 Hey, John. Great. Hi everybody. We are super excited. I don't know if anyone is as geeked out as I am. Awesome. Very, very excited to have you all with us, and we're really excited to have the whole undisclosed team. Some folks are coming out, and we'll go through on the credits and everything, but we do have Methel with us. We do have Rebecca LaVoy with us. We have Claire Gilbert with the Innocence Project. We have Patrick Cortez and this whole bunch of other undisclosed crew working behind the scenes recording today's podcast. So again, thanks everyone for coming. Welcome to New America. We are a pretty young and cool think tank. At least I like to think that we are. And we do everything from countering violent extremists and terrorism to education reform to resilient communities. And we really are looking to expand what the think tank is outside of DC, which will be super important. So we do some policy, some activism, and we are an awesome staff of about 200 between New York, DC, LA, and soon to be Chicago. And so we do events pretty much every day, sometimes two or three times a day, all online, all free. So we really invite you to come check us out and see what we do for the rest of the year. So with that I will not keep you any longer. I just want to welcome to the stage John Cryer, Susan Simpson, Rabia Choudhury, and Dennis Robinson. So I'll normally hear Dennis on the credits, but he's here today. And then in a second you'll see Colin who will pop up behind us. So with that, I'll let John talk about kind of the format of tonight and how we'll do everything else. And then I'll be back around to do audience questions. So enjoy. Hi guys. Welcome. Oh wait, hey Colin just came up. Hey Colin, can you hear us? Hey, he can't see us folks. Just so you know Colin, everybody here is naked. I don't want that to freak you out, hopefully. Welcome to the Undisclosed Addendum, the podcast about all things undisclosed. I am John Cryer. You'll be your host for this evening. We have Dennis Robinson here who is the producer of Undisclosed. We have Susan Simpson, associated with the All Cloud Law Group. And we have the lovely Rabia Choudhury here. She is a fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace, as well as New America here. Which by the way I've never been to a think tank before. When I first came in I heard this hum and I thought, oh that's people thinking. That's wonks thinking fiercely, but it's actually the air conditioning. And ladies and gentlemen Colin, as do Colin Miller. He's an associate dean and professor of law at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Oh but I actually, Rabia just got asked to be a part of the Muslim Jewish Advisory Council. Now could you tell us a little bit about how that came to be? Yeah, so first of all, good evening everybody, thank you guys for coming. And thanks to New America for having us. It's really exciting and we're going to hopefully not totally destroy this. Doing it live. Our first time live. Yeah, so this is a, especially given what's happened in the last week or so. This is a national level Jewish Muslim Advisory Council that was brought together by two organizations that ordinarily never worked together, ever. And so a Muslim organization, a Jewish organization that have no history of working together and there's a lot of complications when even now they're trying. We've been working on this for a couple of months now to bring together a diverse group of leaders who are going to actually try to make policy changes that are going to impact both of our communities. Things like immigration, things like hate crimes, all kinds of things that hopefully won't come to pass but we feel like we have to be really vigilant right now. So I'm excited about it and it's a real honor to be on the council. Yes, I, when I heard I thought, oh, so she's going to be on that whole Muslim Jewish thing. It'll be solved in a couple of weeks. So I was very excited about that. So we're very excited to be here live. But it's, but news just keeps happening and keeps overtaking us. I had been actually meaning to ask everybody about what their feelings were about the news that Brendan Dassey's being ordered, released. But then just moments before we this afternoon we found out that he is actually not being released. The court has ordered that he remain incarcerated until his appeal is decided. And I thought it was, I was going to ask, you know, being that the popular context of the acceptance of whether people are wrongfully, whether the public feels that they're wrongfully convicted or not is such a vital component of these things. I was going to ask, do you think that would affect a non-sayed situation? I almost think that once you get a certain level of awareness and one public sort of standing, this is not scientific, but it seems like it's harder because you look at the cases where, you know, there's a name there at non, Brendan Dassey, Stephen Avery, and they're fighting back every step of the way. Whereas I was talking, one of you in one recent exoneree, and I was asking how he felt being from a state with another famous exoneree, and he's actually kind of grateful because under the radar, the prosecutor looked at the case, you know, they filed a motion, they filed an appeal, but after a little bit they're like, you know what, we're going to close this out and let you go because we don't have anything to do here. And he did not think that would have happened had his case gotten a level of public awareness that other cases had. So yeah, I think it can actually work against these people in some senses. Yeah, because the conventional wisdom is that these people, if public awareness wasn't made of their case, they'd have no hope. And it helps, definitely helps, but I also think there's a sort of a counterweight there too. I was going to say, I was on a panel with Steve Driven, excuse me, who is Brendan Dassey's attorney just a couple of days ago, and he spoke to Brendan right before we began speaking, and he said that, you know, he told Brendan that it looks like he's going to have him home by Thanksgiving, and we were all just really happy to hear that and heartened to hear that. And then yesterday we heard that he was going to be ordered, you know, to be home by Friday, tomorrow. It is Thursday, right, yeah. And then today this happened. So, you know, it's really heartbreaking, but on that panel, like one of the things that we, one of the other attorneys who have been dealing with this is the fact that, although I personally think that it might give the court more incentive to pay more attention to these cases, I also think it gives incentive for the states to fight back harder. And I think that's what we're seeing. I think we're seeing an advance case. And so that is the downside of it, the attention. When they lose, people know. And in terms of the emotional effect that this has to have on somebody who's incarcerated and, you know, and dealing with that, I mean, that roller coaster has to be brutal. Has Adnan been, has he been hearing a lot of the things going on? Yeah, it's interesting because Adnan learned a lot about what's happening in this case from the media directly, because, you know, we don't have a system where we can just pick up a phone and call him and inform him of something. If he calls us, if he calls his attorney, or if his attorney can schedule something, but it takes a couple of days sometimes. So oftentimes he'll learn from the news what's happening. He'll learn from other inmates who saw the news, guards. And so far it's been okay. There have been times when he's been a little bit concerned because if you go too hard, like for example, talking about the conditions, the incarceration, all these things, like he's, he worries that it will impact his relationships with people inside the prison. So, you know, I've kind of backed off on talking about, like, the prison conditions themselves and things like that. I don't want to put him in that position. But I think even in Joey's case we were worried that as this case got more attention that we didn't want him to be mistreated. So, so far Adnan seems to be doing okay, but I don't know how Joey's doing on these issues. Joey is fortunate and he's one of the, well, possibly the only prison in Georgia that's somewhat progressive. Or humane in how it handles prisoners. So he's lucky in that respect. And I'll continue to go well for him. Has his emotional health been okay? I mean, I imagine hope is actually kind of scary for people in that situation. I can definitely tell a difference from when I first, we started this case and I first started talking to him. He seemed more, I guess it's more zen about it. And I can tell in recent months there's more, I don't want to say anxiety. That's the wrong word, but there's more hope, I guess, which is not always an easy thing to deal with. Yes, it's a burden in some way, I'm sure. But actually there's been some movement. You guys have filed for a release of the Watkins Trial Audio. Actually, I don't know if you guys remember, but inexplicably the state has refused to hand over the audio of his trial. Do you want to give a little background on that? Yeah, so we've been fortunate enough to obtain copies of the free trial tapes. So from Mark Fries' trial, which was in February 2002. So that's the audio you're hearing on the podcast. When you hear trial audio being played, that's not from Joey's trial, it's from Mark's trial. And that's what's the long story itself. And actually they apparently have recently asked to get that audio back from us. Yeah, let's see how that goes for it. People can unhear it now. Yeah, so the tapes for Joey Watkins' trial in preliminary hearing and his bond hearing, they actually initially said yes, you can record it. And Claire and the GIP got to work on that and then realized that they had the wrong equipment because it was some kind of old school four track, I don't even know what it's called. But it was complicated and everyone sounds like a demented chipmunk. So it's not going to work for us. So they're like, okay, we'll come back with a new equipment. And in that time, somehow it was decided that they are not going to allow us to have any of the Watkins' trial tapes. So we tried a few ways to get around that. It didn't work. And then we have some wonderful attorneys at Kaplan Cobb who are representing us now. And they filed a motion. Yes, that's cool. So I was kind of sad because I wanted to be like undisclosed versus Georgia, which would have been super cool. But they filed it under Joey's case, so it's still Watkins versus Georgia. But the original motion was denied. The new judge, Judge Sparks, just appointed to replace the judge. It actually was at Joey's and Mark's trial. He just retired. And he said that, you know what? You're right. This is a public record. This audio is something that's subject to Rule 21 of the Georgia court rules. So you have to allow public access. But the rule says you're supposed to, you're allowed to inspect it. Nothing in there about copying. So you can come to the court, pay us some money, and listen to it. But you can't copy it, and that's it. In fact, his order actually said like, I think capital, like not copy it. So that's seen. Okay, that's not going to work for our purposes. And also totally the thief's entire purpose of having open records and public disclosures. So after that came in, Kaplan Cobb filed an expedited motion to either amend the court's order or application for leave to appeal it. That was filed this week and is currently pending. So hopefully we'll get some traction there. And I'd love to have this court of Georgia look at this and say, you know what? This is really messed up. And then on the other hand, like if we lose this, we actually kind of just lost people in Georgia the right to ever copy any records. Because the court's order didn't just apply to audio. The court's order said that any kind of court record, you can only inspect, there's no right to copy it. So theoretically, if we lost, that means that from now on in Georgia, you have to go to a court, like go to a room and look at it, but you can never take a copy back with you. That would be a crazy precedent. Yeah. Well, but a lot of the time when precedents get set like that, lawyers just ignore it. It was a weird thing. It's considered bad law. A friend of mine who was in law school was telling me about this. He said, yeah, there's stuff that they just mark and it's like nobody pays attention to it. Which sounds nuts to me. It depends on, I mean practice and like the history of practice where like courtrooms often kind of the controls and that's not like the rules or the law, just like the habits. Everyone's always done it this way, so everyone always does it this way. Which is why this issue has not been actually litigated before. No one's actually brought it. Well, in recent years actually, in Georgia, it's been an issue that's coming up and it's probably part of why it was denied here. But the courts just always operate the way they always had and however they chose to do it is how everyone in that jurisdiction kept doing it. So it's not actually gone to the Supreme Court prior to now. So is there any case law that supports what you are trying to do? I don't know, would Colin care to weigh in on that? Yeah, well, I mean it's interesting talking about Freedom of Information Act and Open Records requests is actually, that's a relatively new phenomenon. It was in the 70s and actually it was over a veto by President Ford and one of the main cases cited in our brief for disclosure and the ability to copy these records is a case involving Richard Nixon and that I think is probably the strongest case actually in there supporting Freedom of the Press in this and the ability to copy these records and air them to be able to show to the public what's going on. So yeah, I think that Nixon case, the Supreme Court case, is maybe the strongest one and it comes from the state's highest court, the federal Supreme Court. So, but isn't that a federal law as opposed to a state law? I mean if it was Nixon I imagine it wouldn't have happened in Georgia. Right, well it's a First Amendment case. So it is the Supreme Court interpreting the First Amendment which then through the incorporation doctrine has effect on the state. So in other words, if there's this First Amendment right to access and publicity and disclosure, that would apply in Georgia or any other state. Ah, okay. Mike's work, okay. This is like an issue that somebody who has not practiced criminal law has realized in so many states, like the public does not have access to video or audio recordings of what happens inside, like public proceedings in a courtroom. Like it's been shocking for me. Even in Maryland, so for example, we, you know, the PCR hearing that just took place with the non, that's five days of video footage of what happened in the courtroom. His lawyer has it, but his lawyer's prevented under state, under Maryland state law from actually disclosing it to giving it to the public from disseminating it. And you have to ask yourself why? The public's allowed to attend the trial. These are open, like why is there still lack of transparency? And so sometimes when people ask, well, what can we do? I'm like, you know, in your state level, like that's a really important point that I think if there's a way to make changes in laws is to make these types of like video recordings which are mandatory in, because not all courts even allow videotaping in the thing, but also make them accessible to the public. There's just no excuse for it. I mean, it's the whole point of the Constitution and the open courts. I mean, they didn't have podcasts back then, but I'd like to think if they had, they would have understood that's part of the right of open courts. Like they want people to be there to tell about what they saw because it's the only way they had to sort of make sure everyone could see what happened in the courtroom. It wasn't just a only people in the courtroom kind of rule. Well, obviously, you know, very high profile trials like the OJ trial and situations like that, that's a different situation because that, we're talking about a trial that's already taken place. You know, I think part of the reasons, the reticence that they might have to release things probably has to do with not wanting to create an entertainment-style atmosphere. You know, I can imagine it's probably just sort of a knee-jerk. Let's not, you know, if we can choose between putting it out or not, let's not. I think there are a lot of motives for this, and they're not always the same ones, but there are, I mean, one of the big cases in Georgia recently that came about, and sort of the background of this whole litigation now, involves a case where the, what was heard in the courtroom of people there did not match the transcripts, and there are a few, not just Georgia, other states too, where in fact one of the exonerations that happened recently, this involved like, they had to get multiple of David's people in the courtroom to say, actually, no, this is what we heard, because for some strange reason, the transcript didn't have it. Yeah, well, this happens all the time. I mean, obviously, you know, stenographers are human beings, and they make errors, and there's no mechanism for repairing. I mean, is there a mechanism? Well, in Georgia right now. So, well, a recent case is sort of part of the current set of litigation going on involved a court, I want to say, polling, but I'm not sure of that, where the judge actually said the N word in open court. That did not make it into the transcript. So, a reporter asks for the audio, and the court, the person doing the transcription of it, court clerk said, nope, can't have it, here's the transcript, it's not in there. Cool. So, he wrote an article about this, and said, like, well, here's what happened, here's what I asked for, I didn't get it. Transcript doesn't have it, people in the courtroom heard it. So, she sued him. The court reporter sued him for defamation. Meanwhile, the judge who did this, he's off the bench because, well, before a recent election, Georgia had an independent body that evaluated judges. It's now been neutered and put under the government's control, Congress' control. So, this lawsuit happens, and it goes away, but the court reporter gets her attorney's fees paid by the court, which it was unsure if that's what should have happened, or what was going on there. So, the same reporter says, well, I'm going to request the court record, the court financial record to see what was going on. And he did his little open records request saying, give me your financial, showing if you paid for these, the court fees, or the attorney's fees for this court reporter. So, he does that, and the new judge has him arrested for identity theft. Okay. You lost me. I don't get how that one. So, but whose identity was stolen? He's been financial and theft from the court. And the court thought that was him trying to, well, that was, allegedly, he was trying to steal financial information to commit some kind of identity theft or fraud. Who knows? So, he was, you know, arrested jailed, but got out. Okay. And, yeah. And he never got the audio. So, he still doesn't have the audio from the principle hearing. So, wait, and so the judge, so did they ever talk about what the context of saying that was? I mean, he wasn't, you know, greeting a friend or something like that? I don't know. I'm just throwing something out there. Well, you never know. So, I don't know all the details of the underlying issue there, but I do know apparently there was, there was someone in the court. There was a black guy who worked in the court, I think, and that was like, he just went by in word name. Wow. In what year was this made? 2015. Okay. No, this is 1927, actually. That's, every now and then, you run across pretty startling things like that. Georgia. Yes. Yes, Georgia. Yes. Now, so wait, so there was a, there was a body that was, that was overseeing these things, but it recently got put under the control of Congress? At the state legislature. Oh, the state legislature. Yeah. Amendment three, it was on the ballot, and it was a very confusing worded issue. And I can see why it won. It's not because people actually wanted to not have an independent body overseeing judges. It's that it looked like a good idea when you phrase it the way they did, which was like, to allow for some public access to like the judicial qualifications division, which kind of implies there was none before, but there was, now there's been much less. Okay. Well, episode 17 of undisclosed was informants and wiretaps. And it was an in-depth investigation of Detective Sutton's recruitment and use of three particular jailhouse informants. I was so grateful for this episode. I don't know about you folks, because I had no idea the various permutations of how jailhouse informants actually come to do this kind of stuff. And I realized that if I was a member of the jury and I had heard two informants actually confirming the others, I would probably believe it, absent this kind of knowledge, because I would be like, oh well, two of them have very similar stories, but it did not, would not even occur to me that they might just talk it over and figure out how they're gonna do that. We had a question for social media actually from at my customer who asks, is it common to have so many jailhouse informants come forward and want to testify on a case? No. No. Because how many were there? In total informants, I mean, so they had six that were either like, I think five ultimately came to court maybe, either through Mark's trial or forwarded through our jury's trial. And there was more that, so there were a bunch of jailhouse, they were on the witness list, like these guys are named by the prosecutor, like listed on state's witnesses, typed up all formally, and they didn't show up, they didn't actually appear at court, and when I contacted them, they were like, oh yeah, I remember that case, I remember being, I was locked up with the dude who did it, or supposedly did it. He never said anything though. So yeah, they were trying a lot of angles. They actually, when Mark was in jail for his third probation violation that year, yeah, they, and the last day there, they pulled out 34, I think, 30 plus inmates to question them about whether they'd heard Mark confess. Which is just an enormous amount of work. You know, which, I mean, that's one of the things that has, that has always surprised me about this particular investigation is they poured a lot of resources into this. Obviously, you know, it was an unusual, you know, killing, but it seems, it just seemed odd to me, you know, that you have, you know, the Georgia, the GBI, and the FBI, and every possible resource thrown at this one particular case. Yeah. It's odd. It might have something to do with Stanley Sutton's connection to the family, too. I mean, like, his commitment to getting a conviction. Susan knows more about that. But the other thing, like, what's odd to me is the fact that, like, you make an arrest, right? I assume you make an arrest because you already have the evidence, you know, that can prove that this guy did it. So, but in this case, you're like, we've made the arrest, now we're going to look for the evidence, and we can't find anything, so let's find Jehoz. So I am always going to be skeptical when, like, that's, your evidence comes after you have decided who it is, and you've made the charge, and made the arrest, and, you know, press charges. Is it incumbent upon police officers when they're, and detectives, obviously, when they're doing these investigations to make some sort of judgment on the quality of the evidence? I mean, it has to be. I mean, or is it just, is that, like, in this case, it appears that Detective Sutton used the jailhouse informants as a means to get a wiretap, despite the fact that there were huge evidentiary holes in what they were saying. First of all, is that considered acceptable amongst police officers? And then if it isn't, is there any recourse for bringing them, you know, bringing that up and having some sort of discipline taken out of them? Well, as for what's supposed to be, no, this is not what's supposed to be. But, like, as for recourse, Colin, probably, way ahead. Is there any recourse, Colin? No, I mean, not really for the police. A prosecutor could be disciplined for subordinate perjury, but that happens exceedingly or rarely in terms of the police. I mean, if they make up an informant to get an affidavit and to get a search warrant and a arrest warrant, that would lead to discipline, but you never really see any type of discipline for a police officer relying upon a tenuous or unreliable informant when they're submitting that application. Is that because police officers generally get conflicting information? I mean, let's face it, people's memories conflict all the time. I mean, so somebody could, you know, in good faith give a witness a witness statement that conflicts with evidence that the police already have and still have some useful information, correct? I'm probably looking at Colin. Yes, I'm looking at Colin. I know, like, he can see me. He can't see me. Yeah, when you look at it, the Innocence Project stats, 15% of those DNA exonerations are based upon informant testimony with the informants being incentivized. And despite that, there have been one or two prosecutors in the last decade who are disciplined for these wrongful convictions. It's even less with police officers. The amount of credibility and faith we put in their judgment is so high that you just don't see. I mean, the cases you see are really literally this informant was a fabrication. There wasn't an informant period. You don't see cases where there's any type of discipline based upon a police officer putting too much faith in an unreliable informant. Well, yes. And when your informant is telling you that they were using, that the supposed murderer wanted to use their truck to push another truck fast enough to make the truck burn up, it does beggar belief. I mean, but everybody knows that if you can get the truck going 88 miles per hour and you can get a lightning bolt to hit it, then the flux capacitor will work and you can go back to the 50s or to 2015. If you can find, Mark Free is standing in the back of that truck bed this whole time. Yes, for those of you who didn't hear the latest episode, one of the jailhouse informants tells a story that's so completely beggar's belief that you... You don't know that. You don't know that. It could have happened that way. It could have. You're right. I want that audio. I want to hear what Sutton sounds like when he's defending Bechstein. Well, exactly. You're right. And you had that bit of the transcript of him sort of defending him, saying, well, it's possible. No, it could have. It could have been a lot of things. You never know. Uh-huh. Yeah. But he was able to get a wiretap on the basis of that. And that's a real civil liberties issue. You know, if a police officer can do that. Now, don't get me wrong. You know, he may well have believed these informants. I have no evidence to the contrary. Well, he pulled the toll records. He did subpoena, like Joey's and David Brown, who's Mark's friend. He didn't do anything. His home phone records, and Joey's home phone records, and all the jail pay phones. So we could see there were no calls that matched what Bechstein was describing. So he knew. Or he just never looked at it after pulling a lot of records and paying a lot of money for it. So I don't think that happened. He knew. And again, there's no, there's no recourse in that situation. Colin? No, I mean, you're really looking at the, there wasn't even an informant. Yeah. And that's the case that we never talked about. Somebody has to be invisible. Keep repeating. I mean, there's actually an informant instruction that's given in court that says, going to your point, John before if you were in the courtroom as a juror, how much credibility would you give these jailhouse informants? There's actually an instruction. And we discussed in our first season case how tough it is to prove ineffective assistance of counsel. One of those rare circumstances beyond failure to contact an alibi witness where you have ineffective assistance is we're an attorney and an informant case does not ask for that. So we're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. But I'm not exactly sure what that's going to be because it does not ask for this instruction because it's so critical to convey to jurors. These are not reliable witnesses. And the net, of course, then gives deference to the prosecutor and the police officer because we all know informants are not reliable. So you can't really judge too harshly, the police officer, prosecutor who relies upon them. Even though, again, 15% of exonerations from DNA evidence is based upon this false testimony and statement by these informants. I actually have a question. does that instruction also require that the incentive that the informant has been given be disclosed yes and that is not complied with or they might have followed the news the recent story out of Orange County in California where for years they had this huge program of using informants and either there was complete non-disclosure or the prosecutors in the Orange County fell to disclose the benefit they were receiving and it's this huge scandal that's that's blowing up all these cases in Orange County but yeah absolutely they have to inform did they expect a benefit did they receive a benefit what was the nature that benefit and too often that's not done they actually had to go to a different county and get Beckstein's like charges dropped to the hold on him be released we could go out and actually his wife was with them in the hotel room too while they're waiting to send him in the taxi to go talk to Mark like I mean he's a person that was really there clear we are confirmed like Beckstein's his real identity ladies and gentlemen Claire Gilbert yeah he had at least 20 aliases we don't we don't know what his real identity is at all he has a lot of things he a lot of like social security numbers yeah he had a lot of different SSN number like he had a lot of IDs to go by so who knows did they ever that now he admitted under oath that he had been wait was it Beckstein who admitted under who admitted that he had been an informant in other cases and then was it there was a point at which he said or was that Ellis I'm trying I'm sorry they never been an informant form it exactly when there was proof that he was did Joey's attorney have knowledge of that or yeah they actually did because in fact Sutton talked to the GBI agent who used him as an informant and said hey this guy's gonna be informed for us now and apparently agent the agent here is the Eric Harris on the phone calls like yeah we used him he was great totally informed on these women we were trying to get for murder so and that wasn't stuff that the defense had so that was pretty clear that I mean yeah he was a repeat informant okay and I had to I found myself admiring the prosecutor Tammy Colston's just tortured logic in that she was she was having to introduce informants that that even she had no confidence in whatsoever then she had to bring somebody on who had who now she knew was going to come on stand and deny the thing that he'd said before which I mean I again I give her props cuz cuz she got away with it clearly God bless her but now did she in Georgia would say bless your heart but now at one point she it sounded as though she was testifying because at one point she she introduces the fact that was was it Ellis I believe who had he was the one who was up for rape and that he had been that they they had sentenced him and he no longer now had any incentive to tell the truth supposedly I'm using air quotes to the podcast and so now that's why he was coming in to the trial situation and lying supposedly but but that would be evidence I mean she's she's did she do that in her closing statement or where did she just told the jury that of course he's lying now because he didn't get a deal and he's really mad at us for not getting a deal so he's he of course he's lying now he's trying to get revenge on the state but he's telling truth before but she's allowed to do that in the closing statement yeah really okay I'm just drinking all that in well I wanted to get to some social media questions actually we have at Alice B. Carey who asks since jailhouse informant statements seem to be problematic most of the time do any states have restrictions on admitting them as evidence especially ones that have been recanted or is that on the defense attorneys to object to it question I'm not aware of any states that have that there's no states that have a ban there are certain states like Illinois where I used to teach for five years where they have a hearing that is pre-trial and that's the point at which the judge assesses the credibility and the consistency of the informant statements and determines is this are reliable enough informant to testify California recently had some legislation that dealt with this there are some states that are trying to heighten that hurdle for reliability and admissibility but there's no state that has a per se ban on informant testimony I have a question I learned a lot from my colleagues yeah actually the question is for Dennis which is I know like you have been involved in federal he's also a lawyer by the way other than being like I was here to read the underwear we actually we actually bring him along for the tattoos I can't do tattoos and liquor so I got to have Dennis like hanging out with me no but you in federal practice also I'm kind of curious like what is how our informants I've heard that they're used pretty heavily there I hate to deflect but but here's really what it comes down to in the courtroom you're trying to tell a story for the benefit of the fact finder whether it's the judge or the jury either side is trying to put on the best possible story and you pick and choose what contributes to that story if the jailhouse niche is the best that you have to help you tell your story use the jailhouse niche and then you just run the risk of the jury instruction and the opposing counsel shredding you in the closing argument that's about it and you and then you hope that your snitch does well on cross that that's what it comes down to I hate that it's like that but that's the foundation of our justice system it's two opposing part two opposing parties duking it out by telling competing versions of the same story that's it so you know I would like to see mechanisms built into to restrict those practices because Dennis Robinson the executive producer of undisclosed things that screwed up you know but that's just the way it is right now I but I will say though that's also part of the reason why I'm involved with undisclosed is that I truly believe in our ability to enact systemic change I think that if we get enough people on board with this stuff we can really push for the changes that are necessary in our justice system and make it more transparent more more free more more beneficial for the sake of justice if that makes any sense and I will say one of the most disheartening parts of this for me has been I'm talking to jurors and have them pretty much across the board tell me first oh they're a bunch of jailhouse informants but we didn't pay attention to them because everyone knows they're just trying to get out of jail for a day I'm like yeah great they realize this and then I'd ask them like what happened what their understanding was of what went on at the trial or like what the state's theory was if there was a theory most of them don't even know what theory was but they all would when they started trying to describe the facts that they thought they'd heard they would say facts that only came from jailhouse informants so the facts stuck in their brain they they told themselves they told me of course that they're lying we're not going to listen to jailhouse informants but those facts came in and the facts stuck in their brain they couldn't necessarily know where each fact came from so that the story was there that's all they needed them for it was the story and that that's not unlawful it's not even on the unethical a good lawyer preps his or her witnesses right I mean so unethical yeah me sitting up here is like yeah that's really screwed up it's not but legally like a lawyer you you prep witnesses right you show them the statements that they made on paper or the interviews that they did and they said hey would be really cool if when you're on the stand you said this and I'm gonna ask you this and then you're gonna say this cool and then when they get on cross to some degree I mean it happens well you can't direct them what to say but I mean you're basically highlighting portions of their statement you're saying like this is the stuff that I'm gonna ask you about all right it'd be cool if you remembered this that's that's just a practice of that's the way lowering works in the courtroom or if you're in Floyd County you just give him a copy of the transcript and then take it to within the stand that was that of Adam Elrod though and he really needed the help so well and actually our next thing is from Beth Schultz who says I don't even understand how the jailhouse snitch ploy works on a jury anywhere yet it obviously does do people seriously think that an accused murderer still awaiting trial will spontaneously confess to a complete stranger and not just confess but provide details of the crime it defies all logic and common sense and I I believe that people just we get our knowledge when we're when we're in on a jury we get our knowledge from the movies and you'd buy that in a movie sort of you know I and I think that as you were saying unfortunately so much of the system is now leaving it on the shoulders of the defense attorney and then the juries to judge these things you know that there's there's no other way to fix that other than by educating the juries a couple of weeks ago Kathleen Zellner who represents Stephen Avery and you know she not too long ago filed a motion to have the DNA evidence retested in the case tweeted out I thought that was interesting and she's a great advocate because she's a social media really smart because she's telling the she's telling you know the folks in Wisconsin I I know what to expect and everybody's watching you but she tweeted out I won't be surprised now if jailhouse informants come forward now that we're reexamining the evidence like she's expected that and I've had people at different at an instance project when Adnan's conviction was overturned say listen this is the time you have to be like he has to be really careful because it's common practice for the state to go looking for informants like when they're up against a wall and I just it's kind of terrifying as somebody who is in that position you don't know who's gonna say what for what incentive and there's almost no protection against it I feel like it's horrible but the foundation of our republic is on giving the case to the fact finder giving the case of the jury and just believing in our hearts that moral reasonable people are gonna make the right decision they're gonna see the wheat and they're gonna see the chaff and they're gonna decide the wheat that doesn't always happen and that sucks but that's just the way it is you know speaking of the of our republic we got one at jail Whitaker who says what direction do you think justice reform will go now given that we've got a new administration wow this is a podcast because you should see our faces yes Colin do you have any thoughts the one thing that we should gotten more attention and it did get some but the fact that to this day the president-elect is saying that five innocent teenagers should have been executed for a crime they're exonerated for I think that gives us a very frightening idea of what his there's in how the DOJ is gonna go and what their view is gonna be on exonerations yes and I had some hope because I because the Democratic side had a part of their platform as there was a re-enfranchisement for felons for voting rights and and they had a lot of ideas that I thought were very worthwhile pursuing I'm so I was very frustrated that that did not come to pass huge the number of people who can you were straight-up disenfranchised it's far greater than any gap between the votes but obviously the the Department of Justice and and the justice system is huge it's you know goes across America so there's you know I feel like on a local level there's so much happening and so many changes happening and you know with the conviction integrity units in different states I mean does does they does the federal does the federal system cause does it have to be something that sweeps across the nation or on a local level does that come into play more often than not Colin yeah well you know it's I think overall if you're looking at the picture you're gonna see criminal justice reform be based upon economics so there were some candidates who won who campaigned on getting rid of mandatory minimums advocating for shorter prison time and so that's something where bipartisan support says if you're looking at the state's finances or the federal government's finances it's better to have shorter prison terms on the other hand stocks for private prisons skyrocketed after Trump was elected and the momentum there had been that the current regime was essentially getting rid of private prisons the federal level with essentially state private prisons to follow suit and that's something where the economics support private prisons and therefore you're likely to see the progress time that slowed down we had marijuana legalized in some states and it seems there's momentum on that and that has again economic consequences so again I would imagine the next four years when you're looking at it both at the state and federal level you're gonna see criminal justice reform that is supportive of state and the federal economy and anything that cuts against that is less likely to get momentum can I can I add that you know somebody in my position Muslim who you know since the election last week I've been getting questions about the Muslim register I mean I'm my concern now I mean not obviously I'm concerned about all these issues but also is the criminalization of here to for protected activities right so the idea that there will be ideological test that if I fail I might actually like end up being held accountable like as a criminal for something I mean that we know beforehand and also I practice immigration law for a long time and immigration powers can be can have a real impact and immigration powers is not just about you know those people can you know you end up in detention that detention sometimes isn't those private prisons it's and you know it's their house with like state you know state level prisoners sometimes in federal prisons it all kind of ties in together these things are not like that you can't kind of parse them out so I think like if the administration really cracks down on immigration violations if they criminalize behavior if they start out registry this is all going to play together and I think given I mean I spent much of the last 18 months thinking hoping rhetoric maybe just campaigning but just given the kinds of potential cabinet appointments we're seeing I'm really wondering if it if it if it might come to pass if they registered me and take me to a camp you know somebody rescue me Susan break me out I will give you my cat until you until I can get out I don't remember of hand now what state it was but there was an official today who was trying to promote having paid protesting be criminalized yes oh yes that was a I believe in Washington state a state senator was was looking to do that I don't yeah and and by the way there's no proof that any protester has ever been paid at all there's going to be a fake story they came on the news in the Washington Post today so they gave us guys promoting fake news story about paying protesters it's all BS and it's likely good news though Georgia decided to someone in Georgia said introduce a bill that would not let you wear burgers in Georgia and they very very quickly so they took that down so it's not gonna happen that apparently it's still aligned too far thank God yeah it was a confusing election in many ways obviously the pot legalization and but also the several sort of law and order prosecutors got voted out of office which I thought I thought wow I'm getting a mixed message America what are you doing to me I wanted to thank you all for coming so much we are actually gonna take questions from the audience so we'll take questions about Joey about not not about how the show is made whatever you what whatever you want to ask so we're gonna send Veronica and John two things before we do one we need to go to Claire oh yes and we do have a question on I'll go to Claire first and then we'll do the question that will do audience yes Claire from from the Georgia innocence project wanted to remind everybody John oh John you're supposed to read Claire's thing well yes what it was was we wanted to remind where you can donate to the Georgia innocence project and you can do it now by texting the word Joey to 91999 all y'all you got your phones they're right here you just do it right now but thank you that is that is a donation to the Georgia innocence project it'll help the Georgia innocence project fight to free Joey Watkins and there are other clients as well and it is tax deductible so you know it makes it super easy to donate to Georgia innocence project yes 91999 and the word is Joey yeah so yeah so if if you've got any questions we would love to hear them can I just say the amount of work that GIP is doing on like calling a shoestring budget like really overly fair shoestrings because they they were working out of a nail salon when I first met them like I'm not you had power by then I think I'm not sure you had internet yet no he no he but you did have power by that point they hadn't had it before and they were they have a lot of cases there are a lot of cases in Georgia that need attention not just Joey Joey is not there are lots of people like Joey right now and they can do a lot of great work if they have resources to do it but anyone that is watching or listening if you could just pick up your phone now and text Joey to 91999 and just donate $5 that's all we're asking is $5 but if everyone who is listening or watching this right now donates $5 to the Georgia innocence project our budget will be set for the next year and we'll be able to hire an attorney another attorney to help us work these cases and that would be absolutely fantastic it's pretty cool to see all these people doing yes it's awesome thank you thank you very much time it's text Joey 91999 thank you one question and then I'll go right over here from so call me Katie 11 I feel the facts of this case are too absurd to believe have you all been able to contact any of the jurors yes I've tried to the jurors and I mean to some extent I almost found it not unfair but there's been a lot of comments online about how could the jury possibly believe this or like I mean people really like how stupid is this jury it's not what the problem was here that's not what happened it wasn't that there was bunch of stupid jurors because quite honestly I think a lot of people in that jury would have the same exact verdict it wasn't the jury that failed it was the system because the jury sat there and listened to a lot of people get up there and tell a lot of stories about what a bad bad person Joey was and all the terrible things he'd done and with no apparent reason to lie and that's really persuasive evidence when you don't commit all these like how on earth could it's totally not possible that police department can get that many kids up there to lie about all this crazy stuff that's not real that's impossible and that's not an unfair like conclusion to reach so and also remember what you're hearing on the show isn't just what the jury heard you're also hearing what was in the police notes which the fence didn't have as well as like more recent investigation so this is what you're hearing the show is one what was testified to you and to the impeachment for a lot of the witnesses in this case only one was there and the reasons why it was all bogus never came in I want to tag on to what Susan say because one thing that she said was really important was that the system failed right and I don't intend to diminish Joey Watkins case but there are thousands of Joey Watkins across this country and that's what drives me nuts how many wrongful conviction podcast are taking on that work right now we've got Bob Ruffett Ruffett truth truth and justice looking at dozens of cases right now and you know it would be great and I'm sure she will Susan Susan is going to work to overturn Joey Watkins conviction I mean the whole team is but what really matters is this systemic change I mean that's really what we need and I I hope that that's what undisclosed does is that it compels our huge audience to try to persuade legislators to make changes because that's what really matters is the systemic effect and I think that's what we got to focus on and if you haven't already listened to Brooks podcast for getting some actual innocence where she covers all these cases where and people women and men who have been exonerated but their stories are often just as crazy broke of actual innocence where are you and I believe there was a question over there we get a microphone just throw it at her at the underwear commercials but okay so here's the question you talk a lot about changing the criminal justice system here's your magic wand you talk about like we should change it but what do you mean by that like what here's your magic wand how do you change it we're so smart we figure out how to challenge yeah number one you need to increase funding to public defenders offices that is the endemic problem eighty percent of defendants in this country have public defenders 90 percent in capital cases and these public defenders are overwhelmed with a number of cases so that is sort of ground zero of where that the crisis starts so better funding the public defenders offices and then more open discovery you need to have a freer flow of information because so many of these both wrongful convictions after trial but more importantly there have been Supreme Court cases that have really limited the amount of discovery a defendant is entitled to before they accept a plea bargain or plead guilty we really need to fundamentally change the way whether based upon precedent or just prosecutors offices stepping up and giving that information to defense early in the process so they can see their options and decide what they need to do so those are the first two things I would hit right away is finding a public defender's offices and broadening discovery rules I'll tag on a couple I don't quite know how to approach this because I think it's a cultural problem but we have to find a way to disincentivize wins versus losses in the court system I mean I yeah it's it's adversary it's an adversarial system and I mean I hate to steal from Wilson Winston Churchill and his quote about democracy it's like the best worst form of of seeking justice you know the adversarial system but I don't think that it should be the role of prosecutors to win cases I think it should be the role of prosecutors to administer justice but right now most prosecutors are elected and for the most part they're elected based on their ability to win cases and that requires a cultural shift I'll say the same thing about judges I'm just not a fan of elected judgeship it's just yeah to some degree you're placating the whims of of the populist mass you know and I just I think appointments are a better system because you're more likely to get judges who are looking to seek just results despite the fact that you might achieve unpopular outcomes you know so those are the two I would tackle Bob rough right now on truth and justice when he's like exploring cases out of Smith County Texas and in one of the episodes I heard not long ago I'm a little behind sorry Bob but one of the he mentioned that in the particular county where these cases are coming out of if the prosecutors lose three cases they lose their job I mean that is like you know that gives so much incentive to rend and break the rule I'm like do what you need to do to get the win now I'm not a very vengeful person but what I would tack on is that I feel really strongly that accountability measures need to be put in place California recently I think they I think they passed the legislation where they make Brady violations which everybody should know about because Colin has talked about a hundred times that you know when you willfully when you are withholding evidence that's exculpatory willingly that in that that is actually a felony and so I mean that is a measure that you know if you want checks and balances that's how you get checks it's like how do you hold prosecutors who you have prosecutors who become judges Colston and others like how do you hold people accountable if they can just get away with being you know unethical or using the rules you know not in the fair way but that's chicken in the egg when it comes to our democracy is that the accountability is built into voting for these prosecutors right and I don't have it I don't have I'm not proposing a solution I'm just saying that's kind of where we stand right now and I think it requires a cultural shift like just a revisit of how we see the adversarial system at large yes my my dumb idea was the whole one police idea but a lot of there's a lot of support amongst you guys clearly but no but just the idea that we have we have 18 overlapping different you know police agencies and organizations and they they feud over over who's got you know who can have a case who you know and and we have elected sheriffs and if you listen to the in the dark podcast there's that's a big eye-opener in terms of I am embarrassed to say I did not even know what the sheriff in my in Los Angeles does I have no idea he's a lovely guy but but I you know I feel like I don't understand why we have multi overlapping bureaucracies it doesn't seem like it makes any sense to me and but also Susan had the wonderful idea of providing jurors with transcripts at the end of the day which I think you know we're perfectly because I can see issues too but I just don't think it's realistic or fair to expect me there's no way I could ever look listen to a trial and then like go back like yeah I know what happened because without being able to compare and go back you really can't reach a human minds don't work that way mine certainly doesn't do we have any other questions okay in the back yes hi thank you first off like apparently all of the podcast I listen to are here in here now this is the greatest thing ever you guys are my drive to work but so my question is it sounds like between this one and like you know I've been listening to break down as well at your you know suggestion and it sounds like there's a lot of testimony that can come in based on you know character issues and whatnot and it sounds like this all started from one person's dislike of Joey and gathered a lot of other people's dislike of Joey so my question is really have you been able to reconnect with Brianne or any of those folks and kind of how will that we haven't really heard about her for a while so I was wondering what's going on with that if anything yeah Brianne Claire did speak to Brianne early on I think probably December or November of 2015 and she was not interested in speaking anymore we did try and reach out to her we never heard back so I assume she's decided not to comment which understandable other witnesses in the case have similarly not one of just like Adam Elrod didn't want to talk to me yeah like we put it was I kept he said like I don't want to talk to you I kept asking questions try to keep on the phone he's like did you not hear me the first time that was the end of that and then Chad Redden we tried to talk to I think we had some hope there because he was yeah there was like it seemed like a first he was going to talk and then I think he's like Claire like an anchor tech saying like what was it that was that so no unfortunately the the key witnesses in the case for the most part they don't want to talk I should mention we haven't done it yet but Susan went to Emory and recorded an addendum episode that we're hoping to use at some point in the next couple of months in front of an evidence class and character issues or relevance issues under four or three and character issues under column 600 series for witnesses sorry that all comes up like they talk about that from a not yet lawyer perspective in a way that helps the audience understand it so we're looking to broadcast that whenever I think eighth with your oh yeah okay so we're looking to broadcast that in December so I think it'll explain it a lot better around that time I also just want to comment that I think it's really rare to like find like if you revisit cases like find witnesses who now I just want to adjourn or anybody who wants to like go back to that time and talk about it again I think in a lot of cases people are just done they're done they don't want to go back there they don't especially want to revisit they don't want to consider the fact that maybe they got something wrong or maybe they helped further a result that was an unjust result result I mean in the nonce case we've had you know the folks who've done the investigative had had a lot of trouble including you know some of us but getting people just don't want to talk it's really interesting they just they don't want to go back there a lot of witnesses I have talked to you clearly didn't want to but they for whatever reason decided that they felt they decided to talk to us and I very grateful for that it was very clear it was not easy for them and they kind of wish it could have been avoided but they felt like they had an obligation or some sense of wanting to explain things but none of them it's not fun it was terrible back then it's terrible now any other questions okay I was wondering whether any of the informants were given polygraphs and if that's even any kind of tool that is used to gauge the reliability of informants or snitches not in this case but it was me anything in the practice that I that I've observed polygraphs nowadays are more so used to try to get a suspect to flip like polygraphs are they're not reliable in court you can't use them in court as for veracity evidence just from what I've seen polys are now so used where you'll take a suspect who just doesn't know what's up you'll hook them up to and say alright we know you're lying and this machine is gonna prove it and then they they're like alright well I'm hooked up the machine I might as well confess that that's how policies nowadays yeah I actually was an investigator for the prosecutor's office in New Jersey for seven and a half years so I'm wondering like you said there is not one police there is not one way that we all do it for me I was with the sex abuse rape assault unit so in Georgia is there not an investigator what I was tasked with to do was basically take the police's file and go back and research and make sure they actually cross their teeth and dotted every single eye before we let anyone come into the court so it's Georgia not set up that way like New Jersey is there was an investigator for the DA he did Harkness hey Claire and let me John Harkness Harkins he was there was investigator for the DA's office he did interview witnesses yeah podcasting is funny because Claire's got this look on her face like I don't think Claire's thinking something I know she is but I'm like there's a whole back story it sounds like a fantastic idea but I don't think it was done but Harkins did go through and talk to a lot of witnesses and I've heard interesting stories about what happened there too yeah I'm not sure it was a necessarily a check on the police it was not a check that was not what it was I got so many okay I'm sorry I have to be a little bit caddy and I have to go back to Brian so a couple things one you guys started this season saying that Joey is not like your typical nice guy he's not gonna be easy person to bring up and Brian made some pretty strong assaults charges against him and I want to know if Joey's responded to them or puts any validity in them and also if you found any connection between Brian and law enforcement or anything because she seems to have a really inside knowledge of how the system works Joey all the physical abuse claims that she's made Joey is totally denied no one's ever seen them there's no witnesses there's no evidence beyond what Brianna said and there's no way just we mean that's what we have right now and there are lots of reasons people who are abused don't come forward so you have to look at it as a whole in this case there is no supporting evidence and there are situations that there were some kids there should have been but now he was verbally abusive I've seen witness statements describing like him yelling at her things like that but as far as the claims like the shotgun and the bleach thrown in the shower that that's where we are we have those claims and that's what we're left with but no Joey has denied all of that I mean you have to be very careful in these kinds of cases I mean there are you know it's not uncommon that victims of the domestic violence or intimate partner violence aren't able to provide evidence of it I will say though that the fact that it's not just that Brianna wasn't able to or I'm sorry that Brianna wasn't able to provide evidence but also that I felt I don't think there's a you can recognize any kind of pattern that Joey was like this with any other girlfriend I think that also you know we have to weigh that into I will say one thing I wish I dressed in the podcast and didn't you hear at one point and the Robinson Kelly Robinson's tape when Sutton's talking to her he says I've talked to six other girls and they've all said the same thing about what he's done to done to them I don't want you to be the next one that he does this to that's not as far as I can tell there's no basis for that I've talked to like I've talked to ex-girlfriends and they've not one of them's ever said he's been abusive Aslan Hogue the girl he was dating at the time that Isaac was murdered did her parents filed a stalking warrant alleging he like called her and so there's that and that that's there is one case there but that's not like physically abusive there's no other witness who said that and like Erica who dated both Isaac and Joey has said that Joey there's never any abusive tendencies that she ever saw when she was with him my question pertains to a past episode I think one of the things I found most absurd about this case was that Joey was apparently the leader of a very violent gang terrorizing the streets of Rome County or sorry Rome and my question is if there are actual FBI definition of a gang could me and my three friends be considered a gang terrorizing the streets of the best of Maryland I mean I just really want to know I was really really shocked that he that was considered a gang him one other person and other person he didn't really even know that well more than two and then also pattern conduct but yeah more than two in the federal most law enforcement agencies use a defined criteria but it's mostly for statistical tracking so for example if they want to track gang violence in a certain jurisdiction or whatever it's got a fit that define criteria I don't know if that's public I know in terrorism case there is a definition and I can't remember the rules 133 or something that's wrong but yeah there is a defined criteria and they hit all the points I needed to in that report and it doesn't necessarily have legal weight Colin and you could check me on that I mean yeah it's just it's mostly for stats tracking unfortunately I doubt the FBI looked at them as a gang so one thing that Corey Jacobs told me when he's a Sutton's nephew he's the the Home Depot parking like I is that he's I don't know if it's just he says that Sutton went to the FBI and trained there at some point so yeah I'm not sure what a contrary it was apparently he had some stint the FBI I'm just gonna hazard a guess the Georgia Bureau of Investigations has a training academy I think outside of Atlanta that the FBI comes down and does courses for and I know by virtue of proximity like geographic proximity the Georgia sends a lot of its police department through those courses so it might have been something remote but it's always like in law enforcement cases like that the law enforcement is gonna make itself try to sound like more sexy or just like bolsters credentials because it'll help out when you're on the stand or help out when you're trying to investigate like a joint case like well I worked with the FBI I'm Captain badass you know but it's but that but it but we should only lend that lend that the credibility that it deserves and oftentimes it doesn't deserve that credibility and I think we see that in Sutton's case so I know you guys have covered this in past episodes but what are the legal avenues at this point I know I know previously you had said there's very limited legal avenues to solve this for Joey or where he has some some chances here in court so if you can maybe talk a little bit about that without you know I know legal strategy is something you guys are probably keeping close to the vest but any sort of options at this point roads that he can travel down the options are limited it's a very very high burden of the stage and there are a few like depending on what kind of facts aren't case like this there are a few routes you can go and you know it's there's nothing that doesn't I can't imagine any evidence you could find that'd be easy at this point like there's nothing I can't even think of what evidence would be like the magic ticket because there isn't like there's nothing that could be that compelling to you know like well yep that's game over we're done here because every witness could recant wouldn't mean anything I mean we could have more people saying oh yeah I heard this guy confessing that wouldn't mean anything because that's happened a lot in this case already but there are routes and the GIP is working very hard to find a way forward here I'm just gonna add that where there is Susan there is a way I have Zazzle if you're listening t-shirts now I have you know I mean I I have I feel you know I feel very hopeful that that we're gonna find a way I'm not we Susan's we just tag along for the glory like a non-satanic dog said there's always room for hope yeah I know you all had an event in Rome just in the past couple of weeks I'm really interested to know what have been the impacts in Rome I mean either anecdotally or do you have any sort of data in terms of how many people are actually listening to this in Rome and have you do you have any kind of gauge of what popular opinion is now or has you know opinion have opinion shifted in the court of public opinion in Rome the guy the coffee shop knows my name now she waits in the coffee shop yeah I do it's pretty cool coffee shop there's like one so I'm always there between like interviews trying to like wait someone to call me I will say it's gotten so we had two meet-ups this past week we had one in Atlanta and then one in Rome and they're both great and a lot of people came out to one in Atlanta downtown midtown and it was great to one there but a stark difference I noticed I found interesting was that at the Rome meet-up we had people showing up like from their jobs like wearing like their coveralls from like their job at the auto shop and like their nurse tag still on so it's a very different kind of crowd and it was very much people in the community who were concerned about what they were hearing and like coming straight from work and wanting to know more about like what and got almighty happen in their town what county's paying attention right thing I would add to that is that when I was walking over here this evening I got a call from the Rome News Tribune which is the major newspaper in Rome and we've had a bit of a hard time getting them involved I think they maybe did one make one story on Joey's case recently and then briefly cover to meet up but they're gonna do what sounds like a pretty big story on Sunday mainly around the lawsuit about the trial tapes and then a little bit about Joey's future legal options so that's fantastic to get the newspaper interested and and there's a lot more people in the local community interested now than there ever was before and we also got some feedback Susan and I did at the meetup that attorneys in Rome are starting to pay a lot of attention to this podcast and are quite horrified by what they're hearing which is a very good sign and I've been able to talk to a lot of witnesses again like I've been surprised continually people that I didn't expect to want it to come forward that have and have felt a lot have listened to the podcast pay attention and feel horrified by what happened and feel guilt even where no guilt's deserved about them not knowing what was going on I mean they couldn't have known but that sense of guilt definitely is with a lot of them but I've not been able to talk I've had off the record conversations with some of Rome police and that was that ended and no one else no Floyd County officers no one in the DA's office no one in authority is gonna talk to me we have time for two more questions and then I think Mithil has some follow-up questions that came in online so I know I was standing next to here and then I'll go up to the front and I know you guys will be available after I'm a forensic psychology student at George Washington University and in my children and adolescents in the justice system class the first thing we learn is how developmentally different juveniles are from adults and how that plays a role in the justice system so since Adnan and Joey and their friends were all juveniles at the time of the alleged offense and the witnesses statements really incriminated and eventually led to the conviction of both of them how do you think police can better tailor maybe their interrogation tactics or how they handle juveniles since this led to a conviction of both people who we believe aren't guilty so how do you think that police can better handle juveniles in the justice system so this doesn't keep happening I'll note that Joey was actually he was 19th the time this happened so he was not a juvenile I mean still pretty I would I would not call his brain fully developed that time I think it's important to note that in exact juvenile exonerations and I'm talking when I say exoneration that means it's been proven that this person is innocent of a crime 38% of them falsely confessed those juveniles like that is how vulnerable they are to like interrogation and pressure and fatigue and all these things and I mean something as simple as making sure there's a parent or an attorney in the room giving them access to an attorney before they're even read their Miranda rights I mean these are the kinds of things other countries have these protections in place you know they have I can't remember these special advocates who like you know step in and make sure that juvenile has you know the legal protections and they understand these but we don't we don't have this these in place I think the most prominent example in all of our minds is obviously Brenna Desi because you watch making your murdering it like what the hell is this America how is that possible but in my opinion Jeff Deskevich's story is by far the best story of a juvenile interrogation Brooke did it on episode 8 yeah somewhere around there so listen to actual innocence episode 8 with Jeff Deskevich in my so there are different interviewing interrogation techniques that police use like for example and I want to say this is the most respectful way possible when interviewing a victim of sexual assault there is a very specific and scientifically verifiable forensic examination and that that should occur and and kind of outlines what types of questions you should ask in order not to retraumatize the victim and in order to get the evidence that you want in my opinion there should be a similar process for juvenile defendants the problem therein is that most police most prosecutors and I'd say the public at large yeah public at large thinks well if this person's capable of committing an adult crime and they're capable of submitting themselves from an adult interrogation that's how we're gonna treat them and that's false that that isn't the way it should be and again that requires a cultural shift but I would be a proponent of specific and tailored forensic examinations forensic interrogations of juveniles of a certain age and of a certain mindset in order to get to the truth not to get them to confess but unfortunately system right now is built to get them to confess and that's just the way it is because it's a blurry line because in this case especially like who is a defendant and who is a witness I mean you don't know until you find out who's gonna start talking and confessing to you like Josh but they told it quite a few of the the kids the teenagers in this case they were all like under 20 20 and younger they were young and they told many of them like if I find out you were lying I'm gonna come back and charge you of conspiracy commit murder so at that time I'm technically a witness but the same techniques being used on them that could have led to a false convict false confession so I just had to test it out when you were talking about talking with the jurors earlier I was thinking about back and near the beginning of the podcast when you were discussing with Joey about how what the big turn of event was the dogs and dog killing and whatnot data any of the jurors touch on that as prior law enforcement that was really interesting all of them yeah the dogs were the I mean it was always pretty much a script I talked well actually that's not true there was one juror he wasn't really one juror thought it was a hog but for the most part like overwhelmingly like I talked to him like oh yeah I remember that case they killed dogs and the cell phone prove they did it you just offer yourself as a resource to us your prior law enforcement kids can you just give your thoughts on like listen by kissing what you think and some background on who you are sorry so with Sutton I actually used to work at Quantico so I know that the FBI economy a lot of officers come there for resources and gang violence and things like that so as as you were saying 2 plus is considered a gang you know it's very minimal but yes yes there's your power in numbers as an off as a prior officer it's a very interesting case to learn about how they got this evidence and how they talked to these individuals especially juveniles and and whatnot it's it's an eye-opener I mean this is back in 90s in 2000 so it was right around the time that this all occurred and and add non-story and she got me hooked on it and I'm like how is all this possible why is this possible so it's definitely interesting and and coming from Georgia you hit on Paulding County my family lives in Paulding County right but didn't apologize Pauling no it's it's hilarious it's just the ties and we're like we're gonna go visit Rome if you meet the last couple yeah that's a couple more social media questions tell him yes by the way all right so you guys already answered one of the questions from Katie Suzanne she's the one who asked about the jurors and whether or not they had been contacted so she had a couple of follow-ups she says I guess more of what I was asking was whether jurors have said whether there was just so much information introduced a trial versus one specific story being overwhelmingly persuasive IE what was introduced that made them think that Joey was guilty also what was so different regarding some of evidence at Mark's trial versus Joyce we'll get into the latter one later in the episode it's a complex issue and I think there's not really one theory on what happened differently or what explains different verdicts I am inclined to think that Mark just got lucky I don't necessarily think there was a like a different it's just it's different jury different set and you know you get one strong personality on the jury who says there's no real evidence here I'm not moving and she can convince the rest of them but there were differences in the trials which could also explain it to you like there were significant differences Fred Sims and the prosecutor and Mark's trial did not call the same witnesses didn't have the same tactics so it's it's not really a you know scientific study here what was different as for the jurors yeah it seems that probably that I think 90% of them all said dogs himself and then they they start talking or more so after they think about the case a bit they remember what happened but like their first memories before they start to like go back all the way it's always almost always those two things and then they start talking about oh he pulled a shotgun and Brian or oh all his buddies were terrible too and they were covering up for him which that one I'm still confused about because like dude didn't have anyone covering for them they were all like talking over they could but the fact that a lot people came from print from jail and they had like minor ish records and for like they seem like bad people and he's hanging bad people and there's all these stories I think it mostly comes down to they could not conceive of a reason that all these kids would lie that just seemed beyond belief to them so John it's up to you if you want to do one more or not otherwise I was told me he said to take it we got it yes we got to wrap this up folks I did want to direct your attention to Patrick in the in the back Patrick is the Cortes he does the music to the show so great before yes one more point from Claire actually one more very quick point for every one of you who pick up your phone and texted Joey to 91999 and for those of you who are listening and gonna watch this live who do the same they all pop up pop up on my phone here and I can see and I'm gonna try not to cry but I am so grateful and I'm humbled and honored talking to the bike thank you for supporting our cause thank you all for coming tonight we're so grateful that you made the time and you and you traveled from near and far I'm sure and please listen to we'll have another addendum next next Thursday and another another new episode dropping on Monday of next week so thank you for coming and thank you to New America once again thank you guys no no it did take Susan sending him a very interesting graphic involving cubic hair but it works question actually why me what my own business I was really a couple of Twitter questions I don't know how this happened I was kind of this probably won't make the episode and Rebecca is Rebecca did she go to so our producer went to cut this so we could drop it at eight I was really hoping we would do some inside baseball stuff like okay yeah I'm I'm happy to talk about how yeah so whoever wants to kick it off and talk about how it went down everybody has to listen to Rebecca Levoix podcast prime writers are amazing fantastic and these are their stories and these are their stories so I'll make it real corporate and tell you how the addendum thing went down right um it's basically this so undisclosed came about as a vehicle for fundraising for Adnan's Trust right and we I'm not ashamed to say we made a lot of money doing that which is which is great because it's money that goes to Adnan's defense like a legit we didn't make a dime for a year and a half personally because it all went to Adnan's defense so when they wanted to do a second season I kind of didn't like I don't know how to say it but you said yeah you know that's to be cool to help out but what I realized and they asked me to help with the business part what I realized is that we were essentially releasing a second episode every week but we were calling it an addendum which means we weren't making as much money off of it because when you go to sponsors and you say well we've got an episode but then we've got an addendum even though it's like almost the same content sponsors are like well I'll pay this much to host to sponsor on the addendum and I just thought that was completely on set and also Colin and Susan and Robbie were putting a ton of work into the addendum I mean it was like it was like legit carrying an episodic weight which I mean because you have the three of us doing the addendums at the episode so like it was the same format same like style like yeah so it just without just the three of us it wasn't working to be like in a different format that what we wanted was like a questions and like exploring the meta behind like that episode getting more into like random details that really aren't part of a episode but are interesting but what just us three and what's gonna happen and we just weren't making as much money as we were for episodes right that's what it comes up but we're but we're paying the same for production cost and it was the same recording time is the same investigative time so it just it didn't benefit from a cost examination perspective so I mean I don't know if we've ever talked about it but me and you are both huge walking deadfins right yeah like huge like I'm into the comics and everything yeah yeah that's what I come down to but I think we're just going back and forth like well how could we lower the cost of doing an addendum but also give fans something that they can chew on and the idea for the panel discussion came up and I don't know how is Susan you were Susan's brainchild I just like your work but also you tweeted really good questions so like that's why I noticed you like I'm like wow it's John Crier and he's actually asking stuff that's important for us to address so that's kind of how I think I wrote to you I was like sitting on a Marta one day trying to get to like up to my parents place and I was like this will never work it's a terrible idea we shouldn't do it but like maybe John Crier we were all on the email and then the question was like well who's gonna ask him and I was like okay I'll ask no no no no I was joking around I have a bad sense humor that you can't tell them joking or not and so I was totally kidding I made this like little graphic thing that was totally a joke it was not serious it was like a haha look at this funny in between the three of us before John it was or four of us but we call on there was just it was a graphic just for our little yeah so I sent it around like ha look at this and Robbie is like oh she's being serious let's send to John Crier and tell me and I'm like Robbie you didn't just do that I figured if anybody could appreciate the pubic heart it would be John I was scared to death I thought you were John I honestly thought like holy crap this is John like John Crier is a megastar John Crier is gonna look at this and be like who are you people I would love to hear what your thought was when you got that request well I had loved the first season of Undisclosed I enjoyed the addendums I I thought oh there's so much to talk about if you were gonna have a chat show about it and so for me it was it was it would it would be like if you love Letterman and Letterman calls you up the next day and says hey you want to host the show you know it was it was like that for me because I was I was a fan and I'm fascinated by the legal system and criminal justice in general and when you're in entertainment you know because we portray it so often and do such a horrible job I I and because I'd served on a jury a couple of times I saw how that was warping how a jury serves and I thought oh no this is terrible there's got to be some way to fix it and so when I but just you know the graphic was it was it said will you be our Chris Hardwick John and it had yes duck yes will you be our Chris Hardwick ducky and and it was a it was like a ribbon and then a couple of hearts over the ribbon and then curly cues of what appeared to be put here around the heart and but I'm trying to figure out where did you get I mean why why make just googled like Valentine and then like put some text on it because it was not supposed to leave a little circle email so it was a little odd I thought it was a mixed message but but Robbie sent me a lovely note just saying hey I know it just bear with me for a second I'm gonna pitch you an idea and I thought it was and I thought and I replied immediately right yeah and when I when I told them I don't think anybody believe they're like what he said yes and then we went through your Twitter feed what you had tweeted on disclosed and I was I was shocked but I was also really pleased at how engaging your questions were like how deep tissue you're thinking of what of our podcast was and one of the things that we were going for with the addendum was to kind of be the bridge between the lawyer and the listener you know I mean one of one of my fears is as the guy that helps put this on is like we go to deep tissue sometimes to go to lawyer and we need to just step back breathe and just talk about it from a non-lawyer perspective and you bring that 10 times over just you know I like the deep stuff and I think I think a lot of people do and I just want to mention that John every week donates all his proceeds to amazing causes which is I should integrate those better into the show because I always leave it to the end and you know everybody you know it's a podcast everybody but but yes I'm and it's been great because I get because people come to me with these things and I you know they're all new to me and and just it amazes me it never ceases to amaze me how many ways people try to help yeah there are a lot of scripts I never heard of tell you yeah like someone does that that's awesome yeah it's remarkable absolutely remarkable that the listener engagement is amazing I guess that reminds me I have some checks to write we just yeah but the other story about bringing John Crier on involves Colin and the funny thing about working with Colin is Colin is always like okay we could do that you know it's like Colin writes an email it's like yeah I would support that or just something like a permanent voice of reason yeah and he's unfairly like good at not scram recordings yes it's like a machine it's remarkable like he screwed up once and said like oh sorry guys like thank god you're human just adjusted his code somewhere and by the way by the way magnificent job hosting the addendum last week remarkable and finally I understand why you do the references he explained why he does the references because as a professor and as an educator though the references are what really you know bring it home for people and I was like oh my god he doesn't he's not he's not just trying to show off because they're obscure sometimes let's face it they are obscure but always inspired we can do Robby is huge on selfies we can do like selfies and like a ton of them like yes yes we will hang out thank you guys so much