Defending alleged killers: What inspires these attorneys to do it
KALAMAZOO, MI — Someone was shot. Killed. An investigation ensues. A suspect is caught.
The court process begins.
So often, it seems like it’s destined to be open and shut.
The process has many steps: There’s an arraignment, a slew of conferences and hearings. And if it doesn’t settle at some point during the process — a trial.
The prosecutor’s office then makes its case, in the hopes of putting the accused behind bars for life.
But who are the attorneys at the other table? The ones representing people accused of committing the most egregious crime — the taking of another’s life.
The Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive sat down with two of the most well-known Kalamazoo-area defense attorneys who specialize in homicide cases to learn more about what motivates them. Here’s what they said.
Setting a killer free?
Many defense attorneys face a common question: Does it bother you knowing your work could help a killer walk free?
For 36-year-old defense attorney Caleb Grimes, who has tried multiple high stakes cases this year, the answer is an emphatic ‘no.’
“I don’t think you could be really good at this job if you let that stuff bother you,” Grimes said. “As a society, we want to have faith in the convictions people get. If people are going to prison on shaky evidence or just because people think that’s what happened, then we can’t really have faith in anybody going to prison.
“So, if you don’t have an attorney working as hard as they can within the bounds of the law to acquit somebody, I don’t think there’s really a lot of faith in the convictions that the state does secure.”
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Criminal defense attorney Caleb Grimes poses for a portrait in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (Rodney Coleman-Robinson | MLive.com)Rodney Coleman-Robinson | MLive.com
It comes down to the integrity of the system, Grimes said.
“If somebody is convicted off shaky evidence when they are truly guilty, somebody can be convicted off shaky evidence when they are not truly guilty,” he said. “Whether I know they did it, or I believe they didn’t, it doesn’t change a thing for me. It’s all about, can the prosecution prove what they’re saying my client did.”
What keeps Grimes up at night, he said, isn’t if a killer walks free if the prosecution can’t prove their case. It’s the truly innocent client facing life behind bars if Grimes doesn’t do his job well.
“I have an opportunity to do something incredible, to make sure that doesn’t happen to them,” he said.
Of the seven murder cases Grimes has taken to trial in his 10 years of practicing law, one has resulted in an outright acquittal, two a hung jury and three saw his client get a lesser charge of second-degree murder.
Only one — a recent case in Kent County he inherited from another attorney — has resulted in a first-degree murder conviction. He’s also had two murder charges dismissed before trial and two resolved to a lesser plea deal.
Grimes has five murder cases pending, he said.
A former Division III college quarterback at Manchester University in Northern Indiana, Grimes has a competitive streak that drives him.
“I feel like I get to compete every day at my job,” he said. “There’s no higher stakes in a courtroom than somebody going to prison forever or somebody going home. … It’s exhilarating to be a part of that.
“There’s countries in this world that, if you run afoul of the government, you are going to jail — where they don’t really care about due process. I like being that part in between the government and the individual.”
Even with due process, Grimes recognizes the challenge in arguing a case to jurors who he feels often enter a courtroom wondering what the defendant did — as opposed to, “can the state prove that the accusations happened?”
“Even the phrase, ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ kind of presumes ‘Oh, we’re going to get there, let’s just go through the hoops,” he said. “I think it should be innocent unless proven guilty.”
Two sides to every story
Grimes’ mentor, 60-year-old defense attorney Donald Sappanos, is a firm believer there are two sides to every story.
“I’ve learned throughout my career that two people can watch the same thing and have an exact opposite opinion of what they saw,” Sappanos said. “And I think that everybody, not just the police, but the accused, should have their chance to tell their story. And to be honest with you, it’s what I think I’m good at.
“I believe that I can really help someone tell their side of the story.”
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Criminal defense attorney Don Sappanos poses for a portrait on Wednesday, March 29, 2023, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. (Rodney Coleman-Robinson | MLive.com)Rodney Coleman-Robinson | MLive.com
Sappanos, who began his career in the Van Buren County Prosecutor’s Office in 1989, has been helping defend people accused of homicide for more than two decades. He’s had about 30 murder cases go to trial, including eight since late 2022.
“No one has had more murder trials around here than me,” Sappanos said. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I never shunned anybody from either side of the tracks. I was always friends with everybody from doctors to lawyers to guys who were less fortunate.”
After winning the first murder case he tried in the late 1990s — which was a double homicide case — people started coming to him when they got in trouble, Sappanos said.
But Sappanos doesn’t take every case he’s been presented with.
“There have been several cases that I haven’t taken, either because I didn’t like the facts of the case and how that person had allegedly committed the crime, or the guy walks in and immediately tells me he did it and how, and it’s something that has rubbed me wrong,” Sappanos said.
Sappanos, who handles cases across Southwest Michigan and in Indiana, said it’s rare for a client to come in and say: “Hey, I did this, just get me the best deal.”
“Most of my cases, and every one I went to trial on, my client has either said, ‘Hey, I didn’t do this,’ or ‘It didn’t happen the way they’re saying it happened’ or ‘I used self-defense,’ Sappanos said.
If a person walks in and says they did it, the case often ends in a plea deal, as opposed to a trial.
Self-defense cases aren’t common, Sappanos said. But of all the trials where he’s raised self-defense, there’s only one case where the jury convicted his client. That case, where a homeowner allegedly killed someone who trespassed onto his property to steal from him, is now in the appeals process.
Taking issue with the system
For Sappanos and Grimes, another reason they do their jobs — which often includes working with prosecutors to obtain a plea deal — is that they oppose mandatory life sentences for first-degree murder.
“We’re talking about 18- to 20-year-old kids charged with murder having to sit in a cell for 80 years, the rest of their lives, if they’re found guilty,” Sappanos said. “A lot of people think this is a cold-hearted killer who deserves a heavy sentence. (But) when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you see a kid whose mind isn’t developed fully. He then gets convicted a crime and has to go away for life.”
There’s a major difference between a someone who’s 40 and someone who is 21, he said.
“The tough thing is, nowadays, you see kids that have never been in trouble; however, everyone in their neighborhood is carrying a gun, so they carry a gun,” he said. “I’m not using it as an excuse, but so many people resort to solving discrepancies and issues with gunfire, it’s almost if you don’t have a gun in some of these situations, it’s kill or be killed.
“It’s terrible. Our society is a lot different from when I was younger. Things used to be solved with a fistfight. Now, if you go to a fistfight, you’re likely to run into a gun. We see it in the bars. We see it on campus. When I went to school, I never had to worry about getting shot if I went to a Halloween party. Now, you do.”
For these reasons, Sappanos feels there should be adjustments to sentencing guidelines. He wants judges to have more discretion.
“They are the ones that get to read the pre-sentence report. They are the ones that get to hear the arguments, not the legislators making the laws,” Sappanos said. “There’s so much uniqueness about each case.”
For Grimes, who sports a “Black Lives Matter” tattoo on his wrist, race also plays a factor.
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Criminal defense attorney Caleb Grimes’ shows his “Black Lives Matter” tattoo in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. About half of Grimes’ clients in Kalamazoo are Black individuals. Grimes, who grew up in South Haven with mostly Black friends, got the tattoo during the spring of 2020. (Rodney Coleman-Robinson | MLive.com)Rodney Coleman-Robinson | MLive.com
“Everyone is raised in this country to believe Lady Justice is blind and the scales of justice are even. But I’ve seen plenty of courtrooms with a Black defendant, white attorney, white prosecutor, white officer, white judge and 12 white jurors,” he said. “I’ve never seen the opposite.”
From a cultural perspective, Grimes said, you wind up with people testifying about day-to-day life that jurors from different parts of the county struggle to relate to.
As an attorney, it’s his role to bridge that gap, he said.
“People who live on the Northside, they don’t live the same life people in Portage live,” Grimes said.
It would help if more officers lived in the community they policed, Grimes said.
As of February, only 7% of Kalamazoo Public Safety officers lived in the city limits. If that were to increase, he said, it could improve community relations.
Grimes, who grew up in South Haven with a predominantly Black friend base, said he feels he has a better understanding of Black culture than most white men.
More than half his clients are Black.
“This isn’t something that is just a job for me,” he said. “I actually care about the work I’m doing. Not that I’m some saint or anything. But I want to try to make people see these are other people.”
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