Randy Singer - The Justice Game

“I wondered when you might get around to that,” Davids said.

“A recent study by the Tidewater Times found that this gun ranks fourth among assault guns traced by the ATF to violent crimes. Are you aware of that?”

“I don’t read the Tidewater Times, ” Davids sneered.

“Your company has had some trouble with the ATF, haven’t you?”

“We’ve never been convicted of a single violation.”

“That wasn’t my question. Your company has had some trouble with the ATF, haven’t you?”

“Objection,” Jason said, “asked and answered.”

“That’s the problem,” Kelly said. “It wasn’t answered.”

Davids stared at Kelly for a few seconds. “I think it was.”

“Okay. Then let’s walk through it. A few years before the assault weapons ban, the MD-9 was redesigned when the ATF went to court to pull your firearms manufacturing license, isn’t that right?”

“The ATF went to court to revoke our license. We settled the case when we got tired of spending money on lawyers. So yes, we slightly redesigned the MD-9 to address their concerns. But the settlement agreement specifically denied any liability.”

“The ATF was upset because people buying the MD-9 could easily convert it into an illegal fully automatic machine gun in a matter of minutes using only a file, isn’t that right?”

Davids scoffed. “You can convert fertilizer into a bomb, too. That doesn’t make fertilizer manufacturers criminals.” She turned and looked at the camera. “We sold it as a semi-automatic. What people did when they got it home was their business.”

Kelly leaned forward. The witness was getting under her skin. “How many converted MD-9s were traced to crimes?”

“I have no idea.”

“More than ten?”

“Who knows?”

“More than a hundred?”

“Could be.”

“More than a thousand?”

“She said she doesn’t know,” Jason interjected, still leaning back in his chair. He didn’t have a single piece of paper on the table in front of him, as if this proceeding was too inconsequential to even take notes.

“Maybe this will refresh your memory,” Kelly said. She slid a document to Melissa Davids and provided Jason with a copy. She asked the court reporter to mark the document as an exhibit.

“Can you tell me what that document is?” Kelly asked.

“A brief filed by the ATF in the case we’ve been discussing.”

“Please look at page three, the second paragraph. How many MD-9s had been converted into fully automatic weapons and traced to crimes?”

“Eight hundred thirty-three,” Davids said.

“And that didn’t concern you?”

Davids scoffed. “We redesigned the gun so this couldn’t happen. Is that so hard to understand?”

Kelly felt her face redden, the anger rising to the surface. “Just answer the question. Did this fact concern you?”

“Criminals sometimes modify our guns. Criminals sometimes use them to kill innocent people. Every time somebody dies, that concerns me. However, my hope is that sometime before this deposition is over, you might actually want to talk about whether it’s fair to try and hold us accountable for everything these criminals do.”

For three hours, Kelly Starling hammered away at the witness while Jason looked on, occasionally lodging an objection. At 1:30 he insisted they break for lunch. Forty-five minutes later, they were back at it, with Kelly focusing on MD Firearms’s manufacture of silencers.

“Did Larry Jamison use a silencer?” Jason asked. “I must have missed that.”

Kelly shot him a look. “You’ll have your chance to ask questions when I’m done,” she said.

“Maybe mine will be relevant,” Jason responded, though they both knew Jason would have no questions. You ask questions of your own witness at trial, not at depositions. Why give the other side a roadmap of where you’re going?

If nothing else, Jason’s comment made Melissa Davids smile.

Kelly, on the other hand, did not seem amused. She ratcheted up her intensity, and the questions flew faster.

Davids refused to use the term silencer, calling it a Hollywood misnomer, but admitted that MD Firearms sold the outer tubes for “sound suppressors” while other Georgia manufacturers sold the matching internal parts. That way, each company avoided the federal regulations requiring registration by purchasers of complete suppressors. The companies advertised together and sometimes exhibited at the same gun shows with the result that thousands of unregistered sound suppressors were on the street.

The ATF took the companies to court over the suppressor issue, Davids conceded. This time the judge ruled against the ATF. Kelly pulled out a copy of a letter that one of the CEOs had written to the editor of an Atlanta paper the day after an incendiary article about the court’s ruling. The letter compared the strong-arm tactics of the ATF to the tactics of Hitler and Stalin. When Davids said she agreed with those sentiments, Kelly marked the letter as an exhibit.

It was nearly 3 p.m. when Kelly finally started asking questions about Peninsula Arms.

“Do you know what an illegal straw sale is?” Kelly asked.

“Of course.”

“Explain it to me.”

Davids looked at Jason. “Is it my job to explain the law to her?”

“Not really,” Jason said. He was still working hard at acting disinterested. “But maybe if you do, we can get out of here faster.”

Davids sighed. “A straw purchase transaction is when an eligible purchaser of a firearm buys a gun on behalf of another person who is an ineligible purchaser of a firearm. Let’s say, for example, that you’ve been involuntarily committed to a mental institution. Jason here couldn’t buy a firearm and fill out the paperwork on your behalf and give that firearm to you.”

“And if a store knowingly participates in such a sale, they’ve violated federal law, is that right?”

“Of course.”

“Do you monitor your dealers to make sure they don’t engage in illegal straw sales?”

It was a loaded question. For the first time, Davids seemed to hesitate before answering. “That’s not our job.”

“Do you train your dealers on how to avoid straw sales?”

“That’s not our job either.”

“If it came to your attention that one of your dealers was engaging in hundreds of illegal straw sales and that the guns were ending up in the hands of street criminals, would you cut that dealer off from your products?”

They were on thin ice now. “That’s a hypothetical,” Jason said. “I’m instructing the witness not to answer.”

Kelly’s brown eyes flashed. “Do I need to call the judge and get a ruling?”

Jason motioned to the phone. “Help yourself.”

He knew she wouldn’t do it. Judges hated refereeing deposition disputes. They would always chide both lawyers for acting like a couple of kids fighting on the playground. Plus, Jason was pretty sure he would win this objection-the question called for speculation, not facts.

Kelly turned back to the witness. “You’re aware that the cities of New York, Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia have filed lawsuits against rogue gun dealers based on guns they sold that were later traced to crimes on the streets of those cities?”

“Yeah, I’m aware. You want my opinion on those suits?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“You’re also aware that undercover agents from those cities conducted a number of obvious straw purchases in several stores, including Peninsula Arms, and even captured some of those transactions on video-right?”

Davids snorted. “In my opinion, the ATF should have prosecuted those undercover agents for illegally buying guns and the stores for illegally selling them.”