In this episode of Trial Lawyer talk, Scott talks with Greg Reeves, a trial lawyer from Alabama who specializes in personal injury and sexual abuse cases. Greg tells the story of his defense of a difficult murder case.
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Transcript of Episode 39, with Greg Reeves
Scott Glovsky:
Welcome to Trial Lawyer Talk. I’m Scott Glovsky and I’m your host for this podcast where we speak with some of the best trial lawyers in the country. Today, we’re very lucky to have with us, Greg Reeves, who’s an amazing trial lawyer. Greg practices in Alabama, but he does cases all over the country. Greg’s gonna share with us the story of his defense of a capital murder case. Some other highlights from the interview include what we can learn as trial lawyers from comedians, the benefits of focus groups, and how we can make the world a better place. So let’s get started.
This is Scott Glovsky and we’re here on Trial Lawyer Talk and I’m very happy today to be sitting with my good friend, Greg Reeves. Greg is a phenomenal trial lawyer, who does all kinds of personal injury cases, but also has a particular emphasis in sex abuse cases. Greg is from Alabama, but he tries cases all over the country. I had the distinct pleasure of trying a case with him a couple months ago. Greg is one of the most authentic, real, humble, and funny guys I know. Greg, thanks so much for being with us.
Greg Reeves:
Thanks Scott, I’m glad to be here.
Scott Glovsky:
Greg, can you share with us a story of a case that had a profound impact on you?
Greg Reeves:
I can and I will say this, Scott, because I know our work together involves mostly dealing with child sex abuse, but I would probably cast myself more as generic trial lawyer. I’ve tried criminal cases, back in the day, divorce cases, but now my focus is on personal injury. I know that’s a broad umbrella and I also realize that a lot of lawyers have niches, but there’s a part of me nowadays that thinks if you go to the courtroom and try a case, civil or criminal, that’s almost a niche in and of itself. We’re here in Wyoming at the trial errors college and I can’t help but think how I got here. So I’d like to tell you the story of that and that takes us back to 1993.
I had been out of law school for a couple years, had a judge who, back then, not a judge but all the judges appointed lawyers to represent people who could not afford a lawyer. We’ve all heard that, if you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be appointed. Well, I was the one often. Was appointed to represent a fella by the name of Nathaniel Morris on a capital murder charge. Worked on that case for three years and it was instrumental because it was really not one I had started out wanting to do. I thought, in law school, my father’s a real estate broker, my family was in home building, and I thought when I came out of law school that I’d be closing real estate loans. So here I am with a client who’s charged with not only murder, but capital murder. I’ll tell you, even then, I’m very competitive and the sense was, how am I gonna help this person?
This was pre-internet. What I mean by that is there weren’t all these books and videos and guides on how to do things. It felt really, in a way, climbing Mount Everest or something and that may have been for anybody, but it did especially for me being new out of law school. Having not handled many criminal cases, I’ll tell you just briefly, the same time the OJ Simpson trial was going on. I’d read and hear in the news routinely about how he had a dream team and all the great lawyers he had and I knew he was a famous movie star and a famous athlete, college and pro, and well regarded. There was just this huge contrast with the case that I had. I had a client who had been previously convicted of murder, had served time for murder. When my guy was introduced to our jury, it was that he was a former felon, convicted murderer, so there’s no question about that. Certainly wasn’t famous and didn’t have any money or he would’ve hired somebody else besides me.
Tried that case. My co-counsel at the time was really just fed up with practicing law and actually left law to go work at Lowe’s in the garden department. It gave me an opportunity to select my next co-counsel. I asked somebody to help me try it and they said they would. They were an older lawyer. Just briefly, the thing that they kept letting me know was that my ideas were somewhat novel or unique. I think the word he used was malpractice. Just to give you a couple examples. My friend said, “Well, one of us is going to have to death qualify the jury.” I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “We need to find out how they felt about the death penalty.” I said, “Look, we grew up here. I did, you did. If you can find five people in this whole county who are against death penalty, I’ll give you $100.00.”
I’m not doing it. We’re not doing that because it really sends a message. The message that it sends and this is just out of my gut, was at the very beginning of a trial, if I’m talking to them about the death penalty, it presumes that my client’s guilty, not innocent. I’m his lawyer, I’m his advocate. If I’m presuming that, what are they to think? So we didn’t do that. He may have said, “Greg, we’ve got to have something about it.” I said, “Well, I’m not. You can ask a question or two, but I think that’s not the right way to go.” He said, “Well, that’s malpractice,” but he would say, “But we’ll go that way. We’ll do that. We’ll try that.” The other thing was that our client wanted to testify strongly.
I remember saying, our client has managed, in the span of 20 years to be arrested for murder twice. Not much else that he could put on his resume. You and I went to law school and did okay, and passed the bar. I don’t really know that he’s the right person that should be calling the shots like that. I probably said it a lot stronger than that, but my point was, he’s not gonna testify. He didn’t. He didn’t, over his objection. In other words, the client strongly wanted to and every time he … Now look, hind sight’s always 20/20 and the rest of that story is that we had a client who was charged with capital murder, his roommate was found dead, he was arrested two weeks later. They were roommates. My guy had cleaned out his bedroom totally, arrested two weeks later in a hotel room under an alias, had nothing but a six pack of beer and blood on his pants.
The neighbors said that my guy had threatened to kill his roommate. They brought in a jail cellmate at trial that said he’d roomed with my client awaiting trial. My client awaited trial three years, and that my client had admitted to the murder. My client was supposed to report to a probation officer every month, being on parole for murder and he didn’t do that. So they brought in the probation officer to talk about his failure to report. With that said, we walked away with an acquittal. Not a “we spared his life,” but a straight up not guilty. I was five years out of law school and I knew then, just from my conversations with my co-counsel that I did things differently.
Scott Glovsky:
How did you get him off?
Greg Reeves:
Honestly, I think any lawyer that has victories, we’d love to point to one thing. We’d love to say, “Oh, I did this. I did that.” I’ll say this, there’s as much as luck as anything. I do think strategy’s important. I think strategy’s huge. If I think that I have something to bring to the table on a case, it is strategy. I focus grouped that case. We hear a lot about focus groups now, but that was a time where I didn’t know anybody else that did it. I only knew that I wanted to know what normal, non-lawyers thought about these facts. I really didn’t care about what my lawyer friends had to say.
The way that brought me to TLC, Trial Lawyers’ College, is I remember reading about this lawyer named Gerry Spence. I’d say growing up or in my neck of the woods, I wouldn’t say he was real famous or well-known, at least I’d never heard of him. He had some video tapes, they were VHS tapes and I think it was through what was known as American Trial Lawyer Association where he said, “How to win in voir dire, how to win at opening.” I ordered those VHS tapes and I sat there and watched them. I think I watched the voir dire ones all the way through, a couple times the opening statement. The thing that this guy emphasized more than anyone else that I knew was tell your story. Tell the story.
The story for this case, or the theme was, they made an arrest and then tried to make a conviction. Now, I never said that during the trial. Like any good theme, it’s not something I would stand there and say, but yet I tried to make that the backbone of the case. Our point was yes, it looks bad, but there’s nothing tying this fella into this murder. The most damning evidence probably, if there was any, was the fact that he had blood on his pants. This was 1996 and I cannot explain why, but for whatever reason the forensics said that the DNA failed to amplify. Certainly for him, there were certainly lucky breaks, but I’ll say that I had a mindset that we would win. I’ve learned a lot, and Scott, I’m not saying this as a model.
For those lawyers who do those cases, and I probably will never do another one, I’m safe with my one and zero capital murder record. I know they worry about, and are concerned, rightly so, about mitigation and all those. I can tell you that in working on that case for three years, every day I thought about the case, I tried to do things on it, work on it. The total time I spent on mitigation was less than one minute. In fact, I told my co-counsel, if we get a conviction, I’m so laser focused on winning, it was every part of me, was that if we lose, you will take over. You will have to do every bit of it. I will sit there, but I will not … It just felt incongruent for me to prepare a case to win it and then prepare all of this, oh, in case we lose. Now that’s me and that’s probably a shortcoming of mine.
I guess if I maybe was a better lawyer, I could juggle both, but again, I’ll just say, at that time I had tried a grand total of four jury trials. There weren’t seminars, other than those video tapes, there just wasn’t a whole lot out there on trial strategy or trial advocacy that I knew of. But when we got that not guilty, I said I need to go meet Gerry Spence. So I applied for the college and came out here in 1998.
Scott Glovsky:
So tell us your story, Greg. Where do you get the power, the insecurity, the connection to your client?
Greg Reeves:
In that case or in any case?
Scott Glovsky:
In any case.
Greg Reeves:
You know, I think for example on that case, my thought was … I’d say in any case, I think what is it that I wanna hang my hat on? What is it that if I had to say, “Well, this gives me some pause,”? Part of that, I think it’s important to be congruent. It’s important to be authentic. In every case I have, I try to find something that speaks to me about this person, about who they are, or about what happened. We’ll spend time discovering the story. This is stuff that you and I talk about, and other trial lawyers talk about. I’ll say, back then, for me it was just a matter of trying to figure out what speaks to me about this case. If that makes sense?
Scott Glovsky:
Absolutely. Can you talk about the power of listening?
Greg Reeves:
Yeah, I can. We are trained to be speakers. That’s what … we all probably had a class in college, college speaking. Lot of books out on how to give a talk, how to give a TED Talk, how to do this. There’s really very, very few … even if there were books or videos on listening, I don’t know that they would effectively convey it. Probably one of the most well read books, at least in America’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. There’s one of those seven habits that says, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” I remember hearing that, I remember reading it, and I remember thinking, I don’t get it. What does that mean? On one level, I got it, but I actually would buy Stephen Covey tapes and hear him talk about it, expand about it. He talked about getting beyond the words to trying to figure out how the person actually felt. Then putting that out there. It sounds like this is bothering you or it sounds like this is troubling you. I remember thinking, wow, that’s a whole ‘nother way of relating to people.
If I think back, about the people who’ve been instrumental in my life, in that realm, it would be teachers and college professors, a college professor in particular that just had a real knack for understanding. I wanted to be able to do that. I’ll say this, I know for years, I’d say I was a terrible listener. I really envied those people who were really good at it. I knew when I was around people who were good at it, but I just didn’t really understand how they did it. I’ll say that I think it’s something that can be developed, something that can be enhanced.
Scott Glovsky:
How have you developed your ability to listen?
Greg Reeves:
You know, it’s just one of those things that we all get to practice every day. As lawyers, we tend to think, by golly, I’m gonna really listen to this client or I’m gonna … at the same time, maybe we ignore a receptionist or our colleague, our spouse, our children. At some point, of course I read a lot and go to workshops and so forth, but it just seemed to me that the better I communicate, depends on how well I can listen, how well I can understand what my client’s saying, what the judge is saying, what the other side is saying. We’ve all known that person that maybe took everything very literal or didn’t seem to understand when someone was going through pain or even what to say or maybe to be quiet. I’d like to think I’ve advanced in that. I don’t know, you might have to ask my wife that or my children.
Scott Glovsky:
Tell me about the concept of story and its relevance to the trial.
Greg Reeves:
You know, coming through law school, we’re graded on showing our professors how much we know. You’re given a question and you write pages about it, same with a Bar Exam. It’s almost like a learned behavior that wow, we’re gonna write five different pages on this one topic. We learned with the law school admission test, we talk about logic. Nowhere in there do you hear the word story. It’s easy to come from that training and that education … I’d say a lot of lawyers are analytical, they’re very bright. They come to view what happened, we’ll call them the facts, as maybe something you just put in a shaker and shake up and roll out on the table. These are the facts.
Story looks more at, “how do we connect these facts such that they make sense?” As human beings, we’re constantly trying to make sense of things. We can watch clouds move and try to make a story out of it, or an animal play. We could say, “Well this is what the bird was thinking when they did that.” Our survival, our brains are geared such to make meaning out of facts. Even today, you’ll hear about some weather event and some politician will say something crazy about, oh well this means that God must be mad or something. What I point out is, we try to make meaning out of events. It helps give us a sense of maybe purpose, it helps give us things to work for, it just helps us make sense of life, what we know though. We’re hardwired for story.
I’ll tell you, there’s a difference. If you ever go to a lecture or you go in a courtroom, the differences between someone talking, in terms of information, hey this is this, 3000 people this, 100 homes this, versus somebody telling a story. It’s almost like once the story starts, the room really gets quiet and we tune in and plug in. I think those stories are how a lot of us learn how to live our lives. Not in a bad way, but that’s … You gotta remember, we existed a long time as humans before television, internet, movies, and it was story. Basically fables and myths that taught us this is the way you do things, this is the way you handle situations, this is how to live in the world.
I know that being hardwired for story, it’s easy to maybe put that on a back burner as an attorney. I just say this, I’m interested in good communicators who’re doing good work. So if you think about it in those terms, there could be an elite viewpoint or an academic viewpoint of wow, this person’s educated and they’re such a great communicator. I tend to look at it more on a level of who are people taking their hard earned money to pay to go here? Not the academics, but who’s the everyday people paying money to go here? Who can take a huge stadium for an hour and a half, and keep their attention without a PowerPoint? No slides, no fancy animations or gadgets. It’s them and a microphone and a stage and a light and a group. It’s comedians.
I don’t mean to say that as lawyers we need to turn into Rodney Dangerfield or we need to stand up there and tell jokes, but I’ll say this. If you look at some of the best comedians of our time, they take viewpoints, they take a fresh look at it, and they’re very honest. It’s very congruent with who they are, and they talk. They talk for an hour, hour and a half, and you’ve got George Carlin, Chris Rock, Jim Gaffigan, Dave Chappelle, it goes on and on and on. They’re there on a stage and the only thing between them and the audience is the microphone. They’re able to talk, Jerry Seinfeld, about everyday subjects, but it’s a new perspective and it’s honest and it’s real and sometimes it’s vulnerable. There’s a connection there. I’ll just say, I’ve spent time thinking about that. I think that’s probably actually scarier than trying maybe a murder case or a capital murder case, to me it would be pretty frightening. I just think that for what we do as lawyers, we could learn a lot from what they do in communication. Does that make sense?
Scott Glovsky:
Absolutely. How do you continue to grow as a person while being a trial lawyer trying cases around the country?
Greg Reeves:
Well, I did get to try a case in California earlier this year. I haven’t tried … That was my first venture out of Alabama and I’ll say this. I’ve been told that I have a real thick Southern accent, I don’t know if that’s true or not but-
Scott Glovsky:
I haven’t noticed your-
Greg Reeves:
Hadn’t noticed that. But I’ve found that once you’re in the courtroom, the judge does his or her thing which is being the judge, the defense lawyer does their thing which is pointing out all the things wrong with a case. Then the jury does their thing and there’s real universal truths there. You may have places, even within Alabama, that are, we’d say more conservative or more liberal. But there’s also, I think our task a lot of time is to try to tap into what’s the universal truth? What happened and what’s the universal truth? Did your question ask about personal growth though?
Scott Glovsky:
I would ask you now, how you find the universal truth in your case?
Greg Reeves:
I think we all, I give this as an example, if we went to a horse track and bet on a horse. 10 minutes ago they were all horses, after somebody puts a bet on it, all of a sudden they want Lightning to win. Lightning’s my horse and it’s the best horse and look at it, can’t you tell it’s gonna win? All of a sudden, this one horse out of a dozen or whatever, it’s just a special horse. The difference, what changed, well, we put money on it. I think as lawyers, we get our cases in and all of a sudden when they’re our clients, our cases, our situations, naturally we wanna help these people. It can affect our judgment, it can affect … We may start to see them differently than say a jury would because the jury’s the group that didn’t bet on a horse. Here’s another expression. They don’t have a dog in that fight.
I think our task is to listen to our clients, to learn their stories, and at the same time, what I have found over and over and over again for 25 years is value in taking these situations to people who don’t have a dog in the fight and saying, “Hey,” … The phrase that we hear a lot is focus group, but to go to these people and say, “Hey, look.” Whether I do it, well I do my own and I’ve been told that’s not a good thing, but it’s what I do and I’ve done it for years and so far it seems to work. I’ve done them for other people too, but basically to say, “Hey, what do you think about this situation? What’s your thoughts about this,” and really get input from other people because I think it helps us see these situations better.
Face it, in our work, if you have a jury trial, it’s gonna be a group of people drawn from the community. So why would I ask some of my lawyer friends what they think about this case? Sure, I may ask them about legal nuances or questions involving evidence or so forth. But when it gets down to that and you say, wouldn’t you know that? I do, I think, but at the same time I think there’s value in finding out opinions and viewpoints from people who don’t maybe know the situation quite as well, that don’t have any stake in it, so to speak. So that’s a way to learn universal truths.
Another way would be reenactment, to go back and to reenact whatever happened and maybe to step back and look at it. That could be helpful. Those would be some good tools to find universal truths.
Scott Glovsky:
Greg, I’ve had the pleasure of watching you in the courtroom and watching you stay so calm and collected in the midst of incredible stress and serious battle. Can you tell me how you do that? Also, about the incongruence with the stress and anxiety contrasted with how you stay so collected and calm?
Greg Reeves:
I’ll say this Scott, what you see on the outside may not always tell the tale of what’s going on in the inside, so I feel that I have probably so much anxiety and so much stress that … The only thing I can analogize it to is there was a phase in my life, I read a lot of books, and there was a phase in my life where I read a lot of books by football players. I didn’t play football. Occasionally, I’ll watch a game and I’ll watch some, but it’s not like I’m a die-hard football fan. What I found … oh gosh, I went through Beau Jackson, Reggie White, Tim Green, Dick Butkus, I’m thinking Vince Lombardi. All these books about football, and I found this common thread which was stress and anxiety before a game, big game. It’s something they’ve prepared for, worked for, it just seemed so similar to our work in the courtroom, getting ready for a trial, that sort of thing. Of course, their work’s physical and mental, and ours is more mental than physical.
What I would see over and over again was this thought of trying to calm nerves, trying to stay focused. No matter how that went, once the kick off was, a calmness would come over them. I’ll just say, in trying jury trials, I do get stress, I do have anxiety. There’s just something, but once the judge blows the whistle, so to speak, and says, “Game on,” and the time is running and all that, I just feel a sense of peace. I can’t explain it. The only thing that I could say is similar to that is reading those stories of football players who would say, “We practice, we practice, and once it’s game time,” it’s just, they seem peaceful. Maybe that’s it. I’ve had this thought lately about lawyer personas too. I think with internet, YouTube, and different things, our view of different professionals may have changed.
We have an opportunity to know people for better or worse in a lot more intimate way or closer way or different way than we would have, say 30 years ago. Maybe along the line of answering that question, Scott, I once had a client that told me, she said, “Greg, whether I meet you in your office, see you in the courtroom, or see you out at a restaurant or store, you’re always the same Greg.” That’s probably the best compliment I could get because I think the persona, and a lot of people like that, whether they’re lawyers or not, being this certain way in the courtroom and different out there. I just don’t get it and it doesn’t work for me.
This may stem from the fact, Scott, that years ago, I did divorce work. People going through a divorce, I would say, want their attorney to be like the world wresting guys. They want them to have the big belt, flashy belt, stand up on the rings, grab the mic, yell, scream, throw chairs, throw somebody out of the ring. They want that show, that dominance. What the judges wanted was if you’ve ever seen high school or college wrestling or maybe Olympic wrestling, nobody’s strutting around, nobody’s throwing a chair, nobody’s grabbing a mic and yelling. It’s technical, proficient wrestling. It has to do with holds and grapplings, balance and leverage and all that.
I always felt, as a lawyer, again, I never wrestled, but if I did, my technique would probably be much more like the high school or college or that sort of thing, than the world, whatever it’s called WWE or World Federation. I’ve just never been like a Hulk Hogan in the courtroom. I don’t know that that answered that question or not, but it’s certainly something that … even we get older, our classmates that were law school classmates become judges, people we practice law with become judges. You talk to them and they know who’s being the Saturday night wrestling type lawyer, full of themselves, full of yelling, making a big show and drama. Then the other guys who know their stuff technically. I’ve just always wanted to be counted in that latter part.
Scott Glovsky:
We all have certain sayings or advice that we tell our kids. What do you tell your kids?
Greg Reeves:
Oh gosh. I just happen to think of a Willie Nelson song, but it’s not what I tell my kids. I thought, I guess because I’m sitting in Wyoming with you looking at the mountains and all this, I just thought of the song, “Mama Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Cowboys.” He goes on and says let them be doctors and lawyers and such, but I don’t think that would be my advice for my children either. I heard years ago, and I heard it was attributed to Gandhi, is the saying, it was “be the change you want to see,” or “be the change you want to see in the world.” I don’t know that I’ve said that a lot to them, but I hope I’ve practiced that. It’s certainly something that I’ve taken to heart.
I say that in the sense of … I remember in law school, I had a classmate a year or two older than me who went and spent two years in the Peace Corps and then he spent two years with Habitat for Humanity. Now, then he went into state and senate. It was just very low key but giving back, giving back. I guess I thought about that for enough years that I thought, it’s really easy to complain. It’s easy to complain about the president and congress and the governor. I remember when I think I was 17, I read a book that said if you want to make the world a better place, maybe you start with your own backyard. A few years ago, with that in mind, I ran for city counsel. I remember thinking, I may not change the world, I may not change the United States, I’m not gonna change Alabama, but I’m gonna do what I can to do something besides complaining. I’ll tell you, that was a good experience. I learned what it was like to be uninformed and very opinionated, meaning right. We’re all right, aren’t we?
Then I learned what it was like to spend hours and hours and hours and hours and days at City Hall learning and getting familiar. I realized that things weren’t quite as simple or easy as they were before I was elected. So anyway, it was a really neat experience. I don’t mean by that to say that no one should ever criticize elected officials or all that, but I just feel that if we have these opportunities, especially as lawyers and we’re given gifts from God. Intelligence and insight and we have opportunities to use that, then there is a way at times to help the greater good, more so than one client or even dozens of clients. For me, personally, that was just important. It was just important for me to do that and so anyway, my advice to my kids on that would be what I try to do which is to be the change that I wanna see.
Scott Glovsky:
Greg, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. Very fond of you, very lucky to have you as my friend.
Greg Reeves:
I feel the same way Scott. Thank you.
Scott Glovsky:
Thank you Greg.
Thank you for joining us today for Trial Lawyer Talk. If you liked the show, I’d really appreciate if you could give us a good review on iTunes, and I’d love to get your feedback. You can reach me at www.scottglovsky.com. That’s S-C-O-T-T G-L-O-V-S-K-Y .com, and I’d love to hear your feedback. You can also check out the book that I published called “Fighting Health Insurance Denials: A Primer for Lawyers.” That’s on Amazon. I put the book together based on 20 years of suing health insurance companies for denying medical care to people. It provides a general outline of how to fight health insurance denials. Have a great week and we’ll talk to you in the next episode.
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