james e. coleman jr.| Episode 02

James Coleman  0:00  
If we actually believe that our system is what we say it is, then we ought to be willing to test it.

 

Aaron Nelson  0:19  
Hello, and welcome to Sanctuary in the Jungle. I'm your host, Aaron Nelson. I'm excited to introduce you to our next guest, Professor James Coleman. Today we're going to talk about his experience in post conviction work, including wrongful convictions, death penalty cases, and his representation of Ted Bundy. In today's world of true crime, Professor Coleman brings a fresh perspective on what's really important about these cases: following our principles. As my good friend Jessa Nicholson said, "Principles aren't principles if you only follow them when they're convenient." It's in cases like Ted Bundy where all of us must be reminded to follow these principles despite our emotional reactions. Professor Coleman now teaches at Duke Law School, where he is the co-director of the wrongful convictions clinic, inspiring the next generation of criminal defense attorneys. We start our conversation discussing an article he wrote with Michael Tiger, titled Sanctuary in the Jungle, about Tiger's defense of Terry Nichols. In 1995, Nichols was charged with 168 counts of homicide for allegedly helping Timothy McVeigh carry out the Oklahoma City bombing. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Here's Professor James Coleman. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:35  
Well, welcome Professor Coleman. I'm so glad that you can be here in our sanctuary, here at the library in Hudson, Wisconsin. Thanks for joining me.

 

James Coleman  1:44  
 Well, thank you for inviting me. It is a beautiful place. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:47  
Yeah, thanks. I'm very- I'm very happy with the place we ended up here. And so, as some of- some people may know, you were the author, with Michael Tiger, of an article in a small book called Trial Stories, in which you talk about the Terry Nichols defense that was done by Michael Tiger. And the title of that is: A Sanctuary in the Jungle. And so I'd read that, I'd heard Michael Tiger speak about it on a different podcast, and then I kind of got fascinated with that phrase, and as I was reading through that, I came to learn like, oh, there's two different authors here. And I Googled your name, and then your phone number came up, and I just dialed it on a Friday afternoon, and you answered your phone!

 

James Coleman  2:35  
I did, and it was a surprise call, but a very welcomed one, and you told me what you were doing, and I thought, wow, that would be great. 

 

Aaron Nelson  2:45  
Yeah. So I'm just happy that I was brave enough, I guess, to just call, happy that you were kind enough to answer the call, and then obviously answer the call here. So again, thank you. Thanks for coming. 

 

James Coleman  3:03  
Yeah.

 

Aaron Nelson  2:59  
And maybe that's a good place to start. Tell me how you got involved in- with Michael Tiger in that article. 

 

James Coleman  3:07  
Well, so I've mentioned this to you before that, you know, the article really was written by Michael. He was visiting at Duke. I knew him through work I had done with the American Bar Association. At one time, I was chair of the section on individual rights and responsibilities, and he was active in criminal defense- side of the of the ABA. But when he came to Duke, you know, he was working on this, he was editing the Trial Stories. And he asked me if I would like to work with him on this article that he was doing. So I said, sure. You know, I've never worked with him on anything, 

 

Aaron Nelson  3:49  
Yeah.

 

James Coleman  3:50  
And my contribution was primarily just helping to edit it, except that I was struck by, you know, the- his use of, you know the concept of a sanctuary in the jungle. And-

 

Aaron Nelson  4:05  
So tell me a little bit about that. I know, I know that was a theme that he used throughout the trial. It was a phrase that he used, I believe, both in- with the court when he was deciding on a change of venue, but also, I think, throughout the rest of the trial. And what did- how did that resonate with you? What did that mean to you?

 

James Coleman  4:22  
This, this is a very difficult case for the defense lawyers. I represented McVeigh and Nichols, and I, you know. So the question is, if you're- if you're a defense lawyer in a case like that, where you've got a lot of public hostility directed at you, probably judges, you know, not being particularly friendly. And you've got a client who, you know, just about everybody despises. How do you- how do you function in a situation like that? And how do you get your client comfortable with the idea that he might get a fair trial? And so what Michael said was that, you know, that the trial has to be the sanctuary. Where we ought to be able to relate to our client as a human, we ought to be able to get judges who, you know, make decisions unaffected by what's going on around them. And if we can do that, then it's like a sanctuary in this jungle that surrounds what we're doing. And I thought, "That's a really good concept."

 

Aaron Nelson  5:39  
I love that concept, and just, you know, and I think in the book, you describe it as, you know, a place where there's compassion, there's- but also reason. 

 

James Coleman  6:14  
Correct, correct.

 

Aaron Nelson  5:50  
Right? And so from a- for me, as I'm looking at it, it's both how we treat people in it, you know, with dignity and respect and compassion for their situation, but more so for the people in power, to how they make decisions-

 

James Coleman  6:20  
Correct.

 

Aaron Nelson  6:05  
Because, as you say, it's easy in those environ- in cases in which there's a lot of emotion, there's a lot of trauma, there's maybe been a lot of harm that has happened, for people to make decisions on something other than reason or rational process.

 

James Coleman  6:22  
Well, and the lawyers are in communities, you know, they've got to go back to the community when the case is over. And so, you know, public doesn't always understand this notion that a guy like Terry Nichols deserves a lawyer.

 

Aaron Nelson  6:39  
Yeah.

 

James Coleman  6:40  
And deserves a lawyer who challenges the state's evidence. You know, it's like, well, you know, it's clear he's guilty, so why are we? Why are we doing this?

 

Aaron Nelson  6:51  
It really- I love the concept of the sanctuary, right? But it's almost sometimes hard as a- as an acting criminal defense lawyer, to explain it to friends or family or somebody that's not anywhere, because it seems so obvious and second nature to me. 

 

James Coleman  7:11  
Yeah.

 

Aaron Nelson  7:11  
You know, you're a teacher, you're a professor, here. Is that something that you help with your students? If so, how do you do that? How do you communicate that need for- everybody has the dignity, and everybody gets a lawyer, everybody should be involved in a sanctuary.

 

James Coleman  7:29  
In a different way. Because you know, it's kind of two levels on which it works. One is that you're a student in law school, and this is where you can try out stuff without, you know, worrying about there being a backlash, or-

 

Aaron Nelson  7:43  
Sure.

 

James Coleman  7:44  
You know, or something like that. But then, on the other hand, you know, when you're out there and you're defending a client, you're that client's best friend, and you want to be able to defend that client in a- in circumstances where your client is being treated with dignity as a human being, and people are listening to your argument.

 

Aaron Nelson  8:08  
Yeah, because sometimes just your presence standing next to somebody who's been accused; there's these claims against them, you know, that that might bring down our credibility, that perception of our credibility. And so how do you- how do you do that? What do you tell the students?

 

James Coleman  8:24  
Exactly. Well, I tell them that, you know, the focus has to be on the client. And basically, you know, if your reputation is good, people respect you, some of that may wear off on your client if you don't try to distance yourself from the client. 

 

Aaron Nelson  8:44  
So it goes both ways. 

 

James Coleman  8:45  
Goes both ways. And you've got to embrace your client. And, you know, you're not saying that, you know, I'm my- that what my client did is what I would have done, or that, you know, this is something that I think, is not serious. But what you're saying is that I represent this person as a human being, and my job is to make sure that he's treated fairly in the court.

 

Aaron Nelson  9:13  
Yeah, what I've a word that I've liked to use lately is just modeling, you know? And I find it to be so often in the courtroom, we as the criminal defense attorneys are actually the ones that are trying to model the behavior for the judge, model the behavior for the prosecutor, model the behavior for everybody else. But it's just the small things. Is that part of what you're teaching in a-

 

James Coleman  9:37  
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, the worst thing that you can see in court, and, you know, we see these in capital cases, where a lawyer is appointed to represent somebody who's charged with a heinous crime, and the lawyer doesn't want to be associated with it.

 

Aaron Nelson  9:53  
Yeah.

 

James Coleman  9:53  
So they sit at the table, and they, you know, they barely, you know, relate to the client during the proceedings, everybody sees that. 

 

Aaron Nelson  10:02  
Yeah, absolutely. 

 

James Coleman  10:04  
So if you do that, you know, you're sending a message.

 

Aaron Nelson  10:07  
Absolutely.

 

James Coleman  10:08  
Having nothing to do with the facts. It's just that you don't think this is somebody you want to be associated with, and everybody else gets that message.

 

Aaron Nelson  10:16  
Well, this is let's just circle back, because I could go on for this forever, but let's circle back and learn more about you. Professor Coleman, so you're here in Hudson, Wisconsin. Thank you. Where are you from?

 

James Coleman  10:29  
I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina, originally. 

 

Aaron Nelson  10:32  
Okay. Is that where you grew up? 

 

James Coleman  10:33  
I grew up there. I left after high school and did a post graduate year at a high school in New Hampshire, at Phillips Exeter Academy.

 

Aaron Nelson  10:44  
I was reading a little bit about that bio, and that seemed like an extraordinary experience, an extraordinary opportunity, just you know, a life changing, perhaps event. Tell us, how did that come to be?

 

James Coleman  10:59  
Well, I had a guidance counselor at my high school. And, although I graduated from high school in 1965, it was still segregated, alright, so all black high school. But she had a very good friend who was in the Cannon- the Mills family in North Carolina, very wealthy, famous family. 

 

Aaron Nelson  11:20  
Okay, just a prominent- 

 

James Coleman  11:21  
Prominent, yeah, and the- Mrs. Cannon wanted to send some student from my high school to a summer program at Exeter, and so my guidance counselor suggested that she send me. 

 

Aaron Nelson  11:37  
She picked you.

 

James Coleman  11:38  
She picked me, and I- first time I'd been out of North Carolina- 

 

Aaron Nelson  11:43  
Oh, wow.

 

James Coleman  11:43  
Took a bus up to New Hampshire. 

 

Aaron Nelson  11:46  
That's a long bus ride.

 

James Coleman  11:47  
That's a very long bus ride, and, but it was the most extraordinary experience I had ever had. 

 

Aaron Nelson  11:53  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  11:54  
I mean, you know, it was education on a level that I couldn't have imagined. And they invited me to stay and, you know, just finish out high school there, but I was going to graduate number one in my high school back in Charlotte, so I didn't want to miss that.

 

Aaron Nelson  11:54  
That opportunity. 

 

James Coleman  11:54  
That opportunity, and for my, you know, my parents and my mother to see me graduate.

 

Aaron Nelson  12:19  
Sure. 

 

James Coleman  12:19  
So I went back, and they said, "Okay, well, why don't you come back for another year?". So I did that, and it was just extraordinary.

 

Aaron Nelson  12:29  
How, you know, we'll probably talk about culture in other ways, whether it be the sanctuary or some other things, but it sounds like the- just the learning culture there was different. 

 

James Coleman  12:38  
Yes, exactly. 

 

Aaron Nelson  12:39  
And that impacted it?

 

James Coleman  12:40  
And that made all the difference in the world.

 

Aaron Nelson  12:44  
Okay.

 

James Coleman  12:45  
You know, that allowed me to sort of think beyond, you know, what I could dream at the time that I was in Charlotte. I mean, I think my my dreams had a, you know, a limited horizon.

 

Aaron Nelson  12:58  
Okay.

 

James Coleman  12:59  
Exeter opened that up and, yeah, so- 

 

Aaron Nelson  13:03  
And there's a- tell me about- there's like a table there. There was a concept that I hadn't heard about, but I read about it.

 

James Coleman  13:08  
The Harkness table. 

 

Aaron Nelson  13:09  
What's the Harkness table? 

 

James Coleman  13:10  
It's a- it's how all classes, you know, science, math, history, English, are taught around a Harkness table, which is a conference room table. It's an oval, and the professor and the students sit around the table and we talk. And we talk about whatever the subject is. And so it draws you out. You can't hide. It's very small, you know, 12 students, maybe, and the professor. 

 

Aaron Nelson  13:42  
Are there some, like, rules, or a way of how you engage in conversation or discussion around the harkness table?

 

James Coleman  13:50  
It is, I mean, so it's about, you know, how you have a discussion about things that- about what you you may disagree, but you know to be agreeable when you disagree; to be willing to talk about things you're not comfortable with, things you don't really know a lot about. But, you know, you can, even in that circumstance, you can ask questions and so forth. So it draws you into the process, into the- and that's the education. That's kind of where it happens.

 

Aaron Nelson  14:25  
Sounds like a table we'd put in a sanctuary. 

 

James Coleman  14:27  
Exactly. 

 

Aaron Nelson  14:28  
Yeah. I mean, that's- maybe we'll tie that in, tie that in later. But it seems like that's very tied to what your- some of your core concepts of just dignity and, you know, listening to everybody.

 

James Coleman  14:43  
Absolutely. Respect for the people around the table. 

 

Aaron Nelson  14:46  
And that's something that you got from this experience at Exeter.

 

James Coleman  14:49  
Absolutely. I mean, you know, a lot of the students were from prominent, you know, families. They were, you know, third and fourth generation.

 

Aaron Nelson  14:57  
I think you'd said you were hanging out with the grandson of a president.

 

James Coleman  15:01  
Yes, Eisenhower. 

 

Aaron Nelson  15:02  
Okay.

 

James Coleman  15:04  
In my English class, and the two of us, you know, he would write about some of the stuff he did with his grandfather, and I would write about hanging out in this overgrown wooded area near my house that we call the "big jungle". And you know, the- our classmates found both of those things fascinating.

 

Aaron Nelson  15:23  
Yeah, they had equal value around the Harkness table.

 

James Coleman  15:26  
And different experiences- different than the experiences that most of them had. 

 

Aaron Nelson  15:31  
Okay

 

James Coleman  15:32  
Right? 

 

Aaron Nelson  15:32  
How did that experience then allow you to move forward? Where do you move from there?

 

James Coleman  15:37  
Well, so as a result of that, you know, I started to think about going to an Ivy League school, because that's where my classmates were going, 

 

Aaron Nelson  15:46  
Sure.

 

James Coleman  15:47  
Whereas in Charlotte, I mean, I applied to, you know, I mean, I actually applied to some colleges before I left to go to Exeter for that postgraduate year. All of the colleges I applied to were in North Carolina.

 

Aaron Nelson  16:05  
Okay

 

James Coleman  16:05  
And were historically black colleges.

 

Aaron Nelson  16:08  
Okay 

 

James Coleman  16:08  
I didn't apply to University of North Carolina because I wouldn't have got in.

 

Aaron Nelson  16:12  
Oh.

 

James Coleman  16:13  
This is in 1965.

 

Aaron Nelson  16:15  
Okay.

 

James Coleman  16:15  
So, you know-

 

Aaron Nelson  16:16  
Did that change after Exeter?

 

James Coleman  16:18  
I go to Exeter and all of a sudden I got into Harvard, Princeton, Columbia.

 

Aaron Nelson  16:23  
Wow. And so, which one did you pick? 

 

James Coleman  16:25  
So I picked Harvard. 

 

Aaron Nelson  16:27  
You'd said you wouldn't have been accepted to North Carolina. 

 

James Coleman  16:31  
Mh-hm.

 

Aaron Nelson  16:31  
Did you after Exeter-

 

James Coleman  16:33  
In fact, my high school had more people accepted to Harvard than UNC.

 

Aaron Nelson  16:39  
Really?

 

James Coleman  16:39  
I was accepted at Harvard, and that was it. 

 

Aaron Nelson  16:43  
Nobody was accepted.

 

James Coleman  16:44  
And none of us- No. Nobody accepted at UNC. In fact, we didn't apply. 

 

Aaron Nelson  16:48  
Just because of that- 

 

James Coleman  16:50  
We knew we wouldn't get in. They were just beginning to change that, but not in time that we thought that was something for us. 

 

Aaron Nelson  16:59  
Oh. 

 

James Coleman  17:00  
Yeah.

 

Aaron Nelson  17:01  
That's, I can't imagine how that feels when your own, to some degree, your own community, your own state, right, is saying no, but people outside can see things in a different way and see you in a different way, and appreciate you in a different way.

 

James Coleman  17:16  
Yeah, I mean, you know, we appreciated UNC as our flagship university, we knew that, and we were proud of UNC but, you know, we didn't see ourselves as UNC students. And you know, I think Exeter changed that.

 

Aaron Nelson  17:30  
Yeah, well. So you go to Harvard, went to- did you start there in '66?

 

James Coleman  17:35  
'66.

 

Aaron Nelson  17:37  
Okay.

 

James Coleman  17:38  
And graduated in '70.

 

Aaron Nelson  17:40  
That must have been a tough time to be coming out of college.

 

James Coleman  17:44  
Very interesting times. You know, the very first thing that that happened in the fall was that Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense, came to visit campus, and there's a big demonstration, and his car was stopped right outside of my house. 

 

Aaron Nelson  18:01  
Oh.

 

James Coleman  18:01  
And I thought, wow, that's kind of interesting. So, you know, we had a lot of anti-war activities. University closed down at times, stuff like that going on. Some classes weren't finished when they bombed Cambodia. 

 

Aaron Nelson  18:17  
Okay.

 

James Coleman  18:18  
But I had, I had a really good group of roommates. I also was- I volunteered at a small school in- a private school in Cambridge called Charles River Academy, and I wanted to be a teacher. But I loved working with the students so I took a full, you know, full time job the year after I graduated from college as a teacher at this school, and then my draft status changed to 1A. So I needed to do something to avoid going to Vietnam. So I, you know, I joined the Navy JAG program.

 

Aaron Nelson  19:04  
Okay.

 

James Coleman  19:05  
And went to Columbia. And, so I had a four year commitment to go into the Navy. But because the war was winding down, they allowed me to be a law clerk for a year, which I did in Detroit. And then-

Aaron Nelson  19:24  
Was that your first, like, experience with the law? Or had you been a law clerk in Charlotte at all?

 

James Coleman  19:29  
No, I was, you know, that was my first experience as a lawyer. 

 

Aaron Nelson  19:36  
Okay.

 

James Coleman  19:37  
They- when- Ordinarily in law school second year, you know, you do a summer job in law. My summer job was to go to Newport in the Navy.

Aaron Nelson  19:49  
Oh, sure. Had you thought about lawyering or the law before? 

 

James Coleman  19:53  
Yes.

 

Aaron Nelson  19:54  
Before the 1A status change?

 

James Coleman  19:56  
Yes. I did. I had- My senior year in high school, I got a job with Julius Chambers. He was a lawyer, civil rights lawyer, very well known in Charlotte and among the civil rights community. He had just opened his office in 1965, which was the year I graduated from high school. So, I was like his original staff. I was a guy who reshelved books in the library. And I thought what he did was, you know, just extraordinary. And so I started to think about law. 

 

Aaron Nelson  20:25  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  20:26  
But, you know, I had no other experience with law or lawyers. And then when I was at Exeter, his home and his office were bombed. 

 

Aaron Nelson  20:42  
Oh, geez.

 

James Coleman  20:43  
Because of the civil rights work that he was doing.

 

Aaron Nelson  20:46  
Were you still in contact with him? 

 

James Coleman  20:48  
I was and, you know, I thought, wow, that's, that's kind of a extraordinary reaction to a lawyer. So that must mean that-

 

Aaron Nelson  21:00  
That didn't turn you off, that didn't scare you?

 

James Coleman  21:03  
Mn-mn, no. It said to me that there must be something powerful about being a lawyer, if that's kind of how people are reacting. 

 

Aaron Nelson  21:12  
Okay. 

 

James Coleman  21:13  
Yeah.

 

Aaron Nelson  21:13  
And you, yeah, you're on your journey to becoming a criminal defense attorney. You took some other some other experiences. Exactly, how did you get to become a criminal defense attorney?

 

James Coleman  21:24  
Well, I bought it. I had no interest in criminal law as a law clerk in practice at my law firms, but I but I was interested in public interest and interested in pro bono work, and I was at Wilmer Cutler and Pickering in DC, prominent DC firm that did a lot of public interest work. And I had two associates, young associates, who wanted to do a death penalty case in Florida. Had you ever done a death penalty case? Never, never done any kind of criminal case. So they asked me if I would supervise them. I said, "Yeah, sure, I'll do that, but you're going to have to do the work, because-".  

 

Aaron Nelson  21:47  
And is this a this a post conviction? 

 

James Coleman  22:05  
This was post conviction. This was under a death warrant. So it was more than just post conviction, right? This- he was scheduled to be executed in like 17 days. 

 

Aaron Nelson  22:21  
Wow. Talk about throwing in to deep end.

 

James Coleman  22:23  
So there was no chance the students going, I mean, I call them students, their young associates were going to be able to do the case by themselves. So the three of us went down to Gainesville. I and we stayed there until we got a stay of execution the day before the execution was scheduled, we got it so you were successful to do that, and it was the first successor case in Florida. So he had already gone through one round of post conviction litigation, and when they, when they signed the death warrant, people thought that he would definitely be executed because he had already been through. So we went down and we were able to get a stay of the execution. And eventually, after I had, I left my law firm and came to do, the last thing I did in his case was to get his death sentence overturned.

 

Aaron Nelson  23:24  
Oh, wonderful. So you're 37, you've never done this work, and you got 17 days, and you go down and you sit across the table from another human being who's due to, you know, be executed in 17 days. Where do you find the the will to know how to communicate to like, what's going through your head, through your body; through all of- that just seems overwhelming to me, even as an experienced 54 year old criminal defense attorney, like, what am I going to say to this person across the table from me?

 

James Coleman  23:58  
Well, my students were special education students, right when I was a teacher. So for four years in college, and then for the one year I was a full time teacher, I was teaching students who were, you know, had some emotional disability or something like that. So, you know, I was, you know, I knew, you know, I needed to relate to my client in the way that I related to my students. I mean, you know, again, I had to treat them like humans. I didn't treat them like their disability. I treated them like somebody who should be accorded dignity. So I went down to Gaines- to Stark, Florida, where the prison was, and we met this, you know, young man, spent a day talking to him about his case, and I found him fascinating. He was very smart. He was he was a writer and a poet. 

 

Aaron Nelson  24:59  
Oh, wow. 

 

James Coleman  24:59  
Pretty, pretty extraordinary guy. And, you know, we just had to figure out how to stop this execution.

 

Aaron Nelson  25:09  
Yeah, so you successfully did that. You stop it. There's got to be a little bit of a break, a little bit of a time for an insightful man like yourself to reflect, to think about it. I mean, and you decide, sign me up again, or let's do that. What was that-

 

James Coleman  25:27  
I didn't. I didn't, sort of, I mean, so the the original case, once we got a stay of execution, that the case continued. So we- so I was still litigating it, but I hadn't taken on anything different, and that doesn't happen until three years later. 

 

Aaron Nelson  25:47  
Okay, tell me about that. 

 

James Coleman  25:48  
That's when, that's when there's a warrant on Bundy, and his case is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, and he personally filed the cert petition. So pro se.

 

Aaron Nelson  26:02  
A cert petition, is a petition for a writ of certiorari, a formal request for a higher court to review a lower court's decision. Pro se is a Latin term meaning for oneself. It is used in a legal context, in reference to someone representing themselves as their own lawyer. Here, Professor Coleman tells us he got involved in this case after Bundy acted as his own attorney and filed his appeal himself.

 

James Coleman  26:27  
And, you know, the court doesn't like to deal with pro se litigants.

 

Aaron Nelson  26:31  
Sure.

 

James Coleman  26:32  
And the people in Florida, basically, you know, wanted to recruit somebody who would take the case. So because of the work that I'd done, they asked me if I would ask the Supreme Court for state. I didn't even focus on who he was, right? So I had a student, she wanted to do a capital case, so I sent her to Florida to ask the Florida Supreme Court to stay the execution. We knew they would say no, but we had to do that before we went into the U.S. Supreme Court. So this gave her trip to Florida, although it's Tallahassee, so no big deal. But when she got there, she was mobbed by the press, and she had no idea what was going on. And then we focused on who this was...

 

Aaron Nelson  27:20  
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James Coleman  28:22  
And so she came back. The Supreme Court granted a stay. It didn't require a lot of lawyering, you know, we just had to file the papers... and, you know, we looked at the case and some interesting issues. So I offered to become his counsel. He wanted us to amend his petition and then see what happened after that. And so you agree.

 

Aaron Nelson  28:46  
You stayed on and continue to represent.

 

James Coleman  28:48  
'Till, yeah, until his execution. 

 

Aaron Nelson  28:50  
Now, I have to imagine, you know, what little I know about what he was convicted of, and the beginnings of almost the true crime genre that now we see within America and maybe across the- across the world. But he was, imagine somebody that was hard to get a sanctuary for him. It was hard for anybody to to build one, to let him into one.

 

James Coleman  29:14  
Correct that's where, that's where the notion of a sanctuary really kind of, you know, hits you when you, you've got a case like that. Basically, you know, somebody who's known nationwide, who's suspected of having done just horrendous things. Yeah, both in Seattle and Utah and Colorado, and then in Florida. Everybody in Florida knew him, knew him as a result of his criminal cases because he played a prominent role. So there's nobody who didn't have an opinion about him. 

 

Aaron Nelson  29:49  
Sure. 

 

James Coleman  29:49  
And all of them had negative opinions. 

 

Aaron Nelson  29:52  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  29:53  
So the question is, how do you get a judge to pay attention to the- 

 

Aaron Nelson  30:01  
To even listen.

 

James Coleman  30:02  
Exactly. So that was the challenge in that case, was to make a sanctuary. Find a sanctuary. How do you, how do you create a space where you can, you know, where he is treated as a human. And, you know, we get a judge who will listen to the claims, because they weren't frivolous. You know-

 

Aaron Nelson  30:27  
They were real claims. 

 

James Coleman  30:28  
Very real claims. 

 

Aaron Nelson  30:29  
Did you- again, happy to know as much about it as you're willing to share, but were you able to to create, you know, a bit of a space for that? 

 

James Coleman  30:39  
I think so. And I'll tell you where it happened. The- we got an evidentiary hearing right. We won on appeal to the 11th Circuit. What they should have done was overturned his conviction, because they said the trial judge should have determined whether he was competent based on some of the things that were happening in the case. But what they did was to say, well, we'll give you a retrospective hearing. So, so, but at the evidentiary hearing, you know, one of the things that I decided to do, because I knew that- going to be a hostile courtroom. So one of the things that I thought... I spent a lot of time with the defense lawyers, and I could see how beaten down they were from dealing with this. So I took the elected public defender to dinner that night. He was going to be my first witness. 

 

Aaron Nelson  31:34  
Okay. 

 

James Coleman  31:35  
And rather than preparing him with questions that I wanted him to, I asked him to talk about what it was like to be Bundy's lawyer. And that's what we talked about at dinner. And then, because what I wanted was for him to kind of get back in touch with that, those feelings, so that-

 

Aaron Nelson  31:57  
The feelings of just being overwhelmed-

 

James Coleman  31:59  
Overwhelmed and yeah, and overwhelmed in a way that you know, prevented him from being able to save his client, meaning being able to do his best for his client, because his client was making that impossible. And so then I put him on the stand, and the first question I asked him was about, you know, the difficulty he had representing Bundy, and what was his goal during that period? And, and he he said, he says, "I was trying to save his life, and he didn't seem to understand that". And that was kind of that kind of captured the courtroom.

 

Aaron Nelson  32:49  
The lawyer was saying that Ted Bundy didn't understand that the lawyer was trying to save his life.

 

James Coleman  32:53  
And that what, and that what he, Ted Bundy was doing, was making it impossible. 

 

Aaron Nelson  32:57  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  32:57  
For the lawyer to be successful. 

 

Aaron Nelson  32:59  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  33:00  
What's interesting about that is that I think that, I think the- one of the few times that I thought, you know, he responded to something with genuine emotion was after he heard his lawyer testify at that hearing. We took a break and went back and, you know, and it was he, normally he would say what he thought, you know, should be said in a situation. But this time-

 

Aaron Nelson  33:30  
He recognized somebody else. 

 

James Coleman  33:32  
It seemed, right, exactly.

 

Aaron Nelson  33:34  
Well, I have to say is, for you, just thinking of you as the lawyer like, that's incredibly perceptive because, as you'd said, You hadn't been practicing criminal defense lawyer, you haven't been doing the trial work, right? And as somebody who does the trial work, I think the hardest thing to convey to others who don't do this work is sometimes just the extreme loneliness of the work you you're standing there next to a human being, and everybody is against you. So, I mean, it's sometimes you have your your client's family there, which is fantastic. But, you know, I had a, I had a trial recently here in St Croix County, and on the morning of the trial, I felt kind of desperate, but I just sent out a group text to 10 of my buddies. Was just like, I just need to see a friend in the courtroom. And I was- here I am doing this 30 years, 54 years old. It's my own community, but I just, I needed a friend in that room, because it is so lonely.

 

James Coleman  34:37  
Yeah, no, it's, it really is. One of the other things that I did, so there were two cases we were litigating for Bundy, and in one of them, which was in Miami, you know what the governor started doing in 1986, which was a 10th Anniversary of the Greg's decision. So he was, he wanted to execute Bundy on the- that one's going to be the 10th Anniversary thing.

 

Aaron Nelson  35:03  
The Greg decision refers to the 1976 Supreme Court case, Greg versus Georgia. The Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was not cruel and unusual punishment.

 

James Coleman  35:15  
So we had this federal district court judge who basically had done family law before he was appointed, so he didn't know anything about habeas. And, you know, I tried to get the press to take seriously that the issues we were- otherwise I wouldn't talk to them about, you know, the case. And the judge, the Federal District Court Judge made a mistake, which is that he ruled against us summarily, but he didn't have the record. 

 

Aaron Nelson  35:47  
Okay. 

 

James Coleman  35:48  
So I knew he was going to be reversed in the 11th Circuit. So I was able to confidently say to the press that these are serious issues and that I was confident that the 11th Circuit was going to overturn what the judge had done, and we were going to have a chance to present the evidence in support of our claims. And, you know, a year later, that's what happened. The court overturned. It yelled at the prosecutor for not confessing error. So all of a sudden it looks like, hey, maybe this guy knows what he's talking about. 

 

Aaron Nelson  36:25  
James Coleman knows what he's saying. 

 

James Coleman  36:27  
But I wanted them to take seriously, you know what we were doing, because normally they just show up and they want to know when is execution going to be.

 

Aaron Nelson  36:35  
Yeah... So yeah, the state of the media, that's what still continues to surprise me. This state, I mean, I'm not taking, like National cases, but just the lack of an understanding. I mean, recently, there was a wonderful profile of a fantastic criminal defense attorney from Atlanta, and it was in The New Yorker, and I think it was Attorney Steele, and it's a great article about this attorney, but the writer at the end said and implied "he's special because he presumes his clients are innocent". And I don't know this attorney, he sounds like he's brilliant, fantastic, excellent lawyer. For many ways, I'm sure he is unique, but for the media to think that a criminal defense attorney is unique and special just because they merely follow the law and presume their client was innocent, was just to me, shocking that at that high level of journalism you must have, you must have abundance of stories.

 

James Coleman  37:40  
I think one of the things that I did once I, when I left my firm to go to Duke, was to commit to talking to members of the press, largely on background, about the law. 

 

Aaron Nelson  37:57  
Sure. 

 

James Coleman  37:57  
And about criminal law and about the system, to help educate them so that they could cover stories. And so, you know, journalists in North Carolina knew me for that reason, that I would talk to them. So when the Duke LaCrosse case happened, you know, a lot of the people who covered it knew me in the fact that I was criticizing the prosecutor. You know, they paid attention to that, but you're right. I mean, you know a lot of these journalists, they have no clue how the system works, what the defense lawyer does, yeah, the relationship between the defense lawyer and the client, they just don't- they don't know.

 

Aaron Nelson  38:41  
And it's, it's sad, because obviously, all of us get information sometimes from the media, you know, but I get information from the media about things that I don't know. If I weren't a criminal defense attorney, I might be relying upon this. But here's the source of information, and whether the reporter is Columbia educated, or, you know, Duke educated, or they just don't really know criminal defense.

 

James Coleman  39:06  
Right, right, right. And they have some, you know, obvious questions that they ask, and usually what they're looking for is a quote from the lawyer that they plug into a story. And I always wanted them to be concerned about the story and know something about the story.

 

Aaron Nelson  39:25  
Were you, were you able to help shape that or do that anyway? Can you think of any time that, I think so, think of any stories that that you were able to help share?

 

James Coleman  39:34  
I was thinking about, there's an article written in, I think it's Legal Times ,it was called, it sort of the American lawyer, but it was a D.C. subsidiary. 

 

Aaron Nelson  39:45  
Okay. 

 

James Coleman  39:45  
But the Legal Times sent him down to Florida for the first day of the evidentiary hearing, and I talked to him on background before the hearing to tell him what was going on and what he was going to see and all that. And he came down, and he then wrote a really good story, and I think the title was Bundy's Last Lawyer, or something like that. 

 

Aaron Nelson  40:11  
Okay. 

 

James Coleman  40:11  
But it was a really good story about what we were doing. And one of the things that he wrote was about some of the sort of courtroom regulars who show up, you know, big trials.

 

Aaron Nelson  40:25  
And now they can stand on a couch and watch a Court TV, then they had to show up.

 

James Coleman  40:31  
Exactly. They had to show up. And he wrote about this one woman who was, I guess, prominent among this group who said that- and he said that she was touched by our case.

 

Aaron Nelson  40:44  
It has to be a comment about you.

 

James Coleman  40:46  
Well, but, but it was also about the journalists who knew that that was important and and wrote about it. I and I think it also, you know, a story like that helps shape the sanctuary, right? Absolutely says that, you know, you should take this seriously. This is, you know, this is not just something that you, you know, you check off and move on to the next court. You should pay attention to what's going on here.

 

Aaron Nelson  41:16  
Yeah, you know, that's so I've kind of developed recently my last three trials, which thankfully have all resulted in not guilty verdicts. But I've framed my closing within this Sanctuary in the Jungle theme. I use the quote. 

 

James Coleman  41:30  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  41:30  
I kind of have a structure to it. I frame it. The first two times I did it, it felt like- it felt really natural. It felt, it felt like I was connecting with the jury in a way. In the last one, I still got the result I wanted, but maybe it was just me, maybe it was the place. But I felt as if it felt as if people were looking at me like, why should we give anybody a sanctuary? 

 

James Coleman  41:53  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  41:53  
Why should we give anybody a sanctuary? Right? And that's where I've been. I've been pondering that like- it's hard for me to get to a space to think, why wouldn't we want a sanctuary? You know, what are we afraid of? What? Why are we afraid of being kind? Why are we afraid of using reason? Why are we afraid of that? But it's that's what boggles me with the media, like, why are they afraid of not talking about that? 

 

James Coleman  42:17  
Exactly, exactly. 

 

Aaron Nelson  42:19  
Why shouldn't we aspire to that?

 

James Coleman  42:25  
And treat- and treating the issues as being serious. 

 

Aaron Nelson  42:28  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  42:28  
And treating the person as being a human accused of doing terrible things.

 

Aaron Nelson  42:33  
Sure. 

 

James Coleman  42:33  
But terrible things are going to happen to him if he ultimately is convicted.

 

Aaron Nelson  42:39  
Yeah, that it- just at a surface level. I guess that's because that's what we- that's our job is to continually to persuade, to tell our stories that-

 

James Coleman  42:49  
And, and not just the judge, but, I mean, I viewed it as anybody who would listen. I mean, actually listen. I would talk to, I remember on the first day of our evidentiary hearing, there was a group of high school students, a teacher had brought to the proceeding, and when it was over, I talked to them. 

 

Aaron Nelson  43:13  
Sure. 

 

James Coleman  43:13  
I brought them into the- well and talked to them about the case. And because, you know, I felt that part of my job was to also educate people, because if they're better educated, it'll be better for my client. 

 

Aaron Nelson  43:28  
Sure. Yeah, what- I mean, if we go back to the to the to the media a little bit, you know, maybe it's in Mr. Bundy's case, maybe it's in a different case. But you know, what questions do you think they should be asking? 

 

James Coleman  43:41  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  43:42  
I mean, can you think of any off, you know, they should be asking more of these types of questions, or other than just the explo-, you know, looking to say, like, when's an execution date? Obviously, that's not with dignity.

 

James Coleman  43:56  
Well, I think, I think they should be trying to understand what the issues are. 

 

Aaron Nelson  43:59  
Okay.

 

James Coleman  44:00  
You know. So we get a lot of journalists who, you know, you say, Well, I'm there's a, you know, this conviction violated the Constitution. And they would say, "well, that's just a technicality". So, you know, get them to see that the Constitution is  not a technicality, right? And that it's important and understand, you know, the particular issue that that we're raising and why that's important. A lot of them won't bother to do that because they don't care. You know, for them, the story is, you've got this guy who's going to be executed, and he has these lawyers who are running around trying to frustrate that state's, you know, effort to execute this guy, but eventually he'll probably get executed. And so the public has no idea what we're doing and why we're trying to stop the execution and so forth. So I always wanted them to understand. On the issues. You know, it's like, you know, some journalists would almost laugh at us. You know that we were raising a question about whether Bundy was competent to stand trial. Are you serious? What a joke.

 

Aaron Nelson  45:15  
I don't know. Sometimes it doesn't boggle me. Maybe I claim it does. I shouldn't be surprised anymore that- Why, why don't we want it to be different? Why don't we want the courtroom to be in a different analysis, a different space, a different everything else?

 

James Coleman  45:31  
Where we believe that the- this person whose life may be on the line, got a fair hearing? 

 

Aaron Nelson  45:39  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  45:39  
You know, it's like, if we, if we actually believe that our system is what we say it is, then we ought to be willing to test it. 

 

Aaron Nelson  45:52  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  45:53  
You know, let's, let's, let's see it be fair. Have a judge who's interested, who focuses on what the law is, and let's see what happens. 

 

Aaron Nelson  46:03  
Yeah. The jury instructions, as you know, before juries make decisions, the judges instruct them on the law. And what I've been trying to do is pull out the words that the judge tells the jury that I think are, are sanctuary-esque. 

 

James Coleman  46:16  
Yeah, yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  46:17  
Be careful and deliberate. Yeah. You know, use sound reason. You know, be conscientious. All of these words, they're already built into the system. They're already built into the instructions, right? And it feels as if sometimes, when I pull those out, it's like, yeah, but we don't really mean that, right? We don't really mean that. 

 

James Coleman  46:38  
Right. Right. 

 

Aaron Nelson  46:40  
You know, we hear the word accountability. I hear the word accountability and on my side, and it tends to be a word that I think the prosecutors try to use and weaponize, but I've heard you say it in a way that you own it. Tell me about what accountability means for you and your role with accountability.

 

James Coleman  46:58  
Well, so you know, when I talk about accountability, my assumption is that the default should be the sanctuary that the system ought to provide. Sanctuary. And so because I think that that's kind of the way the system ought to function, then I think that those of us involved in it should work toward that effort and that, and that we should hold each other accountable for doing that. So I hold myself accountable to do that. I want prosecutors to do that. I want judges to do that. I want the law enforcement officials to do that and I want the public to hold all of us accountable.

 

Aaron Nelson  47:47  
Yeah, this is a space we should we should have, and we should make and protect.

 

James Coleman  47:52  
And for it to function properly and in everybody's best interest, the public ought to demand. 

 

Aaron Nelson  48:00  
Yeah, absolutely. 

 

James Coleman  48:02  
So that's what I want. I want- I want the you know... So when, when I go to the bar about the prosecutor who has done something that is clearly unprofessional, you know, I say to the bar, hold this person accountable. If this was a defense lawyer who had done exactly the same thing, you would suspend the person or take his license. Don't protect these guys. You know you because, because you protect them, is why they do it. 

 

Aaron Nelson  48:29  
Yeah, absolutely. And of course, the the biggest irony is, most of the time, the the person sitting next to us at the table is somebody that that is alleged to have behaved below the standards, right? And all everybody there is wanting to talk about how that person should have thought more, about how they should have considered the consequences, how they should have been all of this, but yet, that type of behavior isn't always being modeled in the courtroom. 

 

James Coleman  48:59  
Exactly.

 

Aaron Nelson  48:59  
Right? I mean, we're just, we're just echoing whatever that person is that got us, got us here. They're emotive, they're intuitive, they're reactive. And so that's where I feel like, that's just wonderful to be like, let's, let's model this. 

 

James Coleman  49:00  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  49:00  
Hold each other accountable to model it.

 

Aaron Nelson  49:06  
Exactly. You know, it's sort of interesting. I'm constantly surprised by how honorable my clients are in some circumstances. 

 

Aaron Nelson  49:30  
Absolutely. 

 

James Coleman  49:31  
Where, you know, you wouldn't expect it, necessarily. You hope for it, but it doesn't always happen. And they surprise me.

 

Aaron Nelson  49:43  
Yeah, I mean, I've, like, anybody, lost some cases, won some cases. Two clients of mine that I've recently had cases in which I thought that they were acting in self defense, and the jury came back and said something different. 

 

James Coleman  49:59  
Yep. 

 

Aaron Nelson  50:00  
Um, and, you know, I think oftentimes as lawyers, we look at our own performance of what could I have done better? I wasn't, I wasn't good enough. I was less than. I was this. And I remember both of these clients who were just been convicted of something that I don't think they should have been convicted for, I went in and saw them in in custody, because that's where they were. And they both, I distinctly remember, they just look at me, and they're like, "are you okay Aaron?". "Yeah, like, you did a good job. Don't worry about it. You did good". 

 

James Coleman  50:29  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  50:29  
And I'm just like, it's just so moving, so remarkable, that they had this happen to them. 

 

James Coleman  50:35  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  50:36  
Right? And, and they're here to comfort me.

 

James Coleman  50:39  
Yeah, no, no, it's one of the things that you see often in exonerations, is that people come out and they're not bitter. 

 

Aaron Nelson  50:47  
Yeah. How do you do that? 

 

James Coleman  50:49  
I say, I don't see myself doing that. I would be so angry. 

 

Aaron Nelson  50:56  
Yeah, right? 

 

James Coleman  50:57  
But, but it's important not to be angry, if you can avoid it. And I'm sometimes just blown away by how you know people who've been treated so badly, put in prison innocent, kept in prison by, you know, prosecutors and attorney generals who I think know that these people were innocent, and yet they they get out, and it's like- 

 

Aaron Nelson  51:24  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  51:26  
They don't look back in bitterness. They try to move on.

 

Aaron Nelson  51:30  
It's really remarkable. And maybe it's the what we talked about, you know, the modeling, right? And so often they're modeling. They're modeling character. To me, sometimes they're modeling exactly which circles back to the the dignity, right? That if you show them dignity, they're going to be able to show us. 

 

James Coleman  51:49  
Man, I tell you, respect and dignity back. Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  51:52  
So when you're in that setting and you're going through this trying to build a sanctuary, and maybe you're you're feeling alone, you know, I know you were concerned about burnout. I would imagine you live in this word. You still have to be concerned about it. What are, what are the thoughts and advice that you give to your students now that you've gone through these experiences yourself to say, here's what you need to do to avoid the burnout. Or you think you've just been blessed with a certain disposition?

 

James Coleman  52:21  
No, I mean, I do have, but I think it's not to internalize it all. You got to talk to people.

 

Aaron Nelson  52:30  
Okay. 

 

James Coleman  52:31  
You know, and you know, you got to talk to your client. Let your client share some of that burden to. You know, you're going to do everything you can to, you know, prove to a judge that your client is innocent, but you may not succeed. 

 

Aaron Nelson  52:50  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  52:51  
And so the client has to understand that. But what we tell the client, and then what I say to my students, is that, but even if we lose initially, we're not going to give up. We'll never give up as long as we think there's that avenue that we can pursue. You know, we're making a commitment to you that will will pursue it. If we run out of avenues, then obviously there's nothing we can do. But that's what has got to keep you going, is that ultimately you believe that there- got to be able to show that your client is innocent, once you conclude that it's likely that he is. Now the question is, how do you prove it, and how do you find the evidence to convince the people you have to convince.

 

Aaron Nelson  53:39  
Yeah, there's almost an absurdity of the work that we do, in the sense that I feel like I- at least for me, I'm drawn to the work because I think in many ways, the system is unfair. It's unfair, and so I have to do this, but yet, knowing that it's unfair, I have to have sometimes this optimism. 

 

James Coleman  54:03  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  54:03  
That I'm gonna, I'm gonna convince somebody otherwise, in this case, that I'm gonna do something else, and it's-

 

James Coleman  54:10  
Correct. 

 

Aaron Nelson  54:11  
It's almost sometimes crazy to think that, you know, but we have to, we have to just continue to think that even in this unfair world that we, we went there because it's unfair.

 

James Coleman  54:22  
See, I think, I mean, you have these two statements on your on your walls. 

 

Aaron Nelson  54:28  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  54:29  
That I- that stuff like that. 

 

Aaron Nelson  54:32  
Inspirational. 

 

James Coleman  54:33  
Oh, my God. I mean, I that, I love that kind of thing. On the flight over here I watched the movie about Winston Churchill. "Our Darkest Hour", or something like that. 

 

Aaron Nelson  54:47  
Okay. 

 

James Coleman  54:47  
But at the end, he makes the speech about, you know, "we're gonna fight them on the beaches. We're gonna fight them. You know, we're never gonna give up". I mean, that gets to me.

 

Aaron Nelson  54:58  
Oh yeah, I'm a sucker for that stuff too. 

 

James Coleman  55:00  
I, and I like to put our cases in that context. 

 

Aaron Nelson  55:05  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  55:05  
You know that what we're trying to do, if we're successful, you know, you're not going to do a lot of things in your career more important than that.

 

Aaron Nelson  55:14  
Yeah, I'm sure you've read Brian Stevenson's work, and you're familiar with his work, and he talks about the work that we do as being stone catchers. In Bryan Stevenson's landmark book just mercy, He refers to a story of when Jesus intervened to save a woman accused of adultery from being stoned. Jesus tells her accusers, "let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone". Stevenson uses the phrase "stone catcher" to describe the people who catch the stones people cast at each other. As criminal defense attorneys, we can't simply watch the government throw stones. We have to be stone catchers. I recently read something. "The Dictionary of the Undoing" by John Freeman. It's a small little book. I'll give you a copy here before you leave. And one of the things he talks about there is the ability to carry hope. 

 

James Coleman  56:09  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  56:10  
And I thought, wow, that's really what that's- we're stone catchers. But to me, that just captured the like weight of what you're carrying: Mr. Bundys hope; you're carrying Mr. Booker's hope; you're carrying your client's hope. 

 

James Coleman  56:26  
Absolutely.

 

Aaron Nelson  56:26  
And ooh, that can get heavy.

 

James Coleman  56:28  
No, that's- that's absolutely right. But on the other hand, it's so important... you know, we have a client who is convicted of murder. We're pretty sure that he is innocent, and that the state has recently made some concessions that suggest to me that they probably know that he's innocent. But when we first met him, he was so bummed out, so depressed, couldn't get him to, you know, to focus. He seemed to have no interest at all in his case. His family is sort of what got us into the case. And so part of what we did, and with the students, too, was to try to get him to see some hope in his situation. 

 

Aaron Nelson  57:17  
Yeah. 

 

James Coleman  57:18  
And once we did that- incredible. Different person. 

 

Aaron Nelson  57:23  
Really? 

 

James Coleman  57:23  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  57:24  
I mean, I love that. I love that about you. I love doing that. But there's also this- the weight of it is almost this like: it might not work out. 

 

James Coleman  57:34  
Exactly. 

 

Aaron Nelson  57:35  
We might lose. 

 

James Coleman  57:36  
You got to tell them that too. 

 

Aaron Nelson  57:37  
We might lose. The execution might happen. The conviction might occur.

 

James Coleman  57:42  
Yep, yep.

 

Aaron Nelson  57:45  
Do you talk about that with your students? 

 

James Coleman  57:47  
Yeah, yeah. I, you know, I had a death penalty clinic before I did the wrongful convictions clinic I do. And I I ended it because what was happening was that we were only getting cases where the, you know, the state was trying to carry out an execution, and so we were trying to get a stay of an execution, and I didn't want to put our students through that... in the event that we were not successful, because I didn't, you know-

 

Aaron Nelson  58:19  
That's a hell of a way for a 23 year old to-

 

James Coleman  58:21  
Yeah, so we- and then the state stopped executing people. I informally- so at that point, I then switched from doing death penalty to doing wrongful convictions. But yeah, I mean, I, you know, I say to- I say there are students that, you know, we we've got to be honest with our client. We've got to let them know that we're going to do everything that we can possibly do, but it might not be enough. And, you know, so we have to prepare them for that, but, you know, we still have to, you know, make the effort, too. 

 

Aaron Nelson  59:13  
Yeah, you know, and then we participate in a system that we think is unfair. But also, I think- not that there's not other participants that sometimes shine a light on fairness or bring things, I mean, we're not- we're not the only ones, you know? But, I feel like often times we are the ones that, even though I'm embarrassed by what the criminal justice system does on a macro level, that I have some responsibility because I am in that system, to bring that dignity to that, even though no body else in the system is going to do it.

 

James Coleman  59:13  
I agree and others in the system don't appreciate-

 

Aaron Nelson  1:00:00  
Yeah. I mean, I think-

 

James Coleman  1:00:01  
What we're doing.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:00:02  
That's, you know- and again, I know we're all, you know, my little tiny violin for myself and my colleagues, but I don't think the people that don't do this work necessarily understand how we're helping them give them credibility. 

 

James Coleman  1:00:19  
Exactly.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:00:19  
You know, how we're helping the whole system have credibility, just because if our client feels like they've been heard, if they feel like they've been heard, the system's better.

 

James Coleman  1:00:29  
Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. I used to think, when I was trying to stop an execution, that our client might have been better off if I had quit the case, because then the state wouldn't be able to carry out the execution, at least at that time, until they brought somebody else in. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:00:50  
Oh. 

 

James Coleman  1:00:51  
But I thought, in the end, I thought, but on the other hand, I have an obligation to my client not to desert him. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:01:00  
Yeah, right? 

 

James Coleman  1:01:02  
And to fight this battle, and, you know?

 

Aaron Nelson  1:01:07  
And just even going back to some of what you were saying, you know, there's, you know, you'd said the the attorneys in Bundy had just been beaten down, right? Or even oftentimes, by the time you and post conviction must get to the clients, they've been beaten down. And, you know, they may not even recognize their own dignity or their own humanity, and you're the one that has to come in there and almost, you know, reach down and pull them up and build them up.

 

James Coleman  1:01:37  
Yeep. Well, I'll tell you when, before Bundy was executed, I, you know, he wanted to, I mean, we had, basically, we had one issue left, and that was going to the Supreme Court, and they were either going to hear it or not. We lost five, four. They, they denied a state. But what he wanted to do, because now he was desperate, he was worried about that, you know, actually being executed. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:02:09  
Sure. 

 

James Coleman  1:02:09  
And so he wanted to make an offer to law enforcement officials in the different states that he would help them find bodies if they would give him the time to do that. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:02:22  
Okay. 

 

James Coleman  1:02:24  
And I tried to talk him out of that. I said, I said that, you know, they're gonna, they're never gonna agree to give you more time, you know, because now they've got you in a place where they're going to execute you. And I- you know, people are going to say, well, that's just like him to do something like that. So I said, if you, if you want to, you know, if you want to tell people where bodies are, and you can remember, just do that. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:02:57  
Don't do it in exchange. It shouldn't be transactional. 

 

James Coleman  1:03:00  
Don't be, don't make it transactional. And I said at this point, because I honestly did not think there was any way we were going to get a stay, even though, as I said, we lost five-four in the Supreme Court on our issue. But I said, so what you are to do now is, you know, is do it with dignity. Sure, you know, I don't, don't make people say, "Well, you know, he's exactly what we thought he was." Yeah, exactly what we thought he was. I said, you know, do it with some dignity.

 

James Coleman  1:03:33  
Did he take you up on that?

 

James Coleman  1:03:35  
No, what he did was he tried to arrange to a woman who was a lawyer, tried to arrange to have, you know, to do this deal. So a couple of the investigators who had been on working on his cases came in and talked to him, and I got a call from him at the end of the first day, and he was disappointed that they weren't interested in why he had done what he did, and they were only interested in bodies and so where exactly, and so he was, he didn't, he didn't want to say it. He wasn't going to do it anymore. So what I did-

 

Aaron Nelson  1:04:19  
James Coleman knows what he's talking about again. 

 

James Coleman  1:04:21  
Exactly. So what I did was to arrange for our psychiatrist, Dorothy Lewis from Yale, to come down on the the last full day before he was executed, and meet with him to talk about whatever he wanted to talk about. And I she didn't report back to me. I have no idea what the conversation was, but I knew that he respected her, and that he seemed more interested in kind of what went wrong with him, in the way he was wired, or whatever, and so I gave him that opportunity to, you know, spend the day with her, um, and then-

 

Aaron Nelson  1:05:03  
And he did this? 

 

James Coleman  1:05:04  
Yeah, yeah, he did and and then he was executed the next day. But, you know- 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:05:11  
Yeah, but he got that day, right? 

 

James Coleman  1:05:13  
He got that day, you know, when Bundy was executed, one of the saddest things for me was when I drove out of the prison, and, you know, there's a crowd that had gathered to cheer, you know, and that was really, really sad.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:05:35  
Yeah, just the humanities and glee.

 

James Coleman  1:05:40  
Yeah, exactly. They didn't see him as a person. They didn't understand the issues that we had just lost. And they didn't care about any of that, you know, they- and they had, they had little kids there on the side of the road, and we had to drive, you know, by them. Oh, that was really, really sad.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:06:00  
Talk about the culture. You know, we were talking before about just what is, what- How cultures shape us in the culture that you had before, and, and that's a, that's a culture that is sometimes shaped by the media, shaped by other people. That's it's just going to keep repeating. Keep repeating. Keep repeating. Yeah, you know, you've called yourself a happy warrior, right?

 

James Coleman  1:06:21  
That's Senator Humphrey, okay, that's who I got that from. That's, that's what he was referred to as, a happy warrior.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:06:28  
All right? And you see yourself- 

 

James Coleman  1:06:29  
He was doing civil rights battles and losing. And so I see myself. I started to see myself, or at least describe myself, that way that you know, I'm- I am happy to be able to do what I'm doing. I wish it were fair. I wish I was more successful in some of the cases that I've lost, but I think it's important for the work that I do, and for myself and for my clients that I not, you know, I not allow it to wear me out and grind me down and turn me bitter.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:07:16  
Yeah, because we need, we need James Coleman, you know, and-

 

James Coleman  1:07:19  
Or, but we need somebody who is going to be engaged in the fight, you know?

 

Aaron Nelson  1:07:25  
Yeah, you know, at least at the at the trial level, right? I've been thankful that the last couple of trials I've- I've won, but that's definitely- any trial lawyer has lost cases and they hurt, like, you know- 

 

James Coleman  1:07:39  
Yeah, yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:07:40  
They hurt. But it's a balance that at least I found, that, you know, you can learn from the losing. And it's sad because I don't want to think of my client as an object to help me move along, right? Um, but my new client, my next client, my client on the next day, they don't care that I lost, like I gotta go perform for them 

 

James Coleman  1:08:01  
Exactly. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:08:02  
And there's in some way. 

 

James Coleman  1:08:03  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:08:03  
It's this, you're recognizing the dignity and the humanity of your clients, but you have to also, for lack of better- be able to move on so that you can continue to do push more balls up the hill, I guess, push more rocks up the hill, right?

 

James Coleman  1:08:22  
Yeah, no, I think, I think that's right, and I think that's kind of the bottom line really, is that the work we do, we do it because we do want it to be better. We want the system to be better, and we think that we can make a, even if it's a small contribution to that, we can do it. And you know, part of the way I make a contribution to that is to try to instill that in my students so that when they become lawyers, that'll matter to them.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:08:55  
Yeah, well, absolutely, I have no doubt you've done that and so, well, thanks for bringing all of that here to Hudson and to our little, little sanctuary in this moment. And-

J

ames Coleman  1:09:04  
This is great. I this- I love this. This is, this is really, this is really great.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:09:09  
Oh, good. Wonderful. Thanks for talking. 

 

James Coleman  1:09:09  
Thanks again, sir. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:09:10  
Thanks for listening to Sanctuary in the Jungle. This episode was brought to you by Nelson Defense Group and MadeDaily. We'll see you next time for another episode. Until then, stay strong and carry the hope.