Guest Mark O'Mara the attorney for George Zimmerman

Mark O'Mara is a prominent Central Florida criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor who successfully defended George Zimmerman against second-degree murder charges in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin joins Joe to talk about the facts behind the case. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:48

All right, ride a ride. Today is February the 2nd, 26th. You're listening to Illegal Love Down with Joe Ingram, your Alabama lawyer on W E R C 105.5 LM, just off of the lovely UAB campus and the region's baseball field, WBHP 102.5 in Huntsville, and W R T R Roll Tie Roll in Tuscaloosa. We welcome those up in Huntsville and Tuscaloosa to our broadcast this year. We made it through January, which is good because that is the worst month for me to get through. Everybody comes back, nobody's done any work, and then we're slammed with emails and hearings and just inundated with work because nobody did anything in December. Today we have a very special guest. He is a nationally known trial lawyer, and he is from Florida. His name is Mark Omira, and we're going to go straight to him because I want to get every second I can with him. Mark, are you in the house?

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Sure am. Good afternoon, sir. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 1:55

Mark, thank you for doing this for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Oh, no, absolutely great to chat.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Okay. So, Mark, uh just for to bring everybody back up to speed, uh, you are a trial lawyer down in Florida. You are board certified both in criminal law and family law, correct?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Just means I'm gonna go out and for punishment, but yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Mark, don't be shy here today. All right. And so um I want to talk about I went back and reviewed everything, and it's funny how this stuff comes back around. Because this thing started back in February or March of 2012. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Oh, I very much do. Actually, it's funny because I I talked about on on air before I got any involvement in it. So yeah, I know it well.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

So, Mark, uh, for the for the people out there that don't know you, just give a brief introduction about yourself and your practice.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Sure, I've been uh I started out as a puppy prosecutor years ago, been doing this for about 40 years now. Uh criminal defense mainly, some family law work, also sue drug companies around the country when they drugs mess people up. Uh, but my first true love and always has been trial law and criminal trial law. Um, and I've been doing it ever since, and I love it. I guess I got over 150 trials or so. Um, I just I love representing somebody, could never represent myself, but I love representing somebody in front of their peers to try and explain away what happened and why sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

Mark, how did you first get the George Zimmerman defense case? How'd you get that?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Well, it's interesting because I mentioned I had um been doing some local and regional talking about it because it it didn't really have much get up and go behind it in the first several weeks of it, right? It was just sort of the happen. But then um it started catching fire because a few people on a national level started talking about it. And uh I guess I was on a friend of his was trying to get together a lawyer for him, and there was a list of like five people on that list, and then there was another lawyer somehow got involved to try and get a person or a lawyer for him, and I was on that list, so I was sort of on both lists, and George called me up um because he was coming into town since he was still out of town in hiding, coming into town, um, and just called me up. And he said, Well, you know, they want me to come into town, so let's meet, you know, tomorrow or the next day. I don't went, George, just so you know, you are getting arrested when you cross that state line or as soon as you stop and tell them where you are. Not a bad thing, but they are charging you with a crime, which is why they want to get you back in their jurisdiction. As it turns out, that turned out to be accurate and not, you know, not a great crystal ball if you do this for a living. But because I sort of warned him and got it on track, we sort of built that initial trust, and I went to see him at jail that night at 11 o'clock, which is where they brought him, and that's where it started.

SPEAKER_03 5:05

Um, we're talking with Mark Omira, trial lawyer of Florida. We're talking about the George Zimmerman Trayvon murder case back from 2012. Um, Mark, so when you get the case and you announce to the world that you're going to represent him, uh then your street outside your office becomes flooded with what we call mainstream media or drive-by media.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Oh yes. It was uh it was crazy, and I'm not kidding. It was uh I got to the office about 5 30, um announced it sort of because some people must have heard something, so I got a couple calls in, and by about six o'clock I said yes, I'm gonna be representing George. And I am not exaggerating because it's all on video by 6 30 within a half hour, there were a dozen or more satellite trucks, and you know those. I mean, they're just big trucks on little street. Um, and there's this one picture of me coming out to say, hey, I'm representing him, and you can see this crescent of about 60 or 75 reporters just in this half circle wrapped around me. In my little back then I had a little cottage uh house as my office. Uh and yeah, and I am not exaggerating, it never, well, it never led up to this extent. There were never a time when there was less than a half a dozen or more uh reporters in my office. And I mean like sitting in the lobby, they would bring sandwiches, they would bring donuts or coffee, just sitting there to see what might happen that they wanted to be there for. And that lasted going on two years.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

Mark, I want to ask you a question that I don't believe anybody's asked you to date. So I think that I think I might get to throw you a curveball here.

SPEAKER_04 6:53

All right, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

All right, so you have a you have a modest office and you've got the world in your in your in your face. How did you protect the evidence from somebody getting it? Were you ever concerned about somebody breaking in your office and and trying to find discovery evidence or something? Did that ever cross your mind?

SPEAKER_00 7:14

I was uh yeah, no, I was. I mean, there was a lot of security concerns that we had. I mean, first of all, you know, again, my little house was right on the street, no, no gate, no, never mind gated community. My home itself was right on the street, no gated community. Uh, and you're right, you know, within those walls, you know, everything they were working on um was, you know, you had to be very careful. And I'll tell you that we had to double and triple up, I mean, two or three different times, enhance the security that we had for our internet. We had to basically come off internet, and you know, we would go on it to do what we had to do and then come back off because even back then, what a decade ago or more, um, you know, people were trying to just break in to get to not only the discovery, that's one thing. And strangely, in Florida, discovery becomes public record pretty quick, but all of my stuff, you know, all of the, not only all of the work that we were doing on Zimmerman to build up a defense, but you know, you got to remember, you know, I was working on Zimmerman, and no exaggeration, 30, 40 hours a week minimum, but I was still running a practice because Zimmerman wasn't paying. So that extra 20, 30, 40 hours a week that I was working, you know, to midnight and weekends was keeping the business afloat. And all of those clients had their own rights to privacy in my office. So it it it was bizarre. So yeah, we were it was frightening.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

All right, so so you get the case. Uh I know that you had to get one of the judges to recuse themselves, if I remember correctly. Correct?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Yeah, actually it only had to be two, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. One early on, and then another one.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

Okay. And uh I went back and I did some research. At some point, this case is being tried out in the press. Was there ever a decision thought about, bounced around between you and the state to maybe enter a gag order in this case?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

So we had talked about that. It was funny because the state, so initially the state loved it because the groundswell was sort of in favor of the state to begin with, right? I mean, uh uh Miss Corey, who I'm so happy that she's not a prosecutor anymore. I could only hope she's not a lawyer. She doesn't deserve to be a lawyer, and I will say that to her face again if I ever see her again.

SPEAKER_04 9:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

So I don't mind saying it here. Uh sue me if you want, be glad to take it on.

SPEAKER_04 9:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Um, sorry, I just my little rant. But um, you know, initially the the ground swell was sort of in her favor and it was okay. And then, you know, what they didn't like was what we were doing, because in response to it, and I will tell you, this was all uncharted territory for me. We actually had a Facebook page for our case. For for the George Zimmerman case, we had a Facebook page, we had a Twitter account, and I will tell you, I was on the I was on with the Florida Bar a bunch because I'd never done that before, and nobody's ever done that before. And it's scary as all get out to start doing things like, well, you know, what are you doing? Putting a Facebook page up for your criminal defense client. But we sort of had to because there was so much of a groundswell of information flowing by us, most of which was inaccurate, but that we had to stay up with it, right? We had to know what people were saying, what they were thinking. This is our eventual jury pool. So, yeah, so it was um, you know, the gag order may have helped along the way, but this case was such a, you know, it just caused such a fire throughout the whole country that making believe it didn't exist, like a gag order tries to do, I I think it might have hurt more than helped.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

Oh, I can see that now. Hey, um, so so something you said I want I want to unpack for the audience because most people wouldn't understand what we just said. All right, so you're calling the Florida bar, I guess, Office of General Counsel to get an opinion if you're doing something that's going to get you in trouble with the bar for doing something unethical, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:31

About absolutely true. Absolutely true.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Okay. And um were there ever times when you put something out? I I know you're doing this because you're trying to get your position out in the media as well. Did you ever put something out and hit send or post and you think, uh-oh, we shouldn't have done this? I mean, did you have those?

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Well, yeah, we yes, a number of times along the way. But but I will also say this, I'm not gonna make believe, oh, yeah, well, you know, my great media policy that I had in place, we were making this up as I don't want to say, you know, simplistically making up, but we had no idea, we were in a completely new territory. So when we were doing things, if you looked at all of the media presence, if you had every word I said on this case for the two years we always involved in it, and just you know, had some now AI look at it and say, okay, what's here? I never said George Zimmerman is innocent and Trayvon Martin deserved it, or anything like that. I really never took an active stand regarding the facts of the case. And I didn't want to because that's really dangerous, but now I did go after the state a few times when they did stuff that they should not have been doing. But if you actually culled through it all, I was very cautious about not taking stands that I knew could come back and burn me in front of some judge or jury one day. So while it was scary as all get out, trying to figure it out along the way, we try to be really careful um to protect ourselves and protect the integrity of the process by what we were putting out there.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

Right. You you were just trying to fight a battle in the press and keep the game figure for the for potential jurors.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Yeah, I mean, look, let's face it, with that case, and you know this, half the country loved George, right? They thought that, you know, Second Amendment and and and self self-right to protect and all that, you know, it was appropriate. And then there was, you know, a portion of that side of the group that also were just quite honestly anti-young black, so it was an easy bandwagon to jump on. And then the other half of the country hated this, you know, big white guy who just you know killed for no reason this little black kid. And that, and there was that going on as well, evidencing the real concern about the you know, inaccuracies or yeah, inequities of the way the criminal justice system treats young black males. And by the way, a position I have taken on behalf of my young black clients in the past. But yeah, there was so much of that stuff going on that you had to be so careful because you know, fast forwarding two years, we knew we were gonna pick in a jury that everyone was gonna have an opinion about this case. Everyone and everyone did. Question was how to figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Yeah. Hey, Mark, uh switching gears because I want to get as many questions in as I can in our time. All right, so there was a legal defense fund set up in this case, correct?

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Yes, scary as all get out. That was a couple of phone calls to the protocol. Yeah, go ahead ahead.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

Okay, so because I, you know, this was one of the first times I think this had had ever come into play, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Or first one I've ever heard of in my life.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah. There's been a couple of politicians who put out some requests for money, but no, this is the first time ever of a criminal defense fund.

SPEAKER_03 15:07

Okay, so so you set up this fund. Did the money go into your trust account ideally, or or what what what did y'all do? What how did that work?

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah, so and again, I I wanted to be, I mean, you talk about you really want to be dangerous with the Florida bar. You know, you start talking about money um because you you know, you can't touch client money. If it's not your money that you've already earned, don't go near it. And now I've got, you know, it I literally turned out to be, I think, seven or eight hundred thousand dollars or six or seven hundred thousand dollars came in over that next to the next year. So now what do we do with this? So I did, and I'm not kidding, three or four phone calls with the Florida bar. How to do this? We set up a separate account, um, because it's not, I don't want it in my trust account, separate account. We brought in a CPA to be the quote administrator over it.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Smart.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Um, yeah. I didn't take a penny. I didn't, you know, people think, oh yeah, I went off and bought cars or whatever. No, we didn't take a penny for our fees. I will tell you at the very, very, very end, when the case was over, gorgeous was done, we took a few dollars, and I'll talk to you about that whenever you want. Um, at the end, but during this, we never touched it. It was used for living purpose, living arrangements for him, security for him, you know, some other craziness that happened. Um, but yeah, that was scary itself because we had, you know, we had people 10, 15, 20 dollars at a pop, they would be sending in checks and things like that, you know, because every there was a real groundswell of support for for George, just like there was a groundswell of support for Trayvon. And yeah, we're sitting there trying to figure out what to do with all these checks coming in, and I didn't want to touch them.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

So, Mark, how all right? Look, I mean, let's be honest here. You're you're you know, you're not a big, big firm, what we call big law. How in the world did you do this and then do all your other cases and and and and still make any money?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

How'd you do that? Well, uh, I'll tell you, uh, I didn't make any money, but I spent so here's the really the way it happened. I had a decent, I had a good practice going. I was very happy. I was doing a little bit of work here and there, and I was being on TV and you know, had a good reputation and was making good criminal defense fees and good family law fees, and then this thing hit. And I am not exaggerating. It I it took all of my retirement funds, it took um all my savings, because you know, it was 40 hours worth of work, and I'm not exaggerating every week, all week. I didn't, I mean, I was working till 11 o'clock at night, and you know, these lawyers go, oh, I worked 80 hours a week, and they really mean 20. Um, I was working 80, 90 hours a week because there was nothing else that we could do but this case, and also spending those 20, 30 hours a week, uh part of the 90, um, on my regular cases, because those people needed their work done, and it was those cases that was keeping the lights on, you know, because I'd like I said I'd been going through my savings and my retirement funds and whatnot just because you know you gotta pay people, they all want to get paid.

SPEAKER_04 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Um, and uh yeah, no, it it was, you know, people go, Oh yeah, you know, you just you became somebody said I became a millionaire over this case. And I went, do me a favor, let's go back to my house, help me find that million because I haven't found it yet. Um now, no regrets at all about this case and what it's done for me, you know, and from that day forward, but no, the finances of it were pretty crazy and um yeah, it was pretty devastating along the way.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

So um let me ask you a question. Just because you got that case while the case is going, because you're in the media every day, because you're the you know, the talk of the world, were you getting a lot more cases at that time just because of that case, or was it that the the cases came after the Zimmerman case? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

I think some yeah, no, no, it's a great question, actually. Some came during the case, but I I think people, it was almost like there was a pause, if that makes sense. I mean, I'm we got called, yeah, we got calls from all over the country, you know, this happened to me or that happened to me. And quite honestly, if you had walked in and said, here's X number of thousand ten thousand dollars as a fee, I couldn't have taken it because I didn't have the bandwidth. I mean, we were, you know, we were just keeping barely keeping our nostrils above water and learning how to breathe underwater on occasion. Um, but I but so during the case, we just didn't have the bandwidth to take much on, although obviously the national publicity uh it was enormous. So afterwards, there's no question it changed the entirety of my practice.

SPEAKER_03 20:13

So I'm gonna ask you a question that I I I I've tried to review everything I could in the last week, and I I haven't seen anything out there on the internet. So after this case, after everything is said and done, did you do you think you ever recouped financially probably what you spent time and effort in that case? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Yes, I do. Yes, I did. I mean, you talk look, just look at it this way, sure, like the pragmatism of it, right? I I spent, let's just say, it's really less than two years, let's just say two years working, busting my butt on that case. Now, fast forward from 2013, July 2013, when the verdict came in, to what I have accomplished, quote, accomplished today because of the national notoriety, reputation, whatever you want to call it. So here's one example. I was I got a CNN contract for seven or eight years, I think it was, or eight or nine years for a nice salary. Um that came because of my experience with Zimmerman. So I'll tell you right now, that that just about covered, you know, all of my downside, right, just by itself. But much more importantly, you know, I've gotten it's gotta be hundreds and hundreds of cases, if not more, based upon people now knowing my name. I mean, we were getting calls from all over the country, and you know, like, do you do this? No, do you do that? But, you know, some guy up in you know, Wichita, Kansas wouldn't know my name if it wasn't for the George Derrickman case. But, you know, they called in, and I probably one of the most surprising calls. Calls in that I got was, uh, if you don't mind my saying, was just spending a little story. Um, about a month after the case, got in a call about a guy who was shot by cops as he was leaving an area where he he stole a sandwich and a and a beer from a 7-Eleven kind of place. And cops are inside. I don't know why he didn't notice the cop car, but cops are inside, so he's trying to get out, and they shoot him because they say he's trying to run him down, whatever. Uh, and now he's in the hospital because they did shoot him four times. He survived, and uh, they charged him with attempted murder of the cops. Okay, so they called me just like a month after uh the verdict when there was still a lot of protest about the verdict. And um, what was really surprising to me was it was a black family. When I went to the hospital, I had no idea. Opened up a hospital room door where the family is, and the kids sitting there shot up. And it's a black family, and I was really surprised because you know, there had been so much backlash because of the verdict. And I was talking to a friend of mine who worked with me during the case, it worked in my office, a black female uh lawyer, and I said, Wow, that's just sort of surprising. And she just looked at me because she knew it better than I do from her culture. She goes, Well, you won. And that's what counts here. People are looking at people who win. And I think that you know sort of crystallized in my mind, but the last decade has shown that because of that case, and obviously because of winning that case, um, people have called in because they figure if you can do it for him, you can do it for me. So overall, it's been, yeah, I I have gotten the money back, I don't know, tenfold, whatever it might be, um, easily because the whole practice hasn't has sort of changed its texture.

SPEAKER_04 23:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

Um Mark, I guess we're about to go to break, right, John? All right, Mark, we're gonna go to break for uh news and weather, and then we'll come right back. Folks, legal down with Joe Ingram. Mark O'Mara in the house. He represented George Zimmerman in the Trivon murder trial back in 2012. You're so lucky to get to hear this man. We'll be back in a minute. All righty, let's go lick a little. Let's go in the Alabama lawyer. Listen on W-E-R-T, W B H E, W-R-T-R, Talk Radio here in Alabama. Today our guest is Mark O'Mara. Uh, he was counsel for George Zimmerman in the Trayvon murder count trial in Florida. Mark, let's pick back up, okay? Sounds great. All right, so Mark, um jury selection. The jury ended up being all women?

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Yes, which is a surprise and dangerous in and of itself, I will tell you the truth.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

Did your side have a jury uh expert? Were y'all able to to accommodate that? Or did you not have to be?

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Yeah, actually we did, and I and I'll tell you the truth. I don't use jury experts uh very much at all, but a buddy of mine, uh Robert Hirschhorn, who I've known and I've listened to um in seminars before in jury selection, was willing to help out. Um and he did, and I'm glad he did. You know, he was very helpful. You know, I'm I'm very used to picking juries myself, so I was very good with just doing it myself, but it was always good to have his input, and he's a great guy and a great jury consultant.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

So do if you remember what was your ideal juror supposed to look like, or do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 26:49

So, you know, oh no, I I know what I was looking for. You know, we're looking for people who, you know, like engineers, a little bit more the rational side of it, right? A little bit more look at the law, and if you follow the law, this is the result. And the reason why, and exactly what the state was not the state looking for not just in jury selection through the whole trial, was the jury, and one way they did it was disgusting. And I'd love to have a chance to talk to you about that. But even in jury selection, they wanted jurors who were more emotional, right? They had to play to the emotion, to the fear, to the anger, you know, to the oh, it's a child who died. Let's kill let's convict somebody. As opposed, we wanted somebody who would say, okay, it was a horrible tragedy. We're not denying that, but look at the statute that says you're allowed to protect yourself from an perceived threat of an imminent great bodily injury. That's the mantra of self-defense. And if you apply that law, then I knew we would get an acquittal because the law really did support that what George did, even if he determined it to be unnecessary, it was still justified. And that's who we were looking for. Now, that's not who we got necessarily, but that jury selection sort of developed uh because of some, I think, miss moves by the state, and we took advantage of it.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

During the course of the trial, you had co-counsel, a gentleman named uh Don West, correct?

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

All right. And was there anybody else at the table besides the two of you?

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Oh, yes. Um, if you notice, um we had uh a couple of interns, we had five or six interns working on the case with us, um, a couple paralegals. I mean, look, I was not doing that case myself, and Don and I were not doing it ourselves. We had an enormous amount of help from our our staff. But it was the two lawyers were there, Don and I, yes.

SPEAKER_03 28:50

Okay. So during the course of the trial, and and you know what I'm talking about, or I'm going with this question here. Obviously, you had to have somebody that was keeping tabs on the jurors during the state case. And what what was the feedback y'all were getting? Did you feel like yeah you had a chance, or did you feel like it was it was a losing battle every day?

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Well, it was I I would tell you, it was scary starting the trial because again, we had um six women, and you know, women are moms, and moms look at, you know, my god, a child was lost, right? Um, so that was we had to be very aware and very cautious about that. So having said that part of it and the awareness we had to have with that, um, the way the trial was developing with the way the state was presenting their case. And look, I'll give you a real quick example. The prosecutor, John Guy, who's now a judge up in Jacksonville, when he got in his opening statement, right, just right out of the box, he goes first, first words to the jury. The first time that state ever spoke to that jury officially, not in jury selection, he said he screamed out two words that I cannot repeat on your program, but one of them was a cuss word, right? And and it was like shocking. My God, it was shocking. And everyone was looking around. And that's exactly what the state wanted to do, and they tried to do that through the entire trial was make this emotional. He took those two words and screamed them out from a couple of words that George said to the non-emergency operator that he called about seeing Trayvon wandering around places he thought George Slurrey shouldn't have been. And what he said was, these blank punks, you know, always get away with it. These and and he just used the the tone that I just used with you. These blank punks always get away with it. And yet, it shows up in the first words of his opening statement, these blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, screeching to this jury. And it was that level of emotion, and we then became the rational ones. We were the ones who walked in calm, we're the ones who were respectful, we're the ones who were not screaming and yelling. And I think that permeated the entire trial in a way that brought the six women who could have turned on us, brought us more in our camp than in the state's camp.

unknown 31:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 31:24

No, it does. And you know, when when I think back on the trial and and I got to watch some of it, and the um you know, you're in the you're in the eye of the storm, right? You're in the eye of the storm. Oh, yeah. But but from the 50,000 view, I guess, uh, from the from watching it on TV, everybody was talking about look at Marco Mira. Look at how calm he is, look at how cerebral he is. Look at how look at how analytical he is. I mean, is that your normal everyday uh jury trial persona, or was that specifically in this particular case? Do you know what I mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Oh, yeah, yeah, no. Um, so uh I think generally speaking, that's my persona. Now, you know, people ask me, you know, how'd you stay so calm? And I say, blame my dad. I mean, my, you know, I got I learned that from my dad and my mom, but my dad, who was a P.O.W in World War II, like 11 months into a German prisoner war camp, and then a 35-year battalion chief in the fire department of New York. And he kept his act together and he was just a chill, good Irish Catholic, no, no messing around him. And there weren't a lot of extra emotions in our Irish Catholic family. So uh I think that's where it came from. Uh, and I sort of blamed him, not blamed him, you know, credited him for keeping that calm. But I'll also tell you that it was played up. I think played up is almost cheap. You know, we responded to the attempt at emotionalism that the state tried to infect this trial with. Because criminal trials are not supposed to be full of emotion. They tried to infect it because that's the only way that they'd get their conviction, and we countered that with what you just said, staying calm.

SPEAKER_03 33:17

All right, so we're talking off here. You got Don West was your co-counsel. Tell the audience how you conned Don into come doing this with you.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

So, so I've known Don. I was a puppy prosecutor, and Don was already at the public defender's office over in Seminole County. So I've always respected him. He's a great trial lawyer, better trial lawyer than he actually showed up in that trial, to be honest with you. Um and he's been a great friend, and we were out having dinner early in my involvement in the case, and uh it was with him, good buddy John, who's now a circuit judge out of up in Seminole County as well. And you know, I might have had a a Jack Daniels coach or two.

SPEAKER_04 34:02

It's okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

We chatted a little bit, and um, you know, I said, well, look, man, what should we do in the federal public defender's office? Come play with me, you know, let's have go have some fun with this case. It was starting to get interesting, not really spooled up yet, but um, you know, and I guess he talked about and thought about it for a few days, called me back a few days later and asked if I was serious. I said I was, and he left the uh federal public defender's office and you know came over and just started busting butt with me for those two years. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

Where is he now?

SPEAKER_00 34:35

He is mostly retired, living out in Texas and California. He's got most of his family back out in Texas, uh, still doing a little bit of work, but not much. But you know, he ended up with a much different perspective of the event of the Zimmerman event than I did, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

Yeah. Um hey Mark, I want to ask you because um you're you're 69, correct?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Well, inside or outside, inside I'm still in my 30s. People keep telling me I'm getting older.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

I know, but the uh just follow me. Hang on a second, Mark. All right, so you're 69, correct? Yes. All right. So I want to ask you because, you know, I'm I'm 54, and a lot of my friends are already planning their retirement. And for me, Mark, you don't know me personally, uh, my theory is if you do what you love and you love what you do, you're never working today in your life. I love what I do for a living. Okay? Absolutely. So I don't have the this number in my head where I'm walking out and quit practicing law. So where I'm going with this is, Mark, is there a time with a number for you that you're walking out, or is this something that you still thrive on?

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Well, let me give you a lengthy explanation.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

No way, no way am I leaving this. I love this stuff. I'm not kidding. Um, somebody asked me the other day, and I just offhand said, no, I intend to learn something every day. And quite honestly, no, I I'm not stopping. And then I joke and say, Well, I don't golf, so what in God's name am I gonna do if I stop practicing law? I I enjoy this so much. It's like you said, if you love it, you I haven't worked a day in my life. I I really enjoy this. And I'll also tell you, part of it is I do a lot of training for younger lawyers, and I could never give that up. I mean, that's just fun. I mean, that's just enjoyable to give them some of the best. I I wish that I had, I don't want to say this sounds horribly egoist to say it this way. I wish I had somebody like me to teach me when I was much younger, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_04 36:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Um, and and I intend to do that for as long as somebody will open the door and let me walk through it.

SPEAKER_03 36:48

All right, so all right, I want to change gears really fast because I only got about 44 minutes with you and I'm gonna let you go. Thank you for your time. Mark O'Mir is with us, guys. Uh sorry, I forgot to say it again. Mark O'Mear on the Travon Martin trial. He represented George Zimmerman. Mark, you also have a uh good divorce practice. You are board certified in family law in Florida. I saw a video of you the other day talking about divorce cases, and you talked about the the trigger as as a uh an example in a divorce case, whatever the trigger is, whether it's a piece of china, the dog, whatever it is, the hill you're gonna die on. Uh I do it, Mark, I do a lot of divorce cases. Um you know divorce people make fun of people that do divorce work, but I'm telling you, Mark, you got to be a psychologist, a sociologist, a lawyer, a counselor. I mean, there's so much that goes into it when you do divorce work.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Yeah, there's um it really is tough. And that's the stuff that will get you in the belly. It really is, right? Because you have here's the problem that I see. Most people think don't you know you can talk about no fault divorce and all this other crap. Most people think that a divorce is the great equalizer that once I get to my divorce situation, my lawyer, my judge, my jury for those cases where they go to jury trial, that I will finally out everything that I have gone through. I will get credit for every hour of overturn, overtime, I will get credit for every diaper that I've changed, I'll get credit for every curse I endured, or whatever it is, it will be the great equalizer. And finally, there will be a balance in the universe, right? And you know, you know you know this as well as I do. But you walk into a case with me as your lawyer or a judge as the judge in the case, and they say, we can't. Most people want them to listen or watch the entire video of the divorce, right? This is what happened in the beginning, then year one, year two, this Christmas, that Christmas, this child, that child. And the judges tell them, tell us, no, I want to see a snapshot of the day you got married, right? So I know what you had. And I want to see one snapshot of the day you got divorced, so I know what you have. Everything in between, I cannot replay that video. That's it. And people leave the process sort of, you know, unfulfilled, right? Um, and we as lawyers have to get them ready for that, right? Got to get them ready for the fact that, you know, this is not gonna be a balancing of the universe. This is going to be you're getting divorced, get through this as quickly, as painlessly as possible, because one, you're giving up half your kids in most states, you're giving up half your kids, so to speak, you're giving up half your money, so to speak, uh, and then you have to move on. And it's really frustrating that people don't get their, you know, their quote day in court where that judge is gonna sit back and go, oh yeah, he really was a jerk, or she really was obnoxious, or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_03 39:58

Yeah. I have found, Mark, in my practice, that sometimes, and I'll say about 80% of the time, after I take depositions, and both sides have had their chance to almost have like a cleansing, you know what I'm saying? Where they where they've got to sit across the table from their spouse, they've gotten their lawyer to cross-examine my person, I've cross-examined that person, I've asked them every question on their son that they probably regret. It's almost like you're able to settle the case then, because it's like they had their day, their cleansing to be heard. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Yeah, absolutely. And and you're right. Once they, you know, and it's funny, I I I think I learned that lesson without knowing I learned it back when I was a young, young puppy lawyer, where we were fighting over, and I won't get into the graphics there, but we were fighting over a couple of stupid things, and it was just it was senseless. One of them was a shotgun reloader, which is what$50 if you buy a brand new one. China said that I know they paid the total of$50 for if they did, if they didn't get it as a wedding gift. But this lady would not settle her case until she was in front of that other guy, in front of her mediator, and said, You made me do this, and I won't get any further into it. But once that balloon was popped, that she got out to the universe, to the mediator and lawyers, that this husband made her do this, we settle the case. And it's exactly what you just said. Sometimes they just have to be able to say it uh somewhere, somehow, and then they can settle the case. And and quite honestly, good lawyers like you and me, if we start that process early on, letting them know and giving them some ground or some some possibilities for getting that pressure off, then they will settle the case. Yeah. Which they need to because look, judges, and I learned this and I didn't realize it, judges are not superhuman beings, they're just guys and women like you and I, who hopefully have some experience, put on a black dress, um, and hopefully they'll help you settle your case, but they're not imbued with some you know great insight. You just tell them what you tell them and they have to figure it out. So it's much better you do it, you know, in the cool light of day with a good lawyer on your side and a good lawyer on the other side, and move on and damage the children as little as possible. Because that's another concern I have, I'm sure you have it. The chat the children are the are the victims of most divorces, yeah. And it is just unfair.

SPEAKER_03 42:35

Yeah. If I have the better parent, then I'll fight for custody. If I know I don't have the better parent, or I find out during the course that my client doesn't have a chance in Hades of getting custody of the children, then I sit down and I have that heart-to-heart talk with them, and I'll say, one, I don't want to spend your money, two, I don't think you're gonna win that in front of a judge here in in Alabama, and three, um, I don't think it's in the best interest of the children. That's my rules. And and I live by that. Because for me, at the end, the children's are the ones that are used as pawns in divorce cases sometimes, and I I don't I won't be a part of that.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

So Right. And quite honestly, and and see, some people don't want that your type of lawyer, my type of lawyer, but those are the ones they need because they don't need the idiot lawyer. And I'm sorry, here's my last rant. They don't need the idiot lawyer's gonna sit back and pay, you know, pay me most of your retirement fund, and I'll go show him to be the jerk that he is, and it has no effect on the judge. So you've wasted$20,000,$50,000,$100,000,$200,000 on attorney's fees, and you got nothing more than someone like you or I will get them being the rational, reasonable, let's get this through with the minimum amount of damage on you and on the kids as possible. And those lawyers who do that, who churn divorce cases, in my opinion, special place in hell.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

And the other side of it. For me, is you know, I practice in the middle third of Alabama, okay? And I know most of the judges. Well, after that case, after that case is over, Mark, I'm still gonna see that judge again in my career. And you know what I'm saying? I'm not gonna burn my credibility with the court just over one case, any day of the week. Yep, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:21

Absolutely true. It's just not worth it. And and you know, it doesn't even help the system. That's what that's what's frustrating to me is that you know, these lawyers go in there and just litigate for the sake of litigating. The lawyers know you're being a jerk, the other lawyers know you're being a jerk. Maybe you're patting your retirement fund with your client's retirement fund, but you're really not supposed to do that. Go do corporate law where it doesn't matter, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 44:44

Yeah. All right, Mark. So I got about six minutes well with you. I'm actually. So share with the audience. No, listen, share with the audience what you would like to be remembered for. What are you doing now? What what are you what are you really excited about in your doing in your work right now?

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Um, so I'm doing I I I have the you know the benefit, you have to say this the right way, I have the benefit of having a number of pretty high profile cases going on right now, high intensity murder cases going on. And I just like I I liked having the time um to really focus on those. So that's got me going. Um, I really enjoyed that. You know, I'm at the point in my practice where I do get some of the bigger or better cases, even in the family law random. You can do some real good. But I would also tell you that I've taken on in the past several years doing some what's called mass tort work, which is suing drug companies when the drugs mess up, but that's also morphed into the social media lawsuits, if you've heard about them, where you know, companies like Meta, you know, used to be Facebook and places like that, they're they're indoctrinating our kids um into being lifelong customers, but they're doing it in a bad way. And some of these gaming websites that are out there that are that you know can really be a portal for uh pedophiles, and it's just true. And I don't think the companies are doing enough to protect our children. That's really got me, you know, a fire under my belly right now, because these people are making billions of dollars incorporating these kids into these websites and and sort of addicting them to it. And we are gonna pay the price. We already are paying the price of kids who now just stare at screens all day long. And I mean, I I say to my nephew, get out in the field, man, throw a football over you, throw a baseball, you know, do something. But they are intentionally addicting these children, you know, get off on a rant about Facebook and the way they would delay likes to teenagers. And you know, if you delay a like, you get more of an adrenaline buzz or a dopamine buzz when you get them. I can go off on two hours, three hours on that stuff, but you know, that's the kind of stuff that really gets me up in the morning to work on helping the kids stay away from those addictive things like uh these games and whatnot. And again, that's a that can be a whole nother story whenever you want to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 47:11

You know, it's funny you you just brought this up. Um, there's a case that started two weeks ago, Mark. If you if you're following it, uh it's it's uh it's a landmark trial case, is what they're calling it against social media. Have you have you been following that?

SPEAKER_00 47:26

Very well. Um Mark Lanier, a good buddy of mine, is doing that case. He was doing part of it.

SPEAKER_03 47:31

Okay. And yeah, if I'm if I got this right, one of the lawyers got sick last week or something. So is the trial halted, or did I get this wrong?

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Oh no, you're ahead of me. I don't know that. Is that true?

SPEAKER_03 47:45

I I saw a story. I saw a story that one of the lawyers got sick or ill last week, so the trial got halted, and I haven't seen anything this week to get caught up, but I I thought maybe you knew something. I didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

But uh okay, wait a minute. Here it is. Arguments and landmark social media addiction trial, uh, and that's meta.

SPEAKER_04 48:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Uh ought to start next week, and that was a couple of hours ago. So it might have been delayed, yeah, but they're getting back to it.

SPEAKER_03 48:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:15

Yeah. So Yeah, that's against Facebook. That's that meta one I was talking about with the addiction, and they're talking about the delays of likes and whatnot.

unknown 48:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:26

We're we're gonna talk about that case in a second hour. I had that in my news story for the week. So that's interesting. Yeah. Um, Mart, let me ask you this real quick. Um, when's the last time you talked to George Zimmerman and where does he go from here in his life?

SPEAKER_00 48:41

So I I'm telling you, it's been years, and I mean five, six, seven, eight years I've talked about it. We just sort of fell apart after that, not right after the trial, but pretty much because even during the trial and the upcoming, you know, getting up to the trial, I call it um, and look, I know a lot of lawyers who suffer from celebrity itis, where you know, all of a sudden you get in the spotlight and you think you maybe a touch more than maybe you really are. And and and people, you know, and look, people, some people could say that about me, right? I I went from just being a you know lawyer with a good practice to all of a sudden every day on TV. I I hope I didn't get too caught up in it. Some people do, and I think that George would be better staying away from spotlights and just live his life however he wants to. But there was that period of time where everything that could happen to get him in front of a camera seemed to happen. And you know, I'll give you a still example. He visited the he visited the manufacturer who manufactured the gun that he used to kill Trevor. To like thank them or something. You know, come on, leave that stuff behind. You still have a dead 17-year-old, even though, like I've always said and will say, it was a justified under the statute that was a justified shooting. But you don't need to go thank the manufacturer, just move on, you know, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 50:04

All right. Mark Omira of the O'Mira Law Group down in Orlando, Florida. Mark, thank you for your hour that you spent with me today. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Oh, absolutely. No, great chatting with you. Uh really appreciate you. You know, I love the conversation. Good luck with it all.

SPEAKER_03 50:19

Uh, real fast, folks. Mark called me last June on a Saturday night and I kindned him into doing this. Mark, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 50:27

Thanks for tuning in. No problem, thank you, man. You're well.

SPEAKER_03 50:30

All right, bye.

SPEAKER_02 50:31

Joe Ingram of Joe Ingram Law. Don't forget to follow Joe's Legal Lowdown Podcast dot iHeart. If you need a private legal consultation, reach out to Joe on his website, JoeIngramlaw.com. Tune in again next Saturday for the legal lowdown with Joe Ingram. No representation is made that the quality of legal services to be performed is greater than the quality of legal services performed by any other lawyer. He's a top street fighting lawyer with the highest ratings for honesty and integrity. He's here to answer your legal questions and get you the help you need. You are listening to the legal loadout with your lawyer, Joe Ingram. Joe Ingram Law. Joe Ingram has more than 20 years' experience fighting for his clients here in the state of Alabama. Go to focus in criminal defense and family law. Go Ingram on your side.com.

SPEAKER_03 51:43

Go Ingram. All right, alright, right. February 7th, 2026. We're back for the second hour of the Legal Lowdown with Joe Ingram, your Alabama lawyer on WERC 105.5, 102.5 WBHP in Tuscaloosa, and 105.9 WRTR in Tuscaloosa. If you missed the first hour, you missed a wonderful interview with Marco Mirror. Wow, that was really cool. I wish I could do that for another hour, but I didn't want to waste his time. All right, folks, we made it through January. We're into February. Thank goodness, thank God. Uh if you have any questions, go to your phone, go to the little app, the iHeartRoubt. That's the Spy for Rent Hotline. Spy for Rent Hotline. Jeff Hammock, Corey Fuller are your investigators in Alabama, and they are the exclusive investigators of my law firm. They can do anything that you need. They can investigate your spouse. They can investigate the paramour. They can do bug sweeps in your house. They can do all this. Yes, they can. And they do it all the time. Spy for rent. The name to know. We represent people from Huntsville to Birmingham to Montgomery to Mobile, and even the Dothan area. If you have serious money, we'll go down there. It's a joke. Go back to listen to the very first podcast if you want me to come to Dothan. Okay? So let's talk about some legal news. Let's talk about some legal news. Minneapolis story. You haven't heard much last week about the Minneapolis story. Why? Why is it not on the news every minute? I'll tell you why. They made a deal. They made a deal. Here's what they did. President Trump sends Tom Orman up there. Hoban. Thank you, John. John's always here to correct me. He's like Joe Sloppy drunk. Just kidding. He sends Tom up there. He says, Tom, go fix this real quick. So Tom does. He goes up there last week. You know what Tom does? I love this. He catches the mainstream media, drive-by media, off guard. You know what he does? He says, We're going to do news conference at about 7 o'clock Eastern time. Most of the media is not up yet. He gets up, he's ready to go. And it catches everybody off guard. They're not ready for it. But they make a deal with Minneapolis. And they say, look, we're going to back off a little bit, but the people that we want to really get, you're going to give them to us. And we're going to get out of your city. That's what happened. They they made a deal. So we're getting done what we need to get done, but we don't have the cameras up there every day. So that's why Minneapolis is not on the evening news like it was for about 14 days ago. Very good development in that case. All right. We got to talk about Iran for a second. Iran's a major story. They had talks today in Oman, the country between the United States and Iran. They wanted to broker it to have uh meetings at a high level. They told Khomeini to go get in a cave because every time he comes out, all he does is talk about us, the infidels and the Jew state being the Zionists and kill them all. So they sent him into hiding. Well, folks, hang on. This thing's not over yet. In the last week, Iran has taken two oil tankers hostage again in the Strait of Hormouth. So I don't know what's going to happen. But I also know this in the last week. There was a drone that came directly at a United States ship and they finally shot one down. Do you remember the last four years under Biden? All the drones and little little zigzag boats that would come uh charging towards a naval ship out in the ocean. Biden did nothing. Trump didn't do that. He told him to shoot down the drone. And by the way, the little boats, I don't know what you call them, uh can't think of the the naval term right now. How do you know that that boat does not have a nuclear bomb in it or a bomb in it with some crazy nut that they've paid the family off to take one for the for the Muslims and blow up a naval carrier ship? You don't know that. So my philosophy is that if an Iranian guard ship comes at a United States ship, you blow it out of the water every time. And we can't negotiate with these people. It's already in the news again this week. They're back building more missiles. Okay? These are not people that are going to comply. They're not going to comply. It's not going to happen with Iran. And if you noticed in the last two weeks, the gold prices shot up to$5,800 an ounce overnight. And it also moved the oil market, which Trump didn't want to do because we got Maduro out of Venezuela, and that was supposed to help us with the oil market. We were being counterproductive there for a little bit. I don't understand that. So the the gold market's been up and down the last two weeks. Um, by the way, all this goes hand in hand geogloby, okay? Uh Bitcoin. Bitcoin uh on Friday was like sixty something thousand dollars. It wasn't 90,000 two weeks ago. It's down in the 60s. Why is this happening? All this is interrelated. By the way, uh as bad as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell hates Trump and Trump hates Powell, do you know that Powell did Trump kind of a solid last week? You don't hear this stuff uh on the evening news. You don't hear this stuff on Fox Business News or CNBC. You know where you hear this stuff, you have to go listen to the Bloomberg Channel in Africa and uh the Mideast. Here's what they did. The Mideast put out some little feelers. And they said, hey, uh, we're gonna go out on the market and we're gonna go buy some Japanese yen. That's their dollar. Why did we do that? Well, number one, the Japanese have been a big buyer of U.S. debt all of our lives. They they are thinking about not buying our debt anymore because the Fed balance sheet is eight trillion dollars. Eight trillion dollars the Fed balance sheet. It was a trillion about five years ago. Yes, a lot of it has to do with COVID. Anyway, so the Fed is gonna prop up the Japanese yen. And they think by doing this that if they prop up the Japanese yen, it's gonna devalue and weaken the American dollar. They're trying anything they can to bring interest rates back into alignment. They just can't right now. Everything's so out of whack. And by the way, uh, it was in the news this week. Do you know how many people work for the Fed? 3,000 people. The Federal Reserve Bank. 3,000 people, and I think they have some ungodly number, like four or six hundred PhDs in macroeconomics. Does it take that many people to determine interest rates? And by the way, just so you know, Jamie Diamond of JP Morgan JP Morgan Bank, he told you at Davos two weeks ago, the Federal Reserve does not run the world financially. They are a lagging indicator. The market sets what's happened financially. All they do is the Fed gets statistics in, and then they come back later, 30, 60, 90 days later, and say, Well, the economy's doing this, the job market's doing this, this is down, this is up. We need to raise the interest rates, we need to lower interest rates. So the Fed is not the end-all and be-all of the Financial Times as it's played in the press, by the way. I know that was a little wonky, but it needed to be talked about. Uh, big story that happened two weeks ago. Do you remember Lori Laughlin from the 90s? Do you remember her name? John? Do you remember the college admission scandal? Oh my goodness. Lori Laughlin is a beautiful actress, folks. Well, she and her husband are separated. Uh I'm gonna butcher his name. Julie Julie Giannoli is his name. Her husband. Giannoly is his name.

unknown 1:01:17

John.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:18

Uh, he is really angry with Lori still from the college admission scandal, and he has left the home, and allegedly he's dating a person that is a beautician that is much younger than Lori Laughlin. Anyway, it looks like they are headed for a divorce. Um the rumor mill out there is that he was behind the college admission scandal. Lori is the one that took the fall. She's the one that went to prison. Do you remember that? I don't know what the truth is, but um but at the end of the day, it's really sad because Lori Laughlin had two young ladies that she was trying to predetermine their future. She didn't trust her own children to get into college on their own merit. She tried to buy their way in. You can't do that in life for your children. You can give them all the advantages in life, you can try to set them up for success, but at the end of the day, they got to get there on their own. I mean, at some point, you've got to perform on your own merit. And that's what this was about the college admission scandal. And it was huge. It was a huge scandal. Bad story. This is a big story for uh the legal industry that I found really fascinating in the last week. Big law firms, and when I say big law, I'm talking about New York big law firms that have hundreds of lawyers in countries all over the world, have decided to take advantage of AI, and they're hiring new executives from the social media companies, from Google, from Meta, all these companies, they're bringing in AI people in these law firms. Can you believe that? Um, this is kind of scary. And here's why. You can do all the research you want with a robot and a computer and AI. Someone has to go in the courtroom and deliver the message, not a computer. And there's been some examples in the state of Alabama. I'm not going to name any law firm on radio, but this has already happened where law firms are using AI research and the judges go look up the case and it's wrong, and they've been sanctioned for it. And they've been monetarily sanctioned for using AI legal research. That's wrong. But this is where we're headed over the next decade. And this is what's going to happen. We're not going to need as many people going to law school. We're not going to need as many lawyers because we've got supercomputers now that can do research that we pay all these associates for in these big law firms. So this is something to think about for the next decade of people wanting to go to law school out there. I'm really serious. It's going to change our industry. And um so some of the biggest law firms in New York have brought in people from Google and Facebook, and it's just fascinating to watch. And oh, I found this really fascinating. These big law firms are making the younger associates, um, younger associates dedicate twenty hours of artificial intelligence to their practice a year. Meaning we're making you go learn how to do this. They're they're training them to do it, so then they'll have the people that know how to do this, and they can get rid of the executives they brought in, the gun the hired guns to teach them how to use the technology. That's gonna be fascinating to watch. If you were with us uh in the first segment uh with Marco Mira, he talked about this, and I was gonna talk about this story today. Landmark trial test claims against social media that harms teens. This trial started two weeks ago. This is like the same case um in the 80s where uh people went after the tobacco industry, RJ RJR Nabisco. Remember that? Smoking kills you, so we're gonna sue all the people that make cigarettes. Well, you made a choice to smoke the cigarette. I also believe that you make a personal choice if you want to spend your life on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever it is. TikTok. TikTok, Twitter, YouTube. I don't know. It's a personal choice. Also, do you remember the lawsuit against McDonald's where somebody got a cup, what was it, a cup, a cup of hot coffee through the drive-thru and they got burned, so they sue McDonald's for millions of dollars. And so now there's a little sign up in the window. It says, caution, the coffee may be hot. Well, you want it to be hot, don't you? Unless you want iced coffee, which they have now. I don't understand that, by the way. Anyway, so this is the test case against social media. And the trial has started, and um the big executives, uh, even Zuckerberg may have to testify in this trial. He's not happy about it. And they're saying that this is going to set the stage. Um, you know, these are big plaintiff firms that are going after them. And I don't know how I feel about this case, professionally or personally. I I I think it's a personal choice what you do in life. I don't think just because you smoke a cigarette, you should get to sue the manufacturer because you made a conscious choice, and yes, at one time it didn't say on the package it could give you cancer. Did we put uh on the bottom of your social media screen uh if you do this, you're you're wasting precious days in your life for sitting here. Go outside and play football, as Mark Mira said in the first hour. I don't know. Something to think about. These are the kind of things that we're gonna deal with for the next 10 or 20 years in legislation and in law. So that's gonna be an interesting story to talk about. Next story I want to talk about because the Winter Olympics is about to start here in a week or so. Ryan Wedding. Do you remember that name? Ex-Olympic snowboarder, turned drug kingpin, was finally caught. He was picked up, and he he was in federal court last week for his arraignment. It's even alleged that he tried to kill a witness that was going to testify against him in a drug case. How in the world do you get that far off the mark? You go from Olympic athlete to federal drug kingpin. Scary stuff out there. Anyway, so uh wedding appears in a courtroom out in California. Arraignment is a dog and pony show, folks. Every time somebody's arraigned, they come out and they'll say, Wedding just pled not guilty. Well, that's all that can happen in an arraignment. You have to be identified, you tell them who you are, you say I'm not guilty, or you say I'm not guilty by reason or mental defect, and then the case moves forward. That's all that can happen in a Raign. So there you go. Riding weddings in custody, and I don't think it's likely that he's gonna be getting out of out of prison anytime soon. Uh didn't get to talk about this case last week, but we can still do it this week. Federal second was Groundhog Day, John. Do you know who um what's his name? Pucka.

unknown 1:09:31

Pucksitani Phil.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:32

Pucksitanny Phil, yes, in Pennsylvania. You're gonna love this story, folks. PETA. People for the ethical treatment of animals. Guess what they came out and said last week? Um, this is harmful to the groundhog. It's traumatic to him. We need to take an AI version of him and use that instead of using a real animal. Um, it's just too traumatic for Phil to come out and do this one time a year. Hello, are you serious? I live for this. I'm 54 years old my whole life. As young as I can remember, watching the Today Show is the moment that they go pull the groundhog out and he tells us what's going to happen uh either six more weeks of winter or not. I live for that. And by the way, the governor of Pennsylvania was highly offended. Why? Because all the money that comes into his state for that day for everybody to come see this. Oh, PETA, PETA, PETA, PETA, go find something else to do. Please go find something else to do. We like the groundhog. I want to keep the groundhog. Okay? I'm just saying. All right. Uh that's all the federal legal news we're gonna talk about for the week. We got how much time to break? About four minutes? Okay. Um let's talk about some state news really fast. Uh we're gonna go to the wasn't prepared. I want to talk about there's a case up in Limestone County. This is an important case, folks. Uh there is a quarry up there that is being built, and the judge stopped the quarry operations about a week ago. Um, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed the lawsuit because they're up there drilling and blasting, and the people that live there are talking about the smell and the traffic, and it's uninhabitable to live up there. Thank goodness the judge stopped in a week ago and has stopped all work on the quarry up in Limestone County. Um, you know, they they they agreed to do the project. The project was approved. Here again, it's one of these things that no one thought through all the way. What's going to happen in the meantime while you're doing the project? Nobody prepared for that. And from what I understand, if you live up there within, you know, five miles of the quarry, it's just almost uninhabitable. So the judge stepped in and has halted that case. So there you go. When we come back from the break, the last hour we're gonna spend talking about a topic that's really important this time of year. We're gonna talk about stages of divorce. And we're not gonna talk about stages in, well, what happens in a divorce, Joe? You file a complaint, somebody files an answer, we do discovery. No, we're gonna talk about the psychology stages of a divorce that people go through when they file for divorce. Okay? You're listening to the Legal Lowdown with Joe Ingram on WERC 105.5. If you need to call my office, you can call 205-825-5297. 205-825-5297. If you need a consultation, you can speak with Holly or Elizabeth or our in-tech specialist team and they'll get you in for a consultation. My office represents people in divorce cases. My office represents people in criminal cases. We represent people in municipal court cases, those typically being domestic violence cases, DUI cases, possession of marijuana second cases, misdemeanors, those are municipal cases, state felony cases, everything from murder, rape, manslaughter, homicide, sex cases, drug trafficking, those are state felony cases. We also represent people in federal criminal cases. There was a story in the news this week. Nineteen people were rounded up in a fentanyl case. It was a big case that just broke this last week, by the way. So you're listening to the legal lowdown with Joe Ingram. We're going to be back here in just a minute for the final segment of our show. If you missed the first hour, please go back. Listen to the interview with Mark O'Meara. Man, what a phenomenal trial lawyer. He is board certified both in criminal law and family law, and he's an excellent lawyer in Florida. If you move down there and you need counsel, okay? So hang on with us. We'll be back in a few minutes, and we're going to do the final segment of the week. Got a lot to talk about. I got my uh my little side joke about the Superbow. We may talk about if we get there. And um, what a great week. We made it to February. In about four weeks, we get to change the time clock. Thank God. We'll be back after the break, okay? All right.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:40

Go inward. If you need to understand a legal help after, reach out to Joe at GoInGLEDLAVED. Stay tuned for more. Joe will be right back after this break for news and weather.com. And now welcome back to the legal logo.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:14

Let's go in. All right, you're listening to the legal live and with Joe and Ingram. You're an Alabama lawyer on WERC 105.5, just off of the lovely UAB campus and by the region's bear and baseball field. If you're up in Hunts Florida, Tuscaloosa, thank you for listening in to our broadcast as well. If you have any questions or comments, go to your little red app on your phone. That's the Spy Forent Hotline. Spy Forent Hotline. Jeff Hammock, Corey Foley, Corey Fuller are the names to know for investigations in the state of Alabama. They are the exclusive investigators of my firm, and they are the best. Two topics I want to bring up I forgot that we thought about during the break. We talked about this about a week ago. Bill and Hillary Clinton were subpoenaed to testify before a congressional committee. They were a no-show. And then they voted to send it to the DOJ to indict them. And guess what? Bill Clinton and Hillary had a change of heart. Hillary, I think we need to go down to the to the Washington, D.C. campus and testify before the House, okay? So now they're going to come testify. My guess is, folks, they're not going to say anything. They're going to take the fifth. They're going to bring their lawyer with them. Wonderful lawyer, by the way. Wonderful lawyer. Or they're going to take the opportunity to turn it around and tack Trump on the news and the media. That's the way I think they're going to spin this. They're either going to take the fifth or they're going to go after Trump, is the way I think they're going to spin it. And by the way, Hillary, since we're down there, if they ask you about Benghazi again, don't bring that up. That was on your watch. Uh, folks, by the way, uh, they caught the um, I guess mastermind is what we call him, of the Benghazi uh tragedy 12 years ago or 13 years ago in Libya, where they killed an American ambassador. Uh they they got him yesterday. They brought him in on a stretcher. Honest to God, he looks like he's about to die, but he may be prosecuted before he dies in a court because you killed a U.S. ambassador on foreign soil on the anniversary of 9-11. I still remember it. That is a great movie if you've never seen it. 13 Hours. You need to go see that. And that happened on Hillary's watch, by the way. Yep, that's an important story to talk about. Another story I want to talk about that's been in the news the last couple weeks is the fertility clinic down in Florida. Have you heard about this story? So you go to the clinic, you pay money, they do the insemination, wife gets pregnant, so you have a child. Well, this one turned out a little different. You know how it turned out. The child was not the biological child's semen and egg of the parents. It was easy to tell. It was a racial thing. Anyway, that clinic, I think, allegedly, to the best of my knowledge, has been shut down or is on its way to be shutting down. And they have a huge problem here. Uh, they're about to open Pandora's box. I can see plaintiff lawyers foaming at the mouth down there. Let's go get some money. Because they're going to they want to go back and test every child, I think, over the last five years. And there's a lot of issues here at stake. There's privacy issues, there's confidential issues. You know, did we did we just pick up the phone and call everybody in our computer for the last five years that's been in our clinic and say, oh, by the way, you need to come do a uh DNA test with your child to make sure it's really your child. Do you want to do that? Do you want to upset them? If you find out now that the child is not your child that you had three years ago, are you going to give the child back to the to the original parents? No, you're not going to do that. You've bonded with the child. This reminds me of the baby Sam case down in Florida. Um, do you remember this case? The baby Sam case? About the adoption case? The these parents adopt a child, and they find the the biological father finds out like two years later that the mother had given the child up for adoption. And he comes forward and he says, This is my child. I want my child back. And it goes all the way to the Alabama Supreme Court. It's called the Baby Sam case, okay? It's a famous case. Supreme Court says he's the biological file. He was not given notice. You gotta give the child back to him. These parents that had raised this child for a number of years had to give a child up that they had bonded with. How do you do that? How do you do that? That's really tough. These are tough decisions to make. Tough, tough decisions to make any day of the week. How do you do that? And we were talking during the break, but I think I saw a story last week that they're trying to settle this case really, really fast with the fertility clinic because they're trying to keep from opening a Pandora's box. Here's a couple questions that I have. If you're the mother and the father of the child and you settle this case monetarily, okay, fine. Who speaks for that child? Who says X amount of dollars is going to be set aside in some account for this child when they turn 19 because you're not my parents. You're not my mother, you're not my father. How many times do you see where someone has an adopted child? They tell the child, you know, you were adopted, and they say, I want to go find my biologic my biological parents. Okay, fine. Well, in this case, this child's gonna say, I want to go find out who my parents are because you obviously are not my biological parents. Oh, oh, and by the way, how much money did you get to settle the case? Well, we got$10 million. Well, how much money did I get out of it? Well, you didn't get any of it. We got the$10 million because we're the one that paid for the procedure that made you a human being. Well, where's my money? See, this is a whole legal issue that I think about at night. Who speaks for the child to determine how much money is their money out of the compensation fund? I don't know. That's a good question. Something to think about for plaintiff lawyers down there. And I'm not even in Florida. And what if they don't get any money? Does the statute of limitations run and they don't get to come forward when they're 19 and file a claim against the fertility clinic that we know is either going to be out of business or bankrupt, right? So we're they they lose that all the way around. This is this is just a cluster. That's what this is. This is a cluster. There's so many issues on here. Can't even imagine it. Anyway. Okay, so we're gonna talk about stages of divorce. Stages of divorce, folks. Because it's that time of year. I'm not talking about filing a complaint. I'm not talking about you file an answer after a divorce. I'm talking about stages of divorce. Joe, what in the world are you talking about? Well, here's what we're talking about. The first stage of divorce that I have experienced over the last 22 years in my practice is called denial. Denial of the divorce proceedings. And what do I mean by that? Well, somebody uh files for divorce, and then the person that gets served served with the papers ends up in my office. And during the consultation, I'll say, Did you know this was coming? Sometimes they'll say, No, I had no clue that my spouse was unhappy. I had no clue that my spouse was about to file for divorce. I had no clue that my spouse cleaned out the house last week, took all the furniture, took our children, closed the bank account, and they're gone. I didn't know this was coming. This is a shock to me. There was no clue to you. You didn't see any red flags. Sometimes not. You know when else this happens a lot? Not just at the first of the year. This happens at the end of the school year. When school gets out and they know that little Johnny or little Jane or little Sally doesn't have a schedule, one parent will fly the coop with the kids because they know they don't have to start school until August again. So they leave in May, leave in the night. Happens all the time. Denial is the first stage of divorce. Happens all the time. Next stage, next stage in divorce that I see routinely in my practice is fear or anxiety. Fear or anxiety is real. They are fearful because they don't know what's fixing to happen in their life. They don't know where they're going to live. Am I going to get to live in the same community with me and my children? Um you know, it costs it costs more when you divide a house and you have to live separately than when you live together as two separate households. Are you gonna be able to afford to live on your own? I had a gentleman come in to see me uh two years ago. Wife filed for divorce. We first thing we always do is run the numbers for child support, what he's gonna have to pay. And he said, Mr. Ingram, after I pay child support, I I'm not gonna have enough money to live on on my own. What am I gonna do? That's a real dilemma. If you don't have money to live on your own, and the court says you gotta pay child support X amount of dollars unless your wife agrees to take less, what do you do? I said, Well, you might have to get a second job. You gotta get a second hustle. You're gonna have to hump it for a while because you brought this child into the world. That's real. Anxiety. People that are going through a divorce are not the best employees at that period in time. They They cannot focus on their work. They cannot focus on their job. They you know they've got all kind of emotions going through. Am I gonna get my children? Am I gonna get visitation with my children? I didn't see my children in the last two weeks. Is is my wife gonna let me see my children next weekend? Um am I gonna get to see my children for the summer to take them to vacation? Who's gonna take them on spring break? These are real life issues that you deal with when you go through a divorce, anxiety every day. I had a case uh this past year. Uh somebody else was representing one of the spouses, and that spouse was looking at paying a lot of alimony, and the lawyer called me and said, Would you please take over the case? And I said, Well, I don't normally do this, but I called the other lawyer as a common courtesy to tell him that you're in my office. And uh so he comes in and I take the case and I ran the numbers. I said, Look, there's lots of ways to cut up the pie. What if we sell the house? Is she money hungry? Yeah. Let's throw a bunch of money at her, and then we're gonna tell her that you're not gonna pay her alimony for the next 20 years. Guess what? She took the deal. All the anxiety for him went away. It was over just like that. Pain and fear. That's another stage of divorce. Pain and fear. You have pain over the death of your marriage. The day that one of the spouses files for the divorce is what we call the death. You are in pain over the death of your marriage. We are looking at the body in the coffin. We are having the ceremony. The ceremony is the divorce case, the litigation. How long is this gonna last? That's what we call this. The death ceremony. And that's dependent upon you two people in the case. The death ceremony is how long the litigation last after one of you files for divorce. It's very real. Fear. Fear of where you're going to live. Where are my children going to live? Are they going to be in the same school system? Are they going to get to do the same extracurricular activities that they've always done? Or are they going to be in the same community to go to the same church that we've gone to? Am I going to get to go to the same church that I've gone to? Probably not for two reasons. One, there's going to be a stigma that you got a divorce. The church is going to look at you differently as a congregation. And two, you're going to have this tattoo on your head. What is wrong with me that I got a divorce? It happens all the time. I see it all the time. Anger. You are angry at yourself. You may be angry at your spouse. You may even be more angry at the paramour. The paramour is the one that is having sex with your spouse. Angry is real. It's okay to be angry. Except to the point where it becomes a domestic violence case. Do not let the anger turn in you so it becomes a domestic violence case. Because if that happens, it can become a criminal case for domestic violence. And if that happens, you may lose your J O B, your job. I see it all the time. Or two, your spouse may go file what we call a PFA, protection from abuse order. My spouse is danger to me. Keep them away from me. It's not funny, but I see it all the time. Somebody is so outraged in the divorce that they blow up, they tear up a room, they tear up furniture, they tear up a cell phone, the police come. Somebody's leaving the house at night, folks. It always happens. Anytime there is a domestic violence call and 911 comes, somebody's going to leave the house for a cooling off period. It's just a fact of life. We talk about that all the time when I have consultations with people for divorce cases. I will tell them if you're about to lose your temper, leave the home. Do not let your spouse bait you. Do not let your spouse get you so mad that you do something that they're going to call the police on you. Don't let them record you screaming and yelling at them or cussing at them or flying off the handle. Don't let that happen. If that's going to happen, take yourself out of the situation. Sometimes you have to leave for a little while to cool off. Sometimes you may need to leave the house anyway while the divorce is pending. It happens all the time. Bargaining. Joe, what is bargaining? You bargain with yourself. What was I not doing that led to the death of my marriage? What was I not giving the person that is my spouse? Will anybody ever live with me again? Am I damaged goods? That's bargaining with yourself. What could I have done better for my spouse? What should I have said? Should I have been a better husband? Should I have been a better wife? Could I have been a better parent? Could I have been more supportive with my children? You may even ask your spouse, well, I tell you what, you call off this divorce, you put it on hold, let's go see a marriage counselor and see if we can save our marriage. I'm all for that, guys. I'm not here telling people to run out and get a divorce. If you can save your marriage, save your marriage. Okay? I'm telling you that. But you'll bargain with yourself with all these decisions that are going on in your head and in your home, wondering what could have been different. The next phase is called the guilt phase. Guilt, yes. I should have been a better person. I should have been a better husband. I should have been a better parent. A lot of times, my female clients, particularly, will feel guilty about their spouse having an affair. They'll come in and tell me, Joe, I know he's the one that cheated, but I feel guilty about his infidelity. I should have been a better spouse. It may be, and this isn't sexus, folks, it may be that after the children were born, you gained a little weight. You're not the same person that the two of you were when you got married. It may be that either one of you doesn't exercise, take care of yourself, stay in shape for your spouse. You always have to date your spouse. Just because you're married does not mean that you still do not date them. You should still have a date night. You should still have time set aside from your children where you become attractive for your spouse. If you're a stay-at-home parent, there should be one day a week where you really get fixed up to be attractive for your mate. You always have to date your spouse. No phones, put the phones down, no social media, have real interaction, have real conversations, talk to that person. What's going on with you? What's going on in the house? What's going on with the kids? Is there anything new that you want to do this year? People fall into routines and they lose all that. It happens all the time, and I've seen it again and again and again. Depression. You become depressed over the cost of the divorce. The cost of paying me. The cost of litigation. That's when you really become depressed when you see the bills. That's when you decide that you're ready to have the death ceremony and end it. It's just a fact of life. It happens all the time. Acceptance. Acceptance comes in when you are ready to settle the case and end the divorce. That's either done after a deposition where you have confronted your spouse and you've told them everything that you hate about them and everything they hate about you, you've accepted it and you're ready to sign the papers, or you're out of money because you've paid me all your money. So that are some stages of divorce. Oh, there's one more, by the way. Trauma trim. Trauma trim. Joe, what is trauma trim? All right. This is where you've let yourself go. Your spouse has filed for divorce. You've gotten yourself back in shape. You've lost 30, 40, 50 pounds. You're back going to the gym. You've gotten some Botox in your forehead. You got some Botox in your lips, some lip injections. You're ready to go back out of the town and find the new person. Trauma trim. It shocked your conscience to get yourself back in shape and to go find a new mate. It's just a fact of life. It happens all the time. Trauma trim. I see it all the time. I'm laughing, but it's a true statement. Some advice that I give people that go through divorce, and I have probably done 5,000 divorces in my life. Do not go start a relationship for at least six months, work on yourself, be alone before you go introduct yourself and your baggage into the next person. You need to figure out where you are as a person. For my male clients, I tell them do not go live with a woman that has minor children in the house. Why, Joe? Because you do not want the minor children to come forward and say that you touch them somehow sexually, you'll have a criminal case. And yes, I've had that happen several times. Do not put yourself in that position. I always encourage clients to read some books after a divorce because you've just been through a trauma. One of my most famous books is called The Body Keeps the Score. Body Keeps the Score. It's written by a famous Harvard psychiatrist, Van der Koelk. K-O-L-K. Vander Koek. The Body Keeps the Score. It's a big book, but go read part of it. Go read a chapter. It'll help you in what you've just been through. And you might discover something about yourself that you didn't know and how you got to be where you are in this position. So that is what I call stages of divorce. Yes, I could write a little book about divorce because I've seen it so many times. And by the way, it's January, so we just opened 12 new divorce cases for the year. And I I see it in every case because I get to see it from afar rather than in the eye of the storm. I see it all the time. Before we get away, endurance is what separates the unstoppable from the ordinary. Humans are the fastest. We are not the strongest. But when it comes to endurance, we are the best when others fade. We remain the same principle, drive us in competition. The ones who keep going past push past the pain, the fatigue, the doubt, are the ones who win because endurance isn't just about the body, it's about the mind. It's about refusing to stop when everything tells you to quit. Never stop.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:27

Gotta go. Go and remote. Go in remote. Don't forget to follow Joe's legal flowdown. I got stop. If you need a private legal consultation, we've got to go on his website.com. Saturday legal flowdowns with Joe and Joe presentation is made that the quality of legal services to be performed is greater than the quality of legal services performed by any other lawyer.