{"id":6928,"date":"2021-09-02T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=6928"},"modified":"2021-08-30T17:43:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T21:43:50","slug":"the-smoking-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/the-smoking-gun\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SMOKING GUN"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I recently read \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Smoking-Gun-Through-Shocking-Murder\/dp\/0743246969\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Smoking Gun<\/a>,\u201d famed defense attorney Gerry Spence\u2019s account of his successful defense of a woman and her son accused of Murder. Taking place in the 1980s, it is a vivid account of how trials and their preludes sometimes actually happen.&nbsp; Little has changed in that regard today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Going through this 2003 book, I found myself dog-earing pages where Spence had made memorable observations about trial strategy and the psychology of courtroom battles.\u00a0 Not until after I had finished the book did I discover \u201c<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/ideaexchange.uakron.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&amp;context=ua_law_publications\" target=\"_blank\">Gerry Spence\u2019s The Smoking Gun As a Teaching Tool<\/a>,\u201d written in 2004 by Dana K. Cole of the University of Akron School of Law.\u00a0 Cole makes some excellent points for those who get involved in this sort of thing, and you can read it for free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s not just for those of us who spend a lot of time in court. Anyone who keeps or carries a gun could have found themselves in the same situation that generated this trial, and would be well served by knowing what is in \u201cThe Smoking Gun.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I agree with most of Spence\u2019s points, and most of Cole\u2019s, if not all.&nbsp; The excellent Cole analysis runs 78 pages and I can\u2019t go over all of it in this space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the key issues was Spence\u2019s carefully weighed decision not to have his defendant testify. I recommend very strongly that in a self-defense shooting, the defendant take the stand, if only because the issue isn\u2019t \u201cwhodunit,\u201d it\u2019s \u2018why did he or she do it,\u201d and only the defendants themselves can truly answer that.&nbsp; However, in \u201cThe Smoking Gun\u201d case, defendant and defense counsel maintained that his clients didn\u2019t shoot the deceased, ergo, not a self-defense shooting per se.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, there are cases where even I have recommended that the shooter not take the stand if they are too physically or emotionally fragile to withstand a grueling cross-examination. I go into that in much more detail in my \u201cSelf-Defense and the Law\u201d column in the current issue of <em>Combat Handguns <\/em>magazine, the November\/December 2021 issue, presently on the newsstands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently read \u201cThe Smoking Gun,\u201d famed defense attorney Gerry Spence\u2019s account of his successful defense of a woman and her son accused of Murder. Taking place in the 1980s, it is a vivid account of how trials and their preludes sometimes actually happen.&nbsp; Little has changed in that regard today. Going through this 2003 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6930,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6928\/revisions\/6930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}