Even the most righteous defensive use of a firearm can lead to a false allegation of wrong-doing. It might be an unmeritorious civil lawsuit motivated by greed or revenge or a criminal charge promulgated by a self-styled social justice warrior in a prosecutor’s office.
The poet Robert Frost once defined a jury as “12 people assembled to determine who has the best attorney.” There is much truth in this, and people who read this book—people who have accepted the responsibility to protect innocent people—need to take that to heart. Such people are alpha males and females accustomed to being in charge of important matters.
They have to understand that they are not the players when they are on trial anymore.
They are the stakes.
Their attorney is the player. Accordingly, they want the game’s best player to represent them at the table.
THE ‘GAME’
I don’t consider a trial to be a game. Neither should you. But many attorneys do, and it’s essential to understand that.
Many people think the best attorney for a shooting case is the most famous criminal lawyer in the region. That’s not necessarily true. That “Perry Mason of the community” often got his reputation by pulling rabbits out of hats and winning acquittals for obviously guilty criminals. That sort of legal wizardry employs tactics that are almost 180 degrees opposite of the best skillset for defending legitimate, lawful uses of lethal force.
Never forget that the defense of a genuinely justified use of lethal force is an affirmative defense! We are not claiming that we didn’t shoot our attacker; instead, we are stipulating that we did indeed shoot him, but we are maintaining that we were correct.
My work over the years has brought me into contact with many criminal defense lawyers. I can usually find time to ask them a few questions unrelated to the particular case at bar. One of those questions is, “Counselor, in all your years in defense bar, how many of your clients were innocent, wrongly accused men or women?”
The answer has always been a
