The Innocence Case from Hell with Josie Duffy Rice

0:03[SPEAKER_01]: Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects. [SPEAKER_01]: On today's episode of 5-4, Peter and Michael are talking to journalist and friend of the show Josie Duffy Rice, a letter new podcast series, The Backfire Effect. [SPEAKER_01]: Josie's series dives into the case of Temujin Kenzu, a man serving a life sentence in Michigan State prison for the 1986 murder of college student Scott McLean. [SPEAKER_01]: Metamagin says he could not have killed Scott because he was hundreds of miles away when his murder took place.

0:34[SPEAKER_01]: How can someone be convicted of a murder when they were halfway across the state when it happened? [SPEAKER_01]: The answer includes, but is not limited to, corrupt cops, a drug-addled defense attorney, an imaginary ninjas syndicate, and an amateur hypnotist. [SPEAKER_01]: The backfire effect is the story of a truly wild case that also highlights some of the most incidious parts of our legal system. [SPEAKER_01]: This is 5-4, a podcast about how much this is a pre-mcore and the criminal justice system suck.

1:07[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to 5 to 4, where we dissect and analyze a Supreme Court cases that have carried our civil rights to safety. [SPEAKER_02]: Like Donald Trump being carried from ground zero by firefighters, I'm Peter, I'm here with Michael, everybody, and our friend, Josie Duffy Rice. [SPEAKER_03]: Hi. [SPEAKER_02]: You guys are not supposed to Donald Trump ground zero as a story. [SPEAKER_03]: Listen, I got to say that guy's batting a hundred for me a thousand a thousand a thousand a thousand you're doing great I don't think he's doing great.

1:37[SPEAKER_00]: He is. [SPEAKER_00]: I might be the only person in the country who believes his story I do believe Donald Trump would look at ground zero and be like we should go walk around there We should go in there. [SPEAKER_03]: What could be built here? [SPEAKER_02]: The story he tells is quote I took the whole crew down there right after this happened. [SPEAKER_02]: He says there wasn't too much we could do [SPEAKER_02]: Which seems like he's making it seem like we were going down to help, like Donald Trump and his giant silksuit was going to somehow help out here.

2:10[SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, the only reason he's going is if he thinks one of his investments is at risk. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Which is sort of what he seems to be implied. [SPEAKER_03]: Like he's not like, oh my children were down down. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, he wasn't he like verifiably on the phone a couple hours later like talking to the news about how his building was the tallest now. [SPEAKER_02]: So like When was that?

2:33[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so then he He says that he was hanging out at Ground Zero sometime immediately after 9.11 possibly on 9.11 and the the US steel building was creaking [SPEAKER_02]: He says we thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen big strong guys and I'm not a small guy They grabbed me under the arms and said got to get out of here and they literally lifted me up and they started running with me [SPEAKER_03]: and what happened to the building seems like it was fine.

3:00[SPEAKER_02]: I guess the building was fine. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Trump and like strong men like. [SPEAKER_03]: Lanzan, he knows that. [SPEAKER_02]: The psychosexuals shit going on on the right. [SPEAKER_02]: It's so surface level now that you need to really make jokes about it. [SPEAKER_02]: But the layers of lies here is it's fucking hilarious. [SPEAKER_02]: Like first of all, he's obviously lying about all of it. [SPEAKER_02]: But then even in this lie, he's telling, he's getting carried by fire fires like that.

3:26[SPEAKER_02]: This is like, you're having a teenage girl fantasy about going down an 9-11 and then firefighters rescue you. [SPEAKER_02]: What are you talking about dude? [SPEAKER_03]: He didn't bury that, they carried him. [SPEAKER_02]: He's not here out here. [SPEAKER_02]: He's the damsel in distress. [SPEAKER_02]: That's right. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man. [SPEAKER_02]: All right. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, so, Josie, we're having you on because you love me.

3:54[SPEAKER_02]: Every couple years you do a podcast. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's kind of right up our alley. [SPEAKER_02]: And you've done one called the Backfire Effect, which is, what's the state of it? [SPEAKER_02]: Is it out now? [SPEAKER_02]: Is it about to drop? [SPEAKER_02]: Where are we? [SPEAKER_03]: So it's out now as of yesterday, first of all, you just kind of like did a devastating summary of my professional life, which is every couple of years you do podcast.

4:15[SPEAKER_02]: What are you talking about? [SPEAKER_02]: That's the highest calling, Josie. [SPEAKER_00]: Haven't some of them won awards? [SPEAKER_02]: We've been podcasting professionally for six and a half years and we win no awards. [SPEAKER_02]: And every time you win like a Peabody for something, you want awards to me, spiritually. [SPEAKER_02]: which are the only words that matter every now and then we get someone emails us uh and is like hey would you like to pay us a hundred and fifty dollars to like be submitted to win like you know super lures podcast yeah like some shit like that it's like it's like how you could get your child published in a poetry book uh in the 90s if you write money right that's a sort of competition that that we're in awards wise but you put out a podcast every couple years and it will win a journalistic award this one will probably win some award [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and, you know, we wanted to talk about this podcast of Josie's because, you know, we talk a lot about the injustice in the system that flows from the top from the Supreme Court, which has often wide-ranging impact.

5:16[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not the only place where there are problems, where there's injustice, and a lot of it happens, you know, at the trial court level, at the state court level. [SPEAKER_00]: into one of those instances and a great window into broader issues like federal policy like Edpa, which we'll talk about later. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the podcast is a great vehicle for discussing all of these different ways in which injustice manifests for normal people who are experiencing [SPEAKER_03]: So the podcast is called the Backfire Effect.

5:59[SPEAKER_03]: It is about a case in Michigan where a man was convicted of murder. [SPEAKER_03]: He was convicted of murder three days after I was born. [SPEAKER_03]: And so our lives kind of like have this weird intersection, which is obviously his free life kind of ends of mind starts. [SPEAKER_03]: And so he was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriends fiancée. [SPEAKER_03]: Um, ex girlfriend. [SPEAKER_03]: I think being a big term for what we're talking about.

6:27[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they dated they dated for five weeks. [SPEAKER_03]: He's also dating other people. [SPEAKER_03]: She's dating other people. [SPEAKER_03]: They date for five weeks. [SPEAKER_03]: They break up. [SPEAKER_03]: They don't speak again. [SPEAKER_03]: And then four months later, her, um, then I'm saying is shot and killed in the parking lot of a community college in Port here on. [SPEAKER_00]: Not only was he dating someone. [SPEAKER_00]: He was engaged to somebody else when he did.

6:42[SPEAKER_03]: He was engaged to someone else. [SPEAKER_03]: He was engaged to someone else to a pregnant woman. [SPEAKER_00]: Get a pregnant fiance when he dated this girl. [SPEAKER_00]: That's how I'm serious their relationship was. [SPEAKER_03]: That's also like an example of what kind of guy he was, which I think really doesn't up mattering in this case, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like he did not treat women well, he was abusive, he cheated, he was arrogant, and he, this was not his first child either, and he's 23 just like galloping around Michigan during whatever.

7:09[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, he has kind of like created, I think, intentionally, a perception of himself as, like, a badass guy who's not to be fucked with, who, you know, could hurt anybody, want to, and, you know, do whatever he wanted, and then this comes back in a really kind of aggressive way to, [SPEAKER_03]: hurt him when he's like accused of murder. [SPEAKER_03]: That honestly should have been like the beginning of an end of it. [SPEAKER_03]: Like obviously you should look at the X-boyfriend because it usually is some like dude who does feel jealous of is who like ends up killing people in this country.

7:43[SPEAKER_03]: But pretty quickly, it should have been clear to the police and prosecutors that it wasn't him. [SPEAKER_03]: He was like demonstrably across the state at the time of the murder. [SPEAKER_03]: And yet, here we are. [SPEAKER_02]: Before you go further, I mean like Michael and I listen to the first half of the show right and yeah that's sort of the story of the murder and how he gets convicted and it almost plays out like true crime Except with no real mystery because it's very obvious from the start that he didn't do it [SPEAKER_02]: And you're laying out the anatomy of this case, but it also just feels like the anatomy of like a certain type of case, like a taxonomy of this very specific type of like small town prosecution, especially if decades ago.

8:27[SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: And police work, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: Where you have like unbelievably incompetent police work, you have corrupt and incompetent prosecutors and defense attorneys. [SPEAKER_02]: They're like preposterous characters thrown throughout the defendant, the suspect here, even though he's demonstrably innocent, he's sort of ludicrous character in many ways. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like you don't meet that [SPEAKER_03]: Let's such a good way of putting it.

8:58[SPEAKER_02]: Very early on, you introduce us to a piece of evidence, which is a witness statement born by hypnosis. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And when you start talking about it, I thought to myself, oh, we're about to like, [SPEAKER_02]: the rest of this podcast is about to be about how like hypnosis is fake right like this is like like but but actually that's just a tiny little slip of the bullshit as i was listening i felt like i was listening to you describe like almost like this type of like porcupis level case that could only happen in like a small town in the 70s and 80s.

9:39[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, totally. [SPEAKER_03]: And actually, the way you described it, I think is totally right. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, two things you said really stick out to me. [SPEAKER_03]: One is like, it is such a relic of a time. [SPEAKER_03]: I was telling a friend of mine about this case who's a clerk, like a permanent clerk for a local judge. [SPEAKER_03]: And she was like, this doesn't make any sense to me because like, our jury would never convert on this.

9:58[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like, yeah, it was 96. [SPEAKER_03]: like it was a totally different time in terms of like how people thought about the criminal justice system, how people thought about prosecutors as like political beings or almost like seers who had a gut instinct that couldn't be like questioned. [SPEAKER_03]: And also just the entire kind of concept of like what was acceptable was very different. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean like the idea of mass incarceration, we were 10 years off from that being in anyone's laxicon.

10:24[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we are at a point where like politically the one thing that both parties just agree on beyond. [SPEAKER_03]: Any sort of conflict is like, you lock people up and you lock them for as long as you can and crime is the number one if you want. [SPEAKER_03]: And crime is like higher back then, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So this is like a weird part here on is in this like, we are placed between Canada and Detroit. [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of drugs are coming through like people are panic and here's this first murder and 18 months in this county and people like act accordingly to the politics of the time.

10:53[SPEAKER_03]: But I think it is also the hardest thing about this story, which is how many weird things happen that I can't give enough. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I'm like, this should be 20 episodes. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, everything is bananas, the happens. [SPEAKER_03]: And you have to kind of like, the hypnotism being one example, you just kind of have to like, [SPEAKER_03]: you can't really unpack like how insane it is to like have like done the class on hypnotism and decide you want to do it yeah with the hypnotist defending it today right I like that guy though I love him incredulous at the idea that you might question hypnosis yeah in this context you know it's one thing that was really interesting that he said to me that I think you guys what find interesting is I was talking about the case and he was like I don't know maybe this guy's innocent but like [SPEAKER_03]: Also, like, he could be Ted Bundy.

11:37[SPEAKER_03]: Ted Bundy said he was innocent. [SPEAKER_03]: And he convinced people he was like, yeah, there's much that's true. [SPEAKER_03]: We could be Hitler. [SPEAKER_03]: That was the tone of like, everybody, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It was like, we don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, you guys are in a bad guys. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know that sounds like doubt. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, reasonable, they're actually.

11:58[SPEAKER_00]: The entire thing feels like a fever dream, like the hypnosis, it was weird, but also the prosecution, one of their theories being that the defendant, Timogen, was a member of like an international ring of ninjas crime fighting ninjas, and that is an agent of the anti-prostitution anti-drug ninja cartel. [SPEAKER_00]: He may have assassinated this boy, guys. [SPEAKER_02]: We need to slow down. [SPEAKER_02]: we can't we can't get to the ninjas.

12:28[SPEAKER_02]: I will say that I believe it's the fourth episode introduces the idea of an international ninja syndicate that was a pretty significant part of the prosecution. [SPEAKER_03]: Pretty not small yeah and it's funny because at the end the prosecutors like it probably isn't real but but [SPEAKER_02]: Who knows? [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of who knows. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: When I was listening to it, what I kept thinking was like, with a lot of these sort of like botched prosecution stories, you hear the same sort of things over and over again.

13:00[SPEAKER_02]: And none of them individually are very surprising. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you're talking about the police not securing the crime scene. [SPEAKER_02]: They barely talk to witnesses. [SPEAKER_02]: Instead of taking like, [SPEAKER_02]: hundreds of photographs of the crime scene, which is pretty standard, they take like 15, I think you said. [SPEAKER_02]: That sort of thing is the kind of thing I think that you hear from time to time when you're looking at a prosecution like this.

13:29[SPEAKER_02]: And then also, you have a defense attorney who is not [SPEAKER_02]: when crack was fresh on the market like this is it like they had not perfected it yet real experimental set he just heard about it he was like yeah yeah I'll take some and so you know you have the the defense attorney who is drug-addled certainly not doing his best you have like the prosecutor trying to make a name for himself you have a corrupt cop corrupt like you know peace of shit cop the judge who might be indebted to the prosecutor in like a little [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that sort of small town Caribbean, right?

14:13[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, you start adding these all up. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like this case has every archetype of the incompetent slash corrupt title that you could possibly conceive of. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you throw in like the hypnosis. [SPEAKER_02]: You throw in the fact that this guy was on the other side of the state. [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, this is sort of the core of why we believe he's innocent, right? [SPEAKER_02]: He's on the other side of the state.

14:37[SPEAKER_02]: There are tons of witnesses who are not his friend, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Right, who do dislike him, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Who are like, no, he was on the other side of the state with me. [SPEAKER_02]: And you have a prosecution who explains this with a ridiculous theories. [SPEAKER_02]: Josie, I'll let you explain what the prosecution says because this is sort of the core of the news, right? [SPEAKER_02]: That the sky was on the other side of the state.

15:03[SPEAKER_02]: So whatever you think of him, whatever you think of, the corruption of the trial, et cetera, all the incompetence, the prosecution has to explain why he, why there are like dozens of people saying he's on the other side of the state and how he could have possibly done it in that case and the prosecution has a theory here sort of. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, it's like the prosecution presents their case, their case is basically character evidence.

15:25[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry, we don't have a getaway car or we don't have it. [SPEAKER_03]: Merber weapon, we don't have any physical evidence, but like this guy's a bad guy, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And then the defense, and again, the defense lawyer is not totally what the program here. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I've seen worst defense lawyers honestly, it's pretty impressive for being on crack, but he is still on crack, so it's not what you would hope. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's a stimulant, you know?

15:45[SPEAKER_02]: So you're gonna have births of energy, I imagine. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's true. [SPEAKER_03]: It's true. [SPEAKER_03]: He's firing on some cylinders, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And he presents not the entire Alibi case, but some Alibi case. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's interesting because throughout the prosecutor is not really cross-examining a lot of these witnesses. [SPEAKER_03]: You can tell he's not that worried about the Alibi case. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's because, as a rebuttal witness, he introduces his personal friend, a pilot who says, oh, yeah, well, what he could have done is charter a plane.

16:19[SPEAKER_03]: in the country at any time and you can just, there will be a pilot there and you can pay them cash and they'll fly you where you want to go without any record of it. [SPEAKER_02]: His theory wasn't just that you could go to an air strip and pay someone but that in fact in the air strip has, at all times of the day, pilots waiting to charter private flights so that they can like rack up hours toward their license or like a cab dispatch, 24 hours.

16:48[SPEAKER_03]: Waiting, you know, this place where he was and like the upper-pinseled machine and it's like, you can't get a cab. [SPEAKER_00]: Count of 200 people. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you can't count it three a.m. Much less a, like a plane. [SPEAKER_02]: Let alone a plane. [SPEAKER_02]: So they throw out this theory where they just have a guy say, like, well, it could have been a plane and private planes operate like taxis, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Which is obviously not true.

17:11[SPEAKER_02]: You can almost forgive the defense lawyer here for not even note, like, for never having having. [SPEAKER_03]: her, they're like, what, right, how am I going to respond to this? [SPEAKER_03]: It's not. [SPEAKER_00]: And he did object. [SPEAKER_00]: He did objected that there's no factual basis for it. [SPEAKER_00]: That it was like coming in too late. [SPEAKER_00]: This was as a rebuttal witness to the defense at the end of the trial.

17:31[SPEAKER_00]: So he did object to his credit. [SPEAKER_00]: He was like, what the fuck is this? [SPEAKER_00]: This is totally inappropriate. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: But the judge let it stay in the judge let it's let's it in and the jury can fix and it's interesting I've been thinking about it a lot after the Lindsey Clancy kind of jury drama because there are these studies that basically show that like this idea that 12 people will come to the right answer is only correct if you begin with more people who think the right thing then don't once you begin with more people who think the wrong thing or it's in split half and half it's like [SPEAKER_03]: Like consensus is actually not a reflection of reality and you can see being in that jury room right and being like this doesn't really make sense to me, but then it makes sense to everybody else I'm not sure this guy's innocent you vote to convict right it takes them a few days, they vote to convict and you know there's so much about this case that's like [SPEAKER_03]: that shit crazy, but in a lot of ways that actually ends up hurting him in the appeals process because it's all there.

18:30[SPEAKER_02]: So this is sort of the namesake of the podcast, right, the backfire effect. [SPEAKER_02]: Can you explain this a bit? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the backbar effect is this idea in social psychology that actually is pretty controversial in social psychology for various reasons, but it reflects, I think, something that all of us sort of know intuitively is that when someone has a belief, and then you give them information that contradicts their beliefs or, you know, discruse it, they're actually more likely to believe in it stronger, right?

18:57[SPEAKER_03]: And that's not true for every belief you have, et cetera. [SPEAKER_03]: But when you are emotionally tied to something, we're psychologically tied to something. [SPEAKER_03]: It's very difficult to change people's minds, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And you find yourself kind of trying to find the exception. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, it could have been this. [SPEAKER_03]: It could have been a plane. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I think the prosecutor thought this guy was guilty.

19:14[SPEAKER_03]: He's trying to let the basic laws of physics keep him for present. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm glad to show how we, you know, how that shouldn't be an obstacle here. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's something in the prosecutor's mind that I think you see in a lot of prosecutor's minds, which is that when the defense puts up a credible case, the prosecutors believe that like, they're trying to get away with it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

19:32[SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: They're trying to be sneaky. [SPEAKER_02]: They're trying to use information in a sneaky way. [SPEAKER_03]: Is there anybody that believes in their gut? [SPEAKER_03]: Who trusts their gut more than prosecutors? [SPEAKER_03]: It's shocking to me. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember having a drink with a former prosecutor. [SPEAKER_03]: All his your first mistake. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, 11 years ago or so, 10, 10, 11 years ago, when another podcast was out about a case like this, and we were talking about it, and I was like, I don't know, man, it does sound like the cops like really planted evidence.

20:00[SPEAKER_00]: They sort of set this guy up, blah, blah, blah, blah, and he was like, oh. [SPEAKER_00]: No, I absolutely believe the cops like framed this guy. [SPEAKER_02]: I just think they framed a guilty man, which is obviously what cops generally believe themselves to be doing in these situations. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: 100%. [SPEAKER_00]: There was no doubt in his mind about either the fact that the guy was guilty despite the obvious frame, but also about the morality of this.

20:25[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, oh, yeah, you know, you do this. [SPEAKER_00]: Like you know someone's guilty, so you got to put him away. [SPEAKER_03]: You have to do the ugly thing to do the right thing. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: You need me on that wall. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, normally I don't do innocent stories. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just not that interested in innocent people. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm got like someone should be and I'm glad that they are.

20:43[SPEAKER_03]: But for me, I'm like innocent is just not as compelling to me as guilt because [SPEAKER_03]: I'm interested in how we treat guilty people. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm interested in what that means for us. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm interested in all these things. [SPEAKER_03]: Right? [SPEAKER_03]: And obviously, this guy is innocent of this crime. [SPEAKER_03]: But he's a mess. [SPEAKER_03]: He's a complicated dude. [SPEAKER_03]: But it is really fascinating to see kind of the inner workings of how people justify their own wrongdoing as a means to an end to lock up a guy they don't like.

21:10[SPEAKER_03]: And how there's just no incentive has done no incentive for four years to like, [SPEAKER_03]: Just said back to me like, I don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: Like maybe I just like maybe I was wrong. [SPEAKER_03]: That's one. [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe I was right on every other one. [SPEAKER_03]: But this one maybe I was wrong, right? [SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, I think I'm on all the time. [SPEAKER_03]: These people just doesn't even seem to. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, the stakes are so high that if they, you know, if you let that barrier down, right, where it's like, well, what percentage of the prosecutions that I live throughout my career put away an innocent man, [SPEAKER_00]: yeah yeah yeah you mentioned that this isn't usually the type of case you cover and in the first episode you talk about also like location uh sort of identity of people involved you're you're from the south usually cover cases in the south you're a black woman usually you look like someone's perfect African American yeah exactly and here you are doing a case about a bunch of white people um you guys are thriving not the way

22:11[SPEAKER_03]: to say it out, like people are going to say. [SPEAKER_02]: You were upset. [SPEAKER_02]: So a white boy and distress. [SPEAKER_02]: And you were like, I'm going to, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I got time to make a show. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you find that like having sort of moved into different types of claims, different people, different geography, has changed how you think about yourself at all? [SPEAKER_00]: Spending all this time on this case.

22:30[SPEAKER_03]: So, yes, and I've seen this guy through a lot now, like I've watched him through a lot. [SPEAKER_03]: When I met him, he was married, he's now in the midst of a divorce. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm seeing from a journalist for so long, so I'm not seeing the real him. [SPEAKER_03]: He's not showing me the real him and that's the nature of this job. [SPEAKER_03]: But like, I have seen as wide of a range as I think I'm going to get from him. [SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things that I find really interesting is how, and not just him but her, the cop that we talk about, who kind of started investigating this case.

22:57[SPEAKER_03]: Others like how kind of formative this case has been for them because it really like it was like learning Santa is a real right It's like oh, these are bad like these guys could do bad things like these people like work with but I trusted that I like repeated What they sat on the evening news that I like hung out with they would do something like this and it was a reminder that like one of the benefits of like growing up Black and the soft as I was like a [SPEAKER_03]: So I never, like, that understanding of, like, these people could screw over, I never had the opposite idea.

23:31[SPEAKER_03]: And to see kind of, like, you know, it's sort of, like, nationalism, like, when people start to, like, loose faith in their country, to not have any of those kind of preconceived notions is such a benefit in a job like this. [SPEAKER_03]: It makes it, you know, people say, like, if you think he's innocent, you're having a emotional response, I'm like, [SPEAKER_03]: This is not, I mean, like the case is upsetting, but it's not actually emotional, because it's so, I don't know if it's a predictable, but it's mathematical.

23:56[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, this is the incentive. [SPEAKER_03]: This is the decision that people make and that is not tempered by the belief that like everybody is trying to do the right thing at the right time. [SPEAKER_03]: They're just, they're not. [SPEAKER_02]: It's sort of the organic output of like the institutions as they are arranged in that place in that time. [SPEAKER_02]: Correct. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's the other thing is like nobody.

24:15[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of ways he's a lot like the prosecutors and not he sort of like everybody's evil, which look if I'm in prison for 40 years was something I didn't do. [SPEAKER_03]: That's you get that right. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, but it's like I think the scary thing is like nobody here is evil. [SPEAKER_03]: There might be a couple of people people, but mostly it's just incentives. [SPEAKER_02]: There's some people people. [SPEAKER_02]: There's the cop.

24:33[SPEAKER_02]: The cop people. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: There's the cop. [SPEAKER_03]: Pretty bad. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: There is a corrupt slash incompetent slash pretty distinctly evil cop, I think, in the mix here. [SPEAKER_03]: Dude, some of those stuff I heard about this cop that, like, I couldn't publish because I don't know if what is going to muster like legal. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't going to be reliable and I thought, like, some of those stuff I heard about him was incredible.

24:59[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what's the worst thing that the worst cop in a small town ever did is like, that's the answer. [SPEAKER_02]: The answer to that question is going to haunt you in almost every case. [SPEAKER_03]: Every single town, right? [SPEAKER_03]: One thing that people kept saying is they were like, can he kept showing up to my door when a gold chain? [SPEAKER_03]: It's just like so funny to be in your uniform and your gold chain in the 80s.

25:20[SPEAKER_03]: It just seems like such a dick. [SPEAKER_00]: You don't come out and say it, but it feels at least implied or at least I inferred that he had no leads, he had no suspects and just sort of conjured in his mind well like this guy was engaged and she's pregnant maybe she has a jealous ex-boyfriend and went looking to find out if she did and she was like, [SPEAKER_00]: I had an ex-boyfriend and he was kind of sketchy and he's like, that's it, like you just like literally conjured this up out of nowhere.

25:47[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it seems pretty determinative that he made up full police reports about conversations he didn't have. [SPEAKER_03]: He signed people's names when we supposed to do. [SPEAKER_03]: He ignored evidence he didn't like. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, he just, he was just building whatever case he wanted. [SPEAKER_03]: He was doing his own thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's interesting because the like not only is there no good police were done at the crime scene, but it almost feels like he doesn't believe that that's not part of his process, right?

26:16[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you don't even try to solve the case in that way, right? [SPEAKER_02]: You just sort of pick a guy and bury it, right? [SPEAKER_02]: That's his process. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't need to take pictures of the crime scene, you don't need to interview witnesses. [SPEAKER_02]: You'll fabricate that later. [SPEAKER_03]: You'll figure it out later. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the other thing is we started noticing all these kind of the dates of conversation study had and when he filed the police supports would be like weeks apart.

26:39[SPEAKER_03]: You know, he's just sort of right in the police report, whatever he feels so inclined. [SPEAKER_03]: It's just no, and look, there are 50 people in this police department. [SPEAKER_03]: It's his first murder, but nobody really knows what they're doing. [SPEAKER_03]: Like this is not the NIPD. [SPEAKER_03]: This is not Chicago PD. [SPEAKER_03]: This is a different kind of corruption. [SPEAKER_02]: They're used to doing, you know, like petty larceny, just little scraps in the street.

27:00[SPEAKER_02]: She'd like that. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you get hit with a murder and you've got to frame someone. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you're never going to solve this thing if you don't. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, exactly, what do you want me to do? [SPEAKER_03]: Solve this letter? [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: I have this revelation in the midst of this, where I was like, I wonder if clearance rates are down because technology makes it hard to frame someone.

27:20[SPEAKER_02]: Totally. [SPEAKER_02]: There is so many, and this is a completely speculative thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Nobody fact-check this. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure that the timelines don't quite line up here, but it feels like there almost has to be some truth to this because there are so many things in this case. [SPEAKER_02]: where you're like, damn, if this guy had a cell phone with GPS data on him, he'd be walking free. [SPEAKER_03]: 100%. [SPEAKER_03]: If there was a single camera somewhere, like, I'm like, like surveillance tech is bad, and also like, flock might have been a little convenient for once if like, we could just like, you know, it's like this weird situation where you're like, obviously in the aggregate, it's bad.

27:58[SPEAKER_03]: But in the specifics, [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it does make me think a little bit differently about that sort of thing where it's sort of like, yeah, the alternative to being surveilled isn't just not being surveilled, it might also be cops just sort of winging it. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, today, not just the cell phone stuff, like, he was in a parking lot for an hour. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, when I am before the murder, there would be footage of that problem.

28:22[SPEAKER_00]: The security camera. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: You would be able to pull the security footage of all the nearby airports to be like, look, he didn't come charter jet. [SPEAKER_00]: We have the footage of it. [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody is here. [SPEAKER_00]: Not him, not pilots, nobody, right? [SPEAKER_00]: They were just be physical evidence that you could point to, but there just isn't. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know how much more evidence to have helped him.

28:42[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, obviously at some point you cross the, like, cross the area. [SPEAKER_03]: But it's like, people, like, if this, if there's an unlikable defendant that ability for people to tell themselves a story that isn't happening is remarkable and we see it all the time, right? [SPEAKER_00]: You had an interview with the juror there who mentions, like, I think he and a couple of other people had doubts about the plain story and the ability of to be present for this murder.

29:07[SPEAKER_00]: and sitting aside that they were convinced. [SPEAKER_00]: The first thing that jumped out to me is like, wow, they're only like two or three. [SPEAKER_00]: The Jews who were questioning this, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you would think it would be like 10 or 11. [SPEAKER_00]: Like maybe there's one guy who's like trying to convince everybody else, but it's kind of shocking that like, no, it seems to have been the minority position. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, no, maybe he couldn't be present for this.

29:30[SPEAKER_00]: No, everybody just took the testimony in face value, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Totally. [SPEAKER_00]: I spent most of the summer going out, staying out late, having drinks, spending afternoons by the pool, and it was great, but now I'm ready for a little quiet time a little cozy time, a little me time at home. [SPEAKER_00]: And one thing that makes quiet time at home much easier is home chef. [SPEAKER_00]: They make cooking simple, fresh food delivered, easy recipes to follow in meals that actually taste great.

30:04[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not left with an extra chicken breast or half a potato that I don't know what to do with the next day. [SPEAKER_00]: It takes the stress out of my week with convenient weekly deliveries that keep me stocked, eliminate meal planning, eliminate grocery runs, no long shopping lists, no complicated prep and best of all, easy cleanup. [SPEAKER_00]: And people really love it. [SPEAKER_00]: Home Chef is rated number one by users of other meal kits for quality convenience, value taste and recipes.

30:33[SPEAKER_00]: For limited time, Hope Chef is offering our listeners 50% off in free shipping for your first box. [SPEAKER_00]: Plus, free dessert for life. [SPEAKER_00]: They are still doing it. [SPEAKER_00]: Go to homechef.com slash five four that's five four all spelled out. [SPEAKER_00]: That's homechef.com slash five four for 50% off your first box and free dessert for life. [SPEAKER_00]: home chef.com slash five four must be an active subscriber to receive free research.

31:18[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it would be a good way to end the podcast, and this is not for 5-4, Josie. [SPEAKER_02]: But if you wanted to add a sort of Kaiser Sozé reveal, where it turns out, he's hopping on a fire private plane. [SPEAKER_02]: He's like parachuting in. [SPEAKER_03]: There have been times during this podcast where I thought, I wish I could find out that he is guilty on some level because it's been such a weird level of depressing sort of, it's just so, nothing has happened in 40 years.

31:48[SPEAKER_02]: There's a genre of fictional media that's built around this idea that you sort of build like the case that something horrible has happened. [SPEAKER_02]: and then you reveal at the end that it was actually justified that no injustice occurred. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry for this tangent. [SPEAKER_02]: There's this truly unhinged movie from early in the war on terror called Rules of Engagement. [SPEAKER_03]: I've heard of that movie, but I didn't know that that's what it was about.

32:12[SPEAKER_02]: There are American soldiers in the Middle East, and they're sort of running along a wall. [SPEAKER_02]: On the top of a wall, there's a protest below them, and from across the way, there are snipers shooting at them. [SPEAKER_02]: So protest and snipers happening at once. [SPEAKER_02]: This is early in the movie, and the soldiers... [SPEAKER_02]: freak out and they unload, they kill everyone in the crowd and then it's like, you know, pauses, camera pans across the crowd, no weapons.

32:39[SPEAKER_02]: There's a child in the crowd and everyone in the audience is like, and then there's like a trial I believe at the end it's revealed. [SPEAKER_02]: The crowd did have weapons. [SPEAKER_02]: They were shooting. [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, there's a clip of the little boy, the little child. [SPEAKER_02]: No, not the shooting at the soldiers. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god. [SPEAKER_03]: Not the child. [SPEAKER_02]: The terrorists who were doing the sniping, they ran and collected all the weapons that the crowd had before like the media and everyone else could get there.

33:06[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, never doubt our soldiers. [SPEAKER_02]: That was the lesson of the movie. [SPEAKER_02]: I think about that movie all the time and I'm sorry for bringing it up as soon as I'm here. [SPEAKER_02]: No, I'm thrilled. [SPEAKER_00]: But no, no, but it's like primal fears like that, too, and very much like this case, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like this. [SPEAKER_00]: Seemingly innocent, naive, defendant, and then at the end it turns out, oh, he's twisted and who is it that has like he's in the jail cell?

33:32[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, playing like someone with like developmental disability thing, but then it turns out no You know, it reminds me of everybody being like, yeah, he could be innocent or he could be Ted Bundy, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Right, he's people who are like, like, [SPEAKER_02]: There's a real like fear of being outwitted by a criminal in some circles, right? [SPEAKER_02]: The idea that someone might be getting away with it is like intolerable to a certain type of person.

34:02[SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: 100% And getting away with it at your expense by fooling you. [SPEAKER_02]: It haunts like the prosecutor brain. [SPEAKER_03]: I think also there's a sense of like just, you know, if someone said tomorrow, Peter killed someone. [SPEAKER_03]: There are the people who would be like, there's no, I know Peter, like you wouldn't do that. [SPEAKER_03]: I wouldn't be on that list by the way. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure you could tell someone.

34:23[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I was going to say, nobody would say, I know Peter, he couldn't do that. [SPEAKER_02]: If I kill someone, Josie, it'll be you. [SPEAKER_02]: All right. [SPEAKER_02]: So you won't have time. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna be right there. [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody here. [SPEAKER_03]: Ellie, how about my mouth and I say that? [SPEAKER_02]: Or your next. [SPEAKER_03]: Um, but then there's also this thing where your brain starts to try to make sense of it.

34:42[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, well, I did see him get really upset that time and he did, you know, he did make this joke and like, the way in which you can kind of like draw conclusions. [SPEAKER_02]: It's super kind of my violent jokes is going to be devastating at my trial. [SPEAKER_03]: the way that we all the sudden I think we will really underestimate what it takes because like that is a big part of this case is that if you there's all the logistics of like he couldn't have done it and he wouldn't have done it one but it's like they knew stuff like it's like but why would he kill his guy like why would you tell his guy he like doesn't know how to really interact with [SPEAKER_03]: had seen maybe once.

35:17[SPEAKER_03]: He had never spoken to him. [SPEAKER_03]: He had it talked to this girl in four months. [SPEAKER_03]: He lives across the state. [SPEAKER_03]: He's having a baby with someone else. [SPEAKER_03]: He's dating other people. [SPEAKER_03]: Like at the very, very core, it's like, but why? [SPEAKER_03]: Just like why would he do this? [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like we need to talk about the portion of the podcast that Michael and I haven't heard yet.

35:35[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So we listen to the, you know, part through conviction, but the rest of the podcast is sort of post conviction. [SPEAKER_02]: So give us a little color. [SPEAKER_02]: No spoilers. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe some spoilers. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, it's very funny because right when he gets sent to engines, like I'm feeling like Ace, like immediately he's a pilot partying for a pilot council. [SPEAKER_03]: He's sensible.

35:54[SPEAKER_03]: You know, yeah, sensible. [SPEAKER_03]: Also what I would do. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he files the direct appeal. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, he files for a pilot council, like like right after he's sentenced in August of the 87, it takes a year to get a pilot council, it takes another year to file the appellate court, state of public court, since it's [SPEAKER_03]: that he was in with the same judge that judge affirms he gets back to the end. [SPEAKER_03]: And then basically it takes eight years for the missionists we've reported aside, they're not going to take this case, it stands, right?

36:24[SPEAKER_03]: So it's like, first of all, this is just eight years of hell, like you're waiting, you wait two years and a judge writes a four-aligned decision, you know, it's just a not constant at the beginning of the start to peel his attorney says, you know, only 10 to 15 percent of cases have any kind of semblance of success in the [SPEAKER_00]: process. [SPEAKER_03]: These days, that would be a miracle. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, this is before Edpa.

36:48[SPEAKER_03]: This is before Oklahoma City. [SPEAKER_03]: This is kind of before the crackdown on the appeals process that comes from the federal level, but also trickle sound of the state level that has just basically made appealing your case, especially a case like this, a pipe dream, like a fool's errand. [SPEAKER_00]: For our listeners who don't know, Edpah is the shorthand for anti-terrorism, effective death penalty act, ridiculous name. [SPEAKER_03]: But basically, it just was built after Oklahoma City.

37:14[SPEAKER_03]: It has nothing to do with terrorism, and it just basically limits your ability to appeal. [SPEAKER_03]: And it gives the federal system very little oversight over the state system. [SPEAKER_03]: So now, you know, they can only kind of overrule a state decision if it's like [SPEAKER_02]: essentially in practice we've seen it narrowed to nothing. [SPEAKER_02]: Pointed where it's nothing, I almost feel like it's a continuation of the same sort of psychology where if you sort of default to the idea that someone is guilty, then any attempt by them to escape liability becomes almost inherently deceptive in your mind, right?

37:49[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if you listen pops on media quite a bit where like the idea that defendants get out on technicalities all the time, they're using technicalities to get out. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, that's just the fucking constitution. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, that's just like, I don't know what you mean. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: It feels to me like that's on the same spectrum as like the prosecutor creating fraudulent evidence. [SPEAKER_02]: Once you've convinced yourself that this guy is guilty, then nothing seems wrong.

38:11[SPEAKER_02]: 100% in the opposite holds true. [SPEAKER_02]: Once you've convinced yourself that this guy is guilty, affording him due process feels dangerous, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_02]: I think I've talked about this before, but like, you have like the show Dexter, [SPEAKER_02]: which is a fun show, but it's premise on the idea that so many serial killers get released on technicalities in Metro Miami that you can build a show around it, that Dexor is just killing like two guys a week, you know what I mean.

38:39[SPEAKER_02]: That's in the popular consciousness, the idea that like these all these evil guys are walking. [SPEAKER_02]: We need, we need fucking Batman out there. [SPEAKER_02]: We need sociopathic Batman. [SPEAKER_03]: One thing that's interesting about this case to me is like, what has made me focus on like the violence of not acting, not doing anything? [SPEAKER_03]: Like what it means that I think a lot of, and I know this from many of my conversations, that there are a lot of people on the state level and Michigan.

39:05[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, people, who know this guy's innocent and are unwilling to do anything about it. [SPEAKER_03]: There are judges who have said, you think you have a good innocent case, but I'm sorry we can't, you know. [SPEAKER_03]: We're rejecting that your appeal, we are overturning the district court decision, et cetera. [SPEAKER_03]: Like what you are functionally doing is keeping a man incarcerated who you say is innocent based on some rules and the actual act of not doing anything, what the violence of that is.

39:33[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, so many of this, so many of these kind of like crack down on people over appealing has turned being a judge into like just rubber stamping people's thus sentences, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And as a people, it's just monstrous. [SPEAKER_03]: And yet, you seek for it tonight because what you're actually doing is just following the rules. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and a lot of the popular narrative still revolves around judges who like refuse to lock away someone who committed like a misdemeanor right because they later go on to commit a more serious crime or whatever right like the right popular understanding of this is still that like we're soft on crime and that you should have seen it coming because they're a bad type of dude.

40:14[SPEAKER_03]: we're about to do it and you should have known. [SPEAKER_03]: And the way is in which we kind of impart the need to predict the future on the systems and the actors and this in the system is so it's like astrology. [SPEAKER_02]: You can only say that when Rihanna is not here. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, she's allowed to believe in whatever she wants because she can predict the future. [SPEAKER_00]: And she's a queen. [SPEAKER_03]: It was queen.

40:35[SPEAKER_03]: Also, she'd never be a prosecutor. [SPEAKER_03]: So there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I just wonder how poisonous it is to a person's soul. [SPEAKER_03]: And so to believe that you can see evil in someone or that you have the right meter to be able to tell someone's dangerousness from from reading their appeal. [SPEAKER_03]: Like that that just doesn't that's just such a [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I do put a lot of faith in my personal credit to talk a more on when someone's when I want to hear enough about someone or see enough of their writing.

41:08[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, that person's stupid. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm right. [SPEAKER_03]: So often stupid is one thing. [SPEAKER_03]: Stupid. [SPEAKER_03]: You can see, you know, killers different. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not saying that nobody's future that there's nobody words. [SPEAKER_03]: You couldn't. [SPEAKER_03]: But what I'm saying is that like, against physics, evidence, like, reason, just thinking, I know he's a bad guy. [SPEAKER_03]: So he must have done this and I can't let him get one over.

41:28[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, like, that's not critical thinking. [SPEAKER_02]: No. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not that you can't like decipher the character of a man or something. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: That's not how like the adversarial system ends up working. [SPEAKER_02]: The way it ends up working is they have a name, right. [SPEAKER_02]: They become convinced, often through very little evidence that that is the correct name and they move forward.

42:12[SPEAKER_02]: And that leads to bizarre justifications for incompetence, corruption, fraudulence on the part of prosecutors. [SPEAKER_02]: And in this case, it all happens one after another. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not even like dominoes. [SPEAKER_02]: It's more like just a series of preposterous events. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Everything corrupt and fraudulent that could happen. [SPEAKER_02]: The course of a trial seems to happen in this one.

42:41[SPEAKER_03]: Totally. [SPEAKER_03]: There's like junk science. [SPEAKER_03]: There's like everything. [SPEAKER_03]: I think it just you're just overwhelmed. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, more panic. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: I put it off. [SPEAKER_02]: But I guess the last thing we need to mention. [SPEAKER_02]: And we're now working out of order. [SPEAKER_02]: But in the midst of this trial, a theory comes up that I couldn't believe that theories that the defendant belongs [SPEAKER_02]: to a ninjas syndicate, it is made clear that this man enjoys martial arts.

43:08[SPEAKER_02]: He has complaints to you about the quality of Chuck Norris' work, and in the course of this trial, it's brought up that like maybe he's a ninja, which sort of helps close the gap, right? [SPEAKER_02]: How did you get across the state? [SPEAKER_02]: This is ninja, right? [SPEAKER_02]: This is the, yeah, you couldn't comprehend, but a ninja could. [SPEAKER_02]: and you in the podcast sort of made me aware of something I hadn't really thought of, which is the idea of ninjas as a moral panic.

43:35[SPEAKER_02]: Because obviously, ninjas in pop culture, very 80s, 90s, I caught the tail end of this as a child, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, 7 year old Peter was like, [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, in terms of careers, it's like professional basketball or ninja. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: That's where I was in 1992, but I didn't think of it as like a moral panic. [SPEAKER_03]: Can you talk about it? [SPEAKER_03]: Sure. [SPEAKER_03]: I love this because some of the stuff I bet he did say, like when it's like he said, he had to sell his Lamborghini because like the ninja said, it's like, oh, yeah, for sure did.

44:05[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like it sounds totally what like the weird guy you see it with like says, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Um, but there is like talked about extensively in this case, this idea that he could be an enjoy. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's almost like super natural. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like one day he jumped out of a bush and like right where I was or like he could hear me from across the parking lot. [SPEAKER_03]: There's all this sort of like discussion about what ninjas were doing, which kind of comes into this like anti-Asian like [SPEAKER_03]: You know, this is like around satanic panic times like it's sort of this alternative cult stuff that people are like really scared of.

44:41[SPEAKER_03]: It's funny. [SPEAKER_03]: My mom is a black belt in Taekwondo, higher-belting, temperature, and just want to say yeah, he's a red belt. [SPEAKER_03]: You want to present, so can't play that for not, you know, getting to finish. [SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, I was asking her about this, like because she did type one to the 80s, and she was like, it was both like really popular, like every time I turned around, there was like a new type one to a studio, right?

45:01[SPEAKER_03]: Like, they were like, it was such a thing. [SPEAKER_03]: And then there were all these people who were like, they were gonna come get your kids, like, you know, it's almost like an evil pinball ball or something. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's Brazilian jujitsu is right now, but there's no sort of like moral panic around. [SPEAKER_02]: Even though there should be just a different type because every guy who gets into it is kind of a freak.

45:20[SPEAKER_03]: they don't go weird. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's funny because it goes from being like, he was weird. [SPEAKER_03]: He was weird and also like, a asshole, right? [SPEAKER_03]: To like, he was in touch with people who were telling him what to do or he was super connected or, and that is really, I think what leads people to believe he could have gotten there. [SPEAKER_03]: Despite all, like, we don't know how he got there. [SPEAKER_03]: We're not an ninja.

45:44[SPEAKER_02]: It's very interesting that, like, fundamentally, the prosecution has a problem that he's on the wrong side of the state and they're like, look, you could charter private planes like taxis, he's part of an engine syndicate, what do I know, right, it's up to you with the child. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: Are you going to let the ninja syndicate get away with this? [SPEAKER_02]: That's on the 12 of you. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: Why didn't he, the defense call, like a representative of the ninja syndicate to the stand?

46:05[SPEAKER_03]: They call it expert on like martial arts who wasn't very helpful. [SPEAKER_02]: The defense it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it is funny how like, at some point during the crossing examination of one witness, they're like, isn't this exactly like the plot of this movie? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, he describes this kind of scenario and then she's like, isn't this exactly the same as maybe that you're seeing this movie? [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's all coming from this weird.

46:25[SPEAKER_03]: It's, to me, I'm like, this is such an example of what like being a boastful young through how it can come back and bite you in the ass, because like obviously this guy's full of shit. [SPEAKER_03]: If you said any of this. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, we should talk about how absurd it would be for an international and it's just said to get to be targeting an 18-year-old college kid in a rural town in Michigan. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what are we talking about here?

46:46[SPEAKER_03]: Like, they don't want Scott McClump Day. [SPEAKER_03]: And another thing that's really interesting about this and I didn't really know because I'm not a hunter, but like, hunting is huge in Michigan. [SPEAKER_03]: And so like, he's told with a shot done, which to me is like, he tells him on the shot. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, they'll still win wieldy and like, [SPEAKER_03]: But it actually makes it so much harder to figure out who did this because everybody has shotguns because it's, and it's in hunting season just starting to begin in November.

47:10[SPEAKER_03]: But all of these people on stand are like, defense and prosecution, like, ninjas wouldn't even shotguns. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is. [SPEAKER_03]: All that. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you get into this crazy, which is like, it doesn't even matter what ninjas reduced. [SPEAKER_03]: There is no ninja in the general custody of this case. [SPEAKER_03]: There's, isn't ninja even a thing? [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway. [SPEAKER_02]: Ninjas were like type of samurai in like 13th century Japan or something like that's that's like the origin of it Right before this case, I thought I was like a costume kids for like my son was an ninja for Halloween one year It's it's very interesting that adults were believing this because you look back at 80s and 90s movies Ninjas and Ninjas syndicates were playing the role of cartels now like if you needed like a drug runner We're like human trafficking some kind of just like ambiently evil criminal organization that wasn't Italians Who by the way like you right?

47:57[SPEAKER_02]: If you do, if you do a movie about Italian organized crime, they're the protagonist, but if you need an antagonist, now you do use cartels, and at the time it would just be like, yeah, a pack of ninjas. [SPEAKER_03]: Because it's kind of even before games to your point. [SPEAKER_03]: Like it's kind of even before like games under like the, you know, the national consciousness. [SPEAKER_02]: There's something weird about being an adult and believing that that was real.

48:22[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_00]: There's a string of movies in the 80s and the early 90s called American Ninja about a troop who's also in Ninja and there's a different Ninja Syndicate cartel like right evil organization and everyone you're like five you know they're just like they're all over they're all over [SPEAKER_03]: So both of your points about what people will believe. [SPEAKER_03]: It's really crazy how you suspend so much of your judgment when you were sitting in a jury box and a prosecutor's telling you something.

48:51[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I actually think outside of the courtroom, maybe not of them, I believe, I don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know the jurors, but like, it's totally plausible to me that if I was talking to them and telling them this story, they would be who would ever convict on that and then they convict on it. [SPEAKER_03]: Because you're just in an environment where like, you're told this person as the expert. [SPEAKER_03]: You think there's all the stuff you don't know that they know.

49:11[SPEAKER_03]: And in fact, there is nothing that they know that you don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: Nothing. [SPEAKER_02]: The most well-respected man in town is wearing a suit and telling you this story. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like remember the first time that you realized they be your dad, like, didn't know what he was talking about. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's a little bit like that, like you're like, oh, this is just, yeah.

49:31[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it gives me such that I must believe it. [SPEAKER_03]: It's very, very seductive, I think. [SPEAKER_03]: And I have never been on like a murder trial or really have not had jury duty. [SPEAKER_03]: They turn me away right away. [SPEAKER_03]: I see guys to probably imagine, but like, I wonder, like, what could I be convinced of? [SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure lots of things, lots of things. [SPEAKER_02]: I think I told you guys, I made it to like the final 20 last year.

49:52[SPEAKER_02]: I was like hyped. [SPEAKER_02]: I was so fucking excited. [SPEAKER_03]: What kind of case was that, do you know? [SPEAKER_02]: It was just like a, like a hidden run kind of thing that was like in my downtown area. [SPEAKER_02]: They were like, are you familiar with this area? [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, it's where I get my coffee. [SPEAKER_02]: So they're like, do you promise how to do any detective work on your own? [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I don't care about this at all.

50:10[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm just like, yeah, I can't do that. [SPEAKER_03]: Can't do that. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. [SPEAKER_03]: No problem. [SPEAKER_03]: I am. [SPEAKER_00]: I actually think there's one more thing we should discuss right quickly at the end, which is does Timogen have any prospects for getting out or is he, is this, or all his avenues exhausted? [SPEAKER_03]: This is a good place to talk about this, because [SPEAKER_03]: I think the most depressing part of the story for me has been like the cowardice or the like unwilling team and consider by state officials and all yes, love disclinancy.

50:43[SPEAKER_03]: Like unless someone comes forward and says I did it and then you could file another habeas perhaps or whatever but like [SPEAKER_03]: Barring that all he has is a governor letting him out at some point and it seems just deeply unlikely that any of them are going to do that. [SPEAKER_03]: I think part of that is because in the anyways, he says, oh, mercenemy, you would not believe the kind of stuff that's going to post on the Facebook about governor whipper.

51:06[SPEAKER_02]: He likes her that much. [SPEAKER_03]: He just adores her. [SPEAKER_03]: He adores her. [SPEAKER_03]: He loves women. [SPEAKER_02]: There's no negative stuff that would surprise me, but but if he was like, you've done it again. [SPEAKER_02]: I love this. [SPEAKER_02]: That would actually catch me off guard. [SPEAKER_03]: I constantly have the feeling of like stop doing that, but I can't blame him for doing it. [SPEAKER_03]: Like I don't think this is the right approach to getting out, but anybody who says it's an indication of his personality.

51:28[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, I'm going to stick you in person for four years and see how you come out. [SPEAKER_03]: Because that's... [SPEAKER_03]: But we would all be, you'd be crazy not to be that way, right? [SPEAKER_03]: They're like focused on his behavior is so fucked up to me. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's not the question. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, imagine the mental state you'd be in after 40 years. [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm supposed to be nice to this woman.

51:47[SPEAKER_03]: in prison on this bullshit on the ninja private plane theory right there was someone who sent me someone in state government in Michigan he said to me you know he's a big believer in like the deep state and I'm like yeah like he is like where they look where he is like what who would you be of course [SPEAKER_03]: This is not a place where you get better, and especially if you were like in there for 40 years, and you didn't do a thing.

52:08[SPEAKER_03]: But to your point, the governor is the only one who can do it. [SPEAKER_03]: And instead of a mind of how like, clemency is just such an incredible concept, right? [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, you alone, do like, do this thing. [SPEAKER_03]: But you can just do it, sign the thing. [SPEAKER_03]: Donald Trump has had two good ideas in his life. [SPEAKER_03]: New America, great idea. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, let's change our minds. [SPEAKER_02]: And set up new Mexico.

52:26[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, instead of your next go and like the way he does clemency like I don't love who he gives it to all the time, but I like how he does that he does it like let's do it He doesn't have a fucking pardon off his process every time and like talk to the prosecutor and like he's like he's has simplified He calls someone in he's like who's the biggest perfect federal prison right now. [SPEAKER_02]: Let him out [SPEAKER_02]: Right, imagine if you would just and people would like take that same liberty with like different goals, you know, yeah, and this is the thing where it's like sometimes stylistically you look at the fact that Trump does not ask permission from institutions, right, which is obviously in and of itself probably speaking negative, right, but you can see a ton of situations where you're like, yeah, that's yeah, you know, it would be really useful to have someone who doesn't ask permission from institutions who that are largely captured.

53:15[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, the fact that we have this system where it's like, well, I have to ask the time and prosecutor and I have to ask the victim. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, that's like, this guy has served 40 years in prison. [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of him got just let him go. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's, it's, it's me. [SPEAKER_03]: And I kind of, and that's not an endorsement of him as a person. [SPEAKER_03]: But it's just like an endorsement of a process, right?

53:36[SPEAKER_02]: when he gets out he's going to make while that's Facebook post, you know what I mean? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not like, set him free so he can do charity work or whatever, it's just like, you know he didn't do that. [SPEAKER_03]: And you know that's like the story of every innocent work. [SPEAKER_03]: Like you see the guy who was like gardening in his mom's house and then he gets, you know, he's arrested for thinking into it. [SPEAKER_03]: And then 30 years later he gets out and he says like, I'm not bitter.

53:56[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just glad to have a chance again. [SPEAKER_03]: I can't wait to see my family family. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like that's beautiful and also total bullshit. [SPEAKER_03]: Like you should be fucking better. [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I think the idea to be let out, you need to have it like your heart should be so pure like you You must be Christlike in order to to deserve it [SPEAKER_00]: You shouldn't have to be Gandhi to get clemency or to get parole.

54:19[SPEAKER_03]: And you shouldn't have to look at the people who convicted you to let you out. [SPEAKER_00]: You shouldn't have to forgive them. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: There's like an archetype of the guy who gets light out of prison, who, like, you know, there's the press conference and he's like, you know, uh, blessed to be here. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you mean, like, you have to achieve this crisis like a level of serenity in order to be deserving of clemency.

54:37[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, no, like, a lot of these guys may or may not be total shitmags, but they didn't do the crime. [SPEAKER_02]: Let them out. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: No, I'd be chill. [SPEAKER_02]: I'd be like, fucking, Maria, just like writing. [SPEAKER_02]: You're writing beautiful pews, but you're not doing that now. [SPEAKER_02]: You're doing that now. [SPEAKER_02]: Thoughtful pieces about the system. [SPEAKER_02]: Before we wrap, I guess the one thing we'll do is call up Han the Ninja Syndicate to break him out.

55:04[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's been long enough. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, surely. [SPEAKER_03]: They were like left for a long time, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, right. [SPEAKER_02]: They just laughed them there. [SPEAKER_02]: And the movies that guys out in a week, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: These like you think you can hold me when when when the black fist is supporting me. [SPEAKER_03]: It's such a good point that if he wasn't in just some dicket they really don't even care about him because he's really No one has no one has done shit in 40 years not a thing.

55:31[SPEAKER_02]: There's like, uh, there's an interesting dick Board of Mating when they're like by the way, uh, time engine got caught in Michigan Are we gonna break them out or we're gonna disavow? [SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna disavow Yeah, it's uh, it's a splinter sales situation [SPEAKER_02]: Jocie, thanks for coming on. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what promo you're going to do for us in return, but I'm sure it will be valuable and worthwhile. [SPEAKER_03]: Can't wait.

56:02[SPEAKER_03]: I love coming on. [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you guys for having me. [SPEAKER_03]: I remember the first seven I came on and the first thing out of Peter's novel is about killing cops. [SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, it's like, whoa, we're just going to keep that in and you guys are like, I don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: No, we won't. [SPEAKER_03]: And then you 100% did cheaper than it. [SPEAKER_03]: Which really was quite hilarious. [SPEAKER_03]: And, um, and I love you guys.

56:23[SPEAKER_03]: It's probably me. [SPEAKER_03]: And everybody should listen to the five fire of that. [SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait for the rest of the podcast. [SPEAKER_02]: The podcast is called The Backfire Effect, wherever podcasts are sold, is that right? [SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm, yeah, or free. [SPEAKER_03]: And I hope everybody gives it a listen. [SPEAKER_03]: We have, we have touched on like, mere fraction of the weird things in this case. [SPEAKER_03]: It is crazy.

56:41[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, if it felt like we were bouncing around from one crazy little story to another, that's because there's so fucking much in this podcast. [SPEAKER_03]: And I've only listened to half of it, so yeah, it only gets weird here. [SPEAKER_03]: But thank you for having me. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much. [SPEAKER_00]: Five to four is presented by Prologue Projects. [SPEAKER_00]: This episode was produced by Allison Rogers. [SPEAKER_00]: The on-nafoc provides editorial support.

57:03[SPEAKER_00]: Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. [SPEAKER_00]: Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips and Y, and our theme song is by spatial relations. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.