April 30, 2025 • 46 mins
After more than 30 years behind bars, Erik and Lyle Menendez are scheduled for a resentencing hearing on May 9, 2025, following new allegations that the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office is too conflicted to oversee the case fairly. Their defense team argues that decades of rehabilitation deserve a second chance at freedom.
Netflix’s new documentary, MONSTERS, and the resurgence of public fascination with claims of long-term sexual abuse by their father have reignited the debate: Were the Menendez brothers cold-blooded killers... or desperate survivors?
Renowned criminal defense attorney Sam Bassett dissects the explosive case of the Menendez brothers — a story of wealth, abuse, and murder that shattered America's perception of family innocence.
Dr. Craig Wetterer joins to play devil’s advocate, presenting the prosecution’s side and revealing how trauma, privilege, and courtroom theatrics collided in one of the most notorious trials of the century.
Tune in as we explore how childhood trauma reshapes the courtroom — and why the battle for justice is far from over.
Connect with Sam on X (formerly Twitter): @SamBassettlaw
https://www.mbfc.com/our-attorneys/samuel-bassett
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Menendez Case
03:07 Legal Mechanisms for Resentencing
06:18 The Role of Forensic Psychology in Sentencing
09:29 Risk Assessment Protocols
12:02 Self-Defense and Abuse Dynamics
16:05 Political Implications of the Case
21:01 The Emotional Impact of the Case
25:37 Learned Helplessness and Domestic Violence
30:25 The Evolution of Psychological Mitigation
38:51 The Future of Sexual Abuse Conversations
43:55 Predictions for the Menendez Brothers' Future
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/killer-psychologist--6020549/support.
Netflix’s new documentary, MONSTERS, and the resurgence of public fascination with claims of long-term sexual abuse by their father have reignited the debate: Were the Menendez brothers cold-blooded killers... or desperate survivors?
Renowned criminal defense attorney Sam Bassett dissects the explosive case of the Menendez brothers — a story of wealth, abuse, and murder that shattered America's perception of family innocence.
Dr. Craig Wetterer joins to play devil’s advocate, presenting the prosecution’s side and revealing how trauma, privilege, and courtroom theatrics collided in one of the most notorious trials of the century.
Tune in as we explore how childhood trauma reshapes the courtroom — and why the battle for justice is far from over.
Connect with Sam on X (formerly Twitter): @SamBassettlaw
https://www.mbfc.com/our-attorneys/samuel-bassett
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Menendez Case
03:07 Legal Mechanisms for Resentencing
06:18 The Role of Forensic Psychology in Sentencing
09:29 Risk Assessment Protocols
12:02 Self-Defense and Abuse Dynamics
16:05 Political Implications of the Case
21:01 The Emotional Impact of the Case
25:37 Learned Helplessness and Domestic Violence
30:25 The Evolution of Psychological Mitigation
38:51 The Future of Sexual Abuse Conversations
43:55 Predictions for the Menendez Brothers' Future
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/killer-psychologist--6020549/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Killer Psychologist. I'm Dana Anderson, a forensic psychologist
and your host of the show. Killer Psychologist is for
true crime fanatics and anyone intrigued with the dark side
of psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
When two teenagers gunned down their parents in Beverly Hills,
the nation asked why Lyel and Eric Menndez were sentenced
on July second, nineteen ninety six, to life in prison
without the possibility of proll for the nineteen eighty nine
murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. That sentence
(00:41):
came after a second trial, their first in nineteen ninety
three ended in a mistrial when the jury deadlock. Now
three decades later, this case is back in the spotlight
and as of this month, April twenty twenty five, the
Menendez brothers are speaking resentencing based on new evidence, including
(01:04):
longstanding allegations of childhood sexual abuse. A resentencing hearing is
scheduled from May ninth, where the court will wait a
risk assessment which doctor Wedder can explain what goes into
these assessments, And today we're excited to have Sam Basset,
(01:24):
one of the country's top criminal defense attorneys, to explore
this faith and to discuss some of the blurred lines
between victim and perpetrator and the legal hurdles and why
justice is rarely as simple as a theme.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Damn. Welcome, Thank you for having me look forward to it.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So, just by starting out, I'd love to hear about
your criminal defense attorney. You've been doing this for three decades,
your trial attorney. What motivated you to become a defense attorney.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I was in the University of Texas Business school and
I needed some extra income, so I went to work
for a criminal defense firm as a runner, and I
became fascinated with the cases, the work, and at that
point I decided, this is really what I want to do.
And a lot of people were telling me you might
be able to make more money being a business law
(02:20):
attorney or a corporate attorney or another type of attorney,
but I said, I think I'd like to do what
interests me first and figure out a way to make
money second. And so I've been very interested in it
and involved in it since my senior year of college,
and that was in the mid nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, so that's awesome. I love your passion. So for
people that are trying to understand this Menendez case, and
I know Craig and I have talked a lot about this.
People become so emotionally involved even coming unraveled, so they
have a strong opinion about this case. And first of all,
(02:59):
let's just talk about, like legally, the mechanism that has
to take place or a defendant to even file a
new hearing.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, I think that in California a motion for resentencing
is permitted under their procedures. It was an interesting evolution
of how the former DA came to the conclusion that
a motion for resentencing should be filed and that he
would advocate for the resentencing. And obviously the Menendez Council
(03:28):
and the Menindez brothers are all for that. But what's
happened with the new election in the new district attorney
is the new district attorney is a more traditional law
and order type district attorney who probably used that to
win the election, and he is opposing the resentencing. And
(03:50):
the whole basis and the whole argument for the resentencing
is the two brothers were victims of abuse at the
hands of their father, with their mother being complicit in it,
and that should have played a role in their trials.
At the second trial that evidence was not permitted. And
so I think that this is such an interesting case
(04:11):
on so many levels because now more recently we have
emotion to recuse mister Hackman, the current district attorney, to
recuse him from the resentencing hearing. He's obviously opposing the resentencing,
and the judge is trying to weigh all this, especially
in light of the governors also reviewing the case to
(04:32):
determine if clemency should be granted. So there's a lot
of moving parts here, But it's a fascinating case because
the facts of the case were so horrific and these
boys were young in committing these horrific acts. But the
question really is where do you fall on the line
of can you do something horrific and can that be
(04:55):
mitigated by your own victimization? And so that's really a
debate that will go on, and there's there's two sides
to that debate.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
For sure, people are asking is this gonna is this
a risk of opening the flood gates for cases like this?
Do you believe resentencing based on new trauma evidence should
be more common or is this gonna open up the floodgates?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Well, I think when you have extreme sentences like life
without parole, it really should reopen the debate, but not
many states have procedures for this other than the standard
appellate processes and then the rid of habeas corpus if
the irregular appeals fail. So in a rit of habeas corpus,
(05:39):
a defendant could raise that their counsel should have raised
should have raised the trauma either mitigation or defense in
the case, and seek to get a new trial if
their counsel is declared as ineffective for failing to put
forth this evidence. In Texas, it would be probably in
the sentencing phase, not at the guilt ennis it's face,
(06:00):
because we have a jury's assessed sentences in Texas. But
I know California is different. So yes, it's a new
perhaps a new ground certainly in the last decade, with
more emphasis on re examining convictions based on trauma by
the defendant.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, and I wonder if there ever was a forensic
psychologist involved in the second trial of the Menendez case
as far as the sentencing and writing a report in
the psychological factors.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
I don't know, Yeah, I don't. I haven't read that transcript.
So I don't know. I just know that that evidence
was not allowed by the judge and the second trial,
and I don't know the reasoning, but I have to
assume that the hung jury in the first trial influenced
the judge's decision on the second.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, and so Kraik and I are forensic psychologists. We
write mitigation reports. In the fact I recently wrote one
for a murder case, and you know, that's kind of
part of what we do. Critical goal and affects sentencing
for sure. But now I know Craig has worked inside
prison and he could probably shed some light on this
(07:10):
process for this risk assessment that is going to be
you know, they're going to be looking at some psychological
factors and a report is going to be written for
the parole board and viewed risk. And so I would
(07:31):
love for Craig to talk about that this report, what
goes into it, and you know, maybe what type of
assessments they might be using, what factors are they going
to be looking at as far as risk to release
back into society.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Yeah, certainly there's an entire protocol around risk assessment. Most
states have you know, procedures and protocols in place for
when individuals are getting ready to be released on parole,
for example, they often do have to go through a
risk assessment process and that's generally going to be a
forensic psychologist who is trained in assessing for risk of violence.
(08:07):
There's different types of risk that we look at. There
can be risk of sexual violence and then there can
be a general risk assessment that's just looking at general.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Risk of violence.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
In this case, in the Menindaz case, it would be
the latter. It would be the risk of general violence
because if you look at the history, and again I
don't know the entire history in terms of what they
did before these murders occurred. But when looking at, you know,
assessing for risk generally, and in California this is the case,
and I'm sure Texas has similar protocols in place. But
(08:38):
we we would be looking at a number of variables,
both historical variables, risk variables. Those are things like, you know,
if the individual has a substance use problem, if they
have a current psychiatric diagnosis, that those sorts of things.
We look at their criminal history, their past criminal history,
both non violent and violent, and we look at all
(09:00):
these other historical factors as well, and we use actuarial
based risk assessment tools to do this. So we use
an actuarial based tool, which is a predictive model, but
then we also use a none or at least I do,
and I and most evaluators when they do these, and
I do these all the time, we'll use a non
actuarial based tool, which is commonly referred to as the HCR,
(09:23):
and that one looks more at It's a structured professional
judgment model where we look at both the historical factors,
but we're also looking at the clinical risk variables. But
then we also look at potential for rehabilitation. So we
look at, you know, like what kind of supports would
they have in the community if they were released and
what you know, again, what are those protective factors, but
(09:46):
what are those risk factors you know, if they were
to be released. So what's interesting about the menendous case
again is it aside from the murders, I'm not sure
there's any history of violence or violent behavior in either
of those two prior to this. So it's like this
was a singular event, right, And so when using an
actuarial based tool, a lot of what goes into that
(10:07):
risk analysis and the score that we give somebody has
to do with their commission of violent acts or commission
of or engagement and behaviors that we know predict risk.
You know, so substance use problems, prior conduct related problems
while you're growing up and in school, maltreatment of animals,
those sorts of things, uh, juvenile misconduct, not coming from
(10:31):
an intact family system. These are things that we know
are risk factors. So with them, they had an intact family,
but clearly, you know, the evidence seems to show that
there was there was a lot of abuse going on
in the house during this time, you know, up to
up to when these murders were committed. So so that'll
be an interesting thing they're gonna I think the governor
(10:51):
has asked for a risk assessment, is that correct? I
mean he's he said that he wants wants, wants that
to be done, and I'm sure that's that's going to
be part of it. If there's any determination that resentencing
will lead to a reduction of that life sentence life
without down to a you know, probability of parole, which
(11:11):
could very well lead to it. Maybe they'd be time served,
right if they were twenty five to life, So with
murder in California. You know, if it's premeditated with malice
a forethought, they're eligible for life without and that's what
they were convicted of. His first degree murder, and that
resentencing would have to get that taken down to probably
second degree or or you know, if self defense. You know,
(11:35):
again the defense that they correct me if I'm wrong, Sam,
But I think the defense that the defense was arguing
was was self defense because they weren't denying that they
shot their parents. They were trying to argue that these
two boys were in fear of their life. They were
using that. I mean, it's kind of an imperfect self
defense because you know, there wasn't an imminent threat. It's
(11:57):
interesting case, Like, I don't know what your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, I think that it wasn't a pure self defense
because nobody alleging that the father was pointing a gun
at them when they shot him. But effectively the theme
of the defense was the abuse so pervasive and extreme
that it just might as well have been similar to
defending him pointing a gun at them, because they knew
(12:23):
they were going to have to endure more and more,
and so they were protecting themselves and each other from
further acts of abuse.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's uh. And then in that
second trial, you know, as you said, the judge disallowed
any testimony as to the abuse histories, which I found interesting.
It's you know that I recalling the previous the first trial,
there was a hungury on there, right, and so they
(12:51):
they couldn't get a conviction, and so you know, the
judge then what's the mechanism. I guess why would the
judge not permit testimony in that second trial? What would
the evidentiary grounds be for that?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I guess the argument is it's not relevant to them
the act itself, So you know, just a basic relevance argument. Yeah,
and you know, a four h three argument that but
the evidence is so inflammatory.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Yeah, it's too prejudicial, outweighs the probative value. Yeah, okay,
this will be interesting to see what happens here. That
I didn't know that they fouled the motion to get
the new DA in La recused. But that's an interesting move.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, just a couple of days ago. Yeah, they were
arguing that Hawkman has a conflict of interest and should
be recused. They cited several reasons why, including that he
the head of his Victim Services division of his office,
represents a family member of the Menendez brothers who is
against them being resentenced. So he quickly announced that this person,
(13:56):
I think the name is miss Cardi, is going to
be walled off off from anything having to do with
the case. But the defense also cites examples of Hawkman
attending victims' rights rallies with her and just basically argues
that the victims who want the resentencing, which I think
is the majority of the Menindez family, is getting mistreatment
(14:21):
by the district attorney because their desires are being essentially
ignored by Hotman, while the fewer family members who want
the Menindez brothers essentially to die in prison, they're the
ones that are being sympathetic. Hawkman is being sympathetic to them.
It's a very interesting motion. I read it just a
couple hours ago, and it's obviously well written. Gergis isn't
(14:46):
going to put together a bad, bad product, so it's
a very interesting, well written motion. I think, well, with him.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Out of the way, that could change everything.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Yeah, I read and I don't know this, but it
makes sense that the the next prosecutor up if a
judge grants the refusal is as an attorney general or
assistant attorney general who's outside of the district attorney's office.
So that add another twist.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Yeah, that would be Robanta. He's the current attorney general
in California, so they would substitute him. And then of
course Robonto would support this, you know, being appointed by
a Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
I mean, I've tried to recuse a DA one time
in West Texas, and it's a high mountain to climb
in Texas. It seems maybe not quite as high in California,
but there's actually some statutory provisions that talk about it
in California. So it'll be interesting to see how the
judge rules on the refusal.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, it's so political too, you know. Now you got
the judge in the hot seat. I mean, this is
making headlines. It's not going away anytime soon. So if
you're a judge affiliate with this case, like even Governor Dows,
So what side is he on? What politically? What side
(16:03):
would benefit?
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Well, yeah, let's assume he wants to run for president
in twenty twenty eight. Okay, I mean, I'm just gonna
let's just let's just do a thought experiment on this.
He needs to be quite strategic here, right, because he
doesn't want to come off as being too soft. And
I think you've seen a shift in his way of
thinking just in the last I've seen this in the
(16:25):
last year, there's been a sort of a shift away
from you know, the sort of this far left progressive
ideology and starting to shift a little more. I'm seeing
a little more centric. I suspect that strategic, but that's
just me speculating, because we do have a country that
is I think, you know fairly there's there's a fair
(16:45):
number of conservative folks in the country that are law
and order and you know kind of what's what's interesting
is that like the DA of Los Angeles County. You know,
the prior DA was very progressive. Gascon came from San Francisco.
He had been the DA there, he was a he
was actually the chief of police of the San Francisco
Police Department at one point in time. And you people
(17:07):
got in this is Los Angeles, which is quite low
for them to elect a you know, a pro law
and order DA who likely is you know, far more conservative.
That's telling you something about a shift in I don't
know a shift in in movement back towards maybe a
common sense to some degree, just because Los Angeles was
(17:30):
just if you know, Sam, like just like San Francisco.
It's unbelievable what's happened to these these these cities in
terms of just the the lawlessness that goes on, the
amount of people walking in and walking out with large
bags of you know, nine hundred and you know, just
under nine hundred dollars worth of merchandise before before the
reforms happened in this last election, to get these things
(17:53):
pushed back to felonies. It just was really off the hook.
And I think people the populace, you know, degenerate, they
just they're fed up with it. He knows that. So
he knows that even progressive people, they don't want to
see the cities fall apart like this, you know. And
so yeah, there's a political piece to this, for sure.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
I would guess that Newsom. I just wonder if the
staff or the advisors to the judge and the staff
and advisors to Newsom are communicating because Newsom orders this
risk assessment, and then the judge says, well, I want
to see the risk assessment in making my decision. I
would bet that Newsom would prefer for the judge to
(18:33):
take the responsibility of effectively letting them an Indos brothers
out rather than him. And this risk assessment provides some
cover pri of a judge. This is Sam's speculation, seems
to be the most logical trail.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Yeah, so then that's going to be interesting in terms
of who's being appointed to the risk assessment, how do
they do that, Who's going to do it? You know,
because look, you know we're as psychologists. Everyone's biased, right,
Let's just get that out of the way. One has
a bias. So that'll be interesting to see because and again,
like I said, I talked about what a risk assessment is,
(19:08):
and we have to be as objective as possible. Right,
We're not taking as a forensic psychologist, I'm not taking
a side. Right, I'm not supposed to be taking a side.
Were evidence based. We're looking for what is the evidence
telling us here in terms of, like in this case,
whether this individual or whether these two guys.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Are low modern or higher risk.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
So that's generally what we come up with a risk classification.
We form an opinion. Now in Nevada where I do
a lot of these assessments. Judges Generally, if I do
a risk assessment, say on someone who's found incompetent without probability,
so like say a murder suspect, we can't get them
restored and we have to be facing civil commitment. Under
(19:47):
a civil commitment statute, they have to undergo a risk assessment,
which the judge then considers if they're not found at
high risk. So if they're found at lower moderate risk,
the judge actually has a discretion to not commit them.
They generally have to be found high risk for the
judges to make commitment. I'm not sure what Texas does
or how Texas handles that, but I think California follows
(20:10):
a similar pattern in terms of, you know, the judge
does have discretion, right, but they're going to rely they
should be relying on the recommendations of the either the
forensic psychiatrist or the forensic psychologist, because psychiatrists do these
evaluations as well. The difference is is that forensic psychologists
like Dana and myself, we're trained in using you know,
the assessment tools, the risk assessment tools, and I see
(20:33):
often a lot of times I'll see a psychiatrist will
do a risk assessment. It'll be a clinical opinion, it'll
be structured professional judgment, but there won't be the risk
assessment tools that we use that are standardized and evidence based.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see how
the judge rules on not just the if he rules
on just the recusal on May night, or if he's
gonna rule on the resentencing. I think everybody's trying to
figure out who's going to carry the water here.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, and I always think if I was the front
of the psychologists appointed in one of these high profile cases,
it's so controversial. I mean, you even want your name repeats, Craig.
Maybe you want to talk about from the prosecution standpoint.
I know recently they played some footage in the media
of you know, the crime scene, and it just invoked
(21:23):
all kinds of emotions with people.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I know.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
The position from the district attorney is that this clearly
is a premeditated, you know, murder that you know it
was planned well in advance. This is their their their
position that both of the brothers they engaged in conduct
suggests as they were trying to conceal, you know, how
they purchased the shotgun. They believe they went to San
Diego to do that, So they went out of town
(21:49):
to even get the gun. And so you know there
is and again this is just playing Devil's advocate, there
is some pretty compelling evidence that you know, this is
clearly planned. Now again, there's there's counter arguments that defense
could make about this, right in terms of the shotgun
being purchased for self defense purposes, right, and if they
felt trapped. And the other thing I want to point
(22:09):
out too, is that you know, both of these these
two guys were in their teens or their late teens, correct,
I think well Eric was was younger, Lyle was Lyle
in his early twenties, or they were both under twenty five.
And what I'm getting at here, and this is another
thing that you know, defensive you know, council oftentimes will
(22:30):
ask I've been asked this on the stand before about
you know, the brain development of you know, individuals under
the age of twenty five. And we do know that
brain maturation in the frontal lows doesn't generally occur until
you know, mid twenties. And so again when we're talking
about you know, like when you said that they felt trapped,
they felt like you know, they had no way out
(22:51):
of this, this abuse. They couldn't get out of it,
they couldn't escape from it. They thought it was going
to continue. Part of that's a judgment thing, because most
people stepping out side of that would look at that
and say, well, why couldn't you could just you could
just leave. You have other family, you have resources, you
could definitely get away from this, right. That's I think
what a lot of people are trying that. That's what
(23:11):
they can't understand is like, why would they think that
that's the only option, right to kill them like that?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
You know?
Speaker 4 (23:18):
And how is the mother, you know, if she's not
the one even though she you know, tacitly sort of
permitted this based on what you know, the the uh,
the testimonies suggested, you know, why was she why was
she killed? As well? So it's like, you know, I
think there's a lot of that's where the emotion comes in.
I think with a lot of people who look at
this case, they just don't they can't make sense of
(23:41):
how this could be defensible. In other words, like how
could this be self defense or imperfect self defense?
Speaker 3 (23:48):
You know, I think one of the things that comes
to mind when you say that is we with domestic
violence victims, we often talk about cycle of a bat
sent would a woman always go back to a man
who continually abuses or beats her up? And and we
talk about in those cases, we talk about the power
(24:10):
the power dynamic of a typically a husband over a
wife or a partner over their partner. And you know
when somebody gets into that cycle, uh, it's it's a
mentality that develops over months, if not years, and they
don't feel like they can leave the relationship in spite
(24:31):
of all of the objective evidence to the contrary and
the availability of resources. Well, wouldn't that be even more
true if you're the child of a wealthy man and
you've undergone the abuse for a number of years and
your your executive brain functioning still hasn't fully developed. And
I think that's that's one of the counter arguments for
(24:53):
the defense and and and and the resentencing issue. Especially
on the other hand, you have people who this is
an age old discussion about if somebody does something really
awful like kills multiple people, or kills a baby, or
you know, guts down their own parents in their living room,
(25:14):
and not just two or three shots, but a lot
of shots. People would say, anybody who does that something
so terrible they should never be free to walk in society. Again,
this is a not a new debate on these issues,
but the pieces of the puzzle there are very interesting
and unique. So it's a very interesting situation.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
I'm glad you brought up the issue of domestic violence
and that points to and you're correct in psychological parlance
in terms, we call this learned helplessness, and this is
an actual psychological phenomenon that does happen in these types
of situations. And again this is I don't recall at
(25:58):
the trial, and I remember watching the actual trial in
the nineties when it was going on. That was one
core TV if you remember. I think first was you
know on the air in the nineties, and so you
could watch the trial you know, live when it was happening.
I remember this, and of course I wasn't a psycho.
I was a police officer back then, so I wasn't
a psychologist at that point in time. But I do
not recall the defense bringing in any experts like Dana
(26:23):
or I to testify to that psychological phenomena and learned
helplessness has been around. I'm not exactly sure when that
sort of that that theoretical model was positive, but it
was probably around that time. It's been well established in
the research literature that this can happen. People can develop
this what learned helplessness where they don't see any other
(26:44):
options out of this relationship. They're trapped, they feel helpless.
They you know, they just they don't have resources, They
can't see beyond what's in front of them. And it
takes a psychologist or a psychiatrist to come in and
explain this to a jury. And I didn't see that
how and either, So, yeah, these are other you know,
I guess we're espousing arguments the defense could make here.
(27:05):
You know, I don't know if they've I don't know
that that's been included in their briefs and their motions.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
And I think that, you know, the evolution, the timeline
of the way the criminal justice system has been recepted
to more of the psychological mitigation approaches to defending a
case is relatively recent. I've lived through it. I mean,
I started practicing in the late nineteen eighties, and a
lot of times you didn't even think of a mitigation expert,
(27:33):
and the judges didn't even ask appointed council to get
a mitigation expert. It's only been in the last decade
or two that it's been kind of a standard of
care as a lawyer that you have to at least
look into this issue and have your client examined, especially
in serious cases. So that's also I think that the
(27:55):
mentality I'm talking about pre dates the Meninda brothers. It's
you know, they were convicted so long ago. It was
in the infancy of any consideration of risk assessments being
kind of a very common tool to be used in
serious trials, and.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
The judge has so much power to allow this experts
to testify. I recently was just in a criminal trial
where the judge allowed me a very specific and narrow
scope to talk about psychological factors and let me tell you,
all the charges were dismissed, but it could change everything everything,
(28:39):
And it really was so interesting in the trial. I
was just in for the judge to allow that can
change everything. And so what goes into that thought process
for a judge. Well, like you said, this is over
thirty years ago, and you're right, Craig, and I are
(29:01):
now seeing so many changes and I'm more in the
field of forensic psychology. And I'm seeing changes right before
my very own eyes on cases I'm appointed to do,
and more attorneys recognizing like the importance of this hiring
(29:22):
a forensic psychologist. I can tell you how shocking it is,
for outcomes can change drastically with one report. I've seen it,
I've experienced, it's now happening. It's a good thing. I
think that's probably part of my interest in starting this
podcast is just to have these thought provoking discussions and
(29:45):
how the justice system, like what is justice? The system
that was created? But look, it can go so many
different ways, and who's to define justice?
Speaker 4 (29:56):
You have to look at your venue too, right, So like,
depending on where you're where, psychological you know, expertise or
were being used as expert witnesses. You know in some jurisdictions,
the community, and I just talk about like say, so
a jury a community may not necessarily adopt or endorse,
(30:16):
you know, our perspectives in other words, bringing in mitigation
through psychological testimony about psychological phenomena like for example, an individual,
a victim perhaps who might have a borderline personal disorder
and may not be credible or reliable. People may not
be willing to accept any of this is credible. In
(30:36):
other words, that we're bringing in scientifically based information to
help the tryer of fact understand, you know, complex phenomena.
I could just as an example I had. This was
a few years back, but I had a case where
I was called as an expert with a quadruple murder occurred.
And in this instance, this is also a domestic violence
(30:57):
where you know, this individual murdered his entire face family.
And the only thing I was brought in for was
this was a death penalty case. The only thing they
brought me in for was for mitigation to try to
get the death penalty off the table. So the jury decides,
you know, whether to impose death death sentence or not.
You know, and I came in and I testified to
(31:18):
you know, to the phenomena of postmat ex stress disorder
and dissociation and how that can impact someone's reasoning and judgment,
and you know, dissociation could lead to essentially to blackouts.
The jury did not buy it, and you know they
they can. You know, he was convicted and he was
also sentenced to death. So you know, sometimes we can
(31:39):
definitely be helpful for the tryer effect but I think
it depends depends. Like you, like what Sam was saying,
the gravity of the case you kill children, People just
can't get past you know that that just that act itself.
They just can't get past that. They want someone to
pay the price for doing something like that.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Right, So I'm glad you brought up the death penalty
because text is it started changing in Texas in my
experience of being a criminal defense lawyer, especially when George W.
Bush ran for president. You know, the governor of the
Great State of Texas was going to run for president,
and it started coming out that a lot of depth
penalty of cases in Texas, people were being sentenced to
(32:18):
death and their lawyers were one of one case, the
lawyers slept through parts of the trial, and so the
governor was embarrassed by that. His staff was like, we've
got to do something. By that, we need some appropriations
to train defense lawyers to do a better job in
capital cases. And that was kind of a shoehorn for
more resources in court appointed capital cases, and more mitigation
(32:40):
experts started popping up, and more public defenders started popping up,
and so in Texas, at least we kill fewer people
in Texas, but we still kill people and execute people.
We had our third one just a couple of weeks ago.
But that's kind of weird of how it evolved in Texas.
It was like a political thing to make sure that
(33:03):
we didn't have lawyers sleeping through debt penalty trials.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Well, I think Florida has you beat though.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
I think Florida.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Is Florida doing more than Texas now? I think so.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
I mean, there were years when we were executing thirty
something people.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Wow. So well, Actually, one of the questions I want
to ask, and maybe one of you guys can answer
this for me, but when we're talking about sexual abuse,
so now between the brothers, was their sexual abuse? I
watched the movie or the documentary Monsters. I don't know
if either of you saw that.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
I saw him in Thende's movie, but I don't know
that it was that. One.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
My question is, I don't know if we know this,
but did the older brother sexually abuse the younger brothers?
So in some of these movies, the way they're sensationalizing it,
they're making it seem like after the sexual abuse from
the father stopped or discontinued for some time time, then
the older brother was sexually and lasting the younger brother.
(34:05):
So I don't know whether that's true or not. It's
an interesting point because if you're looking at risk, do
we know this information.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
That would be important to know from in terms of
the risk assessment piece. Yeah, that's something that I would
want to know about in terms of perpetration of the
you know again, this is we know again that a
lot of abusers, a lot of individuals who engage in
child sexual abuse were victimized themselves when they were younger.
(34:38):
There's some pretty good evidence of that for that. Not
that that excuses it, but it's it's sort of an
explanatory mechanism for why, you know, this might might take place.
But I mean that would be that would be something
that that the that the risk assessor is going to
want to take into consideration, but that they're going to
look at the you know again, conduct by both of
(34:58):
these brothers in the custodial environment, Like what has the
behavior been in the custodial environment? Have there been any
rule violations that were serious in other words, serious acts
of you know, violence perpetrated against another inmate or staff
inside the prison system. So there's their whole mechanism inside
the prison system for reporting all of this stuff. And
(35:19):
they people get prosecuted inside for committing crime in prison
as well. So I'm not sure what their record is
like right now in the Department of Corrections. I haven't
heard anything in the you know, the media about them
being you know, disciplinary problems or things like that. But
those are things that I would be definitely be looking at.
(35:40):
And are they receiving any any type of mental health
treatment while they're incarcerated? Are they in the mental health
delivery system? So California has California's mental health system system
in the prisons is the largest mental health system in
the world in a correctional setting. They have the most
recent sources at least when I was there. Just to
(36:03):
give you context, new folsom which is where I worked,
which is a level for It's a maxim security prison,
so most of the folks there there for very long
sentences or life and that prison. I don't know what
the data says entirely because I haven't been there for
when did I leave there in twenty eighteen, I don't
know what if you know, if things have changed, but
(36:24):
they had over at the time they had over. I
want to say, over ninety ninety psychologists and psychiatrists, you know,
just in that one institution. And I and I'm assuming
that like Texas you know, probably does have a mental
health system in the prison, but I would argue they
probably don't have that level of resource, So they don't
have those level of resources in a you know, in
(36:46):
any of their institutions. Do you have any information on that.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
I don't have specific information, but I think your assumption
is probably correct. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
So so the point I was going to make about
that is that that are they reiving you know, mental
health treatment while they're in prison or you know, have
they identified any any psychiatric diagnoses again that could potentially
increase risk? And I don't know, because that's all hipA
protected information that we're not necessarily going to know about.
(37:17):
And although that would come out in the risk assessment
for sure, which again you know, the judge, the judge
is going to be reviewing that, because the judge is
going to get that assessment and make a determination.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
And I feel like people have lumped them together as
one person, the Menendez brothers, when in fact there are
two separate people. While and Eric would have two different
psychological evaluations. How will this affect you know, sentencing outcome?
Does one stay and the other one's release? Like, I mean,
(37:54):
would everyone be an uproar about that?
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (37:56):
What happens again, I'm just this hyothetical.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
But what happens if just for you know, let's just
say Lyle comes out high risk for whatever reason, right,
you know, but but Eric's slow risk or you know,
and then so one gets released, you know, and then
the other is like, even if we resent it, we
might have to civilly commit or you know whatever. So
I don't know, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
That's an interesting distinction I'm thought of and feels unlikely
to me. But you never know, I mean, maybe the
risk assessments will be different.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, so what have we learned about this case? You know,
how is this going to affect, you know, the future
of trial cases like? This case seems to have gotten
more people talking about sexual abuse for men. I will
tell you my experience. I've heard a lot of reports
of abuse for mels, more than fifty. I did almost
(38:49):
forty interviews with meles who were sexually abused for a
civil law case, and I can tell you that they
don't report it. And they typically don't tell their family,
the loved ones or even their spouse. They will most
of them will go to their grave with it or
just not report. Men do handle it differently, but there's
(39:12):
a lot of shame, and I hope that you know
we've you know, we used to call it battered women's syndrome,
now battered person syndrome. I do think men were left
out from this conversation. It is important to look at
how this has changed things. So you know, we've changed,
(39:32):
like even the women's shelter locally, it's no longer called
the women's shelter, they totally changed the name, right, and
to include that services for all people.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
No, you're right about the it's the shame and you know,
humiliation of having to report something like that. In my
entire career, you know, in law enforcement, I investigated thousands
of sexual assault cases. Well maybe hundreds and hundreds, not thousands,
but it felt like thousands. Out of that, I can
only recall like a hand full of make less than
(40:06):
less than maybe six or seven where the victim was male,
Where a male was reporting a sexual assault, you know,
at a hospital facility or in some setting. It's so
underreported it's not even funny. So again, I this abuse
that you know that has been reported with both of
these brothers, it doesn't surprise me that you know, they
(40:27):
were trying to keep it under you know, wraps and
suppress it in terms of making sure other people didn't
know what was going on. That's very common.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Yeah, In Texas, we have a special statute on homicide
cases where the nature of the relationship between the accused
and the deceased is fair game. Basically, it opens the
door to more admissibility of prior issues between the accused
and the victim, and in this case, in most cases
(40:58):
that was designed to show abusive relationships leading to murder,
that sort of thing, But it's kind of clipped upside
down now to where in those cases I'm often trying
to get in evidence such as this of a history
of abuse by the victim to order My client and
I had a case with a domestic violence victim who
(41:22):
never reported it and at one point she just decided
to kill her husband because she'd put up with abuse
for so many years, and that evidence was going to
be admissible. We worked out the case, but a judge
would have clearly let that evidence in I'm still scratching
my head as to why the second judge didn't let
(41:42):
in this evidence.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
I'm surprised by that as well.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Well, this is why we haven't heard the end of
this case. All right, I'm going to ask you guys
your final words. But Craig, what are your thoughts. I
know we were discussing earlier some of the people that
you've been having conversations with.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
Well, I mean, one of them is retired. You know,
someone I know who's a retired professor that you know,
has a lot of degree and you know, she's got
a very strong opinion that they should stay in prison
for life. My response to that was, well, I think
what's going to happen in this case? This is just
my prediction is I think there is going to be
a the judge is going to grant this and they're
(42:20):
going there. They're likely going to be resentenced, and they
could very well, you know, have this first degree reduced
to a second degree, which would then make them eligible
for parole if they resentenced them at the twenty five
to life range, which is generally what a second degree
murder conviction yields. You know, in many instances, I mean
the judge has discretion. It's it's indeterminate sentencing in California.
(42:43):
I don't know if Texas has the same indeterminate you
know ranges and that kind of stuff, But that's kind
of my prediction.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
I'm wondering what Sam thinks is going to happen.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Well, this recusal of the DA has thrown a curve
ball into everything. I can see a situation where the judge,
maybe not wanting to take the entire heat for resentencing,
recuses the DA, and then a more sympathetic prosecutor, the
g comes in and says, look, you know, I agree
(43:14):
with the resentencing, and that makes the judges job easier,
keeps Gavin do some kind of in the background politically.
That may be the path I see us most likely.
But the May ninth hearing will be very interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Are we even ready for them to be released? I mean,
do we remember when Gypsy Rose Blanch was released? Are
we ready for like reality TV them being on TikTok.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Here's the thing. At least they they're going to know
technology a little bit. Okay, they went into prison, but
we didn't have smartphones and we didn't have tablets.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
But guess what.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
All the prisoners in California prison now they get tablets,
so the least they have some technology experience.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Can you even imagine how much money they can generate.
That's a whole other topic we can talk about, and
maybe we'll have to have Sam back. When they get out.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
Well, you're already saying they're getting out.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Nobody said they're getting out with you.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
You know, I think the writing's on the wall, like
this's been going on a while. I think all the
things we discussed today, there's the likelihood of them being
released is there. You know, it's in the judges hands.
There's different fackers that play out. We've been watching this
on over years, So will it happen. I think I
think that it's very likely could happen. Well, Sam, thank
(44:34):
you so much for joining us today. We'll have to
have you come back and talk about some other cases
that come up in the news and the media. I
love getting your input and all the way from Texas
joining us here today. So thank you so much. Sam.
Where can people find you? Tell me about your website
and where they can find you on social media?
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Well, I'm unlimited social media, but my Instagram handle is
basset Law the A S S E T T L
A W. And my website is him is in mary
bfc dot com.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
All right, awesome, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Thank you for listening to Killer Psychologist. To watch full
video episodes or if you want to interact with me,
you can find Killer Psychologists on YouTube. You can also
get notified of new episodes by signing up in my
stand store. Now, if you want to work with me,
you can book a console. My website is psychologydoctor dot com.
(45:38):
That's psychology dr dot com.
Welcome to Killer Psychologist. I'm Dana Anderson, a forensic psychologist
and your host of the show. Killer Psychologist is for
true crime fanatics and anyone intrigued with the dark side
of psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
When two teenagers gunned down their parents in Beverly Hills,
the nation asked why Lyel and Eric Menndez were sentenced
on July second, nineteen ninety six, to life in prison
without the possibility of proll for the nineteen eighty nine
murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. That sentence
(00:41):
came after a second trial, their first in nineteen ninety
three ended in a mistrial when the jury deadlock. Now
three decades later, this case is back in the spotlight
and as of this month, April twenty twenty five, the
Menendez brothers are speaking resentencing based on new evidence, including
(01:04):
longstanding allegations of childhood sexual abuse. A resentencing hearing is
scheduled from May ninth, where the court will wait a
risk assessment which doctor Wedder can explain what goes into
these assessments, And today we're excited to have Sam Basset,
(01:24):
one of the country's top criminal defense attorneys, to explore
this faith and to discuss some of the blurred lines
between victim and perpetrator and the legal hurdles and why
justice is rarely as simple as a theme.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Damn. Welcome, Thank you for having me look forward to it.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So, just by starting out, I'd love to hear about
your criminal defense attorney. You've been doing this for three decades,
your trial attorney. What motivated you to become a defense attorney.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I was in the University of Texas Business school and
I needed some extra income, so I went to work
for a criminal defense firm as a runner, and I
became fascinated with the cases, the work, and at that
point I decided, this is really what I want to do.
And a lot of people were telling me you might
be able to make more money being a business law
(02:20):
attorney or a corporate attorney or another type of attorney,
but I said, I think I'd like to do what
interests me first and figure out a way to make
money second. And so I've been very interested in it
and involved in it since my senior year of college,
and that was in the mid nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, so that's awesome. I love your passion. So for
people that are trying to understand this Menendez case, and
I know Craig and I have talked a lot about this.
People become so emotionally involved even coming unraveled, so they
have a strong opinion about this case. And first of all,
(02:59):
let's just talk about, like legally, the mechanism that has
to take place or a defendant to even file a
new hearing.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, I think that in California a motion for resentencing
is permitted under their procedures. It was an interesting evolution
of how the former DA came to the conclusion that
a motion for resentencing should be filed and that he
would advocate for the resentencing. And obviously the Menendez Council
(03:28):
and the Menindez brothers are all for that. But what's
happened with the new election in the new district attorney
is the new district attorney is a more traditional law
and order type district attorney who probably used that to
win the election, and he is opposing the resentencing. And
(03:50):
the whole basis and the whole argument for the resentencing
is the two brothers were victims of abuse at the
hands of their father, with their mother being complicit in it,
and that should have played a role in their trials.
At the second trial that evidence was not permitted. And
so I think that this is such an interesting case
(04:11):
on so many levels because now more recently we have
emotion to recuse mister Hackman, the current district attorney, to
recuse him from the resentencing hearing. He's obviously opposing the resentencing,
and the judge is trying to weigh all this, especially
in light of the governors also reviewing the case to
(04:32):
determine if clemency should be granted. So there's a lot
of moving parts here, But it's a fascinating case because
the facts of the case were so horrific and these
boys were young in committing these horrific acts. But the
question really is where do you fall on the line
of can you do something horrific and can that be
(04:55):
mitigated by your own victimization? And so that's really a
debate that will go on, and there's there's two sides
to that debate.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
For sure, people are asking is this gonna is this
a risk of opening the flood gates for cases like this?
Do you believe resentencing based on new trauma evidence should
be more common or is this gonna open up the floodgates?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Well, I think when you have extreme sentences like life
without parole, it really should reopen the debate, but not
many states have procedures for this other than the standard
appellate processes and then the rid of habeas corpus if
the irregular appeals fail. So in a rit of habeas corpus,
(05:39):
a defendant could raise that their counsel should have raised
should have raised the trauma either mitigation or defense in
the case, and seek to get a new trial if
their counsel is declared as ineffective for failing to put
forth this evidence. In Texas, it would be probably in
the sentencing phase, not at the guilt ennis it's face,
(06:00):
because we have a jury's assessed sentences in Texas. But
I know California is different. So yes, it's a new
perhaps a new ground certainly in the last decade, with
more emphasis on re examining convictions based on trauma by
the defendant.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, and I wonder if there ever was a forensic
psychologist involved in the second trial of the Menendez case
as far as the sentencing and writing a report in
the psychological factors.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
I don't know, Yeah, I don't. I haven't read that transcript.
So I don't know. I just know that that evidence
was not allowed by the judge and the second trial,
and I don't know the reasoning, but I have to
assume that the hung jury in the first trial influenced
the judge's decision on the second.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, and so Kraik and I are forensic psychologists. We
write mitigation reports. In the fact I recently wrote one
for a murder case, and you know, that's kind of
part of what we do. Critical goal and affects sentencing
for sure. But now I know Craig has worked inside
prison and he could probably shed some light on this
(07:10):
process for this risk assessment that is going to be
you know, they're going to be looking at some psychological
factors and a report is going to be written for
the parole board and viewed risk. And so I would
(07:31):
love for Craig to talk about that this report, what
goes into it, and you know, maybe what type of
assessments they might be using, what factors are they going
to be looking at as far as risk to release
back into society.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Yeah, certainly there's an entire protocol around risk assessment. Most
states have you know, procedures and protocols in place for
when individuals are getting ready to be released on parole,
for example, they often do have to go through a
risk assessment process and that's generally going to be a
forensic psychologist who is trained in assessing for risk of violence.
(08:07):
There's different types of risk that we look at. There
can be risk of sexual violence and then there can
be a general risk assessment that's just looking at general.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Risk of violence.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
In this case, in the Menindaz case, it would be
the latter. It would be the risk of general violence
because if you look at the history, and again I
don't know the entire history in terms of what they
did before these murders occurred. But when looking at, you know,
assessing for risk generally, and in California this is the case,
and I'm sure Texas has similar protocols in place. But
(08:38):
we we would be looking at a number of variables,
both historical variables, risk variables. Those are things like, you know,
if the individual has a substance use problem, if they
have a current psychiatric diagnosis, that those sorts of things.
We look at their criminal history, their past criminal history,
both non violent and violent, and we look at all
(09:00):
these other historical factors as well, and we use actuarial
based risk assessment tools to do this. So we use
an actuarial based tool, which is a predictive model, but
then we also use a none or at least I do,
and I and most evaluators when they do these, and
I do these all the time, we'll use a non
actuarial based tool, which is commonly referred to as the HCR,
(09:23):
and that one looks more at It's a structured professional
judgment model where we look at both the historical factors,
but we're also looking at the clinical risk variables. But
then we also look at potential for rehabilitation. So we
look at, you know, like what kind of supports would
they have in the community if they were released and
what you know, again, what are those protective factors, but
(09:46):
what are those risk factors you know, if they were
to be released. So what's interesting about the menendous case
again is it aside from the murders, I'm not sure
there's any history of violence or violent behavior in either
of those two prior to this. So it's like this
was a singular event, right, And so when using an
actuarial based tool, a lot of what goes into that
(10:07):
risk analysis and the score that we give somebody has
to do with their commission of violent acts or commission
of or engagement and behaviors that we know predict risk.
You know, so substance use problems, prior conduct related problems
while you're growing up and in school, maltreatment of animals,
those sorts of things, uh, juvenile misconduct, not coming from
(10:31):
an intact family system. These are things that we know
are risk factors. So with them, they had an intact family,
but clearly, you know, the evidence seems to show that
there was there was a lot of abuse going on
in the house during this time, you know, up to
up to when these murders were committed. So so that'll
be an interesting thing they're gonna I think the governor
(10:51):
has asked for a risk assessment, is that correct? I
mean he's he said that he wants wants, wants that
to be done, and I'm sure that's that's going to
be part of it. If there's any determination that resentencing
will lead to a reduction of that life sentence life
without down to a you know, probability of parole, which
(11:11):
could very well lead to it. Maybe they'd be time served,
right if they were twenty five to life, So with
murder in California. You know, if it's premeditated with malice
a forethought, they're eligible for life without and that's what
they were convicted of. His first degree murder, and that
resentencing would have to get that taken down to probably
second degree or or you know, if self defense. You know,
(11:35):
again the defense that they correct me if I'm wrong, Sam,
But I think the defense that the defense was arguing
was was self defense because they weren't denying that they
shot their parents. They were trying to argue that these
two boys were in fear of their life. They were
using that. I mean, it's kind of an imperfect self
defense because you know, there wasn't an imminent threat. It's
(11:57):
interesting case, Like, I don't know what your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, I think that it wasn't a pure self defense
because nobody alleging that the father was pointing a gun
at them when they shot him. But effectively the theme
of the defense was the abuse so pervasive and extreme
that it just might as well have been similar to
defending him pointing a gun at them, because they knew
(12:23):
they were going to have to endure more and more,
and so they were protecting themselves and each other from
further acts of abuse.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's uh. And then in that
second trial, you know, as you said, the judge disallowed
any testimony as to the abuse histories, which I found interesting.
It's you know that I recalling the previous the first trial,
there was a hungury on there, right, and so they
(12:51):
they couldn't get a conviction, and so you know, the
judge then what's the mechanism. I guess why would the
judge not permit testimony in that second trial? What would
the evidentiary grounds be for that?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I guess the argument is it's not relevant to them
the act itself, So you know, just a basic relevance argument. Yeah,
and you know, a four h three argument that but
the evidence is so inflammatory.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Yeah, it's too prejudicial, outweighs the probative value. Yeah, okay,
this will be interesting to see what happens here. That
I didn't know that they fouled the motion to get
the new DA in La recused. But that's an interesting move.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, just a couple of days ago. Yeah, they were
arguing that Hawkman has a conflict of interest and should
be recused. They cited several reasons why, including that he
the head of his Victim Services division of his office,
represents a family member of the Menendez brothers who is
against them being resentenced. So he quickly announced that this person,
(13:56):
I think the name is miss Cardi, is going to
be walled off off from anything having to do with
the case. But the defense also cites examples of Hawkman
attending victims' rights rallies with her and just basically argues
that the victims who want the resentencing, which I think
is the majority of the Menindez family, is getting mistreatment
(14:21):
by the district attorney because their desires are being essentially
ignored by Hotman, while the fewer family members who want
the Menindez brothers essentially to die in prison, they're the
ones that are being sympathetic. Hawkman is being sympathetic to them.
It's a very interesting motion. I read it just a
couple hours ago, and it's obviously well written. Gergis isn't
(14:46):
going to put together a bad, bad product, so it's
a very interesting, well written motion. I think, well, with him.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Out of the way, that could change everything.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Yeah, I read and I don't know this, but it
makes sense that the the next prosecutor up if a
judge grants the refusal is as an attorney general or
assistant attorney general who's outside of the district attorney's office.
So that add another twist.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Yeah, that would be Robanta. He's the current attorney general
in California, so they would substitute him. And then of
course Robonto would support this, you know, being appointed by
a Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
I mean, I've tried to recuse a DA one time
in West Texas, and it's a high mountain to climb
in Texas. It seems maybe not quite as high in California,
but there's actually some statutory provisions that talk about it
in California. So it'll be interesting to see how the
judge rules on the refusal.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, it's so political too, you know. Now you got
the judge in the hot seat. I mean, this is
making headlines. It's not going away anytime soon. So if
you're a judge affiliate with this case, like even Governor Dows,
So what side is he on? What politically? What side
(16:03):
would benefit?
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Well, yeah, let's assume he wants to run for president
in twenty twenty eight. Okay, I mean, I'm just gonna
let's just let's just do a thought experiment on this.
He needs to be quite strategic here, right, because he
doesn't want to come off as being too soft. And
I think you've seen a shift in his way of
thinking just in the last I've seen this in the
(16:25):
last year, there's been a sort of a shift away
from you know, the sort of this far left progressive
ideology and starting to shift a little more. I'm seeing
a little more centric. I suspect that strategic, but that's
just me speculating, because we do have a country that
is I think, you know fairly there's there's a fair
(16:45):
number of conservative folks in the country that are law
and order and you know kind of what's what's interesting
is that like the DA of Los Angeles County. You know,
the prior DA was very progressive. Gascon came from San Francisco.
He had been the DA there, he was a he
was actually the chief of police of the San Francisco
Police Department at one point in time. And you people
(17:07):
got in this is Los Angeles, which is quite low
for them to elect a you know, a pro law
and order DA who likely is you know, far more conservative.
That's telling you something about a shift in I don't
know a shift in in movement back towards maybe a
common sense to some degree, just because Los Angeles was
(17:30):
just if you know, Sam, like just like San Francisco.
It's unbelievable what's happened to these these these cities in
terms of just the the lawlessness that goes on, the
amount of people walking in and walking out with large
bags of you know, nine hundred and you know, just
under nine hundred dollars worth of merchandise before before the
reforms happened in this last election, to get these things
(17:53):
pushed back to felonies. It just was really off the hook.
And I think people the populace, you know, degenerate, they
just they're fed up with it. He knows that. So
he knows that even progressive people, they don't want to
see the cities fall apart like this, you know. And
so yeah, there's a political piece to this, for sure.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
I would guess that Newsom. I just wonder if the
staff or the advisors to the judge and the staff
and advisors to Newsom are communicating because Newsom orders this
risk assessment, and then the judge says, well, I want
to see the risk assessment in making my decision. I
would bet that Newsom would prefer for the judge to
(18:33):
take the responsibility of effectively letting them an Indos brothers
out rather than him. And this risk assessment provides some
cover pri of a judge. This is Sam's speculation, seems
to be the most logical trail.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Yeah, so then that's going to be interesting in terms
of who's being appointed to the risk assessment, how do
they do that, Who's going to do it? You know,
because look, you know we're as psychologists. Everyone's biased, right,
Let's just get that out of the way. One has
a bias. So that'll be interesting to see because and again,
like I said, I talked about what a risk assessment is,
(19:08):
and we have to be as objective as possible. Right,
We're not taking as a forensic psychologist, I'm not taking
a side. Right, I'm not supposed to be taking a side.
Were evidence based. We're looking for what is the evidence
telling us here in terms of, like in this case,
whether this individual or whether these two guys.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Are low modern or higher risk.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
So that's generally what we come up with a risk classification.
We form an opinion. Now in Nevada where I do
a lot of these assessments. Judges Generally, if I do
a risk assessment, say on someone who's found incompetent without probability,
so like say a murder suspect, we can't get them
restored and we have to be facing civil commitment. Under
(19:47):
a civil commitment statute, they have to undergo a risk assessment,
which the judge then considers if they're not found at
high risk. So if they're found at lower moderate risk,
the judge actually has a discretion to not commit them.
They generally have to be found high risk for the
judges to make commitment. I'm not sure what Texas does
or how Texas handles that, but I think California follows
(20:10):
a similar pattern in terms of, you know, the judge
does have discretion, right, but they're going to rely they
should be relying on the recommendations of the either the
forensic psychiatrist or the forensic psychologist, because psychiatrists do these
evaluations as well. The difference is is that forensic psychologists
like Dana and myself, we're trained in using you know,
the assessment tools, the risk assessment tools, and I see
(20:33):
often a lot of times I'll see a psychiatrist will
do a risk assessment. It'll be a clinical opinion, it'll
be structured professional judgment, but there won't be the risk
assessment tools that we use that are standardized and evidence based.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see how
the judge rules on not just the if he rules
on just the recusal on May night, or if he's
gonna rule on the resentencing. I think everybody's trying to
figure out who's going to carry the water here.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, and I always think if I was the front
of the psychologists appointed in one of these high profile cases,
it's so controversial. I mean, you even want your name repeats, Craig.
Maybe you want to talk about from the prosecution standpoint.
I know recently they played some footage in the media
of you know, the crime scene, and it just invoked
(21:23):
all kinds of emotions with people.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I know.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
The position from the district attorney is that this clearly
is a premeditated, you know, murder that you know it
was planned well in advance. This is their their their
position that both of the brothers they engaged in conduct
suggests as they were trying to conceal, you know, how
they purchased the shotgun. They believe they went to San
Diego to do that, So they went out of town
(21:49):
to even get the gun. And so you know there
is and again this is just playing Devil's advocate, there
is some pretty compelling evidence that you know, this is
clearly planned. Now again, there's there's counter arguments that defense
could make about this, right in terms of the shotgun
being purchased for self defense purposes, right, and if they
felt trapped. And the other thing I want to point
(22:09):
out too, is that you know, both of these these
two guys were in their teens or their late teens, correct,
I think well Eric was was younger, Lyle was Lyle
in his early twenties, or they were both under twenty five.
And what I'm getting at here, and this is another
thing that you know, defensive you know, council oftentimes will
(22:30):
ask I've been asked this on the stand before about
you know, the brain development of you know, individuals under
the age of twenty five. And we do know that
brain maturation in the frontal lows doesn't generally occur until
you know, mid twenties. And so again when we're talking
about you know, like when you said that they felt trapped,
they felt like you know, they had no way out
(22:51):
of this, this abuse. They couldn't get out of it,
they couldn't escape from it. They thought it was going
to continue. Part of that's a judgment thing, because most
people stepping out side of that would look at that
and say, well, why couldn't you could just you could
just leave. You have other family, you have resources, you
could definitely get away from this, right. That's I think
what a lot of people are trying that. That's what
(23:11):
they can't understand is like, why would they think that
that's the only option, right to kill them like that?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
You know?
Speaker 4 (23:18):
And how is the mother, you know, if she's not
the one even though she you know, tacitly sort of
permitted this based on what you know, the the uh,
the testimonies suggested, you know, why was she why was
she killed? As well? So it's like, you know, I
think there's a lot of that's where the emotion comes in.
I think with a lot of people who look at
this case, they just don't they can't make sense of
(23:41):
how this could be defensible. In other words, like how
could this be self defense or imperfect self defense?
Speaker 3 (23:48):
You know, I think one of the things that comes
to mind when you say that is we with domestic
violence victims, we often talk about cycle of a bat
sent would a woman always go back to a man
who continually abuses or beats her up? And and we
talk about in those cases, we talk about the power
(24:10):
the power dynamic of a typically a husband over a
wife or a partner over their partner. And you know
when somebody gets into that cycle, uh, it's it's a
mentality that develops over months, if not years, and they
don't feel like they can leave the relationship in spite
(24:31):
of all of the objective evidence to the contrary and
the availability of resources. Well, wouldn't that be even more
true if you're the child of a wealthy man and
you've undergone the abuse for a number of years and
your your executive brain functioning still hasn't fully developed. And
I think that's that's one of the counter arguments for
(24:53):
the defense and and and and the resentencing issue. Especially
on the other hand, you have people who this is
an age old discussion about if somebody does something really
awful like kills multiple people, or kills a baby, or
you know, guts down their own parents in their living room,
(25:14):
and not just two or three shots, but a lot
of shots. People would say, anybody who does that something
so terrible they should never be free to walk in society. Again,
this is a not a new debate on these issues,
but the pieces of the puzzle there are very interesting
and unique. So it's a very interesting situation.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
I'm glad you brought up the issue of domestic violence
and that points to and you're correct in psychological parlance
in terms, we call this learned helplessness, and this is
an actual psychological phenomenon that does happen in these types
of situations. And again this is I don't recall at
(25:58):
the trial, and I remember watching the actual trial in
the nineties when it was going on. That was one
core TV if you remember. I think first was you
know on the air in the nineties, and so you
could watch the trial you know, live when it was happening.
I remember this, and of course I wasn't a psycho.
I was a police officer back then, so I wasn't
a psychologist at that point in time. But I do
not recall the defense bringing in any experts like Dana
(26:23):
or I to testify to that psychological phenomena and learned
helplessness has been around. I'm not exactly sure when that
sort of that that theoretical model was positive, but it
was probably around that time. It's been well established in
the research literature that this can happen. People can develop
this what learned helplessness where they don't see any other
(26:44):
options out of this relationship. They're trapped, they feel helpless.
They you know, they just they don't have resources, They
can't see beyond what's in front of them. And it
takes a psychologist or a psychiatrist to come in and
explain this to a jury. And I didn't see that
how and either, So, yeah, these are other you know,
I guess we're espousing arguments the defense could make here.
(27:05):
You know, I don't know if they've I don't know
that that's been included in their briefs and their motions.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
And I think that, you know, the evolution, the timeline
of the way the criminal justice system has been recepted
to more of the psychological mitigation approaches to defending a
case is relatively recent. I've lived through it. I mean,
I started practicing in the late nineteen eighties, and a
lot of times you didn't even think of a mitigation expert,
(27:33):
and the judges didn't even ask appointed council to get
a mitigation expert. It's only been in the last decade
or two that it's been kind of a standard of
care as a lawyer that you have to at least
look into this issue and have your client examined, especially
in serious cases. So that's also I think that the
(27:55):
mentality I'm talking about pre dates the Meninda brothers. It's
you know, they were convicted so long ago. It was
in the infancy of any consideration of risk assessments being
kind of a very common tool to be used in
serious trials, and.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
The judge has so much power to allow this experts
to testify. I recently was just in a criminal trial
where the judge allowed me a very specific and narrow
scope to talk about psychological factors and let me tell you,
all the charges were dismissed, but it could change everything everything,
(28:39):
And it really was so interesting in the trial. I
was just in for the judge to allow that can
change everything. And so what goes into that thought process
for a judge. Well, like you said, this is over
thirty years ago, and you're right, Craig, and I are
(29:01):
now seeing so many changes and I'm more in the
field of forensic psychology. And I'm seeing changes right before
my very own eyes on cases I'm appointed to do,
and more attorneys recognizing like the importance of this hiring
(29:22):
a forensic psychologist. I can tell you how shocking it is,
for outcomes can change drastically with one report. I've seen it,
I've experienced, it's now happening. It's a good thing. I
think that's probably part of my interest in starting this
podcast is just to have these thought provoking discussions and
(29:45):
how the justice system, like what is justice? The system
that was created? But look, it can go so many
different ways, and who's to define justice?
Speaker 4 (29:56):
You have to look at your venue too, right, So like,
depending on where you're where, psychological you know, expertise or
were being used as expert witnesses. You know in some jurisdictions,
the community, and I just talk about like say, so
a jury a community may not necessarily adopt or endorse,
(30:16):
you know, our perspectives in other words, bringing in mitigation
through psychological testimony about psychological phenomena like for example, an individual,
a victim perhaps who might have a borderline personal disorder
and may not be credible or reliable. People may not
be willing to accept any of this is credible. In
(30:36):
other words, that we're bringing in scientifically based information to
help the tryer of fact understand, you know, complex phenomena.
I could just as an example I had. This was
a few years back, but I had a case where
I was called as an expert with a quadruple murder occurred.
And in this instance, this is also a domestic violence
(30:57):
where you know, this individual murdered his entire face family.
And the only thing I was brought in for was
this was a death penalty case. The only thing they
brought me in for was for mitigation to try to
get the death penalty off the table. So the jury decides,
you know, whether to impose death death sentence or not.
You know, and I came in and I testified to
(31:18):
you know, to the phenomena of postmat ex stress disorder
and dissociation and how that can impact someone's reasoning and judgment,
and you know, dissociation could lead to essentially to blackouts.
The jury did not buy it, and you know they
they can. You know, he was convicted and he was
also sentenced to death. So you know, sometimes we can
(31:39):
definitely be helpful for the tryer effect but I think
it depends depends. Like you, like what Sam was saying,
the gravity of the case you kill children, People just
can't get past you know that that just that act itself.
They just can't get past that. They want someone to
pay the price for doing something like that.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Right, So I'm glad you brought up the death penalty
because text is it started changing in Texas in my
experience of being a criminal defense lawyer, especially when George W.
Bush ran for president. You know, the governor of the
Great State of Texas was going to run for president,
and it started coming out that a lot of depth
penalty of cases in Texas, people were being sentenced to
(32:18):
death and their lawyers were one of one case, the
lawyers slept through parts of the trial, and so the
governor was embarrassed by that. His staff was like, we've
got to do something. By that, we need some appropriations
to train defense lawyers to do a better job in
capital cases. And that was kind of a shoehorn for
more resources in court appointed capital cases, and more mitigation
(32:40):
experts started popping up, and more public defenders started popping up,
and so in Texas, at least we kill fewer people
in Texas, but we still kill people and execute people.
We had our third one just a couple of weeks ago.
But that's kind of weird of how it evolved in Texas.
It was like a political thing to make sure that
(33:03):
we didn't have lawyers sleeping through debt penalty trials.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Well, I think Florida has you beat though.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
I think Florida.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Is Florida doing more than Texas now? I think so.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
I mean, there were years when we were executing thirty
something people.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Wow. So well, Actually, one of the questions I want
to ask, and maybe one of you guys can answer
this for me, but when we're talking about sexual abuse,
so now between the brothers, was their sexual abuse? I
watched the movie or the documentary Monsters. I don't know
if either of you saw that.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
I saw him in Thende's movie, but I don't know
that it was that. One.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
My question is, I don't know if we know this,
but did the older brother sexually abuse the younger brothers?
So in some of these movies, the way they're sensationalizing it,
they're making it seem like after the sexual abuse from
the father stopped or discontinued for some time time, then
the older brother was sexually and lasting the younger brother.
(34:05):
So I don't know whether that's true or not. It's
an interesting point because if you're looking at risk, do
we know this information.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
That would be important to know from in terms of
the risk assessment piece. Yeah, that's something that I would
want to know about in terms of perpetration of the
you know again, this is we know again that a
lot of abusers, a lot of individuals who engage in
child sexual abuse were victimized themselves when they were younger.
(34:38):
There's some pretty good evidence of that for that. Not
that that excuses it, but it's it's sort of an
explanatory mechanism for why, you know, this might might take place.
But I mean that would be that would be something
that that the that the risk assessor is going to
want to take into consideration, but that they're going to
look at the you know again, conduct by both of
(34:58):
these brothers in the custodial environment, Like what has the
behavior been in the custodial environment? Have there been any
rule violations that were serious in other words, serious acts
of you know, violence perpetrated against another inmate or staff
inside the prison system. So there's their whole mechanism inside
the prison system for reporting all of this stuff. And
(35:19):
they people get prosecuted inside for committing crime in prison
as well. So I'm not sure what their record is
like right now in the Department of Corrections. I haven't
heard anything in the you know, the media about them
being you know, disciplinary problems or things like that. But
those are things that I would be definitely be looking at.
(35:40):
And are they receiving any any type of mental health
treatment while they're incarcerated? Are they in the mental health
delivery system? So California has California's mental health system system
in the prisons is the largest mental health system in
the world in a correctional setting. They have the most
recent sources at least when I was there. Just to
(36:03):
give you context, new folsom which is where I worked,
which is a level for It's a maxim security prison,
so most of the folks there there for very long
sentences or life and that prison. I don't know what
the data says entirely because I haven't been there for
when did I leave there in twenty eighteen, I don't
know what if you know, if things have changed, but
(36:24):
they had over at the time they had over. I
want to say, over ninety ninety psychologists and psychiatrists, you know,
just in that one institution. And I and I'm assuming
that like Texas you know, probably does have a mental
health system in the prison, but I would argue they
probably don't have that level of resource, So they don't
have those level of resources in a you know, in
(36:46):
any of their institutions. Do you have any information on that.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
I don't have specific information, but I think your assumption
is probably correct. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
So so the point I was going to make about
that is that that are they reiving you know, mental
health treatment while they're in prison or you know, have
they identified any any psychiatric diagnoses again that could potentially
increase risk? And I don't know, because that's all hipA
protected information that we're not necessarily going to know about.
(37:17):
And although that would come out in the risk assessment
for sure, which again you know, the judge, the judge
is going to be reviewing that, because the judge is
going to get that assessment and make a determination.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
And I feel like people have lumped them together as
one person, the Menendez brothers, when in fact there are
two separate people. While and Eric would have two different
psychological evaluations. How will this affect you know, sentencing outcome?
Does one stay and the other one's release? Like, I mean,
(37:54):
would everyone be an uproar about that?
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (37:56):
What happens again, I'm just this hyothetical.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
But what happens if just for you know, let's just
say Lyle comes out high risk for whatever reason, right,
you know, but but Eric's slow risk or you know,
and then so one gets released, you know, and then
the other is like, even if we resent it, we
might have to civilly commit or you know whatever. So
I don't know, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
That's an interesting distinction I'm thought of and feels unlikely
to me. But you never know, I mean, maybe the
risk assessments will be different.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, so what have we learned about this case? You know,
how is this going to affect, you know, the future
of trial cases like? This case seems to have gotten
more people talking about sexual abuse for men. I will
tell you my experience. I've heard a lot of reports
of abuse for mels, more than fifty. I did almost
(38:49):
forty interviews with meles who were sexually abused for a
civil law case, and I can tell you that they
don't report it. And they typically don't tell their family,
the loved ones or even their spouse. They will most
of them will go to their grave with it or
just not report. Men do handle it differently, but there's
(39:12):
a lot of shame, and I hope that you know
we've you know, we used to call it battered women's syndrome,
now battered person syndrome. I do think men were left
out from this conversation. It is important to look at
how this has changed things. So you know, we've changed,
(39:32):
like even the women's shelter locally, it's no longer called
the women's shelter, they totally changed the name, right, and
to include that services for all people.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
No, you're right about the it's the shame and you know,
humiliation of having to report something like that. In my
entire career, you know, in law enforcement, I investigated thousands
of sexual assault cases. Well maybe hundreds and hundreds, not thousands,
but it felt like thousands. Out of that, I can
only recall like a hand full of make less than
(40:06):
less than maybe six or seven where the victim was male,
Where a male was reporting a sexual assault, you know,
at a hospital facility or in some setting. It's so
underreported it's not even funny. So again, I this abuse
that you know that has been reported with both of
these brothers, it doesn't surprise me that you know, they
(40:27):
were trying to keep it under you know, wraps and
suppress it in terms of making sure other people didn't
know what was going on. That's very common.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Yeah, In Texas, we have a special statute on homicide
cases where the nature of the relationship between the accused
and the deceased is fair game. Basically, it opens the
door to more admissibility of prior issues between the accused
and the victim, and in this case, in most cases
(40:58):
that was designed to show abusive relationships leading to murder,
that sort of thing, But it's kind of clipped upside
down now to where in those cases I'm often trying
to get in evidence such as this of a history
of abuse by the victim to order My client and
I had a case with a domestic violence victim who
(41:22):
never reported it and at one point she just decided
to kill her husband because she'd put up with abuse
for so many years, and that evidence was going to
be admissible. We worked out the case, but a judge
would have clearly let that evidence in I'm still scratching
my head as to why the second judge didn't let
(41:42):
in this evidence.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
I'm surprised by that as well.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Well, this is why we haven't heard the end of
this case. All right, I'm going to ask you guys
your final words. But Craig, what are your thoughts. I
know we were discussing earlier some of the people that
you've been having conversations with.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
Well, I mean, one of them is retired. You know,
someone I know who's a retired professor that you know,
has a lot of degree and you know, she's got
a very strong opinion that they should stay in prison
for life. My response to that was, well, I think
what's going to happen in this case? This is just
my prediction is I think there is going to be
a the judge is going to grant this and they're
(42:20):
going there. They're likely going to be resentenced, and they
could very well, you know, have this first degree reduced
to a second degree, which would then make them eligible
for parole if they resentenced them at the twenty five
to life range, which is generally what a second degree
murder conviction yields. You know, in many instances, I mean
the judge has discretion. It's it's indeterminate sentencing in California.
(42:43):
I don't know if Texas has the same indeterminate you
know ranges and that kind of stuff, But that's kind
of my prediction.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
I'm wondering what Sam thinks is going to happen.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Well, this recusal of the DA has thrown a curve
ball into everything. I can see a situation where the judge,
maybe not wanting to take the entire heat for resentencing,
recuses the DA, and then a more sympathetic prosecutor, the
g comes in and says, look, you know, I agree
(43:14):
with the resentencing, and that makes the judges job easier,
keeps Gavin do some kind of in the background politically.
That may be the path I see us most likely.
But the May ninth hearing will be very interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Are we even ready for them to be released? I mean,
do we remember when Gypsy Rose Blanch was released? Are
we ready for like reality TV them being on TikTok.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Here's the thing. At least they they're going to know
technology a little bit. Okay, they went into prison, but
we didn't have smartphones and we didn't have tablets.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
But guess what.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
All the prisoners in California prison now they get tablets,
so the least they have some technology experience.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Can you even imagine how much money they can generate.
That's a whole other topic we can talk about, and
maybe we'll have to have Sam back. When they get out.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
Well, you're already saying they're getting out.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Nobody said they're getting out with you.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
You know, I think the writing's on the wall, like
this's been going on a while. I think all the
things we discussed today, there's the likelihood of them being
released is there. You know, it's in the judges hands.
There's different fackers that play out. We've been watching this
on over years, So will it happen. I think I
think that it's very likely could happen. Well, Sam, thank
(44:34):
you so much for joining us today. We'll have to
have you come back and talk about some other cases
that come up in the news and the media. I
love getting your input and all the way from Texas
joining us here today. So thank you so much. Sam.
Where can people find you? Tell me about your website
and where they can find you on social media?
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Well, I'm unlimited social media, but my Instagram handle is
basset Law the A S S E T T L
A W. And my website is him is in mary
bfc dot com.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
All right, awesome, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Thank you for listening to Killer Psychologist. To watch full
video episodes or if you want to interact with me,
you can find Killer Psychologists on YouTube. You can also
get notified of new episodes by signing up in my
stand store. Now, if you want to work with me,
you can book a console. My website is psychologydoctor dot com.
(45:38):
That's psychology dr dot com.
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