After a run of high-profile cases where I helped clear people falsely accused of serious violent crimes, I crossed paths with a man headed straight for death row. It was the fall of 1989. The crime was unspeakably cruel. He had not yet been convicted. He begged me to take his case and conduct a defense investigation. The problem was simple and brutal. The evidence against him was overwhelming. He already had a public defender and a full investigative team. His criminal history ran for pages. The media had branded him “The Devil.” That was not hyperbole. That was the headline. He called me from the jail, and later from death row, at least two dozen times. I never treated the calls as an annoyance. I listened every time. My answer never changed. There was nothing to impeach. No loose thread. No unexplored lead. No alternate theory that survived contact with the evidence. I watched his case climb the appellate ladder year after year. Nothing improved. In modern capital litigation, tim...

There’s something unspeakably grotesque about the death penalty—a horror masked by ritual and bureaucracy. Picture it: a shackled human being, surrounded by several men, marched down a sterile corridor to a sanitized execution chamber. No struggle, no chaos—just cold obedience to a state-sanctioned death warrant. Then, with clinical precision, a switch is flipped, a lever pulled, a syringe deployed—and a life is extinguished. It’s the ultimate act of cowardice, done not in a fit of rage or fear, but with calm, procedural detachment. And the judges? The robed Pontius Pilates of our time—handing down death from the bench, then washing their hands of the consequences. “It’s the law,” they say, hiding behind precedent like children behind a curtain, pretending they’re not responsible for the blood on their hands. Don’t misunderstand me. There are monsters among us—people whose evil defies redemption. If they’re gunned down in the act, whether by a brave citizen or a police officer defen...

Phoenix, AZ — Some crimes are so horrific that a quick death for the perpetrator feels justified. But our criminal justice system has a fundamental flaw: the standard of proof, “beyond a reasonable doubt.” This nebulous term has become a source of injustice, particularly in capital cases. Having witnessed numerous criminal trials, including those where the death penalty was at stake, I’ve seen firsthand the confusion over what “reasonable doubt” really means. It’s a vague standard that varies from one juror to the next. And when the crime is especially heinous, that ambiguity can lead to false convictions. People, naturally outraged by terrible acts, can be eager to punish, and often that means overlooking the very doubt that should protect the innocent. I’ve come to despise the term “beyond a reasonable doubt,” because I’ve watched as innocent people were convicted, and in other cases, where the convicted might have been innocent. Worse, I’ve seen law enforcement and prosecutors...

Richard D. Gierloff  1950-2018 Gilbert, Arizona—It’s with great sadness that I must report on the death of Phoenix, Uber-Lawyer, Richard D. Gierloff this past Monday (04-09-18). Richard was my personal lawyer, mentor and friend for well over three decades.  He handled criminal cases exclusively, including many death penalty matters.  He took on each case as a matter of life and death for his clients.  He never undertook his duties in a lighthearted manner.  Richard was a very meticulous winner. Richard began his working life as a drug abuse counselor; soon he entered the University of Arizona Law School.  He went on to become one of Arizona’s greatest lawyers.  I was really pleased to work as his investigator on so many high profile cases.  Together we had many great victories.    Richard was stricken with throat cancer last year and waged a courageous battle.  He was ...

Phoenix, AZ —Okay I’m jaded.   I have investigated so many high profile cases over the decades and have learned one sad thing about them.   Integrity among witnesses, cops and prosecutors quickly vanishes. Being a criminal defense investigator is not like what most people think or understand.   While investigating these cases  I soon found myself trapped in a world of lies.   If I can e xpose the lies my client often goes free! Because of bizarre dynamics, this is anything but an easy task. Let’s begin with a personal statistic I’ve established about my fellow humans.   A full one-third or more of people routinely lie.   As we know most people in fact can’t seem to tell the truth about something as simple why they’re late for work.   If this percentage of people can achieve the same result by lying as telling the truth they will choose to deceive.   It’s best described as a form of narcissism or self-empowerment.   In high pro...

Phoenix, AZ —A major time-bomb of sorts is waiting to go off in the courtroom of Judge Sherry Stephens .  This is in the form of a motion that would remove the death penalty from consideration due to serious misconduct.  The shenanigans and misconduct of cops and prosecutors in this case has grown to fill a massive book.  Judge Stephens lost all control of the the Jodi Arias case from day one.  Stephens has simply turned a blind eye to the misconduct that allowed this murder trial to become one of the more infamous judicial circuses since the Salem Witch Trials . The latest stunt revealed today was that Mesa police detective Estaban Flores  unlawfully shared confidential and court sealed information with his wife.  She in turn allegedly uploaded outrageous videos containing some of the information onto YouTube in efforts to incite public opinion against Arias. Ultimately, if this is true, Estaban’s police career and peace officer certification is...

Phoenix, AZ — Joseph Wood was condemned to die after being convicted of two rather nasty murders.   I won’t comment on his innocence because I don’t know.    It seems on its face Wood’s two murder convictions was not the subject of controversy. We will never know what demons drove Wood’s violence or if there were any very real excusable brain malfunctions behind his mad acts.   We can only guess. I won’t argue that some hopelessly evil people on our earth don’t deserve to live.   I absolutely encourage people to use guns and other deadly weapons in self-defense and the defense of others.   The concept of killing these people decades later is an  entirely  different matter.  Arizona used secret drugs obtained from a clandestine source to kill Wood.   Wood’s lawyers demanded to know about the drugs and their effectiveness, but were rebuffed throughout the entire appeal process.   This was happening in a nation where its gove...

New York, NY —Selling cigarettes on the street cost a man his life.   Think about it for a moment.   Trying to make a meager living in a miserable economy by selling a legal product deserves death now in New York. That’s precisely what happened to an obviously overweight (350 lbs.) and unhealthy man last week.  A squad of cops investigating this tax transgression approached Eric Garner . Garner actually begged the cops to leave him alone.   Soon Garner began to shun the cops and resist being handcuffed and the cops piled on him.  All too quickly, Garner was dead. Was it the long banned chokehold?  I don’t think so.  I suspect positional asphyxia was the actual cause of death.  Does it really make any difference how they killed him?  Garner was killed not by policemen in the true sense of that noble occupation but a gang of government extortionists.  This was not about anything more than the attempted evasion of a...