Racehorse Haynes | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Morgan gain of The Kissing Bandit is was famous for kissing Major League Baseball
pitchers or famous athletes and and Morgana was in the Astrodome Nolan Ryan was on the pitching mound and the Astros
were playing so Morgana goes down to the the very lower level and apparently jumps onto the field Runs Out kisses
Nolan Orion and then runs back and gets back up to the the seats but well the police by then I came and grabbed her
and arrested her for trespassing so Morgana calls my father and says hey I've been arrested for trespassing I
need some help here can can you represent me my dad goes well sure my dad's defense for Morgan I was and
well I'm going to go back a little bit Morgan I had a big set of uh breasts if you want to call it Morgana The Kissing
Bandit whose real name is Morgana Roberts once told a reporter that she got her bras custom made by the same
people who made the domes for stadiums when she was arrested in 1985 for kissing Nolan Ryan she called Attorney
Richard Haynes this is his son Slade so my dad's defense for her was that her breasts were so heavy it caused her to
fall over onto the field and therefore she thought well I'm already on the field why not go kiss Noah and Ryan
and it was kind of a funny laughing stock of the of the courthouse because they're like oh what kind of defense is
that Mr Haynes and he goes well that's my defense and I'm sticking to it and she was found not guilty because her
chest was so heavy correct that it toppled her over onto the field top holder over onto the field and I thought
that was a brilliant defense I mean that's the thing I keep reading about these defenses that your father came up
with in so many different ways and they're almost they're almost too good I mean they're just unbelievable the stuff
that he would come up with right he he was very good off the fly I am an impromptu he would come up with some of
the best defenses that you would never ever think of Richard Haynes name racehorse Haynes
considered to be one of the most exceptional criminal defense lawyers the country's ever seen
here's how he described his approach say you sue me because you claim my dog bit you this is my defense
my dog doesn't bite and second my dog was tied up that night third I don't believe you really got bit
and fourth I don't have a dog he was comfortable he was in his own skin he didn't try to act like a lawyer
he was just Richard rice horse Haynes a person talking to regular people this is
Dallas attorney Charla Aldous she tried a case with racehorsings and says she'd never seen anything like him
he was Fearless I've tried probably over 200 cases or 250 I've lost count but you know you can
always smell fear on the other side if they're not completely comfortable in their skin and they're not comfortable
in the courtroom with racehorse when he walked through the doors of the courtroom you knew that
man was where he was supposed to be in life he would own the room a real Texas accent yet not as bad as
mine thankfully for him but um yeah he did he he was he was a down-home boy he never put on errors and I remember one
of my my favorite things and I have stolen this from him and have done it that he would say to Witnesses on the
stand and it's so simple but it was so gripping when he would do it let's say a Mr Smith was testifying and he would say
Mr Smith have you ever up until this very moment in your life and just the way he said it you think
this is the most important question and answer of the entire trial it was just a suspenseful way that he
would would word the questions and and with the pauses where they needed to be and the anticipation and the voice tone
and it was just it was beautiful to watch I learned so much from just having the opportunity to try that case with
him it didn't matter if you had two pennies to rub together or a million dollars now
he'd like the guy with a million dollars or show up but if he thought you were the underdog he only had two pennies he
would still take your case and and still give you the best defense that you could get
he represented all kinds of people some very controversial people his job was the same no matter who it was
I can't permit myself the luxury of having it matter to me whether they're guilty or not he said
over and over people told us that to watch him in the courtroom was like watching Magic
he started practicing law in Texas in 1956. back then it was common for courtrooms to have spittoons for chewing
tobacco and the first time he tried a case he tripped over one the jury laughed but he thought they
also sympathized they could see he was nervous he won the case the next time he went to court he
tripped over the spittoon on purpose he won again for two years he kept this up until
finally a judge told him to knock it off there's nothing he wouldn't do he once held a cattle prod against his skin he
cross-examined an empty chair on the witness stand he debated nailing his hand to the jury box and the only reason
he didn't do it was because he couldn't be sure he wouldn't start crying when he
was asked if he considered himself the best criminal attorney in Texas he said it's my belief that I am and I wonder
why you're restricted to Texas according to one judge he was a Charming little jerk
I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal no he'd always come into the courtroom with the cowboy boots and and usually
with a white cowboy hat you see a lot of photos of him when he's exiting the courtroom he'll put that
white cowboy hat out and and you know the reporters will be interviewing and that was probably the the biggest
signature items that he would have or besides his monster-sized leather briefcase they might have one legal pad
in it but he would he would carry that in the courthouse to make the jury think or the judge think hey he's got all this
he's got all this paperwork in here he's getting ready to pull it out I mean that
that seems like a big look to me the white hat and the boots but maybe in Texas just normal probably in Texas is
pretty normal but for him a lot of the younger attorneys and you'll see it they started
wearing cowboy boots and and they would come in with cowboy hats on everybody wanted to be like him yes they did
so I started working for racehorse Haynes two days after I got out of high school and I was an office helper
a private investigator a law Clerk and an associate attorney over that period of time and it was better education than
I got in law school Houston attorney Chris tritico I walked into this this scene of more than you could ever
imagine and the famous people walking through the door that wanted to meet Richard and hire him and hire The Firm
it was it was amazing and Richard was bigger than life Larger than Life he he was gregarious he was he was funny and
top of the field racehorse Haynes is best known for his defense of two very high profile clients
the first was Houston plastic surgeon John Hill in 1969 John Hill's wife 38 year old
Joan hill suddenly became very ill her husband John drove her to the hospital Joan's mother was also in the car and
afterwards she would report that John was driving very slowly she said it was almost like he didn't want to get there
he fiddled with cassette tapes and played very loud classical music Joan Robinson Hill got sick and John
Hill instead of taking her to one of the hospitals that he had privileges at took
her to a small Hospital over off of Highway 59 here in Houston and she died of what today they would
call basically toxic shock syndrome back in the early 70s they didn't have a name
for this they didn't know what they didn't know what killed her eventually they indicted
Dr John Hill for murdering his wife accusing him of injecting her with toxins that he they claimed he was
growing at home and killed her some said he was injecting the toxins into our desserts
specifically eclairs racehorse Haynes was hired to represent John Dr John Hill in the murder trial
it was a hung jury so John Hill went home he lift just a few doors down from Joan's parents Rey and Ash Robinson who
were convinced John Hill had killed their daughter before the case could be retried someone
knocked on the door of John Hill's Mansion he opened it and was shot and killed right there on his front steps
for the rest of uh Ash Robinson's life it was assumed that he had hired a hit man to kill Dr John Hill
[Music] it was never proven and dash Robinson died without ever answering the question
so no one ever found out the case became the subject of a best-selling book called blood and money
which was made into a movie murder in Texas starring Farrah Fawcett and Andy Griffith
when I started at 18 years old I was one of the things I first was asked to do was deliver something over to the Hill
Mansion which was the most exciting thing I ever ever got to do at 18 years old because I just read the book so and
I don't know I don't even know who I gave the stuff to I was just asked to deliver something over there and I did
and I wanted so much to ask to go in but I I was I was more professional than that
the second client to put resource hands on the national map was billionaire T Colin Davis having a billion dollars in
the 70s was a whole whole lot of money and he spent it freely Colin Davis was in the middle of a messy divorce from
his wife Priscilla who was said to be having an affair one night someone broke into their house
and shot Priscilla the man she was having an affair with and Priscilla's 12 year old daughter
Priscilla survived and told the police everything her husband Colin Davis was charged with
capital murder there was a lot of evidence against him two witnesses placed him at the scene of
the crime with a gun racehorse Haynes had a plan he focused on discrediting Priscilla
he described her as promiscuous the queen bee of sex parties a frequent drug user he showed a poster-sized photograph
of her with one of her boyfriends a guy wearing nothing but a Christmas stocking
one reporter said racehorse Haynes made her out to be totally unreliable a quote
want and floozy whose testimony wasn't worth the time it took to hear it he was heavily criticized in the press
for his approach the prosecutor said racehorse Haynes came at Priscilla Davis like a ball of
butcher knives but it worked it was a hung jury and that was in Fort Worth tried it
again I believe in Amarillo Texas on a change of venue and got a not guilty on the case
then as they were wrapping up the divorce Cullen was accused of making a threat to the judge Colin Davis was
frustrated that his divorce was taking so long he thought he was being asked to pay too much alimony and he was
suspected of hiring a hit man to kill the judge The Hitman went to the FBI and the FBI
actually got the judge to cover himself in fake blood and get into the trunk of a car to pose for photographs which were
then shown to Colin Davis suggesting that the hit he'd ordered had been carried out and that the judge was
dead Cullen apparently or has alleged to have paid the money to the Hitman they arrested him for attempted capital
murder of the judge Richard tried that case and got an acquittal of that on that case
somehow in spite of so much evidence racehorse Haynes made Cullen Davis a sympathetic character
he said the FBI had botched the investigation he told the jury if they worked for you you'd fire him come to
think of it they do work for you probably some of the best criminal defense work you'll ever see was winning
that case the pictures of this judge pretending to be dead in that trunk or as graphic as you'll ever see even
though he wasn't dead certainly looked that way really good piece of work in that case
and those two cases back to back over of course several years in the 70s put Richard at the very very top of the
criminal defense field in the United States these are these are probably his best known cases those are his best
known cases but in my opinion not his best work there is a case in Texas called Pam
Fielder Fielder versus State Pam Fielder was married to a doctor in Texas and he
liked s m type stuff and he would take Pam down to what we called the dungeon in their in their house and and torture
her and and have her torture him drive nails through private parts of his body Drive nails through private parts of her
body all the some of the worst stuff you've ever seen Dam Fielder said she had initially consented to what she
called bondage and discipline games with her husband but it escalated and she didn't want to
do it anymore she said her husband drugged her with Demerol to force her to participate
in July of 1981 Pam Fielder shot her husband firing seven rounds with a 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol
he walked through the door one day she expected that he would torture her and she pulled a gun out and shot him but he
had not said on this day that he was going to take her to the dungeon she just thought he would resource
Haynes argued that the abuse she had suffered had to be taken into consideration
he himself had established what's called battered woman syndrome as a legitimate
defense in Texas the year before and so Haynes put on over 350 photographs or different
Implements of sexual torture that they had we had recovered from the house and tried to call an expert to testify
that her State of Mind at the time that she killed him was that she was going to
get injured and she had no choice but to kill him the judge refused to allow that jury
charge Pam Fielder was convicted but on appeal in 1988 the conviction was reversed on
appeal the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for the first time recognized The Battered Women's defense in Texas
and it is now a statute in Texas and it was racehorse haynes's Ingenuity inventiveness and his belief in the
system that a woman ought to be able to put on evidence of that she's been battered that created
that law in Texas that still stands today and that in my opinion is the best work he's ever done
racehorse Haynes like to tell a story about this case about an elderly lady who came to the courthouse every single
day to watch the trial even though she had no relationship to any of the parties
finally a reporter asked her what she was doing there and she replied are you kidding we've got whips and chains and
racehorse hands [Music] foreign foreign that he did John Hill then Cullen Davis and then like I said
the Pam Fielder case and all of those things and then you get talked about when Richard Nixon is having his
problems they were talking about hiring racehorse sayings when Manuel Noriega gets kidnapped out of Panama and Manuel
Noriega calls racehorse Haynes and that's on the news and everyone wants to hire racehorse Haynes and you're in the
news all the time by the highest profile people in the country for years it's it's I've never seen anything like
it and we will never see another lawyer like that I remember like yesterday because it was
a it was a big deal him coming to Sherman the population is about 30 000 the entire County probably a hundred
thousand so you heard people talking about it racehorse Haynes is Coming to Town racehorse Haynes is coming to town
and I was really excited about meeting him and it's right when the new Volkswagen Beetles had come out
and I bought a red one I'll never forget it and it was delivered to me while we're in the middle of trial and I said
rice come out you got to see my car watch this watch this and I hit the button to show how the doors
automatically unlocked and he was driving about a 30 year old suburban all beat up and everything and
had cowboy boots on he said hey Charla watch this he went over and kicked the front tire he said dang it just a second
and he kicked it again and he said damn it usually when I do that the door is open
it was just so that was that was so typical of him he was so humble um but so relatable
was he was he ever just quiet and contemplative or was he always up to a to a trick to an antic what was
interesting is the racehorse that I saw in trial and in public and the racehorse
that I observed during the night when we're getting ready for the next day and and they were totally different people
some of the there was quite a few lawyers on the team and everybody was you know working around the clock and
and talking and everything I would watch race though he would go to a private area by himself and would read every
single piece of paper that he needed to read for the next day he was always so very prepared so he didn't go just on
his god-given talent he was very very prepared every day will you describe what he was like in
the courtroom in the courtroom the thing that that that distinguished Richard from from
lawyers that from every lawyer I've ever seen is he was always a gentleman he had a command of the language in in
an ability to keep control over his own emotions better than most people I have ever seen
in my life in a murder trial we were trying when I was a young lawyer a horrible murder case and
Richard has a kid on the stand who's an eyewitness to the murder and had told a lie while on direct and
Richard caught it I didn't catch it I don't think anybody in the courtroom caught it but Richard did
and he started asking this young man questions and he goes he asked him questions for about an hour and a half
and he was slowly asked he'd ask a question and he would ask a question the same question but
with a slightly different slice of the question and he went on for an hour and a half this way in a big long round
circle slicing slicing slicing slicing the whole courtroom is thinking what the hell is this guy doing
until he got all the way around that Circle and he asked that last question he sliced it one more time asked that
last question and the kid rocked back in his chair and he took his glasses off and Richard said I got you didn't I
and the kid said yes sir you did he said I got you young man because you're taking liberties with the truth
aren't you and the prosecutor objected right as the young man said yes I am it was the most
brilliant cross-examination I've ever seen and nobody got that that kid had lied until Richard finished that hour
and a half circle and that's the way he handled everything he never raised his voice to this kid he baited him along
until he had him so boxed in that when it finally dawned on the Kid what he had done to him he just rocked back in his
chair and realized he had been caught it was it was brilliant and very few lawyers have the patience
to wait that long to box somebody in and that's what Richard did every time we used to have a joke about this but if
he could reuse Staples he would reuse them uh if he saw paper clips in the trash when he'd walk around his office
he would yell at the associate saying what are you doing that's a penny sitting there in that trash basket
you know even when it came to going to lunch you know one of his favorite lunches and I would joke them about it
so he would go to Jack in a box and get the two tacos for 99 cents and I was like Dad you know it's got to be the
absolutely worst lunch you could possibly have well he didn't care he loved his tacos and what about your
mother how did he meet your mother they met their High School sweethearts and at the end they were married for 62
years when it was time for racehorse Haynes to retire his wife Naomi went to Chris
tritico's office and asked for his help she said I Richard cannot work anymore I
need you to take over the practice and close it down and take over the remaining cases and I said is Richard
okay with this and she said he will be [Music] the work seemed to be so important to
him well it was um he Richard understood what he had done and what he was and and he I don't think that he knew
anything else to be and which is why I unfortunately he worked until we just had to drag him out of the courtroom
I don't think he knew what to do with himself racehorse Haynes died April 28 2017 in
Trinity Texas shortly after celebrating his 90th birthday he practiced law for more than 50 years Richard believed
deeply in in what he was doing in the courtroom and and he he believed it so much that he gave up a big part of his
life and and I'll give you a classic story about that um one night one one time we were in trial
on on the murder case I was telling you about my wife was due to have our second
child and literally do any minute and this was at a time before cell phones were had been had come out
I approached the judge and I said my wife's due to have a baby any minute and I gave the number to the coordinator
and if I need to leave she's just going to come get me and I'm just going to get
up and walk out and he said no problem you don't have to say anything I'll understand just leave and I sit down
at Council table and Richard turned around and he said you know when my last child was born
I was in a trial and I didn't leave until after final argument and I missed the birth
before he passed he told me one time that that one of his great regrets was that he
didn't spend as much time as I did with my kids as he and he wished he had and it was the biggest compliment that
he could have ever given me was that that he appreciated what I had done with my kids
and and he wished he had and I I took that as the greatest compliment he ever gave me
[Music] there's an old profile in the Abilene Reporter news called arrogant reputation
doesn't bother racehorse Haynes it ends with him saying I guess the bottom line is who you yourself would hire if you
were in trouble if I was in trouble I'd hire me [Laughter] [Laughter] [Music] criminal is produced by Lauren Spore
Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob Byers Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of
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is Criminal foreign [Music]

There is nothing Richard “Racehorse” Haynes of Houston, Texas, wouldn’t do to win a case. He’s widely considered to be one of the most exceptional criminal defense attorneys America has ever seen. He was notorious for pulling stunts in the courtroom. We speak with his son, Slade Haynes, and attorneys Charla Aldous and Chris Tritico about how Racehorse Haynes changed how they approach a jury.

Music in the episode “Colrain” by Blue Dot Sessions “Steadfast” by Blue Dot Sessions “Arizona Moon” by Blue Dot Sessions “Saunter” by Podington Bear “Floating Whist” by Blue Dot Sessions “Purple Light” by Blue Dot Sessions “On Belay” by Blue Dot Sessions “Neat as a Pin” by A. A. Aalto

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Episode 99 originally published 9/21/2018 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-99-racehorse-haynes-9-21-18

Brief Summary

Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, a Texas lawyer, used unconventional strategies to win high-profile cases and left a lasting legacy in criminal defense.

Key points

Morgana's Bold Move. Morgana, known as The Kissing Bandit, kisses Nolan Ryan during a game and gets arrested.
Richard Haynes's Unique Defense. Haynes defends Morgana by claiming her heavy breasts caused her to fall onto the field.
The Battered Woman's Defense. Racehorse Haynes establishes the Battered Woman's defense in Texas, changing legal history.
Racehorse Haynes' Legacy. Racehorse Haynes practiced law for over 50 years, deeply believing in his work.
A Regretful Reflection. Before passing, Haynes expressed regret about not spending enough time with his kids.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I've been arrested for trespassing!

Morgana calls her father after being arrested.

0:33WatchJan 17, 2023

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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