Taped on Monday, January 10th, 2022

Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Linda Dunikoski:

People have implicit bias. They just do. And some people are aware of it and some people aren’t. And some people when called out on it, get defensive and go into denial.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Linda Dunikoski. She’s a Senior Assistant District Attorney in Cobb County, Georgia, and she served as the lead prosecutor in the trial of the three men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery. Most of you know the story, but I want to remind folks of the key facts. Ahmaud Arbery was killed on February 23rd, 2020, while jogging through a suburban neighborhood in Southeast Georgia. Arbery was a 25-year-old black man. Greg and Travis McMichael, a white father and son, pursued Arbery in their pickup truck. Travis, the son, shot Ahmaud Arbery and killed him. Arbery was unarmed. A third man, William Roddie Bryan, who also took part in the chase, taped the shooting on his cell phone. The men told police that they suspected Arbery had been responsible for a string of apparent break-ins in the neighborhood, but offered no evidence.

Preet Bharara:

Initially, there were no arrests, but after the release of the cell phone footage over two months later, the three men were arrested and charged. In November, all three defendants were convicted of murder. And this past Friday, the judge sentenced each of them to life in prison. I spoke with Dunikoski for her first in-depth long-form interview since the trial. We talked about her trial strategy, what it means to be an effective prosecutor and her unlikely journey to public service. That’s coming up, stay tuned. Linda Dunikoski, thank you so much for being on the show.

Linda Dunikoski:

It’s a pleasure to be here.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a real honor to have you. I’m sure that it has been a grueling experience trying a case of such significance with the whole nation really watching. We’re recording this on Monday, January 10th, one business day after the sentencing hearing of the three defendants took place. All three got life, two without the possibility of parole, one with the possibility of parole. So that’s very significant. I know that’s what the government had asked for in that case, but before we get to the sentencing and the trial and your thoughts about the case in general and in specific, I thought I’d ask you about your background a little bit. So I understand that you were a salesperson in the trade show industry for a number of years. And that’s the line of work that you were engaged in even after law school for about nine years before you made the switch to becoming a prosecutor. So my questions are twofold. One, could you explain your career choice? And two, was the job of being in sales in some ways helpful to being a persuasive arguer to the jury?

Linda Dunikoski:

The answer to the second question is its ABC, always be closing. Every single thing you do is to convince the jury about-

Preet Bharara:

Do you watch Glengarry Glen Ross every day?

Linda Dunikoski:

Oh yes. Every day. ABC, always be closing. Love that movie. So I come from a line of salespeople. My cousin was in sales for years, my grandfather was a salesperson during the Depression. So when I got out of Indiana University with my political science degree, I wasn’t really qualified to do anything except read and write. And so I ended up getting a job as a secretary in the trade show exhibit industry. And my ex-husband, who was my husband at the time said to me, he said, “You’re bored. You really don’t like this being a secretary. Why don’t you go to law school?” And I thought, you know what? I should. I should go to law school. And I had moved down from Chicago to be with him here. He was getting his PhD at Georgia Tech. And so I thought I’ll apply. And I got into Georgia State. But I don’t come from a family that was going to put me through. So I had to put myself through.

Linda Dunikoski:

So I went on the nighttime part-time program at Georgia State University’s College of Law. And while doing that, I also managed to rise up within the trade show exhibit office. And within three years, I was the director of sales. Yes, from secretary to director of sales. And it was a lot of fun. I got to do a lot of travel, I worked with a lot of different people from vice presidents of marketing through Teamsters and people on the trade show floor that were electricians putting the trade show exhibits together. And when we’re talking trade show exhibits, it was a matter of, I would walk into a boardroom, there’d be 12 people there including the president of the company, I’d show them a really pretty picture and go at CES in January. If you give me a million dollars, we’ll build this for you. And they go ahead and sign the contract.

Linda Dunikoski:

So after going through law school and getting out, I had a fork in the road, it was either go practice law or take an offer. And a company made me a really, really nice offer. It was one of those, here’s your corner office, here’s your expense account. We don’t expect you to anything because trade show exhibit sales is longterm sales. And so it was a deal I couldn’t refuse. So that’s why even after law school, I went back into the trade show exhibit industry and had a wonderful time, traveled the world, was in sales for years, had great clients, had great friends. And it was really wonderful. But the writing was on the wall for the trade show exhibit industry with the advent of the internet, because a lot of the companies I was working with, they were going, yeah, why am I shipping this stuff across the country seven times a year and paying?

Preet Bharara:

I see.

Linda Dunikoski:

Right. So for me, I was going, I’ve got to go back and practice law. I’m about to be unemployable as a lawyer because I’ve been so far out of the practice of law.

Preet Bharara:

Nine years. And had you used your legal skills directly in any way for those nine years?

Linda Dunikoski:

Right after law school, I did. I went and went down to Clayton County. My girlfriend had opened her law practice down there. And I did about a year of defense work, criminal defense work. And I did some domestic works, I did a few divorces, did some other things, but it really wasn’t where I wanted to be. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my law degree at that point in time. And I think I went back into sales because it was easy and it was good money, I was commissioned salesperson and it was a lot of fun.

Linda Dunikoski:

So once I could see the writing on the wall and decided to go back and practice law, I also didn’t know what I wanted to do. I thought I would hang a shingle out and do all that sort of thing. But I had a girlfriend from law school who said, “No, no, come to the District Attorney’s Office in Fulton County.” And Paul Howard was the DA at the time. And I was used to long term sales. And I pestered him for about six months to hire me. And it was I think by persistence, because he said, “Why in the world would I want to hire you? You have no experience. Law school was a million years ago.”

Preet Bharara:

In the distant past. Right, exactly. But he took a chance on you and you came on board in 2002.

Linda Dunikoski:

I came on board July of 2002 to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office with no experience at all.

Preet Bharara:

Were you nervous about that?

Linda Dunikoski:

No, I was stupidly confident that, oh yeah, this is going to be easy. I can do this.

Preet Bharara:

Why you think in retrospect it was stupid to be that confident?

Linda Dunikoski:

I was super overly confident. I came from a sales background and I could convince people of things. So how hard could this be? And to me, I was used to also hard work, meaning because once you become a government lawyer, you also become the copier repair person. So I learned how to fix the copier. And I had colleagues who were like, “You can get somebody to do that for you.” And I’m thinking, it’s not beneath me to go ahead and do this sort of work. I’m not special just because I’m a lawyer. So it was easy for me to be a little bit arrogant and overconfident when I first started at the District Attorney’s Office. But I will tell you this. The very first trial I did, I was sales Linda. And sales Linda-

Preet Bharara:

What does that mean? What does that mean?

Linda Dunikoski:

Oh my gosh. Oh it was terrible. It was what I was used to doing, which is, hey, as long as the jury likes me, they’ll vote my way. And I hate to say it, but it was kind of like, what can I do to put you in this car today? Sort of over sales. It was awful.

Preet Bharara:

How did that go?

Linda Dunikoski:

Terribly. Oh, they hated me. It was awful. I have to say this, the jury did do me the giant favor of giving me great feedback that I should never be that way. And so my second trial, I decided to be the TV hard prosecutor kind of person, also a complete utter disaster. So that was bad. But my husband, I had remarried at this time, and my husband who is still my current husband 26 years, he said to me, he goes, “Listen, you’re not connecting with the jury. Go take an acting class.” And I thought, well, then I’m just acting. He’s like, “No, no, no, you’ve got to find yourself.” And I said, “Okay.”

Linda Dunikoski:

So I went down to the Alliance Theater in Atlanta and I took an acting class. And you know how you look around, you can see who’s the worst person in the class. So I did that and decided I was the worst person in the class. I couldn’t act my way out of a paper bag. It was just the worst. But what I did do was I found my own voice as a prosecutor that didn’t have to be a salesman and didn’t have to be a TV version of myself. I could just be myself and give the jury what they wanted, which is all they really want from a prosecutor is for you to be trustworthy.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. The key advice, which sounds trivial in some ways or frivolous in some ways is be yourself, which means there are some prosecutors who gesture a lot and walk around the courtroom, there are some who stand rigid at the podium, there are some who speak extemporaneously, there are some who write out every word and memorize each and every word and pause in their summation or their opening statement. And to me, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s the way that that person is because jurors can tell if you’re putting on an act. Do you agree?

Linda Dunikoski:

I agree.

Preet Bharara:

So one of the other things before we get to the substance of the trial and something they don’t teach you about in law school and they don’t really tell you a lot about when you become a prosecutor in the first instance in crimes that have victims, and in this case, obviously Ahmaud Arbery was killed, what is the relationship between the prosecutor and the victim’s family? And describe how that relationship evolved for you between you and Ahmaud Arbery’s family, because I think that’s an important story that people have not talked a lot about.

Linda Dunikoski:

The relationship between any homicide victim’s family and the prosecutor is a developing one, an evolving one, especially in this particular case, this was a very, very, I think, difficult bridge building, trust building relationship because of how the case started out. The case unfortunately for Wanda Cooper-Jones started out with being lied to by law enforcement about how her son was killed and why her son was killed. And it then evolved into a recusal by the local prosecutor, an assignment to another prosecutor who made some very quick judgment calls and eventually ended up in the hands of Tom Durden with the Atlantic Judicial Circuit who realized, I got to call the GBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in on this. And then seeing the scope of the case, he realized his resources were not up to handling this particular case on just the scope and his personnel and resources. And so here, the Arbery family is with Chris Carr, the Attorney General of the State of Georgia having to appoint a fourth prosecution team. And at that time, it was Cobb County District Attorney Joyette Holmes.

Linda Dunikoski:

So the thing about me was this. I had left Fulton County after 17 years in the trenches doing trial work. I had tried over 90 full felony cases to verdict and the majority of them were homicide cases. And I was exhausted. I wanted to move on to appeals, but as a compliment to me while Howard said to me, “I can’t lose you as a trial attorney.” So I saw the opportunity to come to Cobb County and head up their appeals section. And I took on this job in August of 2019. Of course, the homicide happened February 23rd of 2020. And then COVID shut everything down in March of 2020. So when Joyette was appointed to the case, I was home. And the news hit and my husband said to me, “They’re going to call you.” And I was like, “The phone’s not going to ring. I’m the appeals person, the phone’s not going to ring.”

Preet Bharara:

And then the phone rang.

Linda Dunikoski:

Of course the phone rang. He literally said it’s like, the phone. I’m like, “The phone’s not going to ring.” Boom. He’s like, “Right there, go answer it.” And so Joyette called me and said, “Send in the case file over.” And so she sent an investigator with the case file over and that was it.

Preet Bharara:

So can I ask you a question, when you first review the case file and obviously you haven’t interviewed all the witnesses yet or any of the witnesses yet, and I think all prosecutors are different in this regard, do you handicap the case? Do you think to yourself, well, based on my assessment and my many years of experience doing this, we got about a 40% chance of convicting, we have a 75% chance of convicting? Do you do any of that? And did you do any of that in this case?

Linda Dunikoski:

No, I actually don’t do that. What I do is an assessment of the evidence and the facts, and in this particular case, the law, because I am one of those prosecutors who goes, okay, I can quickly understand my case. My case is what my case is. What I want to know is what the defense’s case is going to be. What am I going to have to rebut? What am I going to have to overcome? What am I going to have to answer? And how am I going to block their defense?

Preet Bharara:

So let’s pause on that for a second. So what was your quick assessment of the core of your case?

Linda Dunikoski:

That this case… Oh, well, my first assessment was they murdered Ahmaud and it was obvious.

Preet Bharara:

Plain and simple. This is not a who done it. We didn’t have to determine who did what. The only thing you had to determine was what the intent and/or motive was, right?

Linda Dunikoski:

Correct.

Preet Bharara:

So in that way, given all the homicide cases you prosecuted before in that way, on its face, was it a little bit easier than some of the other homicide cases?

Linda Dunikoski:

No. A self-defense case is the worst case for a homicide prosecutor.

Preet Bharara:

We’ve seen another significant and widely followed cases as well. And so what did you make as an initial matter, what’d you make out of the self-defense strength?

Linda Dunikoski:

Well, they had a big problem with self-defense, especially in the State of Georgia, because number one, on the video, this isn’t self-defense. The first thing when you see that video is, well, why do you shoot him? What? You’re watching this. There’s absolutely no reason for Travis McMichael to shoot Ahmaud Arbery.

Linda Dunikoski:

Then you start hearing the narrative that Greg McMichael is putting out, you had no choice, you had to defend yourself. He attacked my son. And so it was like, okay, well, wait a second. That’s not what’s really going on here, but you want to claim self-defense? Well, let’s look at the law. And the law in the State of Georgia is number one, you can’t start it. They’d started it. They brought the shotgun to the party. Number two, you can’t go to someone else into defending themselves. In my opinion, they had also done that. Number three, you can’t be committing any felonies and then claim self-defense. They had done that, aggravated assault, criminal attempted false imprisonment, false imprisonment.

Linda Dunikoski:

So the next salvo had to be, how are they going to get out of that? And their big problem was they went with citizens arrest. And the reason it was a problem is nobody had ever said at the scene or at the police station hours later that they were making a citizens arrest. In fact, they were also uncertain whether he’d committed a crime, they were urging the police to go back out there to find out what crime it was that he must have committed. So looking at all that, it was like, okay, legally, we’ve got this, factually, we’ve got this. So where are they going to come from? And how are they going to try and win this case?

Preet Bharara:

So were you pretty confident then given the legal assessment?

Linda Dunikoski:

I am one of those people who is incredibly confident and goes forward and prosecutes while riddled with unbelievable doubt.

Preet Bharara:

So you were less confident than you were with respect to your first case ever.

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Because you would learn from painful experience that things don’t always go as planned.

Linda Dunikoski:

It’s never as it seems.

Preet Bharara:

I want to talk about jury selection and how odd that was for lay people to understand. So, and we’ll talk about race to the extent that factored into this or was deliberately avoided as a theme at the trial. So you have an unarmed black man who’s cornered and killed by three white men in the South. When jury selection takes place, the defense keeps striking black jurors and you end up with a jury of 11 white people and one black person.

Preet Bharara:

And the judge in the case in response to objections that you and your team made, I should point out by the way that you didn’t try the case alone, you would lead prosecutor and did the major jury addresses, but you had an excellent team with you as well. In response to objections about what you suggested were racially motivated strikes of potential jury members, the judge said something odd that I think is hard for lay people to understand and maybe you can explain it that the court said that they found that there appears to be intentional discrimination on the part of the defense and yet under existing Supreme Court precedent, they could do nothing about that. Can you make sense of that for folks?

Linda Dunikoski:

Sure. So Batson v. Kentucky is the case. And for the state, it’s a McCollum challenge. And there’s three parts to it. The first part is the side making the challenge. In this case, it was our team that was making the challenge, has to provide a prima facie case of racial discrimination. And for lay people, what that means is it’s just math. That’s all it is.

Preet Bharara:

It’s like black juror after black juror after black juror gets struck, you are making what you call a prima facie case that it must be based on race, correct?

Linda Dunikoski:

Correct, because the numbers support that finding. So when Judge Walmsley made that finding, it was strictly just math, the defense had 24 strikes, you used 11 of them on out of our 12 African American jurors, you used 11 of your strikes to strike 11 African American jurors.

Preet Bharara:

On that score, by the way, I know the arguments you make as a lawyer, when the defense is doing that, are you dispassionate about it or are you getting angry and annoyed or irritated or are you just emotionally neutral?

Linda Dunikoski:

Emotionally neutral because I knew they were going to do it. I could see it coming. So for me, I knew they were going to do it. I didn’t know the extent. I was, how about this? I was hopeful that they would not strike all of the black jurors. I knew that there were certain black jurors that they had a very good reason for striking and therefore, I was very much expecting those strikes.

Preet Bharara:

Right. And some of them were, I mean, you’re not saying that every strike was inappropriate or improper because in some cases, there were things that the jurors or the prospective jurors said that indicated they might have bias. They either knew the victim or had some other connection, right?

Linda Dunikoski:

Actually no. And the only reason I say that is because every single person who knew Ahmaud knew Marcus Arbery or the Arbery family had already been struck for cause. So these particular 12 jurors had all indicated that they could be fair and impartial, they could put aside anything they’d heard in the media or knew about the case and decided based on the evidence presented within the four walls of the courtroom and the law that Judge Walmsley would give them, but they were struck for other reasons. And it just has to be a race neutral-reason. Now that’s what I’m saying is there are certain black jurors where I totally understood based on other answers to other questions why the defense was striking them. And therefore, I didn’t move to have them receded. But I did move to have receded those jurors, those black jurors that I felt had been struck because of their race, not because of any other reason, because they were perfectly acceptable jurors.

Preet Bharara:

The judge found as long as some articulable non-racial basis could be put forward by the defense, he had no choice but to strike them. Do you think that, I’m going to ask you to be a legal reform person for a moment, do you think Batson needs to be updated? Do you think that remains a good and vital tool or is it out of date?

Linda Dunikoski:

Wow, that is a really good question because there’s part of me, I’ve had people do Batson challenges against me. Do I think it’s a good tool? Yes, because it makes the, not the proponent of the receding, but the other person, the other side put on the record their race-neutral reason for their strike. And sometimes in their explanation, you can tell this is racially motivated. There’s a prejudice or a bias, you’ve decided that you don’t want black people or women or a certain person on your jury because of reasons that are really have nothing to do with whether they’re going to be a fair and impartial juror, because you’re forcing that person to explain themselves.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. It’s just a very odd concept for some people to grasp, because you can literally have a lawyer going in depending on the type of case absolutely intending sight unseen that they don’t want black jurors or in a different kind of case, they don’t want women jurors. And then it becomes an exercise in finding some other excuse, some other proxy for why you would strike the juror when the intent of the person is to just keep blacks off the jury. And some people who haven’t lived under the regime of Batson just find it very peculiar. And I just wonder if there’s a better way to do that.

Linda Dunikoski:

I hope somebody figures out a better way to do it because this is the way we’ve got right now.

Preet Bharara:

So a subject that has been a talked about and debated and I’m sure you’ve seen people talk about and debate it, there was an entire episode of The Daily podcast discussing your trial strategy in this matter. And there was a lot of talk about how much race was overtly cited and addressed and talked about. And they were speculating about your strategy and thinking in the case. Do you care to address how you thought about it and whether you stayed away from those issues and for what reasons?

Linda Dunikoski:

Sure. We took a look at this case as a team. And we started back in 2020 because we got the case. We got it through indictment in COVID, we had our bond hearing, but we first had the preliminary hearing and then the bond hearings. And the defense actually started a drum beat, not us, that our clients didn’t do this based on race. And it’s not something anybody from the prosecution had ever put out there. This was something that was out of-

Preet Bharara:

And because it’s not a hate crime, which was not even chargeable back then in the state. It wasn’t part of the evidence and the proof for the elements of the statute. So people don’t understand this at the outset and we’ll get back to the discussion. You didn’t have to prove racial bias or racial motive in any way, shape or form given the counts that these three men were charged with, right?

Linda Dunikoski:

Correct. We had structured our indictment on the law that was in place at the time. And Georgia had no hate crime statute at the time. So the men were just charged with murder, felony, murder, aggravated assaults with a shotgun and the vehicles and false imprisonment, criminal attempt at false imprisonment, none of which the state has to prove a motive for.

Preet Bharara:

And yet, as I’ve often taught to junior colleagues and explained to people again and again, in most criminal cases, there’s some exceptions like hate crimes, but in most criminal cases, what you need to prove is intent. Did the person intend to kill? Did the person intend to commit arson? Did the person intend to commit fraud? And their motivation, whether it’s greed or jealousy or some other animus doesn’t matter as a legal issue, but it does occur to jurors who want to understand the complete story of why human beings did what they did to determine whether or not it was justified or explained or people should be held legally responsible for it. So typically, you will see in different kinds of cases prosecutors say, this is a case about greed or this is a case about hatred, or this is a case about, whatever thing that they’re saying it’s about, even though that doesn’t need to be proven as an element of the crime.

Preet Bharara:

So given that natural instinct to explain what was going on here. Here you have an unarmed black man who was basically lynched and killed by three white men. Race was clearly a part of it. There’s a federal hate crimes case pending query, whether or not you would’ve charged a hate a crime if that had been available in Georgia. So it’s clearly present in the case, not needed to be proven. How did you think about introducing that or not introducing that?

Linda Dunikoski:

Well, it’s just like you just said, it was clear. And in our team’s mind, what was going on and what was happening was crystal clear, because it was on the video. Here are these three white men and they’ve all made assumptions about Ahmaud Arbery and they’ve gone after him with their trucks and their guns. So part of what we felt was we don’t need to say this out loud repeatedly to the jury. They’re going to see the video, they’re going to understand.

Preet Bharara:

And less is more. You thought less is more on this count.

Linda Dunikoski:

Less is more on that.

Preet Bharara:

When you’re saying like, a theme of your opening, I was going to ask you about this as you just mentioned was assumptions that these three men acted not based on evidence, not based on facts, not based on their own eyewitness testimony of any crime being committed, but on assumptions, which is, I guess, I don’t know if you thought about this overtly is a proxy for saying they racially profiled, right?

Linda Dunikoski:

Correct.

Preet Bharara:

And you didn’t feel the need to say it more explicitly. You did say it at one point. I think you said at one point.

Linda Dunikoski:

All three of these defendants made assumptions, made assumptions about what was going on that day. And they made their decision to attack Ahmaud Arbery in their driveways because he was a black man running down the street.

Preet Bharara:

Was that deliberate?

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes, because I was quoting Greg McMichael. And Greg McMichael and his 911 call when he finally eventually made it basically said when asked, well, what’s your emergency?

Greg McMichael:

I’m out here at Satilla Shores. There’s a black male running down the street.

Linda Dunikoski:

Well, there’s a black man running down the street. That was his response on his 911 call, his own words.

Preet Bharara:

Right. Do you think, and I hate to do hypotheticals and counterfactuals, if Ahmaud Arbery had been white and every other fact remained the same, although I know people will say, it’s hard to imagine that that would’ve been the case because of the role of race and racism in the conduct here, but just assume for the sake of argument that the victim here was white, would this have been a very, very different case? And would you have tried it differently?

Linda Dunikoski:

It would’ve been an incredibly different case. I don’t think we’d have tried it differently because-

Preet Bharara:

Do you think there would’ve been a different result?

Linda Dunikoski:

No, because what I did when we brainstormed about this, I went to my boss and I said, “Listen, if everybody was green and everybody was from the same socioeconomic strata in class, then it’s still illegal what they did. And there is no justification. There is no excuse under the law for what they did. So it doesn’t matter.” And he didn’t want to make it. My boss, District Attorney Flynn Broady said, “I don’t want to make this us against them. I don’t want to make this a white versus black thing. What they did was illegal. Go show the jury what they did was illegal.”

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Linda Dunikoski after this. Did it matter to you in crafting your arguments and in the decision not to overemphasize race because it was so obvious that it mattered that there were 11 white jurors?

Linda Dunikoski:

No, because we made this decision early on. And our ultimate jury pool didn’t necessarily matter in the sense that once we selected those jurors, we knew that they were going to be good jurors, we knew who we had, we knew that they were going to base their verdict on the evidence that they saw within those four walls. They were going to follow the law that Judge Walmsley gave them and they paid really, really close attention. So I wasn’t worried about the actual jurors we’d gotten.

Linda Dunikoski:

We were more concerned strategically about presenting the case in a way to those jurors when we ultimately got them that would not alienate any of them. So I’m going to go ahead and explain it this way. Once we had decided that the law was on our side with self-defense and citizens arrest and we could completely rebut that and we knew that the facts were on our side, this was murder, it was on video, it’s not a who done it like you said, it was obvious what they had done and their own words were assumptions. The case was ours to lose.

Linda Dunikoski:

And so we started with, well, how do we lose this case? What could we possibly do that’s going to ensure a not guilty verdict or a hung jury by alienating the jurors? And the person who was really telling us this was the defense. They did us the great favor of constantly going on the news and being in the media and saying what we were going to say, even though we’d never said it, they proclaimed, well, the prosecution says this and the prosecution has said that. And I’m thinking, I’ve never said that. We’ve never said that. No one’s ever said that.

Preet Bharara:

Strong men.

Linda Dunikoski:

Right. But they did us the favor. I went back before I did my closing argument and I listened again to every interview they’d given, especially the most recent interviews because they did lay out their closing arguments for me in advance, which was a great favor. So I knew what they were going to say and how they were going to position it.

Preet Bharara:

But what was the thing that you as a team determined might alienate the jury when it was yours to lose?

Linda Dunikoski:

People have implicit bias. They just do. And some people are aware of it and some people aren’t. And some people when called out on it, get defensive and go into denial because nobody thinks that they’re a racist and nobody thinks that they’re biased. And the minute you start attacking people, you get their back up, you get them into offensive posture. And the worst fear was, and I’ll just give this as an example, pointing out repeatedly that Travis McMichael had the Stars and Bars, which is the old flag from Georgia on the front of his truck. Pointing that out to the jurors may have backfired on us, especially if we have a female juror whose favorite nephew also has that in the front of his truck.

Preet Bharara:

It’s interesting, I think, for people to understand, there are lots of things that you would’ve been completely within your rights to do. You could have pointed that out, you could have belabored the point, you probably would not have had an objection sustained. And you made certain choices to keep your case as strong as possible.

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Fair?

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes. Very fair. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Did you have a sense when you were giving your opening statement, describe for people how a courtroom lawyer, this is a question I could ask of defense lawyers and also prosecutors, do you get a feeling generally and specifically in this case, did you get a feeling that the jury was with you or not with you? And do they react with body language and expressions in a way that you can actually detect when you’re arguing your case?

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes. So opening statements are very important because they’re the roadmap. I have found that if you know your case and you know it inside and out, which I did, that I could go ahead and get a little deeper into the evidence that we anticipated being shown. A lot of prosecutors, I think, hold back, they give a general overview, they talk in generalities, they don’t get really specific, which I don’t like to do that. I like to get specific, you’re going to hear this evidence, you’re going to hear this witness say this, you’re going to hear that.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s very interesting. So why do you think you diverge from that strategy? Depending on the case, in cases that I’ve ever seen, often you don’t want to go into too much detail because if it’s evidence that’s going to come in through a witness, you never know if that witness is going to be as good and as tight and as crisp as you want to describe it in the opening. And so you don’t want to have too much variance between what you say the evidence will show and what the evidence will ultimately show. And so how do you think about that?

Linda Dunikoski:

I walk into it fearlessly. It’s worked for me, it’s been successful for me. And in the State of Georgia, we have prior consistent, prior inconsistent statements. And I’ve noticed that a lot of prosecutors are afraid to impeach their own witness, but I’ve done enough domestic violence cases to know that unfortunately she or he is going to get on the stand and they might back up on me. And I’m prepared for that because I got her best friend, I’ve got the doctor who saw her, where she made these statements, I’ve got the law enforcement officer, I’ve got her 911 call, I’ve got the body cam video. So sometimes it doesn’t matter what the witness is going to say, what that gang member who’s going to now all of a sudden have amnesia on the stand, because I know I’m going to be able to get the statement in anyway. So I walk into opening fearlessly because I want the jury to understand what the scope is right off the bat.

Preet Bharara:

So I interrupted your answer to the question, you were getting to, you were going to address the issue of whether or not there comes a moment when you think that the jury is with you or not.

Linda Dunikoski:

No, I am always terrified of the jury. And I will tell you why, because there, I’ve had enough hung juries and I’ve had a couple of not guilty verdicts where I was stunned at the not guilty verdict where I thought they understood the evidence, I thought they were following me in my closing argument, I thought to me, it was fairly obvious that the murderer had done the homicide and I thought the evidence was really good. And to have them come back not guilty was a stunner on a couple of occasions to me. So I’ve also had hung juries that there was nothing I could do about that. I had one where I had a 30-year-old young man who told two female jurors that they were stupid. Oh, that was the end of it. It was hung. There’s no coming back, especially-

Preet Bharara:

Nothing you can do about that.

Linda Dunikoski:

I can’t do anything to help them save face to change their mind in that jury room. He had slammed the door when he’d gotten so frustrated back there with them questioning everything. So yeah, there’s nothing coming back from that. So there’s no way to know what’s going to go on in the jury room.

Preet Bharara:

I just want to talk about the defenses that you mentioned a couple times already and flesh it out for another minute. This whole idea of citizen’s arrest, by the way, we should also mention, although listeners of this program might already be aware that that citizen’s arrest law was repealed. So the case that you tried to conviction was significant, not only in terms of what it meant for the victim and the victim’s family, but also for legal policy in Georgia generally, passage of hate crimes bill and repeal of the citizens arrest law.

Preet Bharara:

When I’ve been discussing this case throughout on the Insider pod with Joyce Vance and before that with Anne Milgram, my former co-host, we were struck by how weak the citizen’s arrest argument was. Did you think that was weaker or the self-defense weaker? Or do you think that they had to make both defenses in tandem with each other? And one of the reasons why, and I think you destroyed this during the trial that per the citizen’s arrest statute, among other things, the crime had to have been committed within the presence of the person doing the arresting and they have to have immediate personal knowledge, none of which was here admittedly so, right?

Linda Dunikoski:

Correct. So the citizen’s arrest statute was mostly used as an affirmative defense and mostly used for false imprisonment claims civilly, sometimes criminally. So there wasn’t a lot of case law on it. And everybody pulled all of the case law in the State of Georgia on citizen’s arrest. And we all looked at it, we discussed it and it has to be within your immediate knowledge, meaning you really have to have witnessed this crime, especially if it’s a misdemeanor to go ahead and arrest this person. Now the defense wanted to argue because there’s two sentences that the second sentence, meaning if the crime’s a felony and you have probable cause to believe that the person committed the crime, they took that to mean that you just have to have probable cause, like any police officer might have probable cause, and that you can go ahead and arrest days later.

Linda Dunikoski:

And of course, the common sense there is, well, that’s a really, really the big problem because I’m in the parking lot, I’m putting my groceries in the back of my car and some guy comes up and pulls a gun on me, he goes, “Get on the ground. Three months ago, you broke into my house.” I’m looking at him like, “What are you talking about?” And what am I thinking? I’m thinking I’m about to be kidnapped by some crazy person, not that I’m actually being arrested by this nonuniformed person. So you can’t really do a citizen’s arrest like that because you arrest the wrong person, they’re not going to know what you’re doing. And they might actually fight back and want to escape from the crazy person.

Linda Dunikoski:

So there were all kinds of problems with their argument, I think, on a common sense level, but it’s all they had. They had to overcome the self-defense. If you want to claim self-defense, you can’t be committing felonies and you cannot have started it. And the only way for them to say, oh, we didn’t start it and we weren’t committing felonies is we have to have a legitimate reason for doing this, well, it’s citizen’s arrest.

Preet Bharara:

Right. As you said, I think, more than once, don’t go looking for trouble.

Linda Dunikoski:

Correct.

Preet Bharara:

Right. Which is a nice colloquial way of making a very profound legal point. Were you surprised when Travis McMichael took the stand?

Linda Dunikoski:

No. Bob Rubin gave it away in his opening statement.

Preet Bharara:

Well, I guess, so were you surprised when he to learn in the opening statement that he would be taking the stand.

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes. Because when we did our analysis on the case, we were leaning more towards Greg McMichael taking the stand. And the reason for that is-

Preet Bharara:

And can you remind for people because they may be confused?

Linda Dunikoski:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

Greg McMichael is the father, Travis McMichael is the son.

Linda Dunikoski:

Right. Greg McMichael is the father. And he had been previously a law enforcement officer and an investigator for the local district attorney’s office. And so having been in that role in that capacity and given that we could tell he was the kind of man who would do whatever it took for his son, given his behavior after the homicide, that he probably would be the one to take the stand and maybe do a mea culpa, maybe do something to get sympathy for himself for the jury and explain things because of his background. So I had prepped up extensively for Greg McMichael and cross-examination for him. We didn’t think Travis McMichael was necessarily going to testify partially because we didn’t think he’d do a very good job based on having seen him in the courtroom before and his demeanor, and also he had a lot of, there was a lot of ways it could go terribly wrong for him. And then there was defendant Bryan, the one who took the video. We had no idea if he was going to testify or not, but we prepared for it anyways. So the answer is yes.

Preet Bharara:

So you were least prepared for the guy who ended up testifying. And do you conclude that it was a mistake for him to testify?

Linda Dunikoski:

The answer is I don’t know if it was a mistake because-

Preet Bharara:

Did your case get, did your, let me ask it this way, when you concluded your cross-examination of Travis McMichael, which was very, very good, I must say.

Linda Dunikoski:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

And very crisp. That’s my favorite word when I describe examinations of witnesses and I got made fun of at the office for using the term, but very crisp. Did you feel that you had advanced your case or just avoided damage to your case?

Linda Dunikoski:

After the cross-examination, I felt we had advanced the case.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. So doesn’t that necessarily mean it was probably a mistake for Travis to have testified?

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes. But my experience with self-defense cases is that unless you get on that stand and look that jury in the eye and say, I was in fear for my life, and they believe you, you don’t really necessarily have a chance because you’re claiming self-defense, but if you don’t tell the jury how it was that you were in fear and the level of your fear and why you were in fear and why it was reasonable for your actions, they really don’t have an opportunity to assess that. And so I think he had to testify or at least Greg had to testify for him.

Preet Bharara:

That’s such an important point that they often don’t teach you in law school. And that is we learn about the doctrine of self-defense and you learn about the precedence and you learn about what the elements are and who has the burden and all of that, at the end of the day in an actual courtroom with actual human beings sitting as jurors, it’s not the doctrine that carries the day, right? It’s an observed belief, as you were saying, that the person making the self-defense claim was actually fearful for their life. And some people can’t pull it off. And often they can’t pull it off because he wasn’t in fear of his life as you made very clear in the cross.

Linda Dunikoski:

Exactly. And that is always the fear for the prosecutor that the defendant is going to get up there and he’s been so prepped and he’s so rehearsed and he knows when to cry those crocodile tears that a juror or all the jurors are going to believe him. And that’s the fear with the self-defense case.

Preet Bharara:

You’re calling to mind obviously another very significant case that was followed by many people in the country happening at around the same time, Kyle Rittenhouse, who took the stand, who cried, who asserted self-defense in connection with his killing of two people and injuring a third. Did you follow any of that? Did you pay attention or were you too laser-focused on your own case?

Linda Dunikoski:

We had no idea what was going on. We were super laser-focused.

Preet Bharara:

I’m so pleased to hear that because people ask me that question. And people think from time to time that prosecutors who are in the middle of trial have the luxury of following the news and what’s going on with impeachment and what’s going on with other cases. You had no time for that.

Linda Dunikoski:

No time for that at all. We were up at 5:45 in the morning, out the door to the courthouse, out of the courthouse by six o’clock home, trying to eat dinner, trying to be in bed at 9:00 PM, just so I could, of course, stare at the ceiling from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM thinking about the case and then try and go back to sleep.

Preet Bharara:

Well done. There were a couple of other weird things that happened at the trial, for example, this claim that kept being made by one of the defense lawyers about black pastors being in the gallery.

Kevin Gough:

Obviously there’s only so many pastors they can have and if their pastor is Al Sharpton right now, that’s fine. But then that’s it. We don’t want anymore Black pastors coming in here or other, Jesse Jackson, whoever was in here earlier this week.

Preet Bharara:

What did you make of that?

Linda Dunikoski:

All right. So first off, I want to say that Kevin Gough, the attorney for Mr. Bryan is a brilliant legal scholar, he wrote the best motions, he wrote the most comprehensive brief on citizen’s arrest, he did an excellent motions job. The guy is just intellectually brilliant. In my humble opinion, he lacks the emotional intelligence of reading the room and understanding.

Preet Bharara:

Read the room, read the room, very important.

Linda Dunikoski:

Right. And so his style and presentation in my opinion was off-putting, I think, for a number of, of reasons, but those particular comments about black pastors that was made all outside the presence of the jury. And his whole argument and everything he did was calculated for appeal. So this is how smart, I think, Kevin Gough is. Kevin Gough knew Mr. Bryan was going to be convicted. He knew what his client had said, he knew what his client had done, he knew it met the elements of felony murder based on the aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt of false imprisonment. And he was doing every single thing he could to create issues that he could then bring up on appeal. And he was doing a very, very good job of it.

Linda Dunikoski:

And I know a lot of people were very surprised when I actually stood up and told the court on the record that he’s a brilliant attorney, but this isn’t my first rodeo. And I’ve seen this strategy before and I’ve seen some defense attorneys attempt to do things that cause, I’ll just call it a hubbub in an effort to then later claim that that hubbub somehow prejudice their own client when they were in fact the reason for the hubbub.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. But you don’t expect that having concluded the trial to be any kind of basis for meritorious appeal to you?

Linda Dunikoski:

No, not at all.

Preet Bharara:

Right. So here’s another weird thing that happened at the trial. One of the other defense lawyers said in describing the victim who was killed, Ahmaud Arbery, described him as having long, dirty toenails.

Laura Hogue:

Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts, with no socks to cover his long dirty toenails.

Preet Bharara:

What the hell was up with that?

Linda Dunikoski:

The answer is I don’t know why Laura Hogue, the attorney for Greg McMichael, said that in her closing argument. And I don’t know if it was an attempt to once again try and make Ahmaud out to be the intruder, which is what they called him throughout the trial to do that sort of stranger danger or he’s not one of us kind of arguments, but I personally think it backfired on her immensely, because when she said it, I was aghast and thought, what?

Preet Bharara:

Do you have a philosophy of maintaining poker face? That’s generally what prosecutors, actually all try lawyers are taught. Did you maintain a poker face or do you try?

Linda Dunikoski:

I try very, very hard to maintain a poker face because I don’t do it very well. So I try and overcompensate.

Preet Bharara:

And what about on that at that moment?

Linda Dunikoski:

I have no idea. I’m sure my, I was taking notes. So I remember thinking my eyes probably got really big and I thought, don’t look up, don’t look up because they’ll see that your eyes have gotten really big and what is she talking about?

Preet Bharara:

Talk about not reading the room. Do you have a philosophy of making objections?

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes, I do have a philosophy on making objections. And my philosophy is this, at the beginning, make objections so that the defense knows where the line is because I’ve seen way too many of my colleagues let the defense get away with it and get it away with it and finally, they’ll object. And you haven’t taught the defense anything, you’ve taught them.

Preet Bharara:

Or the judge or the court. And the court has also not been trained to be vigilant about the line too if the prosecution has let it go unchecked for so long, right?

Linda Dunikoski:

Correct. So right out of the gate, I am, here’s where the line is, I’m going to object, you’re going to do this stuff, I’m going to object and I’m going to stand up. Now as the case unfolds, as we all know, you analyze whether an objection is appropriate, you analyze whether it’s worth it, is this evidence going to hurt us? Is this something we need to object to? And you make those judgment calls in the moment and you have to be quick on your feet to be able to do that, but right out the gate, I like to go ahead and set the parameters and the rules that I’m going to be playing by.

Preet Bharara:

You said earlier that you don’t follow other cases in the news of other cases because you’re busy on your own case, but because your case was so prominent, there were a lot of armchair quarterbacks. Do you ignore all of that too during the trial? Do you get told what people are saying about the strategy and how it’s going or do you just bear down on the case and only the case?

Linda Dunikoski:

Well, because we have an excellent, excellent team, what I told the team to do is this, to look at any constructive criticism that actually was meaningful because one of our people on the team who is monitoring that is actually a lawyer, not just a media person. And so she really would be able to say, “Here’s some constructive criticism that we’re getting.” And I told her the rest of it is just noise, I don’t want to hear it.

Preet Bharara:

That’s really interesting. So you used it as a device to actually improve your strategy and approach at trial. You crowdsourced to the cable networks and the punditry a little bit of extra help.

Linda Dunikoski:

Right. If someone was making a good point, there was some constructive criticism, there was something I was doing or the team was doing that we needed to not do or do better, that was great constructive criticism, but anything else was, like I told her, just noise and I didn’t want to hear it.

Preet Bharara:

Screened out. Was there any example of that? Because from everything that I saw, it was mostly praise for your performance.

Linda Dunikoski:

Actually, the most memorable piece of advice came from another lawyer as a female lawyer, and it was you and Miss Olivia need to stop cutting up and making faces and laughing. And she-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, that’s the poker face thing.

Linda Dunikoski:

The poker face thing. And she said, “Basically, it’s a double standard, but as women, we can’t get away with it.” And basically she wanted us to not, she was trying to help. And she said, “I don’t want you to alienate the jury because women can’t get away with doing this. You’ve got to maintain the poker face.” So that was some feedback we got early on in the trial from another lawyer. I think she was out of Tennessee.

Preet Bharara:

So the case is over, everyone rests, the jury gets the case, do you make an assessment at that point? Or do you think to yourself, that went in really well and we should get a conviction or based on what you said earlier, which I think is likely the case among most prosecutors, you never know what a jury will do so you don’t feel necessarily any confidence or did you in this case?

Linda Dunikoski:

I never know what a jury’s going to do because I don’t know what the dynamics are going to be in the jury room because you can have a number of people getting along beautifully during the we can’t talk about the case phase.

Preet Bharara:

Once you start talking about the case, hell breaks loose.

Linda Dunikoski:

Right. Because, and I’ve told jurors this, I said, “You may look at me and think, oh yeah, Ms. Dunikoski, I know exactly what you’re talking about, I’m with you, but the person sitting next to you may be thinking that’s not at all what I believe.” And I totally believe what the defense is thinking. And you don’t know that until you talk about it in the jury room. So I never know what the jury’s going to do or what the dynamic and how it’s going to play out in the jury room.

Preet Bharara:

Did you look at the jury when they came back before they announced their verdict?

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes, I always do.

Preet Bharara:

And how do they look to you?

Linda Dunikoski:

They looked resigned and sad.

Preet Bharara:

And did that indicate to you likelihood of conviction?

Linda Dunikoski:

Yes. Did I think or believe that 12 people having seen that video and the evidence we presented would come back with a not guilty verdict? I had enough faith to think that that would be really, really, really hard. I was more concerned about a hung jury and doing it all over again. And when they actually announced a verdict, all I could do was say, please let it be the right verdict. Please let it be the right verdict. And when they walked in and they were sad and resigned, that to me is an indication of their acknowledgement of the tragedy about their verdict, which is we’re going to hold you responsible for what you did, for your actions.

Preet Bharara:

Had there been no video in this case, would it have been triable?

Linda Dunikoski:

Oh yes.

Preet Bharara:

And would you think the conviction was very, very less certain, somewhat less certain? How would you rate the difference in the strength of the case with or without the video?

Linda Dunikoski:

A video always makes a case stronger. It always does, because people in this day and age really want to see it with their own eyes, jurors trust themselves. And a video will always make a case so much stronger. Was it triable and winnable without the video? Yes, just based on their actions and their own statements in the aftermath of what took place and how it went down, it still would’ve been a triable, winnable case.

Preet Bharara:

So I asked you earlier in the interview about your relationship with the Arbery family. So take us to the moment after the verdict or the series of verdicts and how the Arbery family reacted and your conversation.

Linda Dunikoski:

So after the verdict came back, the courthouse, we had set aside some space so that they could be alone and have the moment to themselves, because for the lawyers, and this was really a family matter for them in the moments right after the verdict. But after that, we all went into the jury assembly room to meet and talk and everything. And it was very emotional. Everyone was crying, everyone was hugging. And so it was really meaningful to be able to have been part of the team that brought justice for their family.

Preet Bharara:

It’s interesting you use that term. And after terrible cases like this, particularly when there was likely racial animus involved and people say, justice was done, there are folks who will say, and sometimes it’s members of the family that no, justice would’ve been, the crime didn’t happen in the first place or justice would’ve been an earlier arrest or some other such thing. How do you think about whether the case and the verdicts accomplished justice or not?

Linda Dunikoski:

Every case is a long road and every case has its own bumps and problems. It’s never smooth, it’s never TV. We got where we needed to go to trial and to holding the murderers accountable. So I know they always say, it’s never the destination, it’s the path and how you got there. But sometimes it is actually the destination, it is the verdict, it is the sentence. So in this case, we got there and justice was done.

Preet Bharara:

Were you surprised at all that the court agreed with you on the sentences?

Linda Dunikoski:

No. I think Judge Walmsley had been thinking about this ever since the verdict. I think he spent the entire month of December mulling over the evidence that he heard that was presented to the jury, their verdicts and what the sentence ranges were. And I think he did a lot of deep thought. Our team had done a lot of deep thought about what we were going to recommend. And we had talked to the family about our recommendations and recommending life without the possibility of parole for the McMichaels and then life with parole for a defendant Bryan. So I think he put in the same amount of energy and thought into it. And what we recommended happen to probably be exactly what he thought as well.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have a, based on this experience, do you have a view about whether there should be cameras in the courtroom? And what was that experience like that’s fraught and fretful enough just to try a very significant homicide case because of the case and the family members and the rule of law and everything else, but for it to be televised day after day after day nationally, how did you cope with that?

Linda Dunikoski:

Well, my coping mechanism was to tell myself that only three people were actually watching. And one was my sister and she’s a big fan. So it didn’t really matter. And this isn’t been my first time. The first time I was on a high profile case that got this kind of level of media attention had been the Atlanta Public School cheating scandal trial. And you just start to ignore it because you’re just putting your case up. And it becomes part of the courtroom equipment. And I allowed myself to go there this time, I told myself the most important thing is doing the job, doing it well, doing it right and to let the junk stress of the TV cameras come into that is a disservice to the family. And I wasn’t going to let that happen.

Preet Bharara:

It’s been my experience that lately, given a lot of things happening in the country, that for some folks, it’s not very fashionable to become a prosecutor. What would you say to people who are coming out of law school who want to do public service? What’s the argument you would make to them? People who care about criminal justice reform, people who care about the rule of law, people who care about inequality, what would you say to them about why they might consider a career as a prosecutor?

Linda Dunikoski:

Because as a prosecutor, you actually are the person making the biggest difference. And the reason I say that is twofold. Number one, you are the voice of victims. People forget about the victims. They are upset that someone’s been charged for a homicide, but they’re forgetting that there’s a dead person, a crime actually did take place. And there’s potential that this person who murdered this other person could do it again. And there has to be justice and accountability. But the prosecutor is also the person who has the power to go behind law enforcement and go, “Yeah, we got this one wrong. This isn’t right. You got the wrong person. You’ve charged the wrong man. We have to dismiss these charges. We’ve got to fix this person’s record.” And I have done that on numerous occasions.

Linda Dunikoski:

In two homicide cases, we actually reinvestigated and went, oh yeah, these aren’t the right people. These are not the people who committed these murders. And so I’ve dismissed charges against numerous defendants where we’ve researched it, we’ve looked at it, we’ve gone back and interviewed the victims, found victims who have lied for various reasons, found victims who were mistaken for various reasons. And as a prosecutor, you’re able to go ahead and fix that and make that right. And you’re also the one who can make that decision about, is this somebody who is a danger? Is this somebody who really should not be with the rest of us because they are a danger, they don’t care, they’re going to do this again? Or is this somebody who has just caught up? And it’s one of those things where we’re mad at them. We’re like, “Hey, could you just get it together, become a good citizen? We’re going to give you the chance to be that person, criminal justice reform.” And the prosecutor is the person who has the ability to do that.

Linda Dunikoski:

The other thing I agree with you that we’re missing are those career prosecutors. We have a lot of people who do as young people right out of law school, they want to become prosecutors. The problem is once again is they’re underpaid, they’re overworked. And once you enter into the life cycle, and I’ll call it the life cycle, once you enter into that, I’m getting married and I’m having children and oh my gosh, I might have to put them in private school or send them to college, it becomes about the money. Unless you have a passion and you become that career prosecutor, it’s a lifestyle, it is a choice. And it’s wonderful. It is absolutely wonderful when you are that person who is able to be that voice for that victim who is never going to have a voice unless you were there to do it for them. It’s a very, very satisfying thing.

Preet Bharara:

Well put. You’ve been very kind with your time. I know you have a lot going on. Linda Dunikoski, I’m so glad you’ve left sales and you’ve maintained your service to the public, not only in this case, but in so many other cases. And I hope you continue to do it for a very long time. Thanks again for your time.

Linda Dunikoski:

Thank you so much for having me.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Linda Dunikoski continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. To try out the membership free for two weeks, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. I want to end the show this week by recognizing some of the legends that we have lost in recent weeks. On New Year’s Eve, we lost Betty White at the young age of 99. Last Sunday, we lost one of America’s iconic television dads, Bob Saget, who played Danny Tanner on Full House at only 65. And last Thursday, we lost actor, director, writer and activist, Sidney Poitier at age 94. And it’s Poitier that I would like to linger on. Many of his successes and achievements are well known. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field, in which he played a handyman who becomes a close friend to a group of Catholic nuns who begin to believe he is a divine force. That mark the first time that a black man had ever been honored as best actor. It would not happen again for 38 more years, when Denzel Washington won.

Preet Bharara:

In 1967 alone, Poitier starred in three era-defining films, To Sir, with Love, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and one of my favorites, In the Heat of the Night, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In that film, Poitier played Virgil Tibbs, a black police detective from Philadelphia who joins up with a white Sparta Mississippi police chief named Bill Gillespie, a memorable turn by Rod Steiger to investigate a conspiracy surrounding the killing of an industrialist. To me, it’s a must-watch and poignant film about racial hatred and redemption.

Preet Bharara:

Poitier was born in poverty to tomato sellers in The Bahamas in 1927. His parents sent him to live with relatives in Miami when he was 14. He came to New York while he was still a teen. He lied about his age and served as an army medical orderly during the final years of World War II. After the war, Poitier began to dream of an acting career. But while dreaming that dream, he worked as a dishwasher in Astoria, Queens. He still spoke at this point with a thick West Indian accent. And so acting was a bit of a pipe dream. And so he listened to the radio and read the Journal-American to work on his English. While working in the restaurant, Poitier had a chance encounter that changed his life. He explained in the 2013 CBS Sunday Morning Interview with Lesley Stahl.

Sidney Poitier:

One of the waiters, a Jewish guy, elderly man, I had a newspaper and he walked over to me and he looked at me and he said, “What’s new in the paper?” And I looked up at this man. And I said to him, “I can’t tell you what’s up in the paper.” I said because I can’t read very well. He says, “Let me ask you something. Would you like me to read with you?” I said to him, “Yes, if you like.” Now let me tell you something: Every night, every night, the place is closed, everyone’s gone, and he sat there with me week after week after week. I learned a lot, a lot. And then things began to happen.

Preet Bharara:

The rest as they say is history. Poitier told the story of his kind waiter teacher many times. In his 1980 memoir, This Life, he talked in more depth about the impact that that teacher had had on his life. “This soft spoken, natural teacher, with thick bifocals, bushy eyebrows, and silver white hair sat with me night after night in the twilight of his years and gave me a little piece of himself. I have never been able to thank him properly because I never knew then what an enormous contribution he was making to my life. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, probably dead by now, but he was wonderful. And a little bit of him is in everything I do.”

Preet Bharara:

I find this story of a waiter and a dishwasher incredibly moving. We say all the time that trailblazers stand on the shoulders of giants. And of course, they do. But they also need kindness and support from ordinary people to reach their own level of greatness. And so I also find myself marveling at a man who admitted his weakness and so honored a kind teacher. What a legend and what a lesson. God bless Sidney Poitier. And may he rest in peace.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Linda Dunikoski. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics and justice, tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338, that’s 669-24-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. And the CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Chris Boylan, Sean Walsh, and Namita Shah. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.