In Part 2 of his look at a high-profile civil rights case, host Keith Fuicelli interviews the young trial team that secured $20 million. These “main brains” behind the verdict – Ciara Anderson, Omeed Azmoudeh, and Crist Whitney – reveal how they divided duties to represent six bystanders who were injured when a former Denver police officer shot into a crowd. Tune in for their insights about voir dire (“we went in with the strategy of finding liberal gun owners”), themes in opening (“you do not shoot into a crowd”) and witness preparation (“for our client, I wanted to get his emotional story out to the jury.”). Learn more about the case in Part 1.

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Episode Snapshot

1. Ciara's opening focused on establishing credibility while withholding powerful evidence like the defendant’s criminal conviction.
2. In voir dire, Crist’s strategy was to find “liberal gun owners” who understood gun safety principles and would recognize the recklessness of firing into a crowd.
3. The team distilled their case theme to a simple rule: "You do not shoot into a crowd.”
4. Officer Ramos suggested that a worse backdrop than shooting into a crowd of people would be "senators, presidents, and very important people." In his closing, Omeed noted that their clients are “very important people.”
5. Omeed organized his cross-examination of Officer Ramos into chapters, each making one narrow point, with questions becoming increasingly focused during preparation: A "know your target" chapter split into separate chapters on "know your target" and "know what's beyond.”
6. The team's collaborative preparation involved often working until 3:00 a.m. and extensive role-playing where Ciara portrayed Officer Ramos for Omeed's cross-examination practice.
7. For punitive damages, the team dismantled the defense attempt to minimize Officer Ramos’ criminal conviction. He had pleaded guilty in a “sweetheart” deal that avoided jail time. Omeed told the jury: “Look, folks, if you're as enraged as we are, here's what you should note. This guy has never been punished for this conduct.”

The information contained in this podcast is not intended to be taken as legal advice. The information provided by Fuicelli & Lee is intended to provide general information regarding comprehensive injury and accident attorney services for clients in the state of Colorado.

Welcome to the Colorado

Trial Lawyer Connection,

where Colorado trial lawyers share

insights from their latest cases. Join me,

Keith Fuicelli, as we uncover

the stories, strategies,

and lessons from recent Colorado trials

to help you and your clients achieve

justice in the courtroom. The

pursuit of justice starts now.

Howdy everyone,

and welcome back to part two of a

two-part episode on the Colorado

Trial Lawyer Connection Podcast,

where we're going to talk with

the main trial team on the case

involving Officer Ramos. And

this, of course, as a recap,

is the case in which Officer Ramos

fired multiple shots at an individual.

I think maybe he hit the individual,

but he hit lots of people that

were behind the individual,

resulted in a spectacular

verdict in Denver County.

And we are fortunate today to

have who by all accounts are the

main workhorse, the main trial team,

the main brains behind this

amazing result. So with that,

I would love to welcome Crist

Whitney, Ciara Anderson,

and Omeed Azmoudeh, hope I got that

right, to the podcast. Welcome everyone.

Thanks for having us. Hi.

Thanks for having us.

So Crist, why don't we start with you.

Tell us a little bit about yourself

and how it is that you became a trial

lawyer.

Well, I'm originally from New

Jersey. I came to Colorado,

I want to say around 2001. I was

a music artist for a long time.

Wow. And then I started

writing. I wrote a couple books.

I went back to school because

I wanted to be a better writer.

And while I was there, I

started studying history,

polysci.

And then I met a professor who

suggested after writing a brief

about the water rights or the Standing

Rock Tribe suggested I go to law school.

Wow.

So then I applied and

fortunately I got in.

I always wanted to do civil rights law,

considering a lot of police

brutality that the black

community sees on a regular basis.

So that's something that inspired

me and pushed me through law school.

Once I got out of law school,

I met with the heads of the firm here

at Rathod Muhammad Bay and luckily was

asked to join the team.

And now I'm here now.

What a great firm you

landed with. Great story.

I agree.

So I want to go back to the music piece

because I was in a band for 20 years.

What'd you play?

I actually was a hip hop artist.

Okay.

So I was an MC.

All right. That's fantastic.

I've recorded over maybe

a hundred or so songs.

Wow. And I sometimes wonder if,

this is just me thinking out loud.

There's the Lady Gaga song.

It's all about the applause.

And I wonder if people that are in bands,

like we want to be praised on

this like subconscious level.

We want to be on stage. We

want the crowd to applaud.

And so we find ourselves in the courtroom

where I guess the next best thing,

but I digress. So that's fascinating

story. Ciara, what about you?

Did you always know you

wanted to do trial work?

If you had asked me 10 years ago even,

I wouldn't have even known

that I wanted to be a lawyer.

I had always had a plan to be a

psychologist and a substance abuse

and work with people who

struggled with addiction.

And then after undergraduate,

I didn't get into the graduate program

that I had wanted and I didn't want to

move back to Nashville. I'm

originally from Tennessee.

So I moved to Colorado with no money,

no plan and no idea what the world

had in store. And it worked out,

thank goodness.

I got a job at a law firm and was

going back and forth between Teach for

America or the LSAT.

And I did a little bit better on the

LSAT than I did for the Teach for America

application. Shortly after

getting into law school,

I did the DU civil rights clinic for a

couple of years and that's my first year

doing that. I worked on an excessive

force case for a little girl

and was able to resolve that and then

moved on and was able to work on a case

involving solitary confinement

for a man. And so that really,

I grew up knowing what it's like

to not have your voice heard in a

courtroom.

And so really getting to

take that client-centered

approach and advocate for our

clients is really what makes me

want to be a trial lawyer and

really fuels my.

Being a trial lawyer.

And it sounds like dealing with

the solitary confinement case,

did that have a profound

impact on your sort of

core being on how you represent

folks that your firm represents?

Yeah, absolutely. Working on that case,

I have a tattoo that says human because

I think so frequently we forget that we

as attorneys are human, but

also our clients are very human.

And so just remembering

that very human aspect.

And I have that tattoo in large

part because of this client and that

experience, but it's a very

rewarding clientele. I mean,

we get to see people on their

worst days and hopefully bring

the better side or bring

justice to those worst days.

So definitely that early client

is somebody who continues

to inspire me still to.

Do that. Yeah. And I find

myself wanting to ask,

but hesitating about the current

political environment and what we are

seeing with these ICE raids.

I just can't imagine ...

I know how it makes me feel and I don't

specialize in the type of work that you

all do and I can only imagine seeing this.

So I guess I'll ask all of you,

what does it mean to you personally to

be on the front lines of

ensuring and protecting our

civil rights and what exactly does

that mean? We have civil rights.

So Crist, maybe I'll just throw

this at you. What do you think?

What are our civil rights and why is

it important to protect and fight for

those?

Well, civil rights is

pretty much all we have.

That's what protects us

against the government.

And you see like right

now with these ICE raids,

a complete disregard for humanity,

like just what we saw the

other day, a lady scared,

driving away and can

just be shot like that.

And then what's going to

happen to these ICE officers?

It's like they're pretty much,

everyone's going to throw

their hands up and like, "Okay,

this was fine shoot." And then you see

the power behind it just to be able to

call her a terrorist and to be able to

call her all kinds of things as opposed

to a human and as opposed to a mother. And

there's a big power structure against

us as people and it's like people

like Ciara and Omeed and

me, the force between that.

And so it does,

it feels empowering. It also

feels frustrating because

a lot of the times things

don't change fast enough, at least for me,

change does come slow and incrementally

and you kind of want things to

change a lot quicker. And

especially in this situation,

like how do we stop ICE

from violating people's,

not just civil rights,

but also human rights.

So that can be very frustrating as well.

Yeah. Again, I digress. I won't

spend too much time on it.

Maybe at the end we can talk about quote

absolute immunity that the government

is professing that these ICE agents

hold and the absurdity of that.

It's outrageous.

Yeah.

It's outrageous. But one of the

things, Crist, that you just said,

it brings me back. The

last trial that I did,

I was starting my opening by quoting,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident."

And it goes right to what you were

saying about human

rights and civil rights,

but our forefounders enshrined

in our constitution had the

wisdom, these inalienable

rights. I just found it profound.

So kudos to you and your team

protecting human rights and civil

rights. And I like that

quote. And it's so good.

That we hold these truths to be

self-evident. And I believe it starts off,

we the people. Yeah. And a lot

of the times we forget that,

especially in a society where

it's always the I before the we.

So we do forget that we are

a country, a collective,

and there's a lot of individualism that

we hear and people not wanting to go

out on the limb for others.

Yeah. I love the endowed by

their creator with certain

inalienable rights among them, life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And it's so profound

for me as a civil lawyer

that those rights were ...

The government is prohibited

from infringing on those rights.

And so when those rights are

taken in the civil context,

it just makes it profound for

the jury to now say, "Okay,

these rights have been taken and now

it's time to right a wrong." So I do love

that quote and I feel like I

use it nine times out of 10.

Omeed, sorry for the delay.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and

how it is that you came to be a trial

lawyer.

For some reason or another, I

always wanted to be a lawyer.

So I grew up pretty early knowing

I wanted to do it. Maybe it was TV,

maybe it was a book that

I read, I'm not sure,

but I pursued the path kind of

straight out of the gate and I

went to see you at the time thinking

that I wanted to be an environmental

lawyer, something like the

Sierra Club or Earth Justice,

NCU as a great environmental

program. And pretty quickly,

and maybe this was just a presumption

that I acted on and it wasn't right,

but what I thought was, "Boy,

these folks are working for 10

years to get one river flowing at

five drops extra than the last 10 years."

And I don't know if I can dedicate my

life to that. And so I, out of law school,

I went to a big firm to just pay off

some debt and get some good training

actually,

a big firm here in Denver

before stumbling upon really

the civil rights path and Sadartha and

Q who owned this firm and realizing

that what a path it was. And I related

to it in so many ways growing up

as a brown boy in a nine eleven

era, realizing, "Holy smokes,

these are those rights that

were so imperative to me

and so important to my own

life.

And here's an opportunity

with the skillset that I

have to be able to help other

people experiencing the similar

things, not the same thing,

but I landed here and I don't know that

I would practice law any other way at

this point." I mean, I love it.

I feel the same way.

I don't think I could be doing

any other type of legal work.

And I also went to see you thinking I

was going to be an environmental lawyer,

but then pretty quickly

realized, wait a minute,

and like you grew up watching law and

order in the practice. And I was like,

"Wait a minute.

So these people are getting paid to do

that because it just seemed like it was

so much fun." And then from there,

I was sold hook, line and sinker.

So all right,

let's get into this case

because both Sedartha and

John all agreed that you

all were the team that

really the workhorse on this. So I'll

try to point questions to individuals,

but how did you guys

decide the division of

work in the case? Was there someone

that was sort of the lead on the case?

I don't think anybody was the lead,

but we actually had a really honest

conversation amongst ourselves and with

ourselves right before trial about what

our strengths were, not weaknesses,

just what are our strengths.

And it became pretty clear that Crist

is the most personable person on the

planet. So we wanted him to handle jurors,

difficult witnesses like experts,

just so that very quickly where there

needed to be a rapport established,

what was the dog that we were going to

send out to establish that rapport that

was going to be Crist?

And on the flip side,

we realized that Ciara is the most

organized person and who can tell the

clearest story from scratch.

And so she did our opening.

And I suppose the thinking was that

I can think quickly on my feet and

potentially nail and hammer things home

at the end. So I landed on closing,

but it was the choice I think that we

made. And I'll let the others chime in

kind of how they remember

that conversation, but

that was my memory of it.

Yeah. I would echo what Omeed said.

We definitely had to have that honest

conversation about what our strengths

were. And I think at the outset,

it had been very much tossed

up in a very different way,

but how it played out after

having that conversation,

I think it did play on all of

our strengths. Omeed in closing,

he also did the cross of Officer Ramos.

And so having a person who played a very

consistent role throughout

the trial, then close it,

and he did a phenomenal job. And

then Crist, Sam as Omeed said,

he's very personable

and immediately likable.

And so he connects really well

with people and did a great job

with the jury selection.

So Ciara, since we sort of have

you on the stage, if you will,

talk to us a little bit about what your

thoughts were on the opening and not

just sort of what you wanted

to accomplish in the opening,

but for maybe some of our

younger listeners, newer lawyers,

what did you do to prepare? Did you

rehearse? How did you actually go about,

once you knew you're doing the

opening and highly publicized,

big trial, you're going to

be asking for lots of money,

sounds very intimidating

to a lot of people.

What'd you do to prepare

yourself for that?

Well, long before the trial,

I had participated in a

trial advocacy training.

And so through that, I was able

to learn how to do openings.

This was my first jury

trial, my first opening.

And so wanted to do a good

job. I think as a team,

we all came together and talked about

what our themes and our theories and what

we wanted to really highlight

throughout the trial.

And so weaving that in through

the opening was very important.

And then obviously we wanted

to establish credibility.

So we wanted to have the evidence that

we knew was going to get in without

showing too much of our hand because

we had a few things up our sleeves.

So really preparing and practicing,

I unfortunately lost my

voice the week before trial.

So I spent the whole week

not really talking much,

but the two weeks or the

few days before the trial,

we met several times as a team. And so

went through the mock opening and got

feedback, revised, and

then washed runs for.

Repeat.

And what I would say about that is the

way that it was laid out that opening,

organization behind it

and all of the beats,

it just felt like perfect and

it was so accessible for a jury.

They can consume that easily.

It was just broken down

so plain and clearly,

and I just think it was just so effective.

Well, how much time did you have

for your opening? Were you limited?

I think we had 40 minutes,

40 minutes per side,

and I didn't use the whole 40 minutes.

So yeah, we had a lot of time.

The one real advantage I sense

from this case is the story

is so compelling from the get

go just factually. You sit down,

you tell jurors like, "Let me tell

you what happened in this case.

This isn't a rear end car crash case.

This is a fascinating

on the edge of your seat

story." And Ciara, I want to ask you,

because I think I heard you say

that strategically you withheld

some really good facts from your

opening with the thought being,

and I'm projecting here,

with the thought being that your case

gets better in trial than the opening

statement, is that accurate and

was that strategic on your part?

Well, there were just some things

that we couldn't bring up in trial.

For example, Officer Ramos

pled guilty to a crime. Well,

that's impeachment evidence,

so we couldn't really bring

that in through the opening.

What we could do is say that our

clients were victims of a crime.

So we had talked about that. That had

come up a little bit in voir dire too,

just because the story had

been pretty publicized.

So several jurors knew

about what had happened.

And then I think I heard on

the first part of the podcast,

the flashlight story,

we weren't highlighting that

in the opening by any means,

but it's certainly something that Omeed

was able to bring up in the closing.

And then just things like that. The

case and the story is so relatable.

Anybody could be an innocent person

coming out of the bar early in their

20s. And so really just

without saying it highlighted,

this happened to six people.

It could have been anyone in Denver

and it could have been a lot worse.

Crist, talk to us a little bit

about your thoughts in voir dire.

Did you find that the panel

was really on your side?

What were your fears and what did you

encounter when you actually did voir dire

here?

So we went in there with the strategy

of finding liberal gun owners.

So basically that was

the strategy going in.

And so what I was trying to do is to

get information from the jury about what

they knew about guns, what

they knew about gun safety.

And we did find a few that

did know about gun safety and

just with the idea that if they're

going to know about gun safety,

they're going to realize how

incredibly reckless this officer was.

And so that was very important to

have them on there in that regard.

And then also, saying liberal,

we don't want anyone that is

like completely pro- police,

but I don't think this was an

anti-police case because I think this was

more about holding someone accountable.

So it wasn't necessarily I was looking

for someone that is anti-police,

but anyone can be, like Ciara

was just saying a second ago,

anyone can be in that position coming

out of the club and then you have a

reckless officer shooting into a crowd.

So that was kind of the

analysis that I was going off of.

And maybe this is a

question for you, Omeed.

Was this a lack of training

issue or how did it

come to be?

So sort of assuming that

reputable use of force experts

say, don't fire into a crowd, don't

fire, know what's behind you, et cetera.

So was this a lack of training?

Was this a rogue officer?

What was the theme as it relates

to those concepts at trial?

Throughout trial and in closing, we tried

to point to every bucket of evidence.

And so training was one component.

We said it was hard to say that

he wasn't trained on this topic.

Basically what we focused

on was policies. I mean,

training aside what was most clear

that the policy said don't do this.

And I don't even have to get into the

nitty gritty of what you discussed in the

academy or in field training about

how these policies apply, et cetera.

Anybody can read this and

understand that this isn't allowed.

But really we zoomed out and I think

this is maybe what was most persuasive to

the jurors was that this is common

sense, folks. Guns are dangerous.

And if you're going to wield a gun and

we're going to give you the power of a

badge and a gun to police our streets,

you need to use your common sense.

And that's at the baseline.

We don't even need to look at policies

or training to figure that out.

And so I think a common theme

throughout the case was just jurors,

we want you to assess,

is this the type of policing that

you want just based on what you know?

Bring your own experiences into

this courtroom and ask yourself,

is this the kind of

decisions that you want made?

And that ultimately proved to be a

pretty useful way of doing it because we

didn't have to get into detailed

subjects about what happened during the

simulations.

We could just ask jurors to use their

own everyday understanding of what to do.

So I have a question factually,

because my understanding is

that the video from the various

body cam and other video,

that it looked like the

suspect was trying to throw his

firearm away when he was shot or not.

So I'm just kind of curious factually,

could someone explain,

was that clear what was going on or was

there an argument to be made that that

suspect was going for

his gun and therefore

use of deadly force would be

justified irrespective of who's

behind the suspect?

Yeah. This became a topic in the case

that we kind of had to pivot as the case

went on. As a very basic

factual matter, it does appear,

if you watch the video in slow motion

that this person is taking a gun out of

their waistband and throwing it away,

not taking it out of their

waistband to threaten the officers,

shoot at the officers or shoot into a

crowd, but then became the question of,

okay,

assume that that's difficult to see or

to comprehend in the moment. What now?

And we sort of attacked that big

issue in a couple different ways.

The first was that apparently the jurors

agreed with this evidence was that

this particular officer,

Officer Ramos, shot very, very,

very late in the sequence. He shot

after this person had drawn a gun,

thrown it away,

and was in fact already falling on the

ground. And so that's problem number one,

is that we're not really even asking

this officer whether he thought he was

brandishing a weapon in the moment

that he pulled it out of his pocket,

because that's not when the

officer shot. The second one,

this was the big pivot.

The second one was, okay,

let's assume a world where you think

a person is actually drawing a gun,

but there's a crowd behind him.

What do we want our officers to do?

And we conceded to the jury that there

might be the difficult case someday

down the line where a person is

actively shooting into a crowd or

at police officers and an officer needs

to stop the threat and the officer needs

to accept the fact that their

bullets might hit the target,

really an active shooter, and also

might hit the people in the background.

That might be a case out there,

but that wasn't this case. Really,

in closing,

we said something to the effect of

this is not columbine because their

expert tried to make it like columbine.

He even used the word

"Columbine." We said,

"This is not Columbine." Yeah,

and we even said something to the effect

that an officer can't be the first

person to shoot into a crowd.

There needs to be some other strategies,

some other tactics deployed before an

officer is the first person to shoot into

a crowd and say, "Ah, it

was okay for me to do that.

That can't be the result

that we're okay with.

" So this case was not the most

difficult case on the planet,

which at some point will present itself

and some other brilliant litigators I'm

sure will figure out how to deal with it.

So, and again, factually,

because you reminded me,

was there another police

officer that had a more ...

Didn't have an angle where there was no

one behind the suspect who had fired at

the suspect first and then Officer

Ramos then with a different

unsafe angle fired after that officer.

Is that factually what happened?

Yes. There were two other officers who

fired with the brick back wall as their

backdrop and then Officer Ramos who

fired with the crowd of people in his

backdrop.

See, to me, that's such a complicated ...

Because that sort of answered my other

question of you can't really argue that

the police officers shouldn't have ...

That the fact that the suspect was

throwing the gun away meant no one should

have fired because you've got two

officers that had a clear line of

sight that did fire.

And I'm assuming you weren't critical

of those officers firing at the

suspect. It was Officer Ramos'

firing with the backdrop.

Do I have that factually correct?

Our lawsuit was mostly against Officer

Ramos because only his bullets could have

injured the six people in the background,

and so it didn't make sense for us

to be critical of the officers who

shot Mr. Waddy.

Certainly there are some critiques that

just wasn't the focus of our client's

case.

Yeah. And it felt like more of a side

issue to even involve the other officers.

And the defense actually tried.

They were trying to pin it on the other

officers and it seemed a bit ridiculous

when they were saying one of the officers

that was dead in front of him could

have somehow fired all the

way to the right of them.

And I think one of the best lines came

from Omeed when they were trying to pin

it on his wife.

And Omeed asked the

defendant, he was like,

"Does your wife know you're out here

saying all this about her about me?

" And I think that was one of the

best lines of the trial. So yeah,

he was trying to pin it on

everyone, including his wife.

I'm not following. Wait, so

Ramos' wife was ... I got lost.

Yeah, I'll give you some background.

So Ramos was at the

time partnered with his

fiance,

then his fiance was also a police

officer and on the scene that night

and a shooting officer.

And so during the trial,

Officer Ramos' testimony was that one of

the bullets or two of the bullets that

hit the bystanders could

have come from his partner,

his fiance at the time.

He didn't call her to the

stand to testify to that point.

She was not called at all at trial.

And so the question during

the cross of Ramos was,

"Does your wife know that you're here

pointing the finger at her saying that she

shot these people?

" And it did garner a

chuckle out of a few jurors

and some co-counsel.

Well, what was his answer to that?

And did you know that that was ...

Was that a planned question or

did it just spur the moment?

That was not a planned question.

And his answer, I believe,

was that him and his wife had actually

not ever talked about anything related to

this case or his criminal

conviction. So no, she didn't know.

It is such a fascinating

factual scenario because

it strikes me that how you

framed your case is so critically

important to the success

that you received.

And just to remind our listeners,

this was what, 20 million.

I mean,

and I do want to ask you questions

about your ask and the punitive damage

component of it, but the overall

verdict was like $20 million plus,

is that right?

It was 19.75 million.

So how did you, Crist,

no focus groups here,

but was it obvious that given

the facts that I've heard

displayed here, that

the rule, if you will,

the rule you never violate is you

don't fire when there's people

behind. And was it intentional,

A, did I get that rule right?

And B,

was the intent to create the simplest

rule that was violated here to make it

as simple as you could for the jury?

Yeah, agreed.

And that is a basic rule that you don't

fire when there's people behind target.

You're supposed to know your

target, and that is a basic rule.

And I think that was very easy

for the jury to understand.

And when they're going back to deliberate,

that's just a basic rule

that they can follow.

And the case pretty much

boiled down to that.

It didn't matter like what they

were trying to throw into the pop.

It's the basic sense that you have to

know your target and know what's behind

your target.

Who crossed their use of force? Omeed,

was that you crossing the

person who referenced Columbine,

their use of force expert?

No, it was Ciara and our

co-counsel, Tony Biorst,

who represented two of the six victims.

So Ciara, what the defendant's

use of force expert,

did they concede the rule that you don't

fire when there are people behind or

did they try to tap dance around that?

They tap danced around it quite a bit.

This is the expert that tried

to liken the case to Columbine,

which for a Colorado

case and Colorado jurors,

I think that that was very

alarming to the jurors and lost

some credibility. The

facts weren't the same.

And so the expert tried to liken

it to a Columbine situation,

which it just wasn't,

but he wouldn't concede the office

Officer Ramos did anything wrong.

And I think that that's where the

experts really came into play.

We had our own policing expert,

but we also had an expert that did

the ballistics and really did a great

job of explaining the ballistics.

So while their use of force expert

wouldn't acknowledge that you can't shoot

into a crowd,

the common sense really came into

play and the jurors used that

common sense. And the

police testimony also was,

even though not designated

as expert testimony,

the other officers who were there

who testified that you wouldn't shoot

into a crowd or you have to know your

backdrop really played a critical role and

I think really hurt the credibility

of the expert who simply would not

acknowledge that this was a bad shoot.

So what I'm hearing you say,

which sounds really important,

is that your theme was you

don't shoot into a crowd,

essentially, know your backdrop. And

through every witness that testified,

you were able to get support for that

theme and raise it every single time.

Basically every witness in the

case testified. Is that right?

Absolutely.

The first nine words out of my mouth

in opening is you do not shoot into a

crowd. You do not shoot into

a crowd. It's common sense.

It's basic police practices.

And we expect our trained

police officers to know this.

We expect any person who

owns and uses a gun to know

this and to not shoot into a crowd.

Did one of you all cross-examine

Officer Ramos at trial?

That's Omeed. I did, yeah.

So Omeed,

what did Officer Ramos say when

confronted with that rule, if you will?

Is it to say, "Well, yeah, that's a rule,

but there's always exceptions,"

something like that?

He did. Yeah.

The testimony to synthesize it was

that that rule doesn't always apply

to police officers.

And that's one of those answers that

you get and you just let it sit.

You don't dig into it and try to eat

too much off of it. You just let it sit.

It didn't match up with what virtually

every other witness was saying.

That type of testimony to

sort of deny the obvious was a

common theme in his testimony.

And I was often faced

with the challenge of,

do I get one more question in

right now and sort of bite at this?

And I tried to exercise restraint and

just let the outrageous statements float

because there were several.

I think another one of the questions

that you all covered on the last podcast,

which was really a highlight

for me was asking him,

"What's the worst backdrop than a

crowd of people? " And he said, "Well,

there could be senators, presidents,

and very important people.

" And in closing, I get

to say, according to him,

these six people seated behind

me are not senators, presidents,

are very important people.

And there were a lot of opportunities

like that where you got this sort of,

he really just will not admit

the easy answer and that's okay.

The jury will see right through it.

There was a temptation often to

try to really hammer things home,

but it was just, I mean, he kind

of made the case for us at times.

And I think an important part was the

jury. None of them are presidents,

senators, and so- called important people.

So that means they can get shot too.

And Omit,

I'm putting myself in your shoes

and imagining the restraint

and imagining what would be going through

my mind when you're given an answer

like that.

And was it obvious to you

when that answer was given

that it would have been worse if there

were presidents or what have you behind

it? Did you ask any follow up

or did you just let it sit?

Talk to us a little bit about

what was going through your brain.

At that very moment,

when you get this gift of an answer

that you could not have contemplated,

that that was going to be the response.

What was your thought process?

Yeah, I had read a book. I hadn't

attended a conference like Ciara. Ciara,

that was Anita conference or?

Yeah, I attended Anita.

Would you recommend that

resource to everyone out there?

Yeah, it was great. I learned a lot.

I got to learn from a lot of

really skilled trial attorneys.

I did the one that was here in

Denver and it was there for a week,

pick up on a lot of things that

you can improve on and then

really you put those skills into

practice. So I would highly recommend it,

particularly for people

who are a little bit ...

I'm a little bit more reserved

and shy in my personal life.

So it did really wonders for my

confidence going into a trial setting.

And if conferences aren't your jam,

I had read a book called

Winning It Cross by Shane Reed.

And I'm also sort of a nerd when it

comes to trials that are out there in the

world.

I try to watch a lot of media like this

podcast to sort of stay up to date on

who's doing some great lawyering out there

and what can we learn and that it's a

skill. It's something that you have

to develop. And in that moment,

what was coming to my mind was, "Yeah,

this is an outrageous statement.

This is what Shane Reid

calls an outrageous statement

and you need to let this

one fly." And so I think a lot of

times some of the stuff you learn isn't

intuitive. And I think people just

assume that good trial lawyers,

like the two who are with me today

just become good trial lawyers because

they're born with it,

but a lot of the stuff is skills that

you have to learn and master. And I

think in that moment it

was a good test. Okay,

here's an opportunity to

make the wrong choice,

the tactically wrong

choice or the right one.

And I was lucky enough to make

the right one in that moment.

And I know we didn't ask

any follow up. In fact,

I think I moved to the next chapter,

which was about like where he

grew up or something like that.

Yeah. Kudos to you. I can

think back to my younger self.

I can still remember one of the first

trials I did as a civil trial lawyer was

after I was a prosecutor for five years

and then did a civil trial and it was a

med mal trial.

And I just beat up this defense expert

so much that I'm confident we lost the

case because of it.

And so you come back to your

situation where you're given this

gift and just the wisdom

to recognize that gift in

the moment and not try to win because

I feel like our natural instincts,

whenever we're even arguing with

our spouse or whatever, it's like,

I need to win this argument,

but to let jurors reach their own

conclusion without shoving it down their

throats,

I feel like is the biggest piece of wisdom

that I've come to in recent years as

a trial lawyer is nobody wants to be told

what to think. And so you have to let

them reach that own conclusion and you

get a gift like that and you just let it

sit and you move on to your next

chapter of cross shows much,

much, much wisdom. So kudos to you.

Talk to us a little bit about how you

went about structuring your cross.

You mentioned chapters.

Did you have various chapters that

you could sort of pivot on the fly

depending on how various answers went?

Just talk to our younger listeners,

if you will, about how you went about

preparing your cross-examinations.

Yeah. The advice that I got,

which was very good advice,

was that each chapter

needs to have a point.

And that point should

be as basic as possible.

And really as I was preparing the cross,

I would have a point that I

needed to make. For instance,

training requires knowing

your backdrop and beyond.

Then as I was going through

preparing the cross,

the points became actually narrower and

narrower and would separate often into

their own chapters.

And so a chapter on know your target

and beyond turned actually into two

chapters. One was about know your target,

and the second one was about

know it's beyond. And so really,

I think as I was preparing the cross,

the big takeaway that I had was

that it can take 25 minutes,

if it needs to, to just

establish a really basic point.

You're not going to win the case in one

chapter of your cross. You're going to

establish one piece. And really that

was the goal, was to take this witness,

this defendant, and at

each stage of his cross,

just prove one thing that's helpful

to our case or destroys his.

And so we tried to be pretty methodical

as we were going through the process.

And I think that was really what

our entire trial team did. I mean,

we were scheduled to go for two weeks

and I think the trial was done in like

nine or 10 days because all of us

pretty effectively managed to just

boil this thing down to what we needed.

Let's not start quibbling with these

witnesses in a way that's going to make us

lose credibility.

Let's just get right down to it

and then ask the jury to decide.

So that was our strategy.

I love that.

And I love what you said

that every chapter has to

have a point and that as you

were preparing, those points

became narrower and narrower.

Did you as a team engage

in any role playing

where you would practice your cross and

others would sort of assume the role?

Just really wondering

for younger listeners,

what sort of practical

trial prep advice for what

you all did in this trial?

And I'll throw this out to the group and

maybe I'll ask each one of you as far

from a trial preparation standpoint,

what really worked that you

learned in this case? And Crist,

I'll start with you.

What was the one thing as far as

trial prep that you found was very

effective here?

So as far as preparing for our client,

what I wanted to do was to get his

emotional story out to the jury.

I wanted the jury to see him

as a person before they saw

him as a victim. So I

walked him through his life,

what he was doing.

And there was a funny story about like

what happened to him right before he was

shot, where he's walking up on a girl

and then he's about to talk to her,

he sees her, he gets scared.

And if he didn't get scared

and started talking to her,

he probably wouldn't have gotten,

wouldn't have been in the line of fire.

But we had to bring that out because

again, that's a very human emotion.

Walking up on a girl, you see her and

you get fearful and you walk away.

So that's very humid.

So I wanted to bring that part out

and then also show his injuries

and what was going on before and after

he was shot. And then that was like the

same with the doctor. So I

also had to cross the doctor.

I didn't want him to start

spouting any kind of medical

information as to show how smart he was.

I just wanted to keep it very simple just

to show this is not my client's doctor

and that the doctor was paid by defendant

Ramos. So again, to keep it simple,

and I didn't want to ask him too many

things that I didn't know the answer to

because he starts talking

about medical information.

I'm not going to know anything about that.

And then I'm looking at the jury like,

and then this guy is seeming

like a remarkable person.

And the doctor was very, very

nice. He was a very good person,

so I didn't want to like poke

him too much. So I was like,

"I have to temper myself to come across

like that. " So those are some of the

things that I picked up. Yeah.

And that was something you

had contemplated in advance.

So you sort of knew when you're

cross examining the defense doctor,

"I don't want to poke this bear.

I know what I want to accomplish.

I want to get in, get out.

" And you had prepared that in advance

and that's something that you found to be

effective.

Yeah.

And I didn't know how appealing he was

going to be because he came across as

someone that I would listen

to and that I would like.

So I didn't want to be annoying

and the jury may like him,

so I don't want to interrupt that.

So just wanted to keep it basic and civil.

Civil that you mentioned civil,

how important is it in this

profession to in front of the

jury be civil that you've seen, Crist?

I think it's important because I think

again, presentation is very important.

Character and personality is important.

And again, that goes back to like,

we were talking about politics earlier.

Presentation and personality

is very important.

So if you're going to come across like

a jerk to someone that people like,

again,

that's a reflection on you and it's a

reflection on you not reading the room.

So that's what I was looking

at him and I was like, "Okay,

this is a very nice guy and if I come

across like a bulldog coming at him,

then it's going to make me look foolish.

It's going to make him look great and

then it's going to hurt our clients as.

Well." Wow. Ciara,

what's the one thing in your trial

prep in this trial did you think really

worked well?

I think collaboration. This is

the first time Omeed, Crist,

and I have gone to trial with

Siddhartha and John and the

attorneys on the case.

And so the collaboration and the trial

experience with one another was really

great. We worked well together,

but we worked differently.

And so really getting to figure out

different people's styles and how to make

it work together.

There were several times in the weeks

leading up that Omeed would come in and

work out part of his cross.

And I was Officer Ramos more than I was

Ciara in those weeks leading up to the

trial. The story's easy to

tell. They're very great people

and a terrible thing happened to them.

They were people out celebrating

an anniversary, a birthday.

One of our clients who got shot

was very endearing and going up

to a girl and then getting scared.

Another person who got

shot was calling his

sister to make sure that she took his

mom to church the next day because that's

something that he did every Sunday.

These are real people with real families.

And so telling that story was very easy.

So it didn't take as much preparation

because when you're doing a direct,

you're not the star, the person

you're doing the direct is the star.

And so it was really easy to

implement that. But I think overall,

I think the collaboration is what I took

away from it and just being there to

bounce ideas off of each other.

We're at the office until 3:00

AM working out the closing and

starting it. "Okay, oh, I don't

really quite like that piece of it.

Let's revise it here. Okay,

now let's put this into really

perspective for the jury and I don't

mean then delivered it excellently.

"So it was a really fun

trial You get a taste of it,

you want to keep doing it, but

it was great for our clients too,

obviously with the outcome.

Yeah. Omeed,

what was the one piece of the trial

preparation piece that you think

was highly effective here?

I think giving yourself enough time and

if you have the privilege of being at a

fantastic law firm, when

it's trial prep time,

people tend to take other things

off your plate so you can focus.

And that became critical both with

respect to the facts and the law.

I can think of dozens of times during

the case when a factual piece would come

up that they thought was important. And

as our entire team, we knew, no, no, no,

we knew how to deal with that. And the

only way, and the same with the law.

In fact,

I can think of a particular dispute

about a effective date of a particular

statute that they thought they had

us on and we said," No, no, no.

We've looked into this. It applies

and it applies to this case.

"And the only way that those

little tidbits which become so

important during a trial come to your

mind is that you've given yourself enough

time. It's like preparing for a

depo. If you start the night before,

you just don't have enough time to

let it sink in and to develop more

complex thoughts about it and to

sort of shift your own understanding.

So I think one thing we did really well

was everybody was just sitting with

it, listening to it, feeling it,

sort of trying to figure out,

what am I missing? What are my

blind spots? How can I pivot?

And I think we did an

excellent job of that. So time,

you just got to set it aside and

just got to do it. There's no ...

I think Abraham Lincoln as a quote,

you can't ignore the drudgeries

of the law is something like it.

You got to sit with it. There's

nothing else you can do,

but just sit with it for a long

time and it'll come to you.

What you're saying really lands because

there's just periods of this job that

are a grind.

And when you look at a trial like you

all did and someone comes in and looks at

how seamless it was, how the outcome,

how much fun it looked

like being in trial,

they see the top of the mountain and

they don't see the climb that it took to

get there and get ready.

So that's really lands with me because I

feel like there's just times in the ...

It's almost like you have to

embrace the suck at times,

whatever it is and it's set

aside time and do the grind.

So I really appreciate

your perspective on that,

of setting aside time,

making sure that things come

up legally and factually

you're able to hit those things head on.

Talk to me a little bit in our ...

We got about a few minutes left here.

I'm curious about the punitive damage

component of this. So, and Omi,

did you do both closings or did you do

first closing and then one of the other

lawyers did the rebuttal close?

I did closing and rebuttal.

Okay. How did you approach ...

Because I'm assuming that the punitive

damage component consumed a lot of your

thought about how to present that

and how to argue that with the jury.

What did you come up with and

what was your strategy with that?

Yeah, the strategy was actually

fairly straightforward.

There had been this criminal conviction

that was percolating throughout the

entire case and would

come up at various times.

And one tact that they took

to minimize the meaning

of that criminal conviction was

that it didn't come with jail time.

It wasn't a felony. It

was a sweetheart deal.

He had to take that deal

basically because it was so good.

That's why he pled guilty, not because

he was actually guilty of the crime.

That was their approach.

And so we flipped that on its head for

punitive damages. We said," Look folks,

if you're as enraged as we are,

here's what you should note.

This guy has never been punished for

this conduct. He told you outright,

I got a sweetheart deal

when it came to the crime.

"So we said," Now's your opportunity.

You're the only people who have the

opportunity as of today to punish this

defendant for that conduct.

And unfortunately,

the way you do it in this

setting is through money.

"And so really all we said was take

whatever compensatory damages you award

and just double it.

Just add another double on top to

punish him in a way that he's never been

punished. So our strategy

wasn't that complicated.

And I think actually the work to

get punitive damages comes long

before the request itself.

It's got to sit on a good

foundation of these jurors are angry

maybe. This is beyond just liability.

This is they are frustrated with

both the defendant and his conduct.

And so I think all of the pieces that

we had set up throughout the trial,

including those outrageous

statements that we talked about,

sort of led into that final request. And

that's the only way that it's credible.

If you've got a jury that's thinking this

is a fifty fifty case and I'm up there

saying," Punish him, we've lost.

It's not going to happen.

"So I think the work to get there

was long before the actual ask.

Can you talk to us just for a little

bit about your preparation for your

closings since you did both

closings, did you think,

did you plan out ahead what you expected

to do in your rebuttal close and what

did you do to prepare and

plan for your first close?

Yeah, this was with the help of our team.

I guess the first thing

was throughout the trial,

I was drafting an outline as big

pieces of evidence would come in and

testimony would come in, the

outline was already started.

And then I'd say about two days before

when it became clear that we were going

to close on X day,

the outline started to turn into

something a little more clear.

And then really the night before

we were to deliver closings,

we spent from the end of trial that

day until 3:00 AM with the entire

team preparing a presentation

and also just until

my eyes were about to fall asleep

and I was about to just pass out

on the concrete floor of our office,

just saying things over and over and

over until they came out to the picture

that we were trying to capture. And even

I drove home that night and there's a

light right before my house that

sometimes doesn't turn green.

And I sat at that light not realizing

that I was sitting at that light at red

light that was never going to turn

green for 15 minutes saying part of

the closing out loud before realizing, oh,

I have to run this to get home or else

I'm going to be here until trial the next

day. And then in terms of organizing it,

we just followed the

jury instructions.That's

ultimately the decision that

jurors need to make. And if you're

presenting it in any other way,

I think we would all posit that you're

doing it wrong because they need a

roadmap.

And so we just roadmapped them and

highlighted the evidence for each of the

elements that they needed to decide and

got them there and tried to stay awake

during the process.

And that was amazing because it was

till like three in the morning and then

eight in the morning he's giving that

closing and it was an amazing closing.

So the judge had to admonish someone in

the back because they made noise after

it. What? That was great because someone

was like, woo, in the background-.

Wait, wait. I got to hear this story.

I've never heard of such a thing.

So tell us the story. The judge had

to admonish a juror for making noise?

Yeah. So someone had made a noise in

the background as soon as it was done.

It felt like a mic drop situation.

And so there was someone in the crowd,

it was like, woo. And then the

judge got upset and was like,

"We will not have that in the courtroom."

Wow. It was truly a great closing.

It reminded me of, I don't know, have

you seen the movie JFK? Of course. Yeah.

So that closing that Kevin Costner

gave, it was kind of like that,

not as emotional and we

actually did win unlike

him. It was very well put together.

Though.

Am I stating the obvious that it sure

sounds like you all had an immense amount

of fun trying this case?

Yeah, it was challenging. The injuries

in this case were really, it was awful.

Some of the evidence that

came in was horrible,

but obviously those aren't our injuries.

We can do our best to sympathize,

but we can't really empathize because

none of us have been there and we did have

fun doing the prep work, but

it did feel very weighty.

It did feel, I don't know how

you all felt after the trial,

but it certainly felt like, "Holy smokes,

what did I just go through?" That

was a lot. It was a lot. Yeah.

I think as a lawyer, we

can see that it's fun,

but we also take on the

weight of our clients.

We are advocating and telling a

very personal story for these people

who have suffered immensely and

their lives are forever changed.

They can no longer go to the

bars or to the grocery store,

couldn't leave their house

for a period of time.

And so recognizing this very

real and personal harm and

taking and telling a jury

this story, it was fun,

but it was a lot and it felt

like a real responsibility.

But I think that we set aside the

time and we put in the time to

really make sure that we were doing

everything that we could to tell it in the

best way. And I think that that

worked out to our client's benefit.

And I think this trial was like a great

example of like why we became civil

rights lawyers.

It definitely felt like we were able to

like restore our clients like dignity.

Wow.

And it did feel like they

were relieved in a sense.

And to me, that made a lot

of the hard work worth it.

Yeah. I probably used the wrong

word fun. It's maybe rewarding.

In the hindsight, you put

in all of this effort,

you get a great result

for truly just clients

that have gone through

something that, like you said,

none of us can imagine

the sense of satisfaction

must just be immense.

And kudos to you all for

such an amazing result.

And I want to thank you all for taking

time out of your very busy lives and

professional careers to talk

with us. So Crist, Ciara, Omeed,

thank you so much for appearing on this

program and congratulations to you and

your clients for a truly

just result. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having us.

And good to finally meet you.

Yeah, it's great to meet you too.

To our listeners, thank

you for listening in again.

We'll be back next time with another

episode of the Colorado Trial Lawyer

Connection podcast where we love to talk

with trial lawyers about what they do,

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and bring some of those real life

Colorado trial lawyer stories to life.

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