A Conversation with Attorney and "Justice at Trial" Author James Brosnahan

[00:00:00] Content Warning This episode contains discussion of murder. It's fair to say that Attorney James Brosnahan has just about done it all. He's tackled murder cases as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. He's had years and years of criminal and civil trial experience.

[00:00:19] He's argued before the United States Supreme Court and even testified in the confirmation hearing of a controversial Chief Justice. He's also traveled to Northern Ireland to investigate the assassinations of two prominent attorneys. And Brosnahan covers all of this and a lot more in his new book,

[00:00:36] Justice at Trial, Courtroom Battles and Groundbreaking Cases. We cannot recommend it enough. It's a great read about a storied career with plenty of excellent insights for current or prospective attorneys, as well as any member of the public fascinated with our legal system and true crime cases.

[00:00:56] In our interview, Brosnahan talked with us about murders, courtroom twists, his run-ins with prominent attorneys and politicians, and why society desperately needs good lawyers more than ever. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet.

[00:01:15] We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. And this is A Conversation with Attorney and Justice at Trial Author James Brosnahan.

[00:02:15] I really enjoy memoirs by trial lawyers, books like My Life in Court by Louis Neiser. I love that book. I love that book. And I read it to try to understand because I was just starting. And he had an argument, something about octopuses.

[00:02:37] And I was at that time living in Arizona and I tried about five cases where I I did something about an octopus when you think I'm on the desert, right? But that book, that book was wonderful. That was great.

[00:02:53] And I enjoyed this book just as much because it's full of stories. You've had a fast in any life. It's full of insights. There's nothing more fun than this is like the literary equivalent of sitting out and hearing

[00:03:08] somebody who's done it all just tell one incredible story after another. Yeah, thank you. I had fun most days. Some days not so much. But most days I did. I wanted the reader to enjoy the book, I think, but I wanted to enjoy it

[00:03:28] in that they would feel like they were right inside the courtroom and things were happening and what's going to be the result and see what people do. I was told when I started very valuable information that it's not about you,

[00:03:45] this person told me. It's about the reader. Of course, I know that because I read as you do. Yeah, as you can see from our background. You've got a hold of confidential documents or something and I saw you. Yeah, that's tricky. We're busy.

[00:04:09] We stay busy. It's been a ride but I wanted to ask you, you get into this in the book, but just for our listeners, can you tell us a bit about your background and about how you decided that you wanted to go into law in the first place?

[00:04:26] Well, my background was I was a slow starter for medical and other reasons, but once I got going in college, I did very well. I got into college on a basketball scholarship and otherwise,

[00:04:42] not sure I would have gone to college, but my father and I were watching the Army McCarthy hearings and that name is probably not known to too many of your listeners, but McCarthy was a

[00:04:54] communist hunter and he ruined people's lives. He called out a young lawyer in this older lawyer's kind of stuffy law firm in Boston because he was a member of the ACLU. That meant he was a communist as far as McCarthy was concerned. This is on national

[00:05:16] television and Mr. Welch, the older lawyer leaned across the table on national television and he said to McCarthy, have you no shame? It was a direct confrontation. It was truth to power

[00:05:33] and I thought that looks like fun. I mean, I'd like to do that. That's when I started. And then your very first case was a murder case. That's kind of like a schedule. Yeah, I did that in honor of the name of your program.

[00:05:57] You know, I want to be a trial lawyer, right? So I got very lucky and became a federal prosecutor on a Monday and never haven't tried a case. And on Tuesday, the boss came in, we only had five

[00:06:14] people in the office, two were civil and a couple of us were going to try the criminal cases and he said there's a criminal case on Monday. Will you try it? Well, of course I said yeah. So he

[00:06:27] left the file, I opened it up and it was the first murder case with allegations of the death penalty, which I always oppose. I didn't like the death penalty. And so I had whatever that is,

[00:06:43] six days to get ready and I did. I worked 12, 14 hours a day. But there was a senior person who took me out drinking every night. Martini's was our favorite. And he told me where you're supposed

[00:07:00] to stand in the courtroom and you're supposed to take notes and don't fight with the judge and the very basic stuff. And the murder, because I know of your great interest in this, was a stabbing

[00:07:17] death by two defendants on the Pima Reservation south of Phoenix. We had moved from Boston to Phoenix and they stabbed him to death. There was some kind of fight that went on.

[00:07:33] His, the victim's car overturned and so they ran up to it and they stabbed him and stabbed him and stabbed him. It was an awful thing. So there I am waiting for the jury as my,

[00:07:52] in the preface of my book. And in one corner we have the victim's family and in the other corner we have the defendant's family. And I'm overcome by the power that I have because I decided not

[00:08:11] to ask for the death penalty. But when that was over, we did get convictions because you know they did it. That's always good for the prosecution. And there were witnesses and so

[00:08:27] forth. I loved, I loved it. It was, it was like being in theater. It was, it was so exciting and you didn't know what was going to happen. I certainly didn't know what was going to happen.

[00:08:39] That's the moment when I realized law school hadn't prepared me at all for the practice of law. It's a little different now because they have programs and you learn a little bit

[00:08:51] about trial and if you're interested in that and all that, but that was my first trial. And it was, it was as exciting as it could be. Yeah, you mentioned it involved Native Americans.

[00:09:08] And I believe you talk in the book about how some of the prospective jurors were, had some prejudices or biases against Native Americans. Yeah, some did. Not everybody in Phoenix was prejudiced against Native Americans by any means, but some people really were and they were outspoken

[00:09:27] about it. They didn't hide it. And by that time, in my law practice, I spent a lot of time on the Navajo Reservation, which I found fascinating and completely different from the movies I had seen

[00:09:45] before I went out West. And I worked with detectives on the Navajo police force and spent a lot of time going to scenes out there and absorbing the beauties of the Navajo Reservation and with a growing respect for the members of the Navajo Nation. So there was Alice

[00:10:11] Cicoti, minding her own business on a Saturday, 14 years old in her tent, taking care of her brother, Danny, and her sister Melinda while her parents were tending the sheep that were just

[00:10:27] off Route 89. And Lester Buetti, a white man, was trying to bum a ride. If he had bummed a ride successfully, Alice Cicoti might be 72 years old today, but that's not what happened. And Buetti had some deadly instinct, saw the tent went over there, asked for water,

[00:10:54] Danny gave him some water, and then he put his hand on Alice's head, 14 years old. And Danny tried to defend her, but he was small for his age. So suddenly, Buetti pulled the 22 pistol

[00:11:13] and shot Alice dead. And he then turned the gun on Danny, put it at the bridge of Danny's nose and fired the 22 pistol, the bullet went into Danny's head, but he survived and

[00:11:30] tell the story of the trial in Phoenix where the surviving Cicotes came. It was the first time they'd ever been in an elevator. They came from a different world, but they understood what was

[00:11:47] going on and Danny took the stand and looked out. You could only see his head and his shoulders. It was not a big kid. And he identified Lester Buetti and tells the story of the trial and

[00:12:06] your Alice's defense of mental illness, which is, as you well know, very important in murder cases. Very often it comes up. Sometimes it's justified, but... Yeah, and you got a chance to cross-examine him. Can you tell us about your cross-examination

[00:12:23] of this man? It was a memorable moment in the book, one of many. Well, it was. And as I explain, it's one of the things I love about trial. You can prepare,

[00:12:33] you know, the antitrust trial for two years. You got it all figured out and then your witness dies, you know? And you don't know what's going to happen. And so I made a decision on the spur of

[00:12:47] the moment that I thought that Buetti remembered. He was claiming he had temporary loss of memory. He just couldn't remember any of it. I didn't believe him for a minute. And so I decided to

[00:13:02] confront him. And I did in a way that federal courts wasn't allowed today, but I went right up and stood behind him. And I started questioning him very loud, pretty loudly, that you not only remember it,

[00:13:22] you know what you did. And he was kind of shaken by it. And the jury was... They leaned forward. When the jury leans forward, that's a good thing for you. Okay? It isn't that

[00:13:36] their back hurts, all right? It's they don't want to miss a word. And the high point can come if the clerk who's always busy with the papers, if the clerk pays attention to you, you really

[00:13:51] find high there. So that's what happened. I confronted him and detailed what you did. When in, you had a pistol. You had a .22 pistol. You remember that and you pulled it out and told

[00:14:05] me, you get the idea. And that's was part of the trial. They were expert psychiatrists and so forth. And it was very interesting. And what was the verdict in that case? The verdict was

[00:14:21] guilty. That was the right verdict. I did something a little out there. And that is one of the bailiffs, one of the marshals told me that over in the jail at night, Gioatti was a totally

[00:14:37] different person. He was talking to the guards and so forth. But in the courtroom, he sat, he bent over, he stared at the floor, he didn't pay any attention like he's crazy.

[00:14:50] So I set up a video, a hidden video and took video of him talking to people and acting fine. And the judge let me play it. And I'll tell you, when that video was over, the jury just looks,

[00:15:06] they just turned and looked at him like, if you're defending, you don't want that. So that was one of the things that happened. In the book, you quote from the movie The Sting when Paul Newman says,

[00:15:22] we need to do things on the fly. And in your chapter on your defense of paddling, that there is no trial lawyers playbook. So can you speak to the improvisation that comes with this work? Well, yes, but you better be right. I was lecturing on, for example,

[00:15:40] to lawyers. I told them, you know, there are no rules that is procedural rules, ethical rules, or those kind of rules, but there's no rules on how you try a case. There's only situations. And I had a case where the 17th most powerful woman in business was indicted.

[00:16:03] She was the chairperson of Ullett Packard, which is a huge corporation. And a man, an older man on the board had taken out after her and really fostered the national negative sensation on a privacy issue. And so what to do?

[00:16:30] And she was on the cover of Time Magazine, which is you don't want to be, you know, that kind of woman of the year. That is not a good thing. And they had,

[00:16:40] it was a terrible picture of her and all that. And so what should you do? Three days after she was indicted, I told her she should do it. And she agreed because of her talents.

[00:16:54] She was a very nice person. And, but she was also suffering from stage four cancer. She never complained about it. I never heard her complain about anything. We put around 60 minutes in front of 14 million people and she handled herself very well. She

[00:17:16] explained what really happened. And about five days later, she had been selected as business woman of the year in the Bay Area. And she said, no, you shouldn't, you shouldn't give it to me. I'm

[00:17:33] indicted, you know, no, no, they insisted. And right after 60 minutes, a lot of people had seen it. There were 500 people in the room and they called her name. The governor was there and they called her name. She got a standing ovation. San Franciscans back up their own people.

[00:17:57] And it turned out that was the turning point in the case for her and the rest of the stories in the book. You gotta buy the book. It's a great book. If you know a lawyer, if you just

[00:18:12] want to read about really great, interesting legal stories. Speaking of San Francisco, speaking of lawyers, San Francisco in the 60s had some great ones. Like, yes, a lot. Can you tell us about those guys and what you could learn? Well, they were, they were the real deal. Erlich

[00:18:32] wrote the best book on cross examination I ever read because he had his cross examinations in there and he had some wonderful cases. Belli was the one who brought visuals into

[00:18:45] the courtroom much more than they had been before. And if you think back to the 50s, when Belli was really at his prime, the nation was watching television all the time. Everything became

[00:18:58] visual. So Belli was great that way. I knew both of them and see that's what I had the benefit of because if I, if I try to case against somebody, it was the point there where I had

[00:19:13] two cases a year against Belli. I don't know why but I did and but I was learning from them just the way, you know, the way they handle themselves is interesting. The way they addressed, you know, this is before television advertising for lawyers, right? And they would

[00:19:35] dress a certain way. When they walked into a room, everybody would be tempted to say, who is that? Who is that? That's how you got business. And those two especially were great but there were many more that you might or might not have heard of. James Martin McGinnis,

[00:19:56] I tried cases against him with him. And George Davis ran a string of, you'll appreciate this, 18 successful murder defenses. You know, it was pretty good. They all wrote books by the way.

[00:20:18] And I did think, you know, maybe someday I can have the time to write a book and I did. Good for you. That's awesome. I wanted to ask you at some point you switched, you shifted from prosecution to the defense. Was that transition difficult at all?

[00:20:36] Not at all. I was always going to do that. I wrote my paper in law school on Clarence Darrow who you readers might not know. I've got him as number one American criminal defense

[00:20:48] lawyer of all time. Tried 101 murder cases and only lost one. And that one, the defendant was a lawyer. So you can't, I mean really. But you know, people need not need but it would be interesting

[00:21:09] for them to know what courtrooms are all about. All of the unresolved problems that are out there, that society hasn't solved, that individuals haven't solved, that children haven't been able to solve. They pour into the courts all over the country every day.

[00:21:31] Today. There were cases, my wife's a lawyer and then it was a judge for 40 years. My daughter's a judge in Minnesota. And they can tell you the stories that are there, the child custody,

[00:21:47] who gets the child? I mean, wow. So and I've done some of that. People ask me what's the most difficult case you ever had for a long time? I said it was a child custody case.

[00:22:02] I represented the mother and the poor kid. So all that activities in the courts and all of America's problems, one way or the other find their way in there. And then the question is,

[00:22:18] on the criminal side, the one that fascinates me is why do lawyers do what they do? They could do something much easier. They could do wills or estate planning. They don't have to

[00:22:32] stand next to some despised person, but they do it. And I did it. I don't have a, I do have one man accused of making bombs in his house in San Francisco. And, and there was my probably my most

[00:22:54] famous case is not in the book at the request of the client, which I certainly honored. But I do have a discussion of what it's like to represent someone accused of terrorism with them with the

[00:23:08] threats and the challenges, you know, all that the lawyers go through. What's that like? It's not easy. Yeah, your book really paints an incredible picture of all of the challenges it faces to do this kind

[00:23:27] of work. And at one point there was a line that kind of jumped out at me. You said controlling one's temper in the face of bullying is often essential. And I was wondering if you could elaborate

[00:23:42] on that and how that idea has come into play in your legal work? Well, yeah, I, I, I worked in the US Attorney's Office in San Francisco after we moved there and we've been in San Francisco

[00:23:58] 61 years. And he was very good at controlling his temper. And I watched him a lot. I knew I could learn a lot from him. He was very good at dealing with his own power. He had it under control.

[00:24:19] He had it subject to his analysis. What's happening now? Where are we now? And I watched him. I have had a temper, time or two, but you know, these screamers that go to depositions now and yell at everybody, usually they're nervous because they haven't tried occasionals.

[00:24:43] Yeah, the ones you have to worry about are the ones that say, hi, how are you? How's it going? You know, it's an old boy. But I have had Brosnan moments, my partners call them.

[00:24:55] And then, because I'll take some guff from somebody and go on about my business. And I'll take a second one and they go on about my business. And then on the third one,

[00:25:09] because I can put words together, I can put words together that hurt. I know how to do it. And then I get real quiet. And I just tell them what we're going to do.

[00:25:22] And one prosecutor gave me a lot of guff one day and I said, look, let's get off on the right foot. You talk to me with respect or don't talk to me at all. And that did it.

[00:25:40] That did it. So occasionally you have to stick up for yourself. You mentioned, obviously we have a particular interest in murder cases is journalists were also interested in First Amendment cases. It's about the zebra murders.

[00:26:01] Yes. You know, the zebra murders, people have forgotten, fortunately, what it was like. But there was nobody downtown in San Francisco because the zebra murderers were killing white people at random. You never quite knew where it would strike and what would happen. And the judge, my little

[00:26:30] part, I had a cameo part in it, but it was on the First Amendment because the chronicle which I represented came into possession of more data as to what had really happened while the case was

[00:26:44] pending against these defendants. They were they were found and they were arrested. And she had a broad order forbidding the chronicle from taking the information they had in their possession and printing it. So I argued, I think correctly under the First Amendment that once you have

[00:27:07] the information, you have a right to publish it. And there's important cases. There was a New York Times case in the US Supreme Court on the question. And once you have it, then you have

[00:27:22] a right to publish it. She agreed and they were then able to publish it. But I for many years, I had an active, I loved the First Amendment practice. And I tried First Amendment cases

[00:27:38] of various kinds, couple of which are in the book. And I tried one that I did one in the Supreme Court that had part of it as freedom of speech and right of assembly. And I just I

[00:27:52] just love that kind of work. I wrote on it, I lectured on it. I loved it. It's incredibly important work. We're dealing with a case right now with the gag order. And at times it's been difficult to get some information. But one thing we were curious

[00:28:09] about just in terms of another homicide case that you were on is the Manly Socrates case. I hope I'm saying his name right. Yeah, I was heartbreaking what he went through. And I was just curious, you know, how did Lisa Starr, the founder of the California Innocence Project,

[00:28:29] convince you to take on that case? Well, you don't know me very well. I actually, as a digression, somebody said, How can we get you to speak? I said, you can ask me.

[00:28:47] Yeah, it was like a five minute call, would you do it? And I don't think I, I think in the 60 years I turned out one case because I was in trial and I had committed to do another trial until

[00:29:02] my partner Bill Alson took the case. It was only nine days to go. There was no way I could do it. So, but it stands out because that's the only one I ever turned down. And that man is,

[00:29:17] the Innocence Project had worked on his case for 10 years. And they can't work on every case, you know, where people write them. But there they were convinced that he did not do an

[00:29:32] arson murder that killed the mother and two children. And the high point of that case, I think. And this is an example of what we lawyers get to witness, the courage of people. He is definitely

[00:29:48] the hero of that chapter in my book. No question. And the prosecutor was going to retry the murder case that we were getting ready for murder and so forth. And then one day, you can

[00:30:03] always tell when they're getting a little squeamish about it because all of a sudden they're nice to you. The whole atmosphere thing. How are you? How's it going? How are those warriors? They

[00:30:14] were great. Did you see them last night? Oh please. And so we went back and forth and finally he said, look, he's been in jail 17 years. And I'm telling your audience for a crime he didn't commit. In fact, he not only didn't commit the arson, but the best

[00:30:39] science was which we had. It wasn't arson at all. And he had been in jail in these chains. Every time I saw him, he had the chains on that made noise when he walked for 17 years.

[00:30:56] And his sister believed in him. So I, the prosecutor said, I let him out of jail today if he would just admit that he did the arson. I said, I don't think he'll go for it, but I

[00:31:11] have to tell him. So I went back to the county jail where he was and I told him, I said, they'll let you out today if you just admit that you did the arson. And the quote is in the book. It's one

[00:31:32] of the amazing things that I heard over the years. He said, I will either be acquitted in this trial or I will die. I will die in jail. And I went back told the prosecutor

[00:31:48] and they let him out. The day he appears on the other side of the glass, in his civilian clothes for the first time in 17 years, and his sister was there and his two

[00:32:03] sons and he came out through the door and he was hugging everybody and shook my hand. He said, you did it. I said, no, no, no, you did it. And he went home to Los Angeles. These are the things

[00:32:22] we experience and not all happy like that. But the experiences of a lawyer who does all kinds of cases, it makes a good life for young people. I hope some young law students and so will

[00:32:41] get this book. Yeah, it is a great read for everybody, but especially people who are thinking about pursuing a career in law, I would say. Yeah. Law students. I think it tells that

[00:32:55] kind of story that they might be interested. Yeah, and you've just done so many types of cases and types of law over time. I think that's really remarkable in terms of getting to experience some

[00:33:08] of these frankly historic moment. I mean one moment that jumps out at me is that the future president of the United States looked at you and told you that you would hurt your legal career by testifying against Chief Justice Rehnquist. Briefly, I testified against him that he was

[00:33:26] challenging voters. He wasn't necessarily challenging, but he was overseeing the challenge of voters and a Democratic preset, mostly Black Americans and Hispanic people. And I was the prosecutor in charge of complaints that day and I went down there. There he was. And that was fine.

[00:33:50] And years passed and they asked me when he was up for Chief Justice, they said, would you testify? And after thinking about it, talking to my partners, hello, I'm, there goes Rosnahan again in this thousand lawyer law firm. He's going to testify against

[00:34:08] the Chief Justice. I mean, surely we're muttering. He'd testify against the pope if he could do it. So I go back and they grill me for two hours. And I enjoyed the two hours. The Democrats wanted

[00:34:28] me to add stuff and all this kind of thing. And Biden was the sheriff. And on the point that you mentioned it, with the cameras rolling, Biden says, you know, don't you think you've

[00:34:42] hurt your career? And I said, well, I hope not. And it didn't, it didn't hurt me at all as far as I know. But then I got another, this is in the book, I got another case in the Supreme Court

[00:34:57] for the political parties in California. Those were my clients. So I went back and I walk in to the Supreme Court chamber and there's the Chief sitting in the center seat.

[00:35:11] And what happened in that case is in the book. Yeah, it's a great moment. And just a fascinating, you know, look at your history as a lawyer. I wanted to go back a little bit on some

[00:35:24] trial strategy. And it was just a kind of advice we give to your clients that really stuck out to me that, you know, when they're saying that everyone is against them, you indicate that you're maybe looking to cast one or two evil witnesses at most.

[00:35:37] The phrase I got to use, and I kept using it over and over again is we're only auditioning for one really bad person. Okay, I know the world is against you, you know, and I know the whole

[00:35:49] corporation is against you and all this stuff. But look, tell me who's the real person behind all this and we'll do what we can to show what they're doing and what they did.

[00:36:04] Yeah, we're only auditioning for one bad person. I think I want to jump into some of our questions about Ireland, Kevin, unless you have anything else because my family's Irish as well, my grandparents emigrated over. So I was really, really riveted by some of your work in

[00:36:26] Northern Ireland in those cases. And I guess to start off with, can you just tell us a bit about, you know, you were reading all these different Irish barristers and of course, you know, long tradition of high power Irish barristers including, you know, some of,

[00:36:44] you know, Wolftown was a barrister, right? And the harvest tried one case and then gave up, but you know, that's all right. But tell us maybe from the beginning when you were a

[00:36:54] young lawyer reading about some of those cases. I read a lot of books about trial law. My library is right here to my right and it's filled with biographies of trial lawyers and judges.

[00:37:10] And my wife has helped me collect what is really a wonderful library of that. And I read a lot of those books because I was trying to figure out what is, what should a trial lawyer be doing and

[00:37:24] how should they do it. And you might be surprised at how helpful English stories about English barristers and Irish barristers are because there's so much that travels generations in how you

[00:37:43] confront a witness and how you question somebody and all of that. So I learned a lot about that. There's nothing too though. And that is six out of eight of my great-grandparents came over in the hunger boats and they carried whatever they could carry. My great-grandmother,

[00:38:07] Katherine Larkin, was about nine years old and a lot of people didn't survive on those boats. So I've always been fascinated by Irish stuff and I had a chance to go investigate two murders

[00:38:25] in Northern Ireland during the troubles. Actually there's a person who was not in the book for a very good reason and that if I ever get a chance I'd write a book about that.

[00:38:42] This one was, I was asked by a civil rights group in New York City. They called up and they said, we understand you investigated murder in Northern Ireland which is true. I had and they said, we're going over and we're going to investigate the murder of two lawyers

[00:39:00] who were killed about 10 years apart just for who they represented. They were not part of the IRA, they were lawyers and I said, sure. And so we went over and we investigated. We confronted

[00:39:17] the chief of police as we would call them the head of the constabulary. That was the most fun because we just confronted the hell out of them like we were somebody who's this guy from San Francisco

[00:39:34] confronting this guy. But one of the cases we quote, solved because Patrick Finooken was one of the great lawyers in Northern Ireland. He had taken cases to the international court and he had won a number of them, embarrassing the British government. He represented Bobby Sandsu for your

[00:39:59] audience became the emblem of resistance in Northern Ireland, went on a hunger strike and died. Nice man his background was he used to work in a garage until he was 15 and then the Protestants made

[00:40:18] him leave. They just threatened him and he had to leave his job and he joined the IRA. Patrick Finooken was sitting at home one Sunday night when two men entered with guns and shot him in front of his

[00:40:34] wife. He was wounded and the kids and he was dead. So that was one of them and Rosemary Nelson was the other one. She was part of a new wave of women flooding in quite a while ago, flooding into

[00:40:53] the legal profession and by the way the funny scene in the bar association when there was a movement to investigate her death and suddenly the old men were in this group and the room was filled

[00:41:12] with women and they were just unsettled by this development. Who are all these women? One of the people that we interviewed told us he had given the guns to the murderers of Patrick

[00:41:35] Finooken and he gave us their names. Now why would he do that? He did it because he was hoping that giving the names to two Americans would somehow protect him. So I came home to San Francisco

[00:41:53] and I wrote the Attorney General of England and I said we have the names let me know what you want me to do with them never heard a word yeah then I said the same thing to

[00:42:04] Northern Ireland never heard a word and this man the witness who told us what he had done by way of giving the guns walked out of his house one day and was shot dead then it came out how long the

[00:42:20] police had known exactly the names that we had. The police had those names in fact they had a recorded confession that they lost the tape of oh yeah so it was a cover-up of police and

[00:42:40] the bottom line in the troubles in Northern Ireland was society can completely unravel it can happen and it did happen there for for 25 years and we walked around on Northern Ireland learned a lot about what it must have been like you know 200 years ago

[00:43:04] what was it like to to be a Brosnan Han over Kavanaugh or any of the other people that I'm descended from it wasn't it wasn't it was total discrimination for pretty much Henry II in the year 1173 was kind of the beginning of it and it

[00:43:32] just got worse and worse yes absolutely one of my ancestors is actually canonized and he was hunted down by the British and then drawn and quartered if you ever go to the cathedral and

[00:43:43] draw a duck his head is there oh Oliver Plunkett oh yeah yeah of course so you're a Plunkett yeah my grandma's uh my grandmother's mother was a Plunkett um so you know they were they were Plunkett so

[00:44:02] I always get excited because um I love Irish history I think it's fascinating but yeah your listeners won't care about this at all but I spent five hours in Galway in a bookstore checking all the indexes of all the books on Irish history looking for Brosnan Han Brosnan

[00:44:19] BROS, BROS, zero and for all those years and I kept looking I couldn't find that Brosnan anything and to resist anybody I think we were outside the castle in some kind of little cottage or something and then a friend of mine this summer was driving through

[00:44:46] a town called Castle Island and they have a lot of Brosnan hands there because there's a town called Brosna which is up the hill and very remote there's only 40 houses there is one church and 40

[00:45:02] houses and so on a whim they drove up there and they found a plaque and she took a picture of it sent it to me and it says in 1920 the Brosna brigade resisted the British in the battle of whatever

[00:45:27] and so that's the only I don't have a Plunkett oh my god bit of celebrity obviously no no that's so cool though I love that the Brosna brigade you guys got to make the merch on that or something my only other cool story with this is my

[00:45:48] grandfather who was from Dublin their family his parents my great-grandparents Michael Collins would apparently be like sneaking through like their property they kind of cross the river and then go back across there was a lot of espionage in those days because obviously he was

[00:46:08] a wanted man but um no that is so cool I really I mean maybe a Brosnahan wasn't in the books at that point but I'm sure you will be for the work you did on on these two important cases up in

[00:46:20] the north because uh I don't know but the Irish Echo wrote a very nice story I don't know if you've seen that but um yeah and my daughter is a member in Minnesota Minneapolis of a group that

[00:46:39] plays the Irish music and somehow one of them got a hold of the Irish Echo review which is nice and so he bought the book and declared it okay and you know the Irish are now the silent majority

[00:46:58] there's about something like 33 million maybe that claims some Irish back on Salar it's a huge number oh yeah I mean Kevin would adopt it but we did the genealogy test and he's Irish too so it's just

[00:47:15] we're everywhere um yeah I know it's it's interesting my uh my uncle was an immigration lawyer and so he worked on I think it was the Brian Pearson case in New York when they were trying to deport

[00:47:30] an IRA member from America and no I have a case very well I uh I won't go into it but I had such a case that uh had a very good result and took eight years wow yeah that is that is a long time um

[00:47:56] but yeah no I mean I what I mean it was fascinating to read this this part of the book because you're going into Northern Ireland as as an American but as an Irish American and you're

[00:48:05] able to see some of this discrimination you mentioned kind of understanding what it might be like like hundreds of years ago to see that yeah they were still marching through Catholic neighborhoods the Protestants were marching through Catholic neighborhoods to show their domination

[00:48:23] uh the the Ford Motor Company had one Catholic employee in their factory one Catholic Ford of course was Catholic himself the grandfather I guess but uh the discrimination the government jobs were all held by Protestants about 94 percent when I first went there I was there in

[00:48:51] the 90s the middle 90s as it was my first trip and it would be you know in in California it would be all the Protestants would live in Hayward and all the Catholics would would live

[00:49:12] in San Jose and and and the need for caution in the middle of the troubles was excessive the hotel I stayed in was bombed 31 times yeah and and life went on I went to the

[00:49:33] symphony one night and there was they have a wonderful symphony in Northern Ireland and there were the people they were all dressed up and they're trying to live some kind of life in the middle of complete chaos and and what you said so eloquently in the

[00:49:51] book is just you know the fact what it says about society society can collapse and it's a horrifying those two stories those two murders are so horrifying because you have people who are

[00:50:01] lawyers who are trying to do the right thing fight for civil rights and and just follow the law and that was that was our message as and we said that to a number of people in authority over

[00:50:15] there because we met a lot of people we were these were 12 hour days and you don't kill the lawyers people people will care about it if you kill the lawyers and we care about it we're over here

[00:50:32] one man was close to Rosemary Nelson and he said please do what you can and we did some things in in the United States with Congress and other other things we did what we could let's put not to exaggerate but we did what we could

[00:50:54] and so I think I'm becoming more Irish by the year you know one of the tragic elements of it is despite all the work you did and and the you know uh finukin case was was somewhat solved there's

[00:51:08] some some conclusion there but with the Nelson case it really isn't and what's horrifying is the amount of um you know as we're talking about society breaking down um you know and and you actually have people in law enforcement who are supposed to be enforcing laws and and

[00:51:24] protecting people where it's kind of bleeding into um you know sectarian violence with state actors being involved and that's still unsolved well we were satisfied after our investigation that there were at different levels of the police force involvement direct involvement

[00:51:46] by them interestingly enough in the last two couple of years there've been a few cases of sort of semi insurrection in the United States that involve uh one or two policemen and I I noticed that particularly because of my Irish experience with with the cops who were

[00:52:13] putting on what they would do they would have their criminal file on x and they would post it on offense and what that meant was go kill them you know there's all kinds of ways to be bad

[00:52:32] and that was done and so I got to see it all I'm back at the scene that lawyering is an interesting life you know you come home I was so glad I put this in the book to

[00:52:54] flying out of Northern Ireland and getting back on you know in Berkeley and with our assumption our social assumptions that we have really made me feel good yeah I kind of the end of your book you talk a bit about you know lawyers trial lawyers but

[00:53:17] you know lawyers in general can be the uh the last defense from tyranny outright tyranny and I know that's something you say a lot he often says that um because you're a lawyer it's happening right now there's lawyers fighting censorship there's lawyers fighting uh on the abortion issue

[00:53:43] uh there's lawyers you name any issue in the country and there are lawyers fighting them and fighting again some of them and you know you notice some of them are full-time dedicated pro bono

[00:53:58] you know low income people who lawyers who devote their entire lives to things like the rights of the handicapped I know I know someone who gave his old career was devoted to the handicapped now

[00:54:16] if they're not going to do it who's going to do it exactly Congress going to do it you're waiting for Congress to get together and and help be helpful they have over the years to some extent

[00:54:28] they have passed some statutes but lawyers are in a lot of ways in my book that lawyers are heroes there's an awful lot of heroes and if you want to be a hero and you're a kid think about it

[00:54:48] what would your advice be for a young person today who wants to become a lawyer two things practice your speech and practice your writing and even if you're good at both of those now

[00:55:05] set a goal to make yourself better it's the speech and the writing those are the skills you have to have and on the writing I do a lot of teaching on speaking and there's an awful lot to it

[00:55:24] is a great get your voice so that people will listen to you and if you speak too fast practice get it slowly get it under control and emphasis and clarity these are things that you can practice

[00:55:45] but they're hard because you have a habit of speaking and that habit starts with your parents all the way through and you have a certain way it's not easy to change it but you can

[00:55:57] record yourself listen to it so anyway you see what happens when I get started on this no I love it they can start a podcast and replay what they're saying and see how it's out

[00:56:10] yeah I love it I gave you an example the other day I was just going to tell you I linked in and I was trying to give a demonstration of exactly how to do it and I had emphasis and it

[00:56:24] was about a murder case and I was doing all this I had two ums in there um um um and that you want to get away from that and your favorite thing is maybe do you know do you know it doesn't

[00:56:42] add anything to the sentence right what what is that but it's a habit so you got to work on it the thing I'm working on right now is basically I say that way too much so yeah there's always

[00:56:56] yeah you know what helps is the writing because if you write it and like my book and you edit it when you say basically is oh you take it out right away off that out a lot of lawyers tend to

[00:57:12] specialize in just one or two areas uh I guess why didn't you do that why why do you think you practice in so many different areas and yeah so many fascinating cases yeah

[00:57:26] I think the I think curiosity is important that and I thought it would keep me going which I wanted to do uh I think uh as I say I was inspired you mentioned Jake Ehrlich and

[00:57:47] Melvin Belli they got to a point where they would take any kind of case and Belli struck out when he represented Jack Ruby down in Texas who had shot uh the murderer of JFK and he lost that

[00:58:07] case I don't think he has to lose it actually if he played it right so it isn't that easy actually but you have to work harder because you might be as I was with some frequency against the

[00:58:22] specialist who knows all the cases and what the next case might be in the ninth circuit and all that you have to work a little harder it's a good it's a good question

[00:58:36] um I think that uh I think part of it was I always wanted trials and even in the early days if you there were some uh anti-trust lawyers for example they did have trials but they didn't have

[00:58:59] a trial after trial after trial which is what I wanted I my goal was to try as many cases as I could so that that means that if I go into this area like I tried seven admiralty cases okay

[00:59:20] I didn't put that in the book immersively uh you know and then the waves came and the boat rocked it you know who knows and but I did and and by the way I found an advantage that if you just

[00:59:36] civil and criminal cases there's a transference of information from one to the other I was talking Friday with the civil lawyers about going to the scene and my observation is that criminal

[00:59:51] lawyers always go to the scene the civil lawyers might go if it's an auto accident but some of the commercial lawyers sometimes don't think about going to the scene the hotel room where they fix

[01:00:05] the prices if it's my case I go and measure the couch the chair you know how well can you hear what are the acoustics like I mean and so there's transference from one to the other absolutely I guess where where can people get your book

[01:00:32] the easiest place is uh to order it at Barnes & Noble uh on amazon um and that's that's really the easiest place to get it because if I'm speaking and I'm doing a lot of that we have the books for sale there so that's that's the easiest way to

[01:00:57] get it uh and it comes in about six seven days and people are doing that um uh I'm running into people that we went to a a nice dinner on uh Friday night and there were people there who had

[01:01:14] bought the book and and and all that so that was fine very cool and we would strongly recommend it is there is there anything we didn't ask you about that you wanted to mention about

[01:01:27] the book got any of the stories or themes we've been talking about you didn't ask me about promising my fellow students in law school that if we hired the cook if we hired a cook which we were going to do we wouldn't try to date the cook

[01:01:49] and all I'm you know law students talk in very formal way sometimes and so we solemnly said to we just won't date the cook and Carol and I got engaged three weeks later

[01:02:06] it's quite a story and it's in there in the book that we got married three weeks after that uh Carol's Jewish I'm Irish it was 1958 oh my we violated tribal custom oh my so we came out

[01:02:27] yeah really and we came out west and that that was that was good it's it's a nice love story within a lot of different legal stories 65 years uh on the 8th of uh uh November wow

[01:02:47] congratulations or three three children four grandchildren and a great grandchild do in March oh that's exciting so there so all the objectors back in the day I don't want to descend to the third grade but

[01:03:13] I don't know who we offended by that story but that's your problem yeah that's our problem oh no that's wonderful oh man well this has been so delightful thank you so much for

[01:03:26] yeah thank you I really admire your your work in a lot of a lot of different ways it's great thank you so much they really mean a lot I really enjoyed it and thank you you got a very nice

[01:03:41] way to present things thank you we really appreciate you and yeah just uh you know if you ever write that book on that other Irish case please let us know because we'd love to I will I I will I'd love to do that

[01:03:57] thanks so much to Jim we really enjoyed speaking with him by just as a trial it's a gripping read thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet if you have a tip concerning one of the cases we

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[01:04:45] we very much appreciate any support special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee who composed the music for the murder sheet and who you can find on the web at kevin tg.com if you're looking to talk with

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