SPEAKER_03 0:01

What's up, y'all, and welcome back to another Behind the Holster A Concealed Coalition Podcast. We are happy to have you today. Before we get started, I want to talk a little bit about our YouTube membership. And I think we're running that membership right now at $3.99. And the way that we've built this membership is that we're going to cover a lot of generic topics here on these podcasts. We don't have time to get into a lot of the detail, which is some of the really important stuff. So inside of our membership, we're going to begin to dissect every episode that we have and get more granular, more in detail of some of these topics. So today I've got uh Mr. Matt Wheeler here with us. We're going to talk about the title for this one is Is the Legal Justice System Designed for the Good Guy? And that is so important because I know Matt, you and I have both seen it in a lot of classes. The assumption that people have that when they act in self-defense, they feel like everything else is a handshake. Good job, you got the bad guy, pat on the back. You're gonna get a you're gonna get a gold medal uh for getting this one because we've been looking for them for a long time. And it's really not it's really not like that. And I think the the legal system, legal justice uh system starts very early in the process. A lot, a lot of times, I know even for me in the past, it's been well, it starts when I'm in court. It starts the day that I show up for court, and truthfully, it starts long before that, and everything leads up to that day of when you show up in court. So, Matt, I want to kind of give you the floor here to run us through. I know you've got law enforcement experience, you've got firearms trainer experience, and so walk us through this question is somebody walked up to you and said, Matt, is the legal justice system built for the good guy? Give us your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean, my the short answer is no, it's it's not. Um, the whole premise. Well, let's let's start at the very beginning. The whole premise of our criminal justice system is based off of what's called Blackstone's formulation in criminal law. And essentially, what that guy said it was like the 1760s or something. He he said it's better that seven men go free or ten men go free than one man go to prison. And Ben Franklin took that and ran with it. And he's quoted as saying a hundred or even a thousand go free is better than one man going to prison wrongfully. Um, so our entire criminal justice, and and I'm I've heard I'm I'm sure our audience has heard people quote this before you're innocent or you're presumed innocent until you are proven guilty in a court of law. And for the vast majority of cases, that is absolutely correct. However, when it comes to legal or or lethal force in self-defense, or or really any any form of self-defense, and I'm sure we'll cover in another episode, every time you act in self-defense, you're actually committing a crime. Um, there is a kind of a standard saying that you're guilty until you prove you're innocent. And while that sounds fancy, it sounds fun to say, but it also doesn't quite sound like it should be true. Unfortunately, it it has a lot more truth to it than people realize. So from the very beginning, every act of self-defense is the commission of a crime. We'll cover that in another in another episode, but just just bear with me on this one. You, as the civilian, you as the good, the good guy who's defending your life, defending your family, have acted in self-defense. You have committed either homicide, assault, attempted homicide, something of that nature. In order for a state to prosecute your case and to convict you of whatever crime it was that that that happened, they need two things. And it's called the burden of proof. Number one, they need to be able to prove that a crime was committed. The simple fact that you acted in self-defense, the fact that there is someone with a bullet hole in them, that's their proof. They don't need anything else. Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, here are here's a sworn statement from the doctor. Here's photographic evidence of the the wounds of this person. A crime was committed. So that one's good. They got that one. The second one is the person that they suspect of committing that crime is the person who actually perpetrated that crime. So, in self-defense case, the person who they suspect of acting in self-defense was the person who actually acted in self-defense. And that's you. Now a lot of times law enforcement gets lied to. Probably 95% of their interactions, people are just never speeding. Or wasn't speeding. Right. That was the guy in front of me. People are just people are just giving complete ball faced lies. I didn't do it, this didn't happen. Exactly. Sir, these are not my pants. Um, whatever the case may be, they're not gonna tell the truth. And when it comes to the good guy who had no other option than to act in self-defense, because if we had a different option, we would have taken that option, or at least you should have. We're not denying that we were the com the person who acted in self-defense, we're not denying that we were the cause of those bullet holes in that bad guy. So the two things the state needs for burden of proof, they have. If somebody has a bullet hole, you you were the one that put the hole there. That's frankly, that's all they need to satisfy the statutory requirement for some level of assault. Now, yes, it gets nuanced when we get into murder in the first, second, and third degrees. Um, yes, there's negligent homicide. There's all different kinds of nuances when it comes to the law, but regardless, any homicide is a crime. So, in order for the state to put you behind bars, they need to walk up in front of a jury and say, This happened, someone was shot, and the person standing in front of you, your your new nickname, defendant, is the one that did it. Now it's on you. The state has satisfied their burden of proof. Now you have the burden of proof to show the jury beyond reasonable doubt that you had no other choice, that your actions were justified in committing that self-defense.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

It's kind of funny because you're literally, when you act in self-defense, you're pretty much handing them their burden of proof on a silver platter.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Oh, absolutely. And that's that's what we explain to students. And not only that, if you had the opportunity to not be involved in that, you would have taken it. This isn't even something that you plan to go do, and now you have to get yourself out of something that you started. You didn't start it. The bad guy started it, you protected yourself, and now all of a sudden you have this intense legal battle in front of you. So, Jody, when you say we think of the legal system as getting to court, that's not the beginning, that's the end. The end of that legal system is when you get into court because in front of that, you've got all kinds of things. You've got jury selection, you've got um the investigation side of it, which can take a really long time. It can take months or it can take years um to complete that investigation. There's so many different aspects that go into it that actually physically getting to court, that's the end of it. And that's the part where you get to figure out is my jury gonna understand that I didn't have an option, or is my jury going to believe that I could have done something different and now I'm going to prison?

SPEAKER_03 8:08

Yeah, and that's gonna vary. When you talk about it's funny, you know, a jury of your peers. And I think in today's world, that's a very broad statement. And I there you just never know of 12 in the box. How do certain ones or what experiences have jurors had with firearms, with self-defense, with maybe lost family members, things like that, that are sitting on the jury with potentially their minds made up from the from the very beginning. And also, this goes into very fine detail when you determine which state that you're in. When you talk about things uh from duty to retreat versus stand your ground. There's gonna be a a lot more for you to prove in certain states than there would be, say, in in in other states. I was gonna name a state, but I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna refrain refrain from that one.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Fair enough. And and and not only that, just just in jury selection alone. I mean, we can sit back and think, what would my ideal juror know? What would their opinions be around guns, around self-defense, around whatever the case it is? And I mean, I can tell you from first hand experience, I've taught thousands of students every single time I get in get up in front of a class, I ask the class, show of hands, who thinks it's better, who thinks instead of shooting someone in the largest center of mass in the in the torso area, we should just shoot them in the leg. At least a quarter, if not half, the class raises their hand. So at least a quarter, if not half, of your jurors think that. And those are only the people that believe that you should be able to defend yourself so much so that they go to a concealed carry class.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Yeah, why don't you just shoot them in the leg? Exactly. That's exactly we get it every class. Somebody says, Well, you know, if they're running at me, can I just shoot them in the leg? Well, I mean, can you? If they're running at you with a knife, why would you know, why would you want to? And it's truthfully because I think those those people inside of them, there's there's absolutely nothing wrong with them. It's just their their thought process that they don't want to take another human life.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

And yeah, and that's exactly what that's exactly what the thought process should be of every student in a concealed carry class because that is the good guy's thought process. That's what we're thinking about. I don't want to take someone's life. I want to save human life at any cost. And then you have the other side of a perfect juror, the perfect candidate to sitting to be sitting in your your box of 12 people with your life in their hands. And that's the guy that's all gung-ho, they kick the door in. I'm gonna shoot through the door. Um, I watch John Wick on repeat every single night. Well, guess what? That those better to it's better to be judged by 12 than carried by six. Don't get me started. Yeah. But those are also the folks that are going to examine those are also the folks that have sometimes a higher, uh more elevated idea of what their own physical capabilities are. So they might think, well, then why didn't you just run away? Why didn't you just tackle them? Why didn't you just overpower them, etc.? And I mean, based on disparity of force, somebody's way, way bigger than us, way, way stronger than us. That's not always an option either. So there's there's a lot of nuances, and those are those that's one half of the juror pool of the people that we want on our jury. And the other half don't think you should have a gun, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

So it it's it's extremely nuanced that the criminal justice system was designed to investigate and convict bad guys and put those bad guys into prison. That's the way it's built. It doesn't work very well, but that's what it works better for. When it comes to a good guy going through that system, that's it's it's not built out that way. It's not designed for that.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Yeah, and I mean we we know firsthand stories of people who on our accounts, at least, I mean the story of Chris that we we typically tell in our in our classes, on on our accounts should have never gone to jail in the first place. Especially, you know, making an attempt to save someone's life who, based on everything we know about the story, I think that lady wouldn't be here today had he not stepped in and done something to suffer the consequences of of jail time to finally being released months later after an investigation and after the grand jury determined that it was uh it was justified. But it shouldn't, I mean it shouldn't happen, you know, and I in it's hard to expect it to be perfect, but I feel like over the years it's just begun to shift more to where it is it's not built for uh the good guy. The whole innocent until proven guilty is is honestly do you know it doesn't happen. It's it's it's not true. And there are things that you go into another episode, but everything you say can and will be used against you. That's a it's a whole nother like you diagnose that and it really opens your eyes to how it's really I would say not built for the good guy, because I feel like when even the Miranda rights are read, they're not they're not explained, right? As a law enforcement officer, you have to read them, you don't have to you don't have to explain what it really means. Exactly. And it's and that goes into the civil side as well. We haven't even mentioned that yet. But the civil side, what 40? I think it was last we looked, a little over 40 million civil lawsuits every year. I would almost guarantee that every action that you take in self-defense has a civil lawsuit on the back end of it. Doesn't matter if it's use of force, doesn't matter deadly force, whatever it is. You get the whole saying of uh what's what's the word on the street? Um um the whole shoot-to-kill mentality. Right. Because the whole shoot to kill mentality was because, well, if you if you do that, then they can't they can't sue you. Well, their family member can, or their brothers, uncles, cousins, dads, mom, who they haven't seen in 30 years, can all of a sudden come up.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Or in Chris's case, the person he saved. The person he saved. Yep. Yeah. I mean, the the civil side that just goes back to the the fact of the matter that the purpose of civil lawsuits is not to win, it's not to it's not to win the case, it's uh the civil case, it's not to have actual restitution for real damages. I mean, yeah, those things can happen, and it's there there are some cases where it's absolutely good that civil lawsuits are a thing, but when it comes to someone that's been found not guilty on all charges when acting in self-defense, they still get sued. And there are a lot of states out there that have even put out laws saying you cannot levy a judgment, a civil judgment against someone who was found not guilty in self- in acting in self-defense. Now, the way that that's worded, you can't levy a judgment, that just means you can't win the case. But the purpose of a civil lawsuit is not to win the case, it's to get them to settle.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

Yeah. Yeah. And I think uh that brings on the importance of having a legal legal protection uh program. I wouldn't carry without it. I know uh for concealed coalition, we have our own legal protection uh partnered with firearms legal protection. Uh, if you're interested in that, don't know anything about it, go check out concealedcoalition.com. Uh, right there on our homepage, you can click on join now, and it's gonna give you a lot of information about those uh memberships. We've got in-state protection, multi-state, and uh family protection as well. So at the end of it, it's the yes or no question is the legal system built for the good guy?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

I mean, I would say absolutely not. You're guilty until you prove that you're innocent. And when it comes to court time, you have either directly admitted that you were the person that put holes in someone or you haven't denied it.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Yeah, and that's true. And that's the interesting part of what you think in self-defense, when they say, Did you pepper spray this person?

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Did you uh shoot this person?

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Your answer is yes. Well, that's when you're admitting that you committed a crime, whether it's self-defense or not goes into everything that you've just mentioned, which is the process to prove that it was self-defense. It's not just automatically, did you pepper spray him? Yes, in self-defense, cool, you're good to go. Self-defense is the claim, and so all of that gathering of information process is going to determine whether it was self-defense or not. Well, I think that's gonna wrap us up for today, Matt. That was really good information, very detailed information that I think a lot of people really don't think about when you when you can, you know, none of us want to get into a use of force or or God forbid use of deadly force uh situation. But it does help to think about these things uh prior to holstering your firearm, prior to to walking out the door and putting pepper spray in your pocket, whatever it is, think about these things first, uh, so that after the incident you know how to proceed properly to make sure that you're taking all the steps necessary to make sure all that burden of proof ends up on your side and not their side. So check out our concealed coalition membership. There'll be a link down below. I think it's $3.99 a month. We're gonna go into a lot more detail things like this, get you more information and more prepared to protect yourself and protect your family. Y'all have a good day. Leave your comments below. If you have a question about the legal system, throw it down there, and we promise we'll get it answered. Thank you, Matt.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Absolutely. See y'all in the next one.