Make Prosecutors Pay When They Lose Cases (Full)

Episode Transcript
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Alex (00:00):
Solving America’s Problems drops in with Jerremy and Dave grilling former
prosecutor turned judge Alex Thomason— and here’s the bomb he just casually

detonates (00:08):
right now the ONLY crime in America where the state has to pay your
attorney fees if they lose and you’refound not guilty… is when you shoot
someone in self-defense with a gun.
That’s it.
Guns get the magic fee-shifting rule.
Every other charge — rape, murder, DUI,robbery, child porn, whatever — the

(00:30):
government can swing and miss, wreckyour life, and walk away whistling while
you eat six figures in legal bills.
Alex says make the state pay everysingle time they bring a case and lose.
One statute.
One line of code per state.
Suddenly prosecutors stop filing 50%of the garbage they currently stack
on people just to force pleas...And the prison doors fly open.

(00:53):
Jerremy and Dave stareinto that abyss with him…

Jerremy Newsome (00:57):
Dave Conley, what are we addressing and solving today?

Dave Conley (01:04):
In this week's episode of Solving America's Problems, we're probing
the justice system where prosecutorspower, often overshadows truth,
overcrowding, prisons, and fraying trust.
Good one, simple rule, fix it.
Our guest, Alex Thomason, a judge,former prosecutor and Valor Law Group
founder, exposes law school failures,prosecutors', truth twisting game, and one

(01:25):
simple rule already used in gun defensecases that could transform everything.
And that's this week one rule toright justice with Alex Thomason.

The justice system is meant to protect, but with 1.9
million Americans incarcerated and$80 billion spent, are we safer?
From prosecutors calling theshots to juries lost in details.
It's a system that punishesfamilies and does not reform lives.

(01:56):
I'm Jeremy Alexander Newsom, joinedby my co-host Dave Conley, and
this is Solving America's Problems.
Today we are digging in with my guy AlexThomason, a lawyer who's lived it all.
Literally apple farmer, worldranked skier, apprentice, finalist,

(02:21):
and prosecutor who has foughtcorporate crooks, courtroom
failures, and so much more.
He is here to help us fix what's broken.
Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex Thomason Valor (02:34):
Hey, thanks for having me, guys.
I appreciate that.

Yeah, it's gonna be awesome, man.

this is such an interesting topic, so I'm glad
you guys were able to pat me on.
I'm happy to be here.
I also am the world's smallest andleast influential judge, so you know.

It.
Smallest towel.
I, you gotta be, unpack that

Yeah.

What,

so the.

do they come in

Yeah.
They come with different powers.
If you imagine the Avengers, andeach Avenger has their power.
I'm thinking, I'm the guy thatdoes the laundry there for their
costumes, so they don't shrink.
So a miss, a municipal judge,so I handle stuff for cities.
So

Love it, man.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for giving us your time.
That's awesome.
I'm gonna start at a random little spot.
What did law school teach you abouthow justice is supposed to work
and then what's the reality whenyou're actually practicing it?

not a thing.
a thing.
Law school teaches you howto be a great librarian.
only thing law school teachesyou is how do you issue spot.
I. So somebody says, they tell you astory and, Hey, I was driving the car.
I failed down here.
This happened, I was arrested.
That happened to issue spot andsay, what are the potential legal,

(03:49):
either civil causes of action youcould have, or criminal causes of
action that could come against you?
So what you learn in law school is howto look at a set of facts and figure out
what areas of law and what elements oflaw would apply to that particular case.
But you learn nothingabout being a lawyer.

(04:12):
Nothing.

That's so wild, man.
The

God.
Ugh.

I start off with that question really is
everyone in the show knows this.
I know you know this as well,but like my whole goal in life.
Is to not only run and win presidency ofthe United States of America, but also to
reform the educational system of America.
And this seems like aglaring problem, right?
Another in incredible professionthat we need, that's a must that's

(04:38):
required, where the education systemis like, ah, we're probably okay
with like mediocre information.
We should be fine.

What's curious about, so have these educational systems
that have been in place for, let'ssay they're 150 years whereby you go
through a gauntlet of tests and atthe end you walk out with a piece of
paper like Wizard of Oz, the Tin Man.
Now all of a sudden he's got a heartand the other guy's got a brain.
The whole thing that, that's what'shappened with law school where you go and

(05:07):
you learn certain things that are not, andhave nothing to do with being a lawyer.
Being a lawyer is writing briefs.
It's dealing learning howdo you sell to a judge?
How do you sell to a jury?
How do you sell to a prosecutor?
That's what law school should be about.
It should be a class on marketingand acting, I would think.

(05:30):
You are muted there.

Weird.
Sorry.
Yes.
Thank you, Alex.
That's so you should take improvclasses, is what you're saying.

Yeah, think about, so with law school, you start
out with contracts 1 0 1, okay?
What is an offer?
What's acceptance?
What's consideration?
Now you have a binding contract.
Okay how do you get outta that contract?
Okay?
Those are all helpful things.
But now with the adventof Google ai, right?
No one's gonna Google anymore.
You're gonna just do chat,GBT or Grok four, right?
And so you're gonna, you're gonna findout those elements of a contract anyway.

(06:00):
once you know the facts well,how do you tell the story?
That's what the practice of law is.
And that's why so many people go to jail.
Why so many people win cases that theyshould lose and lose cases they should
win is because they suck at storytelling.

Dang, dude.
So here's what resonatedwith when you said that.
Like they should have won, but they lost.
Like this is a winnable case.

Yeah.

Should have been a slam dunk, but they just
suck at what they're doing.

some, yeah.
Something example, everyone knowsabout pop culture, case, the man
should have been convicted of murder,but because the prosecutors were
not as effective at answering thestory of this ridiculous, that the
glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.
The civil lawyer, so thecriminal side, they lost.
The civil lawyers were good andthey knew how to tell a story and

(06:54):
so therefore he was found liable.
I. He was found liable.
That's similar to Trump being foundliable for sexual assault charges,
but not liable under criminal charges,even though they weren't pled.
So basically there's two different tracksyou could go under, but the effectiveness
of the lawyers is what determined thatcase, not the veracity of the arguments.

(07:14):
The arguments and the facts were the same.
The outcome was the opposite.
The question is why?

Yeah, that, that's fascinating.
So you mentioned like the youmentioned a few different words there.
So I'm gonna ask you not explain itnecessarily, but is there a difference
between law school students thatchoose to go into public service or
becoming district attorneys or intocriminal defense or other specialties?
You mentioned the word civil.
Can you kinda walk us through all that?

yeah, sure.
So there's this strange kind of cloudthat comes over every first year law
student, and it's all of a sudden it'sthe desire of, oh my God, I need money.
And everyone wants to nowbecome a corporate lawyer.
Nobody begins.
Nobody begins that they want to growand be a corporate lawyer, but the
second you're a first year student, yourealize, oh my God, I need this job.

(08:04):
Now there are a few students that say,no, I'm gonna start out as a prosecutor.
I'm gonna do defense, I'm gonna do that.
And then they do that.
But the most time everyone saysthey're not really sure what they're
going to do, and the end of the firstyear, then they all begin to fight
for the same type of corporate job.
'cause they want the most amount of money.
So by the time you graduate law schoola lot of people are already in a, an
early path to start out as a prosecutor,which is what I did, I worked for

(08:27):
the King County Prosecutor's Office.
And the benefit of that is,hey, you learn how to try cases.
Is this something I wanted to do?
I didn't even know, Ididn't know what law was.
I'd been through lawschool for three years.
I had no idea what it was, and itwasn't until you actually get in
the trenches that you understandwhat is the criminal code.
the civil side of things are,you think of suits, right?
The movies the docuseries suits, it'sfighting over contracts and breaches

(08:51):
and all that sort of stuff, right?
And defamation and sex cases.
Those are civil cases, arguingabout money, criminal cases.
If you lose, you go to jail.
If you win, you get out.

Fascinating.
Fascinating, man.
That is wild.
Talking about that then, you've beencalled a non-conventional lawyer.
What does that mean in your practiceand how does it show up in court?

Here's what a conventional lawyer will do.
Let's talk about a criminalcase, your average DUI case.
Okay?
So by the way, half a Congress has gotDUI and as a side note, there's two kinds
of people when they come into my officewhen they have a DUI the first kind
are the ones that are, so embarrassed.
They like, they, the door slowly opens andthey walk in the office for their meeting
and their head is bowed in shame and theyare bereft of like their, of everything.

(09:40):
They thought that they should be like, ohmy God, I can't believe I'm doing this.
Those people are thepeople that you say listen.
This isn't a big deal, okay?
You gotta calm down.
Okay, half of Congress got a DUI.
What are you gonna run for Senate now?
Is that your next?
And you gotta kinda cheer them up to belike, look, this is not the in the world.
Thank you for recognizing this.
There.
And then there are asecond group of people.

(10:01):
That are like this stupid cop thatand this and so that and in very rare
circumstances are those people innocent.
And those are the people thatI say, listen bro, you're
driving out here in the road.
We got kids out here.
I don't care what you were doing.
You were you blew a0.12, you were not okay.
You're not just fine.
You gotta take some responsibility.

(10:22):
And so I handle those cases differentthan I would than I would in each case.
So an unconventional lawyer would,our conventional lawyer would be like,
okay, we're here to, you're a hammer.
Or You're the nail.
I'm the hammer.
I'm gonna go forward and hammer your case.
I look at each case depends on who isthe client, what does the client need?
sometimes your client may havethe same problem, DUI, contract,

(10:44):
con construction dispute.
They may have the same problem,but because of who they are,
they need a different solution.
Because what?
Say the guy who's upset about thinkingthat he gets pulled over for nothing.
That person, thinks that they'rethere for that particular DUI, but
they're really not there for that.
They're there because they have a greaterproblem in the substrate of their life.

(11:05):
They're just causing them to do this.
And so part of my problem solvingas their lawyer, even though they
didn't ask for it, is to help themwith those other areas of their life
so they're not in my office again.
So the goal is to get to the same goal,which is don't get arrested again for DUI.
But the process that you walk someonedown the path depends on why are

(11:29):
they here and what's their attitude.

Man, that's very informative for me.
Thank you.
And I love that you're using reallife examples, especially as a DUI.
So Dave and myself, one of the reasonsthat we're creating this exact topic is
because we were in a women's correctionalfacility in California about a month ago.
And we were in a prison and many womenin that prison, I would say 10 to

(11:54):
20% were in there for violent DUIs.
That or something that happenedwhile they were under the influence
that was extremely negligent.
And so we're talking about this prisonreform and this incarceration nation
that just seems to be happening so often.
But it also sounds again, toyour point, you are and have

(12:15):
been in the past, a prosecutor
You actually said in a text messagevoice memo that prosecutors can
be oftentimes the biggest problem.

Yeah.

let me ask you this question.
What kind of power does a prosecutorhold and where is it going off track?

Okay, let's, so let's say what everyone knows.

Okay.

knows that cops can pull out guns, come into
your home and strip you from the bedin the middle of the night, right?
You've heard all thesehorror stories, right?
Likewise, cops are the ones thatshow up to save your child who's been
stolen in somebody else's kidnapper'sbed in the middle of the night, okay?
The power of the police is toarrest, and then they write reports.

(12:59):
That's the end of their story.
The, they then take those documents.
They physically either email or walkthem over to the prosecutor's office to
decide has there been a violation of law?
cops don't charge.
Prosecutors do.
So there is, in most of theseDA's office offices, there are

(13:19):
departments that are filing deputies.
Those are deputy prosecutorsthat get the story from the cop.
Jeremy Newsom was running downdrunk and he he shouted at a
woman and called her profanities.
And then the man across the streetturned around and then shot Jeremy.
Okay?
So then I get the d Jeremy was alive,then Jeremy, when he is on the ground,

(13:39):
pulled out a gun and shot the man back.
Now the cops have arrested Jeremy.
For aggravated assault, they've alsocharged Jeremy with disorderly conduct.
And the basis, what the cop has saidis, look, the initial ag the, in the
initial aggressor was Jeremy, becauseJeremy said there's disorderly conduct.

(14:01):
He said words that were likely to causeof public disturbance, and so therefore
it did, which caused the man to shoot him.
And Jeremy therefore couldn't chargeself-defense to shoot the other guy back.
that's the story that the cop gives.
They wanna choose that.
They wanna shoot Jeremy, thefiling deputy will say, hold on
a second, let's make sure we gotthe who's and the what's right.
So they'll look to see whether or notdoes the claim during the words you said,

(14:26):
were those sufficient to warrant a chargeagainst you for public disturbance.
D disorderly conduct.
in very rare circumstancesthe answer is no.
Like just because you say somethingdoesn't give somebody the right to
shoot you, you could say a racial slurdoesn't give them the right to shoot you.
But oftentimes what happens iswhen these assault cases, is it

(14:48):
what leads up to it that decides ifyou can argue self-defense or not.
So the prosecutor would say, okay,step number one and say, okay, that's
disorderly conduct for him to call herall these kind of, these names, but it
doesn't give rise to level where theperson across the street, the boyfriend,
had a reasonable apprehension ofimmediate fear and bodily injury that
the woman was about to be suffered.
So the words I'm using are allelements of a particular crime to

(15:12):
assert the claim of self-defense.
The prosecutor is going through, okay,we've got Jeremy's words, number one.
Okay that's disorderly conduct.
Okay, fine.
But number two, the guy across the streetdidn't have the ability to be able to to
think that he was going to injure her.
So therefore the other personcould not use lawful force.
Therefore he was not permitted to do that.
So for sure, we're gonna choose, we'regonna charge the guy who shot Jeremy.

(15:35):
The next question is, should we chargeJeremy for shooting the other guy?
And then you go through that analysis.
Okay.
Did

Yeah.

have an actual reasonable apprehension
for fear and bodily injury?
The answer is yes, he did.
He did.
So could he assert a selfde claim, defense claim?
Yes, he can.
So I'm the prosecutor.
I'm like, okay, Jeremycertainly is being shot at.
Jeremy has the right now, and thenyou have to go back to the beginning.
You go by state.
By state.
Did Jeremy have theright to be where he was?
Did he go into their livingroom and insult the woman?

(16:02):
You?
And so each state has this packpatchwork of when can you assert
the claim of self-defense?
And so the prosecutor thenwould straighten out what?
And the cops usually they, they're reallygood at this 'cause this is their job.
This to write the cases ina way and charge in a way.
But the prosecutor's job is to makesure out of the gate that the laws

(16:23):
are followed and they're match there.

Alex, we had the pleasure of talking to a senior police
officer with, I don't know, I almost,what, 20 years worth of experience.

Yeah.

what I'm hearing is that there's, there what I got from him.
Was garbage in, garbage out.
was, we asked him, how muchtraining did you get in on, on,
on the law, when you were goingthrough becoming a police officer?
And he said not a whole lot.
And then I asked him how do youfind out about laws that change
over the course of any given year?

(16:55):
And he goes we don't, wehave to do it on our own.
And what I'm hearing is a policeofficer will gather a set of facts and
whatever those facts may be, they'rejust going to bring it to a prosecutor.
And then the prosecutor is going to fitthat into some sort of okay, this is
the problem and we can charge it here.
So literally it's just a story comes in,it may or may not really have, it may have

(17:19):
actually been quite serious and maybe noteven recognized by the police officer.
And then it gets filteredinto this front end.

Yeah, it is.
And I'll give you an example of that.
I had a divorce case where in thedivorce case, the husband filed a
police report against the wife, myclient, and he said, oh my God, all
these bad things have happened to me.
This has happened and that has happened,and she's done this and she's done that.
And he gives the guy a binder,a huge binder these things that

(17:49):
he claims that are going on.
And interestingly he gave, he made apolice report on the heels of him losing
24 motions in a row in civil court to me.
So 24 motions in a row where heraised this exact same garbage.
and the trial judge is no.
He then files a police report.
So the cop takes this set, takesthis report, and is this big thick

(18:12):
binder and says, oh my God, you'vebeen a victim of domestic violence.
You've been tracked, you've beenharassed, you've been followed.
This is so scary.
So he tries to contact my client.
And what does a lawyer do when a copsays, I'd like to interview your client.
Say, no, you're not talking to my client.
You're not gonna talk to her.
And so what did that guy do?
What that guy did was he wrote, hesent it to the prosecutors for charges.

(18:36):
Now, he had, he put in his police report,I recommend you charge this and this,
and so I took the guy's deposition.
This is a very unusual case.
Think about this.
So the cop has a criminal case andI have a civil case, and I realized
that the guy in the civil case, thehusband is bouncing over the criminal
law, trying to get criminal chargesto help him in his family law case.

(18:57):
And so when I realized that thisdetective has, potentially my client
could have felony charges againsther, take the cops deposition.
I was aggressive whatare you talking about?
You, you recommended these charges.
These are like beyond the threeyears of statute limitations.
Did you know that?
Did you look at that?
And he's I did.
I didn't know that.
Did, do you know what theelements are for stalking?

(19:18):
What are the elements?
I, I don't know.
Okay what are the elements for?
And I went through these different crimesand the guy didn't know any elements.
And I made him look like whathe was, which is he just, he was
just a paper pusher at that pointbecause he had no one to talk to.
And I had pointed out to him that look,your job is to go investigate cases.
It's not my job to do your job,which is to investigate cases.

(19:40):
So in that particular case the cop madeit clear, Hey, I'm just here to write
stories and the prosecutor charges.
But if you talk to lots ofcops, they'll be like, no way.
We filed charges.
We do this, we do that.
And so it depends.
But the reality is they tell a story,they gather evidence, and it's up to
the prosecutor to decide what to do.

Wow.
Wow.
Okay.
Thank you for walking through all of that.
This is so informative and I'vealways respected the admired how
intelligent and smart you are.
Alex, what's a plea deal?

Okay.
In every case, the when you so if you everget arrested or anyone you've ever heard
of on TV getting arrested they get what'scalled discovery from the government.
So the government gives you all oftheir videos, their audios, they
usually don't have, and they have theirthey give their written reports and

(20:34):
they give those to the lawyer alongwith your defendant criminal sheet.
So your criminal historyalong with an offer sheet.
And that's a piece of paper thatsays, okay, exchange for you
pleading guilty to the crime ofblank, and blank, we will offer you.
To, serve X amount oftime or no amount of time.

(20:55):
For example, somebody gets a DUI, andthey'll say, okay, the mandatory state
minimum is 24 hours consecutive in jail.
So our offer is for you tospend 24 hours in jail to plead
guilty to the charge of DUI.
So let's just say it'san assault two case.
So second degree assault.
They'll say, our offer to you is ifyou plead guilty to the gr to the

(21:18):
crime of second degree assault, wewill only recommend 30 days in jail.
Now, here's where, I guess this is wherethe cooks get in the kitchen is the
prosecutors, oftentimes, in my experience,half the time to 75% of the time, they

(21:38):
add on what are otherwise bullshitclaims in order to stick the person
with the real claim, the real crime.
For example, anytime I see resistinga resisting charge it, you talk to any
defense attorney in the country, theywill say 100% of resisting charges are

(22:00):
bullshit charges unless you actuallyhave a actual true outside video.
I have seen hundreds and hundreds ofvideos as a prosecutor, and I've been
doing this for over 20 years, the copswill be laying on top of somebody ripping
their arm, shouting, stop resisting.
You've seen it before on YouTube.

Yeah.

Broke.
Yes.
The person is trying to wiggle becauseyou're breaking their damn arm.
And so resisting is differentthan trying to get into a
position so you can be arrested.
And it's not saying that youactually defense attorneys,
we call it contempt of cop.
You told the cop no.
And so now you're gonnaget a resisting charge.
The prosecutors will add onadditional charges, and the cops

(22:42):
will recommend those things becausethey're like, Hey, that's not right.
So they'll add a bunch of kind ofthrowaway charges in exchange for
you to plead guilty to the big one.
So instead of you having one charge thatyou're for sure gonna have a problem with,
they'll add charges to three and four, andthey'll say, in exchange for you pleading
guilty to charge number one, we'lldismiss charges two, three, and four.

(23:02):
But you gotta serve the fulltime on charge one as opposed
to if it was just charge one.
Let's say you're charged with assault two.
I've done a lot of assault.
Two cases those are felonies.
Those are, you're 10 years inprisons, they're class B felonies.
There's, they're serious.
And I frequently will negotiate those downto a lesser charge of assault for where

(23:24):
the person does say three days in jail.
I. Or they'll do a braceletfor 30 days, right?
Or they just basically go home and work.
So that's how you would negotiate a case.
And who you're dealing with at theprosecutor's office is exclusively gonna
determine what kind of a deal you're ableto get that you don't have to fight for.

Yep.
So you would say then that there areprosecutor tactics that you've seen
consistently tip the scales unfairly.

You just drive across county lines.
Anyone, you don't have to, youdon't have to take my word for it.
Ask.
Ask what is ask Go.
Go ask any defense attorney
State.
Hey.
From this county to that county?
Yeah.
Ask any of them anywhere, any stateand say do the prosecutors charge
misdemeanor cases the same in every,in, in the two counties where DUIs

(24:19):
are stuff everybody knows insteadof the more, different crimes.
But DUIs in one county like whereI practice in Washington state, in
one county, doesn't matter what yourfirst DUI, they will never reduce
the DUI down to a reckless driving inorder to induce the person to plead
guilty in the county next to it.

(24:39):
They will always reduce it fromA DUI to a reckless in order to
make sure you do accept the deal.
One office is trying to get rid of casesand one office is trying to keep cases.
Why?
That's becomes a tax question,becomes a prosecutor question,
becomes a public question.
But the problem is that youdrive literally 10 feet on
the wrong side of the county.

(25:00):
You're for sure going to make surethe mandatory minimums of DUI apply
to you versus the other county wherehey, you get a reckless driving.
Yes.

Wow.
Whoa.
So all right on, on that topic,which is just still perplexing me.
In a, in just a baffling way, have youseen or witnessed or experienced courts
suppress evidence that could free someone

I have seen it in lots of cases.
There's lots of national cases,like we know, for example.
Here's how it works.
This is, this happens in everyday in every single courthouse.
Somebody there's, thatwill suppress evidence.
The question is it evidencethat should be suppressed?
Here's an example.

valid point.

you have somebody let's say in a this makes it easy.
In a child custody case, mom says tothe judge, Hey, judge, my children
told me that dad watches pornography.
Objection, hearsay.
Sustained.
So the court will sustain theobjection, which means that the
objection's a good objection.
And therefore she cannot bringthat evidence in because it's

(26:07):
her own testimony, right?
She's the one saying what the kids said.
If the kids were there, thenthey could testify to it.
As a sidebar, kids can't come intocourt and testify, so therefore,
the evidence never comes in.
Okay?
Now you're in a criminal setting.
Someone's been arrested for a crime,and the person says, when they're
arrested, they say, look, bitch, itwasn't my gun, it was my brother's gun.

(26:29):
Okay?
Now very, the prosecutor nowwant to suppress that statement.
A statement that thedefendant himself said, right?
And the reason why they'd want to justsuppress that statement is because that
statement is helpful with the defendant.
When he says, it's not my gun.
What did he say?
The cops pulled up.

(26:49):
He says, it's not my gun.
And so there's a rule, it'scalled self-serving hearsay.
It was a statement that was made outof court that was self-serving, right?
So therefore, thatstatement gets suppressed.
Okay.
And so in criminal cases, you'll haveevidence that could suppress all the
time that is relevant and material.
But they decide that theprejudicial value, so for example,

(27:10):
in 100% of rape cases, right?
You're gonna hear, I knowyou're gonna hear that.
The prosecutor will try to bring inall kinds of, let's say for example,
you have Chad, the rapist, right?
He's the campus rapist, he's beingaccused of raping these girls.
And Chad's I'm completely innocent.
This, nothing's ever happened.
And so he wants what he wants todo, he wants to bring in all of

(27:31):
his church friends, talk aboutwhat a good Christian Guy he is.
He wants to bring in his mom and his dad.
The court's no, you don't get, bring incharacter witnesses for that, but we are
gonna bring in witnesses to show thatyou're a scumbag among the community.
So we'll bring those in.
And if Chad has been accused ofrape before, will also get excluded.

(27:51):
So think about this, if Chad'sbeen the eight time campus rapist,
and they're, they've all beendifferent rapes, different types of
rapes as opposed to the same type.
We'll get that in a secondary.
They're all different types of rapes.
Chad's defense attorney goes, judge,you can't bring in all those other
seven convictions for this onebecause the jury is just going to Yes.
They're it's relevant because yes,it shows that Chad's a rapist.
I just want him to be triedon these particular facts.

(28:13):
And so therefore, for Chad's sake, it'sactually helpful for him that you limit
your case to whatever's in front of him.
But yeah, but if there was a pattern,if there's a pattern of that happening,
other rapes happening where it was allthe same, then you could bring those in
and say, this is a, this is not a mistake.
This is a practice.
So there's evidence that courtshave to weigh every single day.

(28:34):
And it's different in state courtversus federal court federal courts.
And you'll notice like, why are somany, you look at racial populations in
federal courts versus in state courts.
If you look at those, look atthose, sometime you get a chance,
look at the racial DI differencesbetween who's in federal courts
versus who's in state courts.
Federal courts, different rules,harsher sentences, harder prisons.

(29:00):
Literally, they'reliterally different rules.
The rules of evidence are different.
The court rules are different.
How you talk to the judge is different.
And so who are the people thatare getting charged federally and
who's getting charged in the state?
I. And so for the longest time,it was well known that, if you
were if you were smoking weed themajority of the population at the

(29:21):
time was black who was doing that.
And they were beingcharged in federal courts.
And federal courts had higher prisonsentence sentences for that crime.
And then as opposed to you had whitepeople generally were doing cocaine
and they were being charged in statecourts, which had lower rules of evidence
and shorter shorter prison sentences.
And so it's this weird, it'sthis weird thing between state
courts and federal courts.
So that's, that, that'sa long, deep topic.

(29:44):
But you will have been familiar withthis from Donald Trump's case where
Donald Trump would, was not chargedfor the same crime, was not charged
federally, was charged in the state court.
So in other words, state courtsand federal courts can both charge
the same crimes if they wanted to.
Why are they sending people toprison federally versus states?

(30:05):
That's an interestingrabbit hole to get down.

So how is that decided?
Is it just independent?
Does a, a district attorney atthe federal level to say, oh, I'm
gonna, I'm gonna pick that up?
Or is there, I don't know, for lack ofa better term, like collusion between
like state and federal to figure
I'm taking it and, or you're taking it.

it depends on who's telling the story.
Who's the cop?
A federal or state copwho wrote the story.
If it goes across state lines, they'regenerally gonna say, Hey, we'll turn this
over as a, for a federal prosecution.
But there are lots of crimesthat are simply state crimes
that happen in your state.
There is no federal anything, right?
All we have are states.
So we have states here, so why aren'twe just charged in the states, right?
And so the answer is because whatdo we do about interstate crimes?

(30:47):
They don't wanna bring witnesses.
That's why we have,witnesses from here to there.
That's why they do it in federal court.
So yeah, it's, it there'ssome horse trading.
It's a weird patchwork of law if youget sucked into that little rabbit hole.

That is wild ma'am.
From a perspective of let'sjust go systemic for a second.
Big picture.
'cause you've taught lawyers,judges, what blind spots do even the
professionals have about the system.

Oh, this is so basic.
It's the human nature.
I am right.
I am might right.
is.
It is the human pride nobody stops andsays, God, do I really have this right?

(31:36):
That's where it starts and it startsright off the top with judges.
Judges who are not humble about thefact that just because you wore a
black costume, your little black capecostume doesn't make you an intellect.
It doesn't make you a truth teller.
You're not a wizard.

Thing this as a judge.

Yes.
You are simply a person who is asked, whoshould be in humility saying, by God, I
hope I, what I'm doing is right, becausethis is the evidence I have before me.
I don't know if this is true.
We know that in every day, in everycourt, somebody is innocent and
they're going to jail for this.

(32:19):
We know this.
We know this to be the case.
We know people who are factually innocent.
You had a judge.
You had a prosecutor.
You had 10 cops.
You had 12 jurors.
Guilty.
They then win the court ofappeals, no denied then.
Then the Supreme Court denied then backup to an interlocutory appeal denied.
You have all of these judges.
were all there sitting inequity over this case, sticking

(32:41):
in law who all got it wrong.
And at no point do you hearthose guys on a podcast saying,
the hell did we blow this case?
Like, how in the hell did we miss this?

Yeah.

Correct me if,

There's no punishment either, right?
Like

oh, good point, Dave.

and somebody can be on death row be exonerated saying,
okay, actually we got this wrong.
And that all of those people in thatchain, from the arresting officer
to the prosecutors, to the jury,to all the way through the appeals
process down to the governor,

yes.

oh, got it wrong.
And yet it's oh, And then a big shrub,so what I think, this goes to my
question, which is like, would it taketo actually reform the system if the
people in it don't seem to give a shit?

Wow.
I think the problem with finalityappeal finality here's the problem.
You have a trial judge, they have a,somebody gets convicted yep, you did it.
They go to prison.
It is very hard.
The court of appeals are designed builtto uphold whatever the lower court says.

(33:51):
Every practicing lawyer knows that.
The court of appeals judges say that'snot true, but okay, all the other lawyers
in the country think that's the case.
So in other words, if there's a mistakethat happens, and the problem is what
you get is what's called finality.
So when the courts make afinal decision, that's it.
It's over.
And so I suspect from a systemicstandpoint there are some cases that

(34:12):
just your appeal shouldn't be final.
I just think you should be ableto continue to bring appeals.
Because there's just these weird cases youhear about somebody being convicted for a
drive-by shooting, and then later on theyend up getting a video eight years later
that it was actually a different person.
And the judge will deny the video comingin for a new trial because they said the

(34:32):
vi the evidence was available at the timeof your original trial, and therefore
it's not newly discovered evidence underCR 60 B four, and therefore it is passed.
No, yeah.
And therefore it's passed oneyear and therefore appeal denied.
And you're like, but hold on a second.

Wow.

You tralo die.
You horrible goblin from hell, thisman has a video that is not him.
You

Yeah.

and you don't hear,

I'm blown away over here, dude.

And you don't hear judges pulling their hair out
saying, oh my God, we made a mistake.
Oh my God.
Oh my.
That's

heard that in my 37 years on this earth.

yeah.

And to Dave's point, to Dave's point, that is Dave okay?
In any other part of this country?
I think for the, at least the majoritythat I'm thinking of right now if
you do something that is literallyincorrect and another person's life gets
impacted, there's repercussions to that.
To your point.

should be for every person who has been wrongfully.
and sent to jail, or God forbid,put to death by the state.
We should be lamentingthose cases every day.
This is not just a miscarriage of justice.
It's is really screwingwith other human beings.
We can't allow other peopleto do this to other people.

(35:47):
It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Yeah, it's wild.

I just,

Yeah.

disappointing.
I look, I get that we're humanand we get, make mistakes.
What I don't understand is that we're justgoing to shrug and be like, eh, whatever.
That's just the

They

80, 80 20, 80 20 rule when people's lives are at stake.
Come on.

they do get some money when they come out Hey man,
you've been in prison 20 years andyou shouldn't have been my bad.
They get, they get

alex, let me ask you this, because we've talked now to a lot of
people who have been through the system.
And 100% of them have said, thepunishment didn't change me.
The punishment
Me to where I am today.
What got me to where I am today wasreally hard work, was a pathway forward,

(36:37):
was recognizing the problems that I, itwas a lot of inner work, but the years
behind jail was ir almost irrelevant.
What is the view of prosecutors,juries, and judges when it comes,
or even politicians when it comesto throw 'em, throw 'em in jail,

(36:58):
lock 'em away, throw away the key.

I here's why you do that.
Public safety, recidivism,risk, that's re-offense.
Shorter sentences ensures that inmates whoare going to be dangerous or who are going
to continue to steal, do their behaviors.
If they're out, they'regonna commit crimes.
And we know this, for example,in your own experience, some
people are just bad people.
just gonna keep doing thesame shit over and over again.

(37:22):
That's gonna happen.
And therefore, when you are a prosecutordealing with supposed criminals all
day long, every day, you're like,I don't wanna see this crime again.
And so think about in terms ofthis is a child rapist, right?
Somebody who, let's say, wholegitimately commits child rape.
We don't want that person to re-offend.

(37:43):
In fact, nobody wants a person out there.
Nobody wants that crime.
Nobody wants that person around there.
So what do you do with that?
State by state, you're like we're goingto increase the time of incarceration.
So in Arizona, a pictureof a single image of child
pornography is 10 years in prison.
Why?
Is it because that's moredangerous than somebody shooting
children as on a school ground?
No, it's because that's really grossand we wanna see that happening.

(38:06):
So you have recidivism,concerns, deterrence of crime.
That's another reason why they'd saylook, if you have high prison sentences,
it's gonna make people say, oh my god.
Of course that assumes that people arerational actors, which they're not.
They're emotional actors.
The reason most of these crimesare, and this is a fun little
fact about the, you've heardthere's I caught you red handed,
There was a law that if you caught yourwife, not your husband, if you caught

(38:29):
your wife in bed you caught her in bedwith another man, you could kill her
and the man, and you had a red handdefense, which was a defense to murder.
It was a reduced, it would still havebeen manslaughter, but it's still
this idea that there's mitigatingcircumstances to your anger.
Anger, so therefore you couldn't becharged with those elements due to the
hyper emotional state that you're in.
And everyone understood that at the time.

(38:50):
Obviously that's not the case now,but what you see when people are
committing crimes, the majority ofthe time, they're crimes of passion.
They're, or pleasure.
So yeah, so you have look,we don't want just a bunch of
scumbags, looting our stores.
Do we wanna have Kmart looted by50,000 kids coming and stealing stuff?
No.
Do we wanna have, your do you wanna havecitizens attacking cops and doing whatever

(39:13):
they wanna do because they're juveniles?
No.
What do we do?
I say I don't have to do with them.
We'll throw 'em in jail.
They go to prison aspunishment, not for punishment.
So prison shouldn't be like thishorrible place, in my opinion.
It's but you go for punishment.
That is your punishment.

The flip side, we also heard from the police officers
that are like, arrest thesepeople and they're out that day.
And that's, that was a, thatwas the other side of this.
It's it doesn't seem like there isreform on the side of punishment and when
there's punishment it's not being done.
where.

Yeah.
Let's talk about that for a second.
The concern about the revolvingdoor is a, that is a bond question.
In this country, anytime that you arearrested for a crime, you go to jail.
Or if you, yeah, you're arrested,you go to jail and they'll process
you and release you on what is youcalled, your own pr, your own personal
recognizance, saying, alright, this isthe first time Dave's been arrested.

(40:09):
He has a house, he's got a, he'supstanding manner of community based
upon your own personal recognizance.
Come on back.
But if it's a serious crime,they will want you to post bail.
So there's some type of a felony.
And so the bail or bond may besomething like, it's $10,000 or
it's a hundred thousand dollars.
So a drive-by shooting would be likea hundred thousand dollars bond.
And so if you wanna get outon bail, you will post a bond.

(40:34):
So then your parents go across thestreet, or your family goes across
the street to a bonding agency.
They get a hundred thousand dollarsnote, they pay $10,000 for that.
And they walk across back tothe court and they say, here's
a hundred thousand dollars.
If my guy doesn't show upfor jail, then then you can
take, you can keep this money.
And so the incentive is we exchange money.
For security, you'll appear back a court.

(40:54):
So the people that they're talkingabout the revolving door are
people who have no resources, nomoney, no incentive to return.
But that's why they're justlike, what does it matter?
We don't wanna house them here.
It's just a stupid little property crime.
It was 500 bucks from Home Depot.
But you add that up and youand I are paying for that.
So that's how we get there.

Hey, so talk to me about jury trials.
What's scary about jury trials?
What's their role in thesystem and how are they crazy?

It really depends on what side you're on.
Had jury trials as a prosecutor.
I've had jury trialsas a defense attorney.
I've had civil jury trials.
So let's talk about, as a prosecutor,I had a felony murder case that
I was trying where the defendant.
Was six foot three, 240pounds of rock hard muscle.

(41:43):
He was 21 years old and hewas walking around seven 11

Just describe me by the way, like I feel.

Rock hard muscle.
Holy crap.
This guy, he had slippers, like gangsterslippers and he is walking around
for 19 minutes and 28 seconds insideof a seven 11 at night, just walking
around, pacing up and down the aisle.
Okay.
And what was he was doing whilehis girlfriend, I forget her name.
It was a hilarious name.
It was so gross as a pro sidenote, it was a prosecutor.

(42:11):
I had to interview the girlfriend and shewore all this disgusting perfume and I had
to meet her in the CD motel and then shestarted coming on to me and it was like,
just this whole thing was so gross, ugh.
Alright.
So the guy, so the defendant'swalking around and this five foot
two 66-year-old Filipino man withheart disease is mopping the floor.

(42:31):
And you can see inside of the camera, ascuffle happens, and then there's a shot.
Boom, the guy runs out, gets intothe car, and the girlfriend screams,
oh my God, why did you shoot him?
And he says, because I'm a gangster.
So cops arrest him.
They find him like an hour later.
So through the whole jury process,I'm going through and explaining

(42:51):
look here's the surveillancecamera and here's the guy here.
Here's what we saw.
We're explaining like the, I'vegot gunshot residue experts showing
the distance between the shotpattern and the blood spatter.
We introduced the guy's jacket hewas wearing, the defendant, his
shirt, he was wearing his pants,his two shoes, and one sock.
find the other sock.
We don't have any other sock.

(43:12):
so at the end of that trialwe had the evidence, this guy,
that the old man was shot in theback from about eight feet away.
That based upon the blood spatterand the the pat, the pattern on his,
the on his back, it in the back.
By the way, we couldn't get a conviction.
when I pulled the jurors afterwards,one of the jurors said I think you
as a white prosecutor did somethingwith his sock and you hid that and so

(43:35):
therefore there was something exculpatoryabout that evidence about the sock.
So we had to retry the whole case.
It was another three week trial.
And then that case was like, anddetective, did you find the other sock?
No.
Where was it?
We don't know.
We just, he showed up.
He had one sock and we arrested him.
Are you sure?
Was, and we went through a wholesock thing when people were
at the, we got a conviction.

(43:56):
And, that jury people were like,what's the deal with that stupid sock?
We're like, trust me.
It was important.
Okay, so that's the criminal side.
I had a a defense case where I was talkingto the jury in voir dire or voir dire,
that's where the jury sits in a room.
There's a hundred people.
So ever call the jury.
Here's the secret that you need to know.
If you're in the first threerows, you might get picked.

(44:20):
you're in the back, it doesn't matter.
You're not gonna get picked,but they still will call on you
because what they're trying todo is elicit a response from you.
So the first three rows you canfigure out if they're crazy.
Like process of eliminationis just, are you crazy or not?
And so I had this case where myguy was charged with Strang and his

(44:41):
girlfriend interfering with the 9 11 call, assault two all this stuff.
And so I started to the jury,and here's what's crazy.
This is still, this is so insane.
The cop, by the way, who was the arrestingofficer, happened to be a cop that I had
on many other cases in my favor, right?
So he and I were good buddies,like we're really good friends.
And I, so I walk over tobehind the cop, the prosecutors

(45:04):
know this, judge know this.
And I put my hand on the cop's shoulderas again, I'm defending my guy.
I said, does anyonehere love wife beaters?
Nobody raises their hand.
Does anyone think that it's okayto strangle your girlfriend?
No.
No takers.
How about if someone's callingthe do I said, thank God that
didn't happen in this case.
Does anyone know that?
Does anyone believe thecops don't make mistakes?

(45:26):
And this, I still have myhand on this guy's shoulder.
And nobody, there's two orthree people raised their hand.
Oh, juror number 14, you don'tthink cops make a mistake?
No, they have special training.
I said gimme an example about what theywould, so you walk through this whole
process, you being eliminating jurors.
And so in that case, I said to the jury,so when I'm opening statement, I said,
when this case is over, you are not onlygoing to find my client is not guilty
of these crimes, you're going to demandthe judge charge this victim, this sh

(45:51):
shameless hussy, and you're gonna makethe government pay all my attorney fees.
The end of that trial, allfive counts, were not guilty.
All they, the jury actuallywanted her, they actually said the
judge, Hey, we wanna charge her.
That lawyer, Alex said, you could do that.
The judge is Alex just made that up.
And and we, for winning thecase, we actually got all
of our defense fees costs.

(46:12):
So we got $214,000 in attorney feesbecause it was a self-defense case.
Yeah, I, yeah, you bet.
I grabbed her arms.
Yes, I did slam her arm.
The door.
Yes.
'cause she was attacking me and the jury.
And therefore, if you win onself-defense, you get your attorney fees,

Alex, this is I love your memorization, which is why I'm really
excited about this particular question.
Tell us one case that really standsout in your entire illustrious career.

Alex Thomason Valor: On a criminal or civil. (46:40):
undefined

Let's do criminal.

Okay.
Here's a great and thisis how, this is the case.
That never was, but thiscould happen to you.
This listen to me, could happen to you.
You have a doctor, nerdylittle Seventh Day Adventist.
This little dork pleat wearing pants.
Go into Sunday church orSaturday Church not working.

(47:05):
On Fridays middle of the night.
The doors of his home get broken into.
Cops come in with warrants.
They're feds, they possess hisphone, his computer his printer, any
electronic he has in his house, andthey charge him with possession and
trafficking and child pornography.

(47:26):
This dorky doctor, just this glasseswearing guy, has no idea, doesn't even
know how to, he's got a flip phone, right?
And so front page news doctor,possession of child pornography,
doctor this, doctor that.
He is oh my God.
So what does partners do,

Yeah.

Yeah.
They, of course they cut tiesimmediately from the guy, right?
What do his patients do?
We're not having a kiddie porn doctor.
You're out.
Business goes under right?
forward, you're like 16 months in.
Come to find out that thefeds had known for about three
months after the initial rest.
There was no child pornographyin this guy's computer.

(48:05):
And in fact, what was happening was thatthere was an outfit out of Southeast Asia
that was using his and other people'scomputers to traffic through at night.

Oh, shoot.

computers, right?
They were turned on and theywere storing images that way.
And then they were then removing that way.
So the feds knew that, and the prosecutorsin that case, and the county prosecutors
kept that man charged for another ninemonths until finally we were able to
get the reports from the feds and werelike, what the hell's wrong with you?

(48:37):
so the next question is, okay, so then theprosecutor dismisses the charges, okay.
But this man's life hasbeen totally ruined.
you have a remedy for this?
The answer is no.
And here's the reason why.
There's actually a statutethat's, that you're allowed to do.
It's called malicious prosecution.
You can sue, right?
The government, but you have toshow the following four elements.

(48:58):
You have to show.
Number one, was an initiationof criminal proceedings check.
There was lack of probable cause, whichis the absence of reasonable grounds
to believe plaintiff was guilty.
like we thought he was, you arelike, okay, but then malice, the
prosecution was initiated an impropermotive initiated, not continued.

(49:23):
It was in, it was like, no, itwas initiated with a good motive.
And therefore a favorable terminationif the proceedings end in your favor
through dismissal or acquittal.
So that's the only way you can do it.
So they can say the charges got dismissed,but now there was, there's no remedy
because the proceedings weren't initiated.
They just were maintained.
And so this man's life is now ruined.

(49:43):
You think there are any newspaperarticles saying, gee whiz, we goofed.
There was no no pronouncement fromthe courts saying, oh my God, run
this on the front page of the paper.
No.
So that's insane,

Hey, this episode brought to you by Express VPN.
Please use the code Jeremy at checkout.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Norton, VPN.

Yes.

The sponsor of today's episode.
That is terrifying, man.
That is really wild.
Oh, Alex, this has been so intriguingto me because again, to your point,
there's just so many sides and I knowthat there's so much That's right,
and there's a lot that's wrong.

(50:24):
If you had a magic wand, you got oneportion of the justice system that you
could change, what part would it be?

I think I actually, I sent this to Donald Trump as part of his
I used to work for him back in the day.
I sent this to one ofhis committee members.
Thi this in my opinion, if you lookat what is the judicial system, is it?
It's not.
So we have statutory codes.
We have the two types of laws.

(50:56):
We have Adic law and Istic law.
Thou shalt not kill, right?
Versus if you swing an ax and the don andthe ax swings and hits a donkey's head.
So istic law laws that arewritten by codes, we live
by these codes and statutes.
The Big 10, like thosearen't written down.
We codify them.
So what we have are people trying tointerpret these intangible laws that

(51:18):
exist even if they're not written down.
And are bad interpreters, right?
For example, in some culturesthey love their neighbors.
In other cultures they eat them.
Which would you prefer?
So in other words, your preference isn'tdeterminative of what is morally valid
or what is right or what is equitable.
And so what happens and there, andtherefore the incentives of the players.

(51:40):
Who are the players?
I. The lawyers, the cops,the judges, the prosecutors.
you change the incentives to where theincentives are, when you lose, you pay.
It will change things.
So here's how this would work.
In Washington state, if a tree fallson your kid and kills your kid and you

(52:04):
file a lawsuit, you get the value ofone child because you lost one child.
You don't lose two child,you lose three kids.
But if that kid goes on your neighbor'sproperty and cuts down a tree, you get
the value of three trees, not one tree.
Okay?
The reason why that is, isbecause who wrote that law?

(52:26):
Auer, which is one of the largest loggingoutfits in the country, so they have a
law written special for them that says,if you take one of our trees, we get
three of them as a deterrence, right?
You also get your attorney fees.
As a deterrence.
So now so that does change people'sbehavior about timber trespass.
Okay, let's talk about crimes ready?

(52:47):
If you are charged with rapeand found not guilty, huh?
Sorry.
You're charged with robbery.
Found not guilty, huh?
Sorry.
incest.
Tax evasion.
Every, every singlecrime that's out there.
Ah, sorry.
There's no incentive,there's no disincentive.
Here's how you change that.
There's one crime andwhy is this so special?

(53:09):
You wonder, there's one crimeunder the sun that if you're found
not guilty, you get paid, bro.
What do you think that crime is?
Now think about this interms of the lobbyists.
Think of the lobbying industries in,in America, if you're the one crime,
the a very highly powerful lobbyinggroup where they want their members.

(53:32):
To use this particular item, theyhave an item that they are pressing
and they wanna make sure that if youare charged with using their item,
that you get paid your attorney fees,

Opinion.

guns.
Exactly right.
Here's how self-defense, if you usea firearm in self-defense the jury
deems it with self-defense, get paid.
You don't just get acquitted, you getpaid, your costs, your expert fees,
and your attorney fees, you get paid.
So go back down the list, right?

(54:08):
All the crimes that are out there,crabby without a license, you don't
get paid falsely accused, DUI, youdon't get paid falsely accused,
battery, strangulation, whatever it is.
If arson.
You don't get paid.
But if you use self-defense, you get paid.
And you know what thatdoes to prosecutors?

(54:29):
It makes them say does this defense, theyhave a, do they have a self-defense claim?
I wanna have somebody else look at this.
I've had lots of cases likethis guys where I've had assault
cases where I will be like, look,we're gonna assert self-defense.
we have the right, and here's our noticethat we're gonna get our attorney fees.
What that does is it gets an immediatereview from a se, a senior white-haired

(54:55):
lawyer who will look at this caseand say we do not wanna lose a case
where our county's gonna pay 200,300, $400,000 for an assault case.

Wow.

if you take that standard and apply
it to every case, every charge.
If you were to make, every time thestate loses, they pay your attorney fees,
What is the state gonna do now?
They're gonna charge less crimes.
You think you got a prison problem?
Oh my God, this's so expensive.
Instead of figuring out howdo we get people out of jail?

(55:27):
How about we start out withnot letting them get into jail?
And here's how you do that.
Not by saying the crimes aren't there, butsaying if you can't win those cases, then
you sure as shit better not bring them.
You sure better not bring it.
Jeremy.
You sign a contract with a lawnmowingcompany to come and they and
they breach their contract andthere's an attorney fees clause.
If you win, you get your fees right?

(55:49):
You bill their, comes to your houseyou've got your building contract, you
win, you get your attorney fees, right?
And so the incentive for both sides is,oh my gosh, I better make sure that I'm in
the right, 'cause I don't pay their fees.
There is no incentive with the government.
It is opposite.
And I've talked aboutthis with a couple judges.
Like I, we, I went to a judgesconvention and we're all

(56:10):
judges and we're sitting there.
I said, Hey, tell me you have, tellme you have a problem with this.
And they were all nervous.
It was like I was talking to abunch of nerdy bean counters,
didn't know what to do.
I said listen.
You have people, what isso special about assault?
Like, why is that so special?
If I was accused of rape, right?
why don't I get my fees for winning there?
And these judges were just like'cause the government should

(56:32):
really not be, it shouldn't betreated as a privatized entity.
I said, what?
So it's accountable for its actions.
What do you mean?
And I would keep askingthese questions and there

Yeah.

no response

Wow.

say sometimes you have to have a case that you
just prosecute because it's partof, it's good for public morale.
So even if we don't think it's a goodcase, we just need to prosecute the
case and say, okay, then you know what?
Then you could tell thetaxpayers we lost this case.
But you know what, some cases areworth fighting even if we think
we're not gonna necessarily win.
And the citizens will belike, you're damn right.

(57:04):
cases we're gonna fight becauseit's the morally right thing to do.
And so instead you have prosecutorsand judges and the whole system
where there's no disincentive.
So if you put a disincentiveinto the system by making every
crime, if you're found not guilty,you get paid your fees, what?

(57:25):
You're gonna see charges go down by 50%

Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, that's a fantastically wellthought out solution that also seems.
Relatively easy andsimple and pretty quick,

yes.

and

It's a statutory, it's a, I'm in I

Dave, you got a face?
Am I wrong?

I doesn't Europe do this?
At least on civil side, don't they?
If you sue somebody and you're found nope.
That it's like you haveto pay the other person.
I'm this sounds like super easy.
And I think other worlds thathave rule of law do this right.

Yeah, we, we have civil cases that are like that.
So for example in Washington, if youare actually in every state, if you,
the Consumer Protection Act, if somebodydoes something unfair or deceptive
in business or trade or commerce,the person who shows that claim has
a right for their attorney fees.
It's an attorney fee award.
If you're a contractor and you arein Washington R CW 60.04, you can
file a contractor's lien and youcan get paid your attorney fees.

(58:26):
But why is that not true with the crimes?
Like what the hell is the problem?
Like we have an incentive to thinksmart in every area, but crime
where it's with people's liberties.

Yeah, it's.

nuts is this?
How nuts is this world we're livingin where it makes sense that we
have to disincentivize peoplefrom bringing false claims in
every area except where they throw

Wow.

jail?
Oh my God,

Yeah.
Wow.
Alex, man, this is, this has beenremarkable and incredible and I
cannot wait to have you back onin a future episode for something
else, just 'cause you're awesome.
Yeah.
Just 'cause you're amazing.
I'm gonna hit you with somelightning round questions that are
a little just fun and just exciting.
So no law degree.
What are you doing instead?
'cause you have 412 things I'vecounted that you're really good at.

(59:15):
What else?
What else you doing?
No degree.

If I didn't have a law degree at all.

Yeah.
Yeah.

Oh, wow.
I just, I would be an entrepreneur.
I would be, I mean at one point I wasdoing internet internet marketing.
I enjoyed that.
I would just be a marketer.
I think I'd be a sales guy whereI'm not selling products, but I'm

Yeah.

to people.

Yeah.

upgrade, personal improvement.
I think that's what I'd be doing.

Love it.
Awesome.
I've heard lawyers love my cousinVinny, for its legal accuracy.
Do you have a favorite legal film?

I like the, first of all, I like the hot girl in the show, so
that, that kind of moves the whole thing.
That show,

I.

Yeah.
The series suits was, it was likewatching my Nightmare Life roll before me.
Like that movie, that whole series is sostressful because what it was like when
I was at a downtown Seattle law firm.
It was just like that.
And it's funny, for six and a half years,I. I walked around that office every

(01:00:13):
single month with a letter of resignationin my left breast pocket, in my suit coat.
I printed out every single month a

Jerremy Newsome (01:00:21):
Wow.

Alex Thomason Valor (01:00:22):
of resignation because I hated it so much.
I hated the smell and the way they talkedand the way that they walked and the
books and the creek of the floors andthe way that the elevators would ding.
And there's the marble everywhere,and the tall glass building and
the big ships out in the water.
All of that was just like thisdisgusting machine that just was
grinding people and bones and teeth.

(01:00:42):
And gnashing is like this giant,this e this legally evolutionary
biological system that is workingto recreate like wealth into
something that it shouldn't be.
Is I, that's what it was like to me.
So when I walked around and finallyI actually went, had my first kid, I
stopped signing the letter 'cause Ididn't want somebody to lose a letter.
I just had a printed letter,but I kept that in my pocket.
And so for me it wouldbe suits because that is.

(01:01:05):
Yeah, they've got a lot of drama, butit's big law firms are just like that.

Love it.
Very cool.
All right, man.
So what's one practical way everydaypeople, voters, neighbors, advocates,
can push for a fair justice system.
Let's call it either throughvoting or maybe grassroots
action for the last question.

I think what they should do they should call their state
representatives state by state in theircounty they're in and say, Hey, I heard
on this podcast about there's assaultsyou can get like your attorney fees.
If you're falsely accused, whydon't we do that for everything
That seems like a good idea,

(01:01:47):
It will get them a con, make them aconversation about, oh my God, we're
gonna be paying all of these budgets.
Budgets for what?
Think about this for a second.
They're saying, oh my God, wehave to pay an extra $5 million.
charging people withcrimes they didn't commit.
Let's think about that.
Think about that.
They're gonna tell you God, thatwould just would tank our budgets.

(01:02:08):
Why?
Why is that?
Because see, we're charging innocentpeople and we don't wanna pay for that.
So have them go and have them havethat conversation each state should
amend its criminal code that says ifyou are charged with the crime and
you are found not guilty by a jury,get paid your attorney fees and costs.

(01:02:30):
If you do that, you're gonna seethe jail doors flung wide open.
private prisons probably gooutta business because there
just won't be the constituency.
They just won't be there
The prosecutors will be like, oh myGod, we lost a million dollar case.
And like they don't think in terms ofmoney, they turn, think in terms of.

(01:02:52):
Statutes, codes, regulations,

Yeah,

else, wherever you go, whatever you do, you think just 'cause
I can build a bridge to the moon doesn'tmean I should build a bridge to the moon.

sure.
And to your point for anyone whoreaches out and talks to the state
representative, use some of that.
Data that I mentioned earlier.
There's somewhere between 60 and 80billion a year that we spend on jailing
people like, use some of that money,

Yeah.

states like you're already spending it to your point,

Yes.

private business, private prisons will start going outta business.
Man that's a really hot take.
I love that you shared it.
It's really very valuable for us.
Very valuable for our listeners.
And I just wanna say, Alex,thank you for your time.
Thank you, most importantly, foryour energy, for your knowledge,
for your enthusiasm, and forhelping us solve America's problems.

Thank you for having me guys.

Dave Conley (01:03:43):
What did you learn on this one?

I loved his veracity and his intelligent banter and wit.
But most importantly, yeah,this seems like another giant
system built on money, Dave.
A lot of people are making it andthey don't want to be accountable
for what they are making, sendingpeople to jail innocently like I have.

(01:04:10):
I either heard that or felt that,or thought that through at least 30%
of that conversation from a judge.
And prosecutor,

Yeah.

He's not hiding behind the fact that this happens.
That's a really fascinating, and I thinkmaybe something that I, I didn't think,
because we heard that Dave, we heard thisfrom all of the tranches of this system.
We went to people who were in prison whogot out, we're like, man, that sucked.
And I think a lot of people inthere were in there innocently.

(01:04:45):
And then we get to the prosecutor's yep.
A lot of people in there innocentlyand there's no repercussions.
And when you brought that up, Inever thought about that question.
And so thank you.
And I'm sure many of our listeners areblown away by the simple fact that there
is no repercussions anywhere for anyone.

(01:05:06):
The detective, the policeman,the prosecutor, the D, no one

What, so when in your life

never.

anything?
Anything, any job?
Like literally anything.
if you screwed it up,

We're

was absolutely no consequences is

done numerous times.
Like it's not even oh,we convicted one guy.
Sorry.
My bad, like we see about this oftenand it's people in prison that have
been in there for 20 years and it'snot like we didn't have DNA testing
20 years ago like we did like this.
It is 20, 25, 20 years ago, it's 2005.
Like we had plenty of, this is happeningoften and I really, I did learn that

(01:05:57):
there's a very fast solution to thisparticular problem, believe it or not.
And you and I were almost so dumbfoundedbecause it was so elegant and fast
and quick and feels like, seems likepotentially could be extremely efficient.
Man, I can't wait to get onstage and talk about this one.

This.
Absolutely.
We've done, I don'tknow, 50 of these so far.
This is the first one where I'veheard, oh no, there's actually
a really simple solution.
And I'm like, oh my God.
There really is they're reallylegit is, and it's not in the sky.
It's not crazy talk as soon as youstart saying okay, if the state loses

(01:06:35):
the state has to pay, then the stateis going to be bringing like the real
charges to the real people that weall want actually behind bars, right?
The monsters behind bars.
I.
For everyone else, we're gonna be likediverting them into places where they
need to be, like addiction specialistsor treatment programs or whatever.

(01:06:56):
Like those are the vast majority of casesthat are either nonviolent or like they
didn't have a lot of evidence or theywere innocent or all of those things.
I'm like, those people will bediverted out into places where
actually might solve problems.
And so that's what I heard today.
I heard a simple solution.
It could happen tomorrow.
It's a, it's just a little bitof code at your state level

(01:07:18):
and it would change everything.

That is solving America's problems.
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(01:07:43):
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