Gruesome D4vd Prelim Hearing, Nolan Wells Private Autopsy Results, and Florida Murder-For-Hire Case

>> Welcome in the well. I'm Mark Gargas, trial attorney. >> I'm nearly criminal defense, but I do my share of plaintiff's work.

And I'm joined today as always by my co-host friend and former powerhouse homicide prosecutor

Matt Murphy, Matt, how are you this week? >> I'm not as good as you, Mark, because you're sitting on a private plane. >> I'm, I'm in a little beach cottage, I got to go surfing this morning, I didn't am against it, but one day, one day, I hope to fly private, not there yet, or even close. That's the plaintiff's lawyer side that you're just talking about, no doubt.

>> Yes, it's not the criminal defense side.

“What is the, what's your takeaway so far on the David pre-loom this week?”

Because I saw something today which just urged me, which was an article talking about how it was so difficult for the victim's family to listen to the testimony about, Celeste being, you know, severed with the chainsaw, and, you know, that, I guess that makes

a good clickbait, but as far as I know, and maybe I missed something you could tell me,

I thought that when they recovered the chainsaw, there was no DNA on it. So, while that makes a great headline, I don't think it comports with the facts in a documentary area. >> Yeah, this is interesting, and I want to remind everybody, you and I predicted this mark.

Remember, when we were talking about the announcement that there was child pornography on David's cell phone, and you and I were both saying, the public interest people are going to run for the exits, and his support is quickly going to desert them. So, I just want to, I want to put a pin in that, we were absolutely right, because this thing, as soon as that announcement came out, this thing, this case, dropped from a headlines.

I mean, it really did, so it's kind of back in now, because they've started with the preliminary hearing. You know, we were talking about this last week, a preliminary hearing really doesn't require much in California for the viewer. We have what's on its prop 115 prelimbs that allows for hearsay evidence to be introduced.

So, essentially, when, when Mark would defend these or I would present these, they take about two hours typically. You, you call your lead detective, they test out the hearsay, you get the ball

“over the net, because all you have to establish is probable cause, and this is one that,”

you know, I think maybe because of the media interest mark, what do you think that are going into with a little bit more detail? Also, there appears to be some rather bad blood between the lead lawyers on each side. I think best summerman started it by saying there's only one in me, there's three of them. And I think even judge, Oh, maybe jumped in at one point and said something to the effect

that I understand you guys didn't end your last case on the greatest of terms and we're honest. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's been quite a back and forth and to your point, I would say, in most prelimbs, in fact,

Matt, I don't know if you ever had this experience, but I've had buddies who were DAs, who would try to literally, and I know this is, you're talking about somebody's life, but you gallows humor that is criminal, they would try to see what the over and under on how many questions they could ask in order to get somebody hell to answer. Yeah.

I see by that smile that thought may have crossed your mind. No, it's, it's a thing, especially in, in the preliminary hearing calendars, especially when somebody has to do a rotation through, and usually not on the big cases like this, but it becomes like, it becomes, it can be very mononus for the deputies in there, and that is something you hear about, like, I can, they call it naming that tune.

I can name that tune and three questions, watch me. And literally, there's, there are preliminary hearings on, not on complicated murder cases, but on, unless there are felonies where they will put the cop on the one-fifteen at, and they'll ask three or four questions just to quote unquote, "get the ball over the net." And I mean, and then the problem of that, of course, is it's, it's dumb to do it that

way, it's, it's, it's unprofessional, and you're setting yourself up for, for the viewer, what's known as a nine nine five challenge for insufficient evidence introduced to a established probable cause. So, they, they kind of, they high five each other in the hallway when it's done, like, I didn't even, for questions, and then they, they put it on some poor rits attorneys desk that's

going to have to fight the nine nine five that's going to take, you know, an entire morning to argue. So, um, and yeah, I remember my father back when he was just the kind of, still filled with piss and vinegar back in the day, excoriating new deputies, with I could teach

my seven-year-old, how to say what happened next, what happened next, and that, it's a first

“cousin of how many questions does it take to hold something?”

Yeah, but this one, what are your thoughts on America?

time this morning where they're, they're hanging out together talking as the, as the, as the,

as the legal process moves forward, more and more evidence is coming out publicly, and this guy's in, in my view, he's just cooked. I mean, the, the Pruminer hearing is, uh, is about, it's close to a slam dunk, because you can get in, in, in my view, in the legal world, um, and the trial does not look much better for this guy, um, the interesting thing, as we were taking this on a Thursday, it's drops

on a Friday, they may have already, uh, you know, saved the tape as I like to say.

“I think that this whole case rests and falls on the medical examer.”

I mean, so far, we've got a bunch of evidence of a gruesome scene when they opened up the car, uh, to the point where they're talking about maggot activity, they're talking about insect activity, and they're talking about the, uh, the way that it was, uh, virtually impossible to do any kind of recognition, it was just, an awful, I mean, to the point where I think there was even testimony about 11-air freshers that had been stuffed in the car.

But I keep saying, until we hear for the medical examer, I remember vividly, you and I talking about this, that LAPD was saying, after a month of this case, well, just the

hold on, um, we're not sure that crying was even committed other than basically a

disintegration of the court. We're in the first phase of this prelim and to your point, you could have done this first phase of the prelim in 45 minutes if you would want it to.

“There is a certain aspect, I think, of this Kabuki theater, where the prosecution wants”

to make sure that they have completely poisoned the jury pool, that's my opinion. I mean, that's the cynicism of experience, folks. Yeah, that's it for those who were watching. You got main occupant running out and doing press conferences on the courthouse steps, talking about how there's, you know, mountains of evidence and we haven't even revealed all the evidence we have. Yeah, that's really pushing the envelope in my opinion.

Poor Habib Baleyan looks like it. Do you see Habib standing right next to him? It looks like he's been taken hostage. It's like blink twice, Habib, if you're okay and they'll let you out of your newly, you know, newly appointed position. But having said that, I don't think that this case becomes a slam dunk until after we've seen the cause examination of the medical examiner because a lot of this stuff that you could explain it about the grotesque nature

of what they found, still doesn't get over the hub of who what would. Yeah, I would always kind

of, on the gruesome ones like this, I would always encourage the family not to attend the the preliminary hearing because you know, you know, and a lot of them want to be there, but you want them to be able to to go through the entire process and not lose their minds before it gets to trial because it can be tough on the victims family, from the victim, the victim witness side of things, like a mom and their plus, it's like, you know, it's already bad enough

“and there's no real question that this is going to get bound over at this point, I think.”

You know, at least it's going to get up. Is this same judge? Is it a sign for all purposes? The same judge going to do the title? I'm not sure, but I will tell you, it's judge on made as she's on the ninth floor, which is the long cause floor. They had been making a, or the criminal court's building in department 100, which is kind of the traffic cop that along with the part of the 30 of where they assigned things. They've been doing that more and more, where on

serious murder cases, they assigned it to a judge for all purposes. So if judge on made is going to hear this for all purposes, maybe that's one of the reasons she's got the patience of Job so far. Let me ask you, let's pivot here into this Nolan Wells case. I was on Megan show with Dave Aaron Burrigan art idolah yesterday, and this thing, they released the private autopsy. This is Nolan Wells is the young young kid that got left behind on that island on the Fourth of July

in Mississippi, a bunch of kids went out on boats, there's like a thousand people on the island, a big party place, middle of summer. He went for swim, apparently they have to sell phone on the boat. The boat started to sink, and they had to leave, and as they told investigators apparently Nolan wanted to stay and talk to a girl that was on the island. And these guys left, they called vessel assist, a little bit of drama on the boat. Apparently their group went in three boats because

day he was found, you know, he was dead, and it looks like his body had washed up. So the the

“Mississippi investigators went in, there was a thing called the Cajun Navy, which helped in the”

recovery efforts when they were looking for him, and they did an autopsy that has, I don't think, unless they released it this morning, it has still not been released by the authorities in Mississippi, but the family got the body and had a pathologist at Howard University, the body transported, did a private autopsy, and they released it yesterday, and what's interesting, Mark, stay, Al Sharpen got involved in this, and Ben Kromp, who was the attorney who represented

the family on the George Floyd case, and also the Michael Brown case, and they, these guys gone to town, Colin Kaepernack, apparently came in to pay for this, and there have been apparently hundreds of death threats, leveled against the friends of Nolan Wells. Nolan Wells is a black kid, his friends were based on the photos, they're all white kids, and and we are off to the races again in modern America with accusations of wrongdoing and foul play, and what was

interesting to me, Mark, is that they didn't really get much out of the out of that private autopsy, they found some redness on the back of his head, which sounds like levidity to me, and for the viewer, whenever a person dies, there's blood in the tissues, and gravity will pull it into places, so like for somebody that has lighter skin, it's been laying on a floor for a while, if they're face down, if down their back, you'll see these red patches, which is just the blood

that's accumulated in their tissues, and it's called levidity, based on what Ben Kromp said yesterday, that's all they found on the back of his head, which I all bet you anything, it's levidity, but they had removed his throat, they did what's called a marknosis, but for the viewer, an end block dissection, which indicates to me that they found no obvious signs of strangulation, so they're doing a microscopic test, and they actually removed the the larynx and the throat, and apparently that

wasn't provided with the body because they're still testing it in Mississippi, and so the you know,

“I think to their credit, this private pathologist said, it's undetermined until I get the rest,”

until I can see the throat, but right now it is basically inconclusive, so no gunshot wounds,

no significant bruises, no skull fracture, and based on their own private autopsy at this point, no evidence of foul play, they said they couldn't rule it out, so it's just one of these interesting moments in modern America, Mark, where we've got a lot of emotion and very little evidence. So I'm familiar with the initiative that Colin has done, and it's done great work, because Colin, as you know, ex-client of mine, and I think the world of him, and one of the

initiatives that he's done is in cases where people can't afford it, so to speak, your family's can't

afford it. He'll provide very skilled pathologists to do a second autopsy, and it's not

“archiving back to the David case. One of the things I think that people need to understand if you're”

not doing this is that the medical examiner, theoretically, is supposed to be separate from the investigative agency, and even though legally they're viewed as, in fact, Matt, I think the the case in Ray Brown and Kiles V, or not Kiles, but the progeny of Kiles came out of Orange County, where the corner there was ruled to be part of the prosecution team. That is for a legal basis, but from a basis of science, I am used to take it very personally when I cross examine them,

as you've probably have seen, I can't tell you how many times Matt, and I suggest that their findings are influenced by either the detective, or the investigative team, or what information they were fed, they do not like that in the weeks. One of the interesting things here is that in this case, as I understand it, the state contracted, or the authorities, have not released their autopsy report yet, and one of the reasons for that, and it's legitimate, it can be a legitimate reason,

is that they have not received back all of the secondary or downstream tests that they rely on, often Matt, how many times have you heard pending toxicology, or pending sending it out, right?

you see, oh my gosh, you feel like the way to the world, and look, we talked about this one before, I had a case once where talks came back, and it was a guy I had charged with murder, and he choked his girlfriend, fiance, and he was a choker, and he was super abusive, and he had all these other relationships, and all this great evidence, and shit, Mark's on her throat, and shit, bruising the strut muscles, particular hemorrhaging of the eyes, all that other stuff

that you see in strangulation cases, and she died of asphyxia. We get the talks back, and turns out they got the huge fight, he really did choker out, she went upstairs, and took about a million sleeping pills, and you die of asphyxia. So pending toxic results is something that everybody that's lived at every prosecutor, it kind of gives you, like it's like Vietnam flashbacks to those cases, because sometimes it really does go wrong. I really sort of wish that they would let a fire under

whoever's desk this is sitting on, because when Al Sharpton is giving speeches and Ben Krump is is leading chance for justice, you know, and having kind of a, almost a mob mentality, man, I wish that they would release these things already, because I guarantee this kid drowned, and apparently he, you know, he loved his friends, his friends loved him back, it was, they

“they, he's one of those things, there's his mom, and look, I think, I saw an interview with her,”

she's a really, really, she sounds like a really nice lady to me, and she's a bereave mother, but the guy on her left, Al Sharpton, from the Tijuana Brawly thing, he's still

those millions of that prosecutor, that was a hoax, he never paid, you got Ben Krump in there,

he gave his hands up, don't shoot, don't shoot, that Eric Holder, himself debunked in that, in that, you know, in the Michael Brown case, and I, I feel, and I hope I'm wrong here, but I just, I feel like those guys are taking advantage of a bereave mother to advance himself, such as me, it's my opinion, I hate to say it, and I, how do you point to that, I always find this, that it's, you know, I, I'm gonna thank you for me, say this, I just, the idea of mothers and

fathers who would wash their kids, it's the toughest cases that we handle, both you as, when you're a prosecutor, and now when you're out, me, handling, sibling, and there,

there is always one of the reasons that I love the initiative by calling is, there's always

questions, the parents always have questions, and if they don't get answers, and if they don't get, to some degree, definitive answers, and sometimes you can't get them, but if they don't get answers, and if they don't have some degree, I don't know if I would call it finality or closure, because it could never, I've never seen anybody who says, oh, now I'm relieved, you know, I will pass that, that just never happens to our parents, in my experience, in my experiences,

that it breaks you, it it breaks you in a way that you just never recover from. But the initiative of having yet another autopsy that walks over, or at least kind of get a second opinion, and then, obviously, if you get a diagnosis for cancer or some other illness,

you always want a doctor with a second opinion, and I always invite clients, you want a second

opinion on what I'm telling you, because to some degree, what I do for a living is telling

“somebody who's got a terminal illness, this is what I think the prescription is, but the second”

autopsy by a good pathologist is important, but I think that if it were you, and you were the prosecutor in this case, you would have brought that mother in, and I don't know if the prosecutor did, but I think either you or the M.A. or somebody would have brought her in, share the results, and you're going looping back to the David case. That was one of the frustrations as articulated by the LA County M.E., he says, I'm being muscled, I can't, you know, the family deserves to know more,

and in that case, you can say whatever you want, but the M.E. took a stand that said, I don't want to be muscled, it's not right, both to the public, and more importantly to the people who were involved. No, absolutely, and another thing about this, Mark, and I just, I pictured you, actually when when I first heard this, Al Sharpton, and when I pictured you, I pictured what you would do

“on cross-examination, so I think this poor kid drowned, I think that that's what all indications”

are going to finally come out with, I think that when we see the Mississippi pathologist report, it's going to be very similar to the one from Howard University, and hopefully this will die down a little bit, won't for some people, but Al Sharpton offered $50,000 for a conviction.

up evidence of foul play, and some poor prosecutor is trying to, to put this case out there and

establish, you know, if somebody really did hear this kid, the idea that every witness has now been

“incentivized to lie by this, and it wasn't just him, I think Tyler Perry and others put money”

into a fund, I think it's over $100,000 now, an experienced criminal defense lawyer would have a field day, cross-examining a witness that comes forward after a reward goes up on a case like this, and it's just, I mean, you know, right is right, wrong is wrong, and justice is justice, and we just, we can't, we can't right the wrongs of the past and Mississippi or anywhere else in justices in the past with injustices in the present. There's no, like, payback justice is in

justice, you know, and I just, I don't understand this mentality. It's an interesting book because if you were going to put up money rather than as you say, give fodder to somebody

and basically challenge the ability to get a conviction at some point if there is, you know,

it's a big hit, we don't know. But why not fund it? And basically, similar with Collin did with the pathologist, fund a parallel investigation. I mean, you could, if you've got the opinion,

“and I've done this, I can't tell you how many times, where I remember one case in Utah,”

we ended up getting the department, the department's unit, disbanded, because we did a parallel investigation where we wanted information leading to, you know, clues, so to speak, and it turned out it worked out, but it's different than, if you, if, and I have a, but if they condition it on a

conviction, that's fraught with peril. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I don't know, it's the world we live

in the now, I got, I got some strong thoughts on opinions on that, but so next, we're going to talk about a murder for hire out of Florida that is just starting to heat up with some really, really interesting modern day legal issues that a court is going to decide next Friday, stay tuned. Welcome back to In the Well. We are going to talk about a really interesting case out of Florida.

“This is the Shana Gardner case, and I got invited, Mark, to go do a presentation to the fourth”

district court of appeal, and I got to meet a bunch of the players here. I did a presentation on cross examination on capital case litigation, and they were super nice to me, and I met, I got to meet the judge that's involved in this case, I met the T.H. I got to meet a bunch of these players, so I've been sort of paying attention to this thing. This is a really, really interesting one. So we got your classic, like, bitter divorce. There's a woman named Shana Gardner who was born to a very,

very wealthy, Mormon family, as she tell the S all the way, gets married. And I, I, for giving me, I got to read my notes here. Jared, Brit again. He's a Microsoft executive, and they have two kids, and it's one of those classic sort of pre-divore stories. There's some infidelity. If you want's up cheating on him, they wound up getting, getting divorced, and it's one of those contentious custody battles that goes on forever and ever. And it turns out that the guy she was cheating on,

his name is Mario Fernandez, Celdaana, and he was a cheating with, yes, I'm sorry, cheating with, the guy she was cheating with, cheating on her husband with this guy, who was, he was a, he was a maintenance guy in her gym, which is, if anybody who's seen the plot to body heat, not big good after happens around the pool or around the gym. No, and it's like this guy gets, he gets, he, she, she starts dating him, they get caught, the divorce happens, and it's one of these cases,

apparently with a ton of parental alienation, and, you know, she is, she's saying bad things about, about the her ex husband, Jared, and it, but it's one of these things that just goes on and on for years. She wants up marrying the maintenance guy, and, and he also gets remarried, and his, his new wife is named Christian, Christian, uh, uh, rid again, and they have a couple of kids, and so this goes on for years, and he is, he drops the kids off, he's on a, on a regular schedule of visitation with, with the

two twins that he has with his ex wife, he drops the kids off, he has his new toddler, he's got a baby

middle of the road, stops to move the tire, and it's a setup, and the tire, he gets out, he is a

immediately shot up, and this thing wants it being, uh, hugely important evidence wise, so he gets, uh, he gets ambush, she's shot multiple times. Tell me, wait a second, you mean to tell me that the

“prosecution theory is that the tire was there and they fully expected him to stop for the tire?”

Yeah, they, they, they, they did, and as the investigation developed, so he stops, somebody rolls the tire out, uh, hit man jumps out, shoots him multiple times, he's dead, and that's all they have for about a year, and they are ultimately able to trace the tire back to this guy, and I want to make sure you get it right, Henry Tenon, who used to rent a place from Saltana, and there's so

there's this very critical connection, and when the police go to interview him, they find a matching

tire leaning up against his house, okay, like same serial numbers and everything else, same set of tires, who's right here, who's right here, and that's Mr. Tenon, okay, so, so they start putting this thing together, and, um, Tenon rolls on everybody, and basically says that he was hired by Shana Gardner and Mr. Soldana to kill Jared, her ex-husband, and he, and apparently, it's very

“dramatic, he starts walking it back, he's, he's tried to do that recently, but he's already on record,”

kind of land them all out. That allows for search warrants, and they also do wire taps, and in the wire taps, and in, in the, in the, in the search of Shana Gardner's, uh, previous records,

this is one of those things, Mark, where she's, it's, it's one of those, one of those murder plots,

where he's about the millionth hitman that she hits up, that these guys reach out to. She goes to the, the honor of a tattoo shop, and sees if, if he's willing to do it, so there's this trail of all these witnesses that say she came and tried to get me to do this hit, so they put all that together. There's some really super incriminating text messages that they recovered from her phone with her friends, like, I, I dream about being able to, like, slit his throat,

referring to Jared in his chest, endless contentious, one of those divorce things, and one of the, um, so they, they, they wind up putting it together, and they, in interestingly, they're seeking death against, uh, Saltana, the, and, and her, and by the way, right after the murder, she fails on Saltana, takes the two kids and moves to Washington state, and, and her, her, her, her family has a lot of money, so they wind up hiring Jose by, as I, everybody knows him, he's the

guy that defended Aaron Hernandez successfully, also, um, uh, what's her name's, um, the woman who killed her kid that got away with this. I'm sorry. They see it. Thank you. That far, Jose would, Jose would push back on that. I'm sure he would. I'm sure he would, and Jose, buddy, if you're ever watching, I wish that tried that case in Orange County, and, and had we done Casey Anthony Orange County, would have had a very different result with some of my colleagues, but the, the other

the, here and all there, she, of course, is presumed innocent, um, yeah, just my opinion there, but, uh, famous, very effective defense lawyer, and he's been pushing very hard on accessing the widow, cursed in cell phone, and so we have this really interesting thing, Mark, where Florida is what's known as a Marcie's law state, uh, which, which, for the viewer, essentially grants constitutional rights to the victims of violent crime, and their families, their families, especially immediate

surviving family are considered, uh, victims of, of the crime, and they have the rights, uh, a whole, uh, laundry list of rights, California has the same thing, uh, where the thing and it's honored in the breach, my, you know, you know, how cynical I get about Marcie's law. Oh, no, in the Marcie's law, it's an interesting thing, right, and a lot of judges don't like it, um, and, and really at the end of the day, most of the time, it boils down to a right without a remedy,

right, um, because you can, you know, the, the victims, for example, have a right to be present for any significant hearing during the process, um, and they have a right to, to be free of harassment, they have a right to be, to be heard at any hearing they want to be heard, so their most judges will honor it. Um, but what's interesting here is bias has been very, very aggressive about getting into her cell phone. And Mark, I got to tell you, we, we all have, uh, you know, in the modern era,

“we've all got those text threads. I've got, I, I, I think about my fantasy football league,”

or like these are buddies of mine from high school, we've been in fantasy football for 20 hundred years. If, if the wives in that group got a hold of those divorces would happen, based on, it's a bunch of American guys that have both friends before the years. Yeah, we go from

seeing the stuff that's in there, but we all have threads like that on our phone and you were talking

“about privacy interests. And bias has advanced this really, I think, attenuated argument on why”

he should be able to get into this victim's phone and, and because it's a death penalty case, you know, and, and we were just talking about this, you know, day on Tyler Robinson, death is different, right? You, you want to bend over backwards to accommodate the defense, so nothing comes back. But now he wants to get into this poor woman's cell phone and the judge has put things over till next week. And just like the conversation we were having on, on the, on the

case, Tyler Robinson last week, you've got, you've got a former prosecutor, her name is Judge London. Let me make sure I get it right. And I got to meet her, she was wonderful, when I met her. Oh, gosh, Judge London Cite, former prosecutor, and Mark, you know, this, for the viewer, a lot of times, former prosecutors, I, with some of my old colleagues, when they would go to the bench, I hated dealing with them, because they were so, nobody wants to be accused of being

prosecution oriented, especially on an important case. And a lot of the best judges to try cases in front of, as a prosecutor, are former public defenders, because they got nothing to prove to anybody. But by the way, so I used to laugh. We had in California, when you were in Prime Time in the DA's office, was the George Duke Major, era, and George Duke Major, who was the governor, used to appoint nothing but former prosecutors. I mean, if you were a public defender, don't apply.

And people used to think, oh, man, that's lawn or that's lawn order. It was the exact opposite.

Former DA's, first of all, you, you gave them a more charitable interpretation. They didn't

want to be accused. Mine was, they would sit there, look at the DA in front of them, said, I could do a better than them. I could, you know, I was better when I was in the office than they are. What the hell are you doing? They would be so hard in the DA's and I'd sit back there in the worst people in the world, where the former defense lawyers or public defenders, because first of all, they didn't want to hear from the defense. They could earn it all in their mind. It was all nonsense,

and they didn't have enough of a minute to suffer any of these people, any more. So, I could not agree more, and I loved the lawn order era because it was, yeah, I used to sit there and just watch as these former prosecutors would pick the wings off of the DA flies in front of them. Oh, and I've had that treatment so many times. Now, eventually, what happens, I think, is a lot of the judges when they eventually over time, they get a lot more confident and they get a lot,

you know, they get a lot better, and they will, they'll call BS on either side, former prosecutors and not, but there's that, there's that period of time. How long would you say about five years, maybe ten years? You know, I don't think it's as much confidence. It's, I think there's a system of being aspect to it. They just get so tired of seeing the state getting beat over the

head. So many times, and I always say, I would rather have a judge than it's an equal opportunity

from a judge. I want somebody who's going to slam the prosecutor's slam defense. You and I've talked about that countless times. As long as they're there, they're there beating on each side,

“who cares? That's what it's, we're in there, we're in the arena. Yep, give me a, give me a mean judge who”

gets it right any day of the week, you know, let that drag me through the broken glass, just make the right ruling at the end. And, but you get, you get nice judges that want to be everybody's friend that will, that you don't know where that ruling is going to go. And the worst or the mean judges who are also going to make the bad willing, those are the, like the, the mean and dumb ones are the, are the very worst, but give me, give me the nice and smart ones, or even the mean and smart ones,

as long as you get to the right ruling, because everybody, it's so much less stressful, right, because you, you know, especially if you go and up against somebody that's experienced, you know the judge is going to come in, they're going to, they're going to call the boss and strikes, they're going to make the right call at the end. And it takes a lot of the pressure off the lawyers, because nobody's going to argue for anything outrageous, right? You know you're going to

lose, you don't want to lose credibility in front of a judge you respect, but this judge was a hard core prosecutor, excellent reputation within the community, really, really good, like prosecutors prosecutor, and like a lot of people, she went to the bench, and now she's got this really big

“murder case that's getting more and more media, and it's, I think the media tension's going to”

grow on it, but it's a death case, and in Florida, like Utah, like we're talking about, you, you, you actually face execution there, and it's, it's interesting, Mark, this was one of those,

them, for example, where the ship has sailed, it is, it is, like, the, the prosecutor's office is

“such an amateur, it's, it's, they're, there's no justice in Oakland right now, because the DA sucks,”

okay, she just does, she sucks, but, but Jacksonville, which is where this, this murder happened, this, um, this DAs office, I was really impressed. They got career prosecutors in there, lifelong, lifelong investigators that have been cops forever, it reminds me a lot of Orange County back in the day, you got a really experienced bench, but this judge has this, you know, this former prosecutor, and she is smart, and she's made some good rulings, but now we're at this thing where

you got a very effective defense lawyer on a death penalty case, and she wants to be super careful, and I will tell you, Jose, I know people know him because of Casey Anthony, they know him because

of Aaron Hernandez. I don't, Jose, since he was a brand-new lawyer, basically, maybe, maybe not that long,

but I end, uh, in courtrooms with him, and consider him a close friend. I think he's one of the super stars in the criminal defense arena, I'm, for whatever you say about Jose and trying, you know, anybody who wants to say, well, he got this client or you had that claim, he's effective and he's sharp, and, you know, there's, there's, there are, sometimes I hear a knock on him that he's, that he's blistery or, or does, he thinks, and he knows the law and he lives the law, and in this case,

“I think his argument about why you should get it that phone is a winning argument, I think,”

and I think it would be a disaster for the prosecution, I'll tell you, let me give you a parade of horrible, if she were to deny getting that phone and then at some point, they get it another way, and I can think of one or two other ways that you get at it. And they get at it, there's something there that leads to Jiglio and Peachman's style of information. That's an automatic reversal, at that case. It's a, it's a really interesting issue, and there's no doubt what you said is correct,

like he is, he's incredibly effective. I think, in a, in a Marcie's last state, this is a very, very interesting issue. I actually come down the, the, mostly probably out of my, out of a fear of my fantasy football league, like I said, private text messages, it is, it is such an intense invasion of privacy, especially for a defense lawyer, and somebody like you or Jose Bias, the idea that you can get into somebody's phone and, and for the viewer, what's going to happen is,

if she is convicted, and the evidence is very strong that this conspiracy existed, and that the, the prosecution and the, and the, and the investigators have done a very good job, like putting this thing together, and they took their time, they took over a year to put this thing together. There's a jailhouse informant that I don't think they should use, but that's the second secondary issue. But I, yeah, you could just grab the cell, the orange counties had their share.

You guys lag behind LA County. We had the Leslie White back in the day. You had your share of snitches, and I don't wish, I don't, I don't like jailhouse informants at all. I don't like

column, and I never use one mark. No, probably no surprise to you. I never called, I called,

just a, I call, recipient witnesses to crimes in the jail, like new crimes that we had it on. Never once did I do the, hey, he told me he did it in the cell line, because that almost always bites the prosecution in the, but somewhere down in a pile of things. But this is one that I really think this, this judge needs to be, she needs to be very careful, because it's a high profile case, everybody's watching it, and they, they need to be, if she does permit it, and she's

“already allowed some of the phone to come in. I think that needs to go to a special master. I think”

it really needs to be very, very narrowly tailored, because in the penalty phase, of course, she's going to talk about her bereavement and how brutal it was, and the idea that a defense winner is effective as Hosebias could, could have her private text messages to friends. Man, I just, I, in my gut, it really tells me that crosses that constitutional line for privacy rights for the victims, but it is a really interesting issue. I hope she, I hope she gives them this,

if she, if she does a lot, I hope it goes to a special master, and it is the strictest interpretation on very narrow issues, because man, how'd you like to be cross-examined on something like that when, and, you know, they plotted a killer husband, and they got to two kids. So I, I feel, I feel bad for her, I hope the judge, who I believe, and I did, I got to meet her. She struck me as the type of person mark, five minutes into the conversation, I would love to try a case in front of her,

so I just hope, but it's, it's an interesting thing, right? She wants to accommodate their friends in every way, but she has to balance that, that very important victims' rights

goes. I hope, I hope that I hope she, I hope lives losers that argue argument, but we'll, we'll see,

we'll talk about it next time. So, so Mark's got important places to be, he's a very important guy in that, in that plane he's sitting in, so I promise to let him go. So next, I will do a final thought on the Nolan Wells' death investigation. We'll let Mark go. Thank you so much Mark for joining me again today, and by the way, our show is doing great. So for the viewer, thank you, thank you, thank you for hanging in there with Mark and I, listening to us, spitball a lot of these very

interesting issues, and I hope you'll, just stick around for, for next week, and join us again. Welcome back to In the Well. I've got some more thoughts I wanted to share on this tragic Nolan Wells case. We live in interesting times, like the old Vietnamese curse. We live in interesting times. This is a, this is a case where, you've got this young man who was apparently loved by his friends, and he was black. His friends were white. They went to the silent on the

fourth of July, and I feel terrible for his, for his mom and the dad to and his family, and this

is a tragic thing. And like we talked about, the family always wants answers, but it is very

easy in an emotional state to go down a rabbit hole of, you know, why did my son not have any photos

“on his phone? Why, you know, why was his phone? Why did it return to the mainland without him?”

You know, what, what young kid ever goes anywhere without his phone, and something bad must have happened. And that is, I think a dangerous place for the mental health of surviving family members, because sometimes people die in tragic accidents, and it's an awful thing. And I, you know, that private autopsy that they, that they chartered, that was conducted, apparently revealed nothing that from which any sort of criminal case could be built. And, you know, when we, I, I listen to

the comments from Ben Kromp, who's the, the family attorney, and also Al Sharpton. And, you know, the idea that we want to fight past injustice, especially in places like Mississippi. You know, that's a noble thing. But Friedrich Nietzsche, the great German philosopher at a, at a saying, he said, when we endeavor to fight monsters, we must be very careful, less we become a monster. And this is a perfect example of that, where when we want to fight injustices, or we want to fix the criminal

justice system, and we want to write the wrongs of the past, it is very important that we

“not become monsters. And I think that when rewards start getting put on convictions,”

and you've got a thousand kids or so that are on that island, also celebrating the 4th of July. And you've just incentivized a group of people to exaggerate or say, hey, maybe for $180,000, maybe I really did see something. And you wind up starting out in this noble pursuit of trying to fix injustice, and you wind up advocating for injustice. These kids, I don't think their lives will ever be the same, the ones that run the boat. And you can look at

some of those photos and look, I follow the evidence as a, as a, as a prosecutor. I'm guided by the evidence and the rules of the evidence and nothing else. And so far, this, it looks like nothing other than a tragic drowning of this young man. They haven't released the, the autopsy results yet, at least not the official ones, but that is what it looks like. And, and to the answer, the question, who goes anywhere without their cell phone? A kid who's swimming. That's the answer.

“We can't swim with their cell phones. And that's why his phone were to stay on the boat. And if”

he remained behind on the island to talk to a young woman that he had a crush on or that I

crush on him, unless you've never been to a party and you've lived under a rock, that is a scenario

where the boat started to sink. These guys needed to leave. There were three boats that came with that group of friends. You could see that some confusion there, plus everybody is drinking, including, including poor Nolan Wells. And it's one of those things. But the idea that somebody's taken advantage of this poor family, you know, saying that somebody hurt your son, somebody murdered your son, based on what I've seen right now being absolutely nothing. There's a level of hypocrisy

there. Injustice is in justice. Injustice is in, in the 1950s or the 1930s and Mississippi is horrific,

by creating new racial injustices. And I think that as a, as a country, we all got to get together

“and agree that you can't do that. But you got people like Al Sharpen and Ben Crump. And I don't know”

how we walk ourselves back from this. And you have a ton of people who are rallying behind them.

And look, I've prosecuted people for, you know, I did 53 murder cases. And my investigators

“black-wide Hispanic agent, whatever they were, a victim is a victim, a defendant is a defendant,”

right is right, wrong is wrong. And the race just shouldn't play any role in it. And I see it happening here. I hope I'm wrong. But, and I, and I, and I really, I implore the Mississippi authorities toward Lisa's autopsy results as soon as possible and try to, like, try to get the truth out there, because as Mark Twain once said, a lie can make its way around the world before the truth can

“get up and get its trousers on. And I think we're seeing that in this case. To tragic thing,”

and if somebody did murder this kid, I'd be the first one to raise my hand to volunteer to

prosecute the case. But if, but if this is an accident, we do not cure past injustices by calling for the prosecution of innocent people. So that's my little rant. You know, there's a lot more to come on this case. But just my thoughts on a summer day. So I want to thank my co-host Mark Air Ghosts and thanks to you for tuning in to In the Well. We can't tell you how much we love your support. The show's doing great. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to us.

And we hope to see you next time. Thank you.