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Opening Arguments

Bonus: George Floyd and Policing the Police

Today's emergency episode breaks down everything you need to know about the death of George Floyd and the charges filed against Officer Derek Chauvin in Minnesota.

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Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:18 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. Don't adjust that dial. It's a bonus episode. We're coming at you live, uncensored, unedited. Well, might still be kind of censored. How's going, Andrew?

0:01:30 Andrew: Well, uh, the world's on fire, but other than that, um, I miss, I'm as well as I can possibly be in this world of ours. How are you doing Thomas?

0:01:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, again, sitting on a mountain of privilege. I'm doing fine. How many people do you know who have been tear gassed? Because I'm in the, I'm at like four, I think. It's, a lot of people are out and, you know, as much as we, sorry, I'll go into opinion mode. But as much as we hyper criticize and evaluate how every protester is doing and how violent a protest is, the cops seem to have a really itchy trigger finger with the tear gas and all the methods they use. No consequences for that. They're allowed to just kind of shoot people with rubber bullets or whatever they want to do. Newscasters arrest black newscasts. All that stuff is fine. We don't care about that. But heaven forbid there's some damage to a target. So anyway, I know personally know know, several people who have been tear gassed on this very night who I know we're not doing anything other than we're around a protest. So it's a crazy

0:01:45 Andrew: Yeah, right. Ugh. Yeah. Well,

0:02:35 Thomas: Night.

0:02:36 Andrew: And that, and, and your list and my list overlap substantially. So yeah, it's, look, you and I actually had a, a, a bit of an argument about this show, because on the one hand, right, like part of the mission of Opening Arguments is to break down confusing aspects in the law, unclear aspects in the law. And there's none of that here. There is nothing confusing. There is nothing uncertain. The law is super clear. And, you know, we're going to we're going to get into it but

0:02:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:17 Thomas: We'll get to it. Big reveal on the laws about murder later. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's a tricky thing. But I think sometimes you might forget just how much of not lawyers some people are, you know, me included. And it it can be useful even even if it's a clear question, it's useful to to hear because in this day of, you know, fake news and quote unquote fake news and not knowing who to trust, sometimes I think it helps to to here one Andrew Torrez, a trusted lawyer, say something and then you can, you know, rest assured knowing, OK, yeah, no, I'm not crazy. This is this is

0:03:18 Andrew: Yeah yeah yeah I it

0:04:00 Thomas: How the law works. So, yeah.

0:04:02 Andrew: You're not crazy. There are no police exceptions written into laws regarding assault, manslaughter, and murder. And the fact, and, and, and again, again, if, if you were looking at what happened in Minnesota, if you were looking at, you know, what has happened, um, you know, over the past couple of months, this is not normal. And, and you should feel like this is Not Normal. And if you're looking, like, part of what we want to do on this show is tell you, yeah, yes, right, like, this, it isn't supposed to be that way. In every police department, there is an internal investigation whenever an officer discharges his or her firearm.

0:05:01 Andrew: Life is not like Miami Vice. I'm sure there's another reference that I could make that's not from 1985, but damn it. But, yeah, I'm going to make that one. Cops don't run around shooting people. That's not the way it's supposed to be.

0:05:11 Thomas: No, that's fine. They don't? Oh, shouldn't

0:05:20 Andrew: Well, it's not the way its supposed to. Yeah.

0:05:21 Thomas: Be that way. The quote's been going around that the problem isn't getting worse, it's just getting filmed. That could be true. Who knows? I don't know. Normal is a tough word. It may be normal.

0:05:27 Andrew: Yeah, it look again.

0:05:31 Thomas: It may not be. It's not acceptable, but it might be normal, I don't know.

0:05:37 Andrew: One political party has as a part of its I don't want to say it's a part of the platform yet because, you know, we haven't had the national conventions, but But nevertheless, right, like, one political party has almost a solidarity of voices saying that cops should be required to wear body cameras. And I don't really understand what the argument is on the other side of that. But there are folks who are on the other side of when people have deadly firearms and injurious additional devices, right, that the argument that they should not be filmed is a tough one to make. And

0:05:47 Thomas: Yeah, not yet. Give them time to get the convention together, and then I'm sure they'll get the... I

0:06:30 Andrew: And, oh, Yeah, keep going.

0:06:30 Thomas: Can tell you there is an argument that people do make that I'm I'm sure is a concern, which is privacy. You know, once every officer has video at all times, are they using that to like, you know, somehow invade our privacy in other ways and being, you know, facial recognition or license plates or whatever and tracking us in ways that, you know, some more libertarian minded people might not appreciate. There's that. And there's also, I think, a very real probability that body cams don't solve everything. You know, I mean, I I think it helps. I would I think we, you know, given a choice of how we you learn that the police have shot an unarmed black man yet again, say, given the choice of like, would you rather be able to see the body cam footage or not? I still think that our society should have access to that footage. I think that's got to be better than not. But rest assured, as we've seen, police seem to not really even care that they're on camera. And and, you know, like I brought up the examples already.

I mean, we already have footage of officers just shooting cameramen in the media with not with real bullets, but with whatever the bullshit, you knows, rubber bullets or if it's the tear gas stuff or the pepper spray stuff or whatever it is. And it doesn't seem to matter that much. So it's not going to magically fix everything, but I agree that it's, you know, it seems like a better than not.

0:06:31 Andrew: Yeah, Oh, it it Yeah, Yeah, I want to say two things on, on body cameras, right? Number one, you are 100% correct that it, it won't solve the underlying problems, uh, but, and we shouldn't expect it to, right? And, and the fact that something doesn't fix 100% of the, the problems is not a reason not to do it, right? So, we, we, it is going to be a political fight. It shouldn't be. And, uh, if and when that passes as a national mandate to the states, because again there are no federal police, um, that, that when you hear Aunt Kathy say, "Well, they passed that," you know, like that shouldn't be the metric, right? The metric shouldn't b, "We have to do this because this will stop," you know, blue on black violence, right? Like, that the metric should be, is this going to move things in the right direction? And that gets really to my second point, which is what body cameras do is begin to level the playing field for all defendants. And, by the way, indigent

0:08:19 Thomas: Sure. I

0:09:07 Andrew: Defendants, people who need public defenders who can't afford expensive, high-priced criminal defense lawyers, also tend overwhelmingly to be black and brown, right? Like, that, that correlation is, is well known. And so one of the things that a good criminal defense lawyer does is serves discovery on the, the police, requests everything incident to the stop and the arrest. And, you know, if so, for example, if you have a, uh, police car, like, you know, most cars are equipped with dashboard cams now, right? So that, like, there's... there's a lot of information that if you have an expensive criminal defense lawyer, you've already requested that. And if you get a public defender, some, many public defenders are excellent, all public defenders are overworked.

And so anything that makes it easier on public defenders to say, "Oh, by the way, like, just as a matter of course, like, yeah, we want, we want the, a body camera footage," is better for criminal defendants, right? And, and in a situation where, like, this is, you know, we've, we've talked about, we've tried to steal man the other side, right? That, like, look, you, you don't want to demonize all prosecutors, right? Like, there, there are crimes that we think need to be prosecuted, uh, there are, you know, people who, you know, harm others in society. We like, we want to get that balance right.

0:10:45 Andrew: But like clearly the balance is is upset right now. So we're going to talk about that.

0:10:52 Thomas: Think we're still in the intro

0:10:53 Andrew: Yeah.

0:10:53 Thomas: Of this show. Yeah.

0:10:54 Andrew: Yeah, we sure are.

0:10:55 Thomas: So, you Know, when we want to do one of these pop-up bonus shows that are just kind of addressing stuff that's going on, that means, you Now, we're not going To have the usual time to edit and all that. So we try to do it as kind of a live show, sort of. So forgive us for any mishaps, miscues, sounds, bump mics, all that stuff. And also, you

0:11:10 Andrew: Yeah? Did you say bump mics because I bumped my mic? Like, yep,

0:11:17 Thomas: Know, I, on occasion also bumped my mic that could have applied to either of us. It's, it's okay. It'S no, no problem. So yeah. And so I guess that's, I thought there was another thing I was going to say, but there, there you have it. That's the danger of a live show. I don't, I don'T know if I forgot something or if I started a list in which there was only one item. So that's the item we're going to talk about. Yeah, good.

0:11:38 Andrew: I have I have a little pre. Oh, go, go. No, you finish. And then.

0:11:44 Thomas: Well, I was just going to say we're going to talk about, of course, you know, George Floyd. We're goingto talk about some of the surrounding legal issues around that. And then also there was a Supreme Court decision that I'm glad we're here on a little bonus episode to talk about regarding churches. So that's our agenda. Go ahead.

0:12:03 Andrew: Yeah. And I also wanted to say, so this hopefully is coming to you Sunday, May 31st. We have our.

0:12:11 Thomas: Oh, this is coming to them Saturday, May 30th. That's why I see when we don't have to edit, I can just get it going myself really fast.

0:12:14 Andrew: Oh, oh, wow. All right. Well, that's you can just pop it up.

0:12:19 Thomas: I mean, East Coast time, it'll be close. It may be, but yeah, good

0:12:19 Andrew: All Right. Well, it'll be close. So uh remember Sunday 7 p.m. Eastern 4 p.m. Pacific, we've got our live Q&A, so uh, show up for that, we know you're gonna have a lot of questions and uh, and we love doing that. Um, also uh, June is uh, Pride Month, so I, I, I want to say that uh, from the show, right, like, a, this, the country's a mess right now. Right. Like we have chaos. And I just wanted to acknowledge that that Pride Month is, is June of 2020. It is the 50th anniversary of Pride

0:12:27 Thomas: Call.

0:13:06 Thomas: Oh,

0:13:06 Andrew: Month. And so I think we try to do this on the show. Yeah.

0:13:06 Thomas: Wow. That's so unfortunate, you know, because I know they had to cancel everything. It's really sad that they had TOA to cancel all those pride parades and all that. I didn't even know it was the 50th anniversary. That's really cool.

0:13:15 Andrew: Yeah. Yep. Yeah, and so, you know, we can reflect on LGBTQ plus issues. It, I, we have talked about the hard won victories on this show that that may be in jeopardy like marriage equality. And, you know, we discuss not just holding the line on those issues, but also fighting for a better future. And so it's you hear this in my voice, right? Like, I'm a cisgendered heterosexual white guy, right. I don't begin to understand what our LGBTQ plus listeners are going through, but I know we have them.

0:14:14 Andrew: I know you're out there, and we do our best all the time to hear you, to listen to you, to increase that visibility to see you and to be aware. And so, you know, we we will continue to do our our best. And I just wanted to say that from Thomas and I, we hear you.

0:14:42 Thomas: Happy Pride.

0:14:43 Andrew: We support you.

0:14:44 Thomas: Happy Pride Month. Yeah, absolutely. Well put. Let's get to our first segment, which is a case closed post. Uh, very put on your robes, Andrew, your law robes, get your analysis, dig deep. Uh, question, legal question: can cops murder people for fun? No. But

0:14:45 Andrew: Yeah.

0:15:06 Andrew: No, nobody can murder anybody for any reason. Case closed.

0:15:12 Thomas: You're a cop, so if you get mad at a guy, you can just kill them, right? Isn't that right?

0:15:12 Andrew: Yeah. It it it. I again, I want I want to be clear sort of about a couple of things. And I want to talk about the the Minnesota laws that apply here. But but I also I do want to dispel the notion that we've talked about, for example, how legislators enjoy legislative immunity. Right. Right. Like when you're on the floor of the Senate, I can say, you know, libelous if I'm Ted Cruz, I get on the floor of the Senate and say libelous stuff about Andrew Torrez. And, you Know, God knows at some point he will.

0:15:58 Andrew: And and so long as that is in the furtherance of his official legislative duties and that's defined super broadly, like I can't sue Ted Cruz for defamation. Right. He can say all kinds of terrible things about me and probably will. And there's nothing I can do about it. And I think, you know, I've defended that on this show.

0:15:57 Thomas: I'm not like a huge fan of that, but I could you know, know I can live with it, okay, yeah.

0:16:21 Andrew: Like, I, I believe I am a huge fan of it, actually. Like,I think that our legislature needs to be able to debate without having to worry, oh, am I going to get sued for this? Right. Like, let me give you a perfect example. Right. Right. Like everyone knows I represent Puzzle in a Thunderstorm LLC and, you know, Law'd Awful Movies, one of their podcasts, like essentially almost libels Christian movie producers on a weekly basis. And sometimes we tackle on Law'd Awful Movies subjects that are, you knows, films that are put out by people who are heavily litigious. Right. And I can tell you, like, we do extra preparation for those episodes.

0:17:14 Andrew: Right. Like, we make sure every single claim is footnoted and researched. And, I go over the scripts and I say, okay, like instead of calling them murderers here, can we call them, you know, clown horns. Right? Right. And and and look like that's a really good technique. If you're you know, if you're a libel lawyer, like encouraging people to call people names. Right. Is the thing that can't possibly be defamatory. Right. Like how would I if I if you say, you know. You're an asshole and we're going to leave that unclown horned here.

0:17:46 Andrew: Like, yeah, it how on earth. Right, like that. That's not a thing that could be proved true or false. Right? Right. I would love to be a play. You know, I'd love to be the defendant where the plaintiff comes in is like he called me an asshole. I'd like, you know, you move to dismiss it. I'm like, well, you know, he is an asshole, right? Like it expressing things in terms of an opinion actual and the more, you know, sort of vulgar you are, the easier it is to say this is not provably true or false. Anyway, my point on that digression is it is 100 percent true that That on episodes where we're dealing with more potentially litigious groups, like there's a chilling effect, like we work harder, we control what we say, we censor ourselves a bit more because we're more concerned that they're more likely to sue us.

0:17:46 Thomas: There's no clowning or horning in this episode. Yeah, but

0:18:40 Andrew: So all of those are good reasons to have legislative privilege. All of that is a sidebar. Um, cops do not have a firearms privilege. Right. Like, there's... there's not a companion, like, oh, well, you know, I'm a police officer so I can't be held liable for, you know, what I do with my gun, my taser, my pepper spray. It's beyond the scope of.

0:19:05 Thomas: They seem to effectively have that. I'm glad we're covering that. No, that's not how it really should work, but they seem to be able to just say the magic words of, I was afraid for my life, thought I thought he was gonna shoot me with the nothing that he had in his hand or something, you know, and and it seems to effectively be an immunity. Is that what's kind of happening?

0:19:10 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, and it That's right. And that there are, there are several things that come into play here. Right. So I want to, I want to get out of the way that the first thing that I think is a major contributor, that is sadly beyond the scope of this episode. And that is the past 20 years, ongoing militarization of local police departments.

0:19:54 Thomas: Yeah. Can I pause you to say I did see a really good, I think I retweeted it, depressing but also really, really good. Which is a tweet that said, it's kind of wild seeing pics of so many police officers all over the U.S. wearing so much paramilitary gear that they look like Robocop while some doctors in our hospitals are still wearing garbage bags for PPE. Like literally garbage bags, uh, yeah, we seem to have all the money in the world to make our cops look like we really want it to be a dystopia. I don't, I think it's, I mean, it's mainly Republicans, but Republicans are like, did you see that dystopian movie? Like that was cool, let's make our cops look like that, that's awesome from

0:19:56 Andrew: And yeah, it It's hard for me, right? Like, you know that my instinct is to try and steel man the opposite political position here. It's hard for me to do that right because militarization of local police checks all the boxes of the Republican agenda, right, like it, uh, it plays into number one, uh, the the myth, it is 100% false, right, like violent crime is on a steady decline, right, and has been on a a steady decline for more than two decades. But again, that myth of increasing violent crime is sort of key to the Republican constituency.

Fear is key to The Republican constituency, encouraging local communities to spend their money buying military-grade surplus hardware, hardware from defense contractors who give disproportionately to Republicans, is key to the Republican constituency. Like, it's it's kind of hard to come up with the reasons why a local Republican would want to tamp down on irresponsible speculation of, you know. So in other words, you know, when you look at it and say, oh, yeah, well, you Now, this, this looks like, you know, something out of the Hunger Games. Like the Republicans benefit disproportionately when people think inner cities are

0:22:19 Andrew: War zones.

0:22:18 Thomas: The Hunger games Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:19 Andrew: Yeah, they do. They really, really do. And again, I'm not saying that every single elect, you know, hashtag not all Republicans. Republicans. OK, don't at me on that. But I am saying, you know, rather like the Republican situation where, you know, the the average Republican says, yeah, government doesn't work. And then they come in and get the levers of power and break them and go, see, we, you know, we we told you this stuff doesn't work. Right. Like it, you benefit in having a law and order, tough on crime, mandatory minimums. Um, I, literally all of those things are Republican policies, so, uh, so yeah, there, there is an active constituency that wants you to be more afraid in your communities. Um, it, I suppose if I

0:22:27 Thomas: Which

0:23:13 Andrew: Was going to steel man and say, like, the other side, like, it, the argument I would make on the other side is, um, sort of the, the, and we've talked about this on the show, is the uh the fixed, broken, broken windows theory of crime. Right. It would be to say, OK, well, look like it.

0:23:28 Thomas: Has been disproven but yeah well

0:23:30 Andrew: Right, but I'm trying to make the best argument I can. Right would sort of be.

0:23:32 Thomas: You don't need to if

0:23:34 Andrew: Yeah, fair enough.

0:23:34 Thomas: It's been disapproven I don't need you to sit here and make a disproven argument is this yeah um yeah So where do we want to go, because, I, you know, obviously in case you've been living in a cave or something, uh, police officer murdered a man on camera, George Floyd for no reason, uh, he was on his unarmed, he was handcuffed on his stomach, and the guy just killed him with his knee, which is just disgusting indefensible and there even was Sorry, there even was the coroner or somebody issued a report to try to like blame it on the guy, which is, you know, well, it wasn't the force. It was that he had this weird body condition where his body needed blood and oxygen to live. And that's really what did it had nothing to do with the police officer. So they tried to put it on his like health conditions, which Is just complete nonsense. And there was a big delay.

One thing I want to kind of ask you about, it seems, again, see previous segment we did in five seconds, which is you can't do this. This is not OK. But there's there seemed to be a pretty big delay in time to where, yes, they fired the police officers pretty quickly, I think. But then there weren't any charges for quite a while. Do you know anything about that?

0:23:37 Andrew: Yeah. Fair enough. All right. Fair point.

0:23:49 Andrew: Yeah yeah. It it's it's bad. It took it was eight minutes of suffocation Yeah, I

0:24:54 Thomas: Should there have been charges right away? Is it plausible that they were waiting? I mean, it seems like they had the evidence. Can you talk about that part of it?

0:25:01 Andrew: Yeah. So the, uh, the the murder happened on May 25th, um, and the officer, uh, Derek Chauvin, was charged on May 29th. Um, it, it, so I, I, I guess I want to split the baby on that right Like, like, look, if it were you or I caught on videotape pressing our knee against somebody, you would be arrested and charged that night, right?

0:25:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. We'd just be arrested. Right. Wouldn't it be? Yeah, OK.

0:25:37 Andrew: Like, so there certainly was a four-day delay. Um, it, I, I think, I mean, to me that underscores kind of the inherent, uh, dynamic when you're talking about somebody who is, uh, a member of the community and of law enforcement, um, and, you know, obviously everyone there is a member of the community. Like, I'm, I'm, the rhetoric I was using there kind of inherently shows the bias and privilege. It does not surprise me that there would be discussions before bringing charges.

0:26:23 Andrew: And I do want to talk about the charges that were brought. So, yeah. So, if, I guess I would answer the question in two ways. Number one, was there their privilege? There absolutely was privilege, um, and, and number two, this kind of thing happens all the time, uh, with criminal defendants where somebody says, "All right, let's, let's kick this upstairs, let's ask before we bring these charges," right? And, and, and, you know, the, the fact that it took three and a half days, it is illustrative of that privilege. But, but, you know, at least we sort of got to the the right result. So, yeah,

0:27:05 Thomas: Yeah, for me, it's like if if we could trust the system, you know, if we lived in a system where we trusted it and there was a delay, it's not the end of the world to be like, well, they want to make sure they get it right and they can support the charges that they charge, you now, maybe whatever. But like to me, it just comes across as they wanted to see if they could get away with it. And then we're like, Like, ah, it looks like we can't get away with it. We better charge this guy or something, you know, like I don't, I mean, maybe that's not literally true, but it feels that way to people. I imagine.

0:27:26 Andrew: I don't I can't tell you. Right. Like, yeah. It should feel that way. Right? Like it's and

0:27:38 Thomas: Yeah. Like maybe the firing will be in it. We'll fire him. Maybe that'll be enough. We'll see if that's enough.

0:27:43 Andrew: And And look, this is, again, you know, just sort of shades of the introduction, right? Like, you know, you and I are white guys, right? And so there is, I mean, I've, I've told the story in, in the q a um, of, uh, of Judge Andre Davis of the Fourth Circuit, who was a, a mentor and a hero to me, um, talking about how, uh, at, at 70 years sold, as somebody who was a sitting judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, uh, he'd get pulled over once a week for speeding, right? And and and he could tell that story with a chuckle of, you know, yeah, well, you know, look, right, like I'm driving a Mercedes-Benz, but like, you know, but then he would look at you and say, and if this is happening to somebody who is is 70 and a sitting judge, I want you to think about what that means for somebody who is 18 and not a sitting judge.

And and and that was just a, you know, a tiny bit of trying to put a stone in the shoe of of white people to, uh, uh, to understand that, um, uh, in many ways there, there are two Americas in terms of, uh, how, how the law is enforced, um, so I'm very, very cognizant of that. It, it, it, and and I'm cognizance, I try to be, any way that, that you

0:29:28 Andrew: Know, the Donald Rumsfeld, right? Like, at least we have known unknowns, unknown unknowns. Right. Like, I I know that I don't know what it's like to to be Black in America. And and I want to try and temper what we say with that humility. So, yeah, yeah.

0:29:44 Thomas: Understood. So let's talk about the charges. I thought it was funny because I tweeted that this was a murder, and I even got one of those pedants who's like, well, you don't know what murder is, this is not murder, they thought they were going to, like, you know, it's manslaughter or something, think they're gonna pedantry their way into some pointless thing, but then it was funny because he actually was charged with murder, so it's like, you're even, you're not even right on that, but anyway, um, so you talked to, you referenced that Minnesota is a state that has three, uh, degrees of of murder, um, I'm not sure, yeah, uh, talk about those and and what he was charged with and what the differences are, right?

0:30:05 Andrew: And yeah, most states have two murder statutes. And by the way, there is no federal law against murder. Right. So whenever you see these charges, these are state law charges. Right? Most states divide murder into two categories. And murder one, murder in the first degree, is intentional premeditated murder. The way in which you learn about that in law school is, quote, lying in wait. Right. And the idea is exactly that. I'm camping out. I'M a sniper in the tree. I' m there for an hour. You know, I.

0:30:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And understood, this isn't that, unless there was some weird circumstance like a Perry Mason thing where we find out the whole arrest was a plot, that this guy went, like, I understood it's probably, it's not a premeditated, premedicated thing, right.

0:31:11 Andrew: Right, right, right. Right. And then second degree murder, again, in in most states is everything else. And what trips some folks up on on either side of the charging decision is you intend to murder someone for for second degree, for non premeditated murder. Right. You intend to murder someone when you intend to do the thing you do and you understand the thing it is that you're doing. OK. And I realize that that sounds a little a little obtuse. But but in other words, right, like if I the classic case on that, right.

0:32:11 Andrew: Like if I come at you and I am swinging a baseball bat and I crack it into your skull, or if I kneel on your windpipe, right, it, it is intentional if I intended to kneel on your windpipe, or I intended, intended to swing and hit you with the baseball bat. Right. And it is objectively true that kneeling on someone's windpipe or hitting them with a baseball bat could cause the victim to die. Right? So, in other words, you do not have to to to intend to murder somebody. You do not have to say, I want that person to die, right?

Like, you, you don't, you never have to have the moment in your brain, and, again, you know, proving mental states, we've talked about this on the show a lot, uh, but but you never, but intent is, um, to intend the act that you did and to understand the consequences of that act, right? So, in other words, it is not a defense for Officer Chauvin to say, oh, well, I I didn't intend to kill George Floyd, I intended to, you know, suffocate him and cause him to pass out and, you know, to subdue, or, like, that. None of that is a defense to intentional murder. Right. It is a defense to premeditation, which he

0:33:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:43 Andrew: Has not been charged with. Right, right.

0:33:44 Thomas: So it's like, like, it's come up, I think, in some bar questions, where it's, you're responsible for the fact, the reasonable, you know, assumed effects of what you're doing, even, you can't say, well, oh, I didn't mean to kill him, you're still responsible, and and you still intended to do the thing that a reasonable person would have known, especially, by the way, when George Floyd is telling you he can't breathe, uh, for six, seven minutes, I think it's reasonable to to assume you were are causing him great harm.

0:34:07 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That That is exactly right. So Minnesota, one of three states that has three degrees of murder. And I and I want to cut to the chase because, again, look, we've talked about privilege here. It it is it is. It is the case. I'm going to show you that Officer Chauvin was was charged with third degree murder. And it is thecase that that is the appropriate charge here. Right. Like that is not, that is not thumb on the scale. It is not he should have been second. It is not he shouldn't have been first. So let me go kind of briefly through the three Minnesota statutes that could potentially apply. Minnesota statute 609.185 is murder in the first degree, and there are seven different sub criteria, but again basically that is premeditated murder, right? So A1, causes the death of a human being with premeditation and with intent to affect the death of the person or of another. And and and, look, if you were a hyper-aggressive prosecutor, you might be able to charge that, right? Like premeditation does not mean, does not require hours,

0:34:13 Thomas: Okay.

0:34:40 Thomas: It's not like weeks.

0:35:28 Andrew: Yeah. Right. Like it, but the reason not to charge that is that you do not want to give the defense an opportunity, right, like so if if, yeah, Yeah, we

0:35:29 Thomas: Yeah, okay. Yeah.

0:35:40 Thomas: Haven't we talked about this before, like you don't you got to be pretty conservative with this because you can't double jeopardy them, right, so like you don't get to just keep trying the degrees of murder till you land on the one that you convict them, right?

0:35:43 Andrew: Have. Exactly right. That's right. Now, look, you can charge somebody and then include as lesser included offenses, right, the other degrees of murder, right? Right. But but if you charged Officer Chauvin with premeditation, you would give them the opportunity at trial to introduce evidence of lack of premedication, which now by not charging him with murder in the first degree, that evidence is irrelevant. Right. So and you could imagine how in front of a jury having multiple witnesses come up and say, like, no, like this is somebody who is, you know, slow to all of the like, I'm not going to go through and construct his defense because that's going to make me ill. But but again, as a defense lawyer.

0:36:00 Thomas: Okay, right.

0:36:23 Thomas: But you want credibility, you know, as a prosecutor, I'm sure

0:36:45 Andrew: Yeah, exactly. And not just credibility. Right. Like you want to think about what am I putting at issue from an evidentiary standpoint, and what kind of evidence is that going to entitle the other side to introduce? And so if you say he premeditated this, then the other side gets the opportunity to rebut that. And that rebuttal evidence may have spillover effects in terms of making it look like, oh, you're not being fair. And we know that cops tend to get undue credit as witnesses. That's right. Right. Now, look, I will also say that is one of the standard of our dear questions of of potential jurors. Right.

Like they will say, is that to a juror, is a standard form juror questionnaire question, will say, do you have any reason that you would grant the testimony of a law enforcement official either more or less weight than the testimony of any other witness, um, so that's one of the questions that they ask, you know, you might want to evaluate how likely somebody is to say yes to that, uh, but but that is a standard, a standard question, right?

So they, they do try and, uh, and and you were entitled to a jury instruction, um, I don't want to say you're entitled to it, it is a, it is standard jury instruction in police cases, to say that you should not weigh a witness,

0:36:47 Thomas: Right they get the benefit of the doubt, yeah.

0:38:21 Andrew: You know, either give undue weight or discredit a witness's testimony because they are a law enforcement official. So, OK, so that's murder in the first degree. Premeditation doesn't apply in Minnesota. Murder in the second degree has to this is six 609.19, has two different, they're two different kind of unrelated crimes that qualify as second degree murder. And one was sort of amended in 1981, and it is drive-by shootings, right? So So if you are if you cause the death of a human being while committing or attempting to commit a drive by shooting, then that's murder, too. OK, well, this is obviously not a drive-by, but then there's a category of unintentional murders. And it says whoever does either of the following and there are two sub parts to this.

0:39:30 Thomas: And this is, sorry, this is still under murder too, okay?

0:39:30 Andrew: This is This is murder to, right? Causes the death of a human being without intent to affect the death of any person while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense other than criminal sexual conduct. Right. Which is is one of the is one of the murder one subcategories that I didn't read. Right, so in other words, murder, murder in the second degree also includes, uh, in that first sub, sub category, any felony murder that is not felony murder while committing aggravated sexual assault, right? So, violent rape that results in the death of the victim.

Everything else, right, we break into a, uh, you know, a 7-Eleven, uh, and shoot the clerk when the robbery goes wrong, that is classic felony murder for both of us, not just the trigger person, and under Minnesota's second degree murder statute 690.19, we can be charged with second degree murder. The other category of second degree murder is causing the death of a human being without intent to affect the death of that person while intentionally inflicting or attempting to inflict bodily harm, which, which all seems to be right. When the perpetrator is restrained under a protective order and the victim is the person designated to receive protection under the order. Right. So, in other words, they created a special category here for battered spouses.

0:41:07 Andrew: So so murder to up until the Yeah. Protective order part. Right. So and this is the I want to say I don't believe Minnesota has the death penalty. Murder one, the penalty is life imprisonment. Murder two, the penalty is imprisonment for 40 years and six ninety point one ninety five. What Officer Chauvin was charged with here is murder in the third degree, is sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years. I have talked to a Minnesota prosecutor who tells me that the average, remember that federal crimes are governed, governed is the wrong word now, we've talked about this

0:41:07 Thomas: Oh, interesting, okay. I was gonna say that fit almost all the boxes, but yeah, gotcha, jeez. Yep,

0:41:56 Andrew: On the show, that the sentencing guidelines are advisory, but by and large are controlled by sentencing guidelines. And there's not a lot of discretion, right? Like you get, you know, 85 to 92 months, right? So state sentencing is, unless there are statutory mandatory minimums, the judge typically, she will have wide discretion at the state level. And I was told that murder three typically gets Gets you 12, you know, gets you about 50 percent of that maximum. Gets You 12,

0:41:57 Thomas: Sentencing guidelines, yeah. What

0:42:33 Andrew: 12 and a half years. Well, we will find out. And murder three says, yeah, that

0:42:33 Thomas: If you're a cop, though? Yeah. So, you make a good argument that it does seem like any of the other degrees of murder don't make any sense. Murder 3 seems to be it. It

0:42:48 Andrew: I think that's I think that's right. And murder free says, "Whoever, without the intent to affect the death of any person" - and again, we've talked about how proving intent, this goes way back to, you know, episode 13 when we broke down the, you know, Hillary Clinton's emails, right? Like proving intent is hard. "Whoever without intent to affect the death of any person causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind" - we're going to talk about that in a second "without regard for human life is guilty of murder in the third degree" um and and that uh yeah it is it is case closed Absolutely It 100 does.

And that, that depraved mind? You can tell that this statute was written in 1963. It is left over from the 13th century Saxony notion of second degree murder, of deprave heart indifference. And, you know, so by 1963, we knew the heart wasn't doing, you know, the heart pumps blood to your organs. It does not do any thinking for you. But there is, and I'm not making this one one up, there is 600 years plus of case law as to what constitutes depraved

0:43:14 Thomas: Yeah, for Sure 100 Yeah Case Closed that Exactly Fits The Facts For me, hello Yeah

0:44:07 Andrew: Heart indifference on the part of a of a murderer. And um, without a doubt, what we've, what we saw on that videotape uh constitutes depravity, or in Minnesota, deprave the mind. Right, that is, I I don't care that I am causing you grievous bodily injury. And um, that, that's going to be super difficult for uh for Chauvin's lawyers to to argue. I mean, you know, we'll we'll follow the case. Um, this is the kind of case that is very unlikely to be pled out. Um, so uh, I I think there will be a trial and And

0:44:22 Thomas: Because Like He'll say he did nothing wrong, essentially, and

0:44:49 Andrew: It because there's... there's not a good sort of being able to meet in the middle. Right. Like if if if they yeah, well, if they plead out to to manslaughter, like the prosecutor will rightfully be crucified. Right. And this is this is over overlaps kind of nicely with that. There there was there was discussion about, you know, Joe Biden taking Kamala Harris as as his vice presidential running mate, which I think is is very likely. I think the odds of it being Amy Klobuchar have dropped to zero.

0:44:50 Thomas: Yeah Murder Two And a Half Murder, murder Three And A halfway I Hope so, god

0:45:33 Andrew: Yeah. Well, it was that there was a terrible idea. We could talk about that in another episode. But but but, you know, given and again, let's not go down that rabbit trail but but what I will say is that that the, you know, you and I talked about how the, you knows, Kamala Harris is a cop, was is totally unfair. And and this is exhibit A of why you shouldn't say that about prosecutors. Right. Like we want Derek Chauvin prosecuted. Right. And so, you know, throwing, throwing the label of, you know, everybody who, you know, prosecutes criminal wrongdoing, you know, is on the side of the man. Like, I think this illustrates that that's not the case. So that's

0:45:33 Thomas: Yeah Not, not For today Oh Yeah

0:46:22 Andrew: I think

0:46:22 Thomas: I mean, not to get into it, I think, think there there's a line between criticizing, you know, maybe uh good faith criticism and just writing someone off completely. That I think is where I come from there, but anyway. Um, I Want To ask You about Um, the other officers, because so far I don't believe there have been any charges, and that strikes me as kind of a tough one. Like, in my mind, they're quite guilty of something, like, I I don't know if you could say they're guilty of murder, like, or you know, aiding, and whatever it would be. But it, do you foresee any ability to charge the officers who I suppose witnessed a murder and didn't help, uh, or intervene, or you know, like, I I don't know, what what do you see there, but

0:46:34 Andrew: That's fair. I agree with that. Yeah.

0:47:07 Andrew: You you you have to do more if, if the argument is witnessed and didn't intervene, that's not a crime, if if but but but I

0:47:17 Thomas: That's But That Strikes Me as like, if you're an everyday citizen, I get it Like, you know, you're an everyday partisan I'm buying groceries, and a, and a a guy comes in with a gun and and shoot somebody, like, okay, I, you know, fine, I I understand that, no, you're not going to be expected to be a hero and, like, step. But this is cops and other cops. It's almost like there's got to be some special consideration here, or maybe some other something else written into the code. I don't know. Interesting

0:47:21 Andrew: Agree I agree, so but but what I was going to say on the other side of that is, there there is no Minnesota criminal liability here for doing nothing. But here's the argument with respect to the other cops. Here's how, here's Howie would have to characterize it. And again, I am talking about, you know, potential charges. I am not characterizing what the officers actually did. You would have to say they contributed to the environment in which Officer Chauvin killed George Floyd. So here's the way in which that would come about.

That would be six oh nine point two oh five, manslaughter in the second degree, that carries maximum sentence of imprisonment for not more than 10 years, payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both. And there's a bunch of other stuff that doesn't apply, but the main way in which that applies is a person who causes the death of another by any of the following means. And sub point one, by the person's culpable negligence, whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another, so yeah it, I think that's the right way to say it, right, it it it could apply. Um, it it typically is not applied in in situations in

0:48:21 Thomas: Okay Yeah I feel like that could apply, well

0:49:20 Andrew: Which, yeah I

0:49:20 Thomas: Yeah and typically cops get away with just killing people, what I, well, I I just, sorry, and I don't mean to take it out on you, but but I do think that, like, if you really want to change the culture, if anyone was really interested in changing the culture. Maybe having cops be a little afraid of, like, maybe I shouldn't kill somebody, or let someone else kill somebody when I could do something. Maybe you do need to start charging stuff like this. Like, if you were there, you had the ability to intervene and you didn't. And you maybe contributed to the atmosphere that caused, you know, like, you said in the statute. You know, maybe cops should be worried about that. Sure

0:49:24 Andrew: And and and let me give you, and again, again, I hope that it is clear from this conversation that I 100 percent share in the, the, the quest for for that justice be done. Right. Like that it not be permissible for people in positions of authority to to abuse their authority in in in ways, like I, write, like, obviously, that shouldn't be the case. So the, the argument. So I've given you the best case. Right. Which is, you could charge the additional officers with second degree manslaughter. And I think you've outlined the pro of doing so.

0:50:43 Andrew: Right, which is to kind of set up best practices and put police officers on notice that, like, yeah, not not only should you not kneel on the neck of a victim who is in handcuffs, but you shouldn't watch somebody else do it either. You shouldn't, you know, participate affirmatively in that, right? Like say words of encouragement, right, like create the environment in which that happens. The downside is based on on the fact, and again, I don't know the facts, with like, I don't think any of us know the facts with respect to the to the other officers, that that's what I would want to to know. I would wanna see kind of multiple video of the other officers and kind of take a look at the totality of the circumstances because what you don't wanna have happen is you don't wanna bring charges and have an officer acquitted by a jury, probably a very white jury in Minnesota, that that looks at it and says, "No, doesn't doesn't meet these criteria.

0:51:54 Thomas: But I mean, lots of uh police officers have already been acquitted when they've outright Just killed people, and that shouldn't stop you from trying to charge others in the future, yeah

0:51:59 Andrew: Yeah, that's well, right. But but but again, as we're talking about the decisions on that, I don't disagree, agree. Um, when those decisions have come out, like, those decisions have caused, uh, you know, social unrest, right, and have caused, you know, uh, people to look at the system and say, "Yeah, no," I don't, again, I don't disagree, right, I I don't disagree with that in any way whatsoever. Um, I'm I'm saying that you you You Take A higher Risk Of that, yeah.

0:52:21 Thomas: As they should and I'm saying like you you'd want to get Obviously You'd Want each Officer Involved to be able to make their case. Like, who know, you know, if it's somebody, oh, actually, I was in charge of, you know, monitoring the citizens on this side, I didn't even see it, you know, fine, okay, they can make their case, they can make their defense. But, you know, I still think there should be, every risk of, if there was an officer who saw it happening, was right there, was aiding in it, didn't do anything about it, they should face charges. In my opinion, that's again, opinion time. But but that's what I think. Anyway, uh, we are already low on time, um, Uh, so thanks for answering that. I, I do, um, do you expect to see charges for any of them? Or probably not? Is it too, uh, too Tough Of a case?

0:53:00 Andrew: I

0:53:10 Thomas: Had

0:53:09 Andrew: I I Would Say, yeah, it, I would say, here's, to me, from a, from a predictive standpoint, here's what the determinant is going to be: if there is any evidence that any other officer did something, because remember the language of the statute is you have to, quote, create an unreasonable risk, end of quote. And I view that, and I think an ordinary juror would say that, like, that means you have to do something, like, that means that there must be an act, not an omission. Right now, we could argue, is the act omission distinction sensible? I have argued at great length in a law review article I wrote back in law school that it is not. Right, like, you know, if I, if I rev up a car to 90 miles an hour and I pointed at a schoolyard full of kids and then take my foot off the gas and roll out, like, you know, that's an omission.

0:54:05 Andrew: I failed to stop the car from, but like, how is that any different than the action of my putting the car in motion, right? So I don't know that it is a valid distinction. I will tell you it is, right, like the lawyers for any officer charged will absolutely raise that argument. We'll say creates means requires an affirmative act and not doing Doing anything is not an affirmative act. So I would say we're going to be inundated with this in the news. We will see multiple angles. We Will see multiple video we will see video from from bystanders, and, and if there is evidence that any of the other officers encouraged, You know, supported, you said positive things,

0:54:56 Thomas: A Hand in it, in any way, yeah.

0:54:56 Andrew: Yeah, Uh, and And again, hand doesn't have to mean physical hand, right? It Just means, Yeah, uh, then, I would Expect those Charges to Be brought.

0:54:59 Thomas: Right. Right. Right. So? Uh, okay. I Know It's We haven't even

0:55:07 Andrew: I I Think We'll just do, we could just do this one, yeah.

0:55:07 Thomas: Gotten to the Supreme Court. We Could

0:55:10 Andrew: So,

0:55:11 Thomas: Just do this one. So, hey, that's, what I what a wild card segment, we didn't get to it, we'll talk about that later, because I know there's a couple more things and apologies, apologies, but I had a couple more quick questions, and I know you wanted to give some advice to anyone potentially involved in protest, I think. But I wanted to know, I've already seen a few videos of various, you know, various and sundry cops engaging in horrible behavior in this.

And for example, you know, I talked about the newscaster, I talked other examples of that kind of thing. I want to know, I guess I've never checked, you Now, like in times past when there have been these protests and things have happened, are there ever consequences for that? Like, or is it just kind of a heat of the moment thing?

For example, you know, I just saw one flash across my social media where a cop just goes up, you now, to a protester who is not doing anything violent, You kno, is just standing there and probably, I'm sure they're saying something that the cop doesn't like, but, and the cop just shoves him down, you kow, just violently shoves them down. Are there ever consequences for that, or is it kind of just a heat of the moment, oh, it's protest, and then there's nothing, ever happens, sure?

0:56:24 Andrew: This is one of those areas where I could give you the legal answer or the practical answer, right, you Know what the practical answer is? The practical answer is, is no, um, that the legal answer is that, that there, there's nothing that prohibits there from being consequences to that, right, like, When And

0:56:44 Thomas: Is It The case of Like, if the civilian happens to be privileged and has means and wants to pursue a civil suit, like, maybe that's where there's consequences, right?

0:56:55 Andrew: And, and again, let's, let's analyze this from a legal perspective, right? "I felt like I was being threatened" is an affirmative defense, right? Like, Like, it is an item upon which you, as the would-be defendant, would bear the burden of proof. Now, again, you don't bear the burden of proof to the same degree that the state bears the burden of proof against you as a criminal defendant.

0:57:15 Thomas: This This Officer Could Be Charged with assault and Battery, actually, sorry, Sorry, assault and Battery, yeah.

0:57:22 Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yes, absolutely. Yes. Right. And because it's an actual physical touching. That's right. Right. And so let's remember that like reasonable apprehension for your own safety or the safety of others is an affirmative defense to those.

0:57:41 Thomas: I Can't Wait to hear this Defense for this Asshole, he

0:57:43 Andrew: Right. Yeah. But but but again, like it's it's important to categorize like that's an affirmative. Right. Like it's not an element of the crime that the state has to prove.

0:57:52 Thomas: Has To make Defense, so You're Saying, if If The

0:57:54 Andrew: You have to prove 51 percent. Yes.

0:57:54 Thomas: If the system Worked This Citizen has to file charges, I'm guessing, because I'm sure that, uh, no one else is going to do it for him, uh, they have to file charges against that officer that, you know, of assault and battering or or something like that, is that how it would work, or

0:58:10 Andrew: Yes. Yeah. Yes. I mean, you could you could you would file you could file a civil suit or you would look. And again, you know, you sort of have. Right. You have the thin blue line problem of you know other police bringing you know arresting

0:58:18 Thomas: Report It I Guessed Yeah, And By the way, I just want to Emphasize This is but one small example. This is not the most egregious. It's just the video, the latest video that happened to flash before. There's going to be far more stories of people I'm sure will actually be killed in these protests. I can imagine, you know, I've already seen a cop car run into citizens. I mean, there's all kinds of crap. So this is just an example though.

0:58:28 Andrew: One of their own.

0:58:50 Thomas: So, okay.

0:58:48 Andrew: Yeah that's right.

0:58:51 Thomas: All right. And then I guess, yeah. Did you want to give some advice to anyone who's taking part in protests or gets arrested, or what was it? Oh,

0:59:00 Andrew: Well, don't take legal advice from a podcast, Podcast, Um, If If you are, I, I guess I want to say a couple of things. I'm going to include the link in the show notes, um, at, at, it's blacklivesmatter.com partners, um, and it is exactly what it sounds like. It is how, uh, you can, if, um, you are not in a city with sort of active protests, or if you don't want to participate in those active protests, and there are a lot of COVID-19 related reasons why you might not want to participate in this protest, you can, you know, I wanted to sort of go to an organization that I trust, that has much more at stake than, again, than, you know.

0:59:02 Thomas: Sure. Not Legal advice. That's

0:59:51 Andrew: You or I as as as white dudes do. So I'm going to include that link. Go check out how you can partner with Black Lives Matter on these issues, because I think that's very effective way to get involved if you can't be involved. If you are participating in the protests and you are arrested, again, this isn't legal advice. I am not your lawyer. This does not form attorney-client privilege. I'm not a criminal lawyer.

1:00:23 Andrew: Don't say anything. Shut up and demand to speak with your lawyer. Do not talk.

1:00:29 Thomas: One of Those things That TV shows Do get right, it sounds like. There,

1:00:29 Andrew: Yeah, they 100% Get this right. And absolutely, it is not to your benefit to, like, try and talk to the cops and cut a side deal, and there is no, like, well, you know, if lawyers get involved, we're gonna, blah blah, like, that, none of that, all of that is nonsense, um, that no one Holds It Against you when you get a lawyer, get a goddamn lawyer, if, if you're arrested, and, and don't say anything, don't Try and Talk Your way out of it, Uh, Demand The Fifth, uh,

1:00:56 Thomas: You Have it I Like It Um, Could I Could I know I Know we're, we're, uh, we're going long and I know you don't want to form any legal relationships with anybody, which you aren't, I get it, but what about in the case of, as I've kind of shown here, if you're taking part of protest and you know you either maybe you witness some action or you maybe are a victim of some misbehavior on the part of police, what would you advise people to do? Find a lawyer or contact someone? What would you say they should do?

1:01:30 Andrew: The first thing you should do is contact a lawyer, and, and and I realize that that's coming from a position of privilege.

1:01:40 Thomas: Well, but honestly, that's one thing that privileged people can do. There are a lot of people who are doing great things in these protests and are protecting, literally physically trying to protect people of color from police abuse. One further thing, maybe there are victims who won't have the means to go after the police for this kind of thing, maybe you are somebody who could, and I think that would be a good use of your privilege, privilege, personally, All

1:02:02 Andrew: I agree with that. And I would say, right, this is part of what it means to be an ally, right? Like part of being an ally is using your privilege on behalf of folks who do not share in that.

1:02:22 Thomas: Right, well, any any further thoughts, are we gonna call it there? Sorry for the wild card segment fake out, everybody, we'll get To that though. Don't worry, oh,

1:02:29 Andrew: I How About how about I give you 30 seconds to say, we, we, I, we're gonna cover it on Friday show, uh, the Supreme Court ruled Friday at midnight, uh, denied uh the petition for injunctive relief 5-4 uh to a California church um that the the the order this is South Bay United Pentecostal Church versus Gavin Newsom. The order is totally straightforward. It is everything we have told you on the show, which is governors have plenary powers to take whatever actions that they deem reasonably necessary to protect the health of their citizens. That's been well-established for forever uh and uh and John Roberts joined with the four liberal justices uh in uh in crafting that majority um line from it, "Our Constitution principally entrusts the safety and health of the

1:02:40 Thomas: Yeah, Friday.

1:03:28 Andrew: People to the politically accountable officials of the states to guard and protect," and that is the Jacobson versus Massachusetts decision from 1905 on mandatory vaccinations uh that we have talked about on this show a lot um it, again uh, the important thing here is you know the game at the Supreme Court is shame John Roberts um John Robert's does not want um obviously identifiable blood on his hands uh can't say the same for the howler monkey contingent on the Supreme Cort who does not care um that Brett Kavanaugh wrote a literally insane uh dissent that we don't have the time to get through. But you should feel good about this.

1:04:08 Thomas: Though cuz I do want to get how I want to hear it okay on

1:04:10 Andrew: Absolutely, absolutely, we will talk about it on Friday.

1:04:13 Thomas: Friday's show, yep, thanks so much for listening everybody. Hey, stay safe out there. You, you know, yeah, I know it's not easy these days, but stay safe. And, you know, Black Lives Matter. We firmly believe that here and we support protest. And yeah, this is this is a tough time. So thanks, Andrew, for lending your expertise to this. I know, I know, it's one of those case closed questions, but it really does help. I think at least for me, I'll speak for myself. It does help to hear it from you to to know what, what should, at least what should be happening, you know, and and it helps us uh target, you know, where we should get to with the system. It's

1:04:19 Andrew: Please do.

1:04:53 Andrew: Well, thank you. I mean, it's hard being in this position, you know, and to say, like, it is so obvious that things should not go the way that they have, have, and you know, that kind of like, you know, railing against, against futility, is um uh it's a challenge sometimes it's it's not it's not a fun job, but um uh but but I'm I'm glad, I'm glad we, I'm glad we did, I'm we got out and talked to folks

1:05:17 Thomas: Not a fun job all right thanks for listening everybody we'll see you again. Hey, uh Sunday uh we're at, what was it, 4 p.m uh my time, West Coast time, uh 7 p.м eastern time for the live q a and also of course Monday's episode uh we'll seeing you then. Thanks so much for listening.

1:05:26 Andrew: Yep

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