Dave Jones was born in Sacramento, California, in 1974. He went to local schools through high school, focusing on biology and other sciences. He played water polo (goalie) and swam for four years and graduated from El Camino High School in 1992.

Immediately upon graduating, Dave went to UCLA for his undergraduate studies. While there, he worked as a hospital assistant in the UCLA Medical Center, gaining medical and drug knowledge that still assists him in defending clients today. In 1995, Dave graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology, a mere three years after graduating from high school.

After UCLA, Dave accepted a position as a State Traffic Officer Cadet in the California Highway Patrol (CHP) looking to fulfill his long-time goal of helping society be safer a place. Dave attended the CHP Academy in West Sacramento and excelled in both the physical and academic training. At the academy, Dave learned how law enforcement officers think, how they are trained, and how they work and stick together as a team and a family. Dave also learned the California Vehicle Code and the California Penal Code as law enforcement officers learn them; in other words, he knows how cops look at the law and at “law breakers.”

Unfortunately, Dave’s long-time dream of serving the public as a peace officer was ripped from him during his time at the academy. Dave found that the CHP—the department that was widely seen as the most respected and most prestigious law enforcement agency in the state—was not run any better than those agencies that were being ripped apart in the media every day. In fact, he believed that the CHP was training its officers in such a way that future incidents of police misconduct were inevitable.

Specifically, Dave was concerned about the way the CHP rationalized and even bragged about how they handled the Rodney King incident—or rather, how they did not handle the incident. At nearly all of the officer “use of force trainings” at the CHP academy, the staff would spend a significant portion of time saying that the CHP academy’s training was so good that the CHP officers on the scene of the Rodney King beating did not get involved–the cops knew better, the academy said.

Dave Jones was aghast that the CHP would say that it was a good thing that their officers did not get involved! If the CHP really was the "good guy" in all of this, the CHP officers would have stopped the beating, not stood by like a bunch of high school kids watching a parking lot fight!

In good conscience, Dave could not work for an agency that felt it was so much better than other law enforcement agencies simply because it stood by and watched a beating rather than actually swinging the stick at King.

Dave’s psychology degree told him that was a recipe for future disaster. (See, e.g., Stanford Prison Experiment.) Dave left the CHP and decided that rather than let potential police abuses go unchecked, he would go to law school and help those accused of crime.

The Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego offered Dave Jones a full tuition-paid scholarship. Dave accepted the scholarship and moved to San Diego. While in law school, Dave was offered several opportunities to take part in extra-curricular activities. His legal writing skills earned him a position as aTeaching Assistant for Legal Writing I, a class that all first year law students must take. In that position, he was able to help first year students improve their legal research and writing skills.

Dave tried out for the Mock Trial team in his second semester and earned a spot on the team despite his "1L" status. The Mock Trial team competes in events that simulate courtroom trials, either criminal or civil cases, allowing competitors to improve their skills in trial areas including motion-making, witness handling, making and responding to objections, opening statements, and closing arguments. Dave competed in several competitions across the country, earning praise from judges and being named a finalist in the San Diego Defense Lawyers Mock Trial Competition in 2004. The years he spent on the Mock Trial team were well spent, allowing him to hone his courtroom skills in ways most other law school students cannot match.

Dave also tried out for and got a spot in the Moot Court Honor Society, again, despite his 1L status. The Moot Court Honor Society competes in simulated appellate-level cases–in other words, represents clients after they have been convicted in an attempt to get their convictions overturned. Dave competed in several national competitions and became a member of the three person executive board that oversees the Moot Court program at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

Dave was also offered a prestigious spot on the Thomas Jefferson Law Review at the end of his first year. Law review editors review articles submitted by law professors and other attorneys across the country and decide which articles to put in the journal. The editors also have to check the citations for every article and occasionally write articles for the journal. Given Dave’s focus on helping society directly in trial court and appellate court, Dave turned down the offer so he could focus on Mock Trial, Moot Court, and his other activities.

The San Diego Office of the Public Defender also offered Dave an internship during his second and third years in law school. Dave enjoyed every minute of that internship. His mentors allowed him to handle arraignments in felony and misdemeanor court, enter change of pleas, conduct preliminary hearings, write motions, argue evidence suppression motions (View California Penal Code section for Motion for Return of Property or Suppression of Evidence (PC 1538.5)) (including winning one the mentoring attorney did not think was winnable and did not even show up in court to watch the argument), select juries, and prep for and conduct trials (e.g., before he graduated, Dave was second chair on a nine-count domestic violence case with a repeat offender defendant).

Upon graduating from law school, Dave Jones became a deputy public defender, quickly gaining real-world experience to back up the skills he had built in law school by successfully competing in mock trial and moot court. Dave Jones was able to quickly hone his courtroom skills by representing hundreds of criminal defendants at all stages of the criminal process, winning nearly 2/3 of all his jury trials.

When Dave made the switch to private practice, he naturally decided to focus on criminal defense. For more than a year, in addition to representing defendants at trial, the California Court of Appeals appointed Dave Jones to represent indigent criminal defendants in their California appeals. Dave was able to help ensure the defendants he was appointed to represent got a chance to challenge their convictions at the appellate level with no cost to them.

Most recently, Dave was one of the few trial attorneys in the country to be selected to attend the esteemed Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College in Dubois, Wyoming. While attending the nearly one month live-in program, Dave got to work closely with other top trial lawyers from around the country improving his storytelling, jury selection, opening statement, direct examination, cross examination, and closing argument. Dave left the Trial Lawyers College with a deeper understanding of jury trials, lifelong friends, and the ability to connect on a deeper level with his clients.

If you are ever in need of a trial lawyer, Dave’s experience in pre-trial negotiations, motion practice, jury selection, and trials will be invaluable. You can reach Dave Jones, attorney at law, by phone at the American Justice Center at 1-877-432-5325 or by email at djones at American Justice Center.com.