A Word on Words; 0838; Richard Speight

a word on words delving into the world of books and their authors tonight richard state talks about triple jeopardy your host for a word on words mr john second volley publisher of the tennessean an editorial director of usa today once again welcome to world war singing our guest is no friend an author he'd been here before the mammal all he practiced law he knows little about the law once more books called triple jeopardy in our guest gets paid welcome back rich its way to world were like a good idea to talk about this you're your latest book you continue to hold fast to the year they knew the system of justice and for olson the drama inside the system and this time you've come up with a judge looks terrific on the outside body and the problems on the inside a colin

white paris right judge can wire it's done is if you look at all the bench with his robes and his name of hair in and his loving wife his home lives of the floats and formal all partner the governor and he's got it all but then he's really get nothing because he's now calling arrested alcoholic who have started drinking yellow slide and that's so where you at that squarely on that's where the story begins for a triple jeopardy that's the tile costs double jeopardy is a term that commonly known in the law because the response to guarantee have been tried twice for the same crime

i know where that came from but where the idea for this book come from where one person is suspected of a crime you know a person wants to plead guilty to a crime still a third person is guilty of a crime as three year pretty simple but still very convoluted where you come from well that particular idea came up came to me on christmas eve when it eighty four and it was a snow after now that living presence and one other personnel jewelry to as a friend as a judge innocent present this was a longtime personal finance i'll drive industry in nashville and towards normal harder in my cart and slid below and i just all sudden thaw that began the whole idea of which is aware that most of the plots what if it was snowing and what if there was an accident and what if a judge was involved in it this critical point time via the new dui law was big news in nashville

and now driving on toxic it was a very as it is now very important social issue what the judge had been drinking and i do store start what he thinks are pulled over on the side of the road and got a little pet i wrote the art the entire plot of this book on two sheets of paper and it's not changed much since then and the title came immediately triple jeopardy because there is a possibility that any one in three people has committed this crime and in a real respect the reader never knows you have a day and you have a scene early on when the judge a lawyer for the judge and the governor it's pretty clear that the judges put on a front and the reader gets a sense of that in that confrontation is also yet some inkling that the governor announced that maybe there there is something wrong

with the governor's served for gunners very tough on the question of drunk driving laws and the judges on of the emerge because there is no rest in alcala de silva merged us as a pillar of credibility and on this subject a real authority is admired respected i take it because he is someone who in fact has taken the treatments work bob they're caught with characters and they were very interesting to me the court off somalia's accustomed hasta la toya gusto a cough that i found to be so typical courthouse characters that i've known totally dedicated totally loyal to just great amount of that is you get to feeling

pretty early on again he would die for the jet age one of saying well it just takes a great telly that's the judge know he knows it takes eleven so that you don't let us go much beyond that you leave me wondering always route is tony loyal to the judge as tony played a game is very late guy really come come full circle and believe that collie truly live and i get all four is all intertwined or less loyalty rare human trait but i i guess it does exist in the us lives in the society maybe between judges and those who admired him that's been my observation practicing law for many years the army corps offices and i know that they're almost always and maybe even to a

fall loyal to their judges and this doesn't seem to interfere with their ability to deal with the public or with lawyers though they're gracious and rape or any group of people as a whole they're very helpful but their fundamental loyalty is to the judge or the reason i think the reason kelly costello such an enigma to you is because tony a safer the classic dilemma that every person involved with the potential alcoholic is faced with he doesn't wanna believe the truth and he loves the judge so much as does the judge's wife that he just doesn't want to believe the truth and so he does everything he can to keep rumbling and he's they're there by becomes an enabler and permits the just go much farther down the road towards destruction then tony himself would ever have wanted the judge to go but economists will be on the one hand this man that he loves is in deep trouble and he knows it but on the other hand he doesn't normally that and doesn't will accept it and just refuses to believe you up all the crucial

ally tony is trying to monitor the judge's actions don't fear the feeling that some bad is going to happen you know i deeply tony was involvement over like in the book back to that scene on how a snowy night visibility very low i thought when you describe the scene in which the judge knew that he was involved in an accident that was probably not a very well traveled road but i'm at the end i knew was a very well tell rule that night there were some striking down that road you know they are in a sense it's a mystery this is a mystery so it's not

just oil out in this case and justice system works and fails to work and this is a story that has a plot and a subplot and then and then i am a real henry hook very close to the way to the end you you knew that it was going to be about the way it came out when you sat down and a lot of one no i can honestly say that i have experimented with three different endings my initial landing was the one we ended up with but as our friday and i changed it and then at the request the poacher changed again to do like what they had done so went back to my original ending sent it back and they loved that tony was one of the one of the solutions that are one possible sale for my writing over like you thought about tony as this is as the call and if it really did right

when he confessed when i said i knew you know is a guy london's a lot of that the rapport not sure we get it please don't try to take the rap for was interesting that you would say that because when i was going one of trying to craft an ending i thought to myself that people don't think yeah that's right and so therefore that can't be right for the helpless at the end the obvious candidate and so i just left only hanging well and let's go to some they are taxes i mean first of all you have every town has one large or small and when there is that leader in the community so rich so powerful so i don't so influential that unique and fix every they are everybody thinks he can lose everything and you've got a list of post

says is indeed that saw a personality his wife sabah long suffering person like common sense and so is the is balance wheel and then they have this sunday's and dexter baxter baxter boats back their post baxter junior guys in is a revolution it he's in so the revolutionary phase has been quite long erosion against his fault seems to me and and and baxter is the victim that baxter is not the victim of a non baxter's the victims of the judges duplicity the judge's training the judges effort but the crime ridden on it at home or for somebody else and so that's so baxter has fallen mahler they're there and then you have

a wife oh the poor victim who was run down that night she is a very typical widows i've seen in court victims of violent crimes a vengeance has to pay system must work faith in sister penny of the two lawyers competitors but not all at the top personally not that competitive benjamin fun and barbara bradley heim and barbara passion that action the long terms and you wrote this you know the names of the hardest thing to come up with any well that's right well the judge and the twist is that you put the judge trying a case when in fact he thinks he should be the defendant where that

wisdom from it says developers have plotted out i had this it was part of what came out that night on the road that he would the ultimate irony would be that he would end up having to play god as well as judge because you have the fate of the person that he had been trapped in a moment and then barbra later the judge to exonerate himself as he thinks he is exoneration he truly believes he's guilty and he has to really work her over she's pretty tough too confident defense lawyer and she goes through everything including the investigation say the ground that gives her an insight to what's happened which is really just an obese a baby put out there for the reader lean down the trail leads to judge colin myler new gives a false trailer will investigate barber the same faults trip

now me just ask you about there she found a piece of voters that goal and this she at one point finally confronts the judge she puts that piece of others she found the same on him that moment i know where they going be ri because his reaction to seeing that makes me believe that he knows she's caught in the world's chemical either quitting or something else now the only way i don't think i give away your right your secret because i'm yours so it should have a song little little surprise and really it's a big surprise left but you knew what you were doing when you put that found

on him you knew you were taking me down the primrose path where today to lead and in barber with barbara streisand and she she went down that down that same road well and so you got this confrontation saying finally tony and a very private club confesses i did it and i think oh the line turns out he really thinks he didn't do and then he recounts what occurred and i think all this has triple jeopardy mean it's not backed a posting is not judge kilometers <unk> is toni are you couldn't really call it a quadruple jump i guess it might have my love then there is the ring a role but community ace the case with it what about bernie and barbara what about that

relationship professional well professor of course they're the lessons of a terrible conflict they are they they both are drawn to each other both personally and professionally barbara first the package that addressed our backs and bernie fine and they're what they're drawn to each other personally professionally but there's an immediate problem there because it's difficult to carry on a personal relationship for each of them to draw the proper boundaries about what they say about what's gone in this big case for them profession is a big case for both of them barbara her career can be made with this case it's a very visible public case bernie can succeed in the prosecutor's office with this case because the back of course is a big name and brain that family down is going to do something for him and it's given him trouble before his dad got him out of that exactly this given

great great targets this fall dr into bernie's lap all trying to the judge's laughter so odd but the more they engage in this personally solicit the more they say that they're having to be so careful with each other that they can have a good personal relationships or the football which hurt somebody they put on the simple and as we find out i guess after the fact they really don't work out that well anna well those are words a healthy relationship at your experience along the directors from downtown and only in recent years we've had many female lawyers but now are looking at la all on television and i well as more drama and reality a range quite true quite often to me or about the shia has the margins female followers of the

movie know that losses created the number of crucial relationships are complicated the practice for thickness and create complex i think as i am i think that's another one north of circumstances here in nashville for example where women and impressing law meredith taylor her members of different firms at and i'm sure they're extremely careful what they say to avoid conflicts you this is really true that you don't have to be married to each other and they'd each other and simple social situations we can have a different different defense then you would have an up in a courtroom or a conference room you tend to be a little less on guard then you would be under and i think that that social interaction between men and women and at the bars there's probably a southern problem i think it can definitely be a problem in iraq careful with that we can say the wrong thing so is live so quickly just a casual comment that you think is so as is nothing came

into being something do you when you're writing these books all the legal system their books until now have been basically decade ago justice system so you believe that the fiction stranger than fact i believe that the two that they're probably about equal that some of the things that actually happen or so bizarre that fire openness fiction a pilot couldn't sell them out most of what i write is really not fiction it so it didn't happen not the way i write it but it could happen it's it's all based on twenty three years of legal experience in the zone of reality in it it's totally plausible account or are things that are totally plausible all this could easily have happened and i take it that you pick a character here a defendant

there are a lot of fans of the defense lawyer a defendant their prosecute year a judge here take traits that you see in people in aceh and characters you write about that are imbued with them is or ever danger that people you know the messiah a lets me know once i had just so ford has asked him about a book that he had written and nothing can know another tact and he insisted i didn't know attacked not long ago vick her gold certain that sharon i said don't recognize robert novak the prince of darkness and i've been called fact he said you're right about first he said more than that no black all mail or telephone and said allah be played a part in the movie but did you have that problem ever the people say you're writing about me it were that they might recognize so i've never had anyone asked me or suggest that

i'd written about them i've had people ask me if i had written about people in new york to clear the judges for one reason or another i've had people ask me if judge so and so is the judge in this book and in the other book that i had published up particularly because i had a very distinguished a black judge and we have a crisis and major leaguers also asked about that oh i've not intentionally danny iny judges all i admired sterling graham and certainly some of those personality it has got to appear when i think about judges shoe is difficult award there but there's not there's really only one real character in the books that i've written so far knock at his permission in advance did you know this is a minister in florida named joe holder was the minister joel millman desperate just so sure that was the hope i was here in your book is you were here to talk about that as long as a macho guy and i thought he was he was everything administer ought to be installed write about him and i asked him could be ok and chases named as the little island that

have been real characters the book that i'm working on now i think there may be more dangerous that because i'm writing now about the civil justice systems that the criminal justice system running about a malpractice case a sixty five year old doctor who gets sued for the first time in his life and the impact of that on his family and since i have had so much experience in the civil arena and we can thank them and so my character little more deployable you worry about that yesterday we don't want that to become an issue out the books to stand on their own not to be controversial because of their son intensely avoiding that but on the other hand there are lawyers who specialize in the practice cases and they don't see themselves last area where we talk about the new growth when the lawyers the margins we're always in a practice and yet a very very strong laureate strong character not book woman lawyer more inexperienced and and barbara but

nonetheless a say again i'm very impressed with your ability to build strong competitive professionals so often we hear from when practice others the man i would characterize them put them down and put them in a subservient role or may appear that they're less professional and avail then a male opponent so you really dont you barbara is is more than a little daycare herself against many find that gets tougher which is that they don't go and waters as well adjusted we got to get up there in the power over again content and there comes a moment when he threatens that a couple bit about that about you're your view of one of them practice the us intimate does seem to me that their

use of captured the spirit of a change in the administration of justice that's an important month on whether a democrat asked i intended to do there as you know i flipped on strong female lawyer characters and all the law books intensely because i have the good fortune of having lived through the emergence of women as such competent followers and admire that and i think they've done it again some odd so i think that the women were initially and perhaps now even are always taken seriously by their male counterparts and the judges i think there's still a good deal of chauvinism in the system and yet they grit their teeth and keep on going and do an admirable job that's what i wanted to show they have an extra burden to care and they carry it well i wanted to demonstrate that they're barbara patterson totally credible trial lawyer because women make totally credible trial lawyer smith no question about

that my mind would lead to think like in the book when i fish in the book how close week came to kong whitehurst pulling at all helen near scrape it was for baxter of two there are judges who issue our unique bureau has it could've happened but i worry me about the bubba fact that could happen in those days or negate the monthly for judge could administer mallon most just get away with it not be not be disciplined cover up his drunken discover up his crime do you think there is enough monitoring of the system to prevent the injustice

from appearing not to prevent our life fire i really believe in the system i believe that the system is all it goes the people administering it and to some extent it is self administered there really isn't outside body even a body within the bar that looks of the situation of the lawyers involved in cases seen of what's going on and have enough of a sense of what's right and wrong to monitor themselves monitor each other market the judges they're going there's going to be injustices there will be situations where there's abuse no question about that but i admire the system and i think it works i wanted to show i am my book and both of my books that the system itself works but that it can also fail when people fail do i think there's enough monitoring this problem they're not monitoring until the system never fails on the show to achieve that

well gary you must have known what was happening the adversarial system encouraged him however to press her conviction right not bother neil well there are two aspects to that was the system itself if the system to work the prosecutor has to press are because as the prosecutor can start being the judge and can start with a defense lawyer i was the whole thing gets out of balance that's a system far there's also the human part and burn as a competitor and barbara's a competitor and it is true that in the heat of competition sometimes your judgments could be affected by the fact that you just play one away and uses rewarded on as best you can and ethically incompetently but he walked away richard spayd has been our guest on a word on words

featuring john second thought this program was produced in the studios of wbez and television nashville tennessee no no