Joseph H. Low, attorney4people.com, has a national reputation for his expertise in trial law. He has conducted trials all over the country in Federal, State and Military Courts. He focuses his attention in representing people who have been bullied by corporations and the government. Areas of his trial work have seen him with victories for his clients including personal injury, medical malpractice, business litigation, civil rights violations and criminal defense.

The murder Joey Low’s client was accused of occurred during his third tour in some of the most dangerous battle areas in Iraq. He was not guilty and taking a plea deal meant he would serve several years in prison and be required to testify against those who hadn’t yet taken plea deals. He was not willing to testify against his fellow servicemen.

Trying this case was a huge risk. Joey was informed by renown trial lawyers that it was not safe to be on the case, not safe to travel to Iraq, and the client would be brutalized by others – including the 6 marines who had already taken plea deals and would testify against him. The client also faced a potential lifetime behind bars or even execution.

Joey said as he worked on this case and reenacted the crime in Iraq, “a lot of people suffered and went through a lot of pain to make this right. It is easy to do the right thing, and it is hard to know what the right thing to do is.” “I’m grateful for the experience even though it was terrifying.”

Transcript of Episode 58, with Joey Low, Part 1

Scott Glovsky:

Welcome to Trial Lawyer Talk. I’m Scott Glovsky, and today we have a doozy of a story. Joey Low is with us, and Joey is one of the most spectacular trial lawyers in the country. He proceeds time and again to win the unwinnable cases. He’s got an amazing ability to tap into other people’s feelings and to connect with other people. Every time I sit down with Joey, I learn, and I’ve been doing that for many years.

I’m very pleased that he’s here today to share with us one of his amazing stories, and this story takes us to Joey standing up to power, standing up to General Mattis who later became Secretary of Defense, standing up to the prosecution of a murder case, and Joey traveling into a war zone to be able to recreate the events that happened in his case so he could get a sense of the sights, and the sounds, and the smells, and what it looked like and the feeling. And he wraps that into really a wonderful story of how he won his case. So, let’s get started.

I’m very happy to be sitting with truly one of the best trial lawyers in the country. Joey Low is a phenomenal lawyer who has been teaching great trial lawyers how to try cases for many, many years. Joey does criminal cases and civil cases, and he’s truly the only lawyer I know that goes around the country, tries cases, and wins the unwinnable cases, and wins big. I’m very happy that Joey’s taken the time to share with us some stories here today. Joey, thanks for being with us.

Joey Low:

Thank you for having me, Scott. That was a really nice thing you said. It makes me feel a little unworthy. I know I’m supposed to say this to be artificially humble, but, what? I know a lot of really good trial lawyers, and I never thought I was one of them, but anyway. So, thank you for having me.

Scott Glovsky:

Can you share with us the story of a case that had a profound impact on you?

Joey Low:

Yes, I can. There are several that come to mind. Yeah. But there is one that has come to mind very recently. I have a friend who recently graduated from law school. I went to his graduation this last May. When I first met this friend, it was 13 years ago, and I met him in a jail cell where he was waiting to stand trial for capital murder. It was a death penalty case. He and seven other Marines and one corpsman were accused of killing an Iraqi civilian, murdering him in the middle of the night.

So, the reason why this comes to mind is that once I started working the case I had a number of people on the team working with me, some of which are military lawyers because this is a military case. The facts involved, or at least accused, were that the squad, the Marine Corps squad, had been dropped off behind enemy lines in a place called Hamdaniya in 2006, and they had gone out and were supposed to be laying in waiting for insurgents to plant IEDs in the middle of the night, and then deal with them as a result.

Later that night, around 3:30 in the morning, there was a call made back to the rear to a unit called the QRF, which is the quick reaction force. The idea is, any time you engage or meet some contact, as they called it, or you’d get in a fire fight with the enemy, you’d call the QRF and then you’d get reinforced. They’re in the back waiting to … like being on call to come help you out. That call comes in, and they go out there. When they get there, they find a dead Iraqi in an old IED hole, and lying next to him is an AK-47 and a shovel.

As the QRF is looking at it and they’re taking reports and so forth, one of those guys looks over at the corpsman, and the corpsman just got kind of an odd look on his face. What unravels from there is that eventually NCIS gets involved. That’s the National Criminal Investigative Service. It’s a military criminal investigative service. They start conducting interviews, and make accusations, and the corpsman decides he doesn’t want to do this anymore, and says that the other seven Marines had drug this guy out of his house in the middle of the night, zip tied his hands behind his back, and drug him to this hole. Walked back about 100 meters, then shot him and killed him. Went back to his body, cut the zip ties off, laid the AK-47 next to him, and the shovel that they had brought with them, to make it look like he was digging an IED hole, because the rules of engagement at that time said that they could kill anybody who was actively involved in planting an IED.

Well, what the government sought to prove as to why they would pick this person was that they just claimed that the Marines wanted to target somebody in this little village or hamlet to intimidate them. That’s why these men were charged with capital murder and why they were going to go to trial. At that point in time, I’m told … I can’t confirm whether it’s true or not, that I had the record for winning a criminal case with the most rats. And, yes, I did say rats. The most rats that testified against somebody, which was three. Normally the convention is that if you have one rat in a case, you run down to the prosecutor’s office and you beg for a deal. If you have two rats in a case, you take whatever they give you, and you thank them for it. If you have three rats in a case, well, you don’t even take the case. Clearly, you give it to the public defender, because there’s no case, et cetera. Well, I had won a case with that many, despite what they had to say.

But in this case, one of the accused of the eight ran down and cut a deal right away. The government put a lot of pressure on her. As soon as the first one went, boy, they all started running down to the office, because each deal got worse. The first guy got 12 months. The second guy got 18 months. The third guy got … And the number keeps going. Also part of the deals that they were cutting is not only did you have to agree to it and do some time, but you had to testify against anybody else left standing.

So, they get to my guy, and the general, it’s General Mattis at the time, who used to be … he was Secretary of Defense. He wants to talk to me. I go down there and see him, and he says, “All right, here’s the deal,” and on, and on, and on. I say to him, “Look …” I think the deal at the time was eight years. My guy was number six out of eight. There’s three left that hadn’t taken a deal yet. I said to the general, “My guy will take what’s coming to him, but he will not testify against the other two.” The other six or the other five don’t matter because they already cut a deal. He was like, “Well, that’s not acceptable. There’s no exceptions. Your guy’s going to testify against the other two. Take it or leave it.”

I said, “Well, my guy’s been real clear he’s not interested in burying anybody else in a concrete tomb to benefit himself. That’s not how he’s built, and that’s not how he was trained, and that’s not what he’s going to do.” General Mattis, sitting closer to me than you are right now, about a foot away, a foot and a half away, leans in and says, “Son, do you really think you’re doing the right thing for your client?” I leaned in a little closer, and I said, “You know what, general? I think I’m doing the best possible thing I can for your Marine. How about you? You have the power to make this all go away. And all you have to do is say, ‘I can respect why you don’t want to rat on somebody else, and I respect you will take your punishment.’ But for some reasons that’s not good enough for you, is it?”

He sat back, and he gave me that look like, “I hate your guts,” but he was trying not to smile at the same time. I know what that means. So, we went to trial, and I was assigned as a lawyer on the case-

Scott Glovsky:

Wait. Let me back up.

Joey Low:

Yes, go ahead.

Scott Glovsky:

I understand that when you got the case you did a little travel to the scene.

Joey Low:

Yes.

Scott Glovsky:

Tell us about that.

Joey Low:

You want me to talk about it? All right. So, if I have had any successes in the past, it is because I’m one of those unusual nut jobs where I actually want to feel everything my client felt, and I want to feel