September 14, 2023 • 30 mins
With Ed Buck's trial officially underway, what will be his defense team attempts?
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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 eighty eight, check out this podcast notes
page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources in
your community.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
This is shattering the system. I'm Sinari and Glinton.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
This is the notebook that I brought to the trial.
So these are all the pages from every single day
while I was in the viewing room with family and
friends of Jamel and Timothy.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I recently sat down with Jonathan Hunger. He is one
of the executive producers for this show. He attended every
day of the trial. He'd never been to a federal
court before. Jonathan would sit in the viewer section with
the family and friends of the victims. I came along
for some of the key moments, but Jonathan went every
day and he kept an incredibly meticulous notebook that really
(00:59):
gives you a sense of what the trial felt like.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
So just pages upon pages, so from everything to what
was going on, from the jury selection to behind the
scenes stuff before the procedings actually started.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Because of COVID nineteen for this trial, the courtroom was divided.
There was one room for where the principals gathered, you know,
the lawyers, the judge, and ed Buck, and then in
a completely different courtroom was the viewing section where spectators
could watch the trial on closed circuit television.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Every day was starting with me being in a line
of folks that were there not only for the Buck trial,
but also any case within that building. It's a huge
building downtown, so when you walk up it, it kind
of feels almost larger than life, like how you were
describing it.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
The Federal Courthouse where ed Buck was stride was completed
in twenty sixteen. The building's architects, Skid moll Owens and
Meryl envisioned it as a floating cube with curtains of
glass and enduring materials like limestone. It's kind of a
secular temple to justice. A quick review of where we
(02:13):
are in this story. Ed Buck shot up twenty six
year old Jammel Moore with a lethal dose of meth
in twenty seventeen. Buck wasn't arrested, and eighteen months later
another man died the same way. His name was Timothy Dean.
Timothy died on January seventh, twenty nineteen. Then a third
man escaped Buck's apartment on September eleventh, twenty nineteen. He
(02:38):
told a horrifying tale of being bound and injected with
a dangerously large dose of meth. Finally, finally, ed Buck
was arrested, and eventually he would be brought to trial
by federal prosecutors. Today, we'll take a closer look at
Edbuck's trial, as well as the defense strategy his lawyers
(02:58):
put forth. I wanted to talk to someone who could
give a sense of what the trial felt like.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So from the very beginning, he was always coming from
a place of anger of like, how was this man
able to live on the streets and do all this evil?
And really, you know, maybe it's now after hearing all
the things from the trial that I say so openly
evil because there's no other way to describe it. Disgusting, evil, horrific,
(03:34):
the things you would never want to either see again
or hear about again.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Finally ed Buck would have his day in court. Letitia Nixon,
Jamelmore's mother would now have at least the chance to
get a measure of justice for her son. Buck was
arrested in late twenty nineteen, and while waiting for his trial,
the world would stop because of COVID nineteen and the
Black Lives Matter movement would bring renewed scrutiny to this case.
(04:03):
This is shattering the system. I'm your host scenario Glinton.
In the last episode, we heard about the investigation and
what made federal prosecutors take up the ed Buck case.
In this episode, we'll hear about the struggle to get
Buck into an actual courtroom, and we'll hear from one
of Buck's defence lawyers.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
If I was white, no one would have questioned my integrity,
no one would have dragged me. And if I won
or lost as a lawyer, as a white lawyer, nobody
would have had.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Any issue with me.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
The United States versus ed Buck after this break Wow.
After he was arrested in September. On October two, twenty nineteen,
Nick Hannah, the US attorney, filed an indictment against Buck,
(04:56):
charging him with five counts. The delays from COVID make
many wonder if ed Buck would ever get a trial.
Those the ladies gave prosecutors that much more time to
go over evidence and hone their arguments. For many people involved,
it was emotional, not just the victims' families, but all
those involved. Here's the federal prosecutor, Chelsea Norrel, on the
(05:19):
stakes she felt during the trial.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
When we brought our criminal complaint our first day and
magistrate court, when Buck was appearing on our charges, one
of Jamal Moore's friends came up to me with his
urn of ashes and put my hand on it and said,
you're fighting for my best friend. And from that moment on,
this was just the most important part of my life.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Ed Buck wouldn't go on trial until July twenty twenty one,
but when he did, the government was ready.
Speaker 6 (05:50):
We tried to come out of the gates swinging.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Chelsea Norrel is a federal prosecutor. She was on the
team that tried ed Buck.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
So we tried to make the testimony compelling throughout. And
one of our earliest witnesses was a neighbor of Bucks
who had asked Buck about all of the men cycling
through his apartment who came out looking like they were
in a stupor. And the neighbor testified that Buck said
(06:21):
they were his social work clients and painted himself as
this social worker who was attempting to help the victims
and I think that was a good prism through which
to then see victims come forward and say, far from
getting the help I needed, Buck was creating or amplifying
(06:42):
drug addictions in that apartment by monetizing and incentivizing us
to take more drugs, by dangling another fifty dollars to
inject a bigger dose of methamphetamine.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Part of the delay in Buck going to trial was
the court system essentially had to figure out how we
would do court with the onset of the global pandemic.
Buck's attorneys would argue he was at a greater risk
of COVID and should be returned to his apartment on
Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood on bail a rating trial.
Nana Giamfi, a lawyer working with Letitia Nixon. Jamel Moore's mother,
(07:19):
responded to Buck's attempt to be let out of jail, saying, quote,
when these people say they want him on house arrest,
I don't know if they're paying attention. That's where he
kills people. End quote. Buck was considered an increased flight risk,
and a judge would refuse to send Buck back to
the apartment. Was Jamel and Timothy died.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Judge Schnyder was very by the book. From the very jump,
you knew that she was meaning business.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
That's Jonathan Unger. He's one of the producers of this podcast.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
She knew immediately right when the trial started, from the
jury selection down to the very end, that she was
not going to either cut corners or take any bullshit.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
The no nonsense judge Jonathan is referring to is Christina
and Schneider. She's a senior United States District judge. She
was nominated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in
nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Well, the elephant in the room is Christopher Darden, And
like I feel like, especially maybe this is the kid
from Virginia and me, but knowing that someone of that
profile was defending Buck, I think there was just a
lot of eyeballs on this case.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Christopher Darden. For those who remember, is that Chris Darden.
That Chris Darden had been a prosecutor in the nineties
when oj Simpson was on trial for the murder of
Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Since that landmark trial,
Darden would switch sides and become a highly paid defense lawyer.
He would be joined at the defense table by Ludlow
(08:48):
be Query. We asked to speak to Darden, but he declined.
I did have an extensive conversation with his co counsel,
Ludlow be Query. I had to ask him, given all
the evidence that we've just heard in this podcast, why
would a black lawyer who had been head of the
Black Students Association in law school, why would he agree
(09:09):
to defend that buck let's take a lesson.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Well, it was going to be a challenge. It had
some very intriguing elements to it. I mean, basically the
racial components were intriguing to me, you know, because to me,
as a criminal defense lawyer, I've had a lot of
cases dealing with people distributing and using methamphetamine, and it
(09:36):
didn't seem like something that I couldn't tackle. It seemed
pretty straightforward, at least as the allegations went. I do
like the challenge of federal court, and I found it
fascinating because to me, case wasn't what it was being
blown up to be for political purposes, you know, from
(09:59):
the media's perspect you know, how the public was viewing it.
It was just not what it was being portrayed as
it was just to me, meth distribution case, and unfortunately,
two of the individuals that mister Buck was partying with died.
I didn't see it as, oh, he was doing this
because he hates black men, you know.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
I didn't.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
That's not what I saw in this case, that he
hates black men, so he's trying to kill them, which.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Is what was the public perception.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
So I found that intriguing and I found that a challenge.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You said multiple times that the court of public opinion
believed that had Buck murdered Jimmel Moore and timything Dean
like that was the court of public opinion. Yeah, so
it helped me understand. How do you argue for a
client when you understand that the court of public opinion
things they're wrong.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
You have to ignore it.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
You have to ignore the court of public opinion because
the court of a public opinion is not due process.
The court of public opinion is the very thing that
the Constitution of the United States of America protects the
individual from.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Can you help me understand, then, what was your strategy
to defend mister Buck.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Our expert found that Jammel was suffering from AIDS if
I recall correctly, and Timothy Dean. He had heart disease,
he had advanced heart disease, and he's also intoxicated. He
at a very high blood alcohol level, and I believe
(11:34):
he might have done methamfetmine prior to going to mister
Buck's residence, if I recall. So, those were the factors
that our expert opined were the main causes of these
gentlemen's deaths, not the ingestion, not acute methamphetamine intoxication, and
(11:56):
obviously the government's experts disagree.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I want to step away from the idea to talk
about the defense. That expert opinion was that the main
reason for the death of Jamel was that he was
sick with aids and that Timothy died of a heart
attack as opposed to being injected with a legal amount
of drugs. The visitors area was filled with friends of
the victims and you could hear audible groans when the
(12:24):
defense took that tack. The strategy was essentially to attack
the credibility of the witnesses, men who had already admitted
to doing sex work and taking drugs.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
That difference is not that uncommon.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
That's April Prayer. She's a defense attorney without ties to
the case.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
As despicable as it sounds, is basically, the victim wasn't
worth you caring about. The victim isn't worth this trial.
The victim isn't worth the jurors being concerned about them
no longer being on this planet. It's not that uncommon.
As despicable and awful as it sounds, it's kind of
a form of jury nullification, kind of saying, yeah, if
(13:04):
you did it, so what is that such a bad thing?
It is such a bad thing if you wipe these
low lives off the face of the earth. I don't
think it's a very sophisticated defense, but you don't necessarily
need your defense to be sophisticated to win.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The team of dardening Query didn't appear sophisticated, at least
not in the courtroom. During the trial. The defense seemed disorganized,
to say the least. That didn't keep them, though, from
going hard against the witnesses. The prosecutors, like Chelsea Morrel,
weren't surprised by the defense strategy. They were surprised by
the defense's doggedness, especially on cross examination.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
They cross examined on every aspect of their testimony and
presented false choices to the jury, making it seem like
everyone was there willingly and that none of the conduct
was surreptitious or non consensual, and sort of lost over
(14:06):
all of the evidence that we presented showing that there
were non consensual sexual encounters, that there were non consensual
distributions of drugs, and there were surreptitious distributions of drugs
where Buck would drug someone's drink to give them a
(14:29):
CNS depressant, so like a klonipin or a GHB, to
then reduce their ability to resist injections of methamphetamine. So
they kind of they tried to discredit all of those
accounts and really paint these as consensual encounters, and tried
(14:50):
to paint the victims as wanting their fifteen minutes of fame,
As if anyone wants to be famous for being injected
by ed drugs, it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Seems cynical, to say the least, that Buck, who was
accused of killing two black men, would pick two black lawyers.
Darden and Query were criticized by activists and people on
the side of the victims. A good amount of the
interview was Query and I discussing race and his sensitivity
to claims by activists that he was a pawn in
ed Buck's game, or that he was an Uncle Tom
(15:24):
for defending Buck.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
You know, at some point, as a lawyer, I've got
to look at myself as a lawyer and not just
as a black lawyer, because then I'm being ghetto wised,
you know, as a lawyer, as I am as a
black man. If I'm told I can only take certain
types of cases, I can only represent certain types of
(15:45):
people because I'm black, What does that say about our society?
If I was white, no one would have questioned my integrity,
no one would have tried to cancel me, no one
would have tried to drag me.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
And if I won or lost.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
As a white lawyer, nobody would have had any issue
with me.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
I'm just doing my job.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
But as a black lawyer, there's only certain I can't
take ed Buck because the alleged victims are black. So
as a black lawyer, that's off limits to me. So
that was one of the biggest cases of the year
when it was filed twenty nineteen. It was one of
the biggest trials of the summer of twenty one. Yet me,
(16:30):
as a black lawyer, I should have prevented myself from
representing this criminal defendant because I'm black and because of
the nature of the allegations. But if I'm white, it's okay.
I have a problem with that. I have a problem
with that.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
This is shattering the system. The True Crime podcast that's
about more than crime. We'll hear more from my conversation
with low b Query the lawyer Fred Buck after this break.
(17:14):
I'm a black man, Yes, I understand, yes, that you
have to defend people because you know the criment. I
live in West Sullywood. Yes, no one is like this
is not this is not a show that's on the
side of the police, whatever that means.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
As a gay black man who followed this case, I
was offended by the way that the people who were
in his apartment, the people who testified, the ways in
which they were cross examined. It seemed for me, from
my ears, it seemed like a defense out of a
(17:50):
Law and Order episode from the nineties.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
That is I mean, that is it like we don't.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Understand that there's you know that you can get treated
for a that most black men have. Hearts of these
are high high blood pressure, but they're not also slamming
that nfetomin.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Well, yes, and I understand your point, but obviously we're
not the medical experts. Those were the statements of our expert.
Those were the statements of the doctor who examined the
autopsy reports and the lab reports, and that was his summation,
(18:26):
and that's what he testified. We didn't make that up.
That's what he said, and so of course what our
expert says is what we're going to go off of.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
So that's where that came from. It came from our expert.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
I mean, if you ed Buck was convicted, yes, the
jury did not agree.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
If you just didn't agree that your jury did not
agree exactly, if you had to.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Do it over again, would you have chosen the same strategy?
Speaker 4 (18:55):
You know, I still don't see that there was another strategy,
at least in terms of dealing with.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
The cause of death.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
The whole case was really about cause of death because
the distribution you have video of them doing what appears
to be meth amphetamine. You have you know, officer satisfying
that they found meth amphetamine, they found paraphernalia.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
You know, the distribution charges were really.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Difficult to defend because you had all this evidence that
pretty much spoke to the charges of distribution. What this
case really was about, in a nutshell, was about cause
of death, because the causing death part was really the
most important part of the case in regards to what
mister Buck's exposure was. So that's where the fight was,
(19:46):
and so we had to get a medical expert. We
had to get an expert to examine the reports and
examine the medical history and all the things they needed
to do and give us an appear on well, what do
you think kill these two men? They're really I mean,
there's no other strategy than that, at least in regards
(20:07):
to that part of the case.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
The trial was genuinely emotional. The testimony and the exhibits
were truly disturbing and triggering, not just for the friends
and family of Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean, but for
the lawyers and everyone in the courtroom. One potent part
of the trial was even for this moment, hearing these
men who don't usually have a voice speaking out loud
(20:36):
in a federal court. The testimony of victims captivated the courtroom.
Here's the prosecutor, Chelsea irrelegant when victim dB testified that.
Speaker 6 (20:49):
He was in Buck's apartment overdosing for the second time
after Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean had died. He was
lying in the same spot where he knew the men
before him had perished, and he felt himself slowly slipping
away as well. He talked about hearing his deceased mother
(21:09):
call out for him and say his name, and get
yourself off the floor, get help, get out of there,
or you're going to die, and hearing that account and
knowing that that was the jolt that saved his life.
(21:30):
To this day, it gives me chills because dB saved
himself in that moment.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Jonathan Unger, one of our producers, says it was hearing
the way the witnesses describe what they went through in
ed Buck's apartment that left the lasting impact. He describes
the damning details that the court heard from Cody Hoffman,
one of the witnesses who testified against that book.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Cody Hoffman, the evidence that was brought up was not
only correspondence that he had had with a Buck way
back in twenty eighteen and beyond, but also a particular
incident where Cody went into detail about how Ed would
put gas masks on Cody and when we talk about
gas masks, these are masks that you would find really
(22:20):
your rituals. I mean, these were devilish type masks, red
kind of what you would find at carnivals, but at
the same time, in the very dark, again evil way.
He went into detail about how it would take a
long tube blowing meth smoke down it with one end
(22:42):
of the tube and Cody's underwear, and then on the
other end of the tube, Ed was smoking the math
and essentially shotgunning it into Cody's mouth. He would talk
about the gas masks again, the sexual devices that Ed
would use, but also the gates of hell. That's how
he referred AT's place, particularly the doorway into ed Buck's apartment.
(23:03):
And so as these were going on, as you could
tell that Cody had a lot of details to his story.
When Dardan was cross examining him, he just immediately went
into how he was in escort and was trying to
nullify anything that Cody had said.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Donata says, listening to the cross examination of witnesses, he
kind of felt like he wasn't witnessing a scene from
twenty twenty one, but from a whole other century.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
It felt like an old eighties or nineties episode of
a after school special where AIDS and HIV were brought
up to the point where it sounded like AIDS was
a death sentence, which I don't know about you, but
within the queer community, I'm pretty sure we all know
that it's not anymore. And it was pretty clear from
(23:52):
the jump that Darden and Ludlow were hanging their entire
argument on the fact that anyone with AIDS or HIV
you could tell that they were sick and.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
This is why they died. How did it make you
feel sick?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
To my stomach? And that is the lightest way I
could put it. I'm shaking right now even thinking about it,
because it felt like we were going back three decades
within that trial, and ironically enough, a trial that had
a gay man who was doing this to other men
(24:27):
as well, And so it just I don't really, I
don't really know how to like fully put in towards
how it felt, because you know, I have friends who
not only have struggled with HIV and AIDS but also
are thriving. Now it's so irresponsible.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
How didn't land in the room?
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Oh, it didn't land. It didn't land One bit if anything,
everyone would groan every single time they would bring it up,
because they brought it up every single day of the trial.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I mean in a case about injecting firstibly injecting people
with math and fetamain aids came up every day.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
Every HIV, every day.
Speaker 6 (25:08):
Not convicting was not in my.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Frame of mind, again, Chelsea Norrell from the US Attorney's Office.
Speaker 6 (25:17):
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 kept me up 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,
(25:39):
and Joanne Campbell and Joyce Jackson, two of Timothy Dean's sisters,
who all of whom supported me tremendously through this case.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
In total, the trial lasted nine days. The jury was
called to the courthouse at nine thirty am on Tuesday,
July twenty seventh, twenty twenty one. After nine days of
hearing evidence, it was time for the jury to decide.
The defense had objected to calling the witnesses. The people
who'd been in ed Buck's apartment, has quote a small
(26:10):
sample of victims, the implication being there were a lot
more of victims. The judge instructed the jury to look
at the evidence and the testimony of the witnesses, not
the statements or characterizations of the lawyers, and the jurors
were sent to deliberate. On the day of the verdict,
I joined Jonathan at the courthouse. I remember being in
(26:33):
the hallway as the guards moved ed Buck out of
the courtroom. He was above us in this brightly lit atrium,
and there, pale, stooped over and shuffling was ed Buck.
We stood and stared for a moment, and he stared back,
absolutely blank look on his face, no acknowledgment, just to stare.
(26:57):
As he moved off. We decided to go to the
cafeteria to hang out and have some food. Johnathan, my producer,
and I were having lunch in the grand courtyard of
the Federal Building when at one fifty in the afternoon,
word came back that there was a verdict. The entire cafeteria,
which was filled with spectators, was collectively shocked. It had
(27:20):
happened so very quickly, and as we made our way
to the viewing area. Ed Buck sat alone in the
courtroom waiting to hear his fate. The deliberation had been
lightning quick, and if you include lunch, the jury only
deliberated for less than four hours. From the earliest days
after Jamel Moore died, you could feel the rage at
protests and victims forums. When Timothy Dean was found dead,
(27:44):
that rage only amplified. It didn't really subside even when
ed Buck was jailed after seven hundred and eighty two days.
The rage was present in all nine days of the trial.
On July twenty seventh, exactly four years since the death
of Jamelle Moore, has witnesses, lawyers, advocates, friends and family,
(28:05):
and journalists and Jonathan and I piled into elevators. The
rage was still very tangible, and as we filled the
visitors area, we could feel something very, very unusual. Finally,
there was a feeling of hope. This is shattering the System.
(28:37):
On the next episode, the verdict and the fallout of
the case against that book and what we can learn
about how the media covers cases with black victims. Shattering
(29:27):
the System is a production of Macro Studios and iHeart Podcasts.
I'm your Host Scenario Glinton follow me at s O
N A RI I one on Instagram. Our series executive
producers are Charles King, Asha Corpus, Win Royal Reccio, Jonathan Unger,
Lindsay Hoffman and Scenari Glinton. That's Me. Our show is
(29:49):
co written and produced by Ralph Cooper the Third. Erica
Rodriguez is our associate producer. Dana Conway is our archival producer.
Chris Man is our audio engineer. Here sound design and
music provided by Chris Mann with pod Shaper special thanks
to Karen Grigsby, Bates Portia, Amigas Robertson and Lisa Pollack.
(30:10):
We'll be back next week with another episode of Shattering
the System. I'm Snari and Glaton. Thanks for listening.
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 eighty eight, check out this podcast notes
page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources in
your community.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
This is shattering the system. I'm Sinari and Glinton.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
This is the notebook that I brought to the trial.
So these are all the pages from every single day
while I was in the viewing room with family and
friends of Jamel and Timothy.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I recently sat down with Jonathan Hunger. He is one
of the executive producers for this show. He attended every
day of the trial. He'd never been to a federal
court before. Jonathan would sit in the viewer section with
the family and friends of the victims. I came along
for some of the key moments, but Jonathan went every
day and he kept an incredibly meticulous notebook that really
(00:59):
gives you a sense of what the trial felt like.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
So just pages upon pages, so from everything to what
was going on, from the jury selection to behind the
scenes stuff before the procedings actually started.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Because of COVID nineteen for this trial, the courtroom was divided.
There was one room for where the principals gathered, you know,
the lawyers, the judge, and ed Buck, and then in
a completely different courtroom was the viewing section where spectators
could watch the trial on closed circuit television.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Every day was starting with me being in a line
of folks that were there not only for the Buck trial,
but also any case within that building. It's a huge
building downtown, so when you walk up it, it kind
of feels almost larger than life, like how you were
describing it.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
The Federal Courthouse where ed Buck was stride was completed
in twenty sixteen. The building's architects, Skid moll Owens and
Meryl envisioned it as a floating cube with curtains of
glass and enduring materials like limestone. It's kind of a
secular temple to justice. A quick review of where we
(02:13):
are in this story. Ed Buck shot up twenty six
year old Jammel Moore with a lethal dose of meth
in twenty seventeen. Buck wasn't arrested, and eighteen months later
another man died the same way. His name was Timothy Dean.
Timothy died on January seventh, twenty nineteen. Then a third
man escaped Buck's apartment on September eleventh, twenty nineteen. He
(02:38):
told a horrifying tale of being bound and injected with
a dangerously large dose of meth. Finally, finally, ed Buck
was arrested, and eventually he would be brought to trial
by federal prosecutors. Today, we'll take a closer look at
Edbuck's trial, as well as the defense strategy his lawyers
(02:58):
put forth. I wanted to talk to someone who could
give a sense of what the trial felt like.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
So from the very beginning, he was always coming from
a place of anger of like, how was this man
able to live on the streets and do all this evil?
And really, you know, maybe it's now after hearing all
the things from the trial that I say so openly
evil because there's no other way to describe it. Disgusting, evil, horrific,
(03:34):
the things you would never want to either see again
or hear about again.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Finally ed Buck would have his day in court. Letitia Nixon,
Jamelmore's mother would now have at least the chance to
get a measure of justice for her son. Buck was
arrested in late twenty nineteen, and while waiting for his trial,
the world would stop because of COVID nineteen and the
Black Lives Matter movement would bring renewed scrutiny to this case.
(04:03):
This is shattering the system. I'm your host scenario Glinton.
In the last episode, we heard about the investigation and
what made federal prosecutors take up the ed Buck case.
In this episode, we'll hear about the struggle to get
Buck into an actual courtroom, and we'll hear from one
of Buck's defence lawyers.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
If I was white, no one would have questioned my integrity,
no one would have dragged me. And if I won
or lost as a lawyer, as a white lawyer, nobody
would have had.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Any issue with me.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
The United States versus ed Buck after this break Wow.
After he was arrested in September. On October two, twenty nineteen,
Nick Hannah, the US attorney, filed an indictment against Buck,
(04:56):
charging him with five counts. The delays from COVID make
many wonder if ed Buck would ever get a trial.
Those the ladies gave prosecutors that much more time to
go over evidence and hone their arguments. For many people involved,
it was emotional, not just the victims' families, but all
those involved. Here's the federal prosecutor, Chelsea Norrel, on the
(05:19):
stakes she felt during the trial.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
When we brought our criminal complaint our first day and
magistrate court, when Buck was appearing on our charges, one
of Jamal Moore's friends came up to me with his
urn of ashes and put my hand on it and said,
you're fighting for my best friend. And from that moment on,
this was just the most important part of my life.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Ed Buck wouldn't go on trial until July twenty twenty one,
but when he did, the government was ready.
Speaker 6 (05:50):
We tried to come out of the gates swinging.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Chelsea Norrel is a federal prosecutor. She was on the
team that tried ed Buck.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
So we tried to make the testimony compelling throughout. And
one of our earliest witnesses was a neighbor of Bucks
who had asked Buck about all of the men cycling
through his apartment who came out looking like they were
in a stupor. And the neighbor testified that Buck said
(06:21):
they were his social work clients and painted himself as
this social worker who was attempting to help the victims
and I think that was a good prism through which
to then see victims come forward and say, far from
getting the help I needed, Buck was creating or amplifying
(06:42):
drug addictions in that apartment by monetizing and incentivizing us
to take more drugs, by dangling another fifty dollars to
inject a bigger dose of methamphetamine.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Part of the delay in Buck going to trial was
the court system essentially had to figure out how we
would do court with the onset of the global pandemic.
Buck's attorneys would argue he was at a greater risk
of COVID and should be returned to his apartment on
Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood on bail a rating trial.
Nana Giamfi, a lawyer working with Letitia Nixon. Jamel Moore's mother,
(07:19):
responded to Buck's attempt to be let out of jail, saying, quote,
when these people say they want him on house arrest,
I don't know if they're paying attention. That's where he
kills people. End quote. Buck was considered an increased flight risk,
and a judge would refuse to send Buck back to
the apartment. Was Jamel and Timothy died.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Judge Schnyder was very by the book. From the very jump,
you knew that she was meaning business.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
That's Jonathan Unger. He's one of the producers of this podcast.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
She knew immediately right when the trial started, from the
jury selection down to the very end, that she was
not going to either cut corners or take any bullshit.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
The no nonsense judge Jonathan is referring to is Christina
and Schneider. She's a senior United States District judge. She
was nominated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in
nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Well, the elephant in the room is Christopher Darden, And
like I feel like, especially maybe this is the kid
from Virginia and me, but knowing that someone of that
profile was defending Buck, I think there was just a
lot of eyeballs on this case.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Christopher Darden. For those who remember, is that Chris Darden.
That Chris Darden had been a prosecutor in the nineties
when oj Simpson was on trial for the murder of
Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Since that landmark trial,
Darden would switch sides and become a highly paid defense lawyer.
He would be joined at the defense table by Ludlow
(08:48):
be Query. We asked to speak to Darden, but he declined.
I did have an extensive conversation with his co counsel,
Ludlow be Query. I had to ask him, given all
the evidence that we've just heard in this podcast, why
would a black lawyer who had been head of the
Black Students Association in law school, why would he agree
(09:09):
to defend that buck let's take a lesson.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Well, it was going to be a challenge. It had
some very intriguing elements to it. I mean, basically the
racial components were intriguing to me, you know, because to me,
as a criminal defense lawyer, I've had a lot of
cases dealing with people distributing and using methamphetamine, and it
(09:36):
didn't seem like something that I couldn't tackle. It seemed
pretty straightforward, at least as the allegations went. I do
like the challenge of federal court, and I found it
fascinating because to me, case wasn't what it was being
blown up to be for political purposes, you know, from
(09:59):
the media's perspect you know, how the public was viewing it.
It was just not what it was being portrayed as
it was just to me, meth distribution case, and unfortunately,
two of the individuals that mister Buck was partying with died.
I didn't see it as, oh, he was doing this
because he hates black men, you know.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
I didn't.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
That's not what I saw in this case, that he
hates black men, so he's trying to kill them, which.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Is what was the public perception.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
So I found that intriguing and I found that a challenge.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You said multiple times that the court of public opinion
believed that had Buck murdered Jimmel Moore and timything Dean
like that was the court of public opinion. Yeah, so
it helped me understand. How do you argue for a
client when you understand that the court of public opinion
things they're wrong.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
You have to ignore it.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
You have to ignore the court of public opinion because
the court of a public opinion is not due process.
The court of public opinion is the very thing that
the Constitution of the United States of America protects the
individual from.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Can you help me understand, then, what was your strategy
to defend mister Buck.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Our expert found that Jammel was suffering from AIDS if
I recall correctly, and Timothy Dean. He had heart disease,
he had advanced heart disease, and he's also intoxicated. He
at a very high blood alcohol level, and I believe
(11:34):
he might have done methamfetmine prior to going to mister
Buck's residence, if I recall. So, those were the factors
that our expert opined were the main causes of these
gentlemen's deaths, not the ingestion, not acute methamphetamine intoxication, and
(11:56):
obviously the government's experts disagree.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I want to step away from the idea to talk
about the defense. That expert opinion was that the main
reason for the death of Jamel was that he was
sick with aids and that Timothy died of a heart
attack as opposed to being injected with a legal amount
of drugs. The visitors area was filled with friends of
the victims and you could hear audible groans when the
(12:24):
defense took that tack. The strategy was essentially to attack
the credibility of the witnesses, men who had already admitted
to doing sex work and taking drugs.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
That difference is not that uncommon.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
That's April Prayer. She's a defense attorney without ties to
the case.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
As despicable as it sounds, is basically, the victim wasn't
worth you caring about. The victim isn't worth this trial.
The victim isn't worth the jurors being concerned about them
no longer being on this planet. It's not that uncommon.
As despicable and awful as it sounds, it's kind of
a form of jury nullification, kind of saying, yeah, if
(13:04):
you did it, so what is that such a bad thing?
It is such a bad thing if you wipe these
low lives off the face of the earth. I don't
think it's a very sophisticated defense, but you don't necessarily
need your defense to be sophisticated to win.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The team of dardening Query didn't appear sophisticated, at least
not in the courtroom. During the trial. The defense seemed disorganized,
to say the least. That didn't keep them, though, from
going hard against the witnesses. The prosecutors, like Chelsea Morrel,
weren't surprised by the defense strategy. They were surprised by
the defense's doggedness, especially on cross examination.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
They cross examined on every aspect of their testimony and
presented false choices to the jury, making it seem like
everyone was there willingly and that none of the conduct
was surreptitious or non consensual, and sort of lost over
(14:06):
all of the evidence that we presented showing that there
were non consensual sexual encounters, that there were non consensual
distributions of drugs, and there were surreptitious distributions of drugs
where Buck would drug someone's drink to give them a
(14:29):
CNS depressant, so like a klonipin or a GHB, to
then reduce their ability to resist injections of methamphetamine. So
they kind of they tried to discredit all of those
accounts and really paint these as consensual encounters, and tried
(14:50):
to paint the victims as wanting their fifteen minutes of fame,
As if anyone wants to be famous for being injected
by ed drugs, it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Seems cynical, to say the least, that Buck, who was
accused of killing two black men, would pick two black lawyers.
Darden and Query were criticized by activists and people on
the side of the victims. A good amount of the
interview was Query and I discussing race and his sensitivity
to claims by activists that he was a pawn in
ed Buck's game, or that he was an Uncle Tom
(15:24):
for defending Buck.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
You know, at some point, as a lawyer, I've got
to look at myself as a lawyer and not just
as a black lawyer, because then I'm being ghetto wised,
you know, as a lawyer, as I am as a
black man. If I'm told I can only take certain
types of cases, I can only represent certain types of
(15:45):
people because I'm black, What does that say about our society?
If I was white, no one would have questioned my integrity,
no one would have tried to cancel me, no one
would have tried to drag me.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
And if I won or lost.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
As a white lawyer, nobody would have had any issue
with me.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
I'm just doing my job.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
But as a black lawyer, there's only certain I can't
take ed Buck because the alleged victims are black. So
as a black lawyer, that's off limits to me. So
that was one of the biggest cases of the year
when it was filed twenty nineteen. It was one of
the biggest trials of the summer of twenty one. Yet me,
(16:30):
as a black lawyer, I should have prevented myself from
representing this criminal defendant because I'm black and because of
the nature of the allegations. But if I'm white, it's okay.
I have a problem with that. I have a problem
with that.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
This is shattering the system. The True Crime podcast that's
about more than crime. We'll hear more from my conversation
with low b Query the lawyer Fred Buck after this break.
(17:14):
I'm a black man, Yes, I understand, yes, that you
have to defend people because you know the criment. I
live in West Sullywood. Yes, no one is like this
is not this is not a show that's on the
side of the police, whatever that means.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
As a gay black man who followed this case, I
was offended by the way that the people who were
in his apartment, the people who testified, the ways in
which they were cross examined. It seemed for me, from
my ears, it seemed like a defense out of a
(17:50):
Law and Order episode from the nineties.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
That is I mean, that is it like we don't.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Understand that there's you know that you can get treated
for a that most black men have. Hearts of these
are high high blood pressure, but they're not also slamming
that nfetomin.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Well, yes, and I understand your point, but obviously we're
not the medical experts. Those were the statements of our expert.
Those were the statements of the doctor who examined the
autopsy reports and the lab reports, and that was his summation,
(18:26):
and that's what he testified. We didn't make that up.
That's what he said, and so of course what our
expert says is what we're going to go off of.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
So that's where that came from. It came from our expert.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
I mean, if you ed Buck was convicted, yes, the
jury did not agree.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
If you just didn't agree that your jury did not
agree exactly, if you had to.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Do it over again, would you have chosen the same strategy?
Speaker 4 (18:55):
You know, I still don't see that there was another strategy,
at least in terms of dealing with.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
The cause of death.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
The whole case was really about cause of death because
the distribution you have video of them doing what appears
to be meth amphetamine. You have you know, officer satisfying
that they found meth amphetamine, they found paraphernalia.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
You know, the distribution charges were really.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Difficult to defend because you had all this evidence that
pretty much spoke to the charges of distribution. What this
case really was about, in a nutshell, was about cause
of death, because the causing death part was really the
most important part of the case in regards to what
mister Buck's exposure was. So that's where the fight was,
(19:46):
and so we had to get a medical expert. We
had to get an expert to examine the reports and
examine the medical history and all the things they needed
to do and give us an appear on well, what do
you think kill these two men? They're really I mean,
there's no other strategy than that, at least in regards
(20:07):
to that part of the case.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
The trial was genuinely emotional. The testimony and the exhibits
were truly disturbing and triggering, not just for the friends
and family of Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean, but for
the lawyers and everyone in the courtroom. One potent part
of the trial was even for this moment, hearing these
men who don't usually have a voice speaking out loud
(20:36):
in a federal court. The testimony of victims captivated the courtroom.
Here's the prosecutor, Chelsea irrelegant when victim dB testified that.
Speaker 6 (20:49):
He was in Buck's apartment overdosing for the second time
after Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean had died. He was
lying in the same spot where he knew the men
before him had perished, and he felt himself slowly slipping
away as well. He talked about hearing his deceased mother
(21:09):
call out for him and say his name, and get
yourself off the floor, get help, get out of there,
or you're going to die, and hearing that account and
knowing that that was the jolt that saved his life.
(21:30):
To this day, it gives me chills because dB saved
himself in that moment.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Jonathan Unger, one of our producers, says it was hearing
the way the witnesses describe what they went through in
ed Buck's apartment that left the lasting impact. He describes
the damning details that the court heard from Cody Hoffman,
one of the witnesses who testified against that book.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Cody Hoffman, the evidence that was brought up was not
only correspondence that he had had with a Buck way
back in twenty eighteen and beyond, but also a particular
incident where Cody went into detail about how Ed would
put gas masks on Cody and when we talk about
gas masks, these are masks that you would find really
(22:20):
your rituals. I mean, these were devilish type masks, red
kind of what you would find at carnivals, but at
the same time, in the very dark, again evil way.
He went into detail about how it would take a
long tube blowing meth smoke down it with one end
(22:42):
of the tube and Cody's underwear, and then on the
other end of the tube, Ed was smoking the math
and essentially shotgunning it into Cody's mouth. He would talk
about the gas masks again, the sexual devices that Ed
would use, but also the gates of hell. That's how
he referred AT's place, particularly the doorway into ed Buck's apartment.
(23:03):
And so as these were going on, as you could
tell that Cody had a lot of details to his story.
When Dardan was cross examining him, he just immediately went
into how he was in escort and was trying to
nullify anything that Cody had said.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Donata says, listening to the cross examination of witnesses, he
kind of felt like he wasn't witnessing a scene from
twenty twenty one, but from a whole other century.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
It felt like an old eighties or nineties episode of
a after school special where AIDS and HIV were brought
up to the point where it sounded like AIDS was
a death sentence, which I don't know about you, but
within the queer community, I'm pretty sure we all know
that it's not anymore. And it was pretty clear from
(23:52):
the jump that Darden and Ludlow were hanging their entire
argument on the fact that anyone with AIDS or HIV
you could tell that they were sick and.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
This is why they died. How did it make you
feel sick?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
To my stomach? And that is the lightest way I
could put it. I'm shaking right now even thinking about it,
because it felt like we were going back three decades
within that trial, and ironically enough, a trial that had
a gay man who was doing this to other men
(24:27):
as well, And so it just I don't really, I
don't really know how to like fully put in towards
how it felt, because you know, I have friends who
not only have struggled with HIV and AIDS but also
are thriving. Now it's so irresponsible.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
How didn't land in the room?
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Oh, it didn't land. It didn't land One bit if anything,
everyone would groan every single time they would bring it up,
because they brought it up every single day of the trial.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I mean in a case about injecting firstibly injecting people
with math and fetamain aids came up every day.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
Every HIV, every day.
Speaker 6 (25:08):
Not convicting was not in my.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Frame of mind, again, Chelsea Norrell from the US Attorney's Office.
Speaker 6 (25:17):
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 kept me up 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,
(25:39):
and Joanne Campbell and Joyce Jackson, two of Timothy Dean's sisters,
who all of whom supported me tremendously through this case.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
In total, the trial lasted nine days. The jury was
called to the courthouse at nine thirty am on Tuesday,
July twenty seventh, twenty twenty one. After nine days of
hearing evidence, it was time for the jury to decide.
The defense had objected to calling the witnesses. The people
who'd been in ed Buck's apartment, has quote a small
(26:10):
sample of victims, the implication being there were a lot
more of victims. The judge instructed the jury to look
at the evidence and the testimony of the witnesses, not
the statements or characterizations of the lawyers, and the jurors
were sent to deliberate. On the day of the verdict,
I joined Jonathan at the courthouse. I remember being in
(26:33):
the hallway as the guards moved ed Buck out of
the courtroom. He was above us in this brightly lit atrium,
and there, pale, stooped over and shuffling was ed Buck.
We stood and stared for a moment, and he stared back,
absolutely blank look on his face, no acknowledgment, just to stare.
(26:57):
As he moved off. We decided to go to the
cafeteria to hang out and have some food. Johnathan, my producer,
and I were having lunch in the grand courtyard of
the Federal Building when at one fifty in the afternoon,
word came back that there was a verdict. The entire cafeteria,
which was filled with spectators, was collectively shocked. It had
(27:20):
happened so very quickly, and as we made our way
to the viewing area. Ed Buck sat alone in the
courtroom waiting to hear his fate. The deliberation had been
lightning quick, and if you include lunch, the jury only
deliberated for less than four hours. From the earliest days
after Jamel Moore died, you could feel the rage at
protests and victims forums. When Timothy Dean was found dead,
(27:44):
that rage only amplified. It didn't really subside even when
ed Buck was jailed after seven hundred and eighty two days.
The rage was present in all nine days of the trial.
On July twenty seventh, exactly four years since the death
of Jamelle Moore, has witnesses, lawyers, advocates, friends and family,
(28:05):
and journalists and Jonathan and I piled into elevators. The
rage was still very tangible, and as we filled the
visitors area, we could feel something very, very unusual. Finally,
there was a feeling of hope. This is shattering the System.
(28:37):
On the next episode, the verdict and the fallout of
the case against that book and what we can learn
about how the media covers cases with black victims. Shattering
(29:27):
the System is a production of Macro Studios and iHeart Podcasts.
I'm your Host Scenario Glinton follow me at s O
N A RI I one on Instagram. Our series executive
producers are Charles King, Asha Corpus, Win Royal Reccio, Jonathan Unger,
Lindsay Hoffman and Scenari Glinton. That's Me. Our show is
(29:49):
co written and produced by Ralph Cooper the Third. Erica
Rodriguez is our associate producer. Dana Conway is our archival producer.
Chris Man is our audio engineer. Here sound design and
music provided by Chris Mann with pod Shaper special thanks
to Karen Grigsby, Bates Portia, Amigas Robertson and Lisa Pollack.
(30:10):
We'll be back next week with another episode of Shattering
the System. I'm Snari and Glaton. Thanks for listening.
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