September 7, 2023 • 28 mins
782 days since the first victim, with an arrest finally made, the prosecution focuses on building a case against Ed Buck that they can win.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this podcast, we're going to talk frankly but sensitively
about issues some people might find disturbing, including rape and suicide.
If you or someone you know is suicidal in the
US down nine to eighty eight, check out this podcast
notes page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources
in your community.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Let's do a recap of the case of ed Buck
and the key people who got us to this episode.
There is Jamel Moore, who died in the apartment of
ed Buck on July twenty seventh, twenty nineteen. Then there
was Timothy Dean, the second victim. Timothy Dean's roommate Otavio
today remembers him as being full of life.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Timothy carried himself very elegantly and was a muscular, tall,
good looking man and if you saw him on the streets,
you know it's not a person that can pass completely unnoticed.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Then there was the last victim, John Doe calling him
for now, who likely escaped with his life from ed
Buck's apartment on September eleventh, twenty nineteen, after he was
injected with an off the charts amount of meth amphetamine.
And then there is LA's District Attorney Jackie Lacy, who
decided at first not to charge at Buck. She was
(01:19):
the first black person or woman to be the La
County District Attorney, and she would be criticized for being
way too careful.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
And there's a responsibility with that. You want to not
just be the first person of your race or the
first woman, You want to be the best right and
so you want to make sure that you do things
for the right reasons, that you never embarrassed the office,
that you achieved, that you accomplish things.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
To this day, Jackie Lacy says she couldn't have gotten
a conviction for ed Buck. Her office says that the
evidence that they had was quote insufficient to prove beyond
a reasonable doubt that Buck is responsible for the death
of Jamel Moore. Likewise, the admissible evidence is insufficient to
prove beyond the reasonable doubt that suspect Buck furnished drugs
(02:10):
to Jamel Moore, or that suspect Buck possessed drugs. And
then finally there is ed Buck. When ed Buck was
arrested on September seventeenth, twenty nineteen, he was not arrested
on charges of murder. He was not arrested on the
lesser charge of manslaughter even though two men died in
(02:31):
this apartment of nearly identical circumstances. So what did the
Feds get ed Buck on? What new evidence did they
suddenly have that they didn't have since Jamel Moore died
in twenty seventeen or Timothy Dean died in twenty nineteen,
while they had a living victim who could connect the
dots between ed Buck and meth amfetamine. Buck was accused
(02:54):
of distribution of meth amphetamine resulting in death. In addition,
he was charged with maintaining a drug invol premises an
enticement to travel and interstate commerce for prostitution. With ed
Buck and jail, now is the time to build a
federal case and prosecutors will need witnesses. The potential witnesses
(03:14):
to the horrors in ed Buck's apartment would be the
key to putting him into jail. It was in the
months before at Buck's arrest the nation would be gripped
by Black Lives Matter protests. These same witnesses, who had
been ignored by the local police. Ed Bucket called the
(03:37):
sheriff to his home where he was injecting black men.
The sheriff took the victims away. This is the same
sheriff that has a history of harassing black men and
queermen in West Hollywood, and now two white women federal
prosecutors would have to gain the trust of gay black
(03:59):
men used to being ignored. This is shattering the system.
I'm your host, scenario, Glinton. We'll hear what really led
prosecutors to take on the case, and we'll hear from
a defense attorney about why black, queer and transfolk need
to be very careful around law enforcement.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Always that has been my experience of how prosecutors and
police officers treat witnesses as completely disposable, as completely at
their disposal, and they don't give a damn about you
unless you are helping them get to their conviction. So
I understand the Dona snitch rule, but from a completely
different vantage point.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Before prosecutors can convince a jury, they're going to need
to convince witnesses black men to trust the police in
the federal government more after this, this is shattering the system.
I'm your host, Snari Glenton. While recording for this show,
(05:07):
I wandered into something typical for West Hollywood. A protest
politics can be fun in West Hollywood, and ed Buck
certainly joined in. For those in the know, like Ed Buck,
the WIHO City Council can be fun, wacky, and impactful.
(05:29):
Before twenty seventeen, Ed Buck was a political donor who
lived in a rent stabilized apartment in the city of
West Hollywood. Now, if we were going to give you
a snapshot of the man, say pre twenty seventeen, we'd
call ed Buck a former Republican term Democrat who made
a good deal of money as a young man and
moved to West Hollywood, where he became an outspoken animal
rights activist and a supporter of LGBTQ causes. Actually, by
(05:53):
all accounts, it was only gay men's causes. Buck was
one of the most prolific donors. He gave nearly half
a half a million dollars to Democratic candidates over thirty years.
And that may not seem like a lot, but whether
it was say a school board race or spots on
the West Hollywood City Council, it goes far. Buck gave
money to everyone from John Duran, a local politician and
(06:16):
weho to Hillary Clinton's bid for president. Ed Buck gave
money a lot, and that's how the media saw him.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
It's been three months since twenty six year old Jamil
Moore was found dead at the West Hollywood home of
wealthy Democratic donor Ed Buck. Moore's mother, Letitia Nixon, has
pressed police to continue the investigation into her son, Jamel's
mysterious death and to interview other black men about the
experiences with Buck. Buck, who has not been arrested or
charged with any crime, has donated hundreds of thousands of
(06:47):
dollars to Democratic candidates and Cause US over the years.
Jamil Moore's friends and family have lost a petition calling
on Democrats to return Buck's money. So far, only one
has done so.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Jackie Lacey, the local Democratic prosecutor, had previously said she
wasn't able to press charges against ed Buck, and while
the sheriff's office essentially bungled the case, the same sheriff's
office would go over the head of the local prosecutors
to the federal government. This is the part where the
local reporter and me has to come out. One of
the local sheriff's deputies tipped off the Justice Department. That
(07:23):
is what got the ball rolling. Now, this is where
timing seems important. Jackie Lacey, the local DA a Democrat
would be up for reelection, and there was a Trump
appointed US attorney Nick Hanna. Now, Nick Hanna says the
case against Buck started long before his arrest in September
twenty nineteen. Hannah says it was the opioid crisis that
(07:45):
got him thinking of ways to put ed Buck in prison.
Speaker 7 (07:49):
It was the full of two thy eighteen, so at
that point, the opioid crisis was really coming into consciousness
right and we were seeing being much like Cleveland and
some other areas, we were seeing a lot of people
starting to overdose on fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Hanna says. Historically, overdoses were treated more like an accident
in judgment, and police showed up and saw drug paraphernalia
and a dead body. While it might have been tragic,
they really didn't treat it as a criminal offense. But
the opioid crisis changed a lot of that thinking.
Speaker 7 (08:24):
And we were seeing people selling counterfeit pills that were
laced with fentanyl, so people thought they were taking a xanax,
take it it's fentanyl and they would die. We were
seeing instances of drug dealers knowingly killing somebody and then
going off and selling more of the same product to
other people.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Former La County DA Jackie Lacey said that the Feds
had more resources, money, and people. They also had a
variety of federal laws, including one with a twenty year
prison sentence attached that made it a crime to give
someone drugs that result in death. Nick Hannah says when
he became US attorney, he was startled by the number
(09:04):
of overdose.
Speaker 7 (09:05):
Deaths, spike and overdose deaths, and a lot of it
was attributable to people who were selling drugs laced with
federol and knowingly doing it and killing people, right, and
so you know, that seemed to be an area crying
out for somebody to do something about it.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It was Nick Hannah who assigned the prosecutors to take
a look at the information the Sheriff's department brought to him.
He had the Drug Enforcement Administration take a look at
the case as well.
Speaker 7 (09:32):
And see what we thought, and see whether we thought
the evidence, you know, what the evidence was, what had
already been gathered, what additional investigative steps could be taken,
and whether or not we thought this was something that
merited a federal prosecution.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Now, remember, it never hurts for a federal prosecutor to
dunk on a local prosecutor of another party, especially as
an election looms. Nick Hannah says, this wasn't about politics,
it was about something more.
Speaker 7 (09:59):
Ba You know, a case like ed Buck cries out
for prosecution, cries out for someone to do you know,
an investigation cries out for somebody to go to jail.
And you know, we were I think maybe in the
right spot at the right time, with the right statute
to do that. This is about somebody killing people in
his apartment. The mantra of the office is to prosecute
(10:22):
federal crimes without fear or favor and try to do
our best with the resources we have to make an
impact on the community and vindicate the rights of victims.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
This is shattering the system. The federal case against ed Buck,
This is shattering the system. I'm Sinari Glinton. We left
off with ed Buck and jail and prosecutors building the
case to take him to trial. I talked extensively with
the US Attorney's office and with one of the key
(10:55):
lawyers for ed Buck. We've heard from the defense, and
we will definitely hear from the lawyer for ed Buck
again later on in this story. The thing is for
this story to be transparent. I didn't want the only
voice that's critical of the police or law enforcement to
be the lawyer for ed Buck, and I didn't want
to be a shill for federal prosecutors.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Defans take their time.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
That's April Prayer. She's a criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
They don't rush and arrest you in two or three days.
They might take two or three years for research and
investigates you and get video and audio and all your
bank statements, and talk to all of your friends and
get them all on a record before they come for you.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Like I said, I needed someone to balance out the
many law enforcement voices we've been hearing, and I wanted
to get the perspective of someone who knows what's at
stake for black men when they encounter law enforcement. I've
known April Prayer for many years. She was a classmate.
The thing is, she's made it her mission to teach
young people, particularly young black and queer folks, what to
(11:57):
do if they come in contact with the police. Just
board game and teachers high school kids about their rights.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
I'm very I'm very anti police and anti prosecutors.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
See what I mean. I wanted to give you a
sense of what is a stake. Before we go too
far down the road of demonizing Jackie Lacy, let's remember
that the Feds could pay special attention to ed Buck,
and they had tools that a local prosecutor just doesn't have.
April prayer, the defense attorney says, for those rooting for
ed Buck to go to jail for a long time,
(12:30):
a defendant has a much higher conviction rate with the Feds.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
You have a truly uphill battle in federal court. Now
there are exceptions to that rule, because I've actually won
a federal case, but for the most part of the
Fiths come for you. They got you, and there's not
a whole lot you can do about it.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
To give me an idea, there is a government evidence list.
It's fifteen pages long. When you read it, it kind of
gives you an idea of how deep the government can
dig when they really want to get you. There's stuff
you might expect on a drug case, syringes, a ziploc
back with a crystalline substance. There's hard drive after hard
drives of incriminating videos of Bucks fex play, six costume
(13:10):
masks and one modified military style gas mask. And it's
not just his computer and hard drives. The government swept
up everything from his iCloud to Uber and Lift receipts
to the purchase records of his Forward Edge and Nissan Morano.
Then there's more than a dozen videos of Jamel Moore
and here's the key part. Videos of Buck instructing victims
(13:31):
to do met like Exhibits seventy nine point twenty seven
a video clip of Buck instructing an unidentified man on
how to smoke. The lead attorney in the case against
ed Buck for the federal government was Lindsey Bailey. She
says that ed Buck was a different kind of criminal
and needed a different kind of prosecution.
Speaker 8 (13:53):
So this happens a lot in a lot of our
cases where there baby state charges that someone can bring,
but the federal charges have a lot more power behind them. Right, So,
especially with these types of death resulting cases, we have
a federal statute available to us that imposes a twenty
year mandatory minimum if somebody's found guilty, and.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
In California, Bailey says, there was no local law that
was as strong as the federal twenty year mandatory minimum. Essentially,
the Feds had a much bigger book to throw.
Speaker 8 (14:25):
At Buck, because we have this power behind our statutes
that the state doesn't have. Sometimes we will bring things
instead of the state, and you know, sometimes that's coordinated
ahead of time. Sometimes the state brings charges that they
then dismiss in favor of federal charges. So I think
when you talk about this case with someone like ed Buck,
(14:47):
who you know is a danger to society and we
were hoping to put him away for a significant period
of time, the amount of time that we were looking
at federally was just heads and shoulders above whatever the
state was going to be able to bring.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
So ed Buck, in your mind, is a special case.
Speaker 8 (15:07):
Yes, I would say most of the death resulting cases
that our office does are not rising to the level
of criminality that you see with mister Buck, where you're
having not a single individual overdose, but multiple people overdosing
in his apartments. You're finding videos of him being very
controlling over these people, providing them with drugs against their
(15:31):
will in certain cases, providing them with amounts that are
known to be extreme, as opposed to let's say your
average dealer, who like you, may be soliciting.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Chelsea Narel was one of the lawyers that the US
Attorney charts with prosecuting ed Buck's case.
Speaker 9 (15:50):
I knew that this was going to be a case
that rose or fell with victim testimony, and you.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Can say she handles the toughest cases.
Speaker 9 (16:00):
I focus specifically on human trafficking and child exploitation, but
we also have the largest influx of drugs likely in
the country, certainly in California. We see it on our
southern border.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
The key difference between where the FED started and where
the local prosecutor started was victim testimony.
Speaker 9 (16:20):
There was not going to be a person who could
say I saw ed Buck administer those drugs because ed
Buck had killed the two people who could say that
those were our two death victims in the first two deaths.
So my strategy was to interview as many victims as
we possibly could to get those commonalities to build a
(16:45):
very strong, weaved narrative of these witness accounts that could
talk about how Buck was always the one who distributed
drugs because it was part of his ritual of party
and play.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
The federal process secutors had to put together a story
that a jury would understand.
Speaker 9 (17:04):
That when Jamel Moore went to ed Buck's apartment on
July twenty seventh, of twenty seventeen that it could only
have been ed Buck who provided the drugs, because we
had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to twelve jurors
that it was in fact Buck who distributed the drugs,
and that the drugs were the Butt four causation, meaning
(17:26):
the direct result of the death of the two victims.
So to me, it was a matter of getting those
victims to interview and memorializing those interviews, developing trust with them,
earning their trust.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
This is the key difference between the local prosecutor and
the feds. The resources. Let's hear from April Prayer, the
defence attorney, who doesn't have ties to this case. She says,
the FEDS are more highly trained and they print their
own money.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
And because they're more highly trained and have better resource
and can do a really thorough investigation, they have a
ninety five percent plus conviction rate, whereas if you look
on the state level or the city level, at different municipalities,
if you're looking at police departments or sheriff's departments, they
(18:17):
don't have a lot of resources.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
April Prayer, the defense attorney, says, on the local level,
especially if it's a smaller town, there isn't always the money,
the people, or the training for a tough case.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
Especially if it's a murder investigation. They may not have
done many they may not know how to do them
well because they haven't done them often. They don't have
a lot of resources to devote to it, and so
they're going to make a mess of it. And so
there are a lot of different things that separate the
FED from the local authorities that may have nothing to
(18:51):
do with anything being nefarious. They don't have a whole
lot of practice at this and they don't have a
whole lot of resources. So that's why you'll see a
conviction rate in pretty much any state or county being
far lower than you will at the federal level in
that very same state.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
And in this case, you had a full time lawyer
for the Justice Department investigating everything about ed Buck's life.
Here's Chelsea NoREL again. She's with the US Attorney's Office
for the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles
and West Hollywood.
Speaker 9 (19:25):
So we had to go through hundreds of thousands of files.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Her job was to make a case stick against ed Buck.
Speaker 9 (19:34):
I watched personally thirty thousand videos from Bucks hard drive
of him engaged in party and play with various men.
So that took me years, and it was every day
twenty four to seven, no days.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Off, I mean years living in that darkness. Tell me
about that.
Speaker 9 (19:56):
It's haunting. And this was during the pandemic, so I
was siloed often on my own working on this at home.
But they haunt you. And the only thing I can
say about how I cope with it is I also
look at child sexual abuse materials for my job, so
I am unfortunately used to looking at very disturbing images.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
It was by combing through all those videos that would
allow the FEDS to corroborate the allegations against ed Buck.
They needed, however, witnesses. These were people who had been
prepared to tell local prosecutors what had happened to them,
but they weren't believed. And then when police would eventually
question the victims. Remember the only training share of deputies
(20:40):
got with the LGBTQ community was on flags. They would
do it in the most hand fisted way you might expect,
being insensitive, showing up to people's homes for interviews early
early in the morning, essentially you know, being the police.
Chelsea Narel would have to work against all of that.
And it was by showing mel and Timothy's families that
(21:01):
she meant business that would help prosecutors convince victims to testify.
Speaker 9 (21:07):
Not convicting was not in my frame of mind. It
was not something that I even considered to be an option.
The anxiety and the stress of this case was how
am I going to get to hearing guilty nine times?
That's what stayed with me, That's what kept me up
(21:31):
at night. How I was going to hear guilty nine times?
How I was going to get that for Letitia Nixon,
Jamal Moore's mom, and Joanne Campbell and Joyce Jackson, two
of Timothy Dean's sisters, who all of whom supported me
tremendously through this case.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
A drug addict is less likely to be believed than
the average person.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Now, April Prayer, the defense attorney, says, as terrible as
the crimes of ed Buck are, she would have been
reluctant to advise any of his victims to talk to
prosecutors for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 5 (22:06):
So that's a starting point. But just in my experience
dealing with a client who is a drug addict, and
pick your drug of choice. That means there might be
gaps in your memory. That means that you recounting something
to me might be unliable. It means that you might
not intentionally be trying to deceive me, but you might
have holes in your memory because of whatever drug you're on.
(22:29):
So those are some initial problems that you would have
just because of the drug addiction.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
In many ways, the prosecutors were the last people along
the gauntlet that the potential witnesses would likely talk to.
April Prayer, the defense attorney, says she would have us
remember that these were black men who were being told
that their civic duty was to talk to the police.
Her number one piece of advice to black men especially,
(22:56):
be extremely careful with any interaction with the police, especially
for people like Jamel Moore or any of ed Buck's
nameless victims, people who are living in la far away
from their core family support.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
You need to be even more careful when interacting with
law enforcement. And if you are gay, lesbie and trans,
I'm gonna multiply that by about ten times because I
have seen horble discrimination, horrible physical abuse by police against
(23:32):
gay people here and across the nation, and I would
also say, specifically, if you're a trance and I've seen
terrible discrimination in the courts by female judges against trans women.
In the courts, it's played out injuries, it's played out
and pleas has played out in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It would take a tremendous amount of effort on the
government's part to get withness is to tell their stories
to law enforcement consistently and effectively and then show up
in a federal court. Chelsea Norell, the prosecutor, says, under
normal circumstances, there's unpredictability with witnesses.
Speaker 9 (24:15):
It was particularly challenging here, and I'm just so grateful
to the witnesses who testified at trial, who stuck with me,
who trusted me with their darkest, most terrifying, most humiliating,
and deeply personal experiences, many of whom had negative experiences
(24:39):
with law enforcement before this case, had a fundamental mistrust
of law enforcement, and sometimes for good reason. The fact
that they put their faith in me, I had to
reciprocate and put my faith in them and do everything
I could to make sure that they felt prepared, that
(25:00):
they were corroborated. So yes, it was massively challenging.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Were you surprised that you eventually went to trial? Like
it seems wild to have gone to trial in this
case to me, But am I wrong?
Speaker 9 (25:14):
I'm with you. I had the same impression at the
outset because to me, the facts were just so egregious
that this seemed like the type of case that would
plead out.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Ed Buck would not take a plea agreement, and as
he awaited his day in court, the coronavirus pandemic would
change the world, delaying the trial. But he was ready
for a fight and could apparently afford to pay for
a defense, a defense that would include one of the
most famous black lawyers in American history.
Speaker 9 (25:47):
But mister Buck made it clear fairly early on that
we were going to trial, and he hired trial counsel.
He hired Christopher Darden and Ludlow Creery, who are trying
a lawyers. They're known for being trial lawyers. He did
not hire them to just simply negotiate a plea agreement.
(26:08):
So it became clear to me that we were going
to go to a trial and it was going to
be a contentious trial.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
On the next episode, we'll take a closer look at
defending ed Buck. This is Shattering the System. Thank you
for listening. Shattering the System is a production of Macro
(26:51):
Studios and iHeart Podcasts. I'm your Host, Snari Glennon, Follow
me at s O n aar I one on Instagram.
Our series executive producers are Charles King, Asha Corpus, Win
Royal Reccio, Jonathan Hunger, Lindsay Hoffman and Scenario Glinton. That's Me.
Our show is co written and produced by Ralph Cooper
(27:13):
the Third. Erica Rodriguez is our associate producer. Dana Conway
is our archival producer. Chris Mann is our audio engineer.
Sound design and music provided by Chris Mann with pod
Shaper special thanks to Karen Grigsby, Bates Portia, Amigas Robertson
and Lisa Pollock. Clips provided by TV one LLC. All
(27:34):
rights reserved. We'll be back next week, See you next time.
(28:03):
Then came
In this podcast, we're going to talk frankly but sensitively
about issues some people might find disturbing, including rape and suicide.
If you or someone you know is suicidal in the
US down nine to eighty eight, check out this podcast
notes page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources
in your community.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Let's do a recap of the case of ed Buck
and the key people who got us to this episode.
There is Jamel Moore, who died in the apartment of
ed Buck on July twenty seventh, twenty nineteen. Then there
was Timothy Dean, the second victim. Timothy Dean's roommate Otavio
today remembers him as being full of life.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Timothy carried himself very elegantly and was a muscular, tall,
good looking man and if you saw him on the streets,
you know it's not a person that can pass completely unnoticed.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Then there was the last victim, John Doe calling him
for now, who likely escaped with his life from ed
Buck's apartment on September eleventh, twenty nineteen, after he was
injected with an off the charts amount of meth amphetamine.
And then there is LA's District Attorney Jackie Lacy, who
decided at first not to charge at Buck. She was
(01:19):
the first black person or woman to be the La
County District Attorney, and she would be criticized for being
way too careful.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
And there's a responsibility with that. You want to not
just be the first person of your race or the
first woman, You want to be the best right and
so you want to make sure that you do things
for the right reasons, that you never embarrassed the office,
that you achieved, that you accomplish things.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
To this day, Jackie Lacy says she couldn't have gotten
a conviction for ed Buck. Her office says that the
evidence that they had was quote insufficient to prove beyond
a reasonable doubt that Buck is responsible for the death
of Jamel Moore. Likewise, the admissible evidence is insufficient to
prove beyond the reasonable doubt that suspect Buck furnished drugs
(02:10):
to Jamel Moore, or that suspect Buck possessed drugs. And
then finally there is ed Buck. When ed Buck was
arrested on September seventeenth, twenty nineteen, he was not arrested
on charges of murder. He was not arrested on the
lesser charge of manslaughter even though two men died in
(02:31):
this apartment of nearly identical circumstances. So what did the
Feds get ed Buck on? What new evidence did they
suddenly have that they didn't have since Jamel Moore died
in twenty seventeen or Timothy Dean died in twenty nineteen,
while they had a living victim who could connect the
dots between ed Buck and meth amfetamine. Buck was accused
(02:54):
of distribution of meth amphetamine resulting in death. In addition,
he was charged with maintaining a drug invol premises an
enticement to travel and interstate commerce for prostitution. With ed
Buck and jail, now is the time to build a
federal case and prosecutors will need witnesses. The potential witnesses
(03:14):
to the horrors in ed Buck's apartment would be the
key to putting him into jail. It was in the
months before at Buck's arrest the nation would be gripped
by Black Lives Matter protests. These same witnesses, who had
been ignored by the local police. Ed Bucket called the
(03:37):
sheriff to his home where he was injecting black men.
The sheriff took the victims away. This is the same
sheriff that has a history of harassing black men and
queermen in West Hollywood, and now two white women federal
prosecutors would have to gain the trust of gay black
(03:59):
men used to being ignored. This is shattering the system.
I'm your host, scenario, Glinton. We'll hear what really led
prosecutors to take on the case, and we'll hear from
a defense attorney about why black, queer and transfolk need
to be very careful around law enforcement.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Always that has been my experience of how prosecutors and
police officers treat witnesses as completely disposable, as completely at
their disposal, and they don't give a damn about you
unless you are helping them get to their conviction. So
I understand the Dona snitch rule, but from a completely
different vantage point.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Before prosecutors can convince a jury, they're going to need
to convince witnesses black men to trust the police in
the federal government more after this, this is shattering the system.
I'm your host, Snari Glenton. While recording for this show,
(05:07):
I wandered into something typical for West Hollywood. A protest
politics can be fun in West Hollywood, and ed Buck
certainly joined in. For those in the know, like Ed Buck,
the WIHO City Council can be fun, wacky, and impactful.
(05:29):
Before twenty seventeen, Ed Buck was a political donor who
lived in a rent stabilized apartment in the city of
West Hollywood. Now, if we were going to give you
a snapshot of the man, say pre twenty seventeen, we'd
call ed Buck a former Republican term Democrat who made
a good deal of money as a young man and
moved to West Hollywood, where he became an outspoken animal
rights activist and a supporter of LGBTQ causes. Actually, by
(05:53):
all accounts, it was only gay men's causes. Buck was
one of the most prolific donors. He gave nearly half
a half a million dollars to Democratic candidates over thirty years.
And that may not seem like a lot, but whether
it was say a school board race or spots on
the West Hollywood City Council, it goes far. Buck gave
money to everyone from John Duran, a local politician and
(06:16):
weho to Hillary Clinton's bid for president. Ed Buck gave
money a lot, and that's how the media saw him.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
It's been three months since twenty six year old Jamil
Moore was found dead at the West Hollywood home of
wealthy Democratic donor Ed Buck. Moore's mother, Letitia Nixon, has
pressed police to continue the investigation into her son, Jamel's
mysterious death and to interview other black men about the
experiences with Buck. Buck, who has not been arrested or
charged with any crime, has donated hundreds of thousands of
(06:47):
dollars to Democratic candidates and Cause US over the years.
Jamil Moore's friends and family have lost a petition calling
on Democrats to return Buck's money. So far, only one
has done so.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Jackie Lacey, the local Democratic prosecutor, had previously said she
wasn't able to press charges against ed Buck, and while
the sheriff's office essentially bungled the case, the same sheriff's
office would go over the head of the local prosecutors
to the federal government. This is the part where the
local reporter and me has to come out. One of
the local sheriff's deputies tipped off the Justice Department. That
(07:23):
is what got the ball rolling. Now, this is where
timing seems important. Jackie Lacey, the local DA a Democrat
would be up for reelection, and there was a Trump
appointed US attorney Nick Hanna. Now, Nick Hanna says the
case against Buck started long before his arrest in September
twenty nineteen. Hannah says it was the opioid crisis that
(07:45):
got him thinking of ways to put ed Buck in prison.
Speaker 7 (07:49):
It was the full of two thy eighteen, so at
that point, the opioid crisis was really coming into consciousness
right and we were seeing being much like Cleveland and
some other areas, we were seeing a lot of people
starting to overdose on fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Hanna says. Historically, overdoses were treated more like an accident
in judgment, and police showed up and saw drug paraphernalia
and a dead body. While it might have been tragic,
they really didn't treat it as a criminal offense. But
the opioid crisis changed a lot of that thinking.
Speaker 7 (08:24):
And we were seeing people selling counterfeit pills that were
laced with fentanyl, so people thought they were taking a xanax,
take it it's fentanyl and they would die. We were
seeing instances of drug dealers knowingly killing somebody and then
going off and selling more of the same product to
other people.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Former La County DA Jackie Lacey said that the Feds
had more resources, money, and people. They also had a
variety of federal laws, including one with a twenty year
prison sentence attached that made it a crime to give
someone drugs that result in death. Nick Hannah says when
he became US attorney, he was startled by the number
(09:04):
of overdose.
Speaker 7 (09:05):
Deaths, spike and overdose deaths, and a lot of it
was attributable to people who were selling drugs laced with
federol and knowingly doing it and killing people, right, and
so you know, that seemed to be an area crying
out for somebody to do something about it.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It was Nick Hannah who assigned the prosecutors to take
a look at the information the Sheriff's department brought to him.
He had the Drug Enforcement Administration take a look at
the case as well.
Speaker 7 (09:32):
And see what we thought, and see whether we thought
the evidence, you know, what the evidence was, what had
already been gathered, what additional investigative steps could be taken,
and whether or not we thought this was something that
merited a federal prosecution.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Now, remember, it never hurts for a federal prosecutor to
dunk on a local prosecutor of another party, especially as
an election looms. Nick Hannah says, this wasn't about politics,
it was about something more.
Speaker 7 (09:59):
Ba You know, a case like ed Buck cries out
for prosecution, cries out for someone to do you know,
an investigation cries out for somebody to go to jail.
And you know, we were I think maybe in the
right spot at the right time, with the right statute
to do that. This is about somebody killing people in
his apartment. The mantra of the office is to prosecute
(10:22):
federal crimes without fear or favor and try to do
our best with the resources we have to make an
impact on the community and vindicate the rights of victims.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
This is shattering the system. The federal case against ed Buck,
This is shattering the system. I'm Sinari Glinton. We left
off with ed Buck and jail and prosecutors building the
case to take him to trial. I talked extensively with
the US Attorney's office and with one of the key
(10:55):
lawyers for ed Buck. We've heard from the defense, and
we will definitely hear from the lawyer for ed Buck
again later on in this story. The thing is for
this story to be transparent. I didn't want the only
voice that's critical of the police or law enforcement to
be the lawyer for ed Buck, and I didn't want
to be a shill for federal prosecutors.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Defans take their time.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
That's April Prayer. She's a criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
They don't rush and arrest you in two or three days.
They might take two or three years for research and
investigates you and get video and audio and all your
bank statements, and talk to all of your friends and
get them all on a record before they come for you.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Like I said, I needed someone to balance out the
many law enforcement voices we've been hearing, and I wanted
to get the perspective of someone who knows what's at
stake for black men when they encounter law enforcement. I've
known April Prayer for many years. She was a classmate.
The thing is, she's made it her mission to teach
young people, particularly young black and queer folks, what to
(11:57):
do if they come in contact with the police. Just
board game and teachers high school kids about their rights.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
I'm very I'm very anti police and anti prosecutors.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
See what I mean. I wanted to give you a
sense of what is a stake. Before we go too
far down the road of demonizing Jackie Lacy, let's remember
that the Feds could pay special attention to ed Buck,
and they had tools that a local prosecutor just doesn't have.
April prayer, the defense attorney says, for those rooting for
ed Buck to go to jail for a long time,
(12:30):
a defendant has a much higher conviction rate with the Feds.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
You have a truly uphill battle in federal court. Now
there are exceptions to that rule, because I've actually won
a federal case, but for the most part of the
Fiths come for you. They got you, and there's not
a whole lot you can do about it.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
To give me an idea, there is a government evidence list.
It's fifteen pages long. When you read it, it kind of
gives you an idea of how deep the government can
dig when they really want to get you. There's stuff
you might expect on a drug case, syringes, a ziploc
back with a crystalline substance. There's hard drive after hard
drives of incriminating videos of Bucks fex play, six costume
(13:10):
masks and one modified military style gas mask. And it's
not just his computer and hard drives. The government swept
up everything from his iCloud to Uber and Lift receipts
to the purchase records of his Forward Edge and Nissan Morano.
Then there's more than a dozen videos of Jamel Moore
and here's the key part. Videos of Buck instructing victims
(13:31):
to do met like Exhibits seventy nine point twenty seven
a video clip of Buck instructing an unidentified man on
how to smoke. The lead attorney in the case against
ed Buck for the federal government was Lindsey Bailey. She
says that ed Buck was a different kind of criminal
and needed a different kind of prosecution.
Speaker 8 (13:53):
So this happens a lot in a lot of our
cases where there baby state charges that someone can bring,
but the federal charges have a lot more power behind them. Right, So,
especially with these types of death resulting cases, we have
a federal statute available to us that imposes a twenty
year mandatory minimum if somebody's found guilty, and.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
In California, Bailey says, there was no local law that
was as strong as the federal twenty year mandatory minimum. Essentially,
the Feds had a much bigger book to throw.
Speaker 8 (14:25):
At Buck, because we have this power behind our statutes
that the state doesn't have. Sometimes we will bring things
instead of the state, and you know, sometimes that's coordinated
ahead of time. Sometimes the state brings charges that they
then dismiss in favor of federal charges. So I think
when you talk about this case with someone like ed Buck,
(14:47):
who you know is a danger to society and we
were hoping to put him away for a significant period
of time, the amount of time that we were looking
at federally was just heads and shoulders above whatever the
state was going to be able to bring.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
So ed Buck, in your mind, is a special case.
Speaker 8 (15:07):
Yes, I would say most of the death resulting cases
that our office does are not rising to the level
of criminality that you see with mister Buck, where you're
having not a single individual overdose, but multiple people overdosing
in his apartments. You're finding videos of him being very
controlling over these people, providing them with drugs against their
(15:31):
will in certain cases, providing them with amounts that are
known to be extreme, as opposed to let's say your
average dealer, who like you, may be soliciting.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Chelsea Narel was one of the lawyers that the US
Attorney charts with prosecuting ed Buck's case.
Speaker 9 (15:50):
I knew that this was going to be a case
that rose or fell with victim testimony, and you.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Can say she handles the toughest cases.
Speaker 9 (16:00):
I focus specifically on human trafficking and child exploitation, but
we also have the largest influx of drugs likely in
the country, certainly in California. We see it on our
southern border.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
The key difference between where the FED started and where
the local prosecutor started was victim testimony.
Speaker 9 (16:20):
There was not going to be a person who could
say I saw ed Buck administer those drugs because ed
Buck had killed the two people who could say that
those were our two death victims in the first two deaths.
So my strategy was to interview as many victims as
we possibly could to get those commonalities to build a
(16:45):
very strong, weaved narrative of these witness accounts that could
talk about how Buck was always the one who distributed
drugs because it was part of his ritual of party
and play.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
The federal process secutors had to put together a story
that a jury would understand.
Speaker 9 (17:04):
That when Jamel Moore went to ed Buck's apartment on
July twenty seventh, of twenty seventeen that it could only
have been ed Buck who provided the drugs, because we
had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to twelve jurors
that it was in fact Buck who distributed the drugs,
and that the drugs were the Butt four causation, meaning
(17:26):
the direct result of the death of the two victims.
So to me, it was a matter of getting those
victims to interview and memorializing those interviews, developing trust with them,
earning their trust.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
This is the key difference between the local prosecutor and
the feds. The resources. Let's hear from April Prayer, the
defence attorney, who doesn't have ties to this case. She says,
the FEDS are more highly trained and they print their
own money.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
And because they're more highly trained and have better resource
and can do a really thorough investigation, they have a
ninety five percent plus conviction rate, whereas if you look
on the state level or the city level, at different municipalities,
if you're looking at police departments or sheriff's departments, they
(18:17):
don't have a lot of resources.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
April Prayer, the defense attorney, says, on the local level,
especially if it's a smaller town, there isn't always the money,
the people, or the training for a tough case.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
Especially if it's a murder investigation. They may not have
done many they may not know how to do them
well because they haven't done them often. They don't have
a lot of resources to devote to it, and so
they're going to make a mess of it. And so
there are a lot of different things that separate the
FED from the local authorities that may have nothing to
(18:51):
do with anything being nefarious. They don't have a whole
lot of practice at this and they don't have a
whole lot of resources. So that's why you'll see a
conviction rate in pretty much any state or county being
far lower than you will at the federal level in
that very same state.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
And in this case, you had a full time lawyer
for the Justice Department investigating everything about ed Buck's life.
Here's Chelsea NoREL again. She's with the US Attorney's Office
for the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles
and West Hollywood.
Speaker 9 (19:25):
So we had to go through hundreds of thousands of files.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Her job was to make a case stick against ed Buck.
Speaker 9 (19:34):
I watched personally thirty thousand videos from Bucks hard drive
of him engaged in party and play with various men.
So that took me years, and it was every day
twenty four to seven, no days.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Off, I mean years living in that darkness. Tell me
about that.
Speaker 9 (19:56):
It's haunting. And this was during the pandemic, so I
was siloed often on my own working on this at home.
But they haunt you. And the only thing I can
say about how I cope with it is I also
look at child sexual abuse materials for my job, so
I am unfortunately used to looking at very disturbing images.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
It was by combing through all those videos that would
allow the FEDS to corroborate the allegations against ed Buck.
They needed, however, witnesses. These were people who had been
prepared to tell local prosecutors what had happened to them,
but they weren't believed. And then when police would eventually
question the victims. Remember the only training share of deputies
(20:40):
got with the LGBTQ community was on flags. They would
do it in the most hand fisted way you might expect,
being insensitive, showing up to people's homes for interviews early
early in the morning, essentially you know, being the police.
Chelsea Narel would have to work against all of that.
And it was by showing mel and Timothy's families that
(21:01):
she meant business that would help prosecutors convince victims to testify.
Speaker 9 (21:07):
Not convicting was not in my frame of mind. It
was not something that I even considered to be an option.
The anxiety and the stress of this case was how
am I going to get to hearing guilty nine times?
That's what stayed with me, That's what kept me up
(21:31):
at night. How I was going to hear guilty nine times?
How I was going to get that for Letitia Nixon,
Jamal Moore's mom, and Joanne Campbell and Joyce Jackson, two
of Timothy Dean's sisters, who all of whom supported me
tremendously through this case.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
A drug addict is less likely to be believed than
the average person.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Now, April Prayer, the defense attorney, says, as terrible as
the crimes of ed Buck are, she would have been
reluctant to advise any of his victims to talk to
prosecutors for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 5 (22:06):
So that's a starting point. But just in my experience
dealing with a client who is a drug addict, and
pick your drug of choice. That means there might be
gaps in your memory. That means that you recounting something
to me might be unliable. It means that you might
not intentionally be trying to deceive me, but you might
have holes in your memory because of whatever drug you're on.
(22:29):
So those are some initial problems that you would have
just because of the drug addiction.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
In many ways, the prosecutors were the last people along
the gauntlet that the potential witnesses would likely talk to.
April Prayer, the defense attorney, says she would have us
remember that these were black men who were being told
that their civic duty was to talk to the police.
Her number one piece of advice to black men especially,
(22:56):
be extremely careful with any interaction with the police, especially
for people like Jamel Moore or any of ed Buck's
nameless victims, people who are living in la far away
from their core family support.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
You need to be even more careful when interacting with
law enforcement. And if you are gay, lesbie and trans,
I'm gonna multiply that by about ten times because I
have seen horble discrimination, horrible physical abuse by police against
(23:32):
gay people here and across the nation, and I would
also say, specifically, if you're a trance and I've seen
terrible discrimination in the courts by female judges against trans women.
In the courts, it's played out injuries, it's played out
and pleas has played out in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It would take a tremendous amount of effort on the
government's part to get withness is to tell their stories
to law enforcement consistently and effectively and then show up
in a federal court. Chelsea Norell, the prosecutor, says, under
normal circumstances, there's unpredictability with witnesses.
Speaker 9 (24:15):
It was particularly challenging here, and I'm just so grateful
to the witnesses who testified at trial, who stuck with me,
who trusted me with their darkest, most terrifying, most humiliating,
and deeply personal experiences, many of whom had negative experiences
(24:39):
with law enforcement before this case, had a fundamental mistrust
of law enforcement, and sometimes for good reason. The fact
that they put their faith in me, I had to
reciprocate and put my faith in them and do everything
I could to make sure that they felt prepared, that
(25:00):
they were corroborated. So yes, it was massively challenging.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Were you surprised that you eventually went to trial? Like
it seems wild to have gone to trial in this
case to me, But am I wrong?
Speaker 9 (25:14):
I'm with you. I had the same impression at the
outset because to me, the facts were just so egregious
that this seemed like the type of case that would
plead out.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Ed Buck would not take a plea agreement, and as
he awaited his day in court, the coronavirus pandemic would
change the world, delaying the trial. But he was ready
for a fight and could apparently afford to pay for
a defense, a defense that would include one of the
most famous black lawyers in American history.
Speaker 9 (25:47):
But mister Buck made it clear fairly early on that
we were going to trial, and he hired trial counsel.
He hired Christopher Darden and Ludlow Creery, who are trying
a lawyers. They're known for being trial lawyers. He did
not hire them to just simply negotiate a plea agreement.
(26:08):
So it became clear to me that we were going
to go to a trial and it was going to
be a contentious trial.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
On the next episode, we'll take a closer look at
defending ed Buck. This is Shattering the System. Thank you
for listening. Shattering the System is a production of Macro
(26:51):
Studios and iHeart Podcasts. I'm your Host, Snari Glennon, Follow
me at s O n aar I one on Instagram.
Our series executive producers are Charles King, Asha Corpus, Win
Royal Reccio, Jonathan Hunger, Lindsay Hoffman and Scenario Glinton. That's Me.
Our show is co written and produced by Ralph Cooper
(27:13):
the Third. Erica Rodriguez is our associate producer. Dana Conway
is our archival producer. Chris Mann is our audio engineer.
Sound design and music provided by Chris Mann with pod
Shaper special thanks to Karen Grigsby, Bates Portia, Amigas Robertson
and Lisa Pollock. Clips provided by TV one LLC. All
(27:34):
rights reserved. We'll be back next week, See you next time.
(28:03):
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