They say that something is too good to be true if it looks much better than one normally would expect in a given situation; if it is not what it appears to be.
There are many things about my recent trial that simply were “too good,” albeit with different twists on the old adage “Too good to be true.”
First, of course, are those two recordings of conversations the government alleges took place between Larry “the Idahun Hit Man” and myself. Truly, they are a prosecutor’s dream, because they have it all: confession, smoking gun, motive, corroboration, method, alibi and, perhaps most importantly, wording calculated to inflame a listener to be outraged. Never, in the history of wiring confidential informants, has the FBI gotten recordings so complete… so condemning… so inflammatory.
Think about it for a moment. Think back over all the real incriminating recordings you ever have heard, whether made in person or by telephone. Usually, it is a stretch to see the government’s case against the recorded speaker(s). Not in my case, however, and that is the biggest tipoff of all. “My” recordings quite simply are so over the top… so complete and so inflammatory, that they literally are too good to be true.
Just on their face, “my” recordings had to have been scripted because nothing real could have been so perfect. And, of course, that is the case – they were manufactured and cobbled together from actual recordings of me speaking, sometimes to the erstwhile “hit man” (but at other times and in other contexts).
As one of my retained experts ascertained, there are 351 different anomalies on just one of the recordings produced by the government, anomalies of just the sort produced by editing (cutting, splicing, dubbing, inserting etc.) Most of the anomalies cannot be heard, but must be identified via wave-form analysis. That expert also determined, again through wave-form analysis, that in many places on both recordings it is not even my voice! Another’s voice was used and then “morphed” to sound like mine. 351 anomalies. An “extraordinary” number , that forensic audio expert said – the most he ever had seen on a single recording in his over 20 years of analyzing such recordings. Enough to remove all possibility that the recordings were genuine. Keep in mind that only one such defect is enough to justify excluding a recording at a trial. Not my trial, though.
It needs to be said that my lead trial lawyer was too good to be true, as well. Robert McAllister is a natural-born trial lawyer – a gunslinger is what I call such a lawyer. He rides into town, fires a few perfectly-aimed shots and then leaves like Clint Eastwood: always the hero.
The problem with a natural gunslinger is that he is so good that he never has been stretched enough so as to learn that there are some trials that require full and comprehensive preparation of the sort that he never has had to do before. Mine was such a trial, which is why I got convicted. Besides, McAllister secretly was seriously distracted by his bankruptcy and then-pending disbarment (more on this later).
Were there other reasons for his seriously-incompetent handling of my case (more on this in a future installment I call “Thrown Under the Bus”)? I hope not, but I do not believe in coincidence. Too paranoid, you say? Just because I might be paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me. Believe me… they are.
Though I later will give a great many reasons why my defense was grossly inadequate, for now, let me leave you with the four biggest:
Less than a week after I was arrested, a US Marshal, while driving me to the Federal District courthouse for my arraignment, made the following prescient observation: “It doesn’t matter what the truth is,” he told me, “what matters is what you are able to prove to a jury.” The hair on the back of my neck stood up when he said that and now I know why!