Remember how I had posted about the discussion as to who would serve as the expert witness in the case who could testify as to what a person with a Concealed Handgun License is trained to do? Well, Chris Trotter and Jason Short insisted that this person be their firm’s private detective, Jason Servo.
If you recall, Trotter and Short assured me that Servo was the best option for this and could rebut anything any state’s expert witness may testify to.
It turns out there was an ulterior motive for this. Their friend, Jason Servo, got paid $2500 by the courts to provide his testimony. Not bad money for 3 hours of time in court.
So Servo was called as the witness instead of any of the people who I actually trained under.
Right out of the gate, one of the first questions was why wasn’t he with the Gresham police anymore. Turns out he was fired from the police department for getting a DUI.
This was news to me. I was mortified. This was supposedly the grand superstar expert witness? Immediately discredited within the first few questions. I was livid but I had to withhold my emotions and remain stoic.
As the questioning went on, it turns out that while Servo is a certified CHL instructor, he had only trained about 12 people. TWELVE. Total. Ever. The people I had actually trained under trained twelve people nearly every weekend for several years, and had vastly more experience.
When it came time for DA Todd Jackson to start his cross exam of Servo, one of the first questions he asked was if Servo had directly trained me. Of course the answer was no. So that opened the door for Jackson to further discredit Servo’s testimony because Servo did not have direct knowledge as to exactly what I was and wasn’t trained on.
This was exactly what I had feared, and exactly why I had suggested well in advance that we bring in one of the people who had actually trained me. But Chris Trotter had to put on a shoddy expert witness in order to get his friend an easy payday, client be damned.
As the cross exam went on Jackson proceeded to rip Servo apart because Servo’s standards were outdated. One of these things was the concept of the “21 foot rule” where someone who is within 21 feet of you, is posing a threat, can get to you before you can draw your firearm.
I, personally, had been instructed by a current law enforcement officer just the day before the incident that they had increased it to the 25 foot rule.
But did Chris Trotter attempt to enter this as evidence of my personal knowledge or training? Did he attempt to enter any of the printed documents of my training? Of course not, he willfully allowed the DA’s to pretend as if they knew what I was trained on.
As part of Trotter’s questioning, at one point he had asked Servo if he believed my actions were justified and consistent with self defense. This was essentially asking a witness to reach a legal conclusion, which you cannot do. But the judge allowed it.
In fact, as all of these borderline-inadmissible questions were being asked of Servo, it basically opened the door for DA’s Kate Molina and Todd Jackson to pull off one of their most unbelievable stunts yet…