Podcast - Reflections in the Courtroom: State v. Faulkner

Dan Small: Welcome to another episode of "The Trial Lawyer's Handbook." In this episode we will discuss the trial of State v. Faulkner and how I used it for my work in Uzbekistan. These episodes are based in part on my latest ABA book "Lessons Learned from a Life on Trial."

Ashley Faulkner was charged with the murder of Bo Wozniak and Savannah Hyde. Wozniak was found dead in his apartment. His girlfriend, Savannah Hyde, was found dead in the apartment bathroom, with a gun next to her. At first, it looked like a murder-suicide, but that soon changed.

Ashley Faulkner was a security guard at the apartment complex. Shaun Royce, one of the other guards, testified to the grand jury that he saw Faulkner on the night of the murder coming out of Wozniak's apartment. Faulkner, it turns out, was madly in love with Savannah, and wildly jealous of Wozniak.

Another prosecution witness, Casey Lauper, was the registered owner of the gun found in the bathroom that was used to shoot Wozniak and Hyde. Lauper testified that Faulkner, who he knew, tried to buy the gun from him. After he showed Faulkner the gun in his locker at the local gun club, it went missing. But Lauper's roommate, Jan Butler, was a former girlfriend of Wozniak and also jealous of his new girlfriend, Savannah Hyde. She may also have had access to Lauper's gun, but she left for Europe after the murder and is not reachable.

The defense will call Chris Hyde, Savannah's brother, to testify about the rocky relationship between Savannah and Wozniak. He will also testify about Butler's jealousy over Wozniak's relationship with his sister.

Faulkner will testify in his own defense. He was there at the apartment complex that night because he was worried about Wozniak hurting Savannah, but he claims he had nothing to do with the murder. By the time he went into the apartment that night, they were already dead.

It was an interesting case. Relatively simple, yet deeply nuanced and challenging. Two principal witnesses for each side: Royce and Lauper for the prosecution, and Chris Hyde and Faulkner for the defense. Each witness with baggage, and fuel for the other side. A good case for a trial.

One small thing: It isn't real.

In 2013, the international non-governmental organization (NGO) Regional Dialogue asked if I would travel to Uzbekistan on a pro bono basis and work with lawyers and judges there on reforming their judicial system.

In 2013, Uzbekistan was not a democracy. It had emerged from the Soviet empire with a president, Islam Karimov, who remained in office for 25 years. But it is also a country with a fairly young population, and many of its younger students and professionals longed for change. They knew they had to be extraordinarily patient and extraordinarily courageous, or the president might cut off any reform. Perhaps violently, as it happened in many other countries.

Among those wanting reform were lawyers. Uzbekistan essentially had the old Byzantine inquisitorial system, where judges did almost everything. On the criminal side, the prosecution puts together a file, hands it to the judge, and the judge decides what to do with it from there. It was not entirely irrational. After all, the thinking goes, there is only one truth. The judge doesn't need two sets of lawyers getting in the way of the search for truth. He or she can do it themselves. So there were no two-sided trials, no cross-examination, and few of the protections that we in the United States take for granted in our adversarial system. We try cases, or watch trials on TV or movies, and assume that that's the way it works for everyone. It's not.

The younger lawyers in Uzbekistan were curious and wanted more. Without exposure to actual trials, much of what they thought they knew came from the few U.S. movies and TV shows that made it through. But that's no way to explore real reform. So the NGO Regional Dialogue was able to get permission to bring three of us from the U.S. in 2013 to help explain and demonstrate the adversarial system. For this purpose, I was able to persuade my friend, professor Ron Sullivan, who ran Harvard Law School's Trial Advocacy Workshop where I had taught for many years, to allow me to use one of the mock trial case files. That case was State v. Faulkner, translated into Uzbek.

I took the long trip to Tashkent, the capital. But the main event of the trip was not there. It was at Lake Charvak, a resort about a two-hour drive from Tashkent. We took a group of about 60 Uzbek lawyers and judges there for a three-day trial advocacy workshop and mock trial.

My first question was, why? Time and money were precious for these programs. Why use so much of both to take them out of Tashkent, the capital? Surely there were adequate hotels and conference spaces in the capital. The answer was surprising and enlightening: The further we can get them away from the capital, physically and psychologically, the freer they will feel to ask questions, to explore new things and to speak their minds. That willingness to explore is what we were looking for.

We Americans had much to learn. We were not only there to teach about the adversarial system, but also to sell it. I have lectured and taught cross-examination many times. But in Uzbekistan, before we could get to the "how" of cross-examination in other elements of a trial, I had to present the "why." I had to sell this idea that it was more than some Hollywood trick. The great U.S. legal scholar John Henry Wigmore once said, "Cross-examination is beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth." But the Uzbeks were skeptical — they had to be convinced.

We spent about the first day and a half walking them through the key steps of a trial and other issues. We talked about the adversarial system, about the idea of a trial, in the words of its 15th-century origin, as the "act or process of testing." Testing the truth from both sides. I used one of my favorite quotes from the ancient fabulist Aesop, that "Every truth has two sides; it's well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either one."

We then introduced them to opening, direct, cross, closing and more. We spent the second half of day two introducing them to the Faulkner case, which had been translated for us into Uzbek. Imagine lawyers who know nothing about trials attempting it for the first time in a murder case. It was at times hilarious, confusing, profound and enlightening. So much of what we — and they — learned from the experience reflected back on the lessons learned that we've discussed throughout this podcast. It's worth reflecting back on them, through the lens of the Uzbeks, and State v. Faulkner. Tune in next week for more on the Uzbek mock trial.