Alfred Hitchcock for the People – When a Murder Case Unravels in Motown

All right, my A and G-ers. Sorry we're getting this episode out later in the week than we had hope. I think that Thanksgiving holiday break and having family in town might have had something to do with it. Hope you all had a nice holiday weekend as well. The end of the year is approaching fast. It's been a fun ride. Just want to say thank you for supporting us in season five and our comeback. Big props to Brody Sabor, fellow public defender, and father of three for somehow finding the time to edit this monster of an episode.

It's a little bit longer than most, but only because there's just too much good stuff. And we would have deprived you of that good stuff had we made it shorter. Also, we did have some audio issues with one of the guests, Hannah. So she won't be as prevalent on the back half of the episode. Just want to say sorry, Hannah. And now. Without further ado, here's this week's episode of another not guilty. Are we winning? Are we winning this trial right now? Did it just happen? When he started injecting

I started injecting all the hearsay saying like, the uncle told my brother that your client did it. I decided to like drop the veil and just be like, listen, man, you know what hearsay is. You know you can't say that. You're trying to like implicate my client right now because you're scared. And as I did that, I walked out from behind the podium and started walking toward him and just sort of peppering him with questions.

And he went, are you about to assault me? Sir, are you intending me great bodily harm? The prosecutor eventually objects and the judge is like, whoa, whoa, everyone calm down. Let's just take a break. Everyone go go to your own corners.

Welcome to another not guilty. I'm David Moore. Here, along with my fellow public defenders, presenting to you the untold stories of the criminal justice system.

Objection. That assumes there's justice in the system, which there ain't. I prefer calling it the American criminal system.

These stories are about the not guilty as public defenders get on a daily basis in an unjust criminal system with the deck stacked against us.

Another not guilty.

All right. Welcome back, everybody, to another not guilty.

It's your boy, Davey D here, bringing you the freshest not guilty across these United States.

That's right. Another not guilty here to present the stories, the true crime stories from the trenches, the real stories from the players, us public defenders, telling it like it is.

No one better at it than other than not guilty. Davey D here, along with our star co-host, Lauren, today.

What's up, Lauren?

Hey, guys. Excited to be back.

Yes. We're glad to have you back, Lauren.

The numbers are in. The fans have spoken.

And they want more Lauren.

Happy to deliver.

Yeah. And I even said, I was like, more Lauren means less David.

And they still said, that's OK.

They said, bring it. So good to have you, Lauren, sporting the L.A. County Public Defender Union, L.A. Public Defender Union defenders shirt looks good.

Maybe we'll put on the Instagram later.

Client's first, baby.

Client's first, baby.

And that just that just rings true in Los Angeles, but also rings true across these United States, these blue states, these red states, these purple states, all the states public defenders out there making it happen.

And today, guys, we are happy to bring you some dope ass public defenders straight from Detroit.

We've got two public defenders from the NDS agency.

We've got Blaze and Hannah.

Let's start with Blaze.

Blaze, welcome to the podcast.

Say hello and introduce yourself.

Hello.

My name's Blaze, and I'm really, really happy to be here and excited to share this story with you guys.

I think it's a wild one.

Right on.

And who's your co-conspirator there?

Hi, I'm Hannah, and I'm also very excited for today.

Thanks for having us.

All right.

And you guys are the NDS.

Tell us what NDS is or stands for.

Sure.

NDS stands for the Neighborhood Defender Service of Detroit.

We are the second office that has opened.

In 1990, an office opened in Harlem, NDS Harlem, and in 2019, they saw to take their talents on the road and got the contract for Wayne County, which is where Detroit is located.

And we're the institutional public defender for the city of Detroit and the county of Wayne.

I kind of like the neighborhood word in there.

That sounds cool.

Doesn't it?

Yeah.

It's generally something the prosecutors reserve, you know, like the Neighborhood Protection Unit.

Oh, yeah.

The Neighborhood Task Force.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Going after people for kicking their balls onto private property or selling ice creams.

Selling fruit on the corner.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're taking it back, though, in this episode.

All right.

I like that.

You guys are protecting your hood, the neighborhood.

Very, very cool.

I'm sure that's already been said.

So nothing original over here.

All right, guys.

So we got Blaze.

We got Hannah from the Neighborhood Defenders Service from Detroit, Michigan, here to share their tale of a not guilty they achieved recently.

Blaze, what was your client charged with?

Our client was charged with first-degree premeditated murder, along with a felon in possession of a firearm.

And in Michigan, there is a kind of crime that gets attached to those called a felony firearm.

So whenever you're charged with a felony and the felony was committed with a firearm, there's a little rider that goes with it called felony firearm that can carry two, five, or ten years, depending on how many times in the past you've been convicted of felony firearm.

So we had first-degree murder, felon in possession of a firearm, and then two felony firearm sort of riders attached to those other two charges.

So that enhances the penalty, right, for first-degree murder.

You commit it with the firearm, then they add up to ten years.

And then, wait, felon in possession of a firearm can have an enhancement for a firearm?

You know, if that seems like it confuses you because something like the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution might have a problem with that, I would agree with you.

Unfortunately, the Michigan Supreme Court would not agree with you.

So, yeah, it is not a current Michigan law that does not violate double jeopardy to charge someone with felon in possession of a firearm along with felony firearm.

So, Blaise, what was your client facing in total?

So, in Michigan, if you get convicted of first-degree murder, you automatically get life without parole.

No ifs, ands, or buts at all.

Oh.

So, really, the extra stuff didn't matter at all?

Yeah, it didn't matter as much.

I mean, when we get into the facts, we'll talk about the sort of felon in possession charge.

The felony firearm rider to that, because our client had some issues from early 2000, like 1998, 2000, it would have been his third felony firearm conviction, which meant he would have gotten a mandatory 10 years.

Blaise is the one who emailed the podcast and said he wanted to be on the show.

And then, so is Hannah, like, Blaise, were you more, was this more your case than Hannah came on later, so to speak?

So, I was Blaise's second chair on this case.

Yeah, it was Blaise's trial.

Okay.

Wait, is it pronounced Blaise or Blaise?

Blaise.

Oh, I was saying Blaise.

Yeah, Blaise.

Wow.

Neighborhood, we got the writer, we got Blaise here.

This is quite the show.

Coming in hot with his tail.

Wow.

Okay, okay, okay.

Let's do it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, we got first-degree murder.

It's life without the possibility of parole, just straight life.

Those are some serious charges.

They don't get any more serious.

High stakes.

All right, not a problem.

Blaise, how long have you been a public defender for at this point?

I was just, I had just gotten my letter from Grandpa Joe Biden telling me that I had done

my 10 years of public service.

And I was getting my student loans cleared.

So, I just crossed the decade threshold.

Congratulations on that, you know?

Yeah.

Well, don't let the taxpayers down, all right?

We got to get our money's worth for clearing you on your student loans there.

And then, Hannah, how about you?

How long have you been a public defender for?

I think a little over six years now.

All right.

Okay.

So, you guys, all right.

So, this is, you guys have been around for a little bit.

Okay.

So, first-degree murder.

What's the prosecution alleging your client did?

Yeah.

So, the prosecution is alleging that our client shot and killed his mother with a shotgun,

that his father and his mother were sitting in their back room one day, and there was a

knock at the door.

She opened the door.

He was standing there.

He fired a shot without saying anything, striking her once and killing her.

And that was the basic version of their allegation.

Striking her where?

Right in the chest, directly in the heart.

Wow.

And did dad see this, according to the prosecutor?

He did.

Well, part of it, according to the prosecutor.

The dad was somewhat, did not provide a lot of details about what it is exactly he saw.

According to him, he was sitting in a chair, finishing dinner or beginning dinner.

There was this knock at the door.

His wife got up to answer it.

She said, who's there?

And there was some response.

He couldn't hear what the response was.

The door opens.

He sees a shadowy figure that fires a shot.

He can't tell anything about the shadowy figure to the police.

And they, the figure leaves.

And it should be noted that this back room is incredibly small.

We're talking like maybe 10 by 15.

Wait, the back room of where he's seated?

Yeah.

So the, in this house, this back room is kind of where they have like their couch and their

TV.

Okay.

But it's more of like an enclosed sunroom sort of situation with an exterior door back

there.

So it's a very small room with a couch, a TV, and an exterior door.

And then is that close to the front?

Because the front door is where the shooting happened, right?

No, the shooter comes to the back door.

Oh, the same door that's in this small room?

Yes.

So the, all of this happens in a 10 by 15 area.

Oh, okay.

Is this, is the door that was knocked on, is that in the backyard or is that in the house?

The front, like, is it in the house?

No, it's, yeah, it's in the backyard.

So, or it's in the backyard.

So if you walk around the back of this house, it's sort of like, if you imagine your friend

had a, had a little, uh, screened in back porch area that would have one, a door right

there to the house, it's like they had just sort of like put siding up around that and

like decided to build that into the structure itself.

So you could almost say they were sitting on an enclosed back porch.

How old is your client at the time?

39 at the time this happens.

Okay.

And his mom is how old?

67.

And dad is how old?

70 at the time this happens.

Okay.

And, uh, so the, so the dad, uh, I guess hears, uh, maybe even sees the shooting, but just

sees a shadowy black figure.

Okay.

And, uh, what happens next in the case?

Um.

Or in terms of the prosecution facts?

Yeah.

So the prosecution says that, uh, you know, the, uh, obviously a shotgun is involved and

that, uh, a neighbor sitting down the street, uh, who's just sitting on his porch sees, uh,

hears a loud boom, turns and looks and sees someone running from the, uh, side of the house and

getting into a silver Nissan pickup truck with a, equipped with a gun.

And then that car, uh, that truck speeds away.

The neighbor sees the firearm?

He sees a gun in, in the person's hand that's running away.

And how far away is this neighbor?

You know, that, that isn't something the prosecution was too, too excited to disclose.

And they did not put that in the, uh, in the information.

They did put the address.

Uh, it later turned out that the person was about seven houses down on the opposite side

of the street.

Very easy to spot a firearm.

And, and what time of day did this happen?

Uh, it was in the early evening hours, right around, uh, I think eight, seven 30, eight

o'clock.

So are we talking like it was dusk, it was already dark, or this was in the summer.

So it's still really bright outside.

Yeah, it was, it was in the summer.

So it was still, uh, not as a really bright outside, but it was, you know, it was, it

was about the time for people to be sitting on their porch.

This happened on July 22nd.

Okay.

But still from seven houses down, he saw the firearm.

A shotgun though.

He did.

Shotgun.

It's not like a little pistol.

It's a shotgun.

Fair point.

Sometimes he would say shotgun.

Sometimes he would say long gun.

Other times he would say rifle, but what was clear is it was not a pistol or handgun.

Yeah.

Okay.

And obviously son does not live with parents, right?

No, actually he, he was staying there at the time.

He was a little bit.

Yeah.

He was, he had been there earlier in the day.

Um, everyone agreed about that.

Um, and so, uh, yeah.

He was living there, but he's accused of murdering his mother after he knocks on the door from

the outside.

That's correct.

Okay.

The truck was a gray Nissan, a silver Nissan, silver Nissan, silver Nissan frontier.

Okay.

Newer model.

All right.

Um, and your client, well, we haven't, we haven't gotten to your client yet.

So the police just know it's a silver Nissan.

They, uh, what happens next in the investigation?

So we, we've noted that, uh, the, it is a shotgun that, that is used, uh, specifically

the, it's a 20 gauge shotgun and the autopsy reveals that, uh, that there it's a slug.

Uh, so, so, so shot can come in a number of different kinds.

It can come in buckshot, birdshot, or slugs.

And so a slug is just one large piece of metal.

And so they find that they also find yellow webbing, uh, or wadding inside of the, uh,

wound.

So that tells them a little bit about the color of the shotgun shell.

Um, so these are like little plastic bits that are part of the shotgun shell that were

launched along with the projectile that actually ended up in the wound.

Yeah.

So a little piece of the casing.

Um, and so that's important because, uh, this homicide happens at, I guess actually closer

to eight 30 when it happens.

Um, and, uh, 90 miles away, 90 minutes later, the Michigan state police make a traffic stop

of a silver Nissan Frontier, uh, 2019 being driven by our client.

And in the passenger side, sitting next to the client is a 20 gauge shotgun with a spent

yellow shell casing in it.

Great.

Well, that's a tight time window, but not looking great for your client.

No.

Yeah.

You can see, you can see why they, uh, arrived at this or at least had a suspicion at the

moment at the time.

You said 90 minutes or 90 miles away?

Both, both because in, in a state like Michigan, usually you measure how many you go one mile

a minute because there isn't much traffic around here.

So, uh, you know, 90 miles away.

Yeah, I know.

Right.

And a little jealous.

Was the traffic stop in relation to the shooting, like be on the lookout for a silver Nissan or

was he just driving and he got pulled over for a traffic violation?

Uh, he, he was driving fast.

So he was driving, uh, I think like 15 miles over the speed limit and then the Michigan state

police stopped him.

And they said he was fleeing the scene.

They do.

They do ultimately say they're fleeing the scene.

Did they, but the police that stopped him, did they know about the shooting?

They did not know about the shooting and, uh, yeah, they had, they, in fact, let him go.

Oh, um, so, so they noted that, uh, he was, he had the shotgun in the, in the passenger seat

of the car.

Um, that's not how you're supposed to carry a shotgun, uh, in Michigan and many other states.

Um, uh, but this was a rural County in Northern Michigan that they stopped him in.

They decided to cut him a break and, uh, told him how to properly store the shotgun and sent

him on his way.

Um, it was only, wait a minute.

Hi.

So you already told us your client, in addition to being charged with first degree premeditated

murder, was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.

So you're telling me that your client was stopped going 15 miles over the speed limit.

They saw a shotgun on his seat, on his passenger seat, and they didn't do a background check and

to see that he shouldn't have been in possession of the firearm in the first place.

He didn't get arrested for that charge at that moment.

They just let him go.

Their, their claim and, and this really didn't come up in the trial, but their claim was that

their system was malfunctioning.

Um, and, uh, we ultimately had the, the dash camera from this traffic stop and it was sort

of like a, it was as comedic as something can be in the middle of a homicide case.

Like they're, they have the shotgun and they're like, um, they're trying to get the shotgun

open and they eventually do.

And this spent shell casing, you can see just like flies off and lands in the dirt and they're

like, Oh no, there goes a spent shell casing.

So they're like trying to collect those.

And, um, wait, this is at the traffic stop.

Is that the traffic stop?

They still don't know about the shooting, but he, they now realize that there's a spent

casing.

So the, the, this shotgun has been fired recently.

Yeah.

And one of the officers actually, one of the officers actually says, or one of the troopers

they're called here actually says, uh, to during the stop, they say while holding the

shotgun, you haven't been shooting anybody with this.

Have you?

Oh boy.

Yeah.

So would it be fair to assume that your client is white?

No.

Do you tell?

I, what, what was your client's ethnicity?

Uh, he, he, he's black.

Uh, and our, our best guess as to what was going on or like my speculation as to what was going

on here was that this, uh, happened in July of 2020.

Oh yeah.

Two months after the George Floyd was killed and the protests, I think these were rural

white officers.

And I think that when this happened, they were making every effort to like, they were just

like, look, we're going to, we're going to be cool.

We don't see a bunch of black people up here.

We're just, we're just going to be chill.

And we're going to, we're going to, they're like making an extra effort to, I guess, treat

them how they would treat a white person.

Oh, shotgun in the car.

No big deal.

All right.

I think, I think that's the treatment client got.

Wow.

All right.

So what, because of what happened right after that, I doubt that's ever going to happen again

up there.

Um, because they go back to their post, uh, and three hours later, they had a call from

the Detroit police department saying you did what?

You tell all their top buddies.

And then they launched like the, the, the, the largest sweep in, in the Northern Michigan

history to find somebody, um, once they learned that he's a suspect in a homicide.

I'm sure the police interviewed the father at the scene.

Did he like give a statement to the police other than saying it was a black silhouette or

anything like that?

Did, uh, did he say like possible suspects or motives or problems that were happening or

anything like that?

Um, no, he, he said there's no one that has any, uh, problem.

There's no one that I would know that would do this.

I, they ask him for a description and he says, I, I can't tell you, I can't tell you.

Okay.

And then, and then, and I mean, the son wasn't even considered a suspect or a possible suspect,

like as if he had beef with his own mother, right.

To the point where you would shoot her.

Right.

Hey, the, the silver truck, was that registered to your client?

The truck he was pulled over in?

It wasn't, it was a rental truck.

And, and the story of that truck actually ends up figuring pretty prominently into the

trial.

Okay.

Um, he had, the, the truck was rented by his cousin.

Um, and it was rented through a straw purchase by the cousin's girlfriend.

The cousin's girlfriend rented it for the cousin.

And my client happened to have possession of it at the time that this happened.

The straw rental term just makes it sound more shady than it needs to be like, it is what

we're going to get into that.

Trust me.

Uh, all right.

So what happens next to the investigation?

They, they let the bad guy go.

The police are like, you let him go.

What happens next?

Yeah.

So, uh, uh, they end up getting a, you know, uh, they get the phone company involved to start

pinging the client's phone.

They find him at a trailer near Lake Huron, uh, on a, on a street called poor man lane.

In a place called Pigeon, Michigan.

That's how rural that we're at.

We're in now.

And, uh, they, they converge on the place.

They arrest him.

And, uh, in the trailer, they find a shotgun and two live yellow shotgun shells.

The spent shotgun shell casing is gone, never to be seen again.

And is he living there now?

Cause he was living at home, right?

So this is, this is the cousin's girlfriend's trailer, the same one that rented the truck.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Still though, that's not big.

I mean, okay.

There you go.

That makes sense.

Well, this is only the second time my client has ever been to this, uh, this trailer.

So you can see the, the, the, the prosecution's theory is like, look, he is, uh, we know someone

shoots with a shotgun.

He has a shotgun.

Uh, he is driving away from the city of Detroit, uh, in, you know, pretty much at 60 miles an

hour, uh, from the time the murder happens all the way up to, uh, you know, when he stopped

by the Michigan state police and he has, you know, we find him in possession of the shotgun

and he has no good reason to be at this trailer.

Cause there's nobody else there.

He is alone at the trailer.

Wow.

Okay.

So they arrest him there.

They arrest him there.

He said it cause he threw a cell phone cause he made a call or something or.

Yeah.

So the, at the time now I said that, you know, this was the cousin's girlfriend's rented truck.

Uh, what had occurred the day before the murder is, uh, the cousin had been unceremoniously

left at a gas station.

Uh, my client and the cousin both pull into the gas station to get some, uh, to, uh, the

cousin wants to get some smokes and the cousin gets out of the, uh, the truck and the client

just drives off with it.

Just leaves to go be with the cousin's girlfriend at the trailer.

She's also upset.

So she's the one, when she learns this truck is stolen or has, has been quote unquote stolen,

uh, by the client, uh, she begins blowing up his phone.

And so he's in communication with her after the murder to like return the truck.

And that is, uh, why his phone is on.

And they know, uh, that he's in possession of it.

So when your client is arrested at this trailer, the trailer belongs to cousin's girlfriend,

but you said he was alone.

So she wasn't there.

No, she wasn't there.

Oh, so she wasn't supposed to be meeting your client at this trailer.

Nope.

Which is why the, and that's part of the prosecution's theory is my, my client wasn't

invited to this trailer.

He had no reason to be there.

He was, he had left his cousin and taken his cousin's girlfriend's truck and drove driven,

you know, as far away to this rural area in the middle of nowhere, where presumably no

one would find him.

Um, and, and that's where he was lying in wait for everything to calm down was sort of like

the general theory that they had.

Interesting.

Now, you know, I mean, that's, I mean, the case, I mean, in terms of like evidence, yeah,

it's not looking good.

I mean, but people who watch television say, well, where's the motive?

Where's the motive?

Right.

As if that really matters to the prosecution.

Um, okay.

So what happens next to the investigation?

Or is that it?

He's arrested.

And then.

He's arrested.

Uh, they, uh, arrest him initially up in this rural County for felon in possession of

a firearm based on the shotgun and they hold him for a while for the Detroit police to get

their, get their case together.

So the Detroit police over the next, uh, several days, uh, they interview this, uh, girlfriend.

They, the cousin dodges them initially makes meetings with them.

Doesn't show up.

Um, there's something, you know, kind of like off about the cousin.

And the detectives know there's something off about the cousin.

And so they eventually figure out, uh, or they get the cousin to come down and actually

interview with them and the cousin tells them, um, the story of what happened at the gas station.

Uh, and at this point, the pro, the detective should have known something was up with the

cousin because he questions him.

He goes and gets the video from the gas station.

So you can see, uh, the cousin getting out of the truck and then the client sort of driving

off in the, in this truck the day before the murder.

And the weird thing about this video is the truck, despite being an enterprise rental truck,

does not have a license plate on it.

And so the detective says to the cousin, why isn't there a license plate on this truck?

And he says, I don't know, man, that's weird.

Um, and they get into this conversation of like, so like, why did you rent this truck to

begin with?

And he's like, well, I wanted to go visit family in Georgia.

Uh, and, uh, and then he says, I'll tell you this though.

I did take the license plate off the truck in Georgia when we were down there.

Cause I didn't want the police to see a truck with Michigan plates down in Georgia.

Uh, and, uh, our, our guy, the homicide detective here just completely drops the ball, does not

follow up on this at all.

He asks the cousin to extract his cell phone.

Uh, and the cousin allows him to do that.

The girlfriend also gives her cell phone to be extracted and he just kind of moves on.

You meaning he, he doesn't actually download the stuff that's on the cell phone?

No, he gets, he gets the, he never looks into the content of the cell phone that he had.

So he had a very strange story where this truck, cause when they, when they arrest my client up

at the trailer, the truck has the license plate on it.

And so in between when client drove off with it, the license plate got back onto the car.

And so there was just some, there was some weirdness that if the detective had looked into

the phone, he would have realized there was a significant motive for the cousin to have

been the killer.

So this is something you discovered later on.

Yes.

Wow.

Okay.

Did your client give a statement when he was arrested?

He did.

And it ended up being, uh, something we featured in the centerpiece of our opening.

So, uh, when they move him from this rural County in Northern Michigan, and they actually

charge him with a homicide down in Detroit, like six or seven days later, um, they interview

him and begin asking him about the shotgun that he's found with.

How did he get it?

Um, you know, had he used it?

Did he know it had been fired?

Um, he says, uh, that he doesn't, you know, he, he bought it recently.

Um, he knew, you know, he's not supposed to have it.

Uh, and he just denies being involved in anything.

And the detective, when he goes to like, finally, like formally make the arrest at the end of

the interrogation, which lasts because the, our client eventually said, like, I want to

talk to a lawyer once he realizes like, this isn't, you know, he, he at this point did not

know his mother had been killed.

Um, so the detective told him that's, that's what I wanted to ask about.

Like, how was his reaction when he found out his mom was killed?

Yeah.

And so it was, well, it came across in a really hostile way.

So the detective had the, like, it felt like he was trying to have like a first 48 moment

in the interrogation.

Cause at the end of it, when the, when the client invokes and says, I would like to have

a lawyer, he says to him, you know what I noticed about you during this entire conversation?

You never once asked how your mother's been, how your mother's doing.

Um, and, and he's like, whoa, I don't like, and he, then he stands up and goes, you're

under arrest for first degree murder.

Um, and he's like, what?

And he goes, uh, you're a fucking monster who killed your mother.

He says that to him at the end of the interrogation.

And what does your client do?

He's like stunned, you know, and, and our client is a really, really stoic person.

Um, he doesn't, he's, he's not a big talker.

He isn't, uh, you know, he's not like jovial.

He's just kind of like a very even level guy.

And I can't imagine like the combination of like getting the information that you're under

arrest for something like this, then being told your mother is dead and then being accused

of it all in the span of one thing.

He just kind of like sits there in shock.

I guess the time for the police to be nice is over.

So your client's arrested and what happens next?

Is that when you get the case or someone in your office gets the case?

Yeah.

So someone in our office got the case and, uh, there were two lawyers that were on it.

So over the course of the pandemic, one of the lawyers left our office and the other

lawyer, uh, retired, who was the remaining lawyer who was left in charge of the case.

Um, and so, uh, the, eventually the file gets transferred to me, uh, in like December

of 2022.

Okay.

And what was like the state of the case when you received it?

Um, it was, it was very clear that, uh, you know, the, the prior lawyer's opinion of the

case is that it was very, very bad.

Um, because you had, you know, uh, I, I should note I have one very important thing.

I forgot to mention, uh, this neighbor who sees the man running with the gun, uh, around the

side of the house identifies our client as the person he saw running, uh, in a photo array.

The silver Nissan pickup truck, which is described by the neighbor is, you know, a silver Nissan

pickup truck has stopped.

Um, ballistics say that the ballistics and the autopsy both say that the, uh, the bullet

that kills the decedent is a 20 gauge, uh, shotgun slug, um, with yellow, uh, with yellow

webbing.

So it's a yellow shotgun shell and that is the kind of shotgun and the kind of, uh, casing

that our client is, is, uh, sort of in the trailer with the client when he's arrested.

So, um, good.

I have a question about the neighbor before seeing the photographic lineup was, did the

neighbor identify your client by name or say he's the victim's son or I've seen him in

the neighborhood?

Yeah, no, he, uh, he provided a description on scene when the first responders were there

and that was a really important, uh, piece of evidence for us, uh, because the description

that he provided did not match up in any way, shape or form with our client.

And even despite that, the next day he was identifying our client in a photo array.

How, like, did it match up how?

Like the height?

Uh, I would kick it, I would kick it to Hannah to answer this question.

This is her section of the trial.

So he described the person that he saw as late fifties or sixties, uh, with a dark shirt

with writing on them with it.

And with a limp and he like described the lamp.

He acted out the lamp and our client didn't have a limp.

Our client was 38 years old.

He looked pretty young.

Actually, we called out a specific part of the traffic stop where the troopers noted,

they said, you look 22 years old.

So we, we pointed that out because this person was initially described as an older man.

Interesting.

Okay.

All right.

So the, so you got the identification, we've got ballistics and the other evidence that's

in the, um, you know, there was the, the, you know, they kind of had our client and exclusive

use of the, uh, of the truck.

And then they had a cell site location information evidence.

They got, um, they got phone records that showed the client, uh, driving to Columbus, Ohio,

uh, earlier in the day, and then coming back and being, uh, sort of around the area of Detroit,

uh, at the time the murder happened.

And then, uh, heading up to this trailer up in Northern Michigan.

Did the police document investigating any other suspects or were they sort of immediately

zeroing in on your client from the beginning?

They were, they were immediately zeroing in on our client from the beginning.

That was, ended up being our, our central theme in the cases that they, they spent almost no

time investigating this case, less than three hours.

Um, and, and then they felt like they had a strong case because they had, you know, I think

they saw the 20 gauge shotgun in the yellow shell casings and thought that was very,

very, very powerful.

And, and like they were to, in that regard, they were right.

It was, it was very impactful to the, to the lawyer that had the case before we did.

And that's why when the case got transferred, it was, um, it was, you know, the, the file

was full of things saying like, this is not going to go.

That was, I remember reading that a direct quote said, this is not going to go well, was

in the transfer memo for the case.

But you know, how common is, as yellow, as a yellow casing?

I mean, like I have a case right now where it's nine millimeter casings at the scene.

Klein has a nine millimeter gun, but a nine millimeters, like everybody has a nine millimeter.

It's like a hot, like driving a Honda or something like that is, is a yellow shotgun shell casing

common.

Um, yeah, it is, it is very common.

So it turns out that all since like the mid sixties, all 20 gauge shotgun shells are yellow

so that they're distinguishable from 12 gauge, uh, shot, the other most common kind of shotgun.

So they always don't want people like accidentally loading 20 gauge into 12 gauges or vice versa.

So they color them differently.

So 20 gauge just shows that it's a, or yellow just shows that it's a 20 gauge.

There you go.

Boom.

Sorry to ruin the end for you there.

Another not guilty world, but, um, okay, so let's get into it.

So blaze, blaze, you get the case.

You see that, you see the bad notes from your previous colleague that this is not going to

go well.

I guess he meant for the prosecution.

Um, so, so what do you do when you get the case?

So there, there was a plea offer, uh, that was initially, uh, to, to 22 years.

And so he was firm from the beginning.

Did, can, did he testify at trial?

He did not.

Okay.

Are there things that you're comfortable sharing with us that he said that, I mean, did he,

did he deny it?

I mean, he said he's not, I'm not taking a plea because I didn't do it.

Yeah.

He, he was, I, I didn't do this.

Um, I would like to, I w I want to go to trial.

I want to go to trial and like, but you know, it's kind of nice when you have a client like

that.

Cause it just takes the, you know, that whole trying to settle a case and get a specific

number offer.

It can be a little stressful sometimes.

If you know, you're just going to go to trial, you just get ready for trial.

That's it.

None of this sort of haggling back and forth or trying to figure out a way to finesse

or massage the prosecution.

Um, so, okay.

So then what, what do you, uh, from your first meetings with the client and what are we, what

are you doing to get ready on the case?

Um, I say, please, somebody help me in this case, please.

Will anyone do this trial with me?

I think I initially said it was going to be like a four to five day trial.

Um, because that's what all the, the forecasts were for it.

Um, based on what the prosecution was saying.

Um, and Hannah, Hannah agreed.

Uh, she, she said, okay, I'll, I'll do it.

Um, and so Hannah, Hannah got involved in the case.

That was probably one of the biggest mistakes Hannah's made in a long, long time.

So yeah.

Four or five days seems a bit too optimistic for a homicide case where I presume there would

be a coroner and ballistics experts as well as civilian witnesses.

That seems like a very quick trial.

I definitely agree with that.

I will, yeah, starting to look at all of the evidence that also became very clear that it

wasn't going to be as short as we had predicted.

And we also didn't really have to start.

We didn't really know where we were going with our, our theory and what exactly happened.

Um, so you guys are getting ready to start the trial at this point.

That's when you take over.

So blaze, you went and you with an investigator to speak to the, the neighbor witness, but you

guys are now you're close to trial at this point.

Yes.

Yes, that's right.

That's where you are in the case.

And then what, before you started the trial, what did your client tell you was his version

of events?

Um, I don't ask actually, um, as part of my practice, I don't ever really ask the client

what happened.

Um, I don't think it's really like, yeah, I don't think it's, you know, especially when

you're trying to build trust with someone, I feel like both people who I, you know, what

I think if they're guilty or not guilty at the end of the day, I think it actually, for

me, it'll, I feel like it's easier to build trust when I'm not sitting in that place of

judgment and putting the client in the position of being like, well, he's got to think I'm

innocent.

Otherwise he won't work for me.

I would much rather work really hard for the client.

Like regardless when I, you know, they know they haven't told me what happened or didn't

happen.

Um, and so on top of that, this particular client was very, very stoic.

And so you are never going to pull much out of him other than like, this didn't happen.

I didn't do this.

I can't help you out.

Like, I don't know.

I can't tell you something I didn't do.

Everyone has their own different styles.

That's why it's kind of fun to be on the show and listen to hear how other people practice.

Um, so then, okay, so you, you, you go down, you interview the, the, the neighbor, you have

a dinner.

Is there any other pretrial work you're doing on your defense and developing the case?

Yeah.

So, um, you know, we do something that comes out of that session is, is a strategy for

evidence blocking.

So we sort of go through the prosecution's case and figure out what, uh, motions we can

file in limine to, uh, raise confrontation issues.

You know, what necessary witnesses, haven't they?

Uh, brought, are there experts that we can bring in?

We actually, uh, retained and noticed a bloodstain pattern analysis expert in this case.

Uh, and the expert got, uh, well, got excluded, uh, by the, by the judge.

So, but you, you got, you got a bloodstain expert then?

That's correct.

Okay.

What?

Yeah.

So inside, you know, there was a lot of things that Detroit police department didn't do in

this case.

And one of the things they didn't do is, uh, do much with anything of the evidence at the

crime scene that they had.

So in this tiny little back room, um, the story was that someone was shooting from the

outside, right?

Knocked on the back door, opened it, and the shots were fired.

Well, if that happened, you would expect some kind of, uh, what they call back spatter or

some bloodstains coming out of the wound toward, on this door where, uh, the mother was standing

either on the frame of the door or on the door itself, just based on where the, the, the

dad said she was positioned when she was shot and there wasn't any blood spatter on the door.

And there was tiny flecks of blood spatter on like a plastic chair that was sitting in

the room and then some at the very, very bottom of the door.

So the expert would have testified that, uh, you know, that wasn't necessarily consistent

with her standing at the door when she was shot.

Um, and so the effect of giving the, the expert notice for the bloodstain pattern analysis

person was we gave it 30 days before trial, which is, um, under Michigan law, completely

fine.

Um, that's more than enough time for the prosecution.

But, uh, what ended up happening is the prosecutor, uh, the prosecution team themselves, uh, kind

of bought in to the idea that they were going to get an adjournment out of this and they wouldn't

have to go to trial.

So once we served the expert notice, they responded by being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, 30 days to

get ready for it to cross-examine an expert.

There's no possible way we could ever do that.

Um, that is, we, we need, this is serious stuff.

Um, and so for like two weeks, they were like trying to get an adjournment and ultimately

the judge was like, okay, I guess I'll give you the adjournment.

And so at that point we just pulled the notice.

And what's adjournment for our listeners?

Yeah.

Sorry.

A continuance of the trial.

So, uh, they didn't want the trial.

They didn't want the trial to go on, on the trial date.

They wanted to get another six months or whatever to, to confront this evidence.

To pretend like they're working on the case.

The judge at one point said like, well, I would expect you'd be preparing for this trial at,

you would be doing some work to prepare for this trial.

And the prosecutor who was a, uh, a storied homicide, uh, prosecutor who's been there for

a long, long time, looked at the judge in his face and said, judge, have you ever tried

a first degree murder case?

I hope so.

Well, the judge's brain, it was a, it was sort of like she was doing a power play because

he was a brand, you know, he was brand new.

The judge was, but the judge was, the judge had just been elected.

He was a former city prosecutor.

Oh, city.

So no, no felonies, huh?

Yeah.

So she knew that when she would ask, she asked him that it was her trying to bully him.

Oh my God.

And giving her what she wanted.

And, and, uh, the prosecutor punked the judge and the, and the judge responded.

The judge said, no, I haven't.

Oh man.

All right.

So then now it's time to start picking a jury.

Is that correct?

That's right.

So I, at this time, I don't know what your defense is.

It's he didn't do it and there's just not enough evidence.

Do you know what your defense is at this time?

We, we do.

I mean, we, we, so the, it was very strange because I've never had a defense theory in

a homicide quite like this before, um, because there were two alternate suspects and there

was the cousin and the dad.

Why is the dad a suspect?

Well, when the dad did not call 911, the dad, uh, called his neighbor and his granddaughter

and, uh, called his neighbor twice and his granddaughter once.

According to the granddaughter, the dad said, call 911.

Your grandmother's been shot.

When the police get to the scene, the dad answers the door holding a bloody 20 gauge shotgun.

Whoa.

Okay.

That was something better late than never.

Well, better late than never.

Because it wasn't included in the prosecutor's version of events.

Even going through the opening statement, they didn't mention it in the opening statement.

How do you know that?

Because of the crime scene photos and the body worn camera.

The first responders are wearing body worn cameras when they walk up to the house.

Wait, okay.

Dad has a shotgun that matches the type of weapon that was used to kill his wife.

With yellow shells, maybe?

We'll see.

Doesn't matter.

With yellow shells.

Yeah.

He doesn't get questioned?

He doesn't get detained by the police?

They, uh, interview him on the scene.

And then they, uh, try to bring him down to the homicide division that night to interview him.

But his, he has a fever when they get him down here.

This happens in July of 2020.

So they turn around and they send him home and they just come and talk to him the next day.

Oh yeah, COVID was a, was a recurring thing.

Yeah.

It was COVID.

Yeah.

So they send him home.

Wow.

You know, I, I, I, two months after, uh, George Floyd and the racial protests, you know,

even, even a black man holding a shotgun, a bloody shotgun at a scene where someone's

been shot by a shotgun, the police are just going to let him go.

You said that there was blood on this shotgun?

There was blood on the shotgun.

There was a big bloody handprint on the shotgun.

And did, do we know whose handprint?

We don't actually.

I mean, we, we kind of know because the father says like, this was my shotgun.

And in his interview later with the police, he discusses how, you know, after the shooting

happens, he goes to the, uh, the wife's side and is trying to talk to her.

And then according to him, he grabs the shotgun from the closet, uh, to defend himself because

he's worried the shooter would come back.

Okay.

So everyone has 20 gauge shotguns.

Everyone's got a 20 gauge shotgun.

That's right.

Okay.

All right.

So then why is, and why is the cousin a suspect?

Well, the cousin gets a little more complicated because as we mentioned before about the

girlfriend, uh, renting the, the vehicle for them.

One of the things that he's a shady character.

So one of the things that came out of our, our productive, uh, dinner with our fellow public

defenders, uh, when we were asking ourselves this question, like, why is the license plate

coming on and off this truck so much?

At one point, one of the lawyers just turns and goes crimes because they were doing crimes.

That's why.

Um, and so we, we sort of like, I started going through, uh, the cell phone extraction of

the cousin and it became very clear that the cousin was engaged in drug dealing.

Um, there were a lot of texts about, uh, selling a boy and girl, uh, which are colloquial terms

for heroin and cocaine.

And, uh, all of this information was, was contained in, in his phone.

And then, uh, you, when you ask yourself, why was there a straw rental of a truck to drive

down to Georgia to see family where they were taking the license plate off of it, it becomes

kind of a little clear what was going on here.

Um, but what we also uncovered in the phone was that, uh,

the client, our client had actually ditched the cousin down in Georgia earlier, um, when

they were down there, in addition to him in Detroit at the gas station in Detroit, he left

and took the truck for three days, did not apologize, did not give his whereabouts, just

took the truck and left.

And, uh, our belief was that this ended up screwing up whatever the cousin had planned

to like do down in Georgia because the cousin's response to the client driving off of the truck

is to start, uh, issuing death threats to him.

Or to kill his mother.

You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fucking kill you, you know, uh, fuck family, you're dead,

um, you better not come back here, et cetera, et cetera.

And so, yeah.

And so he makes these threats and then client shows back up and they kind of like smooth things

over and they drive back to Michigan.

Okay.

So, but that doesn't really tie as to why he would have shot his auntie.

So, uh, that, it ends up, this man's phone was, was wild.

So, uh, he start, uh, once the client takes the truck the second time, uh, the same thing

starts where he starts threatening him via text message again.

Uh, and then he texts another one of his friends, uh, and says, uh, let's go over there.

Um, and just so happens the shotgun that client is caught with up at the trailer way up north.

It's the girlfriend's shotgun, the shotgun that he was stopped with with Michigan state police, et cetera, et cetera.

And, uh, after his aunt is killed, uh, the cousin, uh, ends up Googling resorts in Canada within an hour

or two hours of finding out about this murder.

The cousin's brother is on scene and breaks into the murder scene after everyone, including the police leave

by pushing in the air conditioner and getting inside.

Uh, the cousin does not go to the murder scene, despite the fact that everybody is gathered there.

The family is, has gathered there to sort of like mourn and be with each other.

He doesn't go down there because according to him, he doesn't want to be implicated in the homicide.

And, uh, and then he just begins Googling news stories about her death, uh, the next morning over and over again.

So the theory, uh, for the cousin is that, you know, the client takes the truck once he's a hothead.

He, uh, is mad, starts issuing death threats.

The second time it happens, he starts issuing death threats, goes over to the house with a plan

to kill our client, knocks on the door and shoots at the first person that opens the door,

realizes he accidentally kills his auntie and then flees.

Okay.

Okay.

So let's, uh, let's move on to, uh, jury selection then.

Have we talked about everything else up until this point?

Any other bombs you guys want to drop on us right before trial?

Anything we missed?

I think we've covered most of the big things.

Great.

All right.

So I love the defense.

It got multiple suspects, nothing.

This is great.

This is great.

Let's hear about that voir dire, that jury selection.

Who's doing the jury selection in this case?

Do you guys argue over it?

Draw straws?

Rochambeau?

I was, uh, I was the person who, who did jury selection.

I think we, we kind of divided up the, the big pieces early on where Hannah was going to do the opening.

I was going to do the closing.

And then, uh, you know, that, that kind of like voir dire right into opening can feel, feel like a lot.

You know, I like the energy or when you split those early parts of the trial up between two people,

it's good to have one person do the voir dire and one person do the opening.

Okay.

So tell us about your, your voir dire in this, uh, first degree murder case.

Well, I think we, we definitely wanted folks that understood that there was, that this kind of investigation would not have happened if a white woman in the suburbs had been killed.

Um, that the police would dedicate more than three hours before they decide who their suspect is and, uh, and just stick with them in spite of a lot of other leads and evidence.

So that was, you know, we wanted to make sure we had folks who were from the city of Detroit who had experience with the Detroit police department and knew that, that, uh, they would be, they, you know, they wouldn't be doing a great job in this kind of a case.

Um, the other kind of folks we wanted, I think were, uh, folks who wouldn't hold the like emotion of the case against our client.

Right. I mean, we're talking about a really, really heinous allegation of shooting your own mother, uh, uh, in cold blood.

And so we wanted people who also were a little bit detached, uh, or at least like more coldly logical.

And so we, we really looked for folks that we thought, um, would be able to do that.

And we ended up with a number of like engineers, uh, veterans and, uh, and people from the city of Detroit.

We got a good, we got a good mix of folks.

We had to throw our first panel away because like, as we started to get into the first part of jury selection, the judge read out his prior convictions to the entire veneer.

Oops. Um, oops. And so we just kind of all approached and we're like, uh, judge, you can't, we can't do that.

And what was the prior conviction?

It was armed robbery.

Okay. So a violent offense.

Yes.

So highly prejudicial.

From like 2000. Highly prejudicial.

Okay.

And we had already obviously stipulated that he just was disqualified from, from possessing a firearm.

So, um, you know, despite the, even though it had been 20 plus years earlier and he was a very young person at the time, um, the judge gave us a whole new veneer.

Man, that new judge first trial, he really drew, he really drew a doozy and, and, you know, a four week long first degree murder trial that was highly contentious and circumstantial.

It was, it was not, not, I wouldn't wish that upon anybody as their first trial as a judge.

And with the prosecutor bullying him.

You just violated your own court order, judge.

Yeah.

Um, he was very nice.

He was very gracious.

And, and we got, we got a new, we got a new panel the next day and started over.

Um, and, and did it right the second time.

So blaze, do you want to give the A and G audience a little flavor of your voir dire?

Like what, how do you approach it?

What do you, like, what's your style?

What do you, how do you schmooze the jurors and get them on your side?

So I think I, I, you know, you can do the deselection Colorado method where you're trying to identify the bad jurors for you.

And then, you know, ask those questions.

Um, I think it's equally as important to sort of try your case, uh, in your questions.

Um, and I, I kind of like combining those two things.

And with the new judge, you can probably get away with trying your case a lot, you know?

Yeah.

With previewing the case, right?

Yeah.

And so, you know, we, uh, we kind of talked about, uh, you know, evidence, spoilation.

Uh, I borrowed this, uh, this thing I heard on a, on a different podcast, uh, the trials of Frank Carson.

Um, where he talked about a, uh, a payday bar with a maggot in it.

I use that one, uh, as a, as a device of like, do you eat the rest of the candy bar after you find a maggot in the first bite?

Um, which is, I love it because it's just so viscerally like revolting, like the idea of biting into a maggot.

You'd be like, no, I wouldn't, of course.

And you're like, yeah, well, you know, in this case you might hear X, Y, and Z.

Um, and then I think it's also like, uh, yeah, as you're pointing out, like schmoozing the jury is kind of, is really important.

Um, it's a really, it's, it's, it's important that they like you more than anything.

So I kind of talk about, um, the importance of reasonable doubt and, uh, using the phrase from Victor versus Nebraska, which is, uh, hesitating to act in one of the graver or more important matters in life.

And then I use a, you know, I talk about how my dad worked at a power plant and, you know, they found out there was toxic water at the power plant, but it had a good health care.

So he had to decide whether or not he was going to leave that job and lose that whatever.

And, you know, he hesitated because he had to think about his family.

And like, that's what reasonable doubt is that like grave and important decision in life.

Um, it ended up playing very bizarrely in this case because the prosecutor, it was, it was very clear, like we were ingratiating ourselves to the jury panel.

And so we took this break and then the prosecutor came up and was like, well, you know, Mr. Kearney over here just talked about how he's, you know, has this working class family.

I, my family is working class harder than his.

They're so working class.

You wouldn't believe my father has three jobs and he still wants to work at the grocery store and he's 70.

And it just came off very, it was very, very weird.

Any memorable moments or exchanges with jurors?

Um, the, the, I remember the moment, the moment I remember is where we turned to our client, had our client make the decision about whether or not to keep a juror.

And we had this, this, uh, argument, not argument, discussion between Hannah and myself and the client about whether or not we liked him.

Um, and he was, he was the veteran that I mentioned.

Uh, and we didn't want someone that was super, super familiar with guns.

Cause there was a couple of things we were worried about, like inconsistencies between the dad's gun and the gun our client was found with.

Um, and so we, one of the other things we wanted just people who weren't super familiar with guns and obviously this guy's an army veteran.

And so like, you know, I was actually on the, I was on the fence with strike him.

I don't want him there.

Uh, and Hannah was set, wanted to keep him.

And so we, we turned to the client and said, be a tiebreaker.

Hannah, what'd you like about him?

I think he was just, well, oh, you know what?

He was very thoughtful about blaze asked questions about what you would expect to see in an investigation.

And he was really thoughtful about like ballistics evidence he would expect to see.

And this was an investigation where there was, there was no testing.

There was nothing.

So it seemed like he would be good for us.

And you guys made, let the, you guys let the client decide how'd that go down?

He, yeah, he, he said, I like him.

I like him.

And I'm like, are you sure you want to keep him?

You sure you want to keep him?

I mean, the army guys, they tend to be conservative and, you know, uh, I don't know.

And, and I was, ended up being very wrong about, about this call.

So I'm.

Something else memorable, just that, uh, about Wadir is there was another juror who talked

about being a defendant before.

And he was saying that he was sitting there and he was feeling so much empathy for our

client.

And we're like, oh my God, this person's amazing.

But obviously the prosecutor's going to kick him.

And they didn't, which I thought was really crazy.

And he ended up being the foreperson.

Oh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, the moment the prosecutor found out that was the foreperson was probably very difficult.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The, the, when he was doing this, cause like, you know, the question was always like, are

you going to be biased or favored in one way or the other for one side?

And he said, I would be biased for the defense.

So what he said, and I was a criminal defendant once and I know how people can get bad representation.

And, uh, even though I hired my own lawyer, I didn't, you know, I didn't feel, I felt

like I got kind of sold down the river.

And so I, I really empathize with the person in this position and I was panicking when he

was saying this, cause I'm just like, oh God, I'm just.

And so the best I could come up with in the moment was like, I'm going to go the prosecutor

into striking this person.

And so I said, you know what, sir, that's exactly the kind of juror that we're looking

for in this case that all of us are looking for in this case, because that's what the

presumption of innocence is.

You're supposed to start over on this side.

You're supposed to empathize with the defendant.

That's actually following the judge's instructions for, you know, the, the rule of law you're

going to have to apply in this case.

And so, and I think, I think the prosecutor felt like she probably would have really looked

a certain kind of way if she had just struck that person after that speech.

That was great.

I love that.

I think, I don't think I would have responded like that.

I would have been like, but you could still be fair though.

Right.

I think I would just ask that question.

You can still be fair.

Yes, I can still be fair.

Okay, good, good.

And that's it.

But that's even, that's even way better response than I would have thought of.

No, it's a brilliant because you've, you've backed the prosecutor into a corner now.

Yeah.

Go ahead and signal to everyone else in the panel that you're not interested in people

that, that are going to apply the presumption of innocence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cool though.

So you guys, all right.

So you guys picked your jury.

Got some good ones on there.

It's a time for opening statements then, right?

Enter Hannah.

All right, Hannah, tell us about it.

Well, I, I said, I pretty much said everything I think important about it.

I think what I was really excited when I heard the prosecutor not talk about the gun that the

dad had on scene.

I was like, well, now their story is going to sound crazy when I tell the jurors what

really happened.

And so I just went through, um, the neighbor hearing the, I guess the neighbor described

it as fireworks, what he heard.

And then he suddenly sees somebody run out and described, um, the police officers arriving

on scene.

And the first thing they see is this guy with a bloody shotgun and they completely ignore

that the, um, homicide detectives decide to completely ignore that.

And they decide to ignore major leads in this case.

They don't do any forensic testing in this case, any of the forensic testing you would

expect to see.

And our client is of course, innocent.

Oh, Hannah, don't bury the lead here.

Hannah had this, my favorite part of the entire trial was in, in the beginning of the opening.

Go ahead.

Well, just, you know, we talked about the homicide detective, the main homicide detective calling

our client a fucking monster.

So I got to, um, say those words and point at the detective who is sitting in the courtroom

and say that he thought it was our client from the very beginning.

And he called him a fucking monster.

Yeah.

Shame.

Yeah.

Hannah, it's okay to say fucking on this podcast, by the way.

Go ahead.

Of course.

Give it a good, give it a good go right now.

I'm just kidding.

It's all right.

Fucking monster.

Uh, all right.

And then, so when you mentioned that the father had the shotgun, the bloody shotgun, was

that like the first time the prosecutor knew about it?

Like, did they react in a certain way?

Was there like papers flying at the table?

Definitely not.

No, they definitely knew about it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

It must've been an impactful moment though.

In my mind, I'm envisioning like a, a TV movie where everyone in the courtroom goes,

Oh, like, yeah, I felt like I felt people reacting.

That was definitely how I perceived it.

That the jurors were reacting to that.

Which is great.

Cause now you're only at opening the prosecutors.

And for you, Hannah, this is the first time they've heard from you since Blaze did the

voir dire and they're already on your side, looking at the prosecutor, like what's going

on?

Yeah.

That's what I felt like.

And you've talked about the prosecutor a little bit being kind of a seasoned prosecutor who

kind of shamed the judge a little bit earlier.

Not that seasoned apparently.

Yeah.

Like what's, what's his energy and vibe like with the jury at this point?

Would you say like, how, how was his voir dire, you know, his opening, like, sounds

like momentum's on your side, but what's he, what's you, what are you going up against?

So what ended up happening is, so when we were doing the pretrial litigation, there was

supposed to be this, this seasoned prosecutor who asked the judge, you know, have you ever

done a first degree murder trial?

Well, the part of the reason she was, that prosecutor was banking so much on getting that

adjournment.

She had double booked herself.

She had another homicide trial she was supposed to be in.

So when we pulled our expert notice and said, that's fine.

We want to go, we don't want this trial adjourned, that seasoned prosecutor had to come off the

case and leaving, leaving her junior prosecutor, uh, to, to do the trial.

So the way this actually unfolded during the four weeks was the junior prosecutor was the

lead with, uh, the supervisor of that division sitting next to them the entire time.

Um, and so I think a lot of the, the, the sort of energy that they were bringing was a lot

of, uh, a combination of like nervous slash angry slash, like slowly, psychologically unwinding,

um, with the jury.

Angry about what?

Us.

About losing?

They're angry.

They're angry.

They're sitting at the council table, council table angry.

I think they were angry that blaze had filed motions.

Like they, they seem to expect that we won't do that.

That's okay.

Did they express being anger, anger, did they express this sort of, uh, their feelings or

animosity towards you at any point?

Yeah, there's, um.

Because this is what we really want to hear about.

Of course, all this law and procedure.

No, we want the cattiness.

We want, come on, show us the human element here.

You know, so, so I, I say psychologically unwinding because the, uh, and again, this, this, this,

uh, entire trial was on YouTube.

Uh, and so, uh, at one point this was also like NDS came to Detroit in 2019 and the pandemic

happened like right afterward.

Right.

We started taking cases in October, the pandemic hits in March.

Right.

And trials are mostly delayed until then.

And so we've had a number of, you know, I had a couple of trials before this, but this

trial was sort of like the new public defender offices, like coming out party.

Right.

Well, what is this?

What are we going to do when we have these big, big trials?

Uh, and, uh, so there were a lot of people from our office coming in and out to like watch

what was going on.

And, and at one point, uh, the prosecutor just in, in front of the judge just started

yelling, saying that she had to be in enduring abuse from our office.

And then she turned around and just started pointing at people in the audience and saying,

this person's been laughing at me, this person right here.

I think she's an attorney and I, it is not fair.

I do not deserve it.

It is not professional.

The judge is like, I don't really see any of the stuff you're seeing going on, but, um,

everybody please be courteous.

Wait, when did this happen?

This is about, uh, so she said for the last two weeks, because these motions that we filed,

the motion in limine, we were basically in court every day leading up to the trial starting

for about a week.

So this is about a week into the trial, like things really started, uh, being really aggravated

from their end and they retaliated.

They did retaliate against us in a way that, uh, they wouldn't, they would not do to other

lawyers.

So the, the, the, the, the witness list in this case was 60 witnesses long of those witnesses,

the prosecutor promised to call 24 of them.

Um, and so, right, right.

Um, well, you know, if, if they expect us not to cross examine or put up a defense, I guess

it could last four days if we didn't ask any questions.

And so, uh, we, we go back into chambers frequently.

And one of the things they were not doing, they would just not, they would, uh, this is

the Midwest.

So you don't be aggressive with someone.

You just, uh, say, I can't do that right now.

And so we would say, who's testifying tomorrow.

Oh, I don't know.

Reach out to me later.

Email them at night.

Who's testing for them.

I don't know.

And then who's testifying after lunch.

Can't tell you who's the next witness.

Don't know.

I'll figure that out after this witness is done.

And so we were in the position early on in this trial of looking at this list of 60 people,

not knowing which person was coming out of the door next to testify.

That that's like a professional courtesy, right?

So that, and efficiency, we want this whole thing to go.

Cause I need to collect my materials.

I need to spend the nights prepping for the witnesses the next day.

Um, especially in a trial that's going to last four weeks, uh, long.

And so we eventually brought it up in chambers where we're like, look, this is way behind

schedule.

We would like you to like, this is a way it could go faster.

Judge, please tell them to tell us who the witnesses are going to be after lunch.

And they said, we don't have to do it.

And the supervisor turned to Hannah and I and said, you have been uncivil.

And if you were different lawyers, we would for sure tell you who these witnesses are,

but you're not those lawyers.

And so we're not going to do that.

And you can't make us.

Wow.

They made it very personal.

Whoa.

Whoa.

And that's because of the judge in front of a supervisor said this in front of the

judge.

So this wasn't like the junior prosecutors gone rogue.

This is like the, you know, the management of their office is, is sanctioned.

Yes.

When they go low, we go lower.

That's what we do.

No one goes lower than the prosecutors.

All right.

Nobody.

We're the ones that play games.

And so they started, they started doing all these like crazy speaking objections throughout

the trial, like they would just elicit, like really, they would just ask police officers,

like what their opinion was about.

Nope.

And we would, and you know, we would have to object to be like, I'm sorry, that's speculation.

And they would respond.

The jury wants to know this.

Are you kidding?

That was like a, that was like a refrain.

It became almost a joke in our office because.

That's highly improper.

I think I would conservatively estimate I heard the jury wants to know no less than three

dozen times throughout this trial.

Well, that's no longer a professional discourtesy.

Those sort of speaking of what was the judge doing during all of this?

You know, he was, he was trying to, to say like, yeah, I don't, I don't think that's

appropriate.

Please move on.

So he came out really strongly there.

Really?

I mean, I, I, I sympathize with the guy.

This is his first trial.

Like, you know, he's, he's, he's trying to get through it.

Like you don't want to come out screaming at the prosecutor's office and the jury's right

there.

And he was a very nice person.

And so, um, yeah.

All right.

Wow.

Okay.

I like this.

This is, now this is fun.

This is, this is great.

This is great.

It's not even about the case anymore.

It's not about the evidence.

It's not about the guilt or not guilty.

Let's go.

Let's go prosecution.

Let's go.

Yeah.

On some level, it must've felt nice to see how much you were bothering them.

Um, yeah, I think a job well done, you know, it does feel like a job well done.

And part of it is like that it's by design.

Right.

And because when you, when someone's acting nuts in front of the jury and we are the calm,

professional, serious ones, like that's, that's just the world of the trial working out for

us.

And that matters more and more the longer a trial is.

So that played right into your, your hand and directly into your theory about, you know,

how this wasn't handled properly from the beginning.

All right.

All right.

Let's move on.

Let's move on.

So, all right.

We had opening statements, uh, by Hannah.

Good job with the drop in the bloody shotgun.

You got the momentum on your side.

Now it's time for the prosecution to put on their case.

So tell us about that.

Who they put up.

So the, the three big witness or the four big witnesses that testified were the neighbor

who did the ID, the dad testified, the cousin testified and the homicide detective testified.

All right.

So both of your alternative suspects were called as witnesses by the prosecution.

That's right.

And they didn't have a defense attorney with them.

Uh, the cousin did, um, and that, and that was his, his was, uh, his was like the big,

the big moment to decide whether or not we wanted him.

That's such a great look.

I love it when witnesses have their own lawyers.

It's, um, yeah.

Okay.

So who, so go ahead.

Tell us.

So, yeah.

So while Hannah, Hannah's going to talk about the, the, the, um, eyewitness was her, uh,

her witness.

So I'll talk about the dad.

And so the dad testifies, and as Hannah said earlier, the complainant or the, the neighbor's

initial description was an older man in his late fifties or sixties with a limp, with

a shirt with lettering on it.

Uh, the dad was 70.

He walked with a pronounced limp.

He was wearing a shirt that said the greatest of all time.

It was a Muhammad Ali shirt.

Uh, and, and he in fact did have a gun when the police showed up.

And so the, you know, I was pointing out some of the weird things, like basically the, I

had to play soft cause this guy, you know, you didn't, the jury, they might feel bad for

him cause he had to watch his wife get killed, which, you know, you could empathize with.

You also had to worry about, you know, he's older, so you don't want to kind of like come

too hard and beat him up.

Um, but you'd have to point out to him like, dude, you didn't call 9-1-1.

Why?

Why'd you call your neighbor twice?

Um, why didn't you stay with your wife when she was dying?

Why did you go to the front room?

Um, yeah.

And so the neighbor he called is a different neighbor than the witness you testified.

Not the eyewitness, not the eyewitness neighbor.

It says direct neighbor.

That's right.

their yards adjoin each other.

Okay.

And then when you were, did you point out to the jury that dad was a potential suspect?

Yeah.

So Hannah's, Hannah's, uh, opening made it pretty clear.

Okay.

So did you feel like you had to explain that the neighbor eyewitness saw this older person

with lip matching dad's description, but the, the neighbor saw the suspects fleeing in a,

in a car.

And it sounds like dad stayed on scene though.

Yeah.

And, and what we thought about that is there was very little information about what happened

to that car immediately afterward.

The neighbor says it turns right and just disappears.

Right.

And it very well could have been, for instance, that the dad, uh, either accidentally or intentionally,

uh, you know, had, had shot the mother and, uh, ran out and told the client to get out

of there.

Right.

And, uh, went around the corner and went back to the house.

Um, the neighbor's point of view was not perfect.

Uh, the, the guy who ultimately identified clients.

There was a lot of possibilities of things that could have happened where the dad could

have gotten back to the house.

Um, he didn't really get as emotional as you would expect someone in that situation to, to get, um, how many years were they married?

50 years, 20, 40, 40, 40 years, 40 years.

Yeah.

Um, and, and, and his explanation for not staying by her side was she was gone.

I could tell she was gone.

Um, and I, I don't know.

I, I just sort of like, uh, felt like it doesn't matter if she's gone, like, you know, denials the first stage of grief.

You're going to sit there at least to be with her, or, you know, you're not going to like go sit by the front door and wait for the first responders to come, um, and leave this woman alone in her final moments.

Um, and it was, it was sad to think about, but it was just a piece of, you know, and then he's going through multiple phone calls that aren't to 9-1-1.

Um, and so.

Yeah.

That would be, you would think would be your first call.

Yeah.

So you're going to do one of those two things.

You're either going to sit there with her, you know, if you're, you're not going to leave her and you're going to try to get help.

And he didn't do either of those things.

And those are all things you, those are all things you pointed on your cross-examination with the dad.

Was there any sort of, uh, like aha moments you feel like that, that really resonated with the jurors?

Um, there was, he, he, the one part where we kind of got him is he was definitely underrepresenting his familiarity with the shotgun and was trying to claim it had not been fired before.

Um, and so that part we scored a few points with.

The other part that was very, very strange that he did not have a good answer for was when the first responders came to the front door, he's on camera.

Uh, and one of the first responders goes to the back room to see where his wife is at.

And then he turns to one of the, the first responder and says, I'm going to go pee real quick.

And then he leaves like not, doesn't go back with the first responder to where his wife's at.

Doesn't stay with the cop.

He like goes to the bathroom for some privacy.

And so if he was getting rid of a shell casing, that would be when, when he did it.

Oh, I see.

Um, I, did the dad testify to, or did the prosecutor try and ask the dad if, um, dad believed it was your client, his own son?

Was he a reluctant witness to testify as a prosecution witness in his son's trial?

I, I think they, uh, I, I think the prosecutors were a little bit scared.

I think they, they believed he was withholding information.

I think they probably thought that he knew his son had done it and that's why he wasn't saying anything.

And he was just trying to cover for his son.

But I think they were too scared to ask that question in, uh, in fear of that he might give the answer like, no, it wasn't him.

He's not the person I saw.

But when the dad was testifying, did he come across as like, I, I don't want to be here.

I don't like that.

They've called me as a witness against my son or how did he said, I remember him saying something along the lines of like, this is a very sad situation because I'm losing two family members.

I lost my wife when this happened and I'm going to lose my son through this.

I mean, I do feel like the failure to call 9-1-1 is a big deal, but I also feel like.

If the prosecutor was smart, they could have made that seem like it's because you don't want to call 9-1-1 on your own child, right?

You don't want to call the police on your, on your son.

Is that what happened?

Um, yeah, I think I, I don't, they never came out and said that.

And I think they, they probably could have, um, I can only speculate as to why, but I, I think at the end, uh, of the dad's cross, I think I was, um, I personally was like underwhelmed with how it went.

Uh, I was expecting it to go a little bit better than it did, um, because he didn't get as flustered and frustrated.

The parts where he got frustrated kind of came off as like more confused old man than, than like murderer who's trying to put it on his son, you know?

And I think sometimes, I mean, sometimes people do illogical things after a trauma, you know, um, what, was there a history of domestic violence or anything like that between the, the father and mother?

No.

Okay.

Happily, happily married for 40 years.

I think what was a little comical was the homicide detective said that he was sure there was no marital discord because he had searched both of their phones.

He extracted the decedent's phone and the dad's phone.

And it's like, this is a 67 and 70 year old man.

Yeah.

Uh, 67 year old woman, 70 year old man, like who lived together and are retired and are with each other all the time.

They're, if there's marital discord, man, it's not gonna, it's not gonna be in their phones.

You keep that, you keep that behind closed doors.

Nobody knows.

That's, that's how they did it.

Analog.

Yeah.

Analog discord.

Yeah.

Um, all right.

Tell us about the next witness then the next important witness.

So, uh, that was the eyewitness who claimed that he saw our client.

He identified our client as the person leaving the house with a long gun.

So he testified that he, um, saw a man running out of the house where this happened with a long gun into a silver Nissan.

And he testified that the person who was running out of the house was our client, but the way that the identification went down kind of worked out for us.

And that was to blaze's credit, um, right before he testified, we noticed that there was big projection equipment right in front of our client.

So blocking our client from the witnesses view.

So obviously either he wouldn't see our client or someone would need to move that equipment.

And we noticed it before he testified and blaze is like, no, let's keep it there.

That's going to work out for us.

And, uh, yeah.

And so the prosecutor is a listening testimony from him and asking him, do you see in this room anywhere, the person who was running from that house?

And he looks around a little and then the press was like, wait, actually, and moves the projector out of the way.

And we kind of, you know, chuckle to ourselves and everyone in the courtroom picks up on how ridiculous this is.

It seems like the jury kind of reacts to the moment too.

Yeah.

That's super, that's super suggestive.

Like, let me move it out of the way.

So the guy, this is the guy I want you to look at.

Right.

Is there anyone in the room, specifically the guy who's behind the projector?

And, and then he does after the projectors moved, identifies our client as that person running from the house.

And so my cross was on a couple of things.

One, his initial description.

So his initial description of the person that he saw really didn't match up to our client.

He did identify our client.

I think it was a day later when he was shown a photo array.

It was kind of a wishy-washy identification, but his initial description of the person he saw actually sounded more like our client's father, who was one of our alternate suspects.

And so he described that person as an older man in his fifties or sixties and with a dark shirt with writing on it with a limp.

And the dad, one of our alternate suspects was an older man.

I think he was maybe in his late sixties with a really prominent limp, which ended up playing really well for us when he came into the courtroom and limped pretty exaggerated.

And he was also wearing a dark shirt with writing on it.

So I kind of just backed up and showed the evolution of his identification from someone who matched somebody totally different to somehow our client.

I think the other major component of his testimony was that he was actually seven houses down from, from where this happened.

So I also admitted a picture of, uh, well, really a view from his porch to this house, seven houses down.

Cause you know, he's making this statement.

He's saying he identified this person from all the way down there.

But when you see how far away that house is from him, it becomes ridiculous for him to actually make an identification on the person's face.

What would make more sense is him noticing like a limp, an age, what a t-shirt looks like rather than being able to identify an actual person who was at that house.

Did the, did the witness push back up?

Did the witness push back on that or agree with you or just whatever?

It didn't care.

He did push back.

He did try to come to me.

It seemed like he was trying to come across.

Like he knew more than he did.

Yeah.

But, but the picture spoke for itself.

His evolving description spoke for itself.

Yeah.

And sorry for the A&G listeners.

We had to take those two witnesses out of order because Hannah had some technical difficulties.

So we went with Blaze's witness, but had, you know, but yes.

So the, so the neighbor, so the neighbor talks about the guy with the lip and then later on the dad comes in limping into the, to the courtroom.

So that's, that's a good look.

It's a good look.

Was there any issues with identification?

Like in terms of the procedure done by the police, did they, did they do a proper six pack identification?

Was there, or was it, everything was okay on their end?

No, it was, it was, it was pretty bad.

Um, so they have a photo ID, ID general order or directive, or I don't know, you know, everyone has their, they call them something different and it wasn't done double blind.

And they recorded the entire thing on their body cameras in his house.

And double blind is where the police, the officer handing the six pack photograph to the witness.

That officer has no idea who the suspect is that way.

When the officer hands the six pack photograph to the witness, he doesn't do any influence them.

You can't influence them with any like nonverbal cues.

Like maybe he gets excited when the witness is considering the potential suspect or something, cause the cops can steer the witness.

And so they find that if the cop administering the six pack doesn't know who it is, then it's, you're less likely to get a false identification.

But the cops follow that procedure.

So it wasn't double blind.

Go ahead.

It wasn't double blind.

Uh, the, uh, they definitely had a conversation with the witness before they turned the recording on because the body more camera gets turned.

Like the procedure says record the entire procedure.

They turn it on and they're like doing like a fake handshake.

Like they're just meeting each other, but they're like already inside the house.

And the guy's like sitting down is very obvious.

They've been talking for a while, um, which is another violation.

And then as they present the photographs, uh, the client picks out two of the photographs and says, these are not the client.

Sorry.

The witness picks out two of the photographs and says, these two, I want to look at these two again.

And then the first one is of our client.

The second one is of, uh, somebody else.

And the, they make comments to the witness that the people may appear younger in these photographs than when you saw them.

So signaling to the witness, like, oh yeah, even though I described a guy who's 50 or 60, these must be younger driver's license photos of the, of those people.

So, you know, when you see the dad and you have a picture of the son in the photo array, uh, yeah.

And so this, then he makes a statement about it favoring him, right?

He's like, oh, that favors him.

And the, the detective hands the man, uh, pen and says, I need you to write down here.

This is the guy you saw.

And the witness goes, he starts to write and then he looks up and says, it's not for sure though.

I'm saying it just looks like him.

And he goes, all right, write down.

It looks like the guy you saw.

And so then all of the statements of identification came from the police officer's mouth, not the witness.

And did the police get up in court and testify that it was double blind?

They testified it was done according to procedure.

Uh, and I think lies, uh, maybe, maybe betting on that.

We wouldn't, uh, you know, really cross them on the minutia of that.

And then they really fought us.

Uh, you, you ever, you ever get into like a directive with a police officer and they're

just like, well, that says one of not, you know, that says may not shall, or like, you

know, all that kind of stuff.

You know, so, I mean, all, with all this, uh, like all the people getting let out of prison

because of like the false, the, you know, the bad convictions, wrongful convictions, you

know, false identification was like the leading cause of someone going for a wrongful

conviction.

And so all these new rules came out to her, like, this is how we should do, be doing

identifications, infield identifications were at the scene or six packs, photo arrays, all

those things.

And the cops, you know, like still don't follow these procedures a lot of the times.

And it's egregious how they're just like, they're trying to figure out new ways to steer

witnesses to selecting the suspect.

They want them to suspect, you know, that they got, they got to figure out ways to go around

it.

I, and I don't want to get to my own cases, but I've seen some really bad photo identifications

that are just disgusting.

They're not changing anything about their procedure.

They're just trying to cover it up more.

Yeah.

And it's interesting.

You mentioned that, that, you know, misidentifications like the leading cause of wrongful convictions,

because that's actually the way the general order starts.

That's like the preamble to why they have all these in the general order.

It's like, we need to follow this because you can very easily lead to erroneous identifications

leading to wrongful convictions.

And you can bet I read that shit to the jury.

Nice.

All right.

So who textifies next?

So the, the homicide detective.

Vindictive is the, is the big piece.

This is our big bad guy, our villain in, in the case.

I do that witness because I have prior, I've worked with this, worked with, I've cross-examined

and dealt with this homicide detective before.

We do not like each other.

Nice.

And he doesn't seem to be that likable.

He, when this is all over, he made a very, very angry post to Facebook about how he was

going to fat, he was going to get more charges to keep my client in jail.

Well, it's not vindictive at all.

Yeah.

He sounds vindictive.

But anyway, so, uh, you know, it's just like dressing him down the entire time.

We had so many misleads.

Hannah had established in the first two very boring weeks of trial that when the crime scene

folks came, they swabbed the doorknobs for DNA.

They, uh, recovered this bloody shotgun from the dad.

Uh, they, uh, had collected, uh, shot, like the actual bullets for, for that shotgun.

Um, and so it's like, did they swab dad's hands for GSR?

No, they did not swab.

And, and of course, when I shot residue, yeah.

Whenever they, whenever we bring that up now, they say it's not scientific.

That's why we don't do it.

Um, they, unless it's found on our client's hands.

Right.

Um, so, uh, you know, it was, it went down to really basic stuff.

Like, bro, you didn't, you didn't get a search warrant for the crime scene.

They didn't search the house where this happened.

I, it, it was wild.

Another thing that Hannah established is that this back door and, uh, this back door where

the shooter was supposed to have been, uh, and where the wife was shot from, none of the

officers on scene could get it to open.

They were spinning the locks, turning the locks every which way.

They're like, the door doesn't work.

I'm sorry.

This is the same door that we're saying the prosecutor was saying your client was shooting

his mother from just outside that door after she opened it.

This old lady opened the door on her own that all of these officers couldn't open.

Right.

And so, and that's why the, the, you know, the, the first responding officers were our

friends in this case.

Cause they were walking around being like, one of them even says at some point, they're

like, we should really search the dad.

I bet he has shell casings on him.

And the homicide detective just ignores all of this, right?

So we have all of these DNA swabs from the knobs, not tested.

We have the fact that he never investigated how it was the door could open or not open.

Never searches the house for what other kinds of shells could be inside the house.

Maybe there is a slug 20 gauge shell inside this house somewhere.

The shotgun that they recovered from the dad never tested for anything, not for DNA.

You can presume the wife's blood's on it, given the dad's story, but what about the tip of

the barrel, right?

What if there were flecks of blood on the tip of the barrel?

They ended up testing the shotgun that our client was found with, and it was negative for

the presence of blood on the end of the tip of the shotgun.

Yes.

You know, I have a ballistics question.

I know with at least your regular handguns, you can take casings and do test fires with

a gun to see if the casings at the scene were produced from that gun.

Can you do the same thing with a shotgun?

You can't.

And the reason you can't is that the shotguns aren't rifled.

The slugs themselves will be rifled.

And what is supposed to impart these, what they call striations or tool marks, onto the

bullets is the rifling inside the barrel.

So, shotguns cannot be confirmed via firearms and tool marks examinations.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

So, you know, you don't test the dad's shotgun at all.

The shotgun goes into a box and like the first time anybody ever sees it, the dad's shotgun

is at trial.

He doesn't, you know, you could swab the inside of that shotgun and see if there's soot or residue.

Remember the dad's saying this shotgun's never been fired.

So, like, you could figure that out if you wanted.

Doesn't do any of that.

It gets more egregious after that.

The responding officers that canvass the scene find not one, not two, but six ring cameras

on the block.

He doesn't get any of them.

Even with one of the witnesses saying you could see the suspect fleeing and getting in a car,

they did not check that out.

There was a ring camera directly across the street.

From not looking at the dad's phone records, not realizing he never, like, that he called

his neighbor and not putting together that, like, you could trace the phone number to

the neighbor and realize it's the dude immediately next door.

Never interviewed that guy saying, hey, what did he call and tell you immediately after this

murder?

Because we know he didn't call 911.

Didn't do that.

And, you know, it was beneficial because on direct, they had brought in our client statements

to the detective.

And he had talked about how he had said something unprofessional at the end of the interrogation,

but he just let his emotions about the case get the better of him.

And so, you know, it was helpful to put all this in context because Hannah had said so

strongly in her opening that he called him a fucking monster who killed his mother.

And he acknowledged that on direct in a way to try to, like, pull the sting that we didn't

even have to, like, we had had the tone of it said so aggressively throughout that we never

even impeached him with it because he had sort of confessed to it being unprofessional and

him doing it.

So all these, these are all points you're bringing up in your cross-examination then, right?

That's right.

And how's he, how's he responding?

So this cross actually spanned a day.

So I began it and then we had to come back the next morning and start over again.

And he pulled this bizarre trick.

So the way he thought he was going to get around this broken back door, the back door

who didn't open thing, is he tried to say that when the dad talked about a knock at the

door, he assumed it was an interior door inside the house because he had like been, he was

sitting there the entire trial.

He knew the blood, the blood spatter stuff didn't line up.

Wait, wait, wait.

Yeah.

Who's the he?

Sorry.

The detective said when the dad, I didn't investigate whether or not that door worked

because when the dad said there was a knock at a door, I thought he meant an interior door

inside the house.

That's what I understood him to be saying, which was very-

Were they saying there was somebody else in home with them?

Well, this is why, like when he says this, I'm just like stunned, right?

I'm like, I am deeply confused because this is out of line with anything that anybody has

said in the case.

So we take the night and I go back and I go to his original investigator's report that

he swore under oath to initiate the case.

And he says in that, he says in that investigator's report, makes it very clear, everybody's always

been talking about the exterior door.

No one has ever been talking about an interior door.

And so I opened the cross the next morning with being like, let's talk about what you swore

to before in this case.

And he like very clearly was panicked and kind of realized where I was going before I

got all the way there.

And then he started yelling at me and saying, don't you put words in my mouth.

Don't you put words in my mouth.

That's not what-

Oh, I love when they do that.

That's not what I said yesterday.

You're mischaracterizing my mischaracterization from yesterday.

Let's read it back then.

Um, and so, yeah, that was, uh, it was, it was hostile.

Um, you know, even that answer sounds dumb though.

I mean, Oh, I thought he was talking about this store.

You're the lead homicide detective and you have no clue about what door the guy's claiming

the person was shot.

Is this your, that's, that's the extent of your investigation.

He, he, his actual explanation was no, no.

My belief about the interior door was short lived.

You just asked me yesterday what I understood the dad to be talking about that day.

And I answered your question, sir, but I, I was disabused of my notion about it being

an interior door.

Uh, we're all on team exterior door now.

So you stop trying to make me look like a liar.

Um, it was, it was, it was fun.

It was satisfying.

It was satisfying.

Nice.

How, how's the client been, you know, like, what was it like?

Well, I mean, the client's been sitting there.

He saw his dad testify.

Like, how's he, how do you respond in those moments?

Just serene as the Buddha.

It was wild that he was just, you know, he, he got the assignment.

We had the conversation with him.

The jury's going to be looking at him the entire time.

So even when witnesses are lying, do not react.

Um, you know, they're going to be looking for you to, to, to have some kind of reaction.

And he, he didn't.

Um, okay.

So who's the next witness or the last, I think you said there was four main witnesses, right?

So the, the big, the big final witness is the cousin.

Okay.

Um, and the cousin is where like the wheels came entirely off the bus.

Can you tell us how old the cousin is?

Um, I want to say, I can't say with specificity.

I think he was in his early forties.

I want to say he was 42.

So he's older than your client, but certainly younger than the description the neighbor had

provided.

That's right.

Okay.

So the, the problem was that, uh, there was some stuff we learned in the lead up to the

trial about the cousin, uh, that the prosecution had done to secure his presence.

They had been trying to subpoena him and he kept not showing up.

They tried to get into the preliminary examination.

He didn't show up.

They got a material witness warrant.

They locked him up.

Um, and then they released him.

He then caught his own drug case.

And in that drug case, he also didn't come to court and they locked him up.

And then the, the seasoned homicide prosecutor that's like mocking the judge earlier in the

case, she goes into court and in his unrelated drug case gets a bond condition from that judge

that he testify in our trial.

Um, like more or less forcing his cooperation as a condition of his pre-trial release in

a different case.

Were you able to talk about that in front of the jury?

Yes.

And, um, you know, tailored around, like, we're not saying you're guilty of this thing,

but like, you know, you feel compelled because like not, not the prosecutor that was handling

your case, nothing to do with your case.

Like scary homicide prosecutor walked in there and said, if you want to stay free, you're

getting a, you're getting a electronic monitor on your leg and you're showing up to testify.

And so, uh, that was one of the points we made, but you know, the, the bigger issue here is like

this guy was, you know, drug dealing with his girlfriend's straw purchase going down to Georgia.

Right.

Our theory was that he was the person that put the shotgun inside that truck because it was

his girlfriend's shotgun.

They were up at the girlfriend's trailer right before this happened.

And so he put the shotgun in the, and he's not supposed to have a shotgun as well because,

you know, he also, he's also a felon, um, unsurprisingly.

And so, you know, we're going to get into some fifth amendment issues here.

And so we really want to get into his, the stuff he's on the phone.

We want to talk about the death threats that he's made to client before.

We want to talk about the death threats the day before the murder.

We want to talk about him.

Oh, he also lied to the police about where he was like, uh, during the murder.

He was like, Oh, is that a house over on this thing?

But I don't remember the address.

I don't remember the address.

The phone made clear that was like his drug dealing address and he definitely knew the

address of where he was staying.

Um, and so one of the big things that like is so helpful in these cases is go through these

phones.

There's always a gem somewhere in the cell phone extractions.

Go through them.

It's annoying to familiarize yourself with somebody's life, but it was really, really beneficial.

It's also just interesting.

It's interesting to see like all the different messaging and who they're messaging and all

the things, you know, the face, Facebook messenger, text messages, Instagram.

It's kind of your whole life is in there.

I really hope I get charged with a crime because, uh, any, any one of us gets our phone.

It would be embarrassing for us.

Um, so, so, you know, I really wanted to get into his Google searches that, you know, he

was Googling a resort in Canada, the, like within hours of his aunt being killed.

Um, you know, I wanted to, he was like obsessively Googling the news stories, which you wouldn't

need to, if you like had contact with the family members, you're not like interested as to what

the police know or what the public knows.

Um, we wanted to get into all of that, but he was going to invoke the fifth.

He had a lawyer and he said, I'm invoking the fifth.

And so we had a really, really difficult decision to make because, you know, if someone invokes

the fifth, you can have all of their testimony thrown out.

Um, so we had to forego, we, we elected to forego cross-examining him on any of the drug

dealing that he was doing, uh, what with this truck.

Well, did the jurors know, however, you said you were able to get into the condition of release.

So that, did the jurors know that he was facing a charge for drug dealing or was that also

sanitized?

I, I, if I remember correctly, I think he blurted it out, um, because he was not somebody

that could be controlled by anyone.

He was going to say, you know, and he was very much like, I'm not scared about talking

about, you know, my pending case.

If I remember that correctly, what happened, it was, it was very high stress cross-examining

this guy.

And then you also, um, were you able to get in, in front of the jury, the fact that he

was removing the license plates from the car?

Um, so I, I was able to cross-examine him about it and impeach him for, uh, you know, when

he said he removed it down in Georgia.

And, uh, he just gave like some really wild, wild answers.

Um, yeah, but that kind of paints the picture for the jury, right?

I mean, he's facing drug charges.

He's taking this car that he didn't rent himself and he's removing the plates.

I mean, I think you were able to still paint the picture without directly asking the question.

That's right.

Um, when I say this was the most hostile witness I've ever cross-examined, it was like by orders

of magnitude, um, that he had a, a near complete meltdown.

He kept, uh, he kept asking for a break cause he was getting too angry, um, to like go step

outside and, and talk.

Was he angry with the prosecutor as well or just you?

Me, me.

Oh, did he know you were accusing him of being a lead suspect?

Yes.

So like he caught on very quickly.

Yeah.

He's like, he's like, you're saying I call about the thing that really got him bent out of

shape and the thing, the prosecutor tried and failed like four different times, kept filing

motions to get out was something his ex-wife texted him.

So we mentioned earlier that he was dodging the police in the days after this murder happened.

He would like make a, he would make a meeting with a homicide detective and then not show up.

Um, and while all that was going on, he was in a text argument with his ex-wife about their

kids and she, uh, he's like threatened to come over to her house and do all this stuff.

And then she texts him, if you come over here, this is a verbatim quote, I'm going to go

down to the Detroit police department and tell them you had something to do with that murdering

your auntie shit.

You got this in, in front of the jury.

And, and because what happened is he was dodging the homicide detective and then he found out his,

his then girlfriend, uh, had gone and talked to them and then he showed up.

And when he showed up, he pointed the finger at my client hard, hard, hard, hard.

And so when he was testifying in front of the jury, it was very, very clear.

He knew the sky was not slow.

He was not unsophisticated.

He knew, he knew exactly what hearsay was.

He knew exactly what he was not supposed to say.

And he was just saying it.

And then you say he, he pointed the finger hard at your client.

Like how, like, what was he, how did he, how do you point the finger?

He just, so he, at one point he said, um, referring to the dad, which is, uh, his uncle, right?

He's like, my uncle, my uncle knows who did this.

He knows exactly who did this.

My uncle told my brother that your client did this.

The brother who broke in?

The brother who broke in, who pushed the air conditioner in after the police had, had left the scene.

Yeah.

But how do we find that out?

You know, when does that come up?

So it comes up, like it was the gift in the middle of trial.

So like the brother goes to testify and we're cross-examining the brother that like, uh, this is the cousin's brother, uh, that, you know, you're down there.

Why was he, why was he called to testify?

He did two things.

One, he said our client wasn't at the scene and the prosecutor kept trying to get in these strange statements, a bunch of prejudicial body camera camera of like the family weeping and falling all over the sidewalk and crying because, you know, they wanted to make this emotional, uh, and shouting, where's, where's the client?

Where's the client?

Um, so they wanted him to like, give a, give a, uh, a census of who was at the scene after this happened.

And then they also, uh, he's the one that gave our client's phone number to the police and said, this is his phone number of this guy that's not here.

That's why he was called to testify.

So when he's testifying, how does he bring up the fact that he broke into the crime scene?

I think it was a complete surprise of the prosecutor if I had to guess, because he's just like, yeah.

And, uh, you know, uh, after the police left, I really needed to let everybody in to start getting ready for the funeral or something.

So, uh, I pushed in the air conditioner in the back and crawled into the house and went and unlocked the front door.

And it's like, there are four children of this family.

They all live within two miles.

Like somebody has a key, um, to the house.

And we also then established through our cross that, uh, the cousin who were accusing of the murder had called him six times while he was on scene.

But brother, to destroy evidence.

That's the implication.

Yeah, the implication.

Yeah, yeah, we don't, yeah, we don't know.

Brother's breaking in to destroy evidence on behalf of the cousin.

That's right.

Okay.

Um, so he, that, that comes up and, and while I'm crossing the cousin, he admits that the reason he didn't go down there is because he didn't want to get implicated in the murder.

Which is a weird thing to say.

Which is a weird thing to say.

Yeah, why would you be implicated?

So how did your cross go with the cousin?

Like, was he, what was his, or I know we've kind of, everything's kind of meshed together.

And I know you've talked about his cross, but is there any like specific moments or things he said that you remember on cross-examination?

Yeah, so when I, when I started crossing him about the, uh, Googling the resort in Canada, which was the Tomahawk resort, um, he like was, he was getting it wrong.

Like he was, there was like five Google searches from like Tomahawk ort, Tomahawk sword, Tomahawk re, Tomahawk resort.

And so he, he initially was like, I like fishing.

I hadn't gotten to go fishing that year.

So I was going to go looking for a place to go fishing.

And I'm like the Tomahawk resorts in Canada, man.

He's like, see, I can't go to Canada.

I'm a felon.

See, you're playing tricks.

And I'm like, okay.

And then they, you know, he sees, oh, Tomahawk sword.

Now I remember I was trying to buy a Tomahawk sword.

He was all over the place.

The craziest thing that he did at one point, he just stopped answering the questions, stared me dead in the eyes and said, you know what?

You're a really terrible guy.

Does your mother even love you?

Wow.

Did you turn around and be like, well, at least I'm not a murderer.

Yeah.

To be honest.

Are you going to shoot my mom now?

I froze.

And I was like, I felt like I was like a, in Jurassic Park or something.

Cause I like in front of a T-Rex, I'm like, are we winning?

Don't move.

Are we winning?

Are we winning this trial right now?

Did it, did it just happen?

When he started injecting all the hearsay saying like the uncle told my brother that your client did it.

I decided to like drop the veil and just be like, listen, man, you know what hearsay is.

You know, you can't say that.

You're trying to like, like implicate my client right now because you're scared.

And as I did that, I walked out from behind the podium and started walking toward him.

And just sort of peppering him with questions.

And he went, are you about to assault me?

Are you, sir, are you intending me great bodily harm?

Wow.

And there's no objections going on or the judge isn't commenting?

So eventually.

First jury trial ever.

The prosecutor eventually objects and the judge is like, whoa, whoa, everyone calm down.

Let's just take a break.

Everyone go, go to your own corners and just cool it.

Everybody cool it.

And so that's, that's what ended up happening.

All right.

So is that it for the cousin then?

Yeah, pretty much.

That's it for the, that's it for the prosecution's case then, right?

That's right.

Okay.

So motion to dismiss, denied.

Now it's time for the defense case.

Okay.

So tell us about the defense.

Did you put on the defense?

We did.

We, our defense, uh, consisted entirely of just calling two expert witnesses, um, that

the prosecution didn't call.

Now we mentioned that the first two weeks of the trial were really boring and the prosecutor

wasn't particularly organized.

So to basically like have time to do stuff during trial days, we called all of our defense

witnesses out of order.

Okay.

So by the time we got to the prosecution's case rested, it was done.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

All right.

So then, uh, who did you call then?

We called, so it was a really, really bad strategic move on the part of the prosecutor

to not call all the forensic witnesses they had gotten.

Um, especially after their, their homicide detective, uh, was sort of like playing fast

and loose for why he didn't request certain forensic testing.

So when we call the, um, we called a serologist, which is somebody that tests bodily fluids, um,

and to talk about how there was no blood found on the end of the shotgun that our client

was found with.

Um, and they decided not to call that person.

So it looked pretty bad from their perspective that like, there's this exculpatory forensic

test that they did not put on that their witnesses conducted.

Also, it shows that they are aware of forensic evidence that could be found on shotguns.

They did it for your client's gun, but they didn't do it for the dad's gun.

That's, that's exactly right.

And then, uh, the one that had blood on it, by the way, the bloody gun, a bloody handprint

on the gun.

So we're also not getting fingerprint people involved either.

Um, yeah.

And then the second witness we call the DNA witness because the one piece of DNA testing

the prosecution did in this case is they tested the mom's fingernail clippings.

Why?

Sorry.

Okay.

Why?

Yeah.

So they did ask for testing.

They tested the fingernail clippings for, um, from the mother.

And just for the listeners out there, see, I'm, I'm catching on.

Um, you typically test the fingernail clippings in cases where there's been a struggle to see

if the, if the defendant's, uh, DNA is found underneath the fingernails of the decedent.

That'll indicate there was some kind of fight where the, the decedent got their hands.

A scratch.

A scratch.

Like a scratch.

Yeah.

That's right.

And so no one is saying anything like that happened in this case.

So why would you be testing those?

And of course the information was not, uh, didn't, didn't reveal anything about the case,

but we wanted to put this witness on to show like one, you could do DNA testing.

Look here, here they are.

It was totally pointless.

And by the way, do you want to just clarify what the actual testing policies are for the

Michigan state police?

So everything that this homicide detective said we now know is bullshit.

So those are the two witnesses we put on.

So you didn't call that witness specifically to talk about how there was no proof of a struggle.

You called that witness to get out other things.

Basically to be like, do you have any idea why this was tested?

No.

Okay.

Did, was there anything helpful there?

No.

Okay.

What kind of testing can be helpful?

That was sort of like the point of that witness.

Nice.

Is that, is that detective, the one that you cross-examine at the council table now or are

they gone?

He's there the entire trial.

He's there the whole trial.

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

Yeah.

Great.

Love it.

Like this, the, the, okay.

That, that, that, that this detective didn't do.

That guy right there.

That guy right here.

As you're like walking through the form, you're like, and so this form here, this name

here at the bottom, that's him right there.

That guy.

Yeah.

Cool.

All right.

So the defense rests.

Your client didn't testify.

Can you want to get into why that, why, what was the decision-making process behind that?

Yeah.

That, uh, you know, subjecting somebody to make them match words and wits with the prosecutor,

uh, I think is, is not fair.

Especially when at this point in the trial, we feel like we scored a lot of points.

We feel like the cousin went really, really well.

Um, and, and our client would essentially say like, I drove straight from Columbus, Ohio

up to this trailer.

Okay.

And then, and the prosecutor didn't bring in your client's statement, right?

They did.

They did.

They did prior to his, prior to his invocation.

Cause he like kind of gave them the run around about where that shotgun came from.

Now we all know it really came from the cousin's girlfriend.

And so like our argument about that is just, you know, he's just covering for the cousin's

girlfriend.

Okay.

All right.

So time for closing, uh, closing argument then.

How'd it go?

Tell us about it.

Uh, it was, it was really, um, it was kind of emotional for me, um, because one of the

themes of this case is like, just like this investigation was so bad that you locked somebody

up for three years without ever looking at any of the evidence, not, not like didn't go

out and talk, like you had evidence available to you.

You had the cousin's phone where someone's threatening to turn him in for this murder, you

know?

Um, and so I, I think we started the closing by just saying like three hours, three hours

was all it took for them to decide who the person they were going to convict for this

crime was or, or charge.

And three years of investigation revealed nothing, uh, to really implicate them.

Um, like, and we framed it or, uh, the, the closing was structured around the decisions of the homicide

detective who's sitting right there the entire time.

So it's like, let's talk about the decisions he made and the whole time.

And so it was just like, he made this decision.

He made this decision.

He didn't test this piece of evidence.

He didn't talk to this witness.

He didn't get this ring video, um, time and time and time again.

And, um, uh, at the end of my closings, I usually put in a, uh, a piece that is about

trying to preempt the prosecutor's rebuttal.

Um, and I, and I say, uh, you know, I'm going to, uh, this is the hard part for me.

I'm going to sit down now and I'm not going to be able to speak again.

And I know when I do, uh, Ms. Barron, Hannah, and, and my client are going to turn to me and

they're going to say, you forgot to say this.

You forgot to say this.

You forgot to say this.

And you know what?

They're going to be right.

Um, and the hope that I have is that, you know, you all have gotten a sense of who I am

over the next four weeks and you have some idea about how, what I would say and how

I would respond to the prosecutor.

Uh, when they get back up here and talk again.

And so while I'm going through that, um, that's sort of like my, I try to end quietly and

emotionally and very close to the jury.

And so I, I, I get worked up for that part.

Um, but I'm not a crier, uh, you know, and I think it looks kind of kitschy if you try

to make yourself cry.

Um, so I didn't want to do that, but the thing was, and I'm, I'm getting emotional now talking

about it cause I'm going back to that moment, but so I'm, I'm working myself up to it.

And then I, I turn around as the part where I'm like, and Hannah and the client are going

to, they're going to turn to me and say, you missed X, Y, and Z.

And when I do that, I see the client is just like tears are just streaming down his face.

Because the thing I had said right before this is like, it really feels like they didn't

try to, they didn't even try to get it right.

They couldn't find 15 minutes to get the video from across the street.

So like, and the 67 year old woman died and we're never going to know who killed her because

they didn't do any of the things to like, don't compound the tragedy of her death by wrongfully

convicting her son.

And so when I turned and I saw he was crying, then I started crying.

And so the, the end of the closing was like this very emotional, like the prosecutor gets

to speak last, but they don't get the last words you do.

And please make those words not guilty.

Um, and so I just like, uh, it was, it was a very intense moment for me.

I've never had anything like that happen, uh, in a trial.

Um, cause I'm not a very, I'm not a very emotional person.

Okay.

On to, on to, uh, jury deliberations then.

How long did the jurors, how long did the jurors deliberate for?

Um, a day and a half, something like that.

Yeah.

Any questions, anything like that from the jurors?

There were, there were plenty of questions, but they all had to do with this annoying felony

firearm felon in possession of a firearm thing, which we kind of highlighted at the top of

the episode about, uh, double jeopardy being an issue.

Um, they were like, we don't get this.

And I'm like, me either, man.

Um, and you know, in that situation, you just have to like keep rereading the jury instructions

of them over and over again for the elements of these offenses.

And they just grew increasingly frustrated.

That gave me a lot of confidence as to what had already happened.

Like they're not talking about that unless they've reached a decision on the murder and

they wouldn't reach a decision on a murder in a case like this in less than a day.

Like for guilty, I think.

Yeah.

Okay.

If they're, yeah, if they're haggling over the firearm thing, for sure.

For sure.

Okay.

So let's do it.

Tell us about the reading of the verdicts.

Then the jurors coming out, who was our foreperson?

Um, Mr. Mr. I've been a defendant before.

I have a lot of empathy for the, for the, uh, he was, uh, he was the foreperson.

So, you know, and they don't announce who the foreperson is until they come out for the

verdict.

And so, uh, you know, as soon as we saw it was him, we're like, Oh, okay.

We're home free.

It's very weird given the stakes, but like we had so many good signals leading up to that.

I was like, I feel confident about this.

Um, but no matter how confident you are that, that 15 seconds right before it happens, like

you start sweating, your heart starts racing.

And it's, it's, it's, it's awful.

And that time stretches, doesn't it?

Oh yeah.

Tell us about the reading of the verdict.

So, uh, the reading of the verdict.

Um, yeah, they, they, they get up there.

They, you know, have you reached a verdict on the charge of first degree murder?

Uh, they say, yes, we have not guilty.

And then you like let out a big sigh of relief and then you're like, Oh, we won.

Thank God.

And then they say on the lesser included charge of second degree murder.

And then you're like, Oh my God, there's more.

Oh no, there's more.

I forgot.

There's more.

Um, and then, you know, immediately then it's like, Oh, not guilty, not guilty.

They convicted him of felon in possession of a firearm because he was driving, uh, with

a gun in the car.

Uh, but bizarrely they acquitted him of the felony firearm associated with that.

Um, so that was no need for an enhancement, right?

There was no 10 year, there was no 10 year mandatory sentence for that.

Um, so, uh, more or less he'd spent 35 months in custody, uh, his guidelines for, for felon

in possession of firearm or zero to six months.

So he, he essentially, he was done.

So what happens next in the case?

Your client got out of jail or whatever, or, I mean, he was, was he sentenced on the,

the firearm possession?

Was it time served?

What?

It was, he ended up getting three months, uh, time served.

He had 35 months of credit.

Um, so that was, uh, fine.

The, we all got excited and we're like, okay, well let's go and pick him up from the jail

because, you know, this case obviously tore his entire family apart.

He didn't have family support.

So we're like, we'll go get him from the jail.

And so we, they say, we're going to release him at eight o'clock.

We all go to the jail.

Eight o'clock comes and goes, no client.

And then we get a text message, um, from a friend who says, I'm going to send you this

Facebook post.

And this Facebook post is from the homicide detective.

Oh, your buddy.

Okay.

And I'm going to, I'm going to read this to you because it's good enough to read verbatim.

Okay.

I know this is not the right form for my rant, but I have to say this.

Are we doing enough to develop our detectives?

I lost a homicide case today from 2020.

Not blaming my, not blaming anyone, but myself, the defense office and the new judge.

Oh my God.

The jury did their job with what they were given.

They were honest.

And I was impressed with their feedback.

I guess what I'm saying is it's not only the prosecutors that are holding your warrant back.

It's cases like mine that the prosecutors see it coming.

This is a big pill to swallow for me.

I hate it.

Especially who the defense attorney was.

The saving grace.

The defendant has other matters that will keep him in jail.

Our client was acquitted at 1130 AM at 425 PM.

The prosecutors in that up north jurisdiction refiled their felon in possession charges.

Wait, the ones that he, from when he got pulled over?

Yeah.

Or I mean, sorry, when he was arrested at the trailer?

Yes.

The felon possession that you dealt with was when the gun was in the car or the truck, right?

That's right.

So then later on, like a day or two later, whenever he was arrested, there was also a gun in the trailer.

Same gun.

Same gun.

So he possessed it on that day, too.

So now they're going to charge him with a felon possession of that firearm.

No, it's dumber than that.

They charged him with the exact same crime on the exact same day to keep him in jail.

But that's not allowed.

It's not allowed.

So I got to learn.

You know, as a public defender, I had never written like an actual, like, this is double jeopardy.

This person's had a verdict on this crime motion before.

This is the first time I wrote one of those.

That's vindictive prosecution.

That was the second motion that I filed.

And so when he, when they picked him up and brought him up to this rural county, they asked for a $1 million bond on a felon in possession of firearm charge.

Eventually, the bond that was granted was a $3,500 bond, which some people at the Solidarity Bail Fund posted.

And he was able to get out of jail about six weeks later.

Six weeks?

Yep.

Because it took a long time to, because, you know, we have connections here in Wayne County.

We know how to, like, get people, you know, we'll make an application for somebody to a bail fund in this county.

But up there, you've got to find your own private GPS tether company.

You've got to pay them $500 up front.

You know, you've got to arrange for all this.

So, and there's a rule that lawyers can't pay the bond.

So, you know, it took a while to try to identify all those folks and get that bond posted.

That's outrageous.

Okay, I'm sorry.

Oh, so the case was filed in Pigeon County.

Yeah, where Pigeon, Michigan is at, yeah.

Okay, so the Pigeon prosecutors filed the case at 425.

That's right.

Which then caused a warrant to be issued, which caused them to be held in jail at your county.

Which we don't know as we're sitting there.

We get this Facebook post from the detective, and we realize that our client's not getting out of jail.

Because originally, he was arrested up at the trailer for being a felon in possession of a firearm because of the trucks, being stuck with, stopped at the truck with the firearm.

And then he was transferred to your county for the murder charge.

And in that, he was charged with felon in possession of a firearm.

Down here in Detroit.

Same conduct.

Yeah, so a different prosecuting agency cannot do for the same conduct unless they're the feds.

That's exactly right.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

So the dual sovereignty doctrine, which is this, does not apply to subdivisions of the same state.

Right.

Okay, so, all right.

So then you filed, did you file the motions?

Were they granted?

Were the case dismissed?

The saga continues.

We were, I was up in, I went up to that county.

I'm taking that case pro bono because it's not part of the public defender contract.

I got permission to do that.

And so the client, the good news is the client is out.

The client is happy.

The client no longer has a GPS tether on.

And we are still litigating the double jeopardy and vindictive prosecution motions.

But we feel very strongly about those claims.

All right.

Well, it's, I think we're at the end here.

Are we ready to wrap it up?

Lauren?

Yeah.

I just, I'm, yes.

This case is.

It's a lot.

The way that that ended is, it's so unfortunate.

It's, that is, it's really.

Yeah.

The gut, the gut punch, the gut punch of like waiting for your client outside the jail and

they're saying he's not getting released is, that's, it's rough.

And on bullshit, unlawful, I mean, really it's double jeopardy.

So it's not just bullshit charges.

They're unlawful charges.

That's just really.

Did you attach the Facebook post as an exhibit?

I did better than that.

I put it in line in the body of the motion as is clear that it's a Facebook screenshot.

And I almost feel like you can get a warrant for his entire Facebook account.

That would be beautiful.

You should do that.

I wonder what his.

Get it all.

His DMs and his text messages look like.

I mean, here in LA County, we have the, all that stuff coming out about their gang messages.

Yeah.

Can you imagine what you might find?

And the racial slurs.

I know.

That would be incredible.

Oh my God.

You could, you could undo, you could get rid of this.

Oh my God.

I also love that he was like, are we doing enough to train our detective?

Because he was the detective that completely bungled this investigation and his inferiors,

just the sort of responding officers all knew they should be doing more.

And he was like, nah, it's fine.

Wow.

Great job, guys.

Great job.

This is a great case.

This is a great trial story.

So much.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, this is, this is, but again, though, this is, this is quite the trial.

I mean, on the face of it, it looked bad.

You know, the shotgun, the yellow, whatever, it all could be explained.

Once we got found, there's other suspects, other evidence to be considered.

The police didn't do much with anything.

So great job, great performance.

Um, but all right.

So I'm going to wrap it up though.

I'm going to ask a question.

I asked all our guests.

We'll start with blaze blaze.

You've been a public defender for public defender for 10 years.

Tell us about why you became a public defender.

Um, yeah, I became a public defender, uh, because I really, uh, think that it is awful.

I've seen how prosecutors work since I was a kid.

Um, you know, I, I was arrested myself when I was, uh, a juvenile and, uh, saw it both in

the inside.

My mother was also a secretary for a public defender.

And I just think like the idea that you can look down at a file for five seconds and then

like make a decision about whether or not someone should be locked up, taken away for their family

for years is, uh, you need to have like a special degree of arrogance to, to believe you can make

those judgment calls, um, given the impact that they have.

And then I'm there to stop that.

And Hannah, tell the A&G universe, the A&G audience, why you became a public defender.

Well, I became a public defender.

I learned in law school about how our criminal legal system oppresses people and marginalizes

people and being a public defender felt like a way to chip away at that in some small way.

And I feel like I get to help people every day and, and fight against that in my own way.

Well, thanks Hannah and Lauren.

Always great to see you.

Thanks for being my co-host today.

Thanks everybody.

That was so fun.

Congratulations guys.

That's a big win.

And good luck with, uh, the other stuff.

Yeah, take them down.

Take them down.

Get, get the warrant for that whole Facebook profile.

I'm telling you, that'd be great.

Then you can just throw it right there on the internet.

Yeah.

Call us back if you get that.

Call us back.

I want to know what you find in his Facebook and his private messages.

Just throw it on the internet and let the trolls have at it.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Another Not Guilty.

Shout out to Daniel Mark, original A&G theme music composer, and Mike Grimm for the remix.

And guess what?

We'll be back in two weeks with Another Not Guilty, straight from the trenches.