Mother Knows Death Presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Hi, everyone, welcome to this week's External Exam. So we've been covering a bunch of stories on the news since we started Mother Knows Death, and we always have crime stories that involve things that have to do with bail and charges that are filed and jail time and things that Maria and I always question what does this mean? And now I thought it would be perfect if we interview an attorney who specializes in this. So we have
a criminal defense attorney this week. Please welcome Allison treesal Hi.
Hi, nice to speak to you. It's exciting, I know.
Thank you so much for being here. We're so excited to talk to you today. Allison has been a criminal defense attorney for twenty five years and has represented over one thousand clients who were charged with committing serious crimes. She is also a legal correspondent for Access Hollywood and has provided legal commentary numerous times for multiple news stations. So you are a pretty big deal in this world. So thanks so much for being on my little show today.
It is my pleasure and I think it's great. I think it's great that you guys are covering it.
So we're going to start off with the basics, because I really have no idea what lawyers do. Luckily, I've never been charged with a serious crime, so I guess that's a good thing. But can you tell us exactly what a criminal defense attorney is.
So it's an interesting job because normally people come to me at the lowest point in their life and they have had some contact with the criminal justice system, usually law enforcement, and and they're either in custody, they've been arrested, or they're about to be arrested, and I meet with them, we walk through what it is that they've been charged with, either in custody, you're out of custody. I practice both federally and in California, so I handle cases anywhere from
a dui all the way to a murder case. And you know, they're afraid. For the most part, they're afraid. I everything they say to me, everything that they say to their criminal defense attorney, has to be kept confidential. A lot of people will ask the question, well what if you know? What if you know the truth? Well, it's so much better for me if I know what actually happened, because then I know how to best defend them.
So if they're lying to me and I learn about it for the first time from the judge or the prosecutor, we're in a pretty bad place. Unlike public deface, public defenders are assigned to a person that's unable to pay for a private attorney. I get paid ahead of time, and one of the benefits is that when you meet your public defender, you're normally meeting them as you're going into court or while you're in custody. Most times I get to meet someone before they go into the courtroom,
so I can explain the process to them. I can reach out to the prosecutor beforehand, get an idea of what kind of evidence they have against them, and if there's anything we can do pre filing. For the most part, you will not be able to convince a prosecutor not to file a case, but you show up in court, you generally enter a plea of not guilty. Our system is set up that all defendants are presumed not guilty
until proven otherwise. And it's interesting because it's not a it's it has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So in our justice system, when people say, well are they guilty. It doesn't necessarily work that way. It has the prosecutor met their burden beyond a reasonable doubt. So we can't rely on speculation or or it seems like
it's they possibly could be guilty. No, they have to have an abiding conviction that this person did the crime that they are accused of doing, and they don't have any reasonable legal defense to the charge.
Now you said that they you really want them to tell you the truth, and that it's kind of the same thing with a with a psychiatrist or a psychologist, that they'll that you could tell them things and they're supposed to keep it confidential, except in certain situations they have to report certain things that their clients tell them. So does that ever work in your case if one of your clients tells you something super serious that you would have to report it to someone or it's always confidential.
Well, for the most part, it's always confidential unless they're talking about an ongoing crime or they intend to commit a crime. Obviously I cannot I cannot hide from the prosecutor that they intend to kill somebody. I of course dissuade them of that idea, but I do have some duty to disclose acts that will be committed in the future, but in terms of the actual commission of the crime, what their level of involvement is, I am duty bound not to share that information.
Okay, that's really interesting to know. So, Mike, before we start getting into all the cases that we've been talking about in the news, I want to get to know a little bit about you and just how you became decided you wanted to become a lawyer when you were a child, Did you always want to be a lawyer, and how you found out about this field and how you got into it.
Sure. So, my dad was a psychiatrist and his clientele mainly consisted of people that were drug addicted and obviously the mentally ill and in some cases gravely mentally ill, and so there has always been a level of compassion
for people that suffered from addiction. And in my practice, although I handle very serious cases along with drug related and DUIs, for the most part, the percentage of people that I represent was some type of either drug addiction, alcohol addiction, or mental illness ranges an upward of eighty percent of the cases that I ham, so I have I have a real compassionate side for those that are struggling with addiction. So I didn't want to go to medical school. I enjoy talking to people, and I always
found criminal defense fascinating. So I knew that the only reason I was going to go to law school was to practice criminal defense. I started working. I opened up a phone book. I came home from college my freshman year, and my mother said, you have to get a job. You're not sitting home all summer. You got to open up.
You got to get a job. So at the time, we had the Yellow Book, we had phone books, and so I opened up pages under criminal attorneys, and I saw a picture of a hand in handcuffs, and I called that attorney and I said, look, I don't need to make any money this summer. I just want to learn. And I ended up working for him for years while I was in college, while I was in law school. Once I graduated from law school, and I helped prepare him for trials. I worked on murder cases with him,
I attended court appearances with him. And so I think it's always been something that I've loved. It's always been my passion, and it's kind of stayed with me, and it has branched out how I do legal commentary for TV and I comment on constitutional issues related to the law. But it's something that I've always loved doing. I've always had a passion for and I believe I've always believed that someone has the right to be defended. Our criminal
justice system only works when there's two sides. When someone is defended and when a person a prosecutor, a judge, a jury gets to hear their side of the story. Cases are complicated. It's never a one size fits all, and all the fans are different, and their stories are different, and the levels of mitigation are different. So the fact that I've been able to be their spokesperson for almost thirty years has been a real blessing for me, and I've enjoyed it so much. I represented all walks of life.
I've represented wealthy people, poor people, every kind of you know, every demographic, any religion, and so every day is sort of a new experience for me, and I go in with the attitude of the prosecutors got to prove their case, but also I need to do something to help this person so that they do not return to the criminal justice system.
Have you ever had a situation where someone has told you their crime, and you thought to yourself, well, this is really messed up, and like having a moral issue within yourself to think, can I really represent this person? They just did something completely heinous and I just there may be mental illness isn't involved with it, and they're just kind of pure evil. And have you ever had that kind of moral back and forth with yourself over certain cases?
I have, and I have been lucky enough to own my own practice, so I get to pick and choose the cases that I want, which is a little bit different than when you work for the public Defender's office. So years ago, I had a case where it was a sex trafficking case involving minor children. The man was a professor and it was a sex ring out of Thailand, and the family offered me thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is a lot of money, and I
just I could not represent him. I could not represent him because I believe that he deserved better than the defense I could, because I was so morally offended that I turned the case down. I've also had a case where I represented a cannibal and it was a similar situation. I was getting threats from community members. I had young children at the time, and again I thought that he deserved better than I could give him because I was afraid. And you can never represent someone and be afraid to
represent them, so I turned that case down. So I have had occasions where, frankly, I had a woman came out into her office and her child would wet the bed and she would take the rod to use to open and close the blinds, and she beat her child with it. And I was so horrified by it because I was at a stage in my life where I was potty training my children, and I felt that, you know, in those cases, you give them love and support and not physical violence. So I frankly said to her, I'm
too busy to represent you. I wish you the very best, but I'm not your person. So, yes, those situations do come up, and I have to ask myself, can I live with myself if I'm handling this case and representing them, and do well I give them the representation that they deserve,
and if the answers know, then I decline. But on the other hand, I recently represented a woman who was accused of killing her two children, and I was absolutely convinced that she suffered from postpartum psychosis, which is an extreme, extreme form of postpartum depression. And she was somebody that I believed, and thankfully sort of the prosecutor and the judge that she was not guilty by reason of insanity
and that she needed treatment and not prison. And so that is ultimately what happened in that case, and that's one of the cases that I'm most proud of.
Yeah, there's actually another case of that going on right now. I'm sure you heard of it, that a woman killed her three children recently, and she was a nurse, and she was on all this psychiatric medication, and they're trying to say that she pre planned the children's murder. She tried to jump out of a window and kill herself
actually after she killed the three kids. And when I heard the list of medications that she was on and the help that she was trying to get, and just friends of hers showing pictures of her working in the hospital, being a nurse and a seemingly normal minded person, it's
really upsetting. And I hope that someone like you can help her not get in trouble for this, because I'm sure she already feels completely terrible that this happened, and being on all that medication, it's kind of not her fault, you know.
Look, in my case, this woman still wants to kill herself. She was accused of poisoning her two children. One was an infant, and she took the poison herself, and she had repeatedly reached out for help. She went to go see a practitioner who did not recognize postpartum depression and psychosis sent her home. And this is someone that should have been hospitalized. So we thankfully had a long documented history. And this is someone who had done everything she could
too have a child. She wanted this child, she wanted to love this child, and unfortunately, her depression and her delusions and her postpartum was so crippling that she would spend hours and hours just walking in circle. She had scratched much of the skin off of her arms. And so this was, in my mind, somebody that did not believe in did not belong in prison. She believed she belonged in a state psychiatric facility. And to this day
she has to live. Even if she her sanity is restored, she then has to deal with the trauma of killing both of her children, So it's cases like that. And also I've represented people who were factually innocent, so I like to believe that there are certain instances, but for my representation, they would be innocent people who were spending all arrest of their life in prison. So for those reasons,
I feel very good about what I do. I don't you know, there are cases that are harder than others and have caused a lot of pain to the victims. But for the most part, the stories that I'm told are just so traumatic and awful, and they've lived through such horror existence, and I try and get them the help they so desperately need.
Yeah, sometimes you hear about these horrible things that even people murdering someone, but then when you hear about how they grew up, it's so terrible, even if they're in their fifties. You just feel so bad that a person was abused their whole life and treated that way, and whatever their history is, that you almost feel kind of bad that now this is the spot they ended up in, even though they're hurting someone else.
Now, Yeah, I mean I recently covered and I'm sure you've covered it many times, the case of Gypsy Rose. Yes, because Gypsy was just released. And what was an interesting what was very interesting or my takeaway from that case was she killed her mother. She planned the murder. She even knows she wasn't the one holding the knife, She was instrumental in her killing. She however, however, she was living in prison before she ever went to prison, and
why do believe that some punishment was justified? And she will say the best thing that ever happened to her, and actually the first time she ever felt free is when she was behind prison walls. The circumstances surrounding that murder were so horrific, and she did believe it was her only way out and what she had been put through and the trauma that she suffered at the hands of her mother is unfathomable, something that none of us would ever wish on our worst enemy.
Yeah, I'm actually surprised that she went to jail at autib. I mean, this is why I have questions, because I just look at it, like, I don't understand how every single person that listened to that case wasn't like, oh good, she should have killed her mom because that was terrible.
You know, it's an interesting case and she was given the low term on a second degree murder, which was ten years, which is the absolute lowest you could receive. But it was a textbook definition of a murder case, right, it was intended, it was planned, she participated in it, and I did applaud the prosecutor for recognizing the circumstances and even know the prosecutor was very comfortable in trying a first degree case, meaning that they could prove all
of the elements of first degree murder. They thought that the circumstances in mitigation warranted the lowest possible second degree sentence.
When I was in PA school, I had to rotate at the medical Examiner's office for a couple of months, and during that time I was able to go to a court case for a homicide with the medical examiner who was testifying, which I thought it was kind of
the coolest experience ever. It was like watching Law and Order but being there and it was really surreal, and that the way that the court case went down, it was like this guy had he had strangled, manually strangled his girlfriend to death, and I kept staring at him
the whole time. I was in the courtroom thinking wow, like I know that this person murdered a person, and it kind of freaked me out just being in the same room with that person because I never experienced obviously I don't maybe I've crossed paths with a murderer before, but never have known it and been in the room with that person, and it scared me a little bit.
So the first couple of times you met with one of your clients that had KIT that was accused at least of committing murder, did that ever scare you to be in the presence of that person or to be alone with that person just knowing what they were capable of.
Well, it's interesting that you say that, because one of the things that burned I think my my passion for criminal defense. This is when I went to law. I went to undergraduate at Tulane, and one of the criminal justice classes that I took, we actually went on a field trip to Angola, which is a state prison that has a long history of executions, and we went on death row and I remember thinking, oh my god, these people, these men are going to spend the rest of their
lives in these cells. And we walked by and I watched them and they were many devoid of emotion or feeling, and I was fascinated by it. And then I started to spend time in jail alone with inmates that were killed, that were accused of killing people. And I wouldn't say that I'm scared because most of them are handcuffed to something or we're talking through a glass. But I'm always amazed at how little insight most of them have to
the heinousness or the finality of their actions. So while they're telling me their story, it's as if they've removed themselves from the event and they're speaking in the third person as to what happened. So that's always been something that's really fascinating to me. There have been other instances where I have been concerned. I've had some people show
up at my home. At one point, I was representing the head of a fairly notorious gang and he threatened me and said, you know, if you don't get me out, I'm going to do X, Y and Z. And I said to him, look, buddy, I'm the wrong person for you to mess with. I'm the only thing that stands between you and freedom. Someday I probably wouldn't not threaten me. And once I took that position with him, we worked out just behe.
That's that's scary. I mean, especially because you have children, so people you hear horror stories of stuff like that happening, that the person that you were representing ends up showing up at your house or something, and that's just scary, is it. So you've had to actually call the police on people for showing up at your house.
I've had certain situations that involve the police. I had one in particular, by the way, who was actually led the police on a police chase to my home and he led them here because he wanted me to speak to the police on his behalf. So things happen. Things happen. And I and I do represent people who without drugs
and alcohol or true schizophrenics. And I would say, of all mental illness, schizophrenia, unfortunately, to me, is one of the most sad because it's like being a prisoner in your own brain when you really can't control your thoughts. And it's for me, my experience has been it's generally younger men in between the ages of eighteen and twenty six, and they've lived seemingly normal enough lives and then you know they're diagnosed with schizophrenia and in their early adulthood.
There are medications that help, but they they are resistant to taking the medication and that becomes a major problem because without it they really cannot function.
Yeah, I agree with you totally. One time I found so I came across some video that said what does it sound like to be a schizophrenic and be hearing voices? And when I listened to it, I thought, wow, I can't imagine to hear it, because you know how you talk to yourself Sometimes you're like, is that what they hear?
That kind of thing? And it no, it sounds like another like we're having a conversation right now, and if another person was talking a little bit louder over us to try to get me to hear and just hearing like all these opinions from all these different places, that that alone would just would just drive you crazy. Yeah, you see these people walking down the street. We were in New York the other day and the sky walked by us and was just completely having a conversation with himself, right,
And I feel I agree with you. I feel so terrible for people that are that are dealing with that because they can't control it. And it's just.
When I first started practicing, there was not the movement there is now for the mentally ill to get help, and I think that the shift has been has been a really positive one. You know, of course no system is perfect, but when you are addressing criminals who are mentally ill, if you can do something to help with their mental illness, if you can get them on medication and you get them so they're feeling better, they are much less likely to commit any crime.
I have this big thing that I feel that way about mental health. And I think that if you could call and get an appointment as easy as you can with like a primary care doctor or something, to get mental health treatment, and it was covered by insurance and it was all treated the same way, I feel like there would be a ton less problems just in America alone.
No doubt, no doubt in my mind, I mean no doubt in my mind. And you know, I'm somebody as a practitioner I can say there are too many people that I represent who have had undie knows untreated mental health issues for decades, for decades.
Yeah, and it's a hard I've dealt with that too throughout my life. It's just like a horrible it's a horrible way to live too, if there's a way that you can get help for it.
This episode is brought to you by The Gross Room. Do you want to explain for everybody the awesome work you do in there?
Yeah, So the Grossroom is kind of it was kind of born because of the extreme censorship that I get on Instagram, and I made this blog that you can join and you could subscribe to, and I do post deeper dives into all of the news stories. So, for example, last week we talked about NFL player Michael Williams and his death, his untimely death at thirty six years old
from a dental abscess. So I do a deeper dive into cases like that to show like what that would look at like at autopsy and kind of go to more details than we can get into on Instagram or the podcast, especially because some of them are autopsy pictures
and stuff can be really graphic. And we also just do so many things, like I was telling you that the Southwest flight, we look at cases that a were kind of high profile, and we break it down and we show all of the photos that we can find from those cases, but also just what things might have looked like at autopsy when these people died. So I think it's a really educational website, but we also have a lot of fun. It's a great group of people.
You could comment back and forth to each other. People have made friends on the Gross Room and we just love it. And there's posts every day, lots of content, lots of videos, audio. We do audio of a lot of things. And actually we were doing this podcast for like what a year before we started this public one, So if you're interested in the podcast too, you could go back and listen to all of the old episodes when me and Maria were first starting out with this
and we're stuttering all the time. But yeah, it's it's cool, and it's an it's just like a nice it's a nice meeting place for people that like are into things that are a little bit weird but want to learn something too. It's it's it's awesome. I love it. Yeah.
So especially we have fifty episodes before Mother Knows Death launch, you could tune into we read all of the high profile and celebrity death the sections on audio. Today. For example, I'll be adding a couple of pictures into this episode's post for more information, So make sure to visit thoughgrossroom dot com.
And you can join for only five ninety nine a month, and if you hate it, then you could unjoined. But you know what, we have sales once in a while that you can join for only twenty dollars for the whole year, and most people that start month a month, they jump right on that because they just love it so much. So see you in the grossroom. All right, Let's get into some of the cases that I'm sure
you've been covered on all of your news channels as well. First, let's talk about Scott Peterson that came out that came out this week that just for for anyone that's unaware of what's happening with that case he was he's saying that he was wrongfully convicted in two thousand and four for murdering his pregnant wife, Lacy Peterson, and she was almost full term pregnant, so I think that he got
convicted of killing the unborn fetus as well. And that case, I was like really attached to that case because that was in my prime of being in school for all this stuff, and I just and it just you related to it just because it was a young pretty woman who was pregnant and seemingly happy marriage by all accounts, and she went missing, and it was it was crazy
how it all went down. But I think that he was he was solely convicted on circumstantial evidence, right, Like he had been cheating on his wife, and he had told the woman he was cheating on her with that his wife had died previously, and I mean, no happily married man says that stuff, right, So that starts to make him look a little bit shady. And then I guess her body and his unborn son's body washed up right around where he goes fishing and stuff. So he
got convicted. And the first time he was convicted and put they gave him the death penalty, and then they dropped I think in twenty twenty they dropped the death penalty and put it to life in prison. And now there's this group called the Los Angeles Innocent Project who's trying to get him free from jail because they're saying, I mean, he's been saying the whole time that he's been innocent. Right, based on what you know about this case, do you think that there's a potential that he can
get out and that he is innocent? Or is it.
So there's a few things that are very important to understand in this case. Just because the La Innocence Project or the Innocent Project the Nationwide Innocence Project, and those are two separate entities take a case of review, it doesn't necessarily mean that the person is innocent. Scott Petersen
has always maintained his innocence. He's also claimed that because he was having an affair, because his alibi was shaky at best, they really the prosecution, the law enforcement and the prosecutors put blinders on and really only considered him as their prime suspect, and there were people that should
have been interviewed. There was a burglary that occurred across the street, and so he has always said, look, you solely focused on me, and you neglected to follow any and other any other leads that could have found the killer. In terms of why the death penalty, why he was given life in prison or not the death penalty, was because one of the jurors did not fully disclose an area that was really a conflict of interest for her.
So during va dayer, she did not disclose that she had taken out a restraining order against somebody and she was pregnant at the time, so the California Supreme Court reversed and although the conviction stood, he was converted to life in prison. With the invent of DNA testing, which has really become sort of the new frontier, and the Innocence Project as a whole, not just not just the Los Angeles Innocence Project has exonerated about two hundred and
fifty seven people. Two of those exonerations was were based on DNA evidence that showed conclusively that it was somebody else. So the argument is there may be newly discovered evidence, i e. DNA evidence that will point in another direction. They have also claimed that his state and federal constitutional rights were violated and they really did not interview or follow up on many potential leads that could have sent
them in a different direction. So the La Innocence Project has his appellate attorneys have filed a habeas petition on his behalf, and in conjunction with that, the La Innocence Project has also filed something saying that they will associate themselves into the case, which means that they will assist in his defense, and they have asked for a series of additional information, interviews, that may have been conducted at the time, and there's some claim that some of that
evidence that was collected and should have been stored has now been destroyed. So they are asking the court for the prosecution to turn over all of that evidence and if they don't have that evidence to explain why they do not, as well as this new DNA evidence that they are testing.
So is it common? Because I do, although I pretty much think that he did it, like just as my personal opinion, just because of how he was acting and stuff, and I'm sure that's why everybody else thought that as well, which is why he got convicted ultimately. But isn't it I do think it's kind of weird that they don't have any They didn't have any concrete evidence like linking him to that crime, and he was able to get
the death penalty like it. It didn't seem like they had DNA or blood or anything.
Circumstantial evidence is just as strong as a physical evidence, and you don't need a confession. So once there are two phases in a trial in California, there's the guilt phase and then there's the sentencing phase. Once guilt has been established, the phase that focuses on sentencing, whether you get life in prison without the possibility of parole, which we call elwomp, or the death penalty does not re
litigate the circumstances of the conviction. It talks about and it focuses on the person's childhood in mitigation, did they suffer trauma, and then the circumstances in aggravation, and the circumstances in aggravation after they determined his guilt. Right, so you can no longer focus on whether or not he was guilty or the strength or weaknesses of their case.
You're now talking about the methods by which the person was killed, and the fact that she was with child and she was about to give birth was a factor in aggravation. The lying in wait, the planning of it, the heinous nature of it. All of those things were used by the jury to determine whether or not he
should have been given the death penalty. So it's not something where you are allowed to sort of look back and say, well, it was only based on circumstantial evidence, because in a court of law, circumstantial evidence is just as strong as physical evidence in terms of a burden of proof.
Interesting, Okay, we're going to talk about another case. This one happened a long time ago but is still ongoing, The butcher of Bella Rose. I don't know if you're familiar with that case, but this happened in We talked about this on other knows that this started. In nineteen sixty eight, a teenage boy named Vincent DeRosa kidnapped and murdered a four year old girl and stuffed her beaten body in a suitcase, and it was she was missing.
They thought she was kidnapped, and then he admitted that he killed her and put her in the attic or in his addict in the suitcase. There was no actual evidence or that he didn't They didn't have to find any evidence. But there was no evidence of sexual assault.
So I don't really know why. He never really said why he did it, because she apparently she was sitting on the stoop with her mom, and her mom went in the house to go to the bathroom and left the kid outside for a couple of minutes, and he just did that, and he was he was a teenager though, so he was charged with manslaughter, served sometime in prison, and was released in nineteen seventy five, when he was
twenty three years old. And then in nineteen eighty three, he was drinking with any eighteen year old exchange student who went missing, and that later on his bones were found in the garden of de Roses house. His brother actually found them when he was gardening. So he got sentenced to twenty five years to life for in prison for that murder. And since then he served thirty five years. And now the guy's seventy two years old and he's getting released from prison again. So there's a lot going
on with this story. But I guess the first thing is like, what's the difference with the with murder charges? You hear first degree murder, second degree murder, manslaughter? What are what do all those terms mean?
Okay, so I think it's important to understand that in a murder charge, right, that there's an issue of especially first degree murder is premeditation, but an intent to kill, So there is an intent to kill. There's some subsets of second degree murder where your actions our sex that you have a willful you have a knowing and willful
disregard for human life. But when he was a juvenile, and remember this is many many years ago, I consulted with a friend of mine who practices criminal defense in York, and he said, look, the laws have changed substantially since the seventies, so at the time and if you're tried as a juvenile, if you're tried as a juvenile, there is an age for which you must be released, no matter what the crime that you caused, that you committed.
In California, it's essentially twenty five years old. So if you commit a crime when you're sixteen, you can be held up to age twenty five. And in that case he served. He served seven years on his sentence. He was sixteen. I believe at the time of the crime manslaughter is is that you are pleading to something where it was not an intentional killing. So you cause enough, you cause sufficient harm to result in the death, but you did not intention You did not intend to kill that person.
Okay, So that makes sense, I guess because he had said, I don't know exactly why he took the child, which is alarming to me. Why would why did you even take her? Kidnap her? But he did say that she wasn't she wasn't being quiet, so he stuffed a socker or something in her mouth. So maybe that's.
So that would that would be that would be an explanation that he did not intend to kill her. It's an unlawful killing, but without the intent to kill, okay, So so that would explain a manslaughter charge. As to the second charge, it's a very interest And again the laws are different now. But when you are given an indeterminative sentence, you must serve twenty five years. So if you're given a twenty five year to life sentence, you're then eligible for parole after you serve the twenty five
year sence. New York now requires that you serve at least eighty five percent of the sentence before you're released. When he was released or now the parole board has determined that he is fit to be released. They generally look at your behavior while you've been in custody, how long you've served, your age now, your health, and what
is the probability of recidivism. Now, what's interesting here is that the family claims that they were not given prior notice of his release and that they really didn't have the opportunity to object to be him being released. So although he's going to be in his seventies when released, in a lot of states under these type of circumstances, they may be held a lot longer than twenty five years, specifically in California. If you're given an indeterminative sentence, the
likelihood that your paroled is relatively low. You do serve much more than the base term of the twenty five years.
That's good to know because I'm just thinking, for well, so the child that got kidnapped and murdered her brother is still alive, and it's terrible that the family has to go through this and know that this guy is walking around yet again. But it's good to know that this is kind of a rare thing that it doesn't happen as much that you would have a person that killed two people that's walking around on the street. Now, it's just scary for me, even just or any person.
And I think the fact that this is making headlines and that there's a spotlight on this case, attention needs to be brought to the fact this is somebody who has proven not once but twice their ability and willingness to kill people. So and there's no doubt that when he's released, it's not as though he's released and freed, he is released and placed on parole. There will be somebody monitoring it. There are conditions of parole. If you
violate those, they return back to prison. But here a parole bird determined that he had served thirty five years of a twenty five year life to sentence, that he must have he must have his conduct must have been appropriate, that he didn't have a lot of violations or write ups, that he probably took some classes while he was incarcerated, and they felt that he had served sufficient amount of time.
That does not bring relief and satisfaction to most victims' families, and so I'm sure this case will be highly scrutinized. I'm sure that the parole board had a detailed explanation as to why they believed he should be released. But in my experience, this is the anomaly. This is not common course.
Okay, because that was one of my questions. I'm just thinking about the Lacy Peterson case. Like I told you, I was really attached to it, and I just remember, I'll never forget her mom on the news crying about her daughter getting murdered and how chilling that was to hear her, and then thinking about Okay, so at least she got the satisfaction that the person that she believed killed her daughter was getting the death penalty, and then she had to go through years later of it getting dropped,
and now she's hearing this. It almost makes me feel that even if a sentence is given to someone, there's no, it's not always permanent. Like that's what I would have thought, that it was permanent that was happening. And it feels like victims' families kind of continuously get revictimized. I mean, think about even this guy's sister that was killed in nineteen sixty eight, it's twenty twenty four and he's still getting victimized by this guy. It's just really sad, right, I.
Mean, in many of these cases, they have to relive the story over and over again. But in our system, they do have parole and people are entitled to a parole hearing. And on the flip side of that, there are people who have made such great rehabilitative steps while they've been incarcerated that keeping them there in debt definitely would also be injust And I'm thinking about Leslie van Houghton,
I'm thinking about the Manson case. Oh yeah, that has been very, very controversial to people for many years, and she had been repeatedly denied parole over and over again, despite the fact that she was a modern parole for, you know, for decades and decades. And so there were people that came out on both sides that said, you know, she is rehabilitated, she should be allowed to walk free. And then you have Sharon Tate's sister who said, my sister will never ever again be able to walk free.
She you know, the but for her criminal actions. I don't care how old she was at the time. We will never see my you know, our loved one again. So there are arguments on both sides. One of the things that is happening is some of these cases where people were convicted as a juvenile in a in a gang related case, or or where they were a conspirator
but they weren't the shooter and they were juveniles. Some of those cases are getting revisited because the the Supreme Court has ruled that it's cruel and unusual punishment for
a juvenile to get the death penalty. And they're also revisiting these cases where women shot their abusive spouse and after years and years of abuse, they they shot them, and they're they're reconsidering those cases and releasing some of those women because under today's standards they may have been able to use a self defense argument or a battered woman syndrome argument.
Yeah. I hate to think that people are sitting in jail that, like, especially a woman that would be an abuse by her husband. I feel that way that they shouldn't. They shouldn't be in jail. It's just continuing the abuse in a sense. It's just not fair to them. So I'm glad that they are revisiting some cases like that. So on your gig on Access Hollywood, which is super cool by the way, I'm sure you talked about Alec Baldwin case because that's all the rage with the Hollywood. Now,
what are your thoughts on that. I have a couple questions because I think this happened in October twenty twenty one, and right away they said that he was going to get charged with the manslaughter charge. I think he actually did get charged with it, and then they drop the charges because they weren't able to determine exactly if the gun was malfunctioning or not. And now they're saying that new evidence has come to late and they said that a grand jury has decided that they were indicting him.
What are all those words mean?
Okay, Now this is a very interesting case, right. So initially a special prosecutor was assigned to the case, and the charges that were filed were not in existence at the time that the act was committed, so you have to so one of the one of the initial attacks from the defense was one that was a legal one, which was, you cannot charge someone with a crime that
wasn't in existence at the time. Okay. There also was a question of the special prosecutor posing a conflict of interest because she was, I believe involved in some political position. So on those basises, the charges were dismissed. As to Alec Baldwin, a grand jury was the unless a case has been adjudicated by the by jury and the person is found not guilty, double jeopardy does not apply. So even though they dismissed, they dismissed without prejudice, meaning that
they could refile the case at a later date. A grand jury was convened and this grand jury found at least eight members had to agree that Alec Baldwin should, in fact sheate face charges of involuntary manslaughter. And what's interesting here is. If convicted, he faces a maximum of eighteen months in prison. Is that Alec Baldwin has always maintained that he never pulled the trigger. So not only did he was he not in charge of the firearms. Not only did he was he told repeatedly that there
were no live rounds on set. Not only was he not he wasn't the one who loaded the firearm. He's saying, I didn't even pull the trigger. So they then have a new ballistics expert go and retest the gun, but in order to do that, they had to disassemble the gun. And this person has opined that there must have been at least two pounds of pressure on the trigger and therefore he must have pulled the trigger, and on that basis they have filed this case against him.
Yeah, and I mean, of course he did. He's not going to say. I just keep saying like he's going to say whatever he could say to cover his ass. I mean, that's I'm sure he feels terrible about it. But do you do you think that he will actually serve this eighteen months in prison if he ever, if he ever really gets convicted, do you think that that would actually happen?
If he gets convicted, I do not believe that he will serve any time. I think he'll be placed on probation. He has no criminal history, and given the facts of the case, this is certainly not an intentional or wilful act. Was it a reckless act?
Maybe?
I think that there'll be a battle of the experts and what's common in the community and was this in fact reckless or was there a wilful disregard for human life. We have to remember that there were concerns about the safety on the set. We also know that these guns were taken out and used as firing practice. I think Hannah gutierres Reeds, who is the armor on the set, has a much more difficult case because she was in
charge of the weaponry. But al Baldwin was also the producer, so he does he does have some responsibility to ensure that that was a safe set that everybody was working on.
But I do believe that in a case like this, the prosecution does have an fpill battle convincing twelve jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Alec Baldwin, who didn't load the firearm, who someone handed him the gun, reassured them there was no lie bullets, that he acted in willful disregard of the safety of others negligence, which is a lesser included charge potentially, but in terms of the more serious felonious act, I'm not sure they'll get a conviction.
Yeah, I mean, I don't like him and his wife. They're just kind of annoying people. But I think this it's just I go back and forth because my husband's a firearm person and he always says, you know, you should never point it out a person unless you're ready
to kill them. You just don't. And whenever he's shown me how to shoot, when we go to range or something, he always shows me where to put my finger on the side, and he's like, you just there's no reason to ever put your finger on the trigger, and you just don't do that, even if it's with a fake gun or any It's just it's etiquette when you're holding
the weapon. So I understand that he shouldn't have been doing that, But if he was doing a shot where he was supposed to look like he was shooting the gun, then his finger would obviously be on the trigger. That's not unusual, and that's why I think it will cut.
That's why I do think it'll come down the battle of the experts. I think that the prosecution is going to show that this that this was very reckless, that this was it was standard in the community to never fire, to never point the gun at somebody, that it was his duty, not just as an actor, as a producer.
And then you're going to have the defense arguing, first of all, the gun that they gun, that this expert tested, has been substantially deconstructed, and so it is impossible to opine that this is exactly what happened on that day because the gun has been modified, and not only that it is not standard in the community for the actor who has already been assured that there are no live bullets and was not the one that loaded, and was assured by the people who are supposed to be the
experts this is fine, and told to point at the person that he did in willful disregard. Was it negligent? I don't know, but I think that this is going to be a very interesting question for the jury if it ever gets there. But I don't foresee him doing any jail time on a case like this.
Do you do you think it's weird and maybe this has come up and I just haven't heard it, But there was a couple of cameras in front of this dude when this happened. None of the film was rolling, and just they could just go back and say, Okay, he did have his finger on a trick, or we'll look at because he was pointing right at the camera when when this happened.
That's a great question. I don't know the answer. I have not read anywhere that they actually have video footage of the actual incident. But that's something and of course both sides will want to know if there's anything like that, because you want to you want to you know, slow it to frame by frame. That's you know, that may be very helpful the prosecution or the defense. So I'm sure they've looked into it.
Well before we wrap up today, I just are you working on any other projects? I know that you're a mom, you have a practice, you're a legal correspondent, you do all this stuff. Are you working on anything else that you want to share with us? You know?
I I thankfully, I'm super busy. I have a very active criminal practice. Our firm probably has about sixty open cases, so I I love doing that. I have worked for Access Hollywood for a number of years. I have a segment called Trending with Triso with Mario Lopez. I work for KTLA and Next Star. And you know, I'm honored. I'm honored that people like yourself asked me to come on and get my legal thoughts about things. I think that true crime is something that we can all appreciate
and enjoy and try and understand. And you know, thank you for having me.
Yeah, thanks for being here. You really explain things in a way for me to understand, which is awesome because I think a lot of people hear these words on the news all the time and we're like, what the hell does this mean? So yeah, thank you, Thank you so much.
Pleasure, so nice. Thank you, have a great.
Day, you too. Thank you for listening to Mother Knows Death. As a reminder, my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor, and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without
the assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based on my experience working in pathology so they can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge
of those subjects at the time of publication. If you are having a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks