Transcript
I'm Alice. And I'm Brett. And this is the prosecutor's legal news. So the state is now done, and you can make sort of your initial thoughts on this. Remember, the state has the burden to prove Richard Allen's guilty. And I assume at this point, I didn't really read that it happened, but it always happens. The defense would have made an argument for a directed verdict. They essentially would say, prosecution hasn't met its burden. That would be denied for several reasons, not the least of which, in this case, you do have a confession, and it's a confession that's corroborated by 1 at least one fact. You can't typically speaking, you cannot be convicted purely on your confession. You can imagine all sorts of reasons. So just saying I did it and that was the only evidence the police had would not be enough. There has to be something corroborating it. Here, you have the I did it and you have the Vann fact, which the prosecution has now put on evidence of. That alone is enough to go to the jury, even if you didn't have anything else. The fact that you have a corroborated confession is enough. Obviously, you have a lot more than that. I think and we're gonna talk about this later. We got all these confessions. The 1st week of trial was enough to convict Richard Allen, certainly enough to get to the jury. It's a very low bar. So not surprisingly, assuming that argument was made, which I think it would have been because it would have been my practice not to, they made the motion for a directed verdict and that motion was denied. So at this point, the defense now has to start calling their witnesses. And it's been said that the And by the way, you you move right into it. Like, I mean, we weren't in the in the courtroom, but in all our trials, you literally have a beat. This is why I say the defense really just has to, like, go. Sometimes you have witnesses waiting at least one witness waiting in your room for days just in case this happens. And this is why you wanna stay on good terms with the prosecutor. You know, you don't wanna be jerks to the prosecutor because, ideally, you're you're letting them know. Like, hey, guys. You know, we got 2 more witnesses. You got 2 witnesses tomorrow. We're gonna be done. So I just wanna let you know. Right? I mean, we're not trying to trick people here. I don't know what kind of relationship the prosecution has with the defense at this point. So it's been said the defense was kind of surprised that they rested at this point, though, obviously, it was coming. I mean, we were coming to the end of their their They also know what's in discovery. Exactly. Like, what else there is? They should have been arrested. Obviously the most powerful evidence, which is the van. That's what you wanna end on. So they call Cheyenne Mill. She initially was kinda trying to use her notes to testify. You can't do that. So those had to be taken away from her. Her testimony was about the timeline. Now we know the girls were likely dead by about 2:32. That's the last time Libby's phone moved. Cheyenne parked at the parking lot that afternoon, and she went to the trail with a friend of hers. The problem is, apparently, she parked around 250, which would be after the girls were dead. She's on the trails at 312, and she gets a call from her boyfriend. She sees Shelby Duncan and Daniel Pearson, who were talking on the bridge. I think these two people have been mentioned before. She and her friends smoke some cigarettes on the bridge. They walk to the end of the bridge. They step off the trail and relieve themselves. In any event, they don't notice anything. It's not clear why she would given the established timeline. It's also interesting if you're still thinking about the whole odinist thing. Like, if there's some sort of odinist ceremony going down in the trees where multiple people are, like, chanting to their dark gods and and sacrificing the girls, you'd think these witnesses would notice something, but apparently, they don't. Either way, doesn't seem like she would. They take some pictures. They go home. They don't don't hear any screaming or anything, which could be significant. The last picture they took was at around 355, which was around the time when Sarah Carball is seeing Muddy Bloody Man walking down the street. She would complain. She called the police after she learned the girls are missing to let them know she was on the trail, but they never really got back to her. Though it doesn't seem like she really had much to offer, but she was the defense's first witness. Yep. And the next two witnesses are kind of along the same lines where it's like they're not gonna know anything and we won't expect them to because of the timeline. So the next witness is Theresa Libert. Apparently, she was very hard to hear so I think everyone had a little bit of difficulty reporting what she testified to, but she lives near the Weber residence, which is on the connecting access road, and she's lived there for 48 years. In fact, at one point, the defense had her come up to a map to pinpoint where the Weber residence was, and she couldn't do it. This was like this happens all the time. This this shows you the difficulties that all lawyers face. Here she is being like, I've lived here for 48 years. Can you point it out on the map? I can't. This literally happens to us. The only reason I bring this out is it I don't know what it would have helped for her to point it out on a map, but it was a waste of time. It doesn't matter. It kind of this may this may go to some of the reporting that it seemed like the defense was stumbling around. I don't blame the defense for this. You I would also expect her to be able to point it out, but what's the point of pointing it out? Anyways, moving on. On February 13th at about 8:30, she says that she's coming home and she stops at the community mailbox and she sees a stranger near the mailbox. She says that she doesn't really get a good look at him, but she did tell law enforcement what she saw. Obviously, this is, like, 6 hours before the murders, and I don't there I don't think Richard Allen was there at, you know, 6 hours earlier, so it's not really clear what the point of this testimony is except to maybe say that there was someone lurking around 6 hours earlier that could have been the murderer. And she was asked if she remembered some girls knocking on her door at 4 o'clock. She doesn't recall this and she says that she never sees mailbox man again later or any anytime so again. Nothing really comes from her testimony. The next, witness is Christopher Gauti. He is with, the Hammond Police Department as an officer, and he's also an FBI task force officer. And he did canvas interviews after the Delphi murders, and he canvassed Brad Weber. Apparently, when he spoke to Weber, he said, he said in his report that Weber went home, and he couldn't recall if it was straight home or not. The defense really wanted to recollect his collection sorry. The defense really wanted Christopher Gautier to refresh his recollection with the FBI report he wrote, but he canvassed a lot of people. So he's like, okay. I'll look at the report. He read it. He looked at it, and what you have to do is you can't read from the report because the report is hearsay. What you can do is you can read it, you put it down, and then the attorney has to ask you, does that refresh your recollection? If you say yes, you can testify about it. If you say no, you cannot. And what did he say? He's like, it does not refresh my recollection. I don't remember. I canvassed a lot of people, and that was it. So another witness that literally established nothing. And here's what's gonna happen. It's gonna be that at some point, somebody talked to Weber, And, you know, he was like, hey. Do you remember that day a few weeks ago where nothing happened to you that was significant? And he was like, not really. Did you go home at work? Yeah. Did you stop anywhere? Well, I have an ATM business, so I I could have been servicing ATMs. Yeah. I think that's what I was doing. Okay. And then right there and left. Right? And then years later, Weber gets called in to the police. He knows he's gonna go talk to them about this case. Apparently, he, like, looks through his text messages from that day and realizes that he actually he did service some ATMs. We did it earlier in the day. So when he talks to him the second time, he's like, yeah. Actually, I did go straight home. I did the ATM stuff earlier. And that's what he's gonna say. And this is important because of the whole white van thing. Now the defense, you know, they want the jury to think Weber might have done it. Right? Maybe he did it. Now of course, they don't believe that. They think the Odenus did it. So none you know, nobody actually thinks that Weber did it. This is just like a thing the defense is trying to do to introduce doubt into the jury's mind. I think it's interesting though to see Richard Allen's defenders online jump on the Weber did it thing when the police or or when the defense doesn't actually believe that. We know what the defense believes happened, and it's not that Weber did it. Weber didn't do it. So you can go ahead and drop that online. We're just trying to get the jury thinking maybe he didn't actually drive that white van by when he needed to. Yeah. And note that remember the, Teresa Liebert who lived next to Weber for 48 years, she saw a man. She probably would know someone she's had, you know, lived next to for 48 years. She didn't say I saw a man and it was Weber. So all of this is it's an attempt to just introduce doubt, but I don't think these witnesses have introduced any doubt yet. And it's always funny to me, and you see this in every single case, every single innocence case. You got the guy who has been charged where we have this, all this evidence against him. We're presenting, you know, have all these witnesses testifying. We got ballistics evidence. We got his own confessions, all this stuff, but there are people who would rather believe it's Weber who we have no evidence against at all. They would rather think Oh, maybe he did it. It's just I don't know like the the desire for it to be anybody other than the defendant is one of those things that I just I don't don't Until they become the defendant. Exactly. And then they don't want that to be. Then it's then it's the odinist. Right? Like, if Weber had been arrested, it still would have been the odinist or it'd be Ron Logan. It's whoever you're like predetermined favorite is, which is and and I'll just say this. I I'm all about, you know, there's some of you out there who think innocent to proven guilty means we shouldn't even talk about a case until somebody's convicted. Like, we shouldn't even we should act like we're the jury at nighttime and I love that. That's great. You know, you're really upholding the principle. But if you can't move off your preconceived notion when you see the evidence, you're not keeping an open mind. You had a closed mind the whole time. So if you if you weren't sure Richard Allen did it at the beginning, but no amount of evidence is ever going to convince you, you are the closed minded one. So try and keep an open mind here when you're hearing this evidence come in. So then we have doctor Diana Dowinger, who was the director for behavioral health in the Indiana Department of Corrections. Now she never met Richard Allen, but she's gonna talk more about sort of general ideas of mental health and how being in solitary can be damaging mentally. The research is split on that, but there's a pretty, you know, there's there's good research about how being isolated can sort of mess with your head. Now she did talk about how though the primary job is to keep the inmate alive, and that's the primary thing, then to keep them mentally well. We cannot keep can't help a dead person. Right? And Richard Allen not only threats from inmates, but he also has indicated a desire to harm himself, and that makes it a lot more difficult. And she also talked about how much doctor Wallach enjoyed true crime, which was a thing that people knew about. And look, there's no problem with that. There's no nothing wrong with her liking true crime. There's nothing wrong with her listening to true crime. There's really nothing wrong with her listening to true crime about Delphi. Should she have been talking to Richard Allen about it? Probably not. Should she have been looking up Keegan Klein's stuff? Definitely not. Those are all bad things, but just the idea that she liked true crime isn't necessarily a problem. I bet a lot of people in law enforcement, hey, like true crime. It's it's a part of our lives. So it's not that surprising. She actually recommended podcasts to the doctor. I wondered whether she recommended ours. I don't know. That didn't come out. She did or not. Now doctor Wallace, she visited the Mona and High Bridge, before she knew she was gonna treat Richard Allen, but that's how much she was into this. And look, it's not great. It's it's definitely something that the defense was right to seize on. I don't know how far it gets them, particularly given the facts in Richard Allen's confessions, but nevertheless, you know, this is good stuff. The a lot of what the defense has done has been kind of inexplicable. This makes sense why they would focus on this. I all talked about Haldol, which is, medications of fact it is a fast acting medication that calms people who are in a state of mental distress. So somebody's having sort of an episode, you can give them hall doll to calm them down. Now it doesn't last very long. It passes out of your system fairly quickly. I think, you know, the defense has been trying to present hall doll as this sort of like you give it to Richard Allen, all of a sudden he's a different person. He's basically been a different person the whole time he's in prison. So maybe that's why he's been confessing. Who knows? So there are a bunch of jury questions, many of which were very helpful to the prosecution. We talked about safe keepers, what those people are, you know, are they in general population? They can be. They asked, could it be that Richard Allen was faking symptoms to avoid being moved to general population? She said, yes. She had seen that. I don't know that Richard Allen ever would have been in general population no matter what since he is just being held at the prison in lieu of a jail. So I don't know if they would have moved in there, but maybe they would have. I don't know. She'd never treated him. Talked about when you're faking a mental health issue or even when you're in the grips of some sort of psychosis, can truth slip out? And this was something she spent a lot of time on. She said yes, and she said, look. People in psychosis can be telling the truth. Just because you're in psychosis doesn't mean you're lying. She asked, what would that look like? And she said, you know, their body language, that sort of thing, you can look at those things, but really look at what they're saying. Is what they're saying? Is it being told in an orderly way? Is it being told in a chronological order? Is it a linear is it a linear story? Does one thing follow after another? Are there things in it that you can verify? Those sort of things. Or is it disjointed and all over the place? Does it have organization? Does it have logic? Etcetera? This is really bad for Richard Allen because his confessions are not do not sound like rantings and ravings. They do not sound like that. Whether you think they're true or not, he's not doing that. He is telling a coherent story when he's talking to people. She also talked about psychotic episodes often have themes. There's a persecutory theme. People are out to get me. They're listening to me. There's hypersexuality. You know, I'm God's gift to women. Hyper religiosity. You know, I am the son of God and the son and probably God's gift to women at the same time. Extreme jealousy, command. You know, you hear voices in your head telling you to do something. None of this really fits Richard Allen. It doesn't seem. In general, her testimony, and remember, she's a defense witness, is pretty bad for Richard Allen all told. I honestly forgot she was a defense witness because the jury questions first of all, again, showed how much the jury is listening. And also it seems to be a pretty educated, jury population in terms of knowing the questions to ask, but it was the jury questions, I think, that really brought out the pro prosecution testimony from this witness. So during a break on Friday, Richard Allen apparently this is reported by the murder of she, but apparently while they were on break, Kevin noticed that Richard Allen was staring and pointing at him and Anya, and then he was, like, talking to Rosie while pointing to them. I have no idea, you know, why he's doing that. Apparently, he's done that to multiple people in the courtroom. Honestly. I there's like 3 weeks you could be looking at everyone and you certainly know who's probably not on your side and making you know podcasts about it. So it doesn't surprise me that much that he would know that. But, I think it also shows that he's aware of what's happening in the courtroom. He's not sitting there sedated. He's not sitting there, you know, completely checked out. We have defendants who did that. But I don't remember I don't know. You we didn't do this trial together, but I did a trial where the defendant, he was a white collar defendant, but he wore it was a over a month long trial, and he wore the same two sweaters on alternating days. It was like a green sweater and a red sweater and a green sweater and a red sweater and a green like, I don't know why. It was like he had lots of clothes because I've seen him in lots of other hearings. He had suits. He, you know, he he had quite the closet, but every day he just wore, like it was like mister Rogers, and he would, like, make jokes about his sweater every single day. Anyways, I just point that out in that, like, I don't think it's that weird that he's talking to his attorneys and maybe even taking note as to who is in the gallery because he knows this is a highly publicized trial. Okay. The next witness on Friday was Max Baker, who was an intern for defense attorney Rosie. He's the one who listened to Richard Allen's phone calls and watched the videos, and he put together a tape of Richard Allen's time at the Westville Correctional Center. Now this was objected to by the prosecution, and the in cell footage right now is out. Some take it so some of the footage that was taken with a camcorder can be used without audio, and it's from April to July of 2023. So they have to figure out if they can do that, but I think there was, on Friday at least they couldn't figure out what dates these videos were actually taken, which is a problem. I think they ultimately figured it out today. But this just shows you you have to be prepared for everything. It's wonderful to come up with like you know your stitched. Together TikTok videos, but the I think the judge literally asked, how do you know, these are from the relevant timeline? And they're like, it's labeled? And they're like, who labeled it? I did? Not great. This is, by the way, why, like, chain of custody and knowing where all your things are from dated is important. It's always fun when the defense has to get evidence in. It's like you guys have been giving us a hassle this whole time. Now you know we're gonna hassle you. Like, how do you know what date that was on? Like, oh oh, how do we know you didn't switch out the video? You know? So anyways, yeah. They eventually figured that out. That wasn't the last witness on Friday. There was also Brad Heath who is, I believe, 70 years old. He drove from Delphi to Logan's port on a a route every day as a service guy. He's driving through on 13th, and he sees a vehicle parked on the street at around 8:45 AM. He sees it later in the afternoon. It was a dark blue older vehicle. He thought it was out of place. It reminded him of a car from the movie The Fugitive. Doesn't not that significant. I mean, this is we talked about this before. In every innocence case you see this too, there's always like the mysterious vehicle parked on the street. You know, witnesses said they saw a car driving through the street. It's like, okay. But, you know, the the presumption is that was the killer in the blue car. Right? It's not the man in the white van It's the dude hanging out at the postal box or the guy in the blue car or whatever, but in any event once again, this was 8:45 a. M. So it doesn't seem all that relevant and I would just say this I don't know why the defense is calling all these people. I don't know if they need more time to get to something. You never want to waste the jury's time. You particularly don't want to waste their time when they are stuck in a hotel. So the defense really needs to move this along and get to their point if they have one. Next, they had a photographer, didn't catch his name. He's 78, last coming to the trails. He said you can see rocks in the stream from the bridge, which I guess means you probably could see fish. It's one of the things Richard Allen said he did. He was there at around 3:15. He left around 4. He saw, I believe, Libby's dad looking for the kids. They asked him if he'd seen some girls. He hadn't seen them, and he didn't really see anything and he left. Yeah. I don't know exactly why the defense is calling these witnesses. You also like we said, you don't know what witnesses will say when they're on the stand. So sometimes you just gotta take a shot and see if someone will be like, you know what? Previously, I said it was 8:30 AM. I saw that weird man. It was actually 2:30. So sometimes you just gotta take those shots. But what I think is really coming across in all these defense witnesses is there's a reason the defense wants to change the timeline. They can find people to talk about things anywhere but the actual timeline. And guess what? Everyone, I think and I think the reason they can't find anyone to talk about seeing something else that may cut it cut in their favor during the timeline of the murders is because we've heard from all of them in the prosecution's case in chief, and all of them saw bridge guy. That's the problem. Right? So they are in a rock and a hard place here, but I think that is what's so stark for me in the two and a half days of defense testimony is, yeah, they have to have people before the murders and after the murders because everyone who was there during the murders saw bridge guy. And Richard Allen said, essentially, he's bridge guy, and he's confessed. Again, you're dealt the hand that you're dealt here, so I don't know about you guys, but that's what I'm hearing like loud and clear right now from their witnesses. Now the next witness is Daryl Starett, who is a volunteer fireman, and he talks about the search, but he didn't find anything. So that's that's all. I don't mean to be short shrift about that, but I guess the point of this witness is to show, like, maybe there's a world in which the girls weren't there and they had to be moved there later. It's not clear from his testimony, but he doesn't have to make the argument. Then it gives, I guess, the defense an opening to be able to argue this on cross. Like, this file by volunteer fireman who searches all the time couldn't find them. Is it because he's bad at searching or maybe they weren't even there? So, you know, but that's not what he said. All he said was I searched. And by the way, so did, like, 100 of people for a day, and no one found anything until the girls were found. So the next person was Steve Mullen, who you remember previously testified. He's called back, and he talks about preserving evidence. He talks about the taped over interviews. Remember how there were there's a lot of interviews in this case, especially before an arrest was made, and not all of the investigative interviews were saved. This is a good hit for the defense. It they suggested it that they suggested that it was strange that police recorded the Brad Weber interview, but not the phone call setting up the interview. And that they even though they tested the bullet, they didn't go through Weber's gun. Now to the extent there were inconsistencies with Brad Weber, he looked at texts which confirmed that he did actually go home that day. So what Brett said earlier where maybe at the time he's like, well, there's a possibility. I don't know. A couple weeks ago, maybe I went somewhere else before I went home. When he went back and looked at, like, his own hard evidence, he's like, no. No. No. I just went straight home. So this again is the defense just trying to insert doubt. Again, the defense doesn't even think Brad Weber did it. This is just to try and insert some sort of confusion, muddy the waters for their case. Yeah. And, look, I mean, I don't I don't I don't really get the point. There's nothing wrong with him looking back at actual data to try and figure out what he did that day as opposed to rely on his memory. That's why we refresh people's recollection. It's because you want you want the the truth. You want the real answer. And the best way to do that is to look at some, you know, hard thing. Like the lady on the on the bridge where she's the first defense witness. How does she know what time she was on the bridge? She got a call from her boyfriend. So it's the same type of thing. You're just looking to see your timing. So, I mean, I I get what they're trying to do and and maybe it'll be successful, maybe it won't, but it doesn't really it doesn't move me. That's it. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep. While you're listening to us talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you can be doing right now, getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance. It's easy, and you could save money by doing it right from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average, and auto customers qualify for an average of 7 discounts, discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 247, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at progressive.com to join the over 28,000,000 drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates National averaged 12 month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. So Tob Lisenby is called, and even though we all know his name from following all the press, of Delphi over the past several years, he actually had a really small role in the actual investigation of this case. He's more the public face in making announcements about the case. So, honestly, not much came out about anything with respect to the investigation. So that was the end of Friday, and then Saturday was mostly showing the tapes. They got tapes together, got the dates right. And Richard Allen, while he was incarcerated, now these tapes were not shown to the public, only to the jury. And the defense team who didn't think it was a big deal when they leaked crime scene photos of the girls to the public were very concerned about preserving Allen's dignity with the videos. Whatever, you know, that's that's their prerogative. If they wanna ask for it and the judge wants to give it to him, so be it. There were a lot of people who are upset about that. Thought that, you know, if if photographs of the girls are fair game for the gallery, then so too should be the video. And I mean, I kind of I kind of agree with that. I mean, as we've often said, you try and protect people's privacy as much as possible when you get to trial that's sort of out the window. I as much as I would like to protect the girls, I don't know that it would have been appropriate, for instance, for no one in the gallery to have been able to see the photographs of the crime scene and the wounds because I think those are things that are very important when it comes to the trial. Remember, you have a right as a defendant to an open trial, and that's that's your constitutional right. And part of that is having some sort of open presentation of the evidence. Now post trial, we certainly can have protective orders that prevent, you know, those photographs and this video from being just on YouTube for anybody to see. I think there's a distinction there. But part of testing the evidence, I think, is the public has some sort of right to access. And generally speaking, the way you satisfy that right is in the public trial. So I don't know. But any in any event, this was the decision made by judge Gull, who, as we all know, always rules to the prosecution and is totally in the bag for them. And yet here, definitely was ruling in favor of the defense. I don't think the prosecution thought this should come in at all. I think they had an argument for excluding it, but I think because of the confessions, I don't know that you keep it out. If if you had no confessions, I don't think this comes in at all. Then it's completely irrelevant. But I think the confessions, it has to come in. We have no idea what was shown. You know, there were people who said it was shocking or or well, it appeared to be shocking based on, you know, the way the lawyer was responding, who obviously was doing a little acting and maybe some of the jurors, we just don't know. We don't and we don't know how it plays. We don't know if people are horrified because they're like, wow. Look at that. You know, there's that murderer doing murder y things, you know. For all we know that could be the response, or they're horrified because they feel sorry for Richard Allen, or they're horrified because this makes them not believe the confessions, or if they're just generally horrified to see somebody acting that way, but it won't have any effect on their decisions at all. We don't know. So at this point, all we can say is that this is Richard Allen's big hope. I mean, based on the defense case you've heard so far, there hasn't been a lot to it. The main thrust is this. Richard Allen was, you know, I think in opening statement, there was some statement that he was treated like a POW, which the defense better hope that nobody on that jury has a relative who was actually a POW because they didn't get tablets in the Hanoi Hilton. You know? And it's insulting to even say that, but that is sort of their take and this is is backing that up. So I guess we'll see. Getting the jury to sympathize with the man who's accused of killing 2 people is hard. That is what they're going for. I mean, it is it is a hail Mary because you basically have to hope that they will ignore all the other evidence because he was treated poorly while incarcerated. I'll say usually when you try to garner sympathy for, someone charged with a gruesome murder like this is what we talked about earlier. The whole he's a a man of God. He is a loving father. He's a, you know, a a person in community that everyone looks to rather than these videos. And this is hard. They're in a hard place because we've heard a lot of testimony where we've already heard his voice, where he seems to not be in midst of psychosis, where, people have said, you know, anyone who doesn't eat for several days is gonna act crazy whether you are crazy or not, and you can force yourself not to eat, but then also eat the 4th meal because you know that skipping a 4th meal is going to trigger, you know, additional response from the prison. So even though they are seeing these videos, again, we don't know what they are of and how it's hitting with the jury, they're not seeing it absent any sort of background. They've been hearing testimony about his actions in in, prison, and the people who've treated him have said that they think at least at some point he is malingering or acting out in a way to, I guess, put on a show. He also had a sticky note today. So there's that back to his paper diet. He's he's back on that. Don't really know what was going on there, but, you know, even when held in jail, apparently, he likes to eat paper. So they show these videos. There may be more. It's unclear. Real quick real quick on that. I mean, obviously, we were not there. I don't know. I kinda got angry at the eating a sticky note thing because it feels completely for show for the jury, but whatever I wasn't in the courtroom today if I were the prosecution, I would probably use that to my advantage and say he's sitting here unshackled with his family members in regular clothing, and they're claiming like, this is this is all a show. All of this is a show, and things are going so bad essentially that, like, he has to eat a sticky note to try and garner garner sympathy. I mean it is just I especially with all that we are seeing the defense do and all that we have heard so much about the gruesomeness of this murder or the these murders for some reason him eating the sticky note today just made me angry. I've kept my emotions out of today's show so far, but I that for some reason, that act angered me today. So Doug Carter also testified. We had told Leslie, we've had sort of all the famous people. He primarily was there to talk about the FBI. The FBI left the case in August of 2021. It was Carter's decision, and that was pretty much it. He returned the investigative documents or they returned the investigative documents, and we're out of the case. Didn't really go into why. This has been sort of a thing the defense has hinted at, that this is somehow nefarious that the FBI wasn't involved. I will tell you, I've been on a lot of multi agency task force is before. The FBI has a lot of great resources. I can imagine in the beginning it was very helpful to have them. You can do some like behavioral analysis stuff. You can use their manpower. By 2021, this investigation had been going on for 4 years. Years. At that point, I don't imagine the FBI had a very major role at that point. They probably had like one agent. He was doing some time on this, and I could imagine them as they're sort of reorganizing this task force, which they did multiple times, just sort of streamlining things and getting it down to their people and and thanks for your help, FBI. There doesn't I don't know why this would be a negative thing that the locals would wanna hand her handle a state matter at this point. And just so you know, for, like, you know, boring law enforcement administrative stuff, almost every law enforcement agency, certainly the FBI, we we all have to do case reviews every several months where you essentially have to say, like, what's being done in a case? Why is this case still open? Because you'd want cases to move along. You don't want things to fall things to fall between the cracks. And so when it's not your lead case, if you are helping and it's, you know, 4 or 5 years later and the case is still technically open on your file, like it shows as a metric that a case continues to be open, and they wanna know how to allocate resources, both money and investigators. And if you report, this case is still on our docket. It's still open. No. There's nothing they're waiting for. We're not waiting on testing. We're not helping with canvassing. There's no additional interviews. We're kind of just waiting because it's an open, unsolved case. Okay. Well, if they don't need us, then let's close it out because then we don't have to allocate resources to it. If something's open, it literally is just an administrative thing that law enforcement has to keep track of. So you can imagine that this actually happens all the time. We can always reopen cases, but we often close out cases when there's nothing for that law enforcement agency to do. Otherwise, administratively, it becomes a real burden, and that's when cases fall between the cracks. When you have too many cases open and it looks like we have to allocate all these resources to these 1,000 cases that nothing's happening in, and then we lose sight of the cases that are active. And and let me just also say state and local agencies don't really like working with the feds. I mean, they just don't. We do it a lot. We value our state and local partners, of course. We love them. But they just they view things differently. There are all sorts of reasons this might have happened. Almost none of them are nefarious. In fact, it doesn't make any sense. This was August of 2021. They didn't make an arrest until October of 2022. They didn't know about Richard Allen for another year. Like, what would be the big thing going on here at this time? I think there's all sorts of reasons as Alice was talking about justifying the resources. I could imagine Doug Carter having to write a memo every couple months explaining to the local FBI why he needs this agent, and maybe just being like, you know what I'm tired of writing a memo. Thanks, guys, for your help. He actually you're you're totally right. He probably actually had to do that, and it's annoying. Like, every case that's open on your docket takes like, you have to do case reviews where you have to sit down and talk to someone. An open case that doesn't need to be reported on takes 5 minutes of your life every few months when you have, like, a ton of cases. That's a lot. And and look, once again, the FBI is just there to help. This is not their case. They have no jurisdiction. It's not a federal crime. There is a kidnapping. So at the beginning there might have been a federal hook. We found the girls there. So there there is no federal hook. So it just doesn't it doesn't surprise me. So we've already spent more time talking about it than they did in court today, but I know this has been sort of a source of, you know, the FBI is so mysterious. Like, why why what's going on with it? What's going on? Focusing on the wrong face. Yeah. Think think something boring, administrative. Yeah. Exactly. And this is probably what it is. So we've come to the end of the testimony for this week. Most likely, there'll be a verdict next week or early week after that. By then, it it may just be me for a little while. So you guys gonna put up with me by myself. We'll have to see how that goes. I do wanna say one thing before we sign off and before we lose Alice, and that's about the confessions. Because I keep seeing people say something, and I don't really even understand. I understand what you're saying, but I don't understand why you're saying it, which is, if there are no confessions, would there be enough in this case? And I feel like you're looking at this completely wrong. I understand you're trying to say, is there enough to convict him without the confessions? But I feel like you've you've already gone down the wrong path at that point. The confessions are part of this case. They're part of this case no matter what. They're part of this case whether you believe them or don't believe them, and you can't look at individual pieces of evidence and just say to yourself, well, I'm looking at this confession. Do I believe this confession is legitimate or not? I'm gonna say I don't believe this one. Now I'm gonna move to confession 2. Do I think this confession is legitimate or not? I don't know. You can't do that, and the reason you can't do that is because when you're looking at the evidence, you have to look at it in a holistic view. You don't know. I don't know whether or not these confessions are legitimate. I don't know whether or not they are the product of psychosis. I don't know if Richard Allen is making them up and neither do you. And so just because you have, like, heard this and you're like, I don't know. I I think maybe these are made up. Okay. Fine. That is not the best way to analyze them. The best way to analyze them is in their totality. So you have a man who put himself on the trails at the time the girls were murdered, who was seen by other people who identified bridge guy, who says he's dressed like bridge guy, whose bullet was found at the trails, whose car is caught on video driving to the trails, who says that he was spooked by a white van that was arriving at the trails at that time and then says he killed the girls in multiple different confessions. Those are all facts you have to consider together. And if you want to say if you want to discount the confessions, you cannot do it on the confessions alone. You have to do it in the light of all the other evidence. So thinking about it in that bifurcated way, I think you've already started down the wrong path, and you've set yourself up not to have a good analysis of the evidence that is in front of you. Amen. And when looking at the totality of the, the evidence, you're evaluating the confessions like you do all the other evidence. If these were all ravings of a madman that made no sense and it had no details that were consistent with the crime scene, It's part of the evidence, but certainly doesn't point to guilt. But look at the nature of this of his confessions as well. There's nothing in the rules of evidence that say you discount their own confessions. You may have reasons maybe you're buying into some of the cross examination or some of the defense testimony that there's some reason you shouldn't believe it, but note that the defense isn't even arguing don't listen to the. They're trying to discount them because they absolutely are part of the case. The defense is not saying, well, they're just they're just blowing a bunch of smoke. You can't listen to this. That's not what they're saying. Listen to what their cross examination is saying. Listen to what their defense testimony is. They're trying to say, don't give this as much weight because that's what the jury is supposed to do. Weigh all the different evidence. It's like when we talk about circumstantial and direct evidence. You don't just say, well, what is the direct evidence case without looking at any of the circumstantial or just the circumstantial evidence? It's all evidence and the jury. That's why they sit in the courtroom and they listen and see the mannerisms in which the witnesses are testifying and they determine the credibility of what they are hearing because all of its evidence imagine it on a table and they have to determine how much weight to put on each of it. What to believe how to believe it and whether it's consistent with each other. So be a smart observer of the evidence and that's the way to do it. That's what the jurors are going to be instructed to do. That's what you're supposed to do. This is what you do in real life as well. Think about how you make decisions in real life. You don't go outside using the rain example. You don't go outside and say, okay. So take away the fact that water is falling from the sky. Convince me that it's raining right now. Okay. I see umbrellas up and I see that the news right now is currently reporting that it's raining, and there's water from the sky, but discount the fact that water is coming from the sky. No. Water coming from the sky is absolutely a part of you determining whether it's raining outside. And this is what you do in the courtroom. When you walk into the courtroom, what does the judge and what do the attorneys tell you to do? You don't check your rational thinking at the door. You don't stop the way you normally think about life, how you make decisions, how you determine what is right or wrong or true or not true when you walk into a courtroom. I think a lot of people forget that. The courtroom is supposed to symbolize the rest of our world. That's why it's a jury of your peers. It's not a jury of people with suspended realities. It is truly supposed to be the standard of a reasonable person who's lived life in this world that follows kind of the rules of society and the rules of physics that we all follow. When you walk into that courtroom, that doesn't get checked at the door. So in real life, if you're at the office and a stapler is missing and you catch your coworker, Bob, on security camera, taking the stapler. And then Bob says, Hey, I stole your stapler. Do you count the fact that you saw him on camera and he said, I stole your stapler. As all part of the evidence has been like, yeah, you stole my stapler. Yeah. You take that into consideration. Do that here as well. Don't check common sense at the door. I don't think the jurors are either because I think they're asking questions that show they're thinking about the totality of the circumstances. But I also think we're going to find out pretty soon what they think. And, Alice, you know, uses great examples as always, and I really like the rain one. You can imagine a scenario where you're watching television, and they're telling you on the television it's raining. And you look out the window, and you see somebody walk by with an umbrella. And you might say to yourself, the similar circumstances, well, what if you didn't see that person with the umbrella? I mean, are you just gonna take you're just gonna take the weatherman's word for it? You're just gonna assume that he's right? It's like, what? I did see the person with the umbrella. And because I saw the person with the umbrella, I have a reason to believe what the weatherman is saying. That is very similar to confessions. We you we believe confessions not just because the words are coming out of someone's mouth, but because of all the other evidence around it. And the defense very much wants you to separate those out because they don't want you to think about the fact that the guy who's confessing to do it, to doing it, also did all these other things. In some ways, the confessions, if played right, are almost helpful because the jury, they're so focused on the confessions that maybe they forget about all the evidence. Now this prosecution's done a good job making sure that didn't happen, but but maybe they forget about all the evidence and you can get them in a place where the only question they ask when they go back in the jury room is, do I believe the confession or not? We've talked about this with with a witness testifying, with the defendant testifying, that a lot of times everybody's so focused on the defendant testifying. And was he believable? Was he not believable? We saw this in Murdaugh. That if we can just convince the jury he's believable, well then maybe they'll maybe they'll quit. Because they'll forget about all the other evidence that showed he was guilty. And I think that's right now the defense's best path is to try and through these videos show that the, you know, there was reason to doubt the confessions, ignore the man behind the curtain since you have reasons to doubt the confessions, therefore, he's not guilty. And kind of I know we have another week to go, but stepping back and looking at 3 weeks of evidence with the prosecution having rested and the defense, you know, getting started and I think probably ending soon, if not for the media circus that has occurred, this honestly is a very boring case. There are so many cases like this. There are so many cases like this. I wish that were not true, but they happen every single day. No one pays attention to these trials because there's so many of them. They are personal, of course, to the victims and the victims' families, but this is not an extraordinary case. The evidence in this case is not extraordinary. The way he's acting in jail is not extraordinary. His 60 plus confessions is not extraordinary except for the fact that he's going to trial. I'm still shocked he's going to trial because this case in 99.9% of other situations would have plead out. It is a strong case the prosecution has put forward. The defense's cross examinations, look, they've done a they've done the job they've they're supposed to do. Their cross examinations and the witnesses they put up so far have done nothing to dent a very clear, very airtight, very strong evidentiary story that meets all the elements of double homicide. Yeah. I mean, I I agree a 100%. We'll see what happens in the next week. I mean, maybe they they throw a Hail Mary, but once again, that is not what defense cases typically do. It's very rare that you see a Hail Mary. You know, we we covered the the, oh. We know what the hail Mary was. They'll continue to try it. It's the odiness theory. True. And look. It's a heck of a hail Mary, you know, but they're not allowed to present it as they shouldn't because there's no evidence tying it to it. It's kinda funny because if you let them do it now, they've already put on all these witnesses who basically said, we didn't hear anything. It's like, wait, if you didn't hear us anything, how was there an odinist cult thing going on down there? But but, look, I don't know. If it had been me, I would have put on somebody, some bullet person. I would have gotten I would have got someone who's actually a ballistics expert, not a metallurgist, which is who they tried to do. I would have gotten that person. I would have shown the videos. I would have gotten a psychiatrist to talk about how they examined Richard Allen, and, you know, he's he's going through all sorts of things and he could say anything, and I would have rested. I wouldn't have put on all these people that they put on. You know, that's how I would have done it. That's not what they're doing. That's why they get paid the big bucks. Like I said, we'll see what happens. I expect we'll have closing arguments. I will be shocked if we don't have closing arguments by Wednesday. I mean, I I think that's given them a lot. 2 more days. I know. Because they've been having long trial days as well. So that's a that's a lot of hours to fill when these witnesses are going and there's not a lot of cross examination or jury questions because there's just not a lot of substance to ask any questions about. And we'll see if the family testifies. I mean, the daughter thing is awkward and out there. Yeah. You know? And it's fair game to ask about. Do you put her on the stand to say he never did that? Do you do that? And if you don't, as a jury saying to themselves, well, they didn't put her on. I mean, that that's that's a delicate place, and I I do not envy her. I don't envy any of his family, and there are a lot of victims in this case. And like like I said, I know people have been very critical of them, but it is difficult to put yourself in the place of being the mother or the wife of someone who's accused of doing something like this. So, you know, spare a little bit of focus on the person who's charged. Exactly. Focus on the person. Direct your ire at them. If you're gonna be mad at somebody, be mad at them. Okay, Alice, we've been going a while. I don't think I have anything else. Do you have anything else? No. No. I hope this was helpful, everyone. And, yeah, there are other sources, obviously, of people who are in the courtroom. Go listen to them. But hopefully, this helps you see it from, you know, folks who've been in the trenches and we I really hope that I would really hope this comes to a close tomorrow because like I said this case is unfortunately un extraordinary from an evidentiary point of view. It's extraordinary whenever there's a horrific murder and I truly wish that Abby and Libby and their families did not have to live through this media circus because this just happens sometimes with cases. I don't know why they hit lightning, but this one did. But now that we've heard, really, I think all most of the evidence, It's it's not a difficult case and it's not an extraordinary case. So I do hope there's closure very, very soon for everyone involved. I agree 100%. With that, Brett, I always love recording with you on a Saturday night. Seriously, this is always really fun to be with all of you. Thank you for showing up and for listening, and we'll see what happens next week on a lot of fronts. Until next time. I'm Alice. What's that to say? You you you gonna say your name? No. It's my turn. It's my turn. Totally my turn. I was like, come on, Brett. But until next time, I'm Alice. And I'm Brett. And this is the prosecutor's legal briefs. Forgot what show we were doing. Yeah. There you go. You nailed it, Alice. I was like, come on, Brett. Way to fall down on the job. Oh my goodness. Alright. Well, good luck, Alice. Yeah. Great. Man, how's over too long? Okay. I'm gonna stop it.
Comments