The Completely Unnecessary Killing of Marcellus Williams

Transcript

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

0:00:02 Clip: Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.

0:00:18 Clip: What's my crime? I got bold? And a little negligent? Nope!

0:00:26 Clip: Bailiffs are coming to take away my will to live. Well, one count of being a bear, and one count of being an accessory to being a bare. This is a free court!

0:00:45 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1072. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and that coming to me on a beautiful, finally, Macintosh Apple machine sounding amazing is Matt Cameron. How are you doing?

0:01:02 Matt: It's perfect timing because I am here to announce my candidacy for mayor of New York.

0:01:07 Thomas: Yeah. Mayor of Good Soundville, at least, finally. Now, this is so funny because all of these complaints are just about what I hear. It's not about what the people hear. So they have no, the listeners could not care less. They just so you know, listeners, I have not been able to hear talking for, I don't know, let's see, I'm looking at the calendar, about eight months. So we've been recording with just, I just guess what he says at all times. I'd have never heard him. Whoa, Matt, first time hearing your voice. Sounds beautiful. But all the listeners have always heard in as best quality as I could muster your beautiful voice. So it's going to be weird for them to hear all this, but let me just say, I feel a lot lot better. And now we can keep going with the show.

0:01:45 Matt: Well, I thought the whole telepathy thing was amazing, but I guess if you want to do it this way, we can do it, sure

0:01:48 Thomas: Real life lawyer and genuine telepath, Matt Cameron. Boy, we have a lot to talk about. We also have a lots to tease. So many announcements. I can't wait. So Eric Adams, obviously, reference you're referencing with your joke. News just dropped. A little too fast to try to have, know, a you real good OA take on it but we're gonna do that for Monday's show so uh excited to hear the details of that, that guy sucks, don't care what political party he is, he sucks, uh, interested to hear how much and how criminally he does in fact suck on Monday show or Sunday night I guess it is

0:02:08 Matt: Do. For sure. If I could just suggest to the SDNY next time, if you could unseal the indictment on Wednesdays, That would really be great.

0:02:25 Thomas: You it's time someone said it totally

0:02:28 Matt: Yes, come on. You're not thinking of our schedule at all.

0:02:30 Thomas: And better perhaps an even better tease than that this is something I've been wanting us to do for a a while and we're finally doing it. Lot awful, we'll say, I don't know, debates, lot awful music, lot awful something, this month, Matt and I are doing a debate on Weird Al. A very informal debate. I get to be the heel. Matt can be the hero. You can cheer Matt. Wow, what a great guy Matt is. Unlike that awful heel Thomas Smith who doesn't really like Weird Al and thinks that Weird Al should have to pay people that he takes music from. And don't tell me he asked permission. I know he asked commission. I'll just say anyone doing Weird Al's thing should in theory have pay for permission if they don't get it otherwise. That's my side of the debate.

0:02:47 Matt: It's going to be so good. Fun, apparently. We have never disagreed more on anything. So, perfect. Let's do this side.

0:03:15 Thomas: Will be taking the side of The People. Matt Cameron for The People and I can't wait that's on patreon.com/law uh gonna be so much fun I in seriousness we're actually going to talk a little bit of music law we're going to talk how that should work and how it doesn't work and actually works so there's wait to get it out to everybody so sure to hop on the patreon and patrons you should see that pretty soon all joyful news aside we've got got to talk about some really not joyful stuff. Boy, I picked a weird one to be in a good mood on. You should have upgraded your setup like last episode, I think, Matt, because we're pretty much all murder that we're talking today. It's like a murder show. As dark as they are, we had an amazing Matt's footnote fetish story, like, I cannot wait for you all to hear, Matt is on a crusade, and it's a just crusade and it is his footnote story, before that, first, we're going to cover Israel and the attack that or not this violated international law, the fact that they blew up a bunch of explosives that may or may not have been around bad guys, you know, and also children. So, yeah, question of international law there. And then our main story, Matt. Williams' execution.

0:04:24 Matt: Execute an innocent man last night is the real question I hear. And this is, I think, no matter the factual guilt or innocence in this case, I think it's the worst procedural outcome that I've seen in a capital punishment case. It is really an absolute abuse of the system that I'm familiar with. I don't follow capital capital punishment cases that closely. But certainly in the modern era, when you have the combination of circumstances we're going to talk about, this is an absolute travesty.

0:04:38 Thomas: Ever? Wow. Unreal. Wow. Okay. Often, you know, I see the coverage. I see that chat about it. I'm like, boy, I hope that's not as bad as everyone's making out to be just because I would like things to be less bad in general. Not then, no, okay. This might be one of those ones where not wrong. Okay, well, take our break and get to it?

0:05:02 Matt: It's pretty bad, and it involves an established enemy of the show. So we'll get into it. Let'S Do It. It?

0:05:08 Thomas: All right. Right. Thomas asks, if I indiscriminately blow up devices that could be around anyone could be connected to a terrorist group. It's just the device. We don't know who has the device that might be around a child. It might be round anyone. An innocent person might be right. If I just blow up a bunch of stuff, am I the good guy?

0:05:32 Matt: You would be in violation of the amended mines protocol of the United Nations, Article 7.2. But there's a little more nuance here. Maybe we should talk about what this attack actually was. And I'm sure everyone's got the basic news by now. But Israel, a couple weeks ago, detonated thousand pagers that were sold to Hezbollah in Lebanon by an Israeli shell company. And I have to say, just taking Israel out of the equation, taking everything else, all other things being equal here. It's an audacious operation.

0:05:59 Matt: I mean, it's really an incredible thing that they did. I mean it's, really, they got them to stop using cell phones because they were convinced them all that the cell phones were going to be traceable, which of course they're very easy for Intel to intercept. They instead offered them these pagers, and they had set them up in such a way that they could detonate them on command when they wanted to. Suggestion that might have been at least 15 years old, this idea, if not the operation going back. So, this is a long -term plan.

0:06:00 Thomas: Kidding. Back then, it was actually just like, hey, this current technology, pagers, let's make sure we can do it. And then whoever was kept amending the idea. No, it would be old -fashioned technology by now.

0:06:32 Matt: But specific thing here in Israel's defense, just before we get into the rest of it, is that these were sold to Hezbollah and they were only supposed to have been on the person of Hezbolah fighters. But of course, when you sell a bunch of these things, yeah.

0:06:43 Thomas: Hey, Matt, question from listener Thomas S. Isn't the specific thing about pagers that you couldn't possibly know whose hands it was in at any given time? Because it's a pager.

0:06:53 Matt: Is true. And unfortunately, two children died in the course of this attack. And who knows how many other innocents may have been injured in all of this. But the question becomes, is this an act in violation of the international laws of war? Is this in fact maybe an act of terrorism against Hezbollah here? And what you were kind of referencing there in the beginning would go to the Minds Convention we were just talking about. I want to talk about that very quickly because Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez tweeted on number 20th, that this is a violation of international law. And she cited specifically the DOD's manual on this, and is citing the Mines Convention that I just told

0:06:55 Thomas: Two Yeah.

0:07:28 Matt: You about. So I'll just read you the language here and we can decide. It is prohibited in all circumstances to use booby traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material. This prohibition relates to booby straps manufactured to resemble items such as watches, personal audio players, cameras, cameras, toys, and the like, which would, of course, include pagers. This prohibition is intended to prevent the production of large quantities of dangerous objects that can be scattered around and are likely to be attractive to civilians, especially children.

0:07:56 Thomas: It's like they wrote that after this happened.

0:07:58 Matt: Little bit.

0:07:59 Thomas: I want to separate just real quick to clarify. Obviously, I have a strong opinion on this. I know what AOC said. I don' t know what anybody said. This is just me. I want just This is my opinion. The first thing I thought of is like, isn't that just terrorism? Let's say just hypothetically. Let's say right now in this country how on the, uh, order of a thousand explosions happened, many explosions happened. President, whoever president Trump, somebody gets on and says, Hey, don't worry. Those sold those only to murders. Like there were just, there was just like murders, like that we hadn't been able to apprehend, but we did, you Know, we sold them hey, two kids died. No big deal. Could be anyone died. We don't know for sure that the murders had them, but like we did sell them to the murderers. So like, that's awesome. Right. Work grade a work like awesome. Or is that just terrorism? Like, cause to me, it sounds like if you blow up a bunch of stuff and your hope is that most of it is bad guys. That's not, that'S terrorism. That'S

0:08:57 Matt: Is a counter -argument here. I see what you're saying. Think understand our position at this point that Israel is committing war crimes every day and has all the way through this war. What have been doing in Gaza is substantially worse than this attack by far.

0:09:10 Thomas: Course.

0:09:10 Matt: They're flattening houses, they're killing journalists, they've destroyed the entire infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. And I don't want to have this overshadow the actual war crimes that Israel has committed. One is a lot more questionable than those things because it was a targeted attack on Hezbollah, which is of course an enemy of Israel and is actually firing rockets into Israel from Lebanon every day and is in fact a terrorist group that has been recognized by every major government, I believe, as a terrorist group and that Lebanon at this point can't control. So it's not quite the same as just randomly distributing things to people you think might be criminals. This wasn't a deal that was made Hezbollah as a terrorist organization to sell them 5 ,000 pagers. The that I read you before involving booby traps and landmines, I think that the thinking there was more along the lines of if they'd made a deal with, I don't know, Target to just put these things in every Target store, that would be terrorism. That would be very, very bad. Now, I'm presenting this just to be sure, because I want to be certain when we're talking about these really sensitive topics and these things that everybody's going to have an opinion about, that we do get these

0:10:02 Matt: Arguments out. Because this is actually one case where there is both sides. There is an argument from Israel that this is legal. Now, the UN doesn't agree. A lot of other people don't agree,

0:10:07 Thomas: Well, Okay, clarify my ideology then. Good point. I do want to make sure, I always want to make sure I'm representing everything accurately. Let's say tomorrow there's something on the order of a thousand explosions around our border and what happens is the president of Mexico is like, good news, hey, we sold those explody things to MS -13 and we're pretty sure that it mostly killed bad ms -13 uh and yeah a couple innocent kids died we you know we don't know uh american kids by the way and like do you think as a country be like a plus that's awesome great work keep doing that within our borders well

0:10:43 Matt: That would not. But I was thinking about this. What if in 2002, we had pulled off an operation like this against al-Qaeda? I would think it'd be a very different reaction.

0:10:51 Thomas: But we also that doesn't mean it's good man the difference between what we can here's the the thing israel can and will get away with this just like it's getting away with genocide that doesn't mean it's good I'm just saying how I hope okay I should have started with obviously this isn't worse than the genocide they're doing but it's by like the numbers a lot less than the killing they're currently doing uh and it'S a lot faster than the slow death of by medical complete lack of medical attention food water uh that they're uh on people right now all that aside what I marveled about with this was how much the overton terrorism window has apparently shifted because like the first coverage of this was like hey wow cool operation it's it's crazy to me how this is covered as though this is just like some little operation they did that killed some bad guys and it just seems in to me.

0:10:55 Matt: I'm just saying it's contextual. Sure, of course.

0:11:37 Matt: I will read a headline from our favorite paper of record, the New York Times. Patriot attack was a tactical success without a strategic goal, analysts say. And Jonathan Katz points out on Blue Sky, that's terrorism. What you're describing is terrorism. You're just putting it out there. I also want to mention, this is a great opportunity for us to venture into the takosphere to look at what people are saying about this, because this is such a gray area. There's so much ambiguity, and this has never happened before. There's never been a single operation that resembles anything like this before. Sense of what people are saying. Now, the UN, as I said, upfront has said that this is a violation of international law. They consider it to be terrorism because you're doing this to inflict fear in the populace, and you don't know where these things are. It's completely untargeted in that sense, because you don'T know exactly who's going to be holding them, as you said, at any given time. It was targeted in the sense that anybody who's holding one or is in possession or has bought one is going to BE a Hezbollah

0:11:55 Thomas: I love it. Yeah, yeah. Oh,

0:12:26 Matt: Member, and there's

0:12:27 Thomas: Because we all know that there's a ironclad law of the universe that once you've bought a pager, you've never done anything else with it than hold it.

0:12:32 Matt: Well, these were part of a military operation for Hezbollah, as I understand it. I'm just telling you what is out there that we know.

0:12:39 Thomas: I know. You drop it. Someone could pick it up. It's in a house that you've left. You're the bad guy. This actually happened with one of them. You know, it isn't a house, your family or someone else's family. Like, that's what I mean. This idea that like, well, it was sold to bad guys. So that means it's like 100 % bad guys, yeah,

0:12:57 Matt: No. And that's why the UN is saying that that's not enough. You're still, at the end of the day, it's an indiscriminate attack and that violates basic human law. Saying that to the extent that international humanitarian law applies, I think they're knowing that this is going to be a hard one to prosecute. Simply because there was no way of knowing who possessed the device and who was nearby, just as we've been talking about. On the other side of it, there is the argument this is essentially a military operation against a valid military target that has been attacking Israel every day, and that this was as targeted as they could possibly be. They weren't doing what they were doing in Gaza and just carpet bombing the houses of journalists and doctors and anybody who might be associated with Hamas. Said, AOC was pretty clear that she thinks that this is terrorism. And a number of other people who I respect, including people like Akiva Cohen and Jonathan Katz, as I said. Leon Panetta, who was Secretary of Defense under the Obama administration, openly called it terrorism on CBS News on Sunday. This is not a opinion. It seems to be a lot of people believe this. On the other side of it, you have got, you will never believe, Alan Dershowitz, recently left the

0:13:55 Matt: Democratic Party to everybody's surprise and disappointment. This is perfectly fine, of course, a sensational victory for technology over terrorism. And well he's very excited about pager technology apparently I don't know

0:14:05 Thomas: A victory for technology? What in the world is he talking about? Okay, I gonna say I don't care and we should stop referencing him, but that's a funny enough quote that a victory for technology, like, does he think the pagers beat the terrorists or something? I don' t know.

0:14:19 Matt: Thought it was worth it yeah I don' know uh

0:14:24 Thomas: Not really sure

0:14:25 Matt: The national review ran a cartoon uh which rashida talib was pictured with her pager exploiting because you know she's hamas yeah yeah that person still has a job um

0:14:30 Thomas: Holy shit that's I missed that or

0:14:36 Matt: So again this is something that brings out out, obviously, for good reason, a lot of angry people and a lot of opinions. Chris Cuomo, another one who challenged AOC and said that, why didn't you mention these were on the members of terrorist organizations? Legal part of this, of course, is what we're most concerned about on this show.

0:14:52 Matt: And that is unclear because nothing like this has ever happened, as I said. I The will say just to name sort of a centrist take to the extent that there is a centris take anymore, has been really good on a lot of these kinds of things, the blog. They kind of did a more detailed analysis of the provision we've been talking about under the the landmine, amended mines protocol. To call. And there is an exception that you can actually distribute booby traps if you do them in the close vicinity of a military objective. So right.

0:15:16 Thomas: You're guarding an ancient idol that indiana jones is trying to

0:15:19 Matt: Naturally.

0:15:20 Thomas: Get that's they made sure to put that in there just in case

0:15:21 Matt: Yeah, I think rolling boulders are still a problem. But yeah.

0:15:23 Thomas: As long as they don't explode it's

0:15:25 Matt: An open question here. Extent that you're able to do it without Without individually vetting every one of these things before you set them off, are you putting them in close vicinity of a military objective when you know that they're on the persons of people who are associated with Hezbollah in one way or another, their ambassador to Iran at one point? So I don't know. An open question. I'm sure I can't give you a answer. Definite I am inclined to say that it goes on the side of being a violation of international law. I don't really want to see this as a precedent necessarily that countries do to each other. Like a pretty bad thing. But this is an extremely unique operation in the history of war. So it's going to be a while before we're going to being able to untangle this. And there's a lot of open questions that I think we need to know before we can say for sure anyway. But as you said, it's not as if they're ever going to brought up on these charges, but it's an interesting question.

0:16:06 Thomas: And it really is what a what world we live in because like this is less horrible than the stuff that's happening every single day so it is weird to like fixate you on it but it's also like yeah but it's a distinct weird new thing that no one's ever done and it's you said the precedent I think is important to talk about yeah

0:16:22 Matt: Potentially concerning. It's also an incredible psyop in terms of just getting into somebody's heads because you get them to believe they can't use your phones, and then you get them to believe you can't use their pagers. And then you have them relying on walkie talkies and you blow those up the next day. They meet in person at that point, and then you kill 20 of the commanders in a bombing. Have to say, I'm not saying you have to hand it to Israel, but that is a pretty impressive series of events in terms of targeting the operations of an opposing force. I know if I can condone anything that might have an extremely high risk, as this did, of killing children. I just can't say that's the right thing to do.

0:16:54 Thomas: The key components of what make it, you or not cool under international law is this like booby trap law. There's no other thing that's like going into someone else's country. There is no other like that part of it.

0:17:07 Matt: No, nothing else that really... We're just talking about international law here. And they Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel for many, many years now, and certainly all the way through this. And it is a state of war, kind of low -key with them. So people have been applying the law of war here. And that's what applies. That's all they've got. This booby trap thing really is the only thing that there is. I think it's much easier, as we said up front, to talk about this because it's such a discreet and sort of shocking act than talk About the actual things that are happening in Gaza all the time. But I thought it was particularly interesting to talkabout because it's just a completely new thing. It's just never happened before. So I thought it was worth touching on.

0:17:40 Thomas: Let's take a break and then we'll talk Marcellus Williams' execution and what went down there. Episode is brought to you by Quince. Do you ever open your closet and think, why did I buy that? Definitely have. I've noticed that of the stuff I bought in the past is just not like the quality that it ought to be and it wears out so much more quickly, but since shopping with Quince, I have not had that problem at all. I am still wearing my Quince stuff, the time, and it still looks just as good and fits just as right as when I bought it. Has all the seasonal must -haves like 100 % European linen shirts from $30, performance polos, and versatile the best part. All Quince items are priced 50 to 80 % less than similar brands. Ends. Do they do that? Well, it's by partnering directly WITH top factories. CUTS OUT the cost of the middleman and passes the savings to you and I. Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices, along with premium fabrics and finishes. Finishes. Wearing some shorts that I got from Quince right this minute as I'm talking to you. Made liberal use of their summer collection because here in Sacramento, California summer for 11 and a half months out of the year and so I got at I need more. I would love more from Quince, and love them. Wore them for most of summer. They still look Great. They Still Fit Great. Recommend. Fill your closet with timeless pieces you'll be wearing for summers to come with Quince. To quince.com/OA for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash OA to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com/OA.

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0:20:49 Matt: You might have seen the headlines in the last couple of days that Missouri just executed an innocent man. Marcellus Williams, 55 years old, was put to death by the state of Missouri on the 25th at 6 p.m. I'm going to say up front that I'm not sure I can say that he's innocent. Marcellus has Wallace maintained his innocence. His lawyers have maintained his innocents. Are no alternate suspects and there is no exonerating evidence. There's nothing in this case that clearly points to anybody else or that shows that he clearly didn't do it. Now, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that he didn't doing it. And the evidence he was convicted on is very suspect. Now, we're not a true crime podcast. I feel like I should say that out loud because somebody in the serial subreddit kept saying that we're a true prime podcast. And we are, I'm out of here. I'm not sticking around for a true crap podcast. Sorry, Thomas. We are not and have never been a true crimepodcast. We're a law podcast. I'm going to focus on the legal issues here because they are shocking. Me, the legal stuff here is actually just as shocking shocking as the facts and this very strong evidence that he should have been given a new trial and

0:21:25 Thomas: We're definitely not. Yeah.

0:21:43 Matt: That this should have all been re -examined. Let me just explain the basics very quickly. It's interesting to contrast this with something like Adnan Saeed, which got so much attention, and we talked about a few weeks ago. And people talk about Adnan's case as if that was barely any evidence, as if they didn't have anything, when there's just a mountain of circumstantial evidence in that case, which is usually what a lot of these cases come down to. There are many cases that don't have physical evidence, but this one should have had a lot of physical evidence. This is a brutal murder. The victim was stabbed more than 40 times in her home. It appears to have been a home invasion, and was a journalist married to a doctor. There was physical evidence everywhere. There was blood and hair and all kinds of things that could have been tested for DNA. Now, this was 1998 in Missouri. They were not doing DNA testing then the way they do it now. So the only DNA that was tested was actually under her fingernails. And that's relevant because the witness, one of the only witnesses who can possibly tie Marcellus Wallace to this murder, said that he came home with scratches on his body. So if he was being scratched by the victim, you would expect that there would be DNA under her fingernail. I find that to be very, very persuasive.

0:22:42 Matt: There's a lot more even here. Here. So the testimony that convicted him was from his ex -girlfriend, who the police basically pressured into doing this and said that they were going to charge her with a crime if she did not provide what they thought she knew. She herself had an extensive criminal record and was promised $10,000 to do this in reward money.

0:22:59 Thomas: Wait, what? Can can do that yeah

0:23:02 Matt: Had put out $10,000 as the reward. And so she found out about this and she resisted at first, but she did eventually testify. Testify. Her story did not really necessarily match all of the physical evidence. Yeah, it gets worse. Because It the other witness here was a jailhouse informant, and those are hardly ever reliable. That's a pretty typical thing when you're locked up with somebody and you come forward and say, this guy told me the whole story. I'm happy to tell it to you in exchange for whatever you can give me.

0:23:24 Thomas: All kinds of reasons why that might be bullshit oh

0:23:27 Matt: The $10,000 was also in play for him. And he demanded $5 ,000 of it up front before he testified, which never happens. That's a very unusual thing. Yeah, it's not great. Between the jailhouse informant story, the ex -girlfriend story, and the physical evidence are three very different stories. And I don't want to go through all the evidence because that's not what we're here for today. We're not a true crime podcast, but

0:23:30 Thomas: What yeah it's not what we're here for but can I at least ask like how did he end up under scrutiny anyway like what was the first thing that you know what I mean like if he's truly an innocent guy then you would suspect that he somehow unrelatedly was picked up you know What I mean like I feel like that that tells us something.

0:23:53 Matt: That's important. That was a good question. No, I agree. Am not prepared to say that he's fully innocent. And, and I feel bad even speculating on this because we're not not even 24 hours from his murder by the state.

0:24:04 Thomas: Well, worth differentiating obviously between was this guy factually innocent worth maybe considering and should maybe we not have done an irreversible horrible thing because we weren't sure. It's, it seems like if you're not sure in any way, maybe don't murder somebody, like maybe don'T kill somebody, but that's just, yeah.

0:24:23 Matt: This is the worst failure of the death penalty system that I've heard of in a very long time. And And just to say up front, of course, I'm sure listeners understand this, but we are both absolutely adamantly opposed to death penalty under any circumstances. The state should not be killing people. Just to disclose our bias there, I guess. Of this story is Andrew Bailey. And And that's very convenient because last month I ranted at Andrew Bailey for about 20 minutes because he was going to Texas and telling a federal judge that there were people in his state that didn't belong there because they'd married the wrong people. You might remember Andrew Bailey, the attorney general of Missouri, is one of the people that signed on as a Republican to fighting Biden's Keeping Families Together program. So he was already on my radar. And we heard from listeners saying, yeah, he's terrible. We've been living under this guy for a while. Andrew Bailey very much much has blood on his hands on this one, and I'll get there. But in terms of the evidence against Williams, which you asked about, I do want to make sure to be fair that we spell that out. He did have a long history of burglary. He was known to have committed a number of home invasions. More importantly, though, the girlfriend had testified that she saw the woman's purse and laptop in his car, and that she was actually angry with him at the time cheating on her because she found the ID in there. And there's someone else who testified testified that Williams sold him the victim's laptop. And the chain of custody on the laptop was never established. The ex -girlfriend's story is suspect for any number of reasons about what she saw in the car. That is it. The story that she told about how he came home with his jacket zipped up and scratches on his neck, plus what she saw on the car, and

0:25:45 Thomas: Did they recover what was in the car?

0:25:47 Matt: Recovered the and they recovered a dictionary and a ruler, neither of which were ever tied to the actual crime scene, but there was circumstantial reason reason to believe that they might have been owned by her husband, who was a doctor. Really loose. It is very attenuated.

0:26:00 Thomas: They recovered a laptop but couldn't tell who owned it?

0:26:03 Matt: My understanding. I don't know. This is 1998. Who knows?

0:26:06 Thomas: Yeah. That is very early for laptops, actually. What? Weird. Okay. I take it back because what the hell were you even doing with that thing back then?

0:26:14 Matt: This is extremely light evidence, especially if you look at the credibility of the people, the witnesses, and their different motivations to lie under under these circumstances. And I will say that the thing that I'm most impressed by in this case is Wesley Bell, who was the first Black prosecutor in St. Louis. He was elected immediately after the Darren Wilson acquittal, when they did not go forward in Ferguson with charging Darren Wilson after shooting Michael Brown. He was kind of elected on that movement as a progressive prosecutor. He filed a 63 -page motion to vacate when the final sort of DNA came back. They they were going to run tests they weren'T able to RUN before and they FOUND DNA on the KNIFE it was earlier this year that they FOUND this DNA now this unfortunately is NOT what it SOUNDS like it WOULD BE NICE if this were just a completely different suspect and we COULD SAY WHO DID IT and fortunately it TURNED OUT as the process wound its way along that it was the trial prosecutor who had contaminated the evidence because he believed that the perpetrator had been wearing gloves, so he didn't think it mattered if he just handled it with his fingers, which

0:26:48 Thomas: Wait. When was this and why? Oh. Oh, wow. Oh, geez.

0:27:10 Matt: Is very stupid. The evidence was irretrievably contaminated, which is its own problem just to begin with, that you have a murder weapon that we can't even get DNA off of it at this point. And again, to stress, there was no DNA in all of the physical evidence ever found at the crime scene. And if it's going to be anywhere, you'd think it's gonna be on the knife perhaps. Didn't come out until about the 21st of August of this year, and that's about a month ago. All this time, there was this question about whose DNA was on the knife and what was going on. At that point, Williams' lawyers realized that they did not have a clear case for innocence because there's no alternate suspect. There's no other DNA out there. And they made an agreement with Wesley Bell's office by which he was going to take an Alford plea. They could vacate the death sentence and they could have him take an Alfred plea in which he did not fully acknowledge his complicity in the crime or responsibility, but he would accept life without possibility of parole in lieu of death.

0:27:58 Thomas: Seems like a no -brainer. Like, just do that.

0:28:00 Matt: Does. Yeah, it does, and that's a great outcome, but in terms of not being able to prove otherwise, if that's the best you can do, that's best you do. Bell motion, motion. We're going to link to it, but it's a model of how prosecutors should do this. It was brought under a law that was specifically passed in Missouri because of the Lamar Johnson case, which was a man who was wrongfully convicted and served decades, demonstrably wrongfully convicted. And in a concurrence in the Johnson case the wrote, unless and until the legislature adopts a law authorizing a circuit or prosecuting attorney to file a motion for new trial upon discovery of evidence indicating a wrongful conviction, that Missouri prosecutors basically had no ability to come back to court and say, we made a mistake. It's incredible.

0:28:35 Thomas: So then they said, hold my beer, hold me, hold, my quill and passed exactly that.

0:28:40 Matt: They did, actually. A successful legislature. They passed this in 2021, and that opinion was in the same year as the opinion. And this became Missouri Section 547.031. And that was what this motion was brought under. And I just want to highlight that, because this is, up to this point, we're talking about a success story. We're talking About the court noticed that there is deficiency here because the prosecution was trying to undo the Lamar Johnson conviction under the same circumstances, but it didn't have a good vehicle to do that. The law really procedurally made it very difficult for that to happen. But everybody understood you have to have a way to do this. And I thought this statute was particularly interesting because I haven't seen something codified quite this way. Actual title of the statute is Information of Innocence of Convicted Person, Prosecuting or Circuit Attorney, My File to Vacate or Set Aside Judgment. And basically, this just gives the prosecution the absolute leeway. Anytime they come across evidence or that the convicted person may be innocent or may have been erroneously convicted. It's a lot of power.

0:29:35 Thomas: What you're saying is they passed a law that is what every single person would think is already true across the board, unless you have any knowledge of the law, any you would think, wow, they're innocent. Okay, free to go. No, doesn't work that way.

0:29:40 Matt: And would think, yeah, yeah. Sadly, no.

0:29:47 Thomas: Scalia decided, you know, Scalia et al decided, no, that doesn't matter if you're innocent, like that's whatever. We already went through all this trouble. We already took the trouble, Matt.

0:29:57 Matt: The legislatures and the courts have set so many limits on how many claims you can bring, when you can bring them. And there have been any number of cases where people come forward with evidence that looks pretty compelling and the court shut it down, including more seriously, recently, Clarence Thomas had one of these cases in front of him and denied it on procedural thing, right? And that should just never never happen. You should never have a procedural barrier to someone who has a strong claim to exoneration. That's the way that our system is designed. So this statute, that's why I want to highlight this. It's doing its job. The statute is doing what it's supposed to. The prosecution is doing what it supposed to under these circumstances, very honorably coming forward and saying, not only do we see that there's new evidence here. Now, that did not turn out to be anything that could actually exonerate him completely, but it is significant that his DNA was not on the knife or anywhere else on the crime scene. That's still relevant. They also had some issues with the assistance of counsel in this case. I'm not going to get into that. We don't have time to get to that. But there was also a Batson challenge, which is Batson US v. Kentucky is a 1984 Supreme Court case, which holds that preemptory challenges of non -white jurors have to have pretty a pretty good reason. It has to be a neutral reason. You can't just exclude somebody because they're Black, obviously. Now, I shouldn't have to say that out loud. The court shouldn't Have had to actually find that, but that is a holding that is very important in criminal law. They actually got the trial prosecutor to admit on the stand pretty recently that he actually excluded a juror because he was Black.

0:31:09 Thomas: What?

0:31:09 Matt: Yeah, that doesn't happen much either, you would think.

0:31:10 Thomas: Case closed. Shouldn't that undo everything?

0:31:13 Matt: That and the contaminated evidence, that is more than enough for me to vacate the conviction and at least vacate the death sentence, at least.

0:31:19 Thomas: In the world?

0:31:20 Matt: He said, well, he was Black, but the reason I really excluded him is because he was black and had glasses and he looked like his brother. Looked like he could have been his brother it's because he wasn't Black.

0:31:28 Thomas: No it wasn't because he's black, it's because quote, they all know each other.

0:31:32 Matt: And he had glasses, so he might be smarter, I guess. I don't know. It's terrible. I hate to even joke about this. This deal, though, that they had reached seems like a pretty reasonable compromise when you can't prove full exoneration, but when it is clear that the evidence is not really enough to kill somebody. And again, neither of us think you should ever kill anybody, but the state should never do that. But if you're going to do it, you better have absolutely airtight, beyond, beyond a reasonable down type evidence. And we don't have that in this case. Pikus was the widower in this case, the woman's husband. He's not necessarily behind full exoneration, but he did not oppose this being converted to a life sentence. No one else has really come forward except for the Attorney General to say this shouldn't happen. But of course, as soon as this agreement was made, Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed an immediate petition for writ of prohibition or mandamus in the alternative saying that this was made in direct contradiction of the Supreme Court of Missouri's death warrant and that the death warrant had never been vacated and that the trial judge didn't have the right to vacate the death war. That's my understanding after reading.

0:32:29 Thomas: A piece of paper, though, is the thing. I know you've got a human life on the other side, but we already typed it up.

0:32:32 Matt: We have paper. Right. You want us to rip that up now and maybe have have to do another one?

0:32:36 Thomas: I was wasting paper. I thought you were an environmentalist, Matt. I don't.

0:32:39 Matt: Yeah. It's bad. And Andrew Bailey, again, just to remind everybody, you can go back and listen to my rant. He is, of course, very pro -life. And this certainly proves that. He certainly loves life. Because rather than allowing this man to proceed with a claim that was brought not by his defense attorneys, but by the people who prosecuted him, I just want to make sure that that is very clear. It was the prosecution that was saying that there were constitutional issues with this case, that there were evidence issues withthis case, that there's not enough to go forward with a death sentence. And rather than let this play out and let the appeals continue and just let everybody take another look at all of this, Andrew Bailey moved in and said, no, we have to execute him as quickly as possible. That's who Andrew Bailey is. It is. It's disgusting. And it is an absolute abuse of the system. Know that people complain that death sentences take too long, but come on, this is exactly the kind of place where they they should be taking too long. Is exactly the kind of process you need to get if there's any doubt whatsoever at all. And I will note, of course, this went to the Supreme Court wound its way up pretty quickly. And in the motion for the stay that was filed with the Supreme court, the defense made a very good point because had to argue irreparable harm, of course, as you have to try to through on these things. And the defense makes a very good point that there's no irreparable harm here whatsoever because

0:33:52 Matt: Ms. Gale's family bears no harm if this court grants a stay of execution because they do not want an execution at all. How much more can you say that? They wanted him to live.

0:34:00 Thomas: What? Huh.

0:34:02 Matt: And that is, yeah.

0:34:03 Thomas: I didn't even know that. That.

0:34:04 Matt: Was saying that about her husband, right? Who's still living with the other family, apparently feels the same. Is just a striking thing to read just before, of course, the Supreme Court denied that stay of execution, 6-3, along exactly the lines you'd expect. Just a complete failure, I think, of the system and of everybody involved. And

0:34:19 Thomas: So let's get this straight. And I do think there is a tendency for people to maybe go a little bit out ahead of the evidence and say like, this person's innocent, this person's instant, you know? So don't want to do that because, you the end, oftentimes, even though someone shouldn't be put to death, we're still talking about someone who like viciously stabbed a woman to death. You know what I'm saying? I just want to be careful. I don't want to, I don'T want to in my quest to like condemn the people who are doing this, which very much they shouldn't do it. They shouldn't have put this man to death I donT want to like, be you going all, in on someone who violently have stabbed a women to death But when it comes to this case, I don't know. It sounds like from what you're saying, I don't really know for sure that he was innocent. I don'T certainly don't know for sure they did it. But setting all that aside, what matters here is the prosecutor, the the actual same prosecutor's office obviously has been a few years. It's not like literally the same person or anything, but the same prosecutor's office who this conviction says, hey, we can't support this anymore. They come up with a deal. It like if you have a deal, a a deals a deal like both parties in this thing tend to agree. And furthermore, and this is often not the case, like often you do have the victim's families calling for blood. You too critical of people who have maybe lost a loved one to a violent murder. I don't know how how I would act in that case. But like, often you do have the families calling for blood. In this case, you don't even have that. You have the family saying, we don't want, we Don't want anyone put to death for this.

0:34:27 Matt: I agree. Nope. Right?

0:35:35 Thomas: Yet this, governor and the Supreme court and, uh, that guy you hate was, Andrew Bailey. Not more, it's at least those three entities that probably could have stopped this. Right. Or, that's

0:35:45 Matt: The governor received a clemency request as well, I should mention, on top of everything else.

0:35:48 Thomas: Main thing I've seen as the governor. It's interesting, like, you angle on this with that guy you already have a grudge against, but I had mainly seen people being really mad about the governor not accepting the clemency request and, you so. But anyway, point is, really wants this. There's plenty of question about the case. There's plentiful question about possible racism. Racism and something that should absolutely grant someone at a minimum, a new trial. And the sake of exactly nobody, except maybe racism or something, they're just like, no, we still need to kill him though. We just got to do it. Got to kill them. That what happened? Am I missing anything? Oh,

0:36:23 Matt: Yeah, and what happened. I also want to note the governor's extra complicity in this because Governor that was set up by Governor Gratens, the previous Missouri governor, to investigate this specific case. And that committee was dissolved with no findings. It was supposed to reach a report, so we don't know what they would have found.

0:36:40 Thomas: It Like didn't finish.

0:36:41 Matt: He's just killed it in the middle of it. So we don't have anything from them. So that's just another strike here, is that you had a previous governor that thought this was worth looking into. The next governor cancels that and denies his clemency and just moves forward with the execution. It's terrible.

0:36:54 Thomas: Unbelievable. Yeah.

0:36:55 Matt: Mean, that's juste so many different failures here, so many different kinds of evil going on at the same time.

0:36:59 Thomas: It's too kind to call it a failure. Yeah, different kinds of evil. I think think that's better uh

0:37:03 Matt: But I mean there are institutional failures because we should have institutions that are designed better than this, and we should institutions that don't kill people.

0:37:09 Thomas: Yes agreed well that sucks matt that's that's horrible as

0:37:12 Matt: It's easily the worst procedural failure in capital punishment history that I've seen. Don't follow these cases that closely, but just in terms of the different machinations going on here, it's unusual enough that a DA is moving to undo a conviction. And I think that the state should absolutely listen. Not that they shouldn't listen to the defense, but when the DA is doing it, there should be extra weight there. That's the thing that is really awful to me, is that you've got a prosecutor who says this is not fair, and then you have the attorney general deciding that he doesn't care, and that he wants to put push for execution as quickly as possible.

0:37:17 Thomas: Unreal

0:37:40 Matt: It never should happen. And we should no longer have the death penalty in any state or the federal government. It's an embarrassment. I hope this gets more attention for that.

0:37:53 Thomas: Well the only thing that can make us feel any better is matt's footnote fetish What is it this week, Matt? Tell us all your deepest, darkest footnotes secrets.

0:38:01 Matt: Well, this one's personal. This is a very personal footnote. And I'm coming at you, Mark Zuckerberg. I'm suing Facebook.

0:38:09 Thomas: Ooh, Zuckerberg.

0:38:10 Matt: Zuckerberg, I can't even say his name. I've been a Facebook user since I was able to get it in 2004 when I was in law school and my brother sent me an invitation while he was in college. Years I was on Facebook and I was disabled. My account was hacked and disabled last month. And I know who did it. It was some guy in Vietnam who actually registered a domain that I used to own so that he could set up an email address, which I didn't even realize was still my backup email address for Facebook and got into my account. And they realized it was hacked because he sent a bunch of messages. I think you got one of them actually. What did it say?

0:38:40 Thomas: Yep. I got one that was, so here's the thing. That was, it was a message that was plausibly you, sort of. And so I was kind of concerned. I was like, either I told Lydia at the time, I was Like, Matt has been hacked or like, he on drugs? I was like, either he's been hacked or he's on drugs. Cause it was like Hey, I need a thousand for something. Can you lend me a thousand dollars? Whatever. It's like, yeah, it was a little bit off. And also the dollar sign was after the 1000.

0:39:06 Matt: That sounds like me. Okay.

0:39:11 Thomas: So I was like, all right, this isn't, this isn't Matt, but like it was close enough that I was a little disturbed. And I responded, I was like, sorry, what? Just to, just to like, cause I was was like okay that'll that's all I need to do uh and if it was you I'm sure you would have I and no here's what I actually thought I thought maybe it was close enough that I thought maybe you had typed it to the wrong person like I could see it being like oh it's I don't know someone you're you're more intimately connected with you might have talked in that hey really need this money whatever like I Could see it maybe almost being real I was like 94 sure it was fake but I just wanted to check I was Like sorry what

0:39:12 Matt: That's telling.

0:39:44 Thomas: And And then the response was like, oh, okay, fake. Like that was, I was expecting either, oh sorry, Thomas, wrong, yeah, wrong message thing or whatever, or, you know, fake and it was obviously fake. So then I just like texted you like, hey, what's going on with your Facebook? Someone hacked it. That's what happened.

0:39:44 Matt: That is so funny. Wow. Yeah, because one of my partners actually said almost exactly the same thing, that she was like, maybe this is the kind of thing between you and Casey, that you owe her money or something. I don't know. Wow, that is disturbing. So I guess I got to hand it to that hacker for at least kind of writing a plausible message. So here's the thing. Facebook knows, and I want to really cover this going forward. I'm going to be checking in on this story because I've learned there are a lot of people in this situation that Facebook has disabled their accounts after they've been hacked, when they know they've Been hacked, and they do do not let them back in. And just to remind everybody, I know Facebook is out of date now, and I know the kids aren't using it, but it was a big part of my life.

0:40:29 Thomas: But olds like us are using it and I miss Matt on it, everybody.

0:40:31 Matt: We still are. I miss Matt on it. I will say, if you can imagine right now your entire digital life with messages with people who are no longer living and with groups I've been participating in for many years, like the way that I met a lot of my friends in Boston, I've got colleagues that I talk to, and I have some of the best immigration attorneys in the country are in a couple of these groups that I'm in that provide excellent advice. And Facebook has been a lifeline, especially for immigration law, because it's so much stuff happening all of the time and so many practical things we have to share with each other. So this is real. This isn't just because I want to look at people's cat photos.

0:41:01 Thomas: Think you didn't, unless I missed it, I'm not sure you said why they disabled your account precisely.

0:41:05 Matt: I'd love to know. I really would like to know, but I don't. They won't tell me anything.

0:41:06 Thomas: You don't know. Oh, okay. What?

0:41:09 Matt: So it was hacked and disabled, and that's all I know. And there's a Reddit group for people who've been in this exact situation, and you can go and read. It's Facebook Disabled Me, the Reddit group. And there are people in much worse situations than I am because I was not using it primarily for business. I certainly was using it for business, I was enjoying using it for podcasting purposes because, of course, we've got an awesome Facebook group, which has 5,000 strong or something, and I was having a great time connecting with people there. And I do miss that part of my life right now. But that's not why I'm suing Facebook, I'm Suing it because I need my digital life back. Stand the idea of losing all of those memories, all of those conversations, all of those participations in different forums that I had, and just, there's so much there, right?

0:41:51 Matt: You don't think about it until it's gone. But Facebook offers you the chance to live online on Facebook, right? That's one of the major selling points, is here's your digital life all in one place. And it turns out that they have absolutely no regard for your digital wife, and they're willing to just kill you off any time.

0:41:51 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah because how many things are you probably like accounts you other stuff that you authenticated with Facebook? What happens to that?

0:42:09 Matt: Yes, also annoying. I had to start a new Spotify account.

0:42:11 Thomas: Man.

0:42:12 Matt: I lost all my Spotify playlists, which is huge for me. I'm going to try to deal with Spotify at some point, but I'm still holding out hope. I'm going to get it back. And I'm gonna tell you how I'm Going to do this. Now, the way that you would get this back, you would think is you just contact customer service, but

0:42:24 Thomas: Just talk to a human. Just be like hey here's what happened. They'd be like oh of course.

0:42:27 Matt: Not possible, not impossible. So, again, I've got screenshots that show exactly what happened. I've Got Facebook's own messages to me saying, we know you've been hacked. So I just put this all together. I explained it all. And there was no one want to talk to you about this. There is no human that will talk to you. And

0:42:39 Thomas: Because we are in hell, Matt. We live in hell. If you need help, you can talk to a series of escalating robots, each more robot than the last robot, that don't actually help you.

0:42:48 Matt: It's because we're data pigs. That's all we're good for. And they have billions of other data pigs that they can squeeze data out of, and they don't need so much data.

0:42:54 Thomas: I'm a fat data pig. I'm ready for the slaughter.

0:42:59 Matt: And found me a cool solution of using a that.

0:43:04 Thomas: Do I need to edit this out? Because, like, that's, are you doing something that's not, is this going to be Exhibit A in your lawsuit, though?

0:43:10 Matt: You're right. Actually, Yeah, you're right. Let's take that out. Sorry. I just realized that was not very loyal of me. I tried various other methods, I will say. I tried various other method to get my account back, including an email that somebody had shared on the forum, which is just an escalation email that you can send to Facebook. I thought for a minute this might actually work because I put my whole case together. I sent it to this escalation thing. I get an email back within a couple of hours saying, don't do anything else. Don't try to contact any other part of Facebook. We're going to look into this. We are going to take care of it. We will get your account back. That was more than a month ago. Nothing has happened. And plenty of people have reported they never heard back on anything. The strategy I'm gonna tell you about, which I think people really want to know, because this is very likely to happen to somebody you know at some point. It's been happening so much, like several thousand percent more than it used to. A piece on Engadget that that confirms what people are talking about on the forum. Somebody put out a very clear post on the Forum Exode, exactly how you should go about this. And the way that you do this is so It's

0:44:02 Matt: So unbelievably stupid. Which court do you think you have to go to to sue Facebook?

0:44:05 Thomas: God. Well, first off, wouldn't they have some stupid, you like the Disney Plus thing the other day? Like wouldn't wouldn't there be some arbitration bullshit first? It's

0:44:13 Matt: Try to say you can't sue at all, because you have the terms of service under Meta and the terms service under Facebook. And of course, Facebook is a subset of the Meta account. One of them says that you can'T sue them anywhere. And what the other one says that any Any account, any lawsuit other than small claims has to be brought in San Mateo. Now, other than Small Claims, that's interesting.

0:44:32 Matt: So I grabbed onto that, of course, as a lawyer. And it turns out that people have been able to successfully sue Facebook and Small C claims court all over the country.

0:44:30 Thomas: Interesting yeah and like traffic court oh wow huh

0:44:42 Matt: So Small C Claim's court of all places, because I don't consider the loss of my digital life to be a small claim, but I don' t think, no, it is not a small claim because it is a lot to me. It is a lot of business. And the way that I, when I wrote that escalation email, I put, you know, incurring massive business losses or something in the subject line. So they get, all they care about is money.

0:44:45 Thomas: Is this another thing I need to edit out matt because it's going to be exhibit b oh so that's already blown okay wait

0:45:05 Matt: I am, I mean, this, honestly, Facebook has been very good for my practice. It got me a lot OF clients and a lot Of referrals because I've been posting about issues of the day for a long time. And it's good for participating in this podcast to be available to listeners. And I love being able to do it. And so there is a real business angle here, but that doesn't matter that at the end of the Day, you have the right to go and sue them and say you violated the terms of service because you did not actually provide a way for me to get my account back the way you promised you're supposed to be able to do. Just just so you know what I'm challenging here. The Facebook terms of Service say we may disable or delete your account if after registration, your account is not confirmed, your count is unused, whatever, or if we detect someone else may have used it without your permission. So again, they know someone else used it by my permission, where we take such Action will let you know and explain any options you have to request a review, unless doing so may expose us or others to legal liability. They are promising in the terms of service that there will be some kind of process, but that process, I can guarantee you, having tried many times now, does not exist. There is nothing that you can do. There used to be a form you could fill out and upload your driver's license. I would have been happy to do that. No, not an option. No longer exists. So there's no one you can talk to, nothing you can doing, and this escalations email is useless. This, again, is a company that is making more money than you can possibly imagine a company company making, and they can't seem to be bothered to have basic customer service for people who they know have been locked out of their accounts wrongfully. And so this should be a lawsuit. Now, my understanding of the way this works is that they do not want a paper trail. They don't want a record. They Don't want anybody knowing that this is happening. So when you bring this to small claims court and you send this to their lawyers and you say, of course, I will accept $10,000, or if you want, you could just give my account back,

0:46:33 Matt: That they'll just give your account back because they don't want to bother with you. And now this may actually require me, and I can't I might have to come to California, Thomas.

0:46:35 Thomas: Hey can I represent you I'll just go over here I'll do it yeah

0:46:45 Matt: That could be fun. Yeah, it's like two hours away from you. So maybe I crash on your couch. I don't know. It comes to that, we'll see. It's possible I might not be able to do this online. I'm putting the claim together now, but what I have to do first is file this demand letter. So I put together a very complete demand letter I'm about to send, which explains exactly the harm and what's going on and all of my efforts to try to get the account back. Stapled exhibits with everything. And I'm pretty optimistic based based on what I'm seeing, that eventually, someday, I'll be able to get my Facebook back.

0:47:14 Thomas: I can't wait to follow this saga will

0:47:16 Matt: This might be its own episode.

0:47:17 Thomas: They really not even let you download your data it won't be like no we're continuing to have it disabled but here's your data for

0:47:22 Matt: After great effort, I found something that is promising to send me at some point my data. We will see. I really hope so. And I don't know.

0:47:28 Thomas: But who knows I mean you've gotten burned a few times with stuff that doesn't actually work so yeah

0:47:32 Matt: And people have said they don't get everything when they do get it. I would accept that to begin with, because I just want to know that some of it's preserved. The conversations, if nothing else. But where yeah. It stands right now. I will We'll continue to update as we go here, but I'm calling this a footnote today. It's not a footnot for me, but it's a foot note in the broader sense.

0:47:46 Thomas: This is this is very serious for matt no I get it it totally is I I would feel the same way of

0:47:51 Matt: It's a, it's not, it feels like one for me.

0:47:53 Thomas: Your digital life. Yeah.

0:47:55 Matt: Yeah. They'll just eliminate it without, I mean, San

0:47:57 Thomas: Mr. Cameron goes to San Mateo. What did you say? Where was it? Was it San Mateu?

0:48:01 Matt: Mateo small claims. Yeah. Might just do it.

0:48:03 Thomas: Mr. Cameron goes through San Mateos small claims court and I, and Mr. Smith, I should go to Washington. Then we'll swap. Mr. Smith goes to Washington, yeah, yeah.

0:48:10 Matt: That's fine. That's right. But Hey, if you want to represent me, well, I guess that would be a felony if you tried to represent me in small claims court, but I can take care of myself.

0:48:16 Thomas: I help? Yeah.

0:48:17 Matt: You can bring a sign or something. Sure.

0:48:19 Thomas: No, I can't, can't I be like a, like a something, I nevermind. That's not worth it. I thought there was some, So if I'm supervised by an actual lawyer, I thought I could help in some way just to put on my resume.

0:48:27 Matt: Could file an amicus brief in the small claims quarter as a friend of the court. I need Matt to get his Facebook account back. Yeah.

0:48:36 Thomas: Man. That's funny.

0:48:39 Matt: Yeah, so it feels good to talk about it because I do want to just tell people, use I resisted it, but I really could have avoided all of this. I'll be honest.

0:48:47 Thomas: Message. Good message.

0:48:50 Matt: Don't trust Facebook.

0:48:51 Thomas: Yeah. I can't wait to follow that along. I Can't Wait for the Next Update. We'll see. All right well that's our show wow really good stuff um for breaking that down and matt uh started to go fund me in your honor now it's just for me but it's it's like I need I go this is horrible what's happened to matt everyone so if you want to donate for help me process what's happening to matt so I really think you should go to gofundme.com I'm just kidding um but thoughts and prayers matt at this trying time and I And can't everybody, reminder, patreon.com/law, Loud, Awful, Weird Al's is coming out, and going to be a whole lot of fun. So thanks for supporting the show, and we'll see you next time.

0:48:53 Matt: Me too. Stay weird.

0:49:29 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:49:47 Thomas: And welcome weird voicing hello I'm a fat data pig. I'm ready for the slaughter.

0:49:52 Matt: So much data.