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Welcome to a special holiday edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. I'm June Grosso. Ahead. In this hour, we'll focus on cases before the Supreme Court. The justices will decide when it's okay for police to enter a home during an emergency, whether a judge can bar a criminal defense attorney from talking to their own clients during their testimony, and whether to invalidate Colorado's ban on conversion therapy for miners.
If the police could not enter this house based on the facts that they knew then. I don't know when the police are ever going to be able to enter a house to prevent somebody from committing suicide.
Police didn't have a warrant when they entered the home of an army veteran in Montana. But they weren't there to arrest William Trevor Case. They were there to help him. His ex girlfriend said that Case had threatened suicide and had a loaded handgun. The police knocked, they yelled, They waited forty minutes, and then they went in. The question before the Supreme Court is what's the standard for police
entering a home in an emergency? Justice is from across the ideological spectrum suggested that the officers were right to go in in this case. Here are Justices Samuel Alito and Katanji Brown Jackson.
What more would they need here? If they need to be able to look through the window and see him with a gun and point it to his head, or they need to see a dead body on the floor, what more.
Did they need?
This person had a long history of threatening suicide, whether it be by cop or whether it be on his own or whatever. We have a long conversation detailed specific with the girlfriend about circumstances that look like they're creating a pretty significant emergency.
And Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned Case's attorney about the alternative scenario.
Well, if they, after deliberations, walk away and he commits suicide, I mean, what are you thinking, Then it's the officers.
That would be unfortunate and tragic. But we are trying to strike up balance between it.
And the officers need some clarity, I would think in circumstances like this about what they can do and what they can't do.
But there was no such clarity by the end of the arguments. Joining me is former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, a partner maccarter in English, Bob, So, police normally need a warrant to enter home, but there are some emergency situations that are exceptions. Tell us about that.
So there is a so called Emergency Aid exception to the Fourth Amendment, which allows police officers to conduct a warrantless search if they have reasonable suspicion that there is an emergency and an immediate need to protect others or themselves from harm.
And tell us about the facts here. Because Case ended up being convicted of assaulting a police officer.
The defendant in this case, William Trevor Case, was an army veteran who had a girlfriend who contacted police suggesting that mister Case might be suicidal. Officers arrived at mister Casey's house around nine pm, and they were familiar with his history of alcohol abuse and certain mental health issues.
The ex girlfriend had told police that mister Case had a loaded gun, He had threatened to harm police if she tried to send officers to his home, and she claimed before she hung up with the police that she had heard a pop and then silence and was concerned that mister Case had actually pulled the trigger. The officers arrived at mister Case's door, they yelled, they shine flashlights
through the windows. They could see empty beer cans, an empty handgun holster, and a notepad with handwriting, which the officers believed at the time was a possible suicide note. After about forty minutes, they entered through the unlocked front door, and when they went upstairs, they saw a closet curtain open. Mister Case lunged forward, his armed outstretched with what officers believed was a handgun. The officer fired one shot, striking mister Case. In the act abdomen. It turned out the
handgun was found in a nearby laundry basket. The issue with trial, then, was when the defense tried to exclude the gun and other evidence of the confrontation from the trial. The trial judge overruled that defense and allowed the prosecution to present it to the jury, and he was convicted after a trial.
It seemed like the police had a lot of reasons to go in. How much more did the defense think they should have before they entered the house.
To put this in context, the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and provides protections for a person's home by generally prohibiting law enforcement from entering without a warrant that is really set up in order to allow people to have privacy in their home in the context of a possible criminal case. The question that was facing justices in this case is what level of certainty must police have that an emergency is underway before entering a
home without a warrant. Mister Case's lawyers argued that it should be a high bar. They argue that it should be something called probable cause, which is what police officers need in order to get a warrant to search your home in the case of a criminal investigation. But here this was not a criminal investigation. This was a circumstance in which they believed that there was an emergency and
there was someone's life at risk inside the house. So the question is what is the level of certainty that police officers need to have in order to enter the home without a warrant? And the defense argued that that level of certainty in order to avoid needless and dangerous confrontations and to prevent police officers from circumventing the concept of probable cause, that there has to be probable cause that they believe that there is an emergency and that somebody is in imminent danger.
The state of Montana and the Trump administration argued that probable cause was too high a standard in these emergency cases. Montana's solicitor general said that a stricter rule of probable cause would quote require hire police to stand outside a dying man's door. So what standard did they argue for.
The government argued that the justices should rely on a Supreme Court case from two thousand and six was a unanimous opinion in a case called Brigham City versus Stuart, in which the Supreme Court held that police may enter a building without a warrant when they have an objectively reasonable basis to believe that an occupant is seriously injured
or threatened with such injury. So in that case, they took it completely out of the context of probable cause, which really has an entire body of case law that talks about when police may enter a home with or without a warrant in the context of a criminal investigation, and said that here we're talking about imminent risk to somebody.
It's not a criminal investigation. It's really a circumstance where police officers may come into a home in order to arguably save the life of somebody or save the life of somebody who may be with somebody who's in danger of hurting them. And in that case the standard is objectively reasonable basis to believe that the occupant is seriously injured or threatened with such injury.
It seemed like justice is across the ideological spectrum, thought that the police had good reason to enter here.
Yeah, Well, what's interesting here is that the Montana Supreme Court, which is the court that had just heard the case before going to the US Supreme Court sided with the state, but it was a four to three decision, and there were actually three judges on the Montana Supreme Court who dissented and said that for a warrantless search to be reasonable, the higher bar or probable cause, must apply, And then they went further and added that there was no probable
cause to believe mister Case was an imminent danger or in need of immediate assistants that would have justified the warrantless entry into the home. When the case went to the Supreme Court and was argued before the justice is there, there was virtual unanimity that the standard that had been applied by the state was the cour First. For example, Justice Thomas noted that the issue or probable cause is a standard that is normally limited to the criminal context.
This was not a criminal investigation, and Justice Robert joined in on that to say, when we talk about probable cause, we talk about probable cause that a crime is occurring. What standard would be used here when we're not talking about a crime, but about a risk of injury to somebody? And Justice Kagan also jumped in, saying that there is a full body of case law out there describing what
probable cause is. It's not a self defining term. It has been raised in many cases, and there is a full explanation in the criminal context of what constitutes probable cause, but this is something entirely different. And the justices all seemed to go back to the Brigham City versus Stewart case from two thousand and six to say that the standard of objectively reasonable basis for believing that somebody needs
emergency help. Is this standard that should apply here, and Justice Alito and Justice Brown agreed, which doesn't happen very often. They both push back on the contention here of the defense lawyer that this was an unreasonable act by police. Justice Alito went so far as to say, if the police couldnot enter the house based on the facts that they knew in this case, then I don't know when police are ever able to go into a house to
prevent something from committing suicide. The concern here is that if there is a legal standard of probable cause in order to go in under these emergency situations, that police officers may hesitate to go into a house when somebody's life is at risk, And they seem to weigh more in favor of protecting the life of an individual and allowing police officers more latitude to go in under these circumstances than they were about the privacy concerns of entering a house without a warrant.
So do you think that the justice is will just announce a standard and that will be the end of the case.
If the Supreme Court decides to uphold the lower court, then there was some discussion about what comes next.
In other words, there were.
Some justices who said that they should simply rule that the lower court was correct and that the standard of objectively reasonable was properly applied, and that in this case,
clearly the facts warranted the police entering the home. Justice Soto Manor and Justice Thomas, on the other hand, argued that it's the normal practice of the court if they're not certain about a standard and state a new standard, then it should be sent back to the Montana Supreme Court to determine whether, based on these facts, that objectively
reasonable standard had in fact been satisfied. Justice Alito expressed some concern that in doing that it might suggest to the lower court that this was in some way a close call, and could, he argued, have some kind of a killing effect on police when they're trying to determine whether to enter a house to prevent somebody from committing suicide.
And the Supreme Court is usually protective of the expectation of privacy in one's own home. And we should point out here that some civil rights and privacy groups did line up behind the defendant in this case.
Mister Case's attorney reminded the justices that police had entered mister Case's home without permission, without a warrant, or without even probable cause, and ended up shooting him in his own home. He argued that the reasonablenst standard that the state was suggesting was so vague as to invite abuse and confusion by law enforcement.
This is one case this term where it appears you never know, but it appears that we know how it's going to turn out. But we shall see. Thanks for joining me, Bob. That's former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz of Macarter and English. Coming up next, the Supreme Court appears likely to invalidate Colorado's ban on con perversion therapy for miners. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio.
You're listening to a special holiday edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. We're looking at several cases before the Supreme Court. Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson defended the state's ban on conversion therapy for miners at the Supreme Court. She argued that the Constitution allows states to protect patients from harmful, discredited treatments even if a regulation incidentally affects speech.
A healthcare provider cannot be free to violate the standard of care just because they are using words, and a state cannot be required to let its vulnerable young people waste their time and money on an ineffective, harmful treatment just because that treatment is delivered through words.
An evangelical Christian therapist is challenging the law, saying it violates her free speech rights, and the court's conservative justices appeared to agree with her, questioning the constitutionality of the law. Here are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
In other words, just because they're engaged in conduct doesn't mean that their words aren't protected.
Looks like blatant viewpoint discrimination.
Liberal Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Katanji Brown Jackson were the only justices who addressed the harms of conversion therapy that every major medical association warns about.
There are studies that say that this advice does harm the people emotionally and physically.
And Justice Jackson questioned why the Colorado law should be struck down when in June the court upheld a different measure from Tennessee that bans transition related treatments for transgender care kids.
The regulations work in basically the same way, and the question of scrutiny applies in both contexts, so it just seems odd to me that we might have a different result here.
My guest is First Amendment expert Caroline Mala Corbin, a professor at the University of Miami Law School. Caroline, will you explain conversion therapy and Colorado's law banning it.
As about half the states in the country have done. Colorado bans something that has been called gay conversion therapy, and it's the idea of trying to convince someone who is gay that they're not actually gay, or trying to convince someone who is trans that they're not actually trans. And this approach to gay and trans people has been proven to be very delictorious for their mental well being,
and so states have forbidden it. They have made it illegal for license medical professionals to provide this as part of their practice of medicine. So to be very clear, it doesn't ban clergy from talking to people about sexual orientation or gender identity, and it doesn't even ban the therapists from talking about it in their own free time.
But if they are in the process of providing health care services that they have been licensed to provide, they're not allowed to try and convince gay people that they're not gay, or trans people that they're not trans. That's the law, and.
What's the fundamental issue in the case.
So you have this law. It says, if you're licensed by the state, the state does not allow you to do things that are contrary to the standard of care, and so you cannot provide conversion therapy. And we have this white Christian woman who argues that the ban forbids her from providing the type of therapy that she wants to practice. She gets help from Alliance to Friending Freedom. And so the question before the court is does this ban on this medical therapy violate the licensed practitioners free
speech rights. And so the question before the court is does this ban on this medical therapy violate the licensed practitioners free speech rights? And the legal question that makes all the difference is whether providing conversion therapy is speech or whether it's conduct. Because if it's speech, then it
implicates the free speech clause. In fact, it becomes presumptively unconstitutional. If, on the other hand, it's considered conduct, then it doesn't trigger the free speech clause and the government is likely to be allowed to regulate it. So the million dollar constitutional question is how should this practice of conversion therapy
get characterize? Is it speech or is it conduct? Now, I just want to point out that the speech in the colloquial sense doesn't always match speech in the constitutional sense. So let me give you a couple of examples when speech is not actually speech, which seems counterintuitive. And yet if for example, you told national security secrets to a foreign enemy, that's speech, but that it wouldn't be treated as speech. It would be treated as the conduct of treason.
It's not protected by the free speech cause. Or for example, a sign on a restaurant that said we do not hire fill in the blank, we do not hire black people or Latino people or Asian people. That's words, but that would be considered speech. It would be considered the act of discrimination. And so while it may seem really obvious on its face, well this is words and therefore it's speech, it's not quite as clear cut as the Supreme Court is going to probably conclude.
It seems like there is almost universal agreement among those who listen to the oral arguments that the Christian counselor is going to win here.
I mean, clearly, whenever you have a white conservative Christian arguing before the Supreme Court, they're going to win, especially if the only thing that's stake, and I say only from the court's perspective is LGBTQ rights. They just don't care, right, So, I think it was a foregone conclusion, apart from any of the legal principles, that the white Christian woman was
going to win. You know, I never used to predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases, but it seems the pattern is so clear these days that I think one could say with a certain degree of confidence that she's going to win. And they're basically going to say this is speech, and therefore it is presumptively unconstitutional, and only if the government has a super compelling justification for its law, and the law was the only way to accomplish its goals,
it's not going to win. In other words, it's going to have to pass what is known as strict scrutiny, and that is very hard to do.
In the speech context, it seemed like most of the discussion was about what standard should be applied here.
Well, that's because if it is considered speech, then the standard is going to be strict scrutiny, and if it is not speech, then it's only going to be rational basis scrutiny. So what level of scrutiny a court must give to this law, how hard it looks at it, questions it, The level of evidence the government needs to provide will depend on whether it is speech or conduct, because again, if it is speech, then it implicates the free speech clause.
Is this a novel issue coming to the court? Have they decided any similar cases?
The Supreme Court is not deciding this against a blank slate. They have already considered the question of medical treatment and speech conduct. But in the abortion context. So I want to highlight that many states who are hostile to abortion. One of the things that they require their abortion providers to do is to give women certain information about abortion. So, for example, you have to let women know that adoption is an option, or that fathers have to pay child support.
Other states have held that women have to be told all the harms that may result from abortion, some of which are not even medically accurate. But the point I want to make here is that doctors challenge this regulation on speech grounds and argued, the government is forcing us to say things that are contrary to what we believe
is appropriate and correct. And you might think, well, these are words, and they're being forced to articulate a particular viewpoint on things, for example, don't have an abortion, you know, adopt your child out instead. That it too, should be considered a regulation of speech that sort of compels a viewpoint. It's a viewpoint based restriction and therefore should trigger strict scrutiny and be presumptively unconstitutional. But that is not what
the Supreme Court did. What the Supreme Court said is that these laws that compel doctors to speak against their will and say things that they don't want to say. The Supreme Court helped that is not a regulation of speech, that is actually a regulation of the medical profession that
only incidentally affects speech. So they're designing this case against a backdrop of the Supreme Court already having held in a different context that speech that is connected to the provision of medical treatment is not necessarily going to be treated like speech. And so you know, oh, it just so happens, right that if you're challenging something that's anti abortion, it's not speech, but if you're challenging something that's pro LGBT, it is speech.
The Supreme Court has been steadily rolling back protections for gay and transgender people in recent terms. The last time I can think of that LGBTQ writs one at the Supreme Court was the boss Stock case in twenty twenty. Is that the last time.
I think so, and I think they have really undermined their own credibility by so aggressively promoting a particular ideology, and to do so at the expense of a marginalized community is not to their honor. And let's be clear, they get to pick and choose their cases. There was nothing that require them to decide this case. I think, in addition to its long standing attack on the LGB community.
I think we also are seeing here a real disparagement of expertise, which we also saw in Scremtti, because to be clear, there is a consensus in the medical community that this therapy is really harmful, and yet they did not seem to accept that. Instead, they kept pushing back against this idea that the experts knew what they were talking about, and certainly Alliance Defending Freedom is helping them by producing all kinds of questionable claims about the reliability
of the science underlying the medical consensus. And to be sure, the medical community has made errors in the past, but if we have to rely on something, you know, better to rely on medical experts and the weight of the medical community than a right wing political group.
And the decision here will implicate similar bands on conversion therapy in twenty six other states. Thanks so much, Caroline. That's Professor Caroline Malacorbin of the University of Miami Law School. Coming up next, When can a criminal defense attorney be barred from talking to his client about his testimony? I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
Thanks for listening to a special holiday edition of Bloomberg Law as we focus on cases before the Supreme Court. It's the most difficult decision a criminal defendant has to make a trial, whether or not to take the stand. And when a defendant decides to take the risk of testifying,
what role does his attorney play. David Villarreal took the stand during his trial in twenty eighteen for murdering his boyfriend, but when there was an overnight break in his testimony, the judge barred villar Rial's attorney from discussing his testimony with him. He was convicted, and in his appeal to the Supreme Court, Villarial argues that the judge's order denied him effective assistance of counsel in violation of the sixth Amendment.
During the oral arguments, the justice's question just what a trial lawyer could talk to his client about during an overnight break in his testimony without crossing over into coaching the client's testimony. Chief Justice John Roberts posed a hypothetical to the lawyer for Texas about a defendant asking his attorney whether he should stop testifying about fred when he got back on the stand.
And I notice every time I do that, you know, Juring number eight gets a big frown and shakes his head. He doesn't look to me like he likes the idea of talking about Fred at all. So I think that's a bad idea. Now, talking about Fred was your idea?
Do you still think it's.
A good idea?
Can the lawyer respond to that question?
No, they you would have to tell them I'm mom to a core order not to out to answer.
So at that point he tells the defendant who's facing a capital sentence, I'm not going.
To tell you.
And Justice Elaina Kagan wanted to know about a lawyer giving his client some tips on his performance on the stand.
Do you think that counsel can say, listen, I've been noticing that you've been mumbling, and you're also not making eye contact with the questioner, and it would just be a good idea if you'd stopped mumbling and made eye contact. Can the lawyer do that in an overnight recess?
The appeals courts are split on whether so called non conferral orders during overnight trial recesses are constitutional. Joining Me is former Manhattan prosecutor and criminal defense attorney. Paul Callan of counsel at Edelman and Edelman. Paul tell us about the facts here.
The defendant, David Villarreal, was a meth addict allegedly who stabbed his boyfriend to death, and he goes to trial, and something happened in that trial, and it's something that's very common in the trial of civil and criminal cases, and that is he was on the witness stand testifying
and the judge decided to break for the day. It was about one o'clock in the afternoon, and the judge gave an instruction which suggested that the defense attorney should not discuss testimony overnight with his clients because he was on the witness stand. And later on he's convicted, sentenced to sixty years in prison, and now he's seeking to reverse the case, saying that instruction impeded his right to consult with counsel, pursuing to the sixth Amendment.
So there was a lot of talk during the oral arguments about coaching your client. Is there a clear line between what's permissible and what's impermissible when coaching a client or preparing a client to testify.
Well, there's a line across and we call it subornation of perjury if a lawyer goes too far in giving advice to his client about how he should shape his testimony. And so lawyers always have to deal with this situation that they can't give advice that would constantly subornation of perjury.
Lawyers do, and it's their job to give a client advice though, about how to testify and a witness stand, how to conduct themself on the witness stand, how to reactive as an objection made in court, all kinds of technical aspects of testimony like that. Clearly lawyers are allowed to give that kind of advice. But this is a situation that comes up all the time in both civil and criminal cases. When there's a recess in the case, the client wants to talk to the lawyer how am
I doing? Am I doing okay on the witness stand? And the lawyer wants to encourage them and say, yes, yes, you're doing great, you know, or no, that was a stupid answer you gave, you know, try to listen to the questions that are being asked. So there are a variety of ways that lawyers approach this thing. So the
courts really have gone back and forth on it. There are some court decisions saying that during the course of testimony, if there's a brief recess fifteen twenty minute recess, you can talk to your client, but you shouldn't discuss testimony during that time period. When there's a long adjournment like overnight, then it gets really tricky because really most lawyers think they shouldn't be discussing testimony with the client, but there
may be other things that have to be discussed. Should I recommend a plead because the testimony is going so badly? Should I tell the witness that if he's going to stick with this kind of a story, we need another witness. You know, maybe he's got a friend who was refusing to testify, but now you say, you know, he's got to come in and testify given the way your testimony
is going. So there's sort of an interreaction between testimony and even testimony that you're not trying to shape, and how it affects other aspects of the case as the case proceeds. So this is a really tricky question for lawyers, and this will be a closely watched case.
Some of the justices seem to be leaning toward a type of limited instruction where the lawyer is prohibited from directly discussing the testimony with the client during an overnight break, but is allowed to discuss broader trial strategies and issues
that relate to testimony. And Villa Reale's attorney argued that that rule is unworkable in the real world, and just as Sonya Sotmayor gave an example of a lawyer suggesting that a client take a plea in the middle of his testimony, that showed why it's unworkable.
I find it impossible for a lawyer to say I think you should consider a plea bargain now, and that the defendant is not going to say, but why, And the why has to be my considered judgment that gets me from here to the corner and back with nobody paying me. Okay, you need to say something. But model rule says a lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to make an informed decision.
I mean it's very hard to draw a line in these circumstances.
Yes, Villaryal's lawyer made a very compelling argument in that regard, because so much of the client's testimony. I mean, if you put a defendant on the witness stand in a
criminal case. His testimony is now the key evidence of the entire case, and if it triggers problems, that may cause you as a lawyer to have to go out and get another witness or maybe bring in some kind of an expert, because he's raised something about the impossibility of how a bullet was fired or was aimed when the murder's shot was fired, or a stab wound it would be in this case. Yeah, the testimony interacts, from the legal standpoint, with all of the evidence in the case.
So you restrict the lawyer's ability to talk to the client. You can't just keep it down to the testimony alone. Everything interacts with everything else. That's what build in the way of his lawyers are arguing.
Justice Elena Kaig and ask this of Texas's lawyer. Do you think that counsel can say, listen, I've been noticing that you've been mumbling, and you're also not making eye contact with the questioner, and it would just be a good idea if you'd stop mumbling and made eye contact. Can the lawyer do that in an overnight recess? Texas's attorney said no, I would consider that to be coaching their testimony as far as how you present yourself to
the jury. Of course, he's defending the conviction for Texas, so he's coming at the question from a different angle. But do you think that would be coaching.
Well, whether it's coaching or not, I don't know. It probably is coaching. But that kind of coaching is exactly what you get hired to do as a lawyer, to school your client in how he can present his truthful testimony in the best way possible to the jury. And I think most lawyers view this situation where a client is on the witness stand that they will not often hamper with the content of the testimony in their discussions with the client, but they may say, listen, stop looking down.
It's making you look guilty. Look at a guy who's asking you the question. And it's okay to glance over at the jurors from time to time with your head up. And I mean, this just has to do with presentation of the testimony to the jury as opposed to the truth or falsity of the testimony. And I think that's perfectly proper that kind of instruction to a client during testimony.
Of course, you can never tell for sure from oral arguments how the justices will rule. But it seemed to me that the defendant didn't have five votes, that the majority of the justices were skeptical that not being able to talk to his counsel about his testimony during the overnight break violated his constitutional rights.
Well, I'll tell you. And my suspicion is maybe they just want to stay away from the whole thing, because I suspect that the truth of the matter is there's nobody in that room at night when the lawyer is discussing the testimony with the client, and rule is a
really hard rule to enforce. I suppose you might have a lot more appeals in cases from defendants who would say I was on the stand and I needed advice and the lawyer refused to talk to me, and that's why I've been convicted, you know what Philip Reality is saying. So it's a touchy subject and it'll be interesting to see how the court rules on this thing. Trial lawyers across the country will be watching very very carefully because there are lots of discuse. It happens to the civil
cases too, during depositions. You know, you have a civil case and the guys being deposed, and then they wanted to take a break, and the lawyer says, well, don't talk to him during the break. And the lawyer says, well, you have no right to restrict what I can say to my client during the break. And I've seen fights among lawyers, oral arguments among lawyers at depositions about this very subject. So this one will spill over into civil
practice as well. I think if they make a definitive ruling on the issue, is.
There an ethical rule that you shouldn't talk to your client during a break into testimony.
There are no ethical rules about it, other than, of course, a lawyer cannot suborn perjury. So if you're giving the client advice, you know he's was serving, say self defense in a case, and he tells you a story in which he's not under threat from the person he killed at all, and you say to him, well, you know it would help if you thought he was trying to strangle you when you pulled out the knife and started stabbing him, Well, that would be unethical. You're subborting perjury.
You're telling him tell a lie to say that you were in fear of your life, that's why you killed him. So you know, those are the only ethical rules that apply in terms of shaping testimony. By saying be more polite, you know, you're yelling at the prosecutor. Don't do that. It makes you look aggressive and bad. I'm telling you
about stylistic questions and advice from the attorney. You know, I think that's something that all lawyers do to a certain extent with clients, and it's probably okay, and matter of fact, the courts may like it, because if you get a long winded client and won't give you a straight answer to a question, a lot of times the judges are quite asked as the client listens carefully to the question and answers it succinctly, as opposed to wandering
around and telling all of these lengthy stories, which, by the way, just open up new avenues across examination for the prosecutor. You know, clients testifying is one of the most complex issues of criminal law and always will be.
And only Justice Katanji Brown Jackson was a criminal defense lawyer who might have faced some of these problems with a client testifying. She was an assistant public defender in DC Justice Sonya so Tomayor is the only other trial lawyer on the court, and she was a Manhattan District attorney like you, Paul, thanks so much for joining me today. That's Paul Callen, former Manhattan prosecutor and criminal defense attorney. And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. I'm June Grosso.