December 5, 2023 • 62 mins
Jim is in the guest seat this week to discuss some of the wildest cases he’s defended over the years. Helping to share some behind the scenes stories is surprise co-host, and Jim’s daughter, Hope Griffin. The group dives into the controversies surrounding a drug detection device called the ‘Quadro Tracker’, and why bringing home a present for your daughter can help you win the case. They also discuss Jim’s early appearances on Court TV, relating to a bizarre case involving the death of a cat killer. Later they break down a reverse sting operation involving sex workers and blackmailers. And in the final part of the show, Hope recalls her favorite summer working at her dad’s office, answering prank phone calls from Dick Harpootlian, and more!
Art – Simon & Associates
Music – Caleb Fletcher
Art – Simon & Associates
Music – Caleb Fletcher
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:22):
Hello everyone, and welcome to thePresumption. I am Sarah, joined by
Jimmy. Hey, Sarah, Hey, Matt, Hey, what's up guys.
Happy holidays. Yeah, it's likeextended holiday season and you know,
we were gone for a minute,we're back, we'll be gone again,
but that's just the holidays. Sotoday is really interesting because we're doing something
(00:45):
really different. We're putting Jim inthe guest chair, so it'll be it'll
get even more interesting. He's toohumble. You obviously had a very long
and colorful career, and sometimes thingscome up where in conversations someone brings up
(01:14):
a reference to a case or youknow, I read something and I'm like,
what is this case? You know, and it just is like one
interesting story after another. But wepicked out three really interesting stories cases of
gems. We've got a cat murder, We've got a device that supposed to
(01:37):
be an amazing device except the governmentthought it's fake. And then we've got
a reversing operation on a hooker.Now I can think of these three cases
having you know, some some commondenominator. But it's going to get dirty,
so I'm going to leave that alone. But before I turn it over
(01:59):
to Jim, and you know,we sort of go through these cases one
by one. Of course I cannot, like, you know, Jim's now
the guest. So I needed anotherperson to help me co host with Matt,
and so decided to call upon somehelp if I can get my While
(02:22):
we're in the process of getting saidmystery guest on the show, I just
want to say, without getting toofar ahead, this just the teaser of
the cat murder case. Is thisreally a story about somebody who murdered cats?
Yes? And then this is rougha little bit. Okay, Jim,
(02:43):
are you a cat owner a catlover? Where do you fall on
this? Oh? You know,I used to not like cats much.
My son is a cat lover,and so we've had cats for like the
last fifteen to twenty years, andthey do grow. I mean, look
your daughter feel about cats. Idon't know my dad. Did we surprise
(03:05):
you? Yeah, hey, Hope, I am surprised. That's really shocking.
I was like, either he's gonnakill me or you know I'm going
to kill you. Yeah, I'mgoing to kill you. No, it's
all good. It's all good.We missed Hope. She was coming here
(03:29):
for Thanksgiving. We're going to ClemsonSouth Carolina game, and she and her
husband came down COVID and so theycouldn't come, and so I'm glad to
see you, Hope. No,it's good to see you too. And
Donald Trump attended the game, soI obviously couldn't show my face there.
Can you put down your can youtilt down your camera a little bit so
you have less He's there, yougo, there you go. I've noticed
(03:49):
both father and daughter have the bookcaselook going on in the background. This
is very fitting. I like it. So, yeah, I heard Donald
Trump was at the game. Anyway. Yeah we are at the States.
(04:10):
You're, what with the raddest ofstates here, and so yeah, yeah,
I get it. I have todefend him in a mock trial,
you know, against Lanny Davis onJanuary sixth. Stuff that's coming up in
like two weeks. And I waslike, I had a rehearsal this morning.
I'm like, I mean, Iwas like, it is my honored
(04:33):
anyway, all right, so letme. Of course, everyone now knows
that Hope is Jim's daughter, butuh, she's also an amazing lawyer,
and so I just want to brieflyintroduce her. H Hope Griffin is an
experience attorney who practices in Kaplan andErnest Educational Law section in Boulder, Colorado.
(04:57):
Her practice includes a wide range ofeducation really did legal matters, including
special education, Title nine, Titlesix, student discipline, and student equity
matters. She began her career asa third grade teacher in Colorado Springs as
part of Teach for America before attendingthe University of Colorado School of Law,
where she was awarded Order of theQuiff. When Hope isn't trying to improve
(05:18):
our public education system, advocating forteachers and fighting for students with disabilities,
she's chasing around her one year oldson, who was the cutest more climbing
Colorado's mountains with her husbands. Oneof Hope's most cherished roles is being Jim's
eldest daughter and biggest fan. Anddid you put that in there just because
(05:38):
you know I was going to readit all? Or what? I try
my best? I really think thisshould be like a holiday themed episode.
Jim's favorite things, claud and trackers, cats, his oldest daughter, you
know, talk about herself. Shedid leave out the part that I have
climbed from fourteen ers with her andsurvived those and she left off the part
(05:59):
that she was editor of the LawReview. Associated It's one thing I didn't
do. I wasn't smart enough.We saw those pictures, Jim, you
shared those when we were talking aboutI think it was something. It was
the title nine, right, No, I'm not sure. Yeah, we
were we we uh we put thoseup anyway. All right, So Hope
(06:24):
and I are going to grill you. We're not gonna tell you that,
we're gonna We're gonna prompt some funstories. So the first one is this
Quadro Tracker case, which was abig win for you and I still can't
tell Matt, do you have apicture of this device thinging? Yeah,
this looks like my worst uh myworst nightmare at the dentist office or something.
(06:46):
That's the Quadro tracker, right,So I was like, is this
thing for real? Is it?Bs? Like? I mean you you
took the case to trial and yourclient was acquitted, uh, which is
a big deal and why we wantto talk about this. But it is
a positive molecular locator also known aslike a detection device, and it was
(07:09):
sold by Quadro Corporation. That's whatthat's where the name comes from, which
is located in or was located inSouth Carolina. Between ninety three and ninety
six, around a thousand of themwere sold to police departments and school districts
around the US on the basis thatthey would detect hidden drugs, explosives,
weapons, and lost golf balls.And I was like thinking, maybe that's
(07:31):
why you got involve the case.But anyway, in ninety six, the
FBI declared it to be fake andobtained a permanent injunction injunction barring the device
from being manufacturer sold. And yeah, so you represented one of three defendants
named Ray Fisk. Tell us aboutyour client, the charges, the defenses,
(07:57):
and what led you to this bigwin. Sure so, so Ray
and his buddy Wade qualabaumb they weretreasure hunters in South Carolina. And you
know, in South Carolina we hadsome We had the Revolutionary War and we
had the Civil War. And thereare a lot of artifacts from from the
from those wars found in in thein the in the waters and the swamps
(08:22):
and in the woods of South Carolina. And so there's a there's a whole
treasure hunting industry and they have developeddifferent devices, not just metal detectors,
but some other devices that you knowthat that they use out when they're treasure
hunting. Well, these guys developedwhat they thought was and believed to be
genuinely believed to be was a devicethat would I would find honestly just about
(08:48):
anything. And and their theory.Their theory was everything in the universe has
a unique molecular structure, every person, and every organic matter. So and
that they believe they had found away to capture the molecular structure of whatever
you want to look for. Andactually Dea licensed them to buy marijuana,
(09:11):
buy cocaine so that they could testit and try to come up with with
a method to find you know,substances like cocaine and marijuana. And they
really did market it as if itwould replace a drug dog, and and
it went, you know, itsold like hotcakes. I mean, they
(09:33):
sold them to law enforcement agencies aroundthe country, they sold them school districts
around the country. And basically thedevice was not electric. They they it
looked like and people who are notwatching them via YouTube, you know,
I try to explain it, It'slike you had a a plastic pistol handle
with a radio antenna on a pendulumat the end pointing horizontal, and and
(10:00):
that you and it was not electricit but they it ran off static electricity,
and that that was their theory.And so you had to walk and
breathe, and as you walk andbreathe, static electricity would build up.
It would oscillate a chip inside thedevice. You could have the chip in
the handle, or you could havethem if you wanted to spend. You
(10:22):
know, for the primo model,you could pay eight thousand dollars and get
one that would go on your hipand then you would put different type of
chips in there. And and asyou walk along, and this antenna would
swing in the direction of whatever you'relooking for, and then you would have
to go in a different direction andyou would triangulate down to where it was
(10:43):
and and and and that was thethat was the device, and that was
how it was operating. And thatthey had they got your clients or your
client and the other defendants got alicense from the DEA, yeah, to
test, so they lawfully could buymarijuana, lawfully could buy cocaine, and
(11:05):
and and to test and and andso they did, and they developed these
models, and and they and andhonestly they had a lot of success.
There was a lot of letters writtenin of people saying I used it,
I found you know, it worksfor US, et cetera. And and
then as the thing was catching on, there was a there was a FBA
(11:30):
agent in Beaumont, Texas who inthe County of Beaumont had purchased these for
law enforcement offices, and they weredoing a display in the county court house
and the guy couldn't make it work. And so then the FBA agent took
it down to the metal dector andran it through and and sure enough that
didn't find anything in there. Andhe concluded the right then, and it
(11:52):
was a it was a hoax.It was a fake And and they opened
a case and they started investigating,and then they would send these devices to
They sent them to the San DiaNational Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
and they had these nuclear physicists andthey put them in and they would put
them in like this. This itwasn't, you know, zero gravity room,
(12:18):
but it was a room that hadbasically I forgot what they called it.
But then it was shot at withgamma rays and seeing what it did,
I mean, just the most sophisticatedtesting techniques that our country had at
the time. They fired it onthis this quadro tracker, and and you
know, they concluded it was fakeand and and they got a search warrant.
(12:39):
The FBI got a search warrant andwent into Hardyville, South Carolina,
where their plant was, and itwas an abandoned gymnasium and that they had
purchased in where they were manufacturing thesequadro trackers. And and as a execume
the search warrant, my client RayFists said, you know it, if
(13:00):
you promise not to tell the worldhow we do this, I will show
you how we make one. Andand the guy promised. He lied,
because it wasn't soon after that,you know, it was on they sent
a national wire out about what hadjust happened. But but so Ray,
they had a model they called whenyou would put, you know, a
(13:22):
little capsule, you'd put it inyour dog's collar, so if the dog
runs off in the woods or huntingdog, you can find it. You
put the little capsule on, haveyour equipment in case I got stolen,
you'd find it. And in fact, my client and his and and his
family members had planted a little bugcapsule and they're through dental work in case
(13:46):
they got kidnapped. I mean seriously, no, lie, seriously, noe
hope to be honest, was yourdad while he was trying this case,
was he also testing the technology outon the home. The boyfriends go through
the tests. You know, everyonehad like a right muller that was actually
one of these capsules. But butso, uh, the Ray is gonna
(14:09):
tell the FB agent how to makea bug, and and and and so
then Ray goes to the freezer inthe kitchen area of of this uh this
old uh gymnasium pulls out and uhsome tweezers and a frozen and a bag
full of bugs. I mean,I mean bugs like ants. And so
(14:31):
he takes tweezers, takes an ant, put it on the copy machine,
close the copy machine, pushes thebutton on the copy machine, then prints
out a black piece of U xeroxpaper, black so you couldn't see what
was on it. Ray then cutsout the center where apparently the bug image
(14:52):
was transposed on the paper, andthen laminates it on a little chip,
slides it into the quadro tracker handleand the or chip would go and there
you have the one end of thecombination. Then he would take the ant
that was on the the the onthe on the face of the coffee machine
and put it in a little capsuleand put super glue and glued it up.
(15:16):
And then that was the bug.And so you would put that bug
and so that the chip had themolecular structure of that ant, and you
had that bug anywhere. And sothe FB agent said, when I saw
that, I knew it was afraud. I knew it was a fraud.
And when your client did this,obviously he was not represented, right,
(15:37):
No, he was not represented.Didn't call anybody, you telling him,
could you please? You're a provider? Step by step? Yeah,
so that you know. They soright then and there it was like this
is a hoax. They went andthey got a national injunction. It became
(15:58):
national news. It was a bigstory. It was on World News tonight,
uh uh. Ted Copple's show.They did a lot of all this
was before documentaries, right so,but but they did a lot of news
magazine shows on it, and andit came like, you know, we're
(16:18):
the laughing stock. And after theygot in the injunction, they indicted these
guys out in Beaumont, Texas.And so they good old boys from South
Carolina, and I had been outof you know, US Training's office for
probably about a few years, notlong. And and so when we got
hired to go out and defend themin Beaumont, Texas. And and as
(16:40):
we're getting ready, we were theninundated, inundated by people who believed in
this device. And and it wasunbelievable. I mean it was And we
got letters from different people about thesuccesses that they had had, and and
so it was clear to us thatthere was more to it than what you
(17:00):
know, these experts that they've sentdecent national lab you know, had come
up and and and so you know, I took it around to some experts
and they were like, you know, sort of you know, patting me
on the back, good luck,but you know, I don't I don't
understand how it works. But thenone of the things that we learned through
this is there's a lot of thingsin the universe that people don't really understand
(17:25):
how it works. And and andone of the things that that we use
in the trial that for all theseexperts, they had three nationally recognized experts
testify and not a single one ofthem could tell you how a homing pigeon
or a carrier pigeon or messenger pigeon, whatever you call it, how you
can take that pigeon a thousand milesand let him go, and how he
(17:48):
or she ends up back at theplace where he started from. They don't
know, but they know what happened. So it was like science doesn't know
everything, right, And and itturns out out that in the in the
beak of a huming pigeon or inthe skull, there's there's properties up called
magnetite, which is the same propertythat is used in in a lot of
(18:12):
toner. And so you know,I'm not saying that that. You know,
we we had valid science behind it, but every expert had to say,
homing pigeons work on some magnetic navigationsystem. They have magnetite and and
magnetites and toners and and and thenwe were in the defense. We had
(18:37):
people testifiut we started out our firstour first our first witness was a golf
coach and he he he could takethis golf ball finder and he could find
golf balls on a golf course.He could He and his family would like
put golf balls under solo cups andput them on a green like a putting
(18:59):
green, and then they would walkby and try to figure out which which
solo cups had the golf ball inhim. And he could do it,
so you know, some of hisfamily members couldn't do it as well as
he could. And so that wasour our first witness. Interestingly, you
would we had the government put ronon the witness stand. I'm sure who
(19:22):
who's wrong? Ron r o N. So the older viewers will know about
ron Co. Ron Co was youknow, a late night UH channel that
where you would you would buy Genzuknives and all this other sould by by
ron Coo. So the guy whostarted ron COO he marketed the golf ball
finder on on his on his InfoMarshall channel and and he got a lot
(19:45):
of a lot of returns and sothey brought him up. So and to
contradict Ronco, we had a golfcoach and then and then then we had
a Texas ranger testify and he hetestified he's going down a road interstate and
and he passed the truck and he'sgot this he's got this quadri track in
(20:08):
his hand and as soon as hepasses this truck, it swings over and
points at the truck. So hepulls the truck over and he says,
sir, I've got this new devicethat I have and and it just hit
on you and it's telling me youhave marijuana in the car in your truck,
and here's if you give me themarijuana, I will not charge you.
(20:29):
So the guy goes in the behindthis pickup truck and by the seat
of a pickup truck, pulls outa bag of marijuana, hands it to
this Texas ranger and off they go. And the Texas ranger testified about that
at the trial that first criminal case. I had a Texas ranger, any
law enforcement testify on my behalf.But on cross examination got to give the
ausa credit. You said, now, mister Texas ranger, what did the
(20:52):
guy look like in that pickup truck? And the Texas ranger said, a
doper and that that was kind ofthat, you know that, you know,
you you would put it in thehands of a law enforcement officer and
he would, you know, andthen if you leaned it on one side
or the other, the antenna wouldswing around and and and and then oh,
(21:15):
my gosh, we had a wehad a woman from Atlanta who sold
these and and one of the thingsthat that she would do to to train
and and and stay proficient with thequadro tracker, she would go to a
funeral home. This is this istrue. And she testified about she would
go to a funeral home, shewould get hair from a deceased and then
and then she would wait a fewdays, and then she would travel around
(21:38):
Atlanta with the quadro tracker in herhand and she would put the hair from
the deceased in the device, andthat she would be able to find where
that person was buried. She testifiedabout. And then our very last witness
was an FBI agent who was retired, who was in marketing this quadro tracker.
And he says, the last questionto him from us was you know,
(22:04):
have you been to frauded? Hegoes, yes, I have,
he said, by whom, hesaid, by the FBI and the federal
government. Mic drop by your closing. I've heard about your clothing and not
from you. Yeah, tell Hope, I want to I want to hear.
I want to hear Hope's version ofmy clothing. Well, well,
(22:26):
well, I wan't need to confirmthis is the right case, but I'm
pretty sure. So when my dadwould travel for work, you'd often bring
back souvenirs for us. So wewent to Vegas and he brought us this
like magic card deck, which wouldvery much align with the quadro tracker these
days. And also he brought mysister a slot machine sharkstal sharpener I later
got stolen. But on this day, Mary Lewis had just learned about Texas
(22:48):
in school, and so she said, Dad, can you bring me back
something big from Texas? Because everything'sbigger in Texas. I think we got
bolo tized. But Dad, didyou work that into your closing argument or
was that a difference? I absolutelydid you know. We're in trial for
two weeks, and I gave myclosing and and honestly, we had this
judge who was appointed by President JohnF. Kennedy. His name was Judge
(23:08):
Fisher, and he was ninety threeat the time, and he gave both
sides twenty minutes for closing. Andwe were like, and there are three
defendants, something like, Judge Fisher, yeah, I need at least thirty
minutes myself. He God, y'allgot twenty minutes. And so the first
guy that gets up there so youknow, he was appointed, and I
(23:29):
promise you it was just like outof the scene from my cousin Vinny.
I mean, he's stuttering, hecan't say much. And then and he
burns up about five minutes of mytime. And then then the second guy,
who was representing Wade Kualabaum gets up. And this was a big Texan,
big guy, big big cowboy hat. He'd come to court and every
(23:51):
day. And he stood up andsaid, I know, you good people
of the Eastern District of Texas arefair minded people, and here's what I'm
asking you to do. Listen tothis young man from South Carolina. And
he says, and then I getup and then that's exactly what I said,
Hope, I said, you know, y'all spent you know, two
weeks here. You're giving us yourtime and appreciate it. You'all been away
(24:12):
from your families. I know whatit means. You know. When I
left South Carolina to come out here, I you know, I dropped my
daughter off at at kindergarten, andI thought I was gonna be in Texas
and bring it back. What wasshe liked? She said, I want
something big, and go why doyou want something big? She says,
well, I saw him Busytown thateverything's big in Texas, And I told
(24:33):
the Jerry, I said, youknow, in Texas you have such a
reputation, and that is one ofthe things. Everything's big in Texas.
But another thing, you're the lonestar state and you don't need the federal
government coming in here and telling youwhat your county sheriff's department can buy and
not buy. You know, theycan do it themselves. And so that
that, and you know, theconventional wisdom was the earth was flat,
(25:00):
and then it was challenged the Earthwas round, and you know, so
we don't know everything. So thatwas really about the two things I could
get out of my mouth before JudgeFisher hooked me from the From my closing
argument was what you bring back forMary Lewis? Yeah, I don't know.
I think bothow ties. That's right, Okay, So the next the
(25:21):
next case, I love this case. Well, let me let me tell
you one last story about that case, because so so the jury is out
for the first day, the jury'sout after they get the closing, and
they're not turning a verdict, andand you know, they did things differently
then, and the judge would sendthe law clerk in and try to see
(25:44):
what the score was. And thelaw clerk came back and said to us,
wink, wink, nod, nod, y'all are in good shape.
That's all you would say, y'allare in good shape. And so the
judge sent the jury home and andthen we went out and prematurely celebrated.
And then we were sounds like BeckyHill, this lawler. We came in
the next day and we can earlyvote. We came in the next day.
(26:08):
And so they're grinding away and allday and gets in the middle of
the afternoon and Judge Fisher says he'sgoing to declare mistrial, and and then
the US Turns Office didn't want himto declare miss trial, and so they
sent the law clerk in again andasked, you know, do you want
to declare miss trial or do youwant to continue working And and the jury
(26:30):
said, we want to come backtomorrow and we will see the exhibits,
and we think we can get averdict tomorrow. And so then we went
out and celebrated all over again.So after two nights of celebration. We
go into court and the jury wantedto see the exhibits. And in Texas,
apparently, and the jury doesn't getthe exhibits unless they asked for the
exhibits. And so they asked forthe exhibits. I go in the courtroom
(26:53):
and all the government's exhibits are inthe jury room, all the defense exhibits
are in the courtroom. I'm like, Judge Fisher, what's going on here?
And go, okay, we'll sendyour exhibits back. And then and
then I was I was really frustratingbecause I thought, you know, some
shenanigans were going on. And thenthe court reporter called me over and he
says, you got nothing to worryabout. He says, look look out
(27:17):
the window. And I looked outthe window and they were like about three
or four pickup trucks with bass boatsbehind them. And he says, he
says, here's what you need toknow. Everybody in most everybody in Beaumont
works at the oil refinery. Andthe and the deal at the oil refinery
is if you are in jury dutypast noon on Friday, you don't have
to go to work. So hesaid, you're gonna get You're gonna get
(27:40):
a knock on the door. Attwelve oh one. Sure enough, twelve
oh one, Jerry knocks on thedoor and they had a defense verdict.
And so yeah, in your cases, I don't know, they just want
to stretch it out so they couldgo fishing. That's what that was about.
All right, Okay, can wego on to the next one?
Sure? My favorite one. Well, actually the next two are my favorite
(28:03):
ones. I can't really pick.So this is uh, I call it
the cat case, but it's aState of South Carolina versus g I think
I miss read you. No,I thought you said it was about a
killer cat, not a cat killer. So this was the graphic I found.
Sorry, that's the cat murder.So RAI was convicted of murder for
(28:26):
killing a cat killer who was actuallya cop or some sort of a police
deputy. Someone killed a cat killer. Is that correct? Correct? So
hold on, hold on, SoJim is gonna fill in the details.
But I'm kind of obsessed with this. So the South Carolina Supreme Court reversed
the murder conviction of your client,and then you represented him on retrial and
(28:52):
he was acquitted again. It's ahuge win and uh, and I have
some questions for Hope as well.But so Ryan, yeah, right,
Jim's Jim's client owned a property wherehe stored his tools and equipment for his
business. Sometimes he slept there.But more importantly, he had a bunch
(29:15):
of stray cats that he sort ofkept on his property. And between March
and August of two thousand and four, Rye, Jim's client, had a
lot of issues with trespassers that wouldcome onto his property. There are like
three trespassers, the neighbor and someoneelse, and then also this like police
deputy guy, this cop guy,and they would just come on the property
(29:38):
and start shooting Ry's cats. Andso I'm gonna let Jim tell the story.
But the but the cat shooter,the cat killer who gets shot at
by Rye is the cop. Soif you hear cop, you know which
trespasser it is. Okay, Jimtell us the whole story. Yes,
But Grover was like guy who hisfamily had had a farm, farmhouse and
(30:03):
some land and the rural part ofRichmond County, which is the county where
Columbia, South Carolina is, Soit's a pretty urban county except you know,
it's a sprawling county. And andand he used he would go out
there and hunt some, but mainlyhe had heating and the air business.
And he stored his heating and airequipment out there for you know, with
(30:26):
supplies and things. And he wasa cat lover. And and Grover was
known if you had found a straycat that you would, you know,
you give him Grover, and Groverwould take him out to his farm and
he would feed him. So hehad really a herd of cats, I
mean probably thirty cats out there,and he would go out there every day
or every other day and feed them. And and and the neighbor would when
(30:51):
you say neighbor in this rural partof South Carolina, I mean the neighbor's
house was probably a half a mileaway, but it was a rental house.
And a new family had moved in, a mother and her adult son,
and and the adult son would comeover, and he thought they were
just feral cats. And he wouldjust take target practice at the cats when
shoot and kill them and leave them, leave them dead. And Groover would
(31:14):
show up and then be a deadcat here, a dead cat there.
And then he would call Richon Countyand they would send a deputy out and
they write a report and cat dead, cat shot, and and it went
on for months and and then I'mnot sure about the the months of the
year, Sarah, because I doknow the day of the of the shooting
where uh, this off duty BeaufordCounty Sheriff's deputy, Beauford County Sheriff's deputy
(31:38):
lost his life was was well.There was a hurricane that had come through
the Beauford County Sheriff's Deputy's wife,her mother and brother lived in the neighboring
property, and so she evacuated tothat neighboring property. And then when the
Beautiford County Sheriff's deputy had finished hispatrol duties, he came to Richland County
(32:04):
to wait out the hurricane or thetropical storm or whatever it was. And
then so the deputy who would bethe son in law and brother in law
of the or the brother in lawof the kid who is coming over shooting
the cats. He comes over withhis brother in law and he's got AR
fifteen and they start shooting cats.Grover pulls up and he sees a dead
(32:30):
cat. Cat is warm, warmblood. He didn't have a cell phone.
He goes to his cousin's house downthe street. He calls Richlin County
and he is very agitated and hesays, you better get out here fast
or something bad might happen. Andthen Grover gets back in this truck and
he goes to the property. Assoon as he pulls up, he hears
(32:51):
a shotgun blast or a gun blast, and so he grabs a rifle out
of the back of his truck andhe charges off in to his property.
He rounds a tree and he's confrontedby this off duty kund of sheriff's deputy
with AR fifteen pointing at Grover,and Grover shoots him, kills him,
kills him dead. And and thefirst trial he goes try he's convicted of
(33:16):
murder. And the issue that itwas overturned on was in order to use
deadly force in a self defense situation. The law is generally you have a
duty to retreat, and if youcan't retreat, then you can use deadly
force. But you don't have aduty to retreat in your own home.
(33:37):
It's called the castle doctrine, andnow it's been codified in statue, and
so you don't have a duty toretreat in your own home. And so
the question is Grover is in theyard of his home, you know,
did he have a duty to retreat? And the Supreme Court reverse saying he
does not have a duty to retreat. And so was this an instruction that
(33:58):
wasn't given or like, well,that was the first trial. The judge
instructed the jury that Grover had aduty to retreat. So if he didn't,
he didn't retreat and he shoots tokill, you know, he's guilty
and murder was the wrong instruction?Yeah, it coroneous instruction. And so
(34:21):
we go back to the retrial,and they hired new lawyers, and they
hired a guy older. I sayolder. I mean he's probably a little
bit older than me at the time, which I thought was old then.
But he he was renting space forme and and he says he's got this
case and it's up, you know, for retrial and murder. And I
said, his name's Dennis Bolt,a great lawyer. He's totally retired now
(34:45):
and I'm living a good life takingphotos of stuff, traveling all over the
world. But so Dennis says,you know, I think it's very defensible,
Jim. But you know, I'mjust I don't have the staff here
to do it, and I justwant your help. And he told me
how much money Grover had to hireanother lawyer. I said, Dennis,
I can't do that. I mean, it's a murder case. It can
be two weeks. And you know, I've never tried a murder case.
(35:07):
He said, I know, I'vetried a lot of murder cases, but
but you know, you know howto try cases, and it'll be a
lot of fun. I said,then I'll go broke. He said,
well, I got to tell you. I got a call from Court TV
today and they're they're planning on coveringthe trial. And I said, okay,
I'll do it. Right. Thatwas my first Court TV case,
And and and we get in.It is not the first time you're on
(35:30):
TV. I've been on TV before, but you know, I mean,
hell, I was on TV onthe Quadrit Tracker case. But the first
time the cameras in the courtroom forsure. Oh okay, okay, the
and and you know, we didn'tjust went on the jury instruction because one
(35:51):
of the significant facts that the firsttrial was the brother in law says he
saw the shooting. He said thathis the off the Dudie Beaufort County Sheriff's
deputy, dropped his gun, steppedback a few steps, and then Grover
executed him, shot him in coldblood. And sure enough, the police
report and everything showed that the gunwas that AR fifteen was about sixteen feet
(36:15):
away from the body when it wasfound. And that was a problem,
that was a huge problem for Grover'sstory. Was he pointed the gun at
me, arounded the tree. He'sgot it pointed to me. I got
a gun, pointed him. I'mnot going to wait to see if he
choose me first. And but thegun was so far from the body.
You know, we're trying to comeup with theories as how how that could
(36:35):
have happened. You know, maybethe guy crawled a little bit afterwards.
And and Dennis Bolt kept saying,you know that we had never and the
first lawyer and no one had evergotten what we call a run report,
that the ambulance run report. It'sthe EMS instant report of the MS medical
record of the run and and soand and Dennis kept say, and do
(37:00):
we have the run report yet?Do we have the run reports? Dennis
we're getting it, We're getting it. And they sent EMS a subpoena.
They didn't like the way it wasworded, or who we served it on
or what have you. And sowe went round around with Rising County EMS
to get the run report. Weare picking the jury, we're picking the
jury, and a runner comes intothe courtroom and hands me the run report
(37:24):
and Dennis is arguing something with ajudge and I'm looking at the run report
and it says body laying soupine,laying flat gun within three feet of the
body, three feet three feet,not sixteen feet. So the EMS guy
moved the gun and it was neverfound out during the first trial, and
(37:46):
it was that fact alone would madeall the difference in the world. We
add a crime scene forensic expert Alabama, who is just I mean awesome,
and he did he did angles ofyou know, and we proved that the
sun law could not see what heclaimed he saw, you know, through
(38:06):
through you know. But I thinkthe instruction was really important to Jim.
Now, yeah, yeah, usuallyimportant. Now I got to tell you
Court TV during the trial says,you know, can we talk to your
client and Goad, no, youcan't talk to my client not until the
trial's over. And I said,okay, and they said they wouldn't do
it. Well, that's trial.I mean it aired that time, but
(38:29):
they would replay it frequently, andthey don't do it anymore because it's so
long ago, but they would replayit, you know, maybe once a
year. And the first time theyreplayed it, I see, like during
the weekend between the first and secondweek, Grover is out there on his
property. He he had he hadhad some cutouts of people where angles were
(38:52):
and cats were dead. I meanhe showed that to es. It was
kind of creepy. Well he's onCore TV walk in these these people through
the crime scene. I mean duringthe middle of the damn trial, My
client gave out was properly with courTV cameras and give gives him as honestly.
(39:12):
And then after and I would knowevery time that that trial was being
shown on Court TV because we wouldget little old ladies calling up want to
know how they could send money toGrover Rye because Grover says that he had
spent five hundred thousand dollars, youknow, defending the case and he broke
well, Grover's insurance company paid thefamily. I think five hundred thousand dollars,
(39:35):
but so you know, and peoplethen thought I got five hundred thousand
dollars for that trial, which wasthat that Uh yeah, I see this
pattern here, Jim not getting paid. Shenanigan's in the trial for a court
clerk messing with the jury, andpeople are getting paid and you're not getting
(39:57):
paid. That's right as television?Why not? You know that that photo
that Matt put up earlier for thoseof you who were watching on YouTube,
Uh the uh the screenshot of theTV was taken by Hope on her glittery
pink BlackBerry. Hope, I don'tknow. I think it was lacking glitter,
(40:20):
but it was definitely a pink BlackBerry. I was interning with Congress and
Cliburne at the time, and wewere working inside the Capitol because he was
the majority whip and so we werelive streaming court TV every day. So
that was where that grainy photo camefrom. I was really proud to say,
that's my down on TV, defendingcats and the cat uh, defending
the guy who killed the cat murderer. Another fun fact about my dad is
(40:45):
that he loves animals. I thinkI jumped in when you guys were talking
about cats earlier. But I adoptedor bought a cat off the side of
the road my freshman year of college, and my real steps changing that story
keep changing. I said, rescued. You can rescue animals lots of different
ways. Dad. So I hadthis cat in my room and I thought
it was only a matter of timebefore we're all going to get kicked out.
(41:07):
So I called my dad up andsaid, can you please take this
beautiful cat. He needs a home. She needs a home. And my
dad adopted the cat and gave thatcat the best home. I think my
dad even bought a stroller, acat stroller. Yeah, it's like legally
blonde showing up. She's got thispink carrying case for this cat with a
(41:30):
pink collar on. And the cat'sname is Chanel. Leave that part out.
And then we take the cat tothe vet to get you know,
checked up, and the vet says, what's your cat's name? He said
Chanel and goes, well, that'sa funny name for a boy cat.
And so then my son renamed Tom. Tom was a good cat. I'm
(41:58):
also I'm also curious to hear whilewe have hope here, Like, what
was your perspective growing up when yourdad was working these high profile cases?
Are these crazy cases? Little background? My dad was a medical malpractice attorney
and he would settle most cases,but whenever he took stuff to court,
our living room and our dining roomjust became like a battle zone with the
(42:19):
most horrific pictures from you know,medical procedures gone wrong. It was traumatizing
for me. So I wonder ifyou had anything similar or or did your
dad keep work at work. Hedid a good job of keeping work at
work, but I would say Christmasthis past year, he was bringing in
what he thought to be a presentand then he realized it was like a
body dummy for the Murdoch trial andput that right back in the garage.
(42:43):
That was the recent version. Hewas like, this is not a present.
It's quite heavy and large, butit's not a present. I've already
hijack's presence too. Like takes presentsthat are meant for someone and says they're
from him as opposed to the personthat gave the present. No, that's
called regifting, Sarah. We regiftedNo, no, no, no,
no, not regifting to Like.For example, I buy a present for
(43:08):
Matt and I say, hey,Jim, give this to Matt. You
give it to Matt. But yousay it's from you, not me.
Oh, a lot of the scottfrom you. That's is Christmas this year?
What did you get on topic?But since she brought that up,
Matt, I'm holding in my handa quill pen that you get when you
(43:30):
argue at the U. S.Supreme Court. And I had a case
up at the US Supreme Court andthat these are on the desk for counsel
and and you take them and andthey're they're years. So Hope is I
think eighth grade. And she's doinga monologue for Elijah Pinckney or some some
you know, strong woman for history, Woman History, I don't know what
(43:53):
it was. But she's doing amonologue at school. And she said,
Dad, I need to get aquill pen. And I said, do
I have the quill a pen foryou? I just got one from the
US Supreme Court. I'm gonna bringit to you. I show up,
I bring this quill pen, Iput it. I'm so proud of it
I got from the U. S. Supreme Court. My daughter's going to
(44:13):
give a monologue at school with apen from the U. S. Supreme
Court. She looks at it,she says, Dad, that looks just
like the one I got it Joanne's, which is a arch and craft court.
And sure enough, it looks justlike the one who got it joined.
So at some point the cat thelove of cats, I mean,
(44:37):
I guess the love of cats extendsto horses and all animals and stuff for
Jim, but Hope, what wasthe story about using animals as a way
to get you to not date orsomething. Yeah, well, it's always
worth a try. My dad wasa big horse guy too. He had
a horse growing up, and sohis horse was named Jake, and every
(45:00):
night would tell us a story aboutJake, Jake going to the moon,
Jake probably going to trial. Andso in high school we're all interested in
horses, and my dad thought,oh, what a great idea. I'll
buy them a horse so they canride instead of being distracted by boys or
trying to date boys. But insteadof backfired in his face. So we
started dating the guys who worked atthe barn, which is probably like he
(45:23):
got this plan would play out,but that's exactly what happened. So that,
yeah, that didn't pan out theway I plan. So this next
one is my second favorite, isthe Prostitute blackmail case, which is a
reverse sting operation that Jim was behindusing his former FBI investigator working for the
(45:46):
defense. Obviously, any case thathas sex and money in it is fun
and saalacious, and you know,you guys, I'm sure all want to
know about it, and it's alsoreally fun for us, so we're not
gonna lie. You know, thoseare pretty fun. So you know,
most of you probably know what asting operation is. It's it's I call
(46:06):
it a fraud committed by an undercovercop. I feel like, you know,
there should be a defensive temptation.You know, you see it a
lot where the cop is like theundercover John going up to the prostitute and
then of course she's like you know, wheeling and dealing, and then she
gets arrested. This was a reversingoperation. So Jim tell us how this
(46:28):
was a reversing operation, who yourclient was, and like what happened?
Yeah? Well, so I usedto teach this course law students past the
bar and before they prikes law,they had to go through this course called
bridge the gap gap between law schooland pricing law, and I was a
constructor for years and years. Theydon't do that anymore. But I use
this as an example of if somelawyers are referring you a case with a
(46:52):
client who has money, you needto ask why. Because this guy went
in to see Dick Carputlin and Dickcalls me up and I'm practicing all down
the street, two doors down onMain Street, and he says, jem,
I got this guy. He's gotplenty of money. He's got a
problem. I don't think I canhelp him. I think you can.
And you know I needed money atthe time. And so the guy comes
(47:13):
up and what was going on ishe had met this prostitute at a brothel
in his in this part of thestate, and there was a pretty famous
brothel that doesn't exist anymore and hadn'texisted in probably fifteen twenty years, but
it was, you know, itwas well known to have judges, politicians,
(47:34):
law enforcement people or customers of thisbrothel. And the and this person,
who is pretty successful, I'm notgoing to give his occupation, he
fell in love with this prostitute andhe bought up a rental house and he
put her and her child up inthis rental house because this prostitute's husband was
(47:54):
in prison. And then the husbandgets out of prison and reaches out to
my client. I'm gonna call himJohn, because that's what prostitutores call.
The guy so reached out to Johnand says, you know, you've been
sleeping with my wife. You've gother put up in a house, so
you need to pay me fifty thousanddollars or I'm going to tell your wife.
(48:17):
And so that was the guy's problem, right, that's his problem.
And so he comes to me afterDick woulden, wouldn't you know, send
him down down the street, Dickto take the case. Did you ever
find out? Well, I thinkyou know you're about to find out.
I don't know the uh so uhI. I contacted the guy who would
(48:43):
just retire from the FBI, whowas doing private eye work, and I
said, I said, I saidto him, I said, you know,
this is a situation. I don'tknow what to do. Can maybe
you can do it? He goes, I know exactly what to do.
We'll just do a reverse thing operationon this guy. Okay, And so
my guy goes, my investigator goeswith John, the client to North Carolina,
(49:07):
and so to make it across statelines, and they record phone calls
of this guy, you know,blackmailing my client for fifty thousand dollars.
And then and then we make anarrangement on this reverse thing that the husband
thinks that my client's going to deliverthe fifty thousand dollars. They set it
up to be to take place atthe brothel owner's farmhouse. And he had
(49:31):
a he had a he had ayou know, a party house behind his
house. And so the prostitute andher husband at the party house behind the
brothel owner's house. And then andall this is out in the country of
South Carolina. And then a coupleof miles down the road, there's this
country store as country as you canget, you know, on a two
(49:52):
lane road, and a country store. And and so the plan was for
the brothel owner to drive to thecountry store, get fit two thousand dollars
in cash from my client in abag, and take it to the brothel
owner, to the prostitute and herhusband. And that was it. Well,
that was not our plan. Ourplan was that now we're off duty
(50:14):
FBA, I mean retired FBA agentwas going to instead of the brothel owner
taking fifty grand back, the FBIagent's going to get in the truck and
go back and tell the husband wegot tapes. You're done. You're going
back to prison. This is violatingyour probation or parole and cut it out.
And so that was the plan,and that you know. And so
(50:38):
we have a big meet with aclient in a small town. As we're
getting ready to go to this countrystore, my client shows up. He
looks like Matt he looks like amajor League baseball umpire. He's got under
his shirt a Army Navy, Armysurplus bulletproof vest is about four inches thick.
(51:05):
And so we're like his restaurant andhe's got a bulletproof vest on him.
And then then before we go overthere, we pull her and then
my guy dresses up like Rambo.He puts, he gets black stuff all
over his face. And then hereand all I have is my bar license,
which I'm pretty sure I'm going tolose. I'm pretty sure I was
losing my bar license that day,because this is not nothing I learned in
(51:28):
law school. And so we goto this country store, and sure enough,
the brothel owner comes up in thetruck. My guy, Tommy,
the FBA agent, jumps in thetruck and says, I'm a And I'm
not sure how loud he said former, but he said I'm a former FBA
agent. Maybe the guy only heardFBI and maybe didn't hear former. But
they get in the car. Theygo back to the party house. Tommy
(51:52):
gets out, talks to the husband. Husband is shitting all over himself,
shot himself. I mean, Idon't know if he actually did. He
was shaking, afraid, nervous,and so then Tommy then and then Tommy
gets back in the truck with thebrothel owner and they come back to the
country store. Tommy gets out,he talks to me and the client.
He says, you've got nothing toworry about. With the husband, he
(52:15):
is so scared nothing's gonna happen.But he said, mister client, John,
whatever her name was, she isso mad at you. She is
so mad at you. And aboutthat time we see this little dots and
pickup truck come with with dust comingup and just hauling ass down this country
road, coming up to the store. And she gets out and she goes
(52:36):
up to our John, if youwill, and she starts screaming at him
and says, I can't believe youdouble cross me after all those bej's I
gave you without a rubber and allthis other stuff. I mean, it
was so then Tommy, the FBagent, you know who's can sweet talk
(52:58):
anybody, he was over there tryingto calm everything down, and it is
like, so that is the storyof the reverse thing. What's the feat?
How do you what I mean,what kind of a fee do you
charge for that? Because that's like, you know, it's not really it's
not really about Uh, I haveno idea what you know. I mean,
he had plenty of money. Ican't remember what we charged him,
(53:20):
but I mean, but to himit's worth a hell of a lot obviously
the value of what he gets,except it's not really basically, you know,
his wife never found out. Iguess to live happily over I don't
know if you until this podcast,she just heard it exactly me. John.
There's another lesson along the lines ofthe red flag you were talking about,
(53:42):
which is interesting for people to know, which is when clients come to
us and they've had multiple lawyers,not not one that they weren't happy with,
and whatnot. But like you know, when they've been through. Every
so often I get people that've beenthrough a lot of really good lawyers in
town, you know, and Igo, uh, why so many?
You know what you know? Andit's and you know, often they do
(54:05):
have the money, and but I'veturned away sometimes those clients because it's just
it seems like a headache. Itusually turns out to be a headache,
no doubt, and they're not happyand no matter what you do for them.
So Hope is serving tea, ofcourse I'm trying. Yeah, tell
(54:27):
me Hope about your summer. Itseems like the summer of two thousand and
seven or eight h was really kindof like a hot summer to be in
Gym's office where you and Mary Lewiswere working as office assistants. There's some
interesting things that happened, I thinkfor people to hear. Yeah, I
know, it was a great time. I was telling Sarah earlier. It
(54:51):
was the cushiest job you could everget. My dad would pick us up
at eight o'clock, and we toldhim as soon as he picked us up
in the car we were on theclock. So we were on the clock
from the time he drove us fromour house until he dropped us off at
the end of the day. Wetold him what music we were going to
listen to in the car. Wegot to the office. His office assistant
was on leave that summer, Ithink, And so we sat at the
(55:12):
front desk, two chairs, onedesk, one computer. We have to
rock paper scissors. Ever, whowould answer the phone? That was the
most popular job. Another great partabout that that position is that we would
also stay on the clock through lunch. And we also be able to convince
my dad to take us out tolunch, so we were getting essentially double
paid a lot of free lunches atthe coordinate's shop and grau shows. And
(55:36):
it was a great summer. Butpicking up the phone calls? Is that
the summer that you know? Designeda T shirt for our summer vacation.
I think that was the most productivething he did all summer, Right,
that's what you think. I thinkwe had. We took a lot of
good things away that summer. Butyeah, I'm pretty sure we designed a
T shirt, did a lot ofprinting. The worst part was having to
pick up the mail. We hadto walk like half a block in the
(55:58):
summer heat, to go get mailfrom the post office. And Columbia is
known as like the Devil's armpit inthe summer because it's oppressively hot and humid.
But so the phone calls. Onetime we got a phone call from
mister Benjamin Dover Ben Dover, andI said, all right, mister bend
Dover, mister is not available rightnow. Can I take your number?
He'll call you back. And hesaid, uh, he'll know who to
(56:21):
call. And I said, okay, mister Dover. And so I watked
in my dad's office and I said, Dad, some guy named mister ben
Dover called and he looked at meand he said, what are you talking
about. I said, I don'tknow. The guy said, you would
know the number to call, andhe picked up the phone. He called
Dick Carpoolia and said, Dick,can you stop messing with my girls?
(56:43):
I thought, I thought that wasa jail call. Was that he's always
bend Over? Yeah? No.The first jail calls came in from a
guy named Milton. And I don'tknow who Milton is or what he did,
but we were really young and wewould get these collect calls on our
house phone and it's say this isa cleet call from Richland County Jail.
(57:07):
Press one to accept, and wewould panic and say we don't want to
answer that call. And eventually mydad had a counselors to press number one
and go find him wherever he wasin the house. But we would often
like leave Milton hanging and forget togo tell my dad he was on the
line. So I'm sure we incurreda lot of phone call calls for mister
Milton. Another great time during thatSummerson, my dad was the representative of
(57:30):
James Brown's estate, and so wehad one of one of James Brown's children
are reported children calling often nearly everyday. She wanted to know Ronda,
that was her name. She wantedto know how this state was shaking out,
what was her share. She calledthe Doctor Phillips show. She got
the Doctor Philip Show involved, Sothe Doctor Philis Show was calling to figure
(57:51):
out if Rohnda was going to takea DNA test or not. She also
had this brilliant idea to have ashow kind of like Survivor, where all
these other people who were claiming beGimes Brown's children would go on this island
and they would take a DNA testevery day or so and built people up
the island. It was a littleahead of its time. That DNA Island
(58:12):
is what she wanted to call it. You know, I'm working for a
production company right now. I'm pitchingthat next week DNA Island. I love
it appropriate, I think. Soit was a busy summer. It was
a fun summer working at my dad'soffice. Was your dad's practice and just
watching him growing up? Is thatwhat kind of led you to want to
(58:35):
go into law yourself or is thatsort of its own journey? And how
did that come together? Well?Both? I think my dad obviously gets
a lot of attention, but mymom is also an amazing attorney too,
And so I watched both of themgrowing up and thought about how neat it
was to have parents' attorneys. Iwas proud to say that I had both
my parents were attorneys. A lotof people could say their dad is an
(58:55):
attorney, but I got to saymy mom and my dad are attorneys.
And so I was always interested inlaw school. I just didn't know if
that was the path for me.I wanted to do something different too,
So I applied at the end ofmy senior year I started taking El SAD
and plying to colleges, and simultaneouslyI was referred to a teacher for America
(59:17):
and asked to apply to that program, and I was accepted. I can't
kind of made this pact with theuniverse, and I said, if I
don't get Colorado Elementary School, thatI'm not going. I'm going to law
school, which was probably going tobe South Carolina. And that's exactly what
happened. I was placed in ColoradoSprings and told I was going to be
a third or fourth grade teacher,and so I took that leap of faith
and I went there. But aftermy two years, I realized being teacher
(59:42):
was much harder than I expected thatmost people probably perceive, and so I
then started talking about going to lawschool again. And at that point I
felt like I had a path forwardand that I was going to be doing
my own thing in the law andnot criminal defense or insurance defense or civil
litigation. I wanted to do schoollaw or education law, which is such
a this narrow area of the lot, and I love what I do.
(01:00:02):
So yeah, they did inspire me, but neither of them pushed me to
go to law school. They wereprobably notably silent when I said I was
gonna apply. I think they wantedme to make my own decision, which
is interesting. Usually parents, likeevery lawyer that I know whose parents has
been a lawyer, is just sortof expected to follow that path, you
(01:00:24):
know. But yeah, I'm theonly lawyer. Sorry, dad, I'm
going to be a writer, producer, no lawyer. I go for a
real, real steady career path talkingto lawyers on a podcast. That's what
I'm gonna do, all right.So I'm sure there's so many more stories
Jim can tell us at another onanother episode. But these were really these
(01:00:47):
were like fascinating to me and Iand I wanted to kind of share them
with everybody. So thank you toour guest this great way. Why can't
you FaceTime you? I don't understandwe FaceTime on Thanksgiving. He's pretending like
(01:01:08):
he forgot okay, and he alsojust got an iPhone antiphone for a long
time. That's big news in theproduction world over here. We were all
very excited when Jim got an iPhoneexactly well, yeah, we I mean,
I refuse to. I don't likethe green thing going on, so
(01:01:30):
I just was not messaging on aregular app. I couldn't deal with it
anyway. Thank you, guest Slashco host Jim Griffin and and Hope,
thank you so much for giving usthe honor. I know you're super busy
and you have a little boy andtaking time off on a Sunday is not
(01:01:51):
easy for you, so I reallyappreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, Sam and Sydney and bekissed for me and I will.
I kicked them out of that housefor this. Yeah, real life off
on the shelf at home right now. And don't let your dad hijack my
gift, which was a birthday ifnot a holiday gift for Sydney. On
the way. We're gonna find itunder the tree with your name on it.
(01:02:14):
Let me just throw before we wrapup. Please subscribe to this podcast
if you're not already, it's calledThe Presumption. We're also on YouTube and
all the social media handles, andwe are going to be back with some
new content for you guys in thenext couple of weeks. And so until
next time, Jim and Sarah werest, We rest, Yes, we do.
Hello everyone, and welcome to thePresumption. I am Sarah, joined by
Jimmy. Hey, Sarah, Hey, Matt, Hey, what's up guys.
Happy holidays. Yeah, it's likeextended holiday season and you know,
we were gone for a minute,we're back, we'll be gone again,
but that's just the holidays. Sotoday is really interesting because we're doing something
(00:45):
really different. We're putting Jim inthe guest chair, so it'll be it'll
get even more interesting. He's toohumble. You obviously had a very long
and colorful career, and sometimes thingscome up where in conversations someone brings up
(01:14):
a reference to a case or youknow, I read something and I'm like,
what is this case? You know, and it just is like one
interesting story after another. But wepicked out three really interesting stories cases of
gems. We've got a cat murder, We've got a device that supposed to
(01:37):
be an amazing device except the governmentthought it's fake. And then we've got
a reversing operation on a hooker.Now I can think of these three cases
having you know, some some commondenominator. But it's going to get dirty,
so I'm going to leave that alone. But before I turn it over
(01:59):
to Jim, and you know,we sort of go through these cases one
by one. Of course I cannot, like, you know, Jim's now
the guest. So I needed anotherperson to help me co host with Matt,
and so decided to call upon somehelp if I can get my While
(02:22):
we're in the process of getting saidmystery guest on the show, I just
want to say, without getting toofar ahead, this just the teaser of
the cat murder case. Is thisreally a story about somebody who murdered cats?
Yes? And then this is rougha little bit. Okay, Jim,
(02:43):
are you a cat owner a catlover? Where do you fall on
this? Oh? You know,I used to not like cats much.
My son is a cat lover,and so we've had cats for like the
last fifteen to twenty years, andthey do grow. I mean, look
your daughter feel about cats. Idon't know my dad. Did we surprise
(03:05):
you? Yeah, hey, Hope, I am surprised. That's really shocking.
I was like, either he's gonnakill me or you know I'm going
to kill you. Yeah, I'mgoing to kill you. No, it's
all good. It's all good.We missed Hope. She was coming here
(03:29):
for Thanksgiving. We're going to ClemsonSouth Carolina game, and she and her
husband came down COVID and so theycouldn't come, and so I'm glad to
see you, Hope. No,it's good to see you too. And
Donald Trump attended the game, soI obviously couldn't show my face there.
Can you put down your can youtilt down your camera a little bit so
you have less He's there, yougo, there you go. I've noticed
(03:49):
both father and daughter have the bookcaselook going on in the background. This
is very fitting. I like it. So, yeah, I heard Donald
Trump was at the game. Anyway. Yeah we are at the States.
(04:10):
You're, what with the raddest ofstates here, and so yeah, yeah,
I get it. I have todefend him in a mock trial,
you know, against Lanny Davis onJanuary sixth. Stuff that's coming up in
like two weeks. And I waslike, I had a rehearsal this morning.
I'm like, I mean, Iwas like, it is my honored
(04:33):
anyway, all right, so letme. Of course, everyone now knows
that Hope is Jim's daughter, butuh, she's also an amazing lawyer,
and so I just want to brieflyintroduce her. H Hope Griffin is an
experience attorney who practices in Kaplan andErnest Educational Law section in Boulder, Colorado.
(04:57):
Her practice includes a wide range ofeducation really did legal matters, including
special education, Title nine, Titlesix, student discipline, and student equity
matters. She began her career asa third grade teacher in Colorado Springs as
part of Teach for America before attendingthe University of Colorado School of Law,
where she was awarded Order of theQuiff. When Hope isn't trying to improve
(05:18):
our public education system, advocating forteachers and fighting for students with disabilities,
she's chasing around her one year oldson, who was the cutest more climbing
Colorado's mountains with her husbands. Oneof Hope's most cherished roles is being Jim's
eldest daughter and biggest fan. Anddid you put that in there just because
(05:38):
you know I was going to readit all? Or what? I try
my best? I really think thisshould be like a holiday themed episode.
Jim's favorite things, claud and trackers, cats, his oldest daughter, you
know, talk about herself. Shedid leave out the part that I have
climbed from fourteen ers with her andsurvived those and she left off the part
(05:59):
that she was editor of the LawReview. Associated It's one thing I didn't
do. I wasn't smart enough.We saw those pictures, Jim, you
shared those when we were talking aboutI think it was something. It was
the title nine, right, No, I'm not sure. Yeah, we
were we we uh we put thoseup anyway. All right, So Hope
(06:24):
and I are going to grill you. We're not gonna tell you that,
we're gonna We're gonna prompt some funstories. So the first one is this
Quadro Tracker case, which was abig win for you and I still can't
tell Matt, do you have apicture of this device thinging? Yeah,
this looks like my worst uh myworst nightmare at the dentist office or something.
(06:46):
That's the Quadro tracker, right,So I was like, is this
thing for real? Is it?Bs? Like? I mean you you
took the case to trial and yourclient was acquitted, uh, which is
a big deal and why we wantto talk about this. But it is
a positive molecular locator also known aslike a detection device, and it was
(07:09):
sold by Quadro Corporation. That's whatthat's where the name comes from, which
is located in or was located inSouth Carolina. Between ninety three and ninety
six, around a thousand of themwere sold to police departments and school districts
around the US on the basis thatthey would detect hidden drugs, explosives,
weapons, and lost golf balls.And I was like thinking, maybe that's
(07:31):
why you got involve the case.But anyway, in ninety six, the
FBI declared it to be fake andobtained a permanent injunction injunction barring the device
from being manufacturer sold. And yeah, so you represented one of three defendants
named Ray Fisk. Tell us aboutyour client, the charges, the defenses,
(07:57):
and what led you to this bigwin. Sure so, so Ray
and his buddy Wade qualabaumb they weretreasure hunters in South Carolina. And you
know, in South Carolina we hadsome We had the Revolutionary War and we
had the Civil War. And thereare a lot of artifacts from from the
from those wars found in in thein the in the waters and the swamps
(08:22):
and in the woods of South Carolina. And so there's a there's a whole
treasure hunting industry and they have developeddifferent devices, not just metal detectors,
but some other devices that you knowthat that they use out when they're treasure
hunting. Well, these guys developedwhat they thought was and believed to be
genuinely believed to be was a devicethat would I would find honestly just about
(08:48):
anything. And and their theory.Their theory was everything in the universe has
a unique molecular structure, every person, and every organic matter. So and
that they believe they had found away to capture the molecular structure of whatever
you want to look for. Andactually Dea licensed them to buy marijuana,
(09:11):
buy cocaine so that they could testit and try to come up with with
a method to find you know,substances like cocaine and marijuana. And they
really did market it as if itwould replace a drug dog, and and
it went, you know, itsold like hotcakes. I mean, they
(09:33):
sold them to law enforcement agencies aroundthe country, they sold them school districts
around the country. And basically thedevice was not electric. They they it
looked like and people who are notwatching them via YouTube, you know,
I try to explain it, It'slike you had a a plastic pistol handle
with a radio antenna on a pendulumat the end pointing horizontal, and and
(10:00):
that you and it was not electricit but they it ran off static electricity,
and that that was their theory.And so you had to walk and
breathe, and as you walk andbreathe, static electricity would build up.
It would oscillate a chip inside thedevice. You could have the chip in
the handle, or you could havethem if you wanted to spend. You
(10:22):
know, for the primo model,you could pay eight thousand dollars and get
one that would go on your hipand then you would put different type of
chips in there. And and asyou walk along, and this antenna would
swing in the direction of whatever you'relooking for, and then you would have
to go in a different direction andyou would triangulate down to where it was
(10:43):
and and and and that was thethat was the device, and that was
how it was operating. And thatthey had they got your clients or your
client and the other defendants got alicense from the DEA, yeah, to
test, so they lawfully could buymarijuana, lawfully could buy cocaine, and
(11:05):
and and to test and and andso they did, and they developed these
models, and and they and andhonestly they had a lot of success.
There was a lot of letters writtenin of people saying I used it,
I found you know, it worksfor US, et cetera. And and
then as the thing was catching on, there was a there was a FBA
(11:30):
agent in Beaumont, Texas who inthe County of Beaumont had purchased these for
law enforcement offices, and they weredoing a display in the county court house
and the guy couldn't make it work. And so then the FBA agent took
it down to the metal dector andran it through and and sure enough that
didn't find anything in there. Andhe concluded the right then, and it
(11:52):
was a it was a hoax.It was a fake And and they opened
a case and they started investigating,and then they would send these devices to
They sent them to the San DiaNational Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
and they had these nuclear physicists andthey put them in and they would put
them in like this. This itwasn't, you know, zero gravity room,
(12:18):
but it was a room that hadbasically I forgot what they called it.
But then it was shot at withgamma rays and seeing what it did,
I mean, just the most sophisticatedtesting techniques that our country had at
the time. They fired it onthis this quadro tracker, and and you
know, they concluded it was fakeand and and they got a search warrant.
(12:39):
The FBI got a search warrant andwent into Hardyville, South Carolina,
where their plant was, and itwas an abandoned gymnasium and that they had
purchased in where they were manufacturing thesequadro trackers. And and as a execume
the search warrant, my client RayFists said, you know it, if
(13:00):
you promise not to tell the worldhow we do this, I will show
you how we make one. Andand the guy promised. He lied,
because it wasn't soon after that,you know, it was on they sent
a national wire out about what hadjust happened. But but so Ray,
they had a model they called whenyou would put, you know, a
(13:22):
little capsule, you'd put it inyour dog's collar, so if the dog
runs off in the woods or huntingdog, you can find it. You
put the little capsule on, haveyour equipment in case I got stolen,
you'd find it. And in fact, my client and his and and his
family members had planted a little bugcapsule and they're through dental work in case
(13:46):
they got kidnapped. I mean seriously, no, lie, seriously, noe
hope to be honest, was yourdad while he was trying this case,
was he also testing the technology outon the home. The boyfriends go through
the tests. You know, everyonehad like a right muller that was actually
one of these capsules. But butso, uh, the Ray is gonna
(14:09):
tell the FB agent how to makea bug, and and and and so
then Ray goes to the freezer inthe kitchen area of of this uh this
old uh gymnasium pulls out and uhsome tweezers and a frozen and a bag
full of bugs. I mean,I mean bugs like ants. And so
(14:31):
he takes tweezers, takes an ant, put it on the copy machine,
close the copy machine, pushes thebutton on the copy machine, then prints
out a black piece of U xeroxpaper, black so you couldn't see what
was on it. Ray then cutsout the center where apparently the bug image
(14:52):
was transposed on the paper, andthen laminates it on a little chip,
slides it into the quadro tracker handleand the or chip would go and there
you have the one end of thecombination. Then he would take the ant
that was on the the the onthe on the face of the coffee machine
and put it in a little capsuleand put super glue and glued it up.
(15:16):
And then that was the bug.And so you would put that bug
and so that the chip had themolecular structure of that ant, and you
had that bug anywhere. And sothe FB agent said, when I saw
that, I knew it was afraud. I knew it was a fraud.
And when your client did this,obviously he was not represented, right,
(15:37):
No, he was not represented.Didn't call anybody, you telling him,
could you please? You're a provider? Step by step? Yeah,
so that you know. They soright then and there it was like this
is a hoax. They went andthey got a national injunction. It became
(15:58):
national news. It was a bigstory. It was on World News tonight,
uh uh. Ted Copple's show.They did a lot of all this
was before documentaries, right so,but but they did a lot of news
magazine shows on it, and andit came like, you know, we're
(16:18):
the laughing stock. And after theygot in the injunction, they indicted these
guys out in Beaumont, Texas.And so they good old boys from South
Carolina, and I had been outof you know, US Training's office for
probably about a few years, notlong. And and so when we got
hired to go out and defend themin Beaumont, Texas. And and as
(16:40):
we're getting ready, we were theninundated, inundated by people who believed in
this device. And and it wasunbelievable. I mean it was And we
got letters from different people about thesuccesses that they had had, and and
so it was clear to us thatthere was more to it than what you
(17:00):
know, these experts that they've sentdecent national lab you know, had come
up and and and so you know, I took it around to some experts
and they were like, you know, sort of you know, patting me
on the back, good luck,but you know, I don't I don't
understand how it works. But thenone of the things that we learned through
this is there's a lot of thingsin the universe that people don't really understand
(17:25):
how it works. And and andone of the things that that we use
in the trial that for all theseexperts, they had three nationally recognized experts
testify and not a single one ofthem could tell you how a homing pigeon
or a carrier pigeon or messenger pigeon, whatever you call it, how you
can take that pigeon a thousand milesand let him go, and how he
(17:48):
or she ends up back at theplace where he started from. They don't
know, but they know what happened. So it was like science doesn't know
everything, right, And and itturns out out that in the in the
beak of a huming pigeon or inthe skull, there's there's properties up called
magnetite, which is the same propertythat is used in in a lot of
(18:12):
toner. And so you know,I'm not saying that that. You know,
we we had valid science behind it, but every expert had to say,
homing pigeons work on some magnetic navigationsystem. They have magnetite and and
magnetites and toners and and and thenwe were in the defense. We had
(18:37):
people testifiut we started out our firstour first our first witness was a golf
coach and he he he could takethis golf ball finder and he could find
golf balls on a golf course.He could He and his family would like
put golf balls under solo cups andput them on a green like a putting
(18:59):
green, and then they would walkby and try to figure out which which
solo cups had the golf ball inhim. And he could do it,
so you know, some of hisfamily members couldn't do it as well as
he could. And so that wasour our first witness. Interestingly, you
would we had the government put ronon the witness stand. I'm sure who
(19:22):
who's wrong? Ron r o N. So the older viewers will know about
ron Co. Ron Co was youknow, a late night UH channel that
where you would you would buy Genzuknives and all this other sould by by
ron Coo. So the guy whostarted ron COO he marketed the golf ball
finder on on his on his InfoMarshall channel and and he got a lot
(19:45):
of a lot of returns and sothey brought him up. So and to
contradict Ronco, we had a golfcoach and then and then then we had
a Texas ranger testify and he hetestified he's going down a road interstate and
and he passed the truck and he'sgot this he's got this quadri track in
(20:08):
his hand and as soon as hepasses this truck, it swings over and
points at the truck. So hepulls the truck over and he says,
sir, I've got this new devicethat I have and and it just hit
on you and it's telling me youhave marijuana in the car in your truck,
and here's if you give me themarijuana, I will not charge you.
(20:29):
So the guy goes in the behindthis pickup truck and by the seat
of a pickup truck, pulls outa bag of marijuana, hands it to
this Texas ranger and off they go. And the Texas ranger testified about that
at the trial that first criminal case. I had a Texas ranger, any
law enforcement testify on my behalf.But on cross examination got to give the
ausa credit. You said, now, mister Texas ranger, what did the
(20:52):
guy look like in that pickup truck? And the Texas ranger said, a
doper and that that was kind ofthat, you know that, you know,
you you would put it in thehands of a law enforcement officer and
he would, you know, andthen if you leaned it on one side
or the other, the antenna wouldswing around and and and and then oh,
(21:15):
my gosh, we had a wehad a woman from Atlanta who sold
these and and one of the thingsthat that she would do to to train
and and and stay proficient with thequadro tracker, she would go to a
funeral home. This is this istrue. And she testified about she would
go to a funeral home, shewould get hair from a deceased and then
and then she would wait a fewdays, and then she would travel around
(21:38):
Atlanta with the quadro tracker in herhand and she would put the hair from
the deceased in the device, andthat she would be able to find where
that person was buried. She testifiedabout. And then our very last witness
was an FBI agent who was retired, who was in marketing this quadro tracker.
And he says, the last questionto him from us was you know,
(22:04):
have you been to frauded? Hegoes, yes, I have,
he said, by whom, hesaid, by the FBI and the federal
government. Mic drop by your closing. I've heard about your clothing and not
from you. Yeah, tell Hope, I want to I want to hear.
I want to hear Hope's version ofmy clothing. Well, well,
(22:26):
well, I wan't need to confirmthis is the right case, but I'm
pretty sure. So when my dadwould travel for work, you'd often bring
back souvenirs for us. So wewent to Vegas and he brought us this
like magic card deck, which wouldvery much align with the quadro tracker these
days. And also he brought mysister a slot machine sharkstal sharpener I later
got stolen. But on this day, Mary Lewis had just learned about Texas
(22:48):
in school, and so she said, Dad, can you bring me back
something big from Texas? Because everything'sbigger in Texas. I think we got
bolo tized. But Dad, didyou work that into your closing argument or
was that a difference? I absolutelydid you know. We're in trial for
two weeks, and I gave myclosing and and honestly, we had this
judge who was appointed by President JohnF. Kennedy. His name was Judge
(23:08):
Fisher, and he was ninety threeat the time, and he gave both
sides twenty minutes for closing. Andwe were like, and there are three
defendants, something like, Judge Fisher, yeah, I need at least thirty
minutes myself. He God, y'allgot twenty minutes. And so the first
guy that gets up there so youknow, he was appointed, and I
(23:29):
promise you it was just like outof the scene from my cousin Vinny.
I mean, he's stuttering, hecan't say much. And then and he
burns up about five minutes of mytime. And then then the second guy,
who was representing Wade Kualabaum gets up. And this was a big Texan,
big guy, big big cowboy hat. He'd come to court and every
(23:51):
day. And he stood up andsaid, I know, you good people
of the Eastern District of Texas arefair minded people, and here's what I'm
asking you to do. Listen tothis young man from South Carolina. And
he says, and then I getup and then that's exactly what I said,
Hope, I said, you know, y'all spent you know, two
weeks here. You're giving us yourtime and appreciate it. You'all been away
(24:12):
from your families. I know whatit means. You know. When I
left South Carolina to come out here, I you know, I dropped my
daughter off at at kindergarten, andI thought I was gonna be in Texas
and bring it back. What wasshe liked? She said, I want
something big, and go why doyou want something big? She says,
well, I saw him Busytown thateverything's big in Texas, And I told
(24:33):
the Jerry, I said, youknow, in Texas you have such a
reputation, and that is one ofthe things. Everything's big in Texas.
But another thing, you're the lonestar state and you don't need the federal
government coming in here and telling youwhat your county sheriff's department can buy and
not buy. You know, theycan do it themselves. And so that
that, and you know, theconventional wisdom was the earth was flat,
(25:00):
and then it was challenged the Earthwas round, and you know, so
we don't know everything. So thatwas really about the two things I could
get out of my mouth before JudgeFisher hooked me from the From my closing
argument was what you bring back forMary Lewis? Yeah, I don't know.
I think bothow ties. That's right, Okay, So the next the
(25:21):
next case, I love this case. Well, let me let me tell
you one last story about that case, because so so the jury is out
for the first day, the jury'sout after they get the closing, and
they're not turning a verdict, andand you know, they did things differently
then, and the judge would sendthe law clerk in and try to see
(25:44):
what the score was. And thelaw clerk came back and said to us,
wink, wink, nod, nod, y'all are in good shape.
That's all you would say, y'allare in good shape. And so the
judge sent the jury home and andthen we went out and prematurely celebrated.
And then we were sounds like BeckyHill, this lawler. We came in
the next day and we can earlyvote. We came in the next day.
(26:08):
And so they're grinding away and allday and gets in the middle of
the afternoon and Judge Fisher says he'sgoing to declare mistrial, and and then
the US Turns Office didn't want himto declare miss trial, and so they
sent the law clerk in again andasked, you know, do you want
to declare miss trial or do youwant to continue working And and the jury
(26:30):
said, we want to come backtomorrow and we will see the exhibits,
and we think we can get averdict tomorrow. And so then we went
out and celebrated all over again.So after two nights of celebration. We
go into court and the jury wantedto see the exhibits. And in Texas,
apparently, and the jury doesn't getthe exhibits unless they asked for the
exhibits. And so they asked forthe exhibits. I go in the courtroom
(26:53):
and all the government's exhibits are inthe jury room, all the defense exhibits
are in the courtroom. I'm like, Judge Fisher, what's going on here?
And go, okay, we'll sendyour exhibits back. And then and
then I was I was really frustratingbecause I thought, you know, some
shenanigans were going on. And thenthe court reporter called me over and he
says, you got nothing to worryabout. He says, look look out
(27:17):
the window. And I looked outthe window and they were like about three
or four pickup trucks with bass boatsbehind them. And he says, he
says, here's what you need toknow. Everybody in most everybody in Beaumont
works at the oil refinery. Andthe and the deal at the oil refinery
is if you are in jury dutypast noon on Friday, you don't have
to go to work. So hesaid, you're gonna get You're gonna get
(27:40):
a knock on the door. Attwelve oh one. Sure enough, twelve
oh one, Jerry knocks on thedoor and they had a defense verdict.
And so yeah, in your cases, I don't know, they just want
to stretch it out so they couldgo fishing. That's what that was about.
All right, Okay, can wego on to the next one?
Sure? My favorite one. Well, actually the next two are my favorite
(28:03):
ones. I can't really pick.So this is uh, I call it
the cat case, but it's aState of South Carolina versus g I think
I miss read you. No,I thought you said it was about a
killer cat, not a cat killer. So this was the graphic I found.
Sorry, that's the cat murder.So RAI was convicted of murder for
(28:26):
killing a cat killer who was actuallya cop or some sort of a police
deputy. Someone killed a cat killer. Is that correct? Correct? So
hold on, hold on, SoJim is gonna fill in the details.
But I'm kind of obsessed with this. So the South Carolina Supreme Court reversed
the murder conviction of your client,and then you represented him on retrial and
(28:52):
he was acquitted again. It's ahuge win and uh, and I have
some questions for Hope as well.But so Ryan, yeah, right,
Jim's Jim's client owned a property wherehe stored his tools and equipment for his
business. Sometimes he slept there.But more importantly, he had a bunch
(29:15):
of stray cats that he sort ofkept on his property. And between March
and August of two thousand and four, Rye, Jim's client, had a
lot of issues with trespassers that wouldcome onto his property. There are like
three trespassers, the neighbor and someoneelse, and then also this like police
deputy guy, this cop guy,and they would just come on the property
(29:38):
and start shooting Ry's cats. Andso I'm gonna let Jim tell the story.
But the but the cat shooter,the cat killer who gets shot at
by Rye is the cop. Soif you hear cop, you know which
trespasser it is. Okay, Jimtell us the whole story. Yes,
But Grover was like guy who hisfamily had had a farm, farmhouse and
(30:03):
some land and the rural part ofRichmond County, which is the county where
Columbia, South Carolina is, Soit's a pretty urban county except you know,
it's a sprawling county. And andand he used he would go out
there and hunt some, but mainlyhe had heating and the air business.
And he stored his heating and airequipment out there for you know, with
(30:26):
supplies and things. And he wasa cat lover. And and Grover was
known if you had found a straycat that you would, you know,
you give him Grover, and Groverwould take him out to his farm and
he would feed him. So hehad really a herd of cats, I
mean probably thirty cats out there,and he would go out there every day
or every other day and feed them. And and and the neighbor would when
(30:51):
you say neighbor in this rural partof South Carolina, I mean the neighbor's
house was probably a half a mileaway, but it was a rental house.
And a new family had moved in, a mother and her adult son,
and and the adult son would comeover, and he thought they were
just feral cats. And he wouldjust take target practice at the cats when
shoot and kill them and leave them, leave them dead. And Groover would
(31:14):
show up and then be a deadcat here, a dead cat there.
And then he would call Richon Countyand they would send a deputy out and
they write a report and cat dead, cat shot, and and it went
on for months and and then I'mnot sure about the the months of the
year, Sarah, because I doknow the day of the of the shooting
where uh, this off duty BeaufordCounty Sheriff's deputy, Beauford County Sheriff's deputy
(31:38):
lost his life was was well.There was a hurricane that had come through
the Beauford County Sheriff's Deputy's wife,her mother and brother lived in the neighboring
property, and so she evacuated tothat neighboring property. And then when the
Beautiford County Sheriff's deputy had finished hispatrol duties, he came to Richland County
(32:04):
to wait out the hurricane or thetropical storm or whatever it was. And
then so the deputy who would bethe son in law and brother in law
of the or the brother in lawof the kid who is coming over shooting
the cats. He comes over withhis brother in law and he's got AR
fifteen and they start shooting cats.Grover pulls up and he sees a dead
(32:30):
cat. Cat is warm, warmblood. He didn't have a cell phone.
He goes to his cousin's house downthe street. He calls Richlin County
and he is very agitated and hesays, you better get out here fast
or something bad might happen. Andthen Grover gets back in this truck and
he goes to the property. Assoon as he pulls up, he hears
(32:51):
a shotgun blast or a gun blast, and so he grabs a rifle out
of the back of his truck andhe charges off in to his property.
He rounds a tree and he's confrontedby this off duty kund of sheriff's deputy
with AR fifteen pointing at Grover,and Grover shoots him, kills him,
kills him dead. And and thefirst trial he goes try he's convicted of
(33:16):
murder. And the issue that itwas overturned on was in order to use
deadly force in a self defense situation. The law is generally you have a
duty to retreat, and if youcan't retreat, then you can use deadly
force. But you don't have aduty to retreat in your own home.
(33:37):
It's called the castle doctrine, andnow it's been codified in statue, and
so you don't have a duty toretreat in your own home. And so
the question is Grover is in theyard of his home, you know,
did he have a duty to retreat? And the Supreme Court reverse saying he
does not have a duty to retreat. And so was this an instruction that
(33:58):
wasn't given or like, well,that was the first trial. The judge
instructed the jury that Grover had aduty to retreat. So if he didn't,
he didn't retreat and he shoots tokill, you know, he's guilty
and murder was the wrong instruction?Yeah, it coroneous instruction. And so
(34:21):
we go back to the retrial,and they hired new lawyers, and they
hired a guy older. I sayolder. I mean he's probably a little
bit older than me at the time, which I thought was old then.
But he he was renting space forme and and he says he's got this
case and it's up, you know, for retrial and murder. And I
said, his name's Dennis Bolt,a great lawyer. He's totally retired now
(34:45):
and I'm living a good life takingphotos of stuff, traveling all over the
world. But so Dennis says,you know, I think it's very defensible,
Jim. But you know, I'mjust I don't have the staff here
to do it, and I justwant your help. And he told me
how much money Grover had to hireanother lawyer. I said, Dennis,
I can't do that. I mean, it's a murder case. It can
be two weeks. And you know, I've never tried a murder case.
(35:07):
He said, I know, I'vetried a lot of murder cases, but
but you know, you know howto try cases, and it'll be a
lot of fun. I said,then I'll go broke. He said,
well, I got to tell you. I got a call from Court TV
today and they're they're planning on coveringthe trial. And I said, okay,
I'll do it. Right. Thatwas my first Court TV case,
And and and we get in.It is not the first time you're on
(35:30):
TV. I've been on TV before, but you know, I mean,
hell, I was on TV onthe Quadrit Tracker case. But the first
time the cameras in the courtroom forsure. Oh okay, okay, the
and and you know, we didn'tjust went on the jury instruction because one
(35:51):
of the significant facts that the firsttrial was the brother in law says he
saw the shooting. He said thathis the off the Dudie Beaufort County Sheriff's
deputy, dropped his gun, steppedback a few steps, and then Grover
executed him, shot him in coldblood. And sure enough, the police
report and everything showed that the gunwas that AR fifteen was about sixteen feet
(36:15):
away from the body when it wasfound. And that was a problem,
that was a huge problem for Grover'sstory. Was he pointed the gun at
me, arounded the tree. He'sgot it pointed to me. I got
a gun, pointed him. I'mnot going to wait to see if he
choose me first. And but thegun was so far from the body.
You know, we're trying to comeup with theories as how how that could
(36:35):
have happened. You know, maybethe guy crawled a little bit afterwards.
And and Dennis Bolt kept saying,you know that we had never and the
first lawyer and no one had evergotten what we call a run report,
that the ambulance run report. It'sthe EMS instant report of the MS medical
record of the run and and soand and Dennis kept say, and do
(37:00):
we have the run report yet?Do we have the run reports? Dennis
we're getting it, We're getting it. And they sent EMS a subpoena.
They didn't like the way it wasworded, or who we served it on
or what have you. And sowe went round around with Rising County EMS
to get the run report. Weare picking the jury, we're picking the
jury, and a runner comes intothe courtroom and hands me the run report
(37:24):
and Dennis is arguing something with ajudge and I'm looking at the run report
and it says body laying soupine,laying flat gun within three feet of the
body, three feet three feet,not sixteen feet. So the EMS guy
moved the gun and it was neverfound out during the first trial, and
(37:46):
it was that fact alone would madeall the difference in the world. We
add a crime scene forensic expert Alabama, who is just I mean awesome,
and he did he did angles ofyou know, and we proved that the
sun law could not see what heclaimed he saw, you know, through
(38:06):
through you know. But I thinkthe instruction was really important to Jim.
Now, yeah, yeah, usuallyimportant. Now I got to tell you
Court TV during the trial says,you know, can we talk to your
client and Goad, no, youcan't talk to my client not until the
trial's over. And I said,okay, and they said they wouldn't do
it. Well, that's trial.I mean it aired that time, but
(38:29):
they would replay it frequently, andthey don't do it anymore because it's so
long ago, but they would replayit, you know, maybe once a
year. And the first time theyreplayed it, I see, like during
the weekend between the first and secondweek, Grover is out there on his
property. He he had he hadhad some cutouts of people where angles were
(38:52):
and cats were dead. I meanhe showed that to es. It was
kind of creepy. Well he's onCore TV walk in these these people through
the crime scene. I mean duringthe middle of the damn trial, My
client gave out was properly with courTV cameras and give gives him as honestly.
(39:12):
And then after and I would knowevery time that that trial was being
shown on Court TV because we wouldget little old ladies calling up want to
know how they could send money toGrover Rye because Grover says that he had
spent five hundred thousand dollars, youknow, defending the case and he broke
well, Grover's insurance company paid thefamily. I think five hundred thousand dollars,
(39:35):
but so you know, and peoplethen thought I got five hundred thousand
dollars for that trial, which wasthat that Uh yeah, I see this
pattern here, Jim not getting paid. Shenanigan's in the trial for a court
clerk messing with the jury, andpeople are getting paid and you're not getting
(39:57):
paid. That's right as television?Why not? You know that that photo
that Matt put up earlier for thoseof you who were watching on YouTube,
Uh the uh the screenshot of theTV was taken by Hope on her glittery
pink BlackBerry. Hope, I don'tknow. I think it was lacking glitter,
(40:20):
but it was definitely a pink BlackBerry. I was interning with Congress and
Cliburne at the time, and wewere working inside the Capitol because he was
the majority whip and so we werelive streaming court TV every day. So
that was where that grainy photo camefrom. I was really proud to say,
that's my down on TV, defendingcats and the cat uh, defending
the guy who killed the cat murderer. Another fun fact about my dad is
(40:45):
that he loves animals. I thinkI jumped in when you guys were talking
about cats earlier. But I adoptedor bought a cat off the side of
the road my freshman year of college, and my real steps changing that story
keep changing. I said, rescued. You can rescue animals lots of different
ways. Dad. So I hadthis cat in my room and I thought
it was only a matter of timebefore we're all going to get kicked out.
(41:07):
So I called my dad up andsaid, can you please take this
beautiful cat. He needs a home. She needs a home. And my
dad adopted the cat and gave thatcat the best home. I think my
dad even bought a stroller, acat stroller. Yeah, it's like legally
blonde showing up. She's got thispink carrying case for this cat with a
(41:30):
pink collar on. And the cat'sname is Chanel. Leave that part out.
And then we take the cat tothe vet to get you know,
checked up, and the vet says, what's your cat's name? He said
Chanel and goes, well, that'sa funny name for a boy cat.
And so then my son renamed Tom. Tom was a good cat. I'm
(41:58):
also I'm also curious to hear whilewe have hope here, Like, what
was your perspective growing up when yourdad was working these high profile cases?
Are these crazy cases? Little background? My dad was a medical malpractice attorney
and he would settle most cases,but whenever he took stuff to court,
our living room and our dining roomjust became like a battle zone with the
(42:19):
most horrific pictures from you know,medical procedures gone wrong. It was traumatizing
for me. So I wonder ifyou had anything similar or or did your
dad keep work at work. Hedid a good job of keeping work at
work, but I would say Christmasthis past year, he was bringing in
what he thought to be a presentand then he realized it was like a
body dummy for the Murdoch trial andput that right back in the garage.
(42:43):
That was the recent version. Hewas like, this is not a present.
It's quite heavy and large, butit's not a present. I've already
hijack's presence too. Like takes presentsthat are meant for someone and says they're
from him as opposed to the personthat gave the present. No, that's
called regifting, Sarah. We regiftedNo, no, no, no,
no, not regifting to Like.For example, I buy a present for
(43:08):
Matt and I say, hey,Jim, give this to Matt. You
give it to Matt. But yousay it's from you, not me.
Oh, a lot of the scottfrom you. That's is Christmas this year?
What did you get on topic?But since she brought that up,
Matt, I'm holding in my handa quill pen that you get when you
(43:30):
argue at the U. S.Supreme Court. And I had a case
up at the US Supreme Court andthat these are on the desk for counsel
and and you take them and andthey're they're years. So Hope is I
think eighth grade. And she's doinga monologue for Elijah Pinckney or some some
you know, strong woman for history, Woman History, I don't know what
(43:53):
it was. But she's doing amonologue at school. And she said,
Dad, I need to get aquill pen. And I said, do
I have the quill a pen foryou? I just got one from the
US Supreme Court. I'm gonna bringit to you. I show up,
I bring this quill pen, Iput it. I'm so proud of it
I got from the U. S. Supreme Court. My daughter's going to
(44:13):
give a monologue at school with apen from the U. S. Supreme
Court. She looks at it,she says, Dad, that looks just
like the one I got it Joanne's, which is a arch and craft court.
And sure enough, it looks justlike the one who got it joined.
So at some point the cat thelove of cats, I mean,
(44:37):
I guess the love of cats extendsto horses and all animals and stuff for
Jim, but Hope, what wasthe story about using animals as a way
to get you to not date orsomething. Yeah, well, it's always
worth a try. My dad wasa big horse guy too. He had
a horse growing up, and sohis horse was named Jake, and every
(45:00):
night would tell us a story aboutJake, Jake going to the moon,
Jake probably going to trial. Andso in high school we're all interested in
horses, and my dad thought,oh, what a great idea. I'll
buy them a horse so they canride instead of being distracted by boys or
trying to date boys. But insteadof backfired in his face. So we
started dating the guys who worked atthe barn, which is probably like he
(45:23):
got this plan would play out,but that's exactly what happened. So that,
yeah, that didn't pan out theway I plan. So this next
one is my second favorite, isthe Prostitute blackmail case, which is a
reverse sting operation that Jim was behindusing his former FBI investigator working for the
(45:46):
defense. Obviously, any case thathas sex and money in it is fun
and saalacious, and you know,you guys, I'm sure all want to
know about it, and it's alsoreally fun for us, so we're not
gonna lie. You know, thoseare pretty fun. So you know,
most of you probably know what asting operation is. It's it's I call
(46:06):
it a fraud committed by an undercovercop. I feel like, you know,
there should be a defensive temptation.You know, you see it a
lot where the cop is like theundercover John going up to the prostitute and
then of course she's like you know, wheeling and dealing, and then she
gets arrested. This was a reversingoperation. So Jim tell us how this
(46:28):
was a reversing operation, who yourclient was, and like what happened?
Yeah? Well, so I usedto teach this course law students past the
bar and before they prikes law,they had to go through this course called
bridge the gap gap between law schooland pricing law, and I was a
constructor for years and years. Theydon't do that anymore. But I use
this as an example of if somelawyers are referring you a case with a
(46:52):
client who has money, you needto ask why. Because this guy went
in to see Dick Carputlin and Dickcalls me up and I'm practicing all down
the street, two doors down onMain Street, and he says, jem,
I got this guy. He's gotplenty of money. He's got a
problem. I don't think I canhelp him. I think you can.
And you know I needed money atthe time. And so the guy comes
(47:13):
up and what was going on ishe had met this prostitute at a brothel
in his in this part of thestate, and there was a pretty famous
brothel that doesn't exist anymore and hadn'texisted in probably fifteen twenty years, but
it was, you know, itwas well known to have judges, politicians,
(47:34):
law enforcement people or customers of thisbrothel. And the and this person,
who is pretty successful, I'm notgoing to give his occupation, he
fell in love with this prostitute andhe bought up a rental house and he
put her and her child up inthis rental house because this prostitute's husband was
(47:54):
in prison. And then the husbandgets out of prison and reaches out to
my client. I'm gonna call himJohn, because that's what prostitutores call.
The guy so reached out to Johnand says, you know, you've been
sleeping with my wife. You've gother put up in a house, so
you need to pay me fifty thousanddollars or I'm going to tell your wife.
(48:17):
And so that was the guy's problem, right, that's his problem.
And so he comes to me afterDick woulden, wouldn't you know, send
him down down the street, Dickto take the case. Did you ever
find out? Well, I thinkyou know you're about to find out.
I don't know the uh so uhI. I contacted the guy who would
(48:43):
just retire from the FBI, whowas doing private eye work, and I
said, I said, I saidto him, I said, you know,
this is a situation. I don'tknow what to do. Can maybe
you can do it? He goes, I know exactly what to do.
We'll just do a reverse thing operationon this guy. Okay, And so
my guy goes, my investigator goeswith John, the client to North Carolina,
(49:07):
and so to make it across statelines, and they record phone calls
of this guy, you know,blackmailing my client for fifty thousand dollars.
And then and then we make anarrangement on this reverse thing that the husband
thinks that my client's going to deliverthe fifty thousand dollars. They set it
up to be to take place atthe brothel owner's farmhouse. And he had
(49:31):
a he had a he had ayou know, a party house behind his
house. And so the prostitute andher husband at the party house behind the
brothel owner's house. And then andall this is out in the country of
South Carolina. And then a coupleof miles down the road, there's this
country store as country as you canget, you know, on a two
(49:52):
lane road, and a country store. And and so the plan was for
the brothel owner to drive to thecountry store, get fit two thousand dollars
in cash from my client in abag, and take it to the brothel
owner, to the prostitute and herhusband. And that was it. Well,
that was not our plan. Ourplan was that now we're off duty
(50:14):
FBA, I mean retired FBA agentwas going to instead of the brothel owner
taking fifty grand back, the FBIagent's going to get in the truck and
go back and tell the husband wegot tapes. You're done. You're going
back to prison. This is violatingyour probation or parole and cut it out.
And so that was the plan,and that you know. And so
(50:38):
we have a big meet with aclient in a small town. As we're
getting ready to go to this countrystore, my client shows up. He
looks like Matt he looks like amajor League baseball umpire. He's got under
his shirt a Army Navy, Armysurplus bulletproof vest is about four inches thick.
(51:05):
And so we're like his restaurant andhe's got a bulletproof vest on him.
And then then before we go overthere, we pull her and then
my guy dresses up like Rambo.He puts, he gets black stuff all
over his face. And then hereand all I have is my bar license,
which I'm pretty sure I'm going tolose. I'm pretty sure I was
losing my bar license that day,because this is not nothing I learned in
(51:28):
law school. And so we goto this country store, and sure enough,
the brothel owner comes up in thetruck. My guy, Tommy,
the FBA agent, jumps in thetruck and says, I'm a And I'm
not sure how loud he said former, but he said I'm a former FBA
agent. Maybe the guy only heardFBI and maybe didn't hear former. But
they get in the car. Theygo back to the party house. Tommy
(51:52):
gets out, talks to the husband. Husband is shitting all over himself,
shot himself. I mean, Idon't know if he actually did. He
was shaking, afraid, nervous,and so then Tommy then and then Tommy
gets back in the truck with thebrothel owner and they come back to the
country store. Tommy gets out,he talks to me and the client.
He says, you've got nothing toworry about. With the husband, he
(52:15):
is so scared nothing's gonna happen.But he said, mister client, John,
whatever her name was, she isso mad at you. She is
so mad at you. And aboutthat time we see this little dots and
pickup truck come with with dust comingup and just hauling ass down this country
road, coming up to the store. And she gets out and she goes
(52:36):
up to our John, if youwill, and she starts screaming at him
and says, I can't believe youdouble cross me after all those bej's I
gave you without a rubber and allthis other stuff. I mean, it
was so then Tommy, the FBagent, you know who's can sweet talk
(52:58):
anybody, he was over there tryingto calm everything down, and it is
like, so that is the storyof the reverse thing. What's the feat?
How do you what I mean,what kind of a fee do you
charge for that? Because that's like, you know, it's not really it's
not really about Uh, I haveno idea what you know. I mean,
he had plenty of money. Ican't remember what we charged him,
(53:20):
but I mean, but to himit's worth a hell of a lot obviously
the value of what he gets,except it's not really basically, you know,
his wife never found out. Iguess to live happily over I don't
know if you until this podcast,she just heard it exactly me. John.
There's another lesson along the lines ofthe red flag you were talking about,
(53:42):
which is interesting for people to know, which is when clients come to
us and they've had multiple lawyers,not not one that they weren't happy with,
and whatnot. But like you know, when they've been through. Every
so often I get people that've beenthrough a lot of really good lawyers in
town, you know, and Igo, uh, why so many?
You know what you know? Andit's and you know, often they do
(54:05):
have the money, and but I'veturned away sometimes those clients because it's just
it seems like a headache. Itusually turns out to be a headache,
no doubt, and they're not happyand no matter what you do for them.
So Hope is serving tea, ofcourse I'm trying. Yeah, tell
(54:27):
me Hope about your summer. Itseems like the summer of two thousand and
seven or eight h was really kindof like a hot summer to be in
Gym's office where you and Mary Lewiswere working as office assistants. There's some
interesting things that happened, I thinkfor people to hear. Yeah, I
know, it was a great time. I was telling Sarah earlier. It
(54:51):
was the cushiest job you could everget. My dad would pick us up
at eight o'clock, and we toldhim as soon as he picked us up
in the car we were on theclock. So we were on the clock
from the time he drove us fromour house until he dropped us off at
the end of the day. Wetold him what music we were going to
listen to in the car. Wegot to the office. His office assistant
was on leave that summer, Ithink, And so we sat at the
(55:12):
front desk, two chairs, onedesk, one computer. We have to
rock paper scissors. Ever, whowould answer the phone? That was the
most popular job. Another great partabout that that position is that we would
also stay on the clock through lunch. And we also be able to convince
my dad to take us out tolunch, so we were getting essentially double
paid a lot of free lunches atthe coordinate's shop and grau shows. And
(55:36):
it was a great summer. Butpicking up the phone calls? Is that
the summer that you know? Designeda T shirt for our summer vacation.
I think that was the most productivething he did all summer, Right,
that's what you think. I thinkwe had. We took a lot of
good things away that summer. Butyeah, I'm pretty sure we designed a
T shirt, did a lot ofprinting. The worst part was having to
pick up the mail. We hadto walk like half a block in the
(55:58):
summer heat, to go get mailfrom the post office. And Columbia is
known as like the Devil's armpit inthe summer because it's oppressively hot and humid.
But so the phone calls. Onetime we got a phone call from
mister Benjamin Dover Ben Dover, andI said, all right, mister bend
Dover, mister is not available rightnow. Can I take your number?
He'll call you back. And hesaid, uh, he'll know who to
(56:21):
call. And I said, okay, mister Dover. And so I watked
in my dad's office and I said, Dad, some guy named mister ben
Dover called and he looked at meand he said, what are you talking
about. I said, I don'tknow. The guy said, you would
know the number to call, andhe picked up the phone. He called
Dick Carpoolia and said, Dick,can you stop messing with my girls?
(56:43):
I thought, I thought that wasa jail call. Was that he's always
bend Over? Yeah? No.The first jail calls came in from a
guy named Milton. And I don'tknow who Milton is or what he did,
but we were really young and wewould get these collect calls on our
house phone and it's say this isa cleet call from Richland County Jail.
(57:07):
Press one to accept, and wewould panic and say we don't want to
answer that call. And eventually mydad had a counselors to press number one
and go find him wherever he wasin the house. But we would often
like leave Milton hanging and forget togo tell my dad he was on the
line. So I'm sure we incurreda lot of phone call calls for mister
Milton. Another great time during thatSummerson, my dad was the representative of
(57:30):
James Brown's estate, and so wehad one of one of James Brown's children
are reported children calling often nearly everyday. She wanted to know Ronda,
that was her name. She wantedto know how this state was shaking out,
what was her share. She calledthe Doctor Phillips show. She got
the Doctor Philip Show involved, Sothe Doctor Philis Show was calling to figure
(57:51):
out if Rohnda was going to takea DNA test or not. She also
had this brilliant idea to have ashow kind of like Survivor, where all
these other people who were claiming beGimes Brown's children would go on this island
and they would take a DNA testevery day or so and built people up
the island. It was a littleahead of its time. That DNA Island
(58:12):
is what she wanted to call it. You know, I'm working for a
production company right now. I'm pitchingthat next week DNA Island. I love
it appropriate, I think. Soit was a busy summer. It was
a fun summer working at my dad'soffice. Was your dad's practice and just
watching him growing up? Is thatwhat kind of led you to want to
(58:35):
go into law yourself or is thatsort of its own journey? And how
did that come together? Well?Both? I think my dad obviously gets
a lot of attention, but mymom is also an amazing attorney too,
And so I watched both of themgrowing up and thought about how neat it
was to have parents' attorneys. Iwas proud to say that I had both
my parents were attorneys. A lotof people could say their dad is an
(58:55):
attorney, but I got to saymy mom and my dad are attorneys.
And so I was always interested inlaw school. I just didn't know if
that was the path for me.I wanted to do something different too,
So I applied at the end ofmy senior year I started taking El SAD
and plying to colleges, and simultaneouslyI was referred to a teacher for America
(59:17):
and asked to apply to that program, and I was accepted. I can't
kind of made this pact with theuniverse, and I said, if I
don't get Colorado Elementary School, thatI'm not going. I'm going to law
school, which was probably going tobe South Carolina. And that's exactly what
happened. I was placed in ColoradoSprings and told I was going to be
a third or fourth grade teacher,and so I took that leap of faith
and I went there. But aftermy two years, I realized being teacher
(59:42):
was much harder than I expected thatmost people probably perceive, and so I
then started talking about going to lawschool again. And at that point I
felt like I had a path forwardand that I was going to be doing
my own thing in the law andnot criminal defense or insurance defense or civil
litigation. I wanted to do schoollaw or education law, which is such
a this narrow area of the lot, and I love what I do.
(01:00:02):
So yeah, they did inspire me, but neither of them pushed me to
go to law school. They wereprobably notably silent when I said I was
gonna apply. I think they wantedme to make my own decision, which
is interesting. Usually parents, likeevery lawyer that I know whose parents has
been a lawyer, is just sortof expected to follow that path, you
(01:00:24):
know. But yeah, I'm theonly lawyer. Sorry, dad, I'm
going to be a writer, producer, no lawyer. I go for a
real, real steady career path talkingto lawyers on a podcast. That's what
I'm gonna do, all right.So I'm sure there's so many more stories
Jim can tell us at another onanother episode. But these were really these
(01:00:47):
were like fascinating to me and Iand I wanted to kind of share them
with everybody. So thank you toour guest this great way. Why can't
you FaceTime you? I don't understandwe FaceTime on Thanksgiving. He's pretending like
(01:01:08):
he forgot okay, and he alsojust got an iPhone antiphone for a long
time. That's big news in theproduction world over here. We were all
very excited when Jim got an iPhoneexactly well, yeah, we I mean,
I refuse to. I don't likethe green thing going on, so
(01:01:30):
I just was not messaging on aregular app. I couldn't deal with it
anyway. Thank you, guest Slashco host Jim Griffin and and Hope,
thank you so much for giving usthe honor. I know you're super busy
and you have a little boy andtaking time off on a Sunday is not
(01:01:51):
easy for you, so I reallyappreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, Sam and Sydney and bekissed for me and I will.
I kicked them out of that housefor this. Yeah, real life off
on the shelf at home right now. And don't let your dad hijack my
gift, which was a birthday ifnot a holiday gift for Sydney. On
the way. We're gonna find itunder the tree with your name on it.
(01:02:14):
Let me just throw before we wrapup. Please subscribe to this podcast
if you're not already, it's calledThe Presumption. We're also on YouTube and
all the social media handles, andwe are going to be back with some
new content for you guys in thenext couple of weeks. And so until
next time, Jim and Sarah werest, We rest, Yes, we do.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd is a thought-provoking, opinionated, and topic-driven journey through the top sports stories of the day.