A criminal defense investigator faces better-armed opponents and long odds. But in time, he learns to wield new weapons on behalf of his clients.
In ancient Roman times, a man — most times, a slave — entered the arena of battle with the odds stacked against him. He often faced a group of opponents as a lone combatant, armed with inferior weapons. This gladiator’s life depended on whatever arms he was given and his skill at deploying them.
The criminal defense investigator, or “CDI,” is a gladiator in modern times. We are given minimal resources and sent into battle against opponents (the state) whose resources are often far vaster than our own (the clients).
Improving my own odds in the arena of criminal justice, on behalf of my clients, took years of training — the kind you learn in books, and the kind that only street mileage gives you. This is my story.
Rookie Moves
In 2011, after years of mentorship with investigators who practiced in different arenas, I finally took the leap and became a licensed investigator. When I started my practice, I made the rookie mistake of taking any sort of case I could — both to put money in the bank and to see where my aptitude lay.
The first criminal defense case I worked on my own was a referral from an attorney I’d known for years. The client, Lamar, faced charges for stealing a prescription with intent to distribute it. The client denied stealing the pills and claimed he was going to use them for his own needs.
Lamar said that he’d gotten the pills from his friend Tre. I tracked down Tre, who said he’d gotten the pills from Carmen Delacruz, the person whose name was on the prescription. It took me two weeks and a few mornings of surveillance to track down Carmen. She lived in a pay-by-the-week motel in the San Fernando Valley. When I finally caught up to her, she said she’d thrown the pills into the trash can, had not reported the prescription as stolen, and did not know Lamar. I reported this back to my client, who reported it to his attorney. In the end, Lamar took a plea for a lesser charge and got out of the ten years he was facing.
When an innocent person is imprisoned, the foundation of society is threatened. I considered all this and understood that it would not be right for someone’s freedom to depend on my blind luck.
This case had a decent outcome, but only by blind luck on my part. There had to be a more systematic way to conduct these investigations. I already had some exposure and had read some of the literature available at the time. Greg Fallis dedicated one chapter of his 1989 manual, Be Your Own Detective, to criminal defense investigations, laying out his personal reasons for taking up the fight by citing Blackstone’s famous ratio: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
We still read and hear about innocent people exonerated by DNA or case reevaluation after years of wrongful incarceration. The Innocence Project has documented 365 DNA exonerations, of which 21 had been on death row. Mr. Fallis put forth the argument that when a guilty person goes free, the community is placed at risk. But when an innocent person is imprisoned, the foundation of society is threatened. I considered all this and understood that it would not be right for someone’s freedom to depend on my blind luck.
I dug deeper into research, looking for a more definitive plan to do this work and help balance the scales. That’s when I came upon Brandon Perron’s Uncovering Reasonable Doubt. His “component method” gave me a philosophy and methodology for tackling these complicated cases.
To the Test
A new assignment soon offered me the opportunity to put this new knowledge to the test. An attorney-client I’d been trying to land decided to take a chance on me. The client, Omar, was being charged with armed robbery, sexual assault, street terrorism, and providing a false name to law enforcement.
Omar, a 20-year-old white male, stood accused of robbing a group of teenagers who were walking through a park at night on the way home from a nearby carnival. According to police, three males approached the teens, shouted out a gang name, and brandished a gun, demanding that the teens hand over everything they had. A girl named Lydia reported that one of the males grabbed her and fondled her breasts and buttocks before taking her wallet and cell phone. After the robbery, the three assailants ran off toward a nearby wash.
Lydia ran home and told her mother what happened. Her mother called the police. They responded immediately and found five males in the wash. One of the males appeared to throw something into the wash. Later, police found a BB gun.
The police rounded up the five boys and had Lydia drive by. She told the officers she believed that these were the assailants. The officers arrested all five males. My client Omar, already on probation from another charge, gave them a fake name.
At the station, the gang detective unit knew my client right off the bat and charged him along with the other males.
Component 1: Investigative Case Review & Analysis
It was time to put the component method to the test. I first reviewed the discovery file and noted a few discrepancies in the file: The victim Lydia was 5’2″ tall, and my client Omar was 6’1. But the statement taken by the police indicated that my client had committed the sexual assault, even though Lydia implied that her assailant was not much taller than she was. Also, she believed that her assailant was Hispanic.
Another discrepancy was the fact that the teenagers reported being robbed by three males, but five males were arrested and charged with the crime.
Component 2: Defendant Interview
When I interviewed Omar, he claimed that he wasn’t in the wash when the crime was committed. He’d been at a party at a friend’s house — a problem in and of itself, since he was violating his parole by associating with a known gang member who was at the party, and with whom he’d previously been arrested. Omar told me that he was cutting through the wash on his way home when he came upon four guys he knew from his gang and decided to socialize awhile. That’s when the police found them, sat them on a curb, and identified them.
My client gave me the address where the party was held and the names of witnesses who saw him there that night.
Component 3: Crime Scene Examination, Diagrams, and Photography
I headed to the exact location in the park where the victims said the robbery occurred, at the exact same time of night. The place seemed lit up well enough for someone to identify a person who was close enough to them to commit the acts described. I also noted that the wash was about 500 feet away and oriented east-west, which made it easy to egress to a main road. I walked the path to where my client and the other males had been socializing, and to the curb where police had them sit and be identified. This spot was about a ten-minute walk from where the robbery occurred. I walked to the apartment complex where my client had attended the party, and then took his path back to where he was eventually held and identified. This was about a 15-minute walk in the opposite direction from where the robbery took place.
Component 4: Victim/Witness Background Investigations
Initially, component 4 yielded minimal results. The victims were minors, as were four of the five males arrested, so we could not access their criminal records. My client was the only suspect with an adult criminal history. There were no other witnesses to the actual robbery.
Component 5: Report of Investigation and Testifying
I moved on to component 5 and hit the pay dirt: Lydia and her mother consented to my speaking with her. I brought the photos I’d taken to our interview, and she allowed me to videotape her statement.
Lydia reaffirmed her belief that the person who sexually assaulted her was not much taller than 5’2” and was most likely Hispanic. When I told her that my client was 6’1 and white, Lydia said he could not have been the person who touched her.
I had Lydia go through the police report to see if she saw anything that may have been misinterpreted or misquoted. When she came to the part that identified my client, she said no, that wasn’t accurate. She and her friends were robbed by three Mexicans, which is what she told police. And when they asked her if the other people they arrested in the wash were nearby or saw what happened, she said she wasn’t sure. One of the officers, she now told me, had then coaxed her into saying that my client might have been a lookout and therefore complicit to the robbery.
Lydia told me she’d been upset when she talked to police and just wanted to get out of there. So she told the officer, sure, it was possible, but she didn’t actually see or speak with Omar at any point during the robbery.
After speaking with Lydia, I went to the address where the party had taken place and talked with multiple witnesses who placed my client at the party. One witness had taken a photo with Omar before he left and was talking on the phone with him as he walked home — she was worried about him being out past curfew and wanted to make sure he got home safely.
Her phone records corroborated this and became an invaluable piece of evidence, as it proved that our client was on the phone with her at the time of the robbery. The witness even recalled Omar telling her “that he was going to talk to the little homies” when he encountered them in the wash shooting bottles with a BB gun.
Final Report
I made my report and submitted it to my client’s attorney with the noted discrepancies:
The main victim stating that my client wasn’t there and had not participated in the robbery or touched her in any way.
A witness providing her phone records, which matched up to our client’s, showing that he was on the phone with her when the robbery occurred.
The attorney immediately approached the district attorney’s office. After two months, the DA dropped the robbery, sexual assault, and street terrorism charges. My client did plead guilty to giving a false name to police and violating his probation terms by associating with known gang members. But instead of the 40 years he was facing for the robbery and assault, he got two years — which, you could argue, was the right time for the right crime. Or at least, in the ballpark.
The component method helped set me on an investigative path that did not rely on blind luck and paved the way for optimal results. It allowed for me to get all the facts — the ones that worked in my client’s favor, as well as the ones that did not.
What would have happened to [Omar] if no one had looked at his case and searched hard for all the facts? Most likely, he would be in prison until he was in his 50s.
I often think about Omar. What would have happened to him if no one had looked at his case and searched hard for all the facts? Most likely, he would be in prison until he was in his 50s.
Some people will argue: Who cares? Omar is a gang banger. If he didn’t commit this crime, it’s only a matter of time before he commits another one.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s answer to that was that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
And my own answer to them is this story: When I was 18 years old, the police stopped me late one night as I was walking home from my girlfriend’s house. The officers handcuffed me and sat me on a curb. I did as I was told. I come from a family of law enforcement, so I was taught to be compliant and closed-mouthed in any dealings with police. But when things settled down, I calmly asked the officer who was monitoring me why I was being stopped.
There’s been a carjacking, he said, looking a little embarrassed and noting the obvious: that I’d been walking home and not driving a carjacked vehicle. After 15 minutes, the officers released me.
In the end, no harm was done to me. But I often reflect on what might have happened if the police had changed their minds and taken me in. If they’d coaxed the victim into remembering something that never happened. Or if they’d asked whether it was “possible” that I’d been a lookout.
Don’t tell me that could never have happened. It can and does happen, and not “just” to gang-bangers who’ve violated parole. It happens to law-abiding grocers, high school principals, and foster moms.
But really, why’s it OK for it to happen to anyone? The justice system is not the just-in-case system. We can’t lock people away just in case they might do something wrong in the future.
It us up to us, the gladiators, to take up the fight and even up the odds a little bit. Those odds may still be against us. But we can arm ourselves better, with experience and research, methodology and sheer grit. And then, when we finally enter the arena, let the facts be our weapons.
A postscript:
One day last year, I was headed home from the gym after a workout when a silver Mustang 5.0 ran through a red light and barely missed me. I could hear sirens closing in — clearly, several police cruisers were in pursuit of the Mustang and, it seemed, were forming a perimeter. I’d slowed down when I heard the sirens and was wary of crossing the intersection, even with the light — which is most likely why I made it home safely. The next morning, I opened the newspaper, and there was a picture of Omar. He had stolen the car and crashed it into a tree in someone’s front yard. I don’t know what the takeaway is here. I’m just sad to see that Omar didn’t make more of the second chance he got after that one bad night in the wash.
About the author:
Steve Morrow began his career in private investigations in 2003. As a graduate of the Nick Harris Detective Academy, he learned a variety of investigative techniques including surveillance, skip tracing, asset searches, background investigations, obtaining statements and more. In 2011, he founded the Morrow Detective Agency in Simi Valley, CA. and has successfully conducted more than a thousand investigations.