Lagniappe editor Ashley Toland-Trice and news editor Pete Teske sat down with defense attorney Jeff Deen, just days after he and Cowboy Bob Clark helped former circuit judge Herman Thomas walk out of the Mobile County courthouse a free man.

Though Deen could not discuss many of the specifics of the case, he did offer his insight and philosophies on some of the strategies employed.

This interview has been edited down due to space constraints.

L: How many years have you practiced law in Mobile?

JD: Almost 19 years. I came here in 1980 and worked for the DA’s office for two years and went into private practice after that.

L: Where would this case rank in all of the cases you have tried — in terms of media and community interest?

JD: Well it would be number two because number one would be the Hamrick case in Montgomery, which was Siegelman and Scrushy, and I represented Paul Hamrick (in 2006) and my client was acquitted. There were similar things about the two cases because they were both long and you have to have a long-term strategy, and there was a lot of interest.

L: District Attorney John Tyson has taken a lot of heat in the black community — some of who say this case was racially motivated? Do you think it was?

JD: No, I think Tyson has been a good DA. I think he tries to prosecute the cases and is usually pretty methodical. So personally, I don’t think this has been racially motivated.

L: The defense brought up in opening arguments that there was a political conspiracy against Thomas but we never heard much about that during the trial. So what was the deal with that?

JD: No, we said he had political enemies. And it was brought up during the trial but it wasn’t harped on, but you play your cards as they come out, so sometimes in opening statements we say what we expect the evidence to be and where we expect the trial to go, and if it doesn’t go where we expect it to go then we have to adapt. When certain cases got thrown out, that put aside some strategies.

L: Some of your major victories came from arguing in front of the judge — not the jury — with many charges being thrown out by Nielson — were you surprised so many of the charges were thrown out or did you expect more would be?

JD: The prosecutors would not tell us a whole lot, and in criminal cases they don’t have to, so when we started figuring out a few of them — but not all of them — some of the charges were way beyond the statute of limitations, or at least what we thought was applicable. And as we got closer to trial, the judge said why don’t you just go ahead and tell them what you know and when they did a bunch of them got thrown out, but until they told us we weren’t sure.

L: You asked the former Murphy High School principal his thoughts on corporal punishment? You guys seemed to all-but-admit Thomas spanked these guys. Do you think the jury thought these guys were criminals and they needed their butts whipped?

JD: I think if you sat through the trial you saw these guys resisted any type of authority or structure and were resistant to any type of discipline. Some of them never had any discipline at all or even knew what that was. I thought it was interesting that more than half of them were saying it made them feel like “less of a man.” And I thought that was very interesting that they all used the same phrase. Because where would that come from? They were either rehearsing it or they had some street machismo, which that’s not what I was taught that a man does. He doesn’t stand on the street corner and sell drugs or go kill people or rob people and not work and not support his children. That doesn’t sound like somebody who is a man. Sounds like someone who has to put away his childish things and become a man and maybe he should be treated like a child.

L: So it was Herman’s job to treat them as children?

JD: You asked me about corporal punishment — philosophically speaking. And you asked me well, how does that play with jurors? Well, I don’t know what they are thinking. But a lot of times when you are trying cases, you try to get people to think about things. I don’t want to tell them this is what I think, so this is what you should think. But I do want to at least give them some thoughts so they can be putting their own day-to-day experiences with it and what they think and then articulate it.

L: Sequestering the jury seems to usually benefit the defense. Why did you decide not to ask for that?

JD: It really didn’t come up. Nobody brought it up. I guess everybody just went under the assumption that no one would read the newspaper or listen to the radio or get on Twitter or Facebook, though I just can’t imagine them not doing that. I’d like to think they weren’t. We would like to assume that the jurors are following the judge’s instructions. Or they are not reading the latest Lagniappe e-mail.

JD: I want to go back to the race stuff you asked me about. You asked me if Tyson was racially motivated?

L: Well, after the verdict, there were certainly a few people outside the courtroom saying he was a racist.

JD: I don’t think Tyson is racist in the sense of hatred of black people or that kind of stuff.. I do think that the different cultures have developed different ideas of how things should be done. And I think sometimes one culture finds it hard to find a way to understand why the other culture does something.

L: Well, it just seems since the alleged victims were also black it would be hard to say Tyson was a racist.

JD: Yeah, well, too, Herman has been well respected in the black community and in the community of lawyers for a long time. And he did have unorthodox methods of doing stuff but he had been out to those schools for years and everybody said, “What a great thing. These guys don’t have a male figure and he shows up at their school and checks up on them.” And everybody thought it was great. And then he gets in trouble and everyone twists it all around and says he was a sex predator and he was there checking everybody out. And that was ridiculous. I mean, he was going to civic clubs and talking about it and people would come up and shake his hand… You wouldn’t have a case if there hadn’t been some kinky sex element in it. Nobody would even care about this case.

L: Well speaking of that, did you consider it a big victory that you were able to keep the “sex expert” from testifying?

JD: Well we could have argued it either way, but I’m glad we did because it just saved so much time. I didn’t see how it was relevant — he wasn’t being tried for being a sex predator.

L: Well didn’t you have to believe the paddlings were sexual in nature in order to get the sex abuse charges?

JD: Well, that was one aspect of it….

L: Do you have any colorful theories on how the DNA (semen of two of the alleged victims) ended up in the office (Room 806)?

JD: I don’t know how it got there.

L: So you guys are helping him get his law license back?

JD: Yes, we are helping him with the bar.

L: How long is that process?

JD: It varies.

L: Do you think he will ever run for DA?

JD: No. But with these qualifications he could run for governor in Alabama. And he’d get elected in Louisiana.

L: Now that this seems to be over, any final thoughts?

JD: I do not believe that John Tyson or Nicki Patterson chose to prosecute Herman Thomas because of the color of his skin. I do believe that Herman has political enemies who wanted him out of office but I don’t think John Tyson or his staff was in cahoots with any of them. I know John Tyson to be a straight forward fellow who can be a bit banal at times, but if he presented the cases to a Grand Jury he did it because he believed it was the right thing to do. However, as happens sometimes, cases which look good on paper fall apart when witnesses have to testify before a jury under oath and are subjected to cross examination. In this case, the facts presented to the trial jury did not fit the charges alleged in the indictments. And… trying a case with the mercurial Bob Clark is like playing tennis in a phone booth