When the stakes are highest — when a person’s freedom, reputation, and future hang in the balance — the quality of the defense matters more than anything else. The verdict in this case is a testament to that truth.
After a trial that spanned from mid-November through mid-January, a jury returned verdicts of Not Guilty on two counts of Murder for our client. The outcome, while hard-fought over the course of nearly four years, was the product of a defense strategy built on exhaustive investigation, expert science, and an unflinching commitment to telling the whole truth about who our client is and what he experienced on the night in question.
The Night That Changed Everything
In the early morning hours, our client stopped at a convenience store. What should have been a routine errand became a life-threatening assault. A group of transients surrounded him as he returned to his truck, attacked him, struck him in the head — knocking him to the ground — and robbed him. He was armed with a firearm, though he did not hold a concealed carry license. During the assault, he fired at his attackers. Two of them later died from their wounds.
He was charged with two counts of Murder. The case was held to answer at the preliminary hearing. What followed was one of the most methodical and thorough defenses our firm has ever mounted.
“The defendant reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury. A defendant is not required to retreat. He or she is entitled to stand his or her ground and defend himself or herself.”
The Defense: Science, Strategy, and Storytelling
Criminal defense is not simply about challenging the prosecution’s evidence. At its best, it is about helping a jury understand the full human reality of what happened. In this case, that meant confronting uncomfortable facts head-on and transforming them into the foundation of a compelling, truthful narrative.
Our client’s background was not without complexity. Members of his family had prior criminal records, including serious offenses. He himself had juvenile-level incidents, though his adult record was relatively clean. The prosecution would use this context to paint a picture. Attorney Maas used it to tell a different, truer story.
PTSD and Threat Response. Our client had been the victim of violent crime before — mugged, assaulted, shot at. That history left a mark that went beyond memory. A Clinical and Forensic Neuropsychiatrist affiliated with Stanford University brought the science of trauma and brain function to bear on the question at the heart of this case: what was our client’s state of mind in the moments of the assault?
The expert’s analysis identified multiple converging factors — our client’s history of victimization, the acute threat he faced that night, and the physical blow he sustained — that together created conditions the neuropsychiatrist described as a perfect storm of neurological compromise. When the human brain enters survival mode, deliberate reasoning gives way to something far more primal. That distinction, between instinct and intent, was the foundation of the defense.
Firearm use — a procedural motor skill — is anatomically separate from premeditation, specific intent, or proportionality judgment. Motor execution does not indicate intact deliberative capacity.
This distinction was central to the defense. The prosecution’s theory required a calculating actor making deliberate choices. The science showed something altogether different: a man in survival mode, neurologically incapable of the deliberation that murder requires.
The Power of a Coordinated Team
Trial work of this magnitude does not rest on one person. Attorney Maas was supported in court by Certified Paralegal Karen Borg, whose presence throughout the trial ensured that the logistics of a complex, multi-witness proceeding were handled with precision. Exhibits, expert coordination, case materials — the smooth operation of a long trial requires a team that has prepared together and communicates without friction. When the jury returned its verdicts, Karen was beside the defendant’s wife, holding her hand as the words Not Guilty were read aloud.
Expert witnesses and private investigators were retained early and worked in depth over the course of the case. Nothing about the defense was improvised. Every element of the courtroom presentation — from the structure of expert testimony to the sequencing of evidence — was deliberate.
This is what we do for our clients. We build a defense that can go the distance, and we stay with you until the end.
Why It Took Three and a Half Years
From the date of our client’s arrest to the day the jury returned its verdict was nearly four years. For a defendant and their family, that stretch of time is not abstract. It is lived — in anxiety, in uncertainty, in the grinding difficulty of not knowing when or how it will end.
We understand that. And we also understand why faster is not always better.
The science that formed the backbone of this defense required time to develop. Expert witnesses of this caliber do not appear overnight. The investigation that allowed us to contextualize our client’s history — and to counter the narrative the prosecution would use against him — required the kind of depth that cannot be rushed. We used that time.
When clients ask why their case is taking so long, the answer is this: we are building the defense your life deserves. Cases like this one show what that investment of time and effort can mean.
The Closing Argument: A Question of State of Mind
At the close of trial, Attorney Maas brought together every thread of the defense — the science, the history, the humanity — into a closing argument focused on one essential question: what was this man’s state of mind?
The law of self-defense in California does not require perfection. It requires reasonableness. The jury was instructed on the standard that governed their deliberations:
The defendant reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury. The defendant reasonably believed that the immediate use of deadly force was necessary to defend against that danger. The defendant used no more force than was reasonably necessary to defend against that danger.
A defendant is not required to retreat. He or she is entitled to stand his or her ground and defend himself or herself and, if reasonably necessary, to pursue an assailant until the danger of death or bodily injury has passed. This is so even if safety could have been achieved by retreating.
Applied to the facts of this case — a man with documented trauma history, a compromised neurological state, and a head injury, surrounded by attackers in the dark of the early morning — Attorney Maas brought every element together: the science, the investigation, the witnesses, and the argument. The jury agreed. “Not Guilty.” “Not Guilty.”