matthew hefti| Episode 05

Matt Hefti  0:00  
We have to maintain our moral center. Otherwise, what are we fighting for?

 

Aaron Nelson  0:14  
Welcome back to another episode of Sanctuary in the Jungle. I'm your host, Aaron Nelson. Today I'm joined by a good friend, Matthew Hefti. He's a remarkable writer. He wrote one of my favorite novels, "A Hard and Heavy Thing". It's a book about friendship, sacrifice, and how we carry heavy things. He's also a criminal defense attorney in Texas. But Matt's path to our work is anything but ordinary. He grew up in a small town as the pastor's son, and eventually found his way to the military. While serving abroad, a tragic accident happened, and he was charged with homicide in military court. Today, he tells us his story, how it shaped his understanding of healing and accountability, and has made him into the criminal defense attorney he is today. He is a remarkable man with an immense amount of love in his heart. It's that love that guides his practice and his push to make the system better. Without further ado: Matt Hefti. Thanks for coming, Matt.

 

Matt Hefti  1:12  
Thank you for having me. I think you picked the perfect October weekend. The leaves are changing. It's gorgeous. So, thanks for having me.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:19  
Welcome back to Wisconsin. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:20  
It's good to be back. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:21  
Matt's a criminal defense attorney down in Houston. You've been down there now for eight years. Is that right? 

 

Matt Hefti  1:26  
That's right. That's where I went right after law school. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:29  
Wonderful. Well, let's talk a little bit about how you got there. Where'd you grow up?

 

Matt Hefti  1:32  
So I grew up in a small town called Bangor, Wisconsin. It's in La Crosse County. Went to University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse right after high school. My freshman year in college was when 9/11 happened, so I joined the military. At that point, I kind of moved all over the place for a while, came back to Wisconsin for law school, and then right out of law school, moved back to Texas, and that's where my wife is from, so that was the draw there. And we've been there ever since.

 

Aaron Nelson  2:00  
Wonderful. Well, I'm going to unpack some of that. There's, I know, lots of stories hidden within that little summary. You grew up in Bangor. Small town. 

 

Matt Hefti  2:10  
Yep. 

 

Aaron Nelson  2:11  
What was it like growing up in a small town in Wisconsin?

 

Matt Hefti  2:14  
You know, it's great to grow up in a small town where you learn the value of hard work. It's a farming community. It's got lots of odd jobs, wonderful, tight-knit community where everybody knows each other, but it is also challenging, because everybody knows everybody, so everybody's all up in everybody's business. And so anybody from a small town can kind of know how that is. And so, you know, it has its goods and its bads, but it's a, it's a wonderful place. And I'm glad that I grew up there.

 

Aaron Nelson  2:44  
And you're also- you were the pastor's kid.

 

Matt Hefti  2:47  
I was so that, like, comes with its own, you know, its own fishbowl thing, you know? I think the town was a town of around 1000 people, and I think, you know, my dad's church had like, 900 souls in it. And so being the pastor's kid, there's, you know, a certain microscope that you're under in a way that, you know, your normal kids or classmates wouldn't be. So that poses its own challenges as well but-

 

Aaron Nelson  3:10  
Sure, you're an author, right? You've published a book. 

 

Matt Hefti  3:14  
Yes. 

 

Aaron Nelson  3:14  
"A Hard and Heavy Thing". 

 

Matt Hefti  3:15  
Yep. That novel came out when I was in law school. 

 

Aaron Nelson  3:18  
Wonderful. How did- when I was asking you about that earlier today, you- you said you- growing up, going to college, you're like, "I wanted to be a writer". 

 

Matt Hefti  3:26  
Right? 

 

Aaron Nelson  3:27  
Absolutely. 

 

Aaron Nelson  3:27  
There's not a lot of- I guess maybe there is 18-17 year old men out there in the world that that's what they aspire to do. How did it come to be your growing up that you wanted to be a writer?

 

Matt Hefti  3:38  
You know, books were important to me growing up. Reading was kind of a sanctuary for me. My dad is a big reader, a big scholar. He had books everywhere, and so growing up around books- kids who grew up around books are more likely to read than kids who don't. 

 

Matt Hefti  3:53  
You know, he introduced me to some cool literature growing up, classics, and then in high school, my favorite classes were always the literature classes. And I just thought, "well, that's something that I could do, or I want to do that". Like, obviously, I benefited from writers and reading. And so it seemed like just something that I wanted to do. Like, you know, I want to do for other people, what they're doing for me. 

 

Aaron Nelson  4:20  
Sure. What were some of the- just to bring you back to that, that time- what were some of the books that really you remember now, you know, that you liked when you were a kid or a teenager or a high school student?

 

Matt Hefti  4:33  
Um, so one of the earliest ones that I remember that I really loved was the whole Chronicles of Narnia series. 

 

Aaron Nelson  4:41  
Oh, sure. 

 

Matt Hefti  4:42  
And the way that they were allegorical, and is particularly like "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", being like a retelling of the Christ story. And so I like that aspect of it, but it's also just good fantasy literature.

 

Aaron Nelson  4:56  
Who doesn't like secret passage through the closet to just go out into this special world, right? 

 

 

Matt Hefti  5:03  
man.

 

Aaron Nelson  5:03  
Yeah. 

 

Matt Hefti  5:03  
And isn't that what we're trying to do with books in the first place, is open it up, especially with fiction, and be transported to a different world. And so having that in the book itself, it's like every closet I open could be, you

 

Aaron Nelson  5:17  
You know when you said books are a sanctuary, right? And you grow up around books, and that's what you're going to do. And for me, that was life changing as a parent, to just realize you can create an environment where certain things are going to happen. And it sounds like your dad did that. He just surrounded you with books, and then he didn't even have to tell you to. Just, you started reading them. 

 

Matt Hefti  5:37  
Yep. 

 

Aaron Nelson  5:38  
Yeah, have you used that too? You're a father, as well?

 

Matt Hefti  5:41  
Yes, I have three daughters. They're all smarter and better than I am, which is the goal, right? 

 

 

Aaron Nelson  5:47  
Absolutely. 

 

Matt Hefti  5:48  
And yeah, I mean, they've grown up in houses with books, and when they were just wee little kids, toddlers and grade schoolers, they'd come with me and be towing along as I went to book readings at bookstores after my book came out. And so it's something that they've always been around. You know, Monica, my wife, she's a big reader, and so they've been around books. And so they're, they're readers, as well.

 

Aaron Nelson  6:14  
Yeah, that's great. So you, you went to school. You were in school at UW La Crosse. Tell me just a little bit about UW La Crosse.

 

Matt Hefti  6:23  
So UW La Crosse is beautiful. It's on the Mississippi River. It's not a huge college, but I went there to major in English and French was the plan, because I wanted to be a writer. But very soon after I got there, is when the terrorist attacks of September 11 occurred, and that was kind of a turning point for me, because as a 18 year old kid who had been kind of living in this bubble where America was, you know, big and strong and untouchable, and now all of a sudden, people were attacking America on- on our own soil, and for ideological reasons, and not just like combatants, but innocent people, all kinds of innocent women and children, and those were the people being attacked. And so I had this instinct, like, I want to do something. This is kind of a turning point in history, and I want to do something besides sit on the sidelines. And I was not too into school anyway. 

 

Aaron Nelson  7:17  
Yeah. 

 

Matt Hefti  7:18  
To be perfectly honest. 

 

Aaron Nelson  7:18  
Even though you were a book kid. 

 

Aaron Nelson  7:19  
Yeah, so what did you do? 

 

Matt Hefti  7:20  
Even though I was a book kid, because I loved reading, but like, I didn't like math, and I didn't like science, and I didn't like all the other stuff that went along with school. All the actual work that you have to do. And I just wanted to live off in my own La La Land. But the military seemed like a way that I could actually contribute something meaningful to the world while also pursuing education and getting that paid for and, and, you know, but actually working while I did it. 

 

Matt Hefti  7:48  
I ended up as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, which is EOD, is the acronym for that, but that essentially are, those are the people that take care of all explosive hazards. So whether it is a hung missile on a plane that needs to be disarmed and removed from the plane, or a dud fired round on the range, or whether it's a nuclear incident, or whether it's an improvised explosive device on the side of the road, every explosive hazard is- EOD troops are responsible for neutralizing those hazards. Essentially, the bomb squad of the military.

 

Aaron Nelson  8:23  
Wow. And that wasn't your plan going in. I mean, you, you, you're at UW La Crosse. You, you wanted to go into the military because of this. But tell us the story of how you got to the path to EOD.

 

Matt Hefti  8:36  
Yeah. So I got it kind of got bamboozled by the recruiter. I went in and talked to recruiters of various services. Ended up settling on the Air Force because my grandpa was in the Air Force, my uncle was in the Air Force, and I just connected better with the Air Force recruiters. So one of the first steps is you have to take the ASVAB test the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. And so I got on a Greyhound bus to Minneapolis Fort Snelling, went and took the ASVAB there, and it was like a Monday, and got the test results back and went talk to the recruiters there. They were like, "hey, congratulations, you scored really high. You can do whatever job you want". I had initially wanted to be a linguist, to learn the language skills and to pursue that path. And they said, "Well, you can't sign up to be a linguist, because we have to a separate test for that. It's like a language aptitude test, and you take that on- on a- on a Wednesday", and it was like a Monday or whatever. So I was like, "Okay, I'll come back on Wednesday". They were like, "No, you can't do that, because that's not the way the military works. You have to sign up for some other job first. That way, if you fail that test, you've got a job locked in. But if you pass that test, then you can be a linguist, and you can just switch your job to that". 

 

Matt Hefti  9:57  
You have to have a fallback. So I was like, "Okay, I'll pick a fallback". Asked them what they had. They said, "we've got security forces, which is military police". I was like, "I do not want to be a cop". They said that they had in-flight refueler. And I was like, "Nope, I don't want to spend my whole career, like, stuck in a metal tube". 

 

Aaron Nelson  10:08  
Right. 

 

Matt Hefti  10:08  
Didn't want to do that. And then they said, "Well, we've got EOD: explosive ordinance disposal". And I was like, "what's that? I've never even heard of it". And this was before IED, or improvised explosive device to become, like, a household term. And I was like, "what's that?". They were like, "Oh, they just go to ranges. They blow stuff up. They travel with the Secret Service, protecting the president. They get all the cool guy toys, like, lots of travel. Like, like, their- it's just a cool guy career field". I was like, "Yeah. Sign me up for that". 

 

Aaron Nelson  10:34  
Things blowing up. That sounds really cool to an 18 year old male.

 

Matt Hefti  10:36  
It does. I was like, "Sign me up". So I signed up for that planning to go back later in the week to take the language test. The next morning, my recruiter called me at like, six in the morning, and he was like, "congratulations". I'm waking up groggy. I'm like, "congratulations for what?". And he's like, "EOD". And I was like, "Oh, don't worry. I'm going back Wednesday. I'm still planning to be a linguist". And he was like, "No, you're not". I'm like, "what do you mean 'no, I'm not'". He's like, "Oh, that's a critical career field. Once you sign up for that one, they need they need them. So you can't, like, move careers once you're in that one". I was like, "well, nobody told me that". Turns out, in retrospect, I don't think that was quite accurate. But they also got signing bonuses for the people that they shuttled into that career field. So there was some financial incentive there for him as- as well I'm sure.

 

Aaron Nelson  11:18  
You were an object in somebody else's ends. 

 

Matt Hefti  11:20  
Yeah. But, you know, the good old Midwestern work ethic, I was like, "Well, I signed up to do it, so I'm gonna do it". So that's what I ended up doing, which ended up being a very good fit anyway, because explosive ordinance disposal is a job where you're fighting an enemy that's indiscriminate, like an explosive on the side of the road. Improvised explosive device does not care who it kills. It could kill Iraqis, Afghanistan, wherever it is, civilians, combatants alike, and the enemy that we were attacking was the device itself and putting ourselves in harm's way to take care of that hazard that could indiscriminately kill anybody. And I was not ever suited to be like a trigger puller person who was going out there to be someone who was taking the fight to the enemy in a violent sort of way. Saw plenty of violence and disarmed plenty of bombs and did four combat tours, but it was a good fit, because it was, you know, I'm, I'm protecting everybody who needs protecting. Not just- 

 

Aaron Nelson  12:19  
Yeah, you're reducing harm. 

 

Matt Hefti  12:20  
Reducing harm. Exactly, not creating it, but the mission is to reduce it.

 

Aaron Nelson  12:24  
Yeah, and in many ways, again, that's your profession now.

 

Matt Hefti  12:27  
Yes, it is. And you know, it's funny, quite a few people that I've deployed with at least, at least three or four that I was on deployments with have now become lawyers after getting out of the military, and I think it's a natural transition, I think, to- preventing harm and defending humans, to moving into the law and defending humans. 

 

Aaron Nelson  12:50  
Yeah. Well, they go hand in hand, right? You said you had four different tours. Wow. 

 

Matt Hefti  12:55  
Two to Iraq, two to Afghanistan. 

 

Aaron Nelson  12:57  
Okay, and that was over the course of about eight years or so?

 

Matt Hefti  13:00  
Yep, the first one that I did was in 2005 then another in 2007, 2009, and 2010.

 

Aaron Nelson  13:05  
And I know some of those experiences undoubtedly shaped you, but I want to talk about a little bit at the

 

Matt Hefti  13:08  
Sure. 

 

Aaron Nelson  13:08  
Wow. And I know some of those experiences undoubtedly shaped you, but I want to talk about a little bit at the end. 

 

Aaron Nelson  13:18  
You eventually went to law school. 

 

Aaron Nelson  13:20  
Yes. 

 

Aaron Nelson  13:22  
And there's a story about how you got there. What motivated you? How did you find the path to law school?

 

Matt Hefti  13:30  
So I didn't know, like any- didn't have any lawyers in my family growing up, didn't have a lot of proximity to the law or anything like that. But that changed when I was in the Air Force. On my fourth combat tour, a tour to Iraq in 2010, we were conducting a controlled detonation on a range, getting rid of some unserviceable munitions that were not safe to transport. And when setting that up, our technical data was erroneous, and things didn't go as planned. We retreated back to our bunker and thought that everything was set up by the book. Did everything according to safety briefings, but when we fired off our controlled detonations to get rid of these rounds, a rogue piece of fragmentation boomeranged around our bunker wall and into our bunker and killed another airman. His name is Jimmy Hansen, killed him right there on the spot and severely wounded a soldier as well. And that kind of put into motion what would eventually put me into law school. There were some initial investigations on the ground that cleared us, where they said, "You guys didn't do anything wrong. This was a tragic accident. Taking apart explosives and getting rid of explosives is inherently dangerous. There was no negligence here. It's just a tragic accident". Then some additional investigations came along that. Were were tainted and flawed in various ways. And after we had returned back stateside, continued mission, completed the combat deployment, came home. Back when I had returned to home station in Kansas, there had been some political pressure, and me and my team, we got charged each of us with manslaughter, negligent homicide, derelict of duty, and various other- very serious felony criminal charges based on that tragic death that occurred on the range under our watch. 

 

Aaron Nelson  15:35  
Yeah. 

 

Matt Hefti  15:36  
So for the first time, I found myself really needing the services of a defense attorney.

 

Matt Hefti  15:41  
And

A

aron Nelson  15:42  
Before we, before we get into that, because I want to, I want to get into that. But you know, now, you know, this is 15-17 years ago?

 

Matt Hefti  15:53  
2010, so around 15 years ago.

 

Aaron Nelson  15:54  
Yeah, and obviously you've had legal training. You've had the opportunity now to be a lawyer for some time. And as I hear you tell the story, and I know I've heard it, heard it before. You know this in many ways, while it's personal, it is to you, if I'm looking at it from another, that the law is oftentimes intervening on things that happen that may not be what we think of as criminal, right? So you- you're in this position, and I've talked to you, I've heard you talk about this before. There's probably your own personal feelings about what happened here, and then there's obviously legal consequences that are unimaginable to some degree, especially to a young man that you were then. How was- you were- How did you reconcile that? Were you able to reconcile that as a as a human going through these feelings, but then knowing that there's these other consequences over there that just don't connect?

 

Matt Hefti  16:57  
Whether I did reconcile it or have reconciled, it still remains to be determined, but that's a really great question. On a human level, I felt grief for the life lost, for the surviving victims who now were without their loved one, and even- even the wounded soldier, for the rehabilitation and the pain and the harm that he suffered, and my whole purpose as an Explosive Ordinance Disposal Technician was to keep that from happening. And so the sense of responsibility as- as an airman, as a team leader, as an Explosive Ordinance Disposal Technician, where my whole identity is wrapped up in saving lives and preventing harm to people from explosive devices... Now I'm in charge of an operation in which the end result was that someone died and another person was very seriously injured, and everybody who was there witnessed something incredibly traumatic and was part of something incredibly traumatic. And there's just a wake of destruction left behind this operation for everybody that it touched, whether it was the commanders who were in charge at a higher level, whether it was our younger junior teammates who were just doing what they were told, whether it was us as team leaders and range safety officers who were in charge of setting up the operation, whether it was family, fiance, you know? Everybody- these concentric circles that- 

 

Aaron Nelson  18:29  
Ripples. 

 

Matt Hefti  18:29  
Like, yeah, the ripples. Like, if you throw a pebble in a pond, you see that it affects not just that one tiny spot, but it ripples outward. And that kind of seminal event affects a lot of lives, and so there's a lot of grief, a lot of sorrow, a lot of guilt, tons of guilt that goes along with that on a moral and personal level. But then, like you said, like I've gone through the criminal justice process with that, and also have become a lawyer, and and there's the legal side of it too, where there's a certain level of moral responsibility and moral accountability, where it's like, okay, this happened under my watch, and I feel morally responsible for it a certain way. But then there's also, but were there any actual violations of the law? Did I break the law in any way? And so it was something that was difficult to reconcile the whole time, where all I wanted to do the whole time was simply apologize to the family, apologize to everybody, apologize to God, apologize to anybody who would listen like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry. But then I also have three little kids and a wife, and they're trying to put me in a cage for up to 40 years, or whatever the maximum penalty was for all of them, and throw in the book at you saying like you're a criminal who deserves to be put away, when I knew that that just wasn't the case from a legal perspective, like I didn't- I did not ever intend for any harm to happen. And I followed our technical orders, I followed our technical data, and did what we were supposed to do in an inherently dangerous environment with an inherently dangerous job. So those two things were very difficult to reconcile as someone who was in the midst of it, and it is still, still difficult to reconcile, because there was never any verdict from a jury or anything like that. I was prosecuted twice. The case got dismissed before a trial both times, and so they it's in, in my own head, there's still sort of this limbo where it's like, "Am I guilty? I do not know, because no one has ever said 'you are innocent' or 'you are guilty'. Who has the authority to do so. You know, those 12 people in a jury box to say, here is our verdict". 

 

Aaron Nelson  20:52  
Yeah.

 

Matt Hefti  20:53  
You know, there was judgment, a judgment. There was no judgment, one way or the other. And so I'm sure that people who wanted a prosecution and loved ones, I can't speak for them, but I would not be surprised to think that they felt that they got robbed because they didn't get justice, and my heart still breaks for them. You know? 

 

Aaron Nelson  21:15  
Sure. I mean, we, you and I have talked about it probably before, and certainly today, the criminal justice system, and even in the military justice system, it's just not set up as a place for healing.

 

Matt Hefti  21:27  
It's not. it's not set up for a place for healing. Like, you have to find that elsewhere.

 

Aaron Nelson  21:30  
Yeah. Were you able to? Because I know right- as an outsider, again, as a lawyer who's trying to help sometimes clients that were in the position that you are- not necessarily that exact same position, but something along those lines and apologies... there's just no mechanism that our clients can do anything to help the healing on the other side in a safe way, in a way that doesn't ultimately undermine them in some way. Were you able to find that at that- in that time, in that place?

 

Matt Hefti  22:05  
I was not and I was not even aware of any ways in which I could do that. I was not aware of anything like- since then and after law school, I went through a federal death penalty program called Defense Victim Outreach and in death penalty cases, oftentimes, the defense counsel teams will hire an independent third party, Defense Victim Outreach person who's like a victim advocate from the prosecution office, but their whole goal is to reach out to the surviving victims and to- to find out: "what can we do to make this process easier for you?". The courtroom is not a place set up for healing, but we do want to minimize harm as much as possible. We do recognize that we have ethical duties to our clients, to represent them to the utmost of our ability under the law, and to zealously protect their rights and advocate for them, but that doesn't mean that we're not human. It doesn't mean that we don't care about the harm that has been caused when a crime has been committed, or when somebody has been a victim of crime or has suffered a tragic loss.

 

Aaron Nelson  23:09  
Or even in situations where we don't- there might have been a behavior. We don't know whether that behavior was criminal, but there's definitely been harm.

 

Matt Hefti  23:16  
Correct? There's been- there's been harm in whether someone is legally culpable for that harm or not is a separate question. But oftentimes the fact that there, there was a harm is almost, I don't want to say almost never. It is often undisputed that a harm has been caused, sure somebody has been hurt, and through that Defense Victim Outreach training, which is some of the hardest work I've ever done, reaching out to victims. I wish I knew about something like that when I was a criminal defendant, so that I could have my defense team reach out to the victims who were hurting and who had lost someone, so that at least we could do what we can to make the process easier for them, sure to make it less painful for them. And sometimes it's as simple as some surviving victims are like, "I don't want the defense attorney saying my loved one's name. I don't want their name in their mouth. And so you'll call them the victim, or you'll call them this, and that's what we want to hear". And it's like, okay, we can do that, if that's going to make the process easier for you. And others come come down on a different side of that. They're like, "I want you to say their name. I want, I don't want you to-" 

 

Aaron Nelson  24:27  
Remember them. 

 

Matt Hefti  24:27  
Yeah, "I want you to remember them, to say their name, to remember that this is a human being", and it's sometimes, it's as what I say, it's as little as that. That's not a little thing, right? That's something that's very important to them, and that's something that within our ethical roles as criminal defense attorneys, we can easily accommodate that to make their their pain less than it otherwise would be. 

 

Aaron Nelson  24:49  
Sure. 

 

Matt Hefti  24:49  
And why wouldn't we want to do that?

 

Aaron Nelson  24:52  
One of the things that I worry about is that when, when it's this adversarial system- 

 

Matt Hefti  24:56  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  24:57  
One side looks at the other side as always having evil intent, as always having bad intent as always- you know, they just put it into a character. And I think it's in many ways, it's it, it's not, I can't imagine that that would be helpful for me, if I was the victim of a crime, to think that the other side was intentional and evil and bad.

 

Matt Hefti  25:20  
Or get to their core, like the worst thing that they've ever done, like that's who they are as a human being.

 

Aaron Nelson  25:34  
That I might find that actually- again, I've not been in their shoes, so I'm not trying to do that, but I might find that it's helpful for me to understand that it was an accident, or it was intentional, or it was stupid, or it was some of these other things that might actually help explain things to me and my feelings. I don't know. Maybe that's just how people look at the world in a different way?

 

Matt Hefti    
Well, and people make meaning out of stories, right? And so oftentimes, I think getting those answers, I think if you are a victim of crime or a victim of harm, like, you know, I have not been a victim of crime as we think about it, but some of my closest friends have been blown up by IEDs that were planted by other human beings. And have, you know, I've got so many friends who have been killed by violence in the combat realm. Where, sure, that they signed up to take that risk and everything, but it's still a harm caused by other people through violence and things like that, and understanding that the people who are setting those bombs or devices like they too, are human beings who are driven by their own motivations and their own ideologies and their own self protections. And I remember finding numerous like bomb making factories and things like that, and where our Quick Response Force had caught people planting IEDs, and oftentimes, the people who were planting the devices were very poor kids or farmers or their families had been threatened by militias or whoever else, and the people who were planting the devices weren't evil people, and they weren't trying to kill people out of hatred, but like their homeland had been invaded by another country, and they saw their own neighbors and communities being run roughshod over. And so, even when I was in the midst of it, I had great empathy for the people who were trying to kill us via, you know, IEDs and things like that, because I understood like, "hey, if somebody came into my streets and over took my country and had their troops storming through my neighborhoods and were rounding people up and whatever, whatever war was being fought, I would not take very kindly to that, and I would probably view them as the enemy as well". So it was very hard, if not impossible, to be- for have hatred like that, but that was because we make meaning out of stories, and I was able to understand to a certain extent, like their stories and what they were going through, and put myself in their shoes. And I think sometimes, especially those victim offender dialogs, being able to have the opportunity to ask questions of the person that you believe caused you harm, or someone who actually did cause you harm, and to be able to hear their answers, and for that person to be able to hear: here's the harm you caused; I want you to know and recognize this. Those are both very important things for someone to understand the magnitude of the harm that they cause, so that they can change their ways or their behavior or- or live their life better going forward, learn from their their mistakes, and also the people who otherwise would have no answers, and they're plagued by the questions as much as they are by the traumatic thing that happened, but wondering why did this happen? Well, you know all those existential questions that go through your head. I think both of those things are important.

 

Aaron Nelson  29:06  
How do you I mean, I find that remarkable, that you are in this jungle, and we're going to talk about sanctuary and jungle, but you're in a war zone. You know what? I you know as a citizen who's never been anywhere near- I've always lived a life where I'm safe. To be able to think that you were in that environment and yet you brought with you this perspective, this insight, where do you think that that came from for you?

 

 

Matt Hefti  29:35  
For me personally, I think a lot of it goes back to my upbringing and parents and my faith. You know, I was raised in the Christian church, and my dad was a pastor, and so a lot of it comes from my faith tradition and from the Bible like that we are all made in the image of God, and there's nothing new under the sun. And people have been causing harm to each other for millennia, but people have also been loving and forgiving each other for millennia, and by- by multiple turns, people have been had moments of wickedness and weak- moments of holiness and just recognizing that we're all made in the image of God, and we're all traveling this world together, and that there is no other- when you zoom out and look at us, there's no us, there's no them, like we're all human beings- 

 

Aaron Nelson  30:25  
We're all the same. 

 

Matt Hefti  30:26
And we're all we all have hopes, we all have fears. We all have things that we care about. We all have things that are important to us, and at our core human level, laughter sounds the same in any language, and tears sound the same in any

language.

 

Aaron Nelson   30:43 
Wow, that's beautiful. We were talking a little bit before I was telling you about the kind of- in my journey here to think about sanctuary. I grew up religious, but I didn't take it very seriously, and I don't consider myself a religious person now, and so I found this concept, though, in thinking about sanctuary, unconditional regard. It's a psychological concept developed by Carl Rogers, or at least named by Carl Rogers, I believe, sometime in the 60s, and I was talking to you about it, and it sounds like that's something that you found without that label, but just in your- in the sanctuary that you grew up in, in the- in the faith that you grew up in, can you tell me about that?

 

 

Matt Hefti  33:29  Yeah, well, in one of the most famous Bible verses, John 3:16 -  "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life". And you know, unconditional love, unconditional regard, like, I believe that that's what God has for us. And all of us fall short of what it means to be perfect or to be holy. And you know, the Bible also says, "Be holy as I, the Lord your God, am holy". So we believe him to be perfectly just and perfectly holy and perfect in every way. But how does that square with us as human beings who are constantly bumbling around like children and causing each other harm or worse. And yet he's also all loving, right? And so that's where objective justification comes in where it's God's undeserved love, God's grace that He gives us through the sacrifice of atonement his son, that's what we believe. And then Jesus raising, rising from the dead to, kind of, conquer death. That unconditional love is what he demonstrates for us, and so we love because he first loved us, and it's not because we can earn our way into heaven or or comparatively be better people than other people, because, you know, that's self righteousness that I don't think has any any place in in religion or the Christian faith, because we are either holy as God calls us to be, or we're not. And none of us are. None of us can meet that standard perfection. I'm not God. You're not God.

 

Aaron Nelson 33:09

And nomatter where we are on that flawed continuum,

 

Matt Hefti 33:10

Wherever we are on that continuum, like we're not at the holy, right? We don't meet the benchmark of holiness. And so, you know, that's why we have a substitute who- God incarnate came in the the form of Jesus Christ, and then lived a perfect life, lived a perfect obedience to God, and then died as the perfect sacrifice, once and for all, for all of us. So that's, that's what we believe.

 

Aaron Nelson  33:37  
So, obviously we're here. We're here at Nelson Defense Group. It's a Carnegie Library. It's what I like to think of as my sanctuary here. And you and probably others have heard about my idea of what a sanctuary is. What does sanctuary mean to you?

 

Matt Hefti  33:54  
You know, that's another loaded word that has multiple layers, but I think the first thing that comes to mind is a safe place. Not necessarily a place where nothing bad will happen or there won't be consequences, but a place where we can insulate ourselves from those negative aspects or harmful aspects or ideas or emotions or thoughts that seek to undermine what it is what we're trying to accomplish. You know, at home, if you're trying to sleep and your bedroom might be your sanctuary, like you want to eliminate noise and bright lights and things like that, you know, things that will inhibit you from accomplishing what you're there to accomplish. In the courtroom, you know, the sanctuary is from those things that seek to undermine equal protection under the law and the presumption of innocence, and all those constitutional rights that we're in there in the courtroom fighting for for our clients, and especially in criminal law, where we have very emotionally charged cases and oftentimes, someone has been very harmed. Sometimes someone has committed great harm. That is a place where where there is no room for prejudice, for determining the outcome of the case based on anger or based on fear. But instead, it's a place where we are a nation of laws, and in this place, we are determining the outcome based on due process and affording everyone equal protection under the law, and recognizing that the person who is accused of a crime is presumed to be innocent. Under the law, they are not a criminal. They didn't do something to get there. They are presumed innocent, and protecting that presumption at all costs, and protecting all the other rights that support that presumption of innocence, you know, our search and seizure rights and procedural due process rights, and making sure that if the government is going to put a fellow citizen in a cage, that we do- that we do not do that lightly, and that we do that with fairness, with justice, and, dare I even say it: with love.

 

Aaron Nelson  36:07  
When you were going through your process as a- as an accused, and it was in the military courts, I know that's a little bit of a different system, right? 

 

Matt Hefti  36:17  
Yes, very much so. I have no complaints with how the courtroom proceedings went, and I was actually incredibly impressed and inspired with how fair and even handed the various judges were throughout the process, and how my attorneys fought for that sanctuary and fought to make it one.

 

Aaron Nelson  36:48  
But on the other hand, we have a concept called prosecutorial discretion, which- 

 

Matt Hefti  36:55  
So in my, my own personal experience in the military justice system, the person with prosecutorial discretion is not even a lawyer. The person with prosecutorial discretion is the convening authority, which is usually the the commander of whatever- whatever level, and the general officer convening authority is a general who's in charge of, you know, a large number of people, and that person is who ultimately, ultimately makes the decision whether charges go to trial or not. So in the Constitution, we're guaranteed if we're going to be tried by a felony, like, "hey, you've got to have a finding of probable cause by a grand jury". In the military system. The way that that happens is through an Article 32 hearing, and in both prosecutions, we had a week long Article 32 hearing, which it's very much been revamped by Congress since then, but at the time, it was very much like a full trial or mini trial, where we had every witness, both sides had expert testimony. We had five days in the courtroom that went from, you know, seven in the morning till six at night. Very long days in the courtroom with testimony from every witness, where the judge got to hear all the witnesses. Both sides had the opportunity for directing cross-examination. The defense had the opportunity to call their own witnesses. So, it was essentially a full trial to determine: is there probable cause here; and then to make a recommendation to the convening authority.

 

Aaron Nelson  38:28  
And probable cause is a very low proof. Typically, we think about it as in a typical trial, the burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt, which is close to 100% right, whereas probable cause is a, again, a measurement of how much evidence, but that's a lot closer to zero. 

 

Matt Hefti  38:46  
That's what the burden was at the Article 32 hearings. And so in both Article 32 hearings, the judge wrote very thoughtful, written opinions, you know, 20 to 30 pages each kind of laying out what happened, laying out the potential defenses, laying out what the evidence showed, laying out what the trial would- outcome of trial would likely be, and recommended to the convening authority, the general, that no charges be referred to court martial; that it does not go forward to trial, and that all the charges be dismissed. And in both cases, the judges found no reasonable grounds, and so it's the same as the probable cause standard: no reasonable grounds to believe that a crime has been committed. And in both those cases, there was a finding of no reasonable ground, and the convening authority said "sending it to trial anyway". 

 

Aaron Nelson  39:41  
And they just have that override essentially. 

 

Matt Hefti  39:43  
it does, and I think there's huge problems for both the accused and huge problems for victims who are seeking justice. And the things that come to mind are, you know, like a lot of the sexual assault problems that have plagued the military. On the one hand, you've got complaining witnesses and victims who have lodged an accusation, and somebody is brought before an Article 32 hearing, and probable cause is found. But in some instances, you've got generals who are like, "Nope, we're not going to send them forward to court martial anyway", and they use their their override to stop a prosecution, and that poses a problem, right? 

 

Aaron Nelson  40:38  
Yeah, it seems like it almost even a waste of time. Why have the Article 32 hearing if it just doesn't matter?

 

Matt Hefti  40:45  
It is. 

 

Aaron Nelson  40:45  
It sounded like, based upon my conversations with you, that the judge was able to set up a place where, in many ways the judge was acting like it was a sanctuary.

 

Matt Hefti  40:46  
Correct. 

Aaron Nelson  40:46  
Probably the lawyers that are watching this know about but maybe not everybody does What- what- how does prosecutorial discretion impact, at least for you and your experience, whether you got sanctuary.

Matt Hefti  40:46  
Correct. 

 

Aaron Nelson  40:46  
And that's what the burden was in your situation.

 

Matt Hefti  40:46  
They have that override. They have that authority. 

 

Aaron Nelson  40:46  
Seems very, you know, if sanctuary is a place where there's a rule of law, right, and the rule of law is, we're going to follow a process, this just seems like a complete end-around of the rule of law and irrational decision making process.

 

Aaron Nelson  40:46  
Absolutely. 

 

Matt Hefti  40:46  
And then there's other times where it's like, well, there's been a finding of no probable cause or no reasonable grounds, but we're gonna, we're gonna send them to trial anyway. 

 

Aaron Nelson  40:46  
It seems pointless. 

 

Matt Hefti  40:52  
And like, where's the- just, you know, they have unlimited discretion, but if that discretion is unguided by- by the judges who are hearing the cases and by the rules themselves, then what is the point?

 

Aaron Nelson  40:59  
And if it's just to create the illusion of justice.

 

Matt Hefti  41:08  
Yeah, right, and that's what it comes to be, is an illusion of justice. And at the end of the day, that's not going to be good for anybody. 

 

Matt Hefti  41:11  
Right. 

 

Aaron Nelson  41:15  
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Aaron Nelson  42:18  
So let me get us back to your journey to law school. 

 

Matt Hefti  42:23  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  42:24  
So you're- Here you are. You followed the rules. A tragic accident happened. You're charged with, you know, manslaughter, as you say. You're in military courts, and you're facing that. How do you go from there to get into law school?

 

Matt Hefti  42:41  
So my attorneys allowed me to be very involved in my own defense. A lot of it was because it was a very technical case, and the technical aspects of how the explosives were supposed to be set up, what the technical data said, what it meant, where the conflicts were in the technical data. It was a very expert intensive case. 

 

Aaron Nelson  43:02  
And you're the expert. 

 

Matt Hefti  43:03  
And I was, you know, able to fill that role in the defense team, in essentially, a consulting expert capacity to be able to help bring them up to speed and explain all the- all the technical stuff to them. So I was able to form a very close relationship with my attorneys. We spent a lot of time together. And at the end of the first prosecution, when my case was dismissed after pretrial litigation, my own attorney, Tony Quinn O'Neill, and one of my co-defendant's attorneys, they were like, "Hey, you kind of have an aptitude for this law stuff. Like, you kind of get it like, have you ever thought about law school?". And I was like, "No, I had never given that a thought for a second in my life. But what- what do I got to do to go to law school?". So I looked it up, and it's like, okay, you take the LSAT. So I went and signed up for the LSAT, took the LSAT, did pretty well on it. Got some scholarship offers, one of them to the University of Wisconsin, Madison. So I accepted that scholarship and enrolled in UW Madison, and it was a good couple of six, nine months, something like that, between when my case got dismissed and when I was getting ready to enroll in law school. Right before I went up to start law school, they started the prosecution all over again because the case had been dismissed without prejudice, which meant that the prosecution could bring it again. They started all over. They moved it to a different command, different prosecutors, and restarted the whole process from the beginning. So I thought, well, there goes the whole law school idea. So I called the dean of admissions, and I said, "Hey, you know that the criminal charges that I wrote my admissions essay about? Well, they they charged me again, and they started over so I'm not going to be able to come to law school". And she was the most optimistic, cheery person that I could imagine, and exactly what I needed at that moment when I was feeling very down and disheartened, she was like, "Oh, no problem. We'll just hold your seat for you. We'll just defer it so whenever you. Wrap up down there. Just let us know and come on up". I was like, okay!

 

Aaron Nelson  45:03  
Not only to leave it open, but the optimism of like, you'll get through this, you're gonna-

 

Matt Hefti  45:08  
You'll get through this. Exactly. 

 

Aaron Nelson   

It'll go away again. 

 

Matt Hefti  
Exactly. And so it started all over. We went through it again. It got dismissed in pretrial litigation again. And so then a year later, that's when I started law school.

 

Aaron Nelson  45:11  
So now, you finish law school. You're a practicing criminal defense attorney in Houston. What firm are you with?

 

Matt Hefti  45:18  
So I am with the firm of Looney, Smith, Conrad, and Hefti. 

 

Aaron Nelson  45:32  
All right. 

 

Matt Hefti  45:34  
And when I joined two years ago, almost two years ago now, it was Looney, Smith, and Conrad, and they just added my name to the door earlier this year, so that was pretty nice.

 

Aaron Nelson  45:43  
Yeah, congratulations. Wonderful. So now you're, you, that's your everyday job. You're out there helping people, trying to reduce harm, doing criminal defense work. 

 

Matt Hefti  45:52  
Yep. 

 

Aaron Nelson  45:53  
What- what are you able to do now, based on, you know, your storytelling, your personal experience that you come through this, your aptitude for, you know, digging in and analyzing cases. How do you- what do you do to bring sanctuary to the job, to the- to the space, to help other people?

 

Matt Hefti  46:12  
So I think one of the one of the things that I do that is a great strength of mine, is I can really connect with my clients. And I think that it starts there, right? If they don't have trust in their own advocate, in the person who is speaking for them, then everything else in the process is going to seem illegitimate and unfair. If they can't even trust or connect with the person who is speaking for them, and I take that as a great privilege and a great honor to be able to speak on behalf of my clients, but that entails building trust, treating them with respect, treating them with love, learning their stories, seeking to meet them where they're at, and building trust with them and creating a sanctuary for them in our office before we even get anywhere near the courtroom, because they need to know that they can trust me. They can be open with me. They can be truthful with me. That I'm not there to judge them, I'm there to advocate for them. That if there's bad facts, they can share those bad facts with us. We can deal with those, but it's much harder to deal with surprises. And so building that sanctuary in the office, among staff, and among my law partners and everybody saying, "Hey, we've got your back. This is a sanctuary for you. This team is a sanctuary for you. You don't have to say another word through this whole process. We don't want you to say another word through this whole process until it's time for you to testify if you're going to do that. We will speak for you, and you can trust us to do that to the best of our ability. And we will, we will put our hearts and souls into it". And so I think it starts there.

 

Aaron Nelson  47:42  
Sure. Let me go back to that sanctuary in your office, right? Because you're clearly the, you know, a student of Professor Levigne's. 

 

Matt Hefti  47:50  
Absolutely. 

 

Aaron Nelson  47:51  
When she was here, she- I asked her the question, you know, "how do you teach students to carry the weight of telling another person's story", and before she could even get to that, she's like, "I think the hardest part is finding the story". And how much of that plays into creating this culture that you've just been talking about?

 

Matt Hefti  48:11  
I mean, that is, that is one of the hardest parts is finding what the story is. And oftentimes, our clients are reluctant, for many different reasons to open up and to share their story. Sometimes it may be because they have intellectual deficits and they're just incapable of verbalizing what their story is. They just don't, don't know how to convey what their story is. Don't know how to verbalize their internal existence or accurately relay facts. Sometimes they have serious mental illness and their perception of things is through a warped lens, and other times they're just too close to it. And you could have the most, the smartest, most articulate person in the world to- relaying, relaying what happened and relaying their story, and they may still get it wrong, and they're still an unreliable narrator because they're so close to it, and they're only seeing it through their own lenses. And so you know, doing the work of investigating your cases and interviewing witnesses and talking to family members and building trust and building rapport, and going out as far as you can to learn from a 360 degree view, our clients lives, their upbringings. None of them were created in a vacuum. None of them got to where they are in a vacuum. And life is one big, long series of cause and effect, and so particularly where- when I started was in the capital world. I worked at a capital defense nonprofit, and there the the standard is, you go back at least three generations, and so you're, you're figuring out, like, "where, what did this person's great grandparents, what was their lives like, and what, what is their genealogy, and what just kind of-"

 

Aaron Nelson  49:59  
Just like trauma in the family.

 

Matt Hefti  50:00  
Yeah, the recurring generational trauma, or "what kind of influences were brought to bear?". You know, I can remember a death penalty investigation I was doing with my old boss, Daniel Enresurge, one brilliant mitigation specialist and capital defense attorney in Texas. And you know, we were digging up old personnel records and found that our client's grandparents were slaves, then his parents were sharecroppers. And, you know, he grew up in a in a shack without any running water, and the kids didn't go to school because they were picking pecans. And just this generational trauma, and at a very young age, he had seen race riots in Tulsa where another black man was strung up on the fence for everybody to see. And like seeing these kinds of things play out in our clients' lives, and then being able to share, like, this is, this is where he came from.

 

Aaron Nelson  50:59  
And these are not- These aren't necessarily reluctant narrators. 

 

Matt Hefti  51:05  
Right. 

 

Aaron Nelson  51:05  
It's much deeper. It's much more complicated than just somebody who doesn't want to tell you something. 

 

Matt Hefti  51:10  
Right. Absolutely. 

 

Aaron Nelson  51:12  
Because sometimes they don't even know what they don't want to tell- I mean, it might be an unconscious-

 

Matt Hefti  51:16  
Correct. Yeah, absolutely. They may not even, they may not even know themselves, like, what kind of influences have been brought to bear on their lives that helped shape them into the person that they are and helped moved them in the direction that they moved. You know, I recently had a client that I shed a few real tears during the sentencing hearing in federal federal court. He was 19 when he was arrested. And his dad was a high-up figure in a certain cartel. And I'm not going to say which one or anything like that, but he had been given drugs and alcohol from the time he was eight years old and got addicted to all kinds of substances before he was even into middle school. 

 

Aaron Nelson  52:06  
He didn't really have his own choice.  

 

Matt Hefti  52:07  
Before he even had his own choice.  And you know, this is the environment that he was brought up in: was a gun running, drug running environment. And then when he grew into a teenager, and then as a young adult, his- his dad used his- his house and brought him into the organization and had him doing his bidding, and he- he didn't know anything else, right? 

 

Aaron Nelson  52:37  
Yeah. I mean, I you know we think of moral character- 

 

Matt Hefti  52:42  
Right? 

 

Aaron Nelson  52:43  
Is something that you just are born with, but it's like everything else, you're taught, you're learned. And I realize as a parent, there's things that my children have learned, not because I intentionally taught them, but it's just they're around this environment, and that's what they learn, and it's somebody like your client. 

 

Matt Hefti  53:01  
Right? 

 

Aaron Nelson  53:01  
They were just in it. They weren't in a culture surrounded by books.

 

Matt Hefti  53:04  
Right? They were not in a culture surrounded by books. They were not in a- a loving environment where parents are sacrificing being selfish for their kids. My client's dad took off, and he's still in the wind. And my client, even though he had no, no real choice in how his life went, he was facing a minimum, a mandatory minimum, of 40 years. He's gonna be an old man by the time he's even eligible to be- to be out, and his dad's off in the wind. And, you know, I had a very different upbringing- Clearly.

 

Aaron Nelson  53:41  
Yeah, right? Yeah. And how do we, how do we as participants in this system, right? I mean, because regardless of our role, we're still inside that system, right? And those are the times where I don't, I don't have the solution. Hopefully somebody else does, or we can come to it at some point. But I'm just, I'm, I'm ashamed of my participation in this system. I'm trying to reduce it as much as I can, sure, but it is just- just inherently unfair that result for that young man in that scenario, and maybe even some of the people that were on the other side, or some of the people wearing black robes, maybe think the same thing, but it's just like, it's like we're stuck.

 

Matt Hefti  54:21  
Yeah, and it's- and it's really heartbreaking in situations like the client I just talked about, because, you know, he's been in pre-trial confinement for like, five years now, right? And in those five years, he has completely turned around his life now that he is away from those toxic influences of the people he really had no choice but to be around. He's taken all sorts of classes and gotten clean, and he's no longer using any substances, and he's a model inmate, and it's clear that he- he has rehabilitative potential, and he has gone enormous- to enormous lengths to rehabilitate already, but the judge's hands are tied. The legislature said the mandatory minimum is 40 years, and, you know, we could have been facing up to life. And the judge is like, "I wish I could do something different, but I can't", and I am up there helpless, like "Judge, all we can ask is that you don't throw away the key, that you give them the minimum, because we can't ask for anything less, even though I think it's far greater than necessary to achieve the penological interests at stake here". It's outrageous, but when everybody's hands are tied, it's like there's something wrong with the system here.

 

Aaron Nelson  55:23  
Yeah, but, and then again, I don't know the federal system or the military system, but I do think not everybody's hands are tied, right? I mean, there, ultimately, there's a prosecutor who are making choices, and there's also, we know at the back end that there's, maybe not in that case, but there's pardons available. 

 

Matt Hefti  55:42  
Sure. 

 

Aaron Nelson  55:42  
Right? And I know sometimes in the media lately, they've been very critical of pardons, and I get it, and I understand, but there has to be a relief valve at the end that has to be used because of this over mass incarceration, but there also has to be somebody in charge of that faucet ahead of time that we can actually trust as a- as a community.

 

Matt Hefti  56:05  
Right. And you know, it goes back to that prosecutorial discretion that you were talking about. The prosecutor's hands certainly weren't tied. He got to choose what charges he was going to bring- 

 

Aaron Nelson  56:14  
Yeah. 

 

Matt Hefti  56:15  
When we were negotiating a plea of guilty because our client wanted to take responsibility, he had the choice of which charges he was going to dismiss, which- how he was going to plead it to, to determine which maximum or mandatory minimums were going to apply. He had all that discretion. And the way the federal system works is it's a snitch based system, and it's a maximum leverage system, where the prosecutors are going to put the maximum amount of leverage on you that you can, and then if you do not cooperate, and if you do not turn on whoever they want you to turn on, then they're going to make you pay for it, and they're going to make an example out of you.

 

Aaron Nelson  56:53  
Yeah. So, you know, you grew up in a world where religion, church, principles of there were very important to you, and then you had the opportunity go into the military. And I'm guessing principles, were they important there as well?

 

Matt Hefti  57:11  
Oh, absolutely. I mean, when you, when you raise your hand and you take the oath of enlistment, whether you're enlisted or an officer, or whether you're the president or a Supreme Court justice or a legislature. You're taking an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And so when we're talking about like, well, who are the authorities here? We got to listen to our authorities. Well, like all of us are subject to this authority in the form of the Constitution, and all of us have this Bill of Rights that we are supposed to protect and defend in this rule of law that we are supposed to operate within for the benefit of all. 

 

Aaron Nelson  57:46  
Sure. 

 

Matt Hefti  57:47  
And if we don't follow those rules, if we are not a nation of laws who, who actually applies the principles in the Constitution, then what's it all for? 

 

Aaron Nelson  57:58  
Yeah. 

 

Matt Hefti  57:58  
It's just chaos. It's the jungle, right?

 

Aaron Nelson  58:00  
It's the jungle, you know, a friend of yours, or at least an acquaintance, Phil Klay, wrote a book, very much echoing what you just said, or wrote a wrote an essay, you know, entitled, you know, "What We're Fighting For". And I'd asked you about that. You're familiar with that article? 

 

Matt Hefti  58:15  
Yes. 

 

Aaron Nelson  58:15  
He- I think it was published in the New York Times in 2017. Just give me the background for that, because here, when we're, we're here talking about sanctuary in the jungle, and why do I think courts should be the sanctuary? And I think this article, "What Are We Fighting For", talking about in a war zone, and how principles apply, it's remarkable the capacity for humans to follow principles in that setting. What was that article about?

 

Matt Hefti  58:47  
So, Phil writes about: he was a Marine Corps officer, and he writes about an event in Iraq where, you know, an insurgent had essentially come into the same hospital as someone who, you know, he played a role in killing. 

 

Aaron Nelson  59:04  
He hurt him. 

 

Matt Hefti  59:04  
He hurt him- and so you've got these Marines who have one of their own laying on the surgical table. And then you also have, in the same hospital, the same doctors have to treat the person who caused the harm, and the Marines donate blood and keep him alive. And you know, he writes about this, you know the kind of surreal experience of the people involved who, on the one hand, like they're they're fighting war, but on the other hand, they're fighting just as hard to save this guy's life as any other's, and treating him with the same dignity and respect as a human being. But then there's also the flip side right? Where he also talks about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and some of the horrible abuses that our- our own soldiers and our own country have inflicted on- on people in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. And, so it's: hey, if we're, if we're going to take the moral high ground in any sort of way, if we're going to be a light on a hill, then we need to do it. We, you know, we need to, we put our money where our mouth is, and we need, we need to follow the Geneva Conventions. We need to follow the rule of law. And even in the midst of a war, we have to, we have to maintain our moral center. Otherwise, what are we fighting for? If we're not fighting for those higher principles, if we're not listening to our better angels, then what are we doing?

 

Aaron Nelson  1:00:36  
And what I found remarkable about, I mean, it's a fabulous question, right? It's a beautiful article. What I found remarkable is somebody who's never been in that I say, "Look, that's the jungle". 

 

Matt Hefti  1:00:45  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:00:46  
That- you know, you're in a war zone, and you're talking about the ability to follow principles. In fact, he writes, you know about those decisions. This was standard policy. Part of a tradition stretching back to the Revolutionary War, when George Washington ordered every soldier to sign a copy of rules to ensure their conduct respected what he called the rights of humanity, and that's the oath that you're talking about. And here we are in that setting where I would imagine there's all kinds of emotions that are overwhelming the people that have been put into that spot, but they're able to put those emotions aside and apply those principles. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:01:28  
Right. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:01:29  
And what I love about this is he says this was standard policy. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:01:33  
Right.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:01:34  
This wasn't just one individual marine doing this. This was an entire culture that had been set up for, you know, 250 years coming up on now, right? How important do you think it is about that culture? Because you've been in that culture. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:01:50  
Sure. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:01:50  
You've read about this culture, you've also now been in a culture in the courtroom, where maybe following principles isn't always followed.

 

Matt Hefti  1:01:58  
Right. I mean, I think in any environment, whether it be that jungle: the jungle of warfare, or the jungle in the courtroom, I think we have people who aspire to follow those principles, do their very best day-in and day-out, never fully succeeding. None of us are 100% perfect at it. But like there are those who- who really endeavor to- to follow the rule of law, to follow constitutional principles, to follow, you know, what- these truths that we hold to be self-evident, right, that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator. And there are people who truly believe that and strive day-in and day-out. Very honorable people, both in warfare and in the courtroom. But there are a lot of times when it's the easier route to just start processing people. It becomes about a job. Becomes about politics. It becomes about anger. It becomes about appeasing victims. It becomes about this. It becomes about that. It becomes about anything except for those first-level principles of, you know, hey, here's, what we're here for: Constitutional Rights. Why do we have constitutional rights? Well, because we're all created equal, and we all have, you know, basic human rights. And we hold these truths to be self-evident, right? And if we forget those things, then everything goes awry, everything gets corrupted, and then it affects all of society, because then people don't view the court systems as legitimate, and people don't view the process as legitimate, and then they don't view the law as legitimate. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:03:37  
You're less likely to follow the law. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:03:38  
Exactly. If the law is illegitimate, then why should I even follow it? And then everybody becomes a law unto themselves, and everybody goes their own way. And then, you know, how do you have a functioning society like that?

 

Aaron Nelson  1:03:48  
Yeah, and so much of it is culture, right? You're in- you're in Houston now. You've been there for- for eight years. You were telling me about how it's changed over that eight years, and how, how so much of it is the the people within the system, but it has to be within the system and it's changed. Tell me about that? 

 

Matt Hefti  1:04:05  
Yeah. So there have been so many, so many changes in just the time that I've been there. And then, you know, even stretching back years before: we're all standing on the shoulders of giants; people who have been fighting battles and making incremental changes for many, many years. But, some of the huge reforms and changes that have come about in my time there and in recent time right before I got there, is we had significant bail reform. It used to be that we had cash bail in misdemeanor cases, very low level misdemeanor cases, and there were- our jail was super overcrowded with people who just simply couldn't afford even really low bail on misdemeanor offenses.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:04:48  
And how much does that impact everything down the line? I mean, if somebody's in custody, that changes everything. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:04:54  
It does. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:04:55  
How?

 

Matt Hefti  1:04:55  
It makes it- it makes it far more difficult for them to assist their counsel in preparing their own defense. When you're talking about a low level misdemeanor case and you're incarcerated for it, you lose your job, you lose your ability to support your kids.  And if you're let's say you've got child support to pay, and you're incarcerated, and now you can't work well. Now you're picking up new new charges and new cases because you're not supporting your family and you're not fulfilling those court obligations. The- you might be out on the street because you can't make money to, like, go back to your house... if you can't even afford bail now, you can't work, you can't, you know, you've lost everything. And apart from all those collateral consequences in terms of the justness of the outcomes of the proceedings, you've got people then who are like, "Well, I'm just going to take a plea deal to get out of jail because I've already served X amount of time, and they're offering me time served. I'm just going to plead guilty to a crime. I'm going to- but now I'm saddled with a criminal conviction for the rest of my life, even though I didn't do it and I just pled guilty to get out of jail".

 

Aaron Nelson  1:05:56  
Because at that point, the rational decision might be like, "Why am I going to fight this? If I just say yes, I get out". 

 

Matt Hefti  1:06:01  
Yeah, it's perfectly rational. And people like, why would you ever plead guilty to something you didn't do? It's like, well, let me tell you about the levers of justice. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:06:08  
Yeah, absolutely. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:06:10  
And so, you know, and that's, that's just kind of skimming the surface of the kind of- here are the visible, superficial kind of things that we can see, right off the bat, in terms of, why? Why bail policies are are important, and it also goes to the presumption of innocence, right? If you're presumed innocent, why are we punishing you before trial? 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:06:28  
Yeah, absolutely. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:06:30  
And so that's kind of a pendulum that has has swung. You know, we've had great bail reform, where now if you're a first time misdemeanor offender, you get an automatic general order bond, and you get a personal recognizance bond right off the bat.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:06:47  
And the the evidence is that that doesn't reduce public safety in any way.

 

Matt Hefti  1:06:52  
Correct, correct. But then the pendulum also is continually swinging. Now we've got a lot of calls in the legislature. They're trying to change the Constitution to restrict bail practices in the state Constitution, because you have a lot of victims advocate organizations and Law and Order type people who are like, "No, our criminal justice system needs to be even harsher than it already is". And, you know-

 

Aaron Nelson  1:07:16  
I always find it interesting that they call themselves law and order. Because, you know, the more I do this work, the more I'm like, "No, I'm law and order. I want us to follow the law. I want us to follow this process, which I think of as an order". 

 

Matt Hefti  1:07:30  
Yes. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:07:30  
Like, law and order for them is zero-tolerance. Law and order for them is quick, efficient-

 

Matt Hefti  1:07:37  
Sure. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:07:38  
Vengeful. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:07:39  
Move the dockets. Punish the wrongdoer, move on.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:07:42  
Yeah. And whether the- punish the person that's there, whether they are or they aren't the wrongdoer. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:07:46  
Right? Yeah. And we don't even have the time to figure it out, you know, they just want to move, move things along.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:07:51  
Yeah. Which, in many ways, I think, almost circles back to some of the conversation we started with, is that I think people who have been harmed are looking for something. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:07:59  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:07:59  
Right? They're looking for- for something, and if, if they're not able to get an apology or some sort of restorative justice or some sort of communication, that's in some way, all they have is some sort of vention. So, in, is- thinking it from your standpoint, you know, trying to put myself in their shoes, I might understand why they want that. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:08:19  
Absolutely. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:08:19  
But if they're not communicated that there's any other way. If they're not given some other choice, and that's how much I worry that in plea negotiations, we'll often hear that the other side will say, "Well, my victim wants X".

 

Matt Hefti  1:08:34  
And they use that possessive noun, "my" right? 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:08:36  
Correct. "My" victim. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:08:37  
And the prosecutor is supposed to be this civil servant who stands between the aggrieved party and the accused, and has a measured discretionary response. And they are there to prevent vigilante justice and to prevent a system based on vengeance and anger and retribution and revenge. And they are there to to start that process and seek justice, not convictions, right? 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:09:07  
Yeah. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:09:08  
But too often they get sucked into that, "Oh, my victim, my victim. I don't know if- I don't know if that's a just resolution. I need to check with my victim". It's like, why are you abdicating your role as the independent discretionary judicial officer here who gets to make this charging decision, who gets to resolve these cases, your your role as an independent... Why are you abdicating that to the very person you're supposed to be protecting the citizen accused from?

 

Aaron Nelson  1:09:34  
Yeah, why? What's the point of your 19 years of education and training- 

 

Matt Hefti  1:09:38  
Right.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:09:38  
If you're just going to hand it off to somebody who doesn't have that education and training?

 

Matt Hefti  1:09:43  
Right. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:09:43  
You know, as far as gatekeepers go, the gates been taken off. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:09:46  
Yep. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:09:47  
Just come on through. I mean, I often worry, maybe wonder and worry both, that it's- part of it is just communication, right? I understand that it's very hard to tell another person that comes to you for help, "I can't help you. I can't give you what you want". In that I might need to give them something else, or I might need to push them in another direction, because we obviously have to do that as criminal defense attorneys. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:10:15  
All the time. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:10:15  
All the time. And again, I've not been a prosecutor. I don't know all of their communications that they have. But I worry, especially when we have lots of young prosecutors, that that might be a skill set that you gain over time, the comfort and the confidence to be able to tell somebody else, "I hear you, I understand you. Unfortunately, I can't get you that here, or that's not the right place to come for this healing". 

 

Matt Hefti  1:10:41  
Right. Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:10:44  
You know, I mentioned before, your wonderful book, "The Hard and Heavy Thing", which is on my shelf here behind us. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:10:51  
Looks good! 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:10:51  
It's, you know, my- I think there's 12 or 13 of my most favorite books and yours is there, as well as a friend of yours, "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk".

 

Matt Hefti  1:11:03  
Yeah, Ben Fountain, one of my favorites, and a wonderful guy.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:11:08  
Another book you have is a short story in "The Road Ahead". 

 

Matt Hefti  1:11:11  
Yes. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:11:12  
And so I was reading that, and this is my cherished signed copy that I have. Thank you. But I was reading that, and this is a story about some ghosts who haunt, I think, a veteran. And just that you had mentioned before: love. You know, and how, how, love is important in what you do and how you do it. And I just in this story, "We Put a Man in the Tree" by Matthew Hefti. It starts by your saying about the ghosts. "One thing is common among us. We cannot speak unless we ask questions". 

 

Matt Hefti  1:11:49  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:11:50  
And then it circles around, and at the end, the ghosts ask this question, or perhaps it's the author: "Why don't you choose to make love the verb of the year?". 

 

Matt Hefti  1:12:00  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:12:01  
How have you chosen to make "love" the verb of your year?

 

Matt Hefti  1:12:05  
Well, I think love in its purest form is selflessness, right? Like, real love doesn't come without a cost. It's not just an emotion. It's not just a feeling, like that's, you know, there's infatuation and there's things that we might mistake for love or feel for love, but I think real love is essentially something that requires some level of self-sacrifice or selflessness, where we are consciously putting somebody else in front of ourselves, or their interests ahead of ourselves. And as attorneys, like, as fiduciaries, if you will, to use a fancy legal word, like, that is our ethical responsibility across the profession: to put the interests of our clients ahead of ourselves. And so from that perspective, like the very job itself, if we're doing it right, if we're- if we're living up to our own professional ethical code, we are putting the interests of someone else ahead of our own interest. And that is definitelish-, definitionally, whether you feel all fuzzy and warm about it or not, definitionally, that is an act of love, and that is what love, essentially is. And so I think remembering that, that love doesn't always come with a feeling, you don't always feel great about it, but it is doing that thing that is hard to put the interests of someone else above yourself. And when we're all selfish, when we're all putting our own interests at the forefront of things, then everything devolves into chaos. Whereas, if everybody's putting everybody else's self interest ahead of themselves, then everybody's better off, right? I mean, it seems perfectly logical, but yet, as human beings, we have such a hard time doing it, don't we?

 

Aaron Nelson  1:13:36  
Yeah, you know, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with you when you were a student, and somewhat in the way that maybe you say, you know, you learn from your daughter. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:13:48  
Sure. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:13:48  
You know, I learned so much from you when you were there. But I think we also, we learned together that summer, we were working on a case where we're, you know, they're here today, we got to talk to Carrie and her mom again about her case. You know, background: our client, you know, was driving in a vehicle in the-in a winter storm, and there was an accident and a head-on collision, and her- her daughter died, her sister's daughter died, and her other sister's daughter died. So we have three sisters with three daughters who died as a result of that, that car accident. And she was charged with three counts of homicide, and that's what we were protecting her from. Ferrying her through life, you know, with whatever hope we could carry for her. But it was in this context that I know I learned all about hope. I learned all about love. What did you learn about love in that context, from that family?

 

Matt Hefti  1:14:56  
Well, that case still sticks with me after all these years, is one of the most important cases that I've been a part of. Obviously, I was still a student at the time, so you were the one who tried the case, and I was just honored to help in any way I could. But from a legal- from a legal perspective, it was, you know, an incredible learning experience, and we can talk about that, but in terms of what sticks with me after all these years, that is the first thing I think about, it is the love in that family. Obviously, Carrie was facing the criminal charges and she had also suffered unspeakable losses, but so too did her sisters and her mother and her entire family. They had all suffered a tremendous loss. But instead of going into the courtroom or going through the court proceedings, her sisters weren't saying, "she needs to fry, she needs to go away, she needs to suffer for what she's done. She needs to be punished". Instead, they rallied around her, made sure that she had excellent defense, and then testified on her behalf and testified about what a good sister she was, and that they forgave her. And when you have lost- I cannot imagine losing a child. I have three daughters of my own, and I think there's probably no greater pain in the world than losing a child. I can only imagine. And to see that love in action, to put aside any sort of feelings of vengeance and work through those and to instead come into a courtroom and say, "I forgive my sister. I love my sister", and to see the way her whole family has rallied around her and shown that love, putting their own hurt aside, which also takes great sacrifice and work. It's just stuck with me all these years as like the- a shining, inspirational example of how wonderful and how gracious people can be, and that, if that can't give you hope, being around a family like that, or seeing that in action, and being able to witness that then, or you're cold-hearted, you know, because that still melts my heart.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:17:13  
Absolutely and it's- it's having the opportunity to meet people like that, to get to know people like that, to see their love, to feel their love, to share in their love, that helps me get up every day and try to find it some more, try to find it tomorrow, try to- try to- 

 

Matt Hefti  1:17:32  
Continue chasing it. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:17:33  
Continue chasing it, and continue to do that, so-

 

Matt Hefti  1:17:36  
And I know it's out there, and so I have hope that I will see it again and again and again. I wish I saw it more frequently. But carrying that hope, that it exists. People are capable of just monumental love and monumental self-sacrifice and monumental forgiveness, yeah, it allows you to carry the hope.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:17:56  
It's why we're here. 

 

Matt Hefti  1:17:57  
Yeah. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:17:58  
Well, Matthew, thank you. This has been wonderful. I really greatly appreciate your coming here. You're bringing the hope that you always carry with you, the love that you always carry with you, the beautiful and inspiring words that you always bring with you, so thank you.

 

Matt Hefti  1:18:11  
My pleasure. This was a lot of fun and great to see you again. 

 

Aaron Nelson  1:18:13  
Absolutely.

 

Aaron Nelson  1:18:23  
Thanks for listening to Sanctuary in the Jungle. This episode was brought to you by Nelson Defense Group and MadeDaily. Subscribe to Sanctuary now and never miss another episode. You can also sign up for our newsletter on our website and follow us on social media for new bonus content. We'll see you next time at the library for another episode. Until then, stay strong and carry the hope.