GG72: Luigi Ruling Shows NY Cares About Illegal Searches but Federal Courts Do Not.

Transcript

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

0:00:01 Clip: All rise. Court is now in session. Court is reconvened. I may be seated. Maintain order. The federal rise to face the jury and harken to its verdicts.

0:00:26 Thomas: Gavel in Gavelinos. It's Thomas, and I'm with, I was going to say I'm not joined by Lydia, but she got in first, so she has to be here.

0:00:29 Lydia: And Lydia. I'm here. Hand me my gavel.

0:00:37 Thomas: It just, it's how it goes. No, just kidding. You already have your gavel. I don't know. I'm the gavel-less fool over here. Wow.

0:00:41 Lydia: Hand it over. You're right, I do. Listen up. Yeah.

0:00:47 Thomas: That wasn't a sound bite. That wasn't a clip. That was amazing. How's it going?

0:00:50 Lydia: Nope, that's my little gavel that I keep on my desk. Hey, pretty good. How are you?

0:00:58 Thomas: Well, you know.

0:01:01 Lydia: We gotta come up with new answers. We need more interesting responses. Yeah.

0:01:06 Thomas: Small talk, the podcast. They should make that just for fun.

0:01:12 Lydia: That's all that it is.

0:01:12 Thomas: Like just total bad small talk. Yeah. Today we're talking, or I'm talking to, Liz Skeen is here to tell us about Luigi. Can't get enough of him. Some probably not great news, but Liz is going to break it down. And then after that, Lydia is going to come back because we're going to we're going to just give some updates on the show and how it's going and stuff. And I figured why put that in front of the podcast, because there's so much small talk to be had, you know, and I don't want to I don't want to preempt the small talk that has to happen.

0:01:32 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.

0:01:43 Thomas: We're going to jump on over to Liz talking about Luigi Mangione and the latest news out of there and also what to expect going forward. A lot of interesting stuff. Patreon .com slash gavel pod. If you'd like to support the show, get the goodies. Oh, speaking of, going to be a really good one. Got to be really good one! You'll hear about it. It's an amazing thing happened. Yeah. All right. After this break, we'll get to Liz.

0:01:59 Lydia: Oh, yeah. Maybe we'll talk about it at the end. Yeah.

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0:02:15 Liz: Heading over to Luigi land, I think I can give us a quick kind of update on where we are. And then we can talk about the recent decision to come out of the state court. So where we are with Luigi is he has a case in both New York State Court and New York Federal Court, Federal Court in New York, the Southern District of New York. Both cases charge substantially the same thing.

0:02:36 Thomas: Wasn't there a Pennsylvania something or other as well? What was that?

0:02:39 Liz: Yeah, there's there's a Pennsylvania case as to possession, like illegal possession of a handgun. And so there's also that case, which I believe at the moment is in abeyance, but we'll probably hear from it. And, you know, just in terms of kind of trial procedure and, you know, in broad terms, like what happens or criminal procedure, like what happened? So, you know, someone gets arrested, they go in front of a judge, they get arraigned, bail is set. In New York, you get arraigned a second time, also in front of a higher court. And then both sides engage in various motions, the most key of which, if you're preparing for a trial, are going to be suppression motions.

0:03:13 Liz: And these are going to be suppression motions refer to suppression of certain types of evidence that the government wishes to offer because the admission of it violates, in one form or another, your constitutional rights.

0:03:25 Thomas: Yeah, so we talked about this before, right? It's been a minute but we definitely did yep

0:03:28 Liz: It has been a minute. We did. And so there were suppression hearings at the federal level. On the federal side, essentially, they let basically all of the physical evidence that was disputed, they let it in. And this is an interesting case because the state decision is a bit different. And again, it kind I think it's a really good, if I were teaching a law school class talking about differences between federal and state law in New York, this case would be front and center. Because this is a case where the state court comes to a somewhat different decision on the basis of a New York state case called Gokey. And one of the things I like about Gokey is that it's called Goaky. And the other thing that I like about it was when I read Judge Caro's decision, I whispered to myself, I kid you not, Gokey lives.

0:04:17 Liz: And what I mean by that is Gokey has been cut into, it's a really good New York State decision that is the reason for the difference between the two of these cases. And Gokey's been cut in two at the New York state level, but it is definitely alive in the New Yorke State decision, suppressing a large amount of the evidence that was found in the backpack. So the New York State decision came down on May 18th by Justice Cairo. We use the term justice in New York for trial court judges. And at New York, the trial court level is the Supreme Court, as people who watch Law & Order may recall. So Justice Cairo, who, by the way, I've done two suppression hearings in front of. I don't have to say this, but I think he's a very good judge. He heard this case. And the issue is Luigi is at the McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. There's a call in for a tip line and a couple of police officers come in. It's initially a handful of police officers, then more come. And while they're sort of talking to him, among other things, they take the backpack away from him and they search the backpack. They don't fully search the backpack, they find certain things in the backpack but they do search it and then they bring it back to the precinct and at the precinct they fully search it when they find the actual gun. So what Caro's looking at is what actually should be suppressed based on this scenario. So before even we talk about Caro's decision, I think it's worth noting kind of what happened in the federal decision. Basically, the federal decision said that everything is coming in from the backpack, not just the stuff that was initially found at the McDonald's, but also the stuff that later found back at the police station subject to an inventory search. And the federal court says that, you know, the arguments that they raised in federal court, the federal court says there's tons of exceptions to the search warrant requirement. Right. So that's like the Fourth Amendment arguments that they're raising, saying that this was an unlawful search. They're saying there's tens of exceptions. So the search of the backpack and McDonald's that make it OK. And one of the examples they use is like truly this terrible doctrine in federal court called inevitable discovery. And we may have talked about this and it's just it's honestly just total horseshit. It means like, oh, say you did something illegal, but you were going to do something legal later and you would have found it that way. It's cool you did the illegal thing.

0:04:50 Thomas: It's so confusing right yeah

0:06:46 Liz: Yeah, it just sucks.

0:06:48 Thomas: We did yeah yeah yeah I feel like this is something the supreme court's ruined maybe yeah

0:06:48 Liz: I mean, it's just a terrible one. And the other thing that they come down on, which is also sucks, is independent source. And what they say is, oh because later on a federal court did issue a search warrant, it is fine that they did not have one at the time because there would have been a search warrant.

0:07:03 Thomas: What that doesn't make any sense

0:07:06 Liz: It's just total horseshit. I have to say, it was really depressing reading the federal decision, and it made me really glad that I practice in state court, which is not something I say often. I mean, I love state court. But federal court sometimes seems a little fancier, and the judges write these thoughtful decisions. I mean the case law in federal court, both of those bases are just horseshit, like I cannot get over like, oh, you did this illegal thing, but it's fine because you might have done a legal thing later. Oh, you did this illegal thing, but you would have gotten a search warrant, so it's fine. It's just like, it's totally, I mean, absurd. So that's why he goes down in the federal court. In the state court, what Caro says is actually everything that was found in the backpack at the McDonald's is suppressed. And that includes a bunch of good stuff, which is, I mean... Well, for the defense, which the magazine, his cell phone, wallet, and a computer computer chip. What's on the computer chip? I can't tell you.

0:07:14 Thomas: Yeah yeah pinkie swear you would you meant to do the right thing cool a computer chip

0:08:09 Liz: Yes. Some sort of computer chip that might've been Caro of say, Caro's way of saying a USB. I'm not sure.

0:08:10 Thomas: What what okay it's gonna say you don't keep anything on a chip but okay so boom boomer computer language got

0:08:23 Liz: Maybe, maybe I'm not sure, and then what he, what Caro says is, however, everything that was found in the station house, which is namely the actual gun and the manifesto, unfortunately that does not get suppressed. So what's the reasoning there? It's this decision called Goki. So Goki is this this really great state court decision that concerns what happens when there is a warrantless search of a closed container. What this decision says, and we use it quite a bit in New York, is that in order for police to search a closed container without a warrant, the prosecution has to establish, one, that there was exigency, so there was

0:09:05 Thomas: Hmm

0:09:05 Liz: An emergency. For example, there was concerned that it contained a bomb or something like that. And then also the search took place when the container was not in the officer's exclusive control, right? So you're holding on to the bag. And the term that gets used a lot is whether or not the closed container is in the grabbable area of the defendant. What is grabbable area? Besides what it sounds like, It's just like, could the defendant have grabbed it?

0:09:35 Thomas: Oh so the point being like if you're gonna say oh there might be something dangerous in there it doesn't work if there's no way like you have total control over it okay

0:09:45 Liz: Exactly. That like, if you have total, right, exactly, so there's no way if like, yeah, if you're concerned that, more to the point, if say you're concerned this bag contains a gun in it that the defendant can use, well, like, you can't say that if like the bag is 10 feet away from the defendant, right? And it's not in his control, it's not in his grabbable area, he's not able to use it. So that, the burden gets put on the prosecution in order to make that showing. That is to say that like, one, there's no emergency. I guess actually, you know, in the case of a bomb, that would probably override it. Yeah.

0:09:53 Thomas: Yeah I was gonna say I was just gonna ask like do they have a way of just getting around this by saying we had to check if there's a bomb we had definitely have to

0:10:23 Liz: I mean, certainly you could, but I think that there would have to be, there was sort of no, it can't just be, you have to think that there's reason to be right. Exactly. You know, this person had threatened and there was bomb, there was, you know, I don't know, a ticking sound. I don't know, I dunno how else you would, you know, the bomb sniffing dog barked, those sorts of things. Right.

0:10:24 Thomas: Check you'd have to have like reason to think there's a bomb can't just be like yeah that's good mm -hmm

0:10:41 Liz: But that's how you would probably get around it. But that's the idea of gokey. And so it's a really important exception because there's all these circumstances in New York where some police officer performs, this happens all the time with backpacks, bags, other things. This happens with respect to drugs. This issue comes up with drugs all the time where there's a bunch of drugs contained in a bag, but it's like a crumpled up bag. So sorry, you can't just open up a crumbled up bag and find the drugs in it. Unless you can establish that the prosecution establishes, one, there's an emergency and it can't have been also like in this defendant's grabbable area. So that's the exception here that gets invoked by Caro and saying, you know, and what had happened was the police officers basically, there's three police officers that come, then there's a bunch more that come. And they just grab Luigi's bag and they take it away from him and they just start searching it.

0:10:41 Thomas: Yeah hmm yeah seems like pretty no -nonsense this should be

0:11:36 Liz: Yeah. And that's exactly it. And so Caro, in my view, correctly rules on the side of the defense of this. And I think this really just illustrates just how terrible the federal law is on this issue, because it's such an illegal search. And I'm glad that New York still has this one case, which admittedly has definitely been carved down. And you always see courts straining to find another read of it, but Gokey lives in this one. And they use this Gokey case to say the search is illegal. And then as to the rest of the backpack, so they didn't perform, I guess, a full search of the Backpack. They arrest him, they bring him back to the precinct. Another police officer performs what's known as an inventory search.

0:11:36 Thomas: Suppressed yeah right

0:12:18 Liz: And this applies in both federal and state law. An inventory search is whenever you get arrested, the idea being that, you know, the police have a right, you know, you are responsible for making sure your property is taken care of, they can go through your property and tag everything. So like, you know, handbag, one cell phone, lipstick, wallet, bag of cocaine. Oh, we found a bag of cocaine. That's the idea of this sort of the inventory searches is supposed to be just like this is like a standard police procedure. It's actually like how you have a good operating department. The problem is in, you know, even inventory searches are sometimes a tail can wag the dog. So maybe you arrest somebody hoping that you can perform an inventory search. You find a very flimsy premise to arrest somebody for having a false license plate or something like that, or a really de minimis marijuana possession. And then you perform an inventory search on their belongings in their car, and you find a whole six kilos of cocaine. That's kind of the tail wagging the dog with the inventory search, and I think to some extent like that applies here, which is, you know, they go back to the police station and they're like, okay, well, we'll search the rest of his stuff because it's an inventory search. And I don't know. I mean, I think they should have waited to get a search warrant.

0:13:36 Liz: That's my view, but it is what Caro looks at here is, and the one way that you can sort of argue against inventory search is the police have to actually follow their procedures for an inventory search. They have to have procedures. You have to follow them. So you just can't be doing something that's it's super wacky. I don't know, feeling a bag and saying, oh, I think I feel firearm over here. Let's go inventory this part of the bag. I do not know, something like that. It is not supposed to be ... I think that would be a little suspect, but who knows, maybe a court will rule that that is fine. You have to follow the procedures that are in place for an inventory search. Here, Caro says they did that. So it was a proper inventory search and that is when they found the gun in the manifesto. So that stuff stays on.

0:14:19 Thomas: It just kind of feels like that would excuse anything really like it so as long like you're saying as long as you find a reason to arrest someone, then that means you get to search everything. I mean, I guess that's fine. I don't know. Just seems like weird.

0:14:35 Liz: It's really messed up. I think what is really tough about that is there's just like it's really hard on the defense side to prove they were just trying to arrest someone on this premise in order to get to something else. That's like you're never going to get a judge, excuse me, a police officer to say, yes, the reason I arrested him for having a fake license plate was because I wanted to search his vehicle.

0:14:57 Thomas: Right. And more to the point, and I'm not sure if this makes sense, but I guess the thing I care about most in this sort of situation is like, I would hate if an inventory search, because that's going to be inevitable and because you're going to find everything with that, does that just paper over and completely excuse any unlawful stuff they did? And it sounds like on the federal level, yes. And the state level, no.

0:15:21 Liz: I think that's correct. Exactly. Yeah.

0:15:22 Thomas: Yeah. So to your point, federal law sucks, or at least federal way it's been interpreted by probably shitty Supreme Court justices kind of sucks.

0:15:30 Liz: I mean, it's just really depressing reading the federal decision saying, Well, there are multiple exceptions to the search warrant requirement here. One is inevitable discovery, the inventory search. The other is independent source, which is to say, oh, they ended up later getting a warrant for this. I mean, it's ridiculous. I can imagine circumstances where something might be suppressed in this federal context that does happen. For example, maybe an unlawful frisk of somebody, if they didn't have a basis to put hands on someone to see whether or not there was a weapon on them and there wasn't a basis to arrest that person to begin with. Something like that. I mean, I'm just, it really, you know, the federal suppression of evidence of physical evidence with those two exceptions of independent source, you can ratify it with a later search warrant or that you would have gotten anyway, or the inventory search. I think it's ridiculous. And I think it just really, I mean how do you even police bad behavior then? How do you tell cops not to to do those types of searches if it doesn't matter. Right.

0:16:37 Thomas: The only way they would ever change their behavior is if there's consequences. Yeah.

0:16:41 Liz: Exactly. It's really frustrating. And think of all the people who you'll never hear about their case, but they were subject to some really inappropriate, violative searches because certain federal officers or police officers reasoned that it didn't really matter. Yeah.

0:16:58 Thomas: Yeah. Like they just felt impunity because of the state of the law. Yep. Frustrating. I can't remember everything that you said or predicted last time, but I did feel like we thought there was a chance some stuff would be kept out, but I don't remember if it's basically what happened or not.

0:17:15 Liz: That's basically what happened. I think there were some concerns that Altoona didn't follow their proper procedures for an inventory search. Caro basically said, yeah, that's not the case. But yeah, we did keep out a big chunk of a big trunk of initial stuff, including the magazine for the gun.

0:17:31 Thomas: Hmm. The magazine? Wait, what? Oh, gotcha.

0:17:35 Liz: Yeah.

0:17:36 Thomas: That's interesting.

0:17:36 Liz: Well, maybe.

0:17:36 Thomas: What does that do? So you'd be like, hey, it was never going to be loaded. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Interesting. And I do remember we talked a bit about the interaction of the federal and state cases and the double jeopardy thing that was interesting. Has anything changed there? I remember talking about like, if the federal government goes first, then state can't go. But if the state goes first then federal government can still go. Is that right? Right yeah yeah

0:18:02 Liz: That's correct. Yes. So New York State has interpreted its own double jeopardy clause in its own New York state constitution to bar a prosecution of Luigi if the federal one would go first. Right. So, you know, I mean, I think the way that the Supreme Court, the U .S. Supreme Court has interpreted the double jeopardy clause is very questionable. But their theory is like, oh, these are two cases by two separate sovereigns. So no.

0:18:28 Liz: Yeah. Whereas the New York State Constitution, our courts have been like, no, like it's the same case, double jeopardy, like, you know, that's it. So the reason the right New York is kind of wants to race to go ahead and can ideally go first is they're going to be barred if the feds get to go first. So they want to try their case first.

0:18:49 Liz: I'm kind of curious how much communication there is between the two sides.

0:18:53 Thomas: I remember asking you that last time like if it felt like anyone was slow walking

0:18:58 Liz: Yeah. So, you know, what's interesting is it right now, it looks like the federal case is scheduled for a bit later. Both of them are scheduled in the fall and it looks like the New York state case is Scheduled first, at least for now. And then the federal case is scheduled for later. And that's interesting because even though in, you know, the federal suppression decision came down in January of this year. And the state one just came down yesterday on May 18th. But trial schedules are always a little based on everyone's availability, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, although you can't do. And I'd be curious if I were the defense attorneys, what I would probably be trying to do is figuring out a way to just throw a

0:19:02 Thomas: Anything hmm yeah slow down yeah

0:19:36 Liz: Bus ahead of the metaphorical bus ahead of a state court date, coming up with other issues, you know, motions and amendments, other problems to kind of slow down the state court case while making sure that like they're not frivolous and you're not going to piss off the judge. Right. Because there's there's a point where you could do that. And the judge is like, well, screw you. We're moving forward. Right? That's what I would probably be trying to do is just figure out a way to to get the federal case to go first.

0:19:59 Thomas: Yeah yeah that seems like the way to do it

0:20:04 Liz: I look forward to returning come the fall. I don't think there'll be much over the summer unless something interesting happens and unexpected. But I look forward to coming back and regrouping during the fall and talking a little bit about the trials and what happens then.

0:20:19 Thomas: So that's gonna be and we're assuming that probably the state one is gonna start

0:20:26 Liz: I think so. I mean, I think the state is making every effort to make this happen. I mean I think I can go.

0:20:28 Thomas: First yeah what kind of access do we get to that to the trials none oh you yeah no I mean what about me do we get transcripts or there's no like video

0:20:41 Liz: I'm curious. So yeah, New York is not a state where we tend to do video. I'm curious if owing to the prominent nature of the case that they would put transcripts, the first time they ever did this was New York state courts did this. I think was the Trump trial. But it does seem that like they've been posting certain of the decisions online for Luigi in the state courts. So I'm curious if they would post the transcripts online. I think it's a legitimate question.

0:21:02 Thomas: That would be nice yeah that'd be definitely something for gavel

0:21:07 Liz: That would be a lot of fun. You know, we could also try to see how much they cost to purchase on a non -rush basis or rush basis from the court transcriptionists.

0:21:14 Thomas: Gavel someone's gotta be getting

0:21:17 Liz: Yeah, someone's got to be getting them. So the defense and prosecution are getting them, you know, every day. And yeah, I mean, it would be very, I think, it'd be a very fun and interesting trial. I mean he has very good attorneys. Prosecutors in the state are very good.

0:21:21 Thomas: Them hmm they get them every day could they give them to us yeah

0:21:33 Liz: Well, maybe we can ask. I mean I can always, you mean, you there's no harm in asking.

0:21:35 Thomas: Interesting thing okay yeah well we'll have to put a pin in that all right yeah

0:21:41 Liz: I'm going to put a pin in that. Yeah.

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0:21:50 Thomas: So what's the next date we're looking at in those trials and well in the I guess

0:21:56 Liz: So the, apparently the state case is scheduled for trial on September 8th of 2026 and the federal trial date, it looks like, oh, so yeah. So the federal trial date originally was earlier in the fall, this coming fall, and then they actually pushed it in order to accommodate the state trial. So that's now, it's just been recently changed to January 5th of 27.

0:22:09 Thomas: Cases hmm yeah and so that's bad right for luigi

0:22:22 Liz: That's bad. That's bad for our boy.

0:22:23 Thomas: Yeah yeah is there any pre -trial things that are significant that they have to figure out or is it pretty much just next thing is the

0:22:31 Liz: Yeah, the next thing is a trial. Well, I think there will be interesting, there will be motions in limine and a few other pre -trial things. So what are motions in limine? Motions in liminae are just kind of evidentiary motions in advance of a trial. Sometimes a lot of my motions in limine, because I'm in state court, I do orally before a trial, so I have a case where I want to say that the prosecution shouldn't be able to bring in this statement, which they're claiming is an excited utterance, the worst hearsay exception of all time, and I'm, you know, we're going to argue that before trial, whether or not they can bring in the statement. And that's called a motion in limine.

0:22:33 Thomas: Trial hmm yeah

0:23:11 Liz: And so other things. So I suspect that there will be motions in liminae for both cases. And that is going to be the type of evidence they can put in. I would imagine regarding motive, I'm not sure if they have any, like, bad act evidence for Luigi. So that's the stuff that we were talking about earlier, right, with Murdaugh. So bad act, any evidence that, say, Luigi was obsessed with healthcare CEOs and had previously stalked another. I'm not aware of that, but that's something that if that evidence existed, the prosecution would try to bring that in. And the defense would try to say, Hey, that's way too prejudicial. Or that's, you know, you're just using that to prove that he's a criminal. So he's more likely to do criminal things. Other evidence, like potentially there might be arguments about, um, I, you know, I assume they performed like a cell phone search. There might be evidence from text messages that reflect poorly on him. Um, that may be a text message that reflects poorly on him that goes to motive, but also puts him in like an unsavory light. I'll give actually one example that I think will illustrate like this, these sorts of motion in limine type things. But I had a case that I tried a couple of years ago. And one of the issues in this case was the police had put together a great deal of, after my client had fled the scene, the police had put together a great deal of evidence from getting various surveillance to tracking my client. And one of the surveillance footages, and they introduced this to basically show, in order to prove, he went here, he went here, we went here and then we arrested him here. Right. Um, one of the surveillance footages included, it was taken in like a porn shop and there was this video of my client by like a massive dildo. Right? And so that was the sort of thing that we were like moving. We're like, can we redact the dildo? Can we like, do we need to show this particular clip? Yeah. So lots of sort of like, exactly. So I, I can't, you know, I don't know like the extent of the state's evidence, like, you knows, where was Luigi luigi before I mean yeah maybe maybe luigi immediately went from killing you know from allegedly killing the united ceo to a porn shop right and they want to you know introduce that evidence to show the next place he went was that I mean right

0:23:25 Thomas: What's that mean hmm yeah oh motion to quash the dildo suppress the dildo yeah maybe it came to my house maybe we were doing stuff that you know might maybe involve dildos I

0:25:26 Liz: And maybe there'd be a motion eliminate because you know thomas you're so disreputable and there's like footage of dildos in your house you know like that's the sort of thing

0:25:31 Thomas: Don't know yeah oh yeah just the pure this sex paraphernalia is, I have it around for that purpose so that maybe it'll get motion in limine. I don't know. You never know.

0:25:40 Liz: Everywhere exactly maybe it'll be motion eliminated so yeah at this juncture like I mean we all have a kind of a sense of what the evidence is going to be, but we honestly don't know the nitty gritty of the evidence, like the specific surveillance that they have of him, the specific text messages they got off his phone, whether or not they have some evidence from friends that are, anything like that. So I think there will be a lot of interesting motions in limine as to the tweaks and contours of the evidence.

0:26:08 Thomas: And I might've asked you this before, but how much is it that, and then at what point is it, well, okay, it's understandable because of our healthcare system or, you know, at what part of the system is it that it's not understandable? Would that kind of thing be any part of it? Like if it's, if, you know, aggravating reasons that But he or whatever you call that, where it's like he had perhaps understandable reasons for doing what he did. Where does that come into play, if at all?

0:26:34 Liz: I mean, so at least under New York law, there is a very good, potentially useful defense for Luigi, which is extreme emotional disturbance. And that would knock down his murder two charges to a manslaughter charge. And manslaughter, notably under New York law, the range for that, for someone who doesn't have a previous felony conviction like Luigi, is from five years to 25 years. And I say all that because this defense is called extreme emotional disturbance. And assuming, you know, what you, one would argue is they would try to present, you know, the defense would try present evidence showing that this was someone who had acted in a moment of, you know, really, you know, not being in their right mind, being disturbed, that sort of thing. And it's not exactly, you know, it's sort of not, maybe it has some analogs to the idea of premeditated versus not premeditated, but it's not exactly that, you know, like what the defense would probably want to say is, you know, think about like what it's like to be in extreme pain and the ways that this can, you know, and imagine having your healthcare claims being denied and trying to, you know, I think try to introduce evidence as to what that is like in order to get the extreme emotional disturbance defense. So I think that is relevant. The federal side, I think they're a little more limited in presenting that, but I'd be curious to see what else that they're thinking. You know, the other thing that the defense is going to want to do is, I mean, potentially try

0:28:03 Liz: To nullify. Now, you're never going to want to say that. Right.

0:28:03 Thomas: Like the jury nullification?

0:28:09 Liz: I mean, they're going to try to get the jury to nullify. They can't say that they can't actively do that.

0:28:13 Thomas: Right. They can't be like, look at how killable this guy is. Look at that face. Killable face. If I've ever seen one.

0:28:17 Liz: I think that they're gonna try to be doing everything they can to introduce evidence of not so much how shitty the insurance situation is in America, but more how shitty this was for Luigi. And I'm sure the prosecution is gonna do everything to say, that's not relevant.

0:28:30 Thomas: And all we need is one brilliant person to be on the jury. Right. To at least hang the jury or something. We just need one person who has eyeballs and can see how beautiful this man is. I think that's really what we need.

0:28:50 Thomas: Remember when CEOs were scared for like three days? That was a good three days. A lot happened in those three days, yeah. I think you can actually, I forget if I saw anyone actually do this or whatever, but you can actually attribute people's claims being accepted rather than rejected because of this thing in the wake of that. And it's really interesting to think about. You know, if the people in power are uncomfortable, don't like all this kind of talk, they could just give people health care. That would probably solve a lot of that you give people health care, I think all of a sudden, you know, people aren't really excited that a health care CEO got murdered. One way to do it.

0:28:48 Liz: Just one. Yeah. Like three and a half days. Exactly. Yeah, I think that there are a lot of solutions to our failing welfare state. We're the richest country in the world. And the extent that we fail by people and say that things are unaffordable. And I mean, Ian, you know, this precedes even the Trump administration, obviously. It's just it's so it's it's so appalling to me. We spend so much money on all of these things and then deny basic dignity for people. The U .S. is the only industrialized country, basically, without, major industrialized country without universal health care, with the exception of, I think, Switzerland, which has kind of like a semi -privatized system, but it's like a tiny country of like three people and it's very rich. So, I mean, it's just truly shocking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We need this money to drop bombs, smart bombs on schools in Iran.

0:30:13 Thomas: Now, we need that money to make sure Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon that we already said they couldn't possibly have because of the bombing we already did the first time so there you go yeah all right Liz Skeen thank you so much it's a pleasure we're going to keep an eye on Luigi as I always do two eyes as often as I can spare them thanks so much for coming on and we'll keep an eye on Luigi and other any other courts hey write in anybody if you'd like to hear Liz give any other roundups of any other interesting criminal court stuff going on trial stuff because I think that could be a lot of fun and I love having Liz on. So write in if there's any other trials you want us to take a look at. But thanks, Liz.

0:30:56 Liz: Yes, thank you. It was such a pleasure. Thanks, Thomas, for having me. It's such a treasure to join. And thank you to everyone for listening. I hope that everyone appreciated my like, oh, this is a really interesting law school style issue. But both those cases are really interesting issues. And yeah, I look forward to answering questions in the future and talking more to you guys about this sort of stuff. And thanks again.

0:31:25 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:31:26 Thomas: Calling this meeting to order. I don't know.

0:31:27 Lydia: Wait, I'll gavel us in. Hang on.

0:31:29 Thomas: This is like the HOA for our podcast. Guest. Okay.

0:31:35 Lydia: Yeah, lay it on us.

0:31:36 Thomas: So, so we, we got more organized. We got all the shows happening on a day and that was a process of discovery. And I think what I've realized is that pretty much has been going well for everybody except this show. And it was, you know, you got sick and lost your voice and we were, we hadn't finished recording the transcript. Yeah. I mean, you had some, but it was okay for like some light podcasting, but for like reading the trial transcript when we've already, that wasn't going to work.

0:31:54 Lydia: Yeah for a couple weeks. I had zero voice. Yeah yeah there would have been no character continuity you guys it would have been really bad.

0:32:12 Thomas: It would've been weird. It would have sounded really weird. Yeah.

0:32:15 Lydia: It's like when you get the actor change outs in a show and they just pretend like nothing's happened and you're like come on I'm not an idiot that's what it would have been like but in an audio format and you guys deserve better yeah yep yep oh really weird yeah you're right I don't remember that at all so and

0:32:26 Thomas: Yeah, I like those ones where they had a weird person for like one episode and then instantly changed. And then like, you don't even remember who the original person is because they were only there for like two seconds. That's funny. That's like uh jerry's dad on seinfeld they had like a different dad yeah for like the first like couple or something or like yeah yeah that's how he's not very memorable anyway that kind of threw us off because we didn't have that done and then some other stuff came up and then also because we're we record with you know matt who's an attorney who's very busy and already has the oa schedule to worry about then that kind of got off track and blah blah blah he just has as much work as you could want, I guess, really like as much work as a person could fit into a day, which is also that feels like what I have too, but his is better.

0:33:02 Lydia: An attorney for immigration an area that might be a little impacted during this administration yeah yeah that you could not want it's too much yeah we

0:33:17 Thomas: And so, yeah, it just kind of throws off. And then I was thinking, you know, maybe the Gavel Gavel kind of, maybe that's the one that could still be on the chunk system, you know, cause it was just trying to hit that actual release day was getting really tricky and it was getting to the point. That's why we're kind of doing these one -offs and then that like that got weird too with the schedule, but let it suffice to say we're in that mid -season break speaking of the sitcom world for the sandwich trial we need to get to the thrilling conclusion of the sandwich trial we got to get through some more transcript and then be able to schedule with matt for it uh and then we'll be on our merry way but I think I just kind of heads up that I think it's possible the chunk system was meant for gavel gavel you know and you know what they say if you give the And you know what they say, if you give the chunk system an inch it'll take a mile but we're just we're quarantining it to this show. No other show. We're gonna keep the others releasing weekly, but this one, the chunk system might be making a comeback. Because doing the transcripts and then talking about them, it doesn't lend itself well to like, let's do a little bit of

0:34:01 Lydia: Do a weekly

0:34:19 Thomas: Little bit of this for a week. Yeah. But the, you know, we're still here. We still also need to, man, when it comes to, this is kind of like just a state of the pod union, you know, when it comes to Blake Lively, obviously there's, I didn't even know what to say. Lots has happened. I don't even know where the listeners are at. Like if they're up with the news, I'm sure they've seen something, but we got to figure out how to end, I guess, for lack of a better term.

0:34:19 Lydia: Format yeah yeah yeah

0:34:45 Thomas: We got to, yeah, cause it like it, you know, we were thinking it might go to trial and then, uh, some stuff happened and it's not going to trial at least for the main case. I don't know. We'll see what Jones V Abel is doing, but yeah. So that was kind of a bummer in how it went. And so sort of recast how we'd want to do it, you know? Like if, if we'd want to pick it back up and how, and like what we want to cover. I think, I think I would want to put some kind of bow on it of some kind, but I also, there's so much that we never went over, but in light of how it went, it's, it makes it less important to talk about little battles that didn't really matter in the end, you know? So we can kind of like reassess if we want to, yeah,

0:34:45 Lydia: Catch up and end yeah yeah streamline a little bit maybe yeah

0:35:27 Thomas: And maybe approach it more as like a retrospective rather than I, you know, I really was thinking absent this one thing that happened, no spoilers, I'm sure everybody knows, but, uh, I think it would have gone to trial had some different stuff happened, but something happened that made that not happen.

0:35:37 Lydia: I think that yeah and I think that'll be a really fun conversation for us to have though like exploring that, analyzing that.

0:35:49 Thomas: That's like 400 conversations away from now though.

0:35:51 Lydia: I know. Hey, actually, while we're talking about that for a second, let me plug for folks who have been consuming Lively V. Baldoni stuff just in general. You've probably run into Kat Tenbarge on some other platforms. We just had her as a guest on Where There's Woke. So you should check out the episode that's coming out on that. It's going to be Where There's Woke, episode 132. We had a great interview with her. We didn't talk a lot about Lively Baldoni, but we did talk about Internet culture and influencers and media literacy and the alt -right pipeline for women, all sorts of things.

0:36:23 Lydia: So check that out if you're a fan of Kat. If you're fan of us, we'd love to have you over there, too.

0:36:26 Thomas: Lydia's always plugging her other projects. God, we get it. You have a show called where there's vogue yeah so um whatever lydia said about her show I guess check that out no. So that's still in the back of our minds um but yeah it does cast it in a whole different light and there's also just lots of other stuff that we have ideas for but we're also trying to figure out what makes sense in terms of workload for the show the transcripts is fun and a lot of people wanted the return to the kind of transcript readings But it is the most labor-intensive thing. I keep forgetting how much it is until we do it again. I'm like, oh, that's so much work. That's not super practical to be able to do. So we got to figure out, do we want to just cover stuff that is audio or do we want to, you know, we'll take a look. There's a lot of stuff to cover. I'm really curious about the Prairieland trial. I guess there might be more than one, but that's a really weird one to me. I don't understand how it could have possibly happened. And it's really alarming, but it's the kind of thing where it's like, can we get transcripts? Can we actually do it? There's all kinds of stuff so we're thinking about it but that's where we are that's the state of the pod we love you all like we said in the beginning there's a really good bonus coming up yeah all three of you here it's just us no one else yeah so

0:36:31 Lydia: Back to Gavalinos. Yeah. Oh, why don't we tease that a little bit for these folks, these fine folks that have made it through the full episode. And we love you. Listener A, B and C.

0:37:50 Thomas: Speaking of cats there's another cat abexale who people might know she ran for the house great online presence probably seen her but anyway she was one of the broadview six I guess the number changed part way through, but it was like, ah, that's right. And that is what matters. Yeah. That blew up in the federal government's face in a fantastic way.

0:38:00 Lydia: Six. Yeah. But for hashtag purposes, it's Broadview six. Yeah, yes. This day and age, yes, sure did.

0:38:15 Thomas: And it was a emergency recording we did with Matt. I got to edit. That's going to be so much fun because Lydia got to be a pissed off judge laying down the law.

0:38:24 Lydia: Sure did. Yeah.

0:38:25 Thomas: And I got to be a slimy government Trump attorney trying to make light of what was going on and uh matt got to be matt

0:38:33 Lydia: And there are definitely some bombshells from that transcript that we got to discuss and just kind of talk over with Matt, like how insane this actually is and that there might be more coming. We might be able to get grand jury transcripts, which is unheard of for America.

0:38:48 Thomas: Yeah that would be a first for not only a Gavel Gavel first I don't know how often there's been any show that does readings of grand jury transcripts because we will probably do that because it's just the amount of scandal that this is just the corruption the lying it's incredible so that'll be out very soon I gotta do that edit we'll probably put at least some of it on the main feed to patreon.com All right, Gavalinos, a little state of the pod for you. I know things have been a little weird on the publishing schedule, so we wanted to sit down and have a little chat with you. You know, not as concerned parents. It's more like you guys are concerned parents about us.

0:39:27 Lydia: Right. Yeah, family meeting. And we had to come and talk to mom and dad.

0:39:32 Thomas: Long live the chunk system. It may be back. Maybe it never left. All right. Thanks so much, Gavilinos. We'll see you very soon.

0:40:01 Lydia: You can't have two people with L names on the same podcast I think is the rule. So.

0:40:06 Thomas: I don't know where you're getting all these ideas lately. Soon you'll be getting ideas and thinking. It's not right for a woman to read. It's always good to hear some authentic lawyer paper shuffling it's part of the part of Gavel Gavel

0:40:27 Liz: Can we redact the dildo?

0:40:30 Thomas: Experience look at how killable this guy is