Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 49: The Great Guy Law-Time New Years Spectacular

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Goodbye.

Hello.

And welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia.

That's right.

Because it's Wednesday, it's Rewind.

And today we're recapping episode 49.

At the time, we named it the Great Guy Law Time New Year Spectacular.

I like it.

It should be a little longer, but

so this episode came out December 28th, 2016.

That's the day your holiday trip to visit your parents should end, but you always stay two extra days.

And let's listen to the intro of episode 49.

If you're going to do something,

don't half-ass it.

Speaking of which,

this is my favorite murder.

Did you get that, Steven?

Are we recording the show?

Oh my god.

Oh my God.

Welcome to my favorite murder end of 2016 episode.

This is the end of this fucking shitpole of a year.

Now, if you had a great year, congratulations.

How did you do it?

Press stop and go have fun with your...

And go fuck yourself.

Our new musical.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Speaking of, did you hear the song that a techno song that a dude made of our podcast?

You haven't heard this?

No.

Oh my God.

Of our podcast.

Hold.

Okay.

Hold on.

I feel such guilt for the amount of things people do and make and whatever that I'm always like, oh, I missed that three months ago.

Well, you're going to die because this is the best thing that's ever happened.

Are you ready for this?

Yes.

Y'all ready for this?

Dun, dun, dun.

Done.

This is from

Alex J.

Squire on Twitter.

Oh, that name sounds familiar to me.

And it's not working.

Why isn't it working?

There's just a photo of his cat, and you press play.

This isn't fucking.

Okay.

This is another Chicago Live episode.

Fucking John

Oh my god.

I can't stop smiling.

No.

That's that's are you saying who that's announcing you announcing at the Chicago live show who you're doing and I and you go

and I go yeah

It just goes and goes like that.

Oh, that is thank you Alex J Squire.

Oh my god.

Talented motherfucker.

Are you friends with Diplo?

Because that was incredible.

The new hit.

You're hearing a very familiar laugh.

We can't ignore it.

Notice.

A lot of you know and love.

That's right.

We actually have in our wrapdown 2016 holiday spectacular.

Anything goes.

And who the fuck knows?

Our friend and our guest, Mr.

Guy Branham.

Hello.

Good to be here.

So excited.

I want that track so bad.

I have a dance track from the 80s.

It is Margaret Thatcher's speeches.

No, I don't know.

An acid dance song.

I know.

Oh, my God.

I love this so much.

You guys are also astoundingly lucky with your fans.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Like, you're like your.

People say it and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, like, it's crazy.

It's weird.

It's crazy.

The extent to which their response to all of this is, she just described a brutal murder.

I need to make this a project.

Yes.

Well, actually, I have something to surprise you with, Karen.

What more?

Yes.

Because you know, me hearing my voice with techno music behind it is like that made 2017 for me.

Totally.

So, I mean, fuck, this year's a fucking bust.

You can carry it on to next year.

That's right.

Okay, so I got a package in my P.O.

box, and it just said it was to me.

So I opened it and I'm sorry.

And I don't worry.

I made a letter that made me cry, like literally almost made me cry.

I was really depressed today, and then I read it and it made me feel better.

It's basically this girl who's like, thank you guys so much.

I went to a Chicago show.

I also told my mom now secretly listens to the podcast, and she's a

she

lives in Alabama, and she's a quote, rich white Republican Southern Baptist mother and is a closet fan, and she can't tell anyone about it.

Yes.

What's her name?

When the girl found out that we were doing Chicago again, she said, I immediately bought my mom plane ticket to Chicago to go.

Her name is Chelsea.

Why?

And look what she gave us.

Open this.

Well, here, oh, she

works at a company.

She works at like a beauty product company, and she sent us a whole line of Sweet Honesty.

No,

my God.

Oh, my God.

Is this the original or is this how they market it?

I think it's still around.

There's Sweet Honesty from the live show.

But it looks so 70s.

I know.

But Avon Sweet Honesty.

Yeah.

No, was that a real thing?

Was it a real thing?

Yeah, it's real.

That's why that girl had the,

it was a thing.

She had basically, it was like, you know, Love's Baby Soft Perfume from the 70s.

Like, if you had a t-shirt or that, this was Avon's version, which was was sweet honesty.

Let me see if I can find her Twitter so I can't.

Oh my god.

And one of these looks like, oh my God.

Wait, this, this is what they sell now because this looks like the

old deodorant.

Yes.

No.

Old deodorant.

It looks like deodorant from the 70s.

It's this is.

I mean, this is the podcast that made me try to figure out how my mom could listen to podcasts because she loves true crime so much.

We got to get Debbie on board.

Debbie Debbie on board.

I don't know how we're going to do it.

Remember when you got to buy your parents an iPod to get them and download a bunch of fucking shit for the business?

She put it in a drawer.

She put it in a drawer.

I honestly feel like I need to go greatest hits and burn some CDs for her.

I think you should.

That's the way to go.

CDs is easier.

It's not a lot of having to touch things and plug things in.

Yeah.

At the same time, she's burned some CDs for Debbie.

So at the same time, though, my dad figured out how to listen to podcasts, and that was a mistake.

I'm trying to find Chelsea's Twitter because I want to give her a hi, Marty.

Thank you.

Hi, Marty.

My dad figured out how to listen to podcasts and then decided this one wasn't for him oh my son

listen it's okay he's more of a nerdist guy this I

he's like I just want to listen to men talk I love it yeah women are so boring um can I spray some sweet honesty

you god yes okay you gotta huff it actually I gotta

my grandma's Avon lady showing up was one of the most exciting things that could happen Avon ladies were the it just makes me think of of Edward Scissor hand.

Yeah, right?

That was a real thing.

I remember doing, what was, it wasn't a, it wasn't Avon, but there was another one that was like that.

Or maybe it was Avon.

We went to a party of it at my Aunt Jean's house one time.

And the way this lady was explaining how you had to buy all of this product, because if you used a bunch of different brands on your face together, it was like chemical warfare on your face.

Biggest bullshit I've ever heard.

I was 12 years old sitting at the table going, bullshit.

Or everyone would have their face burned by now.

12-year-old Karen was like, she'll just call you out on your shit.

It's amazing salesmanship.

It's smart.

It's smart wording.

It was very effective.

It wasn't Jaffra, but it was like one of those brands where it was kind of like, it's a freestanding beauty,

you know, kind of slightly pyramid scheme.

I have a number of women from my high school who've ended up in multi-level marketing.

Yeah.

Okay.

Her name is Chelsea Young, and she's on Twitter as Chelsea and then L-E-E-A-U.

And she's a fucking, she's from Naperville.

Naperville, Illinois?

Yeah.

She's a smile.

That's where Bargo Odenkirk's from.

Oh.

Oh my God.

Is it durable?

No, no, it's good.

Let me smell it.

But I just literally inhaled it.

She said at the, oh, that's like baby powder.

It's powder.

It smells like baby powder.

It smells like a diaper.

It smells like

adorable 15-year-olds.

It smells like a teenage baby.

Which is what everybody wants.

Which is what mean men are attracted to.

Normal, heterosexual men are attracted to.

And she also said that

during the live show, her friend that they were with had to go outside.

She was sick with the flu, had to go outside and barf in the parking lot, but came back in and fucking stuck it out.

Yes.

Like, she was like, we were fucking.

And she sent me a photo of herself of them.

And was she sick with the flu of Budweiser tall boys?

Because I've had that same sickness several times in my life.

Okay, guy is going to

to law us.

Oh, yeah.

That's so

brought you here on those pretenses.

That's right.

So, like, you guys, you guys talk about law things a lot.

Like, you talk about murder.

You talk about murder.

We talk about them with a lot of confidence, even though we fucking don't know anything.

It's true.

There's a lot of theorizing.

Open up.

Do you guys have any idea what the difference between first and second-degree murder is?

Intent?

One.

Oh, okay.

One.

I don't do Roman numerals.

Sorry.

You're right.

That it is intent level.

It is basically, so like first-degree murder requires premeditation.

Right.

But that isn't really planning.

That's mostly just like being in a right enough mind to be like, even for a moment, like, I want to kill this person.

And then doing it like immediately after.

Yeah.

I mean, you do need to both have the mensrea and the act happen.

Sir, what's that?

At the same time.

I don't know that person.

State of mind.

Intent state of mind.

So I thought mens rea was your period.

It's going to sound like a real nasty period.

So

second-degree murder is horrible.

Second-degree murder is either A,

like your passions were raised by, and like the paradigm is you see your wife fucking somebody else and you either kill him or her

or

like

in the moment in the moment or like you you're like somebody starts a fight with you, and they don't use deadly force.

You are trying to defend yourself.

And it escalates.

So you, and you kill them.

Those are second-degree murder things.

But second-degree murder is used for like the worst things.

Like

that dude on Ellen, or not Allen.

What was the Jenny Jones?

Jenny Jones.

Jenny Jones.

We did that one.

Yeah.

Yes.

Or

the guy who killed Harvey Milk.

Oh, I almost...

Dan Brown.

Don't talk about it.

I almost did that one.

Oh, okay.

No, I'm going to.

Just talk about it.

It's really good, but it was, he basically said, like, I was so freaked out by being around gay people and I had eaten so many took place.

20 to 10 that I wasn't in a right state of mind.

And so, and like, oh, so, like, okay, he got fired and he got pissed off and came back.

So, isn't that premeditation, though?

I mean,

it all depends on what the jury believes.

And the thing is, is like the jury is so willing

when it comes to like

a gay guy hit on me and then I killed him.

Right.

Means you're doing six years instead of like, I decided to kill some gay guy, which is like 15 to life.

Wow.

You know?

Like if they can, if they can empathize with you,

you're better off.

And so like second degree murder is this terrible situation where like it's completely screwed over for women because in the like 70s, they tried to sell this idea of battered wife syndrome.

The thing is that like burning bed, right?

Burning bed.

Yeah.

What's that?

I don't know that.

The Farah Fawcett made-for-TV movie called Burning Bed.

Based on a real story, this woman was so terribly abused.

I remember watching it with my mom.

And at one point, I mean, it was incredibly graphic of basically showing what domestic violence really looks like.

And it's incredibly intense, but it was on at like eight o'clock at night on ABC or whatever.

And I remember at one point, my mom goes, I think you should go to bed.

But you didn't.

Of course not.

I was just like out of my way, lady, like standing closer to the TV.

But it was basically to try to show people this whole thing of like, yeah, knock your wife around to shut her up.

Because you, it's like, in my mind, when I was a kid, it was like, it's romantic.

It's because he loves you so much and it's so passionate.

And you guys just have this intense relationship.

And then you see the reality of it.

And you're like, this is just brutal fucking

bullying and awfulness.

Cracking someone across the mouth because she's lippy is not a fun thing to say to your friends in the bar when actually it's a horrible pattern because you were abused.

And once it starts, it can't stop because you're in this like, in a rage fit and you beat a person up like they're a man.

And then if you, you know, when you're older and you're in a good relationship and the thought of like Vince, when we get in a fight, which happens, him just fucking smacking me because I he got like that would be that would change my world.

And the fact that this is a normal thing for people bothers me so much.

But the thing is, what's so fascinating is that like really quick,

so so at night she burnt his bed while he was in it.

Then she got off, right?

When she went to that's a horrible idea.

But the thing is, like

how we learned it in law school, like basically is

the terrible thing is for like second-degree murder, it is generally a dude grabbing a gun right there, or it has to be sort of like within the same window of time that his second-degree murder, sort of like act of passion happens.

But women who've been beaten don't do that, right?

They stew, and then three weeks later, they for three years, yeah, and um, they just finally like break and like shoot him or burn the bed or whatever.

And like, so uniformly, battered wife syndrome was rejected by the courts as a thing.

But it like it's

almost like, I feel like it's even worse because they're going through years and years of constant torture and having their minds fucked with because they never know how someone's going to react.

And so they're not even in their right mind, you know, when they're planning it.

Well, that beforehand.

The thing that's so creepy about all of this is that so many of these ideas were built in the 1600s in England when like things that were very immediate, we understood, but the notion of sort of like a long simmering like psychological torture, nobody understood because they all died when they were 34.

And cool.

And also that men so had the mic that it was like, well, they would have to understand how a woman would interpret abuse and approach it as opposed to how it would feel or how they would react to it, which they would be like, well, that's not how it's done, as opposed to that's not how maybe men do it or how to the individual.

Beating your wife is legal.

Like beating your wife is legal.

Yeah, in the Bible.

Can I state this really quick?

Just so everyone knows, Guy Branham is a lawyer.

The reason that we're having him talking about some credentials we know all this is that you are legally a lawyer.

I graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2001.

It's amazing.

Which means I am an expert on the law of murder and other things in the same way that Karen and Georgia are experts.

No, no, in a much better way.

No,

no, no.

Wait, finish that.

I haven't done this.

I haven't done this in 15 years so this is basically just what i remember oh good good good but like from that let's hop on over to uh murder's best buddy rape um and understand that like

in

in common law in sort of like the origin of our entire legal system it's a horrible construction of this situation where it has to be a violent act.

It has to be against someone other than your wife.

Like that, you know, the old school laws, and there have been many laws that try to sort of like update things.

I hate like that intimidation, you know, and a woman going along with things to not get murdered shows that she, you know, like she didn't fight, so it wasn't really right, you know, like that kind of thing where

her pants would have been hard to take off.

So she must have been consenting.

So basically, one interesting thing that you guys like comes up on the show a lot is in some states you still have rape laws that have been updated um but in other states there was this thing in the 50s called the model penal code where they sort of tried to make the law reflect the world that we live in now a little bit more and so that's what the difference between like first degree second degree and third degree sexual assault are and these are very

serious issues and it's weird to hear a man talk about them and I'm sorry.

I had the creepiest criminal law professor was like a man in his 60s and he was constantly saying things that you were like, don't say it like that.

Don't stop.

Like, he was known before.

Can I tell you the two worst of them?

Yes, always.

Yes,

he's our number one fans.

They were.

There's no rape by swindle.

Which is essentially saying, if you promise to pay a prostitute, and then at the end, you're like, nope, that's not rape.

Oh.

Which is like

classic common law in many states have sort of like figured stuff like that out.

And then the other one was.

Don't do the voice again.

I'm sorry.

Do it.

No, I love it.

For when it comes to sexual violence and age, there comes a point where mental state doesn't matter.

If you did it, so like basically you can say, but she looked 18.

Oh.

But you cannot say, but she looked 13.

Which was the most chilling thing to hear.

I don't understand.

So wait.

wait, so you couldn't say that she looked of age and so you didn't know and so it's not statutory rape.

One thing I should be saying is this man was a leading rape expert.

Like he was this old like 60.

In more ways than one.

65 year old

white guy

who went to Harvard, was like, had written like several books about it, but was talking about it this way.

And it was just like, no, that's what's wrong with the law.

All of these laws were written by that guy.

You talk about fucking statute.

I mean, what comes up, and Karen's always like, stop it, but statute of limitations is just like my biggest

and like anything but murder has statute of limitations, seems like.

Yes.

And like that comes to an idea of like after a certain period of time, you like you just it's

after you find out that the injury occurred, does the statute of limitations change?

Okay.

And 20 years later, you can be like, I got raped and there wouldn't have passed the statute of limitations.

Well, the thing is, is you knew for all of that time, but if it was something

that like

you didn't know that something had been stolen from you or,

you know, if there was a body and it was never reported and like we found the body and it's related to nothing, then you have like three or five or however many years.

I guess it's murder.

So that would be a good thing.

It just makes, I feel like someday we're all going to be like, the fuck was that about?

Like kidnapping.

I don't know all of it.

Uh, I have a question for you that I've always wondered about myself and what I would do.

Is if you had to go to trial for something big, let's say, would you want a jury or would you just want a judge?

Okay, first of all, do you guys understand what the difference between those two things are?

Not really, the amount of people

and robes, yes, one is a jury and one is a judge.

So, the thing is, the idea is that in all situations, you have a finder of law and a finder of fact.

So, like

a jury, the the finder of law is always the judge because they're official and they know what the law is.

And finder of fact, you can either have it be a judge or you can have it be a jury.

And

like, the horrible thing about having gone to law school is that I kind of would trust

a judge as a finder of fact more.

But the thing is, is in a criminal case, you can't get a judge as a finder of fact.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, you have a right to a jury trial.

Right.

So, I mean, could you waive one?

See, this is how much I don't remember this stuff.

And the the thing is, is I mean, you personally ask.

Well, I mean, the thing is, is that I

no, I guess I would go with a jury because the thing is, is if I had done it, a jury is easier to like,

you know, confuse about stuff like that.

Totally.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's the wonderful thing that we have this presumption of innocence and we have a thing against double jeopardy, which means, you know, if you just get them to even just miss trial three times, then you're off.

Like, one of the things that's so interesting about about listening to your podcast is this strong presumption of innocence, which is a thing I love, does lead to a lot of people getting off who we then later find out were horrible people.

Yeah.

I mean, it's so shitty because it's like, well, there's double jeopardy, but like, yeah, just because this person was terrible and molested children doesn't mean he killed this other kid.

Yeah.

But they, oh, but it's still, shouldn't they?

I mean, there's a great thing that circumstantial evidence is evidence.

Like, have you guys ever talked about, like, I guess you guys do with like dna and stuff like that yeah there's a lot of cases that are that we talk about that are just trying on circumstantial evidence yeah sure and you you do have that thing of is it beyond a reasonable doubt right which is like kind of good because it means you need a lot of circumstantial evidence but there's also the weird thing of like it is just these 12 people kind of deciding it which means that like jury instructions are always the most important thing yeah jury instructions are like a judge laying out what are the like five clean questions that you need to ask to figure out whether this is the person who committed the murder or not.

And do they do that when everything is done before they go to start to decide, or at the beginning, before the case is presented?

Okay.

So basically, at the end of the trial, both sides will submit a set of jury instructions.

These are the ones that we want them to be.

And then the judge will basically,

between the two of those, sort of like synthesize jury instructions

that he feel or she feels best sort of like reflect the law as it exists and then submit those to the jury.

That would be great and wonderful if it wasn't for the fact that the prosecutors are doing anything in their means, including make up, you know, false

stories to get their client off.

You know what I mean?

You mean defense attorneys?

No,

the prosecution.

I guess both.

You said get clients off.

I mean, sorry, get their

to either.

Okay, yeah, the defense

off, but also the prosecution to get this person charged.

The thing is that in my head, I'm always like,

like the prosecution has such

a better position because, like, before anything else, a DA gets to say, do, is this person clearly not guilty?

Like, a DA can totally just say, I'm not going to prosecute him.

And like, they kind of have

the apparatus of the state behind them.

And defense attorneys, when it's not people versus O.J.

Simpson, like so much of the time are like

they're worse paid.

Like for everything except for white collar crimes, they are like worse paid and they have like worse support and everything.

And I do have more sympathy than I probably should for defense attorneys who are like

trying to

like

get somebody off through technicalities.

Like let's never forget that in the late 1970s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was going to the South to people who had been

convicted by all-male juries and had death sentences and stuff, and saying, Let's reconsider his sentence because there were no women on this jury.

And that's why you guys have to serve jury duty now.

I do.

Because

Ruth Bader Ginsburg made you equal, but in the process, kind of got some assholes like a second chance, even though they did what they

were convinced.

In my mind, and this might fucking, I might be fucking putting my foot in my mouth, but I'm more dubious of the prosecution than I am of the defense.

Yeah.

I mean, but it is, but also defense have so much,

so much pushing them to like fight for technicalities.

Yeah.

Where like, I just feel like.

Because they're kind of there to just go, they cut down to the bare bones of like, look, this guy's this, and he's going to look guilty.

How do I, how do I cut cut down on how guilty he looks and just get the lowest number that we could possibly get?

And the thing is, is like, you do,

I mean, it is like defense attorneys, like, shouldn't they all be plea bargaining?

Like, I just feel like good attorneys in any situation really should be coming to some sort of agreement beforehand because going to a trial is just chaos.

You don't know what those people on that jury are going to say.

Um, it's crazy, it's crazy, crazy.

Please, let's never be in that position.

Guys, let's do our very best.

Do you want me to answer the question from last week?

The key, key question from last week.

Yes.

Yes.

What was repeat the question for everyone?

Well, it's your question.

Okay.

My question was,

I said life imprisonment, a sentence of life imprisonment isn't life in prison.

Right.

Well, it came out first.

Not to be argumentative.

Yeah.

The first thing you said was life in prison means 10 years.

Well, yeah.

Which is when I said you're full of shit.

i meant i didn't mean 10 years exactly but yes i meant life in prison

that's how we started talking about it where we're like and then i was like what the is going on in the 1970s georgia comes close to being true like really but oh i'm sorry i love in this clothing so it's not

it's not it's not remotely true anymore

but it is so like basically So you have either giving somebody a number of years and sometimes you get the ridiculous number of years and you're like, why are they putting this person in prison for 572 years?

And that is because they have committed a bunch of crimes, but of a sort that

life imprisonment is not an option, and they're trying to put the person in prison.

And then there's regular life in prison, and life in prison without parole.

And regular life in prison, in like the 70s, it used to be that, like,

after as little as like four or five years, you could be up for parole.

Which

why use the word life?

Right.

That's like a time in prison.

It's ridiculous.

It's like a statement that means nothing.

It means nothing.

It's so confusing.

So, what happened is because people kept getting off and getting

killing some more people.

Yes, but you started getting these laws that were called truth and sentencing laws that basically said, and I think a majority of states have passed them.

And a lot of states now and the federal government have the option of life imprisonment without parole.

But the thing of saying you have to serve at least 85%

of your sentence and for life imprisonment, creating a certain like, you can't even be under consideration for parole until like 15 years.

Yeah, but that's still like if you get life in prison and then you, and then with the possibility of parole in 20 years, and so then you get, you know,

15 years or whatever, 85% of 20 is, then

that's, you get, you spend 16 years in prison

for murder and getting, and getting life.

Like, the story of this kind of is supposed to be that, like, but this guy was being a model prisoner and he's being so great.

And there's also this thing of like

good behavior time where like the person in charge of the prison can like give like credit time to you because you've been like

behaving well.

But that is that thing of like,

is prison reflective of how you're going to behave in real life?

I mean, of course not.

And this is now we're getting back into the Mary Vincent case, where that's what happened to the man who attacked her and viciously maimed her, where he was so good in prison that for I can't remember his first crime, whatever it was,

it was probably murdering a woman or something.

Then he spent four years in jail and then got out.

There's a lot of these.

Almost kill her.

But let's talk about the awesome and cool ways that you can punish people for being assholes.

Okay.

So Georgia and I are getting.

This is right up your alley.

Georgia and I are getting more champagne in us.

So this conversation.

let's hope is getting smoother.

Let's do it.

Okay, so let's, first of all, let's just go back to what does it take to make a murder?

What do you think it takes to make a murder?

We already talked about

intent.

A knife.

Oh, you make your fucking joke about the dark, but let me tell you, for burglary and arson,

at common law, they had to happen at night.

What?

If you just broke into someone's house.

What does that mean at common law?

Yeah.

Common law means the way that the law originated in England way, way back when, but was still the valid law in the United States until like in places the 20th century.

They had to change shit because we were stupid.

They had to change shit because we were stupid.

But like in like in the same kind of olden times where you could not legally be considered to have raped your wife, if you set somebody's house on fire in the daytime,

you were fine.

Oh my god.

The best.

And what?

They said it was a mistake or something?

they just, the thing is, is that all of this.

You weren't being sneaky?

All of it.

Yes.

It was just like,

well, the dude who owned the house really should have been watching it better now, shouldn't he?

Because he's like our asshole.

Yeah, that's right.

And so that's all the law that just exists without us doing any work about it.

And then eventually, like, state legislatures had to come along and be like, well, we should do something about this because they keep stealing during the daytime.

And everyone's like, but it's tradition and this is how they did it.

But there's lights at night.

Now they know that it's 1984.

Okay.

What else do you need?

Like, what else do you need for murder?

Oh,

intent.

So we said intent.

Shit.

What else?

You fucking steal my ants.

Did you say intent?

Intent?

Because it kills somebody?

Okay.

That's another thing.

Okay, this is the thing we talk about a lot is I think it's fucking insane that attempted murder isn't tried as murder.

Okay, that's what we're getting towards.

I was just listening to an episode where you were ranting about that.

And so I was.

I don't rant.

So I was talking about that.

Oh, that's hilarious.

So basically,

there are three kinds of

crimes where you don't have to do the act.

So the thing is, is that like

the thing that makes murder murder is that you commit an act, a violent act that deprives someone of their life.

Right.

And the magic is the difference between depriving someone of their life and not is huge.

Wow.

I could punch the shit out of Steven right now.

No, no.

And if he

survived, then that would just be battery and assault.

And I would go to jail for like six months.

Is that because they can't prove your intent?

Or even if you was.

No, like the thing is, it requires the same intent.

Intent doesn't mean I want to kill Steven.

If I, the exact same punch,

like, fuck that dude.

Yeah.

Punch.

And he's still alive afterwards.

That's battery.

And maybe go to jail for like three to six months or something.

The exact same punch.

If, like,

you know, it's, they call it the,

was it glass victim or something?

Stevens syndrome.

Delicate Stevens syndrome.

Under delicate Stevens syndrome, and he goes down and he's dead.

I go to jail for 15 years to life.

Yeah.

Like it is just

because Steven's face couldn't take it?

Yes.

It is just that much of a difference.

Just because he loves cats?

Just because his mustache didn't reflect the fucking

punch.

and it's a little bit crazy.

And attempted murder basically just comes down to like

attempted murder is something you just kind of like tack on top of the fact that it was fundamentally just a battery.

Well, what okay, but what if you shoot someone in the head and they survive, or what if you fucking stab someone and leave them for dead and they survive?

Well, I mean, the thing is, is that it is the interesting, you have to like suss into a person's head that it was actual attempted murder as opposed to just like a battery and they can probably sue you for a lot of money.

That's the point where if you put something killy in someone's body they fuck it's fucking murder it's a tougher that is aggravated battery

use of i mean this is it putting something killy uh is actually a legal concept and it's like the difference between first degree sexual assault and second degree sexual assault in a lot of states what is did you use a killy did you use a killy thing when

you were raping her or like in in some cases the difference is between like intercourse and just sort of like

you know, forced sexual assaults when the person.

All of the other things that when consensual are fun, but not sex.

If we say that, we're going to get in trouble for it.

So let's say it.

Okay, yes.

Terrible.

You mean what you just said?

What?

No, I think I agree.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

No, I just mean like

explaining what the difference is is going to piss someone off because it's such a fucking, it's so, okay.

Yes.

Anyways, we're just talking about the facts of what it is.

It's not

a difference.

So the point is, is that my intent doesn't matter.

like my specific intent to kill doesn't matter nearly as much as what happens to Stephen.

And so with attempted murder, it is just the fact that at the end of the day, Stephen's alive, can go to law school one day, maybe, you know, just like really make something of himself.

So there are

finally.

No, Stephen, you're fucking

really well.

Two other.

inchoate crimes.

That is, they're not complete.

There's no, there's not all, there is an act in them, but not all of the act.

Like the all of the act would mean end up dead.

Yes.

Okay.

They're called solicitation and conspiracy.

Ooh, I like these.

What do you think those things are?

Selling is solicitation.

Okay.

Selling your body.

Solicitation, I think, is trying to get someone to kill someone else.

Yes.

Fuck yeah, dude.

You're like, it's like 5-0, right?

It's almost like I just watch TV all day and read fucking murders all night, which I do.

The thing about solicitation that's wonderful is, so all you need is the intent to want that crime to occur and an act to get somebody else to do it.

And you are at that point guilty.

Like the crime that comes or the sentence that comes with solicitation is the same as murder.

It's completely the same as murder.

So if you accidentally ask like an undercover cop to kill your husband, it's like you killed your husband.

But what do you mean by accidentally?

Like you undercover cop.

Okay, the undercover cop was the accident.

You tripped upon a fucking fucking uniform.

You fell down into a cop's ear.

Kill me.

But the thing is, if you said like, God, I'd love it if Vince weren't around tomorrow.

You didn't have intent at that time.

So, but if you went to an undercover cop and was like, look, Vince has been the worst.

And you like wanted it and meant it, then yes,

you're going to jail for exactly as much as if you had attempted to murder Vince.

Yes.

I have my hand up.

Shit.

Oh, so does that mean that when you catch a person on tape, like if someone calls someone, that's it's over.

Like

it always seems like in forensic files in 2020, it's like the second you make that deal on a phone call.

So the act, so in a murder, the act is

putting the stabby thing in.

But in solicitation, the act is just the call.

And the thing is, is at that moment, it's enough and

you are

an attempted murderer.

And if the other person did end up murdering the person, you're a murderer at that point in time.

So you're the murderer, murderer, even if you didn't commit murder.

The thing is, is you're guilty of solicitation of murder, which carries the same punishment as murder.

Interesting.

Now, what do you think conspiracy is?

Conspiracy to commit murder is planning it, but without a hitman?

None of these, like solicitation.

More of a DIY thing.

Yeah.

The thing is, is if

like if

you knew that Karen was going to try to kill him,

not real life.

If you knew that Karen was going to try to kill me and you helped her plan it and figure it out, basically, sort of like conversations that are like in the direction of that happening, that conversation is enough that when Karen kills me, you are all guilty of conspiracy of murder.

And I can say that.

Well, I thought she was kidding.

I didn't think she was serious.

And it's for a jury to decide.

The thing is, is the

it is for the judge to say if she thought she was kidding legitimately that's not conspiracy for murder

and it's the jury it's not a question of admissibility it is a question of just like legally that's a mistake that absolves you of your mensrea your your mind state your entire

um and and so but it's for the jury to be like to look georgia hardstark in the eye and be like is she bullshitting us

uh and if they think that you're not bullshitting then you are guilty of the same punishment as murder

Okay, I have my hand up again because that, okay, so that is this thing that's now coming up all the time where

people are only now realizing that everybody doesn't react the same way.

So if they look someone in the eye in the courtroom, there's a lot of these crime to remembers where it's like, she was icy cold.

And, you know, how dare a mother of two be this way?

Therefore, she's guilty.

Yeah, she bursts into tears.

Yeah, she didn't act like a woman, quote unquote, and so she's guilty or whatever.

So it's that thing where there, people are now realizing if a person doesn't act the way you have imagined a person under stress would act, or a person that was sad or guilty or, you know, regretful or anything, that's like all that projection.

But instead, it's like every individual deals with that.

And don't you like

when I watch confession or when I watch interviews or what's it called when you talk to a perpetrator?

Investigate.

You mean in court?

No.

In like the police room, interrogation.

Interrogation.

Thank you.

Um, I'm like trying to study that person in every single thing they say, but you just can't fucking know.

No.

And we're back.

I had forgotten about this episode and I love it so much.

It was

great.

It was such a great little segment.

And we always talked about doing it more and never did.

Yeah.

Should we talk about why we did it?

Yeah.

So I was working on Talk Show the Game Show, which is guy branham who is our guest for this entire hour he was the host of that show and i was the head writer at the time and i was on it and i was trying to finish the story i was doing that week i wish i could remember it i won't be able to but i just couldn't finish it because i did work

and so i called you and i was like yeah i don't know what to tell you but i didn't finish my story and i was like i simply don't have a story to do so i can't do that And we went back and forth.

I remember walking up and down the alleyway outside of the writer's room.

And then I was like, okay, hold on, give me one second.

And then I went inside and I was like, hey, look, we're fucked.

Can you please come and be on the show?

And I was like, yeah, I'll do that.

I'm like, really?

Because he listened too.

He was a big fan.

He talked about it all the time.

And if we talked about stuff that was like, why do they do it this way or that way?

Really clueless.

He would always tell me at work.

So I was like, wait a second.

I think I can make up for the fact that I didn't do my homework.

Yeah.

Get something going so we're still recording and it's not like a waste of time.

And then it turned out to be like this band-aid that was like one of the best episodes we've ever done.

Yeah, it was so good.

He really fucking killed it.

And it was very nice of him to come on.

There are a couple stories that we mention in this episode that we end up covering.

So Guy brings up the Jenny Jones murder case of Scott Amadure, which I cover in episode 40, Squad Gourds.

And then you mentioned the Burning Bed story that made for TV movie, the story of Francine Hughes, and you covered that recently in episode 465.

You're kidding yourself, sucked is what it's called.

So you can check those out.

Just kind of like a nice little teaser that we didn't even know he would do.

That's right.

Because all of these stories are kind of hanging in the air around us.

And it's like that, I remember when I was this many years old and saw this on TV inappropriately, and it stayed with me forever.

He knew all the answers.

It was very nice.

All right, so should we get into some more of it?

Let's get into the second part of this law episode.

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Goodbye.

One of the things that's interesting is that

the idea of how a person would behave is a legal, it's an interesting legal standard of how would a reasonable person act.

So the thing is, is

let's say I was walking, I'm much larger than Georgia, I was walking towards her menacingly.

She became terrified and thought I was going to try to kill her.

And she bludgeoned me with the Amy Sederis crafts book that we just had.

The question for

like the jury is: A, did she legitimately think I was going to use deadly force against her?

And B, would a reasonable person have thought I was going to use deadly force against her?

And that question of how does a reason, how would a reasonable person react, is always so problematic, as we saw with like Trayvon Martin and so many situations where like we can put our minds into the head of, you know,

you know, white dude, but we can't put our heads into the mind of like black teenager right so my rule of pepper spray first and apologize later is probably illegal uh no that's kind of fine because it's non-deadly force and non-deadly force this you know the wonderful thing about pepper spray is the difference between deadly force and non-deadly force is huge and if somebody is using

non-deadly force against you like if somebody if is not trying to kill you right they think they're threatened and you use and you use any level of non-deadly force, you're fine.

That is self-defense.

That is perfectly good self-defense.

The thing is, is you need the other guy, the bad guy, to be attempting to

kill you

for you to kill or like

sexually assist anything.

You don't know how it's going to be.

I mean, the terrible thing about the operation of the law as it exists right now is that it does kind of require that he or she be trying to

kill you for you to k-kucka-kill them.

And if it is, the thing is, is that

if presumably if somebody was coming at you to sexually assault you and was being very physically intimidating, you understanding that as being deadly force and sort of understanding if I resist him enough, this dude's gonna kill me.

Yeah.

That's that's understandable.

The other situation where you're allowed to use deadly force even if they're not using deadly force is in your home.

Right.

Some states don't.

Yes, it does vary state by state.

It does vary state by state.

But generally,

there is a duty to retreat

in a lot of situations.

By who?

Like if somebody's coming at you and you have a way of getting away from them,

you have the duty to retreat.

I mean, the thing is,

if they're using deadly force against you, self-defense is fine.

But if you have a clear way out, use your clear way out.

But nobody's expecting you to retreat from your home.

You get to maintain your home.

Okay.

That's so interesting.

That's good to know.

Yeah.

Fucking hit hide knives everywhere.

That just reminded me of just a quick anecdote.

Let's do it.

So that's getting heavy.

Well, this is just an interesting thing of like being in the home.

And also, we were talking earlier about growing up in the country.

My old roommate Maleva grew up in a town called Auburn, which is like 20 minutes north of Sacramento.

Beautiful.

And just a gorgeous, gorgeous area up in the

old

gold, the gold gold rush country

um and red woody kind of thing not red woody because that's close to the ocean this is more but it's very foresty and hilly

and just a lot of houses every house is five miles away from the other house no there's no such thing as real neighbors i don't think i've ever not shared a wall with

yeah that scares me this might really make you uncomfortable

because so one night and uh they all grew up like that and my friend Leva told me the story that she, one of her friends, it was, was home alone as a a teenager and got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and her parents were like away for the weekend.

And she

stepped into the dark hallway, and there was a man standing at the other end of the hallway.

So she just started making the weirdest noise that she possibly could.

On purpose?

Yes.

Like, cause she just was like, it was just an instantaneous decision where she's like, totally alone, wherever the gun is, she's nowhere near me, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

So she just started like being crazy creepy and it freaked this guy out and he ran out of the house.

That's so smart.

Isn't that amazing?

That's so smart because I am so, I have this big fear that I'm going to get attacked one day.

And you know, when you can't, you're so freaked out you can't scream.

Yes.

You know, it happens a lot in dreams, but it actually happens when you just try to scream and your voice is gone because you're so scared.

Yes.

Like I'm so terrified that that's going to happen.

Whenever I read a murder story where the woman just starts screaming, I'm so impressed by that.

Right.

Because I think those instincts are just like, and to do that is so impressive.

It's crazy.

And I think it was, it was her following her instinct.

And it's also like when Maleva made the noise for me, I was like, stop making that noise.

It was a really weird, guttural.

It was almost like it being an animal, but it was almost like she's like, I'm an animal that might attack you.

And chances are, when you think about stuff like that, there was probably a drug addict, like a local drug addict that was just trying to get something he could sell for money for drugs.

And so he's just like, I'll just break into this dark house and I'll get this thing and get out.

So he's probably high anyway.

And then seeing some weird thing at the end of the hallway making that noise, like he

probably stopped burgling, I like to think.

Having the peace of mind when you're in like probably the most scared situation you're ever going to be in to play on the other person's sense of fear.

It's like, it's just so self-possessed.

It's a very good idea.

How can we, what are other ways we can do that?

Well, like sometimes when I walk the dogs and I'm scared at night because I'm walking them in the dark and I'll like pass a house and then I'll look into the window and I can see people.

And then I'm like, oh, oh, maybe I'm the creep.

Like, I always think the creep's behind me, but I could be the creep.

I'm sorry, if they're not closing their fucking blinds, then they're asking for it.

Right?

But, like, all it takes is the difference of being a girl walking a dog.

It's like, I just stepped behind this tree, and now I'm the weirdo, or the person across the street sees you standing behind a tree looking in a window.

Oh my God.

On a slightly related note,

when you're a gay guy walking down the street at night and a woman starts to walk faster or have any of the reactions that are the most normal reaction to a man walking behind you in that way.

It's so funny because I've talked about this before.

The inclination to

sometimes people I know have started to

have a pretend to have a phone call so that they can

see it.

Have a gay voice.

Oh my God.

Just yell, I'm gay.

I mean, I most frequently will start singing

to just be like,

don't worry.

Yeah.

I thought you were going to say,

take the time to criticize her hair, and then she knows she is not in any danger.

Do you guys think?

Okay.

I have literally been in the situation where I giggled at something

and a woman's physical behavior on a street was just like, oh, I'm fine.

Yeah.

It was like, actually, sir, can you walk me in my car?

That's insane.

Do you think, I always think, like, if I acknowledge someone and smile at them and say hello or whatever, that it's, I'm letting them know that I am aware of my surroundings.

And so I'll stop and get my phone out and let the person pass me and say hello to them and like not.

Yes.

Can I just say this?

I just was, did I tell you about that book that I got?

And it's called like, um, The Spy's of like, shoot, I need to remember the cracking.

Shoot.

That's so cute.

Oh, shoot.

It's called like, he was basically a CIA agent.

And he, it's a book.

It's like a total plane read that I read where it's just a list of ways to stay safe.

Oh, my God.

I need it.

Yeah, I'll give it to you.

It's really, really good, but I basically skipped to the whole thing was like an environment awareness.

And he's like, I would throw everyone's phone away if I could.

Yeah.

Because people go into this thing where they think because this thing has a priority and they are so interested in it that the world they're shutting out is shutting them out.

Right.

When actually it makes you a target when you are clearly like being mesmerized by this thing in your hand and you don't have environmental awareness.

So like when you're, you have to,

you don't have to do anything, but when you're walking down the street, the best thing to do is be looking around, be making eye contact, confidently making eye contact with people.

Confidently.

And just being, and also being able to look at a person being like, I see you there.

Yeah.

Like I have a phone in my hand that I can do something with, but also I see you there.

And like, are you going to come at me?

Is a way better approach

because that's, you're basically, it's kind of like alpha dogging and just being like, this is my area.

And this is, I'm not a victim.

This is like.

I mean, I literally carry my pepper spray in those situations.

Like walking down the street in the dark.

Whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like walking on my, like when something just feels off, sometimes I'll just walk with it in my hand.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I know I'm fucking paranoid as shit, but like, but that's what it's for lately.

So yeah, it's what it's for.

I can't recommend being a creepily gigantic man enough.

Amazing.

How tall are you?

You're like six.

Oh my God.

Although last week I was in, I was in Bloomington, Indiana, and

I went to the gay bar in Bloomington, Indiana, and I went to the address.

Yeah, Yeah, gay bar.

I love that speech.

And I looked in, and there were like men playing pool and like couples together.

And I was like, oh, this is not a gay bar.

What's going on?

Because if there are men playing pool, you're in the wrong place.

And so I went in and I was like, hey,

where's the back door?

And they were like, oh, you have to go

around through an alley.

The back wait to a windowless, like, it was just like.

It's like a gay speakeasy.

It's a gay bar from the time when gay bars couldn't have windows.

Like, gay bars were about having a good time while hiding.

I like that he, I like that he knew what you meant.

Yes, I wouldn't.

But the experience of like walking through that alley and being like, oh, like, how many people have been beaten?

Oh, yeah.

You know, it's almost like it's a shameful thing that you have to walk through this place and no one wants to go.

That's awful.

I mean, it's, it's like the old school way of things, but it is,

it's the closest I can come to kind of understanding what it's like for you guys anytime it's dark and you're going to your car of like,

here's this alley where somebody could wait to just like hit you with a baseball battery.

Not even at night.

It's all day too.

Like I won't walk down certain alleys during the day because it's just don't walk down alleys.

Yeah.

No, they're dirty and they're for garbage men.

They're not for girls.

Garbage men, not sanitation workers is what you're saying.

That's right.

Yeah.

Men of garbage level humanity.

I want to clear that up because sanitation workers are very respectable.

Oh, but they're just.

I also meant their truck goes through that alley real fast.

That's where the garbage cans are.

Also, shitty dudes.

There was one final topic I wanted to discuss with you guys.

Please.

All right.

Okay.

So,

one of the ways of sort of like saying something is not murder is just sort of saying that the right

state of mind wasn't there.

And what, well, first of all, just what manslaughter is, is when you didn't intend to do something, but you made a mistake and you did it.

You were negligent.

so like any essentially anything you do in a car not murder it is like in the state of california i think there's a really strong presumption that anything you do in a car is not

like you wouldn't want to kill someone like your car yeah like you wouldn't be trying to kill someone with your car like if you shoot someone in a car i'm not

right

don't be crazy right yeah but just sort of like um

you know an accident is an accident but again

like i don't know why i'm targeting all of this this towards Georgia because of your attempt obsession.

The difference between I hit somebody with my car and I hit somebody with my car and then it killed them

is I accidentally hit someone with my car and then I killed them is you're going to jail for eight years.

Dude, I knew a guy who fucking was.

Wait, sorry, sorry.

I accidentally hit someone with my car and then it killed them.

You're going to jail.

You're going to jail.

Yeah.

That's manslaughter.

You've committed manslaughter.

Even though it was an accident.

Just why don't fucking drive even if you're buzzed?

Because can you imagine two drinks and you drive and you accidentally kill someone?

I didn't realize that's what you were saying.

Yes.

That's horrifying.

And there's an extra level of that where there are things that you are doing that are accidents, but are so dickishly stupid that they're called depraved heart.

And so they're either called depraved heart manslaughter or in some states, that's enough for murder.

I think I know a dude that that happened to me.

What's the example though?

I went out onto my balcony and I shot my machine gun just into space because I thought it was hilarious.

I just drove my car into a farmer's market because I thought it would be funny.

Oh, like

I'm not sure at all.

Well, I know it, because so I know a dude, he was fucking high on meth.

There was fucking traffic on the freeway and he decides to fucking gun it in the

not next to the fast lane, like the pull-off lane.

Some fucking people had broken down in that lane, and he comes around a curve and hits them.

And they fucking,

I cannot, it's been 15 years with that.

That's completely depraved heart and it's that whole thing is horrifying he went to prison for a long time it's a very interesting thing that for a long time i got so drunk or i got so stoned just meant that you had been negligent

and not that you had intent but like if you were

does that make sense so is it now does it now mean that like basically it would now probably be construed as depraved heart like you just you got yourself into a situation where you knew it was possible that you were might drive into somebody like that Well, that's that thing where like I lived through, I think we all lived through the time where we watched drunk driving become a bad thing.

Yes.

Which is hilariously insane now.

But like it was when I was 10 or 12 years old.

I remember the,

it was, I think it was a made-for-TV movie where like, and it's a true story of the drunk driver who had been arrested for drunk driving eight times.

And then he does it.

He hits the ninth, but never went to jail.

It was like, here's your ticket, ticket, ticket.

He comes over the hill.

It's the story of the woman who founded Mother of the Against Drunk Driving.

I remember that TV movie.

Her kids walking in the middle of the street over a hill.

He's drunk.

He plows down two girls, I think.

Oh.

And yeah.

And that's when they were like, no more of this fucking businessman who had a great lunch and sorry, everybody, bullshit.

You would think that the parents could...

sue the city for that for never having punished him for all the eight fucking DUIs he already had.

I think now they do stuff like that but like back then it was like oh but we all drink and drive yeah you interestingly can't sue a city for things like that because of a thing called sovereign immunity shut up where unless the state unless this like when the state is acting like a business like when they're when they're running like oh we take your garbage away or we're making power that stuff you can sue them over but we did the stuff that like only a state can do like we criminally prosecute prosecute, like we

failed at prosecuting them or whatever.

It's like you treat them the same way you would the king of just like, no, they're fine.

Fucking police state, motherfucker.

What's interesting?

No, I'm for or against.

I mean, I think we're fine right now.

I mean, and we are cruising for

police state in the near future.

In 2017, we're fucked.

Let's work against is what we're saying.

Interesting is the first, like, as we get more texting while driving.

The thing is, it's like texting while driving, probably negligent.

Driving while watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on your phone is brave.

You're crazy.

Who does that?

I feel like watching

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is debraved heart anyway.

It took me too long to say that to her.

That was good though.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can you think of any other way?

of getting rid of somebody's state of mind.

First of all, you're the best teacher I've ever heard.

I know.

This is the fun.

I hate being asked questions.

I'm so sorry.

Being so long.

But you're the one.

You know all the answers.

No, this is the best.

Brat.

Can we think of another way?

Of

obviating the

sort of removing the state of mind as one of the elements.

Drugs.

Elements.

Same thing is.

Drugs is basically the sort of lowering it to negligence, the way that we talk about it.

Oh, mentally capacitated.

Mentally incapacitated.

Except I said mentally capacitated.

What's mentally capacitated about?

Not me.

There are.

Okay.

So there are cool defenses, like self-defense is a great defense, but there there are cool defenses like duress.

Duress.

I'm always under duress.

Yes.

He has my child, and he told me the only way he would let my child out is if, you know, I shot this person.

That worked for cats too, because I would fucking kill a bitch if they had my cat.

Okay, based on the things that I have told you,

what do you think the standard would be?

What's the standard again?

Based on the things you've told us.

Based on the standard.

Karen and I are great speakers.

I flonked out of a state school.

I went to community college and just fucking up.

How do we determine whether is threatening a cat enough for it to be duressed on Georgia Hardstark?

Oh,

because I'm in love and you can tell.

If you have an Instagram and there's photos of this thing on it, then you can fucking kill.

If she cradles the cat like a baby every night.

So that is proof that Georgia actually felt like that would be terrible.

Yes.

But you also have to.

So I can do it?

You also have to ask, would a reasonable person

kill the Secretary of the Interior to save their cat?

I would do it.

Just someone, go ahead and say this is going to be my trial.

But the other more interesting thing is like mental state.

And so I just wanted to talk about a little bit about not guilty by reason of insanity.

How much does that actually come up in these horrible, horrible people that you guys discuss?

The things I've been learning and reading about is that a lot of people try it and it's really easy to fucking just it's really easy to disprove it.

And the reality is it's really fucking hard to prove and it's an it's always an extreme case.

Now you can't just,

it's not, it's not as easy as people think it's going to be.

It's the guy that

in Canada, I believe Winnipeg,

took the machete.

to the other guy's head on the bus.

The province of Winnipeg.

Oh, Jesus.

The cannibal episode?

No, Winnipeg is a city.

I was thinking of it.

Don't kill them.

Is Winnipeg in Manitoba?

Yes, it is.

Is this the cannibal episode?

No, not cannibal.

It's just the guy that went crazy on the Greyhound bus.

Remember?

And he

killed the guy sitting next to him and then just went crazy.

Didn't he eat a little bit of him?

Yes.

We had a cannibal episode on pretending to do themes once.

That's right.

He ended up, it was by reason of insanity because he was technically, he was,

I believe, schizophrenic, but not taking his medication because he, it was, it was like his family was basically judging him for being schizophrenic.

Like, you can't be crazy.

But based on that, though, like, if you're schizophrenic and you stop taking your meds, aren't you responsible for that?

Like, you can't just stop taking your meds and kill someone.

Right.

Tell us everything.

Fascinating question.

This is a 32-part question.

It's been super hard.

Also, have you guys done the Florida kid who ate the people in the garage yet?

Basalts?

I believe it was Basalt.

Ate the face?

Or was he on steroids?

I don't know.

Highly ate the face on a highway, right?

He ate it in a garage.

It may have been basalts, but there's footage of him walking out of an Applebee's looking really weird.

I mean, who doesn't look weird when they walk out of an Applebee's?

It took me too long to say that.

Save it for year 15.

Anyway, so basically, there have been like a couple of big theories about how do we figure out is this person crazy enough?

And the first one like, started when a guy tried to kill the prime minister of Britain, and the it's called the McNaughton rule, which was the rule for like a really long time.

And that comes down to could they not tell the difference between right and wrong?

Right, which is like that's sort of like the classic question, and it's also so weirdly subjective.

Yeah, and like in the 60s, we started moving towards this new thing called the Durham test,

which was trying to be cool and scientific and more understanding of things.

And And they, the question was, was this a result of your mental illness?

Was the act a result of your mental illness?

And then the president got shot.

Oh, right.

Oh, yeah.

Remember that?

For Jody Foster.

Yes.

Yeah.

And what's his name said, not reasoned by guilty of insanity.

And under the Durham test, he was judged not guilty by reason of insanity.

And then every fucking state came back and passed laws that were like, fuck you, Durham test.

And so,

like, some of them went back to the McDonnell rule.

Some of them went in the direction of this thing called the irresistible impulse test.

That sounds like a new Avon performance.

It's kind of fruity

with a stinked bullhunch of blood.

Irresistible impulse is kind of that guy.

Like, the question is just, the classic question is, if there was a police officer standing by your elbow, would you still do it?

And like,

Manitoba bus guy just feels like, yeah.

No, no, he absolutely was convinced he had, that that guy was, like, had a demon inside of him, and he had to kill him.

That's a really great question.

Yeah.

And it's like, you're in this other world.

Yeah.

And it doesn't matter who's at your elbow.

They're on your side.

You know, the cop's on your side and you're fucking.

Yeah, you're trying to protect that cop is essentially the mentality.

And that, that also goes towards that Magnotten idea of like, can you just not tell the difference between right and wrong?

But it's like,

oh, I have to try.

Like, you know, you got molested as a kid.

And so you think that's okay.

And you, you know, molest another, your kid.

It's like, that's right.

That's what you're supposed to be doing, you know,

in a fucking pedophile's mind.

The thing is, is like.

A,

at this point in time, it's super, super hard to get a not guilty by reason of insanity.

And then there's also the thing of like, even if you do not guilty by reason of insanity, you're going to a mental hospital for

what should be forever.

Like, what should be until you're cured, cured.

Though you guys recently had a horrifying story.

Was it recent or I just listened to it recently?

I can't remember anything.

Of somebody, somebody who went, somebody who got not guilty by reason of insanity and then got out like within a year.

All of them.

Well, I feel like it was, I think it was a little bit longer than a year, but our Greyhound bus guy

is free now.

Oh, right is free now in canada it's so charming yeah and also like i always think of like mental facilities like can i go there for a week please but it's not like a yoga retreat this is a fucking like shitty well also they don't exist anymore right this is true they don't a friend of a friend of mine went to a women's jail in japan oh my god oh my god i always just imagine that is the most amazing spa i just imagine was it all hello kitty stuff

like fish and fish and rice three times a day Oh, my God.

Light exercise.

Quiet.

Hope linen clothing.

Very licious sato, facial bar.

Oh, my God.

There's a lot of exfoliating and gorgeous skin.

Oh, the hair is just luscious.

But it's, but it's so small.

It's like a small cube.

Yeah, I mean, like, my mom was a psychiatric nurse, a head nurse at a mental hospital.

And when Proposition 13 passed, and they closed most of the mental health facilities in California.

And I think across the nation, I can't remember what, if it was state.

13 was just California.

Yeah, it was California.

But maybe it's something that has declined.

Like, I think the Reagan administration cut funding for mental health and released a bunch of people.

That's why there's a homeless fucking epidemic.

It's because these are all people who should be in mental health facilities.

They should be taken care of.

And medicated.

And instead.

So that kind of thing, where these days, if it's not guilty by reason of insanity, where do they send people?

I mean, there are just like deeply overbooked state mental hospitals and some that are, I believe, specifically structured for people who have committed crimes.

Oh, okay.

So, it's like a wing at a prison almost.

Yeah.

Oh, oh, oh.

Yeah.

I think California has that.

Oh, Folsom, I think, has, is where the sort of like

mentally ill people who have committed crimes.

Let's go there right now.

Let's do a fulsome trip.

You know what's funny?

My mom used to go.

So I may be totally wrong about that.

And let's just remember: I went to law school 16 years ago.

This is my favorite murder.

Where being wrong is so right.

I was just going to say, really quick:

there's a maximum security, it's a super max prison called Pelican Bay that's up in way northern California.

And my mom used to go with her friend, Mrs.

Manwiller.

I can't remember her first name.

Because Mrs.

Manwiller was the kind of nurse, I think she was also a psychiatric nurse.

And she would go there and give like tests to the

residents for some reason.

I can't remember what she was doing.

I don't want to talk to her so bad.

My mom would just go along and stay at the hotel, like read a book, and then they would like go to a fun dinner.

Or I'm like, you're intentionally going to Pelican Bay,

where like it's basically all about this super max prison.

It's where they put...

It was her vacay.

It was her vacay.

That's right.

And she was like, oh, of course I'll go.

I'll just go up there with her.

They have this great Italian place.

And meanwhile, inside the prison are like all, it's all the Hannibal lectors of like California.

Oh my God, I want to know.

She didn't have to deal with you and your sister, for example.

So true.

So true.

When I was in Boston, Minnesota, they like took us to go see the prisons.

And it's the weird thing of like, I'm from California where we have so, like, we just have so many of these things.

Minnesota was basically just like there are two maximum security prisons and one of them was like 1800s

clink kind of like that thing and one of them was like Oz like state of the art state of the art there's like a bubble where you can run the whole place from there and they were making like kindergarten mats that was the thing that they did was they made little mats for kindergartners

and it was

you know terrifying it was legit terrifying to to see what life there would be like.

Well, we talked about this when we were both watching The Night Of.

We talked about it all the time: how it's like we want them people that do horrible things to be locked away forever and no sentence seems long enough and all that stuff.

Then you watch The Night Of and you're like, four minutes

as a prisoner inside of any of those places is an absolute horror show nightmare.

Like, then you start get, it makes me think about it: the complexity of when you get,

you know, when you actually get found guilty for a crime like that, and you go away for 11 years because you did this thing, and you literally are delivered into the bowels of hell, and hopefully you stay alive.

Like that, that does count for something.

We always want it to be 50 years or whatever, but like,

is 11 years enough when it's that level of suffering and fear and constant horror?

Yeah, but what did you do to your victims that they had a similar experience?

That's private.

What I did to my victims.

No, I know.

No, absolutely.

And it's also like, that's why I'm also so interested in like cases where it's like, did they get the right guy?

Because the thought of walking in there and being like, I have 11 years and I didn't fucking do this.

Nothing more horrifying than those stories of, yeah, I was in there for seven years and then like

got the DNA like

technology to figure out I couldn't have remotely done this.

Yeah, that's 100 years more.

You know, it's not seven years.

It's fucking dog years.

It's

I hate those stories so much.

Wrongly accused is like, it's just

how do you convince people

in that situation, you can sue for

deprivation of your civil rights.

I think if you can show sort of like

misconduct on the part of the or just sort of like

failure to do their jobs properly on the part of the due diligence.

Yes, on the the part of

prosecution.

So, like, if someone else gets caught and convicted, then you can, you can, like, if they find someone else's DNA and they let you go, it's one thing.

But if they find someone else's DNA and they find that person and convict them, that you probably have more leeway.

Well, what you would do is if they find

DNA that relates to your case, then you would, there's a thing called like a habeas corpus

act where is it like menses?

Oh my god, I got my menses on my habeas corpus day.

Habeas corpus is just it's it means like present the body.

And the thing is, is that's a proof?

Sexy.

A direct, like a direct thing where you get to go to

an appeals court and say, like, look,

this means there's no possible way he did it.

And like, those are the things that like people in jail are constantly trying to like pursue themselves.

And you get occasional TV movies about the one guy who managed to like get himself out.

The Innocence Project tries to do, too.

Right.

And don't you think that Beyonce should record a song called Present the Body?

Where the chorus, and then, like, in parentheses, is habeas carpet.

That's right.

Exactly.

Or the chorus.

Yeah.

Have you seen?

So you should be, I mean,

if there is DNA evidence of that sort, you should be doing a better job of getting yourself out there than the state is doing of prosecuting somebody else.

Like it's on you.

Like it's on it.

It's on you, but also it should be able to happen quicker, I would think, than the state going and trying to get that other person.

From jail?

From

we're saying there's an innocent person in jail, and there is a person out there who actually committed the crime.

That like the minute they find the DNA that couldn't possibly be yours, then your lawyer can file a habeas corpus and um

you know the

like the police will be or whoever it is will and the dna experts will all be like nope nope nope and you can get that done and it seems like finding the person and all of that

who actually did it would be a longer process than the habeas corpus

okay i don't understand this a lot um i don't know that i understand

you sounded real smart just now or sorry are you just saying, as opposed to finding the guilty man,

it's just proving it's not you?

It's just proving it's not you.

And like, it was just that,

yeah, George's question was like,

basically, can there be two people in jail for the same murder at the same time?

And kind of no.

Oh, got it.

Unless they were like collaborated on something.

Oh, what about the

guy who eventually got prosecuted by the army?

Oh, yeah.

Did you hear that one?

No.

That's Summerland.

That was crazy when we started talking about double jeopardy.

But I mean, anytime, I'll just say a thing where I'm like, I'm pretty sure this is the word I should be saying, but I can't have like a debate about it because I don't really know what I'm talking about.

But it was, you know, you know.

He got tried and convicted of a triple homicide.

That got overturned and he got, and he was declared innocent.

Then they found years later, it's the Summerland Road murders.

And then years later, they found DNA, you know, once DNA technology was around tying him to the murders.

And so, because they couldn't try him for double jeopardy, because of double jeopardy, because he'd already been convicted and then deemed innocent,

he had been in the army at the time.

And so they reinstated him.

And then he was tried by

one of the army people.

I don't know what's it called.

And CIS?

Mark Harmon.

Yeah.

That's because those are different laws.

And different jurisdictions.

Not jurisdictions.

No, because they're different laws because they're different jurisdictions.

But isn't that

it's so that doesn't count as double jeopardy if the army steps in and is like we're gonna try it over here?

Yes, because he violated a different law for committing murder while a member of the army.

Or if he had, if he had crossed state lines with a kidnapped victim,

then the FBI and or the or the U.S.

could can could try him, right?

uh

yeah look so it's an interesting thing that like you can't I don't think you can be convicted of like

can you be convicted of both federal and state murder

if they are if it is both a federal and state murder I would think so because there is

a different requirement but there is this thing where if all of the elements of your crime are all are also all of the elements of a different crime, you can't be convicted for both of them.

So, like, going back to me, going back to me punching Stephen.

What if Stephen sues you just for this example?

All of the things that I did to punch Stephen were battery, but they were in the situation where I killed him.

It was also murder, which means if you prosecute me for murder and I'm convicted of murder, I cannot be convicted of the battery

that was,

you know, that was part of it.

So,

with

that, I assume the thing is that, like,

the failure was on the part of, like, the state law.

Like,

because there was clearly some sort of technical failure in prosecuting it under the state law,

you

he cannot be retried under the state, but all of the facts still occurred.

I just wonder, like, you know, as science and technology advances,

should double jeopardy

depend on compelling evidence?

You know, when we someday can

can

use,

you know, DNA in the fucking 90s wasn't what it is today in the early 2000s.

And so there's so many cases that they're going to find something bigger in 2025 when we know more.

And it is so hard.

It is very, very hard when we constantly have new technology that gives us more information and when you tried somebody under what like criminal research was in in 1984 you want to have another stab at it in 2016 right uh but i believe in the idea of like no you get like

statute of limitations let's deal with it now yeah and you kind of have to deal with it under the terms of now and you can't go back and and it's hard with things like cold cases and stuff like that and it's also up to the prosecution to decide if they actually have a case that they can win.

So if you don't, then you should fucking wait until you do.

Which is why they don't charge a lot of weight, non-body.

It's one of your rights, right?

Except for the fact that you've got the

speedy trial.

But the thing is, speedy trial only starts once they arrest you.

Yeah.

Don't arrest someone until you.

Yeah.

And the thing that's interesting is like

we knew she was dead in 1967, but if we get information that says, oh, so-and-so did it in 19 or in 2016, then you can go and get that guy.

It's not like Statute of Limitations has told

because, um,

wait, has it?

I don't know.

I know it says murder.

Yeah, not if it's right.

Never for murder.

Never for murder.

Yeah.

Um,

but

yeah, so like you just kind of have to wait until you have enough stuff that is a case.

Yeah, fuck, man.

Yeah.

Fuck.

Wow.

Funny.

This is horrifying.

I've forgotten so much about this stuff.

Hi.

You are.

Welcome to our world.

I'm sorry for all of your listeners.

Like, wait, what?

There's only 500 lawyers out there that listen to this.

This is terrible.

Also, all of this.

Well, no, but also the worst part about this is that I love giggling to myself about Karen calling Winnipeg a province or Manitoba a city.

But now you're going to get all of the lawyers writing.

Millions of listeners.

Have you seen her fucking listeners?

They send us sweet honesty shit.

You're going to make a quilt about how I got the law wrong.

What's going to happen is someone's going to make a meme of a quilt for that.

And it's adorable and charming and everyone loves it.

No, I think this is so satisfying because basically for a year straight, we've been throwing out what we think and kind of with the intention of like, we'll probably get back around to this and have an answer eventually or whatever.

But and arguing, like, well, this, not arguing with each other, but like saying, like, this should be this way.

And it's like, well, here's why it's not that way.

Right.

I like that.

And the thing is, I do.

I like after law school, I was just so terrified every time I got behind the wheel of a car.

Please let me not kill someone this time.

Yes.

No, I will be that way too.

But the paranoia of like once you're in the criminal justice system is so horrifying and they have the right to take your life away from you.

That I do, like, however annoying it may seem, I do really believe in all of those little constitutional things that are like, if you don't do it all right, then this person has to go, like, this person gets off.

Like, and watching the Supreme Court kind of like scrape away at some of those things, like it used to be, if anything remotely like unkosher had happened in like searching for something, that evidence was the fruit of the poisonous tree and could never be used.

And they've started to be a little bit more,

yeah, even though you didn't have a warrant for him, it's fine that you got that.

That terrifies me, even though it's finding people who actually are guilty mostly of drug crimes and stuff like that.

I'm just like, I want all of the protections I can have so that the state can't throw me away forever.

That's right.

That's the, I think ultimately that's the thing.

It's like once

it, when we start talking about, because we are talking about cases most of the time, we're talking about cases where we know the person did it.

So then when we opine, it's with a passion of, God damn it, these people have their lives taken away by this person who we know is bad because it's been proven.

Somebody else did all the work.

And we just get to say, yes, get rid of this person because

they got rid of other people.

And that sucks.

But when we get into those cases where it's a question mark, you still have the same feelings of bad people should pay for

ruining other people's lives.

Well, it's interesting, guys, that you think of it from your side of like, um, of the, of being the person who's prosecuted, where I think of it as being the victim and like all the little things that I'll need to do.

Like I save my, I have all of my like

day planners from the past like five years.

So if I ever need to say where I am or what I was doing, or like testify for somebody else, or you know, like if I use my credit card, every time I use my credit card at a fucking parking meter, I think, okay, well, this is gonna be a trail of where I was that day in case something happens.

Yeah,

it's it's well, it goes both ways, though, because it also could be a trail of something that proves you were at a parking meter and save it.

Like, yeah, I don't think about that.

I'm a white fucking female, I like I'm not, I don't need to worry as much, yeah, yeah.

And I mean, it is that situation of like I'm just not scared of incidental crime in the same way.

I like

somebody might rob me, you know, or like there is random sort of, I'm also just not, I'm not the most bashable gay guy.

So

I feel like you're almost unbashable.

Poppa puck, Karen.

Let's not say that.

Yeah, that's true.

But it is like the, I think there's maybe like more randomness to the kind of crime and like why somebody might murder me

than

for for women.

Yeah.

You know, like we're always vulnerable.

Yeah.

No matter what.

But but also the thing of the weird thing about reading those cases and listening to your stuff is realizing that somebody can just like bounce into your world and for no reason cause

such horror and pain

for just

for something that doesn't even make sense to me.

And it's a shockwave of your family and friends and fucking

peripheral people in your life.

It just pisses me off so much that these fucking assholes can take away so much by just having a fucking random feeling to kill someone.

Or drug addiction.

Or drug addiction.

Often it's just the dumbest.

Yeah.

Like they were on meth and they didn't know what they were doing or they were on meth and it made them this crazy violent or whatever, where it's just like, but there's all these people that don't do meth and live, you know, live legal lives.

Well, I mean,

the things where I do get into the mindset of the victim are more sort of like the evidentiary things of like, if this person's not around,

we don't get to rely on the fact that they can't, you know, that you're allowed to admit hearsay evidence for a dead person because

they can't testify on their behalf.

And you think that's not fair?

No, I think it's a wonderful, the best thing.

Like, there are parts of the law that like feel like magic, that really are just like such old, ancient magic.

And my favorite one is

your dying utterance is always admissible.

No.

Yes.

What?

So your dying utterance

is like is because the thing is is like it's that's the name.

That's the name of this episode.

It's dying utterance.

It's hearsay.

So hearsay is something someone, you can't testify about stuff that somebody told you.

You can only testify about stuff that you like experienced yourself.

Fuck, though.

But when it is your dying utterance, because there's no you around anymore, like that is.

always admissible and at least just to be considered yes um

it doesn't mean like it does it's just like throw that in there with everything else why is that okay why is okay so my sister says to me I'm really scared that my husband's going to kill me.

That, and I say that, and she gets killed.

And I say that.

That's hearsay.

Yes, it's hearsay, but hearsay is admissible some of the time.

Okay.

But if you were, as she was dying, leaned over and she said it in your ear, he's the one that did it.

That seems like, okay, that's fair, but that seems like the opposite of how it should be.

Like, she's been telling me this shit for years.

Okay, well, the thing is, is like,

after

your brother-in-law testifies about stuff about how things were fine.

Andy, I love you.

I know.

You're not a murder.

Yeah, I know.

We have to say that.

I just realized that was like,

the example sounds like not, I don't mean that.

You're allowed.

I mean, there is something about how

hearsay from dead people.

There's a separate rule about hearsay from dead people being more admissible, but also you can admit hearsay to impeach his testimony.

So if he says things were fine,

Beth and I had the best of relationships, then we can bring Georgia to the stand, and Georgia says, Okay, she told me 19 times, and I wrote them down on the little pad in my kitchen.

And the little pad from your kitchen is also admissible.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

I like that.

And also, emails these days, which last forever.

So wonderful.

I'm keeping a fucking pad in my kitchen from now on, and I'm writing down every time anything happens.

Good idea, right?

Yeah, and then you can write a book.

Just

intense detail of every single thing that happens to you.

My mom has a situation that Karen kind of knows about

that

just like

where she, there might come a situation where she needs to testify about something.

And she's always just like, well, I put it on my pad.

She's just,

I wrote it down, God.

That's all you need.

She really does that?

Yes.

Oh my God, that's hilarious.

That's why I keep my

daily calendars is like, I'll remember something if I see that I went to this fucking doctor or whatever that

year or that day.

Having documents for stuff is just so exciting from a legal perspective.

You do discovery, that means the other side gets a copy of your calendar.

So, so, so many copies.

Oh, I went to court reporting school for a year.

I fucking

know.

I don't know this shit.

I would actually say, too, that in almost like the inverted version of this that I think of is like in my family, there was a ton of death when I was young, and it was a lot of it like surprising and one after the other.

And that's when I just decided I'm going to do what I fucking want.

Because when we talk about the random stuff or when we talk about being a woman and walking with fear at night or whatever it is, it's this thing where any this that's that is the deal of life.

That is what born being born into this life.

That's the situation.

It's the same, you know, it's different for different people for different reasons.

But in general, we are all constantly at risk.

We all have the specter of death hanging over us all the time.

It's why some people love true crime.

It's why some people love to paint.

It's why some people can't stop jogging, whatever the fuck it is.

But ultimately, I feel like I had this kind of weird realization as a young child who was like, this fucking sucks.

And it could end at any second.

Well, the thing of like, it could be somebody with a machete on a bus.

or the amount of potassium in your system.

Yeah, exactly.

So like, so then why not be like, oh, sorry, I meant to tell you, I'm totally in love with you.

or why not go do stand-up comedy that you're scared to death of doing, but why not do it because it's the thing in your heart that you want to do?

Like,

you might as well.

This is your one fucking shot, and you can sit there lining up all the things that are the reasons why you should be scared, or you can go, well, I should be really scared because this whole situation is really scary.

So, why be scared about the one thing I really want to do?

Why not just fucking do it then?

26.

That's 2017.

that's 2017 baby 2017 is how karen is doing it and everybody else if you would like to join me

how long have we been talking eight hours long should we each do one murder from our cards our true crime cards yes draw draw a murder like um like it's tarot cards all right i have a i have a stack of these murder these true crime playing cards that steven uh Stephen Ray Morris gave us last week.

We're each going to draw one.

Okay.

And we're going to read about it.

and it's just fucking it's just like playing cards and it's murderous oh you guys all right i'm gonna do one oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god

and we're back well it's kind of more of the same it's just like all the things that we don't know are asking him about and what i love is guys very humble in this where he's just like yes i'm technically a lawyer i passed the bar right you know what i mean but it's like but i haven't talked about any of these things in 13 years so you're kind of like pop quizzing me on a thing that, yes, as a very, very smart person, I feel like I should know forever.

But we're like, now let's talk habeas corpus.

Somehow come really mad at him for the law.

And somehow he knew all the answers, though.

It was so impressive.

It was really impressive.

I was very much like, oh, this is why some people can graduate law school and I would never.

I don't have a memory like that.

No, it's like a, it's a way your brain is set up.

Totally.

I would imagine that he would tell us there's other things going on, but he definitely doesn't have like ADHD.

No.

Any of those kind of like, I'm a mosquito and I have, I think he's like a hyper focuser.

Yeah.

Which is a which can be ADHD too.

Is that true?

Yeah.

Everybody's got it.

Everyone fucking has it.

It can go that way for sure, which like

that's not mine, but okay.

But okay.

I think if there's anybody that should come back to the show, it's Guy Brown.

Absolutely fucking literally we should come back.

He should be like a guest host when one of us is like sick or just can't do it.

It's like bring him in.

Definitely.

Yeah, that's great.

Great.

We've decided.

Boom.

Okay, let's get into part three and let's hear what else he has to say.

Smart person, Guy Brennan.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

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Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant.

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In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse.

But in 2014, the youngest escaped.

Listen to The Turning River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

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The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

Okay, who wants to go first?

Karen, you sound excited.

She goes last.

Guy seems disheartened.

Guy, do you want to reach?

Wait, hold on.

I think this, this might be what...

No, hold on.

I said last.

No.

It's the McNaughton rules.

Oh, shit.

I fucking just pulled the card.

That seems crazy.

Okay, let me read this.

The McNaughton rules.

We'll just, we'll double-check your work.

In 1843, Daniel McNaughton, a Glasgow woodworker, shot the secretary to the British Prime Minister.

What the fuck?

That's ooh, guys.

I have tingly tingles right now.

Five packages of these, and this is the one we open, and that's the one you fucking shot.

I wasn't looking.

They were upside down.

This is not the

what is happening in life.

He had intended to kill the prime minister, but was unclear as to his appearance.

At his trial, McNaughton, suffering from delusions of persecution, proclaimed the Tories were out to get him.

The jury found him to be insane and not responsible for the magnitude of his crime.

He was to be sent to an institution.

Concerned parliament members convened a panel of judges to explain this.

Their answer forms the McNaughton rules, which colon,

which are this.

Jurors are to be informed that the accused is presumed

to be sane as he or she is presumed to be innocent.

To establish a defense on the basis of insanity, the accused must be disturbed enough to not know the nature and quality of what he or she did, or if knowing it, to know it was wrong.

Further, if the accused labors under partial delusion only, he or she must be considered in the sane situation as to responsibility as if the facts facts with respect to the delusion were real.

These British rules, commonly called the insanity defense, have been adopted in America and Canada and have been tested hundreds of times since their inception.

In the cases of serial killers such as Ted Bundy, Edward Gein, I like how they call him Edward, Kenneth Bianchi, and Jeffrey Dahlmer.

The atrocities committed have led defense lawyers to attempt to prove insanity.

While this strategy was successful in the case of the obviously dysfunctional Geen, most such defenses prove futile because the sociopathic personality, while deviant in its desires, is often not out of touch with reality.

And jurors usually decide that a killer functional enough to hide his or her crimes can be presumed to be aware of wrongdoing.

And I would just like to say that these are true crime series.

This is from True Crime Series 4: Serial Killers and Mass Murders by Valerie Jones and Peggy Collier.

Lane.

And the art is by Paul Lee Eclipse Enterprises, just in case anybody wants to.

Oh, it's in Forestville, which is right by Petaluma.

Who is Ed Gein again?

Ed Gein is the one

that basically killed several people, women in his town, killed his mother.

Psycho was based on him, as well as Silence of the Lambs.

He's the one that made furniture.

He wore his mother's face as well.

Was that a nipple belt?

Yes.

Nipple necklace.

A nipple belt.

You're right.

And he danced with his, like, different parts of his mother under the moonlight.

He was out of his goddamn mind.

Do you guys hate the movie Copycat?

You mean, you mean it was Sandra Bullock?

No, who was the one with Harry Connerck Jr.

and Sigourney Weaver?

Oh, I like that movie.

Oh, really?

Yes.

I always just thought that his serial killerness was so dorky compared to actual serial killerness.

He hadn't refined his acting style as he had eventually done in Hope Floats.

But I enjoy everything that's happening.

Also, because it's in San Francisco, right?

Yes, it is, and it's amazing.

And Sigourney Weaver

wears a lot of suits and Holly Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter.

But I just, anytime Karen

is just on board for an actor, her love of Sandy Bullock,

I'm just like.

When Sandy cries, I cry.

How can Karen love this vlog?

It's in me.

I want to do it.

Yeah, I think you want someone to dig that out.

And I think Sandra Bullock does it for you every year.

She does it,

but I have to say, like, not the proposal Sandy, where she's kind of.

The proposal is so good.

It's good, but that's, that's

my Sandy is more

eight weeks notice.

That's, I will watch eight weeks' notice

anytime, wherever it is, beginning, middle, or end.

Okay.

I feel the same way.

I'm the same way with Steel Magnolias.

Oh, and Sleeping with the Enemy.

I will fucking turn that on.

No matter what.

That movie is so good.

Steel Magnolias just goes down so smooth.

Like, it just, it's so, it's so smooth.

It's railing and tonic on a hot day.

It's wonderful.

Yeah.

All right.

Do you want to go?

Do you want to go last?

Because you're the guest.

Okay.

When it's terrible, I feel like it will be an anti-climax.

Okay, here we go.

Okay.

Richard Tingler Jr.

Yeah.

And it's like a really creepy drawing of like an alien trying to look like a man.

He looks like he has plucked his eyebrows without using a mirror.

Totally.

He does.

Richard

Tingler Jr.

was an illegitimate child born in 1940.

Not his fault.

I just want to go ahead and point that out.

That's right.

His mother often taunted him for his, quote, sinful birth and beat him.

What a fucking.

I mean, she started it.

Sorry, she totally started it.

He escaped home by enlisting in the Air Force in 1959 while stationed in Alaska.

He went AWOL with a friend and was arrested for burglary.

In February 1961, he was released in Chillicothe, Ohio.

Six months later, he was arrested on 13 counts of breaking and entering, sentenced to 1 to 15 years in state prison, and was paroled in August 1964.

He broke parole with more burglaries and returned to prison.

On September 16th of that year, four bodies, three male, were found shot to death in a Cleveland park.

One month later, he robbed a dairy bar in Columbus.

What's a dairy bar?

Just like people go there to drink milk.

Just like shots of milk.

Just drink milk.

He strangled the manager into unconsciousness and shot two teenage workers.

Identified by the manager, he was indicted on six counts of murder and became one of the FBI's most wanted in November of 68.

Using the alias Don Williams, Tingler secured work at an Oklahoma farm.

On March 30th, 69, his photograph was broadcast in an episode of the FBI.

Oh my God, can we get fucking with some?

There was a show called The FBI in 1969, which we fucking need.

We need it.

What?

How is no one put it on the list?

Video historians.

Come on, let us have it.

Put it on Amazon.

I was just going to say, we can go to the Museum of Television and Radio and watch it.

Okay.

Okay.

Is this like, I don't know what that is.

Is it like

a microfiche?

Exactly.

But with video.

He vanishes in April.

He's shot and he shoots and robs a middle-aged man, then goes goes home to the farm.

Erratic behavior attracted attention.

FBI agents arrested Tingler in May, extradited to face charges in Ohio.

He was convicted of murder and sentenced to die.

His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was overturned.

Tingler.

Kind of boring.

I just wanted more insight.

Like, I just, oh, like, his parents were unmarried is the only thing we got for why he did all of this.

Well, and also just you shoot four people.

Like, what was that situation?

I feel like they make him seem diabolical when really he's just a fucking like drifter who just like doesn't give, who has no emotional attachment to people.

It's not that like, but do we know that?

Like, what was that four-person murder?

Yeah.

It's just, it's, it doesn't sound like he's got

he's got any soul.

He's missing a chip.

Yeah.

Were there more drifters in the 60s, do you think?

I feel like road car riders.

Is that a thing?

You mean hippies?

I feel like half the hippies were like, I mean, hippie.

I feel like half the hippies were just people who are like, fucking great.

I got to do this and fuck hot hippie girls.

Awesome.

Hot runaways.

That's very true.

I think so.

Called Charles Manson.

Poor 70s runaways.

Oh, it is.

You stupid idiot.

This show is such a beautiful tribute to runaways because I forget that they exist.

And then it feels like every other episode, there's a 14-year-old girl who decides to strike out on her own.

That's cool.

She either decides to strike out her own or the cops go, oh no, she ran away, but she'll come back.

They make hippies seem like such free spirits.

And it's really just like kids from small towns who are like, I want to go do a thing.

And they're like, oh shit.

And then have to do terrible things to get money and survive.

And they're like, I made a fucking huge mistake.

And those like videos of them like dancing and having fun.

It's like, no, you're having a terrible trip around a bunch of sober people.

I feel like the core difference between hippies and hipsters was a graphic design degree from a DC school that allows you to have that studio apartment in San Francisco or, you know, Oakland or extended Brooklyn.

Yeah.

where you can be fine.

The difference is whether or not you choose to be in the park.

Right.

Are you sleeping in the park or did you just walk down to the park to get high?

Right.

Karen, let me tell you the most beautiful San Francisco story I have.

Can you tell me too, Karen?

I was in the yes.

Stephen, close your eyes.

Stephen, you can include Georgia.

Okay.

So I was at, I went to the bathroom at the McDonald's that like abuts Golden Gate Park.

That's where the amoeba is.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

Do you have Bay Area Origins?

Yes, I lived there for a while.

Oh, okay.

So I walked into the bathroom, and there was the most adorable

twinkling in

IV drug use tracks who was shaving like the

barely there beard that he had because he was an adorable twink.

What year?

With 90th, you've said enough.

Yeah, really.

Eight or like 2002.

Oh, honey.

And with a disposable razor.

And then as he finished, he offered it to me.

He was like, do you want to shave?

And I was like, oh, honey, baby.

No, I'm good.

It was like, like, that's San Francisco.

Like, that is

San Francisco.

So, especially in the late 90s.

Yes, it was very.

You can't share razors.

No, I told you.

Not a thing.

I want to keep talking about fucking San Francisco in the 90s, but that's another episode.

Should I read Lou Gong?

That's for the end of 2017.

Yeah, that's right.

Were we doing all San Francisco episodes?

Of just terrible stories of

what a bummer it was.

Me stealing toilet paper from bars.

Just a dark time.

Me going to Berkeley and being scared to go into the city.

The core question of my first years of stand-up were: do I have 375 to get to the city?

Oh my gosh.

All right.

Liu Gong was born in 1963 in Beijing, China, one of three children.

His father was a clerk and his mother was a doctor.

Good for them.

Feminism.

That's right.

A timid child.

His math skills blossomed in junior high, and he won academic awards and eventual admission to Beijing University.

Upon graduation in 1985, he entered the University of Iowa to study physics.

Oh, this is a terrible, like, we're, we're taking like a Chinese guy to America's heartland to where all of our serial killers are.

But nothing happened, right?

Everything was the guy on the card, though.

We'll see.

Upon graduation in 1985, University of Iowa in 1987, he took two roommates at his tiny apartment, but both found him slovenly and superior.

He was a loner, bad-tempered, and not well-liked.

He became a graduate assistant and qualified for a PhD program.

Can I?

Jesus,

this guy's going to be a shooter.

That was my guess.

Kill his teacher

for giving him a bad grade.

In the summer of 1987, an IU professor took Lugong to an international conference in Europe.

Upon his return, he became disenchanted with physics.

It happens to all of us.

And his scores began to fail.

He also began to pay processes for companionship.

Nothing wrong with that.

Just hand-holding.

In 1991, a large cash award he had hoped for was granted instead to a rival.

He was incensed and began to file complaints.

He also

bought a gun.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Bought a gun.

He received his doctorate, but still complained of a conspiracy against him.

No.

Nope, none.

No.

Just go get tenure somewhere.

In September 1991, Liu Gong closed out his savings account, packed up his belongings, and sent them home.

On November 1st, he walked into a graduate seminar.

He shot his professor.

Oh my God.

It's like everybody wins on this one.

And the professor's protege.

I win.

He calmly reloaded, walked into the department chairman's office, and killed him.

As students called 911, Lugong killed the university associate vice president.

The woman who had been handled.

How we never heard about this.

Poor administrative official.

Oh, my God.

Wounded her secretary.

Oh, I've been a secretary.

That's sucks.

Then he went to an empty room.

She doesn't even get

any of the glory of like, I'm a professor of this.

She wanted to go home and watch fucking Nash Bridges and have a fucking white line.

All she did was file.

Then he went to an empty room and killed himself.

The six-victim murder spray,

and suicide took 20 minutes.

Wait, what year was it?

Like in the 80s?

Was he one of the first 91?

Was he like one of the first college shooters?

I wonder.

Oh, no.

I mean, aside from...

It's not in college, though.

I wonder, it's not out of college.

Do they call it a college shooting?

Yeah, no, it was out of college.

It was in the University of Iowa.

Oh, my God.

That was crazy.

That was crazy.

Oh, God.

Everything's the worst.

It always ends this way.

Can we have a good thing?

Because I'm really like, this week has been shitty because I'm looking at Facebook too much and like reading all these horrible fucking headlines and like fucking Aleppo and all this crazy awful shit's happening.

Yeah, let's talk about a good thing this week.

I don't have one.

Do you guys have one?

I have a fake good thing that is just me

taking, attempting to leverage your ridiculous success and make it beneficial for me.

But Georgia Hardstark is probably going to be guesting on my podcast, Pop Rocket, in January.

Oh, nice.

I'm sorry.

And also, also, let me be clear, when I said to Karen, hey, maybe I could come on and explain some legal things, it was not just me trying to get on your astoundingly successful podcast.

It was me yelling.

Like, look, when we all listen to podcasts, we all want to yell back at the podcast, which is essentially the only reason I listen to podcasts who are just my friends.

You're making me look important,

and I'm going to fucking Instagram it.

Okay, we both win.

You'll get to talk about non-you'll get to talk about murder things, but you'll also get to talk about some fun non-murder things.

I don't know anything about non-murder.

Also, we have a little information now, so going forward, whenever these things come up, at least we're gonna be like, I think this was that thing Guy was talking about.

However, and we can like know what we're on.

That's exactly right.

And we'll start wearing office outfits.

I would say my good thing for the week is that I am lucky enough, and I mentioned this on our last episode,

to be working on Guy Branham's new show for True TV called Talk Show the Game Show.

And we sit in a room.

It's actually very much like the My Favorite Murder family because we sit in a room with Jamie Lee from our Bellhouse episode.

She's the greatest.

Why Elizabeth?

Louis Katz, who is so hilarious.

And Chase Bernstein, who is a hilarious stand-up comic, who is our writer's assistant.

And we sit in that room and we spend,

you know, 45 minutes working on the script we're supposed to get done relatively soon.

And then we spend the rest of the day laughing our asses off and very actively talking about, like, it'll start the discussion starts about what we need to figure out for the thing.

And it'll always end up in like some kind of inner stand-up theorizing that is so hilarious.

And I just feel grateful that I have a job that instead of draining me of my lifeblood, it actually, the time goes by so fast and it is so enjoyable and the opposite of stressful for fucking once.

It is the most fun.

And I find so fascinating that headspace where you're trying to find something to be depressed or scared or sad about.

Like a friend of mine was recently just like obsessing about the possibility that he might die.

And I'm like, he will then.

Yeah, but the thing is, he's happy.

He's happy and he's trying to figure out a reason that he doesn't deserve to be happy.

Well, it's scary to be happy.

So he's like imagining that it will be taken away from him.

And I think there is something so fascinating about that dynamic.

Yeah, with that like that mindset of like, that's where you're going right now.

And you don't really don't have to.

I beat myself up about that a lot.

Oh, it's hard.

It's hard.

Well, and then the good thing that we have is that we're all full of sparkling wine, which is the most fun.

Not me.

I'm the opposite of full of sparkling wine.

But also the thing is Guy keeps talking about where like he'll talk about in preparation for when it all goes bad.

Like you keep bringing that up to me and it's so hilarious to me where it's like, we almost don't even have time for this all to go bad.

It's going to be done so quickly.

Yeah, but I think a basic degree of paranoia is something any like

the lovely thing about LA is you've seen so many untalented people get amazing opportunities

and just over and over.

It's so weird.

I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I just think the most hilarious thing is that the most negative person on the planet, Karen Gilgara, who will scoff at anyone's sort of little project, that her second podcast is a rousing success.

It goes against her personality.

Yes, it completely goes against her personality.

Like, Karen Kilgarif is a person whose like deepest soul is going,

a second podcast.

I tried not to start it, but

I was so persistent.

We really just had, we had to make it happen.

This was delightful.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for letting me cross over into the world of my favorite murder because

at 50 episodes or how many episodes is it?

This will be 49, I think.

Yeah,

it's been beautiful being taken through those hundred stories, and it's very fun to get to cross over and get to play with you guys.

We always say how nice it is when people we like the podcast.

Yeah, so that's totally cool.

And if you guys

haven't already, please listen to the podcast, Pop Rocket.

It is so awesome.

They talk about pop culture stuff, but

it's a discussion.

I'm not as ill-informed as this.

No, it's not.

It feels like it's very,

it felt very produced to me when I was on it, where I was almost a little bit like, I don't know if I have the right answer.

And you're just like, I'm asking you your opinion.

It's like everybody felt very,

they had big opinions about things.

So I was like, I don't know if I have opinions.

You just just got to get loud and get sparkly wine.

That's right.

I can't.

No.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thanks to Stephen Ray Morris of the Percast for being our amazing audio engineer.

Yes, he's who I'm thankful for this week because when I go out of town, which is a fucking anxiety-ridden thing for me, because I hate leaving the cats, the fact that he now takes care of them like fills my heart with joy because they love him and that it makes it less anxious for me to go away.

That's awesome.

You got one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Very good.

You got, I don't know, go to my favorite murder and do stuff.

Yeah.

Go on.

Oh my God.

There's games and puzzles.

And you can join the raffle.

It's going to be so awesome.

Thanks, you guys, for listening.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

Thank you for being here with us all through 2016.

We've had a great time.

2017, we're going to fucking pepper spray.

It's going to be a spray.

No, it's a good thing.

Yeah, I mean, in a good way.

It's not a possibility.

Like, we're going to fucking kick it.

We're going to kick it.

You know what I mean?

Like, we're going to fucking pepper spray it.

Okay.

We're gonna make it our bitch.

We're gonna take keys between the knuckles

to 2017.

2017's bowls.

Thank you guys.

Stay sexy.

And don't get murdered.

Bye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie?

Want a cookie?

There we go.

You guys actually do that?

I always assumed there was just like one track of it.

It was used every time.

Why do you think he sits out here?

Because he fucking knows what's going to happen.

He comes over here and he knows.

Oh, that's fun.

And we also got into some playing cards, some true crime cards that Stephen got us.

I still have those.

I mean, we were really working.

We were really producing this show in a whole new way where we're like, I guess we'll bullshit, ask you questions, and then we better end with something else.

Yeah.

We have those cards.

It's like a variety show all of a sudden.

Yeah, we did it.

We can produce whatever.

Yeah.

Thanks, Stephen.

Thanks, Stephen, for giving us those cards.

Yeah.

So, this episode, as we told you, was originally titled The Great Guy Law Time New Year Spectacular.

I like that, though, a lot.

Yeah.

I think it's good.

But we could also call it don't half-ass it, which I don't, I don't think we did.

I think we whole-assed it on this episode.

I mean, we asked all around.

He, you know, Guy delivered it.

At one point, I reassure Guy, this is my favorite murder where being wrong is so right.

So we could name it being wrong is so right.

Because it's fucking true.

Yeah.

Then dying utterance, which well i say that i say it should be the name of the episode because i'm like i love that phrase yeah i do love that it's admissible in court like that that idea it's as it should be very compelling i mean how many more legal concepts are there out there that we don't know about yeah that were made up in like the 1950s and make no fucking sense but like some random person used it to get off and then a lawyers since that time are like may i quote yeah dying utterance v the people hey you know what you know what we're gonna find out next time guy is a guest on this show that's right all we can get all those legal do you have legal questions

are you up against it write in and let us know let us know your legal questions in the comments name names no fucking name names fucking give us phone numbers we'll call and ask it'll be so much fun it's gonna be so good all right well that was the rewind for this episode it's like rewinding a weird episode is a weird experience it is i don't have yeah we don't have much to say because we said it all in the episode because we've we invited someone else that would say it all so we wouldn't have to.

Exactly.

And we did it.

And it worked.

It was great.

All right.

Stay sexy.

And don't get murdered.

Goodbye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie?