Why in the hell did I do this?!
Sometimes in your career you have to face difficult situations. Situations that will make you doubt of yourself and what your doing. Be strong, move forward. You’ll learn a lot from those bad experiences.
In this episode, Jim and Tyson tell us about their deepest darkest moments. What’s yours?
There’s always something to learn and to improve.
Hacking’s Hack: Given the fact that both of the examples in the show touched on the issue of race and African – American defendants. A book. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. Spiegel & Grau; Reprint edition (August 18, 2015).
Tyson’s Tip: If you wanna do something, go do it. Jump in, take risks.
The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.
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Transcript: Our Darkest Moments
Tyson Mutrux
I am Tyson nutrix. And I am recording from my basement at home because I had to say on behalf of kids this morning, so your babies in the background, there’s a reason for it. So
Jim Hacking
in New York, your office, I am at my office, I’m doing the recording today,
Tyson Mutrux
our washing is done. There’s no one else power washing at your office, which is good, we could have a trained device, right? That’s the beauty of recording, you want to introduce our topic?
Jim Hacking
So today we’re talking about our darkest moments, the time when we said to ourselves, why in the hell did I do this? Why did I think I was qualified to go out on my own? How in the world? Did I ever think that this was going to work? What a foolish decision I made, and really question whether or not what we’re doing makes a lot of sense. So I think we both have identified that moment for ourselves, you know, they probably come at different points in our journey, but I thought we’d start off with you. And then I can share mine. Yeah, and mine
Tyson Mutrux
is actually interestingly, from a criminal case, I have an idea that yours might be too, but I’m not positive. And so mine has nothing to do with experience has nothing to do with me screwing anything up has nothing to do with a malpractice claim, which I think most people will may think that’s what a deepest, darkest moment may be. And luckily, I’ve never had to have that issue. Mine is I had a case, it was a pretty routine case in St. Charles County. It was the defendant was my client was the son of a friend of mine. And it was pretty routine. Normally, the only problem was is that my client was black. And my client was dealing heroin in St. Charles County. And I remember, it was just a weird, a weird feeling going into the sentencing hearing, the offer from the state was pretty bad. They’re offering I think, 10 years. And this guy literally had zero history at all, no speeding tickets, nothing had absolutely nothing. And so since they’re offering 10 years, we did a blind play, which you know, is pretty standard, you do an open play. And we I fully expected this guy to get probation or at the very most a very, very mild prison sentence. I mean, nothing, nothing major. But it’s one of those cases where I know most attorneys don’t do sentencing memorandums on for state cases, or we do them on all our federal cases. But on state cases, the vast majority of attorneys do not do them. But I did them. I did one on this case. I mean, just because I really believe this guy was I mean, he had done a lot to try to help out the state on a couple of things he had cooperated. It was a one time thing he had screwed up. He was right after the economy hit the crapper. And he just needed some money. And so he made a huge mistake. Well, we go to sentencing. And I remember the prosecutor standing up. And the first words out of his mouth were judge heroin is killing this community. And he literally backs up to the bar, he has to ask the judge for a moment. And he starts to sort of tear up. And I was like, What is going on here? And then he goes on for 10 minutes to argue why my client should go to prison for 10 years. And I was like, What am I missing here? So I stand up. And luckily, I had prepared a sentencing memorandum. So I was I was equally prepared to get up and argue my case. So I argued for 1015 minutes about why he shouldn’t get 10 years. And here’s why he gets it was 10 years is because there were multiple accounts. And so there that he wanted to stack them. So I sit down, and I think okay, you know, this will well will be just fine. It’s one of those scenarios where I fully expected my client to walk out the courtroom with me, I didn’t expect and really did not expect him to go to jail. And it’s one of the things where the client knew that he could go to jail. We’d gone through all the scenarios. So what like, I hadn’t prepared him but I remember the judge looks at my client says I can’t say his name. So I’ll say Mr. Defendant, Mr. Defendant, you are dealing a lot of heroin and you deserve to go to jail. And he says him to eight years in prison on a case where if they were across the river in St. Louis County, he would have gotten probation hands down, and they would have offered him probation. I don’t care what anybody thinks about, you know, race, whatever. It’s one of those cases where I firmly believe it was a matter of him being a black man in St. Charles County dealing heroin. And I know I may catch some flack about that, but I don’t care. The person right before him they Got caught within like 50 pounds of marijuana, transporting it from Colorado and she got probation, which was totally ridiculous. It was literally the sensing right before her. And she had a history. He has zero history and as well as she was a white woman. Yes. And so just there’s an injustice and there was felt like there was very little I could do about it. I felt helpless. Like there’s like, nothing I could do was like, okay, we can appeal it, what grounds can we appeal it on? And it was appealed, but it didn’t go anywhere. There was really nothing. Really nothing we could do about it. So the judge hadn’t sent anything out of the guidelines. I mean, he was did everything by the book. And I’m not blaming the judge, I guess. But it was a crappy scenario. And so I remember holding his dad while he was crying. I mean, it was just like, the worst moment I remember. Once everybody left, I remember going and sitting on a park bench and just like thinking, like, What the hell, I mean, just, I couldn’t believe it. It was just one of the most deflating moment I’ve ever experienced as an attorney, because this guy who had just screwed up, and I understand it’s heroin, and I understand the heroin is bad and all that. It’s nothing like that. But this isn’t one of those repeat bad actors that keeps doing it was a one time thing. And if you looked at this guy’s criminal history, if you met him, you would know that that’s what it is. And so they just talked, and it was awful. And so there’s no correct and you know, he’s luckily he’s out now. And he’s, he’s a really good guy. He’s, he’s on the straight and narrow, and his dad and I are good friends and everything. So it just, I don’t know, it just it was a bummer. It was it was terrible.
Jim Hacking
And does that cause you to second guess yourself?
Tyson Mutrux
Oh, absolutely. I think going back I know I did everything I could. But you definitely whenever something like that happens, you go back. And you think about what could I have done differently? What did I screw up here? Was there something I could have changed, done to change this, this outcome? You go through everything in your head? And I mean, I did that while I sit on that park bench. I was just sitting there, just like, What did I do here? Like, what what did I screw up? Because it just wasn’t your typical sense on a case like that. It just doesn’t digital normally happen that way. What made even worse is he was the son of a friend of mine. And just like it made it that much worse. It was awful. And so yeah, you I think that’s just part of the process. You go back through mentally, and you think, Okay, what could I have done to change this? And really, there’s nothing I could have done. I mean, we had done everything, we had really done everything when it comes to negotiation to try and get him the best deal possible to try and get him the best outcome and it just got a bad result.
Jim Hacking
That sucks, man, what’s yours? Well, you correctly predicted that mine, too, is related to criminal. So when we, when we started our little firm in 2007, the plan was to, you know, help immigrants and do a lot of work for immigrants and handle many different kinds of cases for him or it’s not just immigration now as things have grown. And the cases or the clients have been sort of self selecting everything we do now is immigration. But there was a time about four years ago, where I had a pretty big lawsuit against the city of St. Louis because they were arresting African American men in the city for after Miss identifying who the person was. So I had a client who got picked up. They said, You’re Mr. X, and he said, No, I’m Mr. Y, and they didn’t believe them. And he ended up sitting in jail for about two months. And so this lawsuit got a lot of press. And because of that press one day we were contacted by a reverend in Washington, Missouri, who had befriended an inner city African American young man named Cornell and Cornell he had been friends for about four months and Cornell had been attending his church. And through a certain set of circumstances, Cornell got asked to come in to see the police in the city of St. Louis about an armed robbery. And there had been a high profile murder in the city of a woman named Megan boeken, who was robbed for her iPhone in the middle of the day in the Central West End and about 10 days before that murder. There was a similar iPhone robbery just on the other side of Lindell Boulevard with another white lady who was robbed at gunpoint with a gun. And Cornell had been asked to come in to talk to the police. And this Reverend actually used to be a police officer. And so he thought he could talk his way out of any problems for Cornell. He brought him down to the police station and everything unraveled and eventually, a woman in the robbery that occurred 10 days before the murder, picked Cornell out of a lineup and he ended up facing an armed robbery charge. And so we got a call because of the publicity we’re getting on the other case, to try to help Cornell and not being a criminal defense attorney. We thought that if we just explained things to everybody, how we felt that this was a mis identification, and that the actual person who did the armed robbery that Cornell was charged for was the person who killed Megan boeken. It seems sort of obvious to us there’s a pattern there’s been about five of these robberies, these guys were on like a crime spree. And the person who ultimately pled guilty to killing Megan boeken named Keith Esther’s, he looked a lot like Cornell. So I’m not going to litigate the whole case. But we spent about 200 hours preparing this case for free. And we went to trial because the prosecutor would not listen to us. It was in the city of St. Louis, the circuit attorney’s office is very strident, and very forceful. And I think they didn’t really care about justice. They just knew that they can get they had a white woman pointing at a black man in the city, St. Louis, and that that’s all that they needed. And the trial judge Robin vinoy, assisted in embedded them in keeping any evidence of Keith Esther’s prior crimes wouldn’t let me put on any evidence that he festers, had done these other crimes that he was implicated in, in this particular robbery that he had told his girlfriend, that he had gotten the victim’s phone in a robbery and that he had sold the phone, there was all kinds of evidence, we had overwhelming evidence, much more evidence than they had the Cornell did. And we had more evidence that Keith Esther stood at the judge Robin vinoy, excluded all of it. And my worst moment was the jury been out for about three hours, I hadn’t been able to put on any of my evidence, I still thought we had a chance of winning, the sun was setting Cornell came in. It was supposed to be this glorious moment of lawyer Jim having in Jennifer, my old associate had done all this work to show that Cornell was wrongly accused. And the jury came back guilty. And it was like a kick to the nuts. And it took Cornell out the crowd was sort of shouting at the judge, it was sort of a very surreal experience. There was a lot of emotion. A lot of people from the church out in Washington had come to the entire trial. And that was sort of the start of a really bad month for me, because like I said, I’d mostly done civil work. And as you know, Tyson, because you do criminal defense work, you have to file a notice of appeal in criminal cases within 10 days, and I filed it on the 29th day. Yeah, they
Tyson Mutrux
treat that rule, pretty hard, fast rule.
Jim Hacking
So I had to recuse myself from the case I couldn’t handle the appeal because of my own mistake. And luckily, Cornell got a new attorney and they were able to even on the plane error standard get the conviction overturned, because judge Robin vinoy had refused to allow me to have any of that evidence. And so Cornell was released, the circuit attorney did not retry him. And he spent about two and a half years in jail, because the circuit attorney refused to look at the evidence in an objective way. And they were trying to cover for the police department, which hadn’t solved this robbery, which might have prevented the murder of Megan Bogan. So, in any event, obviously, I’m still worked up about it. And if you want to read up on it, you can certainly look for Cornell’s case. But it was a horrible time. For me, it was a really dark couple of months, I was very upset. And I was questioning myself about a lot of things. But the one thing it did is it fueled my determination that we needed to focus on just one thing. We couldn’t dabble in other things. We couldn’t try other practice areas. And the one thing that I learned, I mean, I learned a lot coming out of that experience. I learned about how race works in the city. I’ve always sort of known that. But I learned how the circuit attorney works. And I also learned that judges can make mistakes and might not necessarily care about justice, and just want to uphold what they’ve done. And so I decided to get out of the litigation business altogether. We stopped doing any kind of litigation. In fact, I just settled my last civil litigation case this week. Nice. Very nice. Yeah. And so now we’re all in on immigration. And I think it was a great cauterizing experience that just helped me cut away from that, and to focus on the things that we’re really good at. And so it was a life changing experience. It’s something that will stay with me forever. And I think that I really learned a lot of valuable lessons. And number one is to refer things out. And sometimes I get caught up with my emotions and with my wanting to help people and my wanting to do good for people. And that sometimes that as a business owner and a law firm, those things don’t always match.
Tyson Mutrux
So did Judge vinoy give a reason why she wouldn’t let it in.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, there’s a doctrine in Missouri, you know, you know this better than I do, but in Missouri, and I think in most other cases on television, they always act like you can, you know, plan B you can just point to someone rights. And the law says that there has to be some evidence connecting the person that you want to point the finger to. And the judges early on decided that she wasn’t going to have a side show she sort of bought the prosecutors line about how we you know, we can’t try this other case, we got to keep out all the Megan boeken stuff we can’t let hacking mentioned the name of Keitha Esther’s and she bought into it. And then she just stuck to her guns. I, after about the third day at trial, I made a really strong push to let her or to ask her to let me get into this again. And she dug in her heels. She gave me a little bit of evidence, but for the vast majority of it, she kept out
Tyson Mutrux
there interesting because it sounds like you had plenty of evidence to tie it and to bring in that other person. So she just dug in and said no way.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I frankly think she was scared to the circuit attorney’s office.
Tyson Mutrux
Interesting. Was she knew her at the time, or is she been around?
Jim Hacking
She’s been a judge for about five or six years. I guess she still wants to do on the bench.
Tyson Mutrux
I can tell you’re definitely kind of gets in your crawl. I imagine you DQ her anytime you had her next.
Jim Hacking
Well, I’m never gonna have immigration. Right. So it’s a lesson. I think that’s a lesson and, you know, maturity and growth. And, you know, obviously, I learned a lot. And I think that there’s always something to learn, there’s always something to do better. And there’s always ways to improve and, and that can be in how you handle your practice. It can be in how you handle yourself as an attorney. And, you know, I think that I have a strong bent towards justice. And I, I feel like with immigration, we’re doing important work, we’re helping protect a lot of people who need it. And I think that, that that’s important. And I think that there’s a lot I can do within this practice area. And I don’t have to necessarily take things on that are sort of monumental like that. We were just trying to help Cornell, help the Reverend and get the right outcome. But frankly, nobody listened to us. The system’s not set up. I don’t think to help an innocent man. And and people will say, Oh, well, you know, everything worked out in the end. You know, eventually he got out? Well, yeah. But he spent two and a half years in jail under the fear of a 10 or 14 year jail sentence. So, you know, there was no justice here.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. And I think part of it was, who was on the other side of your case sucks. I will tell you this. There’s a lot of great prosecuting attorneys in the state ones that really do care about justice. But I think and I don’t know who tried the case against you, but that attorney may have even cared about justice. But that office as a whole Luckily, there’s going to be a turnover. And Jennifer Joyce’s leaving, and things hopefully will change. I don’t I’ve heard that they may not but I don’t know. But in my opinion, I agree with you that office, it’s about wins and losses. It’s not about justice. And I think that that’s something that’s often overlooked. I’m gonna give some big kudos to Jefferson County, because there’s a recent case about basically amount of stolen property, basically, the Supreme Court had ruled that the way the statutes set up, then there really can’t be a felony, it’s basically just a misdemeanor, the amount doesn’t matter. And so what Jefferson County just recently just started doing is on probation violation cases where people are on probation for that. They basically file a motion saying the judge can do whatever they want. But according to the bezel case, I think it’s be easy. Your basal bezel, I think it’s BZ ell, then basically it can be terminated is essentially what it is. It’s not what exactly what it says. But basically, the judge has the power to do them. That is a prosecutor’s office showing that they care about justice because a law there’s a change in the law. Some Prosecutors Offices don’t get that they just care about wins and losses. And so I want to give kudos to Jefferson County, I think Jett, St. Louis County and St. Charles County, sometimes they get some, some flack, and they get some native attention, especially after the Michael Brown thing. But I’ll tell you, both of those offices are handled extremely well, I think that they’re they do care about justice in both of those areas. But when you get to the City, St. Louis, it just for some reason, I think that the crime has really jaded them. And so they get, they get caught up in that. And so that’s, I think, you learned a valuable lesson. I think, you know, how to move forward and how to correct things. And I think that now that there’s a shift in that office, hopefully someone from that office is listening to this, and maybe they can start to change things. I think that’s we learn about these lessons, and we move on and we change, we get better. That’s how it works. I think that’s a lesson to take away from this. Yeah, another
Jim Hacking
one for me with Cornell especially, but I’d see it in the deportation context, too, is, you know, once you get your hand in the machine, it’s really hard to get out of the machine. You know, once the process starts towards you, it’s really hard to sort of turn the wheels back and protect people. It’s just, it’s just tough. I’ll take you at your word about the prosecutors, I do know a lot of prosecutors who are are good, well intentioned people. I do think a lot of times they get caught up in their winning percentages and wanting to be tough, but I’ll take you at your word for that.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, cuz I deal with a more so I do know, I mean, I’ve they’re the prosecutors that get others the ones that don’t, I’m not gonna mention the ones that don’t, but there’s the ones that really do. They say, You know what, this is kind of ridiculous. And so they’ll work something out with you. And if it’s a case where the case should be dismissed, they’ll they’ll dismiss the case. I mean, so there really are the good ones. I will say this and feel like we are really coming down on the circuit attorney’s office because we are that office pisses me off, but they have no discretion at the lower levels. And that’s where the big differences. It all comes from the top and they’ve got these, you know, roundtables committees, wherever Have a column. And it all comes from the top. And these are the people that are on the frontlines taking the heat from defense attorneys from judges. And so they have no discretion. They can’t make those deals in the courtroom. They can’t work it out because they’re, they’re being told from up top. No, you got to pursue it. So that’s the big problem. And honestly, if someone from the secretary’s office gets pissed off, but me saying, I don’t care, because something needs to change. It’s absolutely true. But all right, we’ve
Jim Hacking
been on our soapbox right, about while practicing, but I think this all sort of ties into it. I think that, you know, as business owners, we have operations to run and we have to make good decisions. And frankly, taking a pro bono case it ends up taking 200 hours of your time over the course of a year and a half is certainly from a business standpoint, not the
Tyson Mutrux
best, right? Pro bono works good during the case like that. Not so much. I would have told you not to do that case. But either way. I mean, listen, in the end, the right outcome came up. So do you have your hackings hack of the week,
Jim Hacking
given the fact that both of our cases touched on the issue of race, and African American defendants, I want to tell you about an amazing book that I just started based off a Facebook recommendation by my buddy a random car, a great attorney, Brian cave, who does a lot of pro bono work himself, works with the United Way. He volunteers teaching at a school anyway, a random and his wife, we’re talking about a book called Just Mercy by guy named Brian Stevenson. This is a fellow who’s worked down in the south with African American prisoners facing the death penalty. And he’s written sort of a memoir, and you will love it Tyson. I’m about a fifth into it. And it’s fantastic. It’s called Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.
Tyson Mutrux
Okay, I’ll check that out. My tip of the week, Texas Tip of the Week is not a product. It’s not a service. It’s nothing else. Here’s my tip. I met with an attorney last week who is a listener of this podcast, and I think he’s a phenomenal guy. Actually, I’m gonna mention his name. I think he’s awesome. His name is Matt Jett. He’s a younger kid. We’re not mass up, Matt. So met with him. And he is a go getter. He’s one of those guys where if he sits down, he asked you a couple of questions. He goes and does it. And so my tip is, do you want to do something? Go do it. If you want to do podcasting, go do it. If you want to do videos, go do it. Don’t say I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it and then never do it. Just do it. Jump in. And stop waiting. Stop planning, just do it. And I’m really proud of Matt, because Matt, as soon as he got out of law school, he took risks. He took marketing risks. He’s one of those guys who wanted to start his firm out of law school, which obviously I always encourage people not to do, I encourage you to work. But however he did it, and he’s done well for himself. And so if you want to do something, do it. Don’t tell people you’re going to do it, do it. It’s my tip. Awesome. Well, you have to have him on the show. Absolutely. And I think he’d be happy to be on here. So if you want to go and have some guests, we had them lined up. We’ve got two guests, someone from marketing company and their branding company, and then something from a personal injury firm out in New York. So I think we’ve got a couple really good guests and then say that I talked to John Fisher, I would really like to get him on this podcast. I think he’ll do it. But I need to talk to him. But we’ve got some really good guests coming up.
