On January 30th there was a hearing to go over pre trial motions. If memory serves, this was another one of those instances where Chris Trotter had me show up 30 minutes early because we were going to discuss things before going in, only to have Trotter not show up until 5 or 10 minutes before the hearing and not having time to discuss much of anything before going in.
Chris Trotter managed to win just one of the arguments for pre trial motions and rules, while losing nine of the motions. Yes, NINE. The judge even remarked that one of the state’s arguments was based on “weak reasoning” yet Chris Trotter still couldn’t overcome that.
One of these motions was filed by Trotter for change of venue, to move the trial to a different area of the state, away from the Portland media footprint, since the “press” had published several stories about me that contained outright false information, much of it based on deputy DA Kate Molina’s own words:
Of course Trotter lost that argument.
There was another point where the judge had brought up a hypothetical scenario involving a “counter protester” showing up to an event and getting assaulted by the protesters. Did Chris Trotter take this opportunity to clarify that I was not a “counter protester” and that I was there to do my job? Of course not. Chris Trotter willingly allowed the judge to continue with a false belief that I was at the event in question as a “counter protester” and that I was there to cause trouble.
There was another point when there was discussion as to whether or not the Portland police directives regarding crowd control and responding to unpermitted protests would be admissible during the trial. Deputy DA Todd Jackson said “What the Portland Police Bureau’s policy decisions were and operational strategies were with regard to responding to this protest, all of which was apparently unknown to Mr. Strickland or anyone outside of the police bureau, about what they were doing and why they were doing it within their own internal decision making, none of that is relevant to this case, and so I’m moving to exclude that evidence.”
Christopher Trotter was arguing that those directives were relevant to my case of self defense because had there been a police presence, in accordance with their own directives, then I would have had someone to run to for help instead of being left to my own devices. What Trotter didn’t argue was that I was, in fact, familiar with the Portland police directives and their standard protocols for dealing with protests. Having covered dozens of protests over a 6 year period leading up to this, I knew how the police normally responded. They didn’t respond at all to the protest during the night in question. In fact, at one point before I was attacked, I texted a friend and said something to the effect of “This is weird. There are no police anywhere.”
Did Trotter make any mention of this? Of course not. As usual, he allowed the prosecutors to just say whatever they wanted about his client, even untrue things, and didn’t bother to correct it.
At some point before the trial started, the judge asked Trotter if we had any evidence we’d like to submit. Remember how I took all those individual frame screen captures from my video that shows the gang coming at me, masked up, with weapons in hand, how they were getting physical with me, to show how dangerous and threatening they were? Chris Trotter didn’t think those images had any evidentiary value, and just told the judge that we had no additional evidence and that we would rely on the prosecutor’s evidence.
I also had training material from the firearms courses I’ve taken. Did Christopher Trotter think any of that should be submitted as evidence of my training, what I was instructed to do, and how that would influence my decisions? Of course not.
Here is the audio from the pre-trial proceedings. You can hear how weak-kneed and unsure of himself Trotter sounds:
Once all of that was out of the way, and I was basically hamstrung and barred from being able to mount a defense, it was time to bring the jurors in. As we had feared, almost all of the jurors had read or seen about the case in the media and had already made up their minds about me before even heading in for jury duty. Some of the jurors had been to protests I had covered, and had possibly even been in some of my videos. Another juror was a volunteer for Ceasefire Oregon, a rabid anti-Constitutional organization that was often the subject of some of my videos and investigations. This juror had known about me for years.
I didn’t find out until long after the trial that we could have motioned for some of these potential jurors to be removed based on “for cause” because they were already tainted and already knew too much about the case and already held biases against me.
Did Chris Trotter or Jason Short attempt to do this? Of course not.
They also didn’t re-raise the motion for change of venue. As they were questioning the jurors, Trotter and Short could have tried to motion for it again, since many of the concerns we argued for in the change of venue motion were coming to fruition right in front of the judge.
Of course Christopher Trotter and Jason Short didn’t dare bring up the motion again, for some reason, because they had to roll over and let the prosecutors walk all over them and their client.
So after we were done questioning the jury, Trotter and Short recommended that I file to change the trial from a jury to a bench trial, where the judge is the sole finder of guilt or innocence. So of course I did, because they were my attorneys and I was told to trust them. Long after this I’ve been told by every other attorney I’ve spoken with that this was a bad idea.