The Fight for Justice: Restoring Lives with Alex Taubes

In this episode, Rich sits down with civil rights attorney Alex Taubes for a powerful conversation on what justice really looks like when the system gets it wrong. From major civil rights cases and wrongful convictions to police accountability, prison reform, and class actions that have shaped state law, Alex brings a grounded, real-world perspective from inside the courtroom and beyond.

They break down what most people misunderstand about the legal system, and why fighting for justice often means going far beyond the headlines. Whether it is corporate negligence, government misconduct, or criminal justice reform, this is a candid look at the cases and consequences that do not always make the front page but change lives every day.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

All right, welcome everybody. I have how do you pronounce your last name? Is it Taubus? Taubis. Taubis. Yes. Okay. I I I've been, you know, we're friends on Facebook and I've been following you forever. And I am such a I'm gonna fanboy a little bit here. I am so um honored to have you as part of the profession. Um I presume I'm a little bit older than you, but I you know that uh um just it's just I just love how all the work that you do, like sticking it to the man and uh and and and and in in in beating the uh the Maxim my grandfather used to say to me sort of an old school depression. You can't fight City Hall or you can't beat City Hall. And I and I'm like, no, no, no, you if if he was alive, I would say, well, beat my friend Alex, does it all the time. Um so um so I love it when somebody like is fearless and takes on uh um institutions uh that always or historically have won and have had the the power imbalance and and and really because you're a lawyer in the purest form. You're doing what a lawyer does, uh, which is using you know your your shingle to to get uh relief for people that are either quick can't speak for themselves or are you know up against you know David Vert. It's David versus Goliath, and you're using it and you're doing it with a high degree of success. So it makes me proud to be a lawyer when I see a guy like you um doing those types of things. So so welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Well, thank you. That was a very generous uh introduction. I really thank you for that. I need all the support, we need all the support we can get in this field right now because um civil rights and the rule of law more generally is under such severe attack, but whether at the national level from the president or from all of the people all the way down who are emboldened by his way of life and the way that he conducts himself, that you know, civil rights is very vital right now, and we need all the help we can get, all the support we can get to keep fighting those fights because it's difficult.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

How did so let I want to back up a little because I want to see how you got here and I'm sure I want to I want well I'm not sure, but I am sure that there's something in your past that lit this spark, and I want to know what it is. Where did you grow up, firstly?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Well, I grew up in Madison, Connecticut, graduated Daniel Han High School, okay, um, and went to Boston University for college and Yale Law School for law. Yeah, yeah. Um, and my mother is Iranian, she came to this country from Iran. Okay. Um, and she's Muslim heritage. My father is entirely Jewish heritage. Oh, interesting. And um obviously a very polarly different um upbringings uh between Tehrahan, Iran, and Scarsdale, New York. Um, but uh they met in college, they got married. And growing up in Madison, um, you know, I had experienced uh prejudice and discrimination. I remember when I was in high school, uh, I handed out my yearbook to get signed, and he kind of just goes into a crowd of people. And I didn't notice, but my dad um going through the yearbook that night found a swastika in my yearbook. Oh gosh. And um I of course remember after 9-11 occurred the kind of prejudice that people had against Muslims, including my mother. Um, so even though I grew up with a lot of privilege growing up in Madison, Connecticut, I was exposed to injustice or discrimination or prejudice and felt like um that was something that uh I was interested in trying to remedy. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Okay, so I'm I grew up in the New Haven area as well. I went West Haven and Hamden. I went to, I was the poor kid at Hamden Hall. Um, so uh, and and a Jewish kid, although we're kind of reformed Jewish family. Um, and I did I did experience some of those things as well. Did you um were you did you practice were you bar mitzvah or did you were you a Muslim?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

No, no, we grew up in a very secular kind of humanists or something. My my father actually grew up um with his parents raising him as Unitarian, even though his entire background was all Jewish. Taubis itself is a like a Jewish rabbinical name, going back to Romania and Eastern Europe. Um, but very secular family, and really on both sides. My mom, my mom is not very religious either. No offense, mom, if you're watching. Like most religious people. But um, yeah. And um, but you know, as of one thing that I've pursued in my education, especially when I was at at Yale in New Haven, was to try and um learn more about my heritage on both sides, and especially my my Jewish heritage.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

And studying um, you know, studying more of Jewish history and and the Talmud and things like that is something that I've been able to reconnect with later in life. But as a child, we we were very much American. The only holiday we celebrated was Christmas. Right, a tree and presents, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:53

But I we we you know, we're in my our home, our we're secular humanists, right? Which is, you know, right, being good for the sake of being good, yeah, not because I that's right something that I think. But we always think Christmas because we always looked at it as an American holiday, like it's like a pagan tree, and and we exchange presents and it's the holiday season. But I we did the same thing we still do, but we're not it's not for Jesus or anything, it's just um a thing. So you go to Hint, you go to so Madison, which is obviously a very nice town. Um, you go to BU. Yes. Okay. And then uh what do you study there?

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Uh philosophy and political science and go right to law school? I had a year between college and law school, which was very formative for me. I was very, very I went to Washington, D.C. and worked for a judge who worked at the DC who was a judge on the DC Circuit at the time. Okay. As you know, the DC Circuit is like the second highest court in the country.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

It's a Supreme Court clerkship, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Um the judge I worked for is David Tatle. He's blind, right? He's blind, right? And my job was to read to him everything he needed to do his work as a judge, as his reader and an assistant. Wow. And it would start by meeting him in the morning. When he would come into work, he would take the metro from Chevy Chase, Maryland, all the way to downtown. The whole red line downtown. Uh his wife would drop him off at the station, he would walk his way, and this was before he had a seeing iDog, which he has now. Um, he would he would walk with his cane to the to the train, take the train, get on the escalator up the station at Judiciary Square, and I would meet him there, and we would walk to work and I would start reading him as well. Just your square is red line, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

Yeah, right. So he just won one thing. And he would uh and the metro is I would of all the subway systems, I think the most friendly to blind people, I would say, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

I think it was a it I like the the Washington DC Metro. It's a beautiful metro and it's a it's a nice thing. Yeah. Hopefully Trump can't ruin that. I know. It's nice.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

I I'm an American guy. I went to American for college. Oh, cool. Yeah, cool. So I lived there for a bunch of years. Um, so you'd so you weren't a law clerk at the time, you were just a uh just I was an employee of the federal government. Employee of the federal government, and then in and you did you tell him you were thinking about going to law school?

SPEAKER_00 7:00

I was pretty much a prerequisite if I was gonna take that choice. But I was gonna go and be an attorney, yeah. And so you you're reading to him the briefs? Uh briefs, bench memos, um draft opinions, going through them on the computer and editing them as they go from draft to final and sent to other people.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Did he encourage you to go to law school?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Absolutely. Right. I mean, yeah, I had to go to law school, and and I think his fingerprints are all over my admissions uh I'm not sure if I would have gotten into yellow without that. Let's write back to the guy? Um no. He went to the University of Chicago Law School. All right. Yes. Still. But he had some connections there. He had some connections there.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

So you you work for him and then apply, you go, and then you come, you're back to coming back to New Haven.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Yep. Came back to New Haven where I'm from and um and went to law school. And um, I after law school, I stayed in New Haven and I started working with a local civil rights attorney named David Rosen, uh, who's you know, senior uh to me and and had his own practice and really had a practice that he uh put forward himself, you know, like had hung up a shingle and had done this work. He's a New Haven guy, I probably New Haven guy who has always lived in New Haven and worked in New Haven and um has done some historic cases like Black Panthers cases. And together we worked on two big cases. One was a class action for people who were in apartments in New Haven that had mold in them.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

And it was a big apartment class action that ultimately settled for 18 and three-quarters million dollars. And then the other was a Oh, I remember that case.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

That was a huge thing when it came out, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

And then we also we also worked on some product liability, wrongful death, civil, civil cases, complex civil cases, because David really worked on big one one or two big cases at a time when I was working there. Um, which I you know wish I could do because I have to do I'm doing so many more at once.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Right, right, right. So you so that's so two years with with him. So what year do you get out of law school?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

2015. I was with David for four years. Four years. And then after in 2019, at the end of 2019, I um David and I separated and I started my own firm at that time.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Wasn't there well again, I don't want we don't have to get into this too much, but I I I thought I remember reading there was some sort of issue with the fees on that case. There was a fight over that, nothing like that.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Nothing like that.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Okay, all right, I don't remember, I'm mistaken. So you go with him for four years, you say, fine, I'm gonna go do my own thing.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

I started my own firm at that time.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

Four years out of law school.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Sitting here today as a lawyer for 25 years, and again, I did I was a big law finance attorney and then started my own thing, and now I do just divorce. I don't know if you realize, if you ever stepped back, you probably do realize it now, like what a big deal going out on your own is. Did you realize now how big of how brave of a and courageous you had to be to do that?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

I guess that I never really was part of a big firm. And so I've always kind of undervalued it. But over time, I guess I've I've come to appreciate it more, you know, and I'm trying to to now build out firm because I think it is important to have a firm around you and to work with colleagues and to have a team um to accomplish your butt just the the the the the step taking the step to saying that guy's you know David's cutting you a paycheck, right? I do think I was really I was kind of bold at that time. I don't know if I would have made the same decision now.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

But it's right, but because think about it, right? If you if you work for somebody else and you have a bad day, right? Like the the your check is still gonna come at the end of the week. Yeah, you'll work it out. You'll work it out. But like, no, no, I'm saying, but if you're a W-2 employee and you're on a payroll, right? If you whatever you kind of have a bad day, but if you're on your own and you have a couple of bad days, like that can you may not be able to take a check.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

There's times when no money is coming in, and that's very like nerve-wracking because bills continue to come in and you have obligations that you have to meet, um, and you have to and you eat what you kill, so you there's pressure. But I mean I tend to think that I would be a lot less productive if I wasn't operating under um a framework of pressure. I like having pressure applied. If if if if there's no pressure applied, I don't know that I could sustain like the level of focus and energy that I would if I was just in some environment you know, where it wasn't, you know, and and the the other thing is is that I'm very stubborn and I don't really follow what people tell me to do. I'm like very much if you tell me to do something, I'm gonna I'm and I'm a contrarian, so I'm gonna disagree with you and I'm going to test what you're telling me to do and whether it's right. And so rather than ha you know, having to fight with someone who's on my side basically all the time, it's better for me to just be against the other side in litigation, you know, and just be the lawyer, the representative, and you know, maybe people supporting me, but I'm so contrarian that you know I think I'm well suited to being an attorney.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

So where do you open up an office? Uh in this is 2015, you said?

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Yeah, in 2019. Oh, 2019. Right before the COVID. Okay. And um I started out with a home office. Okay. Um, and then I and then I got some space in downtown New Haven. Downtown New Haven. Okay. Yeah, which where I'm still at. Okay. It's a nice space. Where is it? Are you off the green? Orange and Orange and Elm Street. Oh, where Rosa DeLoro has her office.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's uh that's right. That's in the heart of everything.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yeah, and it's a beautiful building. There's your there's a hattery down the street. There's a hattery. I love that hattery. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Yes. Okay, so you're there. So you're right in the center of it all. And of course, when it gets warm out, there's lots of great food options. There's that great uh Thai uh cart right there near the court.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, no, I love New Haven. Um, and I'm really glad to be there, and I anticipate staying there.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

So when you when you hang up your shingle, obviously you've you met a lot of people, especially the people that are that you helped with the apartment complex and stuff. They, you know, I'm sure they start sending you business and things. Are you doing criminal work? Are you doing just civil? What are you doing at the time in 19?

SPEAKER_00 13:23

You know, when I first started, I had a probably a more narrow idea of what I wanted to do because I just had the experience with David and I basically saw myself doing what he was doing. And so tried to just kind of focus on working up a few large civil cases and not really trying to venture into a lot of different other things. But partly because of COVID, I quickly realized that that was not going to be possible, that I had to pursue every opportunity basically that walked in the door that I could turn a profit on in order to keep it going. And so I started doing uh car crashes, PI work, uh, and PI. I started doing um some criminal. Although with criminal, it was interesting. I kind of got into that through work and and volunteering that I was doing with the criminal justice um abolition reform movements. And I was volunteering in prisons and jails, and I was involved with the ACLU's work to litigate the conditions of confinement during COVID and the difficulties with prisons and COVID. And I had a very close friend of mine who I met through political campaigning work that I was doing, who I learned through family members of his had been wrongfully convicted. And through those various ways of being really close to the problem, I ended up getting some clients who were mostly people who are incarcerated who were seeking to get out early from their sentence. And during COVID, part of it was that they're older or they're susceptible to COVID or that they're nearing the end of their sentence. But then there are also people for whom just people I knew in the community, and it could have been from the Church Street case as well. Um, they were like, this is a person who's really worth worthy of relief. And everybody in prison was trying to get out of prison. Everybody's trying to go home. But I had the luxury of being able to know who was vouching for the people who were coming to me, and then to be selective in the cases I was taking and to try and find cases that I thought were really meritable, had a lot of merit. And through the being very selective about the cases, we had a lot of success. And I've gotten over 1,147 years taken off of people's prison sentences over the past since just in the last four and a half years, basically, that we were doing it. Because we didn't really start getting years off until um 2021, 2022. Um, but um in doing that and getting people out of prison, it wasn't just helping that one person in a way that was really profound, more so than a civil lawsuit, in with some exceptions. You know, some civil lawsuits are just as important. But it was very profound for them, but also for their families, for their communities. And that would bring in more PI cases and things like that as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah. What is the um what is the is there a statute or is it common law? What's how what's the operative way that you seek a sentence reduction? What's the method?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

So, Connecticut, you know, um, for some people who are in prison, there are multiple methods of relief, whereas for others, there's none. And so the individual method and way that we would get a potential relief for someone really depends on the individual case. I think that's one thing that I have to start with. Okay. But there in general, the ways that we've gotten the most time off of people is through sentence modification motions in the superior court that the person was sentenced in. And the laws have changed since 2021 to make more people eligible for those motions. So now anyone who's pled guilty and has received a prison sentence executed time of seven years or less can apply for a sentence modification in the court where they were sentenced, and the judge can reduce it all the way down to whatever the mandatory minimum is. And what's what's the standard? Good cause. Good cause shown. Good cause shown. And uh that's a I love the good cause shown standard. If it's denied, you cannot apply again for five years, though. So for the lesser sentences of seven years or less, you have like that one chance, basically. Now, if it's a plea bargain and they receive more than seven years, like seven in a day, then in order to get in front of a judge on such a motion, you need the permission of a prosecutor. So if it's seven years in one day, you need the permission of a prosecutor? To get a hearing, which and this is for this is just for plea bargains. Any sentence of prison while you're incarcerated that you received so any for anyone who got a sentence of prison after a trial, okay, trial, convicted, sentenced, while they're in prison, they can get a hearing on a sentence modification. And again, if they get denied, they can apply again in five years. So it doesn't matter if you have seven years or more or less, if if it's from a trial. If it's for a plea bargain, then you can only file one if you got seven years or less. So what does it mean to get the prosecutor's permission? Is like you call them and say, hey, Jim? I usually write a pretty formal letter, which is almost like a memorandum of law, with all the exhibits and things that I want them to consider, a package basically for them. Different prosecutors' offices have different policies about it. Um you know, one of the most sentence modifications I'm most proud of was because state's attorney uh Maureen Platt of Waterbury uh gave us permission to go to court for a client, Alpha Jalla, who was the valedictorian of the Yale Prison Education Program at McDougall uh Douglas. And uh, you know, he was fortunate that the the that you know he that she was able to see that, but there are other people I think who are also deserving of that relief. So I commend the those prosecutors who really will take a look at it and and give it a shot. So the sentence modifications is one way, another way in Connecticut we have is commutations through the Board of Pardons and Paroles. And that was something that we were very successful with from 2022 until about April of 2024. They cut it off, right? Where there was a a a political controversy and the the whole system changed, yeah. And that was unfortunate, but um there's a lesson to that, which is that when we are fighting for what we believe in and and getting results, there's no quietly doing that. Like what they're against us for and what we're fighting against is our success. There's it's a zero-sum game. We're not going to be able to get it through the back door. So, you know, right now at the legislative session, um, there's a push to expand eligibility for parole for people who have excessively long prison sentences, especially who were sentenced for those crimes when they were very young. And that was basically the work that we were doing with the parole board during 2022 to 2024. But now we have to get it through the legislature. And that's just the in history teaches us that's the way it has to be done. Because if you don't do it the right way, then there'll be the backlash. You know, it's similar with Trump. Like if we we weren't able to accomplish everything we wanted, or we tried to take shortcuts, and that leads to Trump getting elected. So we have to like learn lessons to make it more durable, the changes that we want to make. Right. Is the um how about then is there a third way through a habeas action? So absolutely. Um a habeas corpus action does not just test the sentence, but actually is a method of trying to reverse the conviction itself through a collateral attack in a civil court, and can only be successful if the person who's incarcerated proves a violation of the Constitution as the plaintiff and carries the burden of proof to do that. And it's rare, but it does happen. And I was actually at the Supreme Court last week on Friday arguing a case on behalf of an individual who's been incarcerated 25 years, wrongly we submit, because of uh misleading forensic scientific evidence that was introduced at his trial in 2000 that was never challenged by an expert back then, and which the prosecutor highlighted and said, Well, if you want to believe my client, you have to believe that the medical examiner is lying, which Which us lawyers know is not a proper way of framing it, but you know, misled the jurors. And as it turns out, 20 years later, one of the nation's most foremost medical examiners looked at all the same evidence and said, I don't agree with the medical examiner from back then. So that was the James Hilton case that we fought last week, and that's a habeas. Now, if the habeas case is successful, what happens is the case returns to a pretrial position as though they've just been accused and arrested. And it goes back on the criminal docket. And the state can actually choose to retry that person again or dismiss the charges. Right. And it doesn't sometimes, and that's a the Rockville court, right? It's the Rockville court is where we had that trial for James Hilton. Actually, that was like four years ago now.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

But there's that but that's where the habeas docket is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

That's where the habeas docket is. And that presents a structural challenge for people because let's say you were convicted of a crime that occurred in um uh Greenwich or Stanford, and you had a trial in Stanford, and all the witnesses are down there. Right. And now you have to put on a trial showing that that trial was unconstitutional, but you have to put it on in Rockville, Connecticut. Two hours away. Yeah. So that's kind of unfair. Now, what some people do is they file what's called a petition for a new trial, which is filed in the same court where you were sentenced, except in civil court. It has a similar but slightly lower standard than a habeas, but the catch is that there's a three-year statute of limitations, three years from the sentencing date. Except in 2008 and then 2018, the General Assembly created exceptions to the three-year statute of limitations. First, for DNA evidence. So that can be raised at any time in a petition for a new trial, and you can get your hearing in the same place. But second, in 2018, they expanded the exception from DNA to all newly discovered forensic scientific evidence. And that's important because scientific evidence is constantly changing. It's evolving.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

I see. So they can now, but as part of the habeas docket, sometimes doesn't the judge who pretries the case sit down and say, look, if we get you five years off, will you withdraw your case? I mean, is there kind of back and forth bargaining and that stuff?

SPEAKER_00 24:27

It's pretty, pretty rare. Really? Yeah. It's pretty rare. And and to the extent that it's happening now, I think it's more of a recent thing than it has been historically. Um, because um, frankly, there are not a lot of grants of habeas relief. Um, historically, from I think the mid-90s to 2018, um, there was a study that showed that on average there's like one or two a year.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

That are granted.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

And you gotta think there's t tens of thousands of people going through the prison system where the state has agreed to sentence relief in exchange for a cessation of hostilities and litigation. Um, but then, you know, the question becomes where does that leave the person who was incarcerated for all those years on what the state is at least willing to concede shouldn't have gone down the way it was gonna be going down, right? So, and and that's actually not a hypothetical. This has happened. People have been let out when the reason they're being let out early is because of evidence of their innocence, right? Including DNA evidence of their innocence. But in exchange for getting out, they have to drop the claim that I was never should have been here at all. Interesting. And then when they get out, they still have the record, they still have the stain of the conviction, the history following them everywhere. So eventually the truth has to come out. Eventually, there has to be new litigation to say that trade that the state basically forced them into is not a fair trade. You know, you're telling it's basically telling someone that to, you know, you have to carry this with you forever in order to be free. That's like really unfair, you know?

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Oh, that's an interesting way to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

It's like the uh, what's what's his name? The uh Jean Beljean, right? It's like a Faustian bargain, like selling your soul to the devil. Right. You know, he has his uh his yellow ticket of leave and he has to show it everywhere he goes.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

Yeah, there's that. Yeah, and and um and this is coming up a lot recently because the um, you know, to get parole, the expectation is that you admit your guilt. You know, so a lot of these individuals from the 90s who got really long sentences, you know, we're giving you a hundred years to like a 19-year-old kid. Okay, so now it's that was 1994, now it's 2026. So now he's 44, spent his entire adult life in prison. Um but we find out actually maybe he was innocent. So he's lost his like entire life to something he didn't do. But these habeas cases take years and years and years, and and sometimes there's technic technicalities that come in. So they offer him, would you like to be free for the first time 30 years in your life as an adult? Or do you want to sit in jail and wait for the chance that when you do get free you can get compensated?

SPEAKER_02 27:38

And so they grab the freedom. Who wouldn't? Interesting. So you're doing that type of work uh now, what else are you doing? Are you doing uh plaintiffs? Are you doing any more injury work?

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Oh yeah, oh yeah. So I mean, fundamentally, as lawyers, you know, we get a bad rap of being like the, you know, the bullies or whatever, but really we're like the humanizers, you know. I mean, unless if if we're not working for the corporations or for the government, we're the ones who are trying to bring the human side of the story to a situation. So the same kind of um tactics that the police use in a case where they've done wrong, like this person would, you know, when they've denied someone the medical care they need um after an incident, or if they um use excessive force, the same tactics that they use are the ones that insurance companies use to deny people their justice from a car accident. They say you're faking it, you know, you were on your phone distracted, it's your fault. Um they do the same, it's the same fight. But the diff, the only difference is is that, you know, from my work that I've done in the community and the experiences that I've had and the education that I was able to get working for the judge and working at Yale, I feel that I'm well equipped to take on some of these cases with the police that other attorneys sometimes don't want to take on, partly because of the experience I have and because, you know, I can, you know, I'm willing to kind of take the risk involved in it. I try to be upfront with my clients about the risk too. Like we're it we're doing this because it's the right thing to do, but it's not like a case that most lawyers would take where you know you're gonna get something at some point, but you don't know what. This is more like we don't know what's gonna come from this. But if we lose the case, it's not necessarily our loss, it's also the system's loss. If we can't win this, something needs to change.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

What other type of work are you doing? So you're doing the PI work, you're doing the sentence work. I do so the sentence work really was sort of much more of what I did until the governor changed everything. I do more um pretrial criminal work now in all the different parts of the state. All the GAs. Yeah, and and and the JDs as well. Um, I do federal uh criminal and civil work of pretty much any kind. I'm in federal court a lot. Um, I do appeals. I really like doing appeals. I was at the Supreme Court last week.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

So state and federal appeals?

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Yeah, I'm Second Circuit, um, as well as the Connecticut appellate and Supreme Court. Um and whatever is either interesting um or you know, potentially going to be worthwhile in terms of it being good for the business, or um, things that are aligned with what we are trying to accomplish by advancing civil rights and the rule of law in our state of Connecticut. You know, this is where I grew up and chose to go to law school and to practice law. And so I'm focused on Connecticut and the issues and the legal issues that are facing our state. And that's where my focus will stay.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

What about trial work? Are you doing any trial work?

SPEAKER_00 31:05

I just finished a trial in federal court. Um, I guess it's a week ago. It was a week, it was last week on Wednesday that we got the verdict. It was a hung jury after five days of deliberation in a civil case.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

Oh, in a civil, I was gonna say criminal case, you did your job.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

No, in a civil case against the police, um, in an excessive force case against the police. In 1983 case. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Who tried it on the other side?

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Um Howden Ludorf. Okay. So so well and they they gave a uh It was a partial verdict, partial hungry, jury. So there are four officers involved. Uh it was a horrible situation, but I am not gonna go into the details because our client is choosing not to go public with it at this time. But two of the officers were found were exonerated by the jury and two, they were hung.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

Okay. So you're doing that type of trial work. How about uh do you do any regular um you know, run-of-the-mill breach of contract, that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_00 32:05

Or commercialship uh disputes? Uh you know, commercial litigation. Um I think that I would be well suited for it if if the right client wanted someone, you know, who's you know, got the experience that I have um and I have some experience with it. I also think that I would be a pretty good mediator of such types of disputes, that I could give kind of a you know, could I could I be the scorched earth commercial litigator who comes up with a million ideas and basically just advances your position? Yeah, absolutely. Um and maybe there is a lot of value to that, but I tend to think that in that field there's more value to having the even-handed analysis that tells you what's actually likely to occur and what the trade-offs are, as opposed to just pushing your point of view to the hilt. But then again, different businesses have different business models and different objectives. That's true, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:14

And then and ours and my field is is divorce, right? So that's all I do custody and divorce. So it's a much different thing because it implicates you know your money, it implicates where you're gonna live, it implicates access to your children. That's the number, yeah. So it's a very tough stuff. Very unique thing. It's very tough stuff. And the court is uh, well, you know, it's empowered by statute. The courts have broad, broad discretion. You know, the what I tell clients when I sit with them, as I said, I can give your case, we can literally stip out to everything, we can videotape the trial and then show it to five judges, right? And all five judges would render a different asset allocation, alimony, whatever it's gonna be. It's not a science. It's not a science. But then every one of those were appealed to the appellate court, and they would all be upheld. And the reason is because a judge can, you know, split something 70-30 or they they can, there's all these factors they have to look at. And all they have to say is, I've looked at those factors and they don't even have to say the weight they gave to each one. So it's uh so it's one of those things where it's like, what do you want to do? Like, do you wanna, depending on the judge you get, you can end up here, here. But I do find it's a good system because it tends to end up within what you know, what Judge Sullivan calls the zone of reasonableness. You can end up within here and here. And the question is, is it worth, you know, for parents, unlike business partners, but parents who are business partners but in a very different way, is it worth, you know, kicking each other in the teeth for three days, spending$100,000, and you're never gonna be able to co-parent again?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

And so you've got to try to get somebody off the off the train tracks because they're gonna get run over uh and they don't even realize it.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Yeah, I mean, in truth, like um there's always two sides of being a lawyer. There's like the there's like the fighting side of being a lawyer, and there's the peacemaking side of being a lawyer. And really, for me, number one thing in terms of how I treat my clients is just to tell them the truth. Tell them the truth of everything, give them all of the information that I can give them. Um, try to help them understand the reality of situations because people come to law with so many expectations and ideas about the way things are or should be that are simply not the case. You know, a lot of people think, well, if we're right, then won't the judge rule in our favor? Yeah, right. Yeah, right. And like the concept of risk is extremely difficult for people to understand if that's not something they've been trained and educated in, understanding, like the that there's always going to be risk in what the judge is.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

And I I try to tell people, I said, look, right now you're draped across the train tracks. And I think this is like a norm patters, like Matt metaphors may or he told me this story once. And my job is to pull as much of you across the train tracks as possible. So maybe you maybe you leave with you know a foot less or something, but you're still, you know, you could still get around, you could you're alive as opposed to being severed in half.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Yeah. Um but you know, the the the thing about this the civil rights work that um is true is just that um yeah, a lot of times you have to give people the blunt reality that like the the work of making our civil rights real in our country is still not over. You know, we still need to fight for Congress to do something about qualified immunity, even though it seems like everything is going in the opposite direction and ICE is just doing whatever they want.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

You know, so you know, the fight and the struggle continues um in all the different areas that I do it, whether it's wrongful convictions, excessive force, employment discrimination, um, or getting people fair and just compensation from insurance companies. Because, you know, we don't usually call it like discrimination, but there is discrimination by them too, you know, in terms of how they look at claims and how they look at people making claims from different walks of life and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

So oh, that's interesting. What are you doing now, if anything, related to the current administration's efforts in with ICE and uh wrongful detentions? Are you involved in any of the anything there?

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Thank you for asking me that because that's been a something that I've started to get very focused on. Um, I have a client who was attending his lawfully noticed immigration court appearance at the Hartford Federal Courthouse. He went through security screening, a metal detector. He attended court lawfully, he appeared to be winning his case for asylum as a refugee from Afghanistan. Um, and when he was going back home um to his American wife, a U.S. citizen, he was uh confronted by unmarked, unidentified, masked agents inside the courthouse who lunged at him. And when he went back towards the courtroom, tased him seven times. Oh my gosh. In the courthouse, uh federal immigration judge came out to tell them to stop and was called a traitor by the agents in the hallway of the federal courthouse. And then that judge would be later fired by President Trump. And thankfully, Governor Lama has nominated him to be a state court judge now. Is this Tom Doolittle? Yeah, Ted Doolittle. Ted Doolittle, yeah. So he was a witness to our case. We've brought an administrative complaint to the DHS, which is the precursor to a Federal Tort Claims Act case against ICE, um, to bring a federal damages action against ICE in federal court in Connecticut in the courthouse where he where the assault was.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

Is your client still in ICE custody?

SPEAKER_00 38:45

So after he was taken, after he was tased, he was taken into ICE custody, but he's now actually outside in the cyber truck waiting to Oh, that's him. Oh my god, that's amazing. You got him out. We got him out. Um with help from his immigration attorney.

SPEAKER_02 38:59

What were they detaining him for? What did they claim he did?

SPEAKER_00 39:01

They claimed that he was well, this was they claimed that he was illegally an illegal immigrant, even though he was actually illegal immigration. He was in court, right? I mean, I don't want to get too much into the details of the immigration case at this time or the details of the case. Right. But even after we were able to obtain a bond from the immigration court in Springfield Mass, because that's where it got transferred to after he was brought to Bristol House County Correct uh Correction Center. The the I instead of releasing him after the bond was paid, the next morning after the bond was paid, ICE put him on a plane.

unknown 39:45

What?

SPEAKER_00 39:46

And flew him to Machanon Valley, Pennsylvania, a private ICE prison in the middle of nowhere, where they kept him there for an additional, I think it was three days before ultimately they let him out. They said administrative, they were just looking to break his chops.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

He was on bond.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

We'll see, the courts will decide. Because that I think is another part of our Federal Tort Claims Act case.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

And they fired the the immigration judge.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

They did. They did, the one in Hartford who witnessed the assault was fired. And um, so we have a case against ICE, and we're gonna sue ICE, and um my client, you know, is he's very courageous for every all of his fights that he's gone through.

SPEAKER_02 40:36

So are you getting a lot of calls to your office about this type of behavior?

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Well, um, frankly, and this is what's so insidious about what Trump is doing to our country. They don't pick on someone like you or me who has a guy to call. Right. They tend to kick the people who are down already, right, or they tend to take advantage of situations where people are vulnerable, where people don't have a network or a community to turn to, people who are isolated, people who have no knowledge of the legal system or what options they have or who to trust. Those are the people who ICE goes after. After all, we see them going after people like kids, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

So, what does that tell you when you see reports of them going after kids? That tells you that the adults they're going after are often like kids, people with intellectual disabilities or with um lack who lack capacity to make decisions or who need um someone to help them make decisions. Those are the classic people who ICE will go after. People who don't speak English. Were you doing a lot of the work in the immigration courts? Like in the I'm not an immigration attorney. I don't practice in the immigration court. Um, I really respect colleagues of mine who do great, courageous work in the immigration courts. Um, it's not something that I've ever done. I will note that they are technically part of the executive branch.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

The immigration courts. And the immigration judges are legally employees of the Department of Justice. Oh, interesting. And not Article III.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

Oh, that's hence hence the firing. Exactly. Right. It's not like uh they have the independence like a district court judge who could who's appointed for life, subject to impeachment of only, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Yeah, exactly. And then appeals of immigration judges go to the executive office of immigration review at the Department of Justice. And only then do appeals go to the Second Circuit, where there's an extremely deferential standard review of immigration. Right.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

So if but so if you've corrupted the Department of Justice to be your personal law firm and advance your ideology, which we know is the case because the if you look at some of the postings looking for um USAs, right? And it basically says, um, are you willing to you have to you have to swear to support Donald Trump's agenda? They want to see your social media post. And so like it's become like to advance the president's agenda as opposed to where it's been more historically independent, right? The Department of Justice used to be viewed to, in my, at least in my view, as folks that are independent, that would, you know, career prosecutors would look at it, call balls and strikes, and make a decision, as opposed to now where it's you have to swear allegiance to this philosophy. Um, so what are they gonna do? You think they're gonna somebody's gonna risk their job by finding against somebody that ICE took in?

SPEAKER_00 43:34

There are always courageous people out there who will take a stand and who will, even if they know that they're just gonna get replaced by someone who is gonna do it, they still say, you know what, I'm not gonna be the one. And today I'm it's not gonna be my day. Uh maybe their bad day is a great day for America, you know, a bad day where they do something that maybe they didn't think they'd ever do, but they say no. We need those people. So, and and those people will have my support.

unknown 43:59

Um

SPEAKER_00 44:00

um as an attorney, if they if they'd stand up and do their patriotic duty as Americans and not allow this president to destroy our country. And you know, this is how he's ruining our country, is because what really made our country very powerful is that we have institutions like the Department of Justice that have guardrails and safeguards to protect their independence, which makes it a stronger agency able to take down um local to transnational criminal enterprises. But when a criminal enterprise takes over the presidency and then wants to turn our country into a dictatorship, then all of those guardrails and safeguards and checks and balances that make our country great become targets for destruction. And that's exactly what's happening. And the problem is that it's not easy to build those things back up when you get rid of them. That's it's the road to dictatorship. And so you know we have to continue to um do everything every American and everybody who has the temerity to pay some attention to what's going on around them has an obligation to not really like just think that that's okay but to but to s speak out and give their opinion and to take action when it's in your power to not allow this to continue. Interesting. In your office is uh are you the only lawyer? I have an associate um who a recent graduate of Quinnipiac um who's who's joined the firm for the last like six months. Oh nice I've typically for the past for the past four years or so had um an associate working with me for a couple years. Sometimes they move on to other opportunities or they move for love or other reasons. Move for love. And then paralegals as well I have three full-time paralegals um two of whom are formerly incarcerated clients of mine who uh not only we got sentence reductions after decades in prison but they got their college degrees in prison. And one of them is actually a second year law student now at UConn where he's studying to you know to become an attorney and hopefully return back to the firm and as an associate.

SPEAKER_02 46:30

Oh my gosh. And um and what do you do um when you're not lawyering? What do you like to do?

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Um well there hasn't been a whole lot of time for me to not be lawyering. Especially since Trump has come into office and we have all this stuff with ICE and everything. Um you know um I do you know I like spending time with my family my kids you know you have some kids yeah yeah two kids.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

Okay. And uh do you do you have any hobbies or are you just singularly focused on law?

SPEAKER_00 47:04

I'm kind of a nerd yeah no nothing wrong with it I'm just uh just curious what the do you do do you like to read?

SPEAKER_02 47:11

Do you I do like to read. I don't because I read so much at work that's one problem for me.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

Yeah I mean I don't read I don't have time much time for leisure reading these days that's I'm like really reading a lot um what do your kids think of the work you do do they are they old enough to they're not old enough but they they want they they like it though because you know I'm cool.

SPEAKER_02 47:33

Well right you hopefully you like that um the what does your significant other think of all this um well I won't speak for her probably is she a lawyer too no she's not a lawyer no all right so she uh she knows you work a lot and you're dedicated I mean you I mean you could you would say though right I mean you have to have a a guy like you has to have a special spouse. True because you're I I know the type you are you are singularly focused you you you take these things very to heart because you realize what's at stake you have people's lives in your hands and so that requires sometimes a a very understanding spouse to I my spouse too like you to understand that you're gonna come home sometimes and you just need to like sink into the couch.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

So you know um it's a ch it's a challenge because the the projects that that I've embarked on when I first dove into them when I started my firm I didn't really know I didn't really have the the knowledge I have now so I didn't know what I was getting into. And the the more I got into it the harder it is to just stop you've star you've started projects and what are you going to give up? Like James Hilton for example I was trying the case in front of the habeas judge in 2021. It's 2025 we're on appeal the same trial um 2021 I was just I was just getting started here I am now and yeah a person's life is in the line like you know doctors will have a surgery that they prepare for but it's not like five years of surgery you know maybe that it is but it's like it's one of them and you don't have a another doctor out there whose like job it is to make sure you mess up like and then you're right you know the opposing doctor whose job it is to to kill the patient. As you're operating yeah so it's it's you know and I don't know that my wife really obviously if I didn't know what I was getting into then she didn't really know what she was getting into either. But that's I think you know that now we're veering into your area of expertise.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

Yes no no stay away from me well stay away from that I think well the you know the joke is not really a joke but people come to me all the time if I've been on a podcast and they say how do we not get divorced and my line is and this is more it's not glib but but think about it for a thing is stay married.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

Yeah and what I mean by that is you have to just commit to saying you gotta just make this work because it's you know but then you have a lot of clients who do get divorced right and they are happy to yeah you know look sometimes it it can't you know you're not cut for it or they I'm an attorney so I think of marriage and divorce as like those are legal things.

SPEAKER_02 50:26

Well it's it's funny because it's a you're entering into a contract where you don't know what the terms are, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:31

If you have a lease, right, you read it and you say okay I pay this I'm responsible this and this if I say to you now what was the contract that you entered into with your wife and you're gonna tell me I don't know you tell me Rich that I was in June 2019 so this is before I even left the firm I was at I had a job like I presume like there there was still a possibility that I would like progress from where I was at where I was with this guy for four years to more seniority and maybe partnership and take over his practice before he retires like the world was very different. It was pre-COVID like no didn't have children yet either. So yeah I mean what can I tell you like it's it's definitely not been um without its trade-offs to be uh a civil rights attorney and to be um on my own and um it's not clear to me what the alternative would have been when all these decisions I made it just at the time it seemed like it was just the only thing I could do.

SPEAKER_02 51:28

What's with New Haven producing some really sort of legendary civil rights folks like John Williams Norm like Dave Rosen like New Haven seems to where is where they originate from what I think it's all that cheap labor we get from Yale interns and and students.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

Right? The uh right the cheap labor and that we can get did you ever work with John Williams at all? Yeah John Williams referred me my first jury trial he had just gotten a great result a split verdict for a criminal client on a jury trial and the guy had another trial in another jurisdiction um and he referred it to me um and he's been a good great friend of mine he he his office is right across the street from my office he he he still comes to the office although his uh it's his the practice the office has been taken over by another firm they still have a little space to come figure things out oh yeah I had a I had something with him and he was just uh he's he's from Montana right um North Dakota or North Dakota or Montana or something up there yeah he was telling stories about that place but he was like a he's a legend I mean he's just a total uh a total legend did you ever work with Norm at all? I have worked with Norm as well.

SPEAKER_02 52:42

Norm has referred some also some of my uh most important cases legend too like he's uh I I co-chaired a case with him a divorce case and uh he's just he's one of the guys that I said you know you can literally hand him a file and he says what do I need to know and he could walk in and win. I mean he's that talented.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

I think that anywhere any of you even in the lesser known cities you find some really legendary attorneys if you're just not from the community you may not know the name because you know um these great attorneys are just really great at at storytelling and um you know stories uh that are real that are about facts you know it's not just stories that are make believe it's like taking all the facts and all of real things that happen and making something compelling about it is something really cool about that.

SPEAKER_02 53:33

There's a guy I want to meet I had his associate on here his name is Ben Shapiro but he works for Isaac Katz or is that his name? Ivan Ivan Katz do you hear the name? Yeah he's like a they're very well security attorneys apparently he's been there for 50 years he smokes a pipe this guy and he's got you know Ivan Ivan Ivan is a great attorney that's the guy I want to have him he's a legendary attorney right legendary right he smokes a pipe right I didn't know if he smokes a pipe or not but I know that he kicks ass at Social Security and Ben I had Ben on his um uh associate who's been there a long time we talk about social security because I'm very fascinated that's another slog too right you got to just like work it and work it and work it about telling the human story of a person's you know challenges right which is really really powerful if you think about it no but I'm saying but that's the one where they automatically deny it and then you have to like you have to really I've been taking compelling and there's like six levels and he talks about it he takes it all he literally does and he wins.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Yeah because at the end of the day um you know people are out there are disabled and and the the sad thing about social security for me is just how meager it is. Oh yeah 900 bucks we're fighting over 900 bucks and that should be a political issue like presidential candidates should campaign on what they think that should be and it shouldn't be 900 bucks.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

Well they can launch a missile a million here a million here a hundred million there and we don't have an extra 300 bucks a month so somebody can have some dignity it's crazy to me.

SPEAKER_00 54:51

It's terrible and with all the profits that are being made off of AI and how they're saying you know to to take care we have money to take care of people an easy way to I mean they should frankly just double it they should make it 1800 they can right and that also helps the economy too right because then the money's not just take the money from all these tech people who are getting these billions of dollars take take that and double the social security disability benefit.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

And people can live Ivancats will have more business too well Alex listen thank you so much um you're doing fantastic work important work um I don't know how our paths will cross uh in cases but I'm hoping they if if I can be of assistance to you I I find myself to be very creative and I've taken on the governor before not this governor but a different governor in a pretty big case um back in the early in the mid-2000s mid-aughts I I took on the governor the for some bunch of workers were wrongfully fired fired for trying for these benefits during a hurricane and he laid off 200 of them and I got them all their job back except for two. So I've been in the spotlight I had press releases and all that stuff and I know what it's like and it's exhilarating but it's exhausting but it's important because to this day I still people still send me business and call me and say you know I'm I'm where I am today because you got me my state job back. So that's so rewarding to hear that when you know and that's what a lawyer's job could do. I mean I I used to do contracts at you know private equity work and all that stuff. And to me that's you know you're working all these hours and like to what end? Here it's like I have a problem I can help you and change your life and that to me is that's a noble profession. I still believe it. And uh and you're you're you're exemplifying that so thank you so much and uh thank you for your kind words. I really appreciate that thank you