The After Show: "Come Home Safe"

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Brian is host of ABC's podcast, Bad Wrap, the Case Against Ditty. He's joining us to help look behind the scenes of how this all kind of plays out, and to defend people in court, somebody that's been accused of crime, navigating the moral responsibilities of his job, of course, because he's a practicing lawyer and his message for young people on the importance of knowing your rights. So there's a lot that we're going to get to, Brian, and talking about misconceptions of criminal defense work and so forth, but it's so great just to have you here. Welcome. Yeah. Thank you for having me. To your point, we keep bumping into each other, but not longer than like 30, 45 seconds. That's great. This is great. And you've contributed to a lot of our platforms here, and you are a lawyer. I learned more about you getting ready for this conversation, by the way, than I knew. I mean, of course, I knew you were a lawyer because you bring your legal expertise to so much of what we're doing, but I'm just really curious. I mean, when we're talking about the law and, you know, for us to try to understand it, you bring in not only the expertise, but you kind of help us from a layman's perspective of understanding. And many of our stories, and in this particular case, you've been talking a lot about Diddy, talk to us a little bit about the conversations that are happening before these folks go to trial. And, you know, what you are thinking when you are sitting down talking with us about, you know, what has transpired in these cases? Yeah. So before we go to trial, oftentimes we've learned a lot about the case from the arrest, indictment, the motions, the arguments that going on, but I often tell people both as a practicing attorney and someone who's on ABC, what we hear in the news is often a fraction of what we end up learning at trial, or even thereafter, oftentimes because defense attorneys don't really speak out in their case. And it's only when you get, yeah, it's only when you get that full breath of the entire case. Can you really absorb it? And that's I think why a lot of judges say, don't deliberate until you get the case, don't come to any conclusion until you get the case because it's not until you get everything that you can really formulate an idea of the case. And you know about defense work because you are a defense lawyer and tell everybody a little bit about your background and the work that you've done. Yeah. So I started in 2014, a few years ago, we don't have to date myself too much. You were a very young, young, very young, yeah, prodigy. But I was at the legal aid society, which is the oldest and largest public defenders office in the country, specifically in their criminal defense practice in Brooklyn. I was a public defender in the way that you think when you watch TV and they say, if you can afford an attorney, one will be given to you. That was me. And I did that for a little under a decade. And my time there, I had done misdemeanors, nonviolent felonies, violent felonies, and even homicides. I was actually on a homicide unit for I think the last two or three years that I was there. Any kind of trial you can think of, I've touched or in one way, shape or form. I did self-defense cases, possession cases. I liked if there was a science, like the DNA, the tracking of a cell phone, I was very intrigued in the forensics. That's why I like working here at ABC a lot as well. Shortly after my son was born, I left the public defender's office and I kind of went full on into the media aspect through ABC and at the time I was working at Dan Abrams-Lon and Crime Network. Oh, I didn't know that. As well. Yeah. See, again, I'm learning all this stuff about you and how you came to our hallways and on our program. Yeah, there was a time that I would represent clients like Monday through Thursday and then Thursday afternoon, I would just like scurry off to like this little studio, maybe half the size of this when Dan was starting up and I would just comment on cases. I was on a show called Long Crime Daily as a host for a while. We did like true crime, whether it be through sports because I also am a college athlete as well. Yeah. So we kind of touch on everything and then the EP of Nightline called me up and I was like, I see you all the time when you come to ABC and I was like, I would love to be at ABC and that's five years ago. Now I'm here. And here we are. Well, you know, what's so fascinating is that you bring a perspective, particularly from the defense world. And we cover so many stories on 2020 where people are accused of horrific things, right? And you know, one of the stories we've been tracking is the Rex Hirman case, the, you know, Gilgo Beach murder case, you know, we've heard about Luigi Manjone, the guy accused in the shooting of a healthcare executive. Of course, Diddy, you know, accused of doing some pretty horrific things, not murder, horrific things. And one of the things that I think you bring to the set when you're talking is about the defense because oftentimes our audience does not understand how these lawyers are defending people who, you know, are accused of pretty terrible stuff. And what are you most trying to get across when you are talking with us and sort of, you know, playing that role of what the defense lawyers may be thinking? Yeah. So one, I have to tell my wife, I don't know if I'm playing the roles of defense attorney or if I'm playing the role of a human being who's not a defense attorney, it's just the way my mind works. I am what, what some defense attorneys would jokingly call a gold star defense attorney because I've never prosecuted before. So oftentimes a lot of people on TV who are defense attorneys are former prosecutors. And then they become defense attorneys. And I think that, that is a, a good thing in the sense of they can give you both sides. They can say, yes, when I used to put someone in the grand jury, I can do this. And now as a defense attorney, but the one thing I think that's unique about being a public defender is I never had an opportunity to shift through what cases I could or couldn't take or did or didn't want to take. If there was a murder on the top of that pile, I had to take it. If there was a rape on the top of that pile, I had to take it. I didn't have a choice. You didn't have a choice. That was your job. It was frowned upon to sift through. So if there was a defense that needed to be found as a public defender, you have to do the mental gymnastics to find a defense no matter what. And for a lot of our most heinous cases, those cases are represented by public defenders where they have to try to find a defense no matter what. But a lot of these cases are in that we are covering. These folks are able to afford top notch defense attorneys. Yeah. I mean, it's so I was saying when it comes to the strength of a case or two things to consider, the actual arguments that you have and then the people who are going to receive that information. And the analogy that probably if you watch me at ABC, you're probably sick and tired of me saying is in high school, I was about as tall as I am now. I was like six, two, six, three, and I played both soccer and basketball. On the soccer field, I was a giant, the tallest person there, but on the basketball court, I was small. Yeah, average. Yeah. Right? Yeah. My height never changed, but it was the people who were receiving that information who made the assessment as to whether or not I'm tall or not. So you can get 12 people listening to one case and come back and say, you know what? Sean Cohn's is not guilty of racketeering conspiracy or sex trafficking and an only of transportation. You could probably get another 12 people to say he's guilty of everything or another 12 people to say he's innocent of everything. So it depends on the people and the facts. In our stories often, and you know, typically for 2020, we don't cover necessarily just all celebrity cases. It can be the 21 year old mom of two young children in Florida who is abducted and killed or, you know, any other case that just like grabs your heart that, you know, the family has just been pleading for justice. Oftentimes they're unsolved crimes. And then after 10, 15, 20 years, some new detective comes to town and sheds new light on it. But the family is always fighting for justice. They're always calling for justice. And one of the things I hear when these very distraught, distressed family members are sitting across from us is they feel like they don't really have any rights as victims. You know, it's the perpetrator who has all the rights. They're just fighting for justice. And so when we're talking about justice on the air, I mean, it looks very different to everybody. I mean, and the question becomes as a lawyer, as a legal mind, you know, justice can be kind of elusive, depending on what you feel, do you feel like for the most part, justice is typically served when you look at the system. So maybe I'm a little jaded. I think that justice is the guiding star or light that we are all attempting to reach, whether you be a victim, a defendant, a prosecutor, a defense attorney or judge. Do I think we reach that more often than not? No. And the reason why I say that is because let's talk about the missing person case. For the cold case, justice, in my mind, to be able to reunite that family member with that person, to make them whole again, but the justice system can't do that unfortunately. And so to make someone whole who has been harmed, that would be justice. And oftentimes we can't reach that when it comes to prison times of a person. Now, take out the big ones, right? Take out the rape, murder, trafficking. I think we're all on the same page there, but selling a baggie of cocaine, punching someone in self defense or not in self defense. How much time should that person get? Is that number exactly justice should they be getting rehabilitation? orientation for substance abuse rather than incarcerated. And I think oftentimes we fall short of that, but I think it's an aspiration that we should always keep in our mind and always strive to attain. - Yeah, it's always interesting to me when I talk to family members because some of them have found a sort of inner peace, even though they're still damaged and traumatized, but they've found a piece to be able to move on and not want necessarily a retribution. And then others just want that. One case I just recently covered for 2020, the family couldn't wait for this guy to be executed because he's on death row. And oftentimes other family members just want to move forward. So it's always very interesting to hear how the family's interpret what's happening in the law. Well, you are just multifaceted, not only do you talk about the law, but you're also a writer and author. And I want to talk about that. So when we come back, we're going to dive into your book, Come Home Safe and your message for young people on knowing their legal rights. 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Right now, go to abcsecretsavings.com/2020 for 50% off the best bedding you'll ever sleep on. That's abcsecretsavings.com/2020. (upbeat music) - Welcome to 2020, The After Show. We're back with Brian Buckmeyer, ABC's Legal Contributor and Criminal Defense Attorney. You're a father, as you mentioned, of a three-year-old. Let's talk about being a parent because oftentimes when I'm working on these stories and I've talked to my producers and as a mom, as a wife, sometimes these stories really get me. How about you as a parent when you're reporting and also when you're defending and doing court work? - So I think it's maybe easier as a defense attorney in being a parent because I really have to compartmentalize when I'm in court. When I'm in court, I am not Brian. I am Mr. Buckmeyer of the attorney. I am a piece of a system that is meant to perform in a way that if I do my job, the judge does their job and the government does their job, we hope that we see justice. And so oftentimes I tell people, yeah, I represent people that I don't agree with, but I do agree that they deserve representation. And so I compartmentalize myself that way. It's actually harder for me when it comes to reporting because as a reporter, I'm more an observer and I'm not an attorney who has a constitutional duty or something that I've sworn to do. It's harder for me to do the cases when I see a missing child, when I see a child or a parent crying, even when I do interviews in the past, the one that comes to mind first is the Amon Arbery Trail. - I covered that story. - Yeah, and I interviewed the mother. And I wasn't even a father then, but my heart just heard speaking to her about how she had so many people not believe that this was gonna be a case that was viable, that she had to keep pushing and pushing. And then now as a father, and I look back on that, I was like, I don't know if I have an ounce of the courage and strength that some of these people when they have a family member who is a victim and a system that says no, and they say, I'm gonna keep going. If anything, that's how it affects me. I hope that I never have to have that strength, but I hope that it's within me if I ever get called to do so. - Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree with you. And I remember sitting down across from her and my heart just cracked for her as well. I just sort of alluded to something when you were saying sometimes you don't always agree with them. - I have had cases where I've been spat at, swung at, called the N-word. - As their lawyer? - And I still gotta get back up there and represent them. So that's why jokes sometimes with producers, even here in ABC, they're like, we're so sorry, it's like, hey, compared to the other job. - That's nothing. - This is nothing. Do not worry about it, I've, yeah, I've gone through the litany of it. And but for me, it is very much compartmentalizing and saying it's about making sure that we all have this right. And if I've got to be the shield and sometimes I'm taking a hit from the front where there'd be the judge or the prosecutor and sometimes I'm taking a hit from the back from the person that I'm actually trying to defend. The way I think about it, my wife, she used to be a scuba diver instructor to hire the professional diver. And she's like, hey, sometimes you're saving someone and they're like thrashing around and they hit you. You can't just say, hey, I'm not gonna save you because you hit me. Sometimes you they're like, knock him over the head or like, just drag them to shore. And sometimes the people that you're saving, you can take a hit from them. But if that's your role, in my belief, you've got to be that person. That's your role. And I do that oftentimes as a reporter. I mean, I'm sitting across from somebody who I think might be a little suspect about either the media or maybe about me or maybe about my race. And I've got to do my job. So I know how you feel about that. You mentioned that your father, your also a brother, which motivated you to write a book called Come Home Save. It's a young adult novel. And I'm just really fascinated. I mean, at first of all, I didn't know you had written the book and now I got to get it and read it. It navigates racial inequality and police brutality and what it means to not become a statistic, which is something that is, you mentioned in the book, talk about how you came to write it and what it all means because the storyline sounds so interesting. - Yeah, so to understand the book, you probably have to understand a little bit about me. So, Caribbean family, mother, Jamaican, fathers, Grenadian, my parents divorced when I was very young. I do have a brother and sister, but they would be, I don't call them this, they would be my half siblings. My father remarried, my sister, my mother got engaged and had my brother, but his father is not in the picture. There are actually children after them that I remember that passed away. So I have a brother who died of crypt death and one who was still born. And when I was 18, if you see me on TV, you see a tattoo on my wrist, it says, I am my brother's keeper because I am my brother's legal guardian. And my brother knows the story about me losing siblings. He knows why I am his legal guardian. And so after a mod arbore, he calls me and he said, Brian, and he crying, how do I make sure I'm not a statistics? Because I go running in my neighborhood as well. What if what happened to Aubrey happens to me? - Oh, that's heartbreaking. - And I sat there and he kept talking as I'm crying over the phone. He said, Brian, and he's going over the things that he's, I've never thought that he accounted for. He's like, but Brian, like, you taught me to shave and you got me my suit when I was in high school. Like, you're on TV, you're a lawyer. Like, if you don't have this answer, can you at least point me to who does have the answer? - Oh my gosh. - And so we were 12 years apart. And I'm like, oh my God, I don't know. And so it motivated me because at the time married to my wife when we were trying to have a child, I'm like, if I have a son, I have to have these answers. - The talk is what we call it in the black community. - And so what I did is I started researching. I asked everyone within the criminal justice system that I can find judges, former prosecutors, current prosecutors, police officers, correction officers, court reporters, clerks of all different race, the only criteria was, do you have a child who would be either mixed race or black, so even Hispanic, whatever, that could be a target. And you're in the system, what do you tell your children? How do you explain this process to them knowing what we know? Because if we don't have the answer, being inside the system, then God help the people who are outside. And through those advice and those stories, I put together two narratives of my son and daughter going through situations where we know they're being falsely accused, but it's very clear that the evidence there could suggest that they did the crime. And they're basically taking the advice that their father, the public defender, gave them as to how to navigate that. And I intentionally made it that the father and mother are not present during these situations, which is probably the hardest thing to write a story about my son going through probably one of the hardest things. And in the book, my son's name is Reed. My son's name is Reed. I just changed the spelling. And even my mother called me crying. And she's like, oh my god, because she knew we were going to name our son Reed. She's like, if anyone touches, I was like, mom, it's a fake book. It's not real. It's fiction. It's not real. But yeah, I wrote the story. Not even think it was going to get published in order to answer a question that I think my son may ask me in the future. And also to just get the conversation going and people to be aware and to think about it. Yeah, it is a big question. and I think is something that happens in so many communities and we have to keep talking about. You also create a card called Know Your Rights when promoting your book. What is that all about? - Yeah, so the publisher who I have to always think Lindsey Davis, because we have the same publisher, she's actually the one we were talking during the Derek Chauvin trial. When I told her, oh, I'm gonna stay over the weekend and work on my book, she's the one that said, this is something that needs to be promoted, not just for your job, but for everyone. So thank you again, Lindsey. But the publisher is like, what about like a card? Like, what would you give your son? And so it's a Know Your Rights, but also invoke your right card. And it basically like has the person's name, the parent's name, contact number. And it says things along the lines of like, I don't consent to being searched. I don't want to speak. I want my lawyer. Those affirmative statements that you would want your child, like young teenager to say, to make sure that law enforcement knows, hey, they've got a parent. - Yeah. - Hey, they've got someone looking after them. If there's a question that needs to be made, ask them, talk to them. - Yeah, which is interesting for you as a defense lawyer because, you know, many times people talk a lot when they're arrested, and that's what minds of, you know, getting them charged and in trouble. Well, Brian, you and I could just sit here and talk all day, but I want to get back to 2020. So when we come back, I want to hear a little bit more about behind the scenes for you and talk about some of your memorable moments. So stay with us, everybody. I wish you all the best in the summer of 2013. I also want to talk to you about Shopify because I want to talk about the technical aspects of Germany. I want to talk to you about the benefits of the industry and the front-end, and about the future. I want to talk to you about it. If Shopify is the best, I want to talk to you about it. I want to talk to you about it, and I want to talk to you about it about it. I want to talk to you about it in the future. Welcome back to 2020, The After Show. We're back with Brian Buckmeyer, ABC's legal contributor, and we are talking about so much. His work as a defense lawyer, his work here at ABC News, and we are saturated with media, as you know, about violence, policing, criminal justice, and I'm just really curious when you are analyzing these cases. How do you decide what you're emphasizing, and when you're, you know, obviously adults, teenagers, also sometimes are watching? How do you sort of decide how you're going to present your viewpoint? So I would say throughout my journey of being a legal contributor or host of different aspects, I talked to my other colleagues and be like, how do you do this? And the best way that I have come to understanding how my voice works best is I imagine that camera is the mother of my client, that they are highly involved in this case. They need to understand what's going to happen, what I'm going to potentially argue, what the prosecutors are going to potentially argue, how the judge is going to potentially decide this, and they need to be as informed as possible because someone they love is potentially going through the worst situation of their life. And so that's how I try to think of the case. So if you hear me going back and forth of like, well, the defense can make this argument, and this is why this is not going to work, and it could work, and then the prosecution, and I kind of meander through it. In my mind, I'm just thinking, and I've done it thousands of times, you're not facing these charges, but your loved one is, and I want to make sure that you understand this as best as I understand this, because you might not be affected by this directly, but if you chose to watch 2020, or news live, or a nightline, or good morning, America, wherever I am, you're affected by this indirectly, and you deserve to know every facet of this case. - Yeah, and it's all about the legal system, and educating us all. Well, before we go, I want to talk about some of the stories you've worked on with us. - Maybe just because of how big the stories were, or maybe because they affected me, the Mont-Arre, Sherry Papini, the ones, and maybe just because I'm becoming more of a father and a parent, but it's like the desperate search for your child, or the advocacy for the justice for your child. I think those ones probably hit my heart a little bit more, and then oftentimes the ones where you have two maybe reasonable sides of trying to get justice, as to like, is this the person that we should be? Giving the greatest amount of punishment for it, because this is horrible, or is this something else? So, I think those two, the Papini one was interesting, and also the Mont-Arre, very still sticks with me. - Yeah, there are some that really get me too, and I think the ones that involved either the children, or just family, you know, moms, desperate searches, and all of that, and you know, answers that just took so long to come about. Well, Brian, you know, we can talk all day, but I know you've got work to get to. That does it for us today on the after show, Brian, so good to have you. - Thank you for having me. - And we thank you, our listeners, for choosing to spend some time with us today, and of course, you can find 2020 on Friday night on ABC, and you can stream episodes any time on Disney, Plus, and Hulu. (upbeat music)