Layman's Law School
The Karen Read Prosecutors Are Playing Defense
(upbeat music) - Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the layman's law school, where three Southern gentlemen lawyer sit around and discuss the legal issues of the day, hopefully in layman's terms, and give you a little bit of a different perspective. And, you know, before I get into today's topic, which of course is gonna be Karen Reed again, based on what people are interested in, I want to inform people that we have day jobs, that we are actually practicing attorneys, and this is an excuse for us to get together and have some drinks, and speak about things that we're interested in, and so if you're looking for detailed commentary on every little piece of evidence in every case, you can go ahead and move along if you want to, maybe laugh a little bit, maybe learn something about the theory of the law, and that goes behind these cases, you're in the right place. - And we're talking about things that have happened, not that are happening. - That's right, it's not gonna be the day of, we're not live, but we certainly like to discuss and kind of go through what has happened and give our opinion on it. - Well, and like Chase said, you know, not only do we have day jobs, but, you know, some of us have family and children, and unlike, you know, Chase with no children, we don't have the time nor necessarily the voracious appetite to watch every bit of testimony, that many of our viewers do. You know, I just don't have the time to do it, but I like that things that Chase brings up and says, hey, take a look at this, take a look at this, what do you think about this? - Yeah, so I recently saw a little post and it says being 40 and not having any kids, and being 30 and not having kids, and it was just, was it a Will Ferrell, and says, I'm just living the dream, waking up on a Saturday with nothing else to do, nobody asking me for anything? - I love it. - So, no, I really do enjoy multiple children. - Yes. - That's how I deal with it. - All right, slowly pull. - Happy Friday. - Hoisin' your shit. - 12 medications, yeah, yeah. Cheers. - Happy Friday. - Cheers. - Join it in other hectic, good week. - That's right. - With changes moving and shakin', so. - And congratulations to prosecutor Lally for gettin' his case done with today. - Don't, don't, don't, be the right word. - Well, at least. - His case in cheap. Today is-- - This case might've been done before. - It's hard, but he did get to the end of his case in chief, and I bet he is relieved to be able to sit down and just do a little bit of cross-examination and pick apart some of the things that maybe some of the defense witnesses might say. - Yeah, and we're gonna talk some about that today is June 21st, okay? We had some other things to do today, so we could not watch the last part of today's testimony, and we stopped watchin', I guess I stopped watching and taking notes after the defense moved for, or the prosecution defense moved to dismiss the case. I will explain some of that. I don't know what the judge ruled. I don't know what the judge ruled. - Well, you know what the judge ruled. - Yeah, yeah. - But then you also know why they have to present the defense, but that's just kinda formality. - Yeah, but guys, all right, so typically when you do this, all right, we talked about the open earlier, okay? And in the opening, that's where you make your promises. This is what I'm gonna show you. This is what the facts of the case are going to be, and Lally made a lot of promises, and so today we're gonna talk about some of the things he kept and some of the things he didn't really keep. - And when you don't keep 'em, it's really, really harmful. It goes against two different things. Most people know the number one, which it goes against the evidence that you have, but the big thing that it goes against is your credibility, and you have to be seen if you are a trial lawyer, you have to be seen as the person that is in charge and already knows the answers. And as soon as the jury or fact finder, sometimes the judge believes that you do not, that case is dead. - Yeah, and unfortunately for Lally here in this case, the poor credibility of some of the witnesses that testified. - Absolutely. - The highlight being Trooper Proctor and probably Officer Paul, the accident reconstructionist. - And like I said, chasing us a good point when we deal with it, in our personal injury cases, our premise liability cases, all that stuff is that it's not a lie. I'm not saying that, but we have clients say things incorrectly. They're not trying to lie. They're saying things and they're misinformed. And that would just destroy the case. And people will say, oh, that guy's not a very good lawyer. That girl's not a very good lawyer. You can't help or you can't fix what the client says. All you can do is prepare them, get them to tell the truth. And sometimes they say it in a way that you can't fix. And I think that to take a little bit of blame off prosecution, they were not given a very good witness set as far as-- - And sometimes, I don't know whether or not our clients intentionally misled, but sometimes I sit down with clients and they feel very credible to me. And I ask them questions. You have any prior accidents, prior injuries of this nature, everything. And then the case might go on for two years. And then we're sitting in, we've done a deposition prep, where I've asked them all these questions again. And we're sitting in a deposition and the other side, the defense lawyers on a civil case are bringing up documents and third party production documents that are like, well, what about this accident? What about when you went to the ER and had back pain then? And I'm like, did you just forget about this stuff? - And that's it, but it harms the credibility. Whether or not they were intentionally doing it or just didn't think about it, it just harms their credibility and it harms their case. And in this case, when you have numerous witnesses that show some credibility issues and a real lack of trustworthiness, the jury's seeing the same thing. - Real quick, a PSA on Chase, I'm sorry to cut your PSA real quick on people that say about these attorneys are filing crazy lawsuits, blah blah blah. A lot of times that's true, but every time that that is true, we don't know until we get the evidence. And so there's cases that I've filed, so on you too, Chase, you too, that we find out our client is lying to us. And then we dismiss the case. - So look through the facts before you start throwing daggers at the attorneys sometimes. - Yeah. And so let's get back to talking about Lally. I remember one of the things we talked about was his affect in his opening, right? Somebody not super thrilled to be there, somebody that looked like that they were doing the version of the opening that would be the equivalent of a factory worker coming in here. - It almost looked like a, to me, it had of a mock trial-ish kind of feel in that he was kind of going through the motions in that he was just, he didn't believe in his own case. That's how it felt. - So I think he knew all this evidence that was going to come out. It's going to hurt his clients. And he was in the, and honestly, I applaud him for this. Have you noticed he's been the only prosecutor? - Yep, I have. - Why do you think that is? - Yeah, he's, oh, he's usually what happens here. - Yep. - Is that other attorneys jump in and they cover certain portions of a cross or a direct or opening something like that, closing, so that you can focus more on your part of it and do a better third or more third job. But he was aware at what was going to come out of trial and how bad it was going to be to be associated with that. So he's taking that on the chin for that. So for everybody out there that was giving him kind of a hard time, know that he's got two super high-powered, super experienced lawyers that have lawyers helping them. - Yep, sure. - Tell the lawyers that are getting the sale. - Well, just to give an example, like we have a trial. You know, you may be focused on damages and Sean's on liability and, you know, our focus on cross or certain things. So it's all chopped up where you can have a lot more time on a specific thing. And if you don't do that, as we've seen, especially in a big case with lots of witnesses, lots of facts, a case like this where the facts are everywhere, you're gonna miss things. And you can't keep track of what the witness is saying and things you're supposed to say if you don't have help. - Sure. - And he's on an island, man. That's how I viewed it. - Yeah, and unfortunately for him, what was supposed to be his star witness actually turned out to be the star witness for the defense. And that is Trooper Proctor. - Trooper Proctor, I don't know, is Sean, if this is how police officers talk to one another, you know? But it's very unusual, yeah, it is very unusual for a police officer to have his personal text messages to his friends, family, maybe not supervisors, but, you know, subpoenaed in this fashion. But with the facts and circumstances of the case, with the fact that there was an allegation that there was a cover up here, that there was collusion between the police officers and that his personal life is intermixed with his work. - Yeah, sure. - And he made the claim that it was not just he, but the entire police department made the claim that these people were just casual acquaintances. And so, you know, it's admissible just in that regard of, you know, let me show you, that is not true. They're not casual acquaintances. - They're talking about a little bit more than my, I talk about with my casual acquaintances. - Texting about balloon knots to, you know, so, that's a little bit more than a casual acquaintance. - Right, and for him to be commenting, he's commenting to high school friends. - Yeah. - You know, he's commenting and talking to people that are associated with what should be somebody that he's actually investigating, the people of the Alberts. - Sure. - The people that were there, he's communicating with him. - He's finally talking to him, but he's talking to him about the case. - Yeah, not only that, but they, it was explained, it basically offered to him that they wanted the Alberts, or Jim McCabe, I can't remember which one it was. They wanted to get him a present for all the work he'd done on this, and he said, "Give it to my wife." I mean, the way that that looks-- - Right, and that could be completely innocent to play devil's advocate, but it doesn't look good. - Yeah. - It stinks. - Yeah. - Yeah, but there's been a whole lot of movies made about Boston and Boston cops and stuff like that, and I think that that's gonna play a role in this, like, there is a stigma, a little bit of attached to this, that organized crime has their hooks and has had their hooks at different times in that area, and so that's all gonna kind of play into it, and it plays into confirmation bias, not only for the jury, but those text messages reveal with Trooper Proctor, confirmation bias, and how that affects him. - Yeah, right. - Yeah, within 24 hours, he's texting his high school buddies and stuff like that, that she's a whack job, and basically indicating through those text messages is that she's the one that he's after. - So, I think you're probably the best person to speak on this in our group. We've obviously all seen it, but you've lived it. When you have an investigation, you let the evidence take you where it takes you, and in this investigation, the decision was made up, and like Chase is saying, confirmation bias, we found the, or they found the evidence to support what they already had made a conclusion in. Like, explain, like you've been in that situation where you may think one thing, but how do you kind of go about that as far as like, all right, I still gotta follow the evidence. - I would say that you have to make sure that your investigation is comprehensive, so that you try and close up loose ends of things that could later be reasonable doubt. So, to go to a scene of a death, or what they're trying to call a murder type thing, and to not even interview the people that are inside the house, 100 feet away, the yard that this person is found dead in is absolutely crazy. You do that, you separate the people. - So, I guess even if you knew for a fact, if you were with the person that was in the house, and you knew for a fact they couldn't have done it, I would imagine you still would interview them to make sure you close that out. - Absolutely, absolutely. So that it is a comprehensive thing to, you know, what I always say, especially now that I'm a, you know, do a lot of criminal defense attorney or add in the past, is that it's just as important to exonerate, you know, the innocent as it is to convict, you know, the guilty. So, as a criminal investigator, you want to button up all those loose ends that may be you have a potential. So that, you know, if, you know, even if you know that this person wasn't involved, but there's some type of evidence linking the person, or somebody says they think they're involved, when you go interview that person, at least, you know, document, you know, what the interview was, that way you have it, you know, and later on you can refer back to it and say, well, no, I looked into that. You know, did you look at anybody else? Well, yeah, I looked at so-and-so because another person said that, oh, they had some words in the past. So I went and interviewed him, figured out where he was. He wasn't anywhere in the vicinity. He couldn't have been him. There's just any time that you start off the premise of I believe this person is guilty, and I have to find evidence to prove it, you are going to subconsciously eliminate things that should pop out at you if you were looking at things with an open mind, right? Yeah, and we're talking about, we were kind of focused on trooper proctor there, yeah, and he said some misogynistic, locker room talk kind of things, not only to his friends, but also his supervisors about Karen Reid. He was using words that if I use those words around my wife, she gets upset. I have never used that word towards her because I don't have any scars on my face. So you can tell, right? I thought I was going in a different direction. I thought she was going to say, yeah. She would have dotted me. She would have dotted me. No, she's a tough one. She would have dotted my lips something, but yeah, the judge made him spell it out. And when he went to ask that- And I thought that was important. I thought that was important. I thought that was important. 'Cause he spelled it out. She said, she said, is this, are these your words? Say it, yeah, yeah. And I thought that was a very important thing that the judge did because, you know, it's one thing to sort of spell it, but to say it, that jury heard it. And whether that affected Proctor's ability to investigate, I don't know, I would guess, probably yes, because of the way it's laid out, but it really doesn't matter. When the jury hears that, there's a lot of ladies on that jury. I think there's more women than men, actually. And I don't know if any woman who would take that lightly. And it just shows that you kind of already have this thought in your head that this person's already guilty. And not only that, you won't hurt to be guilty. That's how I view it. It's a kind of a hatred against her, against women, all that, and it just taints what you've done. - If you've done it correctly. - And it points to the idea of again, confirmation bias. This is what you want to find. So you're going to ignore evidence that leads another direction. Overlook it, not follow up right away. And it's like, why did Jenny McCabe go in the house and wake up these people? Why did they get rid of the dog? Okay, why did both Brian Albert and Brian Higgins, who was of interest of Karen Reed as it came out, they had made out while they were both dating, while John and Karen were dating, right? And they came out through the text messages. Why did they destroy their phones and their SIM cards? Okay, why did Brian Higgins go to his FBI buddy and have just the text messages, certain text messages, taken off his phone, right? And saved, and not the whole entire cell phone. These are all things that create the kind of question that defense attorneys sit on, talk about. They rely on, in every case, to talk about that reason. Now, why did that happen? The unknown monster is we've talked about this on the podcast before. The unknown monster is scarier than the known one. And so those text messages that were deleted and all these other things from these other officers may have been just fodder like proctors that are completely inappropriate. Don't get me wrong, but they may have not shown any kind of liability or cover up anything like that. But when you destroy it, that gives the look of it. It just does. And that's what they always say. It's the cover up that always is worse than the actual what occurred itself. And even if it was just that you as a-- Maybe they were embarrassed what they said. You as an officer thought that you would get professional discipline, because of your comments to other people about this investigation. So you had that done. When I was a police officer, they taught us from the get-go to monitor your behavior on your phone with regards to everything. Not even with talking about cases, but just in your private conversations. Because this was back in the day when digital cameras were there, but phones had just come out with cameras. So it was much easier. You go to a call, a woman's been beat up, you take your phone out, you snap two or three pictures on your personal cell phone, you email it to your records management system or whatever. Well, that kind of gives them the ability to subpoena your phone. For sure. Because you're using it in that official capacity. And then they can go to there and find anything. And find, if you ever use the word C-U-N-T, just to harm your credibility. I will say, I guarantee you that neither one of those were certainly not ballooned or C-U-N-T. I've ever used on my phone. (laughing) - Yeah. Well, and it goes to a point that we understand. Okay, because of what we do. But most people don't ever really have to think about it in that most people think of themselves as a thinking person or animal that feels. And that's not the case. What you are is a feeling animal that thinks. And what you feel drives you. And if I come in the room and I start using C-U-N-T in all kinds of other words, I do reprehensible horrible stuff. They don't have anything to do with my investigation. - We feel first, and then we-- - You're like, I don't like this guy. - Yep. - This guy's got low character. This guy is not somebody I would trust. Okay, and then he might be stating facts. - It's a confirmation bias for the other direction. You know, he being proctors using confirmation bias on the evidence. Well, the jury is gonna do the same thing. They're gonna go, I don't like this guy. And we're gonna find reasons to make it where what he says is definitely not true. - Yeah. - I mean, that's just this human nature. - Yeah, and so that was one I think the nail, when the governor of Massachusetts comes out and basically says that it's embarrassing, that it's a dark day for Boston. - Sure. - It's just commenting specifically on your testimony. That's a bad day in court. - Yeah. - And essentially, as a state police officer. - Yes, as a state employee. I mean, essentially the governor is your ultimate boss. - Right. - Yeah. And so in addition to that, I think one of the biggest problems, 'cause I was personally looking for this, right? I was looking for something from the prosecution that showed how this happened. - Well, that's the first thing I asked you, you know, because obviously I haven't watched it like you have. I've gotten clips and things of that. And you told me that the prosecution rested, and I said, okay, what expert did they have that said that these injuries were consistent with the theory of the case of, you know, Karen Reed running him over in a vehicle. And, you know, what Chase told me was not acceptable to me for a conviction of murder. - Well, that's the thing, I said it in our last time we talked about it, halfway through the prosecution's case at that point. And I still believe it's true, they got sidetracked early. They, the prosecution got sidetracked early in. The prosecution was doing nothing. They switched roles. All they were doing is fighting off the defendant and the defense attorneys. But this is your case in chief. You shouldn't be fighting off anything. You should be laying the groundwork and laying what happened out. And the entire time it just felt like a boxer that was trying to protect himself as the prosecution. There was no, he was doing great defensive work. - No, you're supposed to be punching. - But you didn't ever lay in the shot. - Well, and it really makes no sense because you got to think about who has the resources here. - Yeah. - And in really in almost every criminal case, it is the state, the state of Massachusetts, the district attorney's office. If they wanted to, they could go out and hire any expert witness that they wanted to, whether they're a biomechanical expert, an accident reconstructionist, without having to rely on simply the state trooper who took a class one time that qualified him. - Three-week class or whatever it is. - Qualified him as an expert. They could have hired somebody that had some real credentials, real experience, has testified many times, has done experiments, has consulted all the research. - And come to a conclusion and that might have changed whether or not they prosecute Karen Reed at all. If you go to two or three experts and you pay them and they come back with a report that say he wasn't ran over by a car, that is something that obviously the prosecutors have to take into consideration and not move forward with. When you rely on, you know, what I would say is that under-trained and unqualified expert. - Not to pile on to Joseph, but this Massachusetts police trooper, Joseph Paul, was the one that gave his testimony. And I really felt for this guy. He was somebody that, I mean, here's a thing. - He's just trying to do his job, man. - When people, yeah, yeah, he got shown, he said, "Hey, do you want to do this?" You get paid a little bit more. He got trained on some software to enter in data from the information he got given from the crime scene and then to spit out a report. That's what it kind of looked like, right? But that don't meet the standard for what is happening here. Like he might be able to do car accidents and stuff like that, just a little fender benders or something like that. But it's not, it's not what's required here, the level of training. So it was pointed out on cross, Jackson highlighted his deficiencies and understanding of physics. He was having trouble explaining basic terms like acceleration. He didn't have any kinematics training, no major sort of math degrees, no expertise in biomechanics. - Listen, I saw Goodwill hunting. - No, this was the opposite of Goodwill hunting. So he had to be told, it took about 15 minutes, he had to be told three or four times by the judge that he wasn't allowed to read from his report, but it was sitting in front of him. And then he basically would repeat himself three times at exactly 1,200, I mean, it was, and here's the thing is most people, when they state their biggest fear, it's not death. It's public speaking, right? So this is not just public speaking. He knows he's on television. He knows that he doesn't have the training. He knows there's a high-powered lawyer that's gonna embarrass the highlighted. - And he knows the editorials got all the information that he needs. - Nice train. Yeah, and so it's really tough on him. - I think it's really tough on him. - Moving to the next thing, Chase, I wanna, just 'cause I've seen you do it and I've seen you do it, Sean. Going back to Sean's point, when y'all have a situation like that where you just said it, they have all the money and power in the world to hire experts. And they don't present anybody. What do you do when your time is to come up on your presenting your case, or when you're presenting your closing? Yeah, I've heard both of you do it. They go, "Well, if they had it." - If they had it. - Sure. I mean, the first thing that I'm gonna do is I'm going to immerse myself in as much of the knowledge of that, you know. Enough, yeah, topic, enough to be dangerous, enough to be able to ask them things that, you know, are so relevant and basic that someone with this expertise should have. - Right, well I'm saying they even pass that. - Oh yeah, pass that later on, it's, you know. - If there was a person, they would've been brought up here. - We're gonna tell the jury that, you know, absolutely, the criminal defendant has no burden whatsoever. But we put up these experts, and this is what they told you. And the state, you know, of Massachusetts, the prosecutor's office, they could've hired any expert they wanted to. There's, you know, 150 biomechanics experts in the, you know, just in Massachusetts. - And they've taken a found one to say what they wanted. - Correct. - I guarantee you, he'd be sitting up here today. - Correct, yeah, and that's part of the why, part of why defense, you have a court appointed attorney, if you need one, you have to have it at the very least, somebody that can review the evidence trained in the law and can present your case. But a lot of the, a lot of the rules are weighted towards the defendant, because like you said. - Absolutely. - So, you know, it's important to catch criminals, right? It's more important for the judicial system to be viewed as fair and impartial. - Right, and so the prosecution is a very powerful state. - Sure. - And so because of that, there should be very powerful protections for the defendant, if you have to equalize the playing field for that reason, so that they could bring it. And you know, that's a good point, you were talking about like the experts and if they had them, they would have brought them. I wanna talk to you about something I think is a huge, first of all, should have had a different accident reconstructions, right? - Absolutely. - Right, they should have had a different accident reconstructions right away. He could have confirmed that person's report, but that, the person that did the original report not testify, right? Because they're not experiencing testifying. There's all kinds of ways in which it can become very, very helpful to actually have some training in answering these questions, right? Because you have somebody that's trained to answer the question, or ask the questions in a way that makes you look silly and stupid, so you have to understand what they're doing in order to be ready for it. But one of, some of the pieces of evidence that I saw that I was like, I would have brought up an expert about this. Let's just talk about the taillight. Okay, so throughout this, there's a question as when, when was the taillight busted out and, you know, was it planted at the scene, right? Was it cracked when she backed up into the... - Vehicle in the driveway. - In the vehicle, in the driveway. So I'm just gonna bring up real quick and I'll show you guys, right? This is the footage from the actual, her backing up when she's leaving to go look for him, right? And she's backing up, this is allegedly where she actually hit John O'Keepe's car and cracked her taillight, just cracked it, right? And importantly, other police officers have said that there was a crack and some pieces missing. Not that the whole thing's knocked out, right? But I would have had some sort of lighting expert to explain what happens when you have red light and you have white light. Whether or not the red light diffuses out and makes it null and void or no, you know, just diffuses the white light, right? Because the red is a very, one spectrum, right? And it's over found, it's red for a reason. It's so that you can see it very, very easily, right? Because a lot has been made about what this vehicle, what these lights look like in all these different pictures. And it's her leaving the scene. So this is, I think, her going past a, I think this is the library, but it's a parking lot. But what you can see is at, was it five, 20 AM? Once you're going to look for 'em, you can see the vehicle and what do you see? The only thing you see on the back really is a lot of, and it's right here in this little area here. - Yeah, no way certain to tell whether or not they're, either of the taillights are cracked. - Right. - That's correct. - And I actually even do see a little bit of, you know, but this isn't, you know, that's not the type of things you're looking for. This is how they allege the actual taillight look when she arrived with all that missing. - Yeah, there's. - That's not one piece missing, that's not it being cracked. If I described that, I wouldn't just say that her taillight was cracked. - And the taillight was busted out. - It was busted out. - Bust it out, that's exactly what I said. - The testimony just doesn't match the physical evidence on the light at all. - Right, and there were some other things about his actual report that caused me problems. And one of them was that, and this is something that Jackson did an expert job at doing. Before I do that, let me go back to this real quick. This is her leaving, okay. Again, looking at the light. I would have had some sort of lighting expert explain to me how a light that's, you know, I see a little bit more white here than I did in the previous picture. But I wanna explain to me how red light affects white. - Sure. - Right, so that you can explain this stuff in a reasonable way that a jury can, you know, sink their teeth in and hang that out on. - And there's the experts out there for all this stuff. - Well, that's the problem though, to me, is that it goes back to, we do it in our cases in civil cases all the time, especially with like, pretty existing, if there's a doctor out there that says what the defense is saying, then why is any here? - Yeah. - Like if that light that you were showing earlier is the way a light looks, even when it's busted out, why is that person not here? And I don't think that it's the lack of prosecution to get those people. I don't think those people exist. And I think that's the problem. - Yeah, that might, that very well may be the case. But this was the part of the report that the Trooper Paul produced. And one of the things that Jackson actually pulled him up on was where he was hit and where he landed. So this is basically where he came to rest. Over here in this area, one of the things he couldn't explain was how his phone ended up underneath him, right? - Well, I will say, I thought he did a good job on a cross on that, is saying, look, this is just where the evidence was found. He didn't try to make up a story. He didn't try to make up some kind of thing, how the body twisted. He said, I don't know. I just came, this is where I found it. And that's the way to answer it. I'm not saying it's gonna work. I'm saying, but that's how you answer that question. - See, but it also presented a different problem because he indicates where all the glass pieces were found. And one of the things Jackson pointed out was the fact that he did not really speak to the colleagues too much about an interview with them all about where they found pieces. And one of the pieces that they found was of course, one that was located quite some ways away right here in the fire hydrant. And right by the fire hydrant, a big piece, right? And this is indicating where I think where he was initially supposed to have been hit. And so how a big glass piece ended up here by the fire hydrant. That was something that he couldn't explain in his report. And he didn't really, I don't think, do a very good job. And I'm gonna try and pull up that other piece, if I can. A very good job of, like what you said, yeah, one of the pieces here that they found in front of the... - That's the fire hydrant. - And it's also important to note that in this particular case, right, a lot of the pieces that you're talking about were found days later. A lot of them were found hours and hours later after the vehicle was already in police custody, right? And with the allegation that these things have been planted with the way in which they collected the blood, it's a tainted investigation. - Then what's the inverted video? - Yeah, yeah, not to mention the inverted video. The only thing that you could use to actually prove that no one mess with the tail light from the time they had custody of it in the salad port, right? The only thing you could use has shown definitively to have been altered. - Purposefully. - And purposefully to have been altered. Before it was-- - And was there any explanation of why the video is inverted? - There was an explanation in that they saw that the timestamps at the bottom were inverted and that they tried to invert it the other way so that the timestamps would read correctly. - I think it's easier to explain the way. - Explain that, hey, for some reason, the timestamp is inverted on this video, not to invert the actual video. - That's the thing to say. - You would think. So that's all coming, all that bad evidence and stuff is coming from the chief investigator who has ties to the family who might be the next primary suspect in the particular case. And he's shown a dislike for the woman. He's shown a dislike. He said he hated David Unity early into the case, right? - Sure, and then he repeated it on stand. - And he sure did. - And not only did he hate him in the past, he hates him now. - Hates him now. The other thing that happened, we're covering, I think, day 27 to day 29, at least mid-day 29. We saw, I think it was 27 experts and we saw something called the Verdeier process, right? And if you could, one of you could explain sort of what the Verdeier process, when it comes to an expert, what does that process about? - It's really just a filter. - We only want, you know, both sides should really, only want people that are actually experts in their field to testify. And when we say expert, what we mean is an expert is someone that has so much knowledge, education, and training that on a particular subject, they can give an opinion. Not just someone that knows a little bit about it. So the Verdeier process of an expert is so that both parties can ask questions of this particular expert, and they can prove to the court that they are, in fact, qualified as an expert on this particular subject matter or many subject matters, and therefore they are allowed at law to give their opinion to a layperson, just like layman's law school. - I tried to give our opinions to the layman. - That was a great explanation. - Although we are not experts in a whole lot, but we try our best. - That's a great explanation, and I agree with everything you said, but for the viewers out there and the listeners out there, just know that this is a battle every single time with every single expert, and it's with, there's thousands of case law on that. It sounds simple. Oh, you know, just qualifies as an expert. But there's case law and case law. It's always a fight of who actually qualifies and who doesn't. But what you said is 100% correct. It's just a matter of getting the court to say, yes, that's right, sure. - Yeah, and there are different standards. Every state has their own kind of-- - That's why I didn't even say it, 'cause I didn't know, I didn't know there. I knew ours, I don't know ours, but-- - We have Fry, we have Daubert, Daubert is basically more stringent. So if you can pass Daubert, you can basically pass them all. So, but I don't know if they're standard. - You have to basically be able to show that you have generally accepted practices, okay? That you've used in actually coming up with your conclusions, and that they have been kind of peer reviewed and are generally accepted in your particular field of review. - And the jury still waits for that evidence. It's not infallible, it's not, well, this is an expert, you gotta believe it. Still, do you believe this dude or not? And like we saw in the Johnny Depp trial, the expert was not so believable. - Yeah, yeah, he was, yeah, and a little odd. And that just comes down to him having some quirks. - Sure, sure. - And that's pretty normal when you have different people that like they will, and you saw it in this case, people that would testify in the language of their profession or their expertise, right? - You've had a special one, I'm not gonna give any names, but the very, very good expert, honestly, really, really good, but fell asleep on you. - Yeah, that was a problem. (laughing) - Yeah, during the interview with a family that had had a rough time, he falls asleep. - But anyway, but he knew his stuff, he just-- - Definitely, he had a long story. - Yeah, definitely had a long flight, I should say, right? But today, the last part of what we heard was basically the medical examiner's testimony. And as you heard about, and maybe anticipated from proctor and mechanics exchange on text that she couldn't decide if it was a homicide or not, it didn't necessarily help a whole lot, because basically she described that he died from blunt force trauma. She said that the wounds weren't consistent with road rash, right, that's problematic, really for them. And then when she was crossed, she did not deny that the wounds or bruises on the back of his hand, those could have been defensive wounds, absolutely, right? Didn't have any wounds on his, yeah, torso. Didn't have any wounds on his knees, thighs, shoulder, none of that, right? And he had cuts on his eye, ears, nose, cut to the back of his head. And they could all be consistent with just a blunt force, like an altercation, a fight, right? She said, yes, and they could be consistent with somebody falling down. Yeah, the front falling down hitting their face, standing up falling down the other way. And we saw copious amounts of testimony. I thought it was way, way too much. And this is a practice point for attorneys out there, right? Is that you designate what you need in order to prove the point, and then you move on, right? Exactly, and Lally spent so much time about waterfall bar, who'd you sit next to? What did you have to drink? That's normal in that, like, you wanna show how far away they were, whether that person was impaired, so their testimony can be trusted or not, whatever. That's normal, right? But the amount that he did put them to sleep. Yeah, okay, she was drunk. Did she kill the guy? Right, absolutely. Right, so, and we heard her voicemails, and honestly, she sounds like a pissed-off girlfriend. Obviously, she's found something on his phone. She thinks that she's running around on it, or he's running around on her, and she's pissed, right? But never in there, and I'll point this out. Jennifer McCabe said that she saw her about outside of that house at 1240, right? She connected the expert, Officer Gerino, testified that it shows that his Wi-Fi connected to Karen Reid's phone at 1236, and that hurts her testimony of Jennifer McCabe, right? But she's pissed off, and she's texting him about, where are you, what are you doing? You know, we need blankets. I'm here with your kids, you're a pervert, you're out sleeping with everyone. Not a mention, not a word about, you know, are you okay? I'm sorry. Sure. I mean, that's what I would be looking for. That sounds, and she's cussing, she sounds terrible. She's not quite as bad as she'd be wrong. She sounds like a normal woman. A woman's boyfriend or husband didn't come home that night. Went to a house with a bunch of people drinking, and a bunch of younger people. Yeah, so when it comes to the promises that he made-- That's all that was, I gotta-- Good, yeah, I think that he presented some of that evidence, but there was so much collateral damage done by the defense, and tripping up the witnesses in actually showing the poor character of the witnesses, and the facts and circumstances of, yeah, they destroyed the phone, yeah, they got rid of the dog, all those things, not being able to explain the injuries on the arm, all those things coming together to not even coming close. Yeah, absolutely not coming close. Well, so when we have trials, and I think probably every law firm does it, you go through what your positives and negatives are, and you also try to predict what in our situation, defense counsel, 'cause we're playing the lawyers, but the other side does it too, what the other side is going to throw at you. Yeah. And what has happened in this case that I think was just a bad start, bad everything from the prosecution is, yes, anytime you have a problem with credibility, let's say, in our cases, we talk about that. All right, guys, we gotta jump out in front of that. We gotta talk about it. Acknowledge it, explain what happens. What happened in this case is the prosecution, that is all they did. That's all they did is try to jump out in front of what the defense was going to say. By doing that, they lost focus in what they actually had to present. And had to prove. They didn't and had to prove. All they did was fight what they thought was going to come, but you still have to lay your case out, and they did a terrible job of just plainly laying it out in simple terms of this is what happened, this is why you should believe it. Yes, all this other stuff took place and there's all these relationships, but that doesn't matter. Here's what actually happened. Yeah, there's relationships. We have relationships everywhere. People know people, it happens, but they didn't do that. They laid it out as, let's fight the defense, and I still am waiting for them to present their case. I don't know what their case is. - Right, right, and they had a duty here to basically improve intent. And when it says like not intending to murder the guy, but intending to do the act that actually that caused it. - That actually caused it. - Which is a little, it's strange, but yes. - Right, and so that's the second, that's part of the second degree murder charge. And then they have the lesser included offense of manslaughter where basically you're acting so recklessly that you act, so recklessly that you cause the death of another person. You do the thing and intend to do the thing that actually causes-- - And that may be why the prosecution went so far and hard on, they know they're losing. They went so far and hard on the waterfall part of trying to get, hey, she's so drunk. - Had nine liquor drinks. - That's the only thing I can think of. I don't know if that's true. - But going back to how far you should go and actually present anything as I have been absolutely flabbergasted, and first of all, the amount of time that people have, okay, and the interest. - I'm flabbergasted at the amount of time you have. (laughing) - I don't sleep much, Sean, I get about four or nine. So, but here's the thing, so I've been so impressed with what people have done, and I'm gonna see where these people live so we can't hire some of these folks. - They're fantastic. - Right, fantastic. So, and this is something, I mean, when we talk about what we wanna see, and what's called a demonstrable exhibit, this is not something that goes out as evidence, but if you want to explain your version of the case, this is a woman. - Some of the recreations have been unbelievable. - Is A-Z-G-E-T Industries on, believe it or not, TikTok and YouTube, okay, she's an accident reconstruction. I first saw her in the Alex Murdock case. She presented, she did an accident reconstruction of everything that had happened in the Murdock case from both perspectives once they were done. - When they have, and she'll have the three, it's accurate as far as the size and building and all that stuff, and it's 3D where you can move through the areas. - Yeah, yeah, it's pretty amazing. - Right, and so I'm gonna show you what that looks like. And this is something that, I mean, why does the prosecution not do something like this? And note this is on 6/4/24. - Karen stayed in her interviews that after arriving at 12/24 a.m., John got out of her vehicle and was going into the home to check things out. Walking up the driveway, he approached the door nears to the garage. After entering the home, you realize it would be impossible to walk through to the basement and not be seen. Jennifer McCabe testified that she and others were sitting at the kitchen table, and that periodically was getting up and going to the front door. Here's an illustration of what you might see from the front door if John's body was there at this time. Continuing, we approached the stairs leading to the basement. This leads to the weight room where the defense believes John O'Keefe was attacked. It's assumed that they used this door, which leads to the backyard to remove John's body from the basement to outside, where no one upstairs would be able to see. They then would continue to the side of the house, through the gate, which leads to the side of the house with the flagpole. That was designed to show, basically, what the defense has alleged has occurred and how silly it is. But at the same time, it does give you an idea of where people were, what was going on in the house, what's been alleged in the case. These are all things that are super, super helpful, in my opinion, in determining what happened there, what both sides take is. Now, this one is a little bit further on into the trial. Authorities believe John O'Keefe was hit by Karen Reid's car. It caused him to be thrown through the air, tumbling in such a way that when he hit the ground, he hit his head causing serious injury. They showed some evidence of a broken tail light and some personal items that John's found at the scene. Looking at a model to illustrate the injuries, we heard in testimony that John sustained injuries to his arm, the eyes, and the back of his head. Let's look at the injuries to the arm. As a vehicle backs into John, we can see how the tail light would strike the side of his arm, breaking into sharp pieces and cutting him. Moving to this dent indicated in red, it's believed that this is where the glass John was holding hit the vehicle and shattered. Here's the photo of the prosecution's belief that this dent represents where the glass had hit the vehicle. Continuing with the prosecution's theory, John is hit and thrown into the air. When he comes back down, he strikes the back of his head causing serious injury. This type of head injury will cause black eyes, commonly referred to as raccoon eyes. All of this seems possible, but there's a lot of missing things that don't make sense. For instance, the lack of injuries being shown here in red. You would expect to see many injuries, some on the hips, the elbows, the shoulders, and the ribcage, especially if your ribs and arm were hit with such force that you were knocked out of your shoes and thrown 20 feet to the ground. It's also the lack of evidence on the clothing. There's no abrasions, scrapes, tears, or stains that would indicate sliding on the ground. I personally question that a glass in one's hand could cause this pattern of dense and chipped paint. After all, the hand surrounds a glass like a layer of padding and the speed is no more than tossing a soft ball 12 feet into the air and letting it hit the ground. Lastly, this is presumed to have happened at 12.40 a.m. At this time, Jennifer McCabe was diligent in seeing John O'Keefe, standing at the front door and watching for him. Even seeing him, she texted him to park behind her. - So that is the kind of evidence that you would kind of want to have presented at some point. And they still may do something like that, maybe in closing if they have the opportunity, but that's still gonna be very, very difficult to overcome at this stage. 'Cause right now, right now, you know, the defense is the only one throwing punches at this point, right? 'Cause they close. - And I'm pretty sure now that the prosecution has rested that there's gonna be major defense punches thrown with the witnesses that they're are going to call. - And to put a bow on it, it's not the movies, you don't win at closing. And they're not gonna win at closing, regardless of they being the prosecution. You don't win at closing. - And I always, you know, really thought about that. Like, you know, I'm gonna be so persuasive in my closet. - I'm still no closing, I'm gonna kill it, baby. - But then when I thought about it more, it's like, you know, this jury is generally probably made up their mind after opening. - Yes, absolutely. - And then they were just seeking for a little bit of evidence to support their positions. And I don't think I'm gonna be able to persuade any of them through this, you know, wonderful closing argument, but we do it anyways because that's what we get paid to. - That's right, yeah, and that's why we're so confident in this particular case. There's a lot of other facts and circumstances like the blood stains on the clothes, right, that are important to me. - There's too many, yeah. - Well, I'm just, if you think about it, there's blood going on, all going down his shirt. So how does blood fall? Blood falls down. So this is the person that was bleeding, and then it was bleeding down instead of just going out and around his body. Where's the blood stain analyst? You know, I imagine we might see one from the defense. I don't think he's on his witness list, but still, anyway, all you're gonna see is punches thrown by the defense. They've already been throwing a bunch of haymakers. Thank y'all very much for tuning in. Like and subscribe. Let us know what you think about the Camry trial and how you think it's gonna come out. What did they end? - And this one's not gonna last forever. Give us some new ideas. We got all cases all over the world. Oh, yeah, okay. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is in Tallahassee, there's a law professor that was involved in a murder for hire. - Yeah, we're motive for murder. - Exactly, it was in the custody of Attaway. Anyway, we'll cover that at some time in the future. Thank y'all so much for watching and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]