Gabriel Christian

[Theme Song Plays]

Chad Sands: Tell me about your experience at Georgetown and how you got first into the courtroom as an early trial lawyer. 

Gabriel Christian: I mean, Georgetown’s an outstanding school. Real estate people tell you location, location, location. So I mean, I saw Georgetown, Jesse Helms, Senator Jesse Helms, Edward Kennedy, Biden came through because in the foyer in the lobby, they would sometimes have different organizations doing receptions and the classrooms are read around that main area and they would have brie, cheese and crackers and what have you. And you come to class, since you’re a Georgetown student, you can go ahead and have something too, no one’s gonna shoo you away. And Stokely Carmichael came through. So it was an outstanding law school. My classmate on Stern Bar was Mike Steele. Mike Steele is well known. He became RNC chairman and is on television quite often. He became Republican National Chairman and a lot of other folks who became ambassadors and what have you. So the professors were good. The trial advocacy class was taught by a current federal prosecutor who was moonlighting. So we had good talent at the school. But what really made it for me was that in the first year against the rules, Georgetown at that time, I’m not sure what the rule is now. And my class was the first class where you were required to have a personal computer. They did not want first years to work because it’s so tough in the first year. They felt that you had a greater chance of success if you did not work. They wanted you to be focused. I was living with my sister who was finishing college. I was the primary breadwinner. I graduated already and I was working as a federal government contractor on a HUD contract, Housing and Urban Development contract. So I was the one bringing in the money. And if I stopped working, not only would I not be able to pay the note as far as rent on the apartment, my sister was depending on me. So I had to get a job. When my federal government contract ended in March of ‘88, I saw a note in the Student Affairs Office that said, “Insurance defense firm is seeking a law clerk for its litigation department.” I did not know what litigation meant. It sounded like law to me. I didn’t have a suit, I must tell you. I had a blazer and I would have a pair of khaki pants and olive green for in between and for formal, gray slacks. But I was a working class student. I didn’t have much fancy treads and all. And I went to Jersey Banks. I bought my first suit. I went in with a t-shirt, my jeans, my boat shoes. Boat shoes, why? In college, in our business school, I worked on the DC waterfront. I worked on the old presidential yacht, Sequoia. You see Jackie Kennedy and Jack Kennedy on. I worked on Trump’s boat when you’d visit DC. I worked on the oceanographer, Jacques Cousteau’s Calypso. So I had 80 boats in the waterfront in DC, and my attire was boat shoes, jeans, and t-shirt. So I went to the Jersey Banks with my boat shoes, jeans and t-shirt. I only had $5 for the cuffs. That’s all I could afford. In those days, I was as thin as a rake. I dressed, I did the interview, Chad, I’m still in the job. It was a 21-person white firm. I was the law clerk for the junior partner, John Smallwood. It was Farrington and Smallwood. Thomas E. Farrington was the basketball captain at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School. Very well known, on the Washington Post sports page all the time. He was a basketball captain at William & Mary. There’s a famous, he’s since passed, unfortunately, there was a famous story, it said, when Tom Farrington turned Jerry West. Now being born in the Caribbean on the British Island, we played cricket and football. When I say football, we call it soccer in the United States. So I didn’t know who Jerry West was. So at his wake, and I kind of got to go a little fast forward, I asked a lawyer, “Who’s Jerry West?” He says, “Okay, were you living on the rock somewhere? He’s a guy on the NBA logo. That’s who Jerry West is.” So Farrington was a Yale University graduate, Chairman of the Democratic Party, very dynamic lawyer. He represented all the big names: Lloyds of London, Fireman’s Fund, Kremen Forster, USAA, Allstate. So I was a law clerk at an insurance defense firm doing insurance defense work. And that’s how I cut my teeth, doing pleadings and motions, motions for summary judgment, discovery, supporting the senior partner. But I was a community leader at college in the Caribbean community, of which I was part, and I was bringing in business. When you’re in a small firm or big firm, whatever firm it is, business is a stock in trade. You have to be able to be income and not overhead. So by bringing in business, when I was getting ready to graduate, they made me an offer to become an associate. So I moved from being a law clerk supporting the junior partner, John Smallwood, but I befriended the senior partner because he was an Army commando. He was a paratrooper. He had a club called the World War II Club. And this is why lawyers need to understand the importance of personal relationships in career development. So he was going to a dinner for the World War II Club. Who’s the World War II Club? Judges at the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland, circuit court judges, district court judges who were Marines or were Air Force officers who had been in the Navy. He had been in the Army. And he mentioned something and I said something about World War II. He says, “Gabe, what do you know about World War II?” And when I told him a few things. He said, “Gabe, I’m going to invite you to the club.” And he invited me to the club with all these judges. And what I’m going to tell you is going to be very emblematic of why it’s so important to be studious, because law is about being studious, being able to have a control of the history of the case, being able to be learned in the use of language and being able to research and effectively write that which you intend to have persuade the court to your point of view. Judge Jim Simon just passed away. He was on the Court of Special Appeals. He was a member of the club. After the first dinner, they made me a member of the club. All the members are old enough to be my parents. They’re all practicing lawyers or judges. I’m the only law clerk and the only black guy in the bunch. But I was, of course, very learned and they enjoyed my company and I enjoyed theirs. When I became a lawyer, I walked into Jim Simon’s courtroom one day. When I walked in, he says, “Ladies and gentlemen, hear ye, hear ye. Here comes Gabe Christian, who knows more about World War II than Ike Eisenhower.” And everybody laughed. I think that sort of facility with history helped me in the law in a practical sense because my first case represented the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund. Three other lawyers, the plaintiff’s lawyer and two defendants. It was a chain reaction collision on the Baltimore Washington Parkway. The plaintiff’s lawyer was doing closing and he had a folio of loose leaf, eight and a half by 11 pages. And it fell to the floor and it scattered. And he bent down, he says, “Beg your indulgence, Your Honor.” And he’s trying to gather his wits about him and get the pages back together again. And he couldn’t. And he said, “Your Honor, I rest.” And it taught me that in trial work, to be persuasive, you need to be able to make a connection with the jurors, not stand there and read something like you scripted and speak with passion and with eloquence, hopefully, and with precision and outline the facts of the case that favors your side of the… I was able to show in that particular case that the plaintiff in the damages side, so my guy rear- ended – he was the one who caused it – but the damages were minimal. I was able, in deposition of the orthopedic surgeon after he had rendered his opinion within a reasonable degree of medical certainty and or probability that it was my client that had caused injury because of the rear-end collision. And of course, my client had no defense. He didn’t keep the appropriate distance. When he was finished and I’d locked him into his, you got to lock people into their positions. I said, “Doctor, is that your opinion?” “Yes.” “And you’re sticking with it?” “Yes.” I said, “Doctor, this was a 1989 case. Is that right?” “That’s right.” “Doctor, are you aware that your client was involved in an accident in Baltimore City in 1987?” “That’s right.” “Did you ever review those records within the period prior to this trial?” “No.” “Doctor, are you aware that your client had another accident in 1986, which he claimed injured him in the same area and for which he settled?” “No.” “So, doctor, you did not get any records from the 1987 accident?” “No, I did not.” “You did not get any records from the 1985 accident where he was treated until ‘86?” “No, I did not.” And both of those injuries were for the lumbosacral, cervical spine. He says, “Mr. Christian, I don’t know.” I said, “That’s correct, isn’t it, doctor? Now, had you gotten those records, doctor, would that have made a material difference to the opinion that you’ve rendered here this afternoon?” “Certainly it would.” “Thank you very much, yada, yada.” And so what I learned in trial work is that having mastery of the facts, being studious, diligent, understanding the medical history, very important in success, but also being able to make direct contact with the jurors or with the judge.

Chad Sands: I think your story about World War II and that little group you got into really touches on relationships and how important that is for you guys, not only with other lawyers, but with obviously judges and everyone else and how you need to kind of set yourself apart a little bit. So what makes you unique when it comes to other trial lawyers? 

Chad Sands: Can you tell me a story about the Tuskegee that maybe most people haven’t heard of or don’t know? 

Chad Sands: I know it’s hard to pick one, but can you share a story about one case that really had a big impact on you? I had a case recently that really gave me pause because after 33 years, I’ve had the high honor and privilege of sitting on the Judicial Commission for the Court of Appeals of Maryland. That is, sitting as a governor’s nominee on that commission to interview judges for the highest court in our state. That means sitting and interviewing judges who I have to appear before. So that’s a high honor. And you don’t put yourself there. You’re recommended by your circuit. So I was recommended by the Seventh Circuit folks because it’s seen me blossom from a law clerk to associate to a partner before my partner passed away. So that was a high honor. And so I appreciate the rule of law. I wouldn’t want to live in a system where there was no habeas corpus. I wouldn’t want to live in a system where someone could just be jailed without the opportunity to get bail, to have a lawyer advocate for his release and to not have the ability to appeal to a jury panel of my client’s peers. Or if I elected, as I’m doing in the case on Monday, select for only a judge-only trial, which a criminal defendant has. This case involves a gentleman who had done a case in the early 2000s, who owned a tow truck company. He was going to Panera Bread with his father one morning and some guy accosts him outside Panera Bread. And then the guy alleges he pulled a gun on him. Now my guy had a weapon on him. He is a business owner and had a concealed carry permit. So he was jumped by some police officers. He told them he had a gun and they charged him with first degree assault on this guy, Cesar. Turns out that guy had a bad record for drug dealing and they found about 20 baggies on him with what looked like street drugs, pills, maybe fentanyl, what have you. When we did the discovery, we got photographs that showed our client’s gun in the same picture with the drugs. What’s that about? The drugs were not found on our client. They’re conflating the gun with the drugs. Then the case against the guy gets dismissed. They claim that the drugs were fake. They claim that those were placebos or something. I don’t know that to be true. Then they want my guy to take five years, mandatory five years. This is within the past year this is happening. And I’m seeing all of these issues. I take six members of my staff to Panera Bread on a bright morning where the conditions, climatological conditions, visibility, timing, everything is about the same as the day of the incident. Turns out, when we have a body worn camera, where the officer is speaking to the Panera staff, nobody recalls an altercation. The Panera Bread has plate glass windows, plate glass doors. If there’s an altercation outside where they said it happened on the front of the building, guess what? All the people in there who are sitting now having a meal would have seen it. The staff had an unimpeded view of the exterior. And we had a body worn camera where the police are asking patrons of Panera Bread, what did you see? And no one saw anything like what the government was describing that this guy alleged happened.

Chad Sands: Even in the body cam footage, you have the police talking to the people in the Panera?

Gabriel Christian: They’re all talking to the people at the Panera. And they’re saying, “Sir, we don’t know what you’re talking about. We didn’t see anything. Nobody made any complaint.” The other people are sitting there. Nothing. Their cameras, their CCTV, the CCTV picked up nothing. Up to the day before trial, we all sat after having gone to the scene and taken pictures. Because another thing I want to say to young lawyers: Do not, especially when you’re talking about someone’s life, pull any punches. You have to be deliberate and relentless and focused and pull out all stops to ensure that the justice system works. And unfortunately in our society, too often people, especially if you’re poor, don’t have the resources. The public defender lawyers are very good lawyers, but they are burdened. So the office of the public defender oftentimes is not well resourced. The lawyers take the same exam I take. We have Cottingy and Jackson on the Supreme Court. They’re fine lawyers. I know because I work alongside them in cases where they are co-defendants. I know their value, but they are oftentimes without adequate resources. I don’t know whether they would have taken a bunch of staff members to Panera Bread on one morning to sit around and take pictures. That’s what I did. So we’re all set for trial. And the state says, “Well, Mr. Christian, this, that, and the third, can you take a step? We will retain the gun.” I was so upset because I was all set for trial. And I was all set to unmask what I thought was a gross miscarriage of justice. But when you work for a client, you cannot interpose your feelings over that which is in the client’s best interest. What is my objective as a client’s attorney? What was my fiduciary responsibility? To get him out of trouble, prevent him from going to jail. No matter how good I am, and I know I’m good by God’s grace, not because I’m better than anybody else, I think I’ve been blessed. I couldn’t guarantee that for him if we went to trial. I was almost most certain we would win, but could I guarantee that? No, I could not. So I said, “You know what? Instead of a year’s debt, we’ll do six months, and then you’ll enter it knowledge per seque, which means dismiss it.” He said, “Sure, deal, no deal.” And we walked out with our client. He took our entire staff to dinner. We were very happy, but it says to me that we must understand that the justice system is only as just as the just people who work it. If we have people who are unjust who are police officers, if we have people who are unjust who are prosecutors, if we have people who are mean and who are unkind and who have no respect for our laws and constitution, we can have enormous injustices be inflicted on the poor and people who, because of their ethnicity, may not be favored. But we have to be able to work to ensure our justice system saves our constitution, but serves those who are Black, who are White, who are Jew, who are Gentile, who are Hispanic, who are Asian. Without regard to any race, creed, class, or color, we have to make sure that we keep the doors of justice open to all who come within the inner sanctum of that temple of arbitration of civil matters, adjudication of criminal matters, and we have to make sure that we as lawyers are exemplary in doing the best we can using our intelligence or diligence or discipline to ensure that justice is served. 

Chad Sands: And you’re not just like personal injury or criminal defense? 

Gabriel Christian: No. So we came up with a mixed plan. The insurance work, you know, I talked about Tom Bryant and that was his work. We represented the hospital system and so on. Towards the end of his life, I was getting conflicted out. People who come to me with USA also said I couldn’t take it because I was defense counsel. When he passed away in ‘97, in ‘98, I handed over my last insurance fence cases because I had enough plaintiff’s work. So we do plaintiffs’ personal injury, including medical malpractice, auto tort primarily, which we try those cases that we’re not getting fair offers on because we’re not afraid to go to court. You’ve got to let the other side know you’re prepared to go all the way. If not, they’re not going to, you know, do right by you. And it’s hard to be a good African-American lawyer, frankly, as Johnny Cochran found out, and not do criminal defense. So what happened is in the ‘90s, people started coming to me with DUIs, assaults in first degree, second degree, murder. And I did my first murder case in 1995, a 14-year-old who was kept 40 hours without food or drink. 

Chad Sands: She was accused of murder at 14? 

Gabriel Christian: She was. She was accused of being, along with another young man and a gang leader, being part of an initiation for the Crips. It was a fight and you’re not supposed to hit back. And the young lady who has been initiated supposedly fought back and she was stabbed 16 times. And my client may have stabbed once, you know, but at the end of the day, you know, it’s a very emotionally driven case. The confession she made. She said that the police told her “Just confess that you just gave her a little stab wound, but it wasn’t so deep. I will take you to McDonald’s and bring you home.” She said, “Okay, so I started, but didn’t go all the way. Can I go to McDonald’s now?” And of course, that was not gonna happen. So those are the kinds of things that happen when you have juveniles, you have police officers who are skillful, you can have a lot of misconduct. Yeah, and I wanna take this opportunity to say my dad and his father, so my dad and granddad, were police officers in the old British system. So I have a healthy respect for police officers. I’ve represented the police chief in this county. I’ve represented a lot of officers. I have a lot of respect for state police officers, what they do. But there are officers who shouldn’t be on the force. I’ve caught too many officers who have taken a license. And one of the things I learned in that murder case from a guy called William Brennan, he said, “Gabe, when you get discovery, like, probable cause statements, read every single word once, twice, and three times. Look at every date. Look at the numbers. Look and see if you see cotton paste.” I mean, I can’t tell you how many cases I’ve won since that guy. He represented the court of finance in that case, the murder case I told you about from ‘95. And Brennan, if you are listening, thank you, sir. He was so right. I mean, we just had a gun case. I’ll tell you because it’s something that is really relevant. So my guy was stopped in a neighborhood. You know, he was in a neighborhood and had a gun. And that’s, I can just admit that it’s true. And he was stopped. When I got a probable cause statement, the officer who wrote it was not the officer who stopped him. He wrote the statement, but he was stopped by two other officers. So I immediately realized that the author of the document that said there was probable cause was not the actual person who did the stop. Was she even there at the stop? Well, this is what happened. She said she saw the car go by in the parking lot. And she believed that it had tint that was below the accepted threshold for tint. But she didn’t do the stop. Right. She called on the radio and some officers a mile away did the stop. 

Chad Sands: She radioed ahead? 

Gabriel Christian: That’s right. So when I asked them what probable cause they had to stop the guy, they could not tell me. And then I had to extricate and extract from them, “Sir, I put it to you that you stopped him because you got a call, didn’t you?” “Yes, Mr. Christian.” And I showed them the probable cause statement. I said, “That’s not in the statement, is it?” “No, it’s not.” 

Chad Sands: So what happened? 

Gabriel Christian: Well, when I brought her on the stand, remember, there’s a rule on witnesses. So she’s not in the courtroom and I’m interrogating the other officers. 

Chad Sands: Right. 

Gabriel Christian: I said, “Ma ‘am, you wrote the probable cause statement, did you?” “Yes, I did.” “You said there’s probable cause to stop the guy, didn’t you?” “Yes, I did.” “You didn’t stop him, did you?” “No, I did not.” “In fact, you allowed the car that you said had an impermissible level of tint, you allowed it to go, didn’t you?” “Yes, I did.” “So you can’t tell us whether there’s a gun in the car because you didn’t see a gun in the car, did you?” “No, I did not.” So what happened? So the case was dismissed. My guy, frankly, to be honest with you, he got away and I warned him. I said, “Never do it again.” He had a gun in the open. He didn’t have a permit. You don’t have a permit and you have a legal firearm, it must be unloaded and in the boot of your car. It must be out of reach. It must not be within easy reach for a variety of reasons, public policy reasons, road rage being one of them. If you have a gun next to you, you get in a road rage situation, you can pull it and shoot somebody. But if you have to get out of your car, first of all, open your door, get out of your car, hopefully close your door, go to the back, open the boot, get the gun. All of that gives you time to do what? Cool down. Cool down, right? And so he had to go where it wasn’t supposed to have been, but because the police officers procedurally validated his rights to privacy, he was able to get away. So that again had to do with a very skillful and very deliberate dissection of the probable cause statement. So I tell young lawyers, when you get long-form Miranda statements, look at the date. Is it signed? Are the boxes checked off? You got to make sure that you go through in a diligent manner to sort of excavate from the public or statement, whether they violated the constitutional rights of the motorist or someone who they may have accosted and that type of thing. Up till the last moment, you’ve got to keep putting the pressure on and doing your best for the client. So then at the end of the day, you can go home and rest quietly knowing that you did your best. You’re not going to win everything. You know, that’s just impossible. Some cases are such that they have to play it out. Some cases are such that they, you know, maybe lesser offense, but you want to make sure that you put forth your best effort. I always try to be measured because I think, you know, there are points to be made on both sides. But the fact of the matter is we have to try to respect our courts because at the end of the day, this is what I learned. The executive branch has the power of the sword. The president can call out The National Guard, and can send the troops into action. So as the governor, so too the governor. Colorado State Police, that’s the executive. The legislative branch, well, they pass laws. They pass the budget, they can fund you. The Congress can fund you, they can defund you, they can underfund you. That’s the legislative branch. That’s the power of the purse. Well, of the three enumerated powers, I’ve talked about two, the executive and the legislative. The sword and the purse. The sword and the purse. Powerful, right? Powerful. And here comes the judicial branch. Man, Chad, shame, shame, shame. Compared to the sword, compared to the purse, on the face of it, you are the weakest of the enumerated powers. Because all we have is the power of the pen. That judge who wields that pen and signs on that order. You would say when you look at the purse, when you look at the sword, you know, I mean, if you’ve got a bag of gold coins, you can knock someone over the head with it. A sword, you know what you can do with the sword. A pen, what can you do with that? However, the pen, by the force of its logic, of its reason, of its justice, of its process, the due process it gives to us, flawed to our society ears. We know perfection reigns only in heaven. In a great many ways, our system is still, in my view, superior to most systems on earth, because it has allowed us to abolish slavery. Well, we had a civil war. There’s a little bit of that, too. Deal with racism, deal with human rights in a way that is the envy of the world.

And so I say to folks, respect our courts, respect the practice of law and to law, I say, be involved in your community. Let’s burnish the image of law. Let’s not be seen as simply folks who are interested in the fee. I get criticized at my office because I do a lot of pro bono. In fact, Judge Vincent Vermeer, I walked in one day, he had something called a rocket docket for DUIs and he says, “Ladies and gentlemen, here comes Gabe Christian, best lawyer for the lowest price, so no fee at all, the pro bono king.” And everybody laughed. And it’s okay, because it’s all right to be able to take some time to save the image of our profession by serving others without regard to a fee. Shakespeare, who said in one of those famous quotes, “First, let us kill all the lawyers.” So I don’t agree with Shakespeare. Say, “Let’s save the lawyers and let’s save rule of law,” because rule of law allows us to live in a society that is much more predictable. It allows us to avoid vicious whimsy. It allows us to go into the temple of justice and have our case be heard. And hopefully we get a good and fair result. We can’t always win, but let it be that we are guided by learned effort and due process so people feel respected and that they’ve been served well.

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Now here is this episode’s closing argument.

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