Bombshell Lance Twiggs Video Played in Court and Inside an Officer’s Indictment for On-Duty Shooting

Welcome to In the Well, by the way Matt, I'm joined by my illustrious co-host, prosecutor extraordinaire, Marcie's law practitioner, the pinnacle of victims of rights, Matt Murphy, who I've known for longer than I care.

“I remember Matt Murphy is a young, hot prosecutor, so that's how far.”

Even though you still retain those poor-ish good looks, Matt, welcome. And I think most people would like to, at least in our little bubble of the world, like to hear what we've got to talk about, or what our reaction is to Tyler Robinson in this preliminary hearing. Wouldn't you agree?

Yes, and for the viewers, we're just on with Megan Kelly, who has been wonderful to mark an eye. This was an interesting dynamic today, Mark, wasn't it? We went on and she's,

she was, she didn't, she's critical of the judge, she's very critical of the defense.

“And I think we immediately found ourselves pushing back a little bit against some of the things”

that she was saying, which I think I said, Matt, I think I said, she, Megan did about 18 minutes of a monologue. And then I had to sit there on mute because I wasn't in the room, and then she went to you. That was one of the hardest, you know what I reminded me of. It reminded me of after I sit out and closing and I got to listen to you on a reply, where I want to just absent myself from the courtroom. I want to just be me aboard, get me out of here,

listening to Megan's 18-minute monologue was one of the toughest things I'd ever had to endure. And for the viewer, just so you know, I can see Mark's face on the screen. So we're in different places, but actually he was like one of those cats behind a window that's looking at birds, where he's just like he's like jumping the window like his whiskers are moving. Yeah, you know, it raises a really interesting issue, Mark. Doesn't it? It's because Megan Kelly,

I think, is one of the smartest people in media. I've always been here. I've always been here.

I've always been here. I've always been here. I've always been here, but she was friends with Charlie Kirk. And so there, I think there's an emotional component, and I mean that with absolutely zero criticism, and I've had friends that have been murdered. And so I totally get it, but it raises one of those things that we go throughout life, not just in the cracks of law, right? When emotions are involved in our judgment, oftentimes we can, I don't know at least for me personally.

I don't want to speak for a bit. When I'm mad about something, I will always make the wrong decision. Whenever I'm making a decision or issuing a judgment, whatever it is, whether it's I'm standing in line to get ice coffee, to prosecuting a death penalty case, if I base a decision on

my emotions at the time, it is almost always the wrong one, right? And one of the most

difficult things I think you probably found this since you've left the office. One of the most frustrating things for me is I naturally want to help people. I know you people find that hard to believe,

“but that's why I do this. So, and when my friends are in trouble or facing a situation,”

I want to help them. It's also the toughest situation in the world because you're so emotionally invested that you just want to go to war. And sometimes to your point, you've got to just step back because some of the decisions are, you've got to at least with me. I get almost harmless cycle at the opponent. So, right? No, and I sort of sensed that our friend was doing that a little today. She was frustrated at the judge and saying, he's indulging the defense too much.

Which is all fair commentary, but the key thing about capital case litigation is Mark and I both know is it is about the finality. Your goal as a prosecutor is the long game and in the state of Utah, Tyler Robinson is looking at an actual death penalty. It's not symbolic like California or other states. He's facing the actual prospect of execution for what he did. Now, this was, I think one of the reasons why this case is so captured our attention is this is kind of a, this is a sad statement

of American discourse. You've got a guy who disagrees with something with a man who is going to

And that is something that I think we should all be talking about. It's horrible. It only makes things worse with you. A Greer disagree with somebody. This is the worst course of action that you can take. And this has also spawned a million conspiracy theories. And I, I, I, I, I've watched

some of the Candace Owens commentary on this, Mark, and I don't know her. I've never appeared on her

show. I, I got kind of no dog in the fight, but man, some of the stuff that she has gone out there and said is insanity. She's, she's essentially suggested that Erica Kirk was somehow a complicit in the murder of her own husband. And, and again, wherever you stand on, you know, right versus left, this stuff transcends politics, as far as I'm concerned, that there's political elements to the, to this actual case, and as far as the motive goes, but when it comes to murdering other

human beings, I've always taken a position that this is, you know, the right and wrong of that

predated Democrats and Republicans. And you're talking about, you know, the, a mother's love for

their child, the, a child's love for their father, a wife's love for her husband. That's real base, you know, human reality that should have nothing to do with the partisan discourse in United States these days. And some of the stuff that we've heard out there, some of the conspiracy theories are insane. Oh, gone records saying that. I'll to pay anybody any time on that. And when you, so we have all these interesting components on the Charlie Kirk preliminary hearing, but one of

“things that Megan said is she, she got on the judge. And you and I saw, I think exactly the same”

way, this is a judge who is methodically going through this, and he is going to indulge every single

objection, because when you're talking about potentially putting somebody to death, man, oh man, that's important stuff. So we got a sought here. Let's play Lance Twig's sought. I'd love to get your reaction to this mark. And I, you know, it's going to be the same as mine. If you guys could really could play this. And did he talk about what he did done? It didn't go into detail. He just, I just asked him in person what he said was true the night before, and he said it was,

it started crying a little bit and said he wishes he hadn't done it. And then kept going around and just doing stuff. I think to keep himself as your distractor or something. Mark hippie with your reaction to that. And I know you're thinking the same thing I am. The defense wanted this guy.

“They wanted to rip him. They wanted to go after him. And then we see that clip. What are your thoughts?”

Look, this is precisely why the defense wanted him on the sand and not to just play this. And you can't cross examine that. You've got to sit there. You've got to take it. It's akin to that frustration I was talking about when I was listening to the, the, the, the set-up piece I'm making today. Because boy, they, and the prosecution knew exactly what they were doing. To some degree, it's almost diabolical. You get to put that on that's going to go everywhere. And nobody is

going to be talking about what would have happened to this guy if you had crossed examined him. Because this guy is a fertile, fertile subject across examination. I think right now that most, if not all judges, if the prosecution presented or sitting at the table was landswigs. And based on what has come out, whether it's the DNA, whether it's the text messages prior, whether it's the

“inscription of the bullets, I think most judges would hold landswigs to answer, meaning find,”

probable cause on lands twigs as a co-conspirator in this case. And I know, and I'm not going to, well, I will speak for you. You're, you're prosecutorial, prosecutorial theories to get up and say, this guy, Tyler Robinson, had fallen in love with lands twigs. And this was he was going to be the avenging angel for lands twigs. He went out there. He did it. He wanted lands twigs to be impressed by it. As a defense lawyer, I think the facts fit more properly. This guy was being used as kind

of a useful idiot dope or duped for lands twigs, who was the one who was mid-transition, who was the one who orchestrated all of this, who has a DNA on everything. And just so happens that he's almost the force gump of this case in terms of his presence, both DNA and otherwise.

played wall to wall, you just, you basically cloak lands twigs in this, you know, I'm tortured to be

“here kind of atmosphere. You know what's up? What else is interesting, Marc, is that you got,”

you have an actual witness regarding remorse in lands twigs too, right? So, this raises a very interesting challenge for the defense, because if the, the way I said, if they go too hard on him and destroy him too much, it seems like the only evidence of remorse by Tyler Robinson is lands twigs himself. So, it's like this is a real time, in real time, in real time, in real time. Right? So, that, that may be, you know, that may be what the most compelling evidence

to spare him the death penalty for certain jurors when this goes down the line, because if you

really is crying about it, it that raises some interesting issues. So, this is super complex, very, very interesting. And, and I hope, I hope Megan Kelly isn't too mad at us after pushing back

“back. Yeah, Megan, that we, Megan knows that we love her, but they, they, I'll leave it at this”

before we go to the next segment. This crystallizes the point you and I've been talking about everywhere, which is the defense lawyer here, and I don't know that it can ever be the same lawyer. If you're going hard on lands twigs, and the prosecution is propping him up there, as, I would give him you some energy, but he didn't do anything wrong. You then, how you, in a penalty phase, if you lose the guilt phase, then how does that same lawyer after he's made this guy out as a co-conspirator

lying sack, then you're going to get up there and you're going to argue to that same jury. No, now you got to believe the guy is one of the, right? But it's just, it's a wonderful kind of window and the crystallizes exactly at the lemma. Next up, however, something that is not at the lemma, but I'll bet you not away at you, and I know for a fact did, you're going to share with us a very

“special report about a very, very important victory you've had in court. So stay tuned.”

Let me give you a little background on this one, Mark. And for the viewer, one of the interesting things about being a prosecutor when you're in a, in a, in a tight unit with a bunch of people that have all worked here for many years, you get very insulated. And you have friends that leave and they go out of the private defense world, and you hear stories that you almost don't even believe as a prosecutor. And then you leave and you start encountering some of that stuff

where like when you're in, trying to buy ethical people, you, you, you never hear or even see

anything that, that is done inappropriately. And then you get out of the big wide world and you think holy crap, I can't believe that I've got a prosecutor who's doing some of this stuff right now. So I've been, I've been biting it a bit to share this story with Mark for a while now, so this can be a little bit different. So let me walk you through this Mark. So I got to buy the way I always invoke my father. This is precisely Matt, why my dad used to say,

he used to make a forceful argument that the, the criminal justice system would be better. If we had a military tribunal kind of process where you can be a prosecutor one day in a defense lawyer the next day, but go on and tell us. Yeah. So let me, let me lay this one out for you. This is going to, this will boggle your mind. So we get a, a, a torrents police department, I've got a model police officer, Mark, that he, his name's Matthew Concannon. He was number one in

his academy class. He's, he's got two kids. He's got a wonderful wife. He is the cop we want on the street, multiple commendations for heroism. He is, he is Dudley do right, he's, and he's just a really, really, really good guy. So he's on patrol with his partner and they get a stolen car call. And it's a victim who sees his own stolen car driving down the street and it's kind of a, it's a beater. He calls it in and my client and it's partner again, Tony Chavez get dispatched to this and there is a, the guy was

last seen driving in the direction of the stolen car into this vast giant parking lot with a Ralphs and all these other businesses and the officer's role in, this is in 2018 and it's eight of clock on a Sunday night and the parking lot is filled with civilians and they roll up and if we roll to the next slide. So here's a, here's a, here's a still from the video and my guy walks

didn't know his license plate, right. So they walk up, they're not sure if it's the stolen car

or not, but it fits the description and it's a dark, describe as a dark color Honda with tinnitus, which for the viewer is every other car in the city of Torrance. So they could say Southern California and it was exactly the point. Right. So they don't know, and there's no indication that there was any violence involved with the car being stolen. It was just ripped off out of the streets. So what they do when they still cars is they punch ignitions. Right. So two experienced police officers,

they just want to see if it's a punch ignition. They roll up, but it's nighttime and the windows are so heavily tinnered. They can't tell if the ignition is, is, is punched as they walk up. And they find themselves, my guy, this is from my guy's body cam face to face with a documented T-flats gangster named Christopher Deander and Mitchell. And this is a still taken from the body cam where he is in the driver's seat. It is a still in car. This guy's a documented gang member.

He's got gang tattoos. I can't tell from the, from this picture, could they see the punch ignition? They could, yes, they could see the punch ignition. It turns out it is the still in car.

“Mitchell, okay, hi on. And did they see the, they see the tattoos, the gang tattoos on the face?”

And yes, and not only that, my guy has arrested him before, okay. So well, fun facts, fun facts. This is, yeah, in 2018, there were three different police officers in Los Angeles County who were all murdered by documented gang members. And so they, they look in, and this guy has, in his lap, trigger assembly up the barrel is between his legs, doors wide open, not wearing a

seat belt, which, which does matter, okay. And he basically, my guy, he says, hey, what are you doing

here? And Mitchell raises his hands, which we see, and this black thing there in the, kind of, and the crux of his elbow, that is the trigger assembly. And it is indistinguishable from a sought-off shotgun. And it, it looks like one, the costume and trained on that, sought-off shotgun for the viewer is probably the single most devastating close quarters combat weapon ever invented by, by mankind. It is, it shoots pellets out. And it is, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy.

It was discriminatively. I mean, there's, yeah, it's, it's a blast. And it's a blast. And depending on how short the barrel is, Mark, you know this, indiscriminate to perfect word, because when you're in a parking lot filled with civilians, if they get in a gunfight with this guy, and he takes a shot at them, especially behind tinted windows, chances of somebody else getting hit are astronomical. Okay. So let's go to the next slide.

“I'm trying to tell from that slide. Are they shining a flashlight through the tinted window?”

Is that what's happening? So great question. So this is, he starts with a flashlight and he lifts his hands up. And my guy sees what looks like a sought-off shotgun and his lap. And immediately he goes to his gun, right? And the gun, and this is like, this is real-life stuff. Okay, there is a, you know, you can see him perfectly illuminated here, but there's a, a light that they issued that's supposed to automatically go on, based on the ambient lighting. And there's just

enough light in the parking lot, Mark, that the gun light doesn't go on. So what happens is, he goes to his gun and everything goes dark on the body cam, right? Because in that's, that's just the way these things work, right? Body cams are shaky, everything goes dark, and what my guy says is he, I told him to, and he, and he hear it on the audio. He says, what are you doing here? He's the gun, and he goes, whoa, don't move, and his hands are up, and then he says, get out of the

car, and remember, doors open, no seat belt on, and instead of just getting out of the car, this guy who later turns out, he's on massive amounts of methamphetamine, Mark. Like, like, a borderline psychotic level, so he's super high, and he's jittery, and instead of getting out,

“hands first, he drops his hands. I think probably to try to hide the gun, but this is a gangster who”

doesn't make a whole lot of good decisions over the course of his life. Drops his hands, I think to hide the gun, but all these two cops see is him moving his hands towards what appears to be a sod off shotgun, so they both shoot and they both kill him. Okay, so are they on either side of the car, they both are on both side of the car. Yep, so they're shooting at inside, actually putting themselves into a little bit of danger, that's not a crossfire there. Yeah, three shots all three

are fatal, and Christopher Downey Mitchell is dead basically instantly. Okay, the gun later turns

at that point immediately retreat back, they try to talk to him, he's he's deceased right away. So

they launched this big investigation, and in LA County, as you know Wellmark, with the way it works, you've got the LA DA conducts a separate investigation towards PD does what's known as an OAS investigation, and all things, they put it all together, and my guy is cleared, and if we could go to the next slide now, both the DA's office and towards PD, by both. Yes, cleared by both. Okay. And here is what ended this happening, what day? What year? This was in 2018. Okay, also a good question, because that

“becomes important. So here is of course it's important. Yeah, who was the DA then? Right, so the DA is”

Jackie Lacy, who for those who don't know, she used the first life on Democrat, first African-American DA of LA County, first woman, DA of LA County, and I know her, I don't know what you're relationship with. With her was, I really liked her, I thought she was, she called it fair, she was a

straight shooter, I always thought, and they cleared these guys. If we could go to, and that's a real

side of our shotgun, next to next to the gun that was in his lap, and you can just see, at night, there's no telling the difference between those two. If we could go to the next slide. But by the way, Matt, this is, because you've been living this, I'm seeing this for the first time, although I talked to you in real time about, in general, these 30,000 foot view. Doesn't it crack you up that you had to go to the point crack you up amidst a tragedy, but the fact that you had to sit

there and put, okay, this gun versus this gun, the guy sitting with a gun. Yes, right. I mean, and look, I mean, only in our world, because people are watching this, but say, have you guys smoke

“crack yourselves? Are you guys on the map? Why do you have to, but it was a gun. A gun is a gun.”

It's like a little fair in, in, in due manner, right? I feel like sometimes I'm on crazy, is everybody on crazy pills, right? So this is, yeah, but this is our guy. I'll tie it up. This is a, he's a member of a, interestingly, he's a, he's a black guy, but he's a member of a multi-generational, Los Angeles Hispanic Street gang known as T-flats. There is vicious and as violent as they come. He's got an extensive criminal history, including cases of violence,

firearms. He is, he is presently at the time of his death, a suspect in a separate murder case being investigated by LAPD. High on math, he's got $2 in cash in his pocket, no bank accounts

were aware of. And he has a history of all of these things where he is basically bragging about

robbing people, Mark, getting high and robbing people. And we've got all this stuff that was

“leaked to us, not provided in the discovery, but leaked to us that that's all been, it was verified.”

So this is a bad guy. He's about to do a robbery and these guys interrupt him. Okay. So they shoot him they kill him. And if we could go to the next slide. By the way, Matt, normally what I would push back on you is normally I would say, okay, you're putting up the gang stuff. You're saying he's a bad guy. He's T-flats. But you, Matt, I would, this, this, I'm real playing here. I would say Matt, none of that matters because the officer didn't know that at the time because this was

just a random encounter. You've got the bill to answer to that. He's arrested him before. He knows exactly who he's dealing with. Right. And he know, and like all of this and how much of it scroll down on his little robocop, you know, remembrance thing, you know, who's to say, but they investigate the whole thing. And here's the, here's the, the finding. And for the viewer, there's three ways a prosecutor can deal with the case like this. You can refuse it for additional

investigation. You can refuse it for what people call a DA, DA reject further investigation required. Right. Or you can actually clear the defendant. And this is what they write. We find that officer Anthony Chavez and Matthew can cannon acted lawfully in self defense when they use force against Christopher Donde and Mitchell. We are closing our file and we'll take no further action at this on this matter. That is a clearance, right? So these guys go on with their

load. Oh, they didn't say at this time. They said on this matter. They said they're done. Right. So yes, go on with this missile with prejudice, except at the filing level. Yes. Okay. So let's, let's go to the next slide. Okay. Then we have the summary. I should have no, I should have known where this one said it. You know, and you know where it's going. So these guys get cleared. And then George Gascon comes in and I promise not to dump on them too much.

He made promises during the election before he has seen the file. And he has specifically told

them that he is going to prosecute this case, which on in the world of prosecutorial ethics blows my mind. You cannot announce that you're going to go after somebody before you've seen the evidence as a prosecutor, because that means that you have, you have dispensed with the, the sacrosanct obligation of prosecutorial discretion for the political expediency of trying to get elected. And it was effective, and this guy was elected. And the first thing he did is he, he basically he appointed a

special prosecutor named Lawrence Middleton to review this case and he involved a bunch of other people. And let's go to the Lawrence Middleton, by the way, is so shrinking violent. I used to deal

“with Lawrence when he was an X, AUSA. In the, I think he was in the public corruption unit in the U.S.”

attorneys office as a lawyer. And he's got a distinguished background. And very, but here's the

problem. They gave him a contract mark where the LA, LA City Council is paying him like over a million

dollars a year. Basically to act as a kind of, you know, the, a lot of police associations think, basically there's a witch hunter to go after cops. And so he goes after these guys and they take it to the grand jury if we could go to the next slide. This just shows some of the civilians in the parking lot. Let's go to the next slide. So here is the, here's the car where the shooting happened. This is the day after the shooting. This is before it goes into impact. So all this time goes by Mark,

right? And, and we know that evidence if it's not properly cared for can degrade and we can have all kinds of issues and problems. Let's go to the next slide. So that's the car, right after the shooting, this was the car when we took it out of in-pound. And so it's been an in-pound lot. It hasn't been covered. And let's go to the, to the, to the interior. The next slide, please. Look at this Mark. So the, the driver said window is all smashed in. There was no forensic integrity. That, that

water bottle was not there. It's like, it literally looks like somebody was like, a homeless guy was living in the car. And, and there was no forensic integrity. Yeah. So I was, what I was going to say, it looks like somebody broke into the tow yard. Right. And what the police officers could see or not see, especially with tinted windows, is a really important issue on this, you know. And because they were saying all along, we saw on-rage for the gun, we saw on-rage for the gun. Let's, let's look at the,

the next slide. So we finally get the, it takes it to the grand jury. We all know the, the old expression

of grand jury will, and died a ham sandwich. Right. So we always, who was, who was it, Middleton, who,

as the special prosecutor, it took him from the grand jury? Middleton took him to the grand jury. Now, what's the interesting mark is, is Lawrence was a former federal, former federal member, right? So in California for our view, or we have what's known as Johnson, people versus Johnson,

“or 969, three of the California penal code, which is that you must produce,”

exculpatory evidence in a grand jury. Okay. So for our listeners, because you hear us talk about this all the time, and actually I'd name my dogs after Brady and Jiglio. You have a duty in California, unlike some other jurisdictions under Johnson, the prosecutor has to present and has to ask the defense about whether they've got anything. Right. And so we have to present, and I did a bunch of homicide, you know, and

dimens as you know, and what I was trying to do at Mark is you discover everything to the offense. You give them everything you got, and then you see what's known as a Johnson letter. You have them lay out everything they want you to raise, and they give it to you on a letter.

“I think the best practice says you just put an evidence tag right on it that a fence”

letter is not there, and you give the grand jury every scopedory thing that a fence is asked for, and if you can't argue you away through it as a prosecutor, when you don't have anybody objecting standing next to you, maybe you're in the room. You know what I did in Michael Jackson's case, I made binders. I had 18 binders, maybe 24 binders, and we just handed them to the DA and said give things through the grandures. And that was Ron Zonen, right, at a Santa Barbara.

Yeah. Yes. And Ron Zonen is the real deal. And I guarantee what he does,

former Fed had never done a state grand jury before. So this is his first one. So my first

“and actually now because this is this is important to people know there is no requirement federally.”

Right. So his whole career he's been spent like, I don't need to do that. I just need to establish probably because I don't need to present his scopedory evidence. California is totally different. So my first interaction with him, I'm like, hey, give us all the discovery, and I'll get you a meaningful Johnson letter and we'll move forward. He refuses Mark to give us any discovery prior to taking it to the grand jury. So he presents this super shaky body camera. And on on the left

versus the right, we see the original versus this the enhanced version. So the way it goes down, he presents the original, the original version of this to the grand jury. And and we and he gets the indictment and the indictment on a voluntary man's order. So this guy who's model police officer a voluntary man's order, you say involve or evolve, voluntary man's order. Wow, super unusual in

his own right, right? Writing on a ball, which is something with you or you've never seen.

But then golden enhancement, no no gun enhancement on a on a ball. So it's, but he's been at 11 years, but as a police officer who shot a gang member with BLM involved and protesting and all that,

“he's he's going to, he's going to get, they're going to get to him in classification, right?”

I mean, I mean, like he at some point, he will correct. He's not going to survive. He's not going to survive. He's looking, it's essentially a death penalty case. Okay. So so we he after the indictment, we get discovery, we get some discovery. And and just to skip ahead here,

there are still 98 gigabytes mark of discovery that we never saw on this thing, 90 gigabytes.

That they never turned over documents that they never turned over. That we still have not seen. Okay. And so we get, we get a, we get this enhanced, or we get the, the body camera stuff, this unenhanced body cam, and we take it to a place that does body camera enhancements. Okay. And they, and it's, they're, they're, they're awesome at it. We give it to them and they take one look at it, Mark, and they go, wait a minute, we've already enhanced this. And it turns out four

months before Lawrence took this to the grand jury. He had an enhanced version and just to give give you an idea on the left is the original on the right, what they did is they, they liked it, they zoomed in and they slowed it down and loaned behold on the enhanced version. Here is that's the video shown to the grand jury, where you basically can't see anything. This is right before at 9.86 seconds, by the way, the whole encounter is about 12 seconds long. So on the left is,

is the super shaky dark version on the right is the enhanced version that the grand jury didn't get to see. And in that image, everybody stick with me here for our viewers, you can see the steering wheel. This is right before they shot. He has dropped his hands exactly like, like what they said, exact. And they said on the left, you can't see it in the cross, you had it. I mean, in the hands of somebody like you, Mark, doing a defense case like this, that is dispositive, no jury in the world is

going to impact. So, and I want to, did you run, did you, I have procedural issues? Did you run a 995 on this emotion to dismiss? I wrote it myself, and a 995 for the viewer is when you can challenge a grand jury indictment based on failure, presenting a sculptor of evidence. That's the, the view, the proper procedural vehicle, just like Mark is asking, Mark, I wrote this thing,

“it is, it is probably the best thing I've ever written. I think it was, I mean, and, of course,”

I'm going to be more than biased on this, but I wrote, I authored it myself, I had, I had help with people waste smarter than me. I presented it to our judge. And he, he denied it. And wow, I'm going to have to do this as a cliffhanger, I think. I took a written, the DCA denied it, and marked the California Supreme Court took it up. Wow. And, okay, the odds on that is, you can, you can go play the lottery, and less than 4%. Okay, so this is going to be,

I think we're going to have to call this a cliffhanger, do it next week, and I'm going to ask you, I'm actually very interested to see what the California Supreme Court does, but fantastic,

Yep, and just so the viewers understand, Mark is about, he's got a peer and front of the federal

judge, there's nothing more scary for a lawyer, so I promised him I'd get him out of there, so we're going to call this part one, we're going to return next week with part two on this, and we're going to, we're going to finish the story. So, thanks, Matt. See you next week. Good back in court, Mark. Welcome back to In The Well. It is story time, and I'm so low now because Mark had to go and appear in federal courts, so I'm going to go back to this Tyler Robinson

preliminary hearing, and there is, this is such an interesting time in America, and there's an old Vietnamese curse, may you live in interesting times. Boring times are when the crops come in, and there's no plague, there's no famine, and there's no war, and we live in very interesting times,

“I think in both the best and the worst ways that that can be used. Okay, this is when we are talking”

about murdering a human being because they disagree. Charlie Kirk actually had a whole thing on the, he did a post on the culture of assassination, and assassination culture, and how we have reached a point of such overheated rhetoric in America, that there are a lot of people in this country that believe it's okay to kill people who disagree with them politically, and God, I hope we, we back off from this. I spent 21 years dealing with sexual assault and homicide, 17 in

homicide, where I dealt with family members, and that's all I did, I prosecuted member cases,

and in every one of those, I'd go to the scene, go to the autopsy, and the first thing I would

do with my team is I would sit down with the family, and I would give them my personal cell number, and you just, you want to treat people the way you would want to be treated if you were in the same situation, and when we're talking about whether it's Luigi Manjiani or whether it's Tyler Robinson or any of these cooks that have tried to kill political figures, there's the reality of

“losing a loved one, it's a murder, is the worst thing that anybody can ever experience,”

and I really, I really hope that we back off of this as a country, because what happened to Charlie Kirk, I'm not particularly religious, but it was a guy who was going around a college campuses, and he was engaging people in dialogue, and he was giving a voice to people that might not have been as articulate, he was also giving an opportunity for people who disagree to take to a microphone and disagree, and that's what we're supposed to be doing in college campuses,

it's supposed to be a marketplace of ideas where you have different points of view, and the idea is, vigorous debate will result in the best decision, and you apply a little bit of representative democracy to that, and the idea is the best ideas are the ones that survive, and the best ideas then become law, and when we're resorting to murder, because we're offended by

“what somebody says, we are in huge trouble, and I think that's the real importance of what we're”

seeing in this Tyler Robinson case, and we had Lance Twigs, or at least they played a small portion of that, and one of the things that I've learned in prosecuting murder cases is oftentimes some of the best witnesses come from some of the least likely places, so this Lance Twigs agreed to cooperate

with law enforcement, and he provided some of the most important evidence that's going to be presented

by the prosecution ultimately at trial. We all have to be patient through this process, and we were on Megan Kelly's show earlier today, Mark and I, and she is getting impatient, which I totally understand the frustration of listening to the defense, argue with the judge, or object to everything, but this is a really important part of the process, and in the state of Utah you're talking about a young man who really does face the death penalty, and you really might face execution. I personally

prosecuted eight death penalty cases. I have no problem with with seeking death when the case is extreme enough, and this is one where when we're talking about political assassination, I believe, personally, this is a case that is appropriate for the death penalty. I think that it's, um, I think that in Utah, uh, he might actually get executed, and as a result of that, we want the judge

any argument they want, um, both in this phase, and during the guilt phase of the trial,

and also during the penalty phase, because it's all about the integrity of the process when somebody

may actually be executed, and this is one where I think that, um, you know, our country can benefit

from a real, um, serious conversation about where we want to go as a country. And, um, so anyway,

“I think that, um, this, it's, it's really important. This process is really important. I think the judge”

is doing a good job. There are those who disagree with me on the hat, but, and I think the prosecution

is doing a good job. And, for that matter, I think the defense is doing what they have to do at this stage.

“Look, I think that, uh, he's going to be bound over. In fact, I guarantee he will be,”

he will be found guilty. This is Tyler Robinson, will be found guilty at trial, and I think the chance they're very good that the jury will vote to, um, to have him put to death. And I think that if the judge does his job, it will survive a pellet scrutiny, and he may actually get executed. It's, anyway, um, not to end on a, on a, on a, on a dark note, but this is important stuff,

“and I think that, um, this is where we see the law sort of put to the test. And this is about”

right and wrong. It's about good versus evil, and, um, it's going to be interesting to watch our process played through. So with that note, I hope everybody is having an awesome summer, and we'll see in a couple of weeks when we're back for, in the well. Thank you.