Trial War Stories - Turnpike Murder with Roger Synenberg

In this episode of Trial War Stories, host Andy Goldwasser sits down with renowned criminal defense attorney Roger Synenberg to dissect one of the most shocking and high-stakes cases of his career — the infamous Ohio Turnpike Murder.

The conversation walks through the case step by step:

A respected physician is gunned down on the side of the Ohio Turnpike in broad daylight. His wife, Donna Moon, survives the ambush — only to later find herself accused of orchestrating the murder, facing federal charges and the death penalty, despite never pulling the trigger.
Roger takes us behind the scenes of this nationally covered case, breaking down:

• How a roadside robbery turned into a capital murder prosecution
• The affair that changed everything
• The cooperating witness who cut a deal to save his own life
• Why the case went federal — and why that mattered
• The immense pressure of defending a client facing the death penalty
• Trial strategy, jury selection, witness credibility, and devastating media evidence
• The impossible decisions defense lawyers must make when a client may or may not testify

This is an unfiltered, inside look at what it’s really like to defend a client when the stakes couldn’t be higher — where every decision carries life-or-death consequences and public opinion is already stacked against you.

If you’re a lawyer, law student, or true-crime fan who wants to understand what actually happens inside the courtroom — beyond headlines and verdicts — this episode is for you.

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Transcript

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Dateline meets the death penalty. You're going to hear from a great lawyer who's going to talk to you today about a case involving a woman tried for murder when she didn't even pull the trigger. And you're going to learn how we prepared and how we dealt with the aftermath. Every trial lawyer has that one case. The one that pushed them to the edge, changed how they practice or kept them up at night. This is trial war stories. And I'm your host, Andy Goldwasser. I sit down with great trial lawyers to unpack unforgettable cases the strategy, the chaos, the pressure, and the moments that turn the tide. Beyond the transcripts and verdicts. And now to the show. All right, so my guest today is is Roger Sin and Berg, an incredible, credible criminal defense lawyer. You started out at the U.S. Attorney's office, went into private practice, tried some massive cases, everything from murder to the mob, public corruption, white collar. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. And, Roger, I'm so honored that you decided and agreed to do this today. Thank you for being here. I'm so honored you asked me. It's great. You do a great job, and I'm really happy to be here. Well, thank you, I appreciate that, and I'm. I'm. It was funny because as we were talking, I. First thing I did was when I called you, I said, we got to pick one of your cases. And you said, well, gosh, I have so many. And you. And then I started researching just by plugging your name into the internet. And it was remarkable. All of the just fascinating, mind blowing cases that you had. And I said, can you just pick one? And you picked one that really received I think it was worldwide attention because the facts are just crazy. Can you tell us about the case that you picked and tell us a little bit about the trial itself? Sure. The case is about my client, Donna moon, and it did get a lot of worldwide attention because just the way it happened, and it was May 13th, 2005, and Donna is driving her husband's Jaguar with her husband in the passenger seat and her mother in their rear seat. And they were driving on the Ohio Turnpike maybe a half an hour out of Akron, heading west. They were all they were from Pittsburgh area Hermitage. He was a physician, and they were going to visit his nephew in Toledo. He was a he was a really well known urologist, I believe. Yes, he was very well-respected, the urologist in Pittsburgh. And, I'll get to all. I'll get to doctor, July moon to, in a moment. But they're driving to Pittsburgh, and they pull over in one of those areas that are designated emergency parking on the turnpike to switch drivers. And when they pull over, a vehicle follows them. And a man gets out of the vehicle and approaches the car and puts a gun in coulombs head and says, give me your wallet. And then the gun goes off and there are people driving by. He saw it hit the the, the fellow who committed the murder gets back in his car, drives off. Donna does CPR. They call 911. Before long the turnpike is shut out. Going westbound. It's shut down. And the light, flight life comes there. But they pronounced him dead on the scene to. Heat this guy. Shoot. Shoot him right in that right in the head. Right in the head. One bullet in the head. And Donna's mother's in the backseat. Donna's mother's in the backseat. Donna is in the driver's seat there. Of course, there's blood splatter all over them. And, that's why it got the attention that it got. I'd. Say. Yeah. So it's, reported heavily in the media. This fella gets away. Donna, of course, is questioned. Her mom and her questioned. They get they tell everything that they saw. Donna suspected that maybe someone they had stopped about 40 miles back in and in a plaza. They thought maybe someone had seen all the money he ordinarily carried in his wallet, and that was the only thing that she could. That was the story that she offered her mom, of course, did not. She was an older lady, had nothing to offer in the way of having seen anything. Did they give a description of this guy at all? Well, they certainly questioned her, but Donna's story at the time was that she had it had. So it happened so quickly that all the all she saw was black. She couldn't identify him. Later, they found all the items that he threw out on the turnpike going back eastbound, the ski mask, the hood, all that thing. So she couldn't even describe his race. Okay. And of course, this is 530 in the afternoon on a may weekend. And there's if you were to stand close to the turnpike, the noise is extremely loud. So she said she didn't recognize the shooter's voice as well. Okay. So, they start of course, investigating it was a state highway patrol, and they start doing a background, on Donna. They found out that Donna is 48 years old. She is a nurse, a nurse. Just this at a hospital in Pittsburgh. She has been suspended because, she had picked up a case. Unfortunately, she weakened to the powers of addiction, and she had the availability of heavy narcotics. And she had become addicted to it, where she was caught at the hospital. And in addition to losing her job, she was also charged criminally. She was put into a treatment in lieu of conviction program. And because doctor wounded didn't want. They're trying to keep this quiet. He had set up a rehab program for her about an hour away from their home. Okay. She she starts attending this rehab program. Did you represent her in that underlying action? No, no, no, that was just a local lawyer in Pittsburgh. I didn't come in until much later. Okay. Part of her probation or treatment in lieu was she had to attend this rehab. And that's where she meets Damien Bradford. Damien was 24 years old. He had accumulated a long record. He'd already been to prison. He'd also become addicted to drugs. And Damien, was directed to attend rehab as well. And Donna and Damien meet in this rehab. Wow. What an unlikely place to meet. Really? Two polar opposite people, right? You have a suburban white housewife, right? You have an African-American IT thief. Thief? He was an addict. He was a drug dealer. He was. He was a a ladies man. He had we found out he had 6 or 7 women going at any one time. Cash. He was a, sketchy guy, but there was an attraction there, and he the. And he developed that because here he is looking at this well-to-do lady driving a Mercedes, coming to rehab, dressed to the nines, obviously with a lot of money. And she had a lot of money because she had a very good job as well as her husband. Somebody who could help take care of him. Right. So over the course of several months, they began a relationship that ultimately becomes physical and they start having this affair is which is memorialized in text messages ad nauseum. They were texting each other sometimes 2 or 300 times a day. Wow. And they had done it. Inevitably. But get an apartment for Damien in Pittsburgh. Bought him a used car, put him on her friends, a family plan. So he had a telephone, and this relationship heated up. Of course, after the day after the killing, the police don't know all of this. All they know is that Donny has this problem and she has this record. But within a day or two, the police get a phone call from one of Damien's girlfriends who knew about Donna having purchased him a phone and an apartment and all that. And she's only too happy to tell the police about that. So. A lover scorned. A lover scorned. Exactly. I'll never forget her name. I don't have to repeat it, but I'll never forget it. I read about it, and I'll say that Charlene or. Charlene was the first name. So of course, that gets the peaks, the interest of the police. And they begin to look at phone records, and they see these two are communicating all the time. And inevitably, they execute a search warrant at Damien Bradford's apartment, and he's on probation. As I told you, she's in it in. It's a drug rehab. And, they find in there a bunch of steroids, cocaine residue and the such. So they play some under arrest, and they put him in prison, and he's in prison for the next 4 or 5 months. Just for a probation violation. A probation violation. But unbeknownst to him, they purposely release him in November, put a wiretap on Diana's phone to see what kinds of conversations they have. And, of course, these two lovers, Donna having no idea that Damien is that point, a suspect in Donna believing that she had nothing to do with it. They meet up. She comes to her home, and of course, the police hear all of this. And shortly thereafter, they start looking at the Damien's phone records and sure enough, they see his cell locations, because back then it wasn't like today they couldn't access this information. All you know, right away. But they start seeing that he followed the automobile and is in the vicinity of the shooting, as well as turning around and coming back to Pittsburgh. Okay. They also see by traveling that earlier in the day, because they left,

they left about 3 or 4: 10:33

00 that Donna and Damien's both phones met up at a state park not too far from Donna's house, which during the trial, Damien testifies to, being a meeting to arrange things. Okay, but Damien's indicted. They cannot make a case under because they just aren't unable to gather sufficient evidence. It it seems hard to believe that they couldn't make that case, considering the person that they believe murdered. The doctor has a relationship with the doctor's wife. Well, one thing, one thing that was a theory. And I, you know, well, there was that Gulam, having grown up impoverished in India and having become very successful, was well known to carry large amounts of cash. And I'm talking five, $10,000 at a time. An unfortunate Donna had told that to Damien, while they were having this relationship. So in the beginning, the, the motivation for Damien was, I thought, to go out and commit a robbery because he knew that there's money available. And once we got an opportunity to look at his phone calls on the way back, it appeared to us that he was telling all the people we owed money to in Pittsburgh for drug deals, that he'd have it for him that night. Okay, okay. All right. But anyways, Damien's in jail, and, Shortly after he gets indicted, the Justice Department declares its intention to seek the death penalty for. For Damien. Now they hit the Northern District of Ohio. Had not had a death penalty case in over 30 years. In the last, when they did, was a federal agent that had been killed in the line of duty. So it's a rare, rare instrument used by the feds. So David Dowd, who was the the federal judge in, in Akron because they made this a federal case. Interstate, interstate, interstate, transportation to commit a murder. Coming from Pittsburgh into Ohio. Pittsburgh into Ohio made it a federal case. Okay. They could have, of course, taken statewide, but they decided to take federal. So, Judge Dowd. Can I just. Roger can stop you for a second. Does that make it from a criminal defense lawyers perspective, the fact that it's the federal government as opposed to a state government prosecution, is that more difficult? Is it more more challenging, less challenging, or it really depends on the jurisdiction? Well, this because this is a case that, you know, the first of its kind in 30 years. It wasn't that I could ask people around, but but ordinarily, generally speaking, the feds take things, they do things better. And that's that to say that the state doesn't, but they have better resources, more resource and more time in fewer cases. So the feds are much more thorough in preparing a case. Yeah, it's my understanding. And I don't do criminal work. But it's my understanding when you get indicted in federal court, the conviction rate is just off the charts. It's. Yeah, it's much higher than state court. And that's in large part because you're dealing with the real people who really know what they're doing. And again, they have incredible unlimited resources available. Understood. Sorry to digress. That's all right. So the case goes federal. And a few weeks after Damien's indicted, they notified Judge Doe we're going to go seek a death penalty here. Well, they did it. The rules and regulations of the Department of Justice, at least at the time, where you had to go up, you had to get Attorney General permission, and you have to make a big present. And inevitably, Judge Dowd got tired of waiting for them to do this. And they didn't know how to do it because they'd never done it before. So he says, no time is up or you can't go for the death penalty. And they proceed with Damien and, two days before his scheduled go to trial, you know, I get notification. I don't remember how that he is making a change of plea. And what he was facing was life without the possibility of parole if he was convicted. Although he avoided the death penalty, it was a life conviction. So the feds say to him, we've got a choice for you. They say this all the time. Would you rather do life or how about 15 years if you testify against Donna? Of course. So, Damien being the person that he is, and, and he's not a good person, he takes the 15 years and all sudden he agrees to cooperate. And Donna. And the very day, I think it was July 26th, and I might be mistaken of 2006, the day he takes the plea is the day they arrest Donna. And she has been in jail ever since. So they arrest Donna. They oppose any bail for her. And of course, she did the detainer without bail. And, they charge her, and they tell Judge Dowd that we're going for the death penalty this time. So is by now they have figured out how. To do it, and they're going to use her example. And they go to Washington. And and I had the opportunity to go to Washington and convince them that, it wasn't appropriate. And, inevitably the AG signed off on it and she was charged with the death penalty. Now, I will tell you something that I just remembered. I just remembered this just now, and I think I still have it at home. When all this is going on, I get a phone call from a frantic secretary at the Department of Justice and here in Cleveland, and she says, I just sent you a fax in error. Don't read it, just destroy it. Okay? I hadn't seen it. I said, I don't even know what you're talking about. I read it, it's a memo by the government advocating the death penalty, but I don't know if it's real or not. Okay, okay. It looks real. It smells real, right? Is this like, this is it. They're trying to take me down a path or not. Right. Nevertheless, you know, I kind of thought I knew what the arguments were when I went to the AG's office. Right. Because I knew what there are exactly. You know what? There. Anyways, it didn't work. So who knows? To this day, I don't know if it was real or not. And what's that process like that when you go to the ages? I mean. It wasn't thi8, it was a deputy AG, but you know, there's it's not as terrifying as appearing in front of a federal judge. That's true. What do you just go into a conference. Room and a conference room and made our mitigation case as to why this should not be the death penalty. And of course, I you know, it was it's obvious why it should be. But nevertheless, you know. Sounds like you're going to lose that argument every day of the week. Well, we certainly did, and we have to win it once, but, we lost it, and we proceed on a death penalty. You know, when you have a death penalty case, it's much difference. First of all, for the obvious reasons, the stakes are as high as they get, right? But the cases are bifurcated. And if first the jury decides on guilt, then they're impaneled a second time to decide on whether or not it's a death penalty or life without parole. Right. So, I, I knew I was in over my head to do this by myself with my associate or my partner at the time, Mr. Terrific lawyer Dominic Coletta, who's now a judge in Lyndhurst. But Dominic are working on it. So the judge permitted us to, because at this point Donna could not afford it, and she permitted us to get two other attorneys to help us, and we get deep. Grant, who's a great lawyer. It's got a lot of death penalty experience. And Larry Whitney, who is also a great lawyer from Akron who's got a lot of experience. And Larry and I have done a lot of things together. So we had a really good team. You had a great team. Had you done? I know, I know, not federal death penalty cases, but have you done death penalty cases? Before then because most of your work was federal work? Yes. I, you know, I had the death penalty, a number of death penalty cases, but I don't know if they ever went to trial. Okay, okay. They're all so difficult to prepare for. I'm sure. I mean, you talk about stakes. Oh my gosh. But mitigation is really an important component because, you know, you hope you never have to get to it. Right. But if you have to get to it, you've got about a week to to prepare and put on your mitigation case. So we nevertheless, Larry and Dave took over the the bulk of the work on the mitigation. And Larry and I and Dominic did the bulk of the work on the guilt phase. Okay. So, Damien cuts his deal, Donna gets is designated with the death penalty, and it's in the news every day. It's got. A TV. So you'll appreciate. That. I mean, it's a made for TV drama, really. You know, it was. And, you know, back then it was most of the publicity was in the newspapers. It wasn't. This is in 2006, seven. There was the internet, but it wasn't anything like it is today. So Judge Dowd figures, man, everybody knows about this. So he we had many, many free trials because in this case, like every death penalty case, you have to death qualify your jury. In other words, you have you have to voir dire them one at a time. And they have to be able to say, if the government meets this burden, you know, will you be willing to to vote in favor of death? Now you, the lawyers allowed to also voir dire. Oh, sorry. Oh, sure. Because I know a lot of federal courts don't even allow attorney voir dire. Correct in and that's in most cases. But we had a really extensive questionnaire here. And because it was a death penalty, it permitted us to ask questions. Not a lot okay. Don't repeat them. Okay. Don't. There's something else that someone else asked which is all reasonable. But we ended up getting a jury and, and the trial started and it was it was, I thought the day I had so much to work with, with Damien, because I had every transcript of every proceeding, everything he'd done, every violation he had done, all the lies he had to admit several times. I mean, there was I can't couldn't imagine you would believe anything that he would say. But he also had the benefit of preparation so he could take all the texts that were were out there and they would say, for example, when he sent you this text on the day in question, what did it mean to you? It might be, I love you, baby, so much, he said, well, that meant that they were leaving the house. So why was that different than the other case? Because I knew that was coming. In the meantime, I had gone back. There might have been a hundred times where she had said that to him. Right. Okay. Right. But he he said he was waiting at the end of the street. And when the, he got that text in particular, he took off and filed them all the way. He's got great selective memory, by the way. Well, it's sometimes he did and most of the times he didn't, but it didn't seem to matter at all. We'll get there in a minute. So. Yeah. So the way they, they you know, of course the big issue is, you know, whether or not to put your client on and, I would have in retrospect, if I had to do it all over again, of course, knowing that we lost, I would like to put Donna in, but Donna was in no shape. Not only was she incarcerated, but they didn't make it easy on her. They were keeping her in Akron in the female jail. It was cold and it was miserable, and she didn't do well. And we would meet frequently. And I would tell her I would love for her to testify. But at the end of the day, she wasn't she couldn't pull together. Tell me about that. How do you meet with a client who's in prison to prepare for trial? It's that a lot of fun because you have to go there. They don't have zoom. We certainly didn't have zoom back then. Right. You don't want to talk on the phone because you can't. You don't know if it's being recorded. So you have to go. Are are they accommodating to you when you go. Yeah, yeah. Jails are for the most part least. They were then very accommodating. We didn't have issues. Covid and such. That you'd go into the jail. You get what, a little conference. Room, a little conference room. You know, you reserve it for as many hours as you needed. It had privacy. And that's how you prepare. That's how you prepared. Wow is so Roger in in in in this case Donna did not testify. What is your thought process regarding having a criminal defendant testify or not? Well, it's not the same as it was when I first started. It's evolved. And I remember I couldn't even tell you who was. It was a good friend of mine, John Pyle, who's a wonderful, wonderful lawyer. And we were talking one day and he said, and this is going back in the 80s that, you know it's malpractice to put your client on the stand. And I don't and I'm sure a lot of people today still believe that to be the case. The burden is just so high in those criminal cases for the prosecution that if they don't make your case, the standard responses we're not putting on our client. Well, it'd be a luck. It's a luck. First of all, I always I evolved to the point where I'd like to put my client on in each case, but there's a lot of reasons for that, too. And Donna's is typical. She wouldn't do well. She just didn't handle questioning. Well, she was just she was a nurse. She had a very, very passive life before she met, before she met Damien. And, she was just worked and stayed at home and lived in a very controlling situation. She didn't have the street sense to go through an examination. Well, other times you don't put people on is that they have a criminal record. Obviously, that becomes an impediment if it's been in the last ten years. Right? Okay. Otherwise if it's longer than that, you can put them on and they can't question them about it. Okay. But. Fortunately or unfortunately, I've talked to too many juries. I don't like to talk to juries, but they want to talk to you. You can't say no. And too many times they said, boy, we'd really like to hear from your clients. And of course I say, well, if the judge told you you can't talk about it, you can't ever judge in every standard, every standard instruction. You can't talk about it. You can't even consider it. But they all do, of course. So after a while, I started changing my thinking. Not often, but if I've had a client that I think knows the case, is willing to listen and will do well in their cross-examined and I'll put them on. Sometimes you have no choice. Well, self-defense case. Self-Defense. Exactly. But but but, Donna, situation. I mean, that would have been a tough decision, even if she could get on the stand and testify. Because you have all this circumstantial evidence out there, right? You have you have the relationship that she didn't disclose, the inability to talk about who or what she saw at the scene when she's actually having an a relationship with the murderer. Right. Well, you know, I left out a really important piece here. And if I can backtrack and you know about it because we talked about it five days after the murder and it is yet to be resolved. And they're not even they don't even know who's done it. The police in her family are pressuring Donna to go on television and make a plea for whoever knows any information to please come forward, and she doesn't want to do it, okay. But she does. And she takes a Valium before she goes in there. And I'm not blaming the Valium, but she comes off absolutely horrible. And she didn't. She was talking about her husband and she was I want to say she was fake crying, but that's what the government's called it. And, and it was not a good interview, in fact, that interview became exhibit A for the for the government. It's not surprising to me. And we're going to actually try to plug that into this video, because when you told me about that, I went and I actually pulled it up and watched it, and it was hard for me because I'm not object about the case. So I asked Quinn on my paralegal to take a look at this and just give me her thought. She knows nothing, nothing about the case. She said, oh no, no, that she's lying. Those are fake tears, right? There weren't any tears. She was wiping them away, but nobody else apparently saw them. Right. But, So do they actually play the government play that in. Oh, yeah. Right in the opening. They didn't play in the opening, but they played it okay. They played it early and it was tough. It was tough. And again, Donna was very, unprepared to deal with something like the media coming into her house. Well, let's play that video now and then. I think when you watch it, you'll see it there. I could understand why the government would use that as exhibit M. Words that my husband said to me. With, give me my wallet because I had it in my. And the look on his face with sheer terror. He always helped so many people and I just couldn't help it when he needed my help. But did the interview with Donna Moondust reveal clues about the roadside ambush, or raise questions about how the widow was mourning the loss of her husband. Let's talk about your defense for a moment. I mean, was your defense that this was all Damien Bradford? He was acting alone. Had not that your client, Donna, had nothing to do with this? Or was it? This was Damien was trying to take advantage of Donna, and this was his way of doing it because he was out for money. Was it that she had suffered, some psychological breakdown because she was actually in love with Damien? What was it? Well, it was it was that Damien was acting alone. It was that Damien needed money, and that they. Donna didn't know about this. She didn't know about it. And when he got out in November, several months later, or she wouldn't have invited him into her home, that she didn't know about this. It's interesting, because he gets on the heat, he commits the robbery, he gets away, he's on his way back, he throws the wallet out. He throws the gun away. On the turnpike. Right off the turnpike. Right. They found most of the they found everything but the gun. He had thrown it in an area down the turnpike, and he identified it, and they found the gun and carried it to be the right gun. But his phone calls on the way back to Pittsburgh, where two all of them were drug related. Okay. So we because these people aren't going to talk to you, but they talked to somebody who would talk to us. And, you know, we had we had an investigator who was working the streets out in Pittsburgh. We got a lot of information. It was not useful to us. So I thought he was in debt and he needed money. And, he didn't want to ask Donna for who knows how much you'd given him up to that point. And it was it was a robbery gone bad. So was was did you think when you were trying this case, this case is going to be won or lost based on your cross-examination of Damien? I did in part, it was a big part because without his testimony, they were unlikely to be able to charge down. It was too circumstantial. So he brought all the pieces and parts and talking about the texts, he came up with a map that Donna had given them, but they couldn't show who. You know where it came from. I didn't know who made it, but the judge that led it in, and, they just they had a lot of time to fit the pieces together. Well, I found it interesting when I went back and read about the case that Donna's motivation, her motive here was really interesting, because apparently there was a prenuptial agreement with her and her husband. Do you remember this? Very well? It was this. It was a straw man. It was a straw man. She had a prenup with her husband. But understand something Donna had, and I tried to. I did attack it, that she would have been better off with him dead than alive. It didn't make that much difference to her. And most importantly, and this is why I needed to testify. She had saved enough. But she was so about about money, she didn't care. They had been talking about divorce already because Charlene, our Charlene, not only called the police when they found out about Verna, but she'd also called Gulam and informed Gulam that Donna was sleeping with Damien months before that. Right. Which the government just flipped right on its head because the government said, well, because of the prenup, she would have only received whatever was $250,000 or whatever it was. But if he's dead, she gets half of his estate, which is a lot more. Right? Right. But. The numbers were I don't know what you read. I remember there wasn't that big a disparity between the numbers of which I remember arguing to the jury. There wasn't that much disparity, as there was between the sentence that Damien received and the sentence that Donna was going to receive. Damien. I remember arguing the jury he's going to be out of jail before he's 40. And I remember telling USA and I couldn't tell the jury this, he's going to do this again. And what do you think happened? He gets out of jail and within a year he shoots a deputy in though in a robbery gone bad. And, and now he's in jail for 70 years. Unmaking. Yeah. So did Damien. There was no question that Damien committed the murder, right? No question at. All. It was just a matter of whether Donna hired Damien, right, to commit them. All right. So they were able to corroborate his testimony with respect to the murder, in particular, where they threw the gun. Okay, so they tried to corroborate their relationship in their planning. And it was, you know, I didn't think they corroborated it at all. So nevertheless, I think Donna was not well liked. She betrayed her husband. She traded for profession. She was an addict. And addicts, back then were less, you know, more misunderstood than they are to. They are today, for sure. I mean, that is a that's a tough to your point. That's a tough person to defend. Unless you could put that person on the stand and have the jury understand who they are and what they're. About, right? I mean, you got to know her through the process. That's got to be a really hard thing for any criminal defense lawyer. I mean, I don't do any criminal work. I think I'd handled one case. It was a parole violation, and my client was handcuffed right after I gave my argument to the court and taken away. And I got to tell you, I felt so bad. You know, we fight about money. We don't fight about someone's liberty. Does that get to you? And I like to say you'll get used to it, but you don't always get. Do you? Do you get you don't get used to it at all. No. Never never never, never. I'm just nervous now when I go in as I was the first day started, you know, it doesn't. And then to see or if you lose to see your client handcuffed and taken away. I mean, what's that feeling like? Well, I'll tell you, there are, you know, in many, many cases that you try in your client and you lose, you know, you lose because your client's guilty, right? Those are so hard to swallow when you lose and you think your client's innocent, you know, you live with those, right? I've got a few I live with. Dan is one of them. That is one of them. You know. Are you still in touch with her at all? The last time we communicated was a couple of years ago. One of the unfortunate, collateral consequences of being found. Life without parole is in the Bureau of Prisons. You're designated in the. You know, in the maximum security when you're home. Because ordinarily, if you get 50 years in prison and you've done 40, they'll move you down to a less restrictive environment. Okay. If you do another ten, they'll move you down to the less restrictive. And by the time you're at the end of your last ten years, you're in a camp, okay? When you have no release date, you are in a maximum security for your life. Oh my gosh, that's so poor. So she is still in a maximum security all these years later. Although I'm sure she's a model citizen in jail. But, you know, we, we commuted a couple of years ago, but not not often. So I like to ask these questions on this podcast because really, the purpose of this podcast is not only to talk about interesting cases and interesting stories, but also to learn from great lawyers like you. Okay, what's your process of preparing for, just a major murder or big felony case? What do you do? How do you prepare it? So I've done a lot of civil trials. It's a lot different. For example, in federal court, you forget that you don't get to take depositions in federal court. They don't even have to give you a witness list. So there are times you don't know who's coming in. They don't have to tell you the night before who they're calling. So so here's what happens. There is something called the jinx act, which is an act in order to protect witnesses. This was an act, an act that was enacted maybe 50 years ago. I don't know, but what it says is the government does not have to give you a witness statement until after they've testified. Oh, my. Well, obviously you don't want to stop a trial for 4 hours or 5 hours to read their statements. And sometimes the statements are voluminous because like an an agent might have to testify in the grand jury for days. Right? So the courts cannot compel them to give you chunks before then. But what they do is they say you, you know, at the worse, you better give to Mr. Seberg the night before. So you have that night to look at. It's cold. I mean, you're getting the witnesses testimony after they've testified as well as what they said in the past. The problem is you only have 12 hours to read. Yeah, well, you have 12 hours after working. After working. Right? Right, right. So that's why it's a young man's game. Because when you're young, you can go to two in the morning, get up at five and keep working. That's no man's game. I mean, that is that is really, really hard work. Especially when someone's liberty and stake. But I'll tell you, Andy, I never remember saying I'm tired. I mean, the adrenaline, you know, when you're in trial, the adrenaline pumping and everything else becomes secondary and you just focused on this. So in this case, in federal court, you know, it's it's huge. Oftentimes you don't know sometimes over the years they become more progressive. And they may give it to you. Three days before I had a one of my last trials as a doctor, there was representing and then they dumped. It was a Monday trial and they dumped on the jinx act on Friday. And by Sunday we had a deal. I mean, once we knew all this information that you would, I said that the government, if you give me this a year ago, we would have worked this out. Right. But they don't you know, they oftentimes they have their reasons, they're protecting witnesses or whatever it is or they're or they're or their strategy. So, that's what happened in this case, we get these voluminous chunks of material the day before. It seems to me to be such a disadvantage for you. I mean, nobody could not only process that information but then have time to think about it, how it fits into your case, what to use, what not to use. So you asked about the preparation. So I've found that that's all I have. That's all I can do is prepare. I mean, you don't want to be in trial and across examination and say to yourself, where did I see this? You know. Right. So even though you don't know who your witnesses are, you got a pretty good idea and you could prepare for it. And then you've got the jinx material. And if you've got something inconsistent, that's why I say it's gold. Sure it's gold, right. So it's all about and I've had cases with millions and millions of documents and there's gold in there. You just got to find it. Well, and you're. Always easy and. You have to have time to find. It. And you have to you have to have time to find it. Yeah. So when you're going in and you're I understand that's how you would prepare your examinations. But what about your trial strategy, your trial theme? How did you work through that when you were preparing for these big major cases? Well, you know, again, we had a great team, the Dominique and Larry Whitney and Dave Grant, and we did a lot of strategizing. We also did much. We also did a mock trial. I just remember that we did a mock trial. Did you. Okay. So did you actually when you say a mock trial, you actually would mock try the case as opposed to doing a focus group so. Well, we, I used a company called Decision Quest that was out of Minnesota. Okay. Use them in several cases. And they would get the juries and they would get the location. And we were going to do it at and then we would plan and it was like a summer trial, and we would test out, theories. And, you know, you've done it. Yeah, I'll tell you test out there. It was great. It was a fabulous experience. I'll tell you one quick story. We were doing a mock trial and we've got three. We got 40 people, so we got three juries and we're sitting in the room watching them deliberate. And of course you can listen to jury A B or C with your earphones just A, B or C, and the first jury's guilty, the second jury's hung and the third is not guilty. So we say take these two people, put them over here. Take these two people. Put them over. Here. Interesting. Okay. Very deliberate. And don't you know all the verdicts were different and it showed me the importance of a leader because they move the leaders around, they change the jury. So it's so important. And and when we pictures I mean there's some lawyers who like I don't want any leaders at all. Then there's some who say I want a leader because I want them to drive the decision making process. What's your thoughts? Well, is it depend on the case? You know, I used to be of the mindset that you know, that you're trying it to the leaders. But I had a trial once the the judge told me afterwards, he said to me in a case that I thought was clear, he says, boy, were you lucky to win that the first the first vote was 1101 guilt. And I'm like, what he says, yeah, remember that guy sitting in the back who worked for a clerk of courts in another county? I said, yeah, it was like a little small guy. I certainly didn't see him as a leader. And shame on me, he was the one who turned the other 11 around. So yeah, that's incredible. And it's just. Talk. I hope I talk to him, but he got it. You know, maybe because he works in a courthouse, right. And he had the credibility with the juror, other jurors. But getting back getting back to Donna's case. So you have this case prepared. You put on your defense. What what was your feeling when the case when you rested case goes to the jury? How are you feeling at this point in time? So it's funny because I called dynamic this morning. Judge Colette, I should say. And I asked him, what do you remember about the moon, the case? And he says, he tells me a couple of mistakes we make as it takes. Right? But he says, I, I said, well, what did you think? Did you think we had a chance? When the jury went out? He said, yes, but not like you. I thought we I thought. You were optimistic. Right? You know, because you always believe in your case. Yeah, I do so. So when the jury gets the case, do you stick around? You wait for the jury. Do you remember? I remember I was devastated, you know? And of course, I couldn't talk to the jury because they were coming back again to, to the mitigation. Oh, that's that's right. You know, I sort of skipped over that. So, so now you're in the mitigation phase. Are you permitted to put Donna on in the stand in the mitigation phase? If you didn't put her on in your main stage? Yes. You are. Okay. You are. We didn't. She wasn't any more ready than otherwise. At the point of mitigation, David took a deep breath, took over. He did a masterful job. There was a lot to work with. Okay. Donna had a very traditional background, a high school cheerleader, met Ghulam when she was 18. You know, he she was working in the medical office. He courted her for 12 years. She'd never been with another man before she met Damien. Okay. Was her whole life. And. And he was very controlling. Even though she worked all day long, he she had to have his dinner on the table at five every night. Then he had to take a nap for two hours, and she wasn't allowed to make any noise in the house. So it was a very restricted life. And, you had her friends testify in mitigation that she knew her whole life long, and they talked about what a good person she had been. Well, and it spared her life. And it did. And, that had to be a relief. Of course, that was a giant relief. Yeah. But, but, you know, I remember I did take that one hurt that comes with being a trailer. You don't have to tell you that your calendar is in your own, you know, being on vacations kind of a joke because we're still our minds working and on all the cases, and, you know, so I want to spend more time with my wife and give her the attention that she deserves. She does deserve it. And it's that that's wonderful. It's got to be really hard because with all of your success comes more demands. And I have to imagine, especially as a criminal defense lawyer, I mean, you get those calls in the middle of the night, you're giving out your cell phone to everyone, and it's people are freaking out and it's you need to get. Things, you know. It's so good for you. And, let's maybe we could end it this way. Roger, you know how much I respect you and admire you. I truly believe you are one of the best. If not the best, criminal defense lawyer our town has seen for sure, you know, and I mean that sincerely. So is there. What's your take away to the younger generation, the maybe the younger lawyers who are listening to this podcast? What what do you want to tell them? Well, there's no substitution for preparation. You could you could, you know, it's all about that. I mean, if you're the, you know, the confidence that comes with being the best prepared in the courtroom cannot be understated. The benefit of that. So and it doesn't take long before the jury figures out that this guy is the best prepared. At least what you hope. That's what you're you're yearned for. So I would say it's all about the preparation. We it's funny, we we talked about that on another podcast, the importance of credibility. And that comes with preparation. And and by being prepared, you become one of the most knowledgeable people in the courtroom, which means that everybody's looking to you. And that is so important. What you hope. It's what you hope that you know. So I had James Lowe on the podcast recently with James. James is great and we haven't aired it yet, but I asked him the same question I just asked you and I loved. His answer was, you have to have joy for the profession, and if you don't enjoy what you do, you won't work the way that you have to work to be successful. Well, I think we're so lucky, so blessed to be able to do what we do. And I think it's it's, you know, I think it's the exclusive club to be an attorney. You have a license, you could do a lot of good with it. You know, it's, unlimited. You could you could do anything. You could sue anybody. You can defend anybody. It's it's and it it is choice. I love lawyers, I love the law. I got a lot of notwithstanding the stress, the pressure, all that. I loved practicing law. It was it was, I feel very blessed. I oftentimes would tell my wife, I feel like I'm like the Forrest Gump of the league. And here I am, signed myself and in the middle of another thing, you know, it is true. It is really a magical profession where you get to, to meet and get to know people on a different level. You, if you're you really become a problem solver and that has a feeling that's indescribable. Yeah. Well, even people who are guilty of crimes, even the worst of the worst, there's some good in them. And in my experience, you know, I represented a lot of, people like you or me who might have made one mistake along the way. God, I know I've made more than one, but. But they got charged with the crime, and they say, well, I know a million other people doing it. Why are they charged? Well, because it's you. It's you. Because unfortunately, it's you. But it's a lot of stories of redemption, a lot of people who come back from having made mistakes and do very well for themselves and for other people. Yeah, that's got to be really rewarding for you. When you see someone at the at the really their lowest. I mean, there's no lower point in a person's life when they're charged with a crime, especially by the federal government where they have the resources that we talked about. And then you see them years later and they've had the courage and the strength to overcome that. And there's a lot of people who do allow it, some people who don't, you know, we even I learned another thing I learned over the years that it's so much it's so stressful to someone to be charged. It's the first thing they think about every day. It's the last thing they think about every night. It doesn't go away and the stress accumulates. So what I saw was I had clients, they would be discharged, found not guilty, and they'd call me a few days later. A week later. I don't understand why I'm feeling so bad. I should be. Elated. And I would say to them, well, you know, imagine if you were carrying 300 pounds on your back and then someone took it off of it. You're not going to stand up. It's for a week, a month, a year. It'll take you. And it's true. And I learned that. I tell my clients, it's going to take you a long time to recover, because you were down so far and with so much weight on your shoulders. It's really a great point. Something that I never thought of. It's it's almost like you have knee surgery and you have to do all that therapy just to learn how to walk again. Exactly, exactly. So. Roger, I could talk to you all day. So thank you so much. Oh, my gosh, I had so much fun. Thank you for doing this. Really for your being too kind through. So much. Thanks.