>> Steve Palmer: All right, here we are. Lawyer Talk. Question and answer. That's Q and A. If you've got questions, you can go to LawyerTalkPodcast.com or if you happen to be watching on social Media, guess what? Just leave a question in the comments down below and we can catch, uh, them there and answer them. Uh, for those of you who have asked questions, uh, we have. We're getting to them one, uh, at a Time. Uh, we've got some in the bank that are coming your way, some that I still have to answer. But I, uh, promise if you send me a question, I will do my best to get it answered as soon as possible. Uh, again, we are Lawyer Talk atlawyer talk podcast.com. and by the way, for those who are out there listening, we just checked our numbers. This thing is growing. It's taking off. It's like wildfire, as they say. Uh, so we appreciate the support. We appreciate you listening and just, uh, engage in the comment. And, you know, if you've got a better answer to the question, I'd love to hear it. And I'll be happy to go back and comment on your answer. And guess what? My ego's not going to get in the way. If your answer is better, I'll admit it. So see if you can stump me. Anyway, we've got a question. This one coming from Mickey. Uh, he's a new listener. He says, Steve, I discovered your podcast last week. A question for you. Do you ever discover police corruption? If you do, how do you deal with it? I am pro police, but we need to get rid of the bad actors who damage the reputation of the badge. I couldn't agree more. Um, I mean, look, here's the reality of this. I do criminal defense work for a living. I'd love to say I podcast for a living and make millions doing this, but not yet. Uh, so my real job is representing folks charged with crimes. And that means I butt heads with police officers all the Time. Some people would suggest or think automatically that means that I hate cops, that I don't get along with cops, that we're sort of at odds, butting heads all the Time and at, uh, each other's throats. It couldn't be any less, uh, true. Um, typically, I find this when the police work is clean and the police work is, uh, done correctly, it makes for an easier, uh, Time for all of us in the system. And, um, that sounds sort of odd, I suppose, but maybe think, like, if you've ever played pool with somebody, uh, who is terrible, or if you're playing with your kids for the first Time, and they're learning. The balls get all over the table, and it makes the whole game sloppy and hard to finish. Police, um, work is like that, too. If the police work is screwed up, it makes it difficult on everybody. But that's not really what you're asking. You're asking about corruption. I have found corruption in the system. I have found police lying on the witness stand. I have had cops fudging evidence when they collect it. And the first question is, how on earth could this possibly happen? Uh, I happen to be a man of faith, and I think that we all suffer from, uh, maybe the inherent ability to do things, driven, uh, by ego, by power, by corruption, by whatever. And that's why we have a system in place that's designed to catch those things. So let me explain. Um, my job is to defend people charged with crimes. One of the questions I get all the Time, how can you defend those guilty, miserable, rotten, horrible people? And my answer is always the same. It's like, yeah, it's not the right question. The real question is, how do I defend somebody who's innocent or might be innocent? Think about that for a second. If you, uh, you know, if something goes awry and you believe you have a client who didn't do it, that's a much harder lift for me, um, defending the guilty people. My job is to make sure the system is in check. We have what's called an adversarial system. I had to remind a court of this or a prosecutor of this weeks ago. In a hearing, it's like, look, I'm not on your side. I'm not on your team. I'm here to represent the other side. I'm here to push back on everything I can that's reasonable, and that's what I do. So they're over here, police, prosecutor, whoever. I'm over here. And we sort of clash in the middle. And the U.S. supreme Court has said something like, cross examination is the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of the truth. And what they're saying, what the court was really saying, is the adversarial system is designed to find the middle ground. It's not always perfect. It's not always right in the middle. Sometimes I win when I shouldn't, Sometimes I lose when I shouldn't. It all depends. But the idea is, the adversarial system, uh, is what keeps everybody in check. Now, what on earth does this have to do with police corruption? Well, the point is this. If the police are corrupt. And I'm doing my job, I'm going to find out about it. If I've got a police or uh, uh, an officer on the witness stand who is what we call test a lying that is maybe uh, fudging it or shading the truth a little bit, uh, then my job is to expose that during cross examination or during the presentation of my own evidence. This is why I have to do my own investigation and I don't rely on the prosecutor's investigation. This is why I have to do my workup independent of what the police are doing. And the idea is the system has checks and balances that will ferret out the corruption. Now what do I do when I find it? I expose it. So like anything, you know, sunshine is uh, the tonic for all of this. You shed light on corruption, it tends to disappear almost immediately. Because really nobody, nobody likes corruption. Nobody thinks it should happen even with a guilty person. So what I do is I shed light on it. Um, now I want to tell another story. I've been. And before I go there, uh, I've had police on the witness stand where I've caught them red handed lying. And not just lying about um, shading the truth or making things sound uh, better. I'm talking about like a flat, bold faced lie. And I've caught them and I've exposed it and it hasn't gone well for that police officer. I've also had police officers who do what I call testifying. I used that term earlier, but what that means is like, you know, maybe they, maybe they're shading it a little bit in their favor. It's not a complete aberration or uh, from the truth. But yeah, it's a little bit fishy. And I've caught police doing that too. Um, and what I typically do is I expose it and I make it known. And I will tell you this, juries and judges don't like this. They typically don't like it. And if I expose it, uh, usually there's some sort of remedy, meaning my client might walk away free and that deters people or police from doing it again. Um, now I'm going to go the other way. I'm going to tell you another story. The very first trial I had, not actually the second trial I had, it was in Franklin County. It was a felony case. My client was accused of, um, of uh, stealing a car. So he was in a car, he got drunk at a bar, was riding in a car with a bunch of people he never met. And they're Supposed to take him home or whatever's going on. And, uh, he's in the back seat drunk out of his gourd. The police pull the car over, and, uh, everybody in the car sort of scatters. They all run. The police chase various people down. They find my client hiding behind a gas grill on a patio in some neighborhood on the west side of Columbus. Uh, my client says, look, I was wasted. I had no idea this car was stolen. I didn't know the column was peeled, meaning somebody, uh, had hotwired it or rigged it to start. Um, but they charged the police, charged this guy nonetheless. So we go into court and we have a trial, you know, and everybody's like, hal Palmer, what are you doing? This guy's caught red handed. You can't win. I was like, nah, I think. I think I got a chance. Um, but the trial didn't. It went through two or three lawyers, and the trial didn't happen for a couple of years, uh, after the incident. So the police officers on the witness stand, the police officer who pulled the car over and apprehended my client, and the prosecutor goes through his direct examination talking about, hey, what'd you do? You pulled the car over. It hit for a license plate, or the license plate hit for a stolen car, whatever it was, and they ended up pulling the guy over or pulling the car over. Uh, and this officer tracked, uh, down my client, found him sort of hiding, cowering behind a gas grill. And oops. And later, uh, gets on the witness stand and testifies. And what he, what he says, though, here's the moment of truth. He gets on the witness stand. The prosecutor says, now, sir, Officer Jones, can you identify. Can you identify the person that you apprehended that night? And the officer looks over at the table like this, looks over at me and looks next to me and goes back and forth and says, look, I gotta be honest. I could say it's that guy, but this is two years ago. I've arrested dozens of people or maybe several dozens of people, uh, since that Time. I can't say that's him. I can't. It may or may not be. I have no idea. Now, look, that would be a perfect opportunity for a police officer to test a lie, to say, yeah, that's him. I know that's him. Why? Because he's relatively sure, whether he recognizes him or not, that that's the right guy. But this officer did the right thing. So my point of telling you the story is that have faith. Most of the Time, uh, the Truth comes out in a trial. Most of the Time. If there's corruption, I can expose it, but only if I'm doing my job and only if I'm doing my job well. And here's where I have a little criticism of the defense bar. Uh, or sometimes, um, the defense bar often sort of falls into step with the system and they say, look, this is how we always do it. I'm just going to go along. It's a local jurisdiction and, uh, I know these people. I don't want to push too hard. We have to push. Now, that doesn't mean you pound the table and act like a believer all the Time, but you have to push. Where there's mush, you push, as they say. And when you find a soft spot where you think something's going on, it's my job. It's incumbent upon me to push because if I don't, the next time it repeats and it doesn't get caught. Um, this is how, and this is why I can represent folks charged with crimes even though I think they may be guilty, because the system has to work. And if it doesn't work for them, it's not going to work for you when you are not guilty. So I hope that answers your question. A little bit esoteric, maybe a little longer than what it should be, and maybe some spilled coffee along the way. But I hope it all makes Sense to you. If you've got more questions or you got follow ups in the comments, please let me know. If you've got stories about what you think is police corruption, I'd love to hear about it. Put it in the comments. Otherwise, check us out. Lawyer Talk podcast, uh, coming at you each and every week, off The Record, on the air, at least until now.