239 - Expert Conversation: David Rudolf & Sonya Pfeiffer

Karen and Georgia chat with defense attorneys David Rudolf and Sonya Pfeiffer about The Staircase documentary and their new podcast, Abuse of Power.

Listen to the Abuse of Power: apple.co/abuseofpower

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello, well man, welcome there.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
It is.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
That's what we're looking for to my favorite murder, and
it all falls my favorite to my favorite murder murder.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
That's Karen Kilgareth, that is Georgia Hardstari.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hi, how are you good?

Speaker 4 (00:35):
How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:36):
I have at tension in my neck shoulder, and so
sometimes I can't lift my arm, and then sometimes I
do lift my arm anyway and it makes a popping sound.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
You know, lifting your arm is like math. You never
use it in your adult life.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Right. That's the thing is, you do not need your shoulder.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
You do not need to lift your arm. You're not
at a concert. You're not going to a concert. You're
not you're you're not fucking hailing a cab.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
I was told to put my hands in the air
like I don't care, and I don't care, so I
just needed to indicate it.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, if Freebird comes on, you can hold your lighter
up with your other hand.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
You don't like black click?

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, what's up? A mini trampoline behind you?

Speaker 3 (01:17):
Oh? That's for clearing my lymphatic system. Remember long ago
when we were in Sweden and we got Swedish massages
on my birthday? Yes, because that's somehow the life we're
leading now.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
It's so ridiculous. Quick update in our lives, we've done that.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Remember how we used to tour in your rope. So
the second my Swedish massage therapist looked at me, she
was like, you need lymphatic drainage like from the doorway,
and that's a really good way to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
I did not.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
I've fought like three of those mini trampolines in my
life doing that. I'm going to trampoline as an exercise,
and but I've done it in studio apartments. So after
two months, if I have used it, I get rid
of them or like give it to you know, goodwill
or whatever. So this I'm going to buy it when
I know it. So it's going to be my like fourth.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
You know what's interesting too, is it uh is harder
than you think. In this second you start, you're like, oh,
what the hell? Like you really are doing something.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
And you could do like yes, one hundred percent trampoline.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
It's cool.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
It's our new book club. Is everyone get a trampoline
mini trampoline. We're all going to start working out on
the trampoline.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Well, we're pour back about it and we'll look like
we never started it.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Don't worry about it.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
We're here for you every week give it away to charity,
and you don't and give it away the end.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
What have you been up to besides pushing you out
of mini trampeling. Let's see.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
I can tell you that I listened you text me
over the weekend. A you have to listen to these
episodes of our still favorite podcast, this is actually happening.
We're like spokesmodels for this podcast, but it's worth It's
so good and there's good so many so the one
that I listened to was what If You Refuse to
be annihilated?

Speaker 4 (03:02):
Right?

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Episode one three?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Ugh, ugh, my god, it's so perfect. Every word she
was saying.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
I was just like, I love her, She's what's happening
all The quote is as possible.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
The quote in the episode notes that she says is
I believe that people like me that have experienced trauma,
I think were the ones that need to save the world,
were the ones that actually know everything about innocence. That
made me feel so many feels as someone who always
felt a little broken because I did and went through
so much as a young person and made so many mistakes. Yeah,

(03:35):
I felt like I wasn't allowed to be involved and
have good things, and like I already spent all my shit,
I spent my karma, I spent my good vibes. Yeah,
and that was just like no, no, no, you went through
that shit. And so now you have a better understanding
of it.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
You are now you you that experience is what graduated
you into humanity, into the brotherhood quickly of human beings.
That's how we're connected. That's what we have in common.
Is shame, that hideous cringe where you're like, it's just
me and I'm bad that every person has it. That's

(04:13):
the thing, and that's the thing that I think makes empathy.
It has to be a choice, and it's hard is
because you have to acknowledge your own before you can go, oh,
I now see it in you. Now I get it.
I get what's going on with you.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
And it doesn't make me a broken person. Well, so
the woman who is you know, the subject of that
subject episode, Renee Denfeld. So now I downloaded her her
book because she of course came a writer, which is
part of the narrative called The Childfinder. And I'm so
I'm just completely imashed. I'm so into it.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
And that's her second book, The Child Finder.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Because there's a couple of books her first book. She
immediately got all these words like she is. You have
to hear the story, you guys, it's what a great podcast? Yes,
what a great feeling.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
So that's what I'm doing. What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Nice? I just started.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
I re I have a thing where I really need
a series to be in the middle of. Yes, because
when I finish a series, I get a little dip.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Now I'm lost.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
There's like a big void between series where it's like,
what are you doing? Nothing?

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Then you search and like if you try to start
one and it doesn't work, it's like it's like going
on a bad date where you're like, I'm bad.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
I guess I'm the one.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah for now.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
So I hooked into a new one and it is
I've heard I heard people talk about it on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
It's the one I'm a while ago, Vince and I
forgot until you said this is it.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
I may destroy you. No, but incredible the HBO series.
We're there. It has to happen. It's on. It's on you.
You will love it. It's I can't believe it. It
seems like right up your alley, yes, and I you
know what it was.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
I had been kind of going to what I knew
worked for me, which was Scandinavian procedurals saying I'm insane,
but it really they did something exact for me that
I was like, no, I just want this. It's like
when you just want to eat the one dish over
and over kind of thing. And then the other day,
like the last one the be Foreigners that I loved

(06:08):
so much, it was over and I was kind of
just like, well I might as well because The Foreigners
was on an HBO series, HBO Europe.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
So I was like, well, I'll just go tried and true.
We know HBO. They make hits, that's what they do.
And there was I.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
May destroy you, and I remembered so many people going
like this is so good, and just right away I
was like, I love her. I want to be friends
with her. I have been this girl like it is
really great but also completely not. And the fact that
it's her, you know, her real experience, it's her life.

(06:43):
It's not yes, it's not an actress they hired. It's
really impressive. She's a really cool, impressive it's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Okay, they're really going to do it. I might this
what is it? I might destroy you, I may destroy
may destroy you well in a completely different realm of
life and being. Vince and I have watched it the
first one as a joke and then are fucking in it.
Cobra Kai fucking Netflix. It's like, Yes, it's like, it's

(07:15):
like Karate Kid that we all know and love. If
you guys haven't watched the original Karate Kid, watch it.
It's the two of them grown up and fight and
fucking fighting their adult battles.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Ralph Mancio and the blonde mean guy that was the
blonde mean guy in every eighties movie.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yes, it's them as grown ups and like they keep
like when they're like remembering things from their childhood, they
actually flash back to the fucking movie. They're able to
do like. It's so good and weird and Cobra Kai.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
I'm writing it down.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
I recommend it, but you gotta watch Karate Kid first.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yes, if you haven't seen it, you won't get it.
Karate Kid, which has one of the greatest Halloween costumes ever.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's in the new one. It's fucking featured it's so good,
like this one's son isn't getting along, Like it's almost
like nine O two one OI and it's like cheesy drama.
But then it gets so good and like understanding of
the human condition and like you know, and love and
family and it's so good.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
Oh my god, I know that I haven't even heard
of it. I didn't know, although I did. I saw
an article about about Ralph Maccio, you know, a couple
of weeks ago. But I think because for not not
like spending so much time on social media, I just
thought it was like we're digging in the past because
we need to write stories about something.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
And so I love that.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
It's actually acts and they could both the same.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
They're like, it's Billy is the guy. Blonde guy's name Billy, Billy.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Zachly, Yes, Billy yest cast to everyone's like just so good.
It's fucking and such a good idea. Yeah, it's such
a good idea. There's a lot of corny like bits
of it, but it's really it's touching too. Hey, you
know what, I love corn Yeah, So really quick, before
we get into the details of this episode, we want

(09:06):
to quickly let you guys know that we have heard
you and we have responded.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
To you as we love to do.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
We'd love to do by putting out fuck you, I'm single, sweatpants,
yes there, and my favorite murder dot com in the store,
and we have I think we have now married, divorced
and single.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Right, yeap?

Speaker 1 (09:28):
What more do we need?

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Well, we should definitely make fuck you I'm other or
just like a blank line, you can write it in
with a sharpie. So we're excited because we're doing a
special show, a special what do we call these, Georgia
an episode, God damn you interview conversations conversations with, conversations

(09:52):
with and that it's us right because we're always in
a conversations with Karen.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
And George and then all third part right, we can't,
I can't.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
I have to make sure people understand that I'm in
this too. Conversations with yeah, ellipses, question mark in parentheses,
smiley face.

Speaker 4 (10:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
So some of you may have seen this go down
on social media. We'll get into the actual discussion of it.
But David Rudolph reached out to us, and basically he's
the defense lawyer from the foundational documentary series The Staircase
that's right.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
It's just basically how we bonded. The first time we
ever met, they're not met, but the first time we actually,
like I think, became friends was at a Halloween party
and we just started talking about the staircase. I think
it just come on. We were both obsessed with it. Theories,
theories abound. I changed my mind about my conclusion multiple
times that night, as I want to do.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
We've discussed it ad nauseum. We have talked about guilt
and innocence ad nauseum, as you know. So when I
first got this tweet sent to me, it was a
little bit scary.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
It felt like it could potentially be confrontational, and then
I realized it's I doubt it is.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
So yeah, we reached out.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
And you'll hear everything else because we talk about all
of it in this interview.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
So it's really special. We hope you guys like it.
We had such a blast talking to David and Sonya,
like such incredible, brilliant people.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, so please enjoy our conversation with David Rudolph and
Sonya Pfeiffer of the Abuse of Power podcast. Okay, so
this is a very exciting special episode that we are
doing today, So we'll give you a little background on
how we got here. Georgia, do you remember the I

(11:51):
believe it was four thirty in the morning when I
texted you. I sent a screenshot to Georgia because I
have woke up in the middle of the night and
started reading Twitter and saw that I had a message
from one David Rudolph that said, Karen, this is David Rudolph.
I represented Michael Peterson in the Netflix doc The Staircase.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Could you please DM me when you have him in it?
Thanks David.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
And then I panicked, just.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Like I broke out in a cold sweat.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
And then character defamation of character, It's all over.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
It's over.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
And then I remembered the great line from Michael Clayton
when the guy the phone rings and the client goes, oh,
is that the cops?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
And then Michael Clayton goes, no, they don't call.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
And so I thought, would a defense Michael Peterson defense
attorney tweet at me to let me know that he
was going to sue us for some reason, or would
he actually just go ahead and do it and not
warn me in any way. So that's when we I
DMed and said Hi, what's up? And then of course
basically we had a nice converse and we got here.

(13:01):
So it's really nice to know, David that this you
wanted to talk to us. Our guest today David Rudolph
and Sonya Pfeiffer. We're the hosts of the brand new
podcast Abuse of Power, and they're here to talk to
us today about basically a whole range of things.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
I would assume, how are you guys doing.

Speaker 5 (13:20):
We're doing great, well, I'm getting better.

Speaker 6 (13:24):
I'm recovering from a day of fifth grade with my daughter,
oh wow. Well, also attending a remote deposition and managing
a fine month old puppy who came breakfast and lunch
and cleaning up.

Speaker 5 (13:36):
So you'm getting chill.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
You're having a chill just an easy day.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
Yeah, she just needs a bottle of wine, don't we all?

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, twenty in the afternoon. That sounds about time. Well,
thanks for being on you guys. We're so excited and
we we've already talked about this that we bet you
guys are so sick of talking about staircase, so we
all we want to talk about that, but we also
want to know everything about the new podcast and what
an amazing thing you guys are doing for justice for

(14:06):
We're so fascinated.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
But we don't know how much.

Speaker 5 (14:09):
David.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
You know about the fact that the Staircase documentary is
basically the reason that George and I first met and
like and bonded over talking about and arguing about that documentary.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
It was really big.

Speaker 4 (14:23):
I had heard that I was going to ask you
about that, because that was the rumor that was going around,
but I never was able to confirm it. So it's
nice to hear that that, in fact was true.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Oh yeah, we started talking about it at a party
and just never stopped. That was four and a half
years ago, and we never stopped talking about it.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:43):
Really, so, for better or worse, I'm responsible or at least.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
You're a big part of it. Well, we just we
have lots of different you know. Basically, this podcast started
because we both realized that our entirely unech expert opinion
on these, like this whole wave of true crime documentaries
because the Jinx came out like around the same time,
and there's you know, a whole bunch of them, but

(15:11):
there was so much to discuss that, you know, we
felt of like what we thought versus what reality is
or what the truth is, or how.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
The legal system works.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
And I think that the staircase is a great example
of a documentary where you are led in a direction
and then you get to a place and then suddenly
you're taking a hard left and going in a totally
different direction. The way they reveal the different things that
were going on inside that courtroom, with those experts, with
all that stuff, I mean, it's truly fascinating. And yeah,

(15:45):
so we were just thinking we could talk to you
a little bit since we have you, We could just like,
is there anything off the top that you think we
or people in general kind of got wrong about that
case if we only knew it from the And Sonya
you were there.

Speaker 4 (16:01):
Too, so yes, Sonia reported on it, so maybe she
has a more objective view.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Oh yeah, true.

Speaker 6 (16:09):
Well, I mean I think you probably could answer the
what did people get wrong? And I think that depends
on what your point of view is in terms of,
you know, was it the right outcome or the wrong outcome?
The jury verdict and the way it resolved. What I
can tell you from being a reporter is that when
that verdict came in to this day, I remember the
moment where they said guilty and everyone was ready to

(16:31):
go out to their live shots, but it was like
a freeze frame. I mean, I looked at this reporter
next to me, who was, you know, a rival reporter.
We were fighting for the same stories in the same hoops,
and she and I looked at each other like, oh
my god, how did that happen? Because it didn't really
matter whether you thought Peterson was an odd guy, whether
you thought the stuff that came in maybe I don't know,

(16:52):
could have done it. The truth of the matter is
there was enormous reasonable doubt and even as a lay
person at the time I'm in a practicing a now,
but then as a journalist, I thought for sure it
was going to be not guilty. So I think that
if you covered a day in and day out, and
you saw what the evidence was and what the evidence

(17:12):
wasn't you.

Speaker 5 (17:13):
Were shocked at the verdict.

Speaker 6 (17:14):
Because if we believe our system does in fact work,
you are supposed to vote for a reasonable doubt, and
there were many, many reasonable doubts. But I guess I'm
wondering what you think people's takeaway from it is. And
when you say, what did people get wrong?

Speaker 4 (17:32):
Yeah, it's a little hard for me to say what
people got wrong. You know, from my perspective, the outcome
or somebody you know, sort of deciding what happened was
really not the point for me. For me, it was
let me show you how the criminal justice system actually worked,
and let me show you what criminal defense lawyers actually

(17:55):
do instead of how they're portrayed in popular culture. And
so for me, what the result was, whether somebody thinks
Michael is guilty or not guilty, is really besides the
point of I think, you know, I think it's important
that people come away with wow, you know that sort
of seems like a reasonable doubt. I think that's important,

(18:16):
and I think it's important for them to come away
recognizing that expert testimony can be fraudulent.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
And yeah, at that moment, I think what Karen and
I in an hour, you know, will tell you the
evidence and that's it. There's no nuance, there's no you know,
there's no us deciding whether there's reasonable doubt or not
or whether you know the expert. We hear the word
expert and we're like, well, then they're right.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, it's a line of faith.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, that's not that's haste and that.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
Moment in that documentary, you know, that reveal about the
blood Spotter expert was jaw dropping. I mean, that was
that thing where you, as a person who likes to
follow true crime and is very interested in it, those
are those things where you're like that assumption that this
is the expert, and the expert doesn't lie, and the
expert is an expert, knows exactly what they're talking about.

(19:08):
The whole reveal of this stuff he was doing at
his house and then all everything, it was just like,
oh my god, this can't be and I think that's
total naivete, but it was such a fascinating element. I
mean it must have David Deriven you insane in that well.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
I can remember watching those videotapes of him doing these
experiments and thinking to myself, this is ridiculous. I mean,
they're never going to show these to the jury. I'm
going to have to show these to the jury to
show them how stupid it is. And then they put
them on the stand and they're showing the experiments. You know,

(19:43):
it was it was amazing to me. And then of course,
you know the little victory dance at the end when
they finally get the spatter, right, you know, And so
for me, it's important that you all had that raw,
jaw dropping moment. I think a lot of people have.
I think the same thing happened in Making a Murder

(20:05):
with the Brendan Dacy interrogation. I think a lot of
people had no idea that those interrogations can go like that.
And there's a lot of other similar things that are
that are finally being exposed through these documentaries. So I
think you know what got.

Speaker 6 (20:22):
Left on the cutting room floor is Sammy Shabani. Oh yeah,
if you thought that Dever was jaw dropping, there was
another expert that they brought on that David Cross examber,
and it turned out the guy like completely fabricated his
resume said that he graduated from Temple or taught at Temple.

Speaker 4 (20:39):
No, he said he taught it to you. Yeah, he
said he graduated from Oxford. We're not sure about that, right.

Speaker 6 (20:44):
But he was doing experiments just like Dever was trying
to recreate the blood spatter. This guy, Sammy Shabani, was
doing experiments in another case to try to simulate a
drowning where he was taking people's heads. Real people who
volunteered for this put them in a toilet to see
if they'd stay in the toilet and they could drown that way.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
You know, it's one of the great video clips of
all time. It's I'm unfortunately I can't show it to
you right here.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
But if the jury saw that.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
In the real case, they saw him testify and then
his testimony was stricken because he had made up his credentials.

Speaker 6 (21:22):
But then you see this, and so like from the
reporter's point of view, all of this stuff has been
in front of the jury, and even though the jury
is told, we'll disregard that. I mean, let's just talk
about the experts alone. You watch what you saw Deaver do.
Then couple that with this other guy, Sammy Shaboni, who
was an absolute joke, and you recognize that if the
jury saw this, there's no way they can believe this
because this is blooney. This is obviously beloney. But the

(21:44):
fact that their verdict hinged on Diver's blood spatter evidence,
and in particular the stuff that he said was inside
Peterson's shorts, it was shocking. It was shocking that people
would believe that. But I actually think the reality is
what did it for these jurors at that time was
you know, the bisexuality and.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
And so that that.

Speaker 5 (22:03):
Was what did it.

Speaker 6 (22:04):
They didn't like it. They didn't like Michael. He was
already an outsider. And I think that the jury was
made up of enough people who were persuaded in that way.

Speaker 5 (22:14):
And also, you know, from.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
The Germany stuff didn't help.

Speaker 5 (22:18):
The Germany stuff didn't help, right, I mean, there's another
trial than a trial.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
And I think you know you asked me earlier, what
what do people get wrong about? Almost everybody who watches
that says, well, he killed his first wife. I know,
everybody know it was his wife's best friend. Uh. And
and you know, actually the wife who he divorced was

(22:42):
very alive at the time of the trial and was
there in the courtroom supporting.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
As a defense attorney. You wish that, uh, the you know,
the jury knew going in or you know a level
of understanding. Is it better if they are you know,
true crime aficionado's or better if they're just coming in
without any knowledge of you know, what an expert testimony means,
or you know, what do you look for?

Speaker 4 (23:08):
Well, you know, back then no one had seen true
crime documentaries.

Speaker 5 (23:13):
It was all you know, so and stuff like that, yeah,
and they were basing.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
It on shows that were complete fiction. Right. So the
truth is, I think that somebody who has watched true
crime documentaries, I mean really well done documentaries like West
Memphis three, or Making a Murderer or The Staircase Innocent Man.
People who have watched those, I think are going to

(23:39):
make much better jurors, much fairer jurors, because they understand
that they can't take everything at face value. So they're
educated jurors. And indeed, part of the reason why I
went around, I didn't draw the crowds you drew, but
part of the reason I went and spoke was to

(24:00):
to sort of send that message that you know, listen, folks,
you're now an educated consumer of criminal trials, and so
you need to serve and you need to let other
people know what you know, because it really makes a difference.
I think.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Yeah, I mean, you did get that feeling after the
I guess Escort testified where I got that sense of like, oh, no,
this is going to be the thing that sticks no
matter what else they hear, and the thing that, although
unrelated in terms of what the crime is that he

(24:38):
is on trial for, this is just the thing that's
going to make people go moral or a moral Well,
then here we have it.

Speaker 5 (24:45):
Like it real.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
They really played.

Speaker 5 (24:47):
Yeah, I mean you heard that with pure tea field.
I mean, yeah, what is that?

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Can we ask about ye old owl theory? And sure
are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 4 (25:00):
Well, I see some owls behind you there on your.

Speaker 6 (25:03):
Wall paper, flowers.

Speaker 5 (25:07):
Everywhere.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
I'm not doing that.

Speaker 4 (25:15):
You know. I scoffed at that theory when I first
heard it, just like everybody else did. Uh. And I
heard it, you know, like two days before my closing argument. Uh,
you know, at a time when, as I told Larry Pollard,
even if I wanted to use that, I can't because
there's no evidence of owls in the case.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (25:37):
And I scoffed at it because Larry really didn't roll
it out very well, you know. He he rolled it
out before he had expert support for that theory, and
so people were able to make a joke out of it.
And that's what happened. It became a running joke in
in Durham and then other places. The truth of the

(25:57):
matter is that when you when you get into it
and you start looking at, you know, pictures of people
who have been attacked by owls. When you start looking
at stories of people who've been attacked by owls, you
realize that this is, this is a real phenomenon. You
look at her wounds, you look at some of the

(26:18):
evidence that was at the scene, like drops of blood
outside the house, a feather you know, in her hair,
a twig on the steps, all of these things that
you know, back of the day I sort of wrote off,
as you know, inconsequential take on a whole different light

(26:38):
when you're looking at it through the lens of an
owl theory. Now, you know, I think a lot of
people have this idea that the owl theory means that
the owl was in the house, and you know what
happened to it? And where is it? The owl theory
was never that it was in the house. It was
that she walked outside. Uh, And when she walked outside,
an owl swooped down and then she and in bleeding.

(27:01):
So look, you know, can I tell you that's what happened?

Speaker 1 (27:04):
No?

Speaker 4 (27:06):
But can I tell you it's at least as likely,
if not more likely, than the blowpoke? Absolutely? I mean,
the blowpoke theory never made any sense, particularly after we
found the blowpoke right.

Speaker 6 (27:17):
Right, you know, and you mentioned the wounds, and I mean,
I'll tell you that from the reporter standpoint, And I
remember everybody getting the autopsy photos and looking at these
very odd wounds on the back of her head, which
looked like a talent and there's like three prongs and
they come down to a single point. No one could
figure out how does that happen? And if it is
like a split, you know, like her head was hit

(27:38):
on something, then how does she not have you know,
any edema or anything like that. It didn't make any sense.
And then there was also subsequent information that there were
in fact owls, and owls had attacked people in the area.
And now that we have social media and ways of
sharing this information, you see these owl attacks on animals,
on people all over the place.

Speaker 5 (27:58):
Durham in the triangle, And didn't you just post up.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
Oh yeah, I guess somebody sent me this picture of
a dog that had been attacked by an owl, and
when you looked at the wounds, they were like identical.

Speaker 5 (28:12):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
This theory has taught us that owls are jerks really
more than.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
Exactly well, you know, there's an owl that lives outside
of our house here in Charlotte, and you can hear them.
I don't know what kind of owl it is, but
you can hear them at night. And when I'm walking
the dog. You know, we have a you know, it's
fairly not a tiny bod dog, but a small dog.
It's scary, you know now that I know, I'm frightened

(28:39):
about it.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
It would be so ironic if you got attacked by
an owl like that, which.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Boy, wouldn't it be?

Speaker 3 (28:44):
Yeah, You're like, not me, I'm not the guy. I'm
on your side. But you know, that's actually a really
good point of talking about social media, because I bet
this has changed reporting a lot, but also the way
cases work this way where everybody is getting an education
kind of real time. We talk about it a lot,

(29:05):
having followed true crime TV like Cold Case Files, dateline
shows like that, and you know from eighties and nineties.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, where.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
These you don't know, you only know what the people
who are in charge are telling you, you kind of
And so as we used to talk about how in
the beginning there would be there would always be re
enactments in these true crime shows that were really kind
of salacious, and they would they would there would be
a lot of like blonde girls in red bras being

(29:36):
stabbed for a long time, where I remember watching it
and just being like, why are we still in this spot?
Like this is gross and not processing that, like what
we're getting is based on who's giving it to us.
It's not the expert, it's not These aren't the people
that know best. It's just the people that have elected
to produce this story. And it's starting to feel that
that's kind of the same where all our eyes are opening,

(29:59):
oh overall as a culture, to seeing what a small
group of people have been in charge for so long
and how they've kind of we only know what they
let us know. So it's like, not until cameras have
been in the courtroom do we know the kind of
insane hijinks that go on in a courtroom that I
would have assumed before that couldn't happen.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
Well, and it's not just in the courtroom, how about
you know Black Lives Matter and shootings? You know, I knew,
I've known for decades that police abuse minorities. I saw
it when I was a public defender in New York.
My clients would come in, they'd be totally beaten up,
and they'd invariably be charged with resisting arrests, you know,

(30:44):
and they tell me I didn't do anything. They just
beat the crap out of me. And so I knew
about this stuff, but all of you didn't. Now, with
cell phones and social media, all of a sudden, people
see it for themselves. And you know, what was so
powerful about what happened in Minnesota and now what happened

(31:05):
in Kenosha is how raw that is, you know, how
how cruel and how and you know, it's just shocking.
But you know, this stuff has gone on for decades.
It's just that none of us knew about it. And
I was going to say, I don't know if you
saw the story yesterday about the thirteen year old autistic

(31:26):
boy in Salt Lake who his mom called for help
because he was acting out in the house and the
Salt Lake police arrive and they shoot him. You know.
I mean part of it is I think that the
police have become sort of militarized, and they no longer
view themselves as sort of helping the community. They view

(31:49):
themselves as keeping law and order, period and particularly order,
and so you know, I think that's a real problem.
And you know, our eyes have been open to all
of that by social media and by cell phones really,
and so you know, the first step is recognizing your
implicit bias and then trying to work through that. So

(32:11):
I think that's part of it, is that police officers,
like everybody else, have implicit biases. And then the training
is really not you need de escalation training. You don't
need giving police officers bazookahs and you know, armored vehicles.

Speaker 6 (32:30):
Well beyond that though, I mean, the training piece actually
goes all the way back to basic law enforcement training
before we even get to de escalation training. What we
need to talk about is how police officers are entered
into the academy and essentially taught that their lives are
in jeopardy every day that they're out on the street.
That's not community based policing. That's not protecting and serving
your community. So I think part of the problem is, yes,

(32:53):
training at a fundamental level is not started from a
place of we are here to serve the community.

Speaker 5 (32:59):
We are here to create relationships with people in the community.
If you think.

Speaker 6 (33:02):
About the best policing practices that nobody will dispute, it
is when the officers who are in a neighborhood, know
the neighborhood. Let's take what happened to Jacob Blake. Okay,
I don't know all of the circumstances and who called
what in right, but if you have neighborhood police who
know Jacob Blake, who know that there might be some history,

(33:22):
and they know that there's been a call about domestic
violence or whatever the case may be, if they already
know him as a human being, and they have seen
him in other circumstances other than a mugshot, which by
the way, they didn't know I don't think before they
shot him. But if you have in your mind a
human being in front of you rather than an object,
and you understand something about that person's life, you treat

(33:43):
them like a human being and not like an object.
And so I think that the training starts with basic
empathy training. And I don't mean that in a corny way.
I mean it in a very real way. And I
think it also begins with the training about systemic racism
and systemic biases, because it is it is simple, but
it's complicated.

Speaker 5 (34:01):
It's simple, and.

Speaker 6 (34:02):
That we live in a society that was purposely set
up to discriminate against anyone who is not a white
male and a white straight male at that and we
have to recognize that. And when that society works well,
we have the outcomes that we have now. And so
we have to begin to break down that entire system.
And it won't happen quickly because it's taken hundreds of

(34:22):
years to get here and it was purposeful.

Speaker 5 (34:24):
So what do we do, you know, I mean, you have.

Speaker 6 (34:26):
These officers who are already operating within a structure that
is meant to discriminate, that is meant to perpetuate racism
and sexism, and you have them trained to believe that
their lives are in jeopardy when they're on the street.
That's a toxic combination. And so I think that, yeah,
we need better training. We do need more money in
police departments, but for the right things. We need to

(34:48):
take away, you know, these things that were meant to
combat terrorists, and we need to really get down to
the basics of community policing and what that means, and
then have things like de escalation training so that you recognize,
you know, when a person is mentally ill, you don't
put a spit bag over their head.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
You know.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, yeah, it's It's also interesting. A thing I learned
and had no idea because of the Black Lives Matter
protests and the and the activism that came out of that,
was the size of police budgets compared to all the
other services in a city, right, and how insanely like,

(35:27):
you know, ten times the size and in most large cities,
which is it's you especially here in Los Angeles where
homelessness is so rampant, and so it's such a huge problem.
There's so many people that need help and the services,
like the money isn't there, and yet it's all the
money is there for these for the police. I mean,

(35:48):
it's it's really surprising. But also there's the study that
they've been doing or sorry, they've been put into practice.
I just read this article this morning, so sorry, I
won't be able to remember the city. It might be
in Wisconsin though, or but they started sending a social

(36:08):
worker and a paramedic to nine to one one calls
that weren't direct danger and one percent of the time
those people needed to actual police presence.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
That's I thought that was such.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
An amazing piece of information of like a lot of
the time when people call nine one one, they don't
need guns drawn.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
They don't. That's not what they're looking for, right, right, right, right?

Speaker 4 (36:31):
Yeah. Well, as with that woman in Salt Lake, I mean,
she certainly didn't need police with guns. What she needed
was a social worker.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yeah right.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Had she known that was going to be the outcome,
you know, she wasn't a call. It's so sad.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
Well, and imagine her guilt for the rest of her life.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
It's horrifying.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
What should you know, like, you know, as the public
about when we call nine one one, or when we're arrested,
or I think that when when.

Speaker 6 (37:00):
And if you're arrested. I think the first thing is
don't talk, right, don't talk, be quiet, stop talking, don't
answer questions, get a lawyer, do not talk.

Speaker 5 (37:10):
I mean, it is just even and you're probably innocent.

Speaker 6 (37:13):
Don't talk because whatever you say, they'll find a way
to make it sound like you did do what they.

Speaker 5 (37:18):
Said you did.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
But you know, the real problem, I think what's at
the root of most wrongful convictions and wrongful arrests, which
is probably you know, wrongful arrest don't get a lot
of media play, but they still ruin somebody's life, and
they're probably a lot more prevalent. At root, it's about

(37:41):
confirmation bias. It's about a police officer having the idea
and arrogance a little bit. It's the idea that, oh,
I know what happened here, and so I'm going to
act on that, and then confirmation bias kicks in and
you sort of ignore anything that's inconsistent with your theory

(38:01):
and you focus in on the facts that are consistent
with your theory. And that I think is you know,
you can talk about false confessions, you can talk about
all kinds of the of ways in which the conviction
goes bad, but it's all rooted in confirmation bias.

Speaker 5 (38:22):
It's your question about nine to one one. I mean,
what do people know?

Speaker 6 (38:24):
I actually think that there's frightening lyad there's not a
good answer, because what just happened in Salt Lake City,
you know that, I think really begins to shake those
who have put themselves in a place of privilege before
and felt like that couldn't happen to me.

Speaker 4 (38:39):
Here's what I'll tell you that you probably don't know
about nine one one operators. Nine to one one operators
are trained to investigate the call. So when somebody calls in,
once they dispatch to the scene. Then they're on the
phone and they're trained to, in essence, do a interrogation.

(39:02):
And so if you're on the phone and you're panicked
because you're in this horrendous situation, and they're asking you questions,
that's not just random questions. It's not just you know,
to sort of keep you calm. They are doing the
preliminary investigation. And then whatever you say on the phone
is going to end up being used against you. Well,

(39:25):
most people have no idea.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
I know I never thought about that either.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
About that. Well, in your in your in the podcast
an Abuse of Power, you guys are are specifically telling
stories of these people who were you know who the
investigators had tunnel vision or you know, they talked when
they shouldn't have. What made you guys want to focus
on those cases?

Speaker 4 (39:48):
You know, it's not so much focusing on the cases
are a storytelling device. You know, anytime you want to educate,
it's always good to have a narrative, a story to tell.
It's sort of a hook that people will stay interested in.
But for us, it was really about illuminating the kinds

(40:11):
of abuses that we see every day by people who
are in positions of authority, and it doesn't just relate
to the police. It relates to prosecutors, it relates to judges,
it relates to politicians. You know, we can go on

(40:32):
and on, and we're all seeing, you know, the abusive
power on a daily basis now and it's dangerous. And
so for me at least, I started feeling this about
three and a half years ago that we were in
for a rough go here in terms of the rule
of law. And so for me, this Abuse of Power

(40:54):
podcast is not just about wrongful convictions. No, we want
to be a lot broader than that. We want to
talk about things like bail reform and and you know,
the kind of abuses that you see with bail. You know,
there's there's lots of things that don't relate to wrongful
convictions that are still abuses of power, both in the

(41:17):
criminal justice system and in society at large. And that's
really what we ultimately want to really focus this podcast on.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
MAT's great, it's a fascinating thing to actually start really analyzing.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
And I'm glad you guys are.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
Basically you know, opening up on the other side, because
I feel like we haven't heard this is the side
we need to be hearing from in true crime, right,
is the people that actually know in the day to
day what this is like and what is actually going on.

Speaker 4 (41:45):
Yeah. Well, you know, part of what's part of what's
nice now is that people don't have to take our
word for it. You know, they can watch a documentary
and they can see for themselves that police can be
a use of in how they interrogate a sixteen year
old with mental problems. You know, I don't have to

(42:06):
convince anybody that that happens. They've seen it. Yeah, So
that's that's a that's a very important thing.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Sanya.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Having a background in journalism originally, what role do you
think the media and journalism plays.

Speaker 6 (42:20):
I mean, we were talking earlier about social media, and
I really think that that has vastly changed everything, including
how reporters view their job, because they constantly have to
be you know, tweeting updates or you know, sending in
you know, new video. I think that's really dangerous. But
one of the large reasons I got out of reporting
is because I felt as though it was such a

(42:41):
squandered opportunity. I really believe that good reporting, whether it's
in print or on radio or on television, has such
an incredible opportunity to educate and enlighten people, to inspire people,
and to really get to the truth of something. So
I think that the media, and when I speak about
the media, I'm referring to journalists with the capital J.

(43:02):
I think there there's enormous value to journalists in our society.
I personally am very frightened by how that institution has
been chipped away out over the past three and a
half years and how much doubt is out there about
what you are hearing in whatever your choice of information is.
I think when it comes to criminal cases, there's an

(43:24):
enormous responsibility and I certainly recognized once I became a
criminal defense lawyer that there were a number of things
I did as a reporter that made me a.

Speaker 5 (43:31):
Very good reporter.

Speaker 6 (43:33):
But actually, we're kind of unfair when exactly exactly he
just wants he just wants to justify the times that
he yelled and he was on the lifestop.

Speaker 5 (43:45):
Like six ' ten.

Speaker 6 (43:45):
I'd see my phone ring and be like hello, and
I take the phone away.

Speaker 5 (43:49):
Do you know what interest did to me in my client?

Speaker 4 (43:51):
No?

Speaker 5 (43:52):
But I mean, in all fairness.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Was this before you were in a relationship or.

Speaker 4 (43:56):
During during the trial.

Speaker 5 (43:58):
Yeah, I know, I look and I'm with it, like.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
I love it.

Speaker 6 (44:03):
Yes, But you know, there are a lot of things
that you do. So for instance, I mean one of
the stories that I broke was the story of Soldier
Top of the gay male escort, and that was something
that the defense team was fighting to keep out of court.
And there was a motion hearing about that, and I
am going and I'm reporting to the public about the

(44:25):
motion hearing and about Soldier Top.

Speaker 5 (44:27):
And actually I think it was before the jury was sworn.

Speaker 6 (44:29):
But well no, not only that, but like even if
it had been, the other thing is whatever you report,
the jury wasn't sequestered. And so all of these things
that a lawyer is trying to do and look, and
it could be the prosecution also either side. They are
trying to have a fair trial. And when the media
has the ability to report to the public at large,

(44:52):
things that the lawyers believe should not be a part
of the trial and might even be kept out because
they are not reliable, they should not qualify as evidence
in front of the jury. You you still take the
jury because then you have splashy headlines or whether it's
on TV or whether it's in the newspaper. And you
I mean, like many times jurors aren't s a questor.
But even when they are, how do you keep anybody

(45:14):
off their cell phone these days?

Speaker 5 (45:16):
So I think that.

Speaker 6 (45:19):
It's challenging because you have a responsibility as a journalist
to get the story, as a reporter to tell you know,
but where is that balance. We don't have the same
sort of rules that exist in other places like England,
where your mouth is shut.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
You know, the hard way. Actually, yeah, we learned about that.

Speaker 5 (45:37):
I thought you're talking about the nanny. What did you
guys do?

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Well, we haven't talked about this, but Karen, can we
should we share?

Speaker 3 (45:44):
I mean sure, I don't think because we're out of
the we're in the clear now.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
But we did.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
We did a bunch of shows in the UK and
Georgia talked about a case that had just been reopened,
and we had we toured the UK twice. We had
no idea that you cannot talk about open cases like
that in the media.

Speaker 4 (46:05):
So I could've been representing you guys in the UK.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
We're very close, We're very close, but we and we
had posted it and we pulled it down.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
And we got a letter from the Crown saying from
the from the Crown, Crown Court, yeah, you're in content, Yeah,
con contempt.

Speaker 3 (46:23):
We sent in the recording of the episode and then
everybody got to listen to it, and they decided we
were not.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Basically we were too idiots.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
But that idea that in England they're like, oh no, no,
you don't get to that's not your right.

Speaker 4 (46:39):
Yeah. Well, and and here's the thing. In the United States, Uh,
the First Amendment, forgive the word always trump's due process.
So you know, due process is a right to a
fair trial. And every time I argue that a courtroom
should be closed so that the public doesn't find out

(47:04):
about a fact that may not go to the jury,
the lawyers for the newspaper or the TV station come
in and start yelling about the First Amendment and the
public's right to know and blah blah blah. And it's there.
But there needs to be a balance, and in the
United States there is no balance. The First Amendment sort
of trumps anything having to do with due process in

(47:27):
England because they don't have a First Amendment, due process
actually controls and that's the basis of the distinction between
the two countries. And you know, look, you may remember
a certain reporter standing out in a cemetery when a
body is being taken out of a grave, reporting there

(47:47):
about you know, they're lifting the casket out, you know,
and then following it back to Chapel Hill. You know,
that was a media show and it all done two
weeks before trial, and the jury had all gotten their notices,
so they all knew they were going to be jurors.

(48:09):
And you know, then here comes the autopsy report. Oh
it's a it's a homicide, you know, and and we
tried to seal that and it wouldn't be sealed. So
how do you get a fair trial under those circumstances?
How do you And it's all her fault, so.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
You married her.

Speaker 4 (48:36):
You know what they say, if you can't beat them,
join them.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Right, But wouldn't you say, I mean, like my first
reaction to hearing that, although I absolutely understand the point,
but aren't there times where the media are the ones
that are breaking this information that if it were up
to defense lawyers, we'd never hear about anything that they didn't,
you know, that was not positive for their client, Which

(49:00):
isn't always serving the reality.

Speaker 5 (49:03):
Of let me answer, you don't have to yell.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
It would be an honor to be yelled at.

Speaker 5 (49:12):
I know I deserve it. But here's the thing. I
hear what you're saying.

Speaker 6 (49:17):
And so when David said you know that a fact
doesn't the fact that it's not going to go to
the jury is kept out. What you have to remember
about a criminal trial is that the only things that
are supposed to be considered by a jury are relevant,
admissible factors. And a perfect example is the relationship that
Michael Peterson had with this guy soldier top these emails

(49:38):
that they exchanged. The guys never actually even met. What
relevance did that have at all? It had no relevance,
but it got to the jury, and I believe that's
what turned the juries. I mean, look, I get that weird. Okay,
So he knew this person who died at the bottom
of the staycase in Germany. Again not his wife, Let's
be clear, not his wife.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
And it's so important.

Speaker 6 (50:00):
Distinction important because it is so for that reason. It
wasn't the same. This was fully investigated by German authorities.
Can you think of anybody on the planet who is
more thorough than a German with police power. I mean,
come on, and there was you know, there was no
blood at the scene. That it was incredibly different from
what happened to Kathleen Peterson. And so sure, once you

(50:24):
hear it and you see it in the documentary, you
think to yourself, well, of course they needed to hear
that because it's so similar. But it's not that similar,
and it's not relevant, and there's actually a legal test
that you're supposed to run it through and it doesn't
pass the legal tests.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
Well. In the judge if you if you remember the
judge eight years later said oh, I guess I shouldn't
have let that in. And the same thing with with Brent. Yeah,
same thing with the.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
So he admits that, Okay, because I I you know,
as a as a as a observer, I think two
people dying at the bottom, two women that are you're
close to in your life dying at the bottom of
the stairs, whether or not it's your wife or not
someone you're close to, is an incredible coincidence.

Speaker 4 (51:03):
Coincidence, Yes, okay it but here's well, here's the deal.
First of all, there was no evidence that Michael had
anything to do with the death in Germany. Zero no evidence.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (51:18):
Second of all, yeah, Second of all, she died of
a brain hemorrhage, not of some sort of trauma. Uh.
And uh. And beyond that, there was no blood at
the scene. You know, these women came in and testified
about all this bloody scene we had, and it's not

(51:39):
in the documentary. We actually had the army police officer
who went to the scene and wrote a report, and
we had the report and he testified and there was
no blood at the scene. Yeah, that didn't make it
into the documentary, but that made it in front of
the jury, so you know, and then what are the similarities?

(52:00):
I mean, because because she's found the bottom of a
set of stairs, that that means that she died as
a result of a fall or is some crime. She
was actually found right by the front door, you know,
in that particular house. It's a very small house. You
walk in the front door, you're at the bottom of
the front of the stairs.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Right right. I can tell you what it has done
is that my husband and I moved into our house
that has a concrete set of stairs inside, and I
will not walk down behind in front of him. That's
what it's tough.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
Me well, actually he should. He should make sure that
he doesn't walk behind you.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
I know I won't kill him, but I don't know
his You know, one thing that's always driven me crazy
about the cases that we that have the get overturned
is when I find I find like I find, we
find these a lot that the prosecutor didn't turn over
all the evidence or the investigators don't turn all over

(52:59):
all the evidence. Is that something that you run across frequently?

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (53:03):
Is that just all the time, really colappable all the time?
I mean, you know, we have we have three cases
right now where we're suing police officers for exactly that reason.
You know, people who served. One person served forty two years,
one person served twenty five years, and the other person

(53:25):
served thirty three years. And in each case the police
had exculpatory evidence. Well, if you if you listen to
the podcast Tim Bridges, which is our first the first
episode about a case Tim did twenty five years and
the prosecutor, I'm sorry, the police had a note that
somebody else had been confessing in a jail in the

(53:49):
next county and never turned that over to the prosecutor,
so it never got to defense counsel.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Well, that's the thing where they want to it's their caller, right,
it's that weird culture.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Sure, it's a police culture.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
Why they don't share evidence with other counties or whatever.
I mean, this is obviously half from movies, but it's
that idea that it was my arrest, I got the guy,
it worked, it's good, and then they just keep working
to keep that.

Speaker 4 (54:17):
Well, it's it's partly confirmation bias, and it's partly by
the time. By the time they found that out, Tim
had already been arrested because of confirmation bias. So now
what do they do.

Speaker 5 (54:31):
They've got this got arrested for other reasons too.

Speaker 6 (54:33):
I mean that was sort of like Tim got arrested
because they hadn't arrested somebody for many, many months in
a horrible crime.

Speaker 5 (54:39):
And this is always the case. They're always horrible.

Speaker 6 (54:41):
It was a yeah, eighty three year oldsure. He was
raped and beaten on Mother's Day. She was wheelchair bound
film the next day by her sister. That's horrible. So
you get a case like that and the cops don't
find anybody, and Tim wasn't arrested for six.

Speaker 4 (54:53):
Four months, yeah, I mean four months, but the community.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
It's freaking out right, right.

Speaker 4 (54:59):
But the point is that by the time that tip
came in that there was a guy in the jail
next county who was confessing to this, Tim had already
been arrested. So now what does the police. What does
the cop do? Does he say, oh, gee, I'm sorry,
you've been in jail for six months, but I made

(55:19):
a mistake. Or does he or does he or she
just put that tip to one side and keep ongoing.
You'd like to think that they go to the guy
and say sorry, But that's not human nature.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
No, and it's not it's not police culture. I think
there's that whole part of it too, that is.

Speaker 4 (55:42):
Well, they convinced themselves, oh that's that guy's just probably crazy.
You know, he's just saying that because he read it
in a newspaper, so he didn't really do it. We've
got the guy, that's the that's the mind. Look, I
don't think police set out to entrap or or prosecute
innocent people. You know, that happens rarely, and I don't

(56:07):
think that happens in you know, one percent of the cases.
It's ninety nine percent of the time. They think they
have the right person, and then they're going to get
whatever evidence they need to get to convict that person.
And you know what, most of the time they're right,
but when they're wrong, it is really bad.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah, So what do we happen that change? What's I mean?

Speaker 3 (56:32):
Jeez?

Speaker 6 (56:32):
Well, I mean I think you have to have you
have to have independent agencies essentially investigating along with an investigation,
because you might have a conviction integrity unit that goes
back and reviews a conviction, but by then somebody's already
been convicted.

Speaker 5 (56:46):
If you could have within.

Speaker 6 (56:47):
Again, let's talk about these police budgets, Right, You've got
a lot of money there. Why don't we create an
independent agency that is sort of tracking things along the way.
But you know, I mean, look, part of the problem
is that it's human nature. It's not just that they
they look for evidence that supports their theory. It's that
when evidence that is contrary to the theory comes in,
they find a way in their mind to diminish it,

(57:09):
to discard.

Speaker 5 (57:09):
It and say, well, this doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 (57:11):
Look, we all suffer from confirmation bias, every single one
of us does. Doctors suffer from confirmation bias. So what
do they do? They have something called differential diagnoses. When
you go to a doctor and you give him a
set of symptoms, that doctor is at least supposed to
work his way through a differential diagnosis and consider various

(57:35):
options that those symptoms can fit, and then you start
ruling things out. There's nothing like that for police officers.
You know, they're not trained to worry about confirmation bias.
And I think that that is a really critical missing
piece in police training. Police need to be trained about

(57:58):
implicit bias. Least need to be trained about confirmation bias,
and it needs to be really drilled into them, and
it needs to be part of their ongoing sort of consciousness.

Speaker 5 (58:10):
But there needs to be independent review.

Speaker 6 (58:12):
As well, because I don't think that's It might not
be realistic, but that's what you need.

Speaker 4 (58:17):
That's not going to happen, I don't think. I think
if you could get real training on confirmation bias and
implicit bias and people took it seriously, and and you know,
supervisors took it seriously, and supervisors would look at cases
with an eye towards avoiding confirmation bias, and if we

(58:39):
had sentinel event reviews so that when something went wrong
in a case, you know, police departments don't investigate them
They don't really investigate themselves when a wrongful conviction happens.
They try to make excuses for what happened. They don't say,
what really went wrong here, Let's figure out what went

(58:59):
wrong wrong here and let's try to fix it for
the future. That's not what they do. It happens in
aircraft crashes, right, Yeah, somebody comes in and says, here's
what happened, and then there's fixes. Hopefully, that never happens
in the criminal justice system. It never happens with police officers.

(59:19):
And that's another piece of this. I mean, the police
have to start taking seriously the fact that they get
it wrong sometimes and the results are devastating, and so
they need to figure out why did we get it wrong,
what happened here, and how can we avoid that in
the future, instead of just putting blinders on and saying, well,

(59:43):
you know, it's just the way it is.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
Yeah. I also think there is that, like you guys
were talking about earlier, that idea of the external pressure.
The worse the crime is, the more there's pressure to
say you arrest someone now, and that old Like I
feel like we're all starting to understand how often that
is bad, how often that goes wrong, because that is

(01:00:08):
that thing where, yeah, they want results, they're demanding results.
We can't just have this a murderer or a rapist
or whoever on the street and then it's like, so
just get anybody and then people will be satisfied.

Speaker 6 (01:00:20):
That's the problem, right, And if you think about it,
and like, for instance, in Tim's case, they got the
wrong person, which means that the right person was still
out there. And if this is someone who has a
you know, a serial habit of raping or robbing or murdering,
then that continues. And so it really is not serving
justice in any way, not for the community, not for

(01:00:40):
the person wrongfully arrested and convicted, and not for the
victim and his.

Speaker 5 (01:00:45):
Or her family. It is a loss all the way around.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
And if you think of that little bit of evidence
being you know, dismissed by the police officer and not
being brought forward, that would have possibly led to another suspect,
and that suspect has committed all these crimes since then,
I would you know, think the police officer would feel
responsible for that in a way. If you had done
yeah job correctly, you.

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
Know, for every wrongful conviction, there's a victim who never
received justice, and people sort of lose sight of that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Yeah, it's such a it's the heightened it's worst case
scenario inhuman experience. So people want it to end, they
want it to be solved, they want justice.

Speaker 4 (01:01:27):
And that's understandable. It's understandable, but like I said, when
it goes wrong, it goes really really wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Aside from the Michael Peterson case, are there are there
any cases that are just these egregious standouts to you?
You might each have a different one, but of what
we're talking about, either inside the courtroom, people making mistakes,
or the police or whoever that you just can't believe

(01:01:57):
how the story actually turned out.

Speaker 4 (01:01:58):
Well, you know, for me, it's Tim Bridges because I
represented Tim.

Speaker 5 (01:02:04):
We represented Tim all the time.

Speaker 4 (01:02:06):
We represented Tim.

Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
Sorry, sorry, it's implicit bias against your own one.

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
It's true, exactly, and I pay for that, I promise you. Anyway,
I was what I was trying to say is that
this is my We're.

Speaker 5 (01:02:22):
Going to talk about how good I did in the mediation. No, no, no, oh, sorry,
The reason is.

Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
We represented him. But it means a lot to me
because I got close to Tim, and I saw how
devastating this was to him. He's a really emotional guy.
He can barely talk about, you know, losing his mother
while he was in prison without sobbing, And it was

(01:02:49):
what happened to him was just so egregious. He was
raped in prison. You know, he spent twenty five years.
He wouldn't go into a program where he could have
gotten out earth because he had to admit that he
did it, and he just wouldn't do that. So for me,
you know, if you're going to listen to one episode,

(01:03:10):
you know, for me, it's the Tim Bridges episode, because
I just think it has virtually every It has junk science,
it has suppression of exculpatory evidence, it has tunnel vision,
It sort of has almost everything that shouldn't happen in

(01:03:31):
the case. Now you have a different case, I think, well.

Speaker 5 (01:03:35):
I haven't thought about well.

Speaker 6 (01:03:36):
I mean, I think the reality is there were so
many cases we had to pick from it was hard
to narrow it down to ten.

Speaker 5 (01:03:42):
And so I think that David's right.

Speaker 6 (01:03:44):
Certainly all of those things play a role in TIMS,
but they do almost in every case because we would
have to go through and kind of say, Okay, what
are we going to focus on here? And you could
focus on all of these things, whether it's confirmation bias
or tunnel vision, any of the cognitive biases. But I
think Christine Bunches case is also particularly moving. She's a mother,

(01:04:05):
she was accused of, charged with and convicted of killing
her son and something that was not even an arson.

Speaker 5 (01:04:13):
That's also fault. Oh it's it's I mean it really is.

Speaker 6 (01:04:18):
Not only a tragic story, but one of these stories
where at the antie shake your head and like how
did she not only survive this? But now all she's
doing is giving back and she's created a charity that
helps people when they get out of prison with your
basic needs like a shoe box that has a toothbrush
and soap and underwear. Like you know, you think about
when you are let out of prison, you have nothing.
When you woke up today, what did you have? Right?

(01:04:38):
You had all sorts of stuff, You had a bed,
you had sheets on your bed, you had a pillow,
you had clothes, you had toothbrush, you had tooth I
mean nothing, you have nothing. So she is really focused
on that. So I think Christine Bunch's case is you
know one that stands out for me in the podcast,
although they all do.

Speaker 5 (01:04:54):
Yeah, you know, I mean, I think right now one
of our.

Speaker 6 (01:04:56):
Other cases which is ongoing so we can't comment on
too much, but the Ray Finch case, I think possibly
the most egregious case because it involves such corruption in
a county share department, but we aren't allowed to.

Speaker 4 (01:05:08):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a case where somebody, an innocent person,
actually consciously got blamed for something.

Speaker 5 (01:05:17):
That's all you can say.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
And my purposeful, it was purposeful.

Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
That's a purposeful one.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
Wow, Wow, this is heavy. It's so excited for this podcast.
I can't wait to listen to it, and I'm so
glad you guys are doing it. It's really it's so important.
I just love that true crime is evolving in this
way and it is kind of following this, you know
that it's following for me personally, the trajectory of no

(01:05:45):
longer are you just sitting back and kind of commenting
on people far away.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
You start you really start to understand human life.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
This is human life and the value of it and
the idea that we could we could work toward true
a real justice for people. If like you're saying, if
people could admit their mistakes, admit their faults, do the work,
develop these processes better training. The idea that I also

(01:06:17):
learned in the last like four months, that training only
lasts for six nine months for the average police officer,
which is seems insane. I would assume like two years minimum.

Speaker 4 (01:06:30):
No, so much less than that. I mean, you know,
here in North Carolina, they go to what's called BLET
Basic law Enforcement Training for like four months, wow. And
then they're out on the street and they get mentored,
you know, by somebody else who only had four months
of training, right, and that's it. And then they become

(01:06:50):
a detective and there's no additional training that's required. I mean,
think about that for a second. You move from the
street to a detective position and you don't have to
take a single course in interrogation or you know, or
you know what the law is with regard to turning
over exculpatory evidence. You know, it's mind boggling to me

(01:07:15):
that you could take somebody and put them in that
kind of position without doing any training at all. But
it happens every day.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Yeah, what's something that you both want us as the
public or us as true crime, you know, armchair detectives.
What's something that we need to change our thoughts on
or be aware of.

Speaker 6 (01:07:38):
I think the most important thing anyone can keep in
mind is that we are all human beings. And I
think if we remember that, and if we treat each
other as human beings with the respect and empathy that
we would hope to be treated, I think we have
a far better criminal justice system.

Speaker 5 (01:08:00):
And I think that.

Speaker 6 (01:08:01):
Goes for the public who consumes news and information. I
think that goes for a public who serves on a jury.
I think that goes for players within the system. I
think it goes for investigators, for prosecutors, for defense attorneys,
for all of us. I really think if we operate
it that way as a society, it would be much
fairer and we would see far fewer pain and suffering cases,

(01:08:25):
whether it's a wrongful conviction or harm to another person.
I think that really is the missing link, and if
people could adopt that way of living, it'd be a
different place.

Speaker 4 (01:08:37):
Yes, and I'm not quite as humanist as Sonia is,
so for me, I wish that number one jurors would
be a lot more skeptical of authority and people in
positions of authority and not just defer to what somebody

(01:08:57):
who's in a position of authority said. I think that's
really important.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
What else I think we're learning these days actually just
to not you know, it's not the they don't have
the final say and the only narrative, you know, kind
of a little more question authority going on.

Speaker 4 (01:09:20):
And then the other piece is, you know, when I
grew up, what I remember was always being told it
was better for ten guilty people to go free than
for one innocent person to be wrongfully convicted and imprisoned.
And somewhere along the way, I think that got lost.

(01:09:44):
And I think we need to understand the horror of
what it is to be locked up, sometimes for decades
for something you didn't do. And people need to take
reasonable doubt a lot more seriously for that reason. That's
why we have a reasonable doubt standard. And I also
think that the verdict in Scotland, which is one of

(01:10:07):
the verdicts in Scotland is not proven, is a really
really smart verdict because you know, when a juror has
to say not guilty, it almost implies the person is innocent.
And I think jurors may have a tough time doing
that in some situations, particularly if the crime is really
egregious and there's some evidence the person did it, you

(01:10:29):
don't sort of want to say, oh, well, he's not guilty.
It's different to say not proven because then the focus
is not on the person who's on trial. The focus
is on the prosecutor and the evidence. And so for me,
what I'd like to see people thinking about when they're
on juris is whether the case has been proven. And

(01:10:53):
you know, I'd love to see a vert that says
either proven or not proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So
I wish people would take that whole burden a lot
more seriously.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
I wonder talking about, you know, there needing to be
more training, because it's kind of the same thing with
serving on a jury, where you go in there and
you just you go in. Most people are going in
to try to get out, to try to get off,
and if there was some kind of a way to
educate or and maybe there is, because and I just

(01:11:27):
don't know about it, but about the level of importance,
like is there any kind of jury training if it's
a murder case as opposed to like shoplifting.

Speaker 4 (01:11:36):
Well, jurors in most jurisdictions get or at least here
in Mecklenberg County, for example, they get shown a film,
and they get shown a film that has, you know,
some platitudes about the importance of jury service and we
thank you, and you know, that kind of stuff. They
don't hear from me. You know, they'd hear a lot

(01:11:57):
different message from me. It's it's sort of an an
and Dyne introduction, uh, you know, and they don't really
hear about you need to take things really skeptically and
you really need to understand how horrible it is if
somebody innocent gets you know, convicted.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:12:13):
And you know, I think I think they need to
be in doctrine doctrinating maybe the wrong word, educated about
their responsibility in a more forceful way.

Speaker 6 (01:12:24):
I mean, there are jury instructions, so when you are
whether it is shoplifting or whether it is murder one,
a jury is instructed by the judge what reasonable doubt
is how they're supposed to view the evidence. But I
think part of the problem is that has become such
a rote sort of like Okay, I'm going to go
through or here's your dry instructions, here's reasonable doubt and

(01:12:46):
it doesn't have the same impact.

Speaker 4 (01:12:47):
I mean, and it's all in legal ease, it's it's
not an English right.

Speaker 6 (01:12:50):
And then then what you have is the lawyers and
closing argument telling you to be skeptical, telling you what
their version of reasonable doubt is. But as a jur
the only people you're or the defense attorneys and you know,
and so nearly one like, oh well you said it
that way, but I don't know if I could trust you.
So I think that it could all be done better.
I think maybe that video that jurors are shown at

(01:13:12):
least here, I mean, why aren't we showing them something
that's compelling and letting every juror know that this is
one of the most important responsibilities that they have as
a citizen in this country to serve on a jury
to do justice and then to really impart meaningful information
about weighing evidence about reasonable doubt.

Speaker 5 (01:13:34):
I think that would be really helpful.

Speaker 4 (01:13:36):
Yeah, it would also be really helpful if you just
tell people to trust defense lawyers.

Speaker 6 (01:13:41):
That we are the good don't know, I don't trust
you saying that you're saying that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
I'm just thinking of I'm thinking of the divers thing
where there's there is a bunch of blind faith and
trust going on.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
But it's for for experts and.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
The people that get called where how there should be
a thing where you have to see that person's like
credentials or something.

Speaker 4 (01:14:05):
I well, the ideas that that happens, It happens. It
happens every day. And part of the problem is a
lot of this quote forensic science is not really science
at all. It's anecdotal. You know, there's no there's no testing.
You know, you don't have blood spatter experts being called

(01:14:27):
in and being tested on what this means or what
that means. Same thing with you know, dentists and bitemarks,
same thing with arts and investigators, right, yea, no matter what.
Now you know DNA was different, but now even DNA
is getting a little bit subjective because you have all

(01:14:48):
these mixtures and you have algorithms to figure out what
the mixture means. And so, you know, people need to
understand that these quote sciences are very, very subject and
there's really no competency testing for most of this stuff.
It's one it's one police officer teaching another police officer

(01:15:09):
and they're all in the same agency. You know's we
need independent experts, not not people who are working in
the same lab with, you know, with the.

Speaker 6 (01:15:17):
Cops, which also removes the possibility for the prosecution to
do what they did in Peterson's case, which they do
in almost every case.

Speaker 5 (01:15:24):
This is your expert. He works for you for the
state of North Carolina.

Speaker 6 (01:15:28):
You know, Like, if you can remove that bias and
have somebody who's really independent, I think then you get
fair information.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
Right, Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:15:37):
I'm going to ask the question that nobody's ready for,
which is, how did how did you guys actually like
in during the case, figure out that you liked each other?

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
I did not like How how did it happen? I'm
sorry to just go totally no.

Speaker 4 (01:15:57):
No, no, this is a this is a fair question.
We have different we have different bring our daughter inst.

Speaker 6 (01:16:09):
Let me start with the truth and then you can
color it in the way that you want.

Speaker 4 (01:16:14):
Go ahead, which which would you prefer?

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
Havelis, We're just we're at a blank slate. We're not
coming out.

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
The convince us. It's right.

Speaker 6 (01:16:22):
So here's this is the retelling of the story goes
like this. So I end up getting assigned to cover
this case. And it was after the death had already happened.
It was a couple of months in. There was another
reporter who'd been covering it. We were sort of both
covering it for a period of time. I met with
David for coffee or maybe had a phone call, and

(01:16:44):
I set up an interview with him. And it was
a big get because he hadn't done a sit down
interview with anybody yet. So I was assigned the best
photographer at my station. Her name is Colleen. She had
come from Denver, which is a great photog market. We
show up at his Chapel Hill office and we go
upstairs so the rest have and he comes out and
he says, oh, you guys can set up in the library.
So Colleen spends twenty to thirty minutes creating the most

(01:17:06):
incredible set. It looked like a dateline set. The lighting
is perfect, She's stacked up books behind him. I was like, girl,
this looks awesome, and so I.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
Pop my head on.

Speaker 6 (01:17:14):
Kidn't you can tell mister Rudolf were already And he
comes in and opens the door and he goes, oh
this romantic.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
I look at Colleen.

Speaker 5 (01:17:26):
Colleen looks at me.

Speaker 6 (01:17:27):
It was like the biggest eye roll ever, so so
David has it and you asked how we realized we
liked each other At that moment, I was like, I
really do not like this guy, but I got to
cover this case, and so I continued to cover this case.
And let me tell you, the more he yelled at
me after my six o'clock live shots, the less I
liked him. And when I say yell, I mean you

(01:17:48):
heard how loud he's talking to you today, like magnify
that times twenty in your cellphone and you're driving on
forty back home and he's just going off about how
he's like an emergency room and his client he's just
trying to them up and you're right behind him.

Speaker 5 (01:18:03):
You understand what I'm like. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (01:18:06):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:18:06):
So I've given you, like the the truth of what
happened on that day, and I tell you that day,
because David seems to think differently of what occurred.

Speaker 5 (01:18:15):
So would you like to.

Speaker 4 (01:18:16):
Well, I think I think that Sonya obviously was attracted
and therefore she had her she had her photog set
up this sort of romantic scene.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
And romantic than a sack of book.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
You can go ahead and rest your case. Your daughter
is sick.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
She's a teenager, she's still sick of Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
Anyway, now, you know, I think I think the interesting
thing is being serious for a minute. We we both
saw each other at our most stressful, you know, in
a in a situation where you weren't on best behavior
and you were both doing this incredibly difficult job very

(01:19:13):
very well. And even you know, even when I was
angry at her, I wasn't angry at her. I was
angry at what was coming out of her mouth. You know,
it was it was it was because it was hurting
my client. I wasn't you know, I was. I was
concerned about Michael and about in getting a fair trial.
You were angry at me, well whatever, in any event,

(01:19:34):
so I think what happened is we developed this mutual
Well I'll talk for myself. I developed a respect for
Sonia and what she was doing and how she was
doing it. I hope she did the same for me,
And I think, you know, that's sort of the genesis
of the relationship. It wasn't alike, it was a respect,

(01:19:55):
and I think that's that's a really healthy way to
start a relationship.

Speaker 6 (01:19:59):
So I think that's true I mean, certainly watching him
work on a regular basis and get such insight into
what this work entails. There was absolutely a level of
respect that was critical and I think still is very
important to our relationship because I think if you have that,

(01:20:19):
it gets.

Speaker 5 (01:20:20):
You through a lot of the really really hard times.

Speaker 4 (01:20:22):
Yeah, like, now.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
Let's gets there's more head. Good luck with your podcast.
Oh my god, I'm going to be working it all out.

Speaker 1 (01:20:35):
Amazing. Well, you guys are definitely our favorite couple that
we've ever interviewed here.

Speaker 5 (01:20:40):
Oh, thank you, thank you all.

Speaker 1 (01:20:45):
This has been so insightful, so awesome. Yes, we really appreciate.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
Thank you for reaching out. David. You were scared. We
were scared. We were worried.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
No, no searching our minds of all the horrible things
we said.

Speaker 4 (01:20:57):
We certainly hope that your listeners will we'll tune into
our podcast because hopefully they will get an insider view
of what's going on on a day to day basis
in the criminal justice system.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
All right, there it was you guys. We hope you
enjoyed conversations with conversations with I mean, maybe we'll do
this once in a while. There's so many people to
talk to you that know so much more than us.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
Yeah, we love experts.

Speaker 1 (01:21:25):
If you want to go back at like two hundred
episodes ago, there's an interview that we do with Guy
Brenham that's also really fun.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
Yeah, so thanks for listening. As always, stay sexy.

Speaker 1 (01:21:36):
And don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis. Do you want to cook?

Speaker 4 (01:21:40):
E