Defending innocent people is the hardest | Defending Really Bad Guys with Saul Bienenfeld

One person once asked me, is it easy to defend an innocent person or a guilty person? As if I know whether a person is guilty or not. I really don't. They never tell me, yes, I'm guilty, now do your best. But the truth is, every lawyer gets a feeling. Hello, this is Raymond Aaron, New York Times top 10 bestselling author, bringing you Respark Your Life podcast, the world's premier podcast to ignite the fire, to allow you to live life on your own terms. Every single Thursday, I bring you a multi-millionaire, world-famous celebrity to teach you about the most fascinating ways in order to live a far better life. Every single Thursday, you just need to subscribe by hitting the subscribe button. I'll see you every Thursday to Respark Your Life. Yes, this is Raymond Aaron with yet another edition of Respark Your Life. And I have today with me an exciting character. I can't wait to interview him because I love watching law or crime or courtroom or lawyer movies. I just love it. And now I get a chance to interview one of the top criminal lawyers in America. His name is Saul Bienenfeld. He's a New York criminal defense attorney with over 35 years of courtroom experience. As a former prosecutor turned defense lawyer, he brings a rare inside out view of the justice system. Saul specializes in high stakes cases, including white collar and sex crime allegations, and is known for telling clients what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. On his show, he shares raw stories from real trials, unpacks what really happens during police encounters, and offers practical, no-nonsense insights that could help anyone facing the system. Well, thank God I don't face the system. I am just in awe of lawyers. All my life, I've wanted to be a lawyer. And now I get to interview a lawyer who defends really bad guys, murderers, rapists, children offenders, sex offenders, like the worst of the worst. Even if you know or suspect that they're guilty, goodness gracious, how do you do it? I can't wait for this interview. Thank you so much. Saul, how do you do it? How do I do it? It's an excellent question, and it's a fair question, and I certainly get it a lot. The key thing is, truthfully, I'm not defending a person. I'm defending the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution says that everyone is entitled to the best defense that they could have. I am a great criminal defense attorney, and I go ahead and I defend the Constitution. Now, in doing that, I, of course, meet the client. It's not just a cookie cutter defense because the Constitution says so. I meet the client. I talk to the client. It could be a client accused, like you said, of murder or a crime against a child or a sex crime, or it could be a simple white collar. Someone stole millions of dollars from a bank or another person who had defrauded the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars. I meet the person, and I talk to the person sometimes for hours and hours on end, and I always find a redeeming quality in every person I've ever met. It's that redeeming quality that I focus in on, and I'd say, this is a person. This is a person who made a mistake, who, you know, has consequences that they didn't realize they were going to face, and they deserve the best defense that they could get. And having that burning inside of me that here is a person who deserves a defense. The Constitution says they deserve a defense, and there is a redeeming quality that I find in them. It's easy. It's really easy to defend these people. Very simple to defend these people. You know, one person once asked me, is it easier to defend an innocent person or a guilty person? You know, as if I know whether a person is guilty or not. I really don't. They never tell me, yes, I'm guilty, now do your best. But the truth is, every lawyer gets a feeling. And I answered that person, you know what, I'd much rather defend somebody guilty. When I defend someone who's innocent, and I have defended plenty of innocent people, I don't sleep at night. There's so much pressure on me. I have to win this case. There's no other choice. You know, defending someone who's accused of a crime and you think might be guilty, you'll I will definitely do my best, and I will hopefully win, and I will try to win. But God forbid I lose. Okay, justice was served. I lost. I can still sleep at night. The innocent people are the hardest people to defend for that reason. You know, you remind me of a lecture I heard from a guy who writes, he's a playwright, writes plays, writes scripts for movies and plays. And he says that to make a character on the stage or the movie real, a bad guy has two bad characteristics and one good characteristic. And a good guy has two good characteristics and one bad. That's right. It's all a balancing act. That's all it is. And I just need to find that one good characteristic and what's considered a bad guy, and focus in on it, and blow it up, and explain it to everyone and say, it's really not that bad what this person did. And I could defend it. Because the person is a good person. And I have always, the 35 years I've been doing this, I've always been able to find a good characteristic in every single person I've ever defended. There's always something about a person that, you know what, this person deserves to be saved. And hopefully after saving a person, they'll continue to do good rather than continue to like a crime. You know, there's a funny thing about me. I don't know if I told many people, but maybe once every year or two, somebody will come up to me and say, are you a lawyer? Out of the blue. Like if I pick up a hitchhiker, he'll say, are you a lawyer? Or if I'm walking through a park, a kid in a sandbox will say, are you a lawyer? Like out of nowhere, the weirdest thing, I must have been a lawyer in my previous thousand lifetimes. I don't know. A lawyerly look. I don't know what it is, but I've got it. And you are one. And so I'm so excited. It's like jumping into a TV screen and being able to interview one of the defense lawyers. You must have had, you told me already that your toughest cases are the ones in which you're defending someone you suspect or know is innocent. But that's a generalization. I sure get it. I sure get how you can't sleep at night. But is there a specific case that comes to your mind that was just agonizingly difficult for some other reason? Sure, sure. There are two specific cases I could always remember where I just knew the person was innocent. There was no question in my mind that this person was innocent. One of them was an elderly woman, six o'clock in the morning. She's asleep in her home in Washington Heights in her nightgown, quite frankly. And the Secret Service rush in and they arrest her. What are they arresting her for? That's crazy. She's a woman in her seventies. They're arresting her. And they're taking her out in her nightgown. They didn't even let her change. They let her put on slippers. That's about it. And they take her downtown and they book her on a bank robbery charge. Bank robbery. All right. Family calls me. I said, this is very strange. I never heard of a 70-year-old bank robber, but anything is possible. Let me find out. Let me go do the interview. Speak to her. She has no idea what they're talking about. I'm not a bank robber. I never robbed a bank. I go to the bank. I go to the bank twice a week. I go to put in money. I go to take out money. That's all I do. I'm in the bank all the time, but I've never robbed a bank. So I go back to the Secret Service. I go back to the agent in charge and the U.S. attorney. I say, what's going on with this case? They say, well, she's a note passer. A note passer is someone who writes a note and passes a note to the teller. The note usually says, you know, give me all your money, you know, in a bag and don't push the panic button. They say she is a note passer and we have it on video that she passed the note. I said, let me let me see this video. I look at the video. Maybe it's her. Maybe it's not her. The video was not very clear. This is many years ago. The videos were not that good. And I was like, I don't think it's her. You know, I met her. She doesn't look like a note passer. But, you know, who knows? Let me see the note. So they give me a copy of the note and the note is a handwritten note. So the first thing I do is I hire a handwriting expert. I said, you are going to determine whether this note was written by this person. And the handwriting expert came back and said, no, there's no way that this person wrote the note. I go to the U.S. attorney and say, listen, my handwriting expert says it's not her. They say, the U.S. attorney says, well, maybe someone else wrote the note and gave it to her, but she passed the note. So again, I'm like, wow, I'm really trying to prove that she didn't do it, but this is getting a little more difficult. So I go ahead and I get the videotapes. And instead of just watching that one clip of the woman who they say is her, I watched an hour long of the hour beforehand and an hour afterwards. And what I noticed was there were two Brinks drivers, two Brinks guards who walked into the bank at the same time that this woman, this note passer, walked out of the bank. They definitely passed each other. Okay. So I said, okay, I'm going to find these Brinks drivers and I'm going to find out who they are and what they did. So I did a lot more research, found out who they were and interviewed them. They were both former New York City Police Department police officers. They retired and they're working for Brinks. Now, New York City Police Department trains everyone in observation and in recognition, and most importantly, in identification of people. So I knew that they were highly trained in identifying people. So I did what's called a I took a picture of my person, I took a picture of people who look similar to her, and I went to them and I said, listen, do you remember the day that the bank was allegedly robbed? They said, yeah, of course we remember that day. I said, great. Do you know that you passed the person who was the note taker? They said, yeah, we remember we were being told. I said, did anyone ever talk to you? Did the Secret Service talk to you? The FBI talk to you? No one ever. You're the first person I ever speak to. I said, great. Look at these pictures. Tell me if you see the person. Look at the pictures. They're like, no, the person's not there. Now my person, my client was in the one of those pictures. Both of them gave me the same response. Your person is not in any of these pictures. So I said, okay, great. So now I take the actual picture of my client and I show it to them. I say, is this the person? And they say, no, that's definitely not the person that we passed. Okay. Now I have two witnesses, former police department employees, both came and said it's not the person. Finally, I go to the U.S. Attorney and I explain to them and I show them the testimony. I show them the witnesses. I show them the interview. They go ahead, they talk to these two brink strivers and they dismiss the case. A great outcome. A great outcome. I couldn't have had a better outcome if I scripted it myself. All right. Very nice. Their family was in love with me. Everyone was relieved. Grandma does not go to jail. All right. Grandma went to jail for one night. It was terrible. I got her out the next day in front of a judge on bail and the case gets dismissed. Okay. And that another super interesting high stakes case. Okay. My client was accused of actually raping his 12 year old stepdaughter. She went to school one day. She was angry at mom and her stepdad and told the police and told the teacher, my stepfather touched me. All right. They go ahead, they interview her. And this is a state case. This is the district attorney in Brooklyn. District attorney tells me we're going to arrest your client. I said, uh, I interviewed him. I went through everything. I said, he didn't do it. They said, no, we're arresting him. They ran ahead and arrest him. He gets out on bail and now they have to what's called indict him. They go in front of a grand jury. A grand jury is a bunch of people, 23 people. They have to have 12 people to say there's enough evidence to keep the person over for trial. Okay. Um, and the grand jury decides whether to true bill a case, which means that you're indicted or to no truth bill the case, which means you're not indicted. So I said, let's do the grand jury. I'll waive whatever time I want more time to prepare. Let's do the grand jury in a month. They said, no problem for that month. I did two things. One is I traced his every move for an entire month because the girl said, I don't remember exactly when it happened, but it happened in the month of, uh, let's say June of this year. So from June 1st to June 30th of that year, we traced every single movement from the time he woke up in the time he went to sleep. The way we did it was we went through every credit card receipt he ever had. We went through the locations of where he was on his phone. Every phone has a GPS device. You can do the locations. We went through the location of every, um, every withdrawal from a bank, every deposit in a bank, whether he did it personally, whether he did it online, if he took a picture, all right, on his phone, the picture actually has map coordinates where it was. And I was able to trace exactly where he was. And at no time was he ever left alone with this girl. All right. And she said it happened when we were alone. I then hired an architect, a designer to go into the apartment and to take measurements of the apartment. Because my feeling was, you know, if she was in the apartment with him and she screamed, someone else would hear it. Or the mother, if the mother was in that room next to it, mother would hear it and basically show the layout of the entire apartment to the grand jury. Okay. To show that it just couldn't have happened based on the layout of the apartment. All right. And the third thing I did was I had him have a lie detector test. Now lie detector test is not admissible. It's just belted suspenders. And he passed the lie detector test with flying colors. He was not the one who touched this girl. Okay. And I then took the big risk of interviewing the mother. And I said to the mother, I said, do you think he did it? You know, here it is. This is your, your fiance at the time. Do you think he touched your daughter? And she said, no, I think my daughter's lying. Wow. I said, why do you think your daughter's lying? She says, well, when she accused him, I took him, I took her to the doctor. All right. And the doctor determined that her hymen was intact, that she's still a virgin. Okay. So, and, and she alleged intercourse. Okay. She alleged full on intercourse. But I said, this is great. Let me get the, could, would you sign a HIPAA agreement that I get the medical records? And she did, because she really liked the guy. And she thought her daughter was just making up the story, which is unfortunate. I took all that evidence, the district attorney, I said, you got to dismiss this case. I mean, look at all this evidence. And they said, no, we're not dismissing the case. We still believe her. We believe our victim. We believe that this happened. We believe that it can happen, that it wasn't a full, full penetration, that it happened. And, you know, and, and everything you're saying is, is, is not going to fall. I said, fine, he's going to testify in front of the grand jury. Okay. Let him testify. I spent another 10 days, three hours a day preparing him to testify in front of the grand jury. Exactly what he's going to say. Yes. Three hours a day. Yes. And it's a very dangerous thing to have a defendant testify in front of a grand jury because you're locked into a story. And I don't control that at all. I don't get to ask a question. The way it works in New York is a defendant walks in. He, he, he waves his right, you know, and he goes ahead and testifies. He tells his story and then he's cross-examined by the district attorney. I don't get the question. I get to stay in the room. That's about it. I don't get to question anything. So I had to prepare him and prepare his statement, what to say. He walks in, he's fully prepared. He does an amazing job. And what I also told him to say is, I told him, I told him, tell the grand jurors to ask this girl's mother what happened. Okay. Because they're allowed to call witnesses also. And I said, and leave them with the thought that they're allowed to call witnesses and they should ask the mother what happened. Okay. He does a great job testifying. Cross-examination really did not, you know, hurt us at all. And when I walked out, the grand jury did the right thing and they asked the mother to testify. And I told the mother to hang out because I said, you, you stay here. You know, maybe they'll ask you to testify. She went in to testify. 10 minutes later, no true bill. Now what happens in a case like this is the, the district attorney is allowed to ask to represent the case. Okay. If they wanted to, they go back to a judge, they get permission. And usually permission is very quickly given. Yes. Go ahead and represent. They find another grand jury, maybe a month later, and they represent the same case. In this case, the district attorney said, we're not going to represent the case. And it was a no true bill. Yeah. Okay. So I love those stories. I love them, but I want to ask you a question. In the movies, sometimes the accused looks innocent and the brilliant defense attorney pulls things out of the hat and the jury says, yeah, he's innocent or he's not guilty. And then there's a few minute epilogue right at the end of the movie where the accused admits that he actually did it and that he tricked everybody. I saw that movie also. So does that really happen? So to prevent that from happening, after a not guilty verdict, I don't talk to the jurors. Never. I don't want to talk to the jurors because I don't want to find that maybe something went wrong in the jury room. And I have one drink with my client to celebrate or one meal with my client to celebrate. Usually I'll invite my wife because I've been working so hard and she deserves a break also to see who I was working with. And we don't discuss the case. And that's the last I ever see of them or talk to them. So I personally will never find out those facts. I don't want to find out those facts. It's done purposefully that way. And I'm very happy living that way. But I have heard stories where after a not guilty verdict, the client then says, thank you so much. Maybe I'll do it again. Or, you know, some stupid remark like, you know, I got away with it once. I could try to get away with it a second time. You know, I'll keep you on retainer for that. Something stupid. But I don't want to hear that. I don't want to see it. I don't want to be a part of that. So the answer is it's never happened to me. But it does happen like it happens in the movies. Not as well in the movies, but it does happen. Yes. I've got a tough question that's going to require you to put your humility aside and answer my question. Yes. You got the same lawyerly education that everybody got, and yet you're one of the best. What is it? Is there a character? It's my formula. My formula is very simple. Knowledge plus experience equals success. The first thing you need is the knowledge. Yes, I graduated law school just like everyone else graduated law school and calls themselves a lawyer. Okay. But it's continuing research. It's reading the law journal every day. It's being up on all the cases. It's being up on all the facts. It's talking to police officers and talking to US attorneys and talking to district attorneys and talking to FBI agents. You know, just in general, talking to them, finding out their lives are about, to understand the witness that's going to be testifying against your client is very important. It's knowledge. It's not just case law. It's personality. Okay. And then it's the experience. Doing something over and over and over again, you get better and better at it. And it's not just my own experience and my own doing. I love watching trials, not ones on TV, live trials. If I'm in the courthouse and I have an hour break, I will sit in on somebody else's case. Okay. And it's very hard for me sometimes not to jump up in the audience, say objection, or do it this way or do it that, you know, and it's very hard for me not to give feedback afterwards because I'm just the type of guy like, no, you should have done it this way. You could have done it better. But I learned because there are sometimes you see and hear somebody who is fantastic. And I start taking notes. I'm like, this is a great idea. I could use this in another one of my cases, or I could use this, you know, keep this in the bank, so to speak, and use it in the future. Okay. So it's knowledge, experience equals success. That's how you become successful. Know the facts, do it, do it over and over again, watch it, and then you become successful. That's the only difference between me and everyone else. I'm a professional speaker, and I do exactly the same thing, but I never knew why. If I always arrive early for my speech, and usually there's another one or two speakers before me, I sit there and I don't listen to them as much as I judge them. I say, oh, that was good. I like that line. Or, no, you killed it with that. You lost the audience when you said that. And I watch it, and I learn, and I use it. Yes. Wow. So we have the same technique in totally different fields and professions. Yes. Okay. What is your favorite law or courtroom or defense lawyer movie? Oh, well, I have a very small attention span, so I like to watch Law and Order episodes. Law and Order? Okay. You know, the whole thing starts and ends, you know, from the crime to the trial, and the crime to the verdict in, you know, 50 minutes. It's great. But, you know, I still love A Few Good Men. You know, it's not really a crime story, but it's, you know, in the best line, can you handle the truth? You can't handle the truth. You know, he does that great. There's no line better than that in all of cinematography. I know. I actually have clients that want to go on the stand and yell that. You know, I'm like, no, no, don't do that. That's not a good idea. And then a client will tell me afterwards, did you notice that pause I made when I was in that question? I'm like, yeah. He says, that's when I wanted to say you can't handle the truth. But in my mind, I said it. I didn't say it on the stand. Thank you very much. That wouldn't have gone over too well. Now, one of the most famous trials is affectionately referred to as the monkey trial. And I have heard that every lawyer, every lawyer student has to watch that movie. So what's the truth? Did you watch it when you were in law school? No, I did not watch it in law school. But I did a lot of reading on it. I've read the newspaper articles about it, but I did not watch it. I didn't watch it when I was in law school. So tell me something from the inside of a defense lawyer that I wouldn't think of asking. Tell me something really strange or unusual that you're aware of or you know. We all have big egos. I don't think it's unusual or strange. It's a lot of hard work. It might look glamorous on the outside. It's a lot of hard work. And the public only sees the glamorous part of it. Walking into the courtroom, walking out of the courtroom, or if the public is in the courtroom watching it, there is so much work behind the scenes that goes on. It's 99% preparation, 1% perspiration. And it's all about being prepared. And it's being prepared for every single possible aspect and outcome that might happen. I could walk into a courtroom and start questioning a witness and get a different answer. I need to be prepared beforehand whether that answer is going to come or not. So when I ask a question, and it's a yes or no question, I have to know if they say yes, where to go next, and if they say no, where to go next. So it's all that type of preparation that has to be done beforehand. And people never see that. They don't see me in my office preparing for a trial. All they see is when I'm at trial or the verdict after the trial. They read what happened in the newspaper. They see me walking in or out of the courtroom. But the preparation is the hardest part. And the reason that myth continues is because in movies, they never show the lawyer doing the hours and hours of hard work. That's not interesting. He's just sitting at his desk. Exactly. And every once in a while, you have an aha moment. Like, wow, I didn't think about that. And now I finally read this case. And I thought about this. And I could use this in my case. And here's how I'm going to use it. Or I could use it as an oral argument after a hearing. And it's the aha moments that people don't see. But it's a great moment to have, especially when it works to my client's advantage. Wow. I admire you so much. I don't know. Maybe I would be a great lawyer. I'm sure you would. When I went to university, I loved mathematics. And so I studied mathematics and physics. But I've always wanted to be a lawyer. So I think that Jews make great lawyers, because Jews are willing to go against the grain to think about things that are maybe unconventional. Like, 50% of all American Nobel Physics Prize winners are Jewish, even though Jews represent 2% of the population. Is there something behind that? Is there some ability that you or I have? Because our heritage is a heritage of oppression, we've always had to fight back. Is there something behind that? Or am I just making something up? Well, the joke of an answer would be, we just like fighting and always have to be right. So it's perfect to be a lawyer. I love fighting, and I always have to be right. So even with my own wife, I love fighting, and I have to be right. And everyone is like that. And by the way, in marriage, we're always wrong. So it doesn't work out. But the serious answer, I think, would be that there is an aspect of righteousness and of justice. And the Torah teaches us, justice, justice you shall pursue. And there's a sense of justice that has to be pursued. And we say an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but we don't mean an actual eye, what we mean is monetary damages. So there's a whole system of justice that was thought out and written in the Torah. So in order to have the system of justice, you had to set up courts. And it's very important to set up courts. One of the seven Noahide laws is to set up courts, to have a court system. It's an actual law that everyone has to have a court system, because that's the only way to pursue justice. So if we're setting up a court system, and we have to set up a court system, and we have rules of how to set up the court system, and we already have damages, how to pursue damages, you need lawyers. You need people on both sides. You can't just bring somebody in, accuse them, and say, okay, you're guilty. No, he gets a defense, and he gets the best defense possible under both Jewish law and American law. You deserve the best defense possible, there's no question about it. No judge and no prosecutor wants somebody to walk in and just throw up their hands and say, okay, I did it, that's it, take me away. They actually want to be challenged, because if they're challenged, they know that the Constitution was upheld, and that justice was served. And I think that Jews as a people, and inherit in their culture, and in their religion, is this concept of justice, and pursuing justice. And the only way to pursue justice properly is by having a representation on both sides. And it's just, it's a pleasure to represent people, you know, and to pursue justice. Maybe I'll be your partner in the next lifetime. No problem. Now, you have a bit of, not a gift, but information for us at your website, Bienenfeldlaw.com, B-I-E-N-E-N-F-E-L-D, law, L-A-W dot com. And your actual phone number and email address are in your website, videos of actual cases, lots of information there. And heaven forbid, if you need his services, you can contact him directly. Please call. I'm always available to talk to somebody. Defending really bad guys. Wow. Thank you. I have wildly enjoyed this interview, and I'm honored that you've taken the time to tell the world, or at least my part of the world, what you do and how good you are. Thank you so much. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Appreciate it. Well, I sure hope you enjoyed that fascinating episode. Please make sure you subscribe, and please tell your friends, if you like it, that they will probably like it as well. 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