Hey, that folks did. Is Friday, December twelfth. Closing arguments are underway in the trial of Brian Walsh and with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Robes their part. We listened through Tipton the defense already, and it's strange to say, listening to him, we felt seen. He made some points that throughout we were having the same feeling, and he was doing it to say, the prosecution has just given you a bunch of stuff and says do with it what you will exactly.
And that's what we had been complaining about as we watched the prosecution put on its case for the last two weeks, and I saw, I thought where they were headed, and then they never would bring it home. And I was asking myself as a juror, You're questioning, why am I hearing about this? What's the importance or significance of this?
How are you.
Tying this to intentional premeditated murder? And I was confused, and I had an idea of maybe where the prosecutors were headed, but they never told us, and I've never seen that before. I understand they get the witness to take you down a path and you're and you're you're following along, and then they bring it home with either the follow up question or just in the way they continue the line of question, you understand what they're trying
to prove. I was confused for most of the prosecution's case, and.
So Tipton, who from the very first word that came out of his mouth an opening statement, You and I looked at each other and said, oh boy, he's going to be a good one. And we saw that because it's not just a matter of legal there's a presentation and almost a colloquial way he talks that works that some will tell you works with jurors.
You pay attention, You sit up when he speaks. He is an amazing speaker and orator. Obviously he's he knows what he's doing. But I would expect that from most trial attorneys, and I just would say it is maybe unfair, but you do compare. And when he speaks, you listen, when he tells a story, you pay attention. That hasn't been the case for me with the prosecution.
All right, folks, so we'll tell you where we are right now. We are the as we speak, closing arguments continue. Tipton On the defense side has finished the prosecution as we speak. We're recording this a little before lunchtime. But court started this morning. Jurors got part of their instruction, then the closing arguments started. They are then going to get some final instructions from this judge today and so
we believe she will have them start deliberating. If it gets too late, maybe she just sends them home and they start fresh on Monday, which some of them might appreciate doing that, sleep on it over the weekend, but that is where we are in the process today. So Tipton gets up robes and he it seems odd obviously we don't have a dog in the fight, but we have watched almost every second of this trial, so I feel like we have a good sense of how it's going.
Yes, and look, this is and we've heard from everyone, and we've said this throughout our coverage that every attorney agrees this. This is a almost it feels like impossible case to defend because here you have a defendant who has admitted to dismembering and disposing of his wife's body, has admitted to lying to police. It's clear he manipulated investigators and everyone around him. So how is this guy believable when he says, Oopsie, I just walked in on
my wife's dead body and panicked. But I am impressed and I have and we both have been impressed by Tipton's ability to cast some doubt. One of the big lines that stood out to me this morning he said one statements, and it sat with me. Nothing violent happened in that house. And then he went on in great detail to talk about the lack of.
Evidence, you know, and he brought it home. We listened to it all and we had to piece it together because quite frankly, the prosecution was doing this, so we had to figure out, Okay, they're saying this, so does this mean this? So we had to figure it out. He put it together today for the jurors and reminded them, I mean, this is for real. If something so violent happened in that house, you telling me he cleaned up so well that your investigators for days could find nothing
in the bedroom or the living room. We watch a lot of true crime. They can't have a clean everything.
And he pointed out to the fact that obviously they found some blood evidence of on a Walsh in the basement. He's like you know, he was trying to clean the basement because his searches specifically say how to clean blood out of the basement, cement floor and all of that.
So he said, if he was so.
Good at cleaning the bathroom and the bedroom and the other areas of the house, how is it that he wasn't as good at cleaning up the basement.
Those two things don't make sense.
Okay, you can take that from a legal argument of what that means. You can have lawyers argue about that, or what does that mean to adjure? When I hear that, I mean, look, Robes, the circumstances and his searches. Holy hell, I was like, how's it go to get around this?
It felt insurmountable when you were hearing them.
His attorney's have given doubt. There is some doubt about how this woman died. We don't know, but neither side has proven how she died. And if you didn't prove how she died, that means you didn't prove she was killed. And if you didn't prove she was killed, Robes, what is the jury going to do with this case?
It's the question of how much does common sense play a role versus irrefutable evidence in facts versus what actually is reasonable doubt, and that is what the jury is going to have to figure out, and that is part
of the difficulty of this case. But I'm impressed that there isn't There is even going to potentially be a difficult decision for the jurors because it seemed as though when we started this it was I know, prosecutors hate to hear this word because they don't want to jinx themselves, but it did appear to be a slam dunk case.
Yeah, before reasonable doubt was created for us, I didn't have it. When they started last week on this trial, I was like, this, dude, those searches are insane. It's almost you say common sense. Somebody sits and tells you this story, Well, this is what happened on that night, Like, come on, bro, what'd you do to your wife? Yes, yeah, obviously you're going to say that that feels common sensical until you get somebody like Larry Tipton to come in and give you reasonable doubt.
And during the closing arguments that he made, Tipton pointed out those searches and he had to, and I'm glad he addressed them. Because to have ignored them or something like that would have been terrible. So he actually said, okay, let's talk about these awful, horrible, unthinkable searches. He asks the jurors. Then, and you appreciated this when he created
this testimony. To consider the timing. The searches about murder and cleanup occurred six hours after Anna Walsh died, and he said, consider that the first search was just how to get rid of a body. And when he said, you get search results that show funeral plots and coffins and basic things when someone is about to be disposed of in a legal technical way, of course, you're just going to get those basic results. So he had to
use the word murder. Six hours later, he's claiming. The defense is claiming because all the other searches weren't giving him the information he needed.
Stop there is that ridiculous to think.
I hadn't considered it beforehand.
Because you know what he said to the jurors, he said, we've all done that before. We had to get more specific in our searches. To when he said that, like, oh yeah, I guess, I guess I have had to do that before. Right, he's creating something in your mind. That doesn't make you abandon common sense. It just gives you some kind of reasonable doubt. A big part several lines. We're going to go through a few of the things
he said, but wrote the passion, sympathy and anger. When he told them you cannot convict this man because you have sympathy for Annawash, or because you have anger at Brian Walsh. That was effective because you do leave this whole thing like, Wow, what a jerk he did this, He did this, he's convicted of this crime, and just be mad at him. You can't convictim because you're mad, And you can't convictim because you've learned about her, how hard she worked, how great of a mother she was.
You heard all these wonderful things, and you're sympathetic. I thought that was effective.
I did too.
And he also really brought home this idea that the prosecution did not prove motive, so they don't have a body. They can't tell you how Anna Walsh died, but they also cannot give you a actual reason that is provable as to why Brian walshkeilter. And of course they were trying to say that Brian Walsh, and they have been saying that Brian Walsh knew about Anna Walsh's affair with her lover and real fasto, and they claim that everything he did, including saying he left his lost his cell phone,
was all premeditated. But I have to say Larry Tipton did a great job saying they have not proven premeditation, they have not proven a motive, And I kind of have to agree with him on that.
Because right, it was supposed to be the affair or it was money, right, I haven't seen Look, I watched this. I'm putting myself in the position of a juror. Do I know for sure that he knew about the affair?
No?
I do not. Do I know for sure that they had some financial money issue and that was the reason he killed her? No I those two things are off the table. So now it was a juror, I'm looking, well, why did he kill her? Like I want to believe he killed her. I even if you believe he killed her, why did he kill her? That's gonna that's gonna trip them up, since they trip up, but that has gotta be a point of even internal contention for each juror, much less twelve sitting around a table.
And it was interesting to that point about having the twelve people who are now going to have to deliberate with one another and get on the same page. You heard La Tipton tell the jury very early on in his statement, like, don't be swayed basically if you believe that. You know, he was literally talking to the individual juror that if you have any doubt or you don't think that makes sense, or you don't think this was proven,
you cannot be swayed by others. I mean, he really he needs one juror, and it was very obvious he knows he needs one juror, and he was trying to reach out to maybe whoever that one juror is to hold true to your convictions, to believe what you feel in your heart, to not be swayed into thinking something other than what you feel is correct.
He might already even know who the one is. They pay attention to that jury box, how they're reacting, how they're moving, who's taking the most notes, who gets emotional. We always hear about that. You're right, he only needs one. If I had to make a prediction, I am mistrial in this thing right.
Now, Hungary, absolutely, I absolutely would say that because it's creed. I cannot believe I'm saying it. But if they came back not guilty, I don't know about that. They came back guilty, I would say, I don't know about that.
So if there's if you're hung up only as a legal matter, we have no dog in this fight. This has been a fascinating one to watch tropes. But folks, stay with us when we come back. We are going to share with you. The other very powerful line that Larry Tipton used at the end of his closing argument, and his other most effective argument he made was based around the word cherry picking. Stay here, all right, folks, we continue here now in the Brian Walsh trial, which
robes I think pretty surprisingly. I don't want to go as far as say shockingly, but maybe it's wrapping up today closing arguments. We did not expect to be two weeks in and this thing be wrapping up.
There have been a lot of shocking elements of this case. Yes, how quickly they've gotten through everything. Also the fact that the defense has made such a strong argument on behalf of Brian Walsh that was completely shocking to me. And the fact that they chose not to put on one witness,
not one person. We understand why they didn't put on Brian Walsh, but I was shocked and so were a lot of other legal experts that no one they called no one Allah Sean Diddy Combe style, like, we feel so good about our case and the prosecution we think did such a poor job.
We don't even need to put anybody up. That was shocking.
So yeah, there have been a lot of surprising elements of this case throughout.
That was very a very confident move. I think we were shocked. Our jaws dropped when Diddy didn't put on any witnesses and it worked out beautifully for him. And like our friends, our legal friends told us, you do that because you think you've already won. There's nothing else for them to do. So I don't know how confident they feel. I started at the top about us feeling seen, right, this is something you have been absolutely screaming about during
the entire prosecution case. Is that they're giving you, you know what, all the searches even right, she had this witness up there, she was in very monotone and said, look at file two nine, da da da da, Will you read that entry, he would read the search and
then she'd move on to the next one. These were some of the most devastating lines and searches, blood on a knife, DNA cleaning up, blood cleaning up after a murder, hacksaw a body, all these things, and it was delivered in such a monotone way, and then when it was over,
it was just over. And you had a feeling about this throughout, And Larry Tipton pointed it out today, is that they are just throwing thousands of points of data at you and here's the word telling you but not telling you what to think about it.
That was crazy to me.
They it was as if the execution didn't want to lead the jury, like that's your job. You can't lead a witness, but you're actually supposed to lead the jury and tell them what to think and show them why they should think this.
And she didn't do that.
Yes there was information, Yes there was evidence, Yes there was really compelling testimony.
But when you don't.
Connect the dots for the jurors and expect them to do that on their own, to.
Me, that made no sense.
And again we are not in any way, shape or form critical of these career lawyers, prosecutors, they do this for a living. They know what they're doing. What all we can speak on as observers putting ourselves in the position of a juror. That's yeah, it's our observation in watching this is that we are walking away not really sure of the prosecution case. I don't know what is the theory of how she died? She died violently? What's the n I see your mouth you could think, you know what.
Larry Tipton even made a point to say that knife they talk so much.
About, they didn't even care about it.
Enough to even do a follow up test on whether or not it actually was blood, and they didn't confirm whose DNA was on the blood. That's how little they cared about that knife that they kept throwing in your face.
So he made excellent points.
And look we are and look we've made it very clear we're not legal experts, but we have sat through many trials, Babe. I have sat through so many murder cases, so have you in local news, cable news, network news.
So we do have some perspective.
And it was shocking, at least from our perspective, what the prosecutors chose to leave to the discretion of jurors.
That was confusing.
This might be a part of their strategy and it did exactly what they wanted to do. I don't know, but this is where we're left. He wraps with this, and you know, he's being very good and punching his words and punching his lines when needed. But he made a point at the end that there's no evidence. You don't have evidence. You got evidence that he lied to belief, you got evidence that he disposed of a.
Bible, and he acknowledged all of that.
I love it. There's no evidence of a murder. And what he said was there's no evidence of anything but love. And when he said it, it was it worked on me in the moment because he had just framed robes all these other things that Brian Walsh did that seemingly were of a guy who loved his wife and was planning for a future with his wife. Now, was it all just to set up an alibi or something possible?
I don't know, but the evidence and things he was doing way before January one, the day she died, I mean the dinner they talked about that he set up and he lied to his parole officer about where he was going to because he wanted to take his wife to dinner. It was important enough for that.
That was and that was the first time I actually heard that DOT connected because I was confused why the prosecution had his parole officer or whoever was supposed to be monitoring him and detailing clearly he said he was doing something that he wasn't going to do.
Why would he do that?
She didn't offer a reason and other than he was not being truthful. But I needed to understand why he wasn't being truthful. And so then when the defense filled in the leg he was wanting to take his wife out to dinner, which he isn't allowed to do while under house arrest. Now you're the first person who's given me a reason why he was untruthful. And yes, we heard from Tipton saying there is no evidence in all
of the digital data. And obviously this is a man who wasn't thinking about his digital footprint, because he wouldn't have made all those searches if he was thinking about his digital footprint. But nowhere in any of that did it show that he saw anything between Anna Walsh and William Fasto.
He said there's no.
Evidence that he intended to kill his wife, there is no evidence that he premeditated this murder whatsoever, And he said, mister Walsh is not guilty.
Well, folks, this is how it goes right. Good lawyering has us in this place. We're going to listen to the protect We might come back and say who they got them, They really brought it home. We will follow up and we will be letting you all know what happens. Later in the day. We will give you an episode having to do with the prosecution closing statement, and we expect the jury to get the case today. This is fascinating.
I can't believe two weeks. Well, folk, we appreciate you being long the way with us on this trial, and stay with us our updates top right corner of that Apple podcast app our show page. It says follow click that button and the updates will come to you automatically, don't have to go searching for them. We always appreciate you spending some time with us. For my dear Amy Robot, I'm TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to y'all soon.