Tom Mesereau on Defending Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Suge Knight, Mike Tyson (Full Interview)

all right here we go we have tom mezero one of the great criminal lawyers of our era best known for successfully defending michael jackson in his 2005 case where he beat all of his 14 charges as well as defending mike tyson suge knight bill cosby and a host of others welcome to vlad tv thank you for having me i'm very honored to be here well it's your first time here so i want to start in the very beginning so you grew up in west point new york i was born in west point new york my parents were in the army my father was a west point graduate the united states military academy my uncle was a west point graduate my grandfather was an honorary graduate and i grew up with close ties to west point got it got it and i guess your father and your uncle wanted you to become a lawyer well my father always said to me if you don't know what you want to do consider law school it provides a lot of options and he was absolutely correct i went to law school not knowing what i wanted to do after law school i knew i had many opportunities to do something you can go into business you can go into government you can be a prosecutor you can be a defense attorney you can go into private practice big firm small firm your own firm there's so many things you can do with a law degree in fact i don't know any other degree that gives you as many options as a law degree does so my father was correct he guided me very very properly okay and you actually got your undergrad at harvard yes okay come loudy yes congratulations thank you then you got your masters uh in international relations at london london school of economics yes and then you got a law degree at hastings in san francisco yes got you guys you did your homework i did my homework i did your home i did my homework okay so you graduate from law school and then you started different things you started trying out different things in the area of law and first you started out as a civil litigator yes i was with a law firm in washington d.c called hunted and williams the main office was richmond virginia it's a large international law firm now and i started off as a civil litigator that's correct okay then you became a deputy district attorney i became a deputy district attorney in orange county i was there for about a year i was a real fish out of water and i looked for something else right and you said that very quickly you saw the prosecution wasn't really a good fit for you it was not and and i was i was really touched by my first experience in the orange county da's office i was assigned to the juvenile court to as part of my orientation training they gave me a tour of the facility and part of the tour was looking in a window through an iron door into a suicide watch room and in that room was a little girl sitting by herself her head in her lap not saying a word and i finished my tour finished my orientation finished my training and to my horror i was asked to prosecute this young girl it just was traumatizing it was disturbing she had been caught shoplifting in a department store the case could not have been more open and shut they had her on tape she admitted doing it they arrested her and wanted me to prosecute her for a misdemeanor and i looked in her file and she'd been the victim of physical abuse sexual abuse emotional abuse she had a drug problem the first thing she did when they arrested her was she looked for typewriter fluid to to sniff and i said to myself why do i want to prosecute this poor little little kid i'd like to get her treatment i'd like to get her counseling i'd like to find a way to heal her and i was forced to prosecute her it was a trial in front of a judge it was open and shut and after it was done i felt terrible and i went upstairs to where my colleagues were and they all wanted to high-five me for winning and i was disgusted and i knew that and there i'm not going to last too long in this this office you know okay and you tried a few other things you're a transactional lawyer a civil trial lawyer but ultimately you became a criminal defense lawyer i tried as i said before a law degree can give you an opportunity to try many things now a lot of lawyers don't have the gumption or the courage to try different things they get on a treadmill and they never get off it but i was always willing to try new things if i thought what i was doing was not where i wanted to spend my whole life so i was a civil litigator i was a prosecutor i was assistant the president of a getty oil company subsidiary where i ran around supervising law firms around the country then i was with a small civil firm and i began doing criminal work on my own bringing criminal clients in the firm was very flexible they let me do it and i realized one day this is where i belong i like the criminal courts i like fighting for people's freedom i like fighting against odds i like the courtroom and it just clicked and that i knew that was where i belonged okay and so you get into criminal defense and in the beginning you started representing a lot of uh gang members crips and bloods in la and so forth i did yes okay and how was that experience well um i began attending a african-american church in south la first first ame church i was drawn to pastor cecil murray a legendary pastor of the church and i also began to defend a lot of gang members crips and bloods who were charged usually with murder sometimes lesser crimes but usually homicide and i said to myself one day you know the da's office is just washing these kids right to prison for life they're washing one after another through this hardcore gang unit is so driven to arrest and convict and imprison young people that i don't think they're really paying attention to the details and i think a lot of young people are being rushed to prison because of their race and their socio-economic class and i said to myself how do you win these cases because there was such a spiral of gang violence throughout los angeles this is the you know the 90s and young men were just being gunned down every night in east l.a in south l.a you name it and there was such a dislike for gang violence it was a problem that they would just basically if they saw a young kid associated with a gang or wearing blue or wearing red or having a tattoo or a moniker they would be inclined to arrest them and what i discovered was that when young alleged gang members they weren't all gang members some of them were just showing off and you know you had to learn about the gang culture when they basically put them in front of a jury primarily of people who were not from south la or not from east l.a people who were afraid of those neighborhoods and the prosecutor said this is a vicious killer they would convict them in a heartbeat and they would put on police officers who were called gang experts to tell the jury how many gangs there were and how many homicides there were and how many burglaries there were and how you get jumped into a gang and all of this was designed in my opinion to make sure an alleged gang member didn't get a fair trial in fact the lada's office is the largest district attorney's office in the country there are over a thousand das and they have different units you have special crimes you have domestic violence you have the gang unit the hardcore gang unit they call it all of the units in the los angeles county district attorney's office would never bring a case on the basis of one eyewitness identification unless there was some evidence to corroborate it except the hardcore gang unit if one person identified someone even under terribly unreliable conditions they didn't care if any evidence supported it they would bring those case bring those cases convict the person and wash him away to prison for a life sentence and i was very appalled by the indiscriminate wholesale way young people were just marched off to prison right you said i became more effective because i cared i was able to humanize these kids well i hadn't grown up in the hood i hadn't grown up in south la i hadn't grown up in east l.a most of my cases came from south la and so i made a point to try and learn about my client i would visit their home i would talk to their parents i would talk to their siblings i would talk to classmates i would talk to fellow gang members i wanted to find out who they were as a human being how they were raised what obstacles they faced and i also wanted to find out what good things they'd done and it just occurred to me that someone from west l.a or pasadena you know parts were parts of la where you didn't have necessarily the gang problem you had in south la they didn't have a clue to these neighborhoods because there's a culture in los angeles of not visiting other neighborhoods we're the most spread out city in the in the country and we have a culture of not visiting other neighborhoods in new york or chicago people rub shoulders in the subway they rub shoulders on the street they rub shoulders in in the crosstown bus but la is different and i just realized how what profound ignorance existed between neighborhoods and if you don't understand a human being if you don't relate to a human being if you don't care about a human being it's so much easier to just feel that you're safer if you convict when the prosecutor says convict and i would see young white prosecutors well educated blessed in life referring to every young black kid as a gang member as a gang banger they love that term it offended me so i would basically try to explain as best i could in a courtroom what happens in these neighborhoods how people with tattoos aren't necessarily gang members people with monikers aren't necessarily gang members how kids come out of their homes and to get to school they have to deal with gang members and that actually it's pretty hard to get jumped into a gang and people will show off and try and do things that don't necessarily mean they're vicious gang members at all and i would try to humanize i would put on character witnesses to explain what good people had done put on family members try and humanize them every way i could and i began to have a lot more success defending these cases and the other lawyers i was watching just lose one trial after another when defending somebody so let's just say you're defending someone for murder does it matter to you if the person did it or not first of all people ask me that question all the time and my answer is i believe in criminal defense i believe our criminal justice system is very imperfect very flawed innocent people are convicted all the time but i still think it's the best system i've seen i've looked at other country systems i've seen just judges who are political appointees deciding guilt or innocence and our jury system is the fairest in the world despite its problems i mean look hundreds of people have been released from death row from life sentences because of dna think of years ago when there was no dna to look at think of many innocent people and their families were destroyed through our justice system but nevertheless i do think it's the fairest i've seen as i look around the world everyone has to do their part to make the system fair the judge has to do his or her part the prosecutor has to do his or her part the defense attorney has to do his or her part and every time a defense attorney fights hard and professionally for their client they make the system work you can defend someone who's guilty of something it may not be that they're guilty of what they were charged with or they may not be guilty at all or they may look guilty to you but if you make sure the police don't abuse their power if you make sure the prosecutor doesn't abuse his or her power you are making everyone else safer and everyone else fair and everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty no matter what the situation looks like so i really believe in what criminal defense lawyers do and i think we've done more to advance civil liberties and civil rights in the history of america than any other profession i can think of i mean were there certain cases where it was just so gruesome that you said i'm not gonna represent this person from a moralistic point of view or will you defend anybody i will defend people i suspect are guilty i will defend people i suspect did something wrong because everyone deserves a chance everyone's everyone deserves a competent aggressive passionate defense if i feel emotionally for some reason i can't defend someone i will will not take the case but let me say this if i were ever faced with a situation where there was nobody left to defend that person except me i would do it to make the system work but i haven't been in that situation because there are plenty of other lawyers around who will take cases but i think every time a criminal lawyer steps in a courtroom and does a great job they make us all more safe and more fair well you said i would like to abolish a death penalty as applied in a very unjust arbitrary fashion in america mistakes are made innocent people are executed to me the death penalty is nothing more than legislated revenge i don't believe in the death penalty i understand the vengeful feelings victims or their families have towards those who are convicted or or suspected of murdering someone i understand the feelings of vengeance the feeling of of wanting someone to pay for what happened but i don't think we can afford to make a mistake with one person and i do think mistakes are made and i think dna has proven that mistakes are made all the time i mean hundreds of people have been released those people could have been executed if they were convicted of a death penalty offense so because it's so arbitrarily imposed because our conditions are so imperfect because we can't afford to make one mistake and because i don't think the state should be in the business of legislating how to commit revenge uh i think we're better off just having the ultimate penalty life in prison which some people think is even worse well 1995 rolls around and then we have the oj trial now you and johnny cochran know each other yes johnny cochran to me was the greatest trial lawyer i ever saw i studied everything he did in the simpson case i'm very indebted to him i want to want you to know that he recommended me to michael jackson that's his defender i was very flattered he told michael jackson and his brother randy jackson that if you're ever in trouble he'd want to hire me and i'll never forget his doing that for me i was not his i i knew him i was not one of his closest friends um but for him to recommend me that way i'll never forget but just watching what a talented brilliant personable strategic bright careful trial lawyer this man was was breathtaking i think his closing argument in the o.j simpson case is the best closing argument i've ever seen if it don't fit he must convict that was part of it you must have he said if you don't if it don't fit you must have quit yes that was part of it but i mean there was such a range of emotion range of passion he would keep people watching him for days you would be riveted to your seat for hour after hour after hour and i remember during that closing argument court tv who was televising the trial switched back to a panel of lawyers in new york city to comment on it and there was a district attorney from brooklyn who basically said i've been teaching how to conduct a trial at law schools for 30 years and i've always said don't make your closing argument too long you may turn off the jury you may bore them but he said after what i just saw i've got to reconsider everything i've been teaching this is magnificent what i just watched so i feel like the oj trial was sort of a turning point in american history because you had a black man accused of murdering a white woman and a white man and from the outside looking in everyone felt he was guilty but he got acquitted yes did you feel like o.j was innocent or guilty from your point of view from my point of view not being on the defense team not knowing oj not having access to what the defense had access to he looked very guilty i mean you had his blood at the crime scene you had victim's blood in his in his van you had blood at his home uh apparently his alibi that he was in chicago didn't hold up completely uh you had a lot to suggest that he did this but what the defense did the way they attacked the way evidence was collected the way it was transported the way it was processed the way it was stored the way it was contaminated was just brilliant it was a combination of johnny cochran barry scheck and peter neufel were the preeminent dna lawyers in america uh robert shapiro you had a f lee bailey you had a group of very talented lawyers who were able to combine their talents and get an acquittal in a case that looked overwhelming yeah i mean years later when he got convicted of trying to take his memorabilia back and they gave him a sentence that almost seemed like it was revenge for him getting off earlier do you think that's what happened or do you think that ultimately the sentencing was fair i think the sentencing was not fair i think it was basically oj and a bunch of his friends trying to get back what was rightfully his unfortunately one or two as i recall i don't remember exactly had a gun yeah i don't think anyone was really in jeopardy from what i heard and it looked like a stupid thing to do in a hotel room in a casino but it didn't merit nine years in prison not at all this was payback it was payback well at one point i guess charles manson wanted you to represent him i did visit with charles manson in the mid 90s okay at corcoran state prison had about three hours with him fascinating time uh i was contacted by some people who knew charles manson to ask if i was interested i was not interested in getting involved in representing him at that point the issues were primarily civil issues um and i did not uh get involved in that that situation so were you meeting and talking to him yes what was charles manson like in person very interesting um he uh he was had a very intense stare he clearly was a bright person uh i thought he was a little bit manipulative you know he would sort of be testing me to see what kind of a person i was and what could influence me and what would not influence me uh he was sitting with one of his friends a non-lawyer to assist him and but very studying me very intently but talking a lot trying to get my reactions to what he said and i had read helter skelter by the prosecutor of leosi so i knew a lot something about the facts in the case and and he was he would revert back to some of discussion about some of the things in that book which i'd read about i i sensed maybe he lived in the past a little bit but he was he was clever and perceptive and clearly very bright okay so then in 2001 he represented mike tyson i i received a phone call from a lawyer friend in arizona who was mike tyson's lawyer and he said to me they're thinking of charging mike tyson with rape in san bernardino county and a woman has come forward claiming she was raped gloria allred the famous attorney in los angeles has already agreed to represent her they've already given a press conference would you be california on the defense team and i said i would and we put together a booklet which had a number of investigative materials that we quickly got together to convince the san bernardino county district attorney's office that mike had not raped anybody or assaulted anybody and that included information on the alleged victim and we presented this booklet to the da's office and they agreed not to prosecute right because this comes off the heels of tyson's conviction for rape in 1992. he had already been yes he'd already been to prison he'd already been convicted uh which i must say the more i look at what happened in that courtroom the more suspicious it looks i mean i think you probably know that he was convicted after the defense presented evidence that a young woman had gone up to his hotel room at two in the morning and apparently they'd been making out in a limousine as i understand it and i i question whether he should have been convicted at all in that case but he was convicted he went to prison he came out and now another woman was trying to claim that he committed a sexual assault and we were able to convince the san bernardino county district attorney's office there was no case at all now was this your first celebrity client well i'd represented some people in the entertainment business in the 90s before that i've been consulted by some well-known people i won't mention who they are when they had problems but he was probably the highest profile person i had agreed to defend at that point yes so were you and mike tyson communicating during this time i was communicating through his team in arizona got it got it and i mean you got his case dropped they didn't charge him yeah and you would you know given the fact that he was a target that he'd already been convicted which could make a subsequent conviction easier for a prosecutor uh i think we did a very good job in convincing them there was no case so you said that many celebrities have an unreal realistic view of the courtroom because they've seen trials on television and film so they think they're experts a lot of times what they consider a true performance is often a trial disaster waiting to happen well here's one problem defending celebrities the the courtroom is a very strange counterintuitive place things happen in courtrooms that don't happen outside of court rooms a courtroom first of all is a very sterile very threatening place you don't see children playing in a courtroom you don't see a lot of fun things it's very very solemn very serious very cold and what happens in a courtroom is not really reality it's a reconstruction of reality you know we need a justice system we have to do something uh to make sure there's justice in society so we have certain rules and procedures the lawyers have to follow those rules and procedures and reality that happens somewhere else at some other time is reconstructed in the courtroom and a lot of trials are sensationalized on television you have tv shows you have movies you have books you have all sorts of not so realistic ways of portraying a courtroom so people in the entertainment business very often think they know what happens in the courtroom because of the shows they've seen the movies they've seen the novels they've read and it may have very little to do with what really happens let me give you an example jermaine jackson michael's brother wrote a book about michael and jermaine jackson who came to his criminal trial periodically was there a lot he writes in the beginning of his book that we weren't sure what was going on because every night during that five-month trial we would look at the news and they would say the prosecution is winning and then we would talk to his lead lawyer tom mezero who would say we're doing fine and we weren't quite sure how to process this well they were looking at sound bites on tv you have a jury looking at eight hours of evidence throughout a day morning noon and into the evening and then you have an entertainment program summarizing what happened in a few sound bites so there's no way those few sound bites are going to accurately portray what's going on in the courtroom or what's important in the courtroom so i was basically although you can never know what a jury is thinking and what they're going to do i was pretty optimistic we were doing a very excellent job and as jermaine said we turn on the tv and they say it's a disaster for the defense another disaster today for the defense right well what happened was a number of the reporters would look at a prosecution witness the prosecutor would put that witness on the witness would say something that appeared damaging to the defense the reporter would run out of the courtroom and report it they wouldn't look at the cross-examination when we obliterated that witness with all sorts of provable lies provable contradictions so how the media chooses to portray a courtroom or a trial is very often has nothing to do with what's really going on they're just reconstructing what they think is important reconstructing what they think is is dramatic will help their ratings will help generate controversy and you can't necessarily trust it right i think a lot of uh i think you mentioned as well that a lot of celebrities feel that if they win in the court of public opinion they'll somehow win in the trial itself which a lot of times is just not true at all which is why you see a lot of people who have open cases doing interviews and putting information out there which ends up being used against them well you want to focus on what's going to happen in the courtroom because that's the most important place the most important people are 13 people a judge and 12 jurors they are the most important and yes do you want good information outside in the atmosphere on the media on the airwaves of course you do would you like people saying good things about you of course could that affect a jury pool yes it could but let me say this i think jurors jurors in america really follow their oath and a judge will put a jury under oath in a courtroom he will tell them to follow his or her instructions they are not to follow any media reporting on the trial on the case and he will tell them to avoid newspapers and he will tell them only to focus on what's in the courtroom and i think jurors do their best to follow the judge's instructions i think american juries tend to be very independent and don't want to be manipulated don't want to be you know basically abused by media coverage let me mention the michael jackson jury for example we had about a five month trial i thought we did a very good job during the eight days of jury deliberation all the major networks were showing a jail cell where they claimed he was going to be and they were talking about how he would spend his time in jail when he was convicted they were talking about what time he would get up what he would wear what he could eat would he have reading material when would visitors be allowed to see him could he pray i mean this was going on every day and in my opinion this was a blatant attempt to influence the jury and it didn't work well uh before that case you represented robert blake the law the uh the actor yes uh for over the murder of his wife uh bonnie lee bakely yes so explain the case and explain how you won this case well robert blake was charged with murder with special circumstances which means you could face the death penalty if they choose if you have if you're charged with murder with special circumstances the prosecution can either seek the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole and he'd been represented by another lawyer a good friend of mine very good lawyer harlan braun robert was looking for a new lawyer i was donating my time at a free legal clinic at first african methodist episcopal church in south la and one of the other volunteer lawyers did transactional work for robert blake and he said to me one day mr blake would like to meet you he's looking for a new attorney would you be willing to meet with him and i said i would i met with them had a couple of discussions and to make a long story short was chosen as his lead council and at that point in time this was the most extensive investigation into any case by the los angeles county district attorney's office the lapd had exceeded in terms of paperwork and time the investigation into o.j simpson they'd gone all around the country trying to find out everything they could about robert blake about his films about who he associated with etc and it was a very intensely investigated case they you know they charged o.j simpson right away with homicide but in the robert blake case they waited about a year before they arrested him and then they immediately tried to prejudice the potential jury pool against him the police chief announced that he had solved the crime that kind of thing and i dug into the the evidence and i began to see all sorts of problems i mean they had jumped to conclusions without proper investigation investigation at all and i felt the lapd became enamored with publicity and amber with the possibility of this being a high profile case in fact at the crime scene they invited a writer to come down as one of the first people they said come on down and see what's going on and they were letting this writer do ride-alongs with them and they really misjudged a lot of what had happened robert blake had nothing to do with this they were enamored with winning a big case particularly after they'd lost simpson and he got a raw deal in my opinion okay he was ultimately acquitted yes um he ended up filing for bankruptcy because i guess there was like three million in unpaid legal fees ultimately was that part no part of the money that you were ordered no what happened was there was a civil trial he was acquitted in the criminal trial but he lost the civil trade and then there was a civil trial where they sued him for wrongful death to determine that he was liable or responsible for the death like the og and i didn't represent him in the civil trial he was found liable in that trial a ridiculously high judgment was awarded against him it was eventually cut in half by a higher court and i i did not represent him in a bankruptcy proceeding i'm not a bankruptcy lawyer got it so then in 2005 the michael jackson case well before this case michael jackson was accused of child sexual abuse in 1993 um he ended up settling with the family out of court right yes and the prosecutors ended up dropping the criminal investigation after the accuser stopped cooperating did you and michael talk about that case michael jackson told me in no uncertain terms that settling that case in 1994 was the biggest mistake he'd ever made he should never have settled it he should have fought it through a trial he would have won it was an absurd case but he was advised he told me by lawyers by business advisors to settle it and get rid of it that he had bigger fish to fry bigger projects to to get involved in that the money would be a drop in the bucket compared to what he was capable of making around the world and that diverting everybody's attention because of the publicity attached to this civil case was a mistake he followed his advisors you know suggestions he paid money and what it really did was it opened pandora's box because suddenly everybody on the planet began suing him thinking they could make an easy buck suing michael jackson i mean employees were suing him uh people he met on the street were suing him it was just ridiculous and he told me that was the biggest mistake he ever made was not fighting that to leanne how much do you settle for in that case well allegedly it was around 20 million dollars there there are differing opinions as to how much it was i was uninvolved in that case and i was involved in that settlement i had to deal with it because to my shock the trial judge in the criminal case that i defended allowed evidence that he had settled cases to come into the trial i had never seen that before i thought it was highly prejudicial but the judge let it in so i had to deal with the fact that the jury knew he had settled two other cases the judge didn't let the dollar amounts come into the courtroom but people knew what they were i had to deal with that and basically as i said second ago i told the jury that he was advised to do this that he would make far more money than this he was the great the world's greatest singer choreographer the greatest artist the greatest dancer that he should get rid of this case that the money was a drop on the bucket and he unfortunately followed that advice okay so then there was a documentary that came out in 2003 called living with michael jackson and in that documentary they showed him holding hands with a young boy named gavin arvizo and he also talked about how he would have kids sleeping you know in this large bed of his and that actually triggered his 2005 case that's correct there was a documentary uh that was made by someone named martin beshear and unfortunately he convinced michael that he would be a very fair documentary filmmaker that according to michael because i wasn't involved in this michael said the man told him that he would make him [Music] he would treat him very fairly he would show what a wonderful artist and father he was and michael was expecting this documentary to be very positive it turned out to be exactly the opposite but michael did something very smart he wouldn't conduct any interview with this producer without having his own videographer present so we had the parts that were included in the documentary and we had the outtakes that were not included in the documentary and there was a tremendous difference between what this producer portrayed michael as in the documentary and what he was saying to him and the outtakes he did not include so what happened in the trial was the prosecutors wanted permission from the court the judge to use this documentary and show it to the jury and i i acted like i didn't want them to i actually did because first of all a lot a lot of that documentary i thought would be very appealing to a jury you show a very young michael jackson performing as a child you show him grow and develop you show his enormous talent he sings you know the the music just takes over you know the atmosphere so the press fixated on a couple of quotes they thought were very damaging to michael jackson i focused on the other parts which i thought were very favorable to him and i wanted the judge to let us use the outtakes that weren't included where the producer mr beshear told him he was a great father he was learning wonderful things from him i mean the outtakes were very different from the spirit of the documentary as far as i'm concerned so both came in the documentary came in the prosecution's case the outtakes came in our case and the rest is history he was acquitted of every count well i think the the thing that really bothered a lot of people was the whole sleeping in the same bed as michael and even though i think most people understand this is not like a twin size bed you know this is probably some gigantic bed it was bigger than the building we're in you know when you talk about michael jackson's bedroom you're talking about a building that's bigger than where we are filming today i mean this was a huge huge area and parents would stay on the bed sisters would stay on the bed brothers would stay on the bed it wasn't at all what the prosecution was trying to spin it as being and you know unfortunately michael was well-meaning there was nothing sexual about any of this uh he was nice to everybody i had parents testify that they had slept in his room i mean it wasn't at all what the prosecution was portraying it as as being and that's the thing about a courtroom it's a reconstruction of reality the prosecution tries to make reality look this way the defense tries to make reality look this way and the jury decides who's correct well at one point he was actually charged for the abuse and the police ended up um raiding neverland ranch where they they took everything they could possibly take well and like you said earlier johnny cochran actually told michael to use you as a lawyer well johnny cochran and howard weitzman had represented michael in the early 1990s in the case that settled in 1994. i was not involved in that case when he was charged in 2003 um randy and his brother and michael talked to joni cochran who recommended me now at first i wouldn't take the case because i was tied up with robert blake uh and i was i'll never forget the the day neverland was raided um by 70 sheriffs and their assistants i i kept getting phone calls from las vegas where michael jackson was staying asking if i would immediately jump on a plane and come to las vegas and i said i can't do it because i'm tied up with the robert blake case which is going to trial in february i'm feverishly getting ready to try this case and they just were amazed that anybody would say i can't do this right but i couldn't do both and eventually my robert blake and i had a falling out and i withdrew from the case during jury selection and as soon as i did that randy jackson called me and said are you available now we've always wanted you and i said well that's very flattering um why don't i meet your brother and we'll see where it goes so i was secretly flown to orlando florida i was put in a limousine and taken to a home and interviewed by michael jackson and his people and that was the first time i'd ever met him now he hardly said a word during that meeting he stayed in the back he stared at me very intently and his people were asking me questions about who i was and my background and the cases i'd done etc uh i left the next day wondering if i'd ever hear from again and shortly after that randy jackson called me and said my brother said you're the one so one thing led to another and i was retained okay so you have this initial meeting and then you become michael jackson's official lawyer at that point do you guys start to talk more and have more conversations and start to really dig into this whole situation well yes i would go to neverland we would have meetings we would talk about various aspects of evidence when i start a case my attitude is i don't believe anybody i don't believe the prosecution i don't believe the defense i don't trust anything i want to see for myself what's going on so i realized what these allegations were i realized that he'd been accused of this before and i met with him i believe with a very open mind to try and figure out who michael jackson was and what kind of a case this was and it didn't take me very long to conclude he would never harm a child he would never molest a child this made no sense that he was just a target of opportunism of various forms prosecutors wanted to be stars people wanted to sue him if he were convicted he would be disabled every anybody and their mother's uncle could file a lawsuit how would he defend himself in prison i mean i realized what a phenomenal target he was he was the most famous person on the planet he was one of the wealthiest people on the planet he owned the catalog which included beatles music and other great artists i mean he was such a target and he was also perceived as not someone who would want to fight a case he was received as very gentle very childlike very creative someone who danced to their own drummer and he was just such a phenomenal target i don't think in my lifetime i'll ever see a bigger target for opportunists than michael jackson okay so the trial starts to begin and the jury selection starts and for a trial this big there's a lot of pressure to pick the right jurors and i guess you were told to stay away from women jurors i was but you went the opposite way well i had a consultant with allah who had a lot of experience a lot of insight did a very very professional profile on what a good defense juror would be what a good prosecution juror would be and how different categories like income occupation race religion political affiliation she would correlate all these factors with what she thought a theoretically ideal prosecution juror would be and would a theoretically ideal defense juror would be and i was advised to be very careful with women stay away from women particularly mothers the charges are very disturbing to anyone who parents children this is going to be a horrible thing to explain and i looked at the the consultant and said i'm following my instincts i'd like women right you said um you actually chose as many women as possible we had a majority of women right we did we well we disqualified a few but we had a majority of women on the jury which is what i wanted right you said i had to consider who would be most receptive to my efforts at humanizing michael jackson yeah prosecutors are trying to viciously attack his sexuality the alternate between claims that he was gay and asexual yes the prosecution directly and indirectly overtly and subtly were trying to attack michael jackson's sexuality they were calling him a pedophile they were calling him asexual sometimes they were suggesting he was gay they were doing anything they could to try and alienate him from the jury in that location in that part of santa barbara county which tends to be very conservative and it was nasty and degrading and malicious what they were doing but i knew what they were doing somebody had told these prosecutors whenever you can use the phrase sleeping with little boys sleeping with little boys sleeping with little boys anything to dehumanize michael jackson i wanted women for a number of reasons first of all i thought men in general would be far more judgmental of michael jackson than women i generally have found women to be much more emotionally flexible and available particularly when a male sexuality is being attacked they don't get judgmental the way men can heterosexual men can be rather insecure about their sexuality when you attack michael jackson that way you're trying to just generate prejudice against him and you're being invited to give yourself a sense of security by judging him harshly in cases where i had defended gay men i always found heterosexual women to be much more receptive to the truth and much less harshly judgmental right off the bat than heterosexual men obviously gay women or gay men were fine but you know defense attorneys have to face reality you've got a life on the line you've got to follow your instincts even if these are generalities that don't always apply even if these generalities sound somewhat demeaning or offensive elsewhere you've got to follow your experience you've got to follow your intuition you've got to follow your instincts and i ended up with a jury that i felt would be open-minded to the truth and not judge him because he was a different kind of person right because i remember that was always the question in my mind of well is michael jackson gay or straight now that doesn't necessarily you know mean that he's into children but he's being accused of molesting boys so so the gay part was always a question in my mind and i remember at one point i went through the paperwork um from the the sheriff's uh office of all the stuff that they found in neverland ranch it was actually a large pornography collection of like straight porn like you know kind of stuff i would watch uh and at that point i said okay that's all nonsense michael jackson seemed like he was a straight man well when they raided neverland and again it was 70 plus sheriffs rated neverland they found hordes of playboy penthouse and what i call girly magazines right and they didn't know how to explain this because they knew this could help the defense in explaining he's not a pedophile he's not someone who's enraptured with young males he's a heterosexual male who likes to look at beautiful women who are naked and they came up with a way for them to explain it they thought would help them they said your typical pedophile grooms their victim by showing sexually explicit material so they tried to say that all of these magazines which were everywhere and what she had is his people going out and buying for him they tried to say all of this was part of what a pedophile does to groom a victim that was their explanation i don't think it flew at all right well i guess there were no black people on the jury there was one black alternate who never made it to the actual jury but there was just this was a community with very few african-americans a large latino population very few asians this was northern santa barbara county largely blue collar a lot of people lived there who couldn't afford to live in south county because it's so expensive montecito the city of santa barbara and this courthouse had a very high conviction rate they usually went with the prosecution they were very low in order people but what i did before the trial one of the smartest things i did was i started hanging around local bars and restaurants i would drive up in my jeans and just go into a bar and just sit there alone have a couple glasses of wine and very often somebody would start talking to me because they figured out that i was the lawyer representing michael jackson and i would have a nice friendly discussion and at some point i would say what do you think of michael jackson and i really got the impression two things really stood out one was it a conservative place yes were they pro law order yes were they pro-prosecution yes but they were also very libertarian they felt they were good law-abiding people and didn't want government to go too far intruding into their life so that was something that was very important the other thing was most of them thought michael jackson had been a good neighbor they were very proud to have him in their community and the few times they ever saw him if they did he seemed like the nicest guy in the world generous kind and coincidentally i had a doctor who had a second home near neverland and i would ask him what do the neighbors think of michael jackson he said we're all pulling for him we think this is bs we're all on his side so my impression was you had very independent-minded people very strong-willed people very fair people and we started off with a good impression of michael jackson and a lot of them didn't care for the southern part of santa barbara county and that's where the d.a had his main office so i said to myself you know i want michael jackson to stay in his community because people talked about trying to move for a change of venue to another courthouse i said no i get a good feeling about this courthouse i get a good feeling about this community i think they'll be very fair and let's just stay right here even though the media was saying we're crazy to want to stay there you can't get an acquittal there i felt we could well in terms of having uh no black people on the 12-person jury uh you said that my trial approach was that michael jackson brought all races together he was a scion of a prominent black family with two white and one latino child yes michael jackson made a statement one time that he would like to adopt a child from every continent and look at his music look at his lyrics you know he tried to bring races together he didn't try to divide people now when i first got in the case he was being he was showing up in court surrounded by the nation of islam and surrounded by black activists and i went to his brother randy and i said randy stop this this is dividing him from the community that's going to judge his fate i got one intention not to make a social statement not to make a political statement i want to win this case i want to secure his freedom so stop the nation of islam guards stop having black activists showing up in santa maria california let me show that he embraces his community he brings races together look at his song doesn't matter if you're black or white and look at his children and this is somebody that that heals the world doesn't divide it well when you said two white and one latino child there's always been the question of whether these are his biological children or not did you guys ever have conversations about that no i never asked him that i assumed they were his children he loved them more than anybody could love i mean he was such a devoted father you could tell how much he loved his kids he spent a lot of time with his kids he had a huge book collection to make sure they read books he was so driven to be a good father um i never would ask him if these were his natural kids or not i didn't mean to make any difference to me right okay so then the trial starts and you actually brought some people to get on the stand on his defense one of which was chris tucker that's correct what did chris tucker really bring to this trial chris tucker was my last witness in our case first of all i had to think long and hard about whether we needed to put on a defense case because i thought the cross-examination of the prosecution's witnesses was devastating to the prosecution but then i said to myself these charges are so ugly so awful i mean i think being charged with molesting a child is worse than being charged with homicide i mean the charges were so bad i said to myself we can't just cross-examine their witnesses we have to tell our story and if you're going to put on a defense case and subject your witnesses to cross-examination just like the prosecution witnesses are subject to cross-examination you want to start strong you want to end strong you put the less strong witnesses in the middle that's sort of a psychological tactic that defense lawyers use and i ended with chris tucker who knew the family of accusers he had hung out with the family of accusers he had actually taken them to some oakland raiders games he had invited them to the rehearsal set in las vegas for rush hour and he knew them very well and he expressed his opinions about them to the jury well i remember i interviewed eddie griffin who i guess was friends with michael he actually you know drove michael to to the courthouse and everything else like that and he always maintained that that michael was innocent but he also said that michael was really stressed out during that time poor michael was not built for a situation like this you have to understand what the charges are first of all understand that michael was one of the most sensitive one of the most generous one of the kindest people i've ever met he contributed widely to various causes he had a rule that whenever he gave a concert he would visit a children's hospital to visit the kids to try and inspire them to overcome their illness and to think positively he was a very kind nice person he was exquisitely sensitive person i mean he was just an artist like you can't he never took a dance lesson he would create the most amazing choreography the most amazing performance i mean nobody would see anything like this and he was very very sensitive what was he facing in the courtroom first of all the prosecution claimed he had masterminded a criminal conspiracy he was the mastermind they said to abduct children to falsely imprison a family and to commit criminal extortion now they tried to make him look like a big mobster type which is utterly ridiculous michael jackson would no more know how to even think about extorting someone falsely imprisoning a family it's utterly ridiculous but they charged him with that they also charged him with attempted child molestation they charged him with child molestation and they claimed in the last three counts of the indictment that he had taken a cancer-stricken child and plied that child with alcohol which he knew would hurt the child's health in order to prepare that child to be molested these were the most malicious charges if you think about it and for michael to sit in a courtroom day in and day out and watch the prosecution to try portray him as some monster some mobster type was utterly debilitating and he did lose weight he did his cheeks that last day of of course the verdict day his cheeks were just sunken in the poor fellow just looked emaciated he looked pale as a ghost he looked just debilitated i mean i think he was frozen with fear and because look he went home after trial each day he was out on bond out on bail and he would turn on the tv like everybody else and all he'd see was bad day for the defense bad day for the defense bad day for michael jackson michael jackson's in trouble michael jackson's going to be convicted and this war on him because it went on for about five months we started in january of 2005. we ended june 13th 2005. that's a long trial five days a week there were a few breaks in between but it was a devastatingly harsh experience for michael jackson well uh mccauley caulkin took the stand for the defense he was our second witness right fabulous witness for michael jackson right i remember they did the he was in the black or white video at one point i guess the two of them had a close relationship they were very dear friends uh i met with macaulay the night before i called him as a witness i met with he and his new york lawyer he had an entertainment lawyer with him and the lawyer was nervous as can be and about what this might do to his career and what it might do to him and he was very concerned about his client which i understand completely macaulay on the other hand was so confident so convinced he was doing the right thing and so adamant that he was never molested that he was never put in a compromising position by michael jackson that michael jackson was his close friend that they both came up as child stars and they knew the rigors and the pressures of being a child star and he said this is my friend i'm testifying for him that's the stuff never happened remember the prosecution called witnesses to say they saw macaulay being molested at neverland by michael mccauley gets on the stand and says he never molested me at any time we're dear friends we share a lot we have a lot in common he would never do a thing like this and by the way let me say this also i meet with macaulay and his lawyer that evening the next morning i get up i'm getting dressed for court i turn on the television and here's the one of the major networks and their reporter is saying we've learned that macaulay culkin is not going to show up to court today that his agents his producers his directors his lawyers are all telling him he has nothing to gain and he has refused to testify and here i was with him the night before knowing full well i'm calling him to the stand that day that just tells you what happens when you look at the media and when you're dealing with reality as opposed to the media well and the other witness that you called was wade robson yes who ultimately was one of the the two people who did leaving neverland and we'll talk about that a little bit later but in this case wade robson took the stand to say that michael jackson never did anything improper wade robson was my first witness and as i said before if you're putting on a defense case you want to start strong you want to end strong we started with wade robson we ended with chris tucker macaulay culkin was our second witness i met with wade i met with his mother i met with his sister i called all three of them as witnesses and wade was adamant to me that he was never touched that he was never violated that this was these allegations were nonsense because remember they put on some witnesses to say wade was molested right that they they sought and he was such a strong witness for us such a strong defender and supporter michael jackson that i made her for made him our first witness but i also called his mother and his sister who had traveled with wade and michael on some of these tours and they testified they never saw anything bad happen or anything wrong happen and i mean the three of them could not have been stronger advocates for michael jackson so when i heard about this movie leaving neverland i was stunned absolutely stunned because he talked to me he was adamant he was never touched i called him as my witness he testified under oath he was never touched and then a very very good prosecutor ron zonan terrific prosecutor and a vicious cross-examiner went after him tooth and nail and he never budged he said it's ridiculous he never never did anything like this to me well like you said words to that effect yeah well like you said uh the trial lasted from january to june 2005 and at the end michael jackson was acquitted on all 14 charges ten felonies and four misdemeanors they didn't get him on anything in fact just so you know he was indicted by a grand jury for 10 felony counts at the end of the trial as it was going to the jury the judge said he's going to give the jury some options on the last four felony counts if they acquit him of any of those last four felony counts i'm going to give them the option of convicting of a misdemeanor so they had to say guilty or not guilty 14 times 10 felonies four misdemeanor options they said not guilty all felonies not guilty all misdemeanors not guilty anything sitting next to michael jackson what was his reaction when he heard that news you know he came in the courtroom that day he looked his cheeks were sunken in he looked frozen with fear he was he just was weakened you could just see it in his eyes see it in his his the way he carried himself i think he was terrified with fear i think a lot of people had said to him the media says you're going to be convicted i happen to know some people told him he was going to be convicted and they were trying to cheer him up that there'll be an appeal and all this i never said that to him we went into the courtroom the we sat down the media was packed in the courtroom and outside the courtroom in fact this particular trial had over 2200 accredited media which is more accredited media than o.j simpson and scott peterson combined that's how big this trial was around the world so the media is every place they set up tents everywhere around the courthouse there was a build-up to the verdict you know he was he had an entourage some limousines with security etc they were on their way to the courthouse all the major airwaves had they were following this caravan of limos to the courthouse he stops in front of the courthouse he comes out of the car with his entourage i meet him there we go into the courtroom courtroom fills up the judge comes out asks for silence he then brings the jurors out they fill the jury box the foreman of the jury hands the verdict forms to the bailiff who hands the verdict forms to the judge who looks them over and then asks the jurors you know this your verdict form and says yes and then the court clerk at the judge's request reads the verdicts one count after another and when the last not guilty came down i said to michael you're free and he said thank you thank you thank you we hugged all the defense team hugged and then we left the courthouse well you said that the prosecution is a travesty of justice and one of the most mean-spirited attacks on an innocent person in legal history that's how i feel about that case yeah i think the way the prosecution constructed this case the way they charge this case the way they presented the case was a absolute travesty of justice it was almost as if psychologically because they were going after someone who was innocent they went overboard trying to demonize and monsterize the defendant as i've said earlier i mean how do you possibly charge michael jackson like he's a mafia chieftain masterminding a criminal conspiracy of various individuals to falsely imprison a family and abduct children how do you even come up with that idea right i think they did it because they felt we have to go overboard to have a chance of getting him and fortunately they failed can you say how much you were paid to defend him no i can't that's uh that's private i'm sure it was quite a bit though okay did you maintain a relationship with michael after the case throughout the years you know after the verdict i had lived in santa maria in northern santa barbara county for six months i moved back to los angeles my home uh i communicated with michael a little bit but the main subject in my communication was i felt he should leave neverland and that did not go over so well because he loved neverland he loved what he created he had created the most idyllic beautiful magical enchanting place to live you kind of had to be there during the day and he had to be there at night at night he had strategically placed lights at various parts of neverland he had he was playing disney-like music it was such a beautiful place the animals the zoo the amusement park you you have one of the greatest creative geniuses on the planet using his enormous talents and creativity to create an environment to live in that he just felt so at home at so i said look you got to leave here i said every place in life has a start and a finish i said i don't trust the prosecution they've been humiliated before the whole world you know they thought there was no way they could lose this case and they're going to be gunning for you they're going to be looking for something to come after you on some child is going to wander through a fence and they're going to say the kid was molested they're going to come up with something i said i don't think you can live in peace here and he had people calling me saying what do you know why did you conclude this because a lot of people didn't want them to leave you know but i told them the truth i said i just don't trust the environment they've been humiliated they're devastated by this loss in front of the whole world and then i didn't hear from him for about maybe three weeks four weeks and then he called my law firm partner from bahrain in the middle east where he had moved to and uh then of course one thing after another he moved the middle east he was there about 11 months i think then he moved i think to ireland he tried and he thought of living in england and eventually ended up back in las vegas then moved to los angeles uh to start his comeback tour and then unfortunately passed away yeah in 2009 he ended up dying and you actually went to his funeral i went i went to his burial burial the large funeral um at staples center i was not able to go to because i was in the middle of a trial and a federal judge would not let me have the day off so unfortunately i had to miss that i really wanted to go i did say some words which were in the program about what i felt about michael but the burial i did attend yeah such a loss and such a shock uh to the world um i mean when you found out the way he died you know he had a living doctor that was prescribing drugs to him that he should not have been prescribing uh i mean he was giving michael jackson a drug that they use when you operate on somebody and you want them completely unconscious and michael ended up essentially dying from that drug and the doctor ended up getting convicted what were your thoughts on that well first of all anyone who's facing what michael jackson was facing during the criminal trial is probably going to want to have some medication he was having trouble sleeping he was having trouble with depression he was having trouble with anxiety so many people facing a criminal case will go to their physician and be prescribed anti-anxiety medication antidepressant medications sleep medication that's not unusual at all i never asked him if he was on any medication but i assumed he was on some like many other people i never heard of propofol till michael passed away i didn't even know what it was uh the more i learned about it the more outraged i became right that anybody would give this to him because apparently it induces a sleep-like effect without your body really sleeping so you'll wake up thinking i had a good sleep your body never had a good sleep and your body starts wasting away for lack of sleep and it's very dangerous dangerous to the respiratory system dangerous to your heart why would anybody be giving him something like this and the more i learned about it the more angry i became well ten years after that in 2019 hbo puts out leaving neverland and wade robson and james safechuk were the two main people in this documentary wade took the stand on michael jackson's behalf in your trial and james save chuck i guess was around as well during the trial and you had talked to him and i guess both sides has supposed to i never spoke to mr safety oh you did okay but he did file a he did prepare and sign or shouldn't say i don't know if he prepared it he signed a sworn declaration basically saying he was never molested or anything of that sort yeah wade robson i talked to i called as a witness um i called his mother i called his sister um i'm still shocked that these two would allege what they've alleged no i've never watched the movie leaving neverland i refuse to watch it i will not dignify it i'm outraged at what i've heard about it well and then wade robinson and james sabchuk are actually suing the jackson estate even though they claim it's not about the money it's about the money obviously when you sue someone in civil court for money it's about money about the money right a lot of people will say well it's really principle but if that's true why are they asking for a large sum of money exactly and i guess the jackson estate is actually suing hbo yes you're not involved in that at all are you uh a little bit i'm special counsel to the michael jackson estate okay and i may very well be involved in that okay guys does it look like they're going to win that oh i think so i think okay well then in 2015 you represented suge knight yes how did you get on that case you know i got a call from a young lawyer who was representing shug and wanted me to have dinner with him and i did and he said suge knight would like you to consider defending him and one thing led to another and for seven months i represented suge knight uh then i had a falling out uh with various people and i basically withdrew from the case but you know shug was always decent to me very bright guy uh very creative a lot of leadership ability a very talented man and always treated me well i have to say that but there were some differences that developed they're confidential and i'll leave it at that but i only have decent things to say about him well i mean the case kind of focused over a situation in compton where he goes to uh the film set of straight outta compton movie during the course an altercation breaks out and he ends up running his car uh into uh cle uh bone sloan who was beating him up at the time he runs him over but then he ends up also hitting terry carter which was his friend and ends up killing him um suge knight said he acted in self-defense he did so you think he acted in a self-defense i think it was pure self-defense and i'll take it a step further i think if a old white lady had been driving that car and did what suge knight did they'd be giving her a medal in downtown los angeles for what she did instead of charging her with murder i think he was charged because he was shook you were originally on the case and then stephen l schwartz took over and then uh thaddeus culpepper replaced uh replaced him and then uh antoine d williams uh jamal twoson and jeremy lessom took over the case and i believe some of the lawyers ended up getting indicted right you know i don't know what they did or didn't do i know i never did anything wrong right nor would i um i won't comment on those cases because i really don't know much about them well ultimately september 2018 uh knight pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter he was sentenced to 28 years in prison 22 years running over the victim of six years because it was a third strike do you think the shogu should have taken it to trial i thought it was very defensible i really did i do too i thought it was very very defensible look at that tape you know it appears that people are surrounding suge what is suge to do he never gets out of the truck he never uses a weapon illegally he basically was attacked and he got out of there and unfortunately someone was fatally injured another person was injured survived what is shook supposed to do well i think what they were saying was at the moment that he backed up he could have just gotten away instead he ended up ramming the guy that was that was beating him up bone and then take a look at the whole tape it appears that people are starting to surround suge and suge knows the territory suge knows the neighborhood sug knows who these guys are and sugg takes off to get out of there and i think it was pure self-defense well i remember i interviewed uh reggie wright uh junior who was you know had a security at death row at one point and he was talking to shug around that time and what he explained to me on camera was that not only was suge facing that situation but he was actually facing three different felonies because there was other there was the whole thing of uh threatening uh the movie director there was also like the taking of the camera so from shuk's point of view what i was told was that he had to beat three different felonies because it was his third strike and then potentially three more appeals to avoid that third strike in life in prison so that's why he ended up taking that plea deal you know again i wasn't involved in the plea bargaining that went into that i don't know what the reasoning was he was facing some other cases that's that's correct yeah yeah and ultimately he took the plea deal 22 years he was eligible for parole in uh july of 2037. have you talked to him after that case i have not got you well then you end up representing bill cosby yes okay so in december of 2015 three uh class two felony charges for aggravated indecent assault were filed against uh bill cosby in montgomery county pennsylvania so this was based on allegations by andrea constand from a situation back in 2004 and i guess constant her attorney because originally that case was sealed right and they had actually filed a motion to negate the confidential confidentiality agreement because they said that cosby had engaged in total abandonment of the confidentiality portions of the agreement and a judge actually ruled that releasing the sealed documents was justified because of cosby's role as a public moralist in contrast to his possible criminal private behavior number one do you agree that these documents should have been unsealed let me say this the cosby case is on appeal it's in front of the pennsylvania supreme court they've already had oral argument and we're waiting for a ruling i don't want to say anything that could affect what the supreme court does or doesn't do but let me say this this was the most unfair trial of my career consider the following first of all they did not file the case in time it's what is called a statute of limitations issue you have to file a case in a certain amount of time or you can't file it at all we did our research and proved they didn't file this case on time we filed our motion and all our evidence and the judge refused to have a hearing on statute of limitations that's what we call a jurisdictional issue the case should never have been tried there was no jurisdiction but the judge wouldn't even have a hearing on that second of all the prior district attorney of montgomery county testified under oath that he made an agreement with mr cosby's prior lawyers that cosby would not be prosecuted and because he was not going to be prosecuted he should take a civil deposition and that former district attorney to this day maintains i entered into a binding agreement not to prosecute it there was a hearing on that agreement and the trial judge ruled that the former d.a was incredible now what was the relationship between the trial judge and the prior d.a they had been political opponents for d.a it had been a vicious nasty campaign so all of a sudden you've got two opponents one guy wins d.a he enters into an agreement not to prosecute bill cosby which he to this day says was a binding agreement his opponent who lost becomes the trial judge then there's a hearing on the binding agreement and the trial judge decides his former opponent was not credible when he said i entered into a binding agreement this issue is before the pennsylvania supreme court okay there's another problem and that is that the judge allowed five other women to get on the stand and claim they'd been sexually assaulted none of these cases were ever prosecuted some of them were 30 years old now if somebody says 30 years ago bill cosby assaulted me tell me how we're supposed to defend that right can we find forensic evidence 30 years later no can we find the witnesses 30 years later no can we reconstruct what exactly happened 30 years ago of course not so why are you allowing five women none of whom were in criminal cases against him to come in years later and testify in a case that involves someone else as the alleged victim not them it was purely done to prejudice the jury it was purely done to deny bill cosby a fair trial and if you put all of this stuff together it was the most unfair trial i've ever been part of well the first trial which ended in june 2017 was a mistrial yes right young jury yeah so then a retrial was set yes um and at that point that's when he hired you to represent him in the retrial yes in the first trial the judge let one other woman testify against bill cosby one other woman in addition to the alleged victim when i showed up he allowed five women to testify along with the alleged victim it was clearly an effort to make sure there was a conviction by the trial judge how was your initial meetings with bill cosby oh he said bill cosby is a delightful person to talk to he's very intelligent he's very funny he's very engaging he's a very respectful person of other people he's one of the brightest men i've ever met and it was delightful to interact with bill cosby i just wish he hadn't been in this situation and he certainly doesn't deserve to be in prison and didn't deserve to be convicted well on april 26 2018 a jury found cosby guilty of felony sexually sexual assault on all three counts each of the three counts carried a prison term of up to 10 years when you heard the news that he lost when you're you know because you were in the courtroom how did you feel i felt horrible i felt it was a total injustice i felt the trial was so unfair so prejudiced against him i felt he had been denied due process i felt race had something to do with it although i couldn't prove it um and i was very very upset how did bill cosby react when you're sitting next to him bill cosby is one of the most courageous people i've ever met he's a man of absolute impeccable character he basically took it in stride never complained didn't come out blaming other people for it he's a real man of character well on june 15th of that same year he ended up firing you well i mean i lost the case right uh he brought in another team he has since brought in another team after that and he has that appellate team which i'm not part of which is hoping hoping to overturn the conviction and we're waiting for the pennsylvania supreme court to rule right because on september 25th 2018 he was sentenced to three to ten years in state prison when you heard the sentencing what did you think i felt so sad because the man doesn't belong in prison he's 83 years old he's legally blind in my opinion he's not guilty he shouldn't have been convicted and i feel very bad for he and his family so the appeal was was actually filed june 25th of 2019. so why is it taking this long to kind of go through the appeal process well i'm not part of the appellate team and i'm not an appellate lawyer i'm a trial lawyer i typically don't do post-conviction work but first of all you've got to get the entire trial record all the trial exhibits the appellate lawyers have to go through it with a fine-tooth comb they have to prepare a brief they file the brief there's a schedule where they file a brief the prosecution files their opposition then the petitioner files their response to the prosecution's opposition it goes before a court of appeals there's oral argument they rule and then in this case the court of appeals denied his appeal and then his appellate lawyers appeal to the pennsylvania supreme court who was entertaining his appeal right now and from what i can see the oral arguments went very positive for bill cosby but we won't know what it what the final result is until we get their their ruling okay so bill cosby might be let out he could be i hope he is well and then in september 18 2020 uh danny masterson 44 years old who was known for his role on the 70s show prosecutors allege that he raped a 23 year old woman sometimes in 2000 at some time in 2001 a 28 year old woman in 2003 and a 23 year old woman on the same year um and you end up representing him i am danny's lead counsel i don't want to discuss the facts of the case we're in the middle of the case right now the only thing i will say is he's pleaded not guilty he's a wonderful client wonderful father wonderful guy and we intend to prove he's not guilty well the women that are accusing him are they still anonymous i don't want to say anything about them at this point because we're in an ongoing case got it uh we're going to prove he's innocent got it in terms of some of the other high-profile cases that are happening right now for example the derek chovin trial did you follow that i did what was your take on that trial that tape of the white police officer sitting on top of the deceased is among the most haunting the most sadistic the most monstrous tapes i've ever seen you're watching someone with power sit on top of someone with their knee in their neck who's handcuffed who can't escape can't move and you're watching the life slowly snuff out of george floyd it was horrible but i'll say this as horrible as that tape was the case was even worse than that because you have that tape which i think is enough i think it's enough to prove murder in addition you have senior police officers testifying against chovin you have a battery of expert witnesses use of force experts medical experts a cardiologist a pathologist all showing why this was murder i thought he should have been charged with first-degree murder first-degree murder is premeditated murder but in a first-degree murder case there's a jury instruction which is that there is no amount of time required for premeditation it can happen over a long period of time or it could happen in an instant and in my opinion chovin had nine minutes and 29 seconds to think about what he was doing i thought he should have been charged with first-degree murder do you think that the derek shoving conviction is a turning point in america in terms of police getting away with murder well not getting away with murder i mean he was convicted well that's what i'm saying that after this case it sends a signal to police officers everywhere that they can't get away with murder the way they have been essentially for hundreds of years it's always been very hard to convict a police officer of murder jurors don't want to believe police officers are capable of this and jurors want to believe that police officers are there to protect them and good police officers are i mean look let me be honest there's nobody i admire more than a courageous honest honorable disciplined well-trained police officer officers look they protect us every day but if you get a dirty cop or you get a criminal with a badge like we saw with george floyd that's a disaster because look at the power they have look at what happened there you've got bystanders horrified by what they're seeing a mixed martial artist an emt you've got young people older people all saying stop this don't do this telling the police officer you can't do this to somebody they're horrified and the officer just sits there and lets the life slowly and painfully and sadistically ab out i mean it's it's horrifying it's the right result i think it's a watershed case i think it's going to send shockwaves through the country don't be a bad cop don't be a dirty cop and train these people better than we're doing because now police officers will testify against other police officers it's the first time i'd seen anything quite like that well on the same day that derek chovin was convicted of murder in columbus ohio a police officer ended up shooting 16 year old uh makia bryant did you watch that video i didn't see that video no okay you're not familiar with the case no but i'll let me say this how can so many young people be shot at in routine traffic violations how can it be well that wasn't a traffic violation no but i mean you're seeing young black men pulled over and end up dead in routine traffic stops i mean how can this be there's got to be something radically wrong with the system why are young black people being shot because they don't have a tag that's up to date on their license plate or you can't see the license plate how can shooting someone be the option for a police officer in routine traffic stops it just doesn't make sense to me something's radically wrong i agree i agree have you been following the r kelly case at all i have a little bit yes okay and the r kelly case there's some similarities to the michael jackson case not in terms of innocence or guilt but in terms of a documentary triggered an investigation you know in michael jackson's case he had a documentary now that was surviving r kelly from your point of view do you think r kelly is going to beat it or do you think he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison well i met our kelly one time oh really i was very impressed with him very bright very very interesting guy very nice guy to talk to um i don't know the facts well enough i don't know what they did to bring these charges i mean is there government misconduct is the government overreaching is the government leaning on witnesses and threatening witnesses i don't know i've only followed it from a distance he's presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and i extend everyone the presumption of innocence i think that's the society we live in there you go there you go well what some people may not realize is that apart from all these high-profile uh celebrity cases that you take you actually do a lot of pro bono work we actually go down south and represent people in murder cases on your own dime well i've been going to the state of alabama for 23 years every year taking at least one homicide case for free a number of them have been death penalty cases some of them it was strictly life in prison which was the ultimate punishment but i've been doing that in alabama for 23 years i did one pro bono death penalty case in the state of mississippi as well and 23 years ago i met two young lawyers in birmingham they were up against it they were defending a high-profile death penalty case where their client was a homeless black man charged with murdering a beautiful white girl from a prominent family and every time there was a court appearance you saw the black face and the white face and the on the headlines there was a lot of racial tension over the case they asked me if i would help them i said i would i went down and we acquitted our client which resulted in a lot of tension a lot of antagonism in the city in fact my dear friend charlie salvaggio who recently passed away i'm still upset over that i'm devastated over his passing he was a character he grew up dirt poor italian in a black project and when he was growing up the rednecks would call italians the n-word like they would call black people the n-word he grew up dirt poor he was a truck driver he was a roofer he was a construction worker he was a dj and he saved money and he put himself through a local college and law school and he became the top criminal defense attorney in birmingham and he and i just bonded as close friends so every year for 23 years he would call me and say would you help me with this homicide case and i rarely said no i don't think i ever said no once so i always did at pro bono but after our client the homeless black man was acquitted charlie went back to his office and there were death threats on his office machine and he went to a local television station he brought the message machine with him he played it on television and then pulled out his gun and said you know where my office is and that's who charlie selvaggio was my dear friend as i said he just shockingly passed away a few months ago and i'm still devastated by it but we did we did that case we did a fellow who was on death row for six years for a double homicide got his conviction reversed on a technicality we went to trial and defended him and he was acquitted we in 2015 had a very high profile murder case in bessemer alabama which is about 40 minutes outside of birmingham our client a fellow named charleston wells was a young gang member who was charged with murdering an iraqi war veteran who was coming out of his home early in the morning to jog a wonderful veteran of the military who had two wonderful kids he was gunned down they claimed that some black gang members were breaking into cars and murdered them and they claimed that our client was the shooter so we went to trial in bessemer another very tense high-profile case i put charleston wells on the stand he explained how he grew up hard on the street how he got jumped into a gang what he had to do but he looked at the jury he said i had nothing to do with this i didn't shoot anybody i didn't have a gun i didn't want anybody to shoot anyone i didn't know anything was happening i did break into cars so they convicted him of the car burglaries and acquitted him of the murder which was very controversial in fact a few days later on about 300 doorsteps in the area of the courthouse the ku klux klan had laid down brochures saying rise up whitey the n-word got off this kind of thing a very tense environment yeah you know you you go through the south i there's so much about the south i love i've seen judges and lawyers and some of the one most wonderful people i've ever met you also have your redneck element that is very racist and shouldn't be functioning the way they do well yeah i mean besides going down south uh to do the pro bono work you have a free legal clinic in los angeles that uh gives free legal advice to the poor um you have free services for women recovering from abuse free representations for death row convicts in mississippi and alabama you march with the women of watts you've gotten awards from the city of los angeles and other groups so it almost seems like everything everything you've done on the high profile side you've done as much or more for people that we don't know about that we've never heard of who can't afford to hire you and give you those big paychecks well for years i volunteered at free legal clinics in south los angeles first african methodist episcopal church crenshaw united episcopal church west angeles church of god these churches would have various clinics where they invited lawyers and paralegals and college students and activists to donate their time to council people in trouble and i did that for years and after the jackson case my name was big so i started my own clinic it started at brooklyn's amy church and then jumped to a couple of other churches through the years but basically it's a clinic where lawyers law students college students activists all donate their time on a weekend to counsel people whatever their problem may be can be a civil problem it can be divorce can be a business problem it can be a problem with an estate or a criminal problem it's called the mesaro free legal clinic and i'm very proud to uh to be behind that i also there are a number of organizations through the years that i got involved with there were wonderful organizations a lot of people don't know about there's a group called save our sons at crenshaw united episcopal church it was started by dr dolores allen an african-american woman who was the first african-american female to graduate from the university of louisville medical school and she has a son who was wrongfully convicted and is in prison and in response to this travesty of justice she started an organization called save our sons that's formed by black mothers whose sons are incarcerated and years ago they used to ask me to speak about the drug laws about other facets of the legal system they would have job fairs where convicted felons could find out what jobs were available so i helped them the women of watts was started by my dear friend lydia friend as her name she lives in watts i've been doing that for 16 years it's an annual march usually in june we march through the projects we stop where a young person has been gunned down and say a prayer the route changes every year it's a focus attention on gang violence to focus attention on the need for peace it's led by children and their mothers through the projects i've done that for 16 years and there's some other organizations i've helped out when i could my dear friend kay coulson who worked at terminal island the federal prison for years and then retired and called me up one day and said i want to start an organization to help women in recovery women who are getting out of jail or prison to help them find a way to live productive lives would you help us out so i used to help them out there's an award they give in my name to a young person who's shown interest in the community and done good deeds and shows a desire to excel they're focusing more on homeless children lately and other organizations i've helped from time to time i do what i can um i'm just a human being so i've got a practice and i've got a family and i've i do what i can do well tom messero such an interesting career and your involvement with these huge cases that i really feel has sort of changed the legal course of america is really something to be proud of and you know like you said at the beginning regardless of a person's actions they all deserve to have good representation and that's something that you have done for many years now both for the rich and famous and the poor and disadvantaged and um you know you're still going strong you're still you know have your your foot you know in the legal field and i'm really just looking forward to what else you got coming up well thank you very much it's been an honor to be here and you asked wonderful questions and i really appreciate it thank you until next time

Channel: djvlad

Views: 391,720

Keywords: VladTV, DJ Vlad, Interview, Hip-Hop, Rap, News, Gossip, Rumors, Drama, Tom Mesereau

Id: EK5oMhA6Eco

Length: 100min 30sec (6030 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021