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Season Seven: The Farm and the Bayou Part 1
135 Plays2 days ago
In this episode, we finish talking about what passes for true crime these days and legislative accusations.
https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1119&context=tma
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Reliability of News and AI Concerns
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:57
Speaker
I sometimes see sources and I don't know if they're a valid source or not. So I dig into the story a little bit and I think it's gonna get worse. I think AI is gonna start writing stories that make no sense. So if something happens with this story down the road, this is my disclaimer if some of this is wrong. It's very difficult to go through and figure out what angle it came from, but it was presented as a news article to me.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I read it and it has some weird, interesting things about it where I was like, all right, I want to know, is this real? Is this AI? Like what's happening? Have you gotten to that point in your reading of crime news or no?
00:01:43
Speaker
Well, I might be overly confident, but I feel like I can tell the difference. Well, when you saw this, like, sex offender thing, did you think this was, like, i don't know, real? Or, like, did you think it was BS? Well, for this in particular, i i assumed it was probably real.
Authenticity and Saturation of True Crime Stories
00:02:08
Speaker
But if it were fake, I wouldn't care enough Like I care, but like it's just one of those things that either it's happening or it's not and it needs to either be remedied or it doesn't matter, right?
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, but so many things are getting like that. And like there's so many people, like so many people are commenting on like when we started doing true crime, there was too many people talking about true crime.
00:02:37
Speaker
Oh, it's become exponentially worse since then. Right. And like now i hear them talking and I'm like, what, why, why do you have this opinion?
00:02:51
Speaker
Well, so unfortunately, fortunately, I guess, just depending on how you look at it, I realized that most people ah don't actually care if it's like, if the story is true or not. Right. Right. They don't care. Like they just want to yap about it for a little bit. I have some examples, but I i don't really want to get off track, but it it has become a lot. I do think at some point it's going to be, I don't know, so overly saturated that like something's going to have to give.
00:03:32
Speaker
Are we there? Are we close? I would say we are so far past that. But, like, I say that. Like, the genre and the industry says otherwise, right?
00:03:45
Speaker
Yeah. And it's almost like it's every man for himself or every woman for herself if you're trying to do true crime, okay? Yeah. And unfortunately to me, that's going to bring out the worst because you have to do something to distinguish yourself.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah.
Influencers and AI-Generated Content
00:04:05
Speaker
And the only way to do that is, you know, the AI generated crime leads or crime stories or whatever. And you would think that there would be a point behind the AI generated things, right?
00:04:21
Speaker
But I realized that That's not necessarily true. Like some things are just done for the sake of having something to put out there. i I think we're headed to a point right now where everybody's going to be an influencer for something.
00:04:36
Speaker
And the people who... Like, I don't think there's going many people left who aren't influencing something. Like, ah everybody has a topic. And I jokingly recently said, i don't know how jokingly I was, that we're headed towards a universal basic income with bonuses for how you influence other people.
00:04:56
Speaker
And, like, the basic income is really just because somebody somewhere is paying for your data.
Marketing Strategies in Media
00:05:02
Speaker
Well, ah that is, yeah, that's... That is a whole different... That's a whole different show. But it you're not wrong about that, for sure. There is no standard by which influencers are measured, right?
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm learning. I'm definitely learning that it's the case. and in order to be an influencer... Which, by the way, this is something that like didn't even exist like the majority of my lifetime. Right.
00:05:45
Speaker
You have to actually influence someone. Allegedly. You're supposed to. I would say that if you're an influencer who doesn't influence anyone, then you're not really an influencer. You should probably have a different name, right? But the idea behind an influencer, my understanding is that people want to be influencers because then they are paid by companies who have products to be marketed because that person can influence their audience to purchase the products.
00:06:24
Speaker
Right. Okay. That's where the whole concept of influencing came from. Now,
00:06:32
Speaker
If you watch any degree of that happening at any point in time anywhere, it doesn't take much to be an influencer. Right. and the bids to be in an influencer once you are one, they're only marginally successful. Right.
00:06:59
Speaker
like for that core meaning that I just said, like where a company pays you to say, hey, I use this, don't you want to use this? you know Largely, marketing, like even the way we used to do it back in the 90s and like it only had so much sway regardless. If you ever think about marketing ah What do you see on TV commercial-wise?
Advertising's Role in Major Industries
00:07:32
Speaker
Now, I realize most people today don't even hardly watch TV. However, even on streaming, there's commercials, right? You see insurance companies, you see car companies, you see big family product producers, right?
00:07:48
Speaker
Like cereal or like laundry detergent or... That kind of thing, right? Stuff that you find in every American household. And, you know, it's like Johnson & Johnson are there's several big conglomerates that make that type of stuff, right? Okay, so all of those ah industries, they make so much money that they then turn around and fund...
00:08:21
Speaker
Television. Okay. Kind of. Yeah. yeah Okay. Don't have to advertise the newest version of their car to sell it.
00:08:35
Speaker
Right. Right. Right. Insurance is required in probably every state. So you are going to pick an insurance company and purchase your car insurance regardless of what you see on TV. Right.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't even know how any of that works anymore. like Okay, well, they have so much money. Well, that's what i'm that's what I'm getting at. The industries that are we see commercials for...
00:09:08
Speaker
they They had a huge place in our economy because if you think about it, you've got people going into marketing to make commercials to go on television that we then watch. But over time, it was a a largely fictitious industry because everything that's being advertised, it requires no advertisement.
00:09:31
Speaker
Okay. They literally just put money from... that otherwise wouldn't be there into our entertainment industry.
00:09:42
Speaker
Right? Right. Yes. Okay. A lot of people don't grasp that concept, but I feel like we're talking to the ones that do. So it's largely become, it's just a given that like certain pieces of our economy are always going to support the entertainment industry through the funds. Right.
00:10:09
Speaker
Agreed. i think I think those, I've seen, i don't have cable. um So I've seen a lot more AI commercials where the, like it's like pharmaceutical commercials and I guess commercials for casinos, which has become kind of a new thing in the area that I'm in. But like a lot of the the commercials that I do see are on streaming services but that I'm getting for free.
00:10:31
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's the other thing. Pharmaceuticals is huge, yeah. This actually popped up in the middle of one of those. i was So I had this weird thing happen tree crime wise where someone had that we we've talked to on the show several times, they messaged me and asked me about something that was going on and they had a theory and their theory was correct. So I kind of cleared my afternoon to do a thing and didn't have to do a lot of it.
00:10:54
Speaker
And this ad popped up. And so I clicked on it, and it took me to this thing called txktoday.com.
True Crime Story of a Registered Sex Offender
00:11:03
Speaker
And I'm still not 100% sure.
00:11:05
Speaker
like Most of what I'm about to say checks out, but I'm not 100% sure how I got here or how it knew to add me. But I thought I would use this as one of the pieces of true crime news today.
00:11:16
Speaker
it the The title of it is Registered Sex Offender Runs Historic Washington Wedding Venue and Bed and Breakfast. So if i say that again because we just jumped from ads to this. Registered sex offender runs historic Washington wedding venue and bed and breakfast.
00:11:35
Speaker
ah the The name that's ascribed to having written this on July 3rd, 2026 is Field Walsh. Like, field. It that starts off with a picture at the top that appears to be taken from the Arkansas, like, registry.
00:11:54
Speaker
it But here's the article. A registered sex offender is running Coulter Farmstead, a bed and breakfast and wedding venue in historic Washington that markets itself as the primary premier wedding venue near Texarkana.
00:12:10
Speaker
The address on the sex offender registration matches the address of the venue. This is according to public records reviewed by the TSK Today staff. um And it says this guy's name is listed on the Arkansas Department of Public Safety Sex Offender Registry as a level two offender for stalking in the third degree.
00:12:31
Speaker
And then it gives his address, um which is the address of a this Coulter farmstead. The guy's name is Justice Lee West, which I can't imagine more ironic name.
00:12:45
Speaker
um He's 36 years old at the time of the publication of all this stuff. And it says Coulter Farmstead is an 11-acre property offering overnight stays in restored eighteen forty s cabins and an 1860s Greek revival main house.
00:13:00
Speaker
It hosts weddings with on-site lodging for up to 30 guests. The venue's website lists this Justice West as a contact and advertises the email address that corresponds with his name and Coulter Farm's domain.
00:13:14
Speaker
It says guest reviews repeatedly describe Justice by name as their host. Property records list Someone i named Katie West as the owner of the parcels. The venue is listed on Arkansas.com. The state's official tourism website is a place to stay in Washington.
00:13:29
Speaker
The property sits surrounded by historic Washington State Park land. So this is Washington, Arkansas, not Washington, D.C., and also not Washington State.
00:13:40
Speaker
Um, West is not violating any law or registration requirement by operating this venue. Arkansas places no residency restrictions on level two offenders who must register with the Arkansas Crime Information Center and local law enforcement every six months report address changes at least 10 days in advance.
00:13:59
Speaker
State law borrows registrants from jobs and volunteer positions involving direct contact with minors such as schools, daycares and youth programs. It does not address owning or operating lodging or event business.
00:14:12
Speaker
Level two offender information is typically not posted on Arkansas's public registry. West entry is publicly searchable because state rules make an exception when the offender was 18 or older and the victim was 14 or younger.
00:14:26
Speaker
Nothing in the law requires a lodging or wedding business to disclose an operator's registration status and nothing in Colter Farmstead's booking process does. A guest would only find it by searching the registry on their own Coulter Farmstead is not listed on Airbnb, which prohibits registered sex offenders from hosting and says it screens U.S. hosts against potential public sex offender registries. The property does have an active listing on another site, which has a similar policy barring sex offenders from its platform.
00:14:57
Speaker
ah Contacting the parent company of that site for contact for comment on the listing, ah they said they don't get a response and then down at the bottom they make a correction.
00:15:09
Speaker
i Which is fine. it says, for the criminal case, Justice West was arrested in November of 2019 after a 14-year-old relative allegedly discovered a hidden camera disguised as a phone charger in a bathroom of a home, according to Hempstead County court records. He was arrested a second time in December 2019 after investigators reported finding images of a nude, prepubescent girl in an iCloud storage account identified to belonging to him identified as belonging to him.
00:15:42
Speaker
Prosecutors filed two cases charging him with video voyeurism, a Class D felony. And then in the other case, they charged him with stalking and two felony counts of distributing, possessing or viewing manner depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child.
00:15:56
Speaker
The video voyeurism charge was null prost. So prosecutors let that go back in March of 2022. In September 2023, four years after the arrest, ah West i entered a negotiated guilty plea to stalking in the third degree, which is a classic misdemeanor out there in Arkansas.
00:16:15
Speaker
The charge covered conduct from December 2018 through December 2019 that had placed the victim under emotional duress and in fear for her safety, according to the amended charging document. The same day the plea was accepted, prosecutors dropped the felonies.
00:16:31
Speaker
His sole conviction is the stalking count. On the sentencing order, the circuit judge involved here wrote that the offense was found to be a sexual offense requiring sex offender registration.
00:16:43
Speaker
ah West received a suspended imposition of sentence, meaning they don't have to do the jail time yet if they do other things. Got a $2,500 fine, which was paid the same day. The order merged the video voyeurism case into the stalking case and assessed $960 in jury summons cost, indicating jurors had been called before the plea was entered.
00:17:04
Speaker
In 2022, there was a filing signed by the deputy prosecuting attorney stating that a joint stipulation in the case had been reached in part to balance evidentiary concerns and avoid the need to subpoena a reluctant witness.
00:17:16
Speaker
So this guy had been working as an advanced practice registered nurse at a clinic in Arkansas. He had held an Arkansas nursing license since 2011 and had received this nurse practitioner credential in December 2018.
00:17:33
Speaker
Nine days after the arrest in all of this, he signed a voluntary surrender, um which means he gave up both of those licenses. The State Board of Nursing accepted the surrender November 19th and a final order stating that voluntary surrender would be the disciplinary action here. On the surrender form, asking for a reason, he wrote accused of video of voyeurism.
00:18:00
Speaker
The board's order allowed West to apply for reinstatement after one year or after his criminal case was resolved. According to this article, they're still inactive. And I think one of them had expired in the national databank.
00:18:15
Speaker
There is reporting in here that he is the president of a local school board and a member of a volunteer fire department. Before his arrest. Before the arrest, yeah. And he did not respond to a request for comment during publication.
00:18:30
Speaker
This is interesting to me because it brings up some questions. I happen to believe that like things like this should not be on the registry unless there's clearly some kind of ah sexual element to it, which they seem to have evidentiary concerns. And based on what I'm seeing, what I think those concerns are is something crazy was happening somewhere and he used a hidden camera to try and solve it.
00:18:56
Speaker
and captured things that he was that made him break the law because he was doing something stupid. Does that make sense? It does make sense. um However, so I have a couple of questions. My first question would be, did he realize that he was going to have to register as a sex offender, or was that an afterthought put on the order? Okay.
00:19:18
Speaker
ah The next thing would be,
00:19:23
Speaker
it's It says nothing of intent right here. Right. It says that a hidden camera was located and that there was cloud storage having pictures, ah inappropriate pictures, which would have, like, by default been captured on a camera hidden in the bathroom, right?
00:19:46
Speaker
Correct. ah There are some reasons, not that I'm going to justify this, but there could be some story out there where a person put a camera in their own bathroom, in their own home, for a justifiable reason. The the one thing that comes to mind, it would be like stolen pills, okay? Right.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah. Like if you had pills stolen out of your your medicine cabinet. Now, when you're thinking, I'm going to catch the dirty thief that stole my pills, it probably didn't occur to you that the other things you're going to get, and that would be wrong, right? And it sounds to me like there's been like years and years of this happening, which is also kind of strange, but...
00:20:43
Speaker
Whatever, I'm not entirely sure.
00:20:48
Speaker
about
Intent and Impact of News Reporting
00:20:49
Speaker
any of this. Just, I mean, if he was video, if he was secretly recording, uh, young ladies or young men or whomever in the bathroom at his house for kicks and to watch it for improper purposes, that's all very wrong. Okay. He shouldn't be doing it. It's illegal.
00:21:08
Speaker
However, i don't know that that's exactly what was happening here. And I actually feel like in these types of cases, it would be worth it to actually sort it out.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think they should. And I think this was the prosecutor's only option to secure a conviction. So first of all, let me just say something about this like venue they talk about in here for a second. You've been in the last 10 years to a venue that allegedly slept 30 people.
00:21:40
Speaker
For a wedding. Yeah. you You remember what i'm talking about? Yeah. without I'm not giving away any details because I don't want any of that stuff to be like linked to this. You and I have this experience where we've gone to this place. like There weren't many children there.
00:21:57
Speaker
Well, and it's not he's not breaking the law in any way, shape, or form by offering Yeah. Right. Which is what I'm... that so that's where I'm headed with all this. Why has this become a news article? Well, if you notice, I don't know if you noticed or not, but it's... ah Phil Walsh is the owner and editor of Tex K Today, yeah which I guess is like Tex Arcana. And Phil has 13 plus experience... 13 plus years experience covering news in Tex Arcana. Okay, so Phil Walsh puts this out. Has hit a nugget of gold, apparently.
00:22:35
Speaker
um I personally feel like ah this is just somebody passing along information that is obviously available to anyone.
00:22:51
Speaker
If it were really important for the owner and operator of venues to not be... ah registered sex offenders, it would be a law, right? Yeah.
00:23:05
Speaker
Okay, it's not. um It also... i'm not... I feel like this might be one of the...
00:23:16
Speaker
Well, I don't know. i He is a registered sex offender. However, providing he did Phil Walsh did provide all the information. I mean, he did say, like, it is not actually against the law for this to be happening. Okay. However...
00:23:33
Speaker
The article itself, the only reason you write something like this is to cause controversy, right? Right. And obviously, you are more than welcome to search the sex offender registry that's available, which I'm pretty sure every state has one. I'm pretty sure.
00:23:53
Speaker
Publicly searchable. And if you're going to go partake in a venue somewhere, you're more than welcome to look up make sure the person's not registered. Right.
00:24:04
Speaker
I'd love to know how this came about. yeah I'm wondering if he didn't like have a bad experience at the wedding venue. And like, this is how he's decided to use this, uh, minor level of influence. And the other thing I wondered was how did this end up on my, like my clicks? Like, how did I get there? I think it's because we talked about sex offenders recently.
00:24:31
Speaker
Interesting. Like we talked about the sex offender for great brigades that yeah are all felons. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Cause yeah. And they do have some of those in Arkansas. You're right. That's interesting. That was my guess when you initially brought it to my attention. um i don't know what the point of this is.
00:24:55
Speaker
I would say that it's a factual based article, right? Because yeah it checks out. But, and I don't know about the whole sex offender thing. It's just, it to me, really, this would be a perfect example of how, like, even though he took a deal and, like, justice happened or whatever,
00:25:19
Speaker
Like, he's still paying for this, right? I mean, if anybody looks at this. But I don't think that this is going to matter too much, honestly. ah Unless you've got minors renting the venue for some reason, which I don't think is the intent, right?
00:25:41
Speaker
The man's got to make a living somehow, so it does It looks like he's followed all the law the laws as required, and he may be getting kicked off of Verbo. Yeah, I didn't mention them because of that, but I don't think he should be kicked off of anywhere. i i Actually,
00:26:02
Speaker
i am a little dubious of this kind place because it doesn't sound like the prosecutor did their job, and the more I read about that county out there, the less the less I'm convinced. Well, and you know, obviously a victim is a victim is a victim, but if you found the camera and then you found what you expected to be on the cloud footage, however, the guy forgot he had put it there and had never reviewed the cloud footage, then has a crime really been committed?
00:26:32
Speaker
You know
Legal System Challenges and Plea Deals
00:26:33
Speaker
what? That's, i I think more and more about that with all the cameras that people have on their homes that they never really necessarily look at the footage. Yeah, like how many crimes are we all committing? Right. Yeah, like like what if a kid runs through the neighborhood? Naked. And they're naked and they're caught on your doorbell camera and their parent is chasing them trying to put their diaper on.
00:26:53
Speaker
Like does that make you guilty? Because you would own the cloud footage, right? Right. Of the kid running down the street. And I know it's not for a sexual nature. I'm being tongue in cheek here, but like, I don't miss, I like, I don't understand the whole concept of including everything that happens in the bathroom as a sexual nature. And that's what they did here, putting this guy on the registry. Or is this like circuit court judge just wrong?
00:27:16
Speaker
That's what I wondered. And he didn't have great... count I feel like, okay, this is just my little two cents. It's not actual legal advice. However, in the event that a plea has been struck in lieu of a trial... and they suddenly want to throw you on the registry?
00:27:35
Speaker
ah Well, see, I feel like that had to have been negotiated ahead of time, but I don't know that it was the way it was written. However, I'm just saying, like, there was not enough evidence here to actually convict him.
00:27:48
Speaker
I don't think, I don't know anything about the case. I'm talking about the dynamics of how it played out. I would say that the prosecutor wanted a win, and this was the only way he was able to get it. Meaning, if this dude, if Justice Lee West... Had said, I'm not taking a plea. Let's go to trial and held out because he pled the day of the trial, right? He got taxed the jury summons cost. So if he had held out, I think the prosecutor would have been forced to drop the charges. Right. I think that's where we were headed with this, and he really should have held out. and But it's hard.
00:28:26
Speaker
It is hard to hold out that last step. Well, and you've got to have an attorney on board, to a defense attorney on board that's willing to do it. Now, I'm not saying any... Like I said at the beginning, it's just this is my perception of what occurred. I do think...
00:28:43
Speaker
And I think that the prosecution justifies it in their thinking by saying, well, if he really hadn't done anything wrong, he wouldn't have taken the plea. Right. Which is not true. That's simply not true. I think people fold under pressure and you have to be a very strong person to fight back against like a state prosecution, right? You just do. And I'm not saying that it never happens, but like there's a lot of pressure. And at the end of the day, the defense attorney typically turns on their own client.
00:29:18
Speaker
And says, like, you really need to take this plea. And when if you could just say, like, I really need to go to trial, you know, the prosecutor is going to have to stand up there and say, look, the evidence we ended up having having in this case and the prosecuting witness, like, we don't have it to show you here today at trial. Right?
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah. And then, of course, the case is going to be dismissed. And usually prosecutors don't go tell a judge that. Usually prosecutors will dismiss the charges before they have to stand before a judge and say that. Because it's not... Charges should be way more serious than ah i feel like a prosecutor would be taking them in a case where this was the outcome.
00:30:05
Speaker
However, I welcome anyone... going to a venue to always find the owner operator and look them up on the sex offender registry, look at the status, look at what they did and make your own decision as to whether or not you want to be, you know, a patriot of that business or not. It's completely everyone's own decision. but as of the way the legislation is now, this man hasn't broken any laws. So
00:30:36
Speaker
like a you know, a journalist should do, Phil Walsh put it out there. He put all the information and a few more people will now know that he is a sex offender that may not have known
Advertising and Public Perception
00:30:49
Speaker
previously. And, you know, that's part of what we do here in America now.
00:30:54
Speaker
Like, is this really true crime though? i have some unfortunate news for Phil Walsh. So I watched this on a variety like I read this and it has these moving ads on it. And I looked at it on variety of devices over the last couple of days where I was debating if I wanted to like address this at all. He seems to run entirely on advertising dollars that he seems to be like curating them.
00:31:19
Speaker
And... Unfortunately, the ads for Harvest Food Bank of Arkansas and the ads for Texarkana contractors, in case those people happen to come across this in some way, shape or fashion and wonder why were these ads not successful?
00:31:36
Speaker
It's because the framing of these ads in i iPad form and television form, as well as on the iPhone, make the pictures associated with the Harvest food bank ads and the Texarkana contractors ads appear to be Justice West and his wife.
00:31:58
Speaker
um Because if you swipe through ah to the left, you see a picture of Justice West that's taken from the sex offender registry. The next photo that you swipe past is a picture of a similarly looking bearded man and a woman that says Harvest Regional Food Bank all the way down at the bottom right in a way that you can barely read it. And the third photo is just another similarly situated bearded man and a woman. Right after the words about the property parcel. So if you like read it you assume this is Justice West and Katie West.
00:32:32
Speaker
And if you don't swipe again, you don't know that that is actually an ad. Because they all look the same. The people do. I can say that on iMac running, I think I'm on Chrome. ah The ads have been removed for some reason. It may just be my...
00:32:52
Speaker
my thing But there are no ads. I just thought, wow, this guy, like is he has like a three-for-one I'm ruining businesses today blog going on here. Well, it is. I mean, it's his prerogative to do so. It's just so interesting to me where...
00:33:10
Speaker
Like, I don't know. Do you have
Ethics of Exposing Sex Offenders
00:33:12
Speaker
to really ask? you I mean, can we really fault anyone for like putting sex offenders on display? Well, no, I guess not. Right.
00:33:21
Speaker
Is it really what we want to be doing with our time? Well, not my time. Right. ah Not necessarily. Now, except for the two hours on a Sunday morning that I make you. Sorry about that.
00:33:33
Speaker
No, but but, well, I mean, there was a point to this. It's a topic for discussion, right? Right. ah But would there be something to this if, you know, he couldn't put the paragraph in there where it says, like, he's not breaking the law, right?
00:33:49
Speaker
Like, is it important to have that enforced? Well, I think, yeah, it is. Like, because the proper pathway would be, you know,
00:34:01
Speaker
to have sex offenders actually be sex offenders and actually have to follow the rules of what that means. Right. Right. And this goes back to like stuff I say all the time.
00:34:15
Speaker
Like for example, if everything's a red card, nothing's a red card. Exactly. That's where the sex offender registry is today. It's all a red flag. Everything's a red flag. Yeah. And if if the sex offender, register if everyone's a sex offender, no one's a sex offender. If everything's a sexual assault, nothing's a sexual assault. And I feel like we should always like keep that in mind because this just, you know, it's it kind of brings attention to like a ah nothing burger.
00:34:46
Speaker
a sex offender is doing something a sex offender is allowed to do, Right. Right. And the point is not to keep punishing someone further, which is ultimately how the the registries we have in the United States work. They just work as a like being a felon, being a sex offender. All those things just work these days as a way to further punish someone who's already been punished.
00:35:10
Speaker
Well, I think they're also, okay, yes, you're right. That's how they work. What they're supposed to do is to keep the surrounding community safer, right? Now, in this situation, if you did not use the bathroom in this man's home, you were in no danger. Yeah.
00:35:32
Speaker
Okay, but but now. That's a good point. Yeah. Well, I mean, unless there's something to it, I'm not understanding, right? um I, for one, i would have fought this case. ah you can put bathroom ah You can put cameras anywhere you want to in your home. Now, I don't know,
00:35:53
Speaker
like I don't know ins and outs of this case in particular. Right. Right. And somebody felt victimized and perhaps it was warranted. I don't know. But this is a case that I'm not even sure he should have been charged to begin with, much less still be on the sex offender registry. However, if he wants to not be on the registry, he needs to go through the process of doing that. Right.
00:36:17
Speaker
Well, he doesn't seem this guy. No, no, he didn't comment on Right. Now, i'm I'm just saying that, like, we have a story here of a man that's on the sex offender registry doing stuff a sex offender is allowed to do.
00:36:35
Speaker
i'm Right. But you said that that he should go through the process of getting off the sex offender registry. he He does not appear, he may not even be aware this exists except for the fact that they asked and they asked for him for his comment.
00:36:47
Speaker
If, if he wants to. The fact that you're on a list, do you want to comment about being on the list? If, if he wants to get, I'm not saying like, like, I'm not saying like what I'm saying means he should be off the list. I'm saying if he were to want to be off the list, he should go through a process and do that.
00:37:05
Speaker
I'm not saying just because I feel like the story might lack teeth. I'm just giving my opinion because we're talking about it. I'm not saying it. no. I'm with you. But, like, again, you know, I can't help but say this man, if you didn't use the bathroom at his house, you were in no danger. So should he really be on a sex offender registry when the point of a sex offender registry is to alert the public at large, the community, when someone who has committed a grievous sexual offense moves into the neighborhood, right? Right. Right.
00:37:40
Speaker
I don't think that applies here. However, he is on the sex registry, sex offender registry. Therefore, you know, it is what it is. And I thoroughly appreciate Field Wash doing the research and putting out this information in a mostly unbiased form, except is it biased- Just based on the information. Field, what are you not telling us? I reached out to Field Wasp for this story, but I don't know that he ever saw it. He definitely did not return the opportunity to comment.
00:38:14
Speaker
um I just want to point that out. and So that was one of the pieces of true crime news. And like for those of you who don't know we're like kind of in the South, sort of.
Political and Legal Issues in Louisiana
00:38:23
Speaker
And there's a heat wave going on here that we barely... like It is so hot.
00:38:29
Speaker
Oh my gosh. It's been going on for a while. So, ah that's the reason that we've been bouncing around. We've been working on longer form stories. We've been working on the holiday series. Um, that's the reason we're doing kind of a, a more low key story today. And we're also always experimenting on you guys with, um, the episodes that we put out. We want to see who likes what and who doesn't like it.
00:38:53
Speaker
Uh, so that happens. Um, But I have to tell you, this is the weirdest thing I've heard about. Did you see what I sent you about um what's going on in Louisiana right now?
00:39:05
Speaker
Yes, a couple of things. So I have never been so confused by politics and the law colliding, i don't think.
00:39:17
Speaker
i don't know maybe a half. Then whatever is going on right now in Louisiana And I say that because, okay, so I think most people know how things work in terms of like the hierarchy in a state.
00:39:37
Speaker
But Louisiana has their first female attorney general was right which I think that counts as a big deal in the South. Maybe I'm wrong.
00:39:48
Speaker
um it's She is Republican, so people are really down on conservative ah people today because they associate negative things with ah the conservative side of stuff.
00:40:02
Speaker
um We don't bring up a lot of politics here, so this is not really political. I'm looking at some things that like they just confuse me. So this person, her name is Elizabeth Murrell.
00:40:14
Speaker
So she is a politician and a lawyer. And as I said, she's a member of the Republican Party. She's been at serving as the 46th Attorney General of Louisiana since January of 2024. She grew up in Louisiana. She grew up in Lafayette. Her parents were a doctor and a professor down there.
00:40:32
Speaker
She attended really nice schools along the way. She did all of the things that you expect someone to do preparing for kind of a high profile career. She's in sorority. She gets a bachelor's degree in journalism. She works at a newspaper and kind of turns on that and decides that she's going to.
00:40:53
Speaker
become a lawyer So she ends up getting a her law degree and she focuses in along the way on a variety of things career-wise that kind of lend her to the Republican Party. She was even a fellow of the United States Supreme Court.
00:41:13
Speaker
um She got her Master of Laws degree as well from Pepperdine University School of Law. She clerked for a couple of famous judges, and she became the Solicitor General of Louisiana in 2015. So the Solicitor General is a chief representative of the government in court.
00:41:30
Speaker
that's That's what they are. In 2023, Jeff Landry decides that he's going to run for governor instead of running for re-election as the Attorney General of Louisiana.
00:41:45
Speaker
And Liz Murrell is basically, she announces and she's put in the, like kind of the secession order. So she's going to secede him as Attorney General in the 2023 election.
00:41:58
Speaker
So she does end up in a runoff. So she ends up defeating Lindsey Cheek, who was on the other side of that runoff. by almost 68% of the vote.
00:42:10
Speaker
And that ends up making her the first woman to serve as attorney general. She has like some really weird views on things related to capital punishment, ah to abortion, immigration. I don't agree with all of them.
00:42:26
Speaker
um But whether I agree with her or not, she ends up in this strange position
00:42:36
Speaker
where In July of 2026, she gets indicted by a grand jury in New Orleans. So she ends up being accused of intimidating city officials, including New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno.
00:42:55
Speaker
So what's interesting about Helen Moreno, even though she's the mayor of New Orleans right now, she is a she's a journalist. She's a member of the Democratic Party. She's threatening to remove these people from their jobs if they continue to oppose certain state laws, including a state law that eliminates a position that had previously been held by...
00:43:15
Speaker
a man named Calvin Duncan. So Calvin Duncan is a long-term American legal advocate. He is a prison rights activist. He has a very interesting story that we could do ah probably a whole series on.
00:43:32
Speaker
So she gets indicted and then an arrest warrant is issued for her and a bond of $400,000 is what and guess what happens She immediately goes to the Supreme Court to stay the charges.
00:43:49
Speaker
Right. So she like turns around and says, hey, ah they're not allowed to do this. ah But they do have ah an interesting point.
00:43:59
Speaker
So there's a special prosecutor that's been brought in. her name is Lori White. Guess what her job used to be? um I don't know.
00:44:10
Speaker
She was a legal representative for Calvin Duncan along the way in his travels. So I guess i guess we should talk a little bit about Calvin Duncan, like what has happened to him in early life.
Calvin Duncan's Wrongful Conviction Story
00:44:24
Speaker
So he's arrested for murder in New Orleans back in August of 1981.
00:44:31
Speaker
A 23-year-old man named David Yeager was fairly shot in a robbery. His 15-year-old girlfriend describes the killers as two young black men. One of the shooters is light-skinned and heavyset and just under six feet tall, wearing a sun visor, like a visor cap.
00:44:50
Speaker
And then a week later, she said that the the shooter was five feet eight wearing a knit cap. And this is a big deal was made out of this. In February 1982, Crime Stoppers is running a program about this offering a thousand dollar reward. and a young man named Calvin Duncan is accused.
00:45:12
Speaker
Yeager's girlfriend, so David Yeager, the person who's fairly shot in the robbery, his girlfriend is shown a photo of her Ray, and she picks out a mugshot of Calvin Duncan from when he was 14 years old, but says that she's not sure if it's him.
00:45:24
Speaker
Later, she changes it and says she sure. um Duncan is working on a Job Corps project in Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon.
00:45:37
Speaker
So he's not in New Orleans. The police, have they've issued an arrest warrant. They named him a TV broadcast. ah But a year later, August 1982, they arrest him.
00:45:48
Speaker
They charge him with David Ager's murder. Oregon officers at a time, they write that the police, the Eyewitness was alleged to have been white, and this is the reason that they've arrested him.
00:46:03
Speaker
Only an involved person could possibly have known that this girl they're talking about was white. um And the phrasing that was used that I've seen quoted, i don't know how accurate it is, is Duncan says, she must have been whiter. They wouldn't be trying so hard.
00:46:21
Speaker
So I don't think he's literally saying she's white. I think he's saying... they wouldn't put forth the effort if the witness was African-American. Not to mention that's not that much of a guess. Right.
00:46:36
Speaker
Especially ah and in New Orleans. so Duncan's attorney filed a request with the Orleans Paris district attorney's office basically for discovery and for any exculpatory evidence. They get told, no, there's nothing that exists that's exculpatory. 1983, attorney,
00:46:51
Speaker
the lead a arresting officer from Oregon had pled guilty to illegally wiretapping a county official out there. In 1984, New Orleans assistant prosecutor writes this in-house memo and it points out the problems of the case against Duncan, the tentativeness of the identification in the first place, the felony conviction of the lead officer, and um recommends that they make a plea bargain.
00:47:17
Speaker
So no plea bargain is brought forth and these issues aren't really shared with the defense. which as everyone in true crime would know, that would be a Brady violation in this day and age.
00:47:29
Speaker
Without other resources and only a ninth grade education, Calvin Duncan tried to prepare his own defense. He wrote a 1984 motion titled Motion for a Law Book and sent it to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which redirected it back to the New Orleans Fourth Circuit, which in turn redirected it to the trial court, and they sent him a copy of the Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure.
00:47:51
Speaker
His girlfriend would copy case law from the Louisiana Supreme Court law library for him. and Duncan, like he's working on this case and his position is he didn't do this.
00:48:05
Speaker
And he says he fell in love with the law. So one of his first victories is he files an emergency lawsuit in Orleans, Paris prison about violation of the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment on behalf of older prisoners who had no teeth.
00:48:21
Speaker
He pointed it out that the food that's coming in is tough and they have no teeth. And the sheriff agrees to settle this by giving them indentures. He was also known as being the Snickers lawyer because the fee for him to help prisoners as a jailhouse lawyer were candy bars.
00:48:41
Speaker
So he waits for trial for three years. The trial takes one day. Duncan was neither light-skinned nor heavy set, as the witness had described. He had prominent gold teeth that the witness never mentioned.
00:48:54
Speaker
In her testimony, she answered a question saying it could have been he lost a lot of weight. The prosecutor's argument stressed how he had revealed facts about the murder that only someone could have known, specifically talking about her being white at a time, and that the eyewitness was always certain in her identification,
00:49:13
Speaker
They sort of ignore the fact that like she didn't seem to know who was who in terms of the mugshots and like basically said she's sure and she's not sure at different times.
00:49:27
Speaker
But nevertheless, after this one day trial on January 29th, 1985, Calvin Duncan was convicted of first-degree murder and his sentence was life without parole. In 1988, after spending four years in Orleans Parish prison, he gets sent to Angola, which is Louisiana State Penitentiary.
00:49:46
Speaker
Angola was the slave plantation that used to be on the site of the prison, the land around it. The first task he was given was clearing cotton stalks left after harvest, which would have been a very similar task to what had happened on the plantation 120 years before this.
00:50:01
Speaker
The prisoners were mostly young black men working land while white men with guns looked on. So Duncan said having been sent to Angola was like going from hell to paradise for him because there he was able to do what he wanted to do in the first place and that is study the law.
00:50:21
Speaker
So he earns his GED, he becomes an inmate counsel substitute or jailhouse lawyer, a prisoner who is allowed to give legal assistance to prisoners.
00:50:33
Speaker
He helped several of them challenge their convictions, including Wilbur Rideau, who was freed in 2005 with Calvin Duncan's help. um We called him the most brilliant legal mind in Angola, which is probably true, um but I'm not 100% sure we should run with that too far.
00:50:54
Speaker
He taught two-hour law class to 35 inmates every Saturday morning for more than 15 years. professional law lawyers would um go to him for advice.
00:51:05
Speaker
So Duncan could not help his own case and like many inmates, he could not afford access to even his own case documents, which each page back then cost between one and $3.
00:51:16
Speaker
um Records, as you and I both know, are almost always thousands of pages, even if they are in a one day trial. I don't know how many times we read some. Do you remember the last time you read like a really short legal document?
00:51:31
Speaker
No, no, i never. yeah um So his only source of money at the time was 20 cents an hour for his prison job and he would get payment for selling blood plasma.
00:51:46
Speaker
So with that money, he hired an investigator that he thought would help him. But the investigator took the money and did not do any work. So he files multiple petitions over the years for a new trial. He files writs of habeas corpus. All of them were denied.
00:52:03
Speaker
But his work inspired in 2001 the creation of the Innocence Project New Orleans. So that's a nonprofit law firm that is focusing on support for convicted inmates.
00:52:14
Speaker
There was a Tulane student there named Emily Bolton. She began gathering records for Duncan and other Angola inmates, and she formalized the project after she graduated.
00:52:25
Speaker
In 2003, the project took up Duncan's case, finding evidence that he was not guilty. They found that the eyewitness's description of the gunman differed from Duncan, that one of the Oregon interviewing detectives ah was convicted of a felony, and that he told Duncan the incriminating facts that they testified later he told.
00:52:51
Speaker
And I think the way this goes down is He says, well, that little white girl down there said, and Duncan reiterates it and said, well, she was white. I knew she was white. Otherwise, you wouldn't be paying this much attention to it.
00:53:03
Speaker
It took eight more years. And Calvin Duncan is finally released from Angola January 7, 2011, maintaining his innocence of the murder. But he ends up pleading to a manslaughter and attempted armed robbery in exchange for being released with time served.
00:53:20
Speaker
I think that ties into something you said earlier, which is... It's really hard to hold out. Right. He had been in prison for 28 and a half years at this point. Hey, no judgment.
00:53:32
Speaker
um He had been a paralegal for 23 of those years. He worked with prisoners on death row for 19, and he taught law classes for 15 and GED classes for seven.
00:53:43
Speaker
When he leaves prison, he leaves with a check for $10 and his prison clothes... um the shoes of which were so rotted that he ended up taking them off and carrying them.
00:53:57
Speaker
He still has that $10 check, by the way So that's who we're talking about here is somebody who like understands the other side of all of this. It's going to take till 2021 for Louisiana to change the law to allow persons who had pled guilty to challenge convictions.
00:54:15
Speaker
And this is only if they have evidence of their innocence. And on August 2021, two days after the law took effect, Calvin Duncan's conviction was vacated. given the state's suppression of evidence, and the state dismissed the charges.
00:54:30
Speaker
ah Duncan says this was the second best day of his life, the very best day being the day he was released back in 2011. So that's Calvin Duncan. That's the person that we're talking about here, who's on sort of the opposing side of what's happening to Liz Morrill.
00:54:44
Speaker
Now, Liz Morrill, her case is stayed in the Louisiana Supreme Court. Primarily because Lori White is involved and Lori White was involved in the representation of Calvin Duncan.
00:54:56
Speaker
But this this Guardian document popped up. And like, I have to talk about how they did this a little bit, at least. So the title of this article is Louisiana Court Halt's Criminal Indictment Against a State Attorney General.
00:55:10
Speaker
So it says louis Louisiana's highest court has granted a stay of the proceedings and a criminal indictment targeting the state's attorney general in the latest twist of a high-stakes political battle between Republican state leaders and Democrats who govern its most famous city, in New Orleans.
00:55:25
Speaker
Liz Murrell, a Republican who is um Louisiana's first female attorney general, was slapped with a 16-count indictment on Thursday by New Orleans grand jury charging her with intimidation and malfeasance. The charges effectively accused her of trying to intimidate New Orleans officials who fought a law passed by Republican legislators to overhaul the city courts.
00:55:48
Speaker
So she acted quickly for a stay on Thursday the Louisiana Supreme Court, granted it early on Friday, finding she had made a compelling argument concerning the disturbing defects in the grand jury proceedings and in the trial court's handling of those proceedings.
Legal Confidentiality and Media Access
00:56:02
Speaker
The attorney general had also called the charges against her retaliatory, meritless, and unconstitutional right-of-own-ex that she would continue doing the job the people of Louisiana elected me to do.
00:56:13
Speaker
Separately, the state's Republican governor, Jeff Landry, promised a swift pardon, saying that she would not have her reputation tarnished by a kangaroo court. The Supreme court order resulting in Friday stay says the case was meant to allow, ah for her to assert any and all necessary defensive pleadings, including motions to, to to quash, uh, this day shall not prevent the filing of a response and any pleadings filed by the attorney general.
00:56:39
Speaker
The stay came a day after the announcement of the grand jury indictment, which was shrouded in secrecy. They always are. That's not all that interesting. News media members, um, were waiting in the courtroom of the New Orleans Judge Leon Roche to hear the potential extraordinary return of the indictment. They were escorted, ah she was escorted out after he ordered the room sealed.
00:57:00
Speaker
The public has the legal right to access proceedings and Louisiana law requires grand jury returns to be made in open court. So news outlet WWL Louisiana, which is a partner with The Guardian, They protested against the closure to try to maintain access to the courtroom in the event of an indictment against the attorney general. An investigative producer for the station, Dante Monteverde, and the outlet's attorney, Alayna Belzer, were subsequently handcuffed after the courtroom was emptied and locked.
00:57:30
Speaker
The pair, along with other media who were not handcuffed, had protested deputies orders to leave the courtroom, the courthouse entirely. Roche at the time did not explain why he had sealed the courtroom. Local newspaper ah were report local local newspapers were reporting. Later, a statement from a court spokesperson said grand jurors must physically present when indictments are returned, and that confidentiality ensures their identities for perfected are protected so that they can deliberate they can deliberate freely, objectively, and without fear of public exposure.
00:58:02
Speaker
Nonetheless, Friday's stay said that by all accounts, the New Orleans court violated express provisions of state law requiring that grand jury returns occur in the public eye in open court.
00:58:13
Speaker
So Friday, the judge responds to the Supreme Court's stay with a filing that asserted he had been justified in clearing his courtroom to preserve grand jurors' and not anonymity and that he didn't order anyone be handcuffed.
00:58:27
Speaker
The court never instructed deputies to remand or detain any members of the media. No members of the media were handcuffed inside the courtroom or in the court's presence. The sheriff's office, which provides security at the courthouse, said in a statement on Friday that its deputies acted in accordance with the directives they had received to protect grand jurors and other participants in the proceedings.
00:58:48
Speaker
What do you think of all this so far? Well, they've got to pick either the return has to be made in open court or the grand jury has to be our has the right to remain confidential. Right. Yeah. ah There's two.
00:59:05
Speaker
Now, it sounds like the return to be made in open court is like a statute. Right. Right. That's what it sounds like to me. I don't know for sure. I think that most of the time nobody cares. That's why it doesn't matter, right? Yeah.
00:59:20
Speaker
yeah Like nobody's like waiting for the return. so the judge... um is sort of in a pickle as far as that goes. I don't know. They need legislators to rectify that problem, right? Oh, 100%. Yeah. They've got to pick either, you know, the the jurors come back. Now, granted, the media should be required to respect the confidentiality of the grand jurors, right?
00:59:53
Speaker
So that would mean they can't report on them, but it if the court has to be open, it has to be open. ah The judge can't ah just arbitrarily and capriciously shut the court because this one time they don't want the grand jury to be exposed, right? Yeah. so you know, what is the problem here? Well, it's people talking out of both sides of their mouth, right? Right. ah Clearly...
01:00:24
Speaker
ah maybe they don't trust the media. Maybe they all know they're doing something wrong and that it's worth exposing, right? yeah Maybe there's like absolutely nothing going on here.
01:00:38
Speaker
Who knows? But like, this all needs to be fixed in a way that isn't just about like a judge closing the courtroom and putting a couple of people in handcuffs, right? ah The law is the law. I don't even see how...
01:00:54
Speaker
this these two things exist, right? Except the only thing I can think of is it's just never been an issue before.
01:01:05
Speaker
yeah And, you know, it i think this I think this is just a confluence of events that are are quite interesting. So first of all, ah I've never covered Calvin Duncan in here because it doesn't have a resolution.
01:01:17
Speaker
So Calvin Duncan, even though Technically, has like his case is is done. He never received any kind of compensation. The governor's office, including Landry,
01:01:29
Speaker
have refused to acknowledge him as an exoneree. And that includes this attorney general who has been indicted here. So there could be something at play related to all of that. But i don't think that's the way you handle that particular issue, particularly if you're the attorney general saying you guys could face removals for protesting this other thing.
Political Tensions and Legal Implications
01:01:49
Speaker
Because what they're one of the things that they're protesting is... So it kind of goes like this. The...
01:01:57
Speaker
the The breakdown of what's happening is the mayor, the district attorney are being told they can lose their jobs if they oppose this law that eliminates a ah ah court clerk office that Calvin Duncan is currently occupying.
01:02:21
Speaker
So he has a job as a court clerk. And this law narrowed in and specifically abolished this position.
01:02:33
Speaker
So they protested it, which they're allowed to do. But then everybody started saying protesting the removal of that job would result in the people who are elected to positions being removed. Does that make sense?
01:02:50
Speaker
Right. Except how can that happen? Well, that's, that's where we're at. That's how like her, like, i think she was just running her mouth and I don't think it could happen. I think they jumped the gun on this.
01:03:04
Speaker
Well, right. And so, you know, obviously she can say whatever she wants. Uh, that doesn't mean that she has the power to do it. Uh,
01:03:17
Speaker
and In my experience, ah district attorneys and mayors are elected officials. In most jurisdictions, yeah. Which means that they are you know they're at they serve at the pleasure of the people who have a vote, right? Correct.
01:03:35
Speaker
Meaning that no matter what the attorney general says is going to happen, it can't because how will would that even occur, right? Correct. ah So, you know, are i assume they're saying just the mere words spoken are criminal in nature.
01:03:56
Speaker
And they're going off of the fact that regardless of whether or not she could do it, she said it. Right. And that's the part I think, i think that's where they screwed up is trying to indict her. and look, I'm not a supporter of either side here. I'm, I'm looking at it because I have questions about the process. Well, sure. well and Until she tried to remove them. I don't think they should have been trying to indict her. I think they're doing the same thing to her.
01:04:20
Speaker
Well, and so to answer the whole situation, so you've got a situation where I guess she, I don't know where it was said, like where she said, I'm going to remove them or whatever.
01:04:33
Speaker
Um, or they'll be removed for, uh, supporting, ah the objection of this job being removed. Right. Right. Uh,
01:04:45
Speaker
And I assume they are lobbying more for the person than the position. is is that true or ah it's I think it's actually like they're upset that the only thing we were able to give this guy is the court clerk office when he should have been recognized as exonerated and compensated for the 28 years he spent in prison. And so like even cutting off that...
01:05:16
Speaker
All of that is so far outside of the realm of elected officials' duty. Like, they eliminated a position, right? Right. I assume because somebody deemed it Like, I mean, was the elimination of the position against the person?
01:05:35
Speaker
i don't know that i don't know that we know that yet in terms of what's been released because of how new all of this is. It also says they threatened eight officials, but I don't know who all eight officials are. I don't know the exchanges yet. I just wanted to start covering those.
01:05:49
Speaker
Do they, are they protesting him losing his job or that they really need that position there in the building? We don't know yet.
01:06:01
Speaker
Okay. And so that matters, right? i agree. Yeah. Okay. Especially when you're talking about this specific situation. Right. I i want to be clear about something, though.
01:06:12
Speaker
So without anything else to go on, it is absolutely not the grand jury's job to work on indictments about something that was said by the attorney general of the state.
01:06:34
Speaker
Right. I feel like they have 1000% miss the boat in calling them in presenting it and the return of indictments. Okay. I was trying to figure out how do we get here? Like who calls for this grand jury and appoints the special prosecutor?
01:06:56
Speaker
It has to be the district attorney. So you think the district attorney is doing this and isn't that like some level of, um, it's sabotage. It's using it to, that's it's weird.
01:07:12
Speaker
Well, but here's my point though. All the crimes that like haven't been indicted in new Orleans, which I, notice I assure you, there are plenty of things that people have done in violence towards others that haven't been successfully indicted. Okay. So unless all those things are cleared up, this should have never happened.
01:07:39
Speaker
ah It is just ludicrous the way that we have seen these idiots use their powers and not even just in this case, but like,
01:07:54
Speaker
Obviously, the Attorney General of Louisiana is not a criminal. Do you really want to indict her for criminal charges? Do they realize how dumb they make themselves look when just by throwing that out there?
01:08:14
Speaker
I think both sides looked on, though. I think if she threatened them or did something like... That's fine. I bet she doesn't do it again. But, see, if she made a I don't know. If she just made a comment... Yes.
01:08:27
Speaker
and like I'm with you on that. I think I know where you're at. and If she's like, well, if they're going to fight this stupid premise, they shouldn't have their jobs, right? Okay. Right. Well, that's different, right? She's absolutely allowed to have that opinion.
01:08:46
Speaker
And what, how is it different that... If she said, if you guys fight for that man to keep his job, y'all are going to lose your jobs, even though you're elected officials. And then they turn around and they say, well, you're an elected official and we can't do anything except criminally charge you, which is exactly what makes me think it had to have been the DA's office. Right? Right. Yeah.
01:09:12
Speaker
Okay, all of it's ridiculous. None of that should be happening at all, okay? she shouldn't ah They shouldn't be trying to save an unnecessary job because ah every elected official is a steward of the taxpayer's money, the the job is I assume a government job and it's being eliminated for some sort of reason, right?
01:09:47
Speaker
Most of the time jobs are eliminated when they can't afford them and they're disposable, right? Yeah. And so all of that being said, none of that is a criminal matter. Right.
01:10:02
Speaker
Right. Okay. And the fact that the ah attorney general was able to immediately seek relief from the Supreme Court of Louisiana and she received it is exactly what's supposed to happen.
Supreme Court's Impact on Legal Proceedings
01:10:20
Speaker
Right now. It's just a stay. They didn't dismiss the charges. All they did was they put a halt on it. So essentially, you know,
01:10:29
Speaker
That stops the arrest warrant. It stops the bond. It stops like a whole lot of the proceedings. And she will have to not be doing the duties of attorney general and have to, in turn, be taking care of this.
01:10:49
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Because she's going to have to, you know, I don't know get the indictments quashed or like she's going to have to address it. Okay. So in the meantime, whomever, whoever was responsible for calling the grand jury, making the presentation and presenting ah the indictments, they aren't doing any of the other work they're supposed to be doing. Okay. Right. Right.
01:11:17
Speaker
That's not happening. ah They are now having to deal with the fallout from the stay, right? So that's wasting even more time because it's not, you know, they're mad about the stay, I'm sure. But obviously, if the court couldn't do it, they wouldn't have. Just like, you know, that whoever brought the grand jury and and got the indictments, they had the power to do it. They're just not supposed to.
01:11:48
Speaker
Right. Okay. And that's what is kind of bonkers to me is it's almost like we've gotten to a point now where this targeted like processing, criminal processing, it's almost like people have forgotten that even though I can indict a ham sandwich, I'm does should It is not the best use of resources to do so.
01:12:22
Speaker
Right. and And it makes you look like an idiot. No, I was going to put another story that dovetails with this on this episode, but I think we're going have to wait. i think we have to bring up the end of this on the next episode and then add that story to it.
Conclusion and Listener Support
01:12:43
Speaker
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01:12:54
Speaker
It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
01:13:08
Speaker
I break things like guitars.
01:13:16
Speaker
No scars, we're in trouble, we took it too far.
01:13:27
Speaker
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.
01:13:38
Speaker
I hate the competition. This culture's like a Jimin. I lost the motivation to get fit in your expectations.
01:13:49
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through Patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at TrueCrimeAccess.com.
01:14:07
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.