Uncontroverted Facts: As an Attorney I Could Never Have Defended This Man

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Many people have heard me say on this app that I was a trial attorney for 28 years.

[00:00:06]And so I did not follow the trial that took place uh I think it was in South Carolina that resulted in a not-uilty verdict yesterday uh with a man who was a store owner, an Asian man who shot a 14-year-old black boy named Cyrus in the back. and he was acquitted at trial because he thought that Cyrus had shoplifted a bottle of water.

[00:00:33]If I was the criminal defense attorney in that case, I never could have been to be honest with you. I would have a really hard time feeling good about that case and that verdict this morning because the uncontroverted facts of the case are that Cyrus was inside the store that was owned by Mr. Chow, the shooter.

[00:00:53]Mr. Chow thought that Cyrus had shoplifted a bottle of water and Mr. Chow and I think his son chased Cyrus when he left the store for 130 yards.

[00:01:07]Mr. Chow shot Cyrus in the back and killed him.

[00:01:13]Mr. Chow and again, I believe it was his son who was with him were the only two witnesses to that part of the interaction.

[00:01:21]They said that Cyrus pointed a gun at them. Now, if I'm pointing a gun at somebody and they shoot me, they're going to hit me here. They're not going to hit me in the back.

[00:01:35]Cyrus was shot in the back.

[00:01:39]And I am not qualified to talk about the racial implications of this case or the reaction or the response of the black community to this verdict and to what happened.

[00:02:00]Um, I've been trying to highlight the voices of black creators who are talking about that and use my platform in that way. But I would have a really hard time feeling good about that acquitt if I was the defense attorney on that case because of the uncontroverted facts in the case.

[00:02:20]The jury was not told because they were unrelated incidents that Mr. Chow uh had been involved in two other shootings. He had fired several rounds into a motor vehicle previously that he felt was a threat to him. He did not hit any people. He shot another person previously in another altercation where again he felt that he was threatened.

[00:02:47]And so this guy, Mr. Chow, a private citizen, has fired his weapon either in anger or fear on three occasions, hitting two people, killing one of them.

[00:03:01]I've known cops who have gone their entire career without firing a single round and they deal with these interactions every single day.

[00:03:12]Jury wasn't told about those other two implications or those other two shootings that Mr. Chow was involved in.

[00:03:20]And you know, it just made me think about like when I was in law school, I decided to go to law school like on a whim. I made that decision in like 90 seconds because I was like, "Yeah, whatever. I'm smart. I could do that. I don't really have anything else going on. So, let's do that." And I remember getting into in my first year in constitutional law class and my criminal law uh class and had two amazing professors and was learning about these righteous kinds of cases, you know, the power of the state coming down on people. And you know, you got one attorney defending a client against the full power of the state. And I remember feeling like that was a really righteous thing to do. And I still believe that. I just can't do it.

[00:04:05]And you know that dynamic I mean I will say this it gives me a tremendous amount of respect for people uh like Eliza Orans who's a creator on this app and she's been a public defender in New York City for 16 or 17 years. That's a hard gig, man.

[00:04:25]That is a hard gig.

[00:04:28]And uh so much respect to Eliza and and others like her, but so I just remember, you know, I had a professor in law school for my criminal law class and there were two or three times where it's like we're reading through our case book and he was the attorney on the case uh in the book and he was the real deal.

[00:04:51]And so I decided I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney. And so I get out of law school and I start practicing, start doing cases. And four months after I got my license, uh, I had a a I was defending a guy in a misdemeanor domestic violence case.

[00:05:09]And I believed that it was a [ __ ] prosecution.

[00:05:14]U, it's very easy to do that kind of work when you believe that it's an actual [ __ ] prosecution. And I got an acquitt for that guy. We did a two-day jury trial and I got an acquitt and that felt better than passing the bar exam.

[00:05:29]But the further I went down the road, the thing that did it for me, um, where I was like, I can't do this.

[00:05:39]Um, couple of times I had to represent I mean I say I had to it's like I got assigned cases and couple times I had to represent sex offenders uh alleged sex offenders. You know, I had to defend some defend a man in a rape case and then I had to defend a man who after molesting all of his own daughters uh had started molesting his grandchildren and going through those experiences and in each of those cases is, you know, again, it's just like I what I learned in law school was that as a criminal defense attorney, you had to do everything in your power to force the ca to force the state to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. And I still believe that that is the role of a criminal defense attorney.

[00:06:44]And like that first trial that I did, it was legitimately a [ __ ] prosecution.

[00:06:51]that guy was not guilty.

[00:06:55]And the the moral questions that started coming up for me when I was defending people who were guilty, who had admitted the things that they had done, and when those cases involved a man raping a woman or a man sexually assaulting children, I couldn't do it.

[00:07:22]And you know, in those two cases, I end up I ended up working out the best deal that I could and they didn't go to trial.

[00:07:32]But the prospect for and again it's just like I'm just speaking for me, you know, the prospect of having to the idea of having to cross-examine a rape victim on the witness stand or having to cross-examine a child on the witness stand, you know, who had been raped or sexually assaulted was beyond anything that I was ever going to be capable of doing even even with these lofty goals of forcing the state to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and standing up against the full power of the state.

[00:08:15]And and so I stopped doing criminal defense law three years in to being an attorney and I never did it again.

[00:08:26]And you know, but coming back to this case with Marcus or excuse me, uh, Cyrus and and Mr. Chow, a 14-year-old black boy shot in the back.

[00:08:50]I would not be feeling good today if I was the defense attorney on that case who won that quiddle. And there's no way that I could have done that case because the uncontroverted facts are the uncontroverted facts.

[00:09:08]If your testimony is that someone was pointing a gun at you and you fired your gun and that person was hit in the back, that verdict was shocking to me yesterday.

[00:09:25]Uh that verdict was shocking to me.

[00:09:29]Um it still is.

[00:09:32]And again, it's like I can never speak to the experience of being a black person in the United States of America.

[00:09:42]Um but I can highlight the voices of people who can speak to that experience.

[00:09:47]And that's one thing I've been trying to do for the last couple days.

[00:09:51]Um, racism in this country in 2026 is out of [ __ ]