Midwife acquitted in infant’s death; Police officer convicted of manslaughter – TCD Sidebar
In this episode of True Crime Daily The Sidebar Podcast
Vinnie Politan joins host Joshua Ritter to break down the biggest cases making headlines across the nation. They discuss the fallout for Samuel Bankman-Fried following the collapse of FTX (2:59), Megan Thee Stallion’s testimony (10:19), a judge’s decision to acquit a self-proclaimed midwife (15:46), and the manslaughter conviction of Aaron Dean (24:52).
Tweet your questions for future episodes to Joshua Ritter using the hashtag #TCDSidebar.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:00:11]
Hello and welcome to True Crime Daily's The Sidebar, celebrating 50 episodes of taking you inside the courtrooms of high profile and notorious cases from across the country. I'm your host, Joshua Ritter. I'm a criminal defense lawyer based here in Los Angeles and previously an L.A. County prosecutor for nearly a decade. You can find me at JoshuaRitter.com. We are recording this on Friday, December 16, 2022.
In this week's episode, continuing fallout from the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX with the recent arrest and unsealed federal indictment of the company's founder. Plus, a hip-hop star's emotional testimony in an assault case unfolding in Los Angeles. As well as breaking news in the bench trial of a self-proclaimed midwife facing charges for the death of a newborn. And finally, the conviction of Aaron Dean, a police officer charged with the 2019 shooting that tragically took the life of Tatiana Jefferson.
Today, we are joined by former prosecutor who has made his way into television. You may know him from Court TV. Please welcome Emmy Award winning legal journalist Vinnie Politan. Welcome back, Vinnie, and thank you so much for joining us on the 50th episode of The Sidebar.
Vinnie Politan:
[00:01:24]
Yeah, this is pretty special to be invited for the Big 50. This is a big deal. So I feel good. Thanks so much for having me.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:01:32]
Now, we're so grateful to have you. And it is pretty amazing that we're at 50 episodes now. For listeners who missed the last time that you were on, please tell us a little bit about your background and the current work that you do today.
Vinnie Politan:
[00:01:45]
All right. So, I was born -- no, I'm not going to go back that far. But I was a lawyer, right? I was a prosecutor. Then I went into the private practice and then I came back to my first love, which was television, and I ended up at Court TV. And it's been amazing. It's been absolutely amazing to be first as a correspondent traveling around the country covering the nation's biggest trials, then as an anchor as well.
So, now I'm the lead anchor of Court TV. I've been there so many years. And every day, from 8 to 10, on Court TV, I take a look at the biggest trials, biggest legal stories, biggest investigations across the country. So, it's awesome. I like being a lawyer, but when I was in the private practice, I was doing civil litigation. And man, you get evaluated by how many hours you bill. And I was like that, no, that's not going to be my life's work. So, I love the criminal law especially, and I get to talk about it every single night.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:02:51]
Well, I am a regular viewer of you, and I always appreciate your insights. And that's why we are so excited to hear your thoughts on these cases. So let's jump right into it. A lot to cover. First, we go to the Bahamas. We're following the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas on criminal charges in addition to a pending SEC lawsuit. Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, has been accused of diverting customer funds from the crypto exchange to bankroll his hedge fund, Alameda Research, to the tune of get this, $7 billion in what prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.
During a congressional hearing, the new CEO of FTX, John J. Wray III, testified Tuesday about the absurdity of the fraud scheme, pardon me. Wray, who oversaw the Enron bankruptcy in the early 2000s, described the Enron fraud as having been executed by sophisticated people who worked to keep transactions secret. In contrast, Wray described the FTX in different terms, saying this is really old fashioned embezzlement. This is just taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose, not sophisticated at all.
Further, the SEC has alleged SBF used FTX and Alameda Research as his personal piggy bank, making loans to himself and others, including over 1.3 billion in loans from 2020 to 2022. According to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. SBF built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto. Vinny, SBF was set to testify in Congress the day after his arrest. This timing means something. What do you make of the idea that they arrest him the day he was supposed to testify in front of a Congress?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:04:47]
Yeah, there's a lot to get to with this guy and what he did. And that description that you talked about there is very significant because this doesn't appear to me to be some sophisticated operation here. It's like somehow, some way through his dopey hairdo and all those political donations, he was able to pass himself off as some sort of amazing young future Warren Buffett or whatever he was supposed to be, and people just trusted him. No one really took a close look at what he was doing.
So I don't think this is going to be a tough case necessarily to prove. They grabbed him. I think there was a lot of public pressure to grab him because everyone looked at this and said, well, wait a minute, what's going on here? Why isn't anything happening? And then something happened very quickly, but not after he spoke. I mean, he was giving media interviews. He was very casual about the whole thing. And I don't know him, but this is completely bizarre, completely bizarre, the way he has acted and reacted to what has happened here. And I think at the end of the day, I think the feds are going to have a pretty easy case to prove.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:06:07]
Yeah, I agree with you. It seems as though everyone was just swept along with this idea that, hey, you may not understand crypto, but it's going to make you a millionaire and just believe in me. And like you said, I'm the wild haired genius and you don't really need to look behind the curtain. And it's amazing because as they continue to dive through all this stuff, one of the things that came out in the congressional hearing the other day was that there aren't documents, there aren't records. They were doing things over Slack, which is just kind of a chat app that they talk to each other about how to take part in these billion-dollar corporation and all of its transactions. They were doing their accounting over QuickBooks. I mean, it's absolutely laughable how they were running this company, and nobody seemed to ask any questions until they started to declare bankruptcy.
But I want to get back to that point that we talked about how, you're right, he was talking to anybody who had a camera in front of them and talking anything and everything about all of this, including agreeing to go in front of Congress and testify. And yet the AUSA, instead of letting him put that testimony on, the AUSA steps in early and arrest him. Do you think there was a strategy behind that and not allowing him to testify? Do you think they thought that somehow it would cause trouble for their case?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:07:26]
I don't know how it causes trouble necessarily, unless there's some allegation that they're working together, and they've already decided that they're going to arrest them. But if he's speaking freely, usually as a prosecutor, right, you want someone to talk as much as possible, especially in a case like this. The more he talks, the bigger the hole that he's digging is getting. So, I'm not quite sure on the timing, on why they did it and if there was any sort of communication back and forth. But based upon the simplicity of the case and the simplicity of the way he ran the company, I think makes this a much more simple case to try, despite the fact that we're talking about billions and billions of dollars.
There are some other layers to all of this, though. You mentioned the bankruptcy. To me, this is going to be another fascinating part of this is in a bankruptcy, there's creditors who are owed money and there's people who have ill-gotten gains, which is the money that SBF was giving away and that ended up in the hands of politicians and political parties.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:08:37]
Yeah.
Vinnie Politan:
[00:08:37]
Right. They need to be giving that money back.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:08:41]
Millions of dollars.
Vinnie Politan:
[00:08:42]
Yeah. And they all have said, oh, I already donated it to a charity. Wasn't your money to donate to a charity, you owe that money back to the creditors. So, this is going to get ugly. And the reason I'm very familiar with this is not because I practice this kind of law, but because I'm a New York Mets fan. And when Bernie Madoff went down, the owner of the Mets went down and had to pay back hundreds of millions and we couldn't sign any free agents, and it's the same thing. So these politicians are going to have to dig up. And imagine trying to pry tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars from politicians. Wow. That's going to be fun to watch.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:09:25]
I agree with you. And I agree with you. The repercussions from this are going to last for months, if not years, as this continues to unravel, not to mention the effect it's going to just have on the cryptocurrency industry altogether. I mean to have it --
Vinnie Politan:
[00:09:42]
And it shouldn't because the crypto industry was created to prevent things like this. And this guy was trying to do it a different way. And my understanding is like the real crypto people stayed away from this guy and they had nothing to do with them. So, I think pop culture and for the headlines that you're going to see on the nightly news and news, you know, whatever, they are going to scare people away from crypto, but this is the reason that crypto was actually created. So, we'll see what happens, though.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:10:12]
Yeah. Yeah, we will see what would happen.
Vinnie Politan:
[00:10:14]
Blew up. Like everything else, it blew up.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:10:17]
We'll continue to watch it closely, though. Okay. Let's change gears dramatically for a second and move to Los Angeles, California, where Megan Thee Stallion, born Megan Pete, took the stand to testify in her assault trial against Canadian hip-hop star Tory Lanez. Megan accused Lanez, legal name Daystar Peterson, of firing a weapon at her in an argument following a 2020 Hollywood Hills party, which left Megan with bullet fragments in her feet. In her emotional testimony, Megan detailed the psychological side effects she suffered as a result of the alleged shooting, as well as the ensuing public scrutiny.
The incident has become notorious in hip-hop circles, with Lanez releasing an entire album denying the shooting and Drake alleging Megan lied about the incident on the recent track, Circo Loco. Lanez faces charges of assault with a firearm, illegal weapons possession, and negligent discharge of a gun and faces over 22 years in prison if convicted.
All right. Vinnie, in her testimony, Megan conveyed regret at coming forward with the charges due to the following media coverage and psychological effects. However, at the same time, she had posted about this on social media and had even given interviews. We see this a lot in several celebrity cases where they seem to have no trouble talking to anybody and everybody who will listen beforehand. But then they don't want to testify or reluctant to be involved in the case. Do you think this could backfire on her in this case, in your opinion?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:11:47]
She's got bullet fragments in her feet. So, to me, that's a big part of this. Right. She actually did stuff. Like if someone was shot at and they missed and then, oh well, did she or did she not. She's got bullet fragments in her feet. So, I think that will help her credibility to a certain extent. You've got to explain why you did certain things, why you said certain things, but they live in this strange world of, I don't understand how these millionaires, right, millionaires, lots and lots of money and fame and privilege end up doing stupid things like this. And I don't get it. I don't understand it. They were at a party at the Kardashians, for goodness' sake, right?
Joshua Ritter:
[00:12:35]
Yeah.
Vinnie Politan:
[00:12:35]
You're leaving a party in the Hollywood Hills with the Kardashians. You're a celeb. They're a celeb. We're all celebs. We sell millions and millions of and sell records, downloads, whatever. But we're making tons of money. All you have to do is don't commit a crime and you have a great life. And for whatever reason, some people can't stay away from it. It's crazy.
And I think part of what happens is that because of the celebrity and the trash talking and the notoriety and the drama that you want to bring along with it, because it does help your career. The drama helps because everyone's talking about you. I think they lose perspective on, hey, you can't pull out a gun and shoot at someone and tell them dance, dance. I mean, real life doesn't work that way. Especially when you're a millionaire, it shouldn't. But I think she's going to do okay. I think Megan D will survive all of this because of those fragments in her foot.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:13:38]
You know, you make such a good point about how ridiculous this all is that we're talking about millionaires. It was a bunch of millionaires partying with each other. And after a millionaire's party, somebody pulls a gun and something out of a bad Western tells them to dance and ends up shooting at their feet. You're right. You're right. When you spell it out the way that you just did, it sounds so ridiculous.
But getting to the dynamics of the trial itself, one question that's always asked is, do you think this is a good case for the defendant to testify? Do you think this is a case where he needs to testify? Because it's really her word against his and without his statement somehow getting in front of those jurors that they just might convict him because, like you said, she's got fragments in her feet. What else do they have?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:14:21]
Yeah, I think the jury's going to need an explanation. Got to testify, got to tell your story. Reasonable doubt. I always tell defense attorneys, well, I know you're a defense attorney, but I tell them on my show, I say, you guys have the easiest job in the world. You don't have, number one, you don't have to prove anything. And if you are going to put forth some evidence, it's just like just enough, just to raise a little reasonable doubt. Well, prosecutors, which you were for a decade, you got a lug into the courtroom, and you've got to prove it beyond any and all. And that is such a high burden.
So, if you get in and get into two people giving two different versions of what happens, I think there's a good opportunity there to raise a doubt because someone say, well, I don't wholly believe, but maybe I do and then that's enough. That's enough. Give some reasonable explanation for what happened, some reasonable alternative, because she's got fragments in her foot. So maybe you saw how that happened and it wasn't because you were shooting the gun.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:15:28]
And that's absolutely an argument you can make at that point, is that if the evidence leads you to two reasonable conclusions, you're going to have to, the law instructs you, have to go with the one that favors the defendant. So maybe you're right. Maybe this is one of those rare cases where it's a good idea for him to take the stand. So that's continuing to be on trial here in Los Angeles and we will continue to watch it.
Let's turn to Omaha, Nebraska, where, as I said earlier, we are recording this on Friday, December 16th. And just earlier today, Angela, Angie Hawk was found not guilty after opting for a bench trial for charges of child abuse resulting in death. Hawk allegedly tried to deliver a breech baby in June of 2019, but was unable to turn the baby around, which prompted the response of paramedics. The child was eventually born inside the ambulance without a pulse and died tragically two days later.
The state of Nebraska requires a certified nurse or midwife to deliver infants, and either a certified health care facility, public health agency, or the office of a licensed practitioner. Angela Hawk is not a licensed midwife in the State of Nebraska and reportedly does not have any nurse or medical training. Hawk's defense argued that the baby died of complications from childbirth and not because of Hawk's actions. Childbirth is dangerous, they argued, no matter where it takes place. This was from Defense Lawyer Keith Dornan in his closing arguments, Thursday.
In their closing argument, the prosecution argued a good men midwife would not act like she can handle a breech delivery and spend two to three minutes talking to a young, vulnerable mother to make that kind of life or death decision. In his ruling, Judge Timothy Burns described the event as tragic, saying that everyone involved in this case acted in the best of their abilities to save the child, concluding that the state had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Angela Hawk had acted criminally and found her not guilty. Vinnie, jump right in. Was this a surprising verdict to you?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:17:26]
Well, let's start here. The defendant said, I don't want a jury, I want the judge to make the decision. When do defense attorneys want judges to make decisions? When they kind of get a vibe from maybe some of the pretrial litigation about how the judge sees the case and the type of case that it is. So, I wasn't shocked at all because I don't know the judge, I don't know the litigants, I don't know everything that happened in leading up to the trial. But I do know from my experience in the courtroom that everyone knows to a certain extent how judges see things. And by choosing to have the judge make the decision, I'm not surprised the judge came back not guilty.
I've seen more not guilty from bench trials than in a percentage-wise than from jury trials. And that's because I'm not saying the fix is in. It's just as an attorney, defense attorney, you know how the judge is ruling, you know how the judge sees the evidence in the case. And the deciding factor here really was the fact that the parents of the child that lost her life, little baby Vera, they didn't want the midwife prosecuted. So well, she's not a midwife. She's sort of a midwife but she professes to not be licensed because you don't have to be and all of that. But if the parents weren't upset, then why are we here, right? And obviously, I know that it's not the parents' choice. It's up to the prosecutor. But once the testimony comes out the way it did, I wasn't shocked. Although any time you hear not guilty in a criminal courtroom, we all should be a little bit surprised.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:19:22]
Yeah. No, I agree with you. And I also agree with you that I think that really this case, not that it was decided at the time that they chose to have a bench trial, but it really did kind of begin to tip the scales. And you're right, perhaps that was the defense attorneys just knowing this judge well enough and knowing by luck of the draw, they got a judge that this would be wise to take a bench trial with.
But I also think it had, and you mentioned this, to do with the type of case. This is such a tragedy. And it's so sad and it's so awful and it's something that everyone wanted to see, wanted to prevent it from happening, that you have to imagine that jurors could be very kind of blinded by their own emotions and they might not be listening to the facts. And how do the facts apply to the elements of the law in the same way that a judge would and then in the same way that a judge who has heard many disturbing cases before would be able to kind of separate himself and just apply the facts and evidence to the law, which the judge did here.
So, agree or disagree with this verdict, the judge was very clear in his ruling that he based this upon the evidence and just felt that it did not reach the burden. One thing, though, that you mentioned that I wanted to kind of tease out a little bit more is that the parents didn't agree with this prosecution and including the mother didn't even testify. Maybe it would have had a greater effect if there was a jury trial. But do you think that would have changed anything if she had testified even in this bench trial?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:20:59]
I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think it changes the fact. The facts are pretty clear that there was this short conversation about the two-minute conversation about whether they should go to the hospital or not, and they chose not to. So, if that conversation didn't happen, you might have a slight different outlook here. But they agreed at the time and then they weren't up -- they're obviously upset about the loss of their child, but they weren't blaming the defendant for this. And that's a completely different scenario.
So, I don't think it necessarily would have changed things. And she wasn't called, she didn't testify, but the husband was there. But I think you're so right, I think a jury absolutely would have wanted to hear from the mother and probably would have taken any cue from her in coming to a verdict as well.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:21:55]
You're probably very right. Last question on this, and I ask it because I think it ties into the last case we're going to talk about as well. But this trial demonstrates the difficulty about proving criminal liability, where there does not seem to be any obvious criminal intent. What I mean by that is no one argued and even the judge said this in his closing remarks. No one argued that this self-proclaimed midwife wanted harm to happen to this child, that she and everybody else involved wanted to try to save this child. And it just was a tragic event. So, you have a case where there's no clear criminal intent and the prosecution has to argue intent by the circumstances, by arguing that it's a lack of care or a negligence or an indifference to the safety of those involved. I'm almost answering my own question, but I want you to jump in here. How difficult is that to prove in these types of cases where you're asking for criminal liability, not civil liability?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:23:05]
Yeah, I think these are always the toughest cases. And I've noticed a trend. I don't know if you've seen it as well, but it seems like prosecutors, coast to coast, getting much more aggressive in pursuing these types of cases where, for me, a criminal is someone who creates that intent that they know they're going to do something wrong. And we have a civil system of justice which deals with people who mess up big time. Right. You get sued. It's about money.
For me, I was always a prosecutor who looked at cases. I was always more about the intent. These accidental, unintentional, negligent related types of criminal prosecutions. If you're going to have them, you're going to have them, and you've got to apply it evenly. I think the real problem in our system is, is that's not applied evenly, is that not all accidental things are looked at the same. When a police officer makes a mistake, now we are criminally prosecuting them. Doctors make a mistake, someone loses their life, we're suing them.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:24:16]
Yeah.
Vinnie Politan:
[00:24:17]
You get cuffs on them. The only way you put cuffs on a doctor, it's got to be so extremely beyond outrageous. But, like, they're just, doctor did something wrong, and the patient died, we don't cuff up the doctor. But with police officers, they do something wrong, they're getting charged now. They're absolutely getting charged criminally. And we're seeing the times, the prosecutors won't necessarily win all those cases, but they're charging them. And they're and we might as well get to the next case because they are winning.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:24:49]
Yeah, I was going to say excellent segway into our next case here, because that's exactly what we're talking about. This is in Fort Worth, Texas, where the former Fort Worth police officer, Aaron Dean, has been convicted of manslaughter for the 2019 shooting that killed Tatiana Jefferson. Dean arrived at the Jefferson residence with another officer after receiving, and this is important, a non-emergency call from a neighbor regarding an open door at the residence.
Dean and the other responding officer who testified against him allegedly did not announce their presence. And Dean fired the fatal shot that killed Jefferson in limited visibility through a window. Jefferson was armed with a gun. However, there was dissenting reports about whether the gun was ever raised, or it would have or if it would have been visible to officers.
Zyon Carr, who is eight years old at the time and in the bedroom with his aunt when she was shot, testified that they had accidentally burned hamburgers earlier in the night. So, they opened the doors to air the smoke out of the house. Dean, who was on trial for the charge of murder, was convicted by a Tarrant County jury of a lesser charge of manslaughter for the shooting, which carries a sentence of 2 to 20 years. Dean's sentencing hearing began today, December 16th, to determine how much time, if any, he will spend behind bars.
Okay, jump right in, Vinnie. What do you make of this verdict? Like I said, we're still dealing with people who don't have that specific criminal intent. No one is arguing that Dean wanted to kill somebody that evening. What do you think about the verdict and the fact that the jurors found him guilty of a lesser crime but still very serious?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:26:32]
Oh, it's absolutely serious. But there's a lot of range of a potential sentence here, anything from probation to up to 20 years. The family of the victim outraged afterwards, outraged about what happened. They wanted a murder conviction. And there's a couple of different ways to look at all of this, like he did intend to shoot her because he claimed self-defense. If you're defending yourself, you believe your life is at risk, you're intending to shoot and kill the person you think is going to shoot and kill you, but the jury didn't believe self-defense. Yet, they still didn't believe it was intentional so they went to manslaughter. So maybe it was a compromise verdict.
This, though, gets to the bigger picture of police officers messing up big time. And when they mess up, people die. Doctors when they mess up, people die, but doctors aren't getting cuffed left and right, police officers are. And I understand this case had the additional element of the belief of some that she was shot because she was black, and he was white. Now, I don't know if that's true, but I understand how the community believes that and perceives it that way. And I don't know what the numbers are out there. And I'd be interested to see if anyone's done a study recently of police shootings and racial, cross-racial and all that sort of stuff. I just don't know what the numbers are.
But I do know in this particular case, Tatianna Jefferson shouldn't have died. This was a huge mistake. There should undoubtedly be wrongful death liability, criminal liability. I'm comfortable with this manslaughter conviction. I'm always uncomfortable with the murder conviction in a situation like this, because of the mindset, the mens rea, what he's thinking, what he's intending to do. Here's the biggest problem, though, and it's a problem because it's the way we are in this country. And I'm not saying it should be different, but it's the way it is. And I don't think it's acknowledged enough by law enforcement.
We have a Second Amendment. People in their homes have a right to defend themselves, a right to have a gun. So, if a homeowner hears someone creeping around the side of their house in the middle of the night, who was not announced who they are, which he did not do, we've got the body cam footage. If Tatianna shot and killed the officer, I don't think she should have been prosecuted either for murder, because it's a mistake. She thinks there's a burglar out there, someone with a gun. He thinks there's something going on inside and the gun may be pointed at him. It's such a tough call, but I think it's all in the training and the protocol when you are approaching a home because in this country, you have an absolute right.
Someone breaks into your home, you can shoot and kill them in almost every state. I don't know if there's a state where you can't. I know you can in Texas. And every Texas police officer should understand that, and the training should reflect that in how you approach a situation like this for the safety of the people inside, but the safety of the police officers. I feel like if we don't train them properly in how to deal with this, we're sending them into a very dangerous, dangerous situation.
Breonna Taylor was the same thing. You had someone inside who thought the house was being broken into, so he opened fire on the officer. The officer got shot. Breonna Taylor got shot and killed. I don't think either shooting was a crime, but it's a situation that I think police have to come up with a better way in a country with a Second Amendment.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:30:26]
Yeah, I agree with you. There's no simple answers to any of this. But one thing you pointed out, and I don't even think we would have had this trial had he announced who he was. I think that really was the most crucial moment of any of this, because jurors -- and this is what I was kind of a turning point to me too, is when we heard about that young man's testimony about the reason for the doors being open, because that is a suspicious thing. And there's no one's faulting the neighbor for calling the police. If it's in the middle of the night and you see that your neighbor's doors are wide open, you're thinking to yourself, oh, my God, I hope something's not wrong. And they're not calling 911. They're just saying, hey, something suspicious is taking place here. The police should come check it out. And the police are doing the right thing by coming to check it out. And it is suspicious that a door is open in the middle of the night. And then you hear this young man testify that they had accidentally burnt the burgers and they were trying to air out the house.
And then every single one of those jurors are putting themselves in that exact same situation that we've all found ourselves in, where you burn the meat loaf, whatever, you're airing out the house. It's an unusual circumstance. And in that situation, she ends up getting shot. And you're right, she hears somebody prowling around outside. She doesn't know who it is. They haven't announced who they are. And she grabs her gun to protect herself and her nephew and she ends up getting killed. And I think that's how we end up at this verdict, is that jurors cannot wrap their heads around. Even an officer trying to do the right thing, an innocent person doing nothing but legal things, ending up dead when an officer could have made a small difference in their choice and how they proceeded by just announcing who they were, and things may have turned out very differently. It's just a tragedy any way you look at it.
I had one other question on this, sentencing in this case, explain to us your understanding of this, because it's a little different in Texas, because we're not in most jurisdictions, just purely dealing with the judge here. What are your thoughts on sentencing and the fact that we're going to have this hearing in front of the jurors?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:32:39]
Yeah, the jury makes the decision. Now, you got to understand this though. We're in Texas, so it's not a sentencing. This is the punishment phase. You're convicted of a crime. You don't get sentenced. You get punished in Texas.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:32:51]
Right.
Vinnie Politan:
[00:32:51]
So, they determine and the jury has a lot of range here. They could recommend anything from probation up to 20 years. So I like it because I think it gives the jury an opportunity to really say, okay, a jury of your peers, we found you guilty of this and this is what should happen to you. This is what should happen to you. And there isn't the political pressure put on a judge. They do it this way. And sometimes a defendant can do very well, or it can do very poorly with a jury. And I think it gives the jury all the power, right.
Now, obviously, if something is done that's inappropriate, a judge can step in and always has the final, final word. But I kind of like the way they do it in Texas. It turns into really two separate trials when there's a guilty on the front end. And it's really up to the people of the community to decide how someone should be punished for what they have found that the defendant did. Not everybody likes it. Not everybody likes it. And I think a lot of times there'll be a lot of discrepancy between what a judge would do, and what a jury would do. But I like that it's a jury because it's a plurality of people. It's not one person deciding the punishment in the case. So I'm all for it. I think it's great and I think it works in Texas.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:34:21]
Give us your predictions. Given the fact that a lot of people are looking at this verdict as kind of they're calling it a compromised verdict where people wanted to hold him responsible, but they're not going to hold him responsible for murder. So, they try to find this kind of in between ground. Do you think that that kind of spells something out in the way of the punishment phase that we're now looking at with these jurors?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:34:43]
Yeah, I think it'll be definitely under ten. You're not going up to the max of 20. I think it really starts at ten and can be anywhere there lower. The way this community has been described to me is that the Fort Worth area is very pro law enforcement, very supportive of law enforcement. So that tends to me make it a little bit less. I don't think he's going to get straight probation. I think he'll get some term of years, less than ten, maybe closer to five is where I think this jury may land, but we'll see.
You know, jurors surprise us all the time. All the time, they surprise us. And as much as we analyze and pick apart and try to figure it out, once they get in that room, the other part that I love about our system, they're in charge. They're in charge. So, they'll make the decision, but I think somewhere around five is where they'll end up. And to me, that sounds kind of right under the circumstances. Again, getting back to what I look at in criminal cases, which is the mindset, the mens rea. A clear dereliction of duty. But was it premeditated, planned, plotted? Was there evil intent? There's none of that. There was none of that. Right.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:36:03]
And there's no criminal history here either, right? I mean, I imagine you become a police officer in Fort Worth if you've got a long criminal record. So, they're not going to hear about a person who's committed all sorts of crimes before in the past. And now that you're really asking to drop the hammer on them, you're talking about a law-abiding person who is trying to do the right thing that night, I think everybody believes made some big mistakes.
And I think you're right. I think you have a dead, innocent person on one hand and there has to be accountability. And on the other hand, you have a person that doesn't have that criminal mens rea. And I think you might be right. Jurors do surprise us. And so, we're both probably going to be eating our words but I think you're probably right that around five years is what I would expect as well. Vinnie, thank you so much for coming on this week. Where can people find out more about you?
Vinnie Politan:
[00:36:59]
Well, you can go to Vinnie Politan Court TV on Facebook. You can go to Vinnie Politan One on YouTube. I just started a brand-new YouTube channel.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:37:09]
Oh, good.
Vinnie Politan:
[00:37:10]
From scratch. So, you can get in on the ground floor. Please subscribe, @VinniePolitanOne. But Facebook every day and of course, every night on my show on Court TV, you can go to CourtTV.com to find out how you can watch it in your city.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:37:26]
Fantastic. And I'm your host, Josh Ritter. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter, @JoshuaRitterESQ and at JoshuaRitter.com. And I just wanted to take a moment to express how grateful we are to everyone listening and watching. As we said, at the beginning, this is our 50th episode of the sidebar. None of this would have been possible without all of you, loyal listeners and viewers. So thank you so very much.
I also wanted to thank the guests that we've had on over these past 50 episodes, yourself included Vinnie and the entire TCD family for all the hard work of making this possible. So please continue to comment, like, and subscribe. And as always, if you have questions or comments you'd like us to address, tweet us your questions with the hashtag #TCDsidebar. And thank you for joining us at the True Crime Daily's Sidebar.
