The Boyk Brief
Go into chambers with attorneys Chuck Boyk, Mike Bruno, Zac Shaffer, and the attorneys of Charles Boyk Law Offices on The Boyk Brief, as we talk with interesting personalities from the legal world, celebrities, experts, business & community leaders, and other engaging people about a variety of topics.
The Boyk Brief
Boyk Brief Episode 42 - Defense Attorney Merle Dech
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Chuck Boyk talks with Defense Attorney Merle Dech about his legal career and his life, including a stint as a roadie in Europe for Queen and the Rolling Stones.
A video version of this episode of The Boyk Brief podcast is available on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/H8BKK_VdjI4
To check out more episodes of The Boyk Brief podcast, visit our website:
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We're happy today to have with us Merle Deck. Merle Deck is a fantastic Toledo attorney. He's been an attorney for over 30 years. His reputation is one of the absolute top criminal defense attorneys in Northwestern Ohio. He's the type of guy that everybody who knows him in the court system and just in general, anybody who's met Merle likes Merle. He has some great stories, some neat hobbies. And I was just in a trial with him, with co-defendants, and I got to see him in action for the first time. And if I ever have criminal charges against me, hopefully not. He's one of the few attorneys in town that I would be thrilled to have represent me. So, Merle, thanks for being here today.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you for having me, Chuck. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_00And then what I want to do is get to uh some of your stories and some of your history because I think that's something that makes you uh very different and very intriguing. Um because I think you're probably one of the two or three most interesting attorneys in town.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you very much. Um I represent the criminally accused in both state and federal courts. A lot of my practice is with uh indigent defendants in the Lucas County Common Police Court. I also travel a lot to the Hancock County Common Police Court, the Wood County Common Police Court, and today I had another court call me today. I also uh practice in the United States District Court, and a majority of my practice is representing uh those who cannot afford counsel. And part of me goes back to when I was much younger. My father, who was a chaplain in the military, told me that those who need justice the most can afford it the least, and I really take that with my clients. I work very hard for my clients. I try a number of cases before juries and also before courts. This past year uh I had six jury trials, including the two-week trial that you and I were involved in. And since the start of the pandemic in spring of 2020, I've tried 14 jury trials and one court trial, and that court trial was a two-week aggravated murder trial. So that's basically my practice. Uh, as I like to say, if you come to me for a divorce, you'll remain married and you'll pick up three new kids. So I don't play with anything but criminal law.
SPEAKER_00One of the interesting things about your practice is um you have the reputation that the judges call you when they have a problem. Um they have some guy who may be considered extremely difficult or a very serious charge, or they've gone through three attorneys already. Um so the cases you get are uh the more difficult, um perhaps non-friendly uh clients. Maybe you could talk about that.
SPEAKER_01Well, sure. Um I've had a few judges refer to me as a crazy client whisperer. Uh I do deal with people who have had prior counsel problems. I've been as high as the sixth lawyer for a defendant, and in fact, that defendant we went to trial and he was found not guilty. Which uh I'll tell that one in a better war story because that's really bizarre. But that's really what I do. I come in, the courts call me uh and ask me if I can come on board and take care of a matter. And I do it, and I I think a lot of it as to how I get along with the the so-called uh difficult clients is it goes back to my upbringing in the military. Um I I grew up on army bases, and uh I think it was Colin Powell who said that the military was the first equal opportunity program from the government, and I lived it, and I got to deal with people throughout different cross sections of the community, and uh I think I've advanced that into my law practice.
SPEAKER_00So let's talk about representative cases. I mean, obviously, I know you've handled all the typical misdemeanor traffic stuff and everything, but from a felony uh level, what are all the different types of cases that you've been involved in?
SPEAKER_01Aggravated murders, capital murder cases, murders, rapes, kidnappings, aggravated robberies, aggravated burglaries. Um I had one judge once say, Well, I don't give you something easy because I'm wasting your talent. So a majority of my cases are are very serious offenses, or if it's not a serious offense, it's a case where the defendant and counsel have had a breakdown in a relationship and they call me and ask me to take over and handle the matter.
SPEAKER_0099.9% of attorneys have never dealt with a murder or a death case. Um maybe could you give uh the people listening a little bit of insight how um your mindset and how you deal with a case like that?
SPEAKER_01Well, you really have to compartmentalize in life, and that's what I do a lot. I uh do I take work home? Sure, in my brain I do. And uh I exercise a lot. That's I don't drink alcohol anymore, so that's my that's one of my outlets. But what I do is it if if it's a homicide case, if it's an aggravated murder, and if it's a capital case, especially in the capital cases, you really have to dig in because the the government is going for the ultimate penalty, and that is taking a person's life. So when you get involved in a capital case, the the first thing you got to find out if you're lead counsel is what's known as co-counsel, and that's all on a list from the Ohio Supreme Court from the Rule 20 Committee. And if you're co-counsel, then you also have to work with your lead counsel, and then you really have to put together a team of experts. You have to find a psychologist, maybe a forensic psychologist, you have to find uh experts as it relates to DNA if there's DNA in the case. Uh you also have to have what's known as a mitigation specialist, someone who goes out there and combs through this person's life and puts it together in a package for you to present to a jury or to a three-judge panel so that that person will not receive the death penalty. And in one case I did back in 2012, the mitigation specialist really helped us out in uh preparing our client's life story that we presented that by way of the fact that he was declared developmentally disabled and was not eligible for lack of a better term for execution. Uh, they were able to get rid of the death penalty specifications. The matter then proceeded to trial, and the court actually dismissed the charges of aggravated murder times too prior to uh the case going to the jury. So we went from potentially a death penalty one week at the beginning of the month, and at the end of the month, our client was uh found not guilty within all within 30 days.
SPEAKER_00I grew up beginning of my career doing a ton of criminal defense, and I still respect the attorneys that do that, and obviously I still do a little bit of it. Um when you're at a party and people say, How can you represent those type of people? How do you sleep at night? That sort of thing, what's your canned response to something like that?
SPEAKER_01My canned response is the Constitution doesn't discriminate. That the Constitution, it's equal justice for all. And and really that's what I go to. Have I had people tell me I represent bad people? Sure. I've even had leaving mass one day where I was in the parking lot and a woman asked me about the case, and then a few years later said, I see you on television too much. And since I have a body for radio, I don't want to be on TV. But uh the Constitution applies to all of us, and we have to go back to the simple concept that the founding fathers decided that we are presumed innocent, and we're presumed innocent until the government has proven each and every element beyond a reasonable doubt. And I said, and one day they may come for you.
SPEAKER_00Right. And and I respect the judges that go out of their way to appoint um really good attorneys for the really serious cases because they understand that um, you know, it's the right thing to do. You need to make sure that the people that are facing the most serious charges have really excellent attorneys. Um let's talk about stories. I mean, you're a great storyteller. What are some of the best stories you have on your criminal cases?
SPEAKER_01I I I think the one that it goes to is where I was about the sixth lawyer, it was in the Wood County Common Police Court, and they asked me to come in, and the defendant was accused of attempted felonious assault, domestic violence, and interfering with a 911 call. It was a domestic dispute. And every proceeding he went to, he would uh say very vile remarks to the bench, to the judge, to the female prosecutors, and wasn't the nicest person to me when I was in the Wood County jail. And we went to trial and we brought in numerous residents of Wood County uh to try the case, and he just went off. And uh sexual innuendos, F-bombs, everything. And I just stood there, I didn't melt down or anything, and they decided this is all in front of the veneer, this is in front of the potential jurors. We have probably 40 people sitting there who are probably thinking in their head, I didn't sign up for this. And he's going off, and then the court said, I'm gonna remove him and put him in what's known as the obstreperous defendant room, which is behind and they can watch. And in that courtroom, it was right behind the courtroom. That room was so they put him in there, and it escalated, started banging on the windows, I'm innocent, everything. Then the court called us up to the bench and said, Let the record reflect, I am now turning out the lights in the obstreperous defendant room. And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, this didn't work in diehard, and it's not working here where you turn out the power. They did that, it escalated, and they removed the defendant from the court house. They didn't just take him out of the courtroom, they took him back to the Wood County jail. And it was a case of violence and alleged violence. And when I got up there, I asked how many people could be fair and impartial. And the first woman raised her hand and said, after seeing that, absolutely not. And uh, so we went to trial and I got a jury, and I basically went around that if he had done what he was accused of, and you've seen how he reacts, she'd be dead, she would be pulverized. And the jury found him not guilty. And then we had to go back to trial two months later for him threatening a witness, and they acquitted him three out of four, but he actually behaved very well in that trial and uh found guilty of a misdemeanor. He's put on probation of all things. That's the one case that really um just sticks out.
SPEAKER_00So let's talk a little bit about your background growing up. Uh yours is tremendously more interesting than mine and more than most people. Why don't you tell that story?
SPEAKER_01Okay, sure. I was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Uh my father initially was a pastor uh in the United Church of Christ, which some would say is a very liberal denomination. And um he went active duty in the military. I was in fifth grade, and we moved to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and we lived there for about 18 months on base, which every house looks alike, that's why they have your name in front, so you know you're at the right house. And then we had to live, I had to live with my grandparents for a year. I lived next door to them, but my grandmother was at my house every day, or I was at her house because my father was in South Korea, and then I moved to uh Fort Ord, California, which, if you had to look at military installations as to what is the most beautiful place you can have an army installation, it'd probably be Monterey, California. Our home was on base, a mile from the Pacific Ocean. When my parents bought their first home, it was off base, uh, half a mile from the Pacific Ocean, which you couldn't swim in. And that at the base at the time, it was an infantry division. So it kind of it all comes in full circle because it was really a cross-section of society. I saw everything. I dealt with uh people of different colors, of different creeds, different religions, everything, all there, a big melting pot. Uh islanders, Guaranians, Samoans, Hawaiians, uh Filipinos, Asians, African Americans, Hispanics. I mean, it was everything, all on that base. Um went to Seaside High and uh just let if anybody out there thinks that having a GED means nothing, I do. I didn't like high school too much. I probably spent too much time skateboarding and other things. And um I took the equivalency examination in the state of California. My dad didn't think I would pass it. I did, and he let me get out of school with my equivalency degree in 11th grade, which was nice because that was in May of 1978. In July of 78, we moved to Washington, D.C. My dad was there for a year, and typically in the military, as soon as you meet somebody, you're moving. So we moved six months uh one year later to New York City. It was Fort Wadsworth, it was the United States Army Chaplain's School. It's located right underneath the Verizano's Narrows Bridge, and also where the New York City Marathon starts, which I went back in 1993 and ran. And then we moved to then West Germany. Uh my father was at a uh military uh depot, large ammunition depot, God knows what they had back there, I'm sure missiles of some sort. It's when the Soviet Union was big. And I went to college at the University of Maryland Munich, which was on an old caserne. And of course, the lore, the college lore was, wow, it was SS headquarters or you know, something like that. Actually, it was more of a disabled Nazi veterans' home, we found out once we got the history of it. And uh it was their their old barracks, which were requisitioned by the U.S. Army after the war, and it was a military, uh, it was a University of Maryland, and it was on the second floor, second floor, third floor, and fourth floor of a building, and on the first floor was the base commissary. So people could be up on the second or third floor and look down and see what you're buying in the commissary. And then I transferred to the University of Michigan, uh, got my bachelor's there in 1984, lived next door to some guy named Jim Harbaugh, who played Euchre in my apartment. Really nice guy, pretty high strung then, too. I lived in the Michigan area for four years. Applied to, I applied to be an FBI agent, and somehow I passed a background check, which I haven't figured that part out yet. And they told me to go back to school, so I applied to law school. Toledo offered me a full scholarship, which I lost after first year grades, and I stayed here, and I I've just dug it out ever since then. I mean, this area, it's a city that takes a lot of hard hits, but where else do you have a world-class art museum, a great opera, an orchestra, and really one hell of a legal community? Because I had a case once, a death penalty case, and the prosecutor said to me, Toledo's legal community is of such a size that if you upset someone, you want to cause a scab and not a scar. And I think we really live that. And it's it's a very gentleman community here, and I really appreciate that. I mean, you see a judge on the street, you talk to him. I went to law school with a lot of them. I know you did too. So it's that's my background. I've lived I'm married, I have a 27-year-old daughter, um who knows more judges than most lawyers do. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00So let's talk uh the story. I love the story where uh you used to work for the Rowling Stones.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Um when I live went to the University of Maryland Munich, tour promoters that would come into Munich, and Munich is like Chicago, it's a major city, and all the big bands, with the exception of Pink Floyd in 1981, would go to Munich, and they would come on base and they would hire us as crew, which meant sometimes you had to skip school. And you know, you had to be kind to certain people to get the good gigs. So we would do a bunch of different gigs. I did the Grateful Dead, I did Santana, I worked Queen. I stood back there and they told me the only person who could go in the room was the guitar tech and some guy named Brian May. They pointed him out to me. And I saw Freddie Mercury, and his teeth are that were that big. They were huge. But the big thing was the Rolling Stones. And the Rolling Stones came into Munich for uh two concerts in June of 1982. And you didn't have cranes to get stuff up to the top. You had a lot of chains, a lot of pulleys, and we got it up there, the speakers. And then on concert day, Jay Giles opened up, then they had a German, they were great. You had uh Peter Maffey, who was a German guy, he got booed off the stage, and then the Rolling Stones come on. And you're standing five feet from Mick Jagger, and everyone's like, Oh wow, did you talk to Mick Jagger? Did you talk to Keith Richards? No. That's like if you see the Queen of England, or the King, I guess he's a king now. You see the King of England, you can't just walk up, hey Chuck, man, how's it going? You couldn't walk up and talk to Mick. Um, because you had two big guys right around him. There's pictures of me on stage, and uh, we put the stage up, we helped move all the stuff out, we helped the techs out, then we provided security, and then we literally tore it down, and it's a series of pipes and uh metal pipes, and we put them all in a truck and set them on their merry way.
SPEAKER_00Maybe describe how you looked a little different then than now.
SPEAKER_01Well, I can kind of tie that into my legal career. I don't know if you remember, Chuck, when Toledo Municipal Courtney, the old assignment commissioner's office, they used to have that Christmas tree. They had like a it was a fake mini Christmas tree. And instead of ornaments, they put up attorney's early bar association photos. I said, I gotcha. So I pulled out a picture, it was after we got paid, and we drank more than our fair share of beer on the way to the train station. Um, I took a picture from my junior pass, and it was a series of three photos from a photo mat, and I put it up, I gave it to him a copy of it, and I put it up, they put it up on the Christmas tree. And at the time, I basically had a crew cut. Well, some people have described me as the unibomber, uh, who I share an alma mater with, so I guess they're not far off. And yeah, I have very long hair, uh, a scruffy beard, and I kind of don't know where I am at the time. I kind of look like some people's booking photos, quite frankly. And the best part about that was we hopped on a train, a friend and I, who I'm in contact with on Facebook, his claim to fame was he helped McJagger out of a cherry uh cherry picker at the concert, and he's like he he he got the like shake hands with McJagger. That was pretty cool. He and I were woken up in Sarbrucken, and Sarbrucken is the frontier city to France. Uh we had missed both of our stops. His parents, we stood his parents up, and we stood up my dad at different train stations. And the only reason we got woken up is they asked for our passports and we didn't know where the heck we were. But yeah, I look a little different. Um actually I look a lot different. People freak out on it, but it was all funny games.
SPEAKER_00So let's talk about your hobby. So Those of us that know you, uh, you're kind of a big guy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm very well nourished. Um and I'm a very big guy. I mean, I played rugby for a number for a few years. I was president of the Toledo Rugby Club uh about 20 years ago. Played soccer in high school before it was cool, and uh played a little adult league soccer, but I always was a runner. You went and I used to be actually very thin. I like to run and I do triathlons, and I have finished three Iron Man triathlons and an additional triathlon, which is of Iron Man distance, which is 140 miles. You swim 2.4 miles, you get I wear a wetsuit just to help me out, and then you cycle 112 miles or 116 in Chattanooga, and then for dessert you run a marathon or walk run a marathon.
SPEAKER_00So you've done how many full triathlons?
SPEAKER_01I've done four fulls, finished four fulls.
SPEAKER_00And how many marathons have you done?
SPEAKER_01Including uh the four Iron Man numbers and some 50 kilometer runs, which are you know 31 miles, 59. And that goes back to when I was 18.
SPEAKER_00In an average week, let's say in the past year, how many hours of exercise are you doing?
SPEAKER_01When I'm training for a marrow this year I've been hurt a lot. So my uh I'm gonna go two years ago. I'm exercising 15 to 18 hours a week. It's a really good stress relief. I mean, I'll be honest, I started drinking when I was 13. I mean, the military promotes alcohol. It did. I don't know if it does anymore. And living in Germany didn't help my liver. And I I quit drinking uh right after the not guilty that we had in 2012 on the death case. So I really needed more of an outlet, you know, just to burn steam off.
SPEAKER_00So I cycle and you had an extra 10 hours a week. I had an extra 10 hours a week.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Exactly. And why not get a headache a different way? Yeah. I mean, um, so yeah, I I run in the morning and um I've scared a few people. And uh when I cycle, we we usually start out at, or if I don't ride from home, I'm in the south side of town. We meet out like at the Fort Meg's uh Battleground Visitor Center, and uh we ride the rail trail, or we ride out to Napoleon and back. I'm home in the afternoon, and then the swims. Olander's got some distance, but it's the water quality is not that good. I prefer the water quality at the quarry in Sylvania, but it's a shorter distance to swim by the water is better. And I swim at the Fort Meg's pool. Um probably be there at 8 o'clock tonight.
SPEAKER_00So, Merle, thank you for being with us today. Um thank you. I've enjoyed the stories. I think uh our listeners will enjoy the stories too. And uh hopefully nobody will ever need Merle's services. But uh if you ever have a family member that has some sort of uh serious criminal charge, uh Merle's phone number should be at the top of your list. Thanks for being here, Merle.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank thank you. And in uh closing, I had a when I had a re uh rep representative on the Capitol case uh family said, if we get in trouble, we're gonna call you. There are older people. And I said, well, if you need me, you're in real trouble. So but thank you very much for having me, and it's been a pleasure. I've known you for God, since I was a brand, I think it was before I was a lawyer. Absolutely. Okay, well, thank you very much.