Kohberger’s Betrayal of Defense Team, Accomplice Theories, and Victory in On-Duty Shooting Case

You're co-host along with my illustrious prosecutor, turned the fence layer.

It came over to the light side, Matt Murphy doing God's work. Now, Matt, I look so forward to this. In fact, I had to resist the temptation of texting you because I did not want to spoil the

“things I was going to ask you, how are you by the way?”

Good, good. A little summertime near the beach. So, you know, sort of my favorite time of year, and I'm getting in the water almost every morning right now, as my bones get creakier and creakier. Yeah, as if that's a change of pace for you who's the original, I'm in the water five or seven days

a week anyways, so I'm not talking about the sun damage.

Yeah, I think that's one, but I don't know, I think we start on coalburger, but at some point, I want to, there's a through line between coalburger, Tyler Robinson and David that I wanted to discuss with you, and I'll start with coalburger because coalburger filed this week. And as we speak, I think he just got an appointed lawyer if I noticed, a motion.

“I don't want to formally call it to withdraw his plea, although that's what the import is.”

It was kind of a, I don't know about your take, but kind of a rambling letter that he wrote, which hinted at IAC, and said that he wanted the truth to come out. I assume you've read this, seen this, and what's your opinion? Well, I watched your, your, your spot on Megan Kelly, I thought it was great. I, I went up in a conversation with about my books, so I, I was supposed to be on that panel with you.

Um, yes, I know, but I don't get, don't take this in a wrong way, but I got to actually instead. So, you, you have read it there, sure. Um, so I read it, you know, for those who don't know, in prison, they, they, they're only a lot to use these little golf pencil things, because a lot of times they'll turn actual pens into stabbing implements, they'll men them melt them down. So the idea of him sitting in a cell and

panning, not panning, penciling that, um, that attempt to withdraw his plea, you know, it's, I can't tell you mark how many times, uh, through the course of my career, especially as a prosecutor, you got some guy that somehow has a really good defense lawyer, and, and the, and the defendant, you got him dead to write, and they blame their lawyer for everything, and this, this struck me immediately as one of those, they got such a good deal out of this prosecutor by getting to come off death on co-worker,

uh, and I criticized him openly for that, and it was interesting about his post conviction, um, and then post-sentencing, uh, their burden changes, and it is, um, manifest injustice,

“which I, I think basically means new evidence in competence of counsel and something that like”

shows the, the criminal defendant, you know, someplace else like in Vegas, you know, sipping a peanut cloud and extra an elvison personator at the time of the killing, like, that's pretty much the standard of what it takes, I think, to withdraw your plea, uh, in the state of Idaho, based on, on the research I did, um, uh, but again, just no gratitude for the work of his defense team. Well, you know what I found, what I found, and

Megan had, when I mentioned it, speaking of Megan. She had the interview that I had done the night before with, um, on Jesse Weber, where we followed Steve, um, who'd the father of one of the, um, uh, the slain women. And his, he was, at that point, say, complaining bitterly, talk about a pox on both your houses, the defendant is complaining about his lawyer, and Steve is saying, I wish we had an tailor as our prosecutor in this case, uh, because she was so much

more competent, and it reminded me, I don't know if you ever ran into Harlan Braun, but Harlan was a mentor of mine in Cher Harlan. Harlan was one of the, um, uh, in the day, one of the great, uh, defend, criminal defense lawyers in Los Angeles, and Harlan used to clients would say, well, how much is the fee? And Harlan would quote him a fee, and they don't know why so much, and Harlan used to joke, well, there's one for the case, there's one for the appeal, and then there's

one to defend the ineffective assistance accounts. And so I used to chuckle about that, but this is so reminiscent to me, and I think you and I talked about this, it reminds me of Ted Kazinsky, where used the lawyer works over time to save somebody from the death penalty, and there's a lot of lawyers who do nothing, but the capital work, capital defense work, and try mightily to

uh, save people from the death penalty, and then the reward is, I never got to tell my story,

and I'm going to say that you were ineffective for lying to me about this Saturday, the other

thing, I mean, might look, you may have, he may have some issues here, but the problem is,

when you frame them in terms of my lawyer lied to me about what prison life was going to be,

“you're not going to get any traction with that. Now, the only thing I think to take away for”

some of the people that are watching this is that at least from the family's perspective, Brian Cobrager appears to hate it, so that's, that I think is, it's worth something, but for the viewer, he's got no chance on this thing, they can appoint council, there's the standard is so high, everybody is kind of running out their hair on fire, that Cobrager submitted this thing, it is going nowhere as fast as nowhere it can go, and it is just no chance.

Exactly, right, now the through line that I referenced is we saw the David Prelim over the course of the last, I don't know, seven out of the last 10 days or 11 days, we saw the Tyler Robinson Prelim, where Tyler's lover slash roommate slash

prosecution witness testified, so called testify guy, I always hesitate to say testify,

when you don't get the cross examined, so I'll call it a recorded statement, and then you have this case, the through line for me, in all three cases, there is substantial evidence, once you do the in Cobrager, I said it from day one, in Tyler Robinson, it became apparent to me during the prelim as with David, that I don't think any of these three cases lend themselves to a slam dunk analysis, that one person was the culprit or one person did this, in Tyler Robinson, for instance,

I've said it before, some people chimed in, there's kind of a split decision, that lands twigs, in a lot of jurisdictions would have been sitting at the table next to Tyler Robinson. In David's case, I'm not so sure that based on those text messages, the ME testimony, and what a difference a day makes in terms of cross examination, on the last day of that prelim, that there wasn't somebody else involved, clearly in the cleanup, if not somebody else involved, and who knows who actually

did the killing in that case, and then with Cobrager, I just had never thought that that was a solo,

so it's interesting that in three high profile cases in a very short period of time, that all three of them lend themselves to that kind of analysis, and I was, I wanted to ask you about it all week, and I waited until today. Am I going too far down the rabbit hole here, or is there something

“there? No, it's really, it's really interesting, right? So I think with David, imagine all the people”

that are in his orbit, right? And there were all these, there were a bunch of people that seemed to have information that Beth Silverman brought in to the Granger in the investigative portion of that, and basically forced immunity on them, and for the viewer, what's really interesting about what they did here is that you can refuse to basically testify, like you don't have to cooperate, sorry, you can refuse to testify, you can refuse to testify, then you go into civil contempt, so basically,

if you're called in front of a Grangery, or you're called in front of a judge for a preliminary hearing, you can assert the fifth, but then, especially in front of the Grangery, and I've had to do this before, they'll bring the presiding judge down, who will dominate us on and basically impose immunity on you, so you don't have a fifth amount of right against cross-examination anymore, and they went through that process in David, although they didn't really seem to go into that

too much in the prelim, I wouldn't have either, but clearly there's some people that know a lot more than they were giving up initially, and sounds like they made the right call by working whatever

“deal happened behind the scenes, and I think that we'll see them testify when the trial comes”

about it, and you know that's interesting, and you can talk about free form discussion, so, yesterday, I don't know if you watched it, but Dr. Fauci testified in front of Congress, and it was fascinating in terms of you didn't get any testimony, basically, because he was constantly invoking the fifth, where you got was a succession of speeches, but it occurred to me, and I'm not

for invoking the fifth now on questions that have to do pre-partent, because that's part of what

I've always told clients when they say I want to pardon this or that, and I said be careful

what you wish for, because now you can be forced to testify. Did you watch that, that occurred you, I know Rand Paul kind of talked about it or referred to it, but nobody seemed to press that

“issue. For the viewer, you should, everybody should look at the exchange between Rand Paul”

and Fauci's lawyer. I don't know if you caught that, Mark. Or he's like, sir, he had it. He basically had him, he said I'm going to purp walk you out of here and he did. He purp walked him right out of the building. Can I share something totally inappropriate? Yes, please. Last time, we were talking about my, my great fear on that Florida case, that woman that that's accused of

hiring the hitman of bringing in, and we were talking about the privacy interests between the

the widow and the defense was trying to get in to her cell phone, and I share with you my biggest fear is that we're beginning with your fantasy football. Right. And we're coming up to draft night pretty soon. And like, and so all, all the talk in my finished football league has been who cares about the Fauci testimony. Look at the woman sitting behind Rand. Oh, yeah. And she's smoke show. I'm no idea who she is. I don't even know if she's associated with Rand Paul or if just the

camera card. Well, she is 15 on a 10 scale. And everybody, everybody, everybody in America. So there

“are, you know, this is, we lead parallel lives. And I think we're both, you know, my, my next”

thumb book title is going to be all men or dogs. But the, the chats that I have about and the number of people who didn't want to hear from me when it came to the Fifth Amendment. But sitting behind Rand Paul and then sitting behind Ron Johnson. So the, the camera angles. And I, I sent it to a couple of people. And the consensus was that that is the daughter of a Ron John donor of Ron Johnson donor. So I don't know if that's true. That was ranked speculation. But boy,

you and I have the same text threads because nobody wanted to talk about legal issues. Everybody wanted to talk about that young lady. Yeah, no idea who she is. No idea what her politics are. And I can tell you right now, nobody in my fantasy football league cares one winner. They could care less. She, she could be as, as woke as on the left or as Maga on the right, there is nobody who gives a hoot. I, it's a, what a, it's really a throwback to eight through

fifth through 12th grade for me at least. It was quite something. Well, these are my buddies from high school. This is true. That's true. We saw his mind. Yeah, we've been in this league for 25 years. And yeah. And, and it's a, you know, there's a, it's a pretty diverse group, politically. And there's been a few like hot debates, you know, Zer's probably an every group in America over the last five years. And there was unanimity when it came to that photo.

I was going to Saudi, his lawyer definitely never cared about Rand Paul to paint attention to him.

It was, it was all that woman in the back of it. I was going to say that woman should run for Congress because she could unite a very polarized country. Yeah. We'll just get along. Oh, that's a point of agreement, America. Yeah. It's, it's whatever it's better to look at very beautiful people than Rand Paul. So yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, or Ron Johnson. I mean, although I,

“I get a kick in a perverse way out of both of them, but the, I think you're absolutely right,”

the unanimity across. And we hadn't talked as you know, but it's right in my, and my friend group is a little bit older than your friend group. So I'm telling you, this cuts across generational political and ideological divides. Maybe there's the center of the Middle East. Maybe they can all agree on something and it can start there. Middle East peace, Middle East peace from, from a, from an intern. Oh, I love it. So I, I don't know what the

position was or who she is. And we, we apologize in advance for objectifying you, but we're exulting you to the Henry Kissinger status in terms of diplomacy. Whatever they're doing hasn't worked up till now. So exactly. So she needs to move from Congress over to these, the, the state department. You know, so do you find that in all three of these cases, do you, what it worry you, it's a prosecutor that the defense is going to go that they're

So yeah, and this is one of those things that you deal with as a prosecutor. And I, I had a,

“I had a death penalty case that I did my Daniel Wozniak case where the defense lawyer argued”

very effectively that his fiance was the mastermind and that fiance was far more involved than we were able to prove. And, and it was kind of persuasive. And, but as a prosecutor in rebuttal, I got to get up and say, so what? Let's say there's a million other people involved. How does that lesson? David's, you know, not, not in my case, of course, but that's the thing. It's like, okay, let's say everything that a defense lawyer just said was true, true, and even more true,

all that means is that that person should be sitting next to this defendant as a codependent. It doesn't mean it alleviates his guilt. I think that's the comeback to that. And it takes

little while to get there because you always want to be right as a prosecutor's surprises or always

good for the defense. I think Mark always. And so, and the interesting thing about that argument is it's effective in a coder case. It doesn't from a defense standpoint. I don't worry about that as much in a Tyler Robinson case because then I say, well, if you're saying that it doesn't lesson that responsibility, ladies and gentlemen, go take a look at the jury instructions because

“you have to view with caution anything that Lance Twig says because he's a co-conspirator. And while”

that may not apply at a preliminary hearing, it sure is a applies at a trial. And in David's case, I'd push it even farther. And I would say, ladies and gentlemen, yeah, it does lesson because if somebody thought they were doing a favor. I mean, you can kind of see where there are similar defenses kind of rolling through Tyler Robinson and David because Tyler Robinson, you've got, oh, he's doing this to impress Lance Twig's. And in David's case, an argument may be

building that somebody else did this to protect David who was then in on this horrific cover-up.

So there's a lot to a lot more to work with there than I think people were first giving the

defense lawyers in either case credit for. Yeah, no, it really will be interesting to see. Now, best showman's very experienced. I don't know her, but I know you do. I did it all that time to build the case. I'm sure she's kind of anticipated some of that and hopefully for the prosecution in that case, there will be some corroboration of what those people say. But you can just, you're such a good prosecutor. I suspected all along when people were saying what's taken so long,

“Beth was going down every nook and cranny and trying to eliminate him. The guy I think his name was”

Neo or somebody referred to him as Neo. They dragged him here from out of state. They put him in front of the grand jury at the last time. I thought all of that was to inoculate these kinds of arguments and just thinking about, and when they put the M.E. on and I think the defense was cross-examining in the guy's testifying. No, we're not at odds with L.A.P.D. Oh, yeah, sure you're not. It's all every day. Can you imagine in front of the jury when they get up there and say,

yeah, what about this press release? What about this press release? What about this court order that you want to get to a judge shut down the M.E. So I think she was trying to enoculate all of

that stuff and that's probably why it took so long because as you accurately and almost always

point out, this is why you were such a nightmare to go up against. If you're a good prosecutor, you know, I always say about prosecutors, they've only got about 20 moves. The defense may have less moves and if you've anticipated them and kind of eliminated prophylactically, the I.E.D.s. that defense lawyers set out to. It's very, very challenging. Yeah, and that is advanced prosecuteural game right there. That's that's varsity level stuff when you're when you're basically

seeing potential defense witnesses and normally they can tell the police to pound sand with an investigative grand jury. It's basically a free deposition, right? Mark, you put a mess. Exactly. You lock them in and it's better than in deposition. Better than in deposition. You're at some metal some lawyer getting in your way. You've got a free reign. I mean, I can't, can you imagine? I mean, I can't imagine it. I don't do grand jury work. But to me, that's

that's it's almost you almost feel guilty that you're there with without a lawyer having some person there. They've got no protections. They've got no lawyer and you can just basically lead them down the primrose. That's right. And I'll tell you, I did do a bunch of grand jury working as a prosecutor. I would do that as a defense lawyer, you wouldn't. But it is an intimidating

and it's very somber and they're stern and it's not just a regular jury. There's between 18 and

23 grandchildren there and it is for a young person that would be in David's orbit. They are so far out of their league and are not allowed to have your attorney in there with you. And it is, it's like taking candy from a baby if you're a prosecutor. So that's kudos to best solvent for anticipating that. And we don't know what it is yet. But I have a feeling it's going to pay big dividends when that trial comes around. That's, well, I will keep talking about it. It's going to

have been before us, but I love those observations, Mark. That is a through line and it's really interesting. Also, another thing real quick, these multi-day prelimbs appear to be kind of a thing too. And by, that's the other thing I wanted to ask you about. I'm so glad you said that. I talk about everything, all three of these that we're talking about and others that I could probably cite. My cynical defense lawyer self says, this was the prosecution's way to try to

change public perception. As you and I have talked about before, how many prelimbs have we collectively done? It's in the thousands, right? And how many of them last longer than two hours? I mean, I was done. Almost not. Right. So the obvious calculation here, I mean, there is nothing else. You, I often will say the standard for a prelimis is my client breathing. And the fact that

“they're going for a week is obviously plain to the cheap seats. And if that's the case, I think it's”

backfired in all three of these cases. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. We'll keep up with it. And the good part about it is it gives us plenty to talk about because they put plenty out there. So good for us, hopefully not bad for the cases. So Matt, I think two weeks ago, I mean, just because

I'm always so talking to you with you because I have pent up demand. We had a cliffhanger. And I

want to hear the rest of that. Can we do that next? Yep. Yep. And I got it. I got it. We get it all of line. And what we're going to do this time, we're going to, I'm going to play the whole video for you. So you can, you can actually see the shooting and then, and then we'll take it away. And I got it. I've got a bunch of slides to go through. So I'll just kind of, I'll do a, I'll do a talk to one. I'm catch up for everybody. So I'll remind you with the fact we'll play the, the video.

And this is one that, man, well, I'll save it for when we get on the air. Well, yeah, this is one that you often say, I raised the Titanic. You raised the Titanic. So let's, I mean, and I've been waiting to hear the rest of it. Welcome back to In the Well. Mark, a couple of weeks ago, we started talking about my, my observable shooting case that I, that I've been telling you about for years now,

but I want to finish going through this with you. And for the viewer, one of the interesting things about being a prosecutor, dealing with defense lawyers is there's different species of defense lawyers. And you've got some that are ideological and you've got some that we used to call unicorn riding hippies. And then you get some of these pros like Mark Garagos who have a huge sense of empathy oftentimes for the people, but the representing. And they would friends

mind that were doing defense work would tell me this. And I, in making that transition from being a

prosecutor into doing defense work, I encountered some clients that I really liked, but I'd never

“had a case quite like this. And so I'm like, can I interrupt you for one second?”

Absolutely. It's, well, I often invoke my father. And it was, it's one of the things you put your finger on the pulse of something. He always used to say is that he thinks that the one basic improvement in the criminal justice system is if we adopted the gigantic model where one day you're a prosecutor, one day you're a defense lawyer, because for precisely that reason, it's easy to, when you're a prosecutor, objectify and kind of just consider defendants people who should be

warehouse. But boy, when you get somebody that you like and that you realize that what they're accused of is either a bad day and otherwise, you know, very well-lived life or they're being falsely accused, it rocks you into the court, doesn't it, Matt? And I don't think I've ever had a case where I've lost as much sleepmark, you know, because when you dig in and you realize what's going on,

“it is terrifying because if you fail, somebody's life is in your hands. Okay, so let me,”

let me walk you through this. So this is, for those who watch the, the intro to this, bear with me,

going to a Mac on Canon and he's the cop we all want on the street. He is a model police officer,

“number one in his academy class. He's got two kids, a wife who loves him. He'd had multiple”

commendations for heroically, like he tackled a mentally ill guy wants with scissors rather than shooting him and he became a training tip. There was another gang shooting that he, that he went

in, he was the first officer on the scene mark and he turned his back on the most likely entry point

for the shooter if they came back in, building and not been cleared yet and to give life saving aid to this poor kid, they got shot who didn't make it. So this is a really, really good man and he's out on patrol and this is in 2018, they get a call of a stolen car and this is in the city of Torrance. So he with his partner officer rolling to this parking lot, if we could show slide B1, please. So this is, they roll in, it's eight o'clock in the Sunday night mark,

and they, they go in and it is a, there's civilians everywhere. There's people getting all

“of the groceries for the week, they go in and they encounter a car that matches the description.”

Victim did not know the victim of the stolen car, didn't know what his license plate number was when

he, when he called it in and they come face to face with this guy, Chrisard Yonder, Mitchell. This is a clip that's a still taken from my, my class body cam. So if we can play the video, what are you doing here, man? Don't move, don't move. Get out of the car. So like so many of these encounters, we are, it's, it's about 12 seconds long mark, beginning of the end, and what my guy encounters, and it is, it is the stolen car,

turns out later, this guy's a documented T-flat scan. And so people understand that was from the, you would explain this last time, but that's the body cam footage. That's the body cam footage, and you can see what happens is he looks down, and if we can go to the next slide that shows him with this, the shows the, the owner Mitchell on the, the car, if we can go back to that. So what they do is they, they walk up, and seat belt is off, doors open, and he raises hands,

and he, if you look closer to the tape, he drops his hands, and as soon as they look in, they can see that he's got a gun in his lap. The trigger assembly is upside down, the barrel is between his legs, and it is indistinguishable from a sought-off shotgun, which is terrifying for every police officer. This guy has gang tattoos on his face, don't let the glasses fool you. He looks kind of nerdy in this. This guy has been arrested a

million times. He's been in jail. He is a murder suspect and a pending case at a LAPD. And so they got

that. Remind me, did this officer, your client, have a previous encounter with this guy?

“He'd arrested him before marks. So that's what I thought. Yeah. So someone, his Robocop”

mind, like the, you know, that, like that, that screen, that, the, the town modes. He's seen him before. He knows he's a bad guy. He, you can't hear it on the tape, but his partner officer looks in and sees all the gang tattoos. This is the, 2018, there were three different police officers murdered in Los Angeles County by documented gang members. So all of this is happening super fast. Now, it also turns out later, Christopher Diante Mitchell is super duper high on methamphetamine.

He's got a borderline psychotic amount of meth in his system. He's got no cash in his pocket. Well, I actually $2 and 16 cents. And he's got this thing in his lab and he drops his hands and then so it starts out with a flashlight where you can clearly see what's going on. And then my guy cycles to the gun and the, the, the light on his gun, it's, it's based on ambient light. It's just light enough in the parking lot that you, that it, it doesn't activate. So his flashlight,

you can see that that black object kind of in the crux of his elbow, that is, and this is body cam. So it's below my guy's eyes, what he can actually see. And this happens super super quick. And what he does is he drops his hands, but it's after he's, he's already went from the flashlight to the guns. So it's super shaky. It's super dark and he can't see anything. Okay, if we could go to the next slide. So this is, this is just an image I found off the, off the internet.

The, the image on the left is the, is the gun that was in Mitchell's lap. The one on the right is just a breach loading single shot shotgun that I found. But it's the same thing. By the way, Mark, when we started this, I, I got, I got hate online from some guys like, you, you're an idiot. You can tell that that's a, that's a breach loading single shot shotgun. It's like, yes, okay. Number one, the trigger assembly was upside down. Number two, it's just something

same's of pump action. It is indistinguishable. There's no SWAT team member. There's no firearms expert. At night in the 12 second encounter, gang member with gunners lap, it looks like a freaking shot of shotgun. Right. Okay. So let's go to the next slide. Just some of the gang shots that show, Mitchell and some of his, some of his background. So my guy and the other officer, both say all along, that it, this was, they saw him reach for the gun. This armaged to the gun. Now,

Mark, what I think actually happened here is, and remember, seat belt is off. Door is already open. I think what he's doing is he's reaching down to try to hide it or to try to move it from between

“his legs. I think that's what he's doing. But somebody who is high on math, sitting a stolen car,”

documenting gang member with a million felony arrest isn't a good decision maker to begin with.

So legally, it's not what was he thinking. And we got to prove that, you know, he was actually a danger. It's what a reasonable police officer in the position of Matthew Concannon, good officer, and good man perceived. And the windows of this car, also Mark, are heavily tinted. And we got little kids in the parking lot. We've got at least one little boy right right over the shoulder of my guy and a little girl that we learned later over the shoulder of the other officer. So if they

back off when they see the gun, they're allowing a potential gunmen with a shot off shotgun to take a bead on either one of these cops, and the background would be innocent civilians in the parking lot. So this is a question. Yeah. Yeah. Was this body cam? And I know the answer to this, but I want to

“make sure. This was presented in the filing package that went to the DA's office.”

Yes. Okay. It was and in the way it works for the viewer is there's two independent separate parallel investigations. The LA DA's officer investigates these under what is known as their J. Sid unit, which is their justice integrity division. These are elite prosecutors and investigators who do all officer involved shootings, and they do a ton of them, and they are really, really good at what they do, especially in LA County, because they get a ton of experience.

The other is a parallel investigation conducted by the Torrance Police Department. So those both, they both conduct these investigations, and not surprisingly when they get it out, one of the key facts here is turns out later it's a pellet gun. Okay. So it's not an actual firearm, but there's no way that these guys could know. Yeah. But what I don't understand is, didn't you tell me this case was rejected once? Not only rejected, they were cleared. So there's three things for the view right

that I've seen before. Your views for additional investigation, your views just for generic insufficient evidence, or much more in a rare circumstances, they will actually clear the person. It doesn't have to be a police officer or a community. This person is innocent of the crime, and I can probably count on one hand how many times I did that. If the thousands of cases I reviewed

“were actually said, this person is innocent. Okay. And that's what they get. After almost a year-long”

investigation, they jacid unit and Jackie Lacy returned. Right, a letter to these guys saying,

you exercise lawful self defense, you know, this case will be closed. All right. So, and I always

like that. Yeah. Can I tell you one thing? Yeah. I do a ton, a ton of officer involved shootings on behalf of the people who get killed. I we all across the country, every federal circuit, you name it, I do them. And generally one of the things I do is I analyze the body cam. I mean, I'm going to put the resources in the time because then you take one of those cases and if you're my office, it's five, and I just had one that was ten years from start to finish.

So, before I kind of invest that time and resources into it, I want to see the video. If you had shown me that video, do you know what the odds are that I would have taken that case? Right. We'll check this out. So, in the after the summer of love George Floyd and all that, you know, that period of time we went through this city of Torrance Mark, cut a check for over six million dollars to this family. Imagine that. And there's more.

There's more that we learn. Okay. So, Jackie Lacy, who I, I know you know who I, I always got

along very well with her. She was a, she was a Steve Kooley, sort of a successor to Steve Kooley, and lifelong Democrat for those who were interested in that. She was, first woman, D.A. of L.A. County, first black person who's a D.A. of L.A. County, I thought she was great. And I got along with her very well. Black lives matter started doing protests during the election in 2020,

gets elected, but on the campaign trail, he started promising BLM and the family that he was going

“to prosecute this case Mark before he had access to the file. So, Gaskin gets elected and he”

brings in a special prosecutor who is a former Fed in his defense, he's a former Fed, who convenes a grand jury. And in the federal system, you have no obligation to present exculpatory evidence. Okay. So, that was his background. That was his experience. So, I want to be as fair to him as I can be. He just didn't know. I guess in California, it's different. We have a case called People versus Johnson and 939.7 that requires the prosecution to present exculpatory

evidence. So, Mark, what I would always do when I would present murder cases to the grand jury in

Orange County is I would get the Johnson letter from the defense, which is basically when the defense requests all the exculpatory evidence. And I would just throw an evidence tag on it and hand it to the grand jury and say, folks, read this letter and then let's talk about it. Do you know what I do? I actually will do 23 binders. I put together 23 binders and ask that they be distributed to the grand jurors. Yeah. Which is another good way to do it too. Like,

you gotta do that. So, this guy comes from the federal system and I'm like, look, get us the discovery please and then let's have a meaningful Johnson conversation. So, this doesn't come back on my 995, which is a challenge to an indictment, right? And, um, and Mark, he refused to give me the discovery. He's like, I don't have to do it and they went straight to the grand jury, refused to do it. Okay. So, so we're already off to kind of a bad start meeting him. So, just to give

you an idea, Mark, these are the circles on this are the civilians that we knew about at the time that are right behind my guy. So, again, from the officer standpoint, if you get a gunfight with this guy and he shoots a sought-off shot done, chances of some civilian getting hit are through the roof. Okay. So, here's the car that day after the shooting and this was, again, the stolen car. And, if we could, so years go by now, so the shooting is in 2018, he gets, guess, going get selected

in 2020, takes office in, like, late 2020, hires this special prosecutor. Meanwhile, the car is sitting in an impound lot if we could go to the next slide, please. This is the car, not even wrapped, and let's go to the next one. This is one of my favorites. That's the inside of the car, Mark, the window has been smashed in. That water bottle came from gotoliness when gotoliness by who gotoliness why. The car literally looks like a homeless person's been living in it, and there was no forensic

integrity at all to this. The tires are flat. What the officers could see or not see, the tinting

“of the windows is critically important. This is the quote unquote alleged crime scene, and they”

let it spoil in some lot in San Pedro just going to crap. Okay, so fast forward, we have this texting scandal at the Torrance Police Department. You probably remember this. Oh, there's this text thread with a bunch of, a bunch of guys in a dangerous job, and there was a couple of them that were making, excusable comments. They shouldn't have been police officers, based on the tender of what they were saying, and a bunch of people got fired out of this. Matthew Concannon,

my client, never sent a single homophobic racist anti-Semitic, whatever all the other problems were,

he had nothing to do with it. Okay, so part of the grand jury investigation that this special prosecutor does, he issues a grand jury subpoena, Mark, and I demanding four years of text messages from my client cell phone, starting one year before this 12-second encounter with this guy, and three years after, and you know, Mark, better than I even know this. Wow, how long would you say in Southern California, it takes a police officer involved in an OAS, an officer involved shooting

to have legal counsel, would it be about one minute or ten, you know what I mean? Like, so this covers my communications with my client and Verizon, which we both use, has days worth of this stuff, and he issues a grand jury subpoena circumvents for the viewer of what is known as Cal Appa Echbo,

“which requires a search warrant to look at cell phones. I've never seen anything like this, okay?”

There are 90 gigabytes. Right, I was going to just say, how many gigabytes of information must have been returned? There are 90 gigabytes of information, Mark, that we still

have never seen. Okay, and for the viewer, 90 gigabytes is over to using word documents just as far

an exchange that my guy has with another police officer on a completely unrelated case. Okay, we're a judge, grants, motion for summary, judgment, I'll go down the rabbit hole in that. But they find a text exchange totally unrelated and check this out. This is, they got this, this woman, Kim, Kim, Sam of all, who came from San Francisco with George Gascone, who takes this text message sends it to people who deez off the nude administration, saying, I was unable to determine if

this was related to the OAS or not. And if we could go to the next slide, please, and then they present

this as the slide. Officer Matthew Concannon, referencing OAS deposition, which he never sat in,

never, he was not, because the pending criminal case, he didn't participate in the civil case. They believed our lives, and this is, this is the other officer communicating to my guy in a sarcastic

“joke on the other case. Good job sticking to the script and my client wrote, LMAO, that's what you call”

a W, that's on a totally unrelated case, and that's his response to an inappropriate joke unrelated to this. They give this to the LA times and they give this slide, making it look like my guy is laughing at the shooting, the shooting death of a young black man in Los Angeles County in the modern era. And I've never seen anything like it so now, he goes, and if we could go to the next slide, please, presents, he presents that shaky body camera to the grand jury, no problem with that, he's got

every right and reason to do that. We finally get the body camera to discover to us Mark,

and what we get, we take it to have it enhanced, we take it in and they're like, wait a minute, we have already enhanced this. And the body cam on the, the image on the left is what was presented to the grand jury. The image on the right is the enhanced version, they slowed it down, they lightened it,

“and they, they, they, they zoomed in. Okay, if we could go to the next slide, please,”

just to do a side by side comparison, this is the moment of truth, this is when he reached for the gun. On the left, that was what was shown to the grand jury on the right. That's the enhanced video. The prosecutor did not present the enhanced video to the grand jury, Mark. Wow. And if you look at that, and so everybody understands the definition of a scope of the story. That is the definition of scope of your evidence. So, look at that, his, and remember,

seat belt is already off, he's not reaching for the seat belt, doors already open, he's reaching

for the gun, just like the officer said, I, I have, I have never seen anything like this. We could

go to the next slide. There is the, um, shows the hands up, and there shows the hands down, side by side, and the enhanced video. Clearers day, right, grand jury, never saw it. So, what's the explanation for that? I have no idea, Mark. So, I, and I file, I file in 995 based, so for the viewer, that is a challenge, um, uh, it's known as a Johnson challenge for failure producing scope of tree evidence. Um, I, I do not know what this special prosecutor had in his head other than the, he, I can only

think he's a former Fed, and he didn't think he had to, he had to present a scope of tree evidence.

“It's the only thing I can think of. But this is so clearly, it's called to, I file in 995,”

Sam Oto's the judge. Sam Oto's an excellent judge. I know you, I know you know him very well. Not, not only know him. We, back when he was a prosecutor, we had jury trials against each other. Super smart guy, and he gets it. But also, we got 40 black lives matter activists showing up to every single hearing. You know, I've been, I've been there, I've been there, Matt. I feel you're, uh, I feel your pain. It's a, it's, and I've actually had a trial where not only are they in the

audience, but they're cat calling in the middle of my course from the audience. I mean, it's a wild phenomenon. Me of all people, Mr. Lefty, and I'm having a deal with cat calling from the audience. Okay, because Mark Erickus isn't, isn't fighting hard enough for his client, right? It's, it's, it's pure emotion without, without any, any fact. So, so let me, let me fast forward here. Let me, if we could skip, skip ahead to the, uh, little girl on the door, guys,

we can move to the, uh, this is, uh, B-18, slide B-18. Okay. So what happens, Mark, is this is, we're, we are fighting tooth and nail to get this discovery, and people at, at the, in the L-A-D-A's office, which is a part of the prosecution team, know that all of this expropriatory evidence is being withheld from us, and eventually they can't take it anymore, and I get a leak, who starts leaking stuff to us, and including this image that, that, that was not provided to us.

It was, there were 17 cameras up. They gave us about a couple of minutes from one of the cameras, at a 17 that we know were operational that night. And finally, somebody, we get a mole, who starts leaking information to us, including this still of that little girl walking out right as the shooting happened. That little girl was the backdrop over the other officer, shoulder, had they engaged in a gunfight. That is, as, as a scope at her, so I understand this

about a hundred feet away. Any firearm would be lethal at that range with a sought-off shotgun. These police were acting to save these civilians. And, and, and we, we had to get that from a leak.

Like, I've never seen anything like it. When I, when I, I followed an on on on on five. Oda,

“a new file. So, did you have to do it? And I'm sorry for being a nerd here, but what,”

as a nine out of five, or a stand? So, I did it as a nine out of five with, and using, it was a Johnson challenge using an on on five as the vehicle, okay, which is, which you can't do, Oda, you know, for, for very technical reasons, and I can't, I can't take any issue with him. He was great, okay, but, but he's not my nine out of five that I wrote myself, the California Supreme Court when I'm taking it up. The DCA kind of, okay, the judicial ruling, and they never do that, as you know.

So, in that's the background. And so, what happens is, they should in order for response and pleadings by both parties, which I, I mean, it's super rare that they do that. And the writings

on the wall, then politics change again. Nathan Hockman gets elected. And we get a new special

prosecutor named Mike Jenako, who was solid. I don't know if you know him, Mark. He is an ethical guy. Anyway, long story short. Imagine three and a half years. And I know you deal with this all the

“time. As a prosecutor, you just don't. I'm, I'm disconnected from the stress that, that some people”

are going through. And the, but the enormity of the responsibility, as soon as I knew my guy was innocent of this, man. So, this guy, he's, he's off work. He's been separated from his support group. His wife who loves him to death is stressed out of her mind. The death threats started rolling and on him. He slept after the, the first death threats came through. Before he could get his kids out, he slept in a bathtub and made his kids wear his bulletproof vest. It's, it's like the amount

of stress and he's going gray before my eyes. And this takes three and a half years. And, and we're getting, thank God, we're, we're getting people putting their careers on the line to leak discovery that we should have been given anyway to us, like the image of the little girl and the enhanced tape. And, and also there were 17 different cameras. And, and, and that stuff was

getting leaked to us. So, this is all stuff that should never happen. This is the mix of politics

and prosecutorial power before my eyes. So, so finally, get Mike Janako, who is a good man, and he's willing to take the heat. And Nathan Hawkman came in and was trying to undo some of the, some of the stuff, you know, that, that gas gun was doing and I know you're no Hawkman fan. I am no gas gun fan, but I had nothing against the guy either before we came in. But, okay, so the, the moment of truth comes in, we got a motion to dismiss. And I've filed a 97, 7 page brief

where I go through every single one of these things. I map it all out all of the still images. I explain what it means for his hands to be dropped. The, the fact he can't comply. Also, another thing that we got leaked to us, Mark, is it turns out this guy has this whole text history that they had in the murder investigation where he likes to get lit, I get high, and rob people. So, he's there to commit a robbery. All of that is withheld from us. And so, I turn to the group,

because I want to believe, Mark, like, that all these people that are in court are there for the right reasons. And they, they really believe that this is an injustice. And they really believe that there's some sort of, like, you know, racism here, which there wasn't. And so, I turn to them and I say, look, I'm going to make a deal with you folks. I know you mean, well, this is to a gallery full of, and this is ninth floor in CCB, right? Like, this is the, the protected court, the court,

the courts, and, you know, extra metal detectors. And I still look, I know you mean, well, do this. Read my brief. I deliberately didn't file an under seal. So, the open of the public review the exhibits that I included in that call my office. And I will stay on the phone

“with you as long as you're respectful. And I will answer every single question that you have, okay?”

And, and the court grants the motion to dismiss my client, my client's family is there. They break down in tears. It's this, this seminal moment in my career, Mark, truly. You know, it's one of the proudest moments that I have had. And the other side of the gallery freaks out. Fuck you, can't believe this is doing. Fuck you, racist cops started it up. Mark, guess how many of those people took me up on my offer to call me? And I went, and I meant it. And I, and I still mean it. If they want,

every detail about it. Guess how many call me? None. Not a single one. Why, why let the truth

“get in the way of a good story, right? And first time I hired a career mark, I had to be escorted”

from my own safety out of a court house. 33 years in the practice of law. I tried 250 cases, if you

count my bench trials. First time I very had to be escorted all emotion, politics, and prosecutual

power do not mix. And thank God. And I'll tell you, I got to say this. The book, right? The dismissal was it. The judge and the DA moved to dismiss it. The DA moved to dismiss it. But Oda, Oda initially wanted, you know, any, a very properly wanted Marcie's law representation. And that lawyer came in who clearly hadn't read my brief either, made a big, you know,

argument against against submitting it and said he wanted it. They wanted additional time to

to see if the feds would take it. Good luck with that one. And by the way, even in downtown LA with a federal, federal, grand jury, I would, I would walk my guy. If this was in Orange County, Mark, I would have refused to wait time and we would have, we would have walked him or riverside,

“or anywhere other than downtown LA. And even then, I think, I think we would have walked him.”

But imagine the stress. I mean, you don't have to imagine how you lived it. I'll tell you,

people do not understand. You now understand it vividly and have gone through it. It's not when you're representing somebody who, you know, may have done it. It's the time that you just eats away at you. It's when you know your client didn't do it. It's, it's the most unbelievable, kind of the threat to your being, I guess. Oh, it is. That Mark, I'll tell you was as stressful as any death penalty case I've ever done where I'm, or exact. I'm working for the families. I'm trying

to achieve justice. They're complex. I'm going to be accused of prosecutions. I'm going to, you know, on the appellate process, like we all are like, you're accused by a sea like the judge is accused

“of incompetence. Like knowing all that, this was the most, I think the most sleep I've ever”

lost on a single case. And I just feel like so much my career was prelude to that, you know. And and I, you know, this man is one of the, one of the best humans I've met or the course my life. And thankfully, we got him out of my, my co-counts with two of the one in the probably and I can't leave her out. Prince Lisa, who I know you know very well. She's wonderful. So yeah, congratulations. And I'm glad it, it tales from the, from, as, prosecutors have called the

dark side, defenseless have called the, the light side, but yeah, I'm, I'm very proud of that. I wonder, share that with the group. And I wonder, share that with you. So thanks for saying thanks for letting me ran. And yeah, my pleasure. And I'll talk to you next week, Matt. That was, we job well done. Thanks, Mark. Thanks. Can't wait. I want to thank my, uh, illustrious co-host, Mark here goes. And thank you all for tuning in. The numbers on our,

on our little podcast, this project are, are growing. They're great. That's only thanks your support. And, uh, can't wait to see everybody next time. Thank you.