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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to Talking feds. One on one deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman. Today I'll be speaking with the author of a terrific new book, you know him already, Elliot Williams, a CNN legal analyst and a long time talking Fed stalwart. I want to say he was on the first or second talking Fed ever, many, many years ago. But you don't yet know him and nor did I in this new incarnation as an author. You know, several of my commentator colleagues have written books, typically about their experiences in the law or lessons for our current straits. And no knock on them, any book is a major achievement. But Eliot has turned out a book that is genuinely writerly, in a word, and that adds one more dimension to his multidimensional resume. And it's a resume that already includes high ranking service in the Obama administration as well as time as a frontline attorney in the DOJ's criminal division and as chief counsel to Senator Schumer. So the book is Five Bullets. It's a revisiting of the story of Bernie Goetz, the subway vigilante and the many, many social, psychological, criminal and racial dimensions of that searing event. Elliot Williams, thanks for joining and congratulations on quite an achievement and thanks for.
- [01:50]
B
The very kind introduction. Harry, you're right, I was on if it wasn't the first one. I remember we recorded a few episodes in the course of like two that were your first few and no, it was definitely at the beginning. Seeing what Talking Fence has grown into is really quite remarkable.
- [02:05]
A
Well, you're very kind. Okay. But let's talk about Five Bullets. You know, I was alive then and I lived in New York around then, so it's seared in my memory. But I think for a lot of readers it'll be a new story. Just give it to us in a nutshell. Who's Bernard Goetz? What made him a national name for in that period in 1984?
- [02:30]
B
If you've ever listened to the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel, which was back in the news recently because Brigitte Bardot died, leaving only three people surviving. I believe it was Chubby Checker, Fats Domino or Bob Dylan and aids crack. Bernie Getz is a line and we didn't start the fire. Well, Bernie Getz, all that's not in doubt is that he boards a downtown New York City subway December 22, 1984, shoots, claims he's about to be mugged by four black teenagers, shoots them all with five bullets, runs away, goes on trial and is ultimately acquitted of all violent crime charges. It became a hugely polarizing moment in American history. American legal history, American race relations history, New York City history, political history, all the above. Just really a flashpoint in America's longstanding and long running relationship with, with vigilantes.
- [03:24]
A
It also takes a while for him to be captured and the papers are just going nuts about this vigilante figure. You gave it a little emphasis here. Five bullets. So four victims, four people shot. Five bullets. Explain the five bullets. And a little foreshadowing for why that's going to matter in the trial.
- [03:45]
B
Because it's a mystery as to what happens with the bullets. Actually, it's. We know that certainly all four of the young men end up taking a bullet. They all end up getting shot. The question is how? Right. And as every, you know, there's a very law adjacent audience to talking feds that sort of geeks out on issues like this. And there's not a ton of law in the book. It's really only about three chapters, about two thirds of the way through. But there's some legal questions over. Okay, first guy gets shot, second guy, third guy. We all know they all were shot with a bullet. But then somehow a bullet hole ends up in the wall. The panel of this gritty New York subway car. And one guy ends up paralyzed and brain damaged. But it's hard to know. And there's a factual question that really gets litigated at trial. Does Bernard get stand over him and shoot twice? Does he shoot once? Is he just spraying bullets? And that was one of the questions that actually was quite controversial at trial. So five bullets is sort of the mystery of how these four young men were shot.
- [04:49]
A
You know, I was put in mind of this in the recent shooting in Minnesota because there's that first bullet by Officer Ross, but then the a little bit of hesitation before the second and third. And likewise here there's at least some suggestion you're right. You know, today maybe there'd be all kinds of video, but there just had to be reconstructed through eyewitness testimony. A few people on the. But there's some suggestion that boom, boom, boom, boom out of fear. But then didn't even some people proffer the line, you don't look so bad. Here's another that you know, when you're thinking about the law, which the book really I think illustrates beautifully, is an imperfect prism to think about the whole Getz episode. But that final hesitation you could see how that would be a very different act in the eyes of the law, more sort of wanton.
- [05:46]
B
And real quick on this, tying it to current events. As you know, in Five Bullets I tie it a lot to current events and how we live with some of these issues today. This whole idea of justification for shooting. And of course everyone knows and this is a good thing. And I talk about this in the book. One is allowed to use lethal force in the United States to prevent violent crime or harm to themselves or someone else or if they fear that they are about to be seriously injured or harmed or mugged. That's generally the law in the United States. Well, there's. Let's assume, and the prosecutor goes through this in the trial of Bernard Goetz, let's assume that Bernard Getz legitimately had a basis for firing that first shot. Maybe he did. I'm just putting out the argument. Well then he loses some of that rationale for then turning and firing one guy and is even less of a rationale for firing the third guy.
- [06:34]
A
And then, and they are fleeing, we.
- [06:36]
B
Know, and they're fleeing at this point. They're trying to run through the walls of the train like out of a slasher movie. And then finally, assuming he shoots the fourth guy twice while he's on the ground and says to him, you don't look so bad. Here's another. It is just hard, like in the descending order of legal rationale. So there's just some interesting, again, the law portion of the book, which I wrote to make very accessible to non lawyers. But it's really only about three chapters of the book. Much more of it is about the zeitgeist and all of the grit and grime and sort of difficulties of 1980s New York that got us to this point.
- [07:11]
A
Yeah, I mean, look, it seems a perfect companion for the time and place New York city in the 1980s. And as you say, before we get there, you're pretty, you're, you're upfront about saying earlier, look, he had a right to be afraid. Fear was a very real thing. You don't doubt that as a, as a, you know, a kind of presence in, you know, the subway, which, which almost is a kind of character in the whole book itself. There's. Give us your, the feel of the, of the gritty 80s there.
- [07:43]
B
Yeah, let me, let me give you just read a short, not full sentence from the book. But given that reality, it is almost impossible to comprehend the mythic level of unrest that characterized life in New York a few decades ago. Do you know where that sentence came from? Harry Lippman? That was you literally in our first conversation. Literally. I just said, hey, I'm writing a book about Bernard Goetz in the 1980s. And Harry Lippman, you said, God, you know, I grew up. I know the New York well. And, God, no one can really comprehend the mythic level of unrest in 1980s New York. And I literally wrote that down. Such a beautiful turn of phrase. And you get that line in the book. So, you know, just imagine this is not purebred Labradoodle New York. This is not Whole Foods New York. This is not Lululemon New York that you think of today. Or, you know, $17 toast that you think of. It was a time when the homicide rate was flirting with 2,000 a year. So it was incredibly rough in New York. And again, just to put that in context, you're talking about now anywhere from 200 to 400 or so homicides a year, just a fraction of what it was at that time. So you're talking about violent crime. You're talking about the city being broke and mismanaged. The city sought a bailout from the federal government in 1975, I believe it was, if you know the iconic Daily News headline, Ford to City Drop Dead. When.
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A
And those kinds of headlines, by the way, figure big here, right? Is in them every day.
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B
When?
- [09:18]
A
After the episode. Yeah.
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B
So the city's broke. It's firing teachers, firing sanitation workers. There's a blackout, and that's where we start the book. In 1977, that literally becomes the Purge. It was the city. The lights went out in New York City, and then it was just a night of looting and arson and assault and firearms and. And all kinds of mess. So it's just a chaotic time. And then within the subway, you're talking about also a place where lots of crimes were committed. Every subway car is covered in graffiti. Cars are derailing, cars are setting on fire. And it was just the New York. Not of Sex and the City, but the New York of Death Wish, Death Wish, Taxi Driver, Taxi Drivers, Saturday Night Fever, the Warriors. It's that kind of New York.
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A
And you're right that of course, it wasn't as well to do, but nevertheless, it was then and remains an extremely sort of democratic institution. Everybody, everybody rides the New York subway. Okay, so, Elliot, your reporting here is really panoramic. You taped interviews with Getz himself and such bound for fame New Yorkers as Al Sharpton and Curtis Lewis. By the way, the crime stuff you just talked about is what gave rise to what launched the mayoral candidacy and national prominence of Rudy Giuliani. So we had the whole Ed Koch, David Dinkins thing. None of the boys now men, one of one, I think died about that. Yeah. Oh, two of now died.
- [10:55]
B
One died. Yeah, one died.
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A
But, but. So you tried. But they, but they, they didn't want to talk to you. Give us your sense of that.
- [11:02]
B
I either couldn't track him down, which, you know, sometimes they were just tough to find, or I got very close with one and I spoke to two of his sisters at various points. A bunch of different conversations, emails. This was Darryl kb, his the most, the severely injured one. And I was, and I was even willing to, if they did not want to make him available, given his brain damage and his injuries, I would happily have talked to them. But, you know, I spoke to them, emails, conversations, and then ultimately got a message back. It was just an outright declination that they just did not want to be a part of it. But, you know, it wasn't hostile or anything. They just simply and I guess, you know, trying to be empathetic. To me, my gut is, well, look, I'm writing a book and I'm interviewing and pardon me, I have interviewed Bernard Goetz. He's one of the first interviews I got, which is remarkable. I'm writing a book. This is your chance to have your say and to be heard. I mean, I think being empathetic, I feel like, look, it's been 40 years. They have wanted to move on for this entire time. They're owed $35 million by this man from a civil suit that they're never going to see. And I think they're probably just sick of a parade of Fox News or CNN or whatever, people coming in and wanting to talk to them every few years when you're Trayvon Martin's in the news, let's talk about vigilantes or whatever else. And so I think they just didn't want a part of it.
- [12:30]
A
But as you say, you talked with Getz, man. He comes across, even this short conversation as a really kind of complicated guy. He's sort of contrary and condescending. But here's a quote that just jumped out at me that maybe will shock a lot of readers. Those guys needed shooting, for starters. Just for starters. That's not why I shot them. But they absolutely needed shooting. You know, give us your sense of Emmy. I think he is sort of multi dimensional.
- [13:08]
B
So it's funny, the New York Times in a. Pardon me, the New York Times, it Was the New Yorker in a piece about this book, the way they put it, what they said was that he comes across as, if not sympathetic, which I don't think he does in this book, but as three dimensional. And I made a point of this is what Bernie Goetz told me. You can draw what you wish about you, what you wish to draw about Bernie Getz. You know, my wife was in the next room when I was interviewing him. He's loud. He was on speakerphone, and he was just. And he's just rambling and all over the place. It was a meandering conversation and hard to pin down, but that. That those guys needed shooting. Line came specifically in response to a question I asked him. Do you feel you committed an act of public service by shooting these young men? And that's when he said those guys needed shooting, for starters. Now, the interesting thing, and I talk about this through the book, it's almost like a eugenic view that he. That he holds and held, not just about these guys, but everybody else, that society is better off without some people. And it was really remarkable to me because had he said, I was terrified in that moment, and I felt that the only way to prevent violence coming to me, which the law protects in New York, thanks to his case, quite frankly, if he just said that, it would have been a defensible statement. I was afraid I had a gun and I pulled it out and shot them. But this went further than that. This was. Society did not need these people. I mean, I'm divining the meaning from that, but I don't know how else you interpret a statement like those guys needed shooting other than suggesting that some folks just need to be shot, irrespective of whatever they've done to you.
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A
Yeah, but I mean, it's oddly candid, or open, you could say, and then he suddenly shuts down the conversation. But he obviously is, you know, in some ways still kind of playing it candid. Now, of course, a huge part of the book, and this is a huge part of my memory that'll strike people today, maybe when you read it, as a little surprising. He is at the beginning and he flees and he's not picked up for a while, and then he does this long confession with a lot of statements like this. But, man, he is a hero in New York, by and large, in the sort of tabloid part of New York City. But here was a detail that just was riveting. Well, here, tell us about it. Talk about the moment when he first comes into the courtroom in front of the prospective jurors who are going to, you know, be chosen for his case.
- [15:52]
B
So he walks in for jury selection and a couple dozen jurors start applauding. And the polling, it was interesting. I go through the polling a fair amount in the book, and it seemed more split than I would have anticipated. It's relatively. It's relatively split. It's not 80, 20, you know, it's 55, 45 or 52, 40, whatever. You know, it's. It's within. Not a blowout. But the energy in the city and the most vocal energy seem to be from supporters. If, you know, if you look at the fact that the. The mayor gets several dozen calls and like, of the 32, I don't have the number in front of me. 32 calls the mayor makes gets, 29 of them are in support of the shooter. The police tip line they open up is overwhelmed by. With people offering their purple Hearts and offering to pay him money and offering to pay his legal bills and supporting the shooter. And a lot of that you mentioned in your question, Harry. The tabloids that the. The New York Post being the sort of driver of a lot of this. And I talk a bunch about Rupert Murdoch in the book Five Bullets, the New York Post is driving it, but also the Daily News and Newsday, which the other big tabloids followed suit. It, you know, it's. There was this fascinating continuing cycle and maybe. And we live this today to some extent, but people are scared. They open the newspaper and they get more scared. So then they're scared, and then they go back to the news and get more scared. And it's a cycle. It's a chicken and egg cycle where it's hard to know what came first, the fear or the scares, the scare tactics from media.
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A
I think it's one of the really smart points of opening with the whole blackout, which was this complete sort of almost, you know, limbic scary moment. But I just want to tell people, you say the tabloids, but, you know, Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, those are really big, big features, including in Subway Life, I think they were actually designed to be so, you know, red on the. And you just had all these normal New York, very high circulation, Murdoch and the like. And to me, part of it, as I was reading your account, I hadn't remembered the whole sort of beginning after he had. How long was it until he actually surfaced? Because early on no one knew who he was. And so he emerges initially in the consciousness of the city as a sort of real life, you know, Caped crusader justice, but shrouded in mystery. And then little by little, as people think it over, the district political officials, they begin to temper what, you know, was the obvious more than excitement of people in New York.
- [18:46]
B
Yeah, so it's nine days he's. He's on the lam, he absconds and sort of goes into hiding and is running around New England and nobody knows where he is. And the papers, but also the city filled the void with fantasies about who this guy probably was. They knew he was a white guy, they knew the victims were black guys, they knew he had glasses on and a handgun, but no one really knew much else about him. And people could extrapolate what this idea meant and just back to this idea of fear and the tabloids and so on, you know, something we take for granted. And this is not a criticism of the Daily News or the New York Post, just the reality of what they look like. The front page and the back page of these papers are one headline, right? It's not like the New York Times where if you were down the street, you wouldn't know what was unless it was like Inauguration Day or something. It's a big photograph. You don't know what's on the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily News. It's literally a full size photograph with a big 3 inch headline blaring. And when that headline is Girl shot dead, screaming or screaming, screams ignored or like when I cite a night of terror, literally, that's just the headline that ultimately got in people's brains. And when you consider that everybody. This is picking up on your point again, Harry. It's not a world of CNN, MSNBC, Fox and Vox and Drudge Reporter. 80 different websites you can go to. There's literally four places you can get your news right. And most of them don't come on until 5pm on the television. So really anything the Daily News or the New York Post are telling you are really, that's what's shaping your worldview. And that culture of fear just pervaded the city at the time. And I think everybody was on edge given the stats I cited before. And it just created the need, this void for this hero who ends up being Bernie gets the center of my book Five Bullets.
- [20:44]
A
So you again, in the last answer, raised the way that, you know, race is really central to the story. And you had at the time, well, Al Sharpton, among others. But African American leaders say being kind of the forefront of the what are we doing lionizing this guy? And had it been a black Shooter and white victims. This case would never been. That really is the sort of engine driving not just both the focus and the sensationalism of it, but anyway, you know, race, you show it playing out in very stark ways, but also in kind of undertones. Talk about how it shaped the case.
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B
Yeah, and.
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A
Well, let's just start. Talk about how it shaped not the.
- [21:35]
B
Case, but the way people saw it.
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A
The whole episode of Getz.
- [21:38]
B
Well, absolutely. So it was undeniable. You know, you got a white guy shooting four black teenagers, right? And I muse what? And a number of. Charlie Rangel, then a congressman at the time, muses the same thing. Like, what if a black guy, a middle class black guy, shoots four white teenagers on the subway and runs away? Just, you know, regard. No one's gonna call you racist. Just acknowledge the reality that we all would see such an event play out differently. It's just a reality in how we all or many people see the world. And I just think the racial dynamics of the case were unmistakable. Getz himself had some history of using ethnic slurs, and if not even using ethnic slurs, as you see throughout the book, where I cite to my interview with him, at least talking about race in a forthright way that you just don't hear certainly from white folks often or anybody. It's just, wow. I was stunned in the things he was willing to say to me, just on the record, short of ethnic slurs and outright I hate black people bigotry. It wasn't that, but it was, wow, I can't believe you said that to me. So that was sort of remarkable. The other thing, and I think the big surprise in the book Five Bullets and all this reporting and all these interviews I did, the person who seemed to have the most coherent notion of the shooting, shockingly to me, was Al Sharpton. And I expected Sharpton to be far more strident in both, given who he was in New York City at the time. Remember, he's a street sort of very.
- [23:10]
A
Different person to Juana Bradley, etc. Than he is today. Right.
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B
Three piece suits and bariatric surgery, or GI. You know, the. Or whatever it is. No, it's.
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A
He's a sweat with the people. Right?
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B
Yeah. 300 pound guy with blown out hair and medallions and the Reeboks and totally different guy. But Sharpton. And not just. And this is not even Sharpton coming to Jesus as a mainstream media figure today. This is literally Sharpton in 87 at this big press conference they have says, this is not about the boys. This is not about defending or exonerating these boys. If they did something wrong, they should pay too. I'm paraphrasing a little bit. This is about justice and Bernard Goetz. And he consistently has taken the tackle, surprisingly. I don't know if people would be surprised by it. I would have thought Al Sharpton would have been unequivocal, given particularly who he was in the 1980s, but no, it was. He was, he was all in on this idea that if the guys were bad, then they should, you know, pay for their crimes and get rehabilitated, however society can do that. But this is about Bernard Goetz. And he, he echoed that point to me and he, and he said it back then, which is really interesting. It was a level of, you know, in any book, nuance.
- [24:24]
A
Right? I mean, this is a damn nuanced case. And you, your writing is nuanced, but the writing and reporting you do doesn't necessarily include nuanced folks. I just want to add the one point on the, on the racist undertone. It's again, the character of the New York subway really comes through because that would be about the only place, I think, that, you know, regular, well to do or middle class white New Yorkers would really encounter young black kids playing. Whether or not they hassled them personally, the dispute was whether they'd gone up and asked for $5 or basically tried to, you know, push them around. But that was again, something that happened in subways and, and nowhere else. Okay, so the trial, you're right, it's. It's such an interesting story. In some ways, the trial is a very poor prism to get at it. It has to give one answer or another. It has to filter out all these issues of race and passion and prejudice, et cetera, which are so big a part of the case still.
- [25:43]
B
Yeah, and that's the thing. The trial becomes this microcosm where people are graft of societal issues and fights. People are grafting their views and passions and fears onto this trial. Protesters clogging the courthouse everywhere, snipers on roofs and police on horseback gumming up all of lower Manhattan. It was literally like, you know, a step below college Sheikh Mohammed going on trial. I mean, literally just the, the craziness of it all. And I mean, ultimately, what ends up deciding the trial? One, you know, the passions of the jurors, I do think they saw themselves in gets even if the, even if the verdict was completely defensible, they're just still, you know, we ride the subway, we feel unsafe. He felt unsafe. QED this is. This is the action we're taking. The one.
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A
And what was the legal, you know, kind of.
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B
Yeah. Oh, well, real quick. The legal rubric. So if folks might know from modern history, in 2023, when Daniel Penney, the ex Marine college student, chokes out Jordan Neely, the Michael Jackson impersonator who was acting erratically in the subway, chokes him to death, and ultimately goes on trial and is acquitted of homicide, you know, the governing case in that trial is State versus Getz. It literally. Bernard gets the case, the trial, it goes all the way up to the New York State Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York, on this very issue. And the central issue is reasonableness. What is the reasonableness in one's implementation or use of self defense? And that where the court lands. It's confusing as hell, people, even for me as a lawyer. But just in a sentence, one's actions will be reasonable if two things are true. One, if the self defense was car. If the person was legitimately and reasonably afraid at the time he use the self defense, and if the person's self defense were the actions of what a objectively reasonable person, other person in that circumstance would have done. So is he. Did he do what we would hope he would do in that circumstance, or what we would tolerate from another member of society? And was he legitimately scared? It's this hodgepodge of objective objectivity and subjectivity. Really, really confusing. But needless to say, the jury, you know, acquits him on that basis the more than anything else. One of the four young men testifies and it's a bleeping.
- [28:08]
A
Yeah, tell us about that.
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B
Yeah, James Ramsur, he just, you know, I think what was really neat about James Ramsur, he echoes some of the same things Bernie Getz does. Says about the police aren't out for me, the public's not out for me. I don't trust this system. I don't trust any of you. This is all Bernie Getz. It's just the conclusions a little bit different. And he just came up to testify and, you know, everybody in the courtroom thought he was angry and lashing out and dangerous and so on. Now, some of that's perception, but it just did not go well. And it was considered a train wreck for the prosecution. Prosecution and for the many lawyers possibly listening to this prosecution. Sometimes you gotta put someone on knowing that the guy's gonna be a disaster and just hope you can fix it. Just. That's just how trials work. Greg Waples, the prosecutor whom I interviewed for the book just didn't have a choice and put him on and knew that he was sort of tanked. But Waples felt the moment he saw the jury and knew who got on, he felt that it was a fool's errand to try to even bother trying the case because people were so.
- [29:11]
A
Yeah. So that part's really interesting in terms of the liaison with politics and lobby, you know, Morgenthau, who's the head of the office, I think they basically see it as a DOA kind of case anyway. They. You have a real straight shooter prosecutor. And it was interesting. You have a pretty flamboyant defense team. And all the bad stuff about guests, they sort of welcomed even. Even this confession because it all played into what was going to win it for them were they to win it, which is, you know, this. This sense of. Of him as, you know, Mr. New Yorker with fears that others could appreciate. So you mentioned the Neely case. You know, there. I mentioned the Minnesota shooting when we talked about the fifth bullet. It does seem on the one hand a hellscape from another world, but on the other, lots of, I think, overtones and touch points with today. So just maybe talk about where we are today, which you do some at the end. You know, cities are more. Are safer, but we still have a lot of vigilante activity. You know, Kyle Rittenhouse, Jordan Neely. What's the kind of touch points that the book will give to the younger reader?
- [30:31]
B
Yeah, I think America still has a fixation on vigilantes and as it did back in 1984. But moreover, now we have Twitter and TikTok and Instagram Reels and all that where you can get your views out to a like audience very quickly and far more. I know the names Kyle Rittenhouse and Jordan Neely are sort of politically polarizing because there's a right left issue. But at their core, they're both people who took actions that were supported by many people online, that many people saw as political right, the one that bucks.
- [31:04]
A
But also, as you know, the response to a failed political system, taking law into their own hands, not being afraid of any law, that kind of thing.
- [31:12]
B
But the big one, I actually think the more fascinating one is Luigi Mangione and just taking an action that he, based on his manifesto, felt was against an actor that was oppressive. But far more than the specifics of the action, my goodness, the public reaction to it and the way people were quick to go online to herald the action, and not just herald the action, really bash the victim who you know, or I dislike my health insurance as much as the next guy. But just the viciousness and vitriol directed at Brian Thompson or his family or was just my goodness. And that is indicative and I think of more to come of who we are as Americans. And I talk about how we're united in our fear as human beings. But the country since its founding has had a fixation on vigilantes who are usually white guys who step out and do that which they feel the public cannot. And so in many respects, the book Five Bullets isn't just about 1984. It's a broader look at sort of all of us over time and how events like this play into some of the deepest and darkest fantasies that Americans have. But it's happier than that. I made it sound real dark, but, you know, it's. It's more interesting.
- [32:31]
A
Yeah, look, it's a. It's a. It's a riveting story about a totally, whatever you say, interesting town that so many people wanted to live in at a special time. But I want to end with Elliot. What I think you render really well, and that is the sort of imperfection of all of this being funneled through a legal system. You put it really eloquently. Twelve imperfect people, people and one imperfect judge were about to make imperfect work out of an imperfect system. And you end with thoughts about, you know, the distinction between the legal verdict and a moral judgment about, you know, was this right or wrong, a judgment that can be obviously nuanced in the way the law can't. And you say, you know, maybe there'll be a different moral judgment about get. So I just wonder your kind of final thoughts about that and where whether the. The moral case in 2026 is different from 1984. 5.
- [33:35]
B
The moral case is. Is always different. And I would just urge people, regardless of whether the person you are talking about, you think they should have gotten acquitted or convicted. Just think about, you know, okay, that's a legal decision. That's not the same as a moral one. And think of how many times people have pointed to, well, you got acquitted. The law says everything's okay. Well, would you hire him? Would you have him babysit your kids? I mean, it's. And I think it's okay within reason to have views about actors or actions that go beyond what happened in a trial. And what I say is, yes, the law supported based and the jury was able to defend their reasoning, but it ought not stop there. And I know from talking to Bernard Goetz that, yeah, he is deserving of some skepticism at a minimum, just from hearing how he viewed the world. And I just think simply embracing and respecting the propriety of legal decisions ought not be the way we ought to see the world. And I say this as someone who's been a prosecutor, worked at the Justice Department for a long time. You know, we ought to respect the law and the process, respect decisions and, and and grant people their freedom when they are acquitted. That is wonderful, but it's more complex than that. And I don't think we ought to reduce our lives to simply legal, to just embracing legal verdicts on their face.
- [35:05]
A
And that complexity is really one of the great strengths of the book. The book is Five Bullets by Elliot Williams, Made An Effort. A really impressive book and a great read. Best of luck with it and thanks for spending some time with us.
- [35:19]
B
Thank you. Thanks for all the kind words about it, Harry. Writing is a slog, but I did love writing this book, so thanks so much.
- [35:29]
A
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