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Season Seven: Hunters Among Us Part I
1 Plays3 seconds ago
In this episode, we start talking about a series of terrifying cases involving a community in Wisconsin.
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Transcript
Introduction and Graphic Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Researching Crime Stories: A Rabbit Hole
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:58
Speaker
I get down these rabbit holes and I've talked about this before. We actually like opened this season on one topic. And then I talked about one of the rabbit holes I'd gone down looking for somebody's name.
Unconnected But Similar Cases in Wisconsin
00:01:10
Speaker
This one's a little bit different.
00:01:13
Speaker
There's a couple of cases kind of tied together and the same state that had, they don't have similarities. They just had communities in common. I was going to say, i don't know that tied together is the right word, but the communities are similar. And
Understanding Plea Deals: A Flawed System
00:01:31
Speaker
it that when things like this happen, I actually don't know like what to make of it, except that it is an oddity, right? Right.
00:01:41
Speaker
I think. I think it's an oddity. Right. Well, so here's how this all starts. i was trying to figure out This would have last year around Christmas.
00:01:53
Speaker
I was trying to figure out this order of a court in Wisconsin. And the Wisconsin Court of Appeals was ruling on a case related to this kid, Kamari Lewis.
00:02:07
Speaker
Kamari Lewis had come before ah the Wisconsin court on an old matter. It has an appeal filed in 2024, so it's not that old, but it's a case from 2020, and I'll talk about it in just a second.
00:02:20
Speaker
Anytime i see somebody appealing a judgment with a guilty plea attached, I get really fascinated, and like, look what happened there that they didn't expect. And that's what this kid was doing. Really quick before you get into that, would you say that I am...
00:02:41
Speaker
incorrect in saying that a lot of people are trying to get through the process in a way that they do not fully comprehend what they're doing when they're taking a plea agreement.
Jail Conditions and Their Impact
00:03:01
Speaker
Yes. Okay. Like not just like they literally are just like, okay, I will literally do anything I possibly can to not have to wake up tomorrow and deal with this.
00:03:14
Speaker
I think, I think that's one way to look at it. And I agree with that for like a percentage of the cases. I couldn't say exactly what the percentage was, but I also think for people who have never been in jail and I'm not talking about prison,
00:03:30
Speaker
I mean, usually to get to prison, you have to go through jail. But I'm not talking about prisons themselves. because And your mileage may vary. i am sure most people's experiences with prison, they're not going to come back and be like, this is good.
00:03:45
Speaker
But there's something particularly horrible about jail. And so that is to say the typically cinder block built warehouse of human beings that are being kept ahead of a trial.
00:04:01
Speaker
And I'm not i'm not speaking on like the gravity of the crime or anything like that right a second. I'm just speaking on how you get through the process.
00:04:15
Speaker
Right. And jail is startling. It is very startling. And it's not like when I say like you're being warehoused, you are literally being warehoused because they are typically a local jail. And like, you know, this will vary in the bigger cities, but a local jail, you're being held in a way that's pretty much dehumanizing.
00:04:38
Speaker
What I've thought is... Like they literally don't care they're just trying to basically keep you alive.
00:04:50
Speaker
i think those things fall into dehumanizing, but I'm with you. Okay, yeah, I guess you're right. But, like, dehumanizing, to me, like, has to go more on the negative side of a spectrum. you mean, like, more, like, torture or... Or something like that, because I don't necessarily think... i Now, don't get me wrong, I feel like a lot of people coming out of, like, normal society going into jail would find it to be torturous. But I think that...
00:05:20
Speaker
ah it's not necessarily negative. Like they're just not nice to you or and they're certainly not accommodating, right? It's like, I need you to stay alive until you get through your court case and they do something else with you, which would be like prison or you're exonerated and you're let out or whatever. But so I don't necessarily think that um it's,
Case Study: Murder, Plea Deals, and Justice System Flaws
00:05:47
Speaker
i I associate de dehumanizing with something bad, but it's not necessarily the worst thing on earth to just, because you have access to nothing in jail. Yeah. atly Yeah. That's where I was headed.
00:06:03
Speaker
i I work in a jail every day. Like I i go to a jail four or five days a week and I sit in a little box room with a big glass partition and speak through a speaker to people on the other side Who are there for, like, so my assignment is major felonies. Most of the time it's homicide, sexual assault, some type of crimes to do with children.
00:06:31
Speaker
But that's not every single case because there are unique aspects to extradition cases. There are some misdemeanors that people have committed so many of these misdemeanors that like the next habitual thing they get, it's actually a low level felony, but it comes with like a pretty hefty time in prison for them.
00:06:52
Speaker
So I'm talking to people across the spectrum and occasionally I go in and do like somebody that's on, a domestic violence hold or like there for habitual DUI or like DUI and a misdemeanor death by vehicle or something like that.
00:07:08
Speaker
For the most part, the the reason I bring all that up is for the most part, um the people I'm talking to are for some reason or another are not getting out of jail soon.
00:07:20
Speaker
um That could be the bond. It could be the lack of bond. And, you know, it, Anything that you can think of that can hold people in jail, I've probably encountered it at at some point or another. And the weird part about it all isn't – it's kind of – it's what you were saying. It's the absence of things. There's no real programs in there.
00:07:45
Speaker
um Most of those places are short-staffed, and they're just kind of shuffling people through. They're not set up for, like, living like a prison right?
00:07:56
Speaker
Right. They're literally, I mean, they're set up, like, to hold people temporarily. And so, like, when you get, like, you if you go through the ah judicial process and you are sent to prison, when you get to prison, they are set up to, for it.
00:08:13
Speaker
people to live there, right? And they have the programs in place and they have like so much more access to like things that the jail just doesn't have because they don't bother with it because they literally just need you to get through this side of the justice system. How many people would you say that you're practically the only person that person talks to in the on the outside world?
00:08:41
Speaker
Oh, a lot of them. Right, exactly. And they they need even, like, the most basic thing, right? Yeah, I mean, even just sunshine. um we We put a guy out this year.
00:08:54
Speaker
it started as a first-degree murder shooting. It was a really weird situation because ultimately it was someone selling party drugs, for lack of a better word,
00:09:10
Speaker
who was about to get robbed and wasn't sure what level he was getting robbed. And essentially the two of them kind of freaked out.
00:09:21
Speaker
ah There's a state's witness and there's a defendant. In this instance, the state's witness was for another case. They're there. They're a problematic person. They end up becoming the deceased.
00:09:34
Speaker
So in terms of deceased versus defendant. okay We have to deal with the one that's left alive. The situation was really dumb. And like somebody lost their life in a really dumb situation. It definitely was not first degree murder. Everybody was committed felonies all at the same time.
00:09:53
Speaker
It finally played out. This kid had been so sick in jail, like sitting behind the the stone, the cinder block walls.
00:10:04
Speaker
And... The ultimate plea deal was not great. It was about a decade. But it's better than 25, 40 or life. Definitely.
00:10:17
Speaker
So I had somebody come and talk to them and like walk them. They had never been to prison for a long stretch. They'd only been in jail. I think they'd been processed into the Division of Corrections at one point, but really didn't spend a lot of time there. Because by the time they were processed and got to the final place that they were going to be, they were really only there for...
00:10:37
Speaker
About three months because processing took three months and they had been held in jail for three months. So their 12 month sentence before kind of, you know, they passed through it pretty quickly.
00:10:50
Speaker
In this instance, they didn't really have bail. They didn't have a reasonable bail for them. So they sat for years. And they're going to do this very long sentence. And I had somebody come talk to them that had done a similar sentence because the ultimate final charge was a version of manslaughter. And it was because of, like, the history of everybody involved.
00:11:14
Speaker
They wanted more time off of it, but like the this the decedent had obviously been taking advantage of different types of vulnerable populations and then people who they didn't think the police would deal with, like drug dealers. There'd been a lot of robberies going on.
00:11:31
Speaker
Not anything seriously violent or anything, but it was getting there. So this guy... leaves the jail and I think he had been in there for three years. He was very sick. He had had digestive problems. He had been to a hospital a couple of different times. He had gained a lot of weight, lost a lot of weight over the many, many months. and he finally gets through processing and his mom reached out to me.
00:12:00
Speaker
He, had after he'd been through processing and then basically been wherever he was going to be for a month or two, he had been at the, at the final institution. And she was like, I'm just so glad that he got out of that building.
00:12:15
Speaker
And I was like, what do you mean? she was like, he's not sick anymore. he's got sunshine now. Like his digestive issues are done. His weight's stabilized. And like, That's what sticks in my head. That's ah that's like one example of it. But like I've had people come
E. Lee's Murder: A Societal Reflection
00:12:30
Speaker
through that are you know they're older. Some of them are on dialysis. Some of them have like regular medical things they're supposed to be doing. And I'm not like, oh, no, poor them. That's not what I'm saying. we're like As a society, we're just not set up where jail can handle those things.
00:12:45
Speaker
So... I get very fascinated by legal issues related to appeals and guilty pleas and jail. And like, it's not like, I think people think of like the inability to proceed or like not being competent or being intellectually disabled or the very, very rare NGRI or not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty, but insane, depending on the jurisdiction you're in. I think that's what people think of.
00:13:14
Speaker
But to your point, When you're taking a plea, I'm not convinced that everybody taking a plea even understands the words that are happening. I'm not convinced that everybody like involved in the process recognizes when that happens.
00:13:32
Speaker
Right. Okay. And so i was curious because we're about to talk about somebody that's appealing after like taking a guilty plea, right? Right. And ah for whatever reason, recently...
00:13:47
Speaker
variations of like exactly what you just said kind of keep showing up everywhere. yeah So, uh, I was just curious if it was just me. I, it, it surprises me to know that, but it also doesn't surprise me to know that. Like, I think that lawyers and judges and prosecutors, i think that it,
00:14:13
Speaker
could be more valuable for them to go ahead and get through each case that they have to deal with every day than it would be to make sure the defendant understands what is happening.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, i I spend a lot of time trying to identify people that need forensic examination of some kind, whether it's for an intellectual disability or competency or to make sure like they understand the process. And the thing is, I still miss people because people seem like they know.
00:14:42
Speaker
And you can see it kind of wash over their face at the end. like Like, it's like, oh, they have no idea the things that we've been saying these last six months. They have no idea what's happening right now.
00:14:53
Speaker
Right. And what do you do at that point? It's not like you can start over. Well, that's what this case kind of reminded me of, and I wanted to kick off with it because i was poking around in this area. So this is the case that gets us into a couple of things, like a couple of stories that we're going to tell today. The overview, like the Internet overview of this, not super complicated.
00:15:18
Speaker
We have a young lady named E. Lee, and that's so that's E.E., and then Lee. She's among Americans. According to this, she's from Thailand.
00:15:29
Speaker
She grew up in California. ah she had From everything I can tell, she had been experiencing like instability in her life.
00:15:42
Speaker
There are levels of instability that like kind of changed around for her. Most it was financial. ah She had children. she spent a lot of her time ah not having a home address anywhere.
00:15:56
Speaker
and she finds herself up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2020. Just like a bad situation just gets worse.
00:16:11
Speaker
A lot of times in this situation, i would end up meeting Ed Lee. She would have some kind of felony, not her specifically. I'm not saying that about her, but like I meet a lot of people like this that have identity theft or some kind of financial card. This type of experience. Right. And they have been experiencing what she was going through at the time where if you go and read about E. Lee now, there's these huge vigils and the stuff that are done for her.
00:16:39
Speaker
And a lot of tragedy comes out of what I'm about to describe, where people are like commenting on the tragedy and doing things after the fact.
00:16:51
Speaker
And this is another situation where, in my opinion, they're getting it wrong because if they would have helped her along the way, we'd never get to this situation. Right. um From what I've read about it, i remember reading an article about a custody battle all that popped up. She had a three-year-old daughter.
00:17:08
Speaker
She had a 15-year-old son. Whatever was happening in her world, this part that we're about to talk about is her worst day. on The afternoon of September 16, 2020, she is sitting in Washington Park, by all accounts, kind of having a personal picnic.
00:17:29
Speaker
She had gotten some food from a nearby Asian market. She's on a blanket. It's September day, so it's cooler.
00:17:41
Speaker
She's attacked by a group of teenagers who, by their accounts, intended to rob her. She's punched, she's kicked.
00:17:52
Speaker
I don't think she has anything for them to be robbing her for. So that probably infuriates them to some degree, but we're already in the middle of a terrible crime with just the punchy and kicking.
00:18:06
Speaker
She is dragged to the Washington Park Lagoon And there along the tree line, she is raped by 17-year-old named Kamari Lewis and a 15-year-old named Kevin Spencer.
00:18:20
Speaker
Nine kids. That's nine. N-I-N-E.
00:18:27
Speaker
are standing around watching this happen. During this assault, she is beaten with tree branches. She is abused and tortured.
00:18:38
Speaker
It is filmed and she is left for dead. The kids scatter, vanish on foot and on bicycles. She is at 9.30 found at nine thirty p m She is partially clothed, she's unconscious, but according to the court records and the emergency responses reports, she's still breathing at this time.
00:19:06
Speaker
She's taken over to local hospital and she's treated there Mowatosa at Fred Tart Hospital. It's a teaching hospital there, has a level one trauma center.
00:19:21
Speaker
but they can't save her life. And three days later on September 19th, 2020, she dies. So it's going to take a couple of months, but video starts surfacing.
00:19:34
Speaker
Cops are kind of on it in terms of like trying to figure out what happened here. It involves a bunch of juveniles. and They don't find these two kids right away. They don't even get them arrested until February 6th of 2021.
00:19:49
Speaker
And so they arrest Kamari and Kevin Spencer. They charge them with first degree intentional homicide, first degree sexual assault. They throw in the aggravating factors of great bodily harm.
00:20:02
Speaker
According to the initial reports of the scene, Kamari Lewis is one of the people who is recording. he recorded the rape and the murder on his phone. He shared it with his friends.
00:20:14
Speaker
This video is ultimately how they're able to identify the other people. Kevin Spencer, the 15 year old, he confesses to it all. He is also going to be charged in a, another murder from December, 2020. I think that's really how they kind of start putting all this together.
00:20:34
Speaker
According to one of the criminal complaints in two different interviews, one of the, one of these kids said that they never called for help because they thought she was dead or that she would die quickly.
00:20:48
Speaker
It wouldn't have made a difference. And investigators said that he said he didn't really care about her because he doesn't know her. So he doesn't think of her as a person.
00:21:01
Speaker
Like I said, after all this happened, the Hmong community, and the Hmong American Women's Association, the broader Wisconsin Hmong community overall, they all show up and um they start talking about this case.
00:21:13
Speaker
Right on the tail end of this happening, the Atlanta spa shootings take place, like as they arrest these kids. Do you remember those? I do, I remember that. um It's amazing to me that it's been that long.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's been five years, over five years since all this happened. Because of the age of the of these kids in Wisconsin, this stuff drags on for a while. And finally, in March of 2023, they both enter plea deals.
Community Reaction and Legal Aftermath
00:21:43
Speaker
So the way these plea deals go down, they get second-degree sexual assault count, and they get a first-degree reckless homicide charge.
00:21:55
Speaker
They... end up having the first degree intentional homicide and the first degree sexual assault charges. Those counts are just dismissed. So they're no longer facing life in prison.
00:22:09
Speaker
They end up looking at about 15 to 80 years. and depending on how the judge puts it all together. So in June, 2023, Kamari Lewis is sentenced to 26 years in prison, and he's going to get 19 years of extended supervision or supervised release. It's a version of either probation or parole.
00:22:30
Speaker
So when he gets out, he's going to be on community release for almost 20 years. It's going take him till August to get Kevin Spencer, the younger kid, He ends up getting 32 years in prison and he gets over 20 years of extended supervision.
00:22:47
Speaker
And that's sort of how, like, that story is how I end up looking around up there. The document that I was talking to you about is from October 7, 2025.
00:23:00
Speaker
It's a summary disposition order. the thing about summary disposition orders is they can't be cited as precedent or authority except for limited purposes in Wisconsin. They have a rule 80923 hearing for it. And sometimes um they can come up for a review of sort that might make them an authority. in In this case, they're clarifying that because of what I'm about to read. A lot of times,
00:23:29
Speaker
ah whatever would use it as an authority needs to come up for its own summary. Yeah. it Like this is largely, this is what most courts call an unpublished opinion.
00:23:42
Speaker
Now, based on the timing being our October 7th and this being the Wisconsin court of appeals, this is not the be all end all answer to this. This is just what made me start looking at it. So this takes place with the,
00:23:56
Speaker
Honorable David Swanson, who's a circuit court judge, ah Nicholas DeSantis, Anna Hodges gets a copy. She's a clerk of circuit court. And Mark Rosen gets a copy. Those are the people that are involved here. And it just gives us a ah quick bare bones fact summary that says, Kamari R. Lewis appeals of judgment. He entered upon his guilty pleas, convicting him of one count of first degree reckless homicide and one count of seconds degree sexual assault, both as a party to the crime.
00:24:30
Speaker
Based upon our review of the briefs and records, we conclude at conference that this case is appropriate for a summary disposition and we affirm. So they're not giving him anything on this, but i I want you to hear what the lawyers write up. It's pretty cool um or scary depending on how you look at it.
00:24:49
Speaker
On February 9th, 2021, The state of Wisconsin charged Kamari Lewis with one count of first-degree intentional homicide, one count first-degree sexual assault as a party to the crime. Both of those were as a party to the crime.
00:25:04
Speaker
the complaint alleg The complaint alleged that Lewis and a co-actor, Kevin Spencer
Miranda Rights and Legal Understanding
00:25:10
Speaker
Jr., sexually assaulted and severely beat EL, that you're using initials here because it's a sexual assault, ah leaving her for dead at a Milwaukee park.
00:25:20
Speaker
When police responded to the scene, she was alive and transported to a hospital where she ultimately succumbed to her injuries. Following his arrest, police conducted two Mirandized interviews with Kamari Lewis.
00:25:33
Speaker
In the first interview, Kamari Lewis denied any involvement in the crimes. He denied witnessing the assault. In the second interview, he changes his story and admits to hitting EL, and he states that she consensually performed oral sex on him, He also admitted that he helped drag E.L.' 's body to the side of a pond near the park.
00:25:55
Speaker
Now, his attorneys moved to suppress these statements, arguing he did not knowingly and intelligently waive his Miranda rights. The basis for this claim was an evaluation conducted by a psychologist, Dr. Nathan Glassman, whose report stated that Kamari Lewis had low cognitive abilities, likely did not understand the rights he was waiving, and had a tendency to respond affirmatively to all questions, regardless of what the question was.
00:26:24
Speaker
He's 17 years old. I can totally see that. The circuit court held a hearing on the motion where it heard testimony from Dr. Glassman and the interviewing officers.
00:26:34
Speaker
The court also viewed the video of Lewis's second interview, and the court denied Lewis's motion, finding that Dr. Glassman's report was unconvincing in light of the level of understanding Lewis's demonstrated in the video of his police interview.
00:26:49
Speaker
The court noted that Lewis understood that he could stop speaking and that the inculpatory statements were made after Lewis voluntarily reinitiated contact with one of the officers.
00:27:01
Speaker
Ultimately, he pled guilty to the amended charges. This appeal comes after or follows. On appeal, Lewis contends that the circuit court erroneously denied his motion to suppress the inculpatory statements made to police because he did not understand his Miranda rights and therefore did not voluntarily waive those rights. That's what his attorneys came up with. The appeals court disagrees and they go on to lay out why they disagree, but they basically state that it he appears to understand what's happening.
00:27:39
Speaker
And they state where this falls in Wisconsin law, all the different prevailing statutes, they decide that it at least looks like he understood what waiving his Miranda rights meant.
00:27:55
Speaker
So he has some very coherent responses. He seems to understand he lied the first time, and now he's correcting the record a little bit.
00:28:05
Speaker
So this is where we get to the second interview. And I was wondering what you thought of that. So this kid is sitting with the cops for his second interview.
00:28:16
Speaker
He denied everything initially. They're now saying, hey, this kid's got something going on He's a little slow. He tends to just affirmatively respond to everything.
00:28:29
Speaker
We don't believe he understood his Miranda rights. Do you think people now in 2026, and I know like they will say they understand them and they will initial and sign that they understand them.
00:28:46
Speaker
do you think what but Do you think that people actually understand what Miranda rights mean? Man, well, I did. i i would say I used to think that.
00:28:59
Speaker
Okay. I'd like to think that.
00:29:04
Speaker
But the way that am not sure is going to be my answer. um Because recently it seems like I've seen like people, they're like, yeah, I'm not going to talk to the police. Right. Which essentially that would give me the indication that they probably do understand what ah the Miranda warning is.
00:29:30
Speaker
But then you see where they didn't talk to the cops, but like all this other information like leaked out everywhere. Right. Yeah.
00:29:45
Speaker
And then you're like, Oh, they don't understand it. Right. Because it's not just about like your, your to remain
00:29:59
Speaker
If you provide the information elsewhere, it doesn't matter if you're silent or not. Right. Okay. And so I'm not sure anymore um I think this kid is screwed either way just based on the fact that he recorded it on his phone. I was going to say, there there's hard evidence here, right? um I was a little bit confused with regard to who videoed and who and what they were videoing. But there's implicating ah hard evidence, right? In my opinion, anytime you've got like direct evidence that's like...
00:30:41
Speaker
You know, recordings on video, particularly with cell phones and those type things, and the location data placing the phone there, and the person saying they have the phone, and then, you know, you can hear them, see them, whatever. I think a lot of that just becomes direct evidence, like hard evidence, direct evidence. It's as direct as you can get. Okay. And he...
00:31:04
Speaker
ah What is said is he voluntarily waived his Miranda rights. Right. then there was some sort of situation where he was not with the officers, the investigators, and he asked them to come back so he could talk to them again, and he was re-Mirandized, right? Correct, yes. Okay.
00:31:29
Speaker
And so...
00:31:33
Speaker
I do think it's possible. He didn't understand. um i however, don't think that it is a legal problem. ah Because...
00:31:48
Speaker
See, that's where I'm at today. No, I'm with you. Like, I understand the frustration in answering that question, which is why I ask it the way I ask it. So... There's not like any number to how many different types of people I deal with every day, but I've noticed a lot more and more people fall into this sort of sovereign citizen category, which is generally a sign of some kind of mental illness.
00:32:10
Speaker
Weirdly, most of those people are found capable to proceed and everything never goes in their favor. This guy's not a sob citizen type person, which is a different thing. he says He's young. he's yet he's He's a different kind of group of people. He's young. And, like, it's funny that they say, like, he will answer affirmatively to things. Because I kind of believe that with the generation of people that currently fall. I know he's a little. Like, he wouldn't be a juvenile if i were interviewing him today.
00:32:39
Speaker
No, right. Because of the passage of time. But. Like, I know the personality type, and I've noticed that this generation, i think there's a mindset to this that maybe is like, maybe the closest I can get to identifying with it is I kind of am of the mindset, if there's a how-to project or a DIY project that I don't totally understand in my mind, I'm like, i'll just Google or YouTube that later.
00:33:07
Speaker
but That part. And and that somebody on the internet has already explained to me how to do that thing. Right. But you've got to find the one that you understand telling you how to do it. Yeah, 100%. And I'm not sure that the Miranda warning is always the one that the person who's getting it understands.
Crime, Youth, and the Pandemic's Influence
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah. and so first of all, 9, 10, 11 kids standing around committing this kind of crime. What the hell, right? Yeah. Like, that is...
00:33:37
Speaker
That is a level of awful is its own thing before you start the recording on the phone and before you start these explanations of these kids. And I think it's i think's a mixture of like intellectual disability.
00:33:53
Speaker
and Stupidity. And youth. Yeah, stupidity. but Yeah, that's a good, like, the stupidity of youth. It was 2020, and ah it was what? What month did happen? So this is happening in September. So a lot of these people have been cooped up with nothing to do for seven months. That's what I was going to say. ah It's a lot of, um if we look back, so, like, school had ended. School was not going back.
00:34:19
Speaker
Right. Right. um I don't know like how that applies to the—and they don't really give any information about the other kids' ages, but I presume they're probably teenagers, right? Right.
00:34:32
Speaker
And they're dumb because, you know, I'm sorry, but if you rob a essentially unhoused person, you are dumb.
00:34:44
Speaker
They have nothing for you, right? Yeah. And then, like, the sexual assault, I... Like, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. and maybe she was just scared or something. Like, how does... i don't understand how they...
00:35:04
Speaker
successfully like why didn't she get away from them because it was during the day right and i'm not victim victim blaming here i'm just wondering like it's just an odd odd situation well um i don't have a ah great way to see any of this without making it sound negative on her. so here's how I'll say it. Okay.
00:35:32
Speaker
I think she was a vulnerable person.
00:35:37
Speaker
that That she has times in her life when she would not find herself in this position. It was a horrible type of timing where, and and this doesn't all come out because obviously there's pleas, but,
00:35:56
Speaker
Imagine there were a variety of options, less capacitation because of drugs or how you chose to make your money at the moment or mental health problems or intellectual disability.
00:36:12
Speaker
And just realize that this woman was not making choices. Okay. She was dragged into a situation from a situation where she felt like she was likely kind of safe and okay.
00:36:27
Speaker
Okay, and so... okay i I think I understand. But it it was literally, like, just really stupid, terrible group of kids, right? i mean It was definitely a group heinous, almost psychopathic, violent teenagers.
00:36:47
Speaker
I don't disagree that the Miranda warning was valid. the law with regard to... you know, what it takes, because essentially case law requires that ah police read any person who's subject to, ah they're about to be arrested or they are arrested, they have to be read their Miranda warning, right? Yeah. and
00:37:18
Speaker
ah they want the way that it's worded, it was, you know, after that case, they felt like the wording of it covered the basis for law enforcement and protected the citizen ah to the extent the Constitution required, right? Yeah.
00:37:38
Speaker
Now, it's going to take a whole other set of cases that like you and I probably will never see ah to get like the comprehension part of it worked out.
00:37:55
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, the, the courts, uh, through the work of the attorneys that brought those cases, you know, um,
00:38:08
Speaker
they did the best they could as far as like, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you. um and you have the right to an attorney. If you can't afford one, you'll get one. Um,
00:38:21
Speaker
ah paid for by the state or whatever. And, you know, it's it's the basic awareness of like, okay, you're being charged with a crime and these are your basic rights.
00:38:32
Speaker
I think that... You could be told that and you could sit there and feel intimidated and feel like you have to talk to the police anyway, right?
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. I feel like you could sit there and still not realize that you could have a public defender, right? Right. For whatever reason. I feel like... you could sit there and think that the conversation you're having is just a normal conversation and it's not something that will be used against you, even though they just Mirandized you. Right.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah. um Because, you know, the cops sit down and they're like, you know, how are you? And like, they can chum up to you and you can be talking and not even realize that they're, getting information to use against you, even though they just told you that.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah. So that could be a whole nother stack of case law. I i agree with what the court did. Like as far as the, i mean, I don't think they had anything else to appeal.
00:39:40
Speaker
Honestly, that's the weird thing about plea deal. Most of what you're doing there when you're taking a plea is you're giving up things, including a trial and other rights, including the right to appeal.
00:39:58
Speaker
in exchange. In exchange for a lighter sentence. Right. And that's what they did because um there was video that was basically going to be very damning. ah It doesn't seem like...
00:40:17
Speaker
The Miranda waiver... I don't think that would have affected the video evidence no matter what, right? No. I think they were worried. I think both sides are worried about things. I think prosecution is probably worried about the age of the people and maybe if there's some unsympathetic aspects of their witnesses and the decedent versus like the how the community will respond. Generally speaking, you know, so these kids were black.
00:40:50
Speaker
She's Asian, Asian American. Hmong. You've got, there's a level of sort of crazy racism that I did not fully know about. I'd only heard about it kind of on the fringes.
00:41:07
Speaker
but yeah i I was not aware of any of that. So that case, and and we can still talk about the E.E. Lee case. I'm just segueing into another part of this.
00:41:20
Speaker
it led me down one or two rabbit holes. and I thought the other two rabbit holes were interesting in terms of timing. So we just talked about something that happened basically during the pandemic in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee.
00:41:37
Speaker
Milwaukee is a big place, but Wisconsin a huge place.
Transition to Related Cases
00:41:40
Speaker
And if you start looking around Wisconsin, Wisconsin for this case, you can discover that there's a very strong community of Hmong Americans.
00:41:51
Speaker
So these Hmong Americans are there for a variety of reasons. These two, so i'm I'm kind of going to talk about two cases. And the reason is, is because they're very similar names.
00:42:05
Speaker
And I think if people go down one rabbit hole, you may as well go down the other rabbit hole. So to start this off, we have to go back in time to the early 2000s, which feels crazy to say, but it's almost 20 years ago now.
00:42:21
Speaker
No, it's not almost 20 years ago. It basically is 20 years ago. Well, this case is from 2007. No, it's actually Yeah, this years ago. the first The first part of this is years ago. Yeah, okay.
00:42:37
Speaker
And you know what? it's It's a holiday week for a lot of people. It's 4th of July week. I'm going to split this into parts. I think that's the easiest way to do this. So we'll have we'll leave this part, the EE Lee case. That'll be part one. And then we'll segue into this for part two. And I'll just go ahead and start putting them all into the feed. That's what
Episode Conclusion and Credits
00:42:55
Speaker
we'll do with this.
00:43:03
Speaker
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00:43:14
Speaker
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00:43:28
Speaker
I break things like guitars.
00:43:36
Speaker
No scars. We're in trouble. We took it too far.
00:43:47
Speaker
I don't want to go, but it's cause I'll disappoint ya. It's all I've ever dreamed of, something I cannot let go of.
00:43:58
Speaker
I hate the competition. This culture's like a Jimin. I lost the motivation to get fit in your expectations.
00:44:09
Speaker
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00:44:27
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.