Defending In Murder Trials, Cult Leaders & Robert Durst | Dick DeGuerin

Dick DeGuerin is a legendary Texas criminal defense attorney based in Houston and one of the most respected trial lawyers in the country. Over a career spanning six decades, he's defended some of the most high-profile clients in modern American history — including David Koresh and the Branch Davidians during the 1993 Waco siege, real estate heir Robert Durst (featured in HBO's The Jinx), former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and financier Allen Stanford. Trained under the legendary Percy Foreman, DeGuerin was named Outstanding Criminal Defense Lawyer of the Year by the State Bar of Texas and has been recognized by Texas Monthly as one of the state's best criminal defense attorneys. He's also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

First guest today is is one of my heroes for sure, uh Dick Daguerin, or as I refer to him as Dick Dageron. Um but I want to go through a little bit of your history and then some of your more celebrated cases. All right? Fire away. All right. So your dad was a lawyer in Austin.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

He was. He never practiced trial law. He was a more administrative lawyer, and he uh practiced a lot of politics.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Word has it that he worked with LBJ on occasion? They were very close. How uh did you know LBJ as a kid? I did.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

What was that like? Oh, he was terrific. He just uh as charming and as smart as uh of course I was a kid, right? But uh he lived in our neighborhood for a while early on, and uh we would go over there for backyard barbecues.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

I had I just stumbled across on the interweb the celebrated LBJ conversation with the Hager Pant. Uh are you too familiar with what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Yeah, that's the one where he uh uh said, Hey Joe, I need some some of them new uh khakis that you make for me, and I need need them to have a lot of room down in my crotch, you know, where your balls hang.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

It's classic. Uh and also with us to get today is a is a is a guest questioner, uh the world famous Michael Berry. So if you want to jump in anytime and ask Mr. Daggeron a question, please do so. First, I'm just gonna take in the moment. Two legal titans. Well, one anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

But I'll talk being dick.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. So did you know you wanted to be a lawyer growing up, Dick?

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Well, uh my my dad was a lawyer, and uh so that was something that I knew from the get-go. Uh and uh it seemed like a a good way to stay in school a little bit longer. And uh I was uh I tested well. I didn't study well, but I tested well, and I got into undergraduate school at the University of Texas in a plan two, which I didn't know that that was a big deal. And I got into law school real easily uh because we had two tests. One was the regular law school uh LSAT, uh, and the other one was the University of Texas uh admissions and uh test law school, and I I aced both of those. I didn't do so well in my grades, but I I did I enjoyed school a lot.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

And what's the age difference between you and Mike?

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Mike, uh, my brother was uh almost four years younger.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

And he passed three years and 11 months.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Passing 24 or 25.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

He passed in 24.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

Okay. Uh and y'all were, needless to say, closest two brothers could get. Yep. Uh there wasn't a sibling rivalry that you typically associate.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

There was uh you know, I was an only child and he came until he came along. And so I was jealous, I I think, but uh, you know, at three years old, what do you know? It's just an intuitive thing. And so I'm uh I was his big brother for a long time, and I I I lorded it over him, but I also took care of him. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:23

Now did you beat his ass on occasion like my big brother beat my ass on occasion?

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Yeah, but uh, you know only if he needed it? The my parents would step in.

SPEAKER_03 3:33

All right, so you get out of law school, you do you you have middle of the road grades I'm taking from your last your your last being very charitable.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Uh yeah, I got out. And uh I I did ace the the uh bar exam. Uh came in number three on the bar exam, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Uh and you applied to but not did not get hired by Butler Binion, am I recalling that right?

SPEAKER_02 4:00

What happened was I came to Houston because uh my buddy uh Grant Roan, who went through law school with me, uh said, come on to Houston, uh, you know, that's money falling off the trees. And uh so I came and started interviewing around. Uh got some good interviews with some of the big firms, and one of them was Butler and Binion. And I was very impressed with uh the people I met there. Jack Binion, who was one of the name partners, was a hell of a trial lawyer. Right. And uh he interviewed me and said, You you don't have the grades for us to hire you right out of law school, but you go get some experience and uh come back and talk to us. So I went to the DA's office and luckily got a job with uh Frank Briscoe, who was a DA then.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

And and how many years were you with the DA's office?

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Almost three years.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

And then you left and then went to Butler Binion? That's correct. How long there?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Uh almost three years.

SPEAKER_03 5:03

So six years out of law school, and then you go to work for for the legendary Percy Foreman.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Well, I tell you what, I I really hit a home run. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

How did you get on with Percy?

SPEAKER_02 5:13

Well, it was uh uh there was a another lawyer that kind of in between our ages named Bob Tarrant. Sure. And he was a top-notch criminal lawyer, one of the three or four top criminal lawyers at that time. And he was a good buddy of mine. I'd I'd met him when I first uh became a prosecutor, and Percy knew him very well, and he got in some trouble over some machine guns.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

Back when they were frowned upon.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Well, yeah, uh they he felt that uh they'd been he'd been grandfathered in, that uh he had his machine guns uh collection uh legally, but he was nervous about it, so he decided to sell the entire collection and uh unfortunately sold it to a guy that was cooperating with the ATF, the uh alcohol, tobacco, and tax people, and they they uh busted him. So Percy volunteered to represent him, and I volunteered to represent him, and that kind of threw us together.

SPEAKER_03 6:14

Were you at Butler Binion when that when this had happened?

SPEAKER_02 6:16

I was, and uh uh some of the uh partners in the Butler and Binion didn't exactly like for me to be trying a criminal case and defending someone charged cry. But uh yeah, I was still with Butler and Binion.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Now I'm remembering one story, and it may be apocryphal or not, but at some point or another, didn't Bob Tarrant get in a fist fight with the equally legendary Rusty Hardin? Yeah. What's the what's that story back?

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Well, uh Bob's daughter Gage? No, uh his middle daughter, uh Nancy, um uh went to visit uh Sanford Rodensky. Uh Sanford was holed up in the Rice Hotel, and uh the uh the uh narcotic squad of the uh Houston was watching him very closely and they were arresting everybody that left his room. Nancy was there with her boyfriend at the time, and they arrested Nancy and charged her with possession of a small amount of pot, and it just drove Bob nuts, and he started he shouldn't have had, he he represented her in that trial. Okay. And during that trial Was Rusty prosecuting him? Rusty was the prosecutor. Rusty came up to him uh during a break in the trial. The judge's still on the bench, but the jury's out, and Rusty comes up to him and leans over at him and says, You know you're just scum. Yeah. And so Bob whack. But he was sitting down and it was he didn't really get a lot of whap behind it. And uh Rusty said something like, Is that all you got? Well, uh the judge charged Bob with uh contempt of court. We got rid of that judge because you can't try the the the contempt in front of the same judge, it happens. We got a decent judge come in. Who's the judge? Uh I can't remember his name. He's from Carpus Christi. Okay. And he came in and he saw what was going on. And at the end of the trial, he uh he said, Well, you know, uh Mr. Hardin deserved getting punched, but I can't let it go by, so I'm gonna fine you 50 bucks.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

All right, so I gotta talk. Look, Dick, you you truly are one of my heroes. No no thank you. I appreciate it. No if, ands, or buts about it. And and you you would have no way of knowing this, but I I remember at when I was a law clerk for Judge Onion on the Court of Criminal Appeals, you and Lewis had just opened up uh DeGuerrin and Dixon, and there was a nice engraved announcement sitting on Judge Onion's desk, and I thought, man, that's those are two really good lawyers there. So let's hearken back though to to Percy. Give give me two or three things that Percy, I mean, you you it's a world of experience, you can't ever repay that sort of uh uh debt. But what give it give us two or three things that Percy imparted on you that that stayed with you throughout your career.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Uh Percy was a fighter. He always fought. And uh he fought for his clients tooth and nail. And uh whether he liked them or not, or whether he believed them or not, he was he was their advocate. And uh I passed that on to my students. Uh if you're gonna represent somebody, if you make that decision that you're gonna represent somebody, then it doesn't make any difference how much they pay, uh whether they've paid everything they're supposed to pay, or any there's no other consideration other than you give your absolute best to that client. And uh so that's one thing he taught me, fight. And uh the other thing is you gotta be better prepared than the other side.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

Now, Percy, if I'm recalling the lore of Percy Foreman right, his dad was a sheriff. Do I get did I get that right?

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Um yes, his father was sheriff of uh Polk County.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Wow. Uh yeah. And how does the son of a sheriff become a wide-eyed criminal defense lawyer? How does that happen?

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Percy said it started when he uh was about eight years old, and his dad had him come to the courthouse and shine shoes.

SPEAKER_03 10:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

And so back then, of course, the courthouse was a center of uh activity f in a small town. And um Percy remembered that the of the all the people whose shoes he shined, the best shoes and the shiniest shoes were the lawyers' shoes. Okay. So he decided he's gonna be a lawyer.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

Well, didn't he also have a thing? Didn't he also preach, of course it was different times, but didn't Percy all also lecture or preach on the importance of being able to see the shoes of the jury panel that would give you insight into who they were or what they did or what they were about?

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Well, that was one of the things that he looked at, yeah. But he he could size up a person uh quicker than anybody I've ever known. And he sized them up not only on the shine on their shoes or lack of it, or but their dress, their way they carried themselves, the way they talked. Um he just was a genius at that.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

And would Percy sit you down in the evenings or in the afternoons and say this is what I want you to do, or would he just here's a case, go handle it and don't fuck it up?

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Yeah, that's basically uh sink or swim. He threw me in and let uh to see if I could swim and uh trusted my uh spirit. And uh he once said, uh, you know, uh courage is worth more than brains. Wow. And I th I thought that was quite a compliment until I really started thinking about it.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

How many murder cases have you tried, Dick? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Um probably in the low hundreds.

SPEAKER_03 12:29

Really? Yeah. Uh is that your favorite kind of case to try? Of course. Why?

SPEAKER_02 12:34

There's always one less witness.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

Well, Haynes said to me many years later that one of the lessons he learned from Percy was that if you're trying a murder case, you always want to show that the def that the deceased either would hit women or beat dogs. And if you if you if you could show a jury panel, either one of those things that that the that the deceased beat women or or beat dogs, you you probably had a winner.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Yeah, well that's in the w there's only two kinds of cases, you know, uh murder cases. One of them is a who done it. Right. He did just didn't do it. But the other one is the some bitch needed killing. Right. So that's the category of the some bitch needed killing.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

What was your most memorable trial with Percy? Ooh, boy. Now did you try many cases with Percy, or did he have have you you had your own docket? How did that work?

SPEAKER_02 13:31

I I I didn't try that many with him, although I did try some. Of course, we tried the Bob Tarrant case, and uh that's when uh apparently I impressed him enough for him to hire me. Okay. But uh and then we we tried a few cases after that together.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

And what was this part?

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Oh well, um he generally would let me do the work.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

He damn sure let me do the preparation. Oh course. And and uh, but uh he he would just turn me loose, frankly, and then he wouldn't he might critique me, but he didn't we didn't sit down and have a fireplace chat uh after the cases.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

And how many years were you you were with Percy 12 years? Twelve years. That's a long ass time to work for Percy for me.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Well let me tell you what. It was uh actually it was fun every day. Okay. Um he was he was smart. God, he was smart. Um he you couldn't fool him. I mean, I I knew everything I said to him had to be absolute truth, whether it was embarrassing to me or I'd done something wrong or or not. I mean it had to be the absolute truth because he could see through any kind of falsification, and and he was also a bit penurious.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

All right. Uh for the viewers at home, including me, what the fuck does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 14:56

It means he was cheap. Oh, okay. And uh I was on screen.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

Haynes must have gotten mad from him because Haynes was tighter than Dick Hatzband, but that's another story.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

No, I you know the story about one time I went to Haynes and and see to see if he'd hired me.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

Did not know that story.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Oh, I did, yeah. So after I left the DA's office and I was with Butler and Binion, and I wasn't happy because I was representing the insurance companies, which will kill your soul. And I went to went to Haynes. I said, Look, uh I I just can't stand representing insurance companies. I don't want to represent people and um how about give me the w give me some work? And he said, Well, sure, I'll I'll put you on how much are you making? I told him it was again very low, and he said, Well, I can't quite pay you that much. You know. So I said, No, I got a I got a wife and a kid to feed. Um so I didn't go to work for Haynes. I stayed at Butler and Binion, and I'm glad I did, because one thing that Butler and Binion, it was one of the five top big law firms in Houston at the time, did was uh they taught you discipline in uh preparation. Uh and by that I mean not just knowing the case, but researching the case and filing pleadings, um which most prosecutors have no idea how to do. Right. Um preparing pleadings and uh we had a rule at Butler and Binion, and that is if the boss came in, it was Frank Knapp, and opened up the file, he wanted to see yellow on both sides. What does that mean? Back then uh w we had copy paper. We didn't have Xeroxes, it hadn't been invented yet. Uh and uh you had to have a yellow piece of paper on both sides, pleadings, let a correspondence, meaning every pleading that came in you had to answer, and every letter that came in you had to answer.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

Gotcha. Uh so when you left Percy, you left for the usual suspect's reason, money?

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Yeah. Uh I would get money. Well the hesitation is that uh I really I would have stayed with Percy forever uh if it had been the money, uh only the money, because he would have he would have I was making pretty good money with Percy. Um some of it was under the table. And um but I was getting the cases. The cases were coming to me. My reputation was bringing in uh cases for Percy to make money off of, and I felt like uh I I didn't want to try to wrestle the firm away from Percy. I mean he'd been practicing 50 years, and uh that he deserved better than that. I just I thought it was time for me to be on my own.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

So you left in 82? Yep. And Lewis was all Lewis Dixon uh was also working for Percy at the time?

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Uh we hired Lewis away from the DA's office, and we hired my brother away from uh the uh the public defender's office, and we hired Charlie Sakelli away from the public defender's office. So we had what at that time was probably the largest criminal law firm in Houston.

SPEAKER_03 18:28

Right. So you and Lewis strike out on your own?

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Well, it that wasn't exactly that way. Okay. I went in and told Percy that I was gonna leave. He congratulated me and said everything's gonna be fine. I said, I'm I'm I'll stay for three months and I'll finish the cases that I've got here. And that lasted for about a week. What changed? Well, he realized that I was taking cases in on my own. Uh, that the cases were coming to me, and he uh uh he got pretty jealous about that.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

And he came to the cases that you were gonna keep the fee on? Yeah. That would explain it.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was the fee-related.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

All right, so I I hate to say when you first became nationally prominent, but I remember whether you had tried a bunch of cases, of course, but by the time the Branch Davidian incident rolled around, you were top of the fold on just about every case. Uh for those of you at home that that we had newspapers that that back then. And if you were top of the fold, we even had two newspapers. We had two newspapers. The Post and the Chronicles. You were a big deal. But so you were hired ultimately by David Koresh, I guess his or you call him Corish, you would know better. Uh, but his mother came to see you.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

His mother was the one that engaged me. Uh it came through uh a previous case that I'd had that there was a a gun case, and there was a a guy, uh a lawyer that wasn't really a criminal lawyer, that uh had been contacted. Um and he got her to call me and that it went from there.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

But you actually went to the compound, right? I did. Once or twice? Five times. Five times. I didn't realize you went in there five times. So what the hell was what was that like going into the compound with tanks in the front yards and and sharpshooters in the in the good Lord, what was that like? Oh well it was interesting.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Um actually uh if you count the times going in in the morning and then counting uh going in the evening, it uh went in twice on each day. So uh five days sets ten times.

SPEAKER_03 20:38

So you the siege started on the twenty-eighth and the fire happened February twenty-eighth and the fire happened on April nineteenth. What when when was when were your visits uh to the company?

SPEAKER_02 20:47

I first got in uh March the twenty-eighth.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

So it it'd been going on a month. And what was your goal in entering?

SPEAKER_02 20:56

To uh show uh Koresh that we could uh had a chance of winning the case, that's the first thing, and that it uh that I would be devoted to his defense and that I would recruit other lawyers to uh represent whoever else was going to be charged. Remember when I first went in, uh what they were facing at that time was the deaths of four agents who we believe, and you know from being involved in it, probably two of them were killed by friendly fire by their own people. And uh so my goal was to uh let Cory know to reassure him that he would be well represented and uh therefore he would would be willing to come out and go into custody. I wanted a live client in court, and I convinced finally the FBI. That we had that interest in common. I wanted it to end. They wanted it to end. They wanted no further disasters like the original raid had been. And so we had common interest. And they uh eventually agreed to let me in.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

So you your first date, Dick, entering the compound was March 28th. When was the last time?

SPEAKER_02 22:27

April the fourth.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

So a couple of weeks before the fire. Did you believe, based upon your conversations with Chorus, that he would eventually come out?

SPEAKER_02 22:35

Yes, I did. Why? Actually, the last time that I went in was April the 14th. Okay. Um but was was just a few days before the fire. And that was because I thought he was going to come out then. And and um Jack Zimmerman and I both went in that day.

SPEAKER_03 22:53

Was Jack just with you on that one occasion?

SPEAKER_02 22:55

No, he was with me on one of the previous occasions.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

And he was representing Schneider?

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Steve Schneider was uh one of uh uh Corush's right-hand men. He he was a divinity student, um, a PhD uh student. Um and there was an uh one other fellow that was very important, and that was Wayne Martin. He was a black guy who was a Harvard law graduate.

SPEAKER_03 23:20

And you believe that Corish and others would come out why? Why did you believe that?

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Well they knew that their position was untenable. There's no way that they could maintain uh what was going on there with the the FBI circling the place and tanks and cutting them off from all uh communication outside, and their food and water and so forth would eventually play out if they just let it play out. And they knew that they couldn't win. Uh so uh they were looking for an end to it also. What I didn't realize at the time, and what I've learned later, is that their beliefs uh were that it would end in uh the deaths of all of them, but they would be transported uh in some way to a better life.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Um was Quaresh rational, logical, seemed to be appreciative of what the hell was going on? Yes. Yes, he was.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Now, I and you know, I'm I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I can't say f for certain, but um he answered my questions, he uh truly believed what he believed, and he was very convincing to all those who followed his interpretations of the Bible. All these people were there because of their religion. Um they weren't there to to make war against Mako, Texas. Right. They were there because they believed uh this particular study of the Bible. They were they were descended from Seventh-day Adventists. Uh they were a branch of the Seventh-day Adventists, and even a branch of that branch, which they call the branch but Davidians, and that's where it the word came from. Um and there were people that had been there all their lives. Yeah. Uh there were kids, there were women, uh older people, there were men that had been there from the very beginning.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

As you remember, you had asked me to to represent Clive Doyle back, you know, when there had eighty-five people in the in the house, and and I, you know, I I said, There's no way I can volunteer my time with an 85-person trial that'll take two or three years, and I'm just not going to do that. And then when the fire happened, the same guy, Clive Doyle, you said go see him, and I did. But when I met with Clive, kind of this apropos to what you're saying, um, look, I he didn't believe what I believed, and I didn't believe what he believed, but y the sincerity just dripped off him. I mean, that would be his parents were branch Davidians, his his uncles were branched. I mean, that was like Catholicism to him. That was just normal as the day is long. It wasn't normal to you and me, but it was normal to him. That's what he'd grown up with his whole life.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

It was uh very convincing to them that the Bible was the word. Right. And uh, of course, it it takes some interpretation, and uh what Corish did was uh interpret the Bible in a particular way.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

So when you learned, so this you saw him on April 14th, which is four or five days before the tanks come in and and all that shit show. Uh what was your first where were you and what was your reaction when you saw the tank circling and and the you know, you worship a false prophet and all that all that nonsense?

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Well, of course, I saw the tank circling. The tanks were brought in almost the second day, I think, of the of the siege, which started on February 28th. And uh I I first learned about it, like everybody else learned about it. I saw it uh on television and heard about it, and I heard about uh there being a big shootout in Waco, Texas, with some religious nuts, and I bought off on what the general public uh was being told then that these were just a bunch of religious nuts that were out to capture Waco with the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 27:46

I totally bought into the narrative. Yeah. But when you learned on the 19th that they were the tanks were intruding in the house and doing all that, what was your reaction?

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Oh, I was shocked because on the 14th, when I left, I'd come out and the courts should give me a letter saying, here's what what I'm gonna do. I'm writing my interpretation of the seven seals, and as soon as I do that, I'm gonna come out and go to court. Um I believed it. Uh he had gone to court before and had been successful. Right. And so um I came out, told the FBI that, and I said, I'm really disappointed because I thought today would be the day. They said, Don't worry about it, we got all the time there is. I didn't know that at that very moment some of the FBI supervisors were in Washington, D.C. Meeting with Janet Reno. Meeting with Janet Read Reno and convincing her that the children were at in danger. I never saw anything that suggested that, that kids were all loving and the parents were all loving, and uh at any rate she was being sold a bill of goods. And then on uh uh the 19th, I was about to start a trial uh uh in Denton, Texas. And uh I came back from my morning run and uh my wife called me in the hotel room and said, Turn on the TV. And uh I turned on the TV and I saw that the tanks were poking holes in the building. And uh so I called I called my contact in the FBI.

SPEAKER_03 29:30

It was it Sage, who was it?

SPEAKER_02 29:32

No, it wasn't Sage. Um this was Bob Ricks. Okay, he was one of the four special agents in charge, and I said, uh, I see what's happening. Um, this is the day. I'll come down there, I'll go back in and I'll bring him out. He said, We don't need you anymore. And so uh I went to court that morning in Denton. I told the judge what was going on that I needed to be there, that uh maybe I could uh help. Uh my co-counsel, the judge seemed to be reluctant to let me go because we were we had a jury we were getting ready to pick. My co-counsel said maybe he can save some lives. And so the judge let me go. I drove from Denton, Texas to Waco, Texas. And by the time I got three hours? Uh it's a little bit longer than that. And by the time I got there, the place was burning.

SPEAKER_03 30:26

Wow. Because the I think the tanks were first penetrating the house around six o'clock. Six o'clock. Yes, six thirty-seven. And the fire started happening at ten thirty, eleven, something like that. Did you ever foresee was there ever a suggestion, Dick, that the Davidians would use fire to keep tanks away or they would set a fire? Did was there ever any discussion of that to your knowledge?

SPEAKER_02 30:52

In front of me or in front of Jack Zimmerman or anybody else that I knew of, was there ever any suggestion that there was going to be a mass suicide? In fact, um I think Korsh uh cared too much about himself to uh think of suicide. Um and particularly suicide by fire.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

Yeah, that's not the way you want to go out. Um so how could that tragedy have been avoided?

SPEAKER_02 31:21

You know, after the fire, the FBI said uh our people were getting tired, we uh we didn't have the resources to keep up this siege. All they had to do was have a little patience, frankly. Um they could have uh they could have built a chain link fence around the place and just waited uh until it was over instead of going in there aggressively with tanks and tear gas, knowing that the kind of tear gas they're throwing in there the the kids had absolutely no defense against. The adults had gas masks, the kids didn't.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

They don't make gas masks for kids.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

No.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

Yeah, you and I might disagree a little bit on the whole fire thing because during the trial uh the FBI we learned the day before we got to cross-examine the agents, but the FBI had these little stealth listening devices that they had placed uh in areas where they could overhear Quaresh and Schneider having conversations. And during those conversations, you can hear Quaresh instruct others. If a tank comes, set fire to that portion of the house, because the only thing a tank driver is afraid of is fire because they're sitting on 400 gallons of diesel or whatever it is. You can't really hear, it's it's cloudy, but if if if you want to hear that, you can. But the FBI certainly believed that because as you probably know now, one of the things they did on April 19th was put these FLIR planes, these forward-looking infrared radar planes, which detect ignition and heat. So they put the planes in the air to to prove that they didn't start the fire because they they would have these grainy black and white uh videos that you've seen which show where the ignition was. So I believe the Davidians started the fire, but not as an act of suicide, but as an act of keeping the tanks away.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Yeah. Well, an another twist on that is what I was told by some of the people that I interviewed after the fire was that they made Molotov cocktails to throw out at the tanks. Yeah. And so I think that some of that talk, or maybe all of that talk, was uh misinterpreted, and then it meant that they were they were going to defend themselves with fire.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

Yeah, I don't I don't disagree. But uh the you know, one of the first two places that the tank went was one over the door to the bus, the underground bus, because they knew women and children would seek shelter there, so they ran a tank over there to keep to lock those people in. And then the second was in the cinder block room where so many people lost their lives, they collapsed that door so you couldn't get out. I mean, it in my view, the FBI murdered those people. There's just there's no if if, ands, or buts about it. Call it voluntary manslaughter, call it murder, but they killed them.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

When they were hitting the building with the tanks, uh it was just shaking the building to its foundation. The the stairs, the inner stairways collapsed. So the people that were upstairs were trapped upstairs.

SPEAKER_03 34:22

Well, one of the other things, the obvious things, is they put the planes in the air, right? But they who the who they did who who did they who did they not notify? Oh, yeah, the fire department.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

They kept the fire department away. Yeah. You know, the fire department came out there and uh they they wouldn't let them pass the uh the the gate.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

Yeah, we went out there. I went and saw because you called me out on the 19th or the I guess the 20th and said that Clive had survived. Would you go see him? And I kind of said, yeah, okay, but I ain't guaranteed.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

You didn't say okay right away. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 34:55

I wasn't anxious about it. I was not because I I still bought into the narrative that these were a bunch of child abusing crazy ass. But I wanted to go to Parkland Hospital because I was a Kennedy conspiracist and Parkland, how jacked up I am. Parkland always had sort of a romantic place in in my skewed-up brain, and that's when I went to Saul Clive and I I realized what he believed was what he believed. But the point of it is I saw him on the 20th or 21st, and then on the 24th or 25th of April, Judge Smith, who would later lose his bench, uh opened that the the compound up and we drove we went out there, I went out there, and the smell of that place is I'll never forget the smell of that place. Just fucking unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

Uh you know, when you cook and burn that many people, it's gonna be awful.

SPEAKER_03 35:46

Well, you have a relic of of the fire. Uh tell our listeners about that. I'll get a picture of it and post it by the time we get to see it.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

A friend of mine who's a sculptor uh went out there uh I don't know how long after the fire, but he he found the oil pan that went to David Corish's uh Camaro. He also found an old wheelbarrow and he put all those together in the sculpture that's in my backyard right now.

SPEAKER_03 36:17

All right, so one of your most famous cases is Robert Durst.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

That's that's a big change.

SPEAKER_03 36:25

Well, so Durst was, I guess, the centimillionaire, billionaire, crossdresser. Uh I don't know, I don't even know how I don't even know how to characterize Robert Durst.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

He was just an unusual guy.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

He was an unusual guy. And the Durst family, at the time at least, they uh the they own more real estate in New York in Manhattan than any other family, including our 47, including the Trump family.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

There's a picture on a New York magazine cover of um the five people that um owned the most real estate in uh New York. One of them was Durst's father, another one was Trump, and then there are three others I don't remember.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

Well, tell us about set the stage for representing Durst, Dick.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

I got the call uh before he had been captured. He was a fugitive. And uh a friend of mine, Michael Kennedy, had been contacted by the family who were concerned about him because he was on the lamb from uh what apparently was a murder in Galveston.

SPEAKER_03 37:35

Now, Michael Kennedy, is Michael still alive, but he passed away.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

No, he passed away.

SPEAKER_03 37:39

But he was a uh a likewise legendary New York lawyer, kind of was I think maybe Chicago 7.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

He had a bunch of He was involved in uh Chicago 7, he was involved in uh the uh Mazley Brothers, I think, the uh pornographic thing out in San Francisco.

SPEAKER_03 37:57

He was partner of High Times magazine, if I recall correctly. Advertising way before its its its time, also represented Ivanka in the divorce. One of the Trump Ivana.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

But anyway, I've got a story about that too.

SPEAKER_03 38:13

Iconic New York lawyer calls you because it's a Texas case and you're the guy. Yeah. Take it from there.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Well, he he called me and uh wanted to know the lay of the land and and Galveston and and all this, and uh and then when uh Durst got caught in Pennsylvania, uh he had me fly up there to kind of as a part of the uh beauty contest of who's gonna who he's gonna hire. And uh I did. And um Mike Ramsey was also one of those, and there was a coup a couple other lawyers that didn't make the first cut, but it was Mike Ram it was between Mike Ramsey and me. And um his wife didn't want me because I had come from Kennedy, who she didn't trust, and um he wanted me. She wanted Ramsey. So what Durst did uh he said, okay, well I'll just hire both of them.

SPEAKER_03 39:22

He had the money. He had the money. So for for those at home that don't understand the history of this, so Robert Durst, extremely wealthy, kind of the to put it politely, the black sheep of the Durst family, he moved to Galveston, I guess pursued the identity of a woman. Did we cross-dress, and what was that about?

SPEAKER_02 39:45

Janine Pirot was the district attorney of uh it's all coming full circle. Well w Westchester County, and she was gonna run for attorney general, and she needed a case to and so she r uh dug up this old case of where Durst's wife had disappeared. Right. Nobody knew where she was. And so she started uh threatening to uh convene a grand jury and get Durst uh indicted, and Durst uh panicked and ran. Since he had kind of an unusual thought process, he decided that he would uh pick Galveston, Texas, which was at the end of the literally at the end of the road. And uh he would go there and hide out. But being But as a woman. Uh well that came after he decided that it would be too difficult to hide his identity because he uh had a deep uh New York accent. Okay. And so he decided, well, I'll I'll just be a woman, a mute woman, so I won't have to talk. And uh he would uh write Well, we need more of those. Sorry. So uh he wasn't a very attractive woman.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

So he he assumes the identity of a mute woman lives in basically a tenement shack.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Well, it wasn't really a tenement. It was a very it's it was a cleanly kept, nice uh uh duplex, actually quadruplex. And so he rented this chip. Well, how much was the rent? $300, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

How nice could it have been for $300?

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Well, uh Gallison uh you know has is is not doesn't have the New Yorker Houston prices. And across the hall from him was a uh this guy that was uh uh had been run out of every place he'd ever lived. Morris Black? Morris Black was uh uh an awful person. He had no friends whatsoever, and he'd been uh asked to leave every place he'd been before. He'd probably killed somebody before. But uh at any rate, because of Bob's particular mental status, um, he was he had Asperger's, uh, which they don't call it Asperger's anymore, but it's on the spectrum. Uh and uh he couldn't ascertain people's feelings. Okay. He couldn't uh he just uh didn't have the way w that ever most people um you look at them like you're looking at me right now, and I can kind of tell what's going on with you, you know. So he couldn't he he he didn't know that Morris Black was such a mean, sorry some bitch. And he they became friends. So why'd he kill him? Well he after after he dropped his uh disguise because the disguise wasn't working.

SPEAKER_03 43:04

Okay. Uh for instance he So did Morris Black actually find out who Durst was? Yes. So he knew that he was this fugitive fugitive, air quotes, uh millionaire slash billionaire from New York.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

Well you knew he was a very wealthy guy from New York.

SPEAKER_03 43:20

All right, so I give up. Why why did your boy Robert Durst kill uh Morris Black?

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Well he didn't.

SPEAKER_03 43:27

Well, how did his jury said not guilty? Well, no, they said he was not guilty of murder. They didn't say didn't kill him.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

Well, uh he he died as a result of a struggle over a gun.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

And the gun went off accidentally.

SPEAKER_03 43:41

So again, everybody at home may not remember this bit, but after the uh struggle over the gun uh and and uh Morris meeting his untimely death, Durst used a little self-help by chopping up the body?

SPEAKER_02 43:56

No, he didn't chop it up, he sawed it up.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Well, thanks for clearing that up for us, Dick.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

Well, what happened was uh when when they had this wrestling match over the gun, and the gun went off and it shot uh Morris Black in the bridge of the nose. Um Bob ran outside. He didn't have his phone with him. He didn't have a phone in the in the apartment. He left his cell phone in his car, which was several miles away. So he ran down the street to Charlie's hamburger stand where there was a payphone. He was going to call 911. He runs down there, there's this lady on the phone, and she won't get off the phone for it. And he tries to get her off the phone, and the lady's boyfriend jumps out of the car and runs him off, and he then goes to a neighbor and knocks on the neighbor's door, and the neighbor won't let him in. So he goes back to the house, and by that time uh Morris Black's on the floor. There's a big puddle of blood there, and he's obviously dead. So he's he panics, he doesn't know what to do. He uh went and got a bottle of uh Jack Daniels, drank it, and uh uh smoked a bunch of dope and decided he's just gonna have to get rid of the body. Now, that's not unusual in murder cases.

SPEAKER_03 45:25

It's not well it's always the problem of I've tried a few and I never had any of that self-help before.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Well, not that kind, maybe, but it's it's always a problem of what to do with the body.

SPEAKER_03 45:36

Right.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

Okay, so he decides he's gonna have to move the body. Well, he can't, but that's time there's rigor mortis and well let let's let's pause you for just a second, Haas.

SPEAKER_03 45:49

If if he was actually not guilty, uh and it was a it was a self-defense struggle over the gun, why not eventually call police?

SPEAKER_02 45:58

Why not call the police? Yeah. I hate to ask those questions. Here's a phone call. Say, I just accidentally shot my neighbor, and by the way, I rented this place as a mute woman because I'm uh running away from New York because I'm uh uh because there's a DA up there who wants to indict me for the murder of my wife. Okay. So the police are gonna do what?

SPEAKER_03 46:21

Well, probably the same thing the police ultimately did after he dropped his body off charge with murder.

SPEAKER_02 46:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:27

Uh so so there were several lawyers of significance. First off, there's Robert Hirschhorn, who helped y'all pick a jury in that. How instrumental was Robert to that verdict?

SPEAKER_02 46:36

Well, he was uh crucial.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

So uh in in the Let me put you on pause for a second. I think was this this is right after Simpson, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 46:44

Simpson. I I I I don't remember I wasn't involved in that case, and so I don't remember much about it.

SPEAKER_03 46:51

All right. So uh but at the time this was probably the the highest profile case in the country uh going on at the at that particular time.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

It was it was pretty big.

SPEAKER_03 47:02

And and people, the outsiders gave you all zero chance uh because the body was chopped up and all the assumed identity and and all that.

SPEAKER_02 47:11

Right.

SPEAKER_03 47:12

So uh Robert Hirschhorn, who we've had on before, uh, helped me with explaining to the jury how he did his craft here.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Well, we we had uh a couple of uh mock trials with uh jurars that would be picked at random.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

Now he's in custody the entire time, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:31

He's in custody, yeah. We had we had pretty good uh custodial arrangements with the Galveston police uh Galveston Sheriff's Office. So we had real good access to him. We had a private room where we could meet and talk and so forth, and and so we had mock trials.

SPEAKER_03 47:47

You had mock trials where he participated in? Yes. Well, he's in custody.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Right.

SPEAKER_03 47:52

Help me with that. How do you get that done?

SPEAKER_02 47:55

We uh videoed him in the in the private room that we had there and got permission from the sheriff's office to do that. So he appeared by video.

SPEAKER_03 48:04

Gotcha. How many mock trials? Two. How what were the verdicts? Not guilty. On both of them? Yes. So was the acquittal w when did you believe that you had won that case or that case had been won?

SPEAKER_02 48:16

During uh jury selection.

SPEAKER_03 48:17

Because why?

SPEAKER_02 48:18

Because we got the kind of jury we wanted.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

And what kind of jury was that?

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Well, a jury that would uh uh be sympathetic to uh what actually happened. We we we had to had to be open with the jury because we knew that somehow it was going to come in, that number one, he was kind of a fugitive from New York, and number two, he cut up the body and tried to dispose of it. Two very bad facts. Two bad facts, but we got jurors who said that they could concentrate on how the the death occurred. For instance, using logic with them, whatever happened after he was dead would not change the way the death occurred. If it was self-defense, if it was an accident, the fact that he got rid of the body doesn't change that. It might indicate uh a consciousness of guilt, but it doesn't change how uh Marsh Black died. How long was that trial? I think it was three or four weeks.

SPEAKER_03 49:29

Your role versus Ramsey's role versus Chip Lewis's role, who did what and why?

SPEAKER_02 49:34

Well, we worked as a team. I we made a rule early on that we gotta let egos not play a part in this. We don't we don't want uh to backbite each other. We don't it's it's just not in his best interest. We we've got to work together. That's number one. Number two is we shared the load. And uh Chip did a lot of the background work on uh the uh offense reports and all the reports that we had. Uh Ramsey and I split up the responsibility of who to who to uh what witnesses to take and what to present. We got an agreement from uh the prosecution and from the judge ahead of time that both Ramsey and I could question Durst. And really? Yes. Uh I've never heard of that. I took him up to the point where he's sitting on the bed trying to figure out what to do, and Ramsey took the bad part of cutting up the body.

SPEAKER_03 50:36

And and why the decision to divide his direct? I've never heard of that.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

I I thought a uh um subtle um emphasis on how what happened when he was killed was different from what happened later on.

SPEAKER_03 50:54

I mean that's brilliant, but why why would the state agree to that?

SPEAKER_02 50:59

Well, because we we said that they could both, both of the prosecutors could both cross-examine.

SPEAKER_03 51:04

Wow. I've never heard of that either. Well, I guess it was a pretty good decision given the result. Yeah. Uh so how did he do on direct and how did he do on cross?

SPEAKER_02 51:16

He did terrific on direct. I mean, just absolutely terrific. He did even better on cross. Really? Yeah. He was smarter than uh both of the prosecutors combined.

SPEAKER_03 51:28

So you get this acquittal, which was a nationwide not guilty, nobody could believe it, sort of acquittal. Uh and then he decides years later to be interviewed by HBO on on the show The Jinx. Yeah. Uh walk us through that.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

All of his life he'd been uh looked upon as unusual. He never had been diagnosed. We had him diagnosed for the first time as uh Asperger's on the spectrum, and um he wanted to explain himself. That's the best understanding I have of why he decided to do it. Against advice, against our advice. You know, he was fine, he was out, he was had a nice quiet life here in Houston. And uh there was no reason for him to do it other than he get his side of the story out. Get his side of the story out or not look so bad.

SPEAKER_03 52:32

So I gotta ask you a a question that only another criminal defense lawyer would probably care about. But you do maybe not the work of your lifetime, but the work of most lawyers' lifetime in securing an acquittal for this guy, and then he turns around years later and and effectively confesses to to another crime. What what what what what was your reaction to that?

SPEAKER_02 52:55

Uh well uh I I could see uh that they were gonna charge him.

SPEAKER_03 53:02

Were you frustrated at that point?

SPEAKER_02 53:04

Yeah, I was frustrated. By the way, uh he was actually arrested before the playing of the final segment.

SPEAKER_03 53:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 53:11

Uh there were six segments. The fifth one, uh, you know, the teaser for the next one was pretty pretty strong, and so he got so scared that he left his apartment here in in Houston and uh drove to New Orleans to hide out. Uh along the way, he threw his phone out the window, so they couldn't track him further than Beaumont. But you know, if you head toward Beaumont from Houston, you're you're gonna eventually go into New Orleans. Uh and then um so he went into New Orleans to the uh J.W. Marriott, which is the high-end part of the Marriott chain, and um he walks into Register under a fake name. He walks into Register and goes up to the desk and says, Do you have HBO? Because he wanted to see the last segment himself, and they said yes. They said yes, so he took a room, and uh but before the playing of that final segment, uh he calls his calls from his room back to his answering service in Houston to check his messages, and of course they have trap and trace on the his phone, and they they traced him right to that room.

SPEAKER_03 54:35

Um arrested him. He eventually went to trial in California, right? After COVID. Uh and he was extremely sick during during that trial, if I'm recalling it right.

SPEAKER_02 54:49

We thought he was going to die during the trial. It turns out he only died right after the trial.

SPEAKER_03 54:54

What was that trial like?

SPEAKER_02 54:56

It was uh not a trial. It was not anything like you and I would ever participate in if we weren't forced to, because all the jurors, all the jurors had masks, all the participants had masks. You couldn't see what anybody was uh what their expressions were. Uh that was one thing, but most of the testimony was recorded on video uh in advance of the trial, so most of the testimony wasn't even live in the courtroom. It was just video. It was not a real trial. I mean like deposition sort of stuff where uh it's a different different than a deposition. It's more where the judge is there and it's all filmed on uh video, uh, but uh it's preserved the the idea being that so many of the witnesses were old and ill that they might not be able to make it for trial, and therefore they preserved the evidence.

SPEAKER_03 55:58

You have been a lawyer for 54 years? 61. 61 years. Yeah. Your three most important suggestions for somebody that's considering going to law school.

SPEAKER_02 56:16

Oh boy. Yeah, I I get asked that all the time, and you know, I I taught law school for 25 years. And and the class that I taught, the manner in which I taught was different than uh I ever had in law school. Most of what you get in law school is um learning by cases, by studying cases and and by rote, uh remembering the rules and and so forth. And I told my students um my course is uh not a course in law, it's not a course in procedure, it's a course in attitude. A course in attitude. So I think, at least for what you and I do, attitude is the s most important part. You have to have the right attitude.

SPEAKER_03 57:04

And what is the right attitude?

SPEAKER_02 57:05

The right attitude is I'm gonna win. I'm for this guy or girl, and I'm and they're right, and I if I'm not convinced of it, I can't convince that you're ours. So it's it's attitude.

SPEAKER_03 57:20

There's a was in my limited experience, of course, I tried a number of cases with you, one against you, and also tried a number of cases with your brother, Michael, God rest his soul. But the way you approach cases, in my view at least, couldn't be any different than the way Mike approached cases. You were always on the wet end of the spear. The cops were always withholding evidence. There was always part of the story that wasn't being told. There was always something they didn't do that they should have done. I mean, you you attacked law enforcement really as aggressively as any defense lawyer I've ever known. Haynes did, but I mean, you were that was always your default position. Those are lying motherfuckers over there. Um your brother Mike, on the other hand, he went completely the other way. And it was always humanizing the defendant. Look at my look at my client. He loves dogs, his dogs love him. Look at the house he grew up in, look at the family he supports. He went completely. So, how do two brothers, but four years apart, effectively going through the same lineage, end up with such different worldviews?

SPEAKER_02 58:34

Well, we were different in all going through school, but uh all of you know that that difference between us was noticed uh by all the courthouse crowd, which always called him the nice brother.

SPEAKER_03 58:48

He was the nice brother. Everybody loved Mike. Yeah. Uh three things you want to tell a lawyer who's deciding what kind of law to practice.

SPEAKER_02 58:57

You you won't become filthy rich being a criminal defense lawyer.

SPEAKER_03 59:02

You might become filthy.

SPEAKER_02 59:04

Uh in the eyes of a lot of people, but I uh I think it's probably the most interesting uh area of the law you can be in. And I think it's more uh more like being a lawyer than any other field of law.

SPEAKER_03 59:21

Did you always w once you became a criminal defense lawyer, did you ever think maybe I should go do a PI lawyer, maybe I should do commercial transactions, maybe I should do mergers and acquisitions, taxes. Did you ever did you have any hangover about your your focus?

SPEAKER_02 59:37

Uh well, not mergers and acquisitions or or wills and estates or forming corporations or anything like that. I did have some uh hesitation or some thought about uh personal injury law because that's so lucrative. Right. And in fact, Percy wanted me to uh do both and divorce law and oh god of money, I don't want to do any domestic relations call law. I think uh being a criminal defense lawyer is an honorable profession, and I think it's more interesting. We get to experience vicariously all the bad things our clients are ex uh accused of doing, and yet we don't risk our freedom.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:26

Your proudest moment as a criminal defense lawyer? Man, there'd been a lot of come on, everybody's got one favorite kid. Which one is yours?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:38

All right, your top three. One of the proudest moments uh was when uh my dad came to see me argue a case. Oh wow. Before the Court of Criminal Appeals.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:49

What year was that? Gee, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

I was still with Percy.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:55

So it would have been before eighty-two.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:57

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:58

Uh and died in 82. Your your dad, like I guess, uh like a lot of his generation, he didn't say I love you. He did there just wasn't that that sort of Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:10

He he he was very expressive about his uh love for me and Mike, and uh so was my mother.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:18

Okay. All right, so that's one. When your dad came to see you argue a court a case before the Court of Criminal Appeals, what's what's another? Durst had to be a top five highlight reader.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:29

Well, duh Durst was one of the highlights, yeah.

unknown 1:01:32

K.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:32

Bailey Hutchison's got to be a good one.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

Uh, you know, I I keep forgetting about all those other cases, yeah. Uh we uh I really uh in K. Bailey Hutchison, we got the DA to just turn tail and run. Literally. I mean, he came up to Fort Worth to try to uh dismiss the case and go back and get a new.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:56

Wasn't my former judge your judge, Judge John Funny?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:59

Judge Union. He was a terrific judge.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:01

Yeah, he was. So I gotta ask, do you like winning more or hate losing more?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

I think that's a that's equal.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:14

How do you uh how do you Oh I hate losing more than I like winning? I fucking hate losing. Yeah. Uh you? Uh of course. Do you remember your losses m easier and more clearly than you do your wins?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

I I do, and I'm I'm I'm self-critical about uh I try to examine what went wrong. What did I do wrong? I'm not one of these uh guys that go and start blaming the judge or blaming the witnesses or anything other than what did I fuck up?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:44

Best prosecutor you ever tried a case against?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:48

Oh, that's a tough one.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:50

I always say it's Mike Adanasio, Halo boy, in the in the city hall council cases. He was good.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:56

You know, I I would say that too. He was very good, but I didn't like him because of what he did to my brother.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:03

No, I I I know, but but he was just Adanasio was telegenic, he was articulate, he was prepared, he was boy next door with a little better looks. He just he just goddamn he was hard to beat.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:16

That was a tough case, too.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:18

Yeah, it was. And um your your darkest moment as a criminal defense lawyer?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:24

Oh God. Well, um a couple of the verdicts that I lost uh were pretty bad.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:29

Spill the beans, which ones?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

Celeste Beard in Austin.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:33

That was tough.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:34

And um Temple had to be tough. And David Temple in Houston.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:38

If you had to try David Temple's case over again, you just told us that you were you would always go back and think about what you should have done different as opposed to attack the judge or the prosecutor, jury, whatever. What would you do different in Temple? Um You tried it twice though, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:54

Uh I didn't try it the second time.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:56

Okay, that's right. That's right. Stan did.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:58

Stan Stan did.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:59

What would you do different?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:00

There's not a lot I would do different. Um I think uh there was one this is really technical, but there was one uh mistake that uh my expert made on how the the glass in the door got broken out, uh how it got spread where it was. And my idea was that the door when he w went through the door uh running upstairs to see what was going on, he slammed the door back and uh it hit uh a a cabinet and that would have spread the the glass in a different way. And so the I would have attacked the way the um sheriff claimed that it was a staged break-in. Uh that's one thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:52

And the Celeste is it Blackburn, what was her name? Celeste Beard. Beard. What would you do different in that case?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:58

Uh she uh she was accused of having her um lesbian lover kill her husband, shoot her husband. Right. He didn't die uh until later, until four months later. Um because um so they could run off together. In in truth, the lesbian lover uh lover did that, but it wasn't because Celeste put her up to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

So what would you do differently?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:31

I think I would have uh had Celeste testify.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:34

D Dick, you have a a a very methodical, steady approach in a courtroom. You you never seem to want to be the center of attention, and I I mean that in a good way uh in my view. Uh uh and and I remember once we were trying to case together, and you told me and probably rightfully so, you need to quit prancing around so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

You're making this about you do prance.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:03

I prance less now, but I I still probably prance some. But why is it important to keep the focus on the facts or the state and not the lawyer or the defendant?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:17

Well, I I feel like the focus is on the lawyer. I think that uh and and that's why in even in cases where there's two or three lawyers representing the same person, I usually insist on being the lawyer that asks all the questions. We didn't do that in Durst, but but uh you know, look at what my co-counselors were. Right. I feel like when I'm questioning or uh listening to a juror, I mean to a witness or cross-examining a witness, the focus is on me. Uh and um I'm very much aware of that. I think the jurors uh the the the lawyer is the one uh character in the courtroom that the jurors pay attention to all the time. Another witness might come in, several witnesses and so forth, but uh it's always the same lawyer.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:16

What do you see young lawyers doing that you wish they would not do?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

Not dressing right, for one thing, and uh not having the kind of respect for uh the court and the law and the rules and uh that they need to have. I respect the the code of criminal procedure and the rules of evidence and the the laws that those are the rules you gotta play by. You don't I don't want a crooked judge. You might be crooked for me once and then he's gonna be crooked for you or crooked for somebody else, and it's I want a judge that's gonna follow the law.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:57

Do you think the quality of the judiciary is better, worse, the same than it was 20 years ago?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

Well, you know, old people always say, I wish it was the way it was back when I was young. Uh I I think the quality of the judiciary now is leaves a lot to be desired, and it's because it changed so much. Yeah. Uh and it uh it changes every four years. Every time every time there's a new election cycle, um judges get thrown out because the jurors don't remember their names. In a in a large place, a large county like Houston, we've got what uh fifty district judges, at least criminal and civil, and uh the the general public doesn't know who they are. Shit I unless they've done something to stand out, and that was Ted Poe's and Mike McSpadden. Uh uh Ted Poe's secret. Right. You know, he he uh always did some unusual things and got his name in the paper, so people remembered his name. So the electorate doesn't know who is good and who is not good and who should be elected and not elected. In a small county, that's not the way it is. Everybody knows about the judge.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:16

Yeah, in in my view, the quality of the judiciary is not what it was twenty years ago. A, for the reasons you said, there's just not enough continuity and and and and not and not enough seed time, but B, the life experiences. I mean, when I first was a baby lawyer, we had all the judges were World War II guys. They had actual, real-world experiences that helped them, for better or for worse, make them better judges or judges that could decide issues that cared about the process. And e even some of the judges that I couldn't stand back in the day, the Godwins or or or you know the Stricklands or whomever, uh, they were serious about their craft.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:00

They were serious and they were career judges, and they were it mattered to them.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:03

Now they didn't do my thing, but they they goddamn sure gave a damn about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:07

And they cared about being right.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:09

Yeah. And and you and you don't see that, at least in my old decrepit way. Michael Berry, questions of Mr. Daggeron?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:17

Did what does Cogdell do well better than others as an attorney? Yeah, as a TV show. And apparently people are watching the damn thing. That's what I heard. I didn't know till he said something nice about my son. He was over at the house, we're smoking cigars. Said something nice about my son Crockett, and I start getting people hitting me up with messages that, you know, Crockett is famous now. And I said, How's he famous? Cockdale's done this on his podcast. I said, Cocktail can't make people famous. Apparently can.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:48

Well, you d seriously, what he does is is what a good defense lawyer should do. He fights for his client. You know, he gets in front of a jury, and it the the client is the one that's the most important person in that courtroom.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:05

Now your turn in the hot box.