A Goolsby "War Story:" Winning and Lessons Learned From Losing!

As a former federal prosecutor, I was very fortunate to have won nearly every criminal case I ever tried. In fact, in my 20 year career as an AUSA, I lost only one jury trial. It was a relatively minor public corruption case. But the facts of that case aren't important here. And the reasons why I lost this one trial aren't particularly significant here, either.

Instead, the point of this post involves the important lessons I learned from losing this one case. In perspective, the trial occurred very early in my career. I had been a federal prosecutor for only about 18 months. I had expected and prepared to try another criminal case that week. The other case would have been a slam dunk. But that defendant pled guilty at the last minute and I was left to try this other case for which I was, quite frankly, less prepared. I also had a lousy federal agent helping me on the case I tried. For various reasons, I had not pushed him to produce a winning case. And we went down in flames! I felt horrible! To top it off, my parents had come to see me in action that week. Sadly, this one loss -- this one blemish on my otherwise perfect trial record -- would be the only jury trial my father would ever see me try! Sadly, he died soon thereafter.

But I learned some important lessons from this loss. For example, I learned never again to walk into a courtroom without being ready to try all of my cases. I also developed a better work ethic. I also learned never again to settle for a lazy agent's excuses for not helping me to get a case ready for trial. In short, I learned to demand more from myself and from my case agents. As a result, I never lost another federal case!

Looking back, I believe that losing this one case, early on, may have been instrumental in changing the rest of my career. It instilled in me a drive to succeed -- to never again feel the "agony of defeat!" As a result, I believe that this one loss is responsible for helping me never to lose again!

How has losing helped you to become a winner?

A Goolsby "War Story:" The Dodge County Vote-Buying Case

"I couldn't wait to grow up, so I could get paid for voting." I will never forget those chilling words! They were spoken by an 18 year old young woman who I interviewed, (as a former federal prosecutor), while preparing for one of my biggest federal criminal cases: the Dodge County vote-buying case.

Dodge County is located in central Georgia, about an hour southeast of Macon, Georgia. It is a beautiful farming community and has some really good people who live there. But for decades, Dodge County had developed a bad reputation as a place where (some) candidates would pay voters for their votes. It had degenerated to the point where both sides in one contested election for Dodge County's sole county commissioner seat actually set up tables at opposite ends of the courthouse and supporters of the two candidates would openly bid for voters' votes as they entered the courthouse! Dodge County's sheriff was really smart. He had spread money out among vote-buyers in both county commission camps to buy votes for him! As a federal prosecutor, I was entrusted with the onerous task of prosecuting this vote-buying case and with trying to "clean up Dodge!"

Vote-buying is a federal crime, as long as a federal candidate is on the ballot. We prosecuted a total of 28 defendants. It was quite an ordeal! Fortunately, all were convicted, including the sheriff and both county commission candidates, along with a number of their supporters. The head of the Department of Justice Election Fraud Section has called this the largest election fraud case in United States history. I won my first D.O.J. Director's Award for this prosecution. But I certainly do not deserve all the credit. I was supported by an incredible team of agents from the G.B.I., the F.B.I., and the Georgia Secretary of State's Office. Without their fine work, we could not have been successful!

Awards and recognition are always nice. (Getting out of Dodge County with my skin was nice, too!) But I take greater satisfaction in believing we made a difference in how elections were conducted in this county. And I will always hope that no child in Dodge County will ever again associate growing up with getting paid to vote.

"Paper Cases:" How the Feds Actually Prepare a White Collar Crime Case For Trial!

Let's assume you are a federal prosecutor and that you have used a team of federal agents and scores of federal grand jury subpoenas to gather tens of thousands of documents for use at the fraud trial of an alleged white collar criminal. What do you do with all those stacks of evidence? More particularly, do you want to learn how the feds actually put together a "paper case" for trial?

I can only speak for myself, but as a former federal prosecutor, I oversaw the preparation of numerous complex "paper cases" for trial. And believe me, it can be a daunting task! For example, in my major fraud and public corruption case against State Senator Charles Walker, I personally examined over a million pages of evidence which were used at trial.

The key is organization. In other words, you must first carefully organize your evidence. For instance, I would generally first sit down with my case agent and go through the boxes and stacks of paper evidence, often gathered from scores of banks and other businesses. We would initially identify which exhibits would be helpful at trial, and then begin a list of trial exhibits, which also identified the exhibits' sources. We also assigned a series of exhibit numbers to each group of exhibits, often based on the exhibits' sources, (e.g. the "3000-BA series" would be exhibits from "Bank A"). Next, we would generally decide which exhibits, or pages of exhibits, needed to be scanned so that the exhibits could be shown to trial witnesses, (and the jury), in an effective manner. In this way, we eventually prepared an exhibit list.

Next, we would prepare a witness list. I would discuss with my case agent which witnesses we intended to subpoena for trial. I also needed to begin thinking about witness order, while compiling my witness list. In the Walker case, we prepared a list of over 150 witnesses, (not including records custodians). The witness list, like the exhibit list, will often be modified a number of times before a federal criminal trial.

Finally, in order to prepare a complex federal case for trial, you must "marry" the exhibit list with the witness list! In other words, you have to prepare a new "witness-exhibit list," which contains each of the witnesses and the particular exhibits, now identified by numbers, (out of all the thousands of exhibits originally obtained), which will be introduced, or otherwise used, while each particular witness is on the witness stand. Also, prior to trial, a federal prosecutor will need to decide the order in which each chosen exhibit will be shown to each of the witnesses. (I also made it my practice to laboriously type or write out each question for each of the witnesses, including carefully planning the precise place in each witness' testimony when I intended to show them an exhibit. I found that this thorough pre-trial preparation helped my trials run more quickly and smoothly. Such intense preparation also helped me "not have to think" when I became fatigued during a lengthy federal criminal trial!)

Each trial lawyer has his or her own way of preparing for trial. But these are simply some of the steps I have followed in preparing a complex federal criminal case for trial. So, now you know how the feds, (or at least one former fed), actually do it!