Meth, Murder, and a Missing Boyfriend – When the Case Unravels Like a Bad Thriller

Yee-haw! Giddy up, my A&Gers! We got a heck of a show for you this week, giving you all a little home-grow L.A. County flavor, with our guest being an L.A. County public defender.

So take a listen, enjoy it, and then do us a solid over here in the A&G-verse by leaving a rating and review wherever you get this podcast.

Mmm, that would be awesome. Maybe leave five stars and write something like, oh my god, A&G is the best!

I love David! He has the sexiest voice in the whole podcast industry!

Yeah, that would be cool. That would be awesome.

So we are making moves over here at the A&G Studios.

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And with that said, without further ado...

Oh, one more thing.

If you want to be a guest on the episode, go to the website also and fill out the submission form, because we would love to hear your story.

And with that said...

Without further ado, here's this week's episode of another Not Guilty.

I was like, okay, let's back up, time out, you know.

Okay.

When you left your home that day, you were wearing pants?

Oh, yeah.

When you got home before the chase, you were still wearing pants?

Yeah, I hadn't gone in and changed.

Okay.

When the chase is happening, do you take your pants off?

No, I never take my pants off.

I was like, okay.

When you are in the parking lot of the middle school, do you take your pants off?

No, they're still on.

It's such a ridiculous line of questioning.

Right.

When you go home and you're falling asleep, do you take your pants off?

No, I still have them on.

When you're shot, do you take your pants off?

No, I stopped stuttering my pants.

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's public defenders get on a daily basis.

In an unjust criminal system.

With a deck stacked against us.

Another Not Guilty.

And welcome back, everybody, to Another Not Guilty.

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

One Not Guilty brought to you state-by-state, defense attorney-by-defense attorney, public defender.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is the real stories of the criminal justice system,

how shit really goes down, is told by us, us public defenders,

when we expose the corruption and the waste of the government,

Elon Musk style, and the bureaucracy that we have to fight.

And what a waste.

And us, public defenders, we represent the truth.

That's what we're here for.

To tell you the real stories.

And of course, Another Not Guilty cannot do it without our awesome co-host, Lauren, today.

What's up, Lauren?

How you doing?

What's up, guys?

Good to see you.

I actually spoke at a high school about being a public defender today.

So, I'm all juiced about being a public defender.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Kind of walk the walk.

What high school was this?

How'd you get involved in that?

Long Beach Poly.

Oh, okay.

Mm-hmm.

Went to talk to them about being a public defender.

A lot of questions they had, or?

They did have a lot of questions.

At first, they were shy, and then they started coming up with the questions.

And when I left, there was a little bit of a line of kids who wanted to do internships with our office.

Oh, I love it.

I'm coming for your kids.

Were you the only speaker today?

No.

One of our misdemeanor attorneys went, too.

Okay.

All right.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Well, Lauren, that sounds cool.

We can talk about it later.

But right now, we're here to discuss the awesome trial lawyer we have in our own very office,

Los Angeles Public Defender's Office.

We have our guest today is Avneet Chata.

How are you doing, Avneet?

Did I say your last name right?

Yeah, you said it perfectly.

I'm doing well.

Excited to be here.

Again.

Also spoke.

Again.

Again.

Yes.

We're recording this.

But I spoke at LMU yesterday about being a public defender, so I'm also energized about this.

Oh, you hit the college students.

I hit the college students.

And I'm just coming off a fresh hung jury split 6-6.

So, you know, I'm living the life right now.

There's a lot of PD pride today on this podcast.

Let's go.

Right on.

But this hung jury 6-6 is not the trial you're going to share with us today.

You're going to share a knock guilty you received recently on a different case because you're

just a badass hot trial lawyer in it, in the trenches all the time, representing the

clients, and we appreciate that.

So, Avneet, you've reached out to the podcast.

Actually, you reached out to me.

You said, hey, David, we're in the same fantasy football league, but I also got this cool knock

guilty that maybe it could be cool for your jury trial.

And then I think you let me beat you that weekend.

And I said, okay, yeah, you can be on the show.

So, I appreciate that.

David has to get his wins where he can.

Yeah, it was a trade to get all this thing.

That's awesome.

Well, let's jump into it.

Okay.

Let's not waste everyone's time.

Avneet, why don't you tell the A&Gverse what your client was charged with?

Mine was looking at 20 to life on attempt murder.

Straight attempt murder, 20 to life.

It's around there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just one count?

Yeah.

Just one count.

Attempt murder.

Nothing too wild other than that singular charge.

He had no record.

First degree, obviously.

Yes.

First degree premeditated murder.

And that was it.

It was just one count.

That's all we had to worry about.

Obviously, a lot of time, but just one count.

Wasn't that 15 to life?

Yeah.

But then there was like the weapons enhancement or like the gun enhancement that they alleged.

So, just added a bit more time.

What does the gun enhancement add?

I don't remember.

I think it adds 25.

No.

Well, that's a big gun.

There's different gun enhancements.

Yeah.

I'm sure there was a gun enhancement.

I don't remember which one, but I just remember.

Because if it's the baby gun, it's just 10 more.

It's just 10 gun, 10 more.

Yeah.

I think it was the baby gun.

Yeah.

As opposed to the granddaddy gun, which adds 25 to life.

Yeah.

That really didn't like, yeah.

The gun enhancement didn't factor into our analysis of whether we should go to trial or not.

That's why it was something I wasn't even concerned with.

After I advised a client.

We can all take a moment to mourn the loss of George Gascon as our DA, who forbade people in his office from charging the 25 to life gun enhancement.

Rest in peace, George Gascon.

That was a good moment of silence.

Yeah.

All right.

So what did your client allegedly do then, Avni?

Can you tell the story of the people's case?

Yeah.

The allegation was that my client shot his best friend's girlfriend.

And the story goes that on September 10th, a woman is found in the middle of the street of a neighborhood in Little Rock, California.

And in the early morning hours, she's heard moaning, just asking for help.

She's like, her body's lying next to a car.

A neighbor wakes up, sees what's going on.

He calls 911.

They ask him what he saw.

And he's like, I didn't see anything.

I just saw a car and a woman lying next to it.

I saw nothing else.

And she, in her dying, she was on the verge of dying.

Like, I watched the body one video and this woman probably had maybe, like, minutes left before law enforcement could have saved her, right?

And she is, in her dying breaths, moaning my client's name, Harry, Harry, Harry, on the street, like, just laying there, dying.

Cops are asking her, who did this to you?

And she keeps saying, Harry.

And she has a bullet to her head in her brain, leaves her permanently disabled.

It's not until November that they can actually figure out more of what she's, her side of the story, because she was in a coma for nearly two months.

And so, in November, she tells them that my client came to her property in the middle of the night and shot her in the head out of nowhere.

Okay, so, the police were called because a neighbor saw her?

A person in a neighborhood saw her.

It wasn't her neighbor.

It was just a person in a random neighborhood.

Oh, this is a person just going through the neighborhood and saw her on the ground.

So, he was, he was, he woke up for the day.

And he went outside and saw a car and a woman moaning for help and saying a name.

And he went to go look and he saw her lying there and called 911.

Her body was, she was shot somewhere else, about three miles away, and her body was dumped in a random neighborhood.

That's what the prosecution was saying.

Yes.

And so, this person saw her early in the morning?

Yeah, like around 6 a.m.

Okay.

And then the police show up.

That's like sheriffs, right?

LA sheriffs?

Yeah.

LA sheriffs show up.

She's airlifted to the nearest trauma center where she spends the next several months.

And then when the sheriffs do show up, she's just moaning the name Harry.

Exactly.

They airlifted to the hospital.

She's in a coma.

She comes out of the coma a month later.

And then a detective goes and, is it a detective, I assume, goes and interviews her about what happened?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Detective goes and interviews her.

And she gives some wild story that.

Oh, by the way, this is, let's just describe the geographic layout of Little Rock, Little Rock, which is near Lancaster.

It's part of LA County.

And it's just kind of desert, right?

Yeah.

It's like you hop on a magical freeway known as the 14 and you drive about 60 miles out into the desert.

And from there, you take another magical highway called Pear Blossom Highway and you get to Little Rock, California, which is just a bunch of shacks in the desert and maybe a couple of legit homes, but mostly shacks.

It's where the cartel.

Yeah.

Cactus is where allegedly the cartel is operating.

Cartel operates out of Little Rock.

It's like you're driving to the moon, you know?

Yeah.

It's like out there in the middle of nowhere.

Okay.

All right.

So, tell us about our interview.

So, this is two months later now because she's been in a coma and the detective comes and interviews her in the hospital?

Exactly.

And what did she tell the detective?

So, she told the detective that basically Harry is her boyfriend, Adrian's best friend.

And she tells the detective that her and Harry don't get along, that Adrian and Harry are best friends.

And for quite some time, Harry has never liked her.

Wait, I'm already lost.

Harry is her boyfriend.

No, Adrian's the boyfriend.

Adrian's the boyfriend.

And Harry is Adrian's best friend.

Right.

Exactly.

And Harry doesn't like his best friend's girlfriend.

Exactly.

Okay.

I'm caught up.

Can we give her a name?

Yeah.

Her name's Angie.

Okay.

Angie?

Yeah.

Angie and Adrian.

That's cute.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, Angie's in the hospital telling the detective that Harry and her don't get along.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And so, they tried to learn more about the relationship between the three of them.

And so, we learned that for quite some time, we're not ever told an exact number of years, but quite some time, Harry and Adrian have been very close best friends.

It's that even during marital issues for Harry, he's gone and lived with Adrian repeatedly.

And that Adrian and him work together.

They're like best friends that you can imagine, right?

From a movie.

At some point, Angie starts dating Adrian.

And in about July of 2022, Adrian goes out of town and Harry asks her out on a date and she rejects him.

And that was the one.

Harry asks Angie out on a date.

Yeah.

After she'd already been dating Adrian?

Exactly.

Some best friend Harry is.

I know, right?

But it was out of nowhere.

No other moves were ever made.

And she says no.

She rejects his advances.

And they're like, yeah, everything was cool after that.

Supposedly, according to Angie, everything was cool after that.

But then all of a sudden, by August, Harry started hating Angie, was calling Angie a bitch.

He was calling her a witch.

That she's doing black magic on him.

That she's all these mean things.

Did Angie tell Adrian that Harry had hit on her?

No.

Yeah.

That is never revealed to Adrian himself.

Angie, the first and only time that Angie tells people, or the first time she tells anyone is law enforcement after she comes out of her coma.

And so Angie then says that, well, then I think law enforcement is just, the sheriff's department and the detective is just as confused as we were, right?

Like, well, okay, this is all weird.

Like, well, okay, this is all weird.

Why would these facts drive a man to shoot you?

And she says, well, a week before I was shot, I had a fight with Harry and Adrian and Adrian's friends.

And the fact that Harry and Adrian and Adrian and all the friends got in a pickup truck, drove over to her house to get the keys back.

Like they yelled at her, my client threatened to shoot her during this argument and they were calling her names, that they were calling her a puta, a witch, that they were calling her all these things in Spanish.

And from there, she was scared because my client was serious about threatening to shoot her and that he apparently pulled out a gun, did not shoot her, but instead just pointed the gun in the air and fired a gun in the air five times.

This was all because Angie allegedly stole some of Adrian's property?

Adrian's car keys, yeah.

Mistakenly took her car, mistakenly took Adrian's car keys and as a result, Adrian got mad, my client got mad, and this is, my client shot a gun in the air.

Supposedly all of her keys.

And was Adrian there when Harry shot his gun in the air and was threatening to kill Angie?

Yes.

To which Adrian didn't do, Adrian didn't do anything.

Adrian was like, it's cool, you can talk to my girl like that.

This is her version.

Her version.

Right.

Yeah, it was her version.

Or her reality.

Yeah, but even in her version, her boyfriend was like, that's fine, you can fire your gun and threaten to kill her.

Yeah.

And this was a couple of days before the actual shooting.

Yeah, this is like a week to a couple of days before the actual shooting.

So that exact date's unclear because she changes it over time.

She says it happened a couple of days, a week, and we just know it happened sometime before the actual shooting.

I, you know, I feel like there's drugs at play here because it's like there's been a lot of talking and we still haven't even gotten to it.

I bet the police are just like, okay, so then what happened?

How did we get?

Well, we did hear that Little Rock is the epicenter of the cartels, apparently.

Yes, yes.

And I get this, like I said, when I spoke with David, I told him this case involves witches, involves the cartel, involves drugs.

Yeah.

It involves everything.

And it involves them not guilty.

And so the detective quickly in the initial interview starts asking her, okay, what happened on the day of the shooting?

And she says, well, I went to go get McDonald's.

When I left my home, the sun was going down.

She offers these random facts up that become very big deal later on.

But she offers up on her own that the sun was going down when she went to get McDonald's and that she went to get McDonald's and coming home.

When she was coming home, she saw a pickup truck leaving her property.

And I just want to pause here for a second and say, Angie is living on a empty five-acre property.

There is nothing growing on this property.

It is chicken wire fence all around.

Nothing legal.

She is poor.

She lives on GR, which is like $221 a month, general relief in Los Angeles County.

And Angie needed a place to stay because Adrian would not let Angie stay at her property, at his property.

And so Angie found people who would let her live on the property for free in a trailer long as she made sure that no one came onto the property.

And if the cops ever came, she would call them immediately.

Oh, yeah.

Because they were totally cooking meth.

Right?

I mean, something's going on, right?

It was Breaking Bad out there.

And just like Breaking Bad, she's living in a trailer and she's living on this remote property, which is the nearest home to her.

I checked on Google Maps.

It's about a half mile to three quarters of a mile.

So she gets to live there in exchange for being the lookout.

Exactly.

And it's all completely free and kosher.

And every couple of days, people will come by and give her fresh water.

They will, like, give her, refuel her generator.

And they'll, like, do things to make sure that she can survive, basically, out there.

Okay.

So I have already, there must be a ton of suspects.

Like, she's clearly involved in something nefarious.

Right.

Right.

It all seems weird.

And these are facts that she's offering up on her own, right?

She's telling the police this.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

So she sees on the, on the day of the shooting, she's coming back to her trailer and sees

a pickup truck driving away, coming out of her property.

Right.

So there's like a small little driveway off her property onto the street and the sun.

And remember, the sun was going down.

And so she says, as I was coming to my property, it was already dark.

I just saw lights and a pickup truck driving out.

I didn't know who was in the pickup truck.

I never see that person.

I just assumed it was Harry because he said he was going to shoot me.

So I started driving away from my home.

I just, I just kept driving.

Why did she assume it was Harry?

I mean, she just said that there are people who come and refill her generator and bring her

water and that she's supposed to be looking out for people who might be coming onto the

property.

Why did she assume it was Harry?

Yeah.

You know, I asked her that over the course of the entire case and she never gives us a

good answer.

She just said, I believe it was Harry.

Yeah.

Okay.

And, and she even admits through the course of the case that the pickup truck had nothing

distinctive, nothing like crazy.

It was just a regular Chevy looking pickup truck.

Right.

And so she just suspected it was Harry and she started, she floored it to drive away from

the property.

And next year, the pickup truck took her on her chase.

And again, this is her initial story.

So I'm just going to focus on that.

She just, it went on the chase.

And from there she head out, she eventually makes it to a nearby middle school where she

hides in the parking lot of the middle school with their lights off in a dark area of the

parking lot.

And when she feels comfortable, um, she heads back to her home.

Uh, so eventually after some time she goes back to her home, she says it was a, um, warm

night.

So she decided to go to sleep in her car when she got back to her property and she had her

dogs with her.

And she remembers that she fell asleep in the car in the driver's seat.

And, um, at some point she woke up to her dogs barking.

Uh, and when she woke up to her dogs barking, she looks up and she sees, uh, Harry standing

at the door of her car with the door open.

And he starts yelling at her saying random things, um, which change over time.

And, uh, then he proceeds to, uh, put a gun to her head and shoot her in the head, um,

of her property in the middle of nowhere.

And all she remembers from that point is falling to the ground and feeling like hot, warm liquid

coming down her face.

And then she wakes up and she remembers her dogs licking her face and then she wakes up,

um, in the hospital.

Did she say she, she wakes up to Harry outside of her car, her truck?

Yes.

Her car.

Her car.

Her car.

Are her windows open?

No, she, he has already opened her door.

Oh, he opened the door.

Does she get out and run at some point?

No.

No.

Does she get out of the car at some point?

She gets out after she's shot.

Harry shoots her and then she falls to the ground outside the car.

Okay.

And where's the bullet entry at?

Uh, it's right in her, uh, top of her head.

Uh, in her, in the, there's a bullet lodged in her brain.

Right.

On the right, on the right hand side or, uh, left hand, left hand side, driver's driver's

side.

Yeah.

I hope all the dogs were okay.

The dogs are fine.

No animals were hurt during the course of this case.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, okay.

So she doesn't remember how she got to the place where the person who called 911 found

her.

Yeah.

So, um, during the initial interview, that, that is something we don't learn.

Um, we do learn that over the course of the case, we have some answers, um, during the

initial interview.

And this is how our defense started to unfold.

She was also, again, volunteering random facts.

And when they were asking her, who are the people that are bringing, um, water onto the

property, she was giving us names.

Um, but the names were changing over time, but some of them were generally consistent.

Um, like Pedro was one and, um, and so on and so forth.

And so, so then, then that's where our investigation led to is like, who are these people?

They generally become known.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

I just want to say generally these men become known as the three men.

Okay.

We, the three wise men are the three strangers, right?

Yeah.

We get three men involved in this.

Uh, all right.

All right.

Well, let's talk about this.

So that's some, initially this is the story she tells the police.

It's all, it's all memorialized in a police report.

You get the case, you see the charges.

It's, it's attempted 187.

You read the police report.

You see this kind of crazy story.

Um, do you have any initial impressions when you first read it?

Yeah.

So her interview that I just laid out was not, was very sanitized in the police report.

Right.

Based off the initial police report, I was like, this is a pretty clean cut situation where

our client's guilty.

Right.

Like it's a very straightforward, she's shot in the head, lying, lying on the ground, dying

breath, saying Harry.

Um, but that's where we ask, I go talk to the client and the client's adamant that he didn't

do this.

He's adamant that he.

Let's talk about that.

So then you, you see the police report, you think it's a pretty open shut case or, I mean,

I hate this.

I hate to use these terms that are these colloquial terms and stuff like that.

Uh, but it looks at it.

It's like, oh man, it's like, I mean, she sees the guy, she says it's Harry.

It's not looking great for you.

It's not looking good.

So you go and meet your client, Harry, and tell us about that.

Yeah.

So we go to the, we, so I, so I go to the gel and I meet with him and, um, I, I introduce

myself and, you know, the first interview, he, I usually on, on life cases of this nature.

Um, I don't like to talk about the facts off the bat.

I like to just introduce myself and be like, we're going to get along with each other for

a while and be very, you know, just build a relationship.

But my client was out of, he's like, yo, fuck that shit.

Like, let's talk.

Like, I didn't do this.

Um, and so he's, he's adamant that he didn't do it.

He's adamant.

He's not involved.

And he, he says, you know, you can ask anyone.

I had nothing to do with her.

I was at my home and in, in the Valley at the time.

How did, how did he end up getting arrested?

What happened is once she said to Harry, they, she, they said, well, how can we figure out

who Harry is?

She said his numbers in my phone.

They got access to her phone.

They then, uh, found the number that she was referring to.

And from there, they traced that number to my client's, um, residence.

They executed a search warrant on him and they tracked him to his business where he was working

one day and they arrested him at work.

And did he give a statement?

No, he never gives a statement.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

The only, the only bad fact that the alleged only bad fact in the police report that's

perceived, um, as a statement by the prosecution, not by us was that my client started crying

when he was showing pictures of, um, Angie on the ground with the bullet in our head.

That's not even that bad.

I mean, you would show someone, somebody who's just been shot in the head and expect them to

have a reaction.

Yeah.

But the prosecution was like, oh, and he, and he cried and he got so emotional, like

a guilty person would.

And I was like, oh, yeah, but if he hadn't done anything, they would have said it was,

it was evidence of him being a cold blooded killer too.

So is they showed him the photo at the police station where they tried to interview him or

they showed him the photo at the scene where he was arrested at work.

They showed him at the police station.

Okay.

So they tried, so they sat him down and then to interview him and he, did he invoke his

fifth amendment rights?

He did.

Okay.

But they still showed him the photograph anyways.

Right.

And he started crying.

So like, all right, you got me, you know, um, he cried, but he didn't say anything.

Oh, okay.

Um, all right.

So then, and then you meet him.

You said, he says, I think we kind of glossed over this, but he was in the Valley at his

home at the time was what he said.

Right.

So he's kind of bringing out.

So he doesn't live close.

He lives like two hours away in the Valley.

Right.

Does he live alone?

Uh, no, he lives with his wife and kids.

Okay.

Did he say that they could verify he was at home at that time?

Uh, he, he did not, they were not able to verify that he was home.

They were like, once we were, he, he was up later than us.

And once we went to bed, we didn't, we, we have no idea what happened.

Okay.

So you said, that's from your investigator.

You said your investigator to go interview them.

Okay.

Yeah.

So that's one of the things you did.

That wife is.

Um, okay.

So then, so you talked to Harry, he said he was in the Valley.

You sent an investigator to go interview the family because you're trying to build an alibi

defense.

The family's like, well, he stays up late.

I have no fucking clue.

Great.

In terms of your conversation with Harry, did you learn anything else?

Harry says, look, she doesn't like me.

We don't get along, but I, you can go talk to Adrian and say all this and that.

And I was like, you know, at that point I, I, I was, I did point out to my client.

I was like, you know, Adrian's never interviewed in this case.

And that was a big fact that, cause, cause the client then told me more about his relationship

with Angie and how it is.

And I was like, why would Angie say it's you?

And that's where I, it really started sticking out that Adrian is never interviewed by the

sheriff's department, even though he's a critical character, right?

He's the mutual thing that ties them together.

He's not, he's never interviewed.

Um, and so client was like, look, I, I know Adrian, go talk to him and see what Adrian says.

So that was the next step.

We, we then go talk to Adrian.

Um, and when we go talk to Adrian, he, um, he gives a very rambled story that makes no

sense whatsoever.

Um, he doesn't vouch for Harry, but he doesn't vouch for Angie either.

It's not like, uh, he's not, yeah, he's, he's kind of all over the place and he's not

making a ton of sense with it, with the investigation.

He doesn't help either side.

Um, did you guys ask him about Angie taking his keys and Harry firing a gun in the air and

threatening to kill Angie?

Did you ask him about that?

We, we asked him everything and he was like, he, he verified that Angie did take the keys,

but he never verified the gun being shot in the air.

What about the threat, the verbal threat?

He didn't confirm or deny that.

He didn't confirm or deny.

Exactly.

Wait, what was that, Lauren?

I missed what Lauren said.

Did he, did he verify the verbal threat, even if he didn't verify the firing of the weapon?

No, he didn't verify the verbal threat either.

Did he confirm that they didn't get along?

Yeah, he did confirm that they, they, they were not on a good.

But that was basically it.

Yeah.

He didn't offer a reason as to why or anything.

No.

You got nothing out of Adrian's interview.

Other than knowing that this dude is not a credible witness that he's probably done a

lot of meth or is he, you know, he might, maybe Adrian's, maybe Angie's not even really,

Angie thinks, did he say that Angie was his, his girlfriend at least?

Did he confirm or deny the relationship?

He did not confirm or deny the relationship either.

He said, look, I, I know Angie.

Yeah.

She wants to be in a relationship with me, but I don't think I'm in a relationship.

I don't think I'm in a relationship with her.

He didn't say that or he did say that?

He said, that was his statement.

He's like, I don't think I'm in a relationship with her.

Stop it.

Aw, what?

Yeah, yeah.

I just.

Was Adrian able to account for his whereabouts on the time, on the day that Angie was shot?

Uh, we did not ask Adrian, uh, about his whereabouts, but.

Sus.

Did he say, did he say why, uh, Angie cannot live with him?

His own girlfriend can't live with him and has to live in this fucking.

Well, she's not his girlfriend.

You don't let one of your bench players live in your house.

Come on.

This girl is the dumbest girl.

I mean, I feel so, she's just so clueless.

She's like, she thinks he's in a relationship.

She can't live there.

She has to go live in some sort of sketch house.

Probably gives her meth.

Here's some meth.

Go stay over there and I'll come see you when I, you know.

Was there a talk screen done when she was in the hospital?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That comes into play later.

Yeah.

A talk screen is done though.

Okay.

And.

Was she meth-y?

She was meth-y.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

It's almost like we've done stuff like this before.

However, however, it is not a confirmatory doctrine.

It is just a presumptive one.

So we don't know how much meth.

We don't know any of that information.

We just know that she was screened for meth at the hospital and there might have been meth in her system.

So you didn't get a quantitative analysis?

No.

No.

Because it was from the hospital and it was one of the shittier hospitals in L.A. County.

So that didn't help.

But Adrian did tell us a few good nuggets that led us more in our investigation.

And this is information we couldn't use because these witnesses either said things that weren't helpful, like they didn't take us anywhere or other things.

But they really told us more about Angie.

And so Angie was like, she couldn't live on my property.

I didn't want her to live on my property because she would get me evicted.

And so my investigator asked him more about why she would get him evicted.

And he said, well, my landlords never liked her.

They always thought she was causing problems.

And they told me repeatedly that if she's ever around the property, that it wasn't good for their young kids.

And that she's always causing a ruckus and that if I let her back on, that I would get evicted.

Something along those lines.

And so the next thing was to go interview the landlords.

Yeah.

And so they...

And he lives in Little Rock?

Is that what it's called again?

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Little Rock.

So Adrian lives in Little Rock also.

Yes.

Okay.

And so the landlords were basically like, look, we think Adrian's a good guy.

We just don't like Angie.

We really hate Angie.

We think she smokes a lot of marijuana.

And I want to take your time out here and explain like these are people that don't have...

The landlords are people that don't have experience with drugs.

And so when they refer to people using marijuana, I think they actually mean people that use meth, right?

I think like my parents have a conception that people that use marijuana have similar reactions to people who use meth.

Yeah.

It's all the same.

Basically, they tell you she's a tweaker and we don't want her here.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But then they were like, we don't think Adrian did it.

We don't think Adrian did it.

We think Adrian's a good person.

We also think that Harry's a good person.

Oh.

And so they're like, yeah.

So they said Harry's a good person, that Adrian's a good person.

They couldn't see either of them doing that.

And so they were like, but we have nothing more to offer.

Adrian probably did the meth with Angie.

Let's be real.

Why does Harry go over there?

Why does Harry hang out at Adrian's?

They just know these landlords.

They're best friends.

I know.

But do we know anything about them hanging out and their interactions or like why the landlords feel like they can say they think...

If you know something you can do, if you don't, you know, okay, we'll move on.

No, I never...

You know, that's a good question that I never bothered even thinking about.

I just accepted it.

Yeah.

You like the answer?

They said Harry was good.

Let's just...

No further questions.

Yeah.

He brought pizza one time.

He came over with pizza.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But Adrian turned into one of my potential suspects.

So I was like, I can never call these landlords because I don't like that they say Adrian's a good person, that Adrian can't have done it.

So that's why I never choose to call the landlords.

Even though they say Harry couldn't have done it, they also take Adrian out of play for us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you got a plan B, Adrian.

It's not necessarily that the...

It's not where the evidence leads you.

That's not how the defense works.

And the sheriffs didn't even interview Adrian, so they didn't want to know where the evidence leads them either.

So nobody really wants to know where the evidence leads in this case so far.

I know you're going along the track, but okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So then what happens next in the development of the case?

Yeah.

So the next thing is that I was initially dead set on getting this alibi, right?

I mean, I was talking to the client and talking to other attorneys in our office about this alibi evidence.

And we tried to get cell phone records from T-Mobile, but by the time I...

That client's cell phone?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Unfortunately, T-Mobile wasn't very cooperative and we couldn't get a ton of evidence from T-Mobile.

Were you trying to get the cell phone records because there was communication on there you wanted to see?

Or you wanted to ping his location off the cell phone towers?

Cell phone tower.

If I can show that his cell phone was at his home the entire time...

That would be helpful.

I would see if that can get...

Exactly.

Exactly.

But T-Mobile basically told us to go pound rocks and just fuck off.

So at the same time...

This episode not brought to you by T-Mobile.

T-Mobile sucks.

They suck so bad.

I just switched to T-Mobile too.

Oh, my God.

But, you know, at the same time, there was an avenue for us to get the cell phone records that just would have taken a substantially longer time SDT-ing it and getting all that, which is subpoena deuces tinkum, but...

Oh, of course you have to SDT them.

Wait, you didn't try...

You just tried to get them?

Yeah.

You gotta...

Of course you gotta SDT them, bro.

No, I didn't want to SDT them because my client was authorizing me to get his cell phone records, right?

So I didn't want to go and get it through an SDT initially.

Because then it goes to the court file.

Right.

And I didn't want the DA to know what I was working on.

Yeah, so that's probably an important distinction that we should explain to people.

If you can get a release from your client for any type of records, they can come directly to you as your client's attorney.

But if you submit a subpoena, and if it's for documents and records, it's a subpoena deuces tinkum, an SDT.

A court order.

That's a court order, and those documents go to the court file and technically belong to the court, and the DA can make an argument that they get a copy.

And there could be something bad on there that you don't want the DA to see.

Exactly.

And I also didn't want the DA to know what I was working on, right?

And a lot of the disinformation isn't from the police report.

It's just from my conversations with the client.

So were you worried that your client wasn't telling you the truth, and the records might show that he wasn't at home, and that he was, in fact, near the victim?

That was part of my concern.

Are you saying that your client wasn't telling you the truth, that you were worried about that?

Yeah, that was part of my concern.

That our clients sometimes lie.

Is that what you're going on record saying on No They're Not Guilty right now?

Yeah, that is what I'm saying on record.

PD Pro Chip.

Our clients will lie to us and make their case worse.

Neat!

But, you know, the other thing was the DA who I was going with is shady.

And I didn't want her knowing what's going on in my head.

But the reality was, to get the SDT and everything, it would take too long.

And the judge that we were in front of was like, this isn't a simple case.

You can go to prelim without all this stuff.

We'll just worry about it.

There goes your open and shut there, David.

The judge said it for you.

You don't need to investigate, Ebony.

This is clear.

Yeah, and they were like, this is for prelim.

You don't need it for prelim.

That's for trial.

You don't need this for prelim.

So I tried to get a continuance as much as I could.

The only reason I got one continuance was, two continuances was because I needed to do

a full interview with my client in Spanish.

And then the second one was because I was engaged in a different trial.

So that's the only reason why I got two continuances.

And after that, we were set for prelim.

All right.

So anything significant happened at prelim?

Yeah.

So at the prelim, her story changes and it becomes more entertaining.

Oh, great.

Great.

Yes.

And so at the prelim, her story changes over.

The prelim takes all day.

And the morning is devoted to direct examination by the prosecution.

And the rest of the afternoon is devoted to my cross-examination.

And the only reason my cross-examination takes so long is because it turned into a second

direct.

Because again, her story had information that we had no other answers to.

Like there was reference to three men.

There was just this property was strange.

And we wanted to learn all this other information about her.

Again, given what the judge had already told me about my case, it was clear that I wasn't

getting a dismissal, even if I could show that my client shouldn't be held to answer.

So I took a different approach about just learning more information.

And from there, she starts off, again, the direct is the same as the narrative from the

body-worn video and the hospital interview.

But on cross, we start asking her, well, who are these three men?

And when did you first see them that day?

Things like that.

So we start off with...

So yeah, so she gets up there and she testifies what?

What does she say about three men?

Did I just miss this?

No, no.

So basically, I was just asking her, tell me who you mentioned in your interview at the

hospital that there were three men that you know.

Who are these three men?

And she says, these are the three men that come to work on the property.

And I was like, oh, okay.

What kind of work do they do on the property?

She's like, I don't really know.

But they go onto the other side of the property behind a wall and they just do work there.

There's weird smells.

Yeah.

And I was like, why are you talking about three men?

If Harry's the one that shot you, why are these three...

She's like, oh, because the three men were there when Harry fired the gun in the air.

And I was like, oh, okay.

Tell us more about that.

So I remember that original argument where Harry shoots the gun in the air over the keys.

Supposedly, after it had happened, the three men were working on the property at that time.

And they were like, yo, you have to be careful from that guy.

And they were like, you can't have him coming around and things like that.

And I was like, okay.

So they were there that day.

She's like, yeah.

And she says that they saw him shoot the gun in the air.

They heard him make the threats.

And they were present for that.

And I said, okay, when's the next time you saw the three men?

And she says, for the first time, that the three men were present after she was shot.

I was like, oh, tell us more about this.

And she says, well, after I was shot, I was lying on the ground.

And I don't really remember a lot.

But what I do remember is that the three men came up to me and asked me what happened.

And that's when I told them that I was shot, that Harry shot me.

And they wanted to know who Harry was.

So they put me in the back of a car and we drove around the neighborhood looking for Harry.

Not to a hospital when there's a bullet in her brain and she's bleeding.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess it does make sense if they're concerned that there's somebody coming from a rival cartel or to take their drugs.

They don't care if she dies.

They want to look for the.

Yeah.

And so she starts offering up more evidence about like now more evidence, but she starts contextualizing for us who these three men are.

And she says that one of them put the dogs, because the dogs had gotten out of the car after they were licking her face and they're running around the property.

And she was really concerned about the dogs eating stuff.

And eating meth.

And so then they put the dog inside her RV for her.

Heroes.

And that's when they drove her around town.

With the blood.

She's with the fucked up head.

Okay.

Yeah.

So they're like, what happened?

She said, I was shot in the head.

And they were like, cool, let's go find your friends.

They told her that her face just looked messed up.

No, it's okay.

This is one of the most, like, I've done this job for a while now.

Well, get you some makeup.

And the three of us have a mutual friend who's been doing this job for 18 years.

And she was, and that friend, Alex, was like, yo, she looks fucked up.

And every single person, PD or not, that's seen her lying on the ground with the bullet in her head, they're surprised when I tell them she's a bunch.

They're just surprised that this woman is still alive.

They're just surprised that this woman is still alive.

Except the three wise men were un-fucking-phased.

They were like, come get in the car with us.

So, wait, this is during the prelim, all the story's just getting crazier and crazier.

Are you making eye contact with the DA at this point, or the judge?

Are people just, they're just, I imagine the judge would sustain a, like, a 352 relevance objection at some point, you know?

Or are they just letting her go?

Like, how's it, what's the vibe?

It's just letting her go.

The judge's making eye contact with me, being like, are you going to shut her up?

And I was like, I'm not going to shut her up.

Like, I'm loving it.

Say more.

Yeah, I asked her a question.

She gives me a response, like a paragraph.

There's a pause, and I'm just looking down, being like, okay, I need to make a note of this.

And then next year, she's like, can I say more?

And I was like, yeah.

And then next year, another paragraph comes out.

I'm like, fuck the notes, dude.

I'm just going to, I'm going to read the transcript after the fact.

And we're just going to go on the fly.

So I just started going at the prelim on the fly with this.

It's already attempted murder.

Like, how worse can it get, you know, with these charges?

Like, it's not like you're afraid of other stuff coming out.

Oh, there's this charge.

It's already attempted murder.

Oh, I'm sorry.

There was a trespass?

Well, it could have been a kidnap.

All right.

Yeah, fuck it.

Fuck it.

Fuck it, I'm determined a cow came in.

Oh, my God.

I guess it couldn't have been a kidnap for murder since he shot her first.

So I was trying to dump her body.

Because that would be really unfortunate.

That would be a life charge.

So at the prelim, I changed, eventually I was like, okay, let's back up and talk about when you see this pickup truck.

And I really start focusing on this chase that happened, right?

And now I was testing her memory and her ability to recall events.

And so she had testified on direct examination of my client and chased her for 30 minutes.

This is the chase where she hit at the middle school?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so in the body where she said that chase happened for about 15 to 20 minutes.

But on direct examination, she said 30 minutes.

So on cross-examination, I just asked her if it had happened for an hour, to which she said yes.

And I was like, you really have no recollection of time.

And now I can kind of like morph this a little bit.

And so then she changes it and makes the story even wilder now.

She says, let me frame this.

She drives a 2007 Kia sedan.

Like, Kias are already unreliable and sometimes the wheels are falling off in the middle of the road.

This is the 2007 Kia that she's driving.

And my client's driving a brand new 2021 Chevy Silverado 4x4.

That's not a chase that's going to last half an hour if he's chasing her, in other words.

Yeah.

And again, remember, Little Rock is in the desert.

A lot of these streets go to like an intersection where the second half of the street across the intersection turns into a dirt road.

And so she says that she drives to a T intersection about like a mile and a half away.

And during this entire mile and a half chase, my client, Harry's Silverado is right behind her.

Right behind her tiny little Kia.

And she gets to a street and she crosses the intersection.

And I didn't know at the time because I didn't look at Google Maps, but eventually I come to learn that when she crosses that intersection, she's not on a dirt road.

So this Kia crosses into this dirt road and she says from there, the chase keeps going and Harry is trying to catch up to her.

At some point, she slams her brakes and the Silverado just flies past her.

And about like 100, 200 yards in front of her, the Silverado stops.

And she makes a U-turn and starts driving into the middle of the desert in a different direction.

And now she's off the dirt road.

She's driving in the middle of the desert.

With all that off-roading capabilities of the 2007 Kia sedan.

And she comes up on a different street and comes to a different street.

And the Silverado just drives away.

And then she says she goes and hides at the middle school.

And so then I asked her, I was like, okay, you told us that the sun was coming down when you went to get McDonald's.

At this point, is the sun completely down?

Where's the sun?

Because she says she never looks at the clock.

And so she tells them that it's completely nighttime.

The sun is gone.

And this sounds exactly like one of the meth-y stories our clients tell us from when they're high.

And they're like, no, I had to break into this house because this Silverado was chasing me.

And you're like, are you seeing the Silverado now?

You're like, do you need to go to the Hollywood courthouse for a mental health evaluation?

So then that's where she says, I'm at the school.

And then that's where she takes us back to the house, to her RV.

And that's where she's shot, right?

So those are the new little bits of pieces of evidence that she offers up that make the story become even wilder and a little crazier.

And I'm like, all right, we've gone from a little suspect of a story, like a story that we PDs are already in, the average public is like, this is not all that believable, to a story that's gotten a little crazy of steroids.

Did the DA redirect after your cross?

She did redirect a little bit.

She was like, oh God, let's go away.

Did she say a couple of things to make her bolster her credibility or a story?

She was like, is there anyone, do you think anyone could have done this other than Harry?

She's like, no, Harry did it.

That's a dangerous question by the DA.

That would have been crazy.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, I was on the meth property for the cartel.

There's a lot of people that I have beef with.

Yeah, and she's like, yeah, no, only Harry could have done this, nobody else.

She's crying at this point.

And then the DA's like, can you tell us about the injuries you suffer and things like that?

So it was really bolster her credibility.

Yeah.

Yeah, it doesn't go to our defense, right, for that stuff.

And that was the prelim.

Nice.

Okay.

So how are you feeling after the prelim?

I'm walking away laughing.

I was like, shit, we actually, this is a stupid ass fucking case.

I was like, this is a stupid fucking case.

I go down to the jail and I talk to my client.

My client's like, what the fuck just happened?

And so in the state of California, once you're done with the prelim, you then go to an arraymate again on the information where the charges are refiled in superior court.

And so from that point on, you have 60 days to go to trial unless you will waive time, right?

And my client and I felt very confident with the case at that point.

And we were like, fuck it.

Fuck the cell phone evidence.

Fuck everything.

We still haven't heard the SDT back from T-Mobile.

Fuck it.

We're just going to go to trial.

I think we got enough.

Because she's completely unreliable.

Completely unreliable.

But also, the part that I didn't get to, I did not cross-examine her at the prelim was, because it was more for the detective, is the detective had asked her several times during her initial interview, could the cartel have done this?

Could Adrian have done this?

Could the three men have done this?

Could a gang have done this?

And like other suspects, right?

And then he asked, like, why is there marijuana on the property?

Why is there dried marijuana leaves on the property?

And he's asking her a bunch of questions about what you would expect to see at an illegal marijuana operation operated by the cartel.

Who's to say?

That's what the sheriff's department has been putting out in public news releases, right?

And so, he's asking her all these questions, and she keeps saying no, no, no to those things.

And so, I had those in my back pocket, as those are suspects that we're going to bring up later on, but they're for the I.O., right?

So, I have that for the I.O., and I was like, fuck it.

We have a story that we can tell and share with the public at a jury trial that's convincible and believable, right?

And so, for there, we just set it for trial.

So, then the, I mean, you're mentioning that the detective was asking about dried marijuana leaves and stuff like that.

Is that all in the reports that they found this stuff at the property at our location?

Okay.

So, that's just only through the body-worn video did you learn about the marijuana grow?

Yeah.

Okay.

Did you learn why the sheriff brought the cartel, or is it just an assumption that the cartel is manufacturing and selling drugs in the back deserts of L.A.?

Is that kind of like?

It's just an assumption.

It's just an, okay.

All right.

You just, okay.

You can ask for judicial notice of that.

Did you ask for judicial notice?

I did.

I did ask for judicial notice of that at the trial.

And the judge was like, fuck no.

So, did you talk to your client about the marijuana or possible cartel involvement?

Did you ever talk to your client about her situation and what he knows about it?

Yeah, I did.

I did.

He's like, yeah, you know, she always told us that she found these random people that were giving her this free property to live at, that they were, that she just had to look out.

And this is where I learned, apparently there had been a marijuana raid previously at that property before she was hired as the lookout.

That's why they needed to look out.

And that's why they needed a lookout.

And that's where we learned that information for the first time in response from my client.

So, you know, I've been watching a lot of Ninja Turtles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my five-year-old daughter lately.

And, you know, like the bad villain, Evil Shredder and Evil Brain Crane, you know, and then the henchmen, Bebop and Rocksteady are always, like, stupid, right?

They're just, and the evil Shredder and Crane have Bebop and Rocksteady doing stupid stuff, stuff on behalf, and they're just so stupid all the time.

I feel like it's true, like, the front-line criminals are always the dumbest ones.

Like, and she is, she's sort of fitting into that stereotype.

She's Bebop.

She, yeah, okay, so let's have Bebop walked over, go live in that house, Bebop, and watch over the property.

You know, just kind of like, that's kind of what, that's what I'm thinking about, so.

Did you suspect that Adrian and Harry were also working for her with the cartels?

No, I did not, at least not for Harry.

Adrian, I never, I never, that never came to my mind, but I was confident, and based off all my investigation and interviews with the family and everyone, that Harry was not working with the cartels.

Harry was not Rocksteady, okay.

Yeah, Harry, Harry decided that that wasn't the life he wanted to live.

And, and when you talked to your client, he said he didn't shoot her.

Yeah, the client's adamant.

He was just at home with his family.

Yeah.

He didn't chase her.

He never threatened her.

What?

No, it's like, yo, this shit, this shit never happened.

What, what's going on with client and his family, though?

Because why wouldn't they corroborate where he was?

Like, yeah, I mean, he was there when we went to sleep, but who knows, man?

This guy's always, they could have just been like, yeah, he was there and went to sleep.

He disappears.

He slept in my bed that night.

You know, like, what's, what's going on there?

Yeah, so client, client and his wife were going through a separation at the time.

There you go.

He cheated on her, didn't he?

So, so.

Oh, he didn't answer that question.

He's always, he's always begging Adrian's girlfriends.

You already asked Adrian's girlfriend out.

Yeah, so, so, so they were going through a separation at the time.

And so she, so the wife was like, yo, look, he was with us that day, but I can't, I can't speak to what happened afterwards.

Cause sometimes he comes to my bed and we sleep together.

And other times he sleeps in the truck and other times he goes to Palmdale.

He does other, other things.

I don't really know.

I woke up the next morning and I watched his clothes and she was like, he was there the next morning.

Like that, that's what she said.

But she wouldn't, wouldn't say like, yeah, you know, I woke up for the world at night and he was still there.

Like she wouldn't say shit like that.

I mean, I'm assuming my wife slept in the, in the same bed with me last night.

She was there when I fell asleep and she was there when I woke up.

But I can't say what happened in between.

You're a real heavy sleeper.

You know, like anything could have happened.

I sleep, yeah, I sleep right through the night, you know, like.

Look at Dave just throwing you out of the bus.

Yeah, it wasn't a very resounding like response.

I mean, I could put her on the stand because she did offer like she's like, look, based off of how this shooting was described, you would expect her to be brain matter and blood on my client's clothes.

And she was adamant that that didn't happen either.

She's like, look, I washed his clothes.

He never washed his clothes.

That was not there.

But again, it wasn't, it wasn't just such a resounding answer that I was like, let's put her on.

Yeah.

Which is what you need.

If you're going to put her on, you need her to get up there and say, he would never do this.

He was with me.

I would have known.

If she can't do that, you can't put her up there because you can't have a wife waffling in front of the jury.

Like, well, I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't think so.

I didn't see any brain matter on his clothes.

Yeah.

So even though the client doesn't like waver from his, but he's like his story the entire time.

Right.

And, um, but he, the wife is not giving us anything.

Like she's not giving us anything to work with.

It's like, is it what I'm going to put her on to be resounding.

I washed in clothes and nothing was on the clothes.

Like, I mean, now there's just so much left that can go bad for us.

So you and your client said, fuck it.

We're going to trial.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I guess right now we're at motions in liminy.

Well, wait, hold on before.

So then is there anything you're trying to, cause you're not waiving time.

So is there anything you're trying to do as that 60 day is approaching that 60th day?

Not really.

So we had, we had done our investigation.

We, because I had, I, I'm sure you all feel similar, but when I do my own prelims on such

a serious case, I feel very confident going into the trial about what, where my head's

at with the questioning and things like that.

And so I was pretty confident going into the trial about what questions I wanted to ask

her, what evidence I wanted to establish and how I was going to establish those facts.

So my next thing was just reaching out to the DA and asking her how many witnesses she

planned on calling.

So she says she's only calling two witnesses.

She's calling Angie and she's going to call the detective and that's it.

Nobody else.

Okay.

Are we, are we ready to start talking about the trial then?

Anything you want to add or that we forgot to ask or you thought we should, you felt dementia

or anything like that?

No, I don't think, no.

I mean, I kept most of clients very confidential because yeah.

All right.

All right.

So tell us about the judge you're in front of.

Yeah.

So, uh, the first judge we're in front of, um, isn't, isn't, isn't, um, a neutral judge.

Uh, this is the same judge that's done the prelim.

Um, and this judge has, uh, had a, uh, complaints against her for texting the prosecution in the

12 trials, um, sorry, what?

Yeah.

Not just texting, but texting the prosecutor.

Yes.

About the prosecutor doing the trial, but texting a prosecutor in the courtroom.

That's watching his friend do the trial.

Um, and then texting that person being like, why is, why is the trial prosecutor not calling this witness to the stand?

Wow.

Wow.

Why is this person still on the bench?

That can't, I mean, where are the ethics complaints?

It's already been filed and published.

Oh, and they were like, don't do that again.

And, but all, by all means, continue to preside over criminal cases where people could die in prison.

Yeah.

America.

Got it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, so, but we never, we don't learn about that until like months after, right?

Okay.

But we do know that this judge is not a, at the time, a defense friendly judge.

And when we mean defense friendly, we just want a judge that's good on the law, right?

We don't want them to have to necessarily like.

They don't need to help us.

They don't need to text us.

Yeah.

They, they just, you know, call, call a strike a strike and call a ball a ball.

That's all I'm asking for.

Right.

Um, in other words, do the job that you're supposed to be doing.

Right.

And so motions eliminate.

So we had talked about earlier, there is a toxicology test that shows that she was presumptively positive for meth.

And that was the only thing I was generally concerned about.

So I asked the prosecutor how she planned to introduce the medical records into the trial.

Like who's going to testify to them and et cetera, et cetera.

And the prosecutor was like, they're a business record.

I'm just going to submit them to the jury under business record exception and just put it in.

I was like, okay.

So I told her, and she's like, but I'm going to pick out the pages that are relevant to the gun, to her being shot in the head.

And I said, okay, well, that's only like 10 pages.

And the judge said, yeah, she can pick out the 10 of the thousand pages she wants or how many ever she wants.

If something's incomplete, you can complete it under the rule of completeness.

So for those that are listening that don't know, but if one party submits something that's not fully complete and is leaving some evidence out, the opposing party gets to submit the remaining evidence to complete.

Usually to add context because the DA will cherry pick a little piece of information.

So you put the rest in there to give the context to make sure it's not misleading.

And so.

We do it a lot with videos.

Videos or like audio recording, things like that.

And in this context, I was really just worried about the DA was not putting in the toxicology screen.

I wonder why.

So the judge over and over again was like, you can submit evidence to complete the records, however you see fit.

And so I was like, all right, that's all I need.

So I'm working with, and I just asked that three different times.

And the judge kept getting annoyed and being like, I said, you can complete whatever records you want.

You're bringing up, and you're bringing, you're specifically bringing up the, the, the, the talk screen, right?

You're saying, I want to introduce, I want to introduce the talk screen.

I did not say that.

Okay.

So you weren't, okay.

You didn't say that specifically.

Okay.

Yes.

I was just like, I, if, if I feel like the records are not complete, can I complete the records?

And the judge was over and over again.

I feel like, I feel like this is not going to end well for you, or this is going to get, all right.

Are we foreshadowing right now?

Cause I mean, I don't know that I would have done that any differently though, cause you can't specifically highlight it because then they're going to exclude it.

Exactly.

And so I did it.

I agree with Lauren.

Go roll them dice.

Also, I, I, I consulted attorneys in our office and they, they agreed that this was the best approach because what it allowed me to do is under this scenario.

I then opened where I said, what you're going to hear is you're going to hear that she was, that she had meth.

She, she had drugs in her system.

Am I wrong about that?

No.

But after I opened the, then they do the 402 to take out the toxicology.

They said, because, um, I am not putting on a live witness to explain the toxicology results.

And because the toxicology results are another layer of hearsay.

Um, the business record does not apply to them and therefore they are not coming in.

Yeah.

Well, what's the rule of the whole presumptive?

Cause it's just a presumptive toxic, right?

It's not like an actual, like that's what they call it.

Something that I, I even think that doesn't necessarily come in the evidence.

Yeah.

But if the prosecutor had wanted to bring that in and we made the same objection, they'd say, well, counsel, you can cross on that.

You can challenge it on cross.

I, I've had judge, I've had, I've had that stuff.

I've had excluded.

I've had talks of when it was in my favor or I didn't want to go into evidence.

I've had excluded.

I've had DAs agree.

Like I haven't, I haven't even, there's times I've had, no one's even fought me on it.

It's just kind of like, oh yeah, we'll take that out.

We'll exclude that for the evidence.

I forget, I forget the basis, like the legal basis.

And I'll just insert a definition while we're, you know, right now to explain it all, all the legalese law stuff, you know, but I, it's, I don't think it comes into evidence.

It's 352.

I mean, unless you really know it's, but yeah, I mean, Hey, but that's how you're rolling.

I mean, even under 352, you have to say it's substantially more probative or more prejudicial than it is probative.

If he has a reason to explain why it's probative.

But it's not, it's like, it's not, it's just a presumptive tox.

So I think like, if you had confirming evidence that it was the tox, I, you know, anyways, those are my thoughts on it.

Okay.

After consulting with a public defender who is way more knowledgeable than me, which isn't hard to find.

The answer is the presumptive meth toxicology doesn't come into evidence with the other hospital records as a business record exception to the hearsay rule.

And it only comes in if a foundation for the drug screen is laid.

So you got first laid the foundation for the, for it, and then it can be admitted.

And this is all because of people versus Sanchez.

So I agree with you.

Right.

I think that's that, that was a DA's position.

Right.

And so that's what the judge said.

Like she's not going to get to like explain this.

So you start coming in, blah, blah.

And she's like, if you can get a witness to come in.

And so then I was like, all right, so you're not letting it come in the way the DA is putting in medical records.

But if I can get a witness to come in, who can lay the foundation, who can do all this, then you can come in.

And she said, yes.

And I was like, okay, so still I can proceed forward.

So at that day, we finish opening statements.

We have not started live testimony.

I immediately go back to my office.

And the next thing I do is I start combing through the medical records to see who can lay the foundation for the toxicology results and who can lay the foundation for the meth.

And that she might have been under the influence.

I come up with the two witnesses that are necessary for that evidence.

I find out who did the toxicology results, who did the blood draw and everything, and I can talk about the results.

And then there was a social worker who can talk about her being under the influence potentially because she had interviewed the complaining witness.

So the next morning, I go back to the judge of the DNA.

I was like, I'm going to let you know, as of right now, I do anticipate on calling two witnesses.

I've confirmed that I've gotten one under subpoena this morning, and the second will be under subpoena by noon.

We have an investigator going to Cedars-Sinai to serve that person since they've changed hospitals.

We don't fuck around.

Yeah.

And our investigators are fucking amazing.

I had one of the supervising investigator, Lancaster, Troy, who, like, he was on this shit with us, right?

Like, he was like, I got you.

We're going to make this happen ASAP.

And he drove around to serve some of these subpoenas.

And then he contacted his friends and the other branches to serve the other subpoenas.

And so it was Troy and it was Craig was the other investigator that we had.

And they were fucking kick-ass people who I fucking loved.

And the judge then says, yeah, don't worry about it.

They're not coming in.

And I was like, what?

Your witnesses?

Yeah, the evidence isn't coming in.

I'm not allowed to talk about the drugs.

And I said, what?

After she told you the day before you could bring it in if you had witnesses to lay the foundation.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And now it became that because it's 352, the judge thought about it more.

And I'm just trying to call her a meth addict and taint her in front of the jury that she's a meth addict.

And as a result, it's not coming in because I'm just using it as character evidence and not actually for the value.

No, that's bullshit.

That's fucking bullshit.

I said, Your Honor, actually make it three witnesses.

I'm going to have a third person testify.

He's an expert.

And he's going to lay the foundation for if you have memory issues, you have memory issues as a result of using marijuana, using any drug.

And especially when it's potentially meth.

And it can affect both memory, cognition, perception, recall.

It can affect anything.

Even a short-term use, singular use can affect, or long-term use can affect.

You don't even need an expert to say that.

I mean, it's just any substance.

I think any substance is known.

There's no need for it.

David, David, let me just pause you there.

So I said, Your Honor, I don't think I even need an expert, but I'm more than happy to put it on.

As your Honor knows, from your prior practice on the bench, this is common knowledge.

And she's like, That's not common knowledge.

I don't know that.

What are you talking about?

Okay.

I was like, What?

Okay.

Are we supposed to believe that judge has never been blackout, drunk, and had problems with her memory?

I'm swinging to your side now, Avnit.

Okay.

So I was like, What the fuck?

So from there, the judge is like, Not coming in.

Done deal.

We're over this.

Like, it doesn't come into evidence if, like, she's used meth in the before, or she used meth last month, or she used meth two weeks ago.

But it comes into evidence if you were using meth or under the influence at the time of the fucking incident.

Yeah.

That comes into evidence.

Yeah.

And what we were going to establish is we don't even know if she was, like, and the VA was like, Well, we don't know if she was high on the date of the incident.

I was like, Well, I can cross her on that.

But even if she wasn't high on the date of the incident, if she had smoked meth, which is only your system for 40 to 24 hours, and the preceding 24 to 48 hours, that still affects your ability to perceive and recall events.

So that is still, it goes to the weight, not the admissibility.

And the judge was like, We're done with this.

The jury's outside.

We're shut the fuck up, basically.

So, I mean, not only is this a ridiculous ruling, but at this point, you've opened with this information.

You've told the jury that they're going to be getting this information.

Right.

So did you ask for a mistrial?

I did not ask for a mistrial.

Okay.

Yeah, I didn't think about it.

So I'm not going to sit here being like, There's a strategic reason.

I just didn't think about it at that point.

It happens.

Hey, no.

We're just Monday morning quarterbacking over here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's no bad question.

The great thing about this podcast is you can question the tactics that the attorney used and how maybe that wasn't the best idea.

But they fucking won the trial.

You know they won the trial.

So it's never the wrong decision.

Whatever decision you made, it's never the wrong decision.

Well, if it was, you can recover.

A better lawyer would have asked for a mistrial.

A better lawyer may have not gotten a not guilty.

You know?

So then we just, you know, from there, I was like, fuck it.

All right.

I mean, this is what we got to work with.

Then from there, we got in the testimony and the story got crazier.

When Angie testified?

When Angie testified.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

We got to get your voir dire.

We get your jury selection before we get to the testimony.

Forgot that.

That's even a thing.

Yeah.

It's the most boring part about this case.

The most boring part.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, tell us.

Well, then let's make it quick.

Then tell us about jury selection.

All right.

So that's for 402.

So the judge excluded the fucking meth talks.

Even though that you went above and beyond, you turned around, you fucking like called her fucking bluff, got the witnesses lined up.

Yeah.

All right.

All right.

All right.

So let's talk about opening statements.

And by the way, how's your client?

How's he doing?

He's fine.

He's good.

Does he have any idea what the hell's going on at this point?

I mean, the judge has just changed their mind three times.

You know, the thing I love about clients, I have no record is I like they they're aware of what's happening.

But since they've never lived this, they have no idea what also what's happening at the same time.

So I just like to say my clients are usually out to lunch at this point.

They don't truly understand the significance of what's happening.

I think they don't appreciate it as much as we do.

We're like, fuck, that's a critical piece of evidence I got withheld.

No, I love it.

At the end of the day, when your clients look at you and they're like, good job.

It's going great.

It's going great.

You're like, no, we just got fucked.

You know how you're going to prove that she was under the influence of meth at the time?

You're just going to have her testify.

I mean, her testimony is like all you need to know she was under the influence, you know?

Were you barred?

So the judge said you couldn't bring in the results.

Were you barred from asking her if she was under the influence to just ask the question?

Because I did not want to open that can of worms.

I did not ask her that question.

You didn't ask the judge if you would be prohibited from asking or you didn't ask Angie?

I didn't ask Angie.

Okay.

Because if you would have asked it and she would have denied it, been like, I've never done it before in my life, then you could have brought those records in as impeachment.

I could have, but I don't think they would have come in.

I don't think the judge would have let them come in at this point.

And so I was like, I'm not, if I ask her and she says no, then I'm stuck with her being sober.

Yeah, yeah.

I do bring it up in a different way when we get there.

But for jury selection, it was very simple.

I love the first 18 people that we had.

There were only a couple of them that I didn't like.

So the DA kicked one person.

I kicked like six people.

And then from the first 18, we just got our 12 people.

Love it when it's quick.

So it was very quick jury selection.

Yeah, I mean, they were very, I decided that I was going to make this a cop credibility case and the lack of investigation to back up Andrew's story and really put it on the cops as well as Angie being high.

And so that's where I was able to make some adjustments.

And those people have law enforcement ties, but I was like, you respect your law enforcement people.

You think they do a good job.

And then we're going to call out how they did a bad job here and they can distinguish from there.

So it worked out in that way for the first trial.

Okay.

Okay.

And then, all right.

So then everything's cool with jury selection.

The DA, you mentioned previously the DA was shady.

Is this the same DA that you're going to trial with?

Yes.

Okay.

And did you feel like everything was cool with the DA?

I know you said that they kept out the blood work.

I'm sure you didn't agree with that, but is everything okay with the DA so far?

Yeah.

So far, everything's good with the DA.

I mean, I think the way she was going about it was just bad.

But overall, like, we're not yelling at each other or killing each other yet.

Okay.

All right.

Yet.

Okay.

So then let's talk about opening statements.

How was that?

Yeah.

So opening statements was very smooth.

I told the jury, what you're going to really see in this case is that we are taking Angie's

word and that's it, right?

We're not doing any independent investigation.

We're not looking.

We're not, when we're bringing such a serious charge against someone, we're not, the evidence

will show that we're not eliminating suspects.

We're not doing proper DNA tests.

We're not doing DNA fingerprint tests.

We're not doing any of these other tests that are absolutely necessary.

We get a tunnel vision from the sheriff's department and that's where they lock in.

And that's what the evidence is going to show.

When they arrested your client, did they search his house?

They did.

Did they ever find a weapon?

They did.

My client has four firearms registered to him.

Hey, Avni, can we get your face on the screen here?

I can't see you.

Okay.

There we go.

Sorry.

Okay.

No, it's okay.

I mean, if you want to chill to the other side, that's cool.

Just, you know.

No, no, no.

I agree.

Okay.

Yeah, you have such a beautiful face.

Oh, thank you.

Nice eyes.

Nice smile.

Isn't that better, Lauren?

Yeah.

We can see you now in all your glory.

There's a shining beacon of hope there.

Yeah.

That was a shining beacon of hope for my client, even though it was a very dark way that the evidence is excluded.

Yeah, I mean, opening statements, like I said, I did tell the jury that they would hear some evidence that she may have been under the influence at the time, which ultimately gets kept out.

But I also told them that they're going to hear that this was being operated on a marijuana grow, that there's three men who do some very shady things that don't make a lot of sense, and that there's a lot of other suspects, and they're going to be left with more questions than answers when this case is over.

And because those questions will never be answered, the only verdict they can return is not guilty.

All right.

All right.

Okay.

So then tell us how the people's case rolls out.

Here comes Angie.

I know, like, right, let's get into it.

Let's go, big, and what you got for us this time.

Was she the first witness?

First witness.

Oh, yeah.

Just textbook.

Textbook.

Prosecution.

I love it.

All right.

And so Angie is wheelchaired into the courtroom.

Oh, wow.

Whoa, okay.

I see that curve.

Okay.

Yeah, she's wheelchaired into the courtroom by her son, a young son.

Oh, come on.

You didn't ask for her to already be on the stand?

I hate when they do that little, it's the opposite of a perp walk.

It's this sad little victim that they roll past the jury, like, look at her life now.

No, I didn't.

I didn't.

I didn't ask for that.

I was like, fuck it, whatever.

Is the wheelchair because of the shot to the head?

Is that what the presumably, you know?

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, she's permanently disabled on one side of her body.

Okay.

So she comes in.

You forgot to humanize Angie with that fact a little bit there, Avneet.

You said in the beginning she was disabled.

Okay, I missed it.

Okay.

Angie's also a meth head, so who really cares?

All right.

You know, she accused my client of shit, all right?

I'm not very sympathetic to Angie.

My client did a year in jail.

So then Angie, from there, the direct goes as expected, right?

Direct is very exactly what the prosecution wanted.

Like the prelim.

Yeah, just like the prelim.

Like there's nothing crazy in the direct examination.

The fireworks kind of happen more on our cross.

All right.

So let's get to it then.

Yeah.

And that's where, again, remember I foreshadowed at prelim, she has memory issues.

And she's kind of, you can kind of move her whichever way you want a little bit.

She has a bullet in her brain and she likes to do meth and marijuana.

Yeah.

So then from there, what I decided with my cross is to really show the jury how wild of a story this is.

We were going to break down each fact little by little and really draw out how this scenario and really blow up the fact that this happened between a 2007 Kia and a Chevy Silverado of any year.

But really 2021, this is a brand new, big, giant, heavy duty pickup truck versus a tiny little car, right?

David and Goliath.

Off-roading in the desert.

Off-roading in the desert.

And so cross-examination takes three days.

It's three afternoon sessions with just her.

And so what I had done is every single little thing that I was showing the jury was also a picture was attached to it.

So I entered into like 20, 30 exhibits.

I don't remember off the top of my head.

But every turn she took, there was a Google image for it.

There was the Google image of her going into the desert.

There was a Google image that showed the old review of the scene and the area when she says she goes to the middle school where that is, right?

And she's really telling us.

But now she says that the chase happened for two hours.

Wow.

That this off-road, in the middle of the desert chase between a Kia and a Chevy happened for two fucking hours.

Seems believable.

And so I had backed up.

And when she said that, and I was like, I just want to, the jury commented about this.

They were like, we didn't like that you jumped around a little bit, changing topics here and there.

But the reason I did it is because it tied into the bigger story.

And I wanted to tell this like a story, right?

So we talked about the chase.

And then I was like, I want to back up for a second and talk about earlier that day when you left the property for the first time.

And the sun was still up, right?

She said, yeah.

And then we remember that it was, this happens in September of 2022.

And so the sun is, sets later in the day.

And so we know roughly it's around 6, 7 p.m.

In the high desert at that time.

And this is just this pain of better story for the jury because she, because ultimately she's shot by, by her testimony at the trial.

She, she should be shot around 11 p.m.

Because she says that she leaves at 7 p.m.

When the sun's going down, comes home.

The chase happens for two hours.

She spends about an hour at the parking lot.

She falls asleep, she falls asleep in her trailer for about another hour.

And then she shot, right?

So she shot around 11 p.m.

And this becomes critical to our story because she's found, again, remember, in the middle of a neighborhood, three to four miles away from her property, lying on the side of her car, moaning for help.

So she's got a significant period of time with her whereabouts unknown.

And she says she's shot and she is shot, though.

Then she said the sun was still setting or she said the sun was down.

The sun was down.

It's completely nighttime.

OK.

When she testified on direct in front of the jury, did she say she remembers the three wise men driving her around?

That is never brought up on direct examination.

It's weird that she wasn't just found in a neighborhood.

She was found next to her car.

Like, how did her car get out to where she was found?

It's almost as if, like, you were a defense attorney asking questions.

Something's not tracking.

Right?

Right.

But the prosecution has no answers for that.

They offer no answers to that.

And that's where we bring it up on direct.

We were like, OK.

So that was the last day of direct examination.

She was talking about the three men.

And now we had ended day two.

Day one was set up all talking about her relationship between Adrian, Harry, and her.

Day two was spent breaking down the entire chase and her being shot.

Day three was spent all talking about the three wise men and how they come into a play so that the jury understands.

And so she tells us, well, I was laying there on the ground.

And I remember hearing voices and she tells us that those voices are very familiar to her.

I ask her, how are they familiar to you?

She says, because it's the men that work on the property.

And I back up and I'm like, are those the three men that work on the property all the time?

Yes, those are the three men that were present on the date that Harry had shot the gun in the air.

Yes.

She then says, they came up to her and they asked her, did the guy who shot the gun do this?

And she says yes to them.

This is the first time she's ever saying this.

Meaning the guy who had shot the gun earlier.

So when Harry shot the gun in the air.

Exactly.

Is he the one who did this?

She's also now telling us that they were telling her they're going to call for help.

They're going to get an ambulance for her.

But she remembers not believing them.

And she remembers not believing them because if they were telling her the truth, she would have heard sirens.

She would have heard other things, but she didn't remember hearing any of that.

And so I was like, okay, but you're adamant that this happened.

And she's like, yeah, I know those voices.

I remember them all the time.

Their names are Pedro.

And she offers two other names I don't remember.

I was like, okay, let's take a timeout.

And I showed her the picture of her lying on the street.

And one of the senior felony attorneys pointed this out.

It was the first question I was ever asked by this senior felony attorney.

Where are her pants?

Because when she's found on the ground...

Sorry, her pants?

Yes.

Yes.

Oh, wait.

You left that out earlier.

That would jump out at a person.

She had no pants on.

Did she have underwear?

She had underwear.

Okay.

Just no pants.

No pants.

September in the desert is pretty hot.

And you're unmasked.

But okay.

You know, it increases your body temperature.

You know?

And her underwear was all tangled up and messed up.

It was disheveled.

Oh, come on.

This is how I know you're friends with Alex.

This is how I know you're friends with Alex.

Alex is the one asking me this stuff.

This is what stood out to Alex.

And so I was like, okay, let's back up.

Timeout.

You know?

Okay.

When you left your home that day, you were wearing pants?

Oh, yeah.

When you got home before the chase, you were still wearing pants?

Yeah.

It hadn't gone in and changed.

Okay.

When the chase is happening, do you take your pants off?

No.

I never take my pants off.

I was like, okay.

When you are in the parking lot of the middle school, do you take your pants off?

No.

They're still on.

This is such a ridiculous line of questioning.

Right.

When you go home and you're falling asleep, do you take your pants off?

No, I still have them on.

When you're shot, do you take your pants off?

No, I'm still wearing my pants.

When you fucking are found in the street, you do realize your pants are off.

She's like, yeah, I don't know where they went.

Come on.

Did you just look at the judge at this point and be like, can I ask her about the drugs now?

So I did.

I did.

And the judge said, the judge said, you keep saying meth.

This is a reason she doesn't remember.

Or she could not generally not remember because she has a bullet in her head.

So it's not coming in.

Stop, Mr. Chata.

And I was like, all right, whatever.

And so, so there, that's where my initial line of cross-examination kind of ended.

I just, I was like, we just went down to a ridiculous lot of questioning, but I really

want, I wanted to end on the passport.

Yeah, but you made her look like a mess.

Yeah.

She was a mess who couldn't reconstruct that night.

And by the way, where your pants are is a significant detail.

I mean, if we're going to be asking her to remember the details of that night and what

happened and the sequence of events, missing your pants is going to be one of those that

you would think would be higher up on the list of things she'd remember.

Wait, does she have shoes on?

Does she have shoes?

No.

No shoes or socks.

Okay.

She had a night.

All right.

All right.

Big Ang had a night.

Yeah.

Big Ang is doing some shit out there.

God does.

And so then the DA spends her recross focused in on trying to make it that the three men

never exist.

And the DA's entire class of that nation is spent on the three men that she's mistaking

the law, that she's mistaking the detective and the cops arriving on the scene and the firefighters

for the three men.

That went terribly.

Yeah.

And I didn't know the recross.

Oh shit, that went terribly.

Because she was like, she said, no, the three men fucking exist and the three men were there.

There is no answer Angie could say that would make the DA's line of questioning there like

logical.

Like why would you try to doubt your witness?

You're trying to take this witness's testimony and tell the jury to convict with proof beyond

the reasonable doubt.

And now you're like casting shade on her own fucking testimony.

She doesn't know.

You don't fucking believe or don't know what she's talking about.

Maybe the three wise men didn't exist.

Maybe the chase never happened.

I don't know.

Just text away, your honor.

Text your way.

You can't save it in this case.

Go on social media, judge.

Go on Twitter or X.

I don't care you have a YouTube channel with all your fucking conspiracy theorists.

All right.

Moving on.

But yeah.

Yeah.

So from there, I didn't even do a recross because I was like, yo, I don't know what the

she just doubled and tripled down on the fucking three wise men being involved in the story.

I'm not really fucking touching this shit.

I got a lot to fucking work with now.

So from there, we just move on to the next witness who's the IO.

All right.

It was the detective.

And so with the detective, he only testified for a day, but it was very simple testimony.

And on direct examination, he just tells us that Harry has guns, one of the guns is the

guns that she identifies.

And she, you know, she's adamant that it was Harry.

That's basically how it goes.

And that he found her with a gunshot to the head.

It wasn't really explosive on direct.

On a cross though, I focus in on a few key areas.

And so one of the impressions the detective had when he arrived on the scene, because he

was one of the initial responding officers was, I think she was raped because again, where

are the pants?

And so that became, that became.

And why are her panties all messed up?

Yes.

And so he, he, that was his initial impression on the body worn video.

And he's talking to his partner about doing a rape kit and her being raped.

And so that became a big line of questioning about, um, they didn't do DNA.

They didn't do a rape kit.

And if they did a rape kit, they would have gotten DNA.

Um, and, and he, he's really concerned about her being raped, but yet never orders a rape

kit.

Um, there was, they, they never do any fingerprint on the car.

And, and it's clear, we don't dispute that the car had to be moved from the property.

Right.

And because no neighbor says they heard a gunshot that night and where she's found.

And so I was like, did you fingerprint the car?

Did you fingerprint the steering wheel, the glove compartment, the shifter, anything?

Um, and he says, we never, we, we, I thought about fingerprinting.

I submitted a packet.

I submitted a packet for fingerprinting to be done, but I messed up the paperwork.

Uh, so we never did fingerprint.

And the D and so then he says, did you ask about the rape kit by then?

Yeah, I did.

What'd they say to that?

He said, I never ordered.

I forgot.

I forgot.

I love it.

I, and then next time any of us get in trouble for not doing our job properly.

And they're like, did you do this?

We'd be like, oh, I thought about it, but then I forgot.

So it's totally fine.

It's totally fine.

It's totally fine.

It's totally fine.

I didn't actually do it, but I thought about doing it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And this is the person who is tasked to find murderers and rapists.

And he just forgot.

Back that blue, baby.

Back that blue.

And so then we, we just hit on those key points, right?

It was like, Harry never confesses.

Uh, Harry never, um, Harry, Harry isn't tied.

There's no evidence to show that Harry was on the scene that night other than her statements.

And that becomes a really big captor in my cross-examination, right?

You suspected the cartel.

Yes.

You suspected, um, Adrian.

You suspected the three men.

You suspected, um, another gang.

You suspected, um, uh, uh, it could be Harry.

Yes.

Okay.

So you asked her, um, about all five people.

Yes.

And she responded, it couldn't have been the cartel.

No.

So you were, yes.

You asked her if it could be, um, Adrian.

She says, no.

You asked her this.

And for all these other witnesses, you just took her word.

And that's it.

You, you did no independent investigation to fucking see if she's covering for someone.

And we were also able to establish.

Or to verify her statements, really.

Right.

And we were also able to establish that because he's a detective, he's done a lot of domestic

violence investigations.

And women are, do suffer at a high rate of violence from their partners, who in this case

would be Adrian.

Adrian.

And he never looks into Adrian and he says, I tried to interview Adrian, but Adrian was

evasive and Adrian never came to want to testify or to never want to give a statement.

And then we, we ended it on, he asked for cell phone records of my client and he got the

search warrant for my client.

So if my client did it, he could have got it.

Like he could have done all this, but he chose not to do it.

And he's like, yeah, I did ask for the search one for your client's phone, but I never got

your client's cell phone data.

I was like, okay, so you could have gotten the GPS records.

You could have gotten all these things.

And those things you would admit can both convict and exonerate a person.

He's like, yeah, but you, you, you, you, you fucked up.

He's like, yeah, I just forgot to do all that.

And so, was he doing the drugs on this property too?

And so, so he never gets any of that.

And so that's where we just end it.

Right.

We end our, we end our cross on that.

So the DA gets up on redirect and she makes a big deal about fingerprints.

And she says, well, you know, the car was in the desert for like eight hours.

Like that can mess up prints.

Right.

He's like, yeah, that could, that could taint it, but we can still try.

How about, how about create prints?

There's dust everywhere.

Your hands are touching a dusty surface.

All right.

Anyway, move it on.

But, but then, then she also like fix it.

She's like, well, you know, a car isn't the best surface to get fingerprints on.

And he's like, it kind of is though.

And I was like, did you fucking talk to your witness before you asked these questions?

Clearly you did it.

And so the re redirect really goes well for us also.

And so I don't even recross at that point.

I'm like, fuck it.

There's nothing to touch.

Cause you, you just told us that the surface was a good surface to do fingerprints on.

And so at this point, it's about 4 PM and we're ending for the day.

And we've already gone over jury instructions.

Nothing too crazy.

Right.

It's a standard, standard jury instructions client chooses not to testify.

And I, the judge looks at me and says, don't go anywhere.

I was like, okay.

So the jury leaves and the judge says, um, we're going to do closing arguments tomorrow.

Um, I just want to let you know, uh, I'm tentatively ruling that you are not allowed to argue, uh,

third party culpability, and you're not allowed to argue that your client was not the shooter

and the shooter was someone else.

And she cites a, and she cites a California Supreme court case.

And I was like, excuse me.

And she's like, yes, you have not established sufficient evidence, um, to argue third party

culpability.

And therefore you will not be allowed to argue tomorrow in closing arguments that your client

is not the shooter.

I, okay.

You know, I have a lot of questions.

Okay.

I, you technically, you, you can't.

You can't do something specific, right?

You can't say specifically this person shot somebody or, but you couldn't.

She was saying you, you couldn't come in and say Adrian was the killer.

Yeah.

You didn't present evidence.

You didn't present evidence of agent as a killer, but you can argue that they didn't

do their job and investigate this case.

You can argue that.

Are you telling me?

And that all these people they left out, you can argue that.

This was a, on the court's own motion.

Like the prosecutor didn't even ask for this, right?

This was a, on the court's own motion.

And B, that the judge was saying not only that you couldn't, you couldn't argue that

a specific person like Adrian was the one who tried to kill Angie, but that you couldn't

argue that your client wasn't responsible.

I can't argue that my client wasn't responsible.

What the absolute fuck?

That's fucking bullshit.

You can argue the burden of the proof.

You can only say.

You can't say he's innocent.

That's fucking bullshit.

I don't, what?

I'm, I'm very, very lost.

So the same reaction you guys are having is what I, what I had.

The reaction you guys are having is the same one I had.

And so I went back to my office and luckily I had two other friends of mine at the office

and one was, and then a third friend who, whose day, it was his day off.

And so, and I was texting him and I was like, the judge's rule like this, what the fuck?

And so my friend who's, who's Monday, it's his Monday off and everyone else drops what

they're doing.

And we start reading the case that the judge is citing.

Because that would be crazy if that case actually said that.

The case that the judge cited does stand for the proposition that I cannot argue a specific

person unless I've established sufficient evidence for that specific person.

Sure.

However, in that very own case, the California Supreme Court ruled, you are allowed to argue

that the prosecution hasn't established beyond a reasonable doubt that there's sufficient

evidence for your client to be the shooter.

I don't, I can't imagine it would say anything other than that.

Right.

And so then I went back the next morning and I told him that, I was like, your honor, I

understand what you're saying.

And I'm not pointing to a specific person because I don't even know who that person would

be.

Because again, it could be any one of the suspects that they listed.

Or an unknown.

Or an unknown.

I am arguing that there is not sufficient evidence to point to my client beyond a reasonable

doubt.

And that is what I'm doing.

All I'm saying in my closing argument, beyond a reasonable doubt, because there's a lack

of fingerprint, there's a lack of DNA, there's access to all these resources, there's a lack

of technology evidence, technological evidence, that they have not proven that my client is a

shooter beyond a reasonable doubt and her story is not credible.

That's what I'm arguing.

And she's like, the judge responds, and I'll never forget this, it's been like burnt

into it.

She's like, I can't even believe we're at this point.

And she's like, fine, fine, do whatever you want.

What?

What?

What do you mean?

This judge sounds like a real peach.

Thank you, I will, your honor.

Go fuck yourself.

I think that's her admitting that she's wrong.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Because she's putting, oh, you're just, wow, you're just so ridiculous.

Fine, do what you want.

You're incredible.

This is crazy.

Fine.

Let your client exercise his constitutional rights.

That's, and so, and, and, and the closing arguments, you know, I think in this entire

podcast so far has encapsulated what the closing arguments were, it's exactly what the three

of us are saying, right?

I just laid out for them how her story is fucking wild.

Yeah.

Like crazy wild.

And, and, and, and let me backtrack and say, in my, um, cross-examination of the IO,

the, the judge did allow me to ask three questions.

Yeah.

So she, she, um, Lauren, you talked about like, I didn't, I never asked her if she was

high on that date.

I did ask the IO, I said, did you ever look into her being under the influence?

And he said, no.

I said, did you ever look into her and being under the influence alcohol?

No.

Did you ever look into her, her being under the influence of, um, drugs such as meth?

He said, no, I did not do any of that.

Um, and then from there I was just able to be like, you know, but, but if you, those are

important things because if they were under the influence, then that can affect perception,

recall, memory and all that.

He said, yeah, but I never looked into it.

And so for that purpose, I was like, this story, this story is just so fucking wild and

unbelievable.

And it's like a tiny Kia being chased by this giant pickup truck in the middle of the

fucking desert.

And I have all these pictures on the screen.

And by the way, let me just go out there and say, we're not being sponsored by Chevrolet.

They haven't paid us any money to mention their car or how superior, how superior their product

is, you know?

I'm sorry, Kia.

Sorry, Kia.

We were, we were dropped by Kia and then Chevy just picked us up and tell us what the big

old Chevy truck and how strong and powerful it was going through the desert.

And this is why I love PowerPoint.

Cause what I did is as I'm telling you the story, I had a picture of the dirt road next

to, and on one side I had the Kia.

And on the other side, I had the big Chevy Silverado.

So the jury's seeing not only what I'm saying, but they're seeing what I'm saying.

And they see that I'm talking about America's greatness at its finest, right?

And gunshots.

And so, and so, so, so the jury, you know, it was again, and I was like, look, the story

is just so unbelievable when we're talking about what's being said at here.

And her story, the story keeps changing.

Right.

And I was like, did she send this chase last year for two and a half fucking hours or whatever?

It's not believable.

Like it doesn't, it doesn't make fucking sense to us or two hours or whatever.

And, and as a result, I just sat down after about like 25 minutes of my closing.

And the other big thing I brought up in my closing, I was like, where's Adrian?

Like, where's Adrian?

Where's the three men?

Where, where are all these players at?

And as a result, the jury was out for about two days and they came back hung.

Hung, what was the split?

10-2, not guilty.

Oh.

Ooh, so close.

Yeah.

Who, who are the holdouts?

So one of them stayed behind.

The other did not.

It was, I learned who it was.

The one that stayed behind was a, uh, old black lady.

Um, and then she told me that the other person that voted, uh, guilty was this, um, young white kid, uh, that, but like, he didn't really say much.

He just voted in, it wasn't a voting block.

And, um, she told me, she's like, yeah, you know, I just really believed her.

And also like, if you thought your client was innocent, you would have put on evidence to show that.

And she's like, why didn't you present any DNA evidence?

Why didn't you present any of this?

And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Like, they literally said, they, they said they fucked it all up.

Also, not my job.

I'm not supposed to prove my client is innocent.

This is where, this is where the void year was important.

Cause she had said, and again, remember I said, void year wasn't that explosive, right?

It wasn't.

Cause she said, yeah, I would look for all that stuff.

And it'd be important for the prosecution to present it.

But then all of a sudden when she's voting guilty, she's like, why didn't I do this shit?

And I was like, what the fuck?

How was I supposed to ever figure that out from a simple, like void year that we had done?

There was no way, but she was hiding those feelings the entire time.

And, um, she, she just like walked away.

Um, and so from there we retried it with them.

And so from there, the 60 day clock starts again.

Right.

Um, well, um, real quick before we move on to the next trial.

So, um, you didn't put on a case, you didn't put on any evidence.

You told us about your closing argument.

I know you said earlier, we talked about the prosecutor, how she was fine.

You guys were civil with each other in the beginning.

Was she fine?

Was she fine throughout the trial?

The first trial, at least everything's, I mean, other than her just arguing shit that

you didn't like and causing the judge to rule in a way you didn't like, which is what

they do, but nothing really, everything was kind of straightforward with this prosecutor.

Yeah, the, the, the stuff with this prosecutor doesn't come up into play until the next trial.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Um, and so then you talk, so did you talk to any of the, the not guilty jurors in that

first trial?

Yeah.

The not guilty jurors, they were, they were, they were ride or die with us.

Right.

They were like the, the person who was a four person, his wife was a probation officer and

he was a paramedic and he's like, dude, the fucking black ladies out to lunch.

And he's like, I kept trying to reason with her and she wasn't listening to me.

And like, your guy should go home today.

Like, what the fuck is this?

Like, and I never told him, they never, they're never supposed to know that our client's in

jail, but he was like, your guy should go home today.

So he assumed that my dude was in right.

The parties are that serious.

Um, and so they were really upset.

Like the 10 jurors who voted not guilty were very upset that, um, they couldn't come to

a not guilty.

Was the prosecutor there to hear, hear them speak as well?

Yeah.

And she told the jury that they're retrying the case.

Wow.

I know that you're really upset because you think that this guy should be let go, but we're

going to try and do this again.

Thank you for your service.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

Um, yeah.

She announced the jury that we're retrying this case.

So like when it came, like my, my, my head deputy was like, you should try to resolve it.

And I was like, fine.

It's not interested in resolving it.

Um, but at the D also said, she doesn't want to resolve it, that she wants to fucking

retry it.

Um, I was like, there's no room for any sort of negotiation.

I mean, I'm not trying to throw shade, but your head deputy said to resolve the case

or try to resolve it.

He said, if you want to try to resolve it, this is the best time to try to resolve it.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Which is true.

I mean, you had a 10 to split for you.

So.

Right.

So we have all the leverage in the world.

Right.

And so, yeah.

And there was nothing too wild in our case.

Like if she changes her story, our case gets better.

So there was nothing like they can really fuck up and redo, you know?

Um, so, so it doesn't, it doesn't change anything.

Cause there's no evidence they can add.

They never got the evidence in the first place.

So we're just stuck with all these fucked up stories.

Um, is so there's anything you're doing, doing to get ready for the second trial or things

you might.

Yeah.

I took, uh, yeah.

So the next trial happens in, um, 67 days, uh, for those, the, the, for 50 of those 60 days,

I decided to go to India and, uh, and take time off.

Um, that's what I mean, sometimes that's the best way to get ready.

Yeah.

To just, you're meditating in the mountains and discovering yourself and just like, everything

became clear.

You can do this eat, pray, love tour.

Yeah.

I went to India, gained 10 pounds.

Uh, did my eat, pray, love tour.

I, uh, I, I, I did, I did a small week long venture in Europe afterwards and I came back

and my client was like, are you ready to try this?

And, um, I was like, give me a week to do a time, like recalibrate and adjust to the time

here and we'll, we'll try it.

Yeah.

So you're jet lagged.

What, um, can we just a little background?

Are you, are you from India?

Are you a family there?

Let's, uh.

Yeah.

So I was born in India.

I moved here in 96 and I had never gone back.

So the first time I ever went back to India was in, uh, 2023.

So right before you were about to retry this serious case, you thought now's a good time

to return home.

Yeah.

I was like, this is a good time to have an emotional trip home, right?

And you were, and how old, how old were you in 1996?

Four.

Four years old.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So now you have reconnected with the homeland.

You've recharged and you're ready for round two.

Round two.

With the same judge.

Uh, well, we don't know right now.

Right.

Um, so we, we announced ready, um, the DA approaches me and so let me rephrase.

I announced ready and, um, there was a D the DA who tried the case wasn't present.

And I found out afterwards that she got that same day that I announced ready.

Um, and we're told that we're going to start the trial the following week.

I am told that the DA has gone on medical leave, mental health leave.

Um, and she won't be around.

Um, and so they're going to reassign the case.

So two days later, I get a text message from, uh, more senior DA being like, I haven't assigned

the case.

Um, and so he tells me, um, um, the prior DA knew about it.

Um, but she didn't turn it over.

Um, they, um, they also did have cell phone evidence, but they didn't turn it over.

Um, they had cell phone evidence of my client's cell phone and her cell phone.

They, uh, didn't turn any of that over and that he would be turning it over, um, by the

end of the week.

Again, we start trial on Monday.

This conversation is happening on Wednesday.

So they'll turn it over by the end of the week.

Um, what, and did they, did it, did they say what the evidence would show the rape, the,

the rape kit evidence and the cell phone evidence?

Yeah.

So the rape kit would show that there's no DNA, um, and no rape ever happened.

So the, okay.

I was going to say exculpatory evidence, but it was never accused that your client raped

her.

Yeah.

But there's no DNA, like no DNA.

Cause there was no rape.

Right.

Exactly.

So now, so now the pants are missing for some other reason that isn't sexual assault.

Now they're just missing like before it was like, Oh poor, that poor girl, maybe she was

raped.

And now it's just like, where the fuck are your pants?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, so then, uh, all right.

It just got better.

That's great.

That is great.

Okay.

So then, um, dude, where's my car?

I said, dude, where are my pants?

And we made a big deal of that in closing, right?

We're like, like, you think this woman's goddamn rape, but you don't do any of this stuff.

Right.

And so we find out that they didn't do a rape, that they did do a rape kit, that they did

have cell phone evidence.

And so then I was like, what does the cell phone show?

And he's like, Oh, it doesn't show anything.

The T-Mobile, um, T-Mobile said it doesn't keep records past 90 days.

So T-Mobile has no evidence to show where your client was on that date.

Um, and then they had, um, gotten a search warrant to extract.

The cell phone data of my client's phone and her phone.

And they, and I, and that cell phone extraction data can also give you GPS evidence.

And they said that does not, um, tell us where the phones were either that night.

I was like, okay, so there's basically the cell phone evidence doesn't even put my client

at the scene.

And he's like, it does not put your client at the scene.

I was like, this seems like a big deal, right?

You've got evidence that would put, that could put my client at the scene, but it doesn't

put my client at the scene at all.

It doesn't put my client anywhere, but it doesn't put them at the scene.

And he's like, yeah, it doesn't put them at the scene.

Um, so he had, he turns those over to me.

Um, one thing I haven't mentioned to this point, um, but as important is this, all the

witnesses in this case speak only Spanish and I'm not a Spanish speaker.

I started going through the messages with a friend of mine who does speak Spanish in our

office.

And I find kind of messages like text messages, text messages and WhatsApp messages.

And I find 100 voice messages between, um, Angie and Adrian on the night that she was shot.

And during that time, those messages span from 2 PM all the way to 11 PM at no point in

those voice messages.

I'm not, these aren't written, these aren't text writings.

These are voice messages.

This is her fucking voice.

She's fighting with Adrian, she's yelling at Adrian, she's telling Adrian that she's going

to go to his Adrian's home, that she's waiting outside Adrian's home, that, but she never

talks about Harry.

She never mentions Harry once.

She never mentioned that Harry was chasing her, that Harry was threatening her, that she

thinks that this was happening, that she's hiding at the parking lot of the school.

She doesn't say any of those things, but she's talking about fighting with Adrian instead

the entire time.

That becomes a pretty big deal.

Um, we also find evidence, um, and I started going through, um, I, whenever I get these

cell phone extractions, I love going through like everything of like pictures, videos, and

stuff.

And in her video, in her pictures, I found her, um, injecting herself with meth.

Well, well, well.

She has a picture of herself.

She has a picture of herself doing meth.

That's what she has.

Yes.

And if you, and if you really want to know, apparently if you're a hardcore meth addict

that just, that really wants to get high, um, you can take the needle off and inject it

through your butt and up your anus.

Oh yeah.

And that's what Angie was doing.

Nice.

In the picture, that's what she was doing?

No, that, that's how we know because one of my friends was like, that's where the needle's

off because she's going to inject it in her butt.

Is this what happened to her pants?

Is this why her panties are all messed up?

I suspect.

I suspect.

And she was partying.

Yeah.

She, she injected it, shot right up in the air and ran outside.

Yeah.

Left up their pants on the sofa.

So that's what we get from the cell phone and that's the new evidence.

And so, um, we now fast forward to Monday.

Yeah.

Wait, hold on.

We got to talk about the Brady violation, right?

That they failed to turn over exculpatory evidence.

Yeah.

What the fuck?

And it sounds like they knew about it.

So, um, all right.

So now we get to, you got this on Friday.

Yes.

Then all weekend going through it.

You probably.

Okay.

And then do you like need, are you trying to transcribe some of these audio messages?

Cause you want to introduce some of them or.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Those are getting transcribed.

So I had someone appointed to transcribe those.

So.

Okay, good.

I just shipped those off basically.

Okay.

That's nice.

That was nice.

Um, and so, um, if David Perez wants to sponsor David Moore's podcast, I mean.

In between the lines with David Perez.

Um, he, he, he cranked those out, um, overnight for us.

Um, but in the meantime, um, we, we come back on Monday and they tell us right now, we're

just assigning you to a trial court.

You can address all these issues with the trial court.

And so, um, I get assigned to a trial court.

It's a different judge this time.

And, and so with this judge, the first thing I do is I bring up the Brady violations and

I asked to dismiss the case.

And I said, you should dismiss it because, uh, Brady, um, number one, number two, there

was a 10 to split.

Um, and in light of the 10 to split and then the new evidence and what the two guilty jurors

had said and what the new evidence would show, it is highly more likely that they would have

voted not guilty.

And to which this new DA says, I have no knowledge of that, but I'm not dismissing.

And the judge says, I agree with you.

I'm not dismissing.

If I don't think I'm the proper judge to dismiss it.

If you want to be heard on this issues, I think the proper thing to do, um, is to go back

to the old trial judge and have her rule on this.

And I said, no.

Yeah.

Um, based off prior experience.

And now me having a judge who I believed was more, um, neutral and would be a fair trial

judge, um, and not, not, and was not picking sides.

Um, I was like, I don't want to lose this judge.

And he, he had also just ruled in that same ruling because he was announcing his motions

at lemonade.

Um, and we brought up that we want to introduce the meth again.

And he had ruled that the meth is coming in this time.

So in the second trial, we are allowed to talk about the meth.

That you're risking by going back to the other judge to argue the Brady violations that that

judge probably wouldn't give a shit about.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And so, um, I was like, now that the meth is coming in, my case just got stronger.

Now that I have these voice messages, my case just got stronger.

We got a 10, two split last time.

Yeah.

I don't know how the jury's going to go, but my client really wanted to be, he, he, the

DA came at us with an offer of three years and my client presumably.

He probably would have gone home with the next few months, but would have had a strike on

his record.

Um, and he did not want to take anything.

He said, fuck it.

I didn't do it.

We're fucking writing.

Let's goddamn go.

Let's ride.

So we start picking a jury at that point.

Um, and just, can we just recap this a little bit?

Okay.

So now you have the, you go, you're in front of this new judge.

You like to draw, at least the judge is neutral.

I mean, and, uh, way better than the last judge that there's a, the judge rules that

the, the positive talks can come in now.

The, the, the, okay.

The presumptive talks comes in.

There's also a picture now of her.

Is it doing meth or what's she doing?

Cause you said there's a needle without a syringe.

So she holding a needle or how is it a meth picture?

She is holding a needle full of meth in her car, um, with the door open.

With a milky, a milky substance.

Is that what meth looks like, you know, from television?

Okay.

Yeah.

She's holding a needle with no, and she's like smiling or what's she doing with the needle?

Like, no, you just, you just know that she's holding it based off like a tattoo and other

things like that.

You just know that she, it's her and for the background, it looks like it's her property.

Does she say bottoms up?

I wish, I wish she said that.

Bottoms up like a meme, you know, like it's just bottoms up.

Yeah.

No, instead, uh, what we'll corroborate it was like, she was, she had other messages saying

that she was going to go to Tarzana Treatment Center to start an inpatient program like two

days later.

Oh, okay.

Nice.

It was her last rendezvous.

Yeah.

And so, so, so that, that was, that picture was not allowed to come in because the judge

is like, look, dude, you can bring in the talk screen and you can ask her about the, the

meth.

Um, but you can, but only about, I'm only going to allow you to ask her about meth and

its use the week prior.

So, but since you don't know when that picture dated and any of that information, that picture

is too prejudicial.

Cause if she, that's from like five years old, I shouldn't come in.

That's fair.

And it's still a win.

Cause all you really need is that she was using around the time of the incident.

Right.

And if she says, no, I can impeach her.

And now I know that the talk screen is coming in.

I can impeach her with the talk screen.

Or if she says, I've never done meth.

Maybe.

Never even seen it.

Never even seen it.

Is this you and your butt?

But now all the stuff is good for us, right?

Now all the stuff is good for us and it's going in our favor.

Um, yeah.

So I, so the other analysis of, of not, um, going back to the old judge was because since

we have a new DA assigned to the case, he has to get up to speed.

Whereas I'm already ahead of the game.

Yeah.

Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm not playing behind the sticks here, but, um, from there we go to jury

selection and with this jury, not the first 18, but the first like 30, I really liked.

And the DA honestly was kicking more people than I was kicking.

Um, and I, I, I just really liked the jury composition.

So there wasn't anything crazy in the jury composition that stood out.

And so from there, um, the one thing that came up is I kept asking the DA, who are you

putting on?

And he told me he's not putting on two witnesses.

He was putting on about like five or six witnesses.

And he was like doing a more thorough recreation of the case.

Um, it didn't really go anywhere.

Like some of the witnesses, I didn't even cross examine.

Um, like, but I did cross examine what he, he had the surgeon come in to talk about her being

shot on the head and the effects of her being shot on the head.

And that worked really well for us.

Cause the surgeon said, and he had no idea of this, her memory is not affected by the

shooting.

So if her memory is put into question, it's not as a result of the shooting, it's a result

of something else.

Wow.

Um, which is a strong piece of evidence for us, right?

Wow.

That's huge.

Which makes the math more explainable for everything.

Um, and so the shot to the head is better than doing math.

Remember that kids.

An actual bullet to your brain.

You would rather have a bullet to the brain.

Do you remember those commercials when we were young with the, like the, the, the egg?

Like this is your brain.

This is your brain on drugs.

And she just smashes everything with the, with the, with the right hand.

A bullet to the brain is better for you than math.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's the PSA right there.

By Chevy.

And David Perez.

And David Perez.

And between the lines with David Perez.

Um, but yeah, so this trial happened is, is happening in December.

Um, it's happening around Christmas time.

And so we're one week away from Christmas.

Um, and so, um, the DA is putting on all these witnesses and this DA has about like 25 years

experience in the DA's office.

He's a great four.

He's done homicides and all this stuff.

And I'm just, I'm like five years in at this point at the PD's office.

Um, so this is the experience.

But it's five years of hard time, Evneek.

Come on.

Like it's Lancaster time.

You're doing it.

And a little valley time, you know.

Um, and so, so then, um, the, the DA is very shady about him calling the IO and about three

days into, into testimony, I realized he's not going to call the IO to the stand.

And I came to that realization when he was introducing, um, the same body worn video, but not from

the detective, but from the partner.

And he was calling the partner to the stand to lay the foundation for the video.

So he didn't want you to have the opportunity to say, you didn't do all these things and

watch him make an ass of himself going, I forgot, I thought about it, thought about it, but

didn't investigate it.

But you can ask, you can ask any police officer if they did these things, you know, they would

say no.

Yeah.

The value that we were getting from the detective was even better.

Right.

So as this is happening, as the partner is testifying, I was able to delay it by what

happened is because everything's in Spanish and there are portions of the body worn video

where the partner wasn't always present.

Yeah.

Um, and the iOS and the detectives body, body worn video captures some other portions.

Um, I was able to ask for a timeout to lay the partner's testimony for two days.

And, um, because I was like, I need to transcribe it and I need the Spanish speaker to tell me

what it says.

And so that way, that's why I just need, I need a little bit of time.

And this was never turned over to me.

So we had a discovery hearing in the middle of all this, but that actually bought me some

time to get the detective under subpoena for me.

And, um, cause that's all I really was trying to do was buy more time.

But during this evidentiary hearing, that's where the shadiness of the prior DA and of

this DA came about.

And what happened was my main thing was, your honor, I don't know what's being said because

I've never gotten this body worn video.

So I had never had an opportunity to like, even if I got it and I never watched it, it

can come in because I had an opportunity to figure it out.

Right.

But I, I was telling the judge, I never got this.

I've never seen this body worn video since I started this case.

I had only received the part of the detective's body worn video.

I never got the partner's body worn video.

And the DA says, he's lying.

He's always gotten this.

He's always had it.

And I was like, your honor, I'm not lying.

I have no reason to lie.

This is something silly to lie about.

Um, I, I've never counted this evidence.

Um, yeah, I'm, I'm like, I'm happy to show the metadata from my computer to the court.

I'm, and the original files I have, I never got this.

The DA storms out of the courtroom, comes back about an hour later, has me a four page document,

slides it over and says, and I was like, what is this?

He's like, read it for yourself.

It's when we turned all the evidence over.

And I was like, okay, but how do I read it?

I don't, it's your, it's your document.

It's helped me understand.

He's like, figure it out.

Like figure what out?

I mean, just cause they turned over to evidence or discovery doesn't mean they turned over

all the evidence and all the discovery.

What are you saying?

He's saying they, they had and that I was lying.

And so then I went back to my, and he, that's how we end the day.

So I went back to my office and I sat down and I was looking at this four page piece

of paper and I noticed the dumb ass didn't even read it himself because

it proved that they'd never turned this body worn video over to me.

Brilliant.

And so I highlighted it and I went back to court the next day.

And then he tells me and the judge, he's like, from now on out, everything will be on the

record.

I don't want to have any off the record conversations with the court or the defense

council.

Because defense council is lying on the, is lying.

And I said, okay.

So I texted him, I texted him.

He comes to court and the judge is like, what's going on?

I was like, I wasn't going to do this on the record.

And I don't do these things on the record usually, but because of the prosecution's

requests, we're doing it on the record.

Yesterday, when they, when they said that I lied and that they had turned everything over,

the reality is that they lied.

And when they said that they spoke with the prior DA who said she had turned everything

over, that was a lie as well.

So if those conversations generally did happen, they're lies.

And if they didn't happen, that's actually a lie that they did happen.

And the evidence is backed up by the four page document that was provided to me by the

prosecution.

So I'd like to file it with the court.

And on page four, it shows that this evidence was received by the prosecution two days ago.

And I never had it.

What a fucking idiot.

Because the trial happened two fucking months ago.

And so then the DA is like, whatever, I'll be back at 1.30 for the trial.

And he just storms out of the courtroom.

Wait, so the evidence show that the DA got the evidence two days prior to the trial.

Because it shows, it's sort of like a catalog of the evidence.

It shows when the DA received it.

And then when the DA may have turned it over to the defense, but it just shows the DA

receiving it.

So you never even fucking had it.

Exactly.

And then was that the four page document?

Or is that something else?

Yeah.

So the four page document proves that they received it two days ago?

What a stupid...

What fucking DAs?

All right.

That's fucking...

And he, without even knowing shit, just accuses you of lying.

You know?

And nothing will ever come of that.

They can do anything they fucking want.

They can be as shady as ever.

And it's not a big fucking deal.

But God forbid, now he's, oh, we got to go on the record because of Avni.

It's like, you need to go on the record because of you, man.

Like...

Yeah.

So then the DA then comes back and says, I'm lying about the WhatsApp messages and that

they're not on the South Bright.

And I'm like, I didn't come up with these fucking WhatsApp messages, bro.

And he's trying to move...

Lying about what?

About the WhatsApp messages?

Like, how they came about, that I'm not giving the proper context for them, that they're

not there.

And I was like, bro, you can go back and they're on there.

Like, I didn't do shit.

And so we have a motion to exclude the evidence.

And he's saying that they're not relevant, that they shouldn't come in, that I'm not...

WhatsApp messages are the messages from Adrian, a communication between Adrian and Angie all

night long.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so now we're going over those messages.

And I was like, and the judge rules that they're coming in as impeachment.

Because if what she said would have happened, she would have told Adrian, but she never tells

Adrian about this stuff.

And he said, he tells the judge that he believes that the judge and I have communicated ex parte

about this stuff.

The prosecutor says this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can't.

And that he believes the judge and I colluded to get these messages in.

Oh, they're such bad losers.

And so then he storms out of the courtroom again.

I can't.

And I was like, can I just play the messages when she's on the stand the first time?

And he's like, I'm going to object to that because there's not proper foundation

late for the messages.

And I was like, well, you step to the foundation.

He's like, unless you call the proper witnesses, I'm not stepping the shit.

And you can lay the foundation with Angie.

Is this your fucking message?

It's your fucking message.

That's not a big, that's your fucking voice.

Yes, it is.

He said, no, I have to go through the proper like law school method of getting the witness

who can lay the foundation that these are WhatsApp messages and that these messages

are from her phone.

And then she can testify that that's her voice.

And I was like, God damn it.

Okay.

That's not fucking, you don't fucking need.

That's not even real.

You don't need that.

So the DA won't step to the foundation, but you can lay the foundation through the witness.

So what does that, but go from there.

So yeah.

So I was like, all right, whatever, fuck it.

You're just going to make me work a little harder.

That's fine.

All I did is I went back to the WhatsApp, went back to the Salbright extraction data.

And I found out who was the detective that downloaded that data.

And I subpoenaed that detective to come into court.

And who was a lovely person?

Her and I chatted it up in the hallway.

She's also from the Valley.

I'm from the Valley.

She's like, why the fuck am I here?

And I was like, because the DA is doing this.

She's like, he's wasting my time.

And I said, I asked him if he would just agree.

Because what you're saying is not controversial.

Like, I know where I got the messages from.

But then that's when I found out he didn't understand how I ever discovered the messages.

And that's why he was having all these issues is because he never, to this day, does not understand how I discovered those messages.

Because he asked the detective and the detective tried to explain it.

And he's like, why, how did he find it though?

And so he asked to come to my office and I showed him how I found the messages.

Oh, because when you get the cell phone data evidence, it's like on a stick.

It's kind of like this weird folders you have to access and click on stuff and click on stuff that leads to other stuff and click on stuff.

And so to actually find the Snapchat or the audio, the WhatsApp section, that might be several folders down the line.

And I can see how an older DA, you say he's been around, he's like a grade four, probably been known for 25 years, might have a more difficult time finding or understanding the evidence.

But a young pup who was only four years old in 1996 might be a little bit easier.

You know, like this guy was doing murder cases in 1996, probably.

Yeah.

So he was like, what the fuck?

So he came to my office and my friends were like, why the fuck is there a DA in our office?

The guy who's lying on the record.

We can only talk on the record because this guy's too shady.

Can I please come to your office and could you show me how this works, please?

And so he comes to the office and I was like, yo, it's right there.

And like, you go down these channels.

And I was like, also, by the way, I'll show you a printout.

When I give you these messages, at the top shows you the links that I clicked on.

He's like, oh.

And the I.O. was like, the detector for the celebrator was like, I've been telling you this.

And so, so, so those end up coming in.

And so, but, but we had to like lay the proper foundation.

Right.

But right before, because again, I said this was happening around Christmas.

We took a week off for Christmas because the judge was out of town.

I was out of town and the jury had some indication issues.

And so, for five days, Angie was testifying on direct and cross-examination.

And this is before the Christmas break.

So, before the Christmas break, no one else has testified besides Angie.

And we conclude the trial.

Nothing significant happens during this portion, right, of direct and cross.

She changes a little bit of facts.

She makes it better for us.

The police chance goes from two hours to three hours.

Some of the scenes get a little bit more wild and hallucinatory.

Yeah.

If that's even a word.

Like, but there were, it's been a couple of years.

So, I don't remember these small facts.

But I do remember my impression being like, shit, this kid is getting wilder and wilder.

But I'll never forget when we ended that week long and went on our Christmas break.

About 4.20 p.m.

No pun intended here.

But it's about 4.20.

And Angie's on the stand.

And I started asking Angie, I was like, on the night of the shooting, you smoked meth?

And she says, yes.

Yeah.

You didn't even have to get into all those.

But she just flat out said it for you.

And I was like, I have no more questions.

Mic drop.

And I just sat down.

And so then the DA gets up.

And this DA had a very interesting thing, which I'll talk about more in my closing.

But he would use these qualifiers and his questions that really came to bite him in the ass.

Yeah.

And one thing is, he's like, are you sure you smoked meth that night?

And she's like, yeah.

She's like, wait, really?

Because I do it every night.

He's all, really?

Guys, he's responsive.

She's like, are you sure?

And she's like, yeah.

She's like, wait, really?

She's like, yeah.

I was looking at every one of the goddamn courtroom and be like, what the fuck?

There was the four, the eventual four person.

I'm looking at her and she's shaking her head like, what the fuck?

And looking at the DA laughing her ass off the entire time.

Okay.

So just to kind of recap the second jury trial, Abneet.

Didn't tell you.

The judge rules that you can bring in evidence of the positive drug screen, toxic in the hospital, right?

Under the rule of completeness?

No.

He said it goes towards credibility.

Business record?

Credibility.

Oh.

And it goes towards credibility and bias and all that stuff.

State of mind.

Okay.

Okay.

Great.

Great.

That's great.

And of course, the DA was trying to keep it out.

And then after that, let's see.

Then you said voir dire kind of was the same, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

And we tried the Messner method in this idea, which was my first time doing it.

And it was fun.

But that was it.

Okay.

Okay.

And the Messner, what was the Messner method again?

That's where, yeah, during deselection, but also where you're just confirming that

they know what it means to be fair and really talking about less abstract terms and just

talking about how they can be fair and locking it in and defining what the definition of fair

is subjectively, but inside the courtroom, it means that they can follow the law, even when

we don't, they don't want to, or it's hard.

In this case, I think it really was applicable because they see a grossome picture of a man

who was shot in the head.

And so I think it was really, really good for this one.

And then did you, what was the, did you ask in 402s about the, the, the Brady violation?

Cause the DA didn't turn over, fell to turn over exculpatory evidence.

What was the judge's response to that?

Or what was the outcome of that?

Yeah, so the judge said, um, to that extent, it's coming in, um, and he's going to allow

it to come.

What's, what's, what's coming in?

The cell phone evidence is coming in.

Whatever I find that is relevant on the cell phone evidence, it can come in.

This is the stuff you wanted and the DA did not want.

Oh.

Yes.

That's right.

And the judge said, I can't rule to dismiss this case unless you send it back to the

other judge.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's right.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

Fuck it.

Okay.

Let's just, okay.

So then let's talk about the, how did the testimony, uh, so let's just back up a little

bit to the opening.

Cause I think now that we have just a few extra minutes.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let me ask the question then.

Excuse me.

It's the second trial now that can go around.

Tell us about your opening statement.

So opening statement was really, um, fun in this one because I had a PowerPoint writing.

I usually don't do a PowerPoint for opening, but the DA really teed it up perfectly for

us because his entire opening was just Angie story and nothing else.

He didn't address any of the bad evidence that they would, that that would come up.

Any evidence that may contradict her, even though he had a trial transcript, right.

Of all the holes in their case, he's for some reason did like, you're going to hear

that this woman was shot, that she was in this area and Harry was a responsible party

for all this.

And, um, it was like a very, very clean version of what he expected.

Uh, and so our, um, opening was basically, I, and I said, my opening, I was, I couldn't

have said that more perfectly.

That is exactly what you will hear.

However, they left out the second half of the story.

They didn't turn to chapter two.

Chapter two is about all the things that they didn't tell you.

Uh, you're also going to hear that Angie was high on meth.

You're going to hear that Angie, um, it is changing her story that she makes this really

crazy story.

That's only believable.

If you're under the influence, you're going to hear how they failed to do DNA testing.

You hear it about all these other things.

And now that like the jury has a real clear idea of where both of us stand on everything.

And because I knew all my evidence was coming in, I was able to follow through on every single

little thing of that and make it to that way in closing, I don't have to address these

points again.

Um, and my closing can be a little bit more, a little different than this.

And so the jury really had a clear idea that they're going to see all these things and

there's all these doubts that are going to be left at the end of the trial.

Uh, was Angie, Angie, the first witness?

Angie was the first witness they put up and she was gone for a week.

Um, because this time we had prior testimony from the first trial, uh, and in the first

trial, she had told us a more complete version of events, even though it didn't still, didn't

make sense.

Uh, because of that, that was part of the reasons why it went longer, but also this time she was

more inconsistent.

Uh, my takeaway was it, and I have nothing to support this, but besides my experience within

the, within Lancaster and working with these prosecutors, someone talked to this witness in

the 60 some days between the two trials because her story changed, uh, her story didn't, it didn't

change drastically, but where there were holes in her story or her story was a little wonky

and weird.

Someone talked to her about, Hey, this didn't make sense.

And so she started clearing, cleaning stuff up.

Um, and so that really set up for, did you ask her that?

Did you ask her when you were like, Hey, did somebody coach you through this?

No, I didn't ask her that because what I did instead is, um, uh, a job, uh, a former PD

judge and, um, a, uh, couple of supervisors I've seen me do trial commented on when I do the

theatrics of what I do in jury trial. And so I walked up with the entire prelim transcript,

the jury trial transcript, which is about three to 400 pages. And I just had as one volume sitting

there with me. And so I positioned myself next to the jury and I never like got closer to Angie,

but I stayed next to the jury the entire time. So they would see whenever she became inconsistent,

I pulled out from the bottom of the podium, the jury trial transcript, and I would just refer to

points where she became inconsistent. And there were enough of those that this became a very

repetitive thing over three days. I knew the lines by heart because there were like, I had done this,

but also there were in my cross-examination, like exactly. So I didn't need to do the theatrics,

but I did it because I wanted to show the jury something happened before.

And now she's changing her story significantly. So that was really important. And after that,

we got into one of the things that they tried to do is in their direct, they said she was no longer

wearing pants. They went away from the pants narrative. They started focusing on instead of

pants, they started focusing on, it was a dress. And that was the big change that I, yeah. So they

went from a dress to wearing, you mean she wasn't missing pants. It was just that her dress was up in

the photograph. Exactly. Come on. And so that became a big, big portion of our cross-examination and

impeachment because I was impeaching her because she said it on direct. And then on my cross, she said,

no, I was not wearing pants. I was wearing, I was wearing, I was wearing a dress. So I had to impeach

her from the prior trial, but not just the trial. I impeached her from a couple other statements she

had made about it being a dress, her wearing pants. And as a result, that became, that became an even

bigger issue later on in week two of the trial. But where we really, her, her cross and we end her

testimony on is really when we do, we talk about the meth. And I purposely made it, that was gonna be

the last point since I knew I could impeach on it. And it was the most significant evidence that we had

in our back pocket. The question I forgot to mention earlier was I asked her, did you smoke meth the week

of the shooting? And that's where she said yes. And that's when I was like, fuck, I'm going to tee it

up. And really this could, I hope, I hope it hits, but I didn't know the answer to this. And it was,

did you smoke meth on the night of the shooting? And she said, yes. And that's when I sat the fuck down.

Or shoot it up your butt.

Or shoot it up your butt, yes.

And so the prosecutor had these tells the entire trial and there really came apparent on redirect where

anytime she said something inconsistent, you would say, wait, really? Are you sure that's what happened?

At one point, he even told Angie, he's like, you said on direct examination, you didn't speak with

Adrian that day. Yes. But on cross, you said you spoke with Adrian that day. She said, yes.

His next thing was, I have never seen this in a jury trial, but his phrase was, you understand those

are two contradictory statements. And she said, yes. And I just jotted that down in like a different

color pen I had. Um, and I just put it in my back pocket for closing. Yeah. He just left it. He just

left it. Um, why, why, why would he do that? I don't know. I don't know. And so that was a lot

of the, what about, what about the, um, the WhatsApp recordings, the audio recordings? Did you play those

in your cross-examination or those come into evidence at all? They come into evidence, but because there was an

issue as how the DA believed foundation needed to be laid for those pieces of evidence before they're

introduced to the jury, they came in, um, during my case in chief, I had to put on a case in chief.

So you did not mention them during your cross-examination ever during the first week of the

trial. So she didn't, you didn't ask her, you didn't on your cross, you didn't say, Hey, you

talked to Adrian that night. You talked to him 50 times. You talked, you called him at this time

and this time and this time and this time. You didn't do that. I couldn't do that. I couldn't

do that during the first week. They, they, they said, they said, that's not how it's going to play

out. Cause you don't even know if they're coming in and we don't want you to taint the evidence.

Um, but you could ask her if she made a fucking phone call to Adrian.

So from there, the jury really ended that week and they're going on a week long vacation at this

point, a pause from the trial. No way with her admitting multiple times on cross and redirect

that she was high on meth. And then we come back to the second week and this is when, um,

he puts on other witnesses, witnesses that don't really matter to the grand scheme of the case.

It was her son and her daughter who said her mom, their mom didn't come home the next day. They had

to search for the mom. The mom was in the, Angie was in the hospital, things like that. That didn't

really move the needle or anything. It was just a story of motions. Um, and then he puts on a partner

to talk about some body more video about how she was lying on the ground, almost dying.

What did you find out about the IO? Remember you're talking earlier, you're talking about the IO and

whether or not the IO is going to testify or not. Did we already go into that ad nauseum or enough?

You think? Yeah. I think that was just at the start of the second week where the, yeah.

Once I found out that the partner was testifying, that was at the start of the second week

and we delayed her to the end of the week instead.

And that's when the, the DA was like, Oh, he's lying. He did receive these recordings and that all

happened. Yeah. And that's what that hole, but you still, you had the IO under subpoena at this

point. So you could call the IO in your case. Yes. Yeah. So I got the IO under subpoena at this

point. Um, and so during the second week there, the remainder of their case in chief was pretty,

pretty simple piecing it together without the, without the IO. And so because they didn't call

the IO and there was so much evidence that comes out through the IO, I had to call him as a witness.

Um, but not only the IO, I had to call another detective for the WhatsApp messages, the foundation

for those messages to talk about that. They were on Angie's phone, how they're found on Angie's phone,

and then lay the foundation for about like 50 some messages where it's really boring, repetitive

testimony, but he made us do this. And then, um, the last witness I call is Angie. And I have to call

Angie to get in the WhatsApp testimony, which becomes a big piece. Um, so, so with the IO.

So we're talking about the defense case now for the defense case, you call it, you laid the foundation

with the, for the audio recordings with the sheriff. And now you're calling Angie. Yeah. And I'm also,

I'm also calling the detective, right? The detective who did the, who did the investigation from the prior

trial. Right. Um, and so you asked him all the things he, all the things he didn't do, right? You went through

all that whole checklist again, right? Checklist. And the only thing I added to that is since I knew the evidence

wasn't coming in, instead of calling my own witness, I own expert to talk about the influence, how meth

affects your memory. I just got it out through the IO. I was able, cause they have experience in

investigating drug, uh, drug, uh, being under the influence of drugs and stuff. So I was able to

get out all that from the IO and, um, technically I was supposed to direct examine the IO, but I said,

fuck it until someone stops me. I'm just going to cross-examine him. And the DA never objected,

even though after the fact, he was like, you know, you did cross-examine him. I just didn't do

anything. And I was like, okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Thank you for, thank you for

letting me do what I can get away with. Thank you. And so, and you know, you can object. Yeah. Yeah,

exactly. Go ahead. Go ahead. And then with Angie, I mean, it was really simple, right? Like

she was laying the foundation for, for the, the evidence of the WhatsApp messages. What I wasn't

expecting is when the DA started, the DA crossed her and that's where I wasn't expecting, um, because

the messages weren't really much of a dispute once they're in, right? He crossed her because he was

now, and I didn't know this, but he ordered the detective to go down to Norwalk, which is about

like 120 miles from Lancaster. He ordered the detective to go to Norwalk from the evidence

locker, pull out the top that she was wearing that day. And they brought it in to the jury to show the

jury that that was a dress and not a like top, like a blouse. How many women were on your jury?

It was about like six women. Okay. So about half of them are women. And okay. Tell us about this

shirt that they're trying to say as a dress now, because I feel like the women on that jury are going

to call some bullshit. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I'm seeing your face right now. That's kind of how

the reaction was, especially the eventual four person was a woman. And she was like, I love this

woman so much. She had such clear facial expressions, which was such a clear telling for me when I found

out she was a four person, uh, when they came back with the verdict, I knew how it was going to go

because her facial expressions were like not believing the DA the entire time. And they almost

felt insulted that this man, old man was telling them that this blouse was a dress and not a blouse.

And that was just really like, it was so impactful.

Did it have, did it have, did it have no sleeves or arms?

Like a little arm sleeve, a little arm sleeve, just small, tiny arm sleeves.

Okay. I love that the little hand motions for the people listening.

Avni, it's describing a cap sleeve shirt.

Yeah. I mean, can you like, can you reconstruct this for us? Like, so they bring an actual,

an evidence bag in the court, open the evidence bag and pull out a fucking blouse and call it what?

People's exhibit.

You know, like whatever.

This guy got a moment with his own victim.

And, and because it's cross exam, because it's cross examination, the DA is like,

isn't this the dress you were wearing?

Yes.

And what would she, she said, this is the, the witness said, Angie said, yeah,

that's the dress I was wearing a fucking blouse.

So this, okay. So let's recreate it. Right. So she said, I really like to breathe.

He walks into the courtroom, like he steps outside of the courtroom,

walks in the courtroom with like a Trader Joe's bag sealed up and in front of the jury,

puts it on council table. And cause they sit close to the jury.

It's even, it's even better in this regard and opens it up with a pair of scissors.

Like there's tape and shit and puts on blue gloves in front of the jury,

reaches into the bag, pulls out the blouse and walks up to Angie at the witness stand,

which is about like a 40 feet walk, 50 feet walk. Right.

And holds it up in front of her and to the jury.

And now he's standing.

Clothing.

And he's like, is this the dress you were wearing on the, on the, on the night you were shot?

And she's like, yes. And this red mark, is this the blood that you,

that came from your head? She's like, yeah, that's my blood.

And he's just asking her these questions. And none of that's in dispute.

I'm not disputing. That's her blood. Right.

That'd be fucking stupid of me.

And there's all these like stupid questions, but now he's really,

he's holding it up and he's like, okay, this was a blouse.

You, you, you wear this and you don't wear pants underneath.

She's like, I don't wear pants underneath that.

Wait, so he acknowledged that it was a blouse?

Yeah, my blouse. He said, this is a dress and you don't need to wear,

you don't need to wear pants underneath this.

To be fair, no one needs to wear pants if they don't want to.

Especially if they're high on meth, they don't even know what's happening.

But it's just, it's the length of a shirt. It's a torso. It goes to the torso, right?

It goes from, it's like, it's not a, a dress has shoulders. It's not a skirt.

A dress can, can be a tube dress, David.

I love having this conversation with you boys.

The question isn't really how high it goes, whether it goes up on the shoulders.

It's how low it goes. How long is it?

Did you ask Angie to put it on?

That would have been funny.

No, no, no. So I didn't ask her to put it on.

Can we assist you out of your wheelchair while you put on this bloody garment?

So here's, here's the funny thing I left out.

So the DAs have to prove a lot of things, right?

One of the things they have to prove is that she suffered great bodily injury.

That's really not in fucking dispute in this case, guys.

And he asked her, he had the audacity.

I said, can you lift your arms for us?

And he made this woman who cannot move her arm have like an emotional heartache moment

where she tried to lift her arm and couldn't.

And I was like, you're such a fucking dick, dude.

I would have, I'm not fighting you on that.

Like my whole defense has been my client didn't do it.

I can happily say she's shot and paralyzed.

Like that doesn't affect my case.

I mean, even if she could move it, I would call a bullet permanently lodged into her brain

as serious bodily injury.

Just, just, just, just, just a thought, right?

I mean, grade four should have done this.

And so, so I didn't, I didn't dispute much of it because I saw the jury's reaction and

I was like, this dress.

Wait, I mean, you never told us how long it was.

What are we looking at here?

I don't know, dude.

Like it goes down to your waist.

That is for sure not a dress.

Yeah.

Unless you want your vagina exposed to the mold.

We need a dress to at least cover the undercarriage.

Like that's really.

I mean, this is like driving around with your agent exposed kind of thing.

Did you, did you, uh, did you ask her any questions about the piece of clothing or was

it just so ridiculous?

You didn't try.

We didn't have to.

Yeah.

We didn't have to.

I mean, there, there was, I saw, I read the women on the jury and it was so like insulting

to the women on our jury that I, I, I backed, I was like, there's, there's nothing to do

here.

All right.

So what happened next in trial?

From there we rested.

I obviously asked the motion to dismiss and that was denied and we got right into closing

and, um, for, for this closing, I had gone to, I love my head deputy cause he's so good

at giving me little hooks and openings for trial.

And so this is one I use to this day and it's amazing.

And, and I started by, I want to talk about a story and, and it's a story about an old man

and this old man, um, he was searching for something one night and.

Um, a woman walks up to him and she asked him, sir, something wrong.

And he said, yeah, I lost my keys.

And she's like, well, why would you lose them?

Can I help you?

He's like, I would love your help.

Yeah.

I lost them over there.

And he points to down the street.

And as I'm saying the story, there's a street lamp as picture of one street and a street

lamp, just dark night street on, on as my PowerPoint background.

And I'm pointing to the, pointing to the dark side of the TV.

And I'm like, the keys were lost over there.

And ladies and gentlemen, that's what our story is about.

They're looking for the keys.

They're looking for the answers.

The questions are in the dark, but they're looking for the answers underneath the street

light where it's brightest.

It's not where our story starts.

It's not where the keys were lost.

The keys were actually lost somewhere in the dark and the shadows, but they don't want to

walk across the street and ask the tough questions here.

They don't want to ask the questions about why was she on this property?

Who else on this property could have shot her?

And they don't want to ask those questions because those questions are harder.

They're tougher.

And they messed up the investigation.

If they actually tried to ask those questions, we might actually know who shot Angie.

Was it Adrian?

You know, where's Adrian?

That's a question they never asked her.

In a case where Adrian is missing and she's shot, why is he coming to her defense?

You got their messages of them fighting right before.

Right.

And so all that comes in and that's how we started.

And from there, we just paint the story.

I'm like, look, I couldn't have teed this up better.

And because we're in closing, I can actually say all this stuff.

I'm like, I couldn't have teed this up better.

They got up here and for the past two hours, they've been telling you why my client's guilty,

but never bothered to address her being high on meth or her doing any of these things.

In fact, they tell you it's a red herring that I'm going to talk about her meth.

And actually, I'm exactly saying she was high as fuck on meth, that she is hallucinating.

She's making all this up because the reality is that this is only believable in a make-believe

story or if you're high on meth.

This doesn't make sense any which way.

And that was basically it.

That was the closing, right?

And laying everything out and painting a very clear picture.

And this time, I am kind of pointing the finger slowly at Adrian because we have more evidence

to point it to Adrian.

But without saying that, they tried to bring up third-party culpability again.

He told, he made it a, he tried to, before the eve of closing, the DA tried to bring up third-party

culpability and the judge told him to fuck off.

We're not even entertaining that argument.

Oh, fuck.

And there's a cat attacking you right now.

Sorry, guys.

She's attacked my face.

Oh, you.

But yeah, so, so with that being done and said, I mean, I sat down, my clothing was like

35 minutes, 37 minutes.

His rebuttal was another 37 minutes.

Jesus.

And at that point, I was, I was, I was checked out.

I walked back to my office.

I was ready to like, go home.

Go back to India.

You needed another eat, pray, love tour.

I did.

It was, it was 4 p.m.

I didn't think the jury was going to come back that day.

Um, by 4 15, I was ready.

I was packing up to go home and I got a text message saying they got a verdict.

Oh, yes.

Wow.

15 minutes.

15 minutes.

Wow.

On an attempted murder.

And, um, they, they walked in and the moment they walked in, uh, I, I, the, the four person

was smiling at me.

They were all in a happy mood, which is always a telling sign for us.

Right.

And, um, the, the judge, which is staring, the judge got the envelope.

He read the verdict, but then he gives it to the clerk to announce it.

And the entire time the judge is like leaning over, staring dead ass at me and my client.

Um, and I'm like, fuck, what does this mean?

I think it means we're walking, but I'm not sure.

Um, and then next, you know, it was a, now it's not guilty.

My client starts crying.

I start crying.

Uh, he gives me a hug and he's just, he's thinking again, he speaks Spanish, but he was

able to say thank you and just so thankful for everything.

Um, and so after about a year in jail, my client finally, finally made it home.

Right on.

That's fucking great.

Yay for Harry.

That's a great trial.

Yeah.

The jury stayed behind.

The jury was really inquisitive.

I think, um, about like two weeks after a juror from the first jury for the first trial

reached out to me, um, on social media.

And it was asking me like, Hey, whatever happened with that case?

Um, told her that we, that the jury finally acquitted on the retrial.

And she was like, Oh my God, I'm so thankful.

Like the DA fucked that case.

Like she should have never retried it.

Um, and then another juror from a juror from our second trial ended up interning at the

PD's office.

Oh, wow.

I love that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I gave everyone my business card afterward and then she reached out to me.

She's like, I would really love to like hear more about your career and what you

guys do.

And can I intern for you guys?

So she spent a summer in our office and now she's off to law school.

That's very cool.

That's cool.

That's cool.

That's cool.

Um, well, Avni, thank you for, for reaching out to put this awesome story on the podcast.

Um, so thankful that we got to spend the, uh, this day with you hearing this story.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

Well, hopefully there'll be more to come.

The mystery.

I, yeah, I know there'll be still remains to be.

We still don't know where the fucking pants are.

No one knows where the fucking pants are.

Dude, they searched this.

I never said it, but they searched my client's home for the fucking pants.

Even they were curious.

No one knows where these goddamn pants are.

They're in a, they're in the corner of some meth house, you know, just kind of, um, maybe

they're like a carpet now rug.

Who knows?

But that's great though.

That's great, Avni.

And I'm, you know, I'm so glad that, uh, we get to hang out.

You got it.

You got a good light in you that shines bright.

So I'm glad you're, you're on our team.

Of course.

Of course.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Avni, I'm going to close it out.

Uh, you know, ask the question we ask all our guests, uh, what made you decide to

become a public defender?

Uh, it was an awkward conversation in about September of 2018.

Uh, when my, I was working at a civil rights firm.

It was my first year of practice.

And my boss comes up to me and says, I'm not firing you, but I don't think this is the

job for you.

I don't think you like doing civil rights work.

I don't think you'd like civil practice.

I think you should go to the PD's office.

That's where y'all get to help clients.

That's where you'll still get to fight the fight, but it's more fast paced.

Um, you'll get the trial experience that you're like seeking.

And I was open to that idea.

I didn't want to do criminal cause I don't want to be involved in people going to prison.

Uh, but, um, I talked to a few, uh, former public defenders, John Raifling, John Brock,

um, Jennifer Friedman, and a few others, and, uh, was convinced that maybe I should try this

out at least.

And from there, it's been the perfect merge.

Yeah, it's the perfect merge.

I love this job.

I don't think I'm leaving, uh, ever.

I remember when Evie first started too.

No, I, I, I remember when Evie first started, you know, that was, that was a fun group of,

uh, public defenders to see, uh, do their thing.

It was a good group.

I thought.

And, uh, yeah.

I thought we were good.

Superstar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, all right.

Well, thanks for being on the podcast, guys.

Lauren, as always.

Good time, guys.

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.

We'll be back in two weeks with Another Not Guilty, straight from the trenches.