June 12, 2025 • 71 mins
Review of Andor, season two, episodes Messenger, Who Are You, and Welcome to the Rebellion.
No part of this recording should be considered legal advice.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello everyone, my name is Joshua Gilliland, one of
the founding attorneys of theLegal Geeks.
We are here to discuss thethird arc in Andor, season 2.
With me on this adventure isStephen Tollefield and retired
New York judge Matthew Sciarino.
Your Honor, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Good, Good evening.
Glad you're feeling better.
Thank you me too.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Thanks for taking lead last week.
How are you doing tonight?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
My gosh.
It was my pleasure and gladyou're feeling better and I'm
doing great thanks.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Good, good.
Well, let's dive into whatcontinues to be this amazing
season of Andor.
Excellent arc, so manywonderful issues in this.
So we're two years away fromthe Battle of Yavin.
Episode seven is entitled theMessenger and your Honor.
(00:57):
You identified a area, a topicthat Stephen and I did not know
because we're Californians.
Can you tell us aboutunlicensed fortune tellers?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Sure, cassian is having some discussions with
what we guess is a low forceuser who is using her abilities
to help wounded members of theRebel Alliance, and she proceeds
to kind of take a reading forhim and give him his fortune.
(01:33):
And his fortune is that he is amessenger and, as we all know
from Rogue One, her predictiondoes in fact come quite true.
That being said, in as much asthe force does not seem to exist
in our present day, in ourpresent time, in our galaxy, new
(01:58):
York does make it illegal tofortune tell.
Under penal law, section 165.35,a person is guilty of fortune
telling when for a fee orcompensation.
And here she wasn't charging afee, so she technically would
not have been guilty ofviolating this statute.
But if you charge a fee forfortune telling which he or she
(02:22):
directly or indirectly solicitsor receives and claims or
pretends to tell fortunes orholds himself out as being able,
by claim or pretended use ofoccult powers, to answer
questions or give advice onpersonal matters or to exercise
etc.
And I believe this kind of cameout of Howard Houdini and he
(02:51):
was very much against.
During his time period therewas a lot of occult and fortune
telling and he kind ofinstigated some of these laws
and I think that this came outof part of Houdini's
instigations.
And it's a class B, as in boymisdemeanor, which means it
(03:14):
would be punishable up to threemonths in jail in New York.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That awakens within me historical podcast and books.
I've seen about the spiritualismthat took place in the late
19th century, especially afterthe American Civil War, that
everybody had at least onefamily member or friend who was
(03:42):
killed, at least one familymember or friend who was killed,
and there was this huge pushfor things like spirit
photography something that MaryTodd Lincoln did with like
here's a picture of my deadhusband next to me type of
services that were being offeredand you had a bunch of famous
(04:06):
some would say fraudsters, somewould say that they were, you
know, actually had powers tocontact the great beyond, of
going out and giving peoplereadings and putting on seances
or, you know, speaking with avoice from the other side, and
they were actually putting on ashow.
(04:29):
I remember those cases beingmore Midwest, new York, east
Coast, as opposed to California,where again in California we
have the new agey.
I'm talking to my crystal crowdbecause that's how we are with
this hang loose, welcomeeverybody, because we're
Californians, that's how we roll.
(04:50):
We don't have that history thatthe East Coast had and I think
that's a large part becauseCalifornia was excluded from the
Union draft during the AmericanCivil War.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
And there is an exception to it, where, if
you're doing it solely for thepurpose of a show or an
exhibition, or for entertainmentor amusement, then that would
not be illegal under thisstatute.
So if you're a magician, orwhere it's part of your act, or
(05:24):
a mentalist, you would not besubject to this statute.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
That seems like such a fine line, but I can't believe
that Odomay Brown from Ghostwould have been a criminal under
this statute.
I'm crushed.
How dare you slander Odomay inthis way?
You're in danger.
Girl, Get out of this state.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Well played, well played.
Yeah, there's a.
Houdini was not cool with thoseguys so and went out to debunk
them left and right.
So, ok, that's fascinating andalso a deep dive in, in fact I
like history.
So let's talk about stripmining, gorman.
(06:10):
So which one of you brought upthis topic of strip mining?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
as a potential item for discussion.
In a lot of states that warstrip mine, like Pennsylvania
for their coal, variousenvironmental groups have
succeeded in passing federalregulations which does put heavy
burdens on any kind of stripmining and you have to do
(06:44):
certainly all kinds ofenvironmental studies etc in it
and, and for the most part atleast in our country.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
There there does not seem to be the culture of strip
mining anymore in some thirdworld, moral of Gorman being
(07:12):
potentially made uninhabitableby this imperial plan his
background, his home world waskind of completely rendered
virtually uninhabitable byimperial strip mining, which is
kind of an interesting echolater on in the season two of
the season of the first seasonwhich brings up the importance
(07:36):
of state secrets and the mantrathe mantra that loose lips sink
ships.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
We have Deidre telling Cyril to go home and a
potentially awkward kiss betweenthe two of them, but it raises
the specter of the issue.
Did she violate any imperiallaw?
Because her boss said don'ttell Cyril, and she doesn't
(08:04):
outright tell him, but she tellshim to go home and we're going
to be rewarded.
Did she break protocol or anyyou know imperial ordinances at
play?
And Judge Cherino, you've donemilitary law.
What are your thoughts on thisissue?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I think she threaded the needle in enough of a manner
that arguably, you know, shewas just saying listen, pack, be
ready, and didn't give anygreater details.
Whether Cyril, you know, wouldhave taken that to mean the
(08:48):
mission is wrapping up orsomething major is going to
happen, which is probably likely, you know.
So, between them it wasprobably too much of a warning
for the Imperials to really like, but technically I don't know
if they would have noticed it.
Like, but technically I don'tknow if they would have noticed
it.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Good analysis.
Yeah, it's like, is shespilling the beans too early
here?
Which then brings us to do ourheroes go AWOL when they decide
to go to Gorman on anassassination mission that
(09:28):
William Wilman shows up on.
Yavin doesn't check in, doesn'ttell Cassian where he's been,
but he says like hey, let's,this is Deidre, let's go kill
her because she's out in theopen on Gorman and she's the one
who destroyed Ferrix.
She's the one.
Let's go kill her because she'sout in the open on Gorman and
she's the one who destroyedFerex.
She's the one who's caused allof our problems.
(09:49):
She's a clear and presentdanger.
Let's go kill her.
First off, that's a conspiracywhen you conspire with someone
to go kill someone.
Two, this is completelyoff-book, so there's no.
Like the rebels actually have acommand structure now, so
they're ignoring that commandstructure in order for them to
(10:10):
decide to go murder someone.
Is this them going AWOL?
Because they don't have aflight plan?
Like they don't have approval,they're taking a U-Wing out for
a spin to go kill somebody.
Your Honor, your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, at this point the Rebel Alliance has become a
military organization with amilitary structure.
It has uniforms, so it wouldqualify under all of the various
things that make you into amilitary organization and as
such there's a chain of commandand they were violating the
chain of command by followingLutheran's dictates, as opposed
(10:54):
to the rebel structure.
And they clearly take a U-Wingwithout any authorization to
take it and go on this missionwhich leads to the next episode.
So I don't think there's anydefense, militarily wise, for
(11:15):
them to have done what they didso that they would have been
subject to discipline underwhatever the Rebel Alliance uses
as their uniform code ofmilitary justice.
They certainly would have beensubject to some kind of
discipline loss of rank,expulsion, dishonorable
(11:37):
discharge, various things thatthe military could have done.
And this is a time of war, sothose penalties can be quite
severe depending on what thecode of military justice for the
rebels would have been at thatparticular time.
But yeah they clearly wereleaving without any permission
(11:58):
to go on an unauthorized mission, so they would be subject to
discipline.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I was wondering if like because it's an alliance
would be subject to discipline.
I was wondering if, likebecause it's an alliance, I was
thinking whether there was anysort of wiggle room for people
to kind of still be permitted todo kind of missions that were
specific to their kind ofsegment of that coalition.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, I mean you can make an argument that Lutheran
Soar and the other variouschiefs of this alliance, you
know, all kind of had theirsphere of influence and their
own chain of command.
But I think the fact that theywere using the property of the
main rebel alliance and at thatpoint I think we're operating
(12:44):
under their chain of command, Ithink that they're stuck.
But yeah, you know, if I'm thedefense lawyer for at the court
martial proceeding, my argumentis going to be as Lutheran's,
another general, and Lutherangave me this order and that
would absolutely be my defenseto, to this, the, the stealing
of the u-wing.
You're going to lose and anyway you slice it, but, um, but,
(13:08):
but yeah, that would be mydefense, that he's as big a
chief as as in monmouth, asmonmouth there is.
Just, you know, he's one of the, the, the five families, so to
speak I wonder is all theequipment from monmouth's like?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
did she bankroll this ?
Or is this from other sourcesthat have been working together?
I mean, that's a level ofgranularity that we probably
won't see in the storytelling Imean you had a lot of money
coming from Alderaan and theQueen.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
She funneled an enormous amount of money to the
rebel alliance and you also hadyeah, clearly you had the
successful raid in the firstseason that stole a large amount
of imperial credits.
That was the foundation for alot of what the rebels had and,
yes, I think all of the variousfactions would have donated.
(14:03):
But the bulk of the money didcome from Mon Motha's foundation
and from Alderaan.
From what I've been able togather from other sources and
stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, and it seems like the members of the Alliance
too had kind of varying degreesof their own equipment, because
Maya Pei's people seem to bepretty dependent on other
financial support.
But um, but saw guerrera, umkind of on the other end of the
spectrum, had like x-wings andlots of, lots of equipment.
So, um, I wonder how much isjust sort of contributed to the
(14:36):
main goal from the from themembers of the alliance too.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
It's interesting and like how are they making money?
Because there's, you have theknuckleheads that kidnapped
Patty Hearst, that wanted to be,you know, a serious liberation
army, and like they had armament, but they were still
knuckleheads.
Like there was no secret armythat they were raising.
(15:00):
There was, you know, fiveknuckleheads.
Like there was no secret armythat they were raising.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
It was, you know, five knuckleheads which which is
kind of in the beginning ofthis series, the, the guys that
had cassian prisoner.
You know you could get no moreknuckleheads than those guys,
but you know clearly thatdeveloped into something and if
I remember correctly, there wasa prequel novel to rogue, one
which dealt with soar and andand and, uh.
(15:28):
I now I forget her name um, wasit a catalyst?
Yeah, catalyst, and, and itdealt with, you know, some of
the jobs that sword did, and andhe, you know he, he did a lot
of jobs in order to basicallytheft, uh, in order to fund his
end of the, the rebel alliance.
So he was doing jobs, as were,I'm sure, a lot of other ones of
(15:50):
stealing payrolls, uh, preciousmetals, etc.
Um, in order to uh in in the hansolo movie, there's, there's,
there's the coaxium right, thecoaxium, the being stole by the,
the nest and, and you know,it's being sold to help fund the
Rebel Alliance.
So I think you had a lot ofthat kind of Robin Hood
(16:10):
mentality.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
So, yeah, they, they take a U-Wing for a spin.
So there's, there's just no wayaround that.
Let's pivot to who Are you?
Episode 8.
And so we have the issue ofthere's assassination and,
because this is the GormanMassacre and it's again, we have
(16:35):
passionate young people who aregoing to get everybody killed.
Now Luthans write that it's afire that will burn brightly.
You can say that they wereexpendable to the point of being
able to unite a rebellion, butthey were also used for that
process in order to incite arebellion against the Empire.
(17:00):
I'm not saying that one's abetter situation than the other,
because the Empire was going towipe them out regardless, but
passive resistance would havebeen a better play as opposed to
let's all go into the fishbarrel and wait to die, which is
(17:21):
what they did here.
So Cassian goes to assassinatedeidre who wants to talk about
that, because this is this ismurder like he's planning to
kill her yeah, this is verypremeditated.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
he's um, definitely, um, definitely got the tools.
He's got the tools, he's gotthe cover story, he's got the
opportunity and this is apolitically motivated or
militarily motivated attemptedmurder is every time he kind of
(18:06):
sees her, she's turning aroundand walking away.
Um, so, absent those kind oftiming errors, he certainly
would have, um, I think, takenthe shot.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
you seem to be really into it, so which, no, there's
more to unpack on whether or notI know that if deidre had been
killed, would that have actuallybeen a good thing, uh, or would
that have been harmful for thefuture?
So, but he's not able to killher.
(18:31):
But we have one of the issuesthat I saw with the right to
assemble versus the right tokeep order.
So our First Amendment hasseveral provisions to it five,
and one of them is for peacefulassembly.
You have the right to protest,which means there can be
(18:51):
limitations, like time placemanner, whether or not you could
be using speakers, which againgoes to time place manner.
You can't just start blockingexits, blocking the freeways
frowned upon, it tends to upsetpeople.
But like having a parade orpicketing, you know you can
march on the sidewalks.
(19:11):
There's all kinds of rules thatcome into play with you have
the right to peacefully assemble.
You have a right to hang outwith the groups that you want to
hang out with.
Deciding to eradicate saidgroup is a problem.
But also it goes to the issueof like you can't have the mob
(19:32):
shut down the freeway, like.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So again, there are limits on this and your Honor
care to address the since you'vedealt with some of these issues
your thought please, and Ithink we all have to some extent
.
Yeah, From the various shuttingdowns of freeways In New York,
(19:57):
we would get the Brooklyn Bridgefrequently shut down by various
groups.
They would then be given anopportunity to disperse and if
they did not disperse, then thepolice would begin to arrest to
get the traffic moving again.
As a general rule in New York,if you were able to get a permit
(20:18):
, you were allowed to havevarious parades, even if they
did shut down traffic, but youknow they would be limited in
their scope and where you wereallowed to go traffic, but you
know they would be limited intheir scope and where you were
allowed to go.
And it would also be done sothat there wasn't too many
(20:38):
conflicting groups and parades,because one of the real
dangerous things that can happenis if you have two groups that
are very much against each otherand having their confrontation
in the same space, that couldend up being a very bad
situation.
So there are really goodreasons why there are reasonable
(21:00):
restrictions put on publicdemonstrations that the public
clearly has the right to do, butit also can't impede on
everyone else's rights to goabout their regular day.
So it is a very hard balance.
(21:24):
The Empire clearly was notinterested in the protection of
the people that weredemonstrating.
They were more interested inkind of riling them up so that
they would be able to put themdown, and I know some people say
(21:47):
that that, you know, is thesame of any police department in
every city.
I personally, you know, I wasinvolved with a lot of the
Occupy Wall Street matters and Isaw hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of hours of videotapesof various demonstrations and I
(22:08):
saw cops that were very, veryreasonable in their attempts to
address the situation and I alsosaw police officers pick up
people and body slam them to theground in very violent manners
and you know.
So you certainly have good cop,bad cop, and overwhelmingly I
(22:31):
think the police in New York wastrying to be reasonable, but
there were certain members ofthat force that were quite
unreasonable in the videos thatI saw.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I almost I narrowly escaped arrest, not at the
Occupy Wall Street protest, butwhen I this is back in the day
there was a big Matthew Sheparddemonstration that turned into
that.
We were attending kind of ademonstration near Central Park
and then it got too big andpeople started spilling out into
the streets and that's whensort of the police officers
(23:07):
started moving in to arrestpeople and then it turned into a
march and we were marchingthrough the city, um.
But that um, that was a um in asituation where it's sort of um,
an event had kind of grewbeyond its um, uh, sort of
pre-planned boundaries, um, andgot to a place where the police
(23:27):
officers were provoked into sortof making arrests.
But it struck me that in thisGorman situation that they're
kind of in a classic town square, like they're in the place
where the First Amendment kindof has its greatest power in
protecting people's right toassemble, because they're at a
monument, they're there toaddress, to air grievances
(23:51):
against the government that issituated right there.
You know, at the same timethere's countervailing, as you
said, judge the balance ofstriking security when there's
government entities involved.
But that's where peoplecommonly assemble to address
their grievances.
It wouldn't be effective tokind of cordon off people into
very remote areas when they'retrying to address the government
(24:13):
.
So yeah, so I think it was areally interesting way of
portraying kind of nonviolentprotest, although the people in
the front had kind of broughtweapons to the event, which is
not great, but but most of thepeople there were just kind of
singing and and kind of chantingand doing kind of very core
protected First Amendmentactivities, which is really
interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
And you do find that there are.
You know whether they'reprofessional instigators or just
very zealous instigators, butthere was a lot of times a small
core that then led the group tooverreach what would have been
(24:56):
considered a normaldemonstration, like in New York.
It's Foley Square it's rightoutside a couple of the main
courthouses in Manhattan is kindof the public square for
demonstrations and a lot of themstart there and then they'll go
off and march to variouslocations at various times and
(25:16):
for the most part, as long asthey stayed on the sidewalk and
they kind of went where therewas enough of a police presence
that everyone felt comfortable,there would never be any real
problems.
When it then started to impedetraffic or impede in other ways,
(25:39):
or if there was any violence ofany nature where if a police
officer was hit with a rock orsomething along those lines and
clearly here you know much likethe Boston Massacre a shot rings
out and then it's all bets areoff.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, and you know the past seven years we've seen
some horrific and insane.
You know events go out ofcontrol quickly, whether it's
the police being overzealous outof the gate or an event that
escalates.
And again over the last 25years, I did a continuing legal
(26:25):
education event in San Franciscoin 2002, 2003, before the Gulf
War II kicked off, and there wasa protest in San Francisco that
cut off access to all thefreeways.
So the event ended and I had noway to get home.
It took like five hours to getout of san francisco to get home
(26:51):
.
That annoyed me.
It's just, I'm all for yourright to peacefully assemble,
but when you start cutting offit's like access that's, that's
a problem.
Um, how you lose the room.
So, yes, but this is, but thatdoesn't mean open fire on the
(27:14):
protesters, which is what theempire does, and they shoot one
of their own guys to kick offthe Boston Massacre type melee
that follows, where people justget slaughtered, and they use
that, as it looks pretextual, toroute the city.
And how many other you know?
(27:37):
Cities, provinces within gormanget overrun because of that.
Is this a reason to ethnicallycleanse an entire planet that
seems to be of eight capitalcities with 800,000 people in it
, single economy planet.
So, uh, I did a tiktok aboutthis.
(27:58):
Is, uh, is deidre a war criminal?
Did she commit a crime againsthumanity?
I think the answer is yes,because she understood the
intent was to remove the gorefrom Gorman, which you have to
have intent.
She knew of the plan, she waspart of making the plan.
(28:20):
She's on comms with her bosswhen she tells the shock trooper
captain to proceed.
She looks shaken when she doesso, which I think is she shows
an understanding of what's beingasked of her to do.
So she's fully aware of whatshe's doing is not okay.
(28:46):
I think what makes Deidre asympathetic and compelling
character is she's one of thoseImperials that wanted stability
and order.
You know, grew up in a time ofuncertainty and now things the
economy's good, everything'sokay and you know I don't want
terrorists blowing up, you knowships.
(29:07):
I don't want terrorists blowingup, you know ships.
I don't want people gettingshot at.
So the idea of ethnicallycleansing an entire population
clearly bothers her and she'saware of what she's doing when
she gives that order, which doesnothing to negate the intent.
It only makes it worse becauseit shows, yeah, she's following
(29:28):
orders, but she's giving anorder.
Even though she's the middlemanin this process, she's just as
culpable for ordering a crimeagainst humanity and which means
she'd be a great mock trial inthe future because we could
actually since she, we think,survives the end of shaku,
(29:51):
that's somebody that we could doa mock trial about her yes, she
would be picked up at somepoint from that facility, so, uh
, could be a great mock trial.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I you know one of the one of the things that came to
my mind when she gave that orderbecause the the fact that you
know she had to give that finalorder to, to, to, to the, the
shock trooper, to basically goout and and start wiping out the
the gorman.
I got um, I thought back to um,the, the animated series
(30:24):
dealing with the, uh, the kimono, the, the kimono, the clone
planet, um, you know, and andthe admiral who gave the order
to basically open fire, and theyleveled that planet and all its
, its its occupants, to the sea.
and then, when it blew up in theemperor's face, they had this
(30:48):
scapegoat of the admiral who didthat order.
So you know, to me this was theempire creating a scapegoat if
it were to need it at a laterdate, by making sure that
someone gave that order to thetroops she.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So the captain was kaida.
Uh was the shock troopercaptain who was like, this was
his specialty, that uh, uh, likehe could say I'm following
orders, but he knew what theheck he was doing.
And for those keeping score,crime against humanity is one of
the acts listed when committedas part of a widespread or
systematic attack directedagainst any civilian population,
(31:31):
with knowledge of the attackmurder, extermination,
enslavement, deportation,persecution on political, racial
, national, ethnic, cultural,religious or gender lines, and
knowledge is required.
She knew, she knew, knew therewas absolute knowledge there.
And, uh, this is exterminationat worst, you know, at best it's
(31:59):
uh deportation like she.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
She knows what she's doing in in giving this order
yeah, and I also wonder I'm notsure that she feels remorse for
giving the order too because Isort of read her sort of
reaction to the unfoldingsituation on Gorman as kind of a
PTSD sort of reaction afterbeing injured on Ferrix and sort
(32:24):
of her feeling like that sortof explosive amount of violence
was.
She was kind of feeling unsafe,um, and unworried about her
saving her own skin because shewas, she gave, she gave that
order to cyril to be ready toget out of there and I, I
wondered it, I I sort of readthat as her being kind of more
(32:45):
self-preservation than kind offeeling bad about hurting people
.
I don't know, maybe I think Idon't give her enough credit,
maybe, but if she's evil as faras I'm concerned well, she is
evil, I mean she's finetorturing someone.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Oh yeah, I mean like, but again, I think that's
different than it's one thing togo'm going to go do an enhanced
interrogation that's going toviolate civil rights, to let's
go wipe these people out Likethat.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
That that turns the dial up significantly it does,
but it comes from the same sortof dehumanization, of sort of
the enemy, I think.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Agreed.
I mean, like you open the doorwhen you realize, look at what
you did and look at where youare now, like is this the person
you want to be?
Because it's one thing to go.
I don't want the atomic bomb,the dirty bomb, going off.
So therefore I can convincemyself it's okay to break this
(33:46):
guy's arm to get that intel tostop this terrorist plot that we
think is going to happen.
You can lie to yourself aboutthat.
It's then another to go let'suse chemical weapons on the city
and wipe them out.
That's a different escalationand it's one thing to go.
(34:07):
Hey, I thought I was savingpeople and now we're
exterminating them.
And I think she crosses theline into oh hell, I'm
exterminating a group of people,when I thought I was the good
guy trying to stop bad thingsfrom happening.
So I I think, uh, it's weirdthat I'm defending the Imperial,
(34:28):
because normally they'reincompetent boobs that can't
shoot straight and our heroesbeat them easily.
She's highly effective.
Like it's a very different badguy because you actually are
interested in her.
(34:49):
And Cyril, I don't normallythink, god, I hope those kids
are okay and they make it work.
These are the bad guys that wehope they have a good
relationship.
That's weird.
That's how effective TonyGilroy is in writing them of
going.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I hope those crazy kids make it happen I do have
her in my evil hall of fameshelf over there so did.
You is back behind me I do toolike I have a cassian as well.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
But, uh, I would like a pentagas, you know, because
what did?
Again, effective bad guys?
Because the 70, we didn't seethat, you know.
I mean, we get it with beers,but you know, normally it's
Vader force choking an admiralto death.
I digress there, but it raisessome other questions as we look
(35:56):
at this and getting to well, weget some domestic violence.
This is probably one of thesecond most uncomfortable scenes
that we have, because it's onething for Cyril to go confront
Deidre with what have you done?
I get that.
That's another thing.
He takes her by the throat.
This is a level of domesticviolence that is super
uncomfortable to watch.
(36:16):
It's the second instance ofdomestic violent or assault on a
woman that we see.
And, uh, your honor, uh, I havea feeling you, you put this
analysis down, so would wouldyou like to explain this more?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
bit of a situation which was falling through the
cracks, dealing with choking,like was done in this case by
Cyril to Deborah, where theputting of, you know, the hands
around the neck and pressingdoesn't always leave a permanent
injury.
So you were getting acquittalsor dismissals, even on assaults,
(37:15):
because there was no seriousphysical injury or physical
injury of a permanent naturewith these chokes.
So New York and I would imagineother states created a statute.
In New York it's Penal Law,section 121.11, criminal
(37:36):
obstruction of breathing orblood circulation, where you're
guilty if you, with intent toimpede the normal breathing or
circulation of the blood ofanother person, you apply
pressure on the throat or neckor if you block the nose or
mouth of such person.
And there are different degrees.
(37:58):
This one is the basic one,which is an amyosdemeanor.
If you cause greater injury toa person, it does rise to the
felony level.
I don't think that was the casein, in, in Sarah and and and
Deidre Cause I think you justhad this.
You know this choke and clearlythat you know you saw her
almost lose consciousness andgenerally, when, when, when the
(38:20):
the victim is on the stand, thatis what she would be testifying
to.
You know he put his, his, his,his, the pressure to my neck and
I blacked out for, you know, afew seconds and that's enough to
to to have someone convicted ofthis thing.
So I wanted to highlight thisbecause it really is a common
situation in domestic violencesituations and this is the way
(38:47):
New York addressed it by thisstatute which is probably only
about a dozen years old.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
So interesting that it's so specific to address that
.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
That's really interesting, yeah, and it's
because there were so many ofthose cases that just didn't
make the threshold of assaultbut clearly was a physical harm
to another individual, and thelegislature, as part of a host
of domestic violence initiatives, passed this statute and some
(39:18):
other statutes.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
It's terrifying that it had to be made a law that
people would be so callous about.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, as far as I know, kind of
California just sort ofaddresses it just as a regular
battery, although there's thereare statutes, specifically
there's.
It's more of a like apunishment thing, it's like the
penalties where it comes in whenit's someone that you're in a
(39:50):
domestic relationship with thatyou're in a domestic
relationship with.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Well, all that said, let's talk.
And police officers in domesticviolence units started taking
pictures at the scene of becausea lot of times you'd have those
bruises that would go away in aday or two.
So they started taking pictureswhen they would arrive at a
(40:19):
domestic violence incident ofyou know.
A lot of times it's literallyalmost fingerprints around the
neck or black and blues, becausein a day or two those injuries
kind of go away day or two,those, those injuries kind of go
(40:43):
away.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, well, cool.
My mother testified in a dvcase.
That was in the late 80s andshe didn't talk about it, but
after she passed I found thereport that she did and it was
something that she held on to.
I was impressed with howdetailed the notes that she had.
And it was, and she was aparamedic and so responding to a
(41:07):
call, the victim didn't want topress charges and my mother
wasn't, as a paramedic didn'twant the paramedic, other
paramedics and police to leaveout of fear for the safety of
the victim.
Something had to have happenedwhere the guy ended up getting
(41:38):
charged because my mother endedup testifying um, and thus we
did have the refresherrecollection, I guess, from
those records being saved.
All of that's horrible, uh, andwe have laws to in place to
protect people, we.
So there's In this riot thathappens in Murderfest.
(42:02):
Cyril finally catches up withCassian and they have a huge
fight and at one point Cassian'son the ground.
Cyril has a blaster aimed atCassian.
Cassian asks who are you?
Cyril lowers the blaster and itlooks like he's about to say
(42:26):
something, so the weapon's nolonger pointed.
The body language changes andthen Cyril gets shot in the back
of the head.
This is a very interestingdefensive others case, Because
if the blaster was still pointedat Cassian no doubt that it's
(42:46):
defensive others Because there'sa threat to Cassian's life it
would be justified for Cassianto shoot Cyril at that point in
time.
I think this is a very closequestion on whether or not it
was proper for the Burgermeisterto shoot Cassian in the back of
(43:09):
the head.
Was this a revenge killing orwas this actual defense of
others?
I lean a little bit moretowards revenge killing because
Cyril might've been turning hebecause of what was happening in
that riot.
Did either of you have areaction to that and whether or
(43:30):
not one, this is legitimatedefense of others.
And two, what was Cyr's intent?
I mean, steven, why don't yougo first?
Speaker 3 (43:38):
yeah, I think you're right, it's kind of murky, um,
but I think he um it's.
It seems like if you werewalking into a situation where
there's weapons and there's alot of violence happening and
you know that one person isgetting attacked or has recently
been attacked by someone, Ithink you you probably have a
pretty good argument that youcould anticipate that that other
(43:59):
person is about to affectimmediate harm on the other
person, even if their weapon hasbeen lowered momentarily, you
know.
On the other hand, as you said,it could be an indication that
there's some cooling offhappening and maybe that level
of violence is not warranted.
But at the same time, I'mtrying to remember how much did.
Did the gorman peopleunderstand that that cyril at
(44:24):
that point had been a doubleagent?
Did they realize that he was,that he had been?
Speaker 1 (44:29):
no, but the, the, the leader you know, was the one
who confronted him and said whatkind of you know being are you?
Yeah, yeah, so you know, the,again the mayor bergermeister is
putting a huge amount of blameon cyril yeah so might not be
thinking he's a double agent,but he's blaming cyril for
(44:49):
everything that happened.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Your.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Honor it's a very convenient excuse, for sure yeah
.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I think, first of all , that in the top five moments
of this series was when Cassiansays who the hell are you?
Basically, that was such abrilliant moment, I think, in
the show because Cyril reallyhas devoted his entire life
towards Cassian and Cassianbasically to say like who are
(45:22):
you just was brilliant.
I think anyone walking on thatscene kind of would have thought
that they were justified toprotect Cassian in what was
clearly a fight that, althoughat that point in time might have
ended, was one where Cassian'slife was in danger.
(45:45):
But you know, clearly he shotfrom behind.
Clearly, as you said, the gunwas being lowered behind.
Clearly, as you said, the gunwas being lowered.
You know so it would be a toughcall and you know he would have
(46:09):
to prove he was justified.
That would be also a very toughburden to do, you know so it's
one of those things.
You know, it's one of thesecases that under that fact
situation that might have to goto trial, because it's like one
of those things that there's.
You know you need those judgesof the facts, those peers, those
jurors to make that final call.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yeah, what was in his heart?
Did he reasonably believe thatCassian's life was in danger, or
did he take the shot at the guywho he's blaming caused all of
this?
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Yeah, probably be, but but a good defense lawyer
would would certainly do his orher darndest to make.
Make it into scenario A.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, because you don't want the you know like
he'll have to testify, but youdon't want the witness doing
like he'll have to testify, butyou don't want the witness doing
the you know a time to kill ofyeah, I did it and I hope he
burns in hell, like you don'twant that to happen on the stand
.
Uh, just just no.
Uh.
A final note we have propaganda.
(47:09):
So, uh, deidre highlighted thatpropaganda only gets you so far
.
It gets you across the finishline after all of this, because
it shows the pretext of you havepeople just buying into it's
Gorman's fault that all theseimperial heroes have died
(47:34):
because of these nasty gormen,and uh, uh, so yeah, we, we just
it's propaganda at its finestand another aspect of just
brilliant writing.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
You know the the the person who I dislike the most on
this show, I think Cyril'smother.
You really felt for her inthose scenes where she was being
fed this imperial propagandaabout the imperial martyrs of
Gorman, of which her son is nowone of the imperial martyrs of
(48:08):
Gorman, and when you saw thetears it was very, very well
done.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Oh, this is Emmy worthy, like there are multiple
moments here that are Emmyworthy throughout the season.
And you know, there's the jokethat Andor ruins Star Wars
because it's good.
It's good Like this is New, newbar, meet this.
So we get to welcome to therebellion which is the aftermath
(48:41):
, and a bunch of us uh issuesdid some issue spotting here.
So, your honor, do you want totake the listening devices in
Senate offices?
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, there was imperial listening devices.
Odds are in as much as it wasthe government doing this.
They would have had some kindof process to get that listening
device inserted.
So they would have probably hadto have gone to an imperial
judge to get a warrant Probablynot a difficult thing in the
(49:14):
empire.
So that was probably.
And she was engaging, as far asthe empire is concerned, in
treasonous behavior and breakingthe laws of the empire.
So from the empire'sperspective they would be
justified to put a listeningdevice in her office and in her
car and anywhere else that theywere able to get such permission
(49:37):
.
And generally the way it worksis you have to go before a judge
and make out probable cause asto criminal activity and why you
need the listening device orthe wiretap or the seizure of
their cell records.
All of those things would haveto be put forth to a judge who
(49:58):
would review and then, if therewas reasonable grounds to grant
that warrant, would do so.
So probably that was donethrough legitimate imperial
means.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah, but there's a counterpoint to that you can't
do that for every senator.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Or can you?
I was wondering if they justbugged all the senators' offices
.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
More than likely they did, but we don't know that
that's the case or not, or ifthey only did it to the senators
that they had a probable causebelief that they were committing
treason.
But odds are, from just thelook of the room where they were
acquiring all of this listeningevidence, they were bugging a
(50:45):
lot.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
So when I interned at the state capitol between my
second to third year, first andsecond year of law school, uh,
the, I clerked for, uh, thetaxation and revenue committee
and worked for the vice chair,who was a republican.
The republicans were in theminority, and this was after
(51:11):
willie brown was the speaker ofthe assembly so he's now mayor
but at the time when he was thespeaker, where the republicans
caucused, they had microphonesput in, allegedly at the request
of speaker brown, so he couldlisten to the Republicans caucus
(51:32):
.
They weren't happy about thatand they cut the mics and then
were criticized for destructionof state property.
It's like, oh, no, no, likethat's not how this is going to
work.
And and so there were some veryintense feelings about
microphones and offices tolisten to what opposition you
(51:57):
know could be saying.
If that was the intent, theguys I worked for were pretty
fired up still, even though itwas a couple of years later, as
they told the story.
So I'm having flashbacks tohearing stories about, you know,
(52:17):
a political caucus gettinggetting miked by the opposition,
as Mothma is finding alistening device, that's that's
hidden.
But the nefariousness of thisis it's like 1930s Germany and
and and taking out politicalopponents who don't agree with
what der fuhrer wants and andlike we're not going to have
(52:42):
opposition, we'll get rid of theopposition.
Um, which raises an interestingquestion about, uh, the speech
and debate privilege that as asenator or a congressman, you
know they have, their protectedspeech and being able to speak
on the floor and raise issues ofconcern.
(53:03):
There are historical examplesof when things get that
deteriorates, that deteriorates.
Charles Sumner got caned byCongressman Preston Brooks,
pre-civil War, because Brooksdidn't like what the senator
said and caned him into a coma.
(53:24):
And the good people of thesenator's home state re-elected
him in a coma and by the people,the legislature, they like two
steps, uh, but again, debate andspeech on a congressional floor
(53:47):
is protected because you wantto have that robust discussion.
If that's your grounds foryou're a traitor and I'm going
to mic your office, there's someserious problems with that.
But we then get into privatespying.
So, your Honor, do you want totalk about Luthan having Mon
(54:09):
Mothma's assistant spy on her?
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Clearly Senator Mothma is very popular.
You know she's not only beingspied on by the Empire, she's
being spied on by her allyLuthan, by her assistant.
And clearly you know theassistant is supposed to be
loyal to his or her employer,especially in the legislature
(54:40):
where you're an at-willconfidential employee so that
you can basically share all ofthose things that the office is
working on and you're supposedto keep those secrets within
that office and that chamber.
So what the assistant was doing, I'll bet you know.
(55:01):
Lutheran's heart, I think, wasin the right spot and I think
the assistant's heart was in theright spot.
What they were doing wascertainly disloyal to Mon Martha
, even if it was being done forher benefit, which I think they
both think they were doing.
(55:28):
Giving Lutheran state secrets,he would probably be subject to
not only being fired but variouscriminal penalties as well.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
Yeah, it's a huge invasion.
Mon Mothma just must feel likeshe has no privacy left.
Her rights of privacy arecompletely illusory.
She doesn't have anyone totrust.
Everything she does is known bysomeone, so sort of no wonder
she just like flees and tries toget away from that sort of
(56:05):
scrutiny that she's facing inthe Senate.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
So let's talk about her speech and then resignation
by running for her life.
Uh, so again, that should beprotected.
Uh, there's the mantra fromshakespeare that if you uh, you
know, shoot the king, kill him.
Uh, type logic that if you'regoing to take that kind of shot,
(56:30):
don't miss.
And uh, she, she does use themoment effectively for
galvanizing, uh, the earlyrepublic rebellion.
Uh, and that should beprotected.
However, the response is likewe'll shut down cnn will and
(56:54):
arrest her for having theaudacity to say it.
Like that's not, that's notcausing sedition out of the gate
, type behavior that made JohnAdams a one-term president by
(57:15):
trying to shut down criticism.
So we've seen historicalcomparisons with force of law.
That doesn't work in thiscountry.
Your Honor.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
Did you want to add anything to the senator's speech
?
The you know, unfortunately, Ithink you know the alien
sedition and John Adams isbecoming relevant again.
I just finished reading abiography of Thomas Jefferson
earlier this week and so some ofthat is quite fresh in my mind
(57:52):
this week, and so some of thatis quite fresh in my mind.
There's also a senator not asenator, a congresswoman from
(58:21):
South Carolina who decided thatthe best place to sexual assault
and other actions against herwas on the floor of Congress,
and part of you know I'm a bitcynical and part of my thought
process is that she did it thereso that she would be protected
from lawsuit from her ex-husbandand her ex-husband's friends
(58:42):
who she made these allegationsagainst.
And you know clearly MaudeMartha was giving a relevant
speech in her role as senator.
I think that Bail Organa did aphenomenal job of making sure
that they couldn't shut down thebroadcast and that it would air
in as many places as possible,and we know from the animated
(59:07):
series that it did get out thereto the masses her speech before
they were able to shut it down,so it was effective at that
level.
So it was quite interesting and, like Star Wars was a bit of an
analogy to various times inUnited States foreign policy and
(59:30):
history.
I think that you know that'swhere science fiction is at its
best, where it's talking aboutplaces that are different but
yet the same.
Speaker 1 (59:41):
Stephen, anything to add?
Speaker 3 (59:43):
Yeah, all of that, yeah, I think that this, that
her speech about you know thewhen the gap between what is
true and what is false, whenthat becomes eradicated, then
we're just kind of doomed and Ithink it speaks.
So it's the, the writerstalking about you know the, the
(01:00:04):
age of misinformation and AI,deep fakes and the, how
susceptible we are to lies um,just outright lies by people in
power.
I think it's a reallyinteresting comment on where we
are, very scary.
Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Yes, it is.
They did a brilliant job ofconnecting Mon Mothma's speech
to Star Wars Rebels, because inthe animated they make mention
that they want her to give thespeech again.
Because when we see the speechin the animated series she's not
(01:00:39):
wearing her cloak, her jacket,it's just the white out outfit
and so the senate, she has thecloak and then ditches that and
it's just the she's in the whitefor for the remainder, well,
cassian shacket and then uh, butit ties together nicely.
It's like that's really cleverwriting.
(01:01:01):
They're not ignoring theanimated series, they're making
it work, complete with goldsquadron to escort her in.
I was like rock on guys likethat is give the y-wing some
love I'm so sad thomas is inhere, because that was I.
Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
That was the first person I thought of when I when
I heard gold squadron, me, metoo, and and you know to me.
Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
this is why you know dave filani, and I'm guessing
that he had a lot to do withthis.
Uh, you know that, that thatcare towards keeping you know
the stories in contact with eachother, from the animated series
to the books, to the comics, tothe movies, and clearly you
know everyone's not going to getthese little tidbits, because
(01:01:45):
not everyone watches theanimated series or reads the
books or does all of thosethings like some sicko like
myself, or does all of thosethings like some sicko like
myself.
For those of us that do, thefact that they care about that,
I think, is very, very important.
It doesn't you know someonethat's just sees the live action
?
Wouldn't that remark about goldsquadron wouldn't matter in the
(01:02:09):
least, it wouldn't distractfrom the story.
But it does give just awonderful Easter egg to those of
us that watch the animatedseries and were watching to see
how these things wouldinterconnect.
And it was done really reallywell.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
I was wondering if we were going to get a Hera
appearance in some way.
Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
I thought that I was wondering that as well.
We do in Rogue one where we getthe, the general sedalia.
You know, come to the office,uh issue, but uh, and you see
chopper there in in thebackground.
Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
But yeah, no, I was kind of hoping for a chopper
moment yeah, it's, we got a lot,so like I am absolutely not
complaining about all the theEaster eggs that we got in the
show.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
And we might see it in some deleted scene down the
road.
You know when they release someextras, so you never know.
Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Yeah, it's like they could have been like yeah, we
couldn't squeeze everything infor you nerds, but you kids got
a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
So it's nice that they.
It's nice that they care aboutthe legal geeks and the geeks
and the nerds yeah, they do.
Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
It's nice that they care about the legal geeks and
the geeks and the nerds?
Yeah, they do.
It's a love letter to us and weappreciate that They'll get
Christmas cards.
So here's a fascinatingquestion.
But Cassian, like this, turnsinto pure spymaster storytelling
(01:03:38):
with get the senator out of theSenate so she doesn't get
murdered or arrested and blowthe cover of the entire rebel
alliance on a tuesday and, uh,cassian has to shoot several,
two people, so two isb agentsget, get shot.
In this you can argue defense ofothers and self-defense, but it
like when you're doing thatagainst the state, it gets weird
.
Which is why this is more thespy story at that point, which
(01:03:59):
makes it okay, as opposed tobecause you're not supposed to
say I did self-defense againstthe clothed police officer, no,
you didn't Like we, no, that's abad argument.
Uh, as opposed to, you knowlike, hey, we got her and he
(01:04:21):
shoots the driver.
Like that's from a spy story,makes absolute sense from a
legal analysis, way murky anddifficult and looks more on the
lines of murder.
Uh, either of you want tohighlight that?
Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
you know, clearly, from from the imperial
perspective, he there's no waythat justification could be
shown.
Uh, you know the the bestdefense that you have is we're
at war and this is an act of warand I'm defending my ally, but
(01:05:00):
it's very specious.
And the fact of the matter isis he was killing people to
escape and was breaking the lawsto do this.
And while you know, from thegood versus evil perspective and
from the rebel perspective, hemight be considered a hero for
doing these things, clearly,from the state perspective, he
(01:05:22):
was committing crimes, includingmurder.
Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
Yeah, it's a problem.
It's a problem.
So with that, this might be thebest arc.
I mean, I like all of thesearcs, but this one is
exceptional.
I like the last one a lot.
We'll talk more about that, butthere's, this is a spy story at
(01:05:49):
its best.
Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Yeah, finally seeing the Gorman massacre and Mon
Mothma's escape from the senate,like all those things that have
been referred to in otherthings, and finally seeing it
portrayed was really, reallycool and it hats off to
genevieve o'reilly, for, one,the way she gave the speech, but
two, the look of shock on herface each time Cassian shoots
(01:06:12):
someone.
Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
She really, you know, fromstart to finish, played the role
incredibly well.
And yeah, it's the greatestthing I think about Star Wars is
, you know, in the originalmovie, where you just get this
line, you know I fought withyour dad in the Clone Wars and
(01:06:37):
you know, you just don't eventhink about it and then you did
the amount, see that flushed out.
The way it was done isincredible.
And in Rogue One, where wefirst meet K2, to bring to the
(01:07:02):
last issue of this arc we nowknow where K2 came from and why
K2 is the way he is.
Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
Yeah, he got run over like that's kind of like a
droid napping and chopped inhalf.
Yeah, yeah like there someassembly was required and and he
comes out with a personality.
Now they joked at celebration.
You get to see k2 be born andit's like, yeah, we did.
Like it's weird, uh, we got tosee him come into existence in a
(01:07:40):
very you know, frankensteinlike manner of life.
Life, my creature life, uh, butyeah, so very, very
frankenstein, and it's.
Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
It's funny, you know, when you say about the
personality in the droid depotin in the various galaxies and
edges on on my coast and yourcoast, they now have personality
chips that you can purchase toadd to your, your, your droid uh
, you know it's to to changetheir personality imperial.
Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Do you want a smuggler?
Like what do you?
Uh, you know there's a varietyof them, like three or four.
Um, I got one uh uh for forr26b1, my proportionality droid,
and uh, a little bit of everyhumor, uh.
(01:08:34):
But yeah, this is all goodstuff.
Uh, love the show.
I'm glad they did them in threeepisode arcs.
It makes analysis a lot harder,but uh, it was like a movie a
week and I'm all for that, and Ithink the stories go better
when you watch them together.
Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
Yeah, they broke these down well, I think the way
that you know, each was a minitrilogy that made a movie and we
got you know several reallyreally good movies, which was a
real treat, I think, to thefandom.
Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
And just so well acted I mean everyone's.
And just so well acted, I meaneveryone's compelling in their
roles, like that's phenomenal tosee this level of attention.
Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
Yeah, I hope that those that you know make the
decisions with.
I'm sure they, you know, aregoing to submit for Emmys, but,
you know, I hope people don'tthe people that vote on these
things.
Oh, it's Star Wars.
I hope they really watch itbecause you really have acting
(01:09:44):
that's incredibly good andincredibly real and some very
dramatic, well-acted scenes inthis series and I hope it gets.
You know, there certainly couldbe stuff that's better, but
it's certainly worthy and I hopeit gets a, you know, a real
(01:10:06):
look at.
Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
A real look to God's ears.
Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Yeah no, I hope so.
Didn't Sir Alec Dennis getnominated for a new hope?
Yeah, yeah, okay.
So I mean, like there's aprecedent for because, again,
o'reilly should get one, I thinkshe, she should get one.
Uh, there are others who arecontenders, but I, I think she,
(01:10:32):
I think she's has the most, uh,uh, the strongest chance of
pulling it off.
Um, anyway, that's outside oflegal analysis.
Uh, all of that said, uh,anything else for the good of
the order, all right.
Well, we'll be back next weekto cover more Everyone.
(01:10:52):
Thanks for tuning in.
Wherever you are, stay safe,stay healthy and stay geeky.
Hello everyone, my name is Joshua Gilliland, one of
the founding attorneys of theLegal Geeks.
We are here to discuss thethird arc in Andor, season 2.
With me on this adventure isStephen Tollefield and retired
New York judge Matthew Sciarino.
Your Honor, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Good, Good evening.
Glad you're feeling better.
Thank you me too.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Thanks for taking lead last week.
How are you doing tonight?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
My gosh.
It was my pleasure and gladyou're feeling better and I'm
doing great thanks.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Good, good.
Well, let's dive into whatcontinues to be this amazing
season of Andor.
Excellent arc, so manywonderful issues in this.
So we're two years away fromthe Battle of Yavin.
Episode seven is entitled theMessenger and your Honor.
(00:57):
You identified a area, a topicthat Stephen and I did not know
because we're Californians.
Can you tell us aboutunlicensed fortune tellers?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Sure, cassian is having some discussions with
what we guess is a low forceuser who is using her abilities
to help wounded members of theRebel Alliance, and she proceeds
to kind of take a reading forhim and give him his fortune.
(01:33):
And his fortune is that he is amessenger and, as we all know
from Rogue One, her predictiondoes in fact come quite true.
That being said, in as much asthe force does not seem to exist
in our present day, in ourpresent time, in our galaxy, new
(01:58):
York does make it illegal tofortune tell.
Under penal law, section 165.35,a person is guilty of fortune
telling when for a fee orcompensation.
And here she wasn't charging afee, so she technically would
not have been guilty ofviolating this statute.
But if you charge a fee forfortune telling which he or she
(02:22):
directly or indirectly solicitsor receives and claims or
pretends to tell fortunes orholds himself out as being able,
by claim or pretended use ofoccult powers, to answer
questions or give advice onpersonal matters or to exercise
etc.
And I believe this kind of cameout of Howard Houdini and he
(02:51):
was very much against.
During his time period therewas a lot of occult and fortune
telling and he kind ofinstigated some of these laws
and I think that this came outof part of Houdini's
instigations.
And it's a class B, as in boymisdemeanor, which means it
(03:14):
would be punishable up to threemonths in jail in New York.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That awakens within me historical podcast and books.
I've seen about the spiritualismthat took place in the late
19th century, especially afterthe American Civil War, that
everybody had at least onefamily member or friend who was
(03:42):
killed, at least one familymember or friend who was killed,
and there was this huge pushfor things like spirit
photography something that MaryTodd Lincoln did with like
here's a picture of my deadhusband next to me type of
services that were being offeredand you had a bunch of famous
(04:06):
some would say fraudsters, somewould say that they were, you
know, actually had powers tocontact the great beyond, of
going out and giving peoplereadings and putting on seances
or, you know, speaking with avoice from the other side, and
they were actually putting on ashow.
(04:29):
I remember those cases beingmore Midwest, new York, east
Coast, as opposed to California,where again in California we
have the new agey.
I'm talking to my crystal crowdbecause that's how we are with
this hang loose, welcomeeverybody, because we're
Californians, that's how we roll.
(04:50):
We don't have that history thatthe East Coast had and I think
that's a large part becauseCalifornia was excluded from the
Union draft during the AmericanCivil War.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
And there is an exception to it, where, if
you're doing it solely for thepurpose of a show or an
exhibition, or for entertainmentor amusement, then that would
not be illegal under thisstatute.
So if you're a magician, orwhere it's part of your act, or
(05:24):
a mentalist, you would not besubject to this statute.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
That seems like such a fine line, but I can't believe
that Odomay Brown from Ghostwould have been a criminal under
this statute.
I'm crushed.
How dare you slander Odomay inthis way?
You're in danger.
Girl, Get out of this state.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Well played, well played.
Yeah, there's a.
Houdini was not cool with thoseguys so and went out to debunk
them left and right.
So, ok, that's fascinating andalso a deep dive in, in fact I
like history.
So let's talk about stripmining, gorman.
(06:10):
So which one of you brought upthis topic of strip mining?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
as a potential item for discussion.
In a lot of states that warstrip mine, like Pennsylvania
for their coal, variousenvironmental groups have
succeeded in passing federalregulations which does put heavy
burdens on any kind of stripmining and you have to do
(06:44):
certainly all kinds ofenvironmental studies etc in it
and, and for the most part atleast in our country.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
There there does not seem to be the culture of strip
mining anymore in some thirdworld, moral of Gorman being
(07:12):
potentially made uninhabitableby this imperial plan his
background, his home world waskind of completely rendered
virtually uninhabitable byimperial strip mining, which is
kind of an interesting echolater on in the season two of
the season of the first seasonwhich brings up the importance
(07:36):
of state secrets and the mantrathe mantra that loose lips sink
ships.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
We have Deidre telling Cyril to go home and a
potentially awkward kiss betweenthe two of them, but it raises
the specter of the issue.
Did she violate any imperiallaw?
Because her boss said don'ttell Cyril, and she doesn't
(08:04):
outright tell him, but she tellshim to go home and we're going
to be rewarded.
Did she break protocol or anyyou know imperial ordinances at
play?
And Judge Cherino, you've donemilitary law.
What are your thoughts on thisissue?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I think she threaded the needle in enough of a manner
that arguably, you know, shewas just saying listen, pack, be
ready, and didn't give anygreater details.
Whether Cyril, you know, wouldhave taken that to mean the
(08:48):
mission is wrapping up orsomething major is going to
happen, which is probably likely, you know.
So, between them it wasprobably too much of a warning
for the Imperials to really like, but technically I don't know
if they would have noticed it.
Like, but technically I don'tknow if they would have noticed
it.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Good analysis.
Yeah, it's like, is shespilling the beans too early
here?
Which then brings us to do ourheroes go AWOL when they decide
to go to Gorman on anassassination mission that
(09:28):
William Wilman shows up on.
Yavin doesn't check in, doesn'ttell Cassian where he's been,
but he says like hey, let's,this is Deidre, let's go kill
her because she's out in theopen on Gorman and she's the one
who destroyed Ferrix.
She's the one.
Let's go kill her because she'sout in the open on Gorman and
she's the one who destroyedFerex.
She's the one who's caused allof our problems.
(09:49):
She's a clear and presentdanger.
Let's go kill her.
First off, that's a conspiracywhen you conspire with someone
to go kill someone.
Two, this is completelyoff-book, so there's no.
Like the rebels actually have acommand structure now, so
they're ignoring that commandstructure in order for them to
(10:10):
decide to go murder someone.
Is this them going AWOL?
Because they don't have aflight plan?
Like they don't have approval,they're taking a U-Wing out for
a spin to go kill somebody.
Your Honor, your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, at this point the Rebel Alliance has become a
military organization with amilitary structure.
It has uniforms, so it wouldqualify under all of the various
things that make you into amilitary organization and as
such there's a chain of commandand they were violating the
chain of command by followingLutheran's dictates, as opposed
(10:54):
to the rebel structure.
And they clearly take a U-Wingwithout any authorization to
take it and go on this missionwhich leads to the next episode.
So I don't think there's anydefense, militarily wise, for
(11:15):
them to have done what they didso that they would have been
subject to discipline underwhatever the Rebel Alliance uses
as their uniform code ofmilitary justice.
They certainly would have beensubject to some kind of
discipline loss of rank,expulsion, dishonorable
(11:37):
discharge, various things thatthe military could have done.
And this is a time of war, sothose penalties can be quite
severe depending on what thecode of military justice for the
rebels would have been at thatparticular time.
But yeah they clearly wereleaving without any permission
(11:58):
to go on an unauthorized mission, so they would be subject to
discipline.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I was wondering if like because it's an alliance
would be subject to discipline.
I was wondering if, likebecause it's an alliance, I was
thinking whether there was anysort of wiggle room for people
to kind of still be permitted todo kind of missions that were
specific to their kind ofsegment of that coalition.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, I mean you can make an argument that Lutheran
Soar and the other variouschiefs of this alliance, you
know, all kind of had theirsphere of influence and their
own chain of command.
But I think the fact that theywere using the property of the
main rebel alliance and at thatpoint I think we're operating
(12:44):
under their chain of command, Ithink that they're stuck.
But yeah, you know, if I'm thedefense lawyer for at the court
martial proceeding, my argumentis going to be as Lutheran's,
another general, and Lutherangave me this order and that
would absolutely be my defenseto, to this, the, the stealing
of the u-wing.
You're going to lose and anyway you slice it, but, um, but,
(13:08):
but yeah, that would be mydefense, that he's as big a
chief as as in monmouth, asmonmouth there is.
Just, you know, he's one of the, the, the five families, so to
speak I wonder is all theequipment from monmouth's like?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
did she bankroll this ?
Or is this from other sourcesthat have been working together?
I mean, that's a level ofgranularity that we probably
won't see in the storytelling Imean you had a lot of money
coming from Alderaan and theQueen.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
She funneled an enormous amount of money to the
rebel alliance and you also hadyeah, clearly you had the
successful raid in the firstseason that stole a large amount
of imperial credits.
That was the foundation for alot of what the rebels had and,
yes, I think all of the variousfactions would have donated.
(14:03):
But the bulk of the money didcome from Mon Motha's foundation
and from Alderaan.
From what I've been able togather from other sources and
stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, and it seems like the members of the Alliance
too had kind of varying degreesof their own equipment, because
Maya Pei's people seem to bepretty dependent on other
financial support.
But um, but saw guerrera, umkind of on the other end of the
spectrum, had like x-wings andlots of, lots of equipment.
So, um, I wonder how much isjust sort of contributed to the
(14:36):
main goal from the from themembers of the alliance too.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
It's interesting and like how are they making money?
Because there's, you have theknuckleheads that kidnapped
Patty Hearst, that wanted to be,you know, a serious liberation
army, and like they had armament, but they were still
knuckleheads.
Like there was no secret armythat they were raising.
(15:00):
There was, you know, fiveknuckleheads.
Like there was no secret armythat they were raising.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
It was, you know, five knuckleheads which which is
kind of in the beginning ofthis series, the, the guys that
had cassian prisoner.
You know you could get no moreknuckleheads than those guys,
but you know clearly thatdeveloped into something and if
I remember correctly, there wasa prequel novel to rogue, one
which dealt with soar and andand and, uh.
(15:28):
I now I forget her name um, wasit a catalyst?
Yeah, catalyst, and, and itdealt with, you know, some of
the jobs that sword did, and andhe, you know he, he did a lot
of jobs in order to basicallytheft, uh, in order to fund his
end of the, the rebel alliance.
So he was doing jobs, as were,I'm sure, a lot of other ones of
(15:50):
stealing payrolls, uh, preciousmetals, etc.
Um, in order to uh in in the hansolo movie, there's, there's,
there's the coaxium right, thecoaxium, the being stole by the,
the nest and, and you know,it's being sold to help fund the
Rebel Alliance.
So I think you had a lot ofthat kind of Robin Hood
(16:10):
mentality.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
So, yeah, they, they take a U-Wing for a spin.
So there's, there's just no wayaround that.
Let's pivot to who Are you?
Episode 8.
And so we have the issue ofthere's assassination and,
because this is the GormanMassacre and it's again, we have
(16:35):
passionate young people who aregoing to get everybody killed.
Now Luthans write that it's afire that will burn brightly.
You can say that they wereexpendable to the point of being
able to unite a rebellion, butthey were also used for that
process in order to incite arebellion against the Empire.
(17:00):
I'm not saying that one's abetter situation than the other,
because the Empire was going towipe them out regardless, but
passive resistance would havebeen a better play as opposed to
let's all go into the fishbarrel and wait to die, which is
(17:21):
what they did here.
So Cassian goes to assassinatedeidre who wants to talk about
that, because this is this ismurder like he's planning to
kill her yeah, this is verypremeditated.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
he's um, definitely, um, definitely got the tools.
He's got the tools, he's gotthe cover story, he's got the
opportunity and this is apolitically motivated or
militarily motivated attemptedmurder is every time he kind of
(18:06):
sees her, she's turning aroundand walking away.
Um, so, absent those kind oftiming errors, he certainly
would have, um, I think, takenthe shot.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
you seem to be really into it, so which, no, there's
more to unpack on whether or notI know that if deidre had been
killed, would that have actuallybeen a good thing, uh, or would
that have been harmful for thefuture?
So, but he's not able to killher.
(18:31):
But we have one of the issuesthat I saw with the right to
assemble versus the right tokeep order.
So our First Amendment hasseveral provisions to it five,
and one of them is for peacefulassembly.
You have the right to protest,which means there can be
(18:51):
limitations, like time placemanner, whether or not you could
be using speakers, which againgoes to time place manner.
You can't just start blockingexits, blocking the freeways
frowned upon, it tends to upsetpeople.
But like having a parade orpicketing, you know you can
march on the sidewalks.
(19:11):
There's all kinds of rules thatcome into play with you have
the right to peacefully assemble.
You have a right to hang outwith the groups that you want to
hang out with.
Deciding to eradicate saidgroup is a problem.
But also it goes to the issueof like you can't have the mob
(19:32):
shut down the freeway, like.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So again, there are limits on this and your Honor
care to address the since you'vedealt with some of these issues
your thought please, and Ithink we all have to some extent
.
Yeah, From the various shuttingdowns of freeways In New York,
(19:57):
we would get the Brooklyn Bridgefrequently shut down by various
groups.
They would then be given anopportunity to disperse and if
they did not disperse, then thepolice would begin to arrest to
get the traffic moving again.
As a general rule in New York,if you were able to get a permit
(20:18):
, you were allowed to havevarious parades, even if they
did shut down traffic, but youknow they would be limited in
their scope and where you wereallowed to go traffic, but you
know they would be limited intheir scope and where you were
allowed to go.
And it would also be done sothat there wasn't too many
(20:38):
conflicting groups and parades,because one of the real
dangerous things that can happenis if you have two groups that
are very much against each otherand having their confrontation
in the same space, that couldend up being a very bad
situation.
So there are really goodreasons why there are reasonable
(21:00):
restrictions put on publicdemonstrations that the public
clearly has the right to do, butit also can't impede on
everyone else's rights to goabout their regular day.
So it is a very hard balance.
(21:24):
The Empire clearly was notinterested in the protection of
the people that weredemonstrating.
They were more interested inkind of riling them up so that
they would be able to put themdown, and I know some people say
(21:47):
that that, you know, is thesame of any police department in
every city.
I personally, you know, I wasinvolved with a lot of the
Occupy Wall Street matters and Isaw hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of hours of videotapesof various demonstrations and I
(22:08):
saw cops that were very, veryreasonable in their attempts to
address the situation and I alsosaw police officers pick up
people and body slam them to theground in very violent manners
and you know.
So you certainly have good cop,bad cop, and overwhelmingly I
(22:31):
think the police in New York wastrying to be reasonable, but
there were certain members ofthat force that were quite
unreasonable in the videos thatI saw.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I almost I narrowly escaped arrest, not at the
Occupy Wall Street protest, butwhen I this is back in the day
there was a big Matthew Sheparddemonstration that turned into
that.
We were attending kind of ademonstration near Central Park
and then it got too big andpeople started spilling out into
the streets and that's whensort of the police officers
(23:07):
started moving in to arrestpeople and then it turned into a
march and we were marchingthrough the city, um.
But that um, that was a um in asituation where it's sort of um,
an event had kind of grewbeyond its um, uh, sort of
pre-planned boundaries, um, andgot to a place where the police
(23:27):
officers were provoked into sortof making arrests.
But it struck me that in thisGorman situation that they're
kind of in a classic town square, like they're in the place
where the First Amendment kindof has its greatest power in
protecting people's right toassemble, because they're at a
monument, they're there toaddress, to air grievances
(23:51):
against the government that issituated right there.
You know, at the same timethere's countervailing, as you
said, judge the balance ofstriking security when there's
government entities involved.
But that's where peoplecommonly assemble to address
their grievances.
It wouldn't be effective tokind of cordon off people into
very remote areas when they'retrying to address the government
(24:13):
.
So yeah, so I think it was areally interesting way of
portraying kind of nonviolentprotest, although the people in
the front had kind of broughtweapons to the event, which is
not great, but but most of thepeople there were just kind of
singing and and kind of chantingand doing kind of very core
protected First Amendmentactivities, which is really
interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
And you do find that there are.
You know whether they'reprofessional instigators or just
very zealous instigators, butthere was a lot of times a small
core that then led the group tooverreach what would have been
(24:56):
considered a normaldemonstration, like in New York.
It's Foley Square it's rightoutside a couple of the main
courthouses in Manhattan is kindof the public square for
demonstrations and a lot of themstart there and then they'll go
off and march to variouslocations at various times and
(25:16):
for the most part, as long asthey stayed on the sidewalk and
they kind of went where therewas enough of a police presence
that everyone felt comfortable,there would never be any real
problems.
When it then started to impedetraffic or impede in other ways,
(25:39):
or if there was any violence ofany nature where if a police
officer was hit with a rock orsomething along those lines and
clearly here you know much likethe Boston Massacre a shot rings
out and then it's all bets areoff.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, and you know the past seven years we've seen
some horrific and insane.
You know events go out ofcontrol quickly, whether it's
the police being overzealous outof the gate or an event that
escalates.
And again over the last 25years, I did a continuing legal
(26:25):
education event in San Franciscoin 2002, 2003, before the Gulf
War II kicked off, and there wasa protest in San Francisco that
cut off access to all thefreeways.
So the event ended and I had noway to get home.
It took like five hours to getout of san francisco to get home
(26:51):
.
That annoyed me.
It's just, I'm all for yourright to peacefully assemble,
but when you start cutting offit's like access that's, that's
a problem.
Um, how you lose the room.
So, yes, but this is, but thatdoesn't mean open fire on the
(27:14):
protesters, which is what theempire does, and they shoot one
of their own guys to kick offthe Boston Massacre type melee
that follows, where people justget slaughtered, and they use
that, as it looks pretextual, toroute the city.
And how many other you know?
(27:37):
Cities, provinces within gormanget overrun because of that.
Is this a reason to ethnicallycleanse an entire planet that
seems to be of eight capitalcities with 800,000 people in it
, single economy planet.
So, uh, I did a tiktok aboutthis.
(27:58):
Is, uh, is deidre a war criminal?
Did she commit a crime againsthumanity?
I think the answer is yes,because she understood the
intent was to remove the gorefrom Gorman, which you have to
have intent.
She knew of the plan, she waspart of making the plan.
(28:20):
She's on comms with her bosswhen she tells the shock trooper
captain to proceed.
She looks shaken when she doesso, which I think is she shows
an understanding of what's beingasked of her to do.
So she's fully aware of whatshe's doing is not okay.
(28:46):
I think what makes Deidre asympathetic and compelling
character is she's one of thoseImperials that wanted stability
and order.
You know, grew up in a time ofuncertainty and now things the
economy's good, everything'sokay and you know I don't want
terrorists blowing up, you knowships.
(29:07):
I don't want terrorists blowingup, you know ships.
I don't want people gettingshot at.
So the idea of ethnicallycleansing an entire population
clearly bothers her and she'saware of what she's doing when
she gives that order, which doesnothing to negate the intent.
It only makes it worse becauseit shows, yeah, she's following
(29:28):
orders, but she's giving anorder.
Even though she's the middlemanin this process, she's just as
culpable for ordering a crimeagainst humanity and which means
she'd be a great mock trial inthe future because we could
actually since she, we think,survives the end of shaku,
(29:51):
that's somebody that we could doa mock trial about her yes, she
would be picked up at somepoint from that facility, so, uh
, could be a great mock trial.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I you know one of the one of the things that came to
my mind when she gave that orderbecause the the fact that you
know she had to give that finalorder to, to, to, to the, the
shock trooper, to basically goout and and start wiping out the
the gorman.
I got um, I thought back to um,the, the animated series
(30:24):
dealing with the, uh, the kimono, the, the kimono, the clone
planet, um, you know, and andthe admiral who gave the order
to basically open fire, and theyleveled that planet and all its
, its its occupants, to the sea.
and then, when it blew up in theemperor's face, they had this
(30:48):
scapegoat of the admiral who didthat order.
So you know, to me this was theempire creating a scapegoat if
it were to need it at a laterdate, by making sure that
someone gave that order to thetroops she.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So the captain was kaida.
Uh was the shock troopercaptain who was like, this was
his specialty, that uh, uh, likehe could say I'm following
orders, but he knew what theheck he was doing.
And for those keeping score,crime against humanity is one of
the acts listed when committedas part of a widespread or
systematic attack directedagainst any civilian population,
(31:31):
with knowledge of the attackmurder, extermination,
enslavement, deportation,persecution on political, racial
, national, ethnic, cultural,religious or gender lines, and
knowledge is required.
She knew, she knew, knew therewas absolute knowledge there.
And, uh, this is exterminationat worst, you know, at best it's
(31:59):
uh deportation like she.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
She knows what she's doing in in giving this order
yeah, and I also wonder I'm notsure that she feels remorse for
giving the order too because Isort of read her sort of
reaction to the unfoldingsituation on Gorman as kind of a
PTSD sort of reaction afterbeing injured on Ferrix and sort
(32:24):
of her feeling like that sortof explosive amount of violence
was.
She was kind of feeling unsafe,um, and unworried about her
saving her own skin because shewas, she gave, she gave that
order to cyril to be ready toget out of there and I, I
wondered it, I I sort of readthat as her being kind of more
(32:45):
self-preservation than kind offeeling bad about hurting people
.
I don't know, maybe I think Idon't give her enough credit,
maybe, but if she's evil as faras I'm concerned well, she is
evil, I mean she's finetorturing someone.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Oh yeah, I mean like, but again, I think that's
different than it's one thing togo'm going to go do an enhanced
interrogation that's going toviolate civil rights, to let's
go wipe these people out Likethat.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
That that turns the dial up significantly it does,
but it comes from the same sortof dehumanization, of sort of
the enemy, I think.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Agreed.
I mean, like you open the doorwhen you realize, look at what
you did and look at where youare now, like is this the person
you want to be?
Because it's one thing to go.
I don't want the atomic bomb,the dirty bomb, going off.
So therefore I can convincemyself it's okay to break this
(33:46):
guy's arm to get that intel tostop this terrorist plot that we
think is going to happen.
You can lie to yourself aboutthat.
It's then another to go let'suse chemical weapons on the city
and wipe them out.
That's a different escalationand it's one thing to go.
(34:07):
Hey, I thought I was savingpeople and now we're
exterminating them.
And I think she crosses theline into oh hell, I'm
exterminating a group of people,when I thought I was the good
guy trying to stop bad thingsfrom happening.
So I I think, uh, it's weirdthat I'm defending the Imperial,
(34:28):
because normally they'reincompetent boobs that can't
shoot straight and our heroesbeat them easily.
She's highly effective.
Like it's a very different badguy because you actually are
interested in her.
(34:49):
And Cyril, I don't normallythink, god, I hope those kids
are okay and they make it work.
These are the bad guys that wehope they have a good
relationship.
That's weird.
That's how effective TonyGilroy is in writing them of
going.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I hope those crazy kids make it happen I do have
her in my evil hall of fameshelf over there so did.
You is back behind me I do toolike I have a cassian as well.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
But, uh, I would like a pentagas, you know, because
what did?
Again, effective bad guys?
Because the 70, we didn't seethat, you know.
I mean, we get it with beers,but you know, normally it's
Vader force choking an admiralto death.
I digress there, but it raisessome other questions as we look
(35:56):
at this and getting to well, weget some domestic violence.
This is probably one of thesecond most uncomfortable scenes
that we have, because it's onething for Cyril to go confront
Deidre with what have you done?
I get that.
That's another thing.
He takes her by the throat.
This is a level of domesticviolence that is super
uncomfortable to watch.
(36:16):
It's the second instance ofdomestic violent or assault on a
woman that we see.
And, uh, your honor, uh, I havea feeling you, you put this
analysis down, so would wouldyou like to explain this more?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
bit of a situation which was falling through the
cracks, dealing with choking,like was done in this case by
Cyril to Deborah, where theputting of, you know, the hands
around the neck and pressingdoesn't always leave a permanent
injury.
So you were getting acquittalsor dismissals, even on assaults,
(37:15):
because there was no seriousphysical injury or physical
injury of a permanent naturewith these chokes.
So New York and I would imagineother states created a statute.
In New York it's Penal Law,section 121.11, criminal
(37:36):
obstruction of breathing orblood circulation, where you're
guilty if you, with intent toimpede the normal breathing or
circulation of the blood ofanother person, you apply
pressure on the throat or neckor if you block the nose or
mouth of such person.
And there are different degrees.
(37:58):
This one is the basic one,which is an amyosdemeanor.
If you cause greater injury toa person, it does rise to the
felony level.
I don't think that was the casein, in, in Sarah and and and
Deidre Cause I think you justhad this.
You know this choke and clearlythat you know you saw her
almost lose consciousness andgenerally, when, when, when the
(38:20):
the victim is on the stand, thatis what she would be testifying
to.
You know he put his, his, his,his, the pressure to my neck and
I blacked out for, you know, afew seconds and that's enough to
to to have someone convicted ofthis thing.
So I wanted to highlight thisbecause it really is a common
situation in domestic violencesituations and this is the way
(38:47):
New York addressed it by thisstatute which is probably only
about a dozen years old.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
So interesting that it's so specific to address that
.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
That's really interesting, yeah, and it's
because there were so many ofthose cases that just didn't
make the threshold of assaultbut clearly was a physical harm
to another individual, and thelegislature, as part of a host
of domestic violence initiatives, passed this statute and some
(39:18):
other statutes.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
It's terrifying that it had to be made a law that
people would be so callous about.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, as far as I know, kind of
California just sort ofaddresses it just as a regular
battery, although there's thereare statutes, specifically
there's.
It's more of a like apunishment thing, it's like the
penalties where it comes in whenit's someone that you're in a
(39:50):
domestic relationship with thatyou're in a domestic
relationship with.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Well, all that said, let's talk.
And police officers in domesticviolence units started taking
pictures at the scene of becausea lot of times you'd have those
bruises that would go away in aday or two.
So they started taking pictureswhen they would arrive at a
(40:19):
domestic violence incident ofyou know.
A lot of times it's literallyalmost fingerprints around the
neck or black and blues, becausein a day or two those injuries
kind of go away day or two,those, those injuries kind of go
(40:43):
away.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, well, cool.
My mother testified in a dvcase.
That was in the late 80s andshe didn't talk about it, but
after she passed I found thereport that she did and it was
something that she held on to.
I was impressed with howdetailed the notes that she had.
And it was, and she was aparamedic and so responding to a
(41:07):
call, the victim didn't want topress charges and my mother
wasn't, as a paramedic didn'twant the paramedic, other
paramedics and police to leaveout of fear for the safety of
the victim.
Something had to have happenedwhere the guy ended up getting
(41:38):
charged because my mother endedup testifying um, and thus we
did have the refresherrecollection, I guess, from
those records being saved.
All of that's horrible, uh, andwe have laws to in place to
protect people, we.
So there's In this riot thathappens in Murderfest.
(42:02):
Cyril finally catches up withCassian and they have a huge
fight and at one point Cassian'son the ground.
Cyril has a blaster aimed atCassian.
Cassian asks who are you?
Cyril lowers the blaster and itlooks like he's about to say
(42:26):
something, so the weapon's nolonger pointed.
The body language changes andthen Cyril gets shot in the back
of the head.
This is a very interestingdefensive others case, Because
if the blaster was still pointedat Cassian no doubt that it's
(42:46):
defensive others Because there'sa threat to Cassian's life it
would be justified for Cassianto shoot Cyril at that point in
time.
I think this is a very closequestion on whether or not it
was proper for the Burgermeisterto shoot Cassian in the back of
(43:09):
the head.
Was this a revenge killing orwas this actual defense of
others?
I lean a little bit moretowards revenge killing because
Cyril might've been turning hebecause of what was happening in
that riot.
Did either of you have areaction to that and whether or
(43:30):
not one, this is legitimatedefense of others.
And two, what was Cyr's intent?
I mean, steven, why don't yougo first?
Speaker 3 (43:38):
yeah, I think you're right, it's kind of murky, um,
but I think he um it's.
It seems like if you werewalking into a situation where
there's weapons and there's alot of violence happening and
you know that one person isgetting attacked or has recently
been attacked by someone, Ithink you you probably have a
pretty good argument that youcould anticipate that that other
(43:59):
person is about to affectimmediate harm on the other
person, even if their weapon hasbeen lowered momentarily, you
know.
On the other hand, as you said,it could be an indication that
there's some cooling offhappening and maybe that level
of violence is not warranted.
But at the same time, I'mtrying to remember how much did.
Did the gorman peopleunderstand that that cyril at
(44:24):
that point had been a doubleagent?
Did they realize that he was,that he had been?
Speaker 1 (44:29):
no, but the, the, the leader you know, was the one
who confronted him and said whatkind of you know being are you?
Yeah, yeah, so you know, the,again the mayor bergermeister is
putting a huge amount of blameon cyril yeah so might not be
thinking he's a double agent,but he's blaming cyril for
(44:49):
everything that happened.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Your.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Honor it's a very convenient excuse, for sure yeah
.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I think, first of all , that in the top five moments
of this series was when Cassiansays who the hell are you?
Basically, that was such abrilliant moment, I think, in
the show because Cyril reallyhas devoted his entire life
towards Cassian and Cassianbasically to say like who are
(45:22):
you just was brilliant.
I think anyone walking on thatscene kind of would have thought
that they were justified toprotect Cassian in what was
clearly a fight that, althoughat that point in time might have
ended, was one where Cassian'slife was in danger.
(45:45):
But you know, clearly he shotfrom behind.
Clearly, as you said, the gunwas being lowered behind.
Clearly, as you said, the gunwas being lowered.
You know so it would be a toughcall and you know he would have
(46:09):
to prove he was justified.
That would be also a very toughburden to do, you know so it's
one of those things.
You know, it's one of thesecases that under that fact
situation that might have to goto trial, because it's like one
of those things that there's.
You know you need those judgesof the facts, those peers, those
jurors to make that final call.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yeah, what was in his heart?
Did he reasonably believe thatCassian's life was in danger, or
did he take the shot at the guywho he's blaming caused all of
this?
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Yeah, probably be, but but a good defense lawyer
would would certainly do his orher darndest to make.
Make it into scenario A.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, because you don't want the you know like
he'll have to testify, but youdon't want the witness doing
like he'll have to testify, butyou don't want the witness doing
the you know a time to kill ofyeah, I did it and I hope he
burns in hell, like you don'twant that to happen on the stand
.
Uh, just just no.
Uh.
A final note we have propaganda.
(47:09):
So, uh, deidre highlighted thatpropaganda only gets you so far
.
It gets you across the finishline after all of this, because
it shows the pretext of you havepeople just buying into it's
Gorman's fault that all theseimperial heroes have died
(47:34):
because of these nasty gormen,and uh, uh, so yeah, we, we just
it's propaganda at its finestand another aspect of just
brilliant writing.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
You know the the the person who I dislike the most on
this show, I think Cyril'smother.
You really felt for her inthose scenes where she was being
fed this imperial propagandaabout the imperial martyrs of
Gorman, of which her son is nowone of the imperial martyrs of
(48:08):
Gorman, and when you saw thetears it was very, very well
done.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Oh, this is Emmy worthy, like there are multiple
moments here that are Emmyworthy throughout the season.
And you know, there's the jokethat Andor ruins Star Wars
because it's good.
It's good Like this is New, newbar, meet this.
So we get to welcome to therebellion which is the aftermath
(48:41):
, and a bunch of us uh issuesdid some issue spotting here.
So, your honor, do you want totake the listening devices in
Senate offices?
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, there was imperial listening devices.
Odds are in as much as it wasthe government doing this.
They would have had some kindof process to get that listening
device inserted.
So they would have probably hadto have gone to an imperial
judge to get a warrant Probablynot a difficult thing in the
(49:14):
empire.
So that was probably.
And she was engaging, as far asthe empire is concerned, in
treasonous behavior and breakingthe laws of the empire.
So from the empire'sperspective they would be
justified to put a listeningdevice in her office and in her
car and anywhere else that theywere able to get such permission
(49:37):
.
And generally the way it worksis you have to go before a judge
and make out probable cause asto criminal activity and why you
need the listening device orthe wiretap or the seizure of
their cell records.
All of those things would haveto be put forth to a judge who
(49:58):
would review and then, if therewas reasonable grounds to grant
that warrant, would do so.
So probably that was donethrough legitimate imperial
means.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah, but there's a counterpoint to that you can't
do that for every senator.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Or can you?
I was wondering if they justbugged all the senators' offices
.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
More than likely they did, but we don't know that
that's the case or not, or ifthey only did it to the senators
that they had a probable causebelief that they were committing
treason.
But odds are, from just thelook of the room where they were
acquiring all of this listeningevidence, they were bugging a
(50:45):
lot.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
So when I interned at the state capitol between my
second to third year, first andsecond year of law school, uh,
the, I clerked for, uh, thetaxation and revenue committee
and worked for the vice chair,who was a republican.
The republicans were in theminority, and this was after
(51:11):
willie brown was the speaker ofthe assembly so he's now mayor
but at the time when he was thespeaker, where the republicans
caucused, they had microphonesput in, allegedly at the request
of speaker brown, so he couldlisten to the Republicans caucus
(51:32):
.
They weren't happy about thatand they cut the mics and then
were criticized for destructionof state property.
It's like, oh, no, no, likethat's not how this is going to
work.
And and so there were some veryintense feelings about
microphones and offices tolisten to what opposition you
(51:57):
know could be saying.
If that was the intent, theguys I worked for were pretty
fired up still, even though itwas a couple of years later, as
they told the story.
So I'm having flashbacks tohearing stories about, you know,
(52:17):
a political caucus gettinggetting miked by the opposition,
as Mothma is finding alistening device, that's that's
hidden.
But the nefariousness of thisis it's like 1930s Germany and
and and taking out politicalopponents who don't agree with
what der fuhrer wants and andlike we're not going to have
(52:42):
opposition, we'll get rid of theopposition.
Um, which raises an interestingquestion about, uh, the speech
and debate privilege that as asenator or a congressman, you
know they have, their protectedspeech and being able to speak
on the floor and raise issues ofconcern.
(53:03):
There are historical examplesof when things get that
deteriorates, that deteriorates.
Charles Sumner got caned byCongressman Preston Brooks,
pre-civil War, because Brooksdidn't like what the senator
said and caned him into a coma.
(53:24):
And the good people of thesenator's home state re-elected
him in a coma and by the people,the legislature, they like two
steps, uh, but again, debate andspeech on a congressional floor
(53:47):
is protected because you wantto have that robust discussion.
If that's your grounds foryou're a traitor and I'm going
to mic your office, there's someserious problems with that.
But we then get into privatespying.
So, your Honor, do you want totalk about Luthan having Mon
(54:09):
Mothma's assistant spy on her?
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Clearly Senator Mothma is very popular.
You know she's not only beingspied on by the Empire, she's
being spied on by her allyLuthan, by her assistant.
And clearly you know theassistant is supposed to be
loyal to his or her employer,especially in the legislature
(54:40):
where you're an at-willconfidential employee so that
you can basically share all ofthose things that the office is
working on and you're supposedto keep those secrets within
that office and that chamber.
So what the assistant was doing, I'll bet you know.
(55:01):
Lutheran's heart, I think, wasin the right spot and I think
the assistant's heart was in theright spot.
What they were doing wascertainly disloyal to Mon Martha
, even if it was being done forher benefit, which I think they
both think they were doing.
(55:28):
Giving Lutheran state secrets,he would probably be subject to
not only being fired but variouscriminal penalties as well.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
Yeah, it's a huge invasion.
Mon Mothma just must feel likeshe has no privacy left.
Her rights of privacy arecompletely illusory.
She doesn't have anyone totrust.
Everything she does is known bysomeone, so sort of no wonder
she just like flees and tries toget away from that sort of
(56:05):
scrutiny that she's facing inthe Senate.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
So let's talk about her speech and then resignation
by running for her life.
Uh, so again, that should beprotected.
Uh, there's the mantra fromshakespeare that if you uh, you
know, shoot the king, kill him.
Uh, type logic that if you'regoing to take that kind of shot,
(56:30):
don't miss.
And uh, she, she does use themoment effectively for
galvanizing, uh, the earlyrepublic rebellion.
Uh, and that should beprotected.
However, the response is likewe'll shut down cnn will and
(56:54):
arrest her for having theaudacity to say it.
Like that's not, that's notcausing sedition out of the gate
, type behavior that made JohnAdams a one-term president by
(57:15):
trying to shut down criticism.
So we've seen historicalcomparisons with force of law.
That doesn't work in thiscountry.
Your Honor.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
Did you want to add anything to the senator's speech
?
The you know, unfortunately, Ithink you know the alien
sedition and John Adams isbecoming relevant again.
I just finished reading abiography of Thomas Jefferson
earlier this week and so some ofthat is quite fresh in my mind
(57:52):
this week, and so some of thatis quite fresh in my mind.
There's also a senator not asenator, a congresswoman from
(58:21):
South Carolina who decided thatthe best place to sexual assault
and other actions against herwas on the floor of Congress,
and part of you know I'm a bitcynical and part of my thought
process is that she did it thereso that she would be protected
from lawsuit from her ex-husbandand her ex-husband's friends
(58:42):
who she made these allegationsagainst.
And you know clearly MaudeMartha was giving a relevant
speech in her role as senator.
I think that Bail Organa did aphenomenal job of making sure
that they couldn't shut down thebroadcast and that it would air
in as many places as possible,and we know from the animated
(59:07):
series that it did get out thereto the masses her speech before
they were able to shut it down,so it was effective at that
level.
So it was quite interesting and, like Star Wars was a bit of an
analogy to various times inUnited States foreign policy and
(59:30):
history.
I think that you know that'swhere science fiction is at its
best, where it's talking aboutplaces that are different but
yet the same.
Speaker 1 (59:41):
Stephen, anything to add?
Speaker 3 (59:43):
Yeah, all of that, yeah, I think that this, that
her speech about you know thewhen the gap between what is
true and what is false, whenthat becomes eradicated, then
we're just kind of doomed and Ithink it speaks.
So it's the, the writerstalking about you know the, the
(01:00:04):
age of misinformation and AI,deep fakes and the, how
susceptible we are to lies um,just outright lies by people in
power.
I think it's a reallyinteresting comment on where we
are, very scary.
Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Yes, it is.
They did a brilliant job ofconnecting Mon Mothma's speech
to Star Wars Rebels, because inthe animated they make mention
that they want her to give thespeech again.
Because when we see the speechin the animated series she's not
(01:00:39):
wearing her cloak, her jacket,it's just the white out outfit
and so the senate, she has thecloak and then ditches that and
it's just the she's in the whitefor for the remainder, well,
cassian shacket and then uh, butit ties together nicely.
It's like that's really cleverwriting.
(01:01:01):
They're not ignoring theanimated series, they're making
it work, complete with goldsquadron to escort her in.
I was like rock on guys likethat is give the y-wing some
love I'm so sad thomas is inhere, because that was I.
Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
That was the first person I thought of when I when
I heard gold squadron, me, metoo, and and you know to me.
Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
this is why you know dave filani, and I'm guessing
that he had a lot to do withthis.
Uh, you know that, that thatcare towards keeping you know
the stories in contact with eachother, from the animated series
to the books, to the comics, tothe movies, and clearly you
know everyone's not going to getthese little tidbits, because
(01:01:45):
not everyone watches theanimated series or reads the
books or does all of thosethings like some sicko like
myself, or does all of thosethings like some sicko like
myself.
For those of us that do, thefact that they care about that,
I think, is very, very important.
It doesn't you know someonethat's just sees the live action
?
Wouldn't that remark about goldsquadron wouldn't matter in the
(01:02:09):
least, it wouldn't distractfrom the story.
But it does give just awonderful Easter egg to those of
us that watch the animatedseries and were watching to see
how these things wouldinterconnect.
And it was done really reallywell.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
I was wondering if we were going to get a Hera
appearance in some way.
Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
I thought that I was wondering that as well.
We do in Rogue one where we getthe, the general sedalia.
You know, come to the office,uh issue, but uh, and you see
chopper there in in thebackground.
Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
But yeah, no, I was kind of hoping for a chopper
moment yeah, it's, we got a lot,so like I am absolutely not
complaining about all the theEaster eggs that we got in the
show.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
And we might see it in some deleted scene down the
road.
You know when they release someextras, so you never know.
Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Yeah, it's like they could have been like yeah, we
couldn't squeeze everything infor you nerds, but you kids got
a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
So it's nice that they.
It's nice that they care aboutthe legal geeks and the geeks
and the nerds yeah, they do.
Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
It's nice that they care about the legal geeks and
the geeks and the nerds?
Yeah, they do.
It's a love letter to us and weappreciate that They'll get
Christmas cards.
So here's a fascinatingquestion.
But Cassian, like this, turnsinto pure spymaster storytelling
(01:03:38):
with get the senator out of theSenate so she doesn't get
murdered or arrested and blowthe cover of the entire rebel
alliance on a tuesday and, uh,cassian has to shoot several,
two people, so two isb agentsget, get shot.
In this you can argue defense ofothers and self-defense, but it
like when you're doing thatagainst the state, it gets weird
.
Which is why this is more thespy story at that point, which
(01:03:59):
makes it okay, as opposed tobecause you're not supposed to
say I did self-defense againstthe clothed police officer, no,
you didn't Like we, no, that's abad argument.
Uh, as opposed to, you knowlike, hey, we got her and he
(01:04:21):
shoots the driver.
Like that's from a spy story,makes absolute sense from a
legal analysis, way murky anddifficult and looks more on the
lines of murder.
Uh, either of you want tohighlight that?
Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
you know, clearly, from from the imperial
perspective, he there's no waythat justification could be
shown.
Uh, you know the the bestdefense that you have is we're
at war and this is an act of warand I'm defending my ally, but
(01:05:00):
it's very specious.
And the fact of the matter isis he was killing people to
escape and was breaking the lawsto do this.
And while you know, from thegood versus evil perspective and
from the rebel perspective, hemight be considered a hero for
doing these things, clearly,from the state perspective, he
(01:05:22):
was committing crimes, includingmurder.
Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
Yeah, it's a problem.
It's a problem.
So with that, this might be thebest arc.
I mean, I like all of thesearcs, but this one is
exceptional.
I like the last one a lot.
We'll talk more about that, butthere's, this is a spy story at
(01:05:49):
its best.
Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Yeah, finally seeing the Gorman massacre and Mon
Mothma's escape from the senate,like all those things that have
been referred to in otherthings, and finally seeing it
portrayed was really, reallycool and it hats off to
genevieve o'reilly, for, one,the way she gave the speech, but
two, the look of shock on herface each time Cassian shoots
(01:06:12):
someone.
Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
She really, you know, fromstart to finish, played the role
incredibly well.
And yeah, it's the greatestthing I think about Star Wars is
, you know, in the originalmovie, where you just get this
line, you know I fought withyour dad in the Clone Wars and
(01:06:37):
you know, you just don't eventhink about it and then you did
the amount, see that flushed out.
The way it was done isincredible.
And in Rogue One, where wefirst meet K2, to bring to the
(01:07:02):
last issue of this arc we nowknow where K2 came from and why
K2 is the way he is.
Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
Yeah, he got run over like that's kind of like a
droid napping and chopped inhalf.
Yeah, yeah like there someassembly was required and and he
comes out with a personality.
Now they joked at celebration.
You get to see k2 be born andit's like, yeah, we did.
Like it's weird, uh, we got tosee him come into existence in a
(01:07:40):
very you know, frankensteinlike manner of life.
Life, my creature life, uh, butyeah, so very, very
frankenstein, and it's.
Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
It's funny, you know, when you say about the
personality in the droid depotin in the various galaxies and
edges on on my coast and yourcoast, they now have personality
chips that you can purchase toadd to your, your, your droid uh
, you know it's to to changetheir personality imperial.
Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Do you want a smuggler?
Like what do you?
Uh, you know there's a varietyof them, like three or four.
Um, I got one uh uh for forr26b1, my proportionality droid,
and uh, a little bit of everyhumor, uh.
(01:08:34):
But yeah, this is all goodstuff.
Uh, love the show.
I'm glad they did them in threeepisode arcs.
It makes analysis a lot harder,but uh, it was like a movie a
week and I'm all for that, and Ithink the stories go better
when you watch them together.
Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
Yeah, they broke these down well, I think the way
that you know, each was a minitrilogy that made a movie and we
got you know several reallyreally good movies, which was a
real treat, I think, to thefandom.
Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
And just so well acted I mean everyone's.
And just so well acted, I meaneveryone's compelling in their
roles, like that's phenomenal tosee this level of attention.
Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
Yeah, I hope that those that you know make the
decisions with.
I'm sure they, you know, aregoing to submit for Emmys, but,
you know, I hope people don'tthe people that vote on these
things.
Oh, it's Star Wars.
I hope they really watch itbecause you really have acting
(01:09:44):
that's incredibly good andincredibly real and some very
dramatic, well-acted scenes inthis series and I hope it gets.
You know, there certainly couldbe stuff that's better, but
it's certainly worthy and I hopeit gets a, you know, a real
(01:10:06):
look at.
Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
A real look to God's ears.
Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Yeah no, I hope so.
Didn't Sir Alec Dennis getnominated for a new hope?
Yeah, yeah, okay.
So I mean, like there's aprecedent for because, again,
o'reilly should get one, I thinkshe, she should get one.
Uh, there are others who arecontenders, but I, I think she,
(01:10:32):
I think she's has the most, uh,uh, the strongest chance of
pulling it off.
Um, anyway, that's outside oflegal analysis.
Uh, all of that said, uh,anything else for the good of
the order, all right.
Well, we'll be back next weekto cover more Everyone.
(01:10:52):
Thanks for tuning in.
Wherever you are, stay safe,stay healthy and stay geeky.
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