One Witness Interview Can Change the Outcome of a Case

Can a single witness interview change the entire trajectory of a case?

The answer is definitely yes.

And in this piece, we'll go through 3 cases that I worked on, 2 that were civil plaintiff litigation, and one that was an internal investigation, in which one single interview literally changed the trajectory of that case.

I spent 30 years conducting civil plaintiff and criminal defense litigation investigations for attorneys, as well as conducting internal investigations for businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies.

And I now work with businesses and law firms in helping to make sure that their staff level up their witness interviews to maximize their results.

If you'd like to schedule a call and learn more about the services I provide and how they can help your team level up your interviews, and maximize your revenue and also get the best, most powerful facts that you can in order to make decisions.

The first case was a civil plaintiff case involving a police shooting, and the person who was killed was actually shot to death in their pajamas in their backyard by 2 members of the Albuquerque Police Department.

And because of the location of where this shooting occurred, the law enforcement version was that the decedent had tried to take their weapon from them.

And so they shot him literally in self-defense.

When I was brought in on this case, it was immediately after the shooting happened. There were no police reports available yet, there weren't even dispatch calls to use to prepare for witness interviews.

The attorney had me go out and canvass the neighborhood, but that I made sure I got all of the neighbors and people who might have a chance to actually have seen what went on.

And when I got to the final house, which was the house directly behind the decedent's home, there was a woman home, and it turned out that this woman was the person who had called 911 and she had witnessed through a little hole in the fence, pretty much the entire incident leading up to, and at the time of the shooting.

So literally, I became the 1st person to talk with the person who actually called in this situation.

And what she had to say directly contradicted what the 2 officers involved in the shooting said.

Now keep in mind, there was nobody else home at the house. There was no one else in the yard when the shooting occurred.

So literally, until we interviewed this person, the only version that there was based upon the 2 officers' versions of acting in self-defense.

When I interviewed her, she was very clear that the supposed struggle between the officers and the decedent grabbing the officer's gun didn't happen.

So now we have two very different versions of events.

We've got one in which the officers acted in self-defense.

We have the other in which, in fact, not only did the officers not act in self-defense, but the actions they attributed to the decedent in order to claim self-defense did not occur.

And instead, they shot him in the back while he was on the ground on all fours, no struggle involved. He was shot in cold blood.

When this case went forward, It took 2 years for law enforcement to finally conduct an internal investigation into this shooting and actually interview this person.

That's despite law enforcement, having the 911 dispatch records, to know and be able to identify the person who called in the emergency situation in the 1st place.

They did not do so, which is not so different from other internal investigations where they're really were not after an outcome that was based upon the facts.

They're actually interested in a skewed outcome that eliminated their liability.

Now, there are many times that officers testify that their lives are being threatened, that their safety is being threatened, and that when they shoot someone, it literally is in self-defense. And it certainly can be that way.

But, in this case it was not. We ended up going to trial.

And at trial, the judge ruled that the officer's testimony was not credible, that the witness that I had interviewed, that her statement was, in fact, credible, and that it did not appear in any way, shape, or form, that the officers had acted in self defense.

What that really meant was taking the case from the narrative that the officers, who were  united in their testimony, acted in self defense, to a version from an independent eyewitness, who credibly testified at the trial that the shooting was not in self-defense and that it happened in ways very different from the officers' version.

And as a result, the judge dismissed what the officers had to say as untruthful, because the judge found the witness that I had interviewed to be credible.

And that one witness interview really did change the entire scope of this case.

Here's an internal investigation I worked on where one single interview altered the outcome of this case.

I was conducting an independent fact-finding internal investigations into allegations of a workplace violence incident.

One of their employees, who happened to be a center director of an early childhood education center, who was accused of actually hitting a young child on the head.

Now, we're talking about an actual strike, not just a little tiny tap, not just a please pay attention.

This was a forceful strike on top of the head, and we know that there's definite safety risks for the child based upon something like that.

Now, this investigation was a little bit different in that when the complaint was brought forward to the employee equity office. It was done by the child's family, and they were not part of the city system.

Normally when I conducted internal investigations for the city, those were based on complaints from someone that worked for the city against someone else who worked for the city..

During the incident, there were multiple witnesses about what occurred. But most were other little kids.

But there was one witness who happened to work for the center director. And this person's version of events did not help the center director and her denial of the incident.

In fact, he saw her strike hard on top of the child's head, risking serious injury.

This was not directive touching.This was not something just to get the child's attention.

According to this witness this was literally a hard strike on that small child's head.

And of all places hitting the child on the head, we know that children's brains don't form until they get older, and that there's a significant safety risk for a child who's been hit in the head.

As this was an internal investigation, I interviewed the complainants first.

Then I interviewed the respondent, who denied the incident, and got the names of center employees that were present at the time.

I then went ahead and conducted those interviews where the witness who worked for the center director recounted the entire incident. Very credibly too. 

After she was removed from her position, the center director filed a lawsuit. She refused to accept the investigation that I had conducted.

During depositions for this case, the guy that I had interviewed that had implicated the center director changed his testimony. 

All of a sudden, he never saw the incident, and, he couldn't imagine the center director ever engaging in anything but directive touching. He basically walked back everything he had told me.

This case ended up going to trial, and at trial, the kid took the stand, to testify on behalf of the center director.

But this time, when he testified he was handed a copy of the interview summary that I did for his interview so that he could refresh his recollection.

At that point, when confronted with his own words, he changed his testimony back to what it was originally, where it was very clear that the child had been struck by the center director, and that this was not just some kind of directive touching, but was an actual strike.

Because of that change in testimony. The City of Albuquerque moved for a directed verdict once the plaintiffs had presented their case. The judge granted the directed verdict, kicking out the case, based upon the witnesses, verifying what he had initially told me.

And the final case where a single witness interview changed the outcome of a case was another law enforcement excess force case.

I used to do a lot of those.

 In this case, a young African-American man who worked as a law librarian at one of the bigger downtown Los Angeles law firms, was on his way home in a rental convertible from his engagement party.

He had to go through a bit of a rough area, and became aware of someone driving aggressively behind him.

He initially thought that he was being followed by a gang member so he kept going. But then he noticed that it was the sheriffs right on his tail so he pulled over.

The sheriffs' deputies climbed on back of the vehicle and began beating him because the convertible top was down.

They beat him with their flashlights, they beat him with their night sticks.

They beat him so badly that the D-Rang for the seatbelt was deformed because of the force level of the impact from the strikes from the officers.

The officer reported that the person who was beaten was a member of a gang, and was involved in criminal activity that threatened public safety.

I conducted a lot of interviews in this case, but there were definitely some issues.

You had law enforcement offers who were given immediate credibility. And our own client, who had suffered such a bad beating, did not have a great recollection of the case, because he literally suffered from significant close head trauma.

On a Saturday, I went out and canvassed the neighborhood, going door to door, knocking on the door, speaking to whoever would open the door, trying to find someone who had witnessed at least part of the incident.  

No one had. And I was just about to finish up, and head back to my car, when I noticed a stairway by a bodega that led up to a couple of apartments.

So I thought, why not?

I went upstairs, knocked on the door.

Two young women lived in the apartment. They had watched the traffic stop and beating. And one of the two women had gotten a single lens reflex camera with a nice long, telephoto lens for Christmas. And she watched the entire beating through her new camera and lens! 

These women lived in a rough neighborhood and as a result had a lot to fear about speaking out on a law enforcement beating.

They feared that if they lost the police protection in their neighborhood, that they would be at risk from some very bad elements that lived in their neighborhood. 

Fortunately, that didn't happen.

Eventually, the case went to deposition, and the woman who watched the beating through her camera testified despite her trepidations. She provided dynamic testimony about what took place.

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department contested the lawsuit and refused to settle, even with our eyewitness, but in he end, they lost, and we won a significant sum of money for our client.

These are just three cases in which a single witness interview changed the outcome of the case, and it can work that way for you too.

If you'd like to learn more about it, click on the link below and schedule a time where we'll look at how my 6 step witness interview process can be used by your organization.

So just click on the link here and schedule your free call.