Two Taps and Friends

Dye & Golburgh | Alex Murdaugh: Why He’s Getting a New Trial Explained by Defense Attorneys #73

• Daniel Rosenberg • Episode 73

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Host Danny Rosenberg is joined by attorneys Michael Dye and Lloyd Goldberg for a grounded, experienced conversation on the Alex Murdaugh appeal and its implications for the justice system. They break down the powerful Lowcountry family’s fall, the pivotal evidence that shifted the case, the risks of defendants testifying, and the real challenges of securing an impartial jury in a case flooded by media and documentaries. The discussion extends to lessons from another high-profile circumstantial case, offering thoughtful reflections on strategy, motive, parenting, and what true accountability looks like. Elegant, insightful legal analysis from those who understand the courtroom from the inside.

⏰ Timestamps ⏰
00:00:00 👋 Intro
2:19 🏛️ Who Is Alex Murdaugh and How Did His Family Control Their Town?
3:25 🚨 The Boating Accident That Exposed Everything
4:46 🔍 The Murders at Moselle: What the Kennel Video Revealed
6:07 ⚖️ Why the Appeal Succeeded: Clerk of Court and Jury Influence
9:51 📋 Character Evidence and Trial Strategy Mistakes
10:59 🎤 Why Experienced Lawyers Rarely Put Clients on the Stand
13:41 ⏱️ The Lie That Undermined His Entire Defense
18:41 🌍 Can Alex Murdaugh Get a Fair New Trial in the Netflix Era?
24:00 🔄 Plea Deals, Sentencing, and What Happens Next
32:00 🚗 Key Lessons from the Mackenzie Shirilla Crash Case
48:46 👪 Parenting Patterns That Create Serious Problems

In cases like Alex Murdaugh’s, how much do you think media coverage and documentaries make a truly fair retrial possible?

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Alec Murdoch's wife and this son get executed. The main issue was that there was this clerk of court who was having interactions with the jury and giving the jury instructions outside of the presence of the court and outside of the presence of the judge. She was taking them back to fill out the verdict form. She's like, Yeah, this shouldn't take very long. Here you go. This is where you find guilty. So he lied so much that when he was on the stand, he just got caught in one lie after another lie. And the major lie was the timeline. They got the video of right at the time, literally seconds before the murder, and on the video, you hear Alec Murdoch's voice. So you have you have an exculpatory witness saying, No, that's not my dad's voice, and then you turn around and get on the stand and say, Yes, it was. Shirt was gone, no firearms, no witnesses. Right. Right? It was no i i I mean, if as a defense terror, you're putting up a case now. Okay, this is on the state. What can they prove? They want to tell you that he murdered his wife, and based on his steps, he appealed. How in the hell do you have a fair trial now if you're Alec Murda? Again, we're in our temporary studio as we're building our bigger and better studio. We'll be coming to you very soon. Welcome to Two Taps and Friends. Grab your favorite drink, get comfy, and let's dive into another episode of Two Taps and Friends. Welcome back to Two Taps and Friends. I'm the host of the show, Danny Rosenberg. Uh we again we're in our temporary studio as we're building our bigger and better studio. We'll be coming to you very soon. I brought our panel back on to talk uh more current topics, legal topics here. Uh welcome back to the show, Attorney Michael Dye. Danny. Welcome back to the show, attorney Lord Goldberg. How are you doing, Danny? Good to have you guys back. Thank you. So, a couple things in the news um legal-wise. The biggest thing is the Alec Murdaw case um just came back on appeal. Okay, and just for the Lewis visitors and viewers who, if you've been hiding under a rock and have no idea who Alec Murdaw is, the Murdoch, quick recap. The Murdoch family uh was a very prominent family in in what they call Low Country Carolina. I went to high school in in South Carolina, so I know that area very well. Buford area down south, is what they call Low Country. Um, the family, the Murdaw family had been like in this little town that they were from, had been the solicitors or or the prosecute, the town prosecutors for years. It went from Alec to his father, was I think his father was Buster, and then the father was was Bubba and all those kind of old Southern guys. They were running this town. They also had a very the biggest injury, personal injury firm in this town. So they had Buku money, Buku Rep. They ran this town. And um, you know, this guy Alec Murdah, his kids were next in line. He had a younger, the older son was a Bubba, actually, and he had a younger son. What's the younger son's name? Um, what's the younger son's name? I can't. The one who caused all the problems. I thought the younger son was Buster. No, Buster Buster was the older one, and the younger one was um this one here in the middle. I can't believe I forgot his name, but it'll come to us in a little bit. Anyway, the the family was uh, you know, this guy was going along, everything was they were making money, doing being huge and everything. This younger son uh got into a uh boating accident. Apparently, this younger son, if you watch documentaries and shows he was a bad drunk, uh, would get drunk, cause a lot of problems, got into a boating accident, and actually a girl on the boat got killed, which brought this huge investigation into well, you got it brought a lawsuit. The kid was getting charged, um, they had to recuse the Murdoch family, had to get recused, the judges had to bring judges from other places to to prosecute him because the family was so well known and well to do. Um, but that ended up with the it culminated in a lawsuit, a personal injury. The family of the the girl that died sued the Murdoch family and and and started to get into his finances. And that uncovered a whole slew of things. Alec Murdoch apparently was a very, very uh big drug addict. He was hooked on opioids and all kinds of uh mainly opioids, but very badly hooked on opioids, and had been sp you know spending massive amounts of money and had been funneling and stealing money from his from the lawsuits from from his injury firm, literally taking settlements of people and transferring it into uh his own accounts and all this kind of stuff. And uh, I guess that lawsuit was getting close, the financial stuff was about to be uncovered, and uh, out of nowhere, the daughter and his his not the daughter, sorry, his wife, Alec Murdoch's wife, and this son get executed. They had this farm, uh they had this farm, uh Moselle, they called it. It was this, it's it was like a kind of they had like a country house and they had a farm with dogs and they would go hunting. It was this huge property. They ended up getting um the the son and the wife got executed. The older son was off at school, I believe he was going to USC up in Columbia, University of South Carolina, so he wasn't there. And uh immediately Alec Murdoch became a suspect in the case. And um, we'll talk about more details of the case, but he ended up being charged with murder, ended up being prosecuted uh for murder, and then later for the financial crimes and sentenced. So recently, this past few weeks, the appeal has come back. He appealed. And the basis for his appeal, uh, I'll let Mike talk about the basis for his appeal on the murder charge. Now he was convicted. First of all, what was he convicted? He was he got what is the sentence on the murder charge? Life. Well, murder charge was life. And then on the financial crimes, he got he got. I think it was 80 or 90 years. He got 80, 90 years. So he's in prison for a long time. But the appeal comes back. Talk to me about the grounds for the appeal. Okay, the appeal comes back in on the murder case. Um, and you know, first off, you know, people need to know that when you get convicted at trial, that that's usually a wrap. Um, very few appeals actually come back in the defendant's favor. Um, I think the stat I read somewhere was something like 14% or something. Son's name is Paul, by the way. Go ahead. All right, so yeah, say 14% of appeals actually come back for the defendant. So it's pretty rare. Um, but in this case, uh, there was the the main issue was that there was this clerk of court who was having interactions with the jury and giving the jury instructions uh outside of the presence of the court and outside of the presence of the judge. She was telling the juries, like, watch his behavior when this is happening. It's obvious he's lying. When she was taking them back to fill out the verdict form, she's like, Yeah, this shouldn't take very long. Here you go. This is where you find guilty. Here, let me stop you for a moment. Hold your thoughts. So, for the listeners and viewers, just so if you're not familiar, because we're really familiar with the trial settings. Nomenclature. It comes to us, right? So there's a clerk of court, a person that sits in the courtroom with the judges in charge of the paperwork and doing all this kind of stuff. So when there's a jury trial, the jury goes back into a jury room. The clerk of court and a bailiff usually are the ones that walk these juries back. They're usually in the most contact with these juries, meaning they tell them when it's time to break for lunch. They bring if if the jury needs to look at evidence, they request it from the clerk. The clerk comes out and then asks the judge. So this clerk of court was doing this stuff. And and mind you, understand the the the uh background here. This clerk of court knows the Murdoch family very well. It's a very small town. She'd probably been the clerk of court while Murdah was prosecuting crimes. So intricately knows the family, knows their his father, his kids, knows everybody, and is a very, very biased and and and people did not like the Murdaws in this town because they looked at him as almost like a mafia family that got away with what they wanted. There was an allegation that the older son had killed this uh a gay guy, uh student that ended up with that was a height of relationship. They they was an allegation they had a relationship. He killed him and got away with it. So there's this just and even the grandfather, there was all kinds of allegations of murders. I mean, there's this this family is stained with with controversy. But go ahead. So the clerk you know, one of the things is the people need to know how to take how seriously, you know, messing with a jury is taken. Like, and when we go ahead and we have a trial, and let's say we're gonna break for lunch, some of the judges will tell the jury, if you see one of the attorneys or if you see one of the people here and you say hello to them, and they just look down and walk away, they're not trying to be rude. They are really not allowed to have any contact with you. Right. So, you know, when you you know, when you see them and they just turn around and walk the other way, it's not because they're trying to be rude. We can't have any contact with the jury outside of the trial. Right, right. So the thing that turned out that the uh clerk lady was uh she had a contract to write a book about the murder trial. So she was going ahead and setting it up the way she wanted it so she could make the book as juicy as possible. And uh the book later got uh rejected for publication because she plagiarized a lot of it. Um, but at the same time, you know, her her end game was to uh write a book about the murder child and make millions and retire from being a clerk. And so uh that was the problem. That's one of the grounds for the appeal. I think another ground for the appeal was there is um inadmissible character evidence. They the state was relying on the prior convictions for the financial crimes to show that Alex Murdoch had bad character. That's a pretty complicated area of law, but you're not allowed to use prior under most circumstances, you're not allowed to use prior bad acts to show that the person's just a bad person. Right, right. So Lloyd, I'll turn to you right now. So the appeal is coming back, and and and it means what what's gonna happen is he gets a new trial, right? Yeah, it's gonna get a couple. On the murder. Now, that trial, and I'll turn to both of you, was there was a lot of, I think, mistakes made at that trial. And and they were very confident defense attorneys, but apparently he was very controlling and very pushy. Because you gotta remember this guy tried murder cases. He was not gonna sit there and just let his lawyers make a decision. He took the stand, right? What what's your take on that? Well, right, right, right, right. Obviously, we all well, I mean, in general, we never want to put our guy on the stands, the listener viewers, because even if they're innocent or not, people get so nervous. Nothing really good comes up through. We generally try not to do it because people read body language, eye movements, people get nervous. And if a jury gets a gut feeling that I just think he's lying because he looked down or did this, like it's a problem. So, unless there's a self-defense argument where we have to, like in self-defense, you have to put your person on the stand to to assert the self-defense, we generally don't do it. But go ahead. Yeah, no, I I don't, you know, every case is different, of course. But it seems to me that too much can go wrong. And like you said, even if your client is even if we believe our clients are innocent, putting them on the witness stand, you know, without any experience and being cross-examined by a seasoned prosecutor is not going to work out well. Right. Because as lawyers, we know how to cross-examine a witness. So, you know, we're trained in a way to get them to trip over themselves, um, you know, tell inconsistent stories, um, look like they might be lying. So I I I think it's a terrible strategy. And most of the time, our clients have already spoken. They may be on video and said something exculpatory that we don't want necessarily to expound upon for some reason. So I often will say, you've already spoken enough on that video, and let's not, you know, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Right. And his ego is big because he he's a talker, right? He's a great talker. There's no doubt about it. He's like, he's got that southern charm when he was talking. You could tell he's you know very good at what he does. And that's what made him think that he could go up there and do that. But what he didn't take into account, which he did, I'm sure his lawyers were petrified. Like his lawyer, he lied so much as a drug addict. Yeah. The problem is, you know this intricately, we deal with this all the time, right? Like drug addicts will lie, and and they and they're and they don't even know they're lying. It's a disease, right? So they know. Well, but they've got they've gotten so good at it, right? They think they've gotten good at it. So he lied so much that when he was on the stand, he just got caught in one lie after another lie. And the major lie was the timeline. So on the timeline, he gave a timeline where there was so this area where these people were shot, Paul and uh Maggie, the Maggie was the wife, was down by the dog kennels. They had dog kennels for hunting, so they were down by the dog kennels. Alec Murdaw's position was I was at the main house, which is about a five-minute ride up the road on a little four-wheel or whatever on the property, and then he was sleeping on a couch. That's what his position was. The day of when he got murdered, he was hysterical. It's on video, you could see it anywhere. Um, and he maintained that position until a video came out of Paul. Paul was at the kennels, and he and and Maggie, they were there together, and Paul was taking care of another friend's dog, had him in the kennel. He was watching, he was boarding him. So it just so happened that friend had texted Paul right around the time of the murder saying, Hey, can you send me a picture of this dog to see that the dog's doing okay? He sends that video that took the law enforcement a while to get into the video. Once they got the video, they got the video of the right at the time, literally seconds before the murder, and on the video, you hear Alec Murdoch's voice. Yep. So he got busted that he was definitely down there. So this guy, as cocky as he is, thought he could just work around that and just said he got his timeline wrong and he must have been down there. So that fiasco is up in the air. Everyone knows that. And you're gonna go take the stand and just admit he had to get up there and say, I I I lied because I thought it would look too bad. Now, a prosecutor is gonna eat that alive, right? You lie about this, you lie about that, you lie. What's to say? Anything this guy's saying is not a lie, right? So there's that all the more compounded by the fact that he's a seasoned, you know, uh successful foreign prosecutor. What's the legal maxim where I forget what it is, it's in Latin, and you know, I apologize to my Catholic school teachers for not remembering it, but it's liar in one thing, liar in everything. And so, and that's a legal principle where if you cat if the jury catches you lying about anything, they're free to assume that you're lying about everything. Right. And the thing is, is if without his testimony, circumstantial evidence, am I right? What was the direct evidence they had? Right, they didn't have the guns, no, they never found those firearms, no deal. They had the casings, blood, no deal. They they had it so the allegations there was a shirt that he was wearing when they came that was gone. They couldn't find the shirt that would have been splattered. If I mean the way that they executed was brutal. He was close up on Paul, on Maggie, he even walked up on top. There would have been blood splatter. Shirt was gone, no firearms, no witnesses. Right, right? It was no. So it I mean, if as a defense attorney, you're putting up a case now, okay, this is on the state. What can they prove? They had the cell phone triangulation, they had steps. I remember the big thing in the trial was look how many steps you took now, and look how quick you were going then. And look, uh, as a defense attorney, like, all right, is this what they want you to convict the guy for murder? They want to tell you that he murdered his wife and based on his steps, based on cell phone steps, like that's not enough, right? Right. So another reason why I wouldn't have put him on the wheel. There's absolutely zero reason for him to go on a stand except for the fact that he couldn't stand to listen. I'm this is my theory. He couldn't stand to listen to people shit on him without giving his side of the story. Well, there's another issue that was problematic about putting on the stand putting him on the stand. His son, the one that was still alive, listened to the audio. Buster, right? Buster, and said, That was not my dad's voice. And then he gets on the stand and said, Yes, that was my voice. So you have you have an exculpatory witness saying, No, that's not my dad's voice. And then you turn around and get on the stand and say, Yes, it was. And now it's like, okay, so now we know that your son's lying about everything, we know that you're lying about everything. It was just uh it was a bad move. Well, there and there's two issues there. So he's kind of in a corner, if you think about it, because they proved that he lied about the timeline, right? So that video is out there, right? So if I'm his lawyer, so I'm thinking he might have to explain that, right? Um, and then with this, if I'm a juror and I hear the son testify that's not my father's voice, well, guess what? I'm gonna wanna hear Mr. Murdoch's voice. Right. So you know, the decision to put the son up, I guess, was a gamble to try to convince the jury that it wasn't Alex's voice, but then you create a problem for yourself where now you have to sh let the jury hear your voice. Right, you know, and and me listen, it was his voice. Okay, like I'm not an excerpt, I heard it. Yeah, it was his voice. It seems like the guy was down there. Um, and and look, but the issue again, I thought I had Fred had that on, it was a great episode. I don't know if you guys watched it. Yeah, Legend of Legends, right? And he kept heart happering, like he kept saying in his way, it doesn't matter if they did it, it matters if they prove it. Right. And like people have a tough time wrapping their head around that, but that is the law. Like they have to be able to prove it. If they can't, if they get away with I I knew you did it, but I can't prove it, then anyone can get swept up in anything, and that's not what the this country's about. That's the bottom line. So if you don't have to prove it against him, you don't have to prove it against anyone. Right. So now he gets a new trial. Here's the problem now. This is a fucking problem. How in the hell do you have a fair trial now if you're Alec Murdaw? Oh, they gotta move it. Netflix. To where? Yeah, Netflix, HBO Max. That's literally one of the most covered, and it's a crazy story. I mean, if for listeners and views, you haven't watched it, go watch it. You'll be super entertained. I've done podcasts, I've been on podcasts talking about it because I just know the area very well and I know the people. I actually know I have connections to these Murdaw people, not connections, like I'm not connected to them, but I know people that know him. I know family members, you know. Um, it's a crazy, crazy story. It's a crazy story. What juror, where anywhere, is not gonna have seen his testimony, first of all, watched it. I mean, all these documentaries pretty much conclude for you that he murdered him. They could seek the death penalty too. And it was hard to do I think that would be I think that would be hard to do because if he's already been sentenced to life, I don't think that they can on appeal. I don't think that would be uh judicial vindictiveness to come back and depends on what comes out in the new trial. Right, new shit could come, new shit could come to light, man, according to Big Lebowski. No, but like, and and and what's the crazy thing is I forgot to mention, like, when he was under investigation, all of a sudden he gets shot in the head, right? And everybody's like, oh my god, someone tried to shoot Alec Murdoch, right? And it turns out that they say that he paid like his cousin to kill him or pretend to kill him. I don't know what it was, but it was just one thing after the next with this story. We never even talked about the motive. Like the Yeah, the the motive is really. Yeah, the motive. What the motive was financial. No, no, it's even dumber than that. Right. What was that? All right. The motive was he knew all this bad stuff was coming on the financial end of it. Right, right, right. So he wanted people to feel sorry for him that he just lost his wife and his kids. That's what the state's proposed motive was. I always understood it as he didn't want his family to know that they were broke, pretty much. You know, he didn't want his family to know the level of uh but that's what the state's position was in trial. Yeah, I was just listening to something on that, and they were talking about how the motive was so weak that they he wanted people to feel sorry for him, that he lost his wife and his kid, so that they wouldn't be as hard on him and the financial stuff, which is really weak. I mean, that's like there was a case in North Carolina, it was uh a Brad Cooper murder case where the this woman got killed and they were gonna blame her husband on it, and they said, Well, he was having an affair, therefore he killed her. And everybody was like, huh? You know, I mean, people cheat all the time and don't kill their wives. I mean, that that's if you think about it, if you if you let's like hone in on motive right now, it doesn't make sense at all. No, like, okay, so he's committing financial crimes, he's stealing, he's a drug addict. So I mean, I I look, I I get it, your reputation, but you're making that connection now that he thought he had to murder his son and and wife. I it doesn't make sense, right? If you just hone in on that, but if you look at some of the other circumstantial evidence, it's pretty Right. It's pretty damning. It is pretty damning, but I guess like what better way to draw attention to yourself? It doesn't none of it makes any and and if he owes money and he did some bad job. Shit. Yeah. Like his his for listeners and views you didn't watch, he they had a maid that lived for years and raised her kids. She fell. There's allegations they pushed her, but she fell, hit her head, and died. And he got the family, her sons who were relying on her to sue and to get a settlement. And he got a big settlement, and instead of giving it to the kids, he kept the money. I mean, this guy had burned the whole town. So the motive for someone else to kill his family was way greater, right? A lot, yeah. And that wasn't talked about enough in the trial, right? Right. I just think that it was just for those trial lawyers, probably just an overwhelming amount of information. How do you cover all this? How do you get a lot of this in, you know? I mean, what do you think? You think it's a fair trial? Well, first off, the Constitution doesn't say fair trial anymore. Oh, you love this quote. Uh the United States Constitution says nothing about a fair trial. And if you watch a criminal trial, it is the most patently unfair process you've ever seen in your entire life. So Well, the whole thought that they have to prove everything still makes it kind of fair. Yeah. I mean But they do have an agency collecting everything for them, and they have a, you know, people tend to be believe what they're saying, but it's you're entitled to an impartial jury. I don't know how you find one. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. You know, especially nowadays. You know, especially especially with with the amount of technology where people, like you said, people have been following this all across the country. Where do you find 12 people that haven't already formed an opinion? And if you do find 12 people that haven't heard of this case, do you really want them as jurors? I guess I mean it's your best bet. Yeah, I mean, where are you gonna go like out into the hills out west in West South Carolina and pull somebody out of a cabin? Right. And procedurally, how does this even work? He's got 40. Do we know what his sentence is? I'm about to look it up. On the on the financial sentence? Financial crime. Alec Murdoff financial crime sentence. I thought it was 80 or 90, but I could be wrong. Like, what's the point? Is what I'm saying here. Sentenced to 40 years after pleading guilty to federal charges. He's got 40 years since he had parole. Is there parole? That's his federal charges, right? Yeah. 27 years in South Carolina State Court for similar. And a concurrent 27 years, he's got a concurrent. He's gonna serve 85% of that. He's like 40 something. He was 50 probably. 85%, 17, 35. So he's got to serve 34 years. So what's the point now? And you were saying, what do you think the point is? So he wins this appeal. They find him not guilty of the murder. He doesn't get out. You know what? Here's what's gonna happen. He's 57. Uh I'll I'll call this, right? He's 57 now. They're gonna go ahead. He got sentenced two, three years ago, two years ago. Yeah. Yeah, they're gonna give him a plea to second degree murder, 20 years each, run concurrent with the 40 years. You think they'll give him a plea? Yeah. And what's the point of that for him? Because they can't find an impartial judge. I know. What's the point for him though? What's the point for him? He'll get out eventually, maybe. How? He's gonna serve 85% on a 40-year sentence. How old is he now? 57. Maybe he gets out in 30 years, in 80 seven. I mean, what's the point? He has a possibility of getting out. Possible. Just unless it's the stigma like you said. Is that what it is, 40% or uh 80 80%? 85%. I just looked it up in federal, too. Right. So I mean, I guess it's like to just people aren't just don't say I killed my wife and son. You know what I mean? I mean, I'd fight if I were him, I'd fight for that. He's got nothing left to do but fight. Yeah, because I mean it's not gonna make him a very popular guy in prison that he murdered his wife and his kid. Yeah, and he pled to the to the financial crimes. So it's not like that was a trial that you can go fight and attack later, you know. But yeah, they're gonna have a tough time with that trial. I think with that trial, they you're right, they might give a plea deal. Because what's the difference? You know, they especially if you have this position that everybody knew, we put him up there, we put him up there, everybody if you're the state, everybody saw, everybody heard. What's the point? He's not gonna be like Buster's not happy about the new trial. Well, really, what did he say? He said that he it just brings up old wounds and Yeah, that's what I'm saying. What's the point? You're just bringing it all up again. You're gonna have to bring all these witnesses in to testify again, they're gonna plea him. Well, also, you know, the if he's worried about you know the stigma of a w wife and kids, a lot of states don't allow no contest pleas, but they call it Alford pleas, uh, where you're allowed to plead guilty if it's an Alfred plea, it means I'm pleading guilty in my best interest. I mean it's the same as a no contest. Uh so he he could just Alfred plea to a second-degree murder, and that way he could have the plausible deniability and stuff. Right. For listeners of viewers, what we're talking about with pleaing is as you know, we've talked this before, you can enter into an agreement with the state or the federal government to not have a trial in exchange for whatever offer that they're offering you. You could plead no contest, which is in some states where you say, I'm not admitting guild, but it's in my best interest, and I'm and it allows you to resolve it, or you could plead guilty. Some states don't have that no contest plea. Um, the reason why we think what I'm saying, I think they might plead him because to do a new trial now, they would literally have to call all these witnesses back to the stand, have them relive it, have the people in the crowd again, the tears, the cameras, it would all be a fiasco again, as opposed to if they said to them, hey, we'll let you plead no contest or guilty, we'll sentence you to 20 years with the or I don't know about the give him 20, but they'll send us him. You do you bypass that entire trial, he gets resentenced anyway. He's gonna run, it's gonna run at the same time as these federal crimes, and the state avoids the even the possibility of a not guilty or a showing like that. But I don't think he would take it. Why would he take a plea? There's no reason to. Why would he take a plea? No, he literally is especially this guy. We know he's a narcissist. He's gonna want to be back in the court. Oh, yeah. He's probably gonna end up on the stand again, this idiot. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy says he wants to represent himself per se. He'd probably do a good job. Yeah, he'd probably do an okay job with it. What's the what's the phrase on the pro sea? He who represents himself represents. Yeah. Well, that that that is gonna be interesting to watch. We'll keep up with it. And um, for you guys that haven't watched it, go watch those documentaries. They're worthwhile. I hope I'm not tainting a new jury by saying that. She was uh she was obviously she accomplished her goal. She retired as a clerk. She did. Oh, yeah. So what happened with this clerk? She retired. Oh, she got prosecuted? She was convicted of like of a misdemeanor, I believe, Tampa. Oh, because she didn't. But did she lose her position or anything? I have no idea about that. She got her drop? She got fired. I don't think the book. They they rejected it because she plagiarized a bunch of it. But we had That book's coming out. That book's coming out. Someone will write it. What does plagiarizing lying have to do with anything now on social media, right? Like these people just do it all day. You know, we have the uh in Broward, we had the jury issue with the the clerk. Remember, you know, if you can't do the crime, don't do the time can't do the crime time. I remember that. Uh in Broward, we had a lot of issues. Yeah. So basically Listen and viewers, Google Broward Judicials and Broward Clerk and Broward history, and you'll see a lot of interesting stuff. What happened was um they they have a jury room where everybody who's called for jury duty goes in. And when you go in for jury duty, they they swear you in, all right? Just like, okay, you know, you're in the jury pool. They swear in the entire jury pool. And so the head clerk of court was going to swear in the entire jury pool today. And she gets up there and starts just rambling and saying, you know, thank you for showing up today. You know, I think it was during COVID, and you know, we still have ton things going on here, and so thank you for showing up, you know, and crime doesn't stop because you know, this and she said something like, If you can't do the if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Oh my God. And so then she was a chance to show you. That's the one here, the one here in Broward? Yeah, and then there was a public defender who heard about it, and I think went to the chief judge, and they had to disqualify the entire jury pool. Like the 300 or so people that were in there got sent home. That's outrageous what this juror in Murdoch was doing, though. Oh, yeah. The fact that nobody said anything about it for so long. So that appeal, they must have gotten the testimony of the jurors, right, Lloyd? Yeah, well, yes, of course. So they what they went and they what so this was all going on, nobody even knew it was going on. So that yeah, they had to come forward and say the clerk pressured us or the clerk's, you know, was trying to influence us, and that's what happened. I'm sure if you talk to the jurors, they'd say it didn't have much of an impact. Right. But at the same time, I think the five hours of him lying on the stand had more of an impact. But yeah. But it's enough to where the judges are gonna say, forget that, do it again, you know. Yeah, it it just looks so bad. Yeah. That like what was the one where you know we had the the judge who was like dating the prosecutor or something during a death penalty case. And you know, the it it probably had no impact on the Trevor Burrus, in our jurisdiction? Yeah. And uh oh yeah, I remember very well. Yeah, let's not name names. We're not gonna name names. Yeah, no, yeah. But I'm trying to find it. I actually like everybody involved. Exactly. Well, two of the people involved certainly like each other. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to then wait. I think the next thing that's been going on, the next trial that's and I'm trying to like pull up a picture of it right now, if I can. If I don't know if I if I can pull this off and send this to Dan mid-taping, I don't know, he'll kill me. Um But the next thing going on that's all that is now there's a documentary on um Netflix that just came out. Uh the crash. Have you seen this? Uh it's about the chick who drove the car into the wall. Yeah, so this was uh this is a really interesting um case. It's a it's another case that was the trial is over, but the documentary just came out. Um so this these two these teenagers, uh, a girl and and two guys are driving home at like five in the morning and get into this horrific accident where they like run into the side of a building um and and it kills two occupants in the car. The driver survives, the girl. After investigation, they they realize or they start checking some of the street cams that the car was going how fast was it? Like 102 miles an hour. 102 miles an hour in a residential road, right? A residential road, and and they and they start to look at some of the traffic cams, and they see like the car turning normal and and first driving normally, and then boom, you see crazy videos of this car just torpedoing into the side of this building. It didn't look like there was no veering, no swerving, anything. So immediate questions were asked, and they ended up uh looking into the girl and looking into these kids, and then you know, there was some drug use going on earlier on, um, and they ended up charging the girl. At first, they didn't charge her, right? They they literally they went and they were asking investigators, she got pretty seriously injured too. She like broke a bunch of bones, broke legs, but they ended up uh charging her with murder based on the fact that you know they were looking at the video, it didn't look like there was any swerve, there was no skid marks that look like she even tried to stop the car from hitting. Um, and then the fact that you know whether she was impaired, I think she put up a position at one point that it was a medical emergency, right? But then they brought up the video showing that at the beginning she was fine, and then all of a sudden, a medical emergency, they were saying you would take your foot off the gas. Well, and the and the road that she was on, there's video of her actually turning onto that road, and you can see the car from the front position as it makes the right turn onto the road. She does a careful, you know, normal, slow turn. She activates her turn cycle. And then the next video you see is the car and you hear it. Uh, I guess it's video from a house that was nearby or a building that was nearby. The car, you know, races by the camera at what seems like warp speed, and the road had a bend in it. So the argument was if she had a medical emergency, not only would her foot have come off the gas pedal, but let's assume it wouldn't. How did she navigate the bend in the road? Right? So that was debunked. And uh, although they brought that out, I'm not sure if that came out during the course of the trial. I know it came out during the course of sentencing. And um, you know, the judge wasn't having anything of it. The mother is the one that brought it up, but there was no forensic testimony. There was no medical expert that came in and said, I examined her, she does have this condition, and this is what this condition is, and that she could black out or lose consciousness for a few seconds. Um her name was Mackenzie Sherilla. Right. Um car slams in a brick building at 100 miles an hour. Right. So what happened was, you know, what what made them turn from what they thought was a tragic accident to a criminal investigation was uh when they arrived on scene, right, they they f they thought all of the normal things. A kid fell asleep, maybe there was drug use, who knows? Um nobody considered homicide. And ultimately, when the blood toxicology came back, and sh because it was rumors that that she was on mushrooms, um, there was testimony that she and her friends did mushrooms, there were mushrooms in the car in a bag, right, and some marijuana. Well, her blood toxicology came back negative for psychedelics. So she was not under the influence of psychedelics. The evidence through her own social media videos and um the testimony was that she was an experienced driver under the influence of marijuana. So yeah, there was like videos of smoking pot car or whatever. She had like a big she had a big social media following. So she had people, she was constantly putting out these videos. Right. So they they they dismissed the idea that she was impaired while driving, and that was consistent with the video of her driving slowly making that right turn, you know, just before the crash. But then they got the data recorder from the vehicle, remember? And it showed that she never even hit the brakes, not at all. Not even hit the brakes, right. And and also the background starts coming out. Yeah, she was very controlling. She had her boyfriend in the car and another guy who was a former football player athlete. I don't know if he was playing at the time, but they would have these horrific fights. She was known to be a super controlling, like, girl, very like bossy, nasty, violent text messages, threatening. Yep. Just a real piece of work. Right. And a lot of it's on video. She tape, she taped a lot of that stuff. Her coming to the boyfriend's house and ordering him to open the door, and she was banging on the door saying she was gonna break in because he was, you know, on video saying you can't come in to my house acting this way. Right. You know, so there was a lot of kind of like with the the Murdoch trial where there was a lot introduced into the trial that make you hate her. And so there was this risk of convicting her because you hated her rather than that she that there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that she was that she committed homicide. Right again, direct evidence is very difficult in this case, right? Yeah, but I will say that I think in the Murdaw trial, he had good lawyers, yeah, but her fucking lawyer was terrible, right? First of all, they went bench trial. Yeah, Jesus Christ. Right? So for the listeners and viewers, yeah, it's important, as defense attorneys, we almost never do what's called a bench trial. Bench trial means you have a jury trial and you have a bench trial. A jury trial is when you're trying a case in front of a jury. A bench trial is when you put it in the hands of the judge, the whole trial is in front of the judge. So if there's trials for money and certain things, a lot of those things are bench trials. But in these cases, we almost never do that because judges tend to be very pro-state, federal government. Um they are able to they have very experienced, they look at more witnesses than anyone, right? They're not, there's things that they're going to see, or they're gonna have their biases, and uh it's we almost never do it. In this case, it was two counts of murder, and this guy went bench trial. I don't know what his reasoning was, love to know. And he looked like he didn't know what the hell he was doing. But I would tell you, as a room full of defense attorneys and a bunch of defense attorney watching this, the minute you tell any of us that he's going to bench on a murder, we think he's an idiot, right? What's your thought, Mike? Uh yeah, I can't. I mean, look, I've done a lot of bench trials because in North Carolina you start with bench trials for misdemeanors. Sure, me too. For misdemeanors and juvenile, right? I mean, if it if it's uh well, we uh we had to do the sex bat in juvenile, which was a juvenile. We had no choice. You don't get juries in juvenile, you don't get a jury. So, you know, I mean, for like a uh a second degree misdemeanor, I don't really care if we go bench. But when you're talking about two counts of murder, I mean there there's a concept called diversification of risk. Right. It's like don't put all your eggs in one basket. Uh it's like why you know your stock portfolio should be diversified because if one stock tanks, you have the rest to even it out. The jury, if one juror's bad, you have the rest to even it out. Right, right. It's really hard to get 12 people to agree on anything, right? That's the and that's that's it. That's the point. You know, we most of the time it's six jurors, but of course there are 12 too. And and the idea is I only need to convince one that there's reasonable doubt. Right. And and Freddie, Freddie was on, and I keep referencing Freddie because he's such a legend, he was just so easy to talk to about it. Like everything was jury selection. Everything is like I would tell them, hey, did you look for this in juries? You look for this in juries. I just look for people that I think will be fair. That's what he'd tell me. Okay. That's blessed. Is that what he does? He literally is just feeling the person out. Yeah. He'll talk to them about golf. Are they smart? Are they biased? Me, I'm learning their name. And sometimes are they so biased. He said, Sometimes are they so biased they're gonna overcompensate and go for this, right? Like, but these are all these, you lose all that when you go bench. Yeah, especially with these judges. Most of these judges are pro-state. Even if it's a and sometimes you need an element of bullshit. You need something, right? You need someone, you need some favoritism, you need some bias. Sometimes you need That's why we're involved in the world. Maybe you need a racist guy that's gonna vote for him because he's black and I'm black. You might need that. You need anything you can in a murder one trial, right? So you just they lost all that. He just stood there. I don't know what his mash. I'm trying to think it out. Maybe he was thinking it's so circumstantial, the judge will see that, or maybe but this judge was like a That was his that that was his position, by the way. What was it? That there was no evidence that that she had any intent to kill anybody. It's hard to find out. That it was a tragic accident. That's it. That there was no evidence other than circumstantial evidence. Right. But okay, North. Circumstantial evidence, real quick for the circumstance. There's direct evidence, right? The the firearm, fingerprints, DNA, and then there's circumstantial evidence, which is you is enough. It's the it could be considered, but it it can be attacked. That means based on all this stuff, you have to assume this, right? Or it's likely that this happened based on this. Direct is the best. Circumstantial, you know, but the problem is when circumstantial adds up, a lot of it, it gets very, very, very compelling. And in Florida, by the way, it's very important to note that with circumstantial evidence cases, you guys know this, that in order to get a conviction, circumstantial evidence isn't enough in and of itself, right? There also must be no reasonable hypotheses of innocence that is in contradiction to the circumstances. Circumstantial evidence, right? Exactly. So that's important. If you if if if it's possible that the person is innocent under this scenario, then you're entitled to a judge saying, you know, the circumstantial evidence is irrelevant, you're not guilty. Right. Flor Florida did away with the jury instruction on circumstantial evidence a while ago. But it's still good law. Yeah. I like the North Carolina jury instruction and circumstantial evidence, and it it's the same as Florida, the law. It says there is no distinction legally between circumstantial and direct evidence. The evidence is evidence. You treat it the same, circumstantial or direct. And it even said in the part I didn't like in the North Carolina jury instruction is it said sometimes circumstantial evidence can be more compelling than direct evidence. I wish they took that part out. So, because a lot of people tend to think, oh, it's just a circumstantial case. Well, you can still get convicted on a circumstantial case, sure. Um, because evidence is evidence. But juries, especially today, what we call it like the CSI effect and stuff, they want to see uh DNA or they want to see fingerprints or they want to see some scientific evidence that shows that the person is guilty. Now, in this case, you have I mean it doesn't make sense if it's a circumstantial case to just go with a a bench trial, a judge, because the judge knows there's no difference between circumstantial and direct. He doesn't have to give himself a jury instruction. And you know, whereas if you get since it's a murder case, even here it would be 12, all right. When you get 12 people, you know, they they bring their life experience in there. And they might be a little bit more uncomfortable convicting somebody on a Circumstantial case. Trevor Burrus, Jr. But also the process along the way, the arguments to exclude certain evidence, the arguments to not mention evidence, that's all done in front of the judge. Right. So the judge knows what evidence is being done. He knows what you're trying to get out, what you think is bad. When there's a jury, they walk in fresh. They know nothing. I had to try a case. Remember the case where I tried where we you and you were with me on it, where the guy had about a pound of weed in his trunk. Yeah. But then he had a little weed on his lap, but we got I got the weed in the trunk excluded. Right. So the jury went in front of a jury. The guy was a misdemeanor, but he was on parole for like 90 years. If you were lost, he was going in. So we had to try it. Yeah, of course. So the jury couldn't know about the the pound of weed in the trunk. The judge knew. Yeah. So our whole argument is, ladies and gentlemen, remember at one point I asked for the for the weed. It was like this little, not even a dime bag. I'm like looking at the jury. Remember, I'm like, don't make me come back for this. I'm like, just don't make me come back. Remember that argument was literally, don't make us come back for this that easy gentleman. Yes. She was so mad, she's like, Mr. Rosenberg, Mr. Rosenberg, yeah. She's like, she's just trying to make the juror laugh. Remember, the jury laughed. He's like, I'm not guilty, right? I think the funny her motion in Lemony was like they could have got an appeal. Yeah, yeah. Her motion in Lemini was like, Your honor, we would like to prevent uh Mr. Rosenberg from uh blaming somebody else for the oh no chance. No, but like imagine that judge knows there's a pound of weed in the back of the car. Imagine how much worse my trial would have been. Like this wasn't him, the sprinkles of weed on his lap. No way. Why would he have weed on his lap? Well, because he had a pound in his fucking trunk. No. So this person, the judge has heard all these preliminary arguments to exclude. Now this guy gets up, and I mean, I think this lawyer was just way over his head. Look at that I I she's got a file of ineffective assistance accounts on him. You know? I mean, yeah, but again, ineffective accounts. She did appeal. She her appeal was denied. She lost her appeal. I saw ineffective assistance accounts, usually a waste of time because remember, it's the state's burden to prove everything, which is why you have these cases where defense attorneys fall asleep in capital cases, and the court comes back and says, No, it wasn't ineffective. You don't have to prove anything. Yeah, well, there's some some interesting ineffective assistance is a way to attack your convictions if you can show that the lawyer, as a defense attorney, had a duty to at least do or bring some exculpatory or or push back on something and didn't, or didn't preserve something, that maybe sometimes that can reverse it and you get a new trial. The only time I've seen that happen is when I think it was in Oklahoma. It's a funny case, you gotta read it. The guy gets up there and he says, My client is a con they got the evidence excluded for the prior murders. My client's a convicted hitman. He does this for a living. There's no way he would have left any witnesses to that was the argument? Yeah, that was his argument. Oh my god. But the worst, the worst thing about this girl is Lori, what you were saying. So at the end of that documentary, they show her and if she makes a point to like want to talk, right? Yeah. I remember I thought that was weird, right? It was weird and she looked like a sociopath. She looks like bad news. I'm sorry, and I'm going on. Yeah, no, she she she you know. Because the motive again, motive. What's the motive? Right. The motive was that the the boyfriend who was three or four years older than her, they had been together for like five or six years, and that their relationship was falling apart, and that she wasn't gonna let him go. She, you know, in her mind, it was like, okay, if I can't have you, nobody's gonna do it. So her intent was to kill her boyfriend. And the boy in the back, the football player, collateral damage. And so they painted her as evil, and she appeared evil after it was over. Like you said, in jail, she's coming on saying, I'm not a monster, it was an accident, and I don't remember a thing. Right? Her position, by the way, is I don't remember a thing. That was her entire position. Yet they found no drugs in her system, right? Yet they found weed. Just weed, but she didn't remember a thing. She kept asserting it was a medical thing, it was a medical thing, it was a medical thing. But then after the fact, they found what did you say they found out about her in the jail? I love hearing I love after the documentary, you always gotta go search with the first person account of a of a of another young lady who ended up in jail at first. Right. She was there on like an outstanding misdemeanor warrant. Okay. Um, and so she was in jail at the same time as McKenzie. And she said that, you know, the the sweet picture that McKenzie painted in that post-trial interview from the jail was complete bullshit. That she was running the jail, that she was the bully of the jail, that she had special privileges, she was having sex with a bunch of the girls, they were all her posse, um, and that her parents were still her parents, you know, another another whole thing. Her parents were still funding her and sending her money. She had outfits on and makeup and and hair inside the jail, all of those things. That's another thing I want to talk about. So as her parents. As defense attorneys. I always say this the people that become criminal defense clients, it's one of two things. Either they're non-existent parents, they're just not there, or they're the most overbearing, spoil your kid. It's never my kid's fault. My kid was at the wrong place at the wrong time, 18 times. You know, like it's it's and I and I got that feel from her parents. They just made excuse after excuse. Yeah. Oh, she was such a good kid. We didn't need to say no to her. Like, wait, what? What? Right, right. Except except in except in in her school records, she was a complete disaster, totally disrespectful in school, got in trouble with that. She had respect for authority, got away with it. And this is what happens. And I tell I have friends that have spoiled kids. I'm like, your kids gonna end up my client, they get mad. She moved in with her boyfriend when she when she was 17. Oh, yeah. And it's like we supported that 17 years old. Her parents are on video saying, Well, you know, she was mature though. She was a mature 17 boyfriend. They, you know, we loved him, and it, you know, this seemed right. Like, who are you people? You know, you think your 17-year-old is old enough to get married and you know, be mature, and like you said, the mother. Wow. You know, we didn't have to say no to her, she was a good kid. Did you see her during sentencing? She fucked that up. Yeah, that was she got up in sentencing, and in sentencing, the number one thing as attorneys, maybe thinks her attorney was either an idiot or he had no control, is you do not talk about if you're found guilty, you're found guilty. Like you can't get up there and say I'm innocent. You don't want to do that. Judges will light you up. Oh boy. You need to show sympathy for the victim humility, tail between your legs. That's the whole thing. That is the game. The mom did not stop about her daughter, and the judge cut her off in sentencing and says, I'm hearing a lot about your daughter. I don't hear anything about these victims and these families that are sitting in the thing. And she was like, Well, I'm sorry, but I want to talk about my daughter. And she literally sat her down. What did she say? The first words that came out of her mouth, she kept making making it worse. She said, Well, he was a new friend. The the the the boy in the back. I didn't know him well, right? I didn't know him well. He was a new friend, and the judge was like, What? What does that make make his dead lane? So bad you gotta watch him, Mike. And then basically the mother had to like turn around and sit. He just like ditched in the middle of the sentencing. Yeah. It was bad. And he literally and the guy obviously didn't prep the mother for a sentencing hearing. Or he didn't, she did whatever she wanted. True. I listen, you uh he it's his part too, because I I I I would have not gotten along with these parents. I would have gotten off that case if I would have gotten fired. You know what I mean? I can't fire on stuff like that because I'm gonna go off. Like I'm tired of listening to you right making excuses for your kid. Get out, I don't even want to talk to you anymore. I've told parents that before. You know, you gotta do it. They created a monster. There's no question. They created a monster and is a menace to society and she was dangerous. So not that it, and by the way, you're right. Most most of these cases are that are are parents like that. But there's plenty, as you know, there are plenty of cases you have the best parents in the world, and you absolutely still have a child who goes wrong. Absolutely. I will I don't want to take that back. It's not exactly those two things. We see those two things the most often. Yes. And I do see fantastic parents. Sometimes the kids have mental health issues. There's a lot of other things that play into so I should not have said that. Thank you for correcting me on that. I didn't want to put that out there. But yeah, but in this case, that's what it was. I'll tell you that a hundred percent. No doubt. Any closing thoughts? I'm good. You gotta go. You gotta go watch your kid get graduated. Yeah, he was gonna congratulations, Mazam. My kid graduated. Done with three of them. But that's it, huh? Three out of four. Congrats, you're almost there. All right. Well, thank you guys. We'll have you back on again soon. We'll be talking soon. To all my listeners and viewers, thank you for watching. Two taps and friends. Uh, please like, subscribe to the channel. Uh, when you like, subscribe channel, we get more outsreach. I'm able to bring our panel back on. We're able to talk more issues. We're in our temporary studio for a couple more shoots. We are building a bigger and better studio. It's gonna be incredible. We can't wait to show you guys that. Um, also, we'll be shooting off scene pretty soon. We're we're traveling to other countries to shoot, so it's gonna be interesting as well. Thank you guys. You can find us on Instagram, YouTube. We're everywhere. Our marketing team and our recording team do a great job. We love you all. We'll see you guys very soon. Thank you. Goodbye. Cut