Al Chipperfield

In the season finale, Chris and Alison talk to  Alan Chipperfield, Capital Crimes Director at the the Public Defender's Office in Jacksonville, Florida.  Al graduated from Washington and Lee and has been practicing law for 45 years: the vast majority of that spent defending people charged with murder and who face the death penalty.  He also served as the Chief Assistant Public Defender for the 8th Judicial Circuit and has practiced civil law. 

We discuss why a lawyer who could do anything would choose to devote his career to representing people facing capital punishment.  We also hear about specific traumatic events in some of Al's clients' backgrounds and discuss broad policy questions about the criminal justice system.

These conversations are not appropriate for children. People with their own traumatic histories should be aware that we discuss violent crimes, exploitation, sexual trauma, child abuse, and incarceration.

Transcript

Chipperfield_Transcript.mp3

Chris Moser [00:00:03] This is trauma and justice, this is a podcast about the ways that people confront and manage trauma in the justice system. We also talk about the ways that law school and training have aided or failed the people we interview and ought to be improved. These conversations touch on seriously troubling topics. This podcast is not appropriate for children. People with their own traumatic histories should be aware that we discuss violent crimes, exploitation, sexual trauma, child abuse and incarceration. 

Alison DeBelder [00:00:36] I'm Alison DeBelder 

Chris Moser [00:00:38] and I'm Chris Moser. 

Alison DeBelder [00:00:39] Our guest today is Al Chipperfield. Al is an assistant public defender in Jacksonville, Florida. He went to law school at Washington and Lee and has been practicing law for forty five years. He is the capital crimes director at the Public Defender's Office and he has previously served as the chief assistant public defender for the Eighth Judicial Circuit in Gainesville for a period. He also spent some time practicing civil law. Welcome, Al. Thank you for being here. 

Al Chipperfield [00:01:07] Well, thanks for having me. 

Alison DeBelder [00:01:09] I think it's fair to say that you are considered the gold standard of being an attorney is what another attorney in Jacksonville referred to us when I was talking to them, getting ready for this. And you could really do anything in the law that you wanted to do. You could do any sort of civil law or appellate law. How do you end up being a lifelong public defender? 

Al Chipperfield [00:01:38] Well, that's a very kind thing to say, I'm not sure how true it is, but I mean, I started out doing commercial litigation for a big firm in Jacksonville and I got into doing criminal because the big firm had to do pro bono work and they let the younger associates in the office do the pro bono work. At that time, it included doing federal habeas cases for two hundred and fifty dollars or something like that that the firm would get, and I did a federal habeas case that resulted in a new trial. It was really interesting and challenging, took up a whole lot more than two hundred and fifty dollars worth of legal work. The guy got a new trial and and I just got excited about that kind of work. So I got that. And some other things caused me to leave that firm, even though I like the work over there. I left and started doing criminal with the public defender's office. 

Alison DeBelder [00:02:31] Did you try that guy's case or just handle the appeal? 

Al Chipperfield [00:02:34] Yeah, we tried it. And at that time I had no criminal experience. And also in the federal judge ordered a new trial. We went back to the state court for the trial and the state judge agreed to appoint somebody to help me who had criminal experience. And that was somebody who later became a circuit judge. We tried the case. This guy was convicted again, took it up on appeal, won another trial. But by that time, I was with the public defender's office, could not represent him again because the new trial had been granted based on ineffective assistance of that public defender's office. He eventually got a third trial and got his sentence reduced and eventually got out and I would see him now and then around the courthouse. 

Alison DeBelder [00:03:18] I feel like that's a pretty good introduction to what the flow of this work is like, right? There's a lot of people getting convicted and sometimes getting another shot at it. 

Al Chipperfield [00:03:27] Yeah, sometimes. I mean, he was lucky to get another shot. Part of it was because the attorney general's office had kind of ignored the case, hadn't paid enough attention to it, and might have might have actually won the federal habeas had they worked a little harder on it. But what was interesting was, you know, there were 50 other lawyers in this law firm and they would stop by my office in the morning and ask what's going on in that case, what's going on? And then go on to the rest of their boring day. And I thought, you know, we kind of need to do this one hundred percent of the day. 

Alison DeBelder [00:04:01] You could also do this most of the day if you were in private practice and probably make a whole lot more money. 

Al Chipperfield [00:04:09] Well, you know, the the private practice of criminal defense law is different. I mean, I've been doing homicides for a long time and rarely can a homicide defendant pay a fee. So a lot of the guys who practice full time criminal defendants in the private world make their money doing DUI and other things where clients can pay or white collar crime or drug crime. And I just didn't ever want to do that. Plus, with a public defender, you can practice law all day, every day. You don't have to worry about paying the light bill and buying pads and paper and hire and fire and people. You just it's the pure practice of law and you're surrounded by people who are doing the same thing. So there's a camaraderie and there's also the ability to walk next door and run a problem by somebody where it's harder to do that in private practice. 

Alison DeBelder [00:05:03] That kind of leads into another area that has been on my mind generally, but frankly, in particular regarding you. It seems to me and forgive me if this is awkward, because I don't mean to disparage your work, I certainly appreciate its import. But you handle murder cases and oftentimes the worst, most difficult murder cases that are in the office are the ones that you specifically are handling. And it seems to me that in those cases, you are really just working at the very margins with these incredibly difficult facts and law for what seemed like sometimes marginal, minimal gains, benefits, wins for the folks that you represent. Is it not possible that if you had spent forty five years applying your skill to handling, say, regular felony line cases where people have more winnable issues, they have more legal issues, they have more factual room to play that you could have gotten a lot more justice achieved for a lot more people kept people out on those 10 year sentences where people lose their life 10 years at a time on those felony line cases. If you were winning a lot more of those getting a lot better dispositions in bulk, might there not have been more justice served on your watch? Does that make sense? 

Al Chipperfield [00:06:40] Yeah, no, I know what you're saying because I have thought about that before, the ability to do more justice, doing other kinds of cases. But other lawyers want to do that. I think there are fewer lawyers who want to do the capital cases where the stakes are so much higher. My older sister taught emotionally disturbed kids for years before she went to medical school, and she used to tell stories about the very, very small gains that her students would make. But she would be thrilled if a kid would come out of the corner and and join the class. And that was a huge accomplishment. And I think you have to settle for smaller rewards. You know, there isn't a whole lot of reward if you you know, if the client winds up getting life instead of death or if he gets forty five years instead of life, I mean, some people would say, well, that's new. Didn't accomplish very much, but it makes a huge difference in the life of that person. Plus it makes a huge difference in the system. And if the system will give a fair shake to somebody who has done something horrible, then it sort of assures that they'll give a fair shake to somebody further down the line who has done something less horrible. I mean, if we can be fair in the worst cases, then surely we can be fair in the lesser cases. There's a tremendous amount of satisfaction, even with a small reward. 

Alison DeBelder [00:08:02] I feel at this point, there's no conversation or crisis that you haven't encountered before, and it must be that when you're dealing with, say, a client or truly a prosecutor or whatever, but say with a client, you must be able to see chess moves 10 steps down the line where this is going to end up. But you still have to go through and have the conversation in the back and forth and clients have to reconcile themselves with issues. Is it frustrating and boring to have kind of those same conversations and be able to see almost the end point about where they'll end up, but still having to go through all of the motions yet again? 

Al Chipperfield [00:08:43] Sometimes frustrating. Well, let me say that, yeah, it's often frustrating, but it's almost never boring. Let me answer it that way. But you have the same thing in any part of the law. When I was doing personal injury work, I always felt like there were cases where if the two lawyers got together at the beginning with a shared set of knowledge of the facts, they could settle the case in 30 minutes. He could figure out what this case is eventually going to settle for. Right. But the defense lawyer has to talk to the insurance company and they said a reserve, and then he's got to work down from the original demand. The plaintiff's lawyer has to make a high demand knowing he's going to settle for something less. And everybody's got to kind of do their job and end up after a year with which you could have ended up with in the first 30 minutes had people been reasonable with a shared set of facts. I think it's the same thing in some of the homicide cases where you can guess at the beginning where you're going to end up. But it takes a while to get there because you've got a prosecutor who thinks it's a really horrible set of facts. He's not heard the explanation about the defendant's background or history or mental health problems or family history. And then you've got victims who are still hurting and grieving. And sometimes time is the only thing that can let you get to that reasonable disposition. You know, especially in the in homicide, things happen so suddenly a family is just torn apart instantly. And the defendant, his life has changed in an instant, you know, once free and able to do what he wants. Now, he's he knows he's going to wind up in prison for a long time. So it takes time for both sides to heal, enough to get to a resolution. But it is frustrating sometimes Jani and then to sometimes hear you feel like you have a prosecutor who hasn't done this for very long, so the way the prosecutor's office is set up, it's a hierarchy. And when you come in, you're misdemeanors, then third degree felonies and then higher felonies. So every day, every case you have is the worst you've ever had right through. And so when they just start working in homicide, it's like, oh, my God, this is the worst case in the world. When they've been doing homicides for years, then they have a little bit better idea where this ought to end up and where it fits in the grand scheme of things. 

Alison DeBelder [00:11:06] I don't know if you want to answer this, you don't have to you don't have to answer, obviously, any of these questions, but at this point, who do you find more frustrating, judges, prosecutors or crummy defense attorneys? 

Al Chipperfield [00:11:19] What they as you know, each of those on any particular day can I mean, judges are frustrating sometimes because they have an agenda different than doing justice, being fair. And that's not all judges. And that's not every day that happens. Just like prosecutors have an agenda different than doing justice and being fair. And defense attorneys, some of them have an agenda about money or their own time or they don't like their clients. And so all of those get frustrating their imperfections in the system. It's still a very, very good system, but there are problems with it, just like any system. 

Alison DeBelder [00:12:01] Do you think that it's a good system or do you think that it's manifestly unjust? I asked that because I think that I am becoming that cynical and I think it is overtly, manifestly unjust because of the systemic racism, but also a number of other reasons. 

Al Chipperfield [00:12:19] Yeah, I think there are problems. I'm not that cynical yet. There are days when you feel like, oh my God, this is the system is so unfair, but there are improvements that could make it better. I mean, in my opinion, you know, we have to do a better job picking the judges. I think we have to do a better job educating prosecutors and having supervision for young prosecutors. And the racial thing is is obvious. We all need to be more sensitive to that. We see it every day. And people who deny that they're just they're just not seeing it, that's all. They're just either they don't want to see it or they just don't have the experience to see it. But it's certainly there there's also a lot of difference that there shouldn't be from county to county or from state to state, Florida. I mean, just look at death row. Our death row is with three hundred and fifty people on death row, and that's down from the four hundred before the first decision that took people off of death row. It shouldn't be that way where other states have five or 10 and a lot of states now don't have any death penalty. I don't I don't think justice should depend on where in this country you live, but it does. 

Chris Moser [00:13:35] Mandatory minimums and the changes in the law. 

Al Chipperfield [00:13:38] Oh, yeah, 

Chris Moser [00:13:39] and the sentencing. I mean, I think that's another big factor that didn't exist previewing, which is 10, 20 life and mandatory minimums. I mean, all those things take the discretion away from judges who might consider mitigation and redemption. 

Al Chipperfield [00:14:00] Yeah, well, in nineteen eighty three, Florida did away with parole rather than improving the parole system. But putting people on the parole board who had experience with determining risk and dangerousness and that sort of thing, they just threw away the whole system. And now you trying to determine at the beginning of a sentence what a person is going to be like 20, 30, 40 years from now. That's a lot harder than seeing how a person develops in prison and then giving him a chance at a parole release when he's older, when he has matured, when he's paid his debt, when he's remorseful about what he did and he wants to change his life. The mandatory minimums give all the power to the prosecutor. Somebody right out of law school or out for two or three years has the power to not throw away the mandatory minimum and insist upon imposing. A judge has no discretion on that. The judge who got elected because he's wiser, because he's got experience, he's the one who's supposed to be doing the sentencing, not the prosecutor. But the mandatory minimums give the prosecutor tremendous power over sentencing when they don't have that experience. 

Alison DeBelder [00:15:07] Do you have any sense of how many people you've represented who are facing capital charges 

Al Chipperfield [00:15:13] over your career? I have kept a record, and the reason I kept a record is because I saw lawyers with experience getting cold at post conviction hearings and also has expert witnesses. I'd have to count up on my chart how many people I've represented charged with first degree murder, but it's well over one hundred. And I know that I've had twenty two penalty phases in front of a jury and a couple others just in front of a judge. 

Alison DeBelder [00:15:41] And just for folks who don't know what a penalty phase is, what does that mean? 

Al Chipperfield [00:15:44] That means you've gone all the way through a capital trial. He's been found guilty and then the jury has to recommend either life or death. So it's like a second trial that involves aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the life history and what kind of led up to the homicide. 

Alison DeBelder [00:16:01] And have you had any clients who have been executed? 

Al Chipperfield [00:16:06] Yes, I've had to one of them, I actually attended his execution at his request, he was electrocuted in 1992. And then I had another that I worked on, his post conviction case. For about two years or three years when I took a break from the party and went into private practice, and he was he was executed later, but I spent a lot of time with him because we redid his penalty phase, basically. 

Alison DeBelder [00:16:37] Can you tell us a little bit about. Witnessing your client's execution in the electric chair, I mean, first of all, why did you choose to do that? 

Al Chipperfield [00:16:48] Well, he asked me to and his mother, his mother didn't want to be there. She wanted me to be there because she wanted someone, you know, close to him to be there. He was. He had real mental problems. He he was never found legally insane, but he had borderline personality disorder and he would really vacillate between being OK and being way, way out there. And he was a volunteer. He wanted me and the lead detective to be there. So we sat side by side in the viewing room when he was electrocuted and we had breakfast together, which was kind of weird. But I knew that detective pretty well from a lot of cases, so it was not too uncomfortable. 

Alison DeBelder [00:17:28] What do you mean by volunteer? 

Al Chipperfield [00:17:30] It means he wanted to die. He was ready to move on to this next life, and he really did. It wasn't just because of a mental illness. He could not stand to live in prison. He would much prefer to be free, but he knew he couldn't be free. He had five death sentences. And he just was ready to leave the world, so that made it a little easier to handle and I had a meeting with him two days before his execution where I talked to him about that. And I was convinced that that's what he really wanted. It wasn't just his illness talking here. He was ready to go. So that made it easier, but it was unsettling and disturbing and I wouldn't choose to do it again. It was barbaric. I think it's less barbaric, you know, lethal injection is much less barbaric, but to watch them put the hood on and, you know, the leather straps and the reaction when the current hits, that was really was disturbing for me. And it was disturbing for the detective to. 

Alison DeBelder [00:18:37] Was anybody else there besides you and the detective? 

Al Chipperfield [00:18:40] Oh, yeah, there were reporters and other witnesses. I didn't meet any of them. I didn't want to. 

Alison DeBelder [00:18:47] What did you do? With the rest of your day, what do you do after you've witnessed them kill somebody? 

Al Chipperfield [00:18:55] It was it happened really early in the morning, I had to get up like at three o'clock in the morning to go to Stark. And they it was weird, they serve breakfast at the prison and it was bad food, so the detective and I went to breakfast together afterwards and then I just went home. I didn't want to work that day. 

Alison DeBelder [00:19:17] Did you talk to his mother? 

Al Chipperfield [00:19:20] Oh, yeah, I called her and told her that it all went well and it did it. There were no problems with the execution. 

Alison DeBelder [00:19:26] Would you do that again if somebody asked you to? 

Al Chipperfield [00:19:30] If they ask me to, I would. But I. I mean, it's not something that you enjoy doing, but I would do it for the client. I mean, there are people who have witnessed a number of them and they're mostly the post conviction lawyers by that time because, you know, the post conviction lawyers have been doing their most recent work. I think the reason that he wanted me there is because I had represented him in three different cases. In fact, all of the ones where he got death. 

Alison DeBelder [00:20:03] Do you have cases, particular facts 

Al Chipperfield [00:20:07] or 

Alison DeBelder [00:20:08] pieces of evidence that stay with you? The trouble in. 

Al Chipperfield [00:20:17] You know, I really don't. The things that stay with me are the facts about my client's life. I think that bothers me more than anything else. When you dig into the lives that some of these guys on death row have had, what they went through as children, that stays with me more than the facts of the grisly facts of the murder. But I do know defense lawyers who have had cases where they just can't get the images out of their mind. And it's usually, you know, it involves children or it involves mutilated bodies or things that are really hard. I did have one where it comes to me once in a while, and that is an elderly couple who were buried alive. You know, that that image. Of that, being in a grave together kind of sticks with you. But more often, it's the facts of my client's life. 

Alison DeBelder [00:21:13] I had actually written down a question which was, do you think in your forty five years, you've witnessed more trauma from your clients lives investigating, getting to know your clients backgrounds or the actual facts of murderers themselves? 

Al Chipperfield [00:21:31] Well, because I'm closer to the client and his family, I think that's more disturbing to me, that sticks with me longer than the facts of the murder itself. I'm sure that for the victim's family and the prosecutor, it's just the opposite. 

Alison DeBelder [00:21:46] For folks who are listening, who haven't done this work, I'm wondering if you can give some examples of the things that you've learned that clients have experienced. 

Al Chipperfield [00:21:58] I had a case where a guy was raised out of state. His mother left him and his siblings in the middle of the night. And never came back. The children were moved into a trailer. The little girl who was about six years old or seven, did the cooking for the children. There was no adult living in the trailer for a period of time and then an adult moved in, but he worked all the time and was gone even at night. This little girl would cook at the stove and they had to get a Coca-Cola crate so she could stand up high enough to reach the dials on the stove. And the same thing at the sink, if she would wash dishes. Another client was raised in a meth house where his mother was sort of like the meth queen of the neighborhood, but it was also a flophouse where the meth users would stay so on their living room wall, where normal families would hang pictures of the kids or artwork or whatever they had painted and drawn right on the wall. Not not hanging, but drawing on the wall was a skeleton's head with snakes coming out the eyes and daggers and human pictures of human sex organs nearby. And that's what this kid woke up to every morning because he would normally sleep on the couch. The only time he wouldn't sleep on the couch was when these meth addicts who had spent the night were having sex in the living room. Then they'd put him in the bedroom. And that was pretty horrible to think that that's the way he was raised and then once you know that, then the jump from that to he committed this murder isn't such a big jump. It's pretty predictable that he's going to have trauma in his life that's going to affect him much later in life. I mean, those kinds of childhoods are not unusual. Another one, it wasn't a capital case, but a 14 year old boy killed his father. We got the case, learned that the prosecutor was going to try to indict him for first degree murder even at that age. So did some early work and learned a little bit about his past and offered to put him on in front of the grand jury because he had been abused for 14 years by the man that he killed. And the facts were that he had chased this man around the house and shot him in the back three times and killed him. And it appeared from the scene that the man had just been getting ready to go to work because he had his bag lunch right in front of his body. And the three times he had shot him because he was getting up and that didn't sound like a real good reason to shoot him again just because he's getting up. But then what we learned was that this man had not only beaten him that morning, he had beaten him for 14 years. He'd also beaten his wife. He had made her lose a baby one time by beating her. And he had sexually abused this little boy's sister. So we offered to put this kid on in front of the grand jury, which is very unusual, and they did that, but the prosecutor apparently didn't ask the right questions, even though I had told him what some of the background was. So the grand jury indicted him for second degree murder. By the time we got to trial, picking a jury, very often you have jurors who say they can't be fair because they've heard about the facts of the case and cannot be fair to the defendant in this instance. I think at least five jurors were excused for cause because they said they could not be fair to the state because they'd heard about this man. He was notorious and in the small town and the little boy was found not guilty. And I can remember sitting next to him and his feet didn't even reach the floor. He sat in the chair and just kind of dangled his feet. And when we'd have recesses, he would go out in the hall and do this moonwalk, the Michael Jackson moonwalk with his little brother. We met with the jury in the street afterwards because they wanted to talk to us and they said that they had decided the case within the first few minutes of their deliberations, but they talked for like another hour about what might happen to him and what kind of treatment he could get, which was pretty touching. And usually jurors don't talk to defense attorneys after the verdict. So it was a feel good story, justice prevailed, the right thing happened, he was found not guilty. But then, like a lot of feel good stories in the public defender's office, it didn't turn out that well. You know, 14 years of being abused doesn't just get erased. And he turned out to get into trouble and he got in the kind of trouble that you would predict he was mean to women sexually and physically. So years later, I had to testify in his Jimmy Rice proceeding, which was really an emotional kind of thing, to try and get this new judge to understand the significance of the trauma that he had experienced in his childhood. The last I heard, he was going off to Jimmy Rice treatment, which is like being in prison. 

Alison DeBelder [00:27:14] Do you recall your direct of your client in that case and how you conveyed his past abuse to the jury? 

Al Chipperfield [00:27:27] And one really interesting moment in that trial was we had accumulated a big group of weapons that this man had used on his children, a fan belt, a vacuum hose, extension cords, some metal objects. And as they were introduced through the children's testimony, we put them into a cardboard box. And it wasn't the defendant, but it was his little brother who did this. And I I said to him, can you look through this box and tell me if you recognize these things? And he gets up and he had to stand up off the chair and he's digging in the box and you can hear the stuff moving around. He's looking he says, yes. And I said, are those things that your father beat you with? And he said, My daddy don't beat me with everything in this box. You know, which was pretty emotional and there was another emotional moment, too, when we had a psychologist who testified about battered person syndrome and he was describing how they discovered that this is a syndrome and why. Women and children don't leave when they can, and it's called learned helplessness, and the way psychologists learned about this was they would take a dog and they put him in a cage and they would shock him at one end of the cage. And at first the dog would just get up and go to the other end of the cage where he wouldn't get shot. After doing that for a while, then they would put a shocker at the other end of the cage so they'd shock him, he'd go to the other end of the cage and he'd get shot. He'd get up and move to the other end. He'd get shot, he'd move. But after a while of doing that, he would just lie there and take a. You know, and having that explained about dogs. Sitting next to a little boy was emotional for me and for the jury, I mean, everybody was in tears. 

Alison DeBelder [00:29:32] I'm wondering where you learned all of the things, because they didn't have the kind of training programs they have now for attorneys who are going to be representing people facing the death penalty. And when I think about where I learned the things that I know, I mean, half of the things I learned, I learned from Al, Chipperfield. And I'll give you an example. I was in a misdemeanor courtroom as a new lawyer, and I had a difficult case at that time, it's a while ago now. People, especially prosecutors, weren't as sensitive to human trafficking issues and sex work as hopefully I think they're becoming now. And it was a difficult case. I had a client with maybe like borderline intellectually disabled. She was in a relationship with somebody who was her also her pimp, but was her boyfriend. And she kept getting arrested for hitting him, even though he was clearly the sort of ringleader of the whole operation and the abusive one. She had had her jaw wired shut. As it turns out. Later, he would hit her in the jaw. Anyway, I was I think it was a prostitution case. Maybe it was a domestic battery case then I didn't really know what was happening or what to do. And you were sitting and talking with her, with me for some reason. And you I think maybe you asked her or maybe you said to me, but she was in jail outfits, which just look like scrubs, and she had scars on her arms and they were different sizes and they were circular. And I think you asked her about them. And of course, it turned out that the victim in this case, that she was accused of having struck regularly disciplined her by putting out cigarets and cigars on her arm. Mm hmm. And of course, you recognize that immediately. And it's not something now. I never miss that again. And I saw that again in the future. But I feel like a lot of those things I learned from you telling me. So I learned from you telling me about this trial that you had. And the box when I had clients who had been beaten by family members, I didn't stop at they were beaten by family members. I would ask them, what were you beaten with? And I would ask their siblings what they were beaten with because sometimes one kid was beaten with other things and go through the list. When somebody said they had been hit by somebody, I would say, what does that mean? Open fists, closed fist with a thing and often it means strangled. It means strangled until you lost consciousness. All those things. And I feel like those are things that I learned from you and probably other county court mentors. But you didn't have, I assume, county court mentors and you didn't have the training programs that people go to. How do you accrue that knowledge? Just by being curious and listening? 

Al Chipperfield [00:32:24] Well, that's one of the advantages of the public defender's office. Going back to something I said earlier, you know, it's the pure practice of law. And you come into a system where other people have already been there before you got there. I mean, I learned from Bob Link and Bill White that, again, is an Finnell who is Bizzell. And then you learn also by reading case law. I mean, I'm a believer in reading Florida Law Weekly every week. And you read other facts, situations, what other lawyers have done. We did have seminars back then, but you're right that there wasn't the intense training program for capital litigation that we have now. And then you just you just curious to I mean, you ask questions and you begin to recognize that there are only so many ways that you can abuse a person through, like so many ways to commit these crimes. And I think you just absorb try to absorb everything. 

Chris Moser [00:33:19] I was going to ask you about your legal pad method, because you have a very particular way of doing things. Do that works for you. And I was wondering if you could explain the origins of that. And with time and all the differences that have happened with technology, if that's a tried and true method and how you are able to be prepared using this unique way that you do it. 

Al Chipperfield [00:33:52] Sure. I know what you're talking about. You're talking about cutting out a yellow legal pad. But let me say this. I haven't had an original thought in years. I copy off of people and I still to when I got out of law school, there was a lawyer at Mahoney Hadlow named George Hudspeth, who was the head of our litigation department. And I saw George do that. And I thought, wow, that's really cool. So I started doing it. It doesn't work as well for bigger cases, but for smaller cases. I just cut up the margins of a yellow pad and I write the names of the witnesses for Dyar opening statement motions and Limani and the names of the state witnesses and then JOA to remind me not to forget to move for judgment of acquittal. And then the defense witnesses and closing argument and jury instructions so I can put it all in one pad where when I have an idea about cross examining a witness or impeaching a witness, it reminds me that I also have to set up that impeachment by the witness who heard that person say something else. So it helps me to have all that in one place rather than spread around. 

Chris Moser [00:34:54] Can I ask you a logistical question? Going back to the box, I guess that torture box that the little boy looked at and I don't know if this is true because I wasn't there, but I think you also had a very strategic delivery of how those materials are presented. I know in talking to Judge Guy years ago, I don't think it was the same case, but how you would methodically sometimes lay materials down in front of the jury. Do you also put the for lack of a better word, like a presentation or theatrical components in that pad as well? Or is it mostly the logistical, factual things to remind yourself to do? 

Al Chipperfield [00:35:43] It's mostly the factual things and also the place where that fact can be found. All right. The page or the police report next to a fact in case I get a different response than I know where to go to impeach the witness. I think most lawyers do that. What you're thinking about with Judge Guy was really something he did in a case I had where it was one of the best beginnings of a closing argument I've ever heard. I had a client who they had a video recording, a surveillance film of part of the crime. They had a wire that his girlfriend had done where he confessed to the crime and they had a bag with fingerprints on it that were his fingerprints that was connected to the crime scene. So they had three pieces of very critical, very damning physical evidence. And when John got up to do his closing argument, he didn't say a word. He went to the evidence table and he picked up those three things and very deliberately walked over to the jury rail and put them on the jury. Real one at a time. Kuhn, I was looking for a place to hide. 

Chris Moser [00:36:51] That's brilliant. 

Al Chipperfield [00:36:52] Yeah, because he had not said a word in dead silence, which is unusual in a courtroom. And it's an attention getter when you're quiet. And of course, he didn't stop there. He went on with his argument. But those, you know, those 60 seconds or 90 seconds or so where he was dead quiet and he did that were extremely powerful. 

Chris Moser [00:37:15] And you went to trial because it was a death penalty case, I'm assuming, and there was really no other that was the reason for the trial, right? 

Al Chipperfield [00:37:24] That's true. And that felon got a death sentence. But then later, it wasn't a unanimous verdict for death. So when he first came out, he got sentenced and he's serving life. 

Alison DeBelder [00:37:38] Al, have there been any cases that you've been involved with that have changed your conduct elsewhere in your life? 

Al Chipperfield [00:37:51] Yeah, one in particular. It was a robbery murder where there was store surveillance inside a convenience store and the client could be seen entering the convenience store from the outdoor camera to then he's picked up by the indoor camera in the indoor camera. You can also see an elderly fella at the counter receiving change from something he had just purchased. And the elderly guy turns around and he starts walking out of the store before he put his change into his wallet. So it was visible. So he crossed paths with the defendant who's walking into the store. And you could just about see the defendant kind of glance down, see the money, and then immediately the defendant turned around and followed that man outside the store and outside stabbed him, took his money, and the stab wounds were fatal. Ever since I saw that, I never walk away from a cash register or a counter without putting my money in my pocket or in my wallet before I turn around, because that was clearly a crime of opportunity with no thought beforehand. But that instinct or that immediate decision, horrible decision that I'm going to get that guy's money because he's older, because I've got a knife or because I can or because I need money or whatever. But I'm certain that that thought was not in that man's mind until he actually saw the money. And there are a lot of crimes that happen like that. Just an impulse, an uncontrollable impulse, just a quick decision. That's a horrible decision that changes the lives of so many people. 

Alison DeBelder [00:39:35] That reminds me of when I was when I was a division chief, we got all the gun cases in a courtroom and so there was just a stretch where all I had were armed robberies, just a slew of them. And so many of them were at gas stations that I ended up with this real specific way that I would get gas. Mostly I would send Joe to go and get gas for me because I had hung out at so many gas stations because they were crime scenes. There were no gas stations to go to in Jacksonville that I didn't think of as just a place to go and get robbed, that I would pull in, I would scan the whole area. I would always have my credit card out, my keys in my hand. I would jump out. I was looking around. I would jump back in my car. I would not take the time to put my credit card away before I drove out of the gas station. It was like a military maneuver for kind of a similar reason 

Al Chipperfield [00:40:31] and, you know, the same kind of thing. I mean, I have told my kids about things I've learned in my cases, and I don't know if it sinks in or not. But so often, you know, young people commit crimes in groups. And I've told my kids, you're only as smart as the dumbest guy in your group. You're only as safe as the most unsafe person in your group. If there's a guy in your group who wants to fight, you're in on it. So just you got to be careful who you hang out with. And I've I've also told them, don't shoot the bird at another driver who cut you off. Don't yell at him. Don't make a dirty face. Ignore him because you never know who's out there on the edge and will retaliate after some sort of road rage thing. I mean, there are lessons that you learn because you see how easy it is to be a victim or to be involved in a crime that you don't want to be involved in. 

Alison DeBelder [00:41:25] Yeah, I remember a colleague of ours would always sit when we went to restaurants, she insisted on sitting facing the door because she wanted to see who was coming in with a plan. Yeah, and we share a skewed view of the world. Are most of your friends, criminal defense attorneys, or do you have? Would you say that most of your friends in your private life don't do the same work? 

Al Chipperfield [00:41:53] No. Most of my friends are of rugby players or neighbors. No, I've got a lot of friends who are who are defense attorneys, but that's not all. But I think defense attorneys are interesting. I think that conversation about these cases and these issues is interesting at a cocktail party, you know, if there's somebody who I know is a criminal defense attorney, I'm going to want to talk to that person just because it's interesting. Talk to me. If you're interested in your work, then you're I think you're interested in the people who do the work. 

Alison DeBelder [00:42:26] I agree, and that's where I gravitate for the best stories, but I also think that people and maybe not just defense attorneys, I'm sure law enforcement officers, too, I feel like it can sort of warp your view of the world. It's a view of the world that isn't shared by all the other parents of your kid's classmates. Yeah. Do you find that that's true, that you see things a little bit differently? 

Al Chipperfield [00:42:55] Yeah. And in today's climate, where people are either conservative or liberal and nothing in between or they're Democrat or Republican, it can be uncomfortable if you wind up at a party, you know, around people who are super law enforcement and how can you represent those people in combat. But I try and see the person rather than the views. And I also I think we have a little bit of an obligation to try and educate people. So when people ask me, man, how can you do that? I try to explain that and make them see that what comes around goes around. And when you when it comes around to you, you'll understand why you've got to have a lawyer. I had a roommate one time who just used to trash the work I did. And then he got arrested for DUI and thought it was unfair. And he admitted that, yeah. Now I kind of understand why you do what you do, because it came around to him. And when I did for a while, I did a class at the police academy when the new recruits and they wanted to know what the role of a public defender was. And that's the way I used to teach it to them, is, you know, if your grandmother, who's going, you know, maybe getting a little bit senile, steal something, well, then she's a thief. She ought to get 60 days in jail. No, no, no, not my grandmother. Well, that's how you understand it. When it becomes personal, then the constitutional rights are no longer technicalities. They're very important. 

Alison DeBelder [00:44:19] Is there anything in particular that you wish folks who don't do this work knew about the death penalty? 

Al Chipperfield [00:44:29] Oh, yeah, how how unnecessary it is and how expensive it is. I think most people think it's a lot more expensive to keep someone in prison for life than it is to execute them. But that is far from the truth. And that is because we have a due process system that requires so much to be done before that person is actually executed, it takes up so much of the time and talent in the criminal justice system that it just Alison if you believe in the death penalty, it's a luxury we can't afford. It just doesn't work in a system where due process is required and it's just stupid. I mean, there are so many other things I could say about it, it's racist, it's unfair, it discriminates against people who are poor. There's way too much room for error, as illustrated by the fact that what more than one hundred and thirty people now have been released from death row because of innocence, where we really believe they were guilty when they were put there in Florida especially. I mean, we lead the nation in, you know, innocent people being released from death row. 

Alison DeBelder [00:45:37] Do you think that the criminal justice system that we have currently serves the victims and survivors of crime? Well. 

Al Chipperfield [00:45:47] Well, better than it used to victims and survivors now have a lot of rights in Florida, and in the early years when I was doing this work, they were largely ignored by the prosecutors. In fact, oftentimes we had more contact with the victims than the prosecutor did. I've had victims call to say, when's the next court date? What's going on? And I would tell them, the victim, you know, there's this pendulum in history that goes back and forth and it has swung way in favor of the victims. I think you could argue now that sometimes they have way too much power in controlling the disposition of the case because to them it's the worst case ever, because it involves them where a prosecutor has a better perspective about where a case fits in, like maybe they have a little too much power, but they're pretty well served. I think sometimes they're lied to, though, in the death penalty context, I think some victims are encouraged to seek a death penalty because it will somehow give them closure. That I don't think that could be further from the truth. The truth is that when you get a death sentence, it lasts for a long, long time before it is ever before a person is ever executed. Mean, I've got a guy on death row. He's been there since nineteen eighty five. I'm not even sure that the victims or the survivors of the victims were still around, they didn't ever get closure from an execution. And even if an execution takes place, I'm not sure that ever ends the pain. So maybe the victims need to be a little bit better educated about what's going to result from seeking a death sentence. 

Chris Moser [00:47:19] Can I ask you a question about victim impact statements if you consider them an aggravating factor, even though they're not delineated as an aggravating factor? So in most state systems that have the death penalty, there are aggravating factors and mitigating factors. An example of an aggravating factor would be if someone killed a police officer or if someone killed someone below a certain age or above a certain age. Can you explain to the listeners what a victim impact statement is and what role that should play or what weight that should be given to the decision makers, whether it be the jury or the judge hearing someone read a statement like that? 

Al Chipperfield [00:48:05] Yeah. You know, in the 80s, the United States Supreme Court flip flopped on victim impact. For a while, the case was the victim impact statements were not admissible at a penalty phase. And then just four years passed and then the Supreme Court reversed themselves and said victim impact statements can come in for the purpose of showing the uniqueness of the victim as a human being and the loss to society as a result of their death. So what typically happens, at least in our jurisdiction, is those impact statements are read either by the survivor or by a victim advocate reading them for the survivor because the survivor would cry and and not be able to get through the statement. We're given those impact statements in advance so that we can object to parts of them because they're not supposed to make comments about the defendant or what the proper penalty should be. So they're carefully restricted, but they're very, very emotional. The death penalty is supposed to be determined in Florida based on aggravating factors and mitigating circumstances. Victim impact statements don't fit into either one. So why are they relevant? That's the legal question. If they're not relevant to eggs or mitts, they're not relevant at all. I've made that argument dozens of times and failed each time because the United States Supreme Court on the Florida statute allows them. So what part are they supposed to play? What's a jury supposed to do with them? The jury isn't told. They're just told they're allowed to hear them, but they are never mitigating. There are always aggravating and they add emotion and passion to a proceeding which is supposed to be based on reason and careful thought and judgment. I've always thought that they shouldn't be allowed, but they are allowed in order to do those two things that the Supreme Court said. The alternative argument is, don't let the jury here because it's too emotional. A jury can't handle that, can't make the distinctions between things that they can hear and things that are relevant and let the judge hear them. But I've not won on that argument either. There's one other problem with it, and that is the victim impact evidence tends to make the jurors want to compare the victim with the defendant. The defendant will never win that comparison. Well, hardly ever, unless you have a criminal as a victim, which you have sometimes, but not normally in a death penalty case. Normally, those cases would work out before you ever got to trial. And it's not fair for the jury to consider well, the defendant is a horrible person, the victim was a good person. Therefore, I'm going to lean towards the death penalty. That should have no place at all in the death decision. And the worthiness or not of the victim, whether he was, you know, a good person in the community or not, shouldn't be a deciding factor in whether he should get the defendant should get a death sentence. 

Chris Moser [00:50:55] It's also totally arbitrary, because if you have a family for religious reasons or anything else that believes in forgiveness, that will drive the outcome and not the specifics of the case. So it just seems very fundamentally unfair. 

Al Chipperfield [00:51:11] Yeah, and when you have that kind of family, you can't put them on to say they don't want the death penalty either. That's not admissible. You can put them on to say things that might lead the jury to believe they don't want the death penalty, but they can't say that. Just like they can't say we want the death penalty. 

Alison DeBelder [00:51:29] Al, I wanted to ask if there was anything that you had been contemplating in anticipation of this conversation that we haven't had an opportunity to discuss? 

Al Chipperfield [00:51:41] Well, there is one thing, and that is the trauma on the defense attorney and also the defense attorneys family. You know, I don't feel like I suffered trauma from my work, but I think my family does because the work is intense. When you're in trial, you're so focused on the trial, you you're physically absent from home and you're mentally absent from home when you're there because you're you're thinking about the trial, especially if it's a trial that takes a week, more than a day or two. And I don't know if I would call that, I wouldn't normally call that trauma, but it impacts a family. And then as far as the defense attorneys go, you know, a lot of people burn out on this work because it just is thankless. You're constantly battling the defendant's family, you're constantly battling a defendant and not always. These are generalizations, but a lot of our clients are not grateful for what we do because they didn't hire us and pay us money with a cheap suit. Lawyers and some of them don't even believe we're real lawyers until you tell them they think that being a PD is something you do before you become a real lawyer. So the clients and their families are often ungrateful, you get blamed for things by the judge that are really the prosecutor's fault, you got prosecutors who think that you're worthless because you're representing deadbeats and bad people and the financial reward isn't as great as you would hope it would be. It's not as much as the prosecutors earn. So a lot of people burn out on it, so I think that you have to be real committed to the work to stay for a long time. And what you're committed to is not a particular client, you're just committed to the whole process and the Constitution and believing that fairness will result if the process is fair. 

Alison DeBelder [00:53:22] Do you think that some people are just cut out for this work, are better suited for it? 

Al Chipperfield [00:53:28] Probably. Yeah, I think probably you have to be able to lay it aside. You have to be able to be objective. I mean, you can't you can bleed for everybody that you represent, but you but you have to control it, you know, and if you if you get real wrapped up in emotionally connected to every client, you're just not going to last. And what I always tell clients is that what I'm concerned about is the proof, what can they prove in court? You have to be able to look at it from afar and not just get all wrapped up in it. And that's often hard to do. Some of our clients, you really get to like them. I mean, they're nice people who did a horrible thing. But they did do horrible thing, and if the state can prove it and the system says you paid the penalty. 

Alison DeBelder [00:54:18] Al, thank you for taking so much time out of your day. I have just a couple of things to read. Terry wrote me this. I learned everything I know about practicing law from Al Chipperfield. He was my division chief in the nineteen eighties when we were both young lawyers. I've been lucky enough to know him, work with him and learn from him ever since. He is a part of the reason I return to the public defender's office in twenty seventeen to work with him. And I thought that really captured what everybody had to say when I was chatting with them. Everybody said just precisely what Terry had to say. Bill White wrote to me and said if Al had an ego to match his talent, he would be a major network legal pundit. If politics had not blocked his appointment to the bench time after time, he would be approaching retirement as a respected jurist. But we have been fortunate that he has remained in his perfect role as a mentor who leads by example. He takes the most difficult cases, stays in the arena and fights for the people society has rejected. I have the highest regard for him as a colleague, a trial partner and a friend. And then the last one I was emailing with Bob Link, and he wrote me an email and said, Alison, thank you for asking me to write a few words about Al. As you know, he is one of the finest lawyers in the country, as well as one of the most dedicated in the courtroom. He is always professional, courteous and never loses his temper, even when he has reason to. He is always prepared on both the facts of the case and the applicable law. These traits led Steve and Gary Patrick to ask me to try to persuade Al to leave the office and join our firm. I was successful in luring him from the office, though a substantial signing bonus helped, one of his conditions in joining the firm was that he could continue to do criminal defense work in state and federal court, including court appointments. This kept him satisfied for a while, but he missed the public defender work and eventually returned to the office. He did try one civil personal injury case while he was with. It was a case that no one else in the firm wanted. So he had to try it solo. It involved an attractive young lady who suffered a broken nose when a can of some type of produce fell off a shelf in a Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart's defense, of course, was that she knocked the cat off the shelf while reaching for another item. The client claimed that her nose was now crooked and she had lost her chance at a modeling career. I never saw any crookedness, but Al convinced the jury that it existed and that Wal-Mart was negligent and obtained a verdict that was many times what had been offered. The one might think that someone who is is as meticulous as Al in his profession must be rather rigid in his personal life. That was not true of Al. Did you know he won a prize at a nightclub in a male dance contest? Think amateur Chippendale's. I'm not sure what part of his body was the object of the female audience's approval. Al played for an amateur rugby team for many years. Yes, his car had a bumper sticker that read it takes leather balls to play rugby. Rugby is like playing full contact football without pads after several knee injuries, including surgery and a broken jaw. Al finally retired. He learned to sing bawdy songs with his team mates and was known to entertain us with them at seminars. The point I'm trying to make is that Al is as personable and laidback out of the courtroom as he is talented and professional inside the courtroom. I hope some of this is useful. That's what Bob said. 

Al Chipperfield [00:58:15] Well, those are those are very kind words I. Especially from Bob and Bill, because they were mentors of mine. They are both very fine lawyers. And Terry, I'm so glad that she came back here. So but I do have a couple of comments. It was a tough contest that the rugby club participated in when there were male dancers at the Phenix, which was an old bar at century 21. And we came on at intermission and we were wearing rugby shorts and we danced to Singing in the Rain. Oh, and I did not win. Another guy won and we got 50 bucks and we put it in our rugby club, Treasury. 

Alison DeBelder [00:58:58] Is there photographic evidence? 

Al Chipperfield [00:59:01] There's more to the story, a whole lot more to the story, because we did it twice. But I don't think there are photographs, just memories. As for the case, I try to. Patrick and Patrick, I actually tried three to solo winning one and losing one that the one that we won, it was Plato that was stacked high. And it wasn't through my skill that we won. The defense lawyer made the mistake of getting some cartons of Plato and actually in cross-examination of my client piling them up in front of her because he wanted to demonstrate. Tell me when to stop about how high this was, because he thought it was just a couple of rows, this stack higher and higher. And she starts leaning back it and it fell. The whole thing fell. Oh, no, 

Alison DeBelder [00:59:55] poor defense attorney. 

Al Chipperfield [00:59:56] And I was thinking, wow, he he just won me my case and he was just inexperienced, I guess. So it wasn't anything great that I did. And she deserved the money. So you had to go through surgery. 

Chris Moser [01:00:08] Furneaux Thank you. Al you're our last person. It's been a really amazing experience. I'm glad that you're our last guest of the season. 

Al Chipperfield [01:00:18] Well, thanks. 

Alison DeBelder [01:00:21] Trauma injustice is created by Chris Moser and Alison DeBelder and engineered by Chris Higgins. Thanks for listening. Please be sure to like review and read us. It means a lot.