Want to be an American flony back on seven hundred WLW. There is nothing like a sleep when it's pouring rain outside, so it just makes you sleep more. The only problem with that is you got to get you gotta get up right, and it was a slow move today for me. I might be with you as well. We have horrible news, of course with the fire. We'll get more than a bit later on in Warren County, but also the follow up from the mass shooting at Riverfront Live over the weekend.
Nine people shot, hundreds traumatized, and the man now accused of pulling the trigger could walk free on a fifty thousand dollars bond. He's climbing self defense and the mayor is furious. The question, though, is why didn't prosecutors asked to keep him locked up in the first place? On that is attorney defense attorney, constitutional expert and all around decent guy, Steve Gooden, Steve, how you doing, buddy, good good boy?
Suh.
So we got the case of Frenny Cobb. He's twenty four years old, arrested on a single felonious assault charge in connection with the shooting. Nine people twenty injured in the stampede. The judge set bonded fifty thousand dollars. Cobb is a convicted fellon, illegally barred from having a firearm. He was just in jail, got out of prison and picked up a gun and went and shot an individual
in the crowd at this event on Saturday. He's had two prior weapon under disability convictions before the shooting, including one just a year ago, and only served twelve months before his release. Steve, at what point does the systems repeated leniency in this whole restorative justice thing and bail reform towards an armed repeat offender across judicial discretion into just absolute negligence, Because it feels like this is negligent to me.
Well, look, this was a complete failure of the system on multiple levels, and there's a lot to unpack here, but one thing I do want to make clear, thank god, that looks as of the US Attorney's Office has stepped
in with federal charges. They slapped what's called a federal holder on these two gentlemen, both of whom I guess there was a straight up gun battle the you, and it looks as though that they're not going anywhere thanks to the intervention of the FBI and the US Attorney's office, so that at least, you know, they have rectified the situation, at least for the moment. They are facing federal weapons churages now that they could carry up to fifteen years each.
So that's good news. The bad news is, you're right, there's no way either of these guys should have been getting out on any kind of a low bond. And you know, the saying is, you know, success as many fathers, but failures and orphan here the failure has many many fathers. It looks as though the prosecutors and the police officers
wok forward with a single count of colonious assault. It looks clear to me that at this point they know there was a gun battle, but there seems to be a no nine people shot, twenty others injured, but there seems to be a lack of clarity at this point in the investigation is to who shot whom. So it looks as though they threw this kind of placeholder charge out. That was mistake number one. You know, it didn't carry the gravity or really communicate the gravity of what happened.
And then number two, we do have judges and I've dealt with this judge before, Bernard Monday. He's actually overall a really good judge. But there are a lot of judges in this courthouse right now that have this ideological bent. They don't believe in cash bond. They think it's unfair that people like you and I who have means, if we're accused of a crime, that we can go get a put our house up, or have access sell stock
and post a bond. They think it's fundamentally unfair that people who don't have means are being held in jail. It's an ideological thing that has nothing to do whatsoever
with the facts of a case. And it got so bad in Hamilton County if you recall about three or four years ago, Judge Megan Shanahan, he's now in the High Supreme Court, actually put forward a statewide issue requiring judges to consider public safety is an issue in the posting or setting of cash bonds in addition to their ability to pay, which is like sort of the progressive democratic focus. It's always the ability to pay, not public safety.
So there's a requirement these judges have. It's in the Ohio Constitution now imposed by the voters that they should look at public safety above all else, and that clearly just didn't happen here. So a fifty thousand dollars bond conceivably posted, you know, a ten percent, which is the standard I thing here. So someone could post five thousand dollars cash of walk out on some sort of an ankle bracelet. You know, that's a really bad, bad thing. And you know, back when I was a prosecutor, we
viewed this very very differently twenty years ago. Not only were you trying to protect the public, but you also wanted to protect the defendant because you know, in the in the immediate aftermath of some big public shooting like this, you know, there tends to be victims, families looking for them too. It's in society's interest, they're interest everyone for
them to sit. Look, if there's something flawed about this case and it turns out that got the wrong guys, you know, this will be presented to the grand jury within ten days. Anyway, they'll be out of the worst thing that happens here is that someone who is credibly accused of a mass shooting sits in jail for ten days while the authority sorted out. That's something that is not offensive to our system or to society or anything
of the sort. And it's just common sense. And this is the kind of stuff again that makes people look at this and shake their head. And it's fascinating to me that even the mayor, wait, and the mayor is out. The mayor was somebody who was really really bragged about remaking the carhouse and pushing these things and attacked cash bonds and look.
I remember that that isn't that irony? I don't want to say delicious, because you know this is such a serious crime, Steve Gooden, But here's a guy who campaigned on restorative justice bond reform. We got to be better, a gentler. We can't punch down. We've got to treat people better. Okay, great, And now he's in the podium saying, how the hell could this person get out into the fifty thousand dollars buck It's because you and I said progressive push for this, That's.
All I mean, that's absolutely read. I read this quote. Iomas, you know, I think I still have a cell phone here somewhere else. Who was going to text it it Welcome to the party now, like we will have been saying this for years and look, this is just in This is one of those things that's been out there for about ten to fifteen years on the progress among progressive politicians that drives people. Not just one of these things.
It's an article of faith on that side. And you know, like the way I try to explain it to my my democratic friends is like this, and like, you know how in seeing some people feel when you talk to a hardcore conservative and say, guys, look, we believe in gun rights, but we don't you think we should have some gun control. Maybe you shouldn't be able to carry an A forty seven out in public or AK forty seven in public, and they say, no, no, no, no,
it's got to be it's all or nothing. That's how democrats sound when you in common sense people talk about balbell or form. Well, it's just fundamentally unfair that rich people can postpond and well, no, actually, when you look at the facts of the matter, when someone commits a violent offense, there ought to be an ability to hold on to them. And frankly, in the federal system there
is no cash bond. You have what's called a detention hearing, where a magistrate, a federal magistrate looks at the facts of the case, and if you're caught with a bunch of drugs or guns, you're going nowhere. You have no opportunity to postpond. It's been like that in this country for two hundred and thirty four years in the federal system, and the country hasn't fallen apart, and it's not some grave injustice. So the idea that we're even we're just
playing with ourselves in state courts over this stuff. Ideologically, at all they're doing is they're cycling more people out to hurt others get killed, and it's just bad. Well it's good here, but it's really bad here. Yeah. Yeah.
And there are some judges out there. I mentioned names of Silverstein ordation and ordered banning objections during bond rulings, which is just absolutely I don't even know if that's legally permissible. The mont Is Merriweather thing. We bonded out on a weapons disability charge and participated in the downtown brawl.
The Chiefs of Police Association wants to have roundtables the judges refuse to participate in that they feel them bold and to continue this pattern that puts the public in serious, serious jeopardy. And that's back, of course by people like mayor Pirival, who now wants to undo this and go, well, maybe this was a bad decision, with Au admitting it
was a bad decision. The judge judge in this case you mentioned, Judge Mundy, he said a bond Steve good than fifty thousand dollars in a single full only as assault charge to the shooting on Saturday at Riverfront Live. He said, look, my hands are tied by the charging decision, says that's the max. That's all I can do. Did he have any more discretion, broader discretion or you just chose not to exercise it?
Well, you know, I it's arguable I would say that. I but I think he did. I mean, look, I mean is tech he is correct. They've put forward a single case of a flows assault, not the nine charges or however many this guy hit. They didn't also charge him with any of the gun offenses for whatever reason, which would have justified a higher bond. So they did put the judge here in a kind of a bad place. Why they made those decisions at this early stage, I
don't know. Maybe they're waiting on additional ballistic evidence. I don't know, but it sounds pretty clear to me they were able to put a gun on this guy's hand and that there should have been more charges put there. So that's correct. But I want to zone back in on this public safety piece and if the judge could have, in my view, argued and found that because of the nature of the overall incident, that there was a true public safety issue and that that justified a higher bond.
And what's going on in that arragement room all the time. We're having judges who are deviating from this public safety requirement, and because of the bond issue is usually washed through the system so quickly because we have what we call a rapid and dim grandury system. When all the felonies and serious churches are dealt with in about ten days and you have a new judge and it takes over, there really is no effective way for the state to
appeal these bad decisions. And frankly, now we have a situation where you have the prosecutor's office and all the judges who are sort of on the same page it seems ideologically anyway, But if the prosecutor wanted to appeal effectively, they're not really going to have time. These judges are smart enough to know that. So they're really not posting these high bonds for their ideological reasons, it seems to me.
I mean again, I don't know, but I mean we're seeing, you know, they're campaigning on these sorts of things that made public statements to this effect. So you're right. I mean, Bernard Muddy was put in a very bad position, I think by the charging decision, but he could have deviated, as I understand that under Ohio law and put a really high bond on this because there are clearly more charges coming, no question. And again the Feds didn't mess
around with it. And I think that is the other really interesting thing here because traditionally, but the US Attorney's Office would work with the state attorney's office citing which case is to take. And here it looks as though from everything I have heard, that the US Attorney's Office and the FBI at HTF just came in unilaterally and said, no, we're taking we're taking this away because this isn't right.
Yeah, he is an attorney. Former prosecutor Defenser Steve Good on the show on seven hundred WLWD News yesterday that the individual, one of the individuals responsible for the mass shooting at Riverfront Live on Saturday or left nine people shot and hundreds traumatized, could walk fan a fifty thousand dollars bond that was posted yesterday by Judge Munday in his court and said, listen, that's all I can do.
Even have apt had Peerval and other Democrats backpedaling on the issue of restorative justice, because this is what it looks like. You know, it's one thing to cite someone or penalize someone and set a high bond because they've got a bag of weed. But when you hire a violent predatory criminal with a track record, that person needs to be locked up and knocked up sooner rather than later. In that regard, there's kind of an I don't know if it's a loophole or not. Steven, maybe this supplies
with our standard ground law. I'm not sure, but take me through the fact that the shooter on Fountain Square. We sim shoot the two individuals at Citybird Chicken on Fountain Square. That person was led out because the claim that was self defense at the two inside the store,
and the video inside City Bird backed up that. The I think the seventeen and eighteen year old if I'm not necessair, nineteen year old pulled guns out and we're going to shoot him through the glass while they're sitting having chicken at a restaurant, and Fountain Square with a bunch of people around, said it was self defense. This guy was prohibited from having a weapon because he is
already convicted in this case. You've got individuals here who both had a jacket on them that prevented them from having a weapon, and yet they get around to turn around and claim self defense. Do we kind of like have a pattern of a loophole here?
What a little bit now, I think, frankly, I heard this too. I saw this on the news, and I actually watched a club of the video. This guy's lawyer, the moprint Live Shooter. He is going to claim self defense, but of course, as you point out, he is legally barred from having a firearm. And it is exactly like
what happened to Fountain Square. Now, it looks as though on Fountain Square they are still pursuing at least felony charges against the individual for having the firearm to begin with, even though it looks as though he did establish a right to self defense and some of that you know you're right stand your ground in Ohio actually make self defense claims easier to assert, I guess because you don't have a duty to retreat anymore. That's really all the change,
and it's very fact specific to every case. But here in the Riverfront Live situation, I mean, the idea that this guy that there were multiple individuals going into this what I'm told was a private party with five or six hundred people getting in there with firearms, both of whom were legally barred from owning the firearms and having them on their body. I mean, that's unfortunately that doesn't under a highalog go to self defense piece. But they
will both base some charges. And it looks as though the federal prosecuted US attorney is focusing on the weapons aspect, at least initially in the charges that he is bringing in federal courts. So it looks as though at least the system was correcting itself from this instance on this. But that is like that is the heart of the problem that we're seeing in Cincinnati, which is convicted felons carrying guns with impunity and it not being taken very seriously in the state courts.
We spent like six million dollars on what they call targeted community alternatives to prison. It's a program, another program, no more programs, I swear to God. But and it's designed to divert following the offenders away from incarceration. Someone with the Cobbs record cocaine trafficking, two weapons under disability convictions. I don't understand how your candidate for diversion in that guy who decides why he would be eligible for diversion, how's that work?
Well? I mean, typically it's a judicial decision where the prosecutor's office does sign off and they what they look at or non violent offenses, and for better or worse, by and large, under Ohio law, merely possessing the gun but not using the gun is considered, you know, non violent. I mean they're looking at they're looking as someone who actually has pulled the gun on someone or who has
attacked someone. And and the kind of drift of where the system is right now, not just in Cincinnati but statewide is to look at drug offenses in sort of
a more forgiving way. And I mean there's there's certainly an argument to that effect, but what the way I I always looked at it and the way we looked at it back in the day when when I worked in the in the prosecutor's office under very different administrations, is we looked at drug users and addicts in a very different light than we looked at drug dealers, because we saw drug dealers as folks who tended to be armed, who were capable of violence, whether they had committed violence
in the offense or not, and that they were profiting off the misery and addiction of others. So we always looked at those folks very differently, and I think that has eroded over time, and now just drug offenses generally are looked at by a lot of the judges and a lot of the prosecutors, not just here but statewide.
There's just being well, it's just part of the overall drug problem, quote unquote, And I think we would all be better served as society to look at if you had the way we looked at it at a grand jury, is drugs and you're using and drugs in your system, you know, maybe that's somebody that does need to be diverted into a treatment scenario and not have their lives ruined.
Drugs plus a gun and the drugs are packaged in a certain way, that's the guy that that's the guy that deserves to go to prison because he's profiting from it. And that kind of common sense sort of analysis is sort of followed by the wayside over the years.
From what I yeah, no question, Sarah Herringer, Patrick's widow is pushing a law that would require real time ankle monitor data and making cutting one off an automatic felony. And it hasn't passed. But if that had been on the book with his murder, Mordecai Black want to say, Patrick Herringer, does the same logic apply to supervision of repeat gun defenders post release like this?
You know it should. And I'll tell you, I think, you know what if if we get a probation officer here on the phone with us and he was given some truth surm, I think they would tell you that the technology and the funds just aren't there at the county level to really monitor these ropes. And I got to know Sarah, unfortunately pretty well through all this, and I can tell you that you know that there were many many failures there. There were personal failures, but there
was a system's failure. There's a technology failure. We have the ability to to do real time monitoring both on probation and then hurt the situation. Unfortunately with Mordecai black on parole, A's just we don't as a society spend the money there, we don't staff these things the right way, and we just have not made it a priority. And that's a shame because if we are going to let people out and have these inkle monitors, they ought to be able to work. And really it's the same technology
they've had since the mid nineties. And you're right, you can take a kitchen knife and cut one of them off. You were so sure. So it's no way to do that.
Yeah, the idea that we don't have the technicians say, I mean, I've got an Apple watch right now, and it'll sell you know, it'll wear it at night. You know, it'll tell you your quality sleep, will tell you how much you're sleeping. You'll tell you if you're snoring, if you tell if you're an a FIB, give you an
EKG and do all these amazing things. You need to tell me that the technology doesn't exist to go, hey, listen, if you cut this thing off, instant alarm bells go off or in the case of a gun film like this, maybe they need one that uses that technology that would sense if that individual shoots a firearm and an automatic goes off and said, this person who is prohibited from having a firearm just shot one off, you go and arrest the guy. How hard is that? I don't think
it's that hard. But we've got to have the political will power, of course, to do these things. He is Steve Gooden, attorney at law, former prosecutor around defense. Steve all the best, Thanks again for coming on the show anytime. Scott take care always got great legal analysis for us.
Here it's it's mindless and you know how to show you the problem that I have with politics as a no nonsense, straightforward, common sense kind of guy, a political if you will, that this is a great example of progressives and Democrats talking out of both sides of their mouth that you know, you have have to have pure of all in other progressives who ran on the whole doctrine of restorative justice and bond reform, well, this is
what it looks like. These are the effects of that that these guys get out and just commit crime after crime because some people you can't reform. Actually a lot of people you can't reform. Why give them a second, third, or fourth chance. It's just throwing lives. The blood is on their hands, on their hands. I'll switch up in a second here, and there's another speaking of politics in
the squaretgard The same thing is kind of happening. You know, in an election, there was a lot made about you know, transgender people in bathrooms, in that stuff. There's not enough of them to cause the problems that were indicated during the election. But I got an example of, you know, turning the tables around here of that happening actually in Warren County in a very very serious, disgusting case that had this been someone that fit that category, you would
hear more about it. But instead it's just a sad case. It faded away. You know what I'm talking about. If you don't, I'll explain next seven hundred ww