Criminal Investigation With Public Records
Public records! Now we’re going to get to the simple lesson on cutting your finger! Look at everything and make notes. Go to the courthouse. Any place that person’s lived. Type in their name or give it to the clerk. If they don’t have anything you can type. If it’s a witness who’s going to testify in your case. If it’s your client, go pull their file. I’ll give you a couple of illustrations. This is just nothing, but boring determination, helping you out.
Now 9 times out of 10, you don’t find anything special. Heck, maybe 19 times out of 20 you don’t find anything special. But that one time you do, it really pays off in spades. I had a drug case 2 years ago. Drug/murder, whole thing. There is a woman who’s been charged in the case. She been convicted, she got 5 to do. Her case was already plead, and she’s going to testify against my client. So they say! But they promised, there’s been no deal, there’s been no deal, and there’s been no deal! They say it on the record, “there’s been no deal”. Well, I went down and looked at her file. God bless Judge Darnel. You know how as lawyers, we get letters from people from prison. I really want you to help me with your case. Well you have people who can’t afford you and come in. Well DA’s office gets the same people, it’s called Walk-ins!
The police will send them over there. Nobody wants to talk to them, you got to deal with them. Well judges get them! They get people who send them letters from the jail. If they do the right thing. They take that letters from people in the jail! If they do the right thing, they take that letter and stamp it, and they put it in that person’s file or that file that it’s related to! Well low and behold, this young lady, who I’d been told, didn’t have a deal, didn’t have a deal was writing to the judge.
“Dear Judge, this is bullshit. They didn’t give me my deal. They told me they were my deal. My brother was supposed to be released! I was supposed to get 3, not 5”. Well there’s somebody who thinks there was supposed to be a deal. That helps tame things a little bit. I had a federal case in Odessa three years ago, the States star witness and this 30 defendant cocaine case, there’s a lady! They say she has got one prior, its right here in Odessa. That’s all there is! That’s all the motive behind her testimony. Well first we went and looked in Midland, and it was minor league fruitful, but she had to be creative. She had about for 4 forcible entry entertainers in JP court. Well forcibly entry? That’s just didn’t pay their rent. That’s not admissible! No. But go talk to all those landlords.
