Back on April 2 of this year DoorDash delivery guy Alan Colie found himself confronted in a shopping mall food court by two aggressive pranksters, the leader of whom was one Tanner Cook. Colie would ultimately shoot Cook once, causing serious but not fatal injuries. Colie would be charged with malicious wounding, firing of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and and discharging a firearm in a building–all felonies. Colie’s sole legal defense to all three charges was the justification of self-defense.

In September Colie was acquitted by jury of the malicious wounding and use of a firearm in commission of a felony charges, but found guilty of the lesser discharging a firearm in a building charge. The trial judge declined the defense request to dismiss the conviction on the grounds that it was inconsistent with the acquittals, which necessarily required the jury to find self-defense.

Sentencing is scheduled for December 21, and Colie is looking at a maximum of 5 years.

I originally did a legal breakdown of this event in the Law of Self Defense Show of October 2, but I return to the event today for reasons having less to do with the legal merits of the case and more to do with the role that “self-defense insurance” company USCCA may have played–or, rather, may have refused to pay.

Evidence in this case suggests that Colie was a member of USCCA at the time of the shooting, that Colie called USCCA immediately after the shooting (as USCCA instructs its members to do), and that USCCA may have refused to honor its purported commitment to Colie to cover his legal expenses in this self-defense trial.

This rings all too consistent with how USCCA similar refused to cover USCCA member Kayla Giles after she claimed self-defense following the shooting of her estranged husband in September 2018. Giles would later be found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life plus 30 years, a conviction later affirmed on appeal. To what extent her conviction was the result of her being denied desperately needed legal resources by USCCA can never be known.

This was all brought to my attention again in recent days by Law of Self Defense Member Floyd, who linked me to an interesting discussion of the Colie case and the relevance of USCCA to that case on the video channel of Attorneys Marc Victor and Andy Marcantel–both of whom I’ve had personal conversation in the past, and who strike me as smart and capable attorneys. Floyd also linked me to some news stories that raise similar questions.

So, did USCCA refuse to cover another of their members in a self-defense case? In today’s show we’ll take a look at the available evidence.

Resources:

My collected critiques of USCCA

Attorneys on Retainer, “Did USCCA Drop Coverage for YouTube Prank Victim Alan Colie?”

Alan Colie shooting of Tanner Cook source video:

Disclaimer – Content is for educational & entertainment purposes only, and does not constitute legal advice.

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Transcript

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NOTE: All LOSD video/podcast transcripts are prepared in rough form, provided solely for our members’ convenience & documentation, and are not thoroughly reviewed for accuracy. Refer to the original video/podcast for the authoritative form of this content.

Hey, welcome to Today’s Law of self-defense show. Thank you so much for being here. I am, of course, Attorney Andrew Branco for Law of self-defense. Thank you. Thank you very, very much.

Today. Today, we have an interesting show for all of you and it involves a case I’ve covered before a shooting event involving food delivery guy, Alan Coley. But more relevant for our purposes, it raises questions about one of the more prominent of the self defense insurance.

I’ll put that in quotes companies and that is uh US CC A and the question is whether they’ve appeared to have once again declined to cover one of their members. There’s certainly evidence to support that conclusion. It’s not definitive evidence.

There could be alternative explanations, but it’s becoming a bit of a pattern with US CC A. So that’s what I want to explore with all of you today. So with that said, and that lined up, let’s go ahead and launch the formal start of today’s show. All right, then I do, of course, also have to share the sponsor of today’s show, which is none other than ourselves Law of self defense in the form of our best selling book, Law of self defense Principles. We make this book available for free folks. We largely think of it as a fat business card, but it is the handbook to knowing how to be hard to convict.

If you’re ever compelled to defend yourself, your family or your property. The holiday season is here, folks, even if you have a copy of this yourself and if you don’t, you should certainly take advantage of this opportunity to get a copy for free. Certainly you have friends and loved ones who you would also like to be hard to convict if they’re ever compelled to defend themselves, their family, their property against criminal predation.

Now, this book is on Amazon and I encourage you to check out the reviews on Amazon. It’s five star rated, but don’t buy it on Amazon. Amazon will charge you for the book and shipping and handling. We only ask that you cover the cost of shipping the book to you. The cost of the book itself, we zero out.

Yes, you can get your own free copy of this book, Law of Self defense Principles by pointing your browser as it says on the screen here to Law of self defense.com/free book. Simple enough. All right. So let’s talk about this shooting event. And as I say, this is something that I’ve covered before I covered it back, I think on October 2nd. So a couple of months ago, roughly uh when this was all in the news and I’ll give you a quick overview um of the event for those who may not be familiar with it.

So back on April 2nd of this year, a doordash delivery guy by the name of Alan Coley found himself confronted in a shopping mall food court by two aggressive pranksters. Now, the leader of these two pranksters was named, is named Tanner Cook and Coley would ultimately shoot Cook once in the food court um causing serious but not fatal injuries. Coley would survive. Uh Sorry Cook would survive. Coley would be charged with malicious wounding, firing of a firearm in the commission of a felony and discharged a firearm in a building.

All of these are felonies and Coley’s sole legal defense to all three of the charges was the justification of self-defense. Now, I do have the video of that event. It was captured on video. There’s no gore here, but it does show a human being being shot. So if that’s going to be disturbing, now might be a good time for you to stop watching.

So here is that video, few seconds of a morning and then we’ll see the confrontation between the two pranksters and Alan Coley and the shot being fired. So here we go. But what’s that? And then get it off my mm I and that is the extent of the video. So as I say, I covered this myself back on October 7th when it was in the news. So let me cover a couple of the news reports about that. Um, one, first I’ll, I’ll kind of go backwards in time, so I’ll share with you what happened at trial. Let’s take a look at this and I’ll make myself a little smaller, so this is easier to read.

So, um, the, the headline kind of gives it away. Judge declines to toss lesser charge for man shot for a man who shot youtuber at Dulles Town Center. This was in uh Virginia. So Alan Coley had been charged with uh aggravated malicious wounding and uh use of a firearm in the course of a felony. The underlying felony, of course, being this claimed aggravated malicious wounding, he was uh acquitted by jury of both those charges and his only legal defense was self defense. So it’s only the only reasonable inference is that the jury agreed that it was self defense in the sense that they agreed the state had failed to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the legal question here, but the jury did find him guilty on the least of the felonies which is unlawful discharge of a firearm.

And for that, Alan Coley could be on the hook for five years. Now, the defense here had argued to the court that this conviction should be reversed by the court because it doesn’t make any coherent sense if the jury believes the firing of the shot was self-defense, which it must have in order to have acquitted Coley of the two more serious use of force felonies. Well, then the firing of the shot was legally justified as self defense. It’s simply not a crime.

So he can’t logically also be guilty of the unlawful discharge of a weapon. It wasn’t unlawful, it was lawful self defense. And that’s what the defense attorney argued here. Uh, of course, the prosecutor says, ah, don’t pay any attention to that judge. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a incoherent combination of guilty and not guilty verdicts.

And the judge agreed with the prosecution denied the defense request. Um, and just simply said, well, I, I think the jury had enough evidence to come to these inconsistent conclusions. And so sentencing now for the, the one conviction, the unlawful discharge of a weapon in the building is going to take place on December 21st.

So a Christmas present of sorts for Alan Coley again, it could be anywhere from six months to five years in prison for that. Um, but, but so that’s what happened with the outcome of the trial. And we’re looking forward to the sentencing on December 21st or, you know, in a, in a rhetorical sense.

Not, not because I think the sentencing is just, I think, I think I, if I were the judge, I would have dismissed the conviction charge because it is logically incoherent, uh, appears normally when you get those logically incoherent verdicts. It’s because there’s some kind of compromise verdict taking place folks. So, um, some number of the jurors, uh, believe it should be not guilty and some numbers of the jurors believe it should be guilty and there’s various charges in play and they can’t come to a unanimous agreement and of course, it must be a unanimous agreement or it’s a hung jury. It’s a mistrial on whichever charge they can’t agree on.

So sometimes the, they’ll finally just get fed up and want to go home. And the jurors who are in favor of acquittal will say, well, listen, acquit him on the two more serious charges and will agree to convict on the least serious charge, even though we don’t actually believe he’s guilty of that one. And the other side will say, well, ok, if you’ll agree to find guilty on the least of the charges will agree to acquit on the more serious charges, that’s what this feels like to me. Of course, jurors are not required to explain how they got to their conclusions in arriving at verdicts. Uh Nevertheless, on the legal merits were I the judge here, I would have said, hey, if they found self-defense for the two big ones, it had to, it’s only one act. It also has to have been self defense with respect to the lesser charge. And I would have dismissed the conviction on the lesser charge.

So that’s what happened with the trial. Let’s take a look at what happened before then because something interesting happened and this is where US CC A begins to come into the story. So the more interesting thing is that immediately after firing this shot, Alan Coley firing the shot into Tanner Cook, Coley grabbed his phone and speed dialed US CC A to inform them that he had just shot somebody in what he believed to be self defense. Uh And the prosecutor wanted to introduce that call. The fact that Coley had immediately called US CC A, which many prosecutors will refer to as murder insurance. That’s not a fair characterization, but prosecutors are not obliged to be fair what the general public calls self-defense insurance. It’s not really that either but US CC A is one of these programs that, uh, promises to pay your legal expenses if you’re facing legal liability for a use of force event, usually, uh a gun type of event like here.

And, uh Coley called US CC A immediately had him in his phone which suggests that he was a US CC A member. Why would you have us CC A on, on speed dial if you weren’t a member? Um And I, and I believe there’s other evidence that he was a member as well. And the prosecutor wanted to introduce this into evidence at the trial. Um So they could argue, presumably they don’t explain why they wanted it, but so they could argue his state of mind that Coley had a state of mind, he only fired the shot. Not because he had to, not because the five elements of self defense were satisfied, but because he knew he had murder insurance to protect them from legal liability. Naturally, the defense did not want this evidence introduced before the jury. And ultimately, the judge agreed to exclude it from evidence, but the judge was not making a decision here on the legal merits.

The judge excluded the evidence of the phone call because it was untimely. Uh, the request to introduce it into evidence was made by the prosecu prosecution after the window for accepting evidence had already closed. So not on the legal merits. If, if the prosecution had been on top of its game, they might have been able to get evidence of this call into the record.

So I’ll read the article here, phone call evidence excluded from Sterling Mall shooter trial in the case of the man who said he shot an unarmed youtube prankster in self defense at the Dulles Town Center mall and Sterling goes to trial. Jurors are unlikely to hear that he immediately called the gun rights group after the shooting. I’m not sure I’d characterize any of these programs as gun rights groups per se but whatever. Uh, Loudon Circuit, Judge Matthew Park Snow, that’s the trial judge in this case on July 20th rule, jurors can’t hear about Alan Walter Coley calling the United States concealed carry association moments after shooting cantor cook on April 2nd. In court documents, Coley admits he shot cook once in the stomach cook who tries to irritate people. He randomly films for his youtube channel classified goons sustained a ruptured liver. Adam C Pollard, a Loudoun County deputy public defender.

This is Coley’s legal counsel. His lead counsel argued in May that Coley shot in self defense. Well, this raises the question, folks, this is what is confusing about this. The whole point of being a US CC A member is that if you’re involved in a qualifying use of force event, they will pay your legal expenses. If you have someone to pay your legal expenses. Why do you have a public defender? Now, I’ve worked for the public defender’s office, not as an attorney, but as an investigator, but part of my job as an investigator was to determine whether people seeking a public defender qualified to get one because you have to be indigent, you have to be broke, to qualify for a public defender pretty damn broke. You have to have none have the means to pay for a private attorney.

That’s why the taxpayer picks up the tab for your public defender. But if you have the means to pay for a private attorney, why would you end up with a public defender? And I, I wanna make clear here, I, I don’t mean to be speaking negatively about public defenders II, I think some of the best attorneys I’ve ever worked with are public defenders. Uh, public being a public defender is one of the best ways to get real trial time in criminal court. I would strongly urge anyone who wants to be a criminal defense attorney, um, to work as a public defender before going into private practice. I, I know few ways, few better ways of getting more trial time than working as a public defender and lawyers who get more trial time tend to be more skilled at being criminal defense attorneys.

Um, so I’ve got nothing against public defenders. They do tend to be extremely overworked, especially at the trial level. Uh, so if you have the means to hire a private attorney who can devote more of his attention to your particular case, you know, all other factors being equal. That’s generally what people are likely to do yet. Here we have Alan Coley appears to be a US CC A member. I, I’ve never heard US CC A say he wasn’t a member.

I mean, that would be a reasonable reason for US CC A not to cover him and for Alan Coley to end up with a public defender, right? If, if he neglected to pay his membership, if he’d never become a member in the first place, but only intended to. Um, if, uh, he, I don’t know some other disqualifying factor that would strip him of US CC A coverage uh that could be perfectly reasonable. We’ve just not heard that from US CC A.

They haven’t said he’s never been a member or he, he had been, but he no longer was at the time of this event during, but certainly he appears to think he was a member because he called them immediately after this event and yet he ends up with a public defender. Now, this is all very reminiscent of another case. The case of Kayla Giles back in 2018, Kayla Giles was uh divorced or going through a divorce. Uh She was doing a custody exchange with her estranged or ex-husband in the parking lot of a Walmart. And in the midst of the custody exchange, she shoots her husband dead. Now she claims self defense and she was a US CC A member.

So her lawyer calls US CC A say, hey, one of your members shot her husband and what she claims is self defense will be arguing self defense at trial. The judge just said we’re allowed to make that argument. We’d like you to start meeting your obligation to pay her legal expenses to which she’s entitled as a US CC A member. And US CC A did for the 1st $50,000. They paid the 1st $50,000 of Ka guy’s legal expenses, which they certainly would not have done if she was not a member.

And then they stopped paying and they gave no good reason except to say, well, we just don’t feel we have the obligation to pay and in fact, Kyle’s lawyer sued US CC A in federal court. No, the money matters, folks, this is going to criminal trial is like going to a war. And we’d all like to think how much money you have doesn’t affect the justice you get in the criminal justice system, but it absolutely does. Just like how many resources you have affects the outcome of the war and other war you might be fighting. So, ultimately, A US CC A did not pay any of those other legal expenses.

And Kayla Giles was found guilty and she’s serving a sentence of life plus 30 years and her conviction was affirmed on appeal. But one question we always have to ask ourselves is, well, would she have been found guilty if she’d had the resources, the legal resources that US CC A had promised to pay? We’ll never know because they didn’t pay. And now we have this case of Alan Coley who also was not covered by US CC A and maybe there’s a good reason for that or maybe they just decided they didn’t want to that they don’t in fact have your back as they tell their members in their advertising materials. In which case, I have to ask, well, then what are you paying for if you’re a US CC A member? Now we have two cases. One, they clearly didn’t pay. They, they never denied that. Uh Kelly Giles was a member and now we have what appears to be a very similar case.

I mean, I’m open to explanation from US CC A if they’d like to make an explanation, but we appear to have another case in which U US CC A is just not covering a member for no particularly good reason except they don’t want to. So I have to ask if you’re a US CC A member, what are you paying for? And, and I’m not the only person asking these questions because this was brought, this whole matter was brought to my attention again when a law self-defense member who goes by Floyd, thank you, Floyd. Um, brought to my attention, a youtube uh show done by these two attorneys, attorneys on retainer. This is, uh Andy Marcantel on the left and Mark Victor on the right. Uh And I will tell you that I know these guys and we’ve had conversations over the phone.

I’ve seen a bunch of their videos. They’re aware of my content. Um, and I like these guys, these guys come across as very capable, competent, uh, criminal defense attorneys. They may do other legal work too, but I, I know them for their criminal defense work. Uh I like their videos.

Um, they have their own kind of prepaid legal services program. Attorneys for attorneys on retainer. They call it where they’ll be your lead counsel or, or co counsel, uh, for your criminal defense, if you’re involved in the use of force event, I, I don’t know the details of the program but that’s what they promote on their show. Um, and, uh, and I’ve talked with these guys and, and they seem to be perfectly fine attorneys and, and genuinely nice guys on the phone. Now, now they’ve, they’ve generated some heat for themselves because they’ve done a series of youtube videos looking at the various self defense insurance programs, um and have been quite critical of all those programs, including us CC A including I believe, Law Shield, including CCW Safe. Now, if you’re a law self defense member or you watch my content for any substantial time, you know that I do quite a bit of partnering with CCW Safe. In fact, I’m a member of CCW Safe.

Um, and if you’re considering this kind of coverage, I would encourage you to take a look at CCW Safe. You can learn why they are the only one of these companies that I personally trust and you can learn that at law of self defense.com/trust. That’s why CCW Safe is my personal choice.

I’m a member, my wife is a member, but these guys have been uh as critical of CCW Safe as they are of the various other competitor programs. So certainly my endorsement of CCW Safe does not carry over to them, right? They would say there are things about CCW Safe. They don’t like and they don’t think you should like either. Uh And I encourage everyone to make informed decisions, folks, but there are when you look at these various programs and I have my, my critique of various programs too. Obviously, I’m being critical of the US CC A here. I’ve critiqued Law Shield. I’ve con con critiqued other of these programs.

So I have no problem with uh with um Andy and Mark critiquing any program they want, including CCW safe and, and people should just make, you know, educate themselves, make their own informed decisions about whether any of these programs are suitable for them. And, and which ones? But I will say that the criticism of these programs, I think falls into two categories. And the first category is I would say substantive substantive criticism where there’s a obvious clear defect or shortcoming in any one of these programs. To my mind, I would find that if it’s the position of US CC A that they’re only going to cover their members if they feel like it. And that Kayla Giles and Alan Coley are examples of that behavior, then you’re only covered if we feel like it strikes me as a substantive defect in the US CC A membership offer.

And they’re actually doing that. It would appear from the Kla Giles and the Alan Coley cases. Um There are other programs that uh will only, well, various programs have different shortcomings.

And so some of the shortcoming I I think are substantive. Some of the programs don’t allow you to pick your own lawyer. For example, you can only have a lawyer that’s part of their network. I, I think that’s a pretty substantive defect in such an offer.

And I, I think all those criticisms are, well, I think they’re, I think they’re 100 well fair is I think all criticisms are are most criticisms are fair, but the substantive ones are kind of concrete. Look, this is what they’re telling you. Uh the limits of their offer are. And so we have to assume those are concrete and those could just be uh you know, a deal breaker.

One of these programs, I think there’s another a separate bucket of criticism that’s more speculative. So for example, I’m asking the question in this show is US CC A only covering you if they feel like it NFC, what are you really paying for when you, when you pay for A US CC A membership? And I think we have clear examples now in Kayla Giles of and perhaps Alan Coley of them adopting that position. Is it possible that any of these programs including CCW safe? Is it possible you could be a member of one of those other programs and you’d use force in what you believe to be self defense and they would say, you know what we just don’t want to cover you doesn’t look like self defense to us. Is it possible a law shield or CCW safe or somebody else could take that position? The answer is yes. In, in a speculative sense, I mean, any time you get into a contractual relationship with anybody, there’s always the possibility they wouldn’t honor the contract.

So, and what do you do about that? Right. I mean, you could do what Kla Giles would do, which is sue them and that didn’t help her because the, the civil suit process takes much longer than your criminal trial. So you’re gonna have the criminal outcome long before the civil courts bring you any kind of relief. So, I think you have to ask yourself, well, if this is possible for an theoretically possible, speculatively possible that any of these programs might say, uh, yeah, we’ve been taking your money all this time, but now we’re gonna tell you to screw, we’re not gonna have your back. We’re not gonna pay your legal expenses like we promised you, we would, I, I think what you have to do is look at each of these programs and say, well, you know, what, what’s their character and their demonstrated performance? I mean, are they doing that or is it just a speculative fear? Now, if it’s a speculative fear that that doesn’t make it unreasonable, but it, it makes it unsubstantiated? Right. It makes it speculative. So, if I were to ask myself, is it possible that CCW safe would, would do something like that.

Now, I, I know those guys really well at CCW safe. I know them on a personal level. II, I don’t imagine they would do something like that. I mean, they, they’ve told me explicitly they wouldn’t, if, if you’re allowed to argue self-defense in court, they’ll honor their obligations to that member. Even if on a personal level they, it doesn’t look like self-defense to them that doesn’t bind them in any way. They could still change their mind, I suppose. But that’s what they tell me explicitly and that’s what they’ve done.

In contrast US CC A appears not to want to tell anybody when they are or are not gonna cover their members. And we have at least one example, Kayla Giles and it looks like another example, Alan Coley in which they, they just decided they didn’t feel like it. So I think we really have to differentiate between a demonstrated conduct of not covering members which we seem to have in the US CC A and a merely speculative concern that that could happen because we’ve never seen CCW Safe do that. So I, I think there is that really important distin distinction between the two organizations. And by the way, I’ve told CCW Safe that if, if they were to adopt the position of US CC A, I wouldn’t be able to partner with them anymore.

If, if, if they’re only gonna defend CCW SAFE members when, when they feel it was self-defense as opposed to what a court’s allowing to argue. Uh, that would be the end of our relationship. Uh, but that, that’s not happened. And I just knowing the, knowing the guys there as well as I do, it’s CW, I just don’t believe it would happen.

Now. Could they do it? Sure if, if they did that. Is there anything I could do about it? No, I could only be disappointed. I could only stop working with them.

Um But I, I just don’t, I don’t believe they would do it and that’s why I’m willing to partner with them even though the speculative risk exists. So, uh by the way, I will put links to um attorneys on retainer to this video in the description of today’s show. So you, you can see what these guys have to say on it. So you sh I think you should listen to everybody and that make your, make your own opinions. It, it’s not so much that I think their criticisms are necessarily unfair, but I think some of them are more speculative and some of them are more demonstrated and then you need to make your own call. Um So what else did I wanna say about all of that? Um Again, if you’d like to hear my take on CCW safe, not the attorneys on retainer take, they, they have, they’re critical of CCW safe. But my take, you can learn more about why I trust CCW safe at Law of Self defense.com/trust.

And don’t forget the Christmas season is here, folks get your own copy, free copy of our book, Law, Self Defense Principles at law. Self defense.com/free book. All right, folks.

So, uh that’s, I’m gonna wrap things up right there. Remember if you carry a gun? So you’re hard to kill if you carry pepper spray. So you’re hard to kill if you carry a knife. So you’re hard to kill if you study jiu-jitsu. So you’re hard to kill or any other martial art. I do all those things so that I’m hard to kill.

So my family is hard to kill, then you also owe it to yourself and your family to make sure you know the law. So you’re hard to convict as well. Until next time I remain attorney Andrew Ranker for law self defense. Stay safe.