About Adrian Baca

Adrian Baca is a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney. His law firm defends California clients against a full range of felony criminal charges including violent crimes, sex crimes, drug offenses, and federal crimes. The firm also assist clients with post-conviction matters.

About the Case

Adrian Baca established trust with Reggie and used psychodrama techniques to understand how the victim shot himself. In a risky move, Mr. Baca called Reggie to the stand where he admitted to being a gang member, to a manslaughter conviction, and to other offenses. During the trial, they recreated the incident in front of the jurors.

Adrian ends with how he tries to protect those people who feel they aren’t a part of the larger community and who need help.

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Transcript of Episode 64, with Adrian Baca

Scott Glovsky:  

Welcome to Trial Lawyer Talk. I’m Scott Glovsky. I’m your host for this podcast, where we speak with some of the best trial lawyers, who are telling great stories from cases that had a profound impact on them. Today, we have another great episode, so let’s get going.

I feel very fortunate to be sitting with Adrian Baca. Adrian is a wonderful criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles who wins cases that nobody should win. I know he wins them with skill, creativity and dedication. Adrian, thanks for being with us.

Adrian Baca:      

Thank you for the invitation and the kind words, Scott.

Scott Glovsky:  

Adrian, can you share with us the story of a case that had a profound impact on you?

Adrian Baca:      

The story that had a profound impact on me actually has a catchy headline. It was a subject of an article in Rolling Stone Magazine. It’s, “How I killed my way out of prison.” It became a retrial. It came to me, and I realized this case was symbolic, in a lot of ways, wrongful conviction, a man who was out suing the police, now he was going to go back to prison. It had a lot of twists and turns.

Scott Glovsky:  

Wow. Please tell us.

Adrian Baca:      

Well, it was a case I was actually appointed on. He went to trial after he got out of prison for a murder he didn’t commit. He was looking at the death penalty. He got involved, and they accused him of another shooting. It went to trial. He was charged with mayhem and a gang allegation. He was looking at life. One of the best attorneys in Los Angeles hung at nine to three. I was covering the court in Compton and Los Angeles, and the judge appointed me.

Initially, when Mr. Cole met me, very standoffish. “You’re not going to be my attorney.” I just knew, something about this case, that we had a connection and a karma. I knew that I was going to go to trial on his case. He didn’t know it yet, but I knew it.

Scott Glovsky:  

How did you know it?

Adrian Baca:      

I think by just sensing things. Sometimes you have an intuition about destinies interchanging and paths crossing with somebody. I just knew. I knew it. In the core of my bones, I knew. I knew that it was going to be a big, giant case, because I received boxes and boxes of discovery.

Scott Glovsky:  

How did you start?

Adrian Baca:      

I started by accepting my client’s reluctance to have me as an attorney. I told him I was going to be an attorney until I heard otherwise. The court appointed me. I started working on the case and going through the transcripts of the trial.

Then I started meeting with my client a little more. We started establishing a relationship of trust. I introduced him to some of the techniques we used at the Trial Lawyers College, reversing roles, setting scenes, being there for him all the time.

Understand, this man had been in prison for a murder he didn’t commit for 20 years. He was looking at the death penalty. He was out of custody now, and he was potentially looking at 5, 10 million dollars. His co-defendant settled for 8 million.

Everybody in his life had disappointed him, his family, the police who set him up, in prison, the brutality of prison. He had to kill somebody inside of the prison who was going to kill him. It was a horrible condition, the kind that you would imagine in one of the most typical prison movies. It was like that.

So it was establishing trust. Me being there, me meeting on his terms, and just reinforcing and gaining one piece of trust at a time.

Scott Glovsky:  

What happened next?

Adrian Baca:      

What happened next is we went to trial quicker than I thought. I started meeting with my client a lot more and doing scene reenactments. It was a shooting case, and I had to understand. Essentially what we’re saying is the victim shot himself.

Scott Glovsky:  

That sounds like a plausible defense.

Adrian Baca:      

Well, it was scary. My feeling was I was … The first attorney didn’t put his client on the stand. I know Gerry Spence says typically he doesn’t do that, but I always prepare every case like my client is going to take the stand.

So we prepared and we prepared. We did scene reenactments in my office. Some of them actually became quite harrowing for me, where I realized that my client was decompensating a bit and was mixing up roles, because he had some post-traumatic stress that he didn’t deal with. I pulled back. We don’t ever want to become a psychodramatist.

Scott Glovsky:  

Can you tell us what happened?

Adrian Baca:      

Well, what happened is we redid the scene. He became so animated that he relived the scene, and I could see it in his eyes. He started reverting to like he was in prison. I feared for my safety. I looked at my desk and I thought, “Where are those scissors? I’m going to have to stab him to defend myself.”

Scott Glovsky:  

Can you go in role as him at that moment?

Adrian Baca:      

I was angry. I’m angry, Baca. I’m angry. Where’s my money at? Where’s my money at? You motherfucker. Baca, where’s my money?

Reggie, I’m not your civil attorney.

Baca motherfucker, I got screwed out of that money. I got screwed out of that money, Baca. Where’s my money, Baca?

He’s looking at me. I can see his eyes are … He’s in the role. He’s not playing the role. He is that person at that time. He’s mixing me up with the civil attorney, and he’s mad because he feels he’s going to be cheated $3 million.

He’s putting his hands in the front of his pants. He’s coming at me. He’s looking hard. This is an admitted Hoover gang member. The Hoover gang is a pretty bad gang. I knew that I had to be very, very careful and very affirming. I am not your civil attorney. I am not your civil attorney. I am not your civil attorney.

Scott Glovsky:  

What was your soliloquy at that moment?

Adrian Baca:      

My soliloquy was I was looking for the scissors. This is going to be a bad incident that I took something on that exploded in my face. But at the same time, I understood his pain. I became like an empath, and I took his pain, and I allowed him to … I trusted him, even though it was some mistrust for my safety, I was worried, but I took his pain. I knew that it was something that he had to get over. In hindsight, we should have had a trained psychodramatist.

Scott Glovsky:  

How does that scene end?

Adrian Baca:      

It ended with him calming down, meaning his breath was calm, his manner was calm. I brought in four or five people, people who work adjacent to me, that have helped me. I said, “We’re going to do it again.”

I think he had gone through the scene enough, and we had a time crunch, that we did it, and it was much more … Without the violence or the fear, we went through it, and it was very powerful. So we had gotten over that period of fear.

After that, what I did is, I run the local working group in Los Angeles, I brought him to the group. We had 20 attorneys, 20 attorneys. We worked on his case. We did scene reenactments. We had him … I put him on the stand for direct examination. Patrick McLean, who’s a TLC graduate helped. Suzie Mindlin helped. A lot of attorneys helped. At the end, he understood he had been socialized about to be honest and to be vulnerable.

So when it came to the trial, after five weeks, the judge thought I was going to rest. She said, “Mr. Baca, are you going to rest?” I said, “No, Your Honor, I’m waiting for a ruling from the court of appeals to keep this evidence out.” She said, “Call your witness.” I said, “Can we wait until 12:00 ?” “Call your witness.”

I called Reggie Cole to the stand. We did the scene in front of the jury. The judge had trusted me. I was upright with her. We fought a bit, but she let me get Reggie off the stand. So we got Reggie off the stand, then we reenacted it. He threw me around a bit. I could look at the jurors, and they had a look of horror in their eye. They were fearful for me, because he was throwing me around, and we were making noise. I said, “Reggie, was it like this?” He goes, “No. It was four times as violent.”

I think by