Dan: [00:00:04] In police stations across the country, officers start their shifts in The Briefing Room.

Dave: [00:00:10] It’s a place where law enforcement can speak openly and candidly about safety, training, policy, crime trends, and more.

Dan: [00:00:17] We think it’s time to invite you in.

Dave: [00:00:19] So, pull up a chair.

Dan and Dave: [00:00:21] Welcome to The Briefing Room.

[Briefing Room theme playing]

Dan: [00:00:36] Imagine you’re the parent of a 13-year-old child. She’s gone on a bike ride like she often does. She has a curfew, which she always complies with. Then the worst thing you can imagine happens. The curfew passes and she’s nowhere to be found. You call her friends, they haven’t seen her. You scour the neighborhood, she’s nowhere to be found. You call the police, and your worst nightmare begins.

Dave: [00:00:59] That’s the story at the heart of our next guest’s book, In My DNA: My Career Investigating Your Worst Nightmares. In the case of 13-year-old Jennifer Bastian, who went missing in her town near Tacoma, Washington, on August 4th, 1986, the worst nightmare came true. Her body was found three weeks later, but the case went cold for over 30 years. Detective Lindsey Wade helped lead the team that solved the case. Hello, Lindsey.

Lindsey: [00:01:24] Hello. Thank you for having me.

Dave: [00:01:26] This was a cold case that landed on your desk, and you dug in, and solved it. For anyone in law enforcement, a fresh child abduction is a nightmare call. But law enforcement officers don’t get a whole lot of training on child abduction cases. So, they might not know exactly where to go, which resources to start mobilizing. And that can be a huge issue because minutes matter in these child abduction cases. Lindsey, you train law enforcement on child abductions and you’ve worked numerous child abduction cases.

Lindsey: [00:02:03] Right.

Dave: [00:02:03] I wanted to lean on you, so you could provide some expertise on what law enforcement should do, what parents should be concerned with, and in general, how child abduction cases are investigated.

Lindsey: [00:02:18] Appreciate you having me on the show. This is a topic that is so important for law enforcement to really understand, for the general public to really understand. I think that it is so complicated and these cases are so massive that they really can just take over an entire agency and really an entire community in the blink of an eye. And so, it’s one of those situations where you really have to have resources set up ahead of time. And unfortunately, a lot of agencies will never experience a situation that requires them to get ready, if that makes sense for something like this. And a lot of times, of course, waiting until it happens is too late.

Dave: [00:02:59] It’s one of those calls that you’re just hoping never happens, but how do you hammer home the most important first steps of these investigations? You can’t get the first hour back. You, as a subject matter expert, what are the absolute must haves from a police response in the first couple minutes, hours, and days? What should a family expect to see from an appropriate law enforcement response?

Lindsey: [00:03:28] Yeah, that’s a difficult question to answer because every situation is so different, and I think with the majority of child abduction cases, it’s not witnessed. And so, that puts law enforcement in a really difficult predicament from the beginning, because they don’t really know what they have. And hindsight is always 2020, and sometimes it takes a while to figure out what you have. We’ve all been to those calls, all been sent to a place because a child is overdue, the kid was due home after school, or should have been home hours ago and hasn’t come home. We’ve all responded to those and they turned up to be nothing. They turned up to be, “Oh, the kid forgot to check in or they stopped at somebody else’s house and didn’t tell their parents.”

[00:04:15] So, when law enforcement gets that call of a missing child, they have to weed through all those previous experiences of, it’s probably just an overdue child. That’s what we’re used to responding to. In some cases, though, it’s pretty clear from the get go that something has happened. And in those cases, I think it may be a little bit easier for law enforcement to quickly mobilize, and lock down the crime scene, and call out detectives, and decide whether or not an Amber alert is appropriate, and do all of those initial steps that you would take if you do have a true child abduction. Unfortunately, it just usually doesn’t happen like that.

[00:04:57] A lot of the cases that I’ve been involved with, either current cases or cold cases, they didn’t happen like that. There were hours between when the child was last seen and when they get reported. It’s not really clear at first if nobody wants to make a big deal out of it. And that, of course, puts the police and the investigation behind the eight ball, because now you may have days or weeks, hopefully not weeks, but sometimes, a long time between when that child was last seen, and when law enforcement is finally notified and gets involved.

[00:05:32] There was a case that I was involved with been a few years ago now. And in that situation, the family didn’t report the child missing for over 24 hours, and she was six. So, you have the fact that the child isn’t even reported missing for 24 hours, which means the police aren’t involved for over 24 hours. And then in that case, just based on her age alone, really ratcheted up the level of response by the law enforcement agency, because at that point, okay, she’s six years. She shouldn’t have been out all night on her own. No one really knows what happened to her initially, but regardless, it’s pretty dangerous for a six-year-old to be out on their own all night long.

[00:06:15] So, either something happened to her at the beginning or something may have happened to her later. But even though there was no witness to what happened to her, no one could really say, those facts alone tell us, “Okay, we need to really heighten the response here.”

Dan: [00:06:31] Lindsey, you talk about a 24-hour gap in law enforcement being even notified of this. The significance of that that I think Dave and I recognize and obviously you is that we’ve got potentially a crime scene that is being contaminated or especially up where you work depending on time of the year, the weather can have a huge impact on that crime scene. So, can you talk about why it’s so important that law enforcement gets involved early? This is our job as law enforcement. We are bound to investigate. That’s what we do. So, it’s not an interruption to our work. It’s the purpose of our work.

Lindsey: [00:07:09] Yeah. It is absolutely critical that law enforcement be notified as quickly as possible to do exactly what you said, to lock down that crime scene, to preserve it, and make sure that evidence isn’t lost, destroyed, walked away with, cleaned up, or whatever. And with child abduction cases, there may be multiple crime scenes. In fact, there usually are multiple crime scenes. And so, I would also take it a step further to say, not only should law enforcement be contacted, but whoever’s going to be investigating it, presumably a detective or a detective unit or a Child Abduction Response Team should be notified as soon as possible. And that was really one thing that we tried to hammer home with our agency.

[00:07:50] When I was working with our Child Abduction Response Team is that we want to be notified right away. Don’t wait a couple of hours while you try to figure it out and try to find the child in patrol before you call us and now that you’ve exhausted all your leads. We want to know now. I don’t care if I get in the car and I drive in and then as soon as I arrive, the child is found, which has happened. That’s fine. I’m good with that. I would rather have that than have you call me two hours or three hours into it and say, “This child’s been missing. We’ve done these 10 different steps and we still can’t find the child. So, can you come out?” I don’t want to hear that. It’s never going to be a waste of resources because like you said, you can’t get that time back.

Dave: [00:08:30] Right. You mentioned the CART team, the Child Abduction Response Team. What did a Child Abduction Response Team look like at your agency and what are the roles and responsibilities of each member?

Lindsey: [00:08:41] So, yeah, Child Abduction Response Team, CART, is what you’ll hear people refer to them as, and it’s a multidisciplinary team of investigators and other professionals within the criminal justice arena who come together and respond in a timely manner when a child is abducted. And CARTs are pretty well known around the country. They can look different depending on the agency and the size of the jurisdiction. Our CART in Tacoma, I think we started working on it around 2009, and we got certified by the Department of Justice in 2013.

[00:09:18] It was a really huge undertaking for our agency. CARTs are, they’re invaluable and what they bring to the agency is organizational structure, and a plan, and training, and expertise. It brings together a group of people that can be basically called at a moment’s notice to respond. There’s no scrambling, trying to figure out, “Okay, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? What’s your role going to be?” Everybody knows ahead of time what their role is. So, we had about 30 core team members on our CART, and that included detectives, it included people from our child advocacy center, it included prosecutors, people from Department of Corrections, Department of Social and Health Services like CPS workers.

[00:10:10] We also had our SWAT team involved with our CART, because we knew just from other cases that some of these situations can become extremely high risk very quickly, and so we wanted to make sure we covered that component. We had search and rescue as a big part of our team. We also included the Team Adam representatives from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. We had a therapist who was involved to assist with reunification. And then we also worked really closely with the FBI, and so they’ve got victim specialists that would assist us on these kinds of cases as well.

[00:10:51] With these child abduction cases, when they occur, they are so massive and so chaotic because you’re just getting inundated with information from the news media, people calling in tips. It’s pretty important that you have a system in place ahead of time to capture all of that information to organize it, to quickly dissect it, and identify how you’re going to prioritize the tips, and how you’re going to sign them out, and who’s going to follow up, and who’s going to document all that. So, these are all things that we took into account when we created that CART team.

Dave: [00:11:28] Was there a landmark or a milestone-type case that made your agency decide, “We need to go with a Child Abduction Response Team model. This is what we need to go for?” Or, was it a cumulative, “Hey, we’ve had these over the years. Let’s get organized?”

Lindsey: [00:11:45] Unfortunately, we’d had quite a few child abductions in Tacoma prior to us forming the team. When I say quite a few, I mean, just off the top of my head, maybe six or seven at least. Most of those were unsolved. Then we had one in 2007 that was really horrific and we did end up solving it.

Dan: [00:12:08] You’re talking about a case where a 12-year-old girl was abducted by a sex offender.

Lindsey: [00:12:13] Yeah. It brought to light some of the deficiencies with how child abductions are investigated. And so, one of the recommendations that we received after that was that we needed a comprehensive child recovery strategy. And then, in order to get certified by DOJ, we had to do this huge mock exercise where we had, I don’t know, maybe 150 participants and a bunch of different locations around the city where we did this mock child abduction from start to finish. We had assessors on site from DOJ that were watching the whole thing and assessing us in real time. So, it was pretty nerve wracking to say the least, but we did it. It was successful. And so, I think that our city is much better off. Since then, since we created the team, we have been called to other jurisdictions to assist them with their cases.

Dan: [00:13:23] Lindsey, can you talk a little bit about the different types of abduction or missing child cases that you encounter?

Lindsey: [00:13:30] Well, so, some of the cases that I have worked on as cold cases, they’re still unsolved even today. I have my opinions about what may have happened with those cases. One of the cases that I worked on was a case that’s still unsolved, and I believe that it’s most likely what is referred to as a false allegation case. And a false allegation case is a case where a parent or a caretaker makes a false report of a missing child to cover up a homicide. They’re very difficult cases to investigate, but there are some flags or some key considerations when someone reports a really little kid missing, a kid that is really too young to be off on their own or a suspicious story about the kid going missing from the house when they’re two or three years old or one or a baby, an infant, that kind of thing.

[00:14:28] So, those cases, they’re really hard. I don’t know what the stats are on solvability factors for those kinds of cases, but those kinds are hard. The stranger abduction is the most unlikely type of child abduction, the stereotypical kidnapping. And the one case I talked about with a six-year-old, that was an acquaintance. And so, it turned out to be somebody that she knew, somebody that lived in her neighborhood. The cases with the two little girls from 1986 that I talked to you about on a previous episode, those were stranger cases.

Dave: [00:15:08] This is a cold case that dates back to 1986 that you talk about on our other podcast, Small Town Dicks.

Lindsey: [00:15:15] Yeah. And so, those are the most rare, the hardest to solve, because there’s no connection between the victims and the suspects, and they literally are victims of opportunity. With a lot of these child abduction suspects, when they’re interviewed, they will say, the victim was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t like this perpetrator was out stalking them, or had been watching them, or picked them out ahead of time. It literally was they’re looking for a victim and the victim presented themselves.

[00:15:49] The case from 2007 that I talked about earlier, it was the same situation. She was a 12-year-old little girl. She was literally standing in her backyard, about to walk into her backyard. She had her hand on her back gate trying to walk into her yard when this guy pulled up. He saw her a minute prior to this. He was pissed off. He wanted to have his kid for the day. This is according to him, later, and his ex-wife wasn’t home when he showed up unannounced. So, in his mind, I guess, that gave him permission to go do whatever he wanted. So, he said he was driving around, he was angry, he saw this girl riding her bike, and he decided that he was going to grab her.

[00:16:31] He followed her, and pulled his van around, and parked it, so that he could make a quick getaway. He walked up to her and he said, “Does this alley go all the way through?” And she stopped and she addressed him and said, “No,” and then she turned her back on him and tried to go into her backyard, and that’s when he grabbed her and pulled her into his van and then took off. He later murdered her and dumped her body out in a rural area. And he was a registered sex offender. He was within like nine months of being off sex offender registration at the time of the murder. So, he was level one, which was considered the least likely to reoffend.

[00:17:10] Yeah, he didn’t know her, never seen her before. It was just that he was looking for a victim. I think a lot of these guys do have, of course, a fantasy of what their victim looks like, but if a victim presents themselves that’s vulnerable and available, they’re going to go for it.

Dan: [00:17:25] Yeah. And his motivation was based on a disagreement with his ex.

Lindsey: [00:17:30] That’s what he said. That was what set him off.

Dan: [00:17:33] So, I’ve encountered true stranger abduction. I’ve been working when one of those occurred. I’ve been a part of an abduction where it was an acquaintance who abducted a woman. And then the other type that was a little more common to me was more of a custodial interference type of abduction where somebody loses a custody hearing or something similar, where they’re not going to have equal access to their child and they feel slighted, so they just decide that they’re going to take their child. That’s something that I have found to be fairly common. Do you agree with that?

Lindsey: [00:18:09] Yes. When it comes to abduction cases, the majority of child abductions are family abductions compared to acquaintances or strangers. I will say though that sometimes people have this belief that if it’s a family member that abducts the child, then it’s okay, like, they’re with their dad or they’re with their mom. That’s just absolutely not the case, because these kids are being taken as punishment. And oftentimes, they’re not taken care of. They’re hidden. They’re subject to abuse themselves, whether it’s physical, sexual, or mental, and they’ve been ripped away from their other parent that they love. So, they are very tragic cases as well.

Dave: [00:18:48] Absolutely. You think about Hollywood and their portrayal of child abduction where you’re getting a ransom note, and we’ll be in touch by Friday at 5 PM, follow the instructions, don’t involve law enforcement. All of that is horseshit. I’ve never heard of it happening in real life. It’s not the way it goes. So, I imagine from a lead detective perspective, this waiting for additional leads, updates, good news, give us something. It’s not like the movies where you’re like, “Well, he’s still talking to us, so we still have a shot.” Usually, you never hear from the abductor. How does that feel for you specifically, I didn’t sleep very well when I was a detective. I can’t imagine having a case like that and being the lead on it, what that would have done to my life?

Lindsey: [00:19:45] Yeah, it was very difficult. It’s like having an elephant and a grand piano strapped to your shoulders, because you do feel like the weight of the world is on you, not only to find this child, but then to hold somebody accountable. My perspective on child abduction cases is we’re not going to wait around for tips. We’re not going to wait around to hope somebody calls something in, like, we need to be proactive. And so, that’s where having some really strong crime analysts involved. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. If a guy goes out and abducts a kid, chances are he’s done it before, he’s done something like it before, there may be some previous attempts, there may be something that happened previously that you can look back to try to help identify the suspect in the case.

[00:20:29] In a lot of these cases, that’s what you’ll find if you look for it is, okay, this child’s just been abducted, but a month prior or three months prior, there was this attempted abduction, and we have a witness in that and a description. So, those are the kinds of things that law enforcement really needs to take a look at when they’re looking at one of these cases, both fresh cases and cold cases as well. Look at what else happened in the area, look at suspicious activity reports, look at Peeping Toms. It doesn’t have to be the exact same type of crime, but look for people that are off, things that are off, odd things that happened at that location prior to the actual abduction.

[00:21:11] Really with the case from 2007, and the one that I talked about with the six-year-old from a few years ago, neither one of those cases was solved by way of tips. Those cases were solved through investigative leads by the detectives working the case. In the case from 2007 with the sex offender that abducted the 12-year-old girl, we solved that case because I happened to find a report when I was digging back through our police database looking for similar crimes or other crimes. I did two different searches. So, I was looking for other crimes, something similar in the area, luring, abduction, kidnapping, sexual assault, anything like that. We had a vehicle description. So, I did some really broad searches just looking for similar vehicles, and I ended up finding a couple of reports with similar vehicles, and we followed up on both of those reports, and one of them turned out to be the guy.

[00:22:14] Unfortunately, when we found him and got him into custody, we had no evidence. Literally, it was just a circumstantial case. We had no body, nothing to tie him to the case. It was just all these circumstantial things. After tallying up the 50 different circumstantial pieces that made him look really good, we presented the case to the prosecutor, and he said that he would take the death penalty off the table if this guy would lead us to this child’s body and he went for it.

Dave: [00:22:49] That was a gamble.

Lindsey: [00:22:50] It was a gamble. And really, it was like, up until he said, I’ll show you where she’s at if I can have a cigarette, I was like, “I don’t even know if this is the right guy.”

Dan: [00:23:01] Not that there’s an average child abduction case or an average offender, but are there commonalities among suspects that you’ve seen over the years?

Lindsey: [00:23:10] Yeah, that’s a tough one because it depends on the type, right? Like, is it family? We’re going to take that out. Acquaintance and stranger can be similar with the statistics. Unfortunately, there haven’t been a lot of studies out there. There’s really only one study that you can point to that’s well known about child abduction, murder cases, and that’s a study that was actually done in Washington State. People just refer to it as the child abduction murder study. And that one, I think they looked at about 800 cases total of solved child abduction murder cases. From that they were able to create some stats about what the composite looks like. Like, what does the average child abduction victim look like and what does the average child abduction murder suspect look like.

[00:23:58] For the suspect, it’s a white male somewhere around 28 years old, somebody who’s got marginal social skills. When you’re talking about someone that’s going to abduct a kid off the street or even a slight acquaintance, this is somebody that doesn’t have the social skills to groom a child. This is not the camp counselor, the boy scout leader, whoever. The person that has access to these kids all the time and is continuously assaulting these kids because they have the skill set to groom them, this is the person that probably couldn’t carry on a face-to-face conversation with anybody. Those are the kinds of offenders typically.

Dan: [00:24:38] Little more impulsive?

Lindsey: [00:24:41] Yeah, the stranger or the slight acquaintance type of abductions. Some of them, actually, I think at the time of the offense, majority were unemployed. For the ones that did work, the most common job was some kind of construction work.

Dave: [00:24:58] What Lindsey is describing sounds very familiar to me. I can think of two cases in our area that were child abductions where the offenders in those cases had very poor people skills. So, they don’t have the traditional ability to groom like others who are charming, quick witted, manipulative. So, based on the crimes I’ve worked, when I think of someone who’s able to groom a victim, I think of these folks who can really fit in to almost any scenario. They’re good talkers and they put people at ease. If you don’t have those skills, brute force becomes an option.

Lindsey: [00:25:37] Mm-hmm. For these child abduction murders, most of the suspects that were identified in the study were not registered sex offenders. They were actually a very small number. However, a good percentage of them did have history for child sexual assault or some kind of sexual assault offense. So, while they may not have been a sex offender, they had something in their history, an arrest or a conviction or something. Maybe they were even just listed as a suspect in some kind of a sexual assault case. And so, that should be something that investigators key in on.

[00:26:11] The sex offenders themselves, yes, you have to check them, but they’re probably not as high priority as that person that just has that in their background, but has managed to stay under the radar.

Dave: [00:26:24] I have always noticed that that you see– I watch a lot of true crime.

Lindsey: [00:26:29] [laughs] Yeah.

Dave: [00:26:30] Sometimes, you get these cases where they’re like, “Oh, and then we just did a sweep of all the sex offenders.” And I’m like, “God, if it was only that easy.”

Lindsey: [00:26:37] Oh, 100%.

Dave: [00:26:38] It’s actually not. So many horrible crimes that I’ve gone to where the person just had a speeding ticket in their past. They’re really good at hiding, folks.

Lindsey: [00:26:47] Yes. And I will say I’m hoping that at some point this study gets updated, now that all these cases have been solved with genetic genealogy, because I think we’re going to see a different picture of the offender once those stats are produced or published, because a lot of the offenders who have been identified and arrested and convicted for child abduction, murder cases, thanks to genealogy, they don’t have any criminal history. They don’t have anything that stands out. There’s nothing about them that meets this stereotypical profile. And so, that’s going to be really interesting. It explains why the cases were unsolved for so long.

Dave: [00:27:28] Yeah.

Dave: [00:27:43] You had a hand in changing some state law regarding DNA. Do you want to talk about that at all?

Lindsey: [00:27:50] Sure. There were two girls that were murdered in Washington state back in 1986, Jennifer Bastian and Michella Welch. When I was investigating their cases as cold cases, I had this theory that the suspects in their cases, they must have slipped through the cracks somehow with their DNA. Because after reading the child abduction murder study, and based on my own experience with these kinds of predators, I just thought, there’s no way these guys are like a one and done. They have to have history for doing this. They have to be incarcerated someplace or maybe they died in prison.

[00:28:25] I just couldn’t believe that a suspect who could commit a crime this horrendous could just be out walking around. So, my thought was, “Okay, I know that we have a major gap with collecting DNA from convicted offenders.” This is national. This is not just a Washington thing. And so, I thought, “Well, could we strengthen our state law with regard to collecting DNA, and maybe it’ll help us solve not only these cold cases, but some other cold cases as well.” There are lots of different reasons why people are missed and why their DNA is not in CODIS.

Dave: [00:29:02] And CODIS, as we know, is the DNA database that law enforcement leans on heavily to identify offenders.

Lindsey: [00:29:09] Yeah. And in this case, I thought, “Well, maybe we can go back and look at some of these older offenders that were operating back in the 1970s and 1980s that are now deceased. Based on our state law, they couldn’t be entered into the DNA database, because they committed their crimes prior to the DNA law actually being enacted. And so, I was able to work with a state representative here in Washington. It took four years of going down to Olympia and lobbying with the mother of one of the victims. But we finally, in 2019, got Jennifer and Michella’s law passed. It did several things to strengthen our DNA law. But the main thing, I guess, that I was happiest about was that it allows law enforcement to enter DNA from deceased convicted offenders into the database regardless of when they were convicted.

[00:30:01] So, prior to this, I found examples of these basically serial killers in Washington that one of them had been executed, and he had just committed a string of atrocious crimes. But not only was he not in CODIS, I was all excited when I tracked down a sample of his DNA at the Medical Examiner’s Office, just to be told by the crime lab, “That’s great, Lindsey, but we can’t do anything with it. Can’t put it in the database.” So, that’s when it lit a fire under me that, “Okay, we need to change something here.”

Dan: [00:30:32] I guess, maybe it’s just too obvious to me, but what is the objection by a lawmaker why you wouldn’t want to put a serial killer’s DNA, even though they’re deceased, into CODIS?

Lindsey: [00:30:43] Well, you would be surprised. One of our trips to Olympia, I don’t even remember which year it was because it’s kind of a blur. Patty Bastian and I, so that’s Jennifer Bastian’s mother, we went to testify in Olympia. And someone basically stepped in and said, “Well, that’s really sad about your daughter and all, but we’re more concerned about the rights of the deceased offenders and their families being bombarded with this kind of information if it were to appear on the news that they were somehow linked to a new crime.”

Dave: [00:31:17] Nothing surprises me anymore. We already have a system that’s fairly weighted in favor of the defendant as far as they have rights. They say, “I don’t want to talk to you. We can’t talk to them anymore.” It’s very protective of defendants. I think we have continued to move where we’re protecting the accused and forgetting about victims and answers, and what’s the bigger picture? If we get this guy’s DNA, maybe we clear six cases and we get closure for dozens of people.

Lindsey: [00:31:52] Absolutely. You have to look at the greater good. I could talk about lawfully owed DNA all day, because that is something that I’m really passionate about, because it’s just ridiculous. I love genetic genealogy, I think it’s great, I’m glad it’s solved so many cases, but we also have CODIS and there are a lot of people that should be in CODIS that are not.

Dave: [00:32:11] 100% agree.

Dan: [00:32:13] I think most parents, it’s the worst nightmare to have your child abducted. And Lindsey, you mentioned this study about child abduction, murder cases, murder statistics, for parents out there, just to give you an idea, what do the stats say about how common child abduction is? Obviously, I think that and we talked about it, acquaintance abductions. So, we’re talking about maybe the creep that lives down the street, who the child has seen in passing over the years, or maybe is even known to say hello to the family every now and then. And stranger abduction, those are the least common types of abduction. What is realistic for parents to feel about the likelihood of their child being abducted? Because we don’t want to panic parents.

Lindsey: [00:33:03] Correct. It’s extremely rare. When I say rare, I mean, the FBI keeps stats on child abductions each year. It’s less than 100 a year for the entire country. It’s probably closer to around 60 per year for the whole country. That sounds like a lot. It is a lot. But compared to other violent crime, it’s extremely rare.

Dan: [00:33:31] So, let’s talk about what parents can do in the meantime with their children, obviously educating their children about stranger danger. We’ve heard it for decades, stranger danger. But what are some things that parents can do on their end in the event of the worst-case scenario happening?

Lindsey: [00:33:50] So, let me first start by saying, you have to have open dialogue with your child. I think there are just some things that parents need to talk about with their kids. I feel bad for my poor daughter because I have had so many conversations with her about this particular topic, way more than she ever wanted to hear about. But it’s just really important to even throw some scenarios at your child. What would you do in this situation? Because believe it or not, they’re not going to do what you think they’re going to do. And so, bringing it to their attention– It sounds silly to us, right? But what if this guy with a cute puppy asks you to come help him find the other puppy, or he says he has a cute puppy and he lost it. We all love animals. Having that open discussion about the fact that these are some potential things that somebody like that could say to you. And so, just be aware. So, at least, if something like that happens, it’s like, “Oh, I remember my mom saying something about that.”

[00:34:52] The other thing that I think is really important is that parents need to explain to their children that adults don’t need anything from them. It’s not okay for an adult to come up to you, to drive up to you and say, “What time is it?” No, they have their own watch, they have their own phone. They don’t need directions from a nine-year-old. They don’t need the time from a nine-year-old. But those are the most common ruses that these guys use to get close to the kids. So, keep that thing in mind.

[00:35:25] Then really arming your kids with the knowledge and also, the permission to yell and scream and say, “No, get away from me,” and to run away. It’s okay. We teach kids to be respectful of adults, and kids are just naturally prone to do that. But make noise, yell, scream, run away. You need to do that. It’s okay.

Dave: [00:35:52] If I can piggyback on Dan’s question, just getting out in front of this, what can parents do? What are items they can keep, pictures, those types of things?

Lindsey: [00:36:03] As far as preparing for your child going missing, yeah, it may be helpful to have things like a fingerprint card. I know they make those ID Me kits and things like that. The reality is that law enforcement is probably going to have a pretty easy time of getting a reference sample if that was necessary.

Dave: [00:36:23] Toothbrush. [chuckles]

Lindsey: [00:36:25] Yeah. So, I’m less concerned about that kind of stuff, more concerned about just let’s avoid it from the get go. And that means encouraging your kids to use the buddy system. And this day and age, it’s all about online safety. I have conversations with my daughter all the time about Roblox and all these games that they play. It’s like, they think that somebody who tells them they’re 14 playing with them in another state is really a 14-year-old. I’m like, “Well, that’s possible, but it also could be like a 75-year-old guy living in his mom’s basement, FYI.”

Dave: [00:36:57] Your daughter’s got a mom who just knows too much.

Lindsey: [00:37:00] [laughs] Yeah. So, I don’t want to scare my child, but the online enticement is a real thing. I know we’ve all heard some horror stories about these online predators who meet these kids online and they say that they’re their same age and then they come across the country and abduct these kids. It does happen.

Dan: [00:37:19] I know Dave’s talked about it for years on the podcast, and especially when he does presentations for parents that, parents you have a right to know what’s in your child’s phone and if your child is going to protest that, then maybe your child just doesn’t get a phone or they just get a phone that has the ability to dial 911 and the parent’s number, that’s it. But I think a lot of parents don’t feel empowered to have that visibility into their child’s phone and the different apps that are on their phone. I know, detective, that was my partner for a while, any app that his child downloaded onto his phone magically appeared on my partner’s phone also. So, my partner, he had the keys to the castle. I want parents to feel empowered to do those things. It’s not that you’re going to snoop on your child, but there’s some accountability there.

Lindsey: [00:38:15] Absolutely. Kids, they are still trying to figure it out, and they just don’t have any kind of a concept of just how evil people can be and how manipulative some of these people can be. And so, it doesn’t even occur to them that those kinds of things could be happening. So, I think it is absolutely important for the parents to be aware and monitor that social media, and the games that they can communicate through. I have an app, the family app, on my phone so I can see where my daughter is at. We’ve got the whole family on there. So, we can all see where we’re at, you know? I think that’s important. I want to know where my child is. If God forbid, something happened to her, I want to be able to go and look and see where she’s at.

Dave: [00:39:17] Have you been present for a reunification between child and parent?

Lindsey: [00:39:21] I have not. No, I have not.

Dave: [00:39:24] Does that feel like an empty checkbox from your career? It’s like, when you work all this tragedy, give me the feel good at the end.

Lindsey: [00:39:33] I know. Although, I think reunifications are tricky. I know we did quite a bit of training on that very topic, because I’ve definitely heard of situations where the reunification didn’t go well, where maybe they do it very publicly. I’ve definitely seen some news footage from some of the older high-profile cases where they literally film the child coming out of the hospital or whatever and reuniting with the family and there’s no privacy. There’re so many variables, like, how long has the child been missing and what kind of things was the child told while they were missing about the parent that’s been searching?

[00:40:08] If they’ve been told the whole time they were gone that the parents didn’t want them anymore, that they basically did something wrong, that’s going to look very different than a child that truly believes their parents were looking for them.

Dave: [00:40:20] I understand that that’s a control tactic and manipulation, but how evil. That’s disgusting. But as we know, they’re out there.

Dan: [00:40:33] The case that I think about the famous case of Steven Stayner, he got abducted when he was seven years old in central California, held hostage by his abductor, Kenneth Parnell for seven years. And then Kenneth Parnell goes out and abducts another kid. And Steven Stayner says, “Uh-uh, this ain’t happening on my watch.” So, Steven Stayner takes this kid, Timothy White, and they escape. Steven Stayner had been living autonomously with Kenneth Parnell. Kenneth Parnell had trusted Steven Stayner to not leave. And finally, Steven Stayner said, “I’ve had enough. I’m not going to watch this happen to this little kid.”

[00:41:12] So, Steven Stayner rescues this child. The reunification with the parents happens. It’s just chaos. There are cameras everywhere. I think it was completely inappropriate how the reunification happened. You’ve got Steven Stayner’s brother, Cary Stayner, who is watching all this, and now he is the forgotten brother. And this whole case is just tragic. Ten years after Steven Stayner reunites with his family, he dies tragically in a hit and run motorcycle accident. And then you’ve got Cary Stayner, who moves up into the Yosemite National Forest. And in 1999, Cary Stayner goes out and murders four women. You couldn’t write it because I don’t think anyone would believe it, but it happened and it’s tragic, and you wonder what the tale of that reunification if that was maybe the spark for all the bad things that happened following.

Dave: [00:42:10] Right. Is there a Cary Stayner as we know him or as we knew him, if his brother, Steven, isn’t ever abducted? The cost is tremendous.

Lindsey: [00:42:21] Yeah.

Dave: [00:42:23] Good or bad, what are some memorable moments from some of these missing and abducted child cases that you’ve worked over the years? Do you have things that just, “Oh, I remember that one, and it always bubbles up?”

Lindsey: [00:42:36] Mm-hmm. Yeah, they’re not fun. I don’t think that anyone would argue that children are the most precious gifts that we have. And so, even the most hardened law enforcement officer, detective, whatever you want to say, has a soft spot when it comes to kids. So, I think the child cases are certainly the hardest to process and to deal with. I think when you’re working on it in real time, it’s easier because you have a job to do, and so you have to focus on the job. It’s more like after the fact. And that’s, I guess, how I experienced those cases.

[00:43:15] I would say for the cold cases, it’s a little bit harder because just the case that we talked about on your other podcast with the two girls that were murdered in 1986, those were long ago cold. And so, it wasn’t like that fresh fear and panic in the community. But once you meet that family and once you make a connection with the victim’s family, it just takes on a different tone and it can become a bit more personal. So, with those cases, I wasn’t there. Like, I wasn’t at the crime scene. I didn’t see all of the things. Looking at photos and watching the crime scene video is different than actually being there.

[00:43:58] You still are emotional, but it’s not quite the same. With the fresh cases, it’s just an emotional roller coaster. [laughs] You’re basically working– I don’t even remember what kind of hours we’re working in the midst of those crazy cases, but it would be 15, 16-hour days. You’d run home and get a couple of hours of sleep and then come back and it’s just nonstop. You’re bombarded. The case that I talked about previously with the little six-year-old, that case was resolved fairly quickly. She, like I said, hadn’t been reported for like 24 hours. And so, when we got involved, I think it was a Monday morning. And so, you figure, okay, all-day Monday, this thing is going, all day Tuesday and I think it was either Wednesday– I think it was Wednesday afternoon, her body was finally found.

[00:45:01] Of course, this was after multiple searches in the same exact area where she was found, which is another issue with child abduction cases, is searches. But in this case, the area had been searched multiple times. People literally walked right over the top of her. And so, when she was finally found, it was like this let down and this sadness, but also like, “Okay, we still have a job to do now. It’s no longer a missing child. Now it’s a homicide case, and we need to find who did it, and we need to get justice for this little girl.” So, while it’s sad and it’s heartbreaking, you still have to go and you still have to get things done. I know for myself, with those kinds of cases, it’s all over. I don’t even know what all over means, because it can take years and years for these cases to go to trial. But it seems like I have to be completely separated and away from it for quite a while before I allow myself to really think about it.

Dave: [00:45:58] I understand that.

Dan: [00:46:01] Lindsey, you mentioned challenges when it comes to searching for a child. Can you give us a little more detail on what you were talking about there?

Lindsey: [00:46:09] Yeah, I can think of several cases where an area had been searched previously, and the child wasn’t found, and then later the child was found in the same exact spot that had already been searched. This has come up in at least three different cases that I can think of right off the top of my head. And so, some people will say, “Oh, the child must have been taken away and then brought back later. I don’t think that’s the case, usually. It just depends on where the search is taking place and who is searching. When you’re talking about a vast wooded area and the cases I’m thinking of in particular, these were wooded areas where you don’t have a million people out doing a search. There’s no way that you can cover every square foot of a wooded area. And so, things get missed. They do.

[00:47:03] I think it’s just critical with the child abduction cases, especially that there’s a plan ahead of time with search and rescue about who is going to be searching. And also, keep in mind, search and rescue folks are very adept at doing searches, but they’re adept at doing it on their own. Like, they are called out all the time for people who are lost in the woods and people that are missing, not necessarily related to a criminal investigation. And so, keeping that in mind, when search and rescue is brought in on a missing child case, sometimes what will happen is they will want to search as if they’re doing a typical search and rescue operation. That has to be managed by someone within the criminal investigation to make sure, “Okay, you’re not just looking for a person. We’re also looking for evidence.”

[00:48:00] So, along the way, I know you’re looking for this child, but if you happen to find some suspicious items as well, you need to stop, and you need to flag them, and you need to contact the command post. I’ve seen that happen in situations where they’re so used to doing the search the way that they’re doing it and also being autonomous and just doing it how they want to do it. You can’t do that with the child abduction case because that communication back to the command post and back to whoever is running the operation is extremely critical, and that can really cause problems. I’ve seen cases where something was found out in the woods by a searcher, and they brought it back to the command post, and just set it down. No one knew where it came from or who found it.

Dan: [00:48:42] Never photographed in place.

Lindsey: [00:48:44] Nothing. So, with search and rescue, they bring in the ESAR volunteers which are the Emergency Search And Rescue. Oftentimes, they’re kids. Again, they’re trained to find lost hikers and things like that. They’re not trained on how to preserve a crime scene or how to look for evidence. And so, that’s something to really keep in mind, because I know everyone wants to mobilize, and just jump on it, and let’s deploy all these people. But sometimes, that can be problematic.

Dan: [00:49:11] Yeah. I think it’s easy to look at a map and draw a perimeter around a part of a map and say, this area has been searched when– Depending on terrain, there are certain parts of an area and terrain, we’re not talking about flat fields with two-foot-tall grass.

Lindsey: [00:49:28] Right.

Dan: [00:49:28] We’re talking about mountainous, there are cliffs, there’s brush everywhere. Like you said, you can’t cover every square foot of that area. So, to just blanket mark this area off as it’s already been searched, it’s just not a true representation of the search.

Lindsey: [00:49:45] Yeah. And with that case, with the six-year-old, this same area was searched and researched and researched again. It wasn’t until, I think, maybe the third or fourth search that she was found. It was a difficult situation because she was actually submerged in mud. I mean, it’s not like people walked by her or anything like that, but there were other items of evidence nearby to someone that’s used to looking at crime scenes would key in on, “Okay, we need to spend more time here, as opposed to let’s keep looking for a body,” so to speak.

Dave: [00:50:18] So frustrating like. [laughs] We say it all the time over the years. You are at the mercy of the law enforcement professional that’s assigned to your case or assigned to a task. It’s the same way in every job.

Lindsey: [00:50:31] Oh, 100%. Not to say that any of those people did anything wrong, because that’s the situation that they were in. My case from 1986, the area was searched, and then I think it was 24 days later, a jogger noticed an odor, and they went back to the same area. Even after, I think there were two days’ worth of additional searches and it took that long after they noticed the odor to find her right there. So, that just gives you a sense of how difficult it can be in a rugged, forested area with all kinds of trees and shrubs.

Dave: [00:51:10] Right. You think about, if you lost your car keys in your front yard and hadn’t mowed for a week, go find them. That’s such a small scale compared to what search and rescue and these search parties are doing on these cases.

Lindsey: [00:51:25] Right.

Dave: [00:51:26] We could devote a whole episode to search and rescue. Lindsey, former detective, police educator, author, and expert on child abduction cases, we appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us, and of course, you are always welcome back.

Dan: [00:51:41] Yes, thank you.

Lindsey: [00:51:42] Well, thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Dan: [00:51:49] On the next episode of The Briefing Room–

Male Speaker: [00:51:52] I get halfway into the first case and I realize what an idiot I am. And you don’t realize it completely, but you cut out your other life. You’re no longer you. All the friends you have, they’re moving on. You don’t get it that their life is moving forward. And for you, who you are for real, just hit a pause button and stops. That person that you were just before the case started, that person is gone for the amount of time that you’re undercover.

Dave: [00:52:17] That’s next week on The Briefing Room.

[music]

Yeardley: [00:52:25] The Briefing Room is produced by Jessica Halstead and co-produced by Detectives Dan and Dave. Executive producers are Gary Scott and me, Yeardley Smith. Our production manager is Logan Heftel. Logan also composed the theme music. Soren Begin is our senior audio editor. Monika Scott runs our social media, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

[00:52:50] Thank you to SpeechDocs for providing transcripts. To read those transcripts or to hear past episodes, please go to our website at thebriefingroompod.com. The Briefing Room is an Audio 99 production. And I cannot go without saying thank you to you, all of you our fans, you are the best fans in the pod universe. And I can say with complete confidence, nobody is better than you.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]

Dan: [00:00:04] In police stations across the country, officers start their shifts in The Briefing Room.

Dave: [00:00:09] It’s a place where law enforcement can speak openly and candidly about safety, training, policy, crime trends, and more.

Dan: [00:00:17] We think it’s time to invite you in.

Dave: [00:00:19] So, pull up a chair.

Dave and Dan: [00:00:20] Welcome to The Briefing Room.

[Briefing Room theme playing]

Dave: [00:00:35] In today’s Briefing Room, we have, of course, Yeardley-

Yeardley: [00:00:39] Hello, Dave.

Dave: [00:00:40] -and Dan.

Dan: [00:00:41] Hello, team.

Dave: [00:00:43] After last week’s discussion about stop and frisk, we thought, “Let’s have a defense attorney on our show.”

Yeardley: [00:00:49] Yeah, someone who scrutinizes law enforcement investigation of a crime from a different angle than the DA does.

Dave: [00:00:57] Yeah. So, we’ve asked someone who works in our town to join us today. Please welcome defense attorney, Lissa.

Lissa: [00:01:03] Hello.

Yeardley: [00:01:04] Hello, Lissa. We are so pleased to have you. Thank you.

Lissa: [00:01:07] I’m so excited to be here. I’m honored that you wanted to have me on and talk with me.

Dan: [00:01:12] So, who are you charging these billable hours to?

Lissa: [00:01:15] I’m billing it all to Dave.

[laughter]

Yeardley: [00:01:19] Perfect. That works for me.

Dave: [00:01:21] It might surprise our listeners to know that a cop and a defense attorney can be friends. And not only friends, but we’re respectful of each other. To me, it’s a perfect example of the way things should work. It’s not personal in the courtroom. She’s doing her job, I’m doing mine. Truly, I appreciate the role defense attorneys have in the system. And early in my detective career, I had heard about Lissa.

Lissa: [00:01:51] Oh, really?

Yeardley: [00:01:52] Your reputation preceded you.

Dave: [00:01:55] You have a reputation is that you will fight and you will write lots of motions to suppress.

Lissa: [00:02:00] I do. Well, don’t do shit I have to suppress then, Dave. [Yeardley laughs] I won’t have to write it. [laughs]

Dave: [00:02:07] I get it. That’s why I just started making stuff up. [Lissa laughs] It’s more believable in court.

Lissa: [00:02:11] Well, now I’m going to cross examine you on that.

Dave: [00:02:13] Yeah. Right. [Lissa laughs]

Yeardley: [00:02:14] There you go.

Dave: [00:02:16] I’ve worked with and against Lissa, [Yeardley laughs] with the common teammate always being truth.

Lissa: [00:02:25] That’s right. Dave, are you going to cross examine me now?

Dave: [00:02:28] God, I’ve been waiting for this for years [Lissa laughs] and you are under oath. I think it’d be useful for us to get your CV, your background, and the career path of Lissa, and how you’ve landed where you are today.

Lissa: [00:02:45] Okay. Well, after law school, I was a prosecutor for just under four years. While I was a prosecutor, I tried all variants of misdemeanors and some felonies and handled a variety of different cases. I spent a year as a prosecutor doing solely domestic violence prosecution. So, that was a specialty that I had while I was on that side.

[00:03:14] In about 2012, I switched over to the defense side and have been doing retained and public defense ever since. The majority of my career is retained defense, but over the past year or so, I’ve started doing some court appointed work in various courts locally and the state level and federal level. I also do some victims’ rights representation, actually, stalking orders, protective orders, and litigating those sorts of cases. So, that’s my general practice.

Dave: [00:03:49] Like I said, Lissa and I have squared off where she was the defense attorney on a case that I had investigated, and I think at least once I’ve testified for the defense in a case that you were the defense attorney and going against your former employer, your old office.

Lissa: [00:04:09] Yes, I have to frequently litigate against my old office every day. A lot of my court appointed work and most of my retained work is against my former coworkers, some of whom I’m still very close friends with, but they’re my opponents when we go into court.

Yeardley: [00:04:26] If you watch any scripted procedural television show, you’ll see the lawyers go at it in the courtroom head-to-head, and then go out and have a beer together, and I always thought, “Is that real?” Is that real?

Lissa: [00:04:41] It is. For me, it is. Not for every defense attorney. The way that I practice it is, it can’t be like that with me and all of my opponents. There are some opponents who probably would not want to have a beer with me, but that might be mutual.

[laughter]

Lissa: [00:04:57] But there are several that I litigate against on a daily basis that I know are good people, and I’m happy to have as colleagues, and I hope that they feel when we go to court, I have a client to defend, and I’m going to fight them, and then I’m going to shake their hand afterwards. That’s how I try to practice with people who can practice that way with me.

Dave: [00:05:19] Lissa, just to get it out of the way, you’ve got some constraints about where you can go in discussing specifics. Can you just explain where your boundaries are when you come on a show like this, people hear from us, the detectives, and we’re giving them facts and intimate details? You have some constraints.

Lissa: [00:05:40] Yes. So, I cannot talk about specific cases or clients that I have defended. There are rules of professional conduct that lawyers have to abide by where I can’t reveal client confidences or talk about certain or any cases really, but I can talk about defense work in general, cross examining officers, and just my job and my experiences.

Yeardley: [00:06:09] That’s fair. When people find out you’re a defense attorney at a dinner party where they don’t already know you, probably they want to ask you, “How do you defend somebody that you suspect is guilty?” So, of course, that’s my first obvious question.

Lissa: [00:06:23] Sure. It doesn’t impact how I defend them. Whether or not a client tells me I’m guilty, it doesn’t change my duties to defend them. Guilty people have rights, and innocent people have rights, and those are the same rights. People ask me that. That’s usually the first question, especially if there’s a case that I’ve been doing that is in the press locally or is emotionally charged in some way and people say, “How do you do that? How do you talk to those people, and how can you defend what they did?”

[00:06:57] I’m not defending what they did or didn’t do. I’m making sure they get the process that they are do. The more emotionally charged an accusation or a case, the more that person needs me to put any emotion aside and defend them. If it’s a really, really heinous accusation that someone has launched against someone I’m defending, it’s my job to put that aside and see if they do have a defense, regardless of the emotional dynamics in the case. The more heinous the case is the more that’s needed, in my opinion.

Dave: [00:07:41] Lissa, I can say which of our Small Town Dicks Podcast episodes you were the defense attorney on, correct, since we don’t actually name the people involved?

Lissa: [00:07:51] I don’t know the answer to that, honestly, but I don’t think I can say which ones they are. I’m sorry, Yeardley.

Yeardley: [00:07:57] No, don’t be.

Dave: [00:07:58] I was going to tell her how offline you’ve always told me, they all confessed and said what a great Detective Dave was.

[laughter]

Lissa: [00:08:07] Mm, prove it, Dave.

[laughter]

Dave: [00:08:09] Right.

Lissa: [00:08:11] Because you ain’t got that. [laughs]

Dave: [00:08:12] Right. Maybe that’s not the case and I’m making that up.

[laughter]

Dave: [00:08:17] But, yeah, it’s always an interesting dynamic, because I don’t immediately know– When I arrest somebody, usually it’s a week or two, three weeks later where I find out who’s representing that person. So, it’s rare for me to go into an arrest already knowing which defense attorney I’m going to be dealing with. But there are times where I’ll get like a text message from Lissa and she’ll say, “Oh, hey, I read one of your police reports recently.” And I’m like, “Well, which one?” And she’ll say, “Okay, well, I guess, I’ll be seeing you soon.”

[laughter]

Dave: [00:08:50] So, it’s an interesting dynamic to be friends with a defense attorney, because there’s sometimes where even me on the police side, I’m like, “Hey, is this off the record?” She’s like, “Well, Dave, you know, it’s not off the record if it’s going to end up in court. If it goes to the facts, then nothing’s off the record.” So, she’s always been respectful of that boundary and I don’t think that I’ve ever revealed anything that she didn’t know already.

Lissa: [00:09:18] Nope.

Dave: [00:09:19] It’s not like talking to the press though. When you talk to the press and you say, “This is off the record,” if they burn that, you’re probably never going to work with that journalist ever again, because they’re supposed to protect their sources. Defense attorneys are officers of the court, so they are bound to the truth just as much as we are with keeping the defendant’s rights in mind.

Lissa: [00:09:41] I think that’s something people don’t realize about defense work is, I know that it’s not a popular profession. I get a lot of emotional responses from people if they find out that’s what I do and they don’t know me, but I’m bound to my representations in court just as much as the prosecutors are. Just because it’s a defense attorney saying something, it doesn’t mean that we aren’t bound to say things in good faith to the court, we have to. I will not go before a jury and say something that I don’t believe.

[00:10:15] So, we are bound in the same way, even though we may not be looked at the same way by juries or by cops or by society. We’re two sides of the same coin in the same system and we have to follow the same rules.

Yeardley: [00:10:37] Lissa, why did you decide to switch from prosecution to defense?

Dan: [00:10:41] Money.

[laughter]

Yeardley: [00:10:45] Thank you, Dan.

Lissa: [00:10:46] So, there was a massive budget cut within my office. They cut a third of the office. And so, when I was in there, I thought I was going to be a career prosecutor, and I was happy to be a career prosecutor, and I thought that was going to be my path and my role. When I was a law student, they let me try a case. I went to a different county in my state and tried a case, and people came in because they wanted to see the new kid trying a case, because I wasn’t even a barred lawyer yet. And they said, “Wow, she even looks like a prosecutor.” And I was like, “Yeah, this is a role that fits me.” I feel good about this, I feel good about my work. I like working with cops, I like getting to know cops, I like figuring out search warrant issues, and going and seeking those from judges. I had a blast doing it. It was a great job to have.

[00:11:33] Then budget cuts happen and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. But it was a really nice interview process, because everyone knew that there were people out looking that weren’t necessarily bad lawyers. It was 8 out of over 30 that were just out looking because of an external force of funding. And so, you weren’t going into interviews with people wondering. It was a known thing in our community that this was happening. And that’s okay.

[00:12:01] I was thinking about doing family law. I started working in private practice and started doing criminal defense and just loved it and just knew, “Okay, maybe I’m even a better fit for this than I was as a DA. Maybe I’m better suited to sit down and get to know clients and figure out how to defend them as opposed to figuring out how to prosecute them.” I think that’s turned out to be true. But because I used to be on the other side, I think I can maintain friendships and professional relationships with people on the other side, because they’re not an enemy there where I used to be.

Yeardley: [00:12:40] Right.

Lissa: [00:12:41] So, I can use that perspective and just– and I’ll tell clients that too. I’ll tell people that are seeing if I can be their attorney that too. If you want 100% cop hater, I’m not your attorney, because there are people trying to do their job. And if they make mistakes, I’ll take them down if I have to fight for you, because that’s my job. But they’re people and they’re just trying to do a job. I think I have a different perspective being on both sides of it.

Yeardley: [00:13:08] Yeah, sure.

Dave: [00:13:10] I’ve had people that are not familiar with the system and they’re like, “Well, this one time I saw this cop got up and lied on the stand,” and I’m like, “It’s just so exceedingly rare for a police officer. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I recognize there’s a difference between getting it wrong, like testifying inaccurately versus intentionally deceiving and lying and just being factually. I don’t care about the facts. This is what I’m saying.” People that just say, “Well, that cop just got up and lied his ass off on the stand.” I’m like, “God, there’s so much to lose.”

Lissa: [00:13:49] There’s so much to lose. I’ve seen it happen. I know that because I’ve proved it. But I agree. It’s not like every cop gets on the stand and just lies from beginning to end, and they just all lie and all cops are liars. That’s what I say like, “If you want a cop hater, I’m not your defense attorney.” There are times where cops can get corrupt and then the thing is, you find a trail of cases, because then they start doing it all the time. That doesn’t mean all cops are lying. That means that that person was really problematic and they started lying and they got away with it, and so they lied some more.

Dave: [00:14:24] And we don’t like working with them either.

Lissa: [00:14:26] And you don’t like working with them either because how the hell are you supposed to have community trust when you got these people wearing the same badge you have? It doesn’t help.

Dan: [00:14:36] Law enforcement in the United States is very unique. In that, someone from the neighboring jurisdiction can say, “Hey, I’ve got probable cause to arrest somebody who’s in your city. Will you go grab them for me?” This is a tug of war you have, because one hand, you think, “This is my brother in blue and I should automatically trust this person. They took the oath and they took it as seriously as I did.” That’s a battle that you have. A lot of times I’d say, “Why don’t you send me your report, so I can read it?”

Lissa: [00:15:08] Good.

Dan: [00:15:09] Because if I don’t know you, I’m not going to just go out there. I mean, what if this person resists arrest and then I have to use force against them? And God forbid it, it turns into something more than just me putting hands on them when all I had to do is say, “Hey, send me a report real quick.”

Lissa: [00:15:27] Trust but verify.

Dan: [00:15:29] Yeah. That’s one of the unique things about law enforcement in the United States is, is that’s very, very common. That’s why sometimes, when we’ve had murder cases that have our suspect has crossed state lines and you call up these neighboring jurisdictions and say, “Hey, my suspect is rolling through your state right now. If you have contact with him, can you grab onto him?” And they’ll say, “You got a warrant, because they don’t know us from Adam?”

Yeardley: [00:15:54] Mm-hmm.

Lissa: [00:15:54] That’s right. You don’t know if you’re talking to one of the good ones or one of the problematic ones. I think it’s more problematic to not acknowledge that there are problematic cops in defense of a thin blue line and in defense of a brotherhood, which I understand why that exists and I understand why there needs to be trust within agencies, and you need to be able to trust your fellow officers because of the situations that you’re put in. But if you don’t acknowledge internally if there’s a problematic person and you defend them or you hide that in defense of a thin blue line, it hurts everyone, including you and your ability to do the job, because once you lose the trust of the community, you can’t effectively police them anyway.

Dan: [00:16:42] Yeah, that social contract is void.

Dave: [00:16:45] Right. We police with their consent.

Lissa: [00:16:47] You have to make the hard, courageous decisions to keep that social contract, and no one’s hoping you do that more than defense attorneys. We want your investigations to be good. We want prosecutors to only bring the cases they can prove in court, and they need to be able to trust their officers to bring them the good cases. The trust has to extend and there has to be people of conscience on both sides. That’s what I mean by that. If you hide things for the short-term gain of preserving an image in defense of a thin blue line, you’re only going to fester corruption further and hurt everybody. So, what’s the point?

Yeardley: [00:17:32] Since you guys have said you’ve been on opposite sides at a trial before, is it nerve wracking for either one of you? For Dave, you to be grilled by Lissa and Lissa, for you to tee up questions for Dave?

Dave: [00:17:45] For me, it’s not adversarial or it shouldn’t be. It does not make you look credible to be fencing with the defense attorney. What everyone’s going for is the fact. We’re just trying to establish a fact and the truth. There are certainly times where and I’m not speaking about Lissa, I’m speaking about other defense attorneys who try to be crafty, and you can see where they’re going, and they’re trying to paint you into a corner, and they are leaving out context about things that you’ve written in a police report. I always recognize that, “Okay, I see where you’re going with this.”

[00:18:21] There have been times where there’s been a little bit of that adversarialness, but I think juries also recognize when a defense attorney is trying to eliminate a portion of your answer, even though the whole answer is the truth, they just want you to repeat the last five words of that answer.

Lissa: [00:18:40] I agree and that’s not my style. I don’t think it’s an effective style. I will never confess fear of Dave. I will never be nervous crossing you. [Yeardley laughs] No, I don’t mind crossing him at all. For me, in a lot of the cases that I end up in that are the level of crimes that Dave investigates, my issue or what I’m trying to establish for the jury isn’t necessarily about the police. These are cases with witnesses that the case will hinge more upon those witnesses’ credibility or what they are able to testify to than what Dave or other law enforcement witnesses are going to be testifying about. I would have no problem if Dave got on the stand and he did not investigate a part of a case that I thought he should have. I would just ask him, “Did you do this or not?” But I also know that Dave would say yes or no.

[00:19:36] He’s not married to a certain fact. He’s just there to say what happened. And so, if Dave’s on the stand with me in a case, we can probably get through it pretty quickly. I think if the times Dave has been on the stand with me, we did get through it pretty quickly.

Dave: [00:19:52] Absolutely.

Lissa: [00:19:53] My issue that I was trying to demonstrate to the jury wasn’t about Dave’s credibility. That being said, Dave’s my friend, but if I did have an issue with Dave’s credibility on a case, he’s well aware that I would say it in front of the jury, but I haven’t had to do that.

Dave: [00:20:10] Right. Dan can probably recognize this as well. You get these police officers who like to spar with defense attorneys and want to fight, won’t even relent on a suggestion that your investigation was incomplete, even if it’s something small, where you’re like, “You know what? I probably should have done that, but I didn’t.” You take the fuel out of the fire, if you just concede a good point and I’m sure Dan’s been on the stand when he recognizes that he’s being asked some questions about, “Well, why didn’t you do this?” There’s probably a good reason why he didn’t. And maybe the defense attorney is putting on a show. There’s also times where you can be like, “That’s fair. I did not do that. That’s a great idea. Next time I will.”

Dan: [00:20:57] I think in a situation like that, and I have been, I think any police officer who’s actually investigated cases that made it to court that didn’t get dismissed, because a lot of cases do get dismissed because of lazy police work on the front end. But when you’re getting cross examined by a defense attorney and they bring up something that is probably a minuscule part of this case, if you make that into a bigger deal than it is, you’ve just done the defense a favor.

Lissa: [00:21:26] That’s right.

Dan: [00:21:27] If you just admit like, “You know what? Hindsight, I wish I would have done that.” That’s what prompts a prosecutor, if they know the case as well as you do to on redirect, come back to you and you can clear up that point. But I think what a lot officers do when they’re on the stand, they take things personally they’re not prepared. They haven’t reviewed their case well enough, so they’re not versed in their case where they don’t have to keep diving into their report. If you know your report and you know the case, I think it’s very easy for you to testify truthfully, and accurately, and realize that they’re trying to sow seeds of doubt in your investigative abilities, the path you chose in your investigation. And that’s where I see– I can’t even say younger officers.

[00:22:22] I’ve seen 20, 25-year veteran officers who just got eviscerated on the stand, because they’re not prepared and they take everything personally. The truth is the truth. So, just tell the truth. That’s really the bottom line. Just tell the truth.

Yeardley: [00:22:39] Right. So, Lissa, you had said a couple of minutes ago that if you had something to call Dave out on you, you wouldn’t have any bones about doing that. Does that quality in your work make you that frank in your relationships?

Lissa: [00:22:59] Yes. [laughs] What you see is what you get with me. [Yeardley laughs] I don’t know how to be anything else but me. And so, I’m not going to get up and be anything but authentic when I’m in court. And the people that I have in my life, no matter what they do, I think know that about me.

[00:23:19] When I’m in court, I have a client that I am trying to make sure gets what’s due to them. If that means I have to cross examine Dave, I have no issue doing that. I have no problem cross examining officers that I grew up with as a prosecutor. There are certain officers now that I took them before a jury and asked a jury to convict on their word that now I’m cross examining them. The ones that come up and shake my hand afterwards and say, “I really respect how you just ask me those questions,” probably did a better job for the state than the ones that get offended by what I’m doing.

[00:24:01] What I’m doing is trying to show the jury what the facts are, not whether or not this officer is a good person or a bad person. Any more than the states trying to show whether or not my client is a good person or a bad person. They’re trying to show what acts happened and how it happened, and they’re trying to see if they can meet their burden of proof. If I’m in trial, I don’t think they can. And so, it’s my job to point that out.

[00:24:32] The officers that end up doing the best job in trial and coming across is the most authentic are the ones that just say, “No, I didn’t do that.” Because if you think about it, where am I going to go with that? “So, Dave, isn’t it true that you didn’t do this part of the investigation?” “Well, no, I didn’t.” It’s like the wind draw out of my sails at that point. But if they come back at me and say, “Well, I didn’t do it because of this, this, and this,” well, I know they’re investigative techniques and I’m going to call them out and say, “But you should have, because if you would have X, Y, and Z.” If you just concede, then you concede. The jurors can write it down in their notebooks and we can move on with the trial.

[00:25:12] There have been times where I’ve had officers who have had trouble with me crossing them when before I was putting them up as state’s witnesses. We’ve worked through it. I think most of the time if I’m in court, the officers know that I’m going to be talking about my case and I’m going to be taking them on in the same way I’d be taking on any other witnesses. The ones that can’t understand that, I don’t really associate with. Maybe those are the ones who wouldn’t go out for a beer with me.

[laughter]

Lissa: [00:25:42] But the ones that will understand that they have a job to do, and I have a job to do, and we’re both just trying to do that.

Dan: [00:25:51] Dave and I, our step mom worked in the DA’s office. Then when a bunch of attorneys from the DA’s office went into defense work, she went to work for them. So, she was on both sides. I knew these guys as prosecutors, and then I also knew them as defense attorneys, and it was just never a big deal to me. They just had a different job to do. They were on the other side of it now. Now their job was to defend. These were very talented, smart attorneys. To me, it was valuable knowing that there’s men and women on both sides of that that it’s about the truth.

Lissa: [00:26:27] There really is.

Dave: [00:26:45] I think people might be curious about, “How does a case come to you?” Say, we’ve got a big-time crime and it lands in your lap, walk us through how you get that, how you start evaluating it, how you strategize, and how you put a game plan together on how am I going to defend this person?

Lissa: [00:27:04] Sure. So, for a big-time crime that’s retained, sometimes defense attorneys can represent people who think they might be under investigation, or they’ve been contacted and told they’re under investigation, or a search warrant has been executed on their house. That’s a pretty good sign. Something’s coming down the pike. And so, you can call a defense attorney for legal advice, if you’re under investigation and you haven’t been charged yet. So, in those types of cases, a potential client or a family member will call me and say, “I’m under investigation, I need some legal advice.”

[00:27:42] What I’m doing in those cases is either communicating directly with the detective on the case or communicating with the DA. Because by the time you’re in major crimes, a lot of times, as I’m sure your listeners know, and Dan and Dave definitely know, they’re in contact with prosecutors from the beginning on some of their bigger cases, asking them for advice and working with them to get warrants. And so, a lot of times, my first call is to the officer or the detective to say, “Who you’re working with on this one?” And they’ll tell me, and then I can say, “Okay. A lot of times, at least, I hope my reputation is that you don’t have to go chase my clients around.”

[00:28:21] If I know somebody’s under investigation and an officer calls me, I will be there with my client to have them surrender if they will extend me that professional courtesy. Most of them do. And then I can negotiate somebody going in to meet with the officer and get arrested right there and get taken into custody and it helps to have somebody that they have been working with that provides some comfort in a really stressful situation. And then the prosecution begins, and we start litigating.

[00:28:51] If somebody’s already in jail, it’s usually a family member that calls me and says, “I have a family member in jail. We’re looking for an attorney.” If they’re in custody, I’ll go visit with them and see if we’re a good fit to work together. I just sit down and get to know them, because I think it’s a very tempting instinct on anyone’s part to see this person as the accusation that’s happened. And they’re not. They’re a person that’s in the system that needs help.

[00:29:24] I don’t know what kind of help I’m going to be able to provide for them. It’s different in every case. I don’t go in and just say, “Okay, I see you’re accused of this, so I’m going to look at you in that lens now.” You are a person I’m going to sit down and get to know and figure out how this all happened and see if you can trust me and we can work together, and I just get to know them.

Yeardley: [00:29:45] Is there anything in that assessment process where you feel like, “If this happens, if I get a sense either that they’re not being truthful or they say something in a tone or tell us what the phrase is or something that you’re like, “That’s a red flag, this is not going to be a good fit.” Are there any absolutes like that?

Lissa: [00:30:06] The only time it’s an absolute is if they’re so upset that they can’t communicate with me at all and I’m just not the right person to be with them in this situation. That’s okay. I’ve done this a while, so I am used to talking to people in really stressed-out situations when they’re really scared. And so, most people I can get along with just fine, and we can sit down. I don’t go in and just immediately say, “Okay, tell me everything that happened.” I don’t even ask, not when I’m first meeting them, because I just want to get to know them and figure out what information they want. It’s different for every client. Some people are more concerned about things that I wouldn’t even think of, if they were arrested and I wasn’t there on some of my court appointed cases, sometimes they have a pet that needs to be fed.

[00:31:02] If I’m not talking with them about that in the first meeting, I’m not getting to know them, because they don’t want to talk with me about anything else yet. They want to make sure their dog is okay. All right, that’s what we’re talking about today, and that’s okay. It’s figuring out where they are and what they need from me in that moment. And then if they can trust me, then I can start helping them make decisions. But I just look at myself as a person with some specialized knowledge that can come in and just be with them in that situation and help them figure out what they’re up against, because a lot of times, they don’t know.

[00:31:33] Most people think that people accused of really heinous crimes are just a total asshole to everybody. I don’t talk to assholes all day long. I talk to people who are really scared. It’s easy for people to not think of someone in a jail cell as scared. They think of someone in a jail cell as, “Well, something must have happened and it must have been pretty awful, or you wouldn’t be in the cell.” And that’s not always the case.

Yeardley: [00:32:08] Lissa, what’s the first question you ask when you sit down with someone to get to know them?

Lissa: [00:32:14] I say, “What information can I give you right now? I talk for a living, so I can talk with you about the law and technicalities all day long, but some of that stuff doesn’t matter to you right now. So, what information can I give you right now to just start this off and help you feel a little bit more informed in a situation where you don’t have a lot of information?” A lot of times people just want to know, “Are they going to get out? What’s going to happen to them? Where’s their family? Does their family know? What is going on?” They’re in shock. And so, I don’t dig in right away. I don’t think it helps them trust me. I don’t think I’m going to really get very far until they trust me. And so, I just try to let them guide and it helps me understand what their fears are and what their priorities are, and then that helps me figure out how to defend them, because I’m their lawyer, and I can take a lot of actions on their behalf. But Criminal defense attorneys, their representation of their clients is really directed by the client.

[00:33:30] The rules are set up to where I make strategic decisions, I determine whether or not I’m going to call Dave on the stand and cross examine him. I determine if I’m going to file a motion to suppress something Dave did or my client’s statements, whether or not they go to trial or whether or not they take a deal is totally up to them. It doesn’t matter how much legal advice I give them. It’s their choice, because they have to live with the consequences of that decision. And so, they’re really directing. They’re the voice of the defense. And so, I’m just trying to figure out what that is initially and what their goals are, and then I can figure out what I can and can’t do for them.

Dave: [00:34:11] Obviously, there’s lots of negotiation that goes on in the weeks and months after a grand jury indictment. This is just out of sheer curiosity on the law enforcement end, but on some of these big ones where the initial offer is 30 plus years. You have to bring that to a client. Walk us through the mood of that room. I’ve had cases where the initial offer is dozens of years, and you know that you’re sitting very good as far as a prosecutor. Their perspective, they feel pretty good about the case if they’re offering decades in prison. But on the defense side, we never get into that room, so we never see what that looks like.

Lissa: [00:34:57] I’m going to give the general lawyer answer. It depends. That’s what we always say. But it does depend on the case. So, a lot of times I’ve already talked with clients about what their potential exposure is, given whatever the charges are. I try to tell them what I think other cases have settled for in certain prosecutors’ offices or other cases that I’ve had that are similar that prosecutors have offered what types of practices specific prosecutors have on how they structured negotiations, because each of them are in charge of their own caseload. They all answer to the elected DA, but they’re in charge of their own caseload and they’re determining the plea offers that they’re going to make. And so, they have their approaches to situations.

[00:35:48] I just try to prepare my clients for what potentially could happen. Then by the time, an offer comes down in a big case like this, it’s not going to be a week after. On misdemeanor caseloads, you can get offers at arraignments from these DAs that just say, “Take one misdemeanor, I’ll dismiss the other.” With these bigger major crimes, it’s not like that. Offers don’t come for months, sometimes. And that’s okay, because a lot of times when– well, I guess I’ll answer what the mood is like in the room first. It’s anticlimactic because I’ve been having theoretical discussions with them up until the point where a plea offer might be coming to prepare them, “Look, at some point, the DA is going to make you an offer. I will come in, and I will bring it to you, and then I’ll discuss your options with you.”

[00:36:39] It doesn’t mean that you have to take it. You order me. I counsel you, but you order me what to do. That’s how it should be. By the time I’m discussing a plea offer with any client, it’s not really that eventful of a meeting, [chuckles] because we’ve run so many potential scenarios. And then I tell them most of the time, “Just sit with it for a little bit. Now it’s actually here. Trial is not tomorrow. Just sit, let this percolate with you for a little bit and then ask me questions that you have about it.” So, the conversations prior to that and how I approach cases are more stressful than the actual by the time we’re getting down to brass tacks and numbers.

Dave: [00:37:21] Moving on from that, there comes a time where it’s time to, “We’re going to trial or we’re taking the offer.” I imagine there’s two buckets here. One, where you’re like, “I suggest we go to trial.” There’s others where you’re like, [laughs] “We’re not sitting pretty. [Lissa laughs] I’m telling you to take the deal” type thing. When somebody finally says, “You know what? I don’t want the deal,” and you’re sitting there with perceived apprehension about they got a mountain of evidence against you, what that does to you work mode wise, like does it flip a switch for, Lissa?

Lissa: [00:37:58] No, because they’re the ones who have to serve the time. And so, I’m already working the case from two angles. Anytime I take one. I’m working up the case. I’m looking at witnesses, I’m investigating possible defenses, because they can’t evaluate the plea offer until they know what their defense would look like anyway. And so, especially on some of these major cases, the cops are still getting evidence. Things are still being sent to the crime lab. The investigation is still underway. If my client is indicted, they’re still getting stuff to me.

[00:38:35] So, I figure if they want to go to trial, then I’ve prepared it. If they want to take a deal, then I’ve prepared it, so they can evaluate the deal. It’s a no-lose situation for me to take a really active approach to defense, which I do. Some defense attorneys don’t, I suppose. [laughs] Maybe that’s why people think I’m aggressive, but I actively defend cases, because once you’re at this level, the cases aren’t going to stop moving as soon as someone’s charged. Witnesses are still going to be talking to people, they’re going to be talking to the DA, they’re going to be talking to the cops, they’re going to be talking to your investigator, sometimes each other, when they shouldn’t be. It just depends on the case. And so, you have to move with the case as it’s going, which is why prosecutors don’t make offers in the beginning of these cases, because they don’t know everything they have, either.

[00:39:29] So, both sides get involved. The detectives are still doing follow up. Things are still moving, and we see where it settles and then go, “Okay, now we both know the universe of information.” The state does and the defense does. Is this reasonable or not? If it’s not reasonable from the prosecutor’s side, then I go back to them and I say, “That’s not reasonable. That’s not an offer.” And then they tell me, “Well, I’m not going to bid against myself. I’m not going to make you another offer.” And I say, “Okay, well, see you later.”

[00:39:57] Part of being known by my opponents is they know what meeting we’re having pretty quickly. So, if I come in and say, “Look, this isn’t an offer and here’s why,” they’ve had that conversation with me before. They understand how I defend cases.

Dan: [00:40:21] You talk about trial prep, and probably one of the first things you do as a defense attorney, I would imagine, is read the report or the reports. I’ve heard from other defense attorneys that I know that when they read a report, one of the first things they do is they look at who actually wrote the report. Working in a small area, defense attorneys, they get exposed to certain officers more than others or they’ve had history with a certain officer. Are there times when you read a report and you see the name at the bottom and you start licking your chops?

Lissa: [00:40:58] [laughs] Yes.

Yeardley: [00:41:00] Because it’s not a good report, or because it is a good report?

Dan: [00:41:03] Because it’s probably not a good report, and there are a lot of questions left unanswered.

Lissa: [00:41:11] Yes. The cops that do those lazy investigations are known. They’re known by the cops who don’t do lazy investigations, who are probably just as annoyed with them as we are, because they end up with cases in trial that maybe didn’t need to go to trial. Had they just done their job upfront? But, yes, there are certain officers where, if I see that they’re on a case, I have background with them and I know whether or not they do it right or not, most of the time.

Dan: [00:41:41] And you can say Dave’s name.

[laughter]

Lissa: [00:41:46] Yes. Whenever I read one of Dave’s reports, I’m like, “Oh, Jesus.” No, [Yeardley laughs] that’s not true.” I know certain ones that are frankly lazy or they’re not very good at their jobs. I know that I’m going to go investigate, and I’m going to find witnesses that they should have found, and I’m going to find evidence that they should have found. And they didn’t. Had they done that, maybe the case would have turned out differently. But instead, I have to pick up the baton and continue the investigation that didn’t happen. But that’s law enforcement is a job like any job. There’s going to be people who are really, really good at it, and there are going to be people who are in the wrong profession, and then they’re going to be people who are kind of middle of the road. That’s okay. The system is made up of people. And so, it’s just going to be different. But, yes, there are a few where I lick my chops.

Dave: [00:42:33] I imagine there somewhere you read the report, look at who wrote it and say, “We’re in for a fight right here, because I’m familiar with this person’s work.”

Lissa: [00:42:42] Yes, there are certain times where I’m reading and I see the name at the bottom and I go, “Well, it’s not just going to be the report. There’s more evidence coming. They’re going to be doing follow up, they’re going to be doing their job.” And that’s okay. Defense attorneys are members of the community where they defend in. We don’t want bad law enforcement in our own communities. We’re parents and we’re married to spouses with jobs in the community. We don’t want law enforcement to not do their job. It benefits our clients when law enforcement does their job right. It stops false convictions, it stops false charges, it stops cases from going into the system that could have been handled in the field.

[00:43:27] We don’t want mayhem and lawlessness either. [laughs] We’re just there as quality control because the cops weren’t there when a lot of crimes happened anyway. They’re there collecting the evidence after it happened. And so, sometimes, because they’re human, they’re going to get it wrong. They’re out there to make a call, to make an arrest, not to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and that is so different. Sometimes, they make a call and they’re trying to do the right thing and it’s not the right call. Well, then the community should be happy that I’m there to step in, if the cops are trying to do their job, but they make the wrong call. The system has to have everyone to work. So, I don’t blame it on the cop necessarily, if they make the wrong call. There are some cops that make a lot of wrong calls, and then it’s a problem.

Yeardley: [00:44:35] I was thinking about when you sit down with your client that you’re going to defend and you need to get to know them, when you were in school, did you take a psychology course?

Lissa: [00:44:46] I didn’t.

Yeardley: [00:44:47] You’re assessing a lot of nuance in those interviews and throughout the course of whatever the case is, you’re sort of this de facto counselor.

Lissa: [00:44:57] Yes. I’m the one person that they can talk to candidly. The system is built that way, so that you can be honest with your lawyer. But as a human, and you’re sitting in the cell, and someone you’ve just met walks in and they say, “Okay, tell me about the worst day of your life. I’m betting it’s this you’re sitting in jail. Nice to meet you.” They’re not going to tell you anything right then, if that’s how you approach it. And so, I’m just assessing whether or not when they trust me enough to tell me certain things. And so, that’s different for every person and every client. It’s just sitting down. I try to think, “Okay, what would I want if one of my kids were in trouble? What would I want this lawyer to do for them?” “Okay, I’m going to go in and just try to talk with them like a person and figure it out.”

[00:45:51] Maybe that’s figuring out that they’re going to go to prison. Maybe that’s figuring out that they’re innocent. I don’t know what I’m walking into, but I know that I’m just going to sit with them and be with them in that situation, and then just see where it takes us. I don’t have a system outside of just figuring out what they need from me in that moment and then I work with them throughout. Maybe I should have taken a psychology class.

Yeardley: [00:46:15] No, I was just curious. Dan and Dave, when they describe what it’s like to interview a suspect or a victim, there are so many micro-assessments of what the body language is, what the inflection is, what the lack of inflection is. All of these cues that you get that are unspoken, that you, Dan and Dave is detectives, and now you as well, Lissa, need to read in order to put together a picture that then you can say, “This is the picture I got. Is that in fact, what–?” Is that an accurate representation of what you think happened?

Lissa: [00:46:54] As far as assessments are going, I’m just looking for when they let their guard down and they trust me. That’s going to be a comment that they make of, “Wow, I’m really glad that you’re here and I really feel like I can talk with you.” Okay. Rapport is getting built to where they feel like maybe they can confide in me what happened. Maybe it’s different than what the police have in their reports, but they’re afraid to tell me, because they don’t know me from Adam. So, if they can start relaxing, I try to crack some jokes, see if I can get them laughing, and then I say, “See, you laughed, even though you’re in jail, because this is not the end of your life.”

[00:47:35] You can laugh, you can crack jokes with me, I’m a person, and that’s okay. We’re just talking person to person right now. You’re allowed to have some dark humor in the situation, you’re allowed to talk with me, just open and candidly whenever you are ready to do that. And that’s disarming to a lot of people, anyway. A lot of people, I think, are afraid that you’re going to judge them and I tell them, “In these situations, it’s just not my job to judge you. It’s my job to sit with you and help you make decisions. That’s my job. And so, we just have to figure out what decisions we have to make together.” That usually calms people down and hopefully gets them to trust me, and then eventually, they talk when they’re ready. Every attorney-client relationship is different.

Dave: [00:48:20] See a theme there though? People talk when they’re ready.

Yeardley and Lissa: [00:48:23] Yes,-

Yeardley: [00:48:23] -actually.

Lissa: [00:48:23] -they do.

Yeardley: [00:48:24] Dave has said that a lot.

Dave: [00:48:25] Disclosures and victims and even suspects, when they trust you, when they feel safe, that’s when they will talk.

Lissa: [00:48:34] I totally agree with that from the disclosure side too, because I represent people who are trying to get protective orders against other people, and those aren’t easy meetings for them to have with me, but they talk when they’re ready, and that’s okay.

Dave: [00:48:49] You and I had discussed the other night when I approached you about coming on that we could also discuss some of your most proud moments as a defense attorney. I imagine you’ve got some victories out there. We don’t have to be specific about who’s involved, but for me, getting a conviction or not arresting someone that I thought I was going to arrest and then finding out, “Hey, you would have made a mistake if you had arrested him.” Those are the biggest moments of my career. I never want to convict somebody that was innocent. I imagine on a defense attorney side getting someone acquitted or charges dropped is a very, very righteous and rewarding feeling.

Lissa: [00:49:32] Yes. There’s a local rule in our courts where you cannot visually react to a verdict, if you’re in the gallery or if you are an attorney. I have a really difficult time following that one.

Yeardley: [00:49:49] [laughs] Literally, is it on the books, like a code of conduct, no reactions to any verdict?

Lissa: [00:49:57] Yes. And you’ll be instructed before a verdict comes down, the judge’s clerk will say, “No one in this gallery is to react. The parties are not to react.” That’s it. It is a really tough rule to follow, because everyone is invested by the time you’ve done battle like that. I’ve cried. [laughs] I’ve made gestures, small ones, because I really don’t want to get held in contempt. But by the time you’re there, it is really hard not to do that.

[00:50:31] What has surprised me about defense work, and something that I did not have any perspective on when I was a prosecutor, was that some of my biggest victories and proudest moments where I have truly, I think changed the course of someone’s life, because they have not been convicted of something or even had charges filed nobody ever knows about. Sometimes, it’s just me and the DA that know, and the detective, and that’s it. They don’t make the papers. They aren’t the flashy victories.

[00:51:05] When I think about what are the ones that really impact me the most, it’s people that are out just moving through society and not having this conviction on their record for something that they didn’t do, and I was able to step in and hopefully be working with a cop like Dave who might listen to me, because I know that Dave is the person that I could go to if I were representing a client that he was investigating and I could say, “Dave, I really have something here and I’d really like you to see it.” I know that he would at least sit down and listen.

[00:51:38] He may not agree with what I’m saying. He may have a totally different perspective on the case. But if you have good law enforcement on the other side who isn’t so invested in what they think is the truth and they’re willing to let a case unfold, then that’s how justice gets done. There aren’t many people who know about it except the people in the room when the detective decides not to arrest or the DA decides not to file.

Yeardley: [00:52:03] You’re like Superman catching the piano in midair before it smashes into the crowd of people on the ground.

Lissa: [00:52:11] I love that image. That’s exactly who I am, Yeardley. That’s why I’m going to tell everyone I am from now on.

Yeardley: [00:52:16] As well you should. [laughs]

Lissa: [00:52:19] I’m good with that.

[music]

Dave: [00:52:23] Lissa, I want to ask, if you’ll come back next week and talk with us a little more.

Lissa: [00:52:27] Absolutely.

Dave: [00:52:29] I know our audience will find this fascinating, and I know there are plenty of folks in law enforcement who should really listen. It’s all about respect, for yourself, for the law, for the suspect, the victim, the court, the process. That’s how you catch pianos in midair. So, until next week.

[music]

Yeardley: [00:52:50] The Briefing Room is produced by Gary Scott and me, Yeardley, Smith and coproduced by detectives Dan and Dave. This episode was edited by Logan Heftel, Soren Begin, Christina Bracamontes, Gary Scott, and me. Our associate producers are Erin Gaynor and the Real Nick Smitty. Our social media is run by the one and only Monika Scott. Our researcher is Delaney Britt Brewer. Our music is composed by Logan Heftel and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the podcast, please visit us on our website smalltowndicks.com/thebriefingroom. Thank you to SpeechDocs for providing transcripts and thank you to you, the best fans in the pod universe for listening. Honestly, nobody’s better than you.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]