Huntsville, AL criminal defense lawyer Richard Jensen's new trial tactic book focuses on "poker" of winning cases

Huntsville, AL -- To win a criminal jury trial, nationally recognized criminal defense lawyer Richard Douglas Jensen says you need to know the secret -- "it takes rattlesnakes, cottonmouths and poker."
    Jensen's new book is entitled "Winning Criminal Trials- The Secret is Rattlesnakes, Cottonmouths and Poker!"
    In what legal scholars are calling a landmark departure from established legal thinking, Jensen tosses out the long-taught maxims of trial advocacy and espouses a new way for lawyers to conduct their trials and win cases.
    "Law students and lawyers are taught from day one to 'present alternate theories,'" Jensen said recently. "They're told to advance what is called 'the defense theory.' I explain that I have had remarkable success at trial by doing something radically different. I hold my cards. I don't advance a defense theory."
    Jensen said defense lawyers who present a 'defense theory' merely tip off the prosecutor as to how they're going to try the defense case -- giving the prosecutor the ability to adjust strategy.
    "It's simple. When you're dealt a poker hand, you don't shout out what your cards are. You hold them close in order to win the game," Jensen said.
    In his new book, Jensen explains in detail how poker analogies work in the creation of criminal defense strategies, and he argues that criminal defense lawyers should use his "cottonmouth strategy," i.e. be like cottonmouth snakes, rather than rattlesnakes.
    "Rattlesnakes signal that they are about to bite you, so you change tactics and you move away to avoid being bitten," Jensen said. "Cottonmouths don't make a sound. They wait until you blunder by and then bite you."
     Jensen said his "cottonmouth strategy" often confounds prosecutors and wins over juries. With a 90% not guilty record, he might be on to something.
     "Winning Criminal Trials (The Secret is Rattlesnakes, Cottonmouths and Poker!)" is available exclusively from Amazon.com in Kindle format. The paperback edition of the book is scheduled for release on October 11.

Best-selling Tom Mix author comes to Mix Museum Saturday

DEWEY, OK. – The author of not one, but two Tom Mix biographies comes to the Tom Mix Museum here Saturday to celebrate the release of Tom Mix - Cowboy King of Hollywood.
Richard Douglas Jensen will also be signing copies of When The Legend Became Fact - The True Life of John Wayne, his controversial biography of the screen legend which was published last year and ignited debate over the true life of the Hollywood icon.
“Both Mix and Wayne were iconic cowboy heroes on the big screen, but they were as alike as milk and tequila,” Jensen said. “Tom Mix was a true cowboy in every sense of the word, while John Wayne was only a cowboy when he was on a film set. John Wayne was an actor, and he preferred yachting to horses – in fact, he hated horses,” Jensen said. “Tom Mix was the first person to tell everyone he was no actor, but he embodied in life everything he portrayed on the screen. And Mix loved his horses.”
Jensen first biography of Mix, entitled The Amazing Tom Mix – The Most Famous Cowboy of the Movies, ignited controversy when Jensen revealed that the iconic Oklahoman had actually deserted from the U.S. Army before becoming a star in wild west shows and silent movies.  His new Mix biography contains even more amazing information about the famous Oklahoman, including some startling revelations about his politics.
The Alabama-based author said he looks forward to coming to Oklahoma as often as possible, and has been looking for ranch property to buy for the past couple of years.
“Oklahoma is always like home to my family,” Jensen said. “We have made many dear friends here. In fact, when you’re in Oklahoma, everyone treats you like family. We love that. We own a couple of ranch properties in Colorado, and there it’s the reverse. Everyone in Colorado treats you like a trespasser. In Oklahoma, folks make you feel right at home.”

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When The Legend Became Fact - The True Life of John Wayne author decries “deification” of actor as distortion of history

The author of When The Legend Became Fact - The True Life of John Wayne says the deification of the author is distorting history.
“Go to the magazine rack at your favorite book store,” Richard Jensen said recently, “and go to the ‘Western lifestyle’ section and you’ll see glossy magazine covers with John Wayne there every month. Inside these publications you will read glowing articles about the Duke’s life that border on deification of the actor.”
Jensen said the magazines depict Wayne as the quintessential heroic American, a true-life hero. “They glorify his image as the perfect American man, the perfect American father, the perfect American idol.”
“These magazines sell this image to an adoring public for a profit. They gloss over the truth – that the John Wayne image on screen was markedly different from the man himself.”
Jensen’s book is a tersely written expose on the actors private life of drinking, womanizing, bullying of family, friends and co-workers, and covers in detail Wayne’s insecurities and his inability to relate to women – a result of abuse he suffered from his mother as a child.
“Now the Wayne estate, i.e. Duke’s surviving children, have a vested interest in this. Duke’s image is licensed on thousands of products and they’ve just released a glowingly positive book about their dad. That’s fine, and wonderful, but these magazines are heralding that book and ignoring mine because my book will cut into their bottom line.
“God forbid someone prints the truth about a favorite actor,” Jensen laughed. “The problem is, it’s not the truth and the public doesn’t realize they’re being sold a fantasy.”
When The Legend Became Fact - The True Life of John Wayne continues to sell briskly, according to its Nashville-based publisher, Raymond Street Publishers, LLC. This, despite a push from the Wayne faction to squelch the book.
A recent defection from that wall of denial came from a Wayne insider.
Brian Downes, the director of the John Wayne Museum in Winterset, Iowa posted a highly negative review of the book as soon as it was released. When other critics quibbled with Downes’ negative review, and it was revealed Downes hadn’t actually read the book, Downes retracted his comments and said, “I'm nearly finished with the book and I've come to like it very much.” He added that the book had what he felt were factual errors,  but it was “enjoyable nonetheless.”
Jensen said readers want to know the true story of famous people, warts and all.
“People are interested in the true history,” Jensen said. “They don’t want the spin. They want to know the truth.

“The truth is John Wayne is a hero in real life. When he survived lung cancer surgery he changed the way the world looks at the disease. He raised millions for cancer research and now, long after his death, his John Wayne Cancer Center in California is continuing to break new ground in the treatment of cancer and the search for a cure.”