Proof Beyond a Reasonable Printout

And so now she has all these other emails.

So at first I was kind of like, shit, like I've now made it worse.

It was just the Twitter notifications involving his username.

They sort of gave us all of the email a day or two before the hearing.

So we have like 60 pages from law enforcement, 300 pages of the news.

And so I sort of compared them and say, okay, which ones are duplicates, which ones are not.

And notice in that comparison that some of the emails that should be identical, same date, same content, had a slightly different timestamp.

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-guilties public defenders get on a daily basis.

In an unjust criminal system.

With the deck stacked against us.

Another Not Guilty.

All right, all right.

Welcome to another episode of Another Not Guilty.

I'm Dallas Guttman, a public defender in Cincinnati, Ohio.

And McKay, I think our guest is across the pond today.

Across the pond, the major pond.

The big one.

Yeah, we are joined today by Lauren Hillary with a win out of the Harrison County Public Defender in Mississippi.

Wait, McKay, who are you?

Oh, I'm McKay.

I'm Rachel McKay.

Also a public defender.

I work with Dallas.

I did mix it up a little bit, so I get why we got a little bit off track.

There's a lot of people here today.

We've got 10 people lined up.

Just kidding.

And the other one is Lauren, and she has a great win from when you were working in Mississippi.

But you're currently across the pond in New Zealand?

I am currently in France, in the Burgundy region.

You can see behind me there's this really antique stone wall that's in our Airbnb.

That looks older than anything we've ever experienced.

For people who are listening on, you know, in their car, there is a very old wall behind.

Super old.

Yeah.

These bricks, if they could talk.

Right.

How's Burgundy?

It's great.

We've been riding our bicycles through these vineyards and drinking all the wine.

Oh my gosh.

That sounds like a dream.

I know.

I know.

Yeah.

Do you have room for two more on those bikes?

Yeah.

No.

We'll just tandem bike behind you.

It won't be annoying.

It won't be annoying, I promise.

At all.

So, I actually quit my job, and my husband quit his job in September.

We are moving to New Zealand in January.

And so, for the time being, we're just going to travel around Europe.

Yay.

Good for you.

You're catching me in France.

Yeah.

Love that for you.

That's the dream, honestly.

So, wait, are you planning on doing any legal work in New Zealand?

Yes.

So, I submitted all of my qualifications to the New Zealand Law Council, and they assessed

me and told me what I need to do.

I have to take two law school classes, property law and wills in the state.

Oh, the worst ones.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Did I get a con law?

Simple, simple, simple.

Absolute.

You got the Fourth Amendment over there.

Yes.

So, I have to take those two classes and then sit for an exam made for international lawyers,

and then I can practice.

New Zealand's not a UBE country?

No.

So, I am set to become a student at the ripe old age of 41 years old.

Wait, that's exciting, though.

Yeah, that's really exciting.

My perspective is it's always time to send it.

So, I'm hoping I get to wear a wig.

Oh, yeah.

Do they wear those?

Apparently, for special occasions, I'm not sure.

The wigs?

But, yeah.

You got to send us a picture of you in the wig when you get there.

Yeah, absolutely.

And also the wigs and the wig, too.

Yeah.

The wigs are expensive.

They're like $1,000 each.

I looked into it.

Don't ask me why.

Just a cursory search.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, all right.

Well, we have an excellent not guilty for you today.

Lauren, tell us a little bit about what your client's charged with.

By indictment, he was charged with 13 separate counts.

The first one was child exploitation, which in Mississippi is kind of our catch-all.

It covers child pornography.

It covers the to-catch-a-predator type of situations, but in this case, he was accused of trying to proposition his teenage stepdaughter.

And then there were six counts of sexual battery and six counts of touching of a child for lawful purposes.

For a grand total of 13 counts, each one would carry day-for-day mandatory time.

And some of the sexual battery counts, because of how old the alleged victim was, would carry up to a life sentence.

So he was facing, what, two life sentences plus, I calculated it one time, like an astronomical amount of time.

Okay.

What we need to know is he's facing life in prison.

Oh, yeah.

Times several.

Times several.

Okay, so this is a very serious case.

What's your client alleged to have done?

What's the state's version?

Our client, his name is Jeremy.

He was, he had a long-term relationship.

They weren't married with the mother of three children, one of which I think when he moved in was 12, a girl that was 12, a girl that was 11, and then a younger son that was maybe like 10 at the time.

And so the allegation is that during the course of their relationship, and they're all living together as a family, that he started a sexual relationship with the oldest daughter.

They alleged that it occurred for years and years in his home.

And so at some point in April of 2023, the girl disclosed the abuse to her mother.

So Jeremy's, he called, he called her his wife.

They weren't really married.

And so she confronts Jeremy.

He says, absolutely not.

I've never done anything like that.

And so surprisingly, the mom then kicks the two teenage daughters out of the house.

Let's go live with your grandma.

And Jeremy stays in the house.

Okay.

And this is to protect them?

Or this is to?

That's a good question.

Get the problem out of the house.

I guess get the problem out of the house.

And that's sort of how we tried to spin it.

So Jeremy stays in the house.

They try and repair their relationship until, so this disclosure is April 15th.

The mom finally asked him to leave the house in mid-June.

And then the girls come back from grandma's house.

And then at that point, they go to the police.

So we have, you know, a delayed disclosure as far as when did the acts occur, but then

also several months delayed from when the allegation was first made by the complainant.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

Yeah.

And how long is the delay on the disclosure?

She's saying it happened for years while she was growing up.

From when to when?

Well, there were no specifics whatsoever.

She said it started either when she was 13 or 14.

And so she is 17 at the time the disclosure is made to law enforcement.

OK, so a few years.

A few years.

Right.

She's 18 at the time of the trial.

OK.

So they go to the police.

He gets arrested.

And that's where you come in?

Well, there's a little bit more to it.

They just do like a walk in at the police.

They sit down and take a little mini interview because they're trained, trained not to talk

to juveniles making allegations of sexual abuse.

So they talk to the mom, get some some information and then schedule.

We call them forensic interviews.

I don't know if that's a common term, but, you know, a child advocacy center that's also

supposedly trained to interview children.

Right.

Dealing with abuse.

And so but also what they brought with them in this initial interview to the police were

these emails.

And so she when she told her mom what was going on, she had spent the night before sort

of what she called compiling her evidence.

And so she claims that not only would Jeremy, you know, have sexual relations with her, but

he would send her Twitter messages saying, you know, let's meet up or a smiley face emoji

means meet me in the garage, that kind of thing.

And so she when they showed up at the police station, they had all these Gmail printouts,

not from Twitter, but a Twitter notification.

OK, so they weren't the they weren't the DMs themselves.

You have a DM from Twitter in your email.

And here's an excerpt of this, whatever this message says.

OK.

And so that's what they bring to the police, you know, on that that day when they walk in.

And so law enforcement with that information, like I said, they scheduled the forensic interviews

and then they sent a preservation letter to Twitter for Jeremy's account and eventually

followed up with a search warrant for Jeremy's Twitter account thinking, OK, if these messages

exist in Gmail notifications, they should be in Twitter.

When they get that response back from Twitter, there are no messages at all.

And this is pre-arrest, right?

So they are.

OK, so this is like not even we're not even at the discovery process yet.

No, no.

OK.

So they to their credit, they did do some investigation before before they went and arrested.

Shocker.

Wow.

This is maybe.

I know.

I'm disoriented that he hasn't been arrested yet.

I'm like, where are we?

Yeah.

Well, I'm going to try it, right?

And they're disclosing this.

Oh, no.

This is pre-arrest.

This is a remarkable amount of homework.

Well, don't get too excited because when their follow-up investigation doesn't turn

up anything else.

So then they decide to just go and arrest them.

Oh, of course.

Right.

Yeah.

So, you know, the forensic interviews, they actually scheduled them for all three of the

kids that were in the house.

And so younger sister also made some disclosures, like he hugged me too tight or he touched me

on the butt, that kind of stuff.

They didn't charge any of that.

Okay.

And then younger brother, he said, I have no idea what you're talking about, but they would

sometimes be alone in the house together.

Okay.

And so that's the evidence.

They go and arrest him.

They come with search warrants for all of his electronic devices.

And he had a lot because Jeremy was a gamer.

That was his profession.

And I didn't know this was a thing until this case, but he plays video games on his YouTube

channel and people watch.

And people pay him?

Pay.

Pay.

I don't know why, how.

Anyway, but that's what he did.

I'm in the wrong profession.

I'm not a gamer, but it sounds.

I'm actually live streaming this on YouTube and getting paid for it, guys.

I want my cut, please.

Yeah, same.

The viewer is my mom.

So they come, they take all of his electronic devices, his PlayStation, his laptop, his iPad,

his phone, forensically investigate all of that.

Again, nothing to corroborate or nothing that matches up with the emails that they brought

to the police.

So all they have at this point is the daughter's allegation, the oldest daughter's allegation,

and these emails of notifications.

Correct.

Okay.

And you can see the messages in the email or it's like you have a new notification?

You can see the content of the message.

And most of them are like smiley face emoji, heart emoji.

Are any of them damning?

Not really, except that they are at like three in the morning.

Okay.

And so, you know, if you send a heart eye, smiley emoji at three in the morning, then

they were going to use that as contact.

At three in the afternoon.

Yes, that does.

It does have a different tone.

Or versus not at all.

That's also has a tone.

Oh, yeah.

Or versus not at all.

Exactly.

Right.

So they do all this and then they arrest him, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Is there anything else like pre-arrest that's?

Yeah.

One more thing I should mention.

During the forensic interview, there is a social worker that attends and she tells the detective,

hey, I know something about this family and I actually know that Jeremy is HIV positive and

I don't know how she knew that or how she was privy to his private medical information,

but Jeremy and his wife had actually had an infant child together during the course of their relationship.

I think the kid was like eight months or a year old at the time that all these disclosures were happening.

And so the detective takes that information and gets the daughter's medical records and Jeremy's medical records from the health department.

And so he confirms that Jeremy is in fact HIV positive and the girl as part of her normal physicals had been tested for STDs and was negative on everything.

So we had that little piece of information to go with as well.

Okay.

So the social worker who was involved in the forensic interview coincidentally independently knew the HIV status and without a search warrant, without anything, gave that information to law enforcement, which happened to be beneficial to the client.

But she just independently disclosed that medical information like sua sponte.

Yes.

I don't even know the name of the social worker because I wasn't able to get that later.

And there's just a note in the detective narrative, like social worker mentioned blah, blah, blah.

So I, so I went and did this.

So it's kind of like an offhanded comment that helps your case.

Really?

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's like a egregious violation that went well.

Yeah, exactly.

I was upset about it at first, but then, you know, okay, we can really use this to our minimum.

Just this time, it's fine.

So is this where, is this where you meet your client?

One more thing to mention at arrest, he did give a statement.

Okay.

He just emphatically denied, denied, denied.

I would never, I love these girls.

I think of them as my children.

Like it was really, really powerful denial.

And this is on video?

Yes.

On video.

And at the end, the detective asked him about his HIV status.

And then he does lie about that.

He says, no, I'm healthy as a horse.

But, but I think that's understandable.

But that was something, if we play that card, we were going to have to deal with, with the

denials that he made.

Okay.

But that's about it.

Now it's time.

He's been arrested.

He gets a lawyer.

And to tell you about how this works, I have to tell you about how fucked up it is in Mississippi.

Tell us how fucked.

Okay.

So you get arrested.

You're entitled to a preliminary hearing.

That preliminary hearing happens in justice court.

Justice court is the same court that handles speeding tickets, misdemeanors.

Sorry, did you say justice court?

It is called justice court.

It sounds like.

That sounds dystopic.

Yeah, it does sound like a dystopic, like, video game.

God damn it.

Justice court.

Not much justice to be found in justice court.

You go, but you never return.

Correct.

The, the judges in justice court are not required to be lawyers.

What?

Yes.

Jesus.

Do you have like regular schmoes who are like, lock them up for life.

I don't know what the eighth amendment is.

Correct.

Sometimes when we have preliminary hearings, instead of finding probable cause and biting

them over, they find them guilty.

It's fine.

But it's really appalling that they get to be part of the, a major process for a serious

felony case like this one.

Someone has multiple life sentences pending and the person deciding that preliminary hearing

like stayed at a Holiday Inn Express and that's like the credential.

Correct.

Um, I used to file.

I used to.

Yeah, stay in Bordeaux.

The only ones that they will agree to transfer to what we call county court, which is a court

of record with a, you know, judge that's a lawyer, um, are capital murder cases.

So cases where the death penalty is on the table.

What they seem like real serious cases, not like these life cases.

So there are boundaries.

Yeah.

I used to file all these motions to transfer in every capital case, which, you know, anything

where a life sentence is being faced by the defendant to me is a capital case.

Yeah.

Those would get denied when I got in trouble, you know, trouble.

The justice court judges didn't really like me telling them they're not important enough

to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're like, Hey, can we get a lawyer involved here?

And they're like, absolutely not.

Over my dead body.

Will we involve a lawyer?

Why would we do that?

I don't know.

We're in justice court.

Excuse me.

Yeah.

Are they elected?

They must be.

So they're elected.

They're elected.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Okay.

So we're in justice court.

We're in justice court.

I did not have the case at this time because we have, um, some younger lawyers in our office

that handle the pre-indicted cases.

Um, so I didn't get the case until it got indicted, but, um, Jeremy actually declined to

have a preliminary hearing.

One, he's not going to get any relief in justice court and two, even in sex cases, they require

them to have the hearing in front of everybody.

So if you have the hearing, your other inmates are going to know what your charges are, which

are alleged to have done.

And so in, in his judgment, the risk reward wasn't there to have the hearing.

So he waived it.

Yeah.

So when you got to the case, were you like, damn, I wish you had this preliminary hearing

or were you like, okay, good call or it doesn't matter?

I don't think it really matters because even when you have a hearing, it's just the

detective sort of up there spitballing what he can remember from his report.

So there's no, there's no fact witnesses.

There's no people like that.

And if you, you know, if you get too far afield into trying to develop a defense or asking questions

that the county prosecutor thinks are, you know, this is discovery, not a preliminary hearing.

There's an objection and it's sustained, of course.

Okay.

So they're not really that fruitful.

Yeah.

They're really not.

They're really not.

Um, but the unfortunate thing is the other part of how Mississippi is so fucked is it takes

about a year until indictment?

What?

Yes.

Wait, what about speedy trial time?

That's waived?

No, there are, there is the line of jurisprudence in Mississippi on the speedy trial.

There's actually a dissent that was written by one of our more liberal justices that said there

is no speedy trial right in Mississippi, because even when you bring those speedy trial rights

for somebody that's been sitting pre-trial, you know, for a year, two years, they say you

have to show prejudice and prejudice means I would have won the case except for this witness

dying or whatever else.

Pre-trial, lengthy pre-trial incarceration is not prejudiced.

It's not even really considered.

Wow.

Yes.

That's, that's unreal.

Well, why?

Is there like a huge backlog?

They can't just like show the grand jury the case or they just-

I don't know.

Because in this case, like even drug cases take like a year to be presented.

And the excuse they use on those is, well, there's a backup at the crime lab.

But this case, there was no, there was no investigation.

There was no crime lab.

There was no friends.

Right.

They didn't do like, they didn't do like a, a sane invest, uh, so I mean, that must be

difficult to like explain to a client.

Like, it's hard for me to explain to a client, like, Hey, in 10 days, there's going to be

a grand jury report.

I can't imagine trying to advise a client like, Hey, you're going to sit here for a year before

we even learn whether or not you're indicted on these charges.

Like, and what the charges are.

Yeah.

That must be so hard to like, A, advise people on and B, accept as a client.

Like, wow.

Yeah.

We spend a lot of our time saying like, I recognize that this is wrong and you are presumed innocent

and you do have these rights, but in our system and the way it's set up, they're illusory.

And there's literally nothing you can do about it.

Nope.

Nope.

Um, I've tried, I've filed, you know, trial motions and motions to dismiss and they just

get denied.

That's unreal.

Then the prosecutor says, okay, when we indict, we're going to, you know, we're not going

to make the offers and we're going to, you know, there's going to be a retribution for

you, all this kind of stuff.

Wow.

And I don't even know who that benefits.

I obviously doesn't benefit the client at all, but if the state is trying to prove a case

that involves a private witness, especially a kid with something that's already a delayed

report.

Right.

Like it doesn't benefit them either.

I don't even understand the purpose.

It's just kind of the, it's the way it is.

It's the way it's always been.

It's showbiz.

I hate it the way it is.

Like.

And the way it's been.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just, that, it doesn't make sense.

No.

Good on you for moving to New Zealand.

I don't know what they do over there, but I know they do things different.

I'm sure.

It can't be this.

It can't be this.

Like it feels like fields of grass and sheep justice, you know, realized.

Justice court.

We'll see.

And I'll, I'll report back.

Not, hopefully not justice court ever again.

Yeah.

Okay.

But I digress.

So how did you meet Jeremy?

Okay.

He, he finally got indicted.

So like I said, he got arrested in July of 23.

He got indicted and I met him.

He got indicted in May of 24.

So yeah.

So that's right.

And I met him in, at his arraignment in August and he was a little.

Wait, so it takes, it takes May, June, July, three months to go from indictment to arraignment.

He had, he had an initial arraignment where he said he wanted to try and hire a private lawyer.

And so they set him off.

That's my recollection, which was, you know, I kind of understand why he would feel not,

not want to trust in the system or a public defender.

Yeah.

Like he was, he was not in a very good place when I met him.

Understandably, he'd been sitting in jail for a year.

And when he got indicted, so when he was initially arrested, he was charged with one count of

sexual battery and one count of expectation.

But then when they indicted him, they really loaded him up.

Oh, so he was only charged with two charges.

And then after indictment, it ballooned to 13.

Correct.

Wow.

That's so you, when you met him, he was not, not doing well.

Yeah, not at all.

And so, you know, I told him, like, we just have to start over from a clean slate.

We're going to fight these charges.

Because he was, from the second I met him, he was adamant, I didn't do this.

I'm not interested in a plea.

I'm not interested in anything but a trial because I want to clear my name.

And as far as discovery, can you lay out exactly what you get in discovery?

I got a case file which included the detective's narrative.

It had little sort of summaries of what was said during the forensic interviews.

I had the search warrant that was given to Twitter and their response, which had data, but it didn't have any of the messages that they had brought.

I had the messages that the daughter and mom turned over to law enforcement.

There were about 60 pages of those.

Wait, so the stuff from Twitter, they didn't give you messages?

It just had, like, what did that look like?

So the response from Twitter, it was really hard to read.

I don't think they want to be super cooperative with law enforcement, which is good.

Yeah.

But, so it had, like, his account information.

So they were able to verify, in a minimum, that the username that was on the emails that came from the family was, in fact, his account.

And it matched his name, his address, his email, you know, all that kind of stuff.

But they didn't give you, like, dumps of DMs that corroborated the emails.

No.

And there were some DMs.

There just were none that matched up in any sort of way.

There were no messages between them at all in the Twitter production, which was the certified document.

They gave me a download of the daughter's cell phone, which was super, super helpful.

And we don't get that in every case.

A download of Jeremy's phone.

And then the medical records that they had gotten, you know, after the forensic interview.

Both of the girl and of Jeremy from the Department of Health.

Why was the daughter's phone helpful?

Well, because it was, she, she was an interesting, sort of strange kind of girl.

But she lived her life a lot online.

And so we used that to kind of develop our theory of the case.

She was really into creating characters and telling stories.

Like, in the Notes app on her phone, she would write, like, whole chapters of different, like, fiction.

Like, little mini novels.

She would, she had all these different characters that she had created with lots of details about what their personality was like, what they looked like, their age, their name.

And so it gave us a lot to try and explain this as a girl that likes to play make-believe, that likes to tell stories, is a creative writer, is creative.

And she lived her whole life online.

Was there anything, like, sexual on there?

There were some.

Okay.

But nothing, nothing dealing with Jeremy at all.

Okay.

She had, like, an online boyfriend, somebody she had never met in person.

And there were some sexual messages between them.

But, you know, nothing.

Okay.

Nothing really.

Nothing that really pointed to your client?

No, nothing at all.

There were some, there were some text messages between them, but they were what you would expect to see between a daughter and a stepdad.

Like, I'm making breakfast.

Do you want some pancakes?

Hey, close the front door.

You know, just, like, little benign stuff like that.

Was there anything from the discovery that, like, worried you?

The emails.

Okay.

Yeah.

And they got worse later.

And so I thought, this case is so much easier to try without the emails.

The emails give it a little more validity.

When you got the discovery, did you get more emails than you had initially?

No.

Okay.

And I'll get to that.

Okay.

Because that became one of the main things that we litigated.

But to go back for discovery, I got copies of the forensic interviews and then a copy of Jeremy's statement.

And I think that was pretty much everything.

So as far as the emails, that's what's most concerning.

And of the content in the emails, what are you most concerned about?

Three o'clock in the morning and their heart emoji or there were several that said, I love you.

You know, that kind of stuff.

I don't, I mean, it's not like, it's not like, oh, that's me to have sex or anything like so explicit.

But still, it's not, it's not great.

So you get that discovery from them.

Do you do any of your own, like, pretrial investigation?

Yes.

The only thing you really did, we reached out to the mom and she agreed to come and sit down and talk to us.

Yeah.

Tell us about that.

Yeah.

It became really important.

She came to our office and this was before it seemed like anybody in the DA's office could really talk to her.

And so obviously we told her who we were.

She came to the public defender's office, me and my investigator.

We probably talked to her for about three hours and she sort of, I mean, she, she was not on our side whatsoever and told us, you know, what scum she thought Jeremy was.

But she also gave us a lot of insight into their family dynamic, how they were living, you know, just all this sort of stuff.

All of the kids were homeschooled and she worked from home and Jeremy worked from home.

So we have a family where we have five people in the house all the time.

It makes it harder to believe that all this sexual assault was going on in the home and nobody ever noticed.

Right.

She also told us about how Jeremy was really the strict parent, that he made the girls do their homework.

He took their phones away.

And so that helped give us a little bit more of an idea of a motive why she would make this kind of story up.

Right.

Because I think in a sex case, you have to have some, some reason that the person would make up an allegation.

And so we use that to sort of say she wanted the strict, harsh parent gone.

Yeah.

That coupled with her, like, strong imagination.

Yes.

Did the mom say anything explicit about why she thought her daughter would make something like that up?

Because it sounds like from the way it went down that the children left and the mom stayed with him, that from the get at least she believed him or wanted to believe him.

Did she have a clear side or was she professing a clear, like, motive on their behalf?

No.

She, by the point we talked to her, she said, I 100% believe my daughter.

I think he did this.

I hope he does the rest of his life in prison.

I mean, it's a hard place to be as a mom, I'm sure.

Like, at some point you kind of have to, like, believe your kid.

I don't know.

That's a difficult position to be in.

Yeah.

And so, when we talked to her, she kind of just said, well, you know, I wanted to give him a chance and see if I could figure out, get to the bottom of what was happening.

Because this is her family as well.

She's got a child with Jeremy now.

You know, they had been together for probably five or six years.

They knew each other in high school.

So, I think she just wanted to try and figure out what the real story was.

Whatever happened to cause her to decide to kick him out and bring the girls back, I don't know.

Okay.

All right.

Did you do any other type of investigation?

That was about it.

Didn't you go to the house?

Oh, yeah.

We did go to the house.

Sorry.

Anything else?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We, um, yes, we did do more investigation.

All this happened at a family home nearby.

So, we went, the same people weren't living there.

So, we just went and knocked on the door.

The new tenants were more than happy to let us in.

So, we walked around and got a good idea of the layout of the house.

Because, um, although the daughter was not specific on when these things happened, she was very consistent that it happened either in the garage or there was this, like, guest half bathroom that was in a hallway.

And so, when we went to the house, we learned, okay, there is a garage, um, but that garage shares a wall with the master bedroom.

So, it makes it a little bit harder to believe there's sexual activity going on in the garage in the same wall where mom and infant are sleeping in the bedroom in the middle of the night.

Um, and it also became important because, it turns out law enforcement never went to the house.

And so, we got to sort of knock them over the head with that.

They had a year to go to the house.

Like, just stop by.

They just never went.

They didn't know the layout.

So, that, that helped us in, in cross-examining and start trying, each of the kids, and trying to paint that picture of, you know, why, why this doesn't make sense.

So, at this point, you're kind of have a theory formed, right?

Can you just encapsulate that for us before we move on to pre-trial motions?

The theory was that this is a girl that lives her life in sort of make-believe.

She spends all her time online.

She likes to create characters.

She likes to write stories.

This was sort of a story and a character that she created, and her goal was to get Jeremy out of the house.

There was one more thing that became apparent from looking at her phone and talking to her mom is that she, at the time, the daughter was struggling with sort of gender identity issues, sexuality sort of issues.

And Jeremy was not really having any of that.

I would say he was kind of a strict, conservative sort of person.

Okay.

And so, he, he was not tolerant of, oh, you want to dress like a boy, or you want to, you know, do these things that are out of the norm.

And so, that sort of lended a little more to our theory that she wanted to get him out of the house.

Understandably, so maybe she could be the person that she wanted to be.

But, so, that was out there.

We weren't sure how or if we wanted to use that, but that's something else that we had in mind from looking through her phone and talking to her mom.

Her mom also told her that, told us that she had gone to therapy and actually been admitted to as a psychiatric hospital in between the disclosure and when we were talking to her.

And so, we needed, we needed those records.

Did you end up getting those records?

We did.

I asked the state for them.

They wouldn't give them to me, so I filed a motion to compel.

It turned into a little bit of a circus.

Yeah.

So, let's talk about these pretrial motions, right?

I think this is like a good time to kind of go into, you know, what you can get in and certain types of discovery.

So, tell us about, you know, these, some motions that happened pretrial.

The motion to compel was the first one.

And the motion to compel these records.

Yes.

So, we had the family medicine doctor, and they had given us some of the records, but not all of them.

So, we wanted all of those, and then we wanted a counselor, and then the psychiatric hospital, those records.

Okay.

And so, the judge ordered the state to produce them in-camera, but she said she would review them, determine if anything's relevant, and then give them to us accordingly.

And so, we were tasked with getting the in-camera review order done, given to all the providers.

And so, in the course of that, I'm calling the clinic saying, hey, just wanted to make sure you've got this court order.

I want to make sure that you've answered, you understand what you're supposed to do with this, where you're supposed to send it.

If you have any questions, let me know.

And they say, oh, we already sent those records out this morning.

And they tell me, oh, we sent them to the DA's office.

What?

Because they had them, unbeknownst to the DA's office.

And they told you, right?

They disclosed them to you, and they went through the proper procedure.

No.

No.

And so, this was, so, they tell me that.

I call the other providers and say, did you happen to get a request by authorization, not a court order, but an authorization signed by the mom for these records?

Oh, yeah.

Can you tell me what date that authorization was signed?

It was signed in the morning before the hearing on the motion to compel.

So, the state had actually had the mom come in, signed an authorization, sent the records off to get them, never told the judge anything.

Wait, this, so they knew before, you had, you were going in front of the judge and they were telling the judge, like, we don't have them, but they had them?

Well, they probably didn't technically have them in their hands yet, but they had requested them.

And they didn't say that?

Correct.

Wow.

So, I filed a motion to reconsider the motion for the in-camera review order and just sort of laid all that out for the judge.

She called us back in the next day, I believe, and I said, well, if they have them, I don't think we need to have an in-camera review.

I now want them.

I don't think we need this extra process.

Right.

And she ended up agreeing with that, but their explanation was, oh, the victim's coordinator, she did all that on her own.

We didn't even know she was doing that.

And also, she only did that to assist the court.

And when you got those records, did they, what did they show?

There were some inconsistent sort of things.

They mentioned the abuse, but there was, there were no, like, we didn't, we didn't end up using them all that much, except that she was really struggling with lots of different things around the time.

So she, there was a therapy note where she had threatened suicide because a friend was being mean to her online.

Or, you know, like, that she was sort of a histrionic sort of person.

Okay.

She had, like, disproportionate reactions to, to life.

Exactly.

Were you able to use some of that in trial?

We were.

Okay.

But you said they did, they did mention sexual abuse.

They did.

But just the fact that this had happened.

Okay.

It wasn't like I made it all up or whatever.

No.

Okay.

No.

But so she had ongoing treatment, but her history was always, she's been sexually abused and now she's having problems X, Y, and Z.

What other pretrial motions did you guys do?

We did several.

And so in our jurisdiction, the forensic interviews, they usually try and play those to bolster whatever the witness is going to say.

And so we moved to exclude those because of the age of the girl.

Yeah.

And that ended up being granted because she wasn't, we have a rule called tender years.

If you're of a certain age, then they're allowed to bring in other hearsay witnesses to say, oh, yes, she did disclose to her mom and she disclosed to the doctor and this person.

But she's not tender years because she's kind of older.

Exactly.

And so we got, we made sure we kept those forensic interviews out.

Um, I filed a rape shield motion on the HIV issue just out of an abundance of caution.

Like we want to get into things that touch on sexual conduct.

We're, you know, it's our position that she's never had any sort of sexual activity, but we do want to bring in the fact that she's been tested and negative and he's positive.

So you're like covering all your bases.

It doesn't quite touch what rape shield, the purpose of rape shield, but you just want to make sure that when you get to trial, they say, oh, well, you didn't file this rape shield motion.

So you can't say that she's never had sex and that she's not HIV positive.

Exactly.

Okay.

Um, and so the state in response sort of filed a competing rape shield motion saying this is textbook rape shield.

You can't get into any of this.

Um, and the judge actually sided with us.

I wasn't sure which direction she was going to go.

Um, so what we were able to get into that and we had certified records, medical records of hers and his.

And so we were able to just say, okay, this is coming in and then we can use it, you know, however we want to use it at trial.

And then the big one was to exclude those emails.

Like I said, I thought those were the biggest problem that we had with the case.

And so I want to keep them out.

So what grounds are you trying to exclude them on?

Authentication and hearsay.

Okay.

Because these are, you know, they want to stand up and say, these are Twitter messages from him to her.

And we don't have any Twitter messages.

Right.

And all we have are these printouts from her that haven't been corroborated by the certified records custodian.

And so we don't think they're proper.

And so after I file that motion, I get a supplemental discovery from the state.

And it's about 300 pages of emails.

And they say, to fix the problem, we just had her come in to the DA's office, log into the computer, into her Gmail account, and just press print.

And so now she has all these other emails, some of which are actually very incriminating.

Oh, really?

So at first, I was kind of like, shit, like I've now made it worse.

Is it like 300 of emails from him to her?

Or is it just like her entire email history and you got to like sift through it?

It was just the Twitter notifications involving his username.

So they're saying that he sent her hundreds of messages.

Correct.

And some of them are emojis and whatever, but some of these were pretty bad, like make a video using two fingers.

Are you horny?

Are you up?

You know, some of that kind of stuff in the middle of the night.

But it didn't change at all the legal issue in my mind.

So they sort of gave us all of these, I don't know, a day or two before the hearing.

So we have like 60 pages from law enforcement, 300 pages of the new.

And so I sort of compared them to say, okay, which ones are duplicates, which ones are not.

And noticed in that comparison that some of the emails that should be identical, same date, same content, had a slightly different timestamp.

So they'd be like two or three minutes off from each other.

So do you think that like she's creating these emails or do you think that this happened?

I mean, I know that it's not really our job to say, but I'm just kind of like wondering, you know, if she's so sophisticated online that she can – because, you know, sometimes people like make up text messages and stuff.

You know what I mean?

It's kind of easy to do that because now all of a sudden like she has – like don't you think that you would – if you're making an allegation against someone, you would give them the most damning stuff first?

It's kind of strange that it's like, you know, at the 11th hour, oh, here's some, you know, some other corroborating stuff that's more damning.

I don't know.

I can never make any kind of sense of it.

And either way, it doesn't align with either of their phone dumps, right?

These are just – these are just on their own emails and they're refuted by both phone dumps.

That's so weird.

Now you have two emails that are identical that have like a slightly different time on them, which they shouldn't be because it's not like they're being regenerated.

It's just kind of like they're meant to be copies of each other.

Exactly.

And so when we go back before the judge, I spring that.

I know, I'm like kind of befuddled.

I've never even used that word before, but that's how – that's how befuddled I am.

Yeah.

We can edit that out.

So you brought that up with the judge?

Yeah.

So at the next hearing, I'm like, look, judge, here's how you know they're not authentic because they're not identical.

These are supposed to be copies of the same thing.

And she was very close to excluding the whole thing.

She was not really happy with the same presentation.

And so they moved for a continuance.

Granted.

Granted.

They wanted to go directly to Gmail, give a search warrant to Gmail for her account and get the certified copies of the emails directly from Google.

That's what's hard about litigating pretrial authentication and hearsay.

Because I noticed sometimes you're in a room with a judge where there's literally no shot that you could possibly keep it out live when you spring it, when they can't fix it.

But if there is, there's a huge benefit to not flagging it for them to fix it pretrial.

Did you consider bringing it up in a live objection?

Yes.

We agonized over that decision, really.

Yeah.

But the judge that we have, she's a civil lawyer.

And so she really, really, really wants people to bring things up pretrial.

And I think she's less likely to listen to it if you didn't raise it.

You know, though, OK, so I know we're probably going to get into this, but like, does it matter, right, if Gmail says these are authentic or like these are emails?

What does that say?

It just says, like, we say that these are emails?

Yes.

It doesn't say anything about what comes from Twitter.

It doesn't say anything about who sent them.

Like, she may have, like, made a fake Twitter account or.

The hearsay remains.

Logged into his Twitter and, like, sent them to herself.

They're just saying this is an email, right?

Yes.

Yes.

I made those arguments until I was blue in the face.

Like, the Gmail doesn't mean anything because we don't have the source.

We need Twitter and we don't have Twitter.

And she can't get up there and say that he sent this message because she doesn't have that information, right?

Yes.

So they ask for continuance to get Gmail.

They get the continuance.

And then what happens?

They, within, I don't know, five days, they have all these certified records from Gmail.

And they are consistent with the 300-page dump, the second version that we got.

And so now they've got these documents.

And now they're certified.

So that solves one of their small problems.

But they never tried to go, ever tried to go back to Twitter and follow up.

Or maybe make their search warrant language more robust.

They never, ever tried to do that.

And that was sort of part and parcel of our, because after they got the Gmail documents, we went back in front of the judge and re-argued the same thing.

And that was my position.

Gmail can't authenticate a Twitter message.

Right.

And we don't have any messages.

We have some sort of computer-generated message purported to be sent by Twitter to a particular Gmail account.

But there's nothing to authenticate that there ever was a Twitter message.

Mm-hmm.

So for you, at this point, the hearsay issue remains, the authentication issue remains.

But it's coming in.

So it's just going to be a trial issue of reliability.

Correct.

Wait, so the judge, the judge denied your motion?

Yeah.

Sorry, I assumed that.

I assumed this didn't have a happy ending, so I just jumped the gun.

Yes.

So where we're at now is the emails are coming in, and now they're certified.

But though you can talk about the HIV, you can talk about the fact that she is not HIV positive.

Yes.

Okay.

And was there anything litigated related to the experiences of the other daughter, as far as whether that could come in?

Yes.

Yeah.

We call it a Darwin witness.

That's our case that says that they're allowed to bring in other instances of child sex abuse to bolster.

Like a 404B situation?

Correct.

It's not codified in our rules of evidence like it is in the federal rules, but it is by case law.

It sounds like the Mississippi version of Texas's doctrine of chances.

It strikes again.

Yes.

So they gave us notice that they were going to call the younger sister to talk about, you know, the things that she experienced as well.

You know, we objected to it, but that was awesome.

I don't know.

I don't think her experience is like hugged too long.

Yeah.

He was kind of weird and creepy is what it kind of amounted to.

Right.

So now we're like gearing up for trial, right?

Yes.

How is your client feeling at this point?

He's actually feeling really optimistic.

He was one of those that's like, I can't wait for trial.

I'm ready to go home.

Yeah.

He's been there a long time.

He has been there a long time, but it always makes me feel like such pit in my stomach when they're like, I can't wait for this trial.

I can't wait to go home.

Yeah.

You're like, you know, oh gosh.

Yeah.

The state can't wait either.

Like they're in it too.

Exactly.

So then how are you feeling?

Okay.

Except for, in my experience, the child sex cases are the most difficult to win.

I've had some before that were very defendable and then we go to trial and don't get a good result, even though, you know, the evidence just wasn't there.

I just feel like it's such an uphill battle with the jury and almost the burden seems to be flipped.

It's very emotional.

Yeah.

And I think it's hard for jurors to, it might be one of those things.

It's like they think something happened and someone has to pay and you might have to like voir dire on that a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we definitely did.

One thing in talking with Jeremy in the lead up to trial, obviously we're talking about you may need to testify.

We can't make that decision now, but we can't make that decision now, but let's talk about it.

Let's practice.

In case, let's get you prepared.

And we knew we wanted to use the HIV, but the difficult thing for Jeremy, he had such trouble admitting that he was in fact HIV positive.

Well, there's a lot of shame and stigma surrounding it.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And especially in Mississippi, in his community.

I mean, just, it was very difficult.

His family didn't know.

At your like child rape trial.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, you know, we had a lot of struggles getting him to a place where he could admit it because he had never told his family.

And, you know, and this is all going to come out as a public trial.

Yeah.

And in, in his medical records, when he was confronted with a positive test at the health department, he got irate, said, no, I'm not, and left.

And so that's what's in his medical records.

So, you know, if, if he gets up there and testifies, he's going to have to be crossed on all this dishonesty about his status, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And we were just not able to get him to a place where he could explain it.

And obviously there's a good explanation, the stigma, the shame.

Yes.

You know, all of that.

I think people understand that.

Like the regular juror would get that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's a really difficult conversation when your best trial fact is the most personally embarrassing fact to the client.

That's a, that's a hard road to navigate.

It's something that he just had so much trouble talking about.

And the, as usual, the state gave us a bunch of, like a dump of his jail calls, maybe like three days before trial was due to start.

And some of those heartbreakingly were him on his phone to his mom and dad telling them about his status and, you know, telling his family.

And it really brought home like, oh, you know, there are such real repercussions for him, even outside of prison or not.

Like, I think too, it's like one of those things where you like, we are not on trial, right?

We have a, can have like a very clinical view of trials and cases.

And, you know, we're like, you have to say your status, right?

Because it's going to be the best for the case.

And here's why and X, Y, Z.

And like, I think that it really behooves us to like, try to put ourself in our client's shoes about how much shame surrounding it.

I mean, it really requires a lot of empathy and compassion to, to work with clients like this.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

As far as negotiation, did they offer anything?

They never made a single offer.

And we never asked for one.

So there were no plea negotiations whatsoever in this multiple life sentence case.

We're going to trial.

It takes zero to tango.

Yeah, that, okay, multiple life sentences.

And no one made a peep about like, hey, can we like get rid of the, the 11th charge?

The one life?

Well, I, I did say, are y'all actually going forward on all 13 counts?

Fair question.

And they said, well, yes, of course.

So we're ready for trial.

What kind of, what kind of jurors are you looking for?

Struggled with that one as well.

Jeremy is African-American.

The whole family is African-American.

And so we weren't sure how race would necessarily play with any of this.

But I think we wanted men, but also potentially older women who may be a little more sophisticated

about family dynamics.

And, you know, somebody that's raised a teenage child or teenage daughter and knows sort of

how they can act out or how they can be sometimes.

What's the, what's the jury pool like in your jurisdiction?

So we tried this case in Gulfport and it's a little more of a city, a little more diverse,

but for whatever reason, every single jury pool we get seems to be very heavy on women.

Okay.

Like 75% women on the venire.

And so I believe that's what we ended up with in this case as well, which I wasn't necessarily

afraid of women.

Cause I feel like, you know, women also jar judge other women harshly.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I, I've never really come up with a good juror for a child sex case.

Yeah.

I think that's sort of horrified.

Yeah.

I think that's right.

I think that that's, it's just tough.

Yeah.

Did you voir deer on like past sexual experiences and sexual trauma?

Yes.

Um, and so the judge actually did, have you, have you or your family been a victim of sexual

violence, anything like that?

Anybody in your family been charged with that kind of stuff?

And so we made it, we really focused on, I think the first topic in voir dire was, look,

somebody is going to come in here and say, he did this to me.

And is that all you need to hear?

Is that the end of the story?

Does everybody automatically believe a woman or automatically believe a teenager, you know,

all that kind of stuff.

And we got overwhelmingly from the, the response from the jurors was, no, that's not enough.

Kids make things up all the time.

Teenagers especially make things up all the time.

That's great.

That's actually, were you like, okay, I think we can do this a little bit.

Yeah.

Were you feeling good about that?

Okay.

Yes.

I was, my hand started shaking.

I was like, I think I just need to sit down.

But no, I didn't.

But we also wanted to voir dire on HIV.

Just so the first time that they heard it, they wouldn't be shocked.

And so we talked about like, who, who would not want to be friends with somebody that's

HIV positive or a coworker with somebody who's HIV positive.

And then the last question would be, who would, who would not want your child to date somebody

that's HIV positive.

And so we got a lot of responses on, I wouldn't want them to date somebody that's HIV positive

because it's too risky.

So what were you like, what would someone say to have you strike them?

People that did not seem to have any kind of an open mind.

Okay.

You know, if somebody, and really in this case, we're in court, so he's guilty.

And there are some people that say that.

And then there are some people that you can tell that's what they think.

Right.

Right.

Like we're in court, so he's guilty.

They're trying to make it on the jury to convict somebody.

Yeah.

We were died on, you know, the defendant testifying, of course, because we weren't sure where we

were going to go with this one.

And we got a lot of people that said, especially in this kind of case, I would, I would get up

there and say, I didn't do it and clear my name.

And I would expect anybody else to do that.

Yeah.

So we would strike people for that.

We also were died on the fact that there were 13 different counts.

And does that make him more?

Yeah.

And, you know, so at least got to educate them that it doesn't really mean.

Yeah.

Did you voir dire on the fact that he's a stepfather?

Because that's a stereotype that's just in the water, is the stereotype of a stepfather

capitalizing on the kids of their partner.

Yes.

And so we asked some questions about step-parent dynamics, difficulties with step-parents,

that kids lashing out at, you know, just like the difficult dynamics and did get a lot

of people talking about difficulties being a step-parent.

And the responses were, they were empathetic to step-parents as well?

They were, because there was a lot of step-parents on the vaniary.

That's great.

Okay.

Okay.

How was the state's voir dire?

They do this reasonable inference.

You know, if you go into the grocery store and you see people coming in with their umbrellas

and they're wet, you know, it's rained outside, even though you didn't see it raining.

Oh, yeah.

That's what's required.

They use rain instead of snow.

Oh, yeah.

In Ohio, they use snow.

I guess in Mississippi, they wouldn't, it wouldn't hit as hard.

The jury would not be a reasonable inference.

Yeah.

In Ohio, they use snow.

Same soup, reheated.

There was nothing case-specific in it, which I thought was a lost opportunity for them.

But good.

Right.

So you have a jury.

How are you feeling going into opening?

Yeah, like I'm going to throw up, like normal.

Yeah.

Like every trial.

Yeah.

Did you?

And Klein still-

Especially this one.

Klein still geared up to go?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

He's ready to get going.

I think he was a little bit impressed by the amount of litigation that happened before trial.

And he would go back to the jail and tell everybody, you know, Miss Lauren's doing this and that and, you know, whatever.

It made him feel good.

Yeah.

Is he doing okay in jail based on these charges?

Because I know we kind of touched on it earlier about, like, not doing the preliminary hearings.

But we all know that people who are accused of this kind of stuff don't fare well in jail, even if they haven't been convicted.

So is he doing okay?

He said he was, that he didn't have those concerns.

Okay.

He grew up here, so I think he probably knew enough people from before times that he wasn't a target.

And he doesn't present as, like, a creeper.

Okay.

All right.

Cool.

Helps to not present as a creeper.

Yes.

Yeah.

No matter what anyone says about you.

All right.

So opening statements.

Who goes first?

State goes first.

And they opened with, there is a method to our madness, trying to explain why they brought 13 cats.

Okay.

And it's because this happened when she was 13 and when she was 14 and when she was 15.

And that was sort of the theme of their whole thing.

Okay.

Method to your madness just really puts you on a back foot.

I agree.

Now you're like, we know this looks bad for us.

I know.

It's weird.

We're on here.

It was really weird.

Maybe it's because in Fort Iroh, it's like, you know, there's 13, whatever.

Oh, you got in their head.

You know, is that a big deal?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, you're right.

That speaks to you.

You got in their head and you made them open on the back foot from your voir dire.

That is high level shit.

That's surgical work.

It was not intentional or planned.

Okay.

Now you opening statement.

Yeah.

Our opening statement was to tell the story about what happened that he, this is his family.

This is a person that he helped raise and cared about.

And the day that this allegation was made was the worst day of his life.

And he's been sort of fighting back ever since then.

And you're going to hear from her and she's going to say some things and you need to watch

what she says and how she says it and why she's saying these things.

And then we, we sprung the HIV in the opening as well.

Because I just thought that was such a powerful piece of evidence.

It really is.

Did you talk about how she's not positive?

Yes.

Okay.

That's really good storytelling to frame it as the worst day of client's life.

Because especially high level charges, like we forget that.

I forget that.

And without that framing to a jury, it's just a really efficient way to isolate this

allegation from who they are.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good storytelling.

And that he was the one that's really betrayed.

Mm-hmm.

The whole story.

Mm-hmm.

Awesome.

So first witness, who does the state call?

The girl.

Straight out the box.

Oh, go for it.

That's typically what they do.

Yeah.

Start strong.

Primacy and recency.

So how did she testify on direct?

She was not a very confident witness.

She was very quiet.

They had her dressed up in like a really bulky cardigan that she kind of shrunk underneath.

But she was not able to give any kind of specifics on what happened, when it happened, where it happened.

They had to use the emails as a crutch.

So they'd say, okay.

And they got the emails admitted through her, which was an interesting choice, I thought.

Because they got them in through her, but they just handed her like a stack of documents and say, do you recognize these?

Yes.

What are they?

These are emails that I received.

What are they?

They're messages from him.

And we objected along the way.

Yeah.

But they all came in.

But they offered all three versions of the emails.

So we had.

Oh, good.

Nice.

So the inconsistencies came in.

Yes.

So they offered the 60 pages from the police, the part that she printed out.

And I think maybe they saved the Google for when the detective testified.

So she was working from really the ones that she printed out, the 300 pages.

She wasn't able to say like specifics, even though she had done that before.

So did they like impeach her?

Or I don't know, I guess what you call it.

Kind of like nicely.

They would hand her an email and say, on this date, did you get a message from Jeremy?

Yes.

Is this a message?

Yes.

What does this mean?

Oh, it meant go have sex in the garage.

Did you have sex in the garage?

Yes.

That kind of stuff.

Independent of those, she wasn't really able to say much about what happened.

But her direct was probably like 45 minutes or an hour.

It was not that long.

Wow.

That is unreal.

Two life sentences, 250 years, 13 counts.

And the allegation is on the stand for an hour.

Yes.

And they just made sure that she checked the boxes of, did this happen?

You know, in the, because in the, the indictment, there's specific sex acts charged in the counts, you know, vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and then touching of the vagina and touching of the penis or the basic.

Did she seem not prepped?

Yes.

Okay.

And, and to be fair to them, I don't know if she just wasn't prepped or she was just a really poor witness.

Like, she was so visibly uncomfortable just being up there, not necessarily just talking about, you know, sexual stuff, but she was just very, very awkward and uncomfortable.

Well, it's real once you get up on the witness stand, whether you're making it up or not, right?

Like, it's real.

Right, right.

Yeah.

And she was not a particularly, like, outgoing sort of person.

I imagine for her, public speaking would be, you know, right up there with top fears.

And so it was just, it was really, it was really clunky.

Do you think that understatedness from someone who was testifying about, like, a child rape allegation, do you think that lent her credibility?

If your theory of her is that she's a storyteller and she's on the stand and she's extremely uncomfortable and extremely understated, did that lend her credibility?

Were you scared about that?

I was very scared about that because I thought she just seemed, she seemed a lot younger than she was and she just seemed really, really fragile.

But, but not necessarily like she was making it up or lying, you know what I mean?

Exactly.

So, so yeah, just that this was a really, really difficult thing for her to do, which, you know, later they're going to come back and say, like, you know, she didn't want this.

Look how tortured this was for her.

So did you try to, you know, in Cross kind of tread lightly and not eviscerate her like we usually do?

Yes.

Okay.

Tell us about that.

How was Cross?

Cross ended up taking over a day, which was really, really uncomfortable.

But what I wanted to focus on was the stuff from her phone about all of her, her stories, her online activity, these characters that she created.

Did you get objected to for relevance?

Yes.

Okay.

And they let it go.

And it came in?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It came in.

They're pretty lenient with us on Cross.

Cross is really, really, really wide open.

Okay.

But I really didn't get objected to that much.

Probably not as much as I should have.

Right.

We love that.

Yeah.

And then in going through her phone, I learned about she was, she was also into gaming, but she had followed some of these gaming influencers, some of whom had been accused of sexual assault and canceled.

And then, so there were messages between her and her sister talking about, I don't remember these people's names, but, oh, so-and-so is a pervert or so-and-so is a pedophile.

And so I asked her, you know, built a lot of, you know, built a lot of narrative around, you know, well, you know about so-and-so and you called him a pedophile.

You know what a pedophile is.

Yeah.

You know what happened to him when he got accused of being a pedophile, you know, so we could later tie that up.

Okay.

So most, most of the cross was about her, all the shit on her phone.

Yeah.

To try and build that narrative.

And the shit that wasn't on her phone, like the original messages.

Right.

And that she also didn't know when the last time that this happened was.

I was very scared to ask that question, which we had sort of, me and my co-counsel had sort of decided to go for it.

Yeah.

But just, like, what do you mean you don't remember when this stopped, this thing that's so terrible and so traumatizing.

Yeah.

It stopped.

During the cross, we had to take a couple different breaks because she kind of started crying.

And not when I was asking her hard questions, but asking her stuff about whatever online account she had.

She would just sort of, like, theatrically collapse into tears.

I thought it looked really incredible, but I also, I also didn't want to be the one making her cry.

Right.

But I, but I didn't feel like I was asking her really, like, you know, confrontational kind of questions.

I was using a nice tone of voice and saying, well, tell me about this person.

Tell me about that.

And as far as credibility, if, if the only time someone's crying is when they're not talking about the allegations themselves, that just looks great for the defense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, I thought it came off.

Okay.

Well, you know, well, as uncomfortable as that, that whole thing is.

Were you worried?

Because the state put their star witness on for an hour and was going to leave it there.

And you have all this great cross because you're incredibly prepared and you want to get into it because there's a lot of credibility stuff.

There's a lot of everything.

But in so doing, that person's going to get an extra day of airtime and face time with the jury.

Were you scared of humanizing her further or giving more opportunity for her to be a complete character to the jury?

I'm not sure I ever really thought about it because I just felt like the case rises and falls with her.

And I've got to get out the things that make, because, you know, we, we built this story about her being online and a storyteller and creative.

We had to get that out there.

And if she made it difficult to pull that out, it's just, it's going to take as long as it's going to take, you know.

Yeah.

So next witness, who's the state's next witness?

Second witness is younger sister.

So they call her on direct.

She discloses the, you know, he hugged me too tight.

He touched me in a way that I felt was uncomfortable, sort of to bolster what her sister said.

She was a pretty short witness.

We asked, on cross, I asked her some questions about, I think, the layout of the house.

That's good.

It's a good witness to get that into.

Nice.

Yeah.

Make her your witness.

Yeah.

That she, she and her sister shared a bedroom and she never woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that she was gone or heard her leaving.

She never heard anything going on in the house.

She never suspected anything.

That's good that you're not responding to her saying like, oh no, he's not a creep.

You're saying like, okay, that's fine.

But let's, yeah, let's get all this information through you.

That's a good strategy.

Yeah.

That's really smart.

Okay.

So you're not too worried about what comes out through her because you got what you needed.

Yeah.

And we couldn't really say, well, that didn't happen, did it?

Yes, it did.

You know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's not worth it.

It's worth it.

Yeah.

Not a battle worth fighting.

Okay.

Who's next?

Third witness is little brother.

I don't know why they called him because he didn't really have much to offer other than

that daughter and Jeremy would sometimes be in the house by themselves.

And really, he and Jeremy were very close when they all lived together.

And so we got in some of that stuff to help try and humanize Jeremy.

He's not Jeremy's kid, right?

No.

Okay.

No.

Only there's like an infant.

The infant.

Okay, I got it.

And so we asked him some stuff about them playing video games together and spending time together

and being close to help try and humanize Jeremy to see that he was really a part of this family.

Yeah, that's really smart.

And the state has to be careful.

Like, more is not more for the state.

When you're putting kids on, A, that better be a key witness because I don't think the jury

appreciates just, like, watching kids go through that period.

And then separately, these are kids that have very, like, whatever way you cut it, have

very difficult dynamics and loyalties to a lot of different adults involved.

And so, yeah, the odds that that child is close with the accused, like, exactly how you

pointed out, or has loyalties to them in some way are very high.

So, well played.

Yeah.

It was kind of a strange choice, I thought.

And then the last witness was the detective.

I don't know why they called him, because he didn't do very much.

He talked about the emails that they, that the family brought into him.

And then I think he sponsored probably the third set of the Gmail documents that he got

from the search warrant.

He, as it turns out, he had never seen that second version that came from the girl.

And so when he was asked questions about that, he didn't know what those were.

Great.

That's great for you.

Yeah.

He, he admitted, they had him admit on direct that he had never gone to the house as part

of his investigation.

On direct?

They asked him that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We've heard a lot about this house.

Did you ever go?

No?

Oh, I shouldn't have asked.

Okay.

Moving on.

Well, he, he just said, well, that was a, that was a, that was a failing on my part.

I really, looking back, I really should.

Oh, I thought, just crossing off lines of your cross.

Perfect sentence.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

We, we crossed him about, why, why didn't you, you knew that Jeremy was HIV positive and

yet you still didn't, um, recommend a medical exam for her, even though you know what these

allegations are and that there is risk involved.

And he said, he gave the regular line of when they don't do the same, well, so much time

had passed, there would be no evidence to be found.

And then on redirect, the state came back and asked him that they were trying to rehabilitate

a little on the same part of it.

And they asked him what sane stands for.

And he said, I don't know.

Oh, whoopsies.

So it was, yeah, messy.

It was, it was pretty poor investigation.

He does not have credibility issues.

I'll say that.

Right.

Did you put a case on or how did they get, how did you get her negative status in?

We offered the records, um, at the beginning of the trial, just to certified records.

Cause we had, you know, the records custodian certificate.

And so we offered those as D1.

Oh, okay.

So you didn't get them in through anyone.

The jury is just going to get that and you'll just argue it and close.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So is that all the witnesses?

That's all the witnesses.

They did not call mom, which I thought was an interesting choice because she's the one that's at the center of all this.

She knows everybody, but I think they felt like her delay, once she was given the disclosure, her delay in staying with him was probably just too hard to explain would be my guess.

Yeah.

And not just delay, but kicking the accuser out of the house who is a minor.

Like, yeah.

Yeah.

So then did you do a motion for acquittal mid-trial?

Yes.

Did the state rest?

Did that go anywhere?

It actually did because she was not able to say that any of this happened when she was 13 years old.

I did not touch it on cross because I didn't want them to be able to come back on redirect and try and fix it.

So the testimony that was out there was, and I think the prosecutor asked her probably two or three times, this happened before your 14th birthday?

No, after.

So she was pretty definitive about that.

So I was like, okay, we have a real argument on DV for some of these counts.

And instead of us getting a DV, the state dismissed them.

Oh, okay.

So then going into your case, how many charges are left?

Let's see.

So we still had, what, nine?

And any of them carry life?

No.

Oh.

Wow.

Yes.

We got rid of the life counts.

But remember how the state opened with, there's a method to our madness.

There's a reason we have all these counts.

Flip the theme.

Flip the theme.

Nice.

And then they don't, they don't actually have any proof to support some of these, admittedly.

What method?

It was just, it was chef's kiss.

It was so good.

Awesome.

All right.

So halftime.

So we ended up with nine live counts after DV.

Did you put on a case?

We did not put on a case.

We had, we had the mom under subpoena and thought really hard about calling her, but decided

it was just too risky.

Yeah.

And then the issue with Jeremy testifying.

Um, I told you that we had a lot of issues with him being able to talk clearly about HIV.

Yeah.

But you have a status in, right?

It's okay.

Yeah.

You know, I thought that was the right decision as well.

And I never thought I would say that in a sex case.

Cause before that, I have always believed that to have any chance of winning, you've got

to get up there and deny it because the jury wants to hear from you and they want to hear

you say, I did not do that.

And forcefully say, I would never do that.

Here's the thing I think about stigma about HIV.

I'm not like well-versed about it, but I think most people think if you have HIV and

you have sex with someone else, that person's going to get HIV.

I don't know.

I don't know whether or not that's actually true and it's probably not, but I think that

like most sex cases that you've done probably don't have this fact in it.

So I think that like, this to jurors might be like some scientific proof that maybe it

didn't happen.

Whereas, you know, you don't have that in most cases.

So I think you really had that going for you.

It's like an exculpatory fact to someone who, yeah, like me is not educated on HIV.

Right.

I think most people just think that like if you, if someone has it and they have sex, then

you get it, you know, which is probably false, but good for your case.

Yeah, it's not true because when I initially got the case, I thought about getting an expert

to talk about that, you know, the rate of transmission, but it's actually quite low.

One thing that clouded the HIV picture.

So in Jeremy's medical records where he is diagnosed and tested positive, he went in with

mom on the same visit and they're mentioned together.

What's not clear is what her status is because that's not her medical record.

Um, what we had learned from talking to her is that she is in fact positive and she contracted

it from Jeremy.

Um, we weren't able to put that in without calling her.

And I thought it would make it a bit more powerful to say, here's a person that did have sexual

relations with him for years and she is positive.

Right.

Um, and so that was sort of left as an open question as far as the evidence that was presented

to the jury.

Um, and that's why we felt really hard about calling her, but just thought we probably have

enough.

It's so risky.

The cons outweighs the outweighs the outweighs the outweighs the outweighs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you had to, okay.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Um, so then you're going into closing.

How do you feel going into closing?

I feel like we have a chance.

Um, I thought we were going to be dead on the email account because all they had to prove

for exploitation was essentially that he was using an electronic communication to entice

her into some sort of sexually explicit, you know, the idea from the email, some of which

are encouraging her to make videos or send pictures, which in itself would be enough.

Yeah.

So I thought, okay, we're dead on exploitation, but I think we might have a chance.

What's the maximum on exploitation?

40 years, day for day.

Day for day means no good time or anything like that.

No good time.

No parole.

No early release.

One count of exploit.

Wow.

Whoa.

Mississippi.

Okay.

So that's kind of heavy going into closing then.

If you're feeling like you're, what does Jeremy think?

Jeremy feels terrible at this point.

Yeah.

So his confidence has waned?

Yes.

Even though the trial was like seemingly pretty good.

Yeah.

I think from a human perspective, it was so jarring for him to watch.

Your whole family.

Three people that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

These three people that you considered to be like your own kids come up and say these

things about you.

It's devastating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rocks your whole world.

Yeah.

All right.

So closing.

Let's talk about close.

Do or die.

State first.

State first.

And so the prosecutor that had opened with, there is a method to our madness, had to get

up and explain, well, actually now you only have nine counts to consider.

And that was my favorite part.

That's great.

Otherwise, their first close, what we call it, it's pretty formulaic.

They use a PowerPoint and have the elements and checkboxes.

And we've proven each element of this count and we've proven each one of this count.

We did have, I guess prior to closing, we did have some argument before the judge about

the state was asking that I not be able to mention the fact that four of these counts

were dismissed in my closing.

I was like, well, what?

Of course I'm going to, you know, not only is it relevant to the case, but they opened

on it.

So, you know, even if you can say, oh, it's not normally an issue, they made it relevant.

They opened their own door.

Like what's, what's the legal basis of that?

Bad for me?

They came up with some, some old ass case that said, bad, bad for, yeah.

Objection, bad for me?

Bad for state.

Bad for state.

Objection, I, this is bad for my case.

I don't like this.

They came up with some old ass case that said that you were not supposed to comment on cases

that had been dismissed at directed verdict.

Was it from justice court?

Straight from justice court.

I think it was like from the fifties or something.

It was like some obscure thing.

Yeah.

Verily as it were.

The judge sort of compromised and she said, okay, we have to explain to the jury that

there's only nine counts.

Cause otherwise the first question we're going to get is.

Where's the other counts?

What happened?

Yeah.

But she told me I'm, I wasn't allowed to like make a big deal out of it.

Did you?

She told me I wasn't allowed.

Oh.

And it's also, it is a big deal because the reason those charges got dismissed is because

she testified to a different age.

Like that's an inherent credibility issue.

Credibility is always relevant.

It's a due process issue.

There's no reason why that shouldn't be the center of closing.

So to say that you have to dance around it, like it's not about that those charges got

dismissed.

It's about the star witness contradicting an element of the charge.

Like, of course you're going to close on it.

I know.

So she told me, I could mention it.

I just couldn't make it like a ton of argument.

We'll see.

We'll see.

So how'd you deal with it?

Let's talk about your clothes.

I kind of, I think I used their words.

I said in opening, they told you there was a message to their madness and there was a

reason, a good reason that they charged this case the way they did.

And now you see those counts are gone and they're gone because of lack of evidence and

lack of proof.

But, you know, and I think that may be all I did.

That's probably enough.

I got away with a lot in closing, dealing with the mom and the fact that they didn't

call her.

Even, I even got away with basically telling them that she is HIV positive because if she

wasn't, she could have come in here and said that she wasn't.

How I got away with that, I don't know.

They did not object.

Just like looking over like, hello?

Okay.

But then, you know, hit on the same themes and theory that we had started developing in

Vordire.

This is a girl that's troubled, that lives her life online, that creates stories, that

makes up things.

You saw it.

It's real.

This is why we're here.

Repeated that same theme about April 15th, 2023 is the worst day of his life.

He's been betrayed by his whole family.

You know, really, I think we did good at having a lot of continuity right from Vordire all

the way through closing.

Yeah.

And then, I always end my closings with a United States of America sort of riff.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Did y'all ever watch the show, The Practice?

No.

It was on in like the late 90s, early 2000s.

It was about a bunch of criminal defense lawyers.

It's probably why I'm a criminal defense lawyer.

Okay.

I want to watch it now.

Honestly.

I like legal shows.

It's really, really good.

But one of their characters always did like a United States of America close.

Like, if you don't have anything else, you always have United States of America.

And so, I do this whole, it's become like semi-famous in our office, like star-spangled

awesome.

Like, really empowering them.

You have to, as a patriot, find him not guilty because otherwise authoritarianism and

tyranny reigns.

And it works well in our conservative district because everybody wants to feel like.

Is that what you say?

Like, we have a constitution.

The constitution says the state has to prove every element beyond a reasonable doubt.

As a patriot, you are required to find my client not guilty because that's what the,

like, is it like that?

Give us a practice tip here for the listeners who don't know about the star-spangled awesome

clothes.

In the United States of America, before the state, the almighty, all-powerful state can

take away your life, your liberty, and your freedom, they have to prove it.

And they have to prove it to you, not the judge, not the lawyers.

They have to prove it to you in an open courtroom.

And they have to bring it.

They have to bring evidence.

And they don't, they didn't do that here.

You know, something like that.

Okay, nice, nice.

The limited government clothes.

Yeah, yeah.

To speak to our very conservative.

Right.

Brothers and sisters.

That believe, that think.

As you expatriate to New Zealand.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's like, I'm going to limit the government from New Zealand.

Yeah.

But I think people, people like to think that they believe in, in all that stuff.

Yeah.

People do, yeah.

But try and empower them to think.

I like that.

And then, so their second clothes?

Ten years.

I wish I could remember more about the second clothes.

Sometimes I sit there and just try and zone out.

It's where like the most outlandish shit comes out is their, the state's rebuttal clothes.

Yes.

And I try and preempt, because some of the stuff they say in second clothes every time.

Like, these are all defense tactics.

Everything she says is smoke and mirrors.

You know, they're defense lawyers.

They have a job to do.

So I preempt every bit of that in my clothes and say, they're going to get up and say this stuff.

They say it in every case.

But it's what my job is to talk to you about the evidence.

It's not defense tactics to say, to point out the inconsistencies in their witnesses.

You know, just try and preempt all of that.

I think it was effective in this one, because you could tell that she had planned to say every bit of that shit.

One line I thought was really good, she talked about the demeanor of the daughter, and how she was up there, and she's taking her power back.

She loves that for her.

I thought that was a good line.

I was just like, ugh, I wish I could get up again.

Yeah.

All right.

And so that was up.

And that was up.

All right.

The jury has it.

It's over.

So how do you feel?

I always feel terrible.

Yeah.

I have to go lay down.

I have a green couch in my office that I just go lay on while the jury's deliberating.

How long were they out?

They were out for about four hours.

Okay.

Which is pretty long for our jurisdiction.

Okay.

I mean, we've gotten verdicts before in 15, 20, 30 minutes.

Oh, my God.

And so we've gotten a not guilty before in like 30 minutes.

Yeah.

So you never know.

They don't mess around down there in Mississippi.

No.

Yeah, they got me.

No, they really don't.

Okay.

So they have a verdict.

What are we thinking?

What are we doing?

What are we feeling?

Well, it just felt terrible.

I hate, I absolutely hate that moment.

Yeah.

So much.

And obviously, so there's nine counts.

The exploitation count was count number one.

And that's the count that I was pretty sure, because at the end of their second close,

they sort of threw up on their PowerPoint.

You know, are you horny?

You still up?

Make a video.

Send me a picture.

Like, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom.

All the bad stuff.

And I was like, there's no way they won't convict on that count.

But maybe that'll be the only count.

We all file in.

There's a, I think everybody from the DA's offices back in the audience, people from our

office there.

And the first count they read, exploitation, not guilty.

Wow.

And I almost, like, I almost fell over.

Are you, like, in your head, like, it's okay if it's guilty?

Are you, like, talking yourself through it?

And then you hear not guilty?

Yeah.

And you're like, wait, what?

Can we hear that again?

And so my, my boss was second chair for the trial with me.

And I, like, grabbed his arm.

I was, like, trying to stay upright because they make us stand.

Oh, okay.

The hair passes out.

And then, so count two, not guilty.

I'm really, I'm really trying not to cry because I don't like to cry in a courtroom where other

people can see me because that's not my persona that I'm going to have.

Is Jeremy reacting as this is kind of unfolding?

He's sobbing.

Yeah, he must be.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah.

But I didn't want to get, so count two, not guilty.

Count three, not guilty.

But I didn't want to get too excited because about a year and a half prior, I tried a sex

case that had six counts.

And the first three were not guilty.

And then counts four through six were guilty.

So, I'm like, in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, they've done, like, a compromise verdict.

Yeah.

And so, I was not able to relax until, you know, count four, not guilty.

Count five, not guilty.

Count six.

Count seven.

Count eight.

Count nine.

Across the board, not guilty.

Across the board.

Wow.

I could not believe it.

That's unreal.

That's unreal.

So, we went back, visited with him in the holding cell.

The bailiffs let us take a picture with him.

You know, got the biggest, best hugs, tears all around.

Wow.

It was just, oh, it's so incredible.

The best feeling.

Did you end up talking to the jury at all about why they have not guilty?

Oh, yes.

Yes.

And I forgot one part to tell you.

I told you we got this juror that we really liked, a younger black male.

After day one of trial, so this is partway through the cross of the complaining witness,

he told the bailiff when he arrived in the morning that he did not want to continue on the jury.

And so, he wanted to be excused because he didn't think he could do it.

And he went back in chambers and the judge asked him some questions about why he didn't want to be on the jury.

And he basically said, like, this is too heavy of a decision.

I don't want to have any part of this.

It's too important for him.

It's too important for her.

I don't think I'm going to be able to, you know, I don't know that I can do this.

And so, he stayed on the jury and ended up being the foreman.

Nice.

Wow.

That's awesome.

That's exactly who you want.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Somebody that really appreciates, like, what a heavy thing this is.

Yeah.

The gravity.

Yeah.

So, we did talk to him afterwards.

They do, they try and keep us from having contact information with the jurors.

Like, they black out all their phone numbers and addresses and stuff on the juror cards.

But we did find contact information for him and talked to him and said, okay, you know, tell me, in particular, the emails.

And he said, they just, it was so confusing about where they came from and what they were that they just couldn't, they weren't, they weren't satisfied that they actually came from Jeremy.

I love when you hear jurors doing the right thing, right?

Yeah.

Like, really thinking about it, really taking the, beyond a reasonable doubt, into consideration and not just, because it is so, it looks so bad on its face.

You don't want people to be like, he said, you know, so show me a video, something graphic, and that's that.

Like, they really hold the state to the burden.

And I really appreciate that.

Yeah.

He said they just weren't convinced that any of this happened, and they did apply the burden of proof.

Wow.

Which is insane.

We love to hear it.

We love to hear it.

Well, great job.

I mean, yeah.

That case, it was just, like, start to finish, just tried with an incredible level of expertise.

Like, from the pretrial, all the client trust building that happened pretrial, just the decisions that were made, just technically super clean.

And, yeah, that stuff is, it's just so heavy.

And so I'm always so impressed by lawyers that keep their cool start to finish, just to get it done, and to do so with a level of poise that whatever the outcome would have been,

it's just the client knows that they were fought for, and here it was just a clean acquittal.

So, yeah, incredible work, Lauren.

And, yeah, you're the patriot, and New Zealand's lucky to have you, but you can come back whenever.

Yes.

Yeah, but it's our loss, their gain.

Our loss, their gain.

Yeah.

I'll be back at some point.

Good.

Probably.

Yeah, so this is the part of the episode where we ask our guests, why did you want to become a public defender?

In law school, I was a part of the first Mississippi Innocence Project class, and I got to go and attend these blockbuster exonerations.

The guy that had been on death row, and another that had a life without parole sentence.

And I sat in a courtroom and watched them be set free.

And so that was a defining moment.

Graduated law school, I worked as like a law clerk for the first year, and tried really hard to find a public defender job.

And so in Mississippi, it's still mostly done by contract work.

I was not able to find a job in a full-time public defender office, so I went and did civil litigation for 10 years.

Oh, whoa, okay.

I defended insurance companies.

I did all sorts of soul-sucking shit.

And so in 2020, I finally got brave enough to go back.

I applied, took an entry-level job in a public defender office, doing pre-indictment, preliminary hearings and stuff, and then have never, ever been happy.

Good for you.

It's never too late to become a public defender, honestly.

Like, it really isn't.

So good for you for finding that in and doing what – and, you know, I did Innocence Project work, too.

And it is – it's intoxicating, you know?

And then you become a public defender, and you're like, okay, well, I want to represent the guilty people, too, you know?

And I think that it's – yeah.

It's super rewarding.

So thank you so much for telling us your story.

We appreciate it so much.

And any updates or any other cases in New Zealand, please let us know.

We'd love to hear about it.

I will do it.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Another Not Guilty.

Shout-out to Daniel Mark, original A&G theme music composer, and Mike Grimm for the remix.

And guess what?

We'll be back in two weeks with Another Not Guilty straight from the trenches.

We'll be back in two weeks with Another Not Guilty straight from the trenches.