Interview with Crystal Gail Mangum

this podcast may contain content that is graphic and disturbing in nature listener discretion is advised in a domestic incident early in the morning of april 3rd 2011 crystal stabbed reginald day in the abdomen one time but mr day survived the stabbing and was taken to the hospital where he died 13 days later crystal has always maintained that she stabbed mr day in self-defense after he initiated a violent attack on her crystal was convicted of the second-degree murder of reginald day in 2013 and sentenced to 14 to 18 years in prison so is crystal the real victim here or did the jury get this one right was it the stabbing that caused mr day's death or a mistake made by the hospital where he was being treated [Music] this is episode 30 the crystal gale mangum update [Applause] hi amy hi megan do you remember covering this case way back in uh six months ago or when you know we were kind of 15 episodes in i was just gonna say do you remember what episode number it was it was episode 15. oh okay yeah it's good i was going to announce that so other people could look at this as well but you remember this one yes in today's episode it's going to be a little unique and a little different in that we're updating the story and airing an interview i conducted with crystal mangum from the north carolina prison where she's incarcerated which we'll get to shortly it was after our original episode aired i was contacted by someone close to mangum one of her supporters who asked if we would review outside reports on the case that have been conducted since she was convicted and would we speak to crystal to help aid in our final conclusions and of course you know we considered it and said yes we'd love to hear from her and hear what she has to say so today we're going to hear that interview between me and mangum and then amy i was hoping afterwards you and i could discuss our thoughts if you haven't already done so i would encourage everyone to go back and listen to episode 15 for the original story and case details and then come back and see if your opinion has changed i won't need to tell you the entire story again because crystal is actually going to tell you herself in a couple of minutes so without further ado here's crystal gail mangum [Music] this call is from crystal mangum an inmate at anson correctional center this call will be monitored and recorded to accept this call press five now to decline this thank you for using global tailwind so would you mind if we began with the discussion of the events that led up to your conviction more specifically can you tell us a little bit about your relationship with uh reginald day i um i met reginald in december of 2010 and it was after another case that um he said he saw that he felt like uh injustice was done on my behalf so he volunteered to take me in me and my children and um in exchange for me helping him get caught up on his friend things have been really difficult for me up until that point because of the negative publicity that i received from the duke lacrosse case so i couldn't get an apartment on my own i couldn't find a job every time i i tried to go for a job interview i for example i went for an interview to work for blue cross and blue shield insurance company and i had all the credentials i had gone to college i was good at communication skills i retired from the military so everything was going good but then someone recognized me [Music] as the different prosecutor and they had a conference for a short period of time while i waited in the um lobby and the guy was really nice about it he came out and apologized he said well we um can't hire you and i said well what's the reason that everything else checks out and he said well you didn't tell us about your past and i said well what does that have to do with my job and he says well honestly the things that they said about you were not sure that we're able to trust you wow that was the closest that i show them the receiving employment so during the time when i met reginald that seemed like my only option and i didn't want to revert back to i guess using my my body as a means of providing for me and my children but that ended up it ended up that that was the situation that i was in with with reginald and it started out as you know i'll pay the rent and i'll have to get caught up and we'll just keep everything platonic but eventually um he requested sex of me and i and i gave in to him and it became more than that so i'm pressured by not being able to tell him no because i lived with him and i was really depressed at that time because i felt like well this is my only option like where is my life leading like if i'm never going to get an opportunity to be anything else other than what they've labeled me as or what i've allowed myself to be in the past how am i gonna ever move forward so i started saving my money and i started back escorting and i was saving my money up and regimen knew this but he was very jealous about it so this creates another issue because he wanted the money for his rent but on the other hand he didn't want me doing um performance for others because he was jealous so he would go into these fits of rage where he was fighting against his own desires i guess you know wanting money versus wanting his his so-called girlfriend to himself right i say yeah so the night of april the 2nd going into april the 3rd was his breaking point he saw me talking to an officer outside of the apartment and i didn't know at the time but i was told later that he was getting his cousin to shoot heroin into his back and that's why he had those swords on his back he was telling me that they came from his work from being a painter that he was getting scars and stuff and i'm kind of naive when it comes to drugs because i've never done them but i was hearing a lot of rumors later that he was addicted to heroin as well as alcohol wow okay so that would have explained a lot of the anger and the uh i don't know personality changes that i experienced with him that night he went into this rage and he said well i was told that you were bringing other men into the apartment i said well where is all this coming from and we were discussing this while the police officer was standing in the parking lot he said that's it i'm done with you he said get over here right now so we can talk and and i'm tired of you talking to me and i'm done with this even you stop talking to him and get over here and talk to me or we're done and i said all right you just calm down so the officer told me well y'all take that in the house i don't want y'all arguing outside and i said well i've never seen him act like this i knew the officer from the past so i was able to address him by his first name on carlos i'm afraid of reginald tonight because he's never acted like this in this in this way like he's had rage before but he's never done it like in front of people and yeah like he was literally yelling to the top of his lungs did the officer respond to you when you said that you were afraid no he just told me to go in the house and try to calm him down got it okay keep going please so we get into the house and he looks outside and he's waiting for the officer to leave so as soon as the officer leaves then he comes back and he says well i don't want you talking to me and i don't want you bringing me into the house and i said well i'm not bringing this and he said well somebody told me that you were and i don't believe you he said you're already sleeping with these men i'm leaving i'm not i'm not dealing with this person i'm leaving and he said you're not going anywhere you're not going out to sleep with these men you're not going to i said i'm not going to sleep again i'm just my kids that are around the corner um in my friend's house and he said you're not leaving you're not going out of this house he said i'm tired he said don't you understand that i love you don't you love me and i said yes i love you but not in that way and then that's when he slapped me and that's when things went downhill from there okay when i started to tell him how i moved in with him and how things escalated and i felt like i didn't want to be there anymore he hit me and i failed and i tried to get back up but as soon as i got up and started arguing with him he hit me again so i ran to the back of the apartment and he wrestled with me and he hit me a few more times and i landed on the bed and he um he got on top of me and we we said some more words back and forth as soon as he got up i went into the bathroom and i locked myself in the bathroom i don't know i guess i was in there maybe about five or ten minutes when i heard banging on the door and he said open the door i know you're calling me and i know you're in there calling me and i said i'm i'm not i said i'm i'm i need help i said you have my phone i said i can't call anybody and the next thing i knew the door flew open and he grabbed me up by my hair and pulled me out of the bathroom he said that nobody could have me but him and that he knew i was trying to leave him and he knew that i was saving money up to leave him he threatened to pour boiling water on my face and he started choking me so i ran i was i crawled behind the mattress and he left so i just laid there and i was trying to figure out a way to get from the back from the bedroom to the door because it said oh there's only one way to the door and that through the narrow hallway leading from the bedroom the only way i was able to get to the door was to go past him so i was just sitting there crying and he came back and started throwing knocks at the at me from the mattress and he said come out come out of there come out of there and keep yelling at me sorry can i ask you a question you had said that you were hiding behind the mattress was that correct yeah was the mattress on the floor for some reason or off the bed yeah um when i when we came into the bedroom from the living room when the argument first started i laid on the bed after he hit me the second time in the bedroom i fell back onto the bed and when i fell back he tried to pull me off of the bed and so when he tried to pull me off on my feet i grabbed the mattress and i came off with the mattress and then i ran into the bathroom i see okay that makes sense thank you i'm sorry to interrupt it's been so long ago and i try to block these things out so it's like when i tell what happened it's like throw like i try to separate my emotions from what really happened because it upsets me so bad afterwards because i start to see things the way they happen even after i talk about it it's really hard i'm sure i'm sorry take your time yeah so he pulled me out of the bathroom and when he was pulling my hair i could feel my hair actually separating from my scalp it was very painful and i was trying to like grab his hand while he was pulling my hair i think that was to me that was more traumatic than even the hitting because i could actually feel the ripping like on my scalp while he was pulling my hair and there was nothing i could do to get installed so um i tried to hide behind the mattress i didn't know what to do on my first thought were where my kids they were about three blocks away uh from the apartment at a friend's house so the only thing that i kept thinking about was oh my god what if my kids don't get to see me alive what if they never get to see me again at the time kayla was three anna was 10 and rj was 11. and i just i was trying to like picture my friend telling my kids like your mom is dead and you're never gonna see her again i just couldn't imagine my kids being without me because i'm all that they've ever known i've always tried to do my best to make sure they had everything that they needed in the face even though they wanted so i just couldn't imagine life without him sitting under the mattress trying to figure out how am i going to get out of this apartment um so he's yelling at me um come out come out of there come out of there we need to talk um i opened the house to you i was good to you and your kids i i'll let you have my room in my bed and i slept on the couch and you're going to do this to me and he was just i looked into his eyes and then i couldn't i couldn't see him like all i could see was anger right and then i saw that he had the knives that were in the kitchen um he had the whole wooden block with all the knives on there and he just started throwing them at me and um she said go ahead and dug blend up you can't hide from me i'm gonna find you and next thing i know he's pushing the mattress to the side and then he straddles me and gets on top of me he said i'm gonna pour a bowl of water on your face and nobody's gonna be able to recognize you because you don't do this to me um you betrayed me and i was good to you it's like he said um if you can't if you can't be loyal to me um you don't deserve to live after all that i've done for you so it just seemed like the natural thing to do to pick up one of the knives and jab them in the side with it to try to get away from him so i stabbed him in the side with the knife and i tried to get up when i tried to get up he grabbed my shirt and tore my shirt um as i was trying to get away from him and i stumbled a couple of times but i was able to get out of the door he chased me down the steps and through the woods and when i was on the other side of the woods i looked back and i heard the leaves for us when but i couldn't see him so i just kept running and i went to my friend's house and knocked on the door and she opened the door and i was just crying i couldn't tell what was going on because i was so hysterical and she said oh my god crystal i knew something bad was happening i just knew it i couldn't sleep the kids couldn't sleep and um i just went into her apartment and fell on the floor and i guess it was about five minutes later as i was trying to tell them what happened my um friend said you have to call the police so i said i can't i don't know what to say i said they're going to blame me because they're already judging me because of who i am i don't know what to say i'm afraid i was afraid to even call the police because the police were just at my apartment and they didn't do anything right my daughter my daughter ended up calling the police for me and she told them my mom been abused she's been here and via our boyfriend he tried to kill her and she stabbed him and the police came and they didn't say anything um ask me any questions they said where's crystal mangum and my friend sat over there on the floor and she just shook her head and um the officers came over and put the handcuffs on me and said you're under arrest let's go and as i was in the car i was trying to tell them my face was hurting and it felt like my teeth were loose um like my front tooth was getting ready to come out it was hurting really bad and my lip was swollen so i was telling the officers that um so there's blood in my hair uh my lips hurting i said i think i need to see a doctor and the officer just looked at me and laughed and he said nope you're fine and slammed the door and i was just i was just sitting there like oh my god i can't believe this was happening like i felt like just thrown away like a youth would stall i've just been abused and beat by the one person that said that they would help me and protect me and then the police are not doing anything and i just thought well this was nothing left for me and i just at that point i just felt so helpless and it was even hard for me to cry because i felt like nobody would hear me and nobody was listening and nobody cared especially when the officers looked at me and laughed i felt like this was not you like there's just no use nobody's gonna care i mean i've seen the pictures and it was obvious that you sustained injuries to your face did they ever provide you with medical assistance no and in about a week after i was in county jail it got worse before it got better and i asked them to take pictures of it because the bruises weren't really they didn't really show the full effect until like a week later um as they were healing they turned darker and i asked the um ask them to take pictures of it but they said that they asked my attorney and at the time my attorney was putting in and he didn't even see me for another two weeks so i was pretty much just in the jail suffering was you know they wouldn't even give me tylenol i mean they treated me really bad because they felt like well she deserves this because she lied on those frostboys it's just like almost like they already had um a um an idea about who i was and that i deserved the position that i was in [Music] care of is a wellness brand that makes it easy to maintain your health goals with a customized vitamin plan that helps you feel your best today and supports you long term megan you know how much i love the little sayings on my vitamin packs every day i do and i love them now too they're so cute so this morning i learned that every 10 days your taste buds are regenerated ah that was mine this morning oh really yeah and i was like wow i didn't know that it's so cute i love it news honestly having the little tower of vitamins right next to the coffee machine every morning it's just become part of my routine it's perfect what i really appreciated was the super simple and easy quiz that i took online that helped tailor my vitamin packets to my lifestyle i feel like i'm able to get the vitamins that best suit my needs all of carob's products are formulated with good for you clean ingredients that are backed by science care of is super transparent about the research and sourcing behind each of their products your recommendations come in daily individually wrapped packets that are perfect for getting back into a routine i have to agree get a personally tailored approach to your unique health needs for fifty percent off your first care of order go to take care of dot com and enter code women and crime fifty for fifty percent off your first care of order go to take care of dot com and enter code women and crime fifty that's women and d crime five zero if your happy place is anywhere where you can have a cold drink in your hand then you need to check out blendjet the secret to creating fantastic drinks in fantastic places blendjet is the original portable blender that makes it easy to create a fresh meal anytime anywhere no matter where you go if you have your blend jet you're only ever 20 seconds from a fresh protein shake it can even make cocktails salad dressing omelets salsa baby food and more where was this when my kids were young i know right i also like how quiet it is megan i've had blenders that wake up the neighbors and let me tell you what this is perfect for this is perfect for our camping trip yes i am so excited we could do breakfast and then we can do cocktails i i know i mean i'm literally excited to put it in my camping gear and this is just done we now have like so many more options with drinks blend jet is compact and lightweight around the same size as your favorite water bottle but it packs big blender power plus you can use it every day for two weeks before charging with any standard usb port blend jet comes in 16 fun colors and is the perfect gift for anyone in your life i use blend yet and you should too go to blendjet.com women right now to save an extra 12 percent save an extra 12 percent at blendjet.com women [Music] did you speak with the police at all or did you just go with your attorneys and stay quiet until your trial um they have been in the interrogation room for about two hours maybe three hours it happened at one o'clock and by the time i got to the police station it was about two o'clock before everything was over um so they kept me in the police station until about six o'clock that morning so it was about three hours that i just sat there i didn't like i said i just had no tears i was in shock and the officer there um i i think i asked him for some water or something and he said i can't give you anything and i said um i don't care what they say about you i think you're okay and they recorded that one statement that i said in the interrogation room and made it seem like i was nonchalant about it they played that during my trial um how long did you have to wait until your trial was it 20 22 months i mean were you given bail at first they set my bail at nobel for two weeks because it was i mean 48 hours i'm sorry because it was domestic violence they said and then after two days or 48 hours it was um a million dollars and then after i think maybe about six months i guess it was reduced to 500 000 and then another six months i think it was reduced to 300 eventually when they reduced it to 200 000 i was able to get out but how long did that take about 22 months that's what i was waiting on million dollars very high what was the charge they charged me on april 18th which was um what 15 days after the incident happened they charged me with what the initial charge was assault was deadly with intended kill and that was on april 3rd but they charged me with the murder charge on april 18 and in order to upgrade it to the first degree murder charge they also charged me with larcenia chosen action which was um due to some money orders that i had in my purse written out to the apartment complex where we lived and so they used that to upgrade it yeah um they were trying to get the capital get capital punishment um so in order to there's a what's called a felony murder rule so in order to charge someone with first degree murder there has to be um proof that well if there's proof that another crime or another felony was in commission while the murder charge while the murder occurred that it could be automatically determined as first-degree murder so they were trying to find the easiest route to charge me with first-degree murder i know the felony murder rule well and i would advocate for getting rid of it or abolishing it at this point it allows for for real abuses in my opinion when you did go to trial um crystal what was your trial strategy um my lawyer was adamant about self-defense so that's what my attorney argued and i was asking some people you know asking around like how can he argue self-defense and they said well in extenuating circumstances they will accept the self-defense but it's really hard to prove so out of everything else for him to choose self-defense i think was the wrong angle and i argued that with him even during the trial but he said that was the best strategy because the medical evidence was um [Music] not admissible his medical evidence behind this going forward what did you think i'm sorry just out of curiosity what did you think the argument should have been or your strategy should have been you had 60 seconds remaining i feel that it should have been um medical malpractice okay i see and that was because the hospital um intubated him incorrectly is is that right yes and this is i mean it's impossible for him to have died 13 days later and for them not to make a connection you have 30 seconds remaining the stab wound and his death i feel like i was i was fed up i do okay um can you call me back yeah um so let me get right back into it you were discussing the cause of death of mr day and you were saying that it wasn't really the stab wound that caused his death but rather it was something the hospital did can you just explain that yeah so when um reginald was admitted to the hospital he had two diagnoses one was the sample and the other was delirium trimming the sample was determined to be not life-threatening the delirium tremens however is life-threatening and that's from withdrawal from alcohol is that correct yeah he was he was a chronic um alcohol um user he used every day and i guess i didn't know that he also was addicted to heroin so i'm not sure that they treated him appropriately because i know in his medical records when they asked him if he had had anything to drink or if he had ingested any drugs he said no and that was in his medical record or went further into those issues or not so they treated him with ativan for his agitation and three days after his hospitalization he was getting ready to be discharged and he started getting more agitated and um his blood pressure dropped and so they were trying to figure out if he had a plural effusion or an infection or what was causing him to be agitated so they put him to sleep and they tried to intubate him but instead of putting the tube into his trachea and place it in his esophagus and whenever you place a tube into the trachea i know because i read up on this while i was in jerry jail whenever you place a tube into the um esophagus you have to open up the airway otherwise you cut off all the air supply to the body to the lungs so they didn't open up his airway when they placed the tube into his esophagus accidentally and they cut off all of the oxygen to his brain and his lungs so he was without oxygen for 20 seconds and at that point it was too late to um provide his brain cells they realized the mistake they corrected it but it was too late so the agitation caused them to intubate him but even with the agitation he wasn't in a precarious situation where he would have died what caused him to be in that position what was the mistaking information understood thank you for the explanation what did the medical examiner determine was the cause of death basic complications complications due to a stab wound or complications due to something else uh i think you said complications due to the staff am i correct that the medical examiner was fired just days before your trial for mishandling other cases yeah he was gonna he was actually under investigation before my trial and then um two days three days into my trial they were going to fire him but are they um the judge ordered that they put that they um not investigate him until after my trial was over and then afterwards he was fired is that correct yes and he was a star witness at your trial also yes right and um there was a 18-page report that the judge being relevant to my case concerning his mishandling of the case that he was fired for there was um 18 pages that were relevant to my case that the judge ordered relevant my attorney had a chance to see them and he said they weren't important but i knew i didn't get a chance to see those records and i i really feel like that there was exonerating information in those records you've requested access several times is that correct i have and i was told that they're confidential have you ever acted as your own attorney a couple of times i realized that even though i don't have the expertise as my own attorney i was able to get access to certain records like the dr christina roberts did a study of dr nichols autopsy and she determined that there were flaws in his report i wasn't able to get her report until i claimed to represent myself so even though i wasn't prepared and i wasn't legally ready to represent myself that was the only way that i could get access to my own records i see and your attorneys didn't feel that they could press the medical defense at trial no he said that they that they wouldn't make a difference and that they were confidential and the day family would be able to contest it were you offered a plea deal crystal yes i was offered a plea deal for time served and 10 years probation but i was so confident that the justice system would finally um see things from a factual standpoint and i guess i was more so not confident about hoping so you didn't take the plea deal because you wanted to exonerate yourself yeah i was i was hoping that the traditional system wouldn't let me down again unfortunately i was wrong i understand do you think your lawyers fully advocated for you no i my case is very political and i think a lot of people were afraid i think my attorneys were afraid to lose their job because they work for the state and the people in power like governor roy cooper who was attorney general at the time was strongly against me and i don't know i just feel like he positioned once what happened to um michael nyson to happen to them and he was used as an example of what could happen the media i feel is is mainly responsible for the outcome of my case as well and that's kind of what i i really wanted to discuss how he has played a big role in suppressing factual information that would help my case and releasing the information that's false that hurt my case on october the 25th dr phil wett wrote a report saying that reginald dave's death was due to medical malpractice or accident resulting from um medical malpractice and not from the sad one on november 25th dr wett was able to get a skype interview with cbs the 20-minute interview with bill young and they didn't they actually didn't air it because it was so powerful and factually based dr wett didn't provide his his individual opinion everything was based on the prosecution's discovery and he came to the conclusion that there were several things wrong with the original autopsy and sentence nichols didn't provide any photographs of the of the supposed injuries and then he said that six different organs were injured and then he changed it on this on the stand he went against his own autopsy report and said that only one organ i think was injured which was his sleeve and that he died from complications of the sample that it was possibly an infection which doesn't it is nowhere in his medical records where it says that he had an infection dr wet's report went unreported he um he wrote the report on october 25th and today the media has forget to report anything on dr whitt's report the contrary they did report that dave's death was a stabbing death all throughout the pre-trial the time period before my child they reported that jay smith was a stabbing death they reported that they died due to complications of a stab wound do you think that's because that's what they were being fed or that's what they're being told or do you think they were intentionally painting you differently well i think that the media should report on facts and and not what they were told and if they would would have looked at his medical records then they would have saw that the autopsy hadn't taken place at the time where they called it the stabbing dead the autopsy was still in question so i think that the media has a responsibility to check their facts before they report anything but i also think that they were persuaded by those in power to report to have bias reporting also there was a narrative from the duke lacrosse case that i lied about the charges about pressing charges against the lacrosse players and so i feel like that the media didn't look at the facts in this case because they went on on the um old preconceived notions that i was guilty before looking at the facts i also wanted to say that i think that we're in an era now where the media has a lot of control over people's lives and that they report based on what the mainstream society feels and a lot of times mainstream society is persuaded by those in power and i think the only way to actually get women's voices and victims voices heard is to start groups designed to help women heal unless we come together as victims i think there's really not much that society is going to do to help we have this notion that you know whenever a crime is being committed that people are going to be brought into justice on the one hand and then on the other hand we have a notion where we blame the victim for the crime that took place but i think the only way to cause change is to help women heal i would agree with that as well for sure i actually think that that there should be groups um here in prison because a lot of women in prison um have been abused and a lot of crimes are a result of that abuse whether it's in the past or before they were incarcerated i think that groups that have helped that help women heal a lot of crimes especially sexual crimes but also physical crimes go unreported and they go unprosecuted for whatever reasons a lot of times women deal with substance abuse which i dealt with alcoholism for some time and it kind of crowded my judgment on a lot of things with the original day case and also with the cross case and because of that my word wasn't taken at face value and i think that i don't think that people should look into a woman's past and what she's done before i think it should i think that crimes should be investigated based on facts alone and not on mental illness or substance abuse or other factors because that's when we get into blaming the victims we teach about this all the time to be honest try to dispel some of these myths or these preconceived notions that people have and i also know that you're right about it you know just statistically about 80 of women who are incarcerated have a history of being abused and that's a very uh high number certainly higher than the general population so i agree with a lot of what you said here when when a crime is committed and people are victimized like in my situation where i was beaten and abused by reginald and he didn't receive any any legal ramifications from it i think that it sends a message that it was okay for that to happen i think it sends a message that that our legal system is is not fair as being a being a female and not having a lot of political power or financial means people don't really relate to fighting or standing up for me but i mean if we don't stand up for injustice when it concerns anyone eventually it can happen to anyone i think that you know when african americans first came to this country we were slaves and now we're free and things are getting better but eventually people that don't stand for good and don't have strong morals or strong values i think eventually it's just going to get worse and even worse where people in power are going to be able to turn against each other and it's just gonna all come down to who has the most money and who's able to convince the most people whether you're right or wrong and we have a duty i think as people to make sure that that the truth comes out do you think that you would have received the same trial or punishment if you had not been known as the duke lacrosse accuser definitely not definitely not even when it come when it comes down to that night i don't think that the police officers would have been hostile towards me before they even knocked on the door i mean it was pretty obvious that they had already formed a judgment because there were there were at least 30 police cars in the parking lot when i had called for help so right then i knew that the situation was stacked against me and then just all went downhill from there just taking back to the trial for a minute milton walker testified at trial at your trial that you had previously threatened him with a knife is that true and if not why would he make that up it's not um neilson walker is he's been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and the prosecution knew that and they played on his weakness and i think that that was very cool of them what they did by placing them on the stand they probably threatened him because he smoked marijuana and they probably threatened to level charges against him for things that were probably in his record and i think that he did it out of fear i honestly think that he was being manipulated by the prosecution did you ever speak to him after that no i have and i pray for him often because he is very troubled i also had read that he did not want to testify or he was reluctant to testify yeah it was really sad he was very confused it was almost faithful too painful for me to watch he was so confused and i knew he was being manipulated it kind of made me angry because i knew that the prosecution was so fixed on having me convicted that they would use anything did they go too far in the trial did they cross lines i believe so um investigator bond was an investigator on the duke lacrosse case and her partner was investigator hyman and investigator hyman was one of the investigators that really stood behind me he was with mike nyfong and saying yes something happened you may not be able to verbally um talk about what happened because of the trauma but we know something happened we have the evidences here so investigator bond was upset because investigator hyman was fired for trying to stand up for me so she had a vendetta out on me from the beginning and she was the investigator who pressed the charges against me for the murder and the um larceny chosen action they had uh i think at least seven or eight police officers testify against me concerning milton walker case about things that weren't true they said i had a knife in my hand that was not true i was nowhere near a knife i never threatened to stab milton walker at all the evidence should not have even been admitted during trial as a matter of fact the police officers in that case were also abusive to me they pushed me down on the floor they put their foot on my back investigator titus or officer titus placed his foot on my back after i told him that i had had a spinal tap and they were they were very mean to me you have 60 seconds remaining all of my dealings with the police have been very hostile when he kept saying stop resisting stop resisting when i never did anything to resist sounds like you had a rough go of it yes it's very frustrating i just want people to know that it's important we'll have 30 seconds remaining it's important that the truth comes out about my case because if the truth doesn't come out concerning me then other people will eventually be affected by it whether they want to or not thank you crystal thank you for your time i think we covered everything all right amy now you've heard the interview with crystal gail and i and i'm sure we have a lot to discuss yes let me add a few other details though because there's a couple of things that i think are important here first i'd like to begin with self defense in north carolina there's a lot of caveats to self-defense the stand your ground laws but one of the instances in which it is unreasonable to use self-defense is when the person whom the force is used against is lawfully in their own home and reginald day was clearly lawfully in his own home meaning that you cannot use self-defense against somebody if it's in their own home under the law it's not considered self-defense if someone was in so is that why hers was not considered self-defense well it was one of the things the jury had to consider her team said no no we've got to press on with self-defense because even though there's this exception there's an exception to that exception and there's going to be this is extenuating circumstances that's a very strange caveat it's a very in their home in their place of employment and and i think in their vehicle have you heard of that in other states i've never heard of this before and it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in other states i'm surely not an expert i mean the only places i know really well are new york new jersey and maybe florida but but it's just not common no this is very uncommon and i think this was one of the problems initially to self-defense i don't understand how this is she was possible she was allowed to be there she was her home as well it was her home as well but it was his technically and he was on he was the one paying the rent or but he's regardless even if it's her home it's his home too so he's still lawfully in his own home but is there not a caveat that says if it's in your own home then you can use self-defense do you see what i'm saying like i'm wondering if it works both ways it possibly does i know this was one of the problems that she saw in using self-defense i just want to point out that as i always tell my students every time you talk about these little intricacies of these statutes it just shows you how you can never know what's going to happen in a case because there are so many exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions and i think this is a great example of one of those i mean i teach that all the time too obviously when we're talking about like fourth amendment like yeah good faith searches oh you know this can't be used except when it's made in good faith or when it's you know an emergency of course okay so that's complicated obviously and it complicates her defense and i see i see the problem with that um and this is why when we talked when i talked to her she said look i was really pushing for the medical defense to come in because i thought it seemed much more obvious that i didn't murder him that his death was not caused from the stabbing and she felt that her lawyers should have advocated for her more in that regard was she charged with aggravated assault and also manslaughter she was charged initially with aggravated assault yes a deadly weapon and then when he died they charged her with but did you hear this too they charged her with first degree murder first degree because they said it was um felony murder um can you explain the felony murder rule sure the felony murder rule which i believe is often used inappropriately says that if anyone dies during the commission of a felony you two are responsible for meaning if you are responsible for the initial felony you're responsible for any murder that comes out of that felony so the way that they used this against her was that she had money orders so they were charging her also with like oh and that was a felony and so they used that as the it was in commission of that felony to charge her but actually one had nothing to do with the other and i don't even know that it was a crime she said that it was money orders like that they used for the house that she was holding in our pocketbook for him so had it not been for that they would have still pursued they would have pursued probably murder two or manslaughter exactly they were now going even higher yes i and i mean i think this only exemplifies the problem with felony murder i think felony murder is one of the worst rules we have it should be abolished it should never be used it's inappropriately used and it is it's an abusive power and you heard that she said that it would have been a capital case that's incredible i i think that's terrible to be honest and i think that was totally an abuse overreached by the prosecutor in my opinion next issue the medical examiner was fired four days before crystal's trial for mishandling evidence in other cases they let him stay on crystal set if you heard that to testify in her trial but he was dismissed after that and there was actually talk about criminal charges as well so they let him testify knowing that this would be his last trial before he's out the door yes and even though they did the judge know about this yeah he said it was admissible there was this issue too he he said it was admissible but there was an issue they had flagged like what he did wrong in his personnel files and they the judge sealed it made it available i guess to crystal's lawyer and the prosecutor but then sealed it and wouldn't make it available to anyone else so crystal doesn't even know what the issues were she tried to get her hands on that report for a while saying it'd be you know would have been really important to our defense and definitely to her appeal to know how he missed he mishandled evidence and that was the accusation and then he was testifying at trial so i think at the very least we have to be skeptical of his findings i absolutely agree she was also able to get cyril wecht to review the case and prepare his findings or report with his findings did he do a pro bono do you know because i can't imagine he has a small price tag because he is the expert of that he did not do it pro bono he didn't he doesn't have a small price tag at all but nor should he because he's brilliant no for those of you who don't know him dr wecht is considered one of the nations and maybe even beyond that leading forensic pathologist in fact he was he served as the president of the academy of forensic sciences um he's written numerous books and he's really just top of the field he also opines on like the jfk assassination findings for people who might know him from that okay so what did wecht find i was really curious i was provided with her reports and i read everything he analyzed the injuries he he had the reports from the duke hospital which is where mr day was being treated and where he passed away he analyzed findings from the medical examiner was he asked to just speak on the cause of death not necessarily on self-defense correct correct yes just literally looking at the cause of death at trial she was convicted of second-degree murder because the medical examiner the one who was fired from his handling evidence said the cause of death was complications due to a stab wound which means the stab wound is what triggered the death okay well here's what yeah here's what sarah wecht said i i was like i'm reserving opinion until i read what someone who's reviewed everything in someone whose opinion you know we can rely on wecht said that mr day underwent surgical repair for a small splenic and colon injury and a few days after the surgery he experienced delirium tremens which is alcohol withdrawal delirium it was well documented that he was um an alcoholic who was going through withdrawal he was going through severe withdrawal he further went on wex further went on that um in an episode of aspiration that he was having required that he be intubated but when the hospital staff at duke hospital intubated him they intubated him they put the tube in the esophagus rather than the trachea and as a result mr day suffered irreversible brain damage he lost oxygen for a certain amount of time and even though they corrected it it was a huge mistake it was too late when they corrected it the oxygen had been lost he had brain damage he went on to i guess a coma or you know when you you know he he was still living but he was no longer able to function it just occurred to me that the family would have likely filed a wrongful death suit but they had someone else they could have easily blamed for what happened crystal but i'm wondering did they file a civil suit against the hospital i think that there was civil suits i'm not sure who filed them but i definitely know that i read something about there being civil suits i'm just not sure who that came from despite changing the intubation to the trachea mr day did not recover and he died again 13 days later after his injuries dr wecht his final conclusion he took the official position that the cause of death was complications related to delirium tremens including aspiration due to alcohol withdrawal related to chronic alcoholism and that the manner of death was accident and not homicide which was vastly different than what the medical justice advocate i'm at this point i do believe that crystal should not have been charged in mr day's death but to play devil's advocate had it not been for the stab wound he would have never been away from the alcohol and never suffered the tremors hence never needed the intubation i think that's a very fair process so this is where things get a little tricky that's also an issue when you so when i'm teaching forensics that comes up with cause of death and um cause of death is the what what the event that precipitated it and was there usually they asked was there an unbroken chain of events or was it broken so in this case he actually explained wecht explains in his report this was a broken chain of events because he was recuperating and he was recuperating nicely and he would have but he could have been home drinking had it not been for her stabbing yes so i know it seems like it could have been hit by a bus he could have but you're absolutely right he would not have been in the hospital to have been intubated likely had he not been stabbed by her however officially if you're relying on cause of death and manner of death and he's declaring in an accident he's also saying that the hospital is negligent here yep that's just that's his opinion that if you had to blame someone you'd blame the hospital that's what wecht is saying and there was a couple other things from crystal's interview though that i wanted to talk about things that i was certainly bothered by and one of those was the treatment of her by the police officers uh upon her initial arrest i'm not sure if you heard yeah i saw the pictures we looked at the time crystal was injured you could see i mean were they the type of injuries that look life-threatening no but she i could see i remember um a fat lip and there were there were other obvious things that had happened she looked very disoriented it is not uncommon for someone to be arrested and receive medical treatment um but it's also not uncommon for police to treat women of color especially women of color who might be sex workers like this and someone who they also they knew who she was yeah and you heard that they knew who exactly who she was so i think that's one of the things that crystal suffered from notoriety but then she also discusses it and she's a black woman and she's a sex worker so she's going to be like that you know she's triply damned yeah and that really played against her but she she wasn't offered any medical treatment at the time or ever which was one of the things that really bothered me um about this case let's discuss some of our opinions here now that we've heard from crystal uh now that you've heard some of the reports i also read up just so you know a little bit more about the intubation and the damage and you know it's pretty well established in the literature that this was a huge mistake and i do believe that he would be alive but for not this mistake by the hospital in my opinion i really believe crystal gale was acting in self-defense and fear of her life the description of how much it hurt when she felt her hair separating from her scalp i don't know why but it just made me it made me think that she was just terrified and she's talking about my kids my kids i don't know if you recall from the original episode but reginald day admitted to hitting her he admitted to starting this violent attack on her and i think he was telling the truth but i don't think she stabbed him where their stories diverged was he said that he he had done this but then he was backing off and she was so angry she came at him and stabbed him her story was that he was so angry was still yelling at her she was hiding behind the mattress in the bedroom he was throwing knives at her and then he came at her to like actually attack her and that she was laying there as he was on top of her trying to choke her and she had a knife right there and stabbed him in the side her story seems to fit more with the evidence to me than his story to be perfectly honest of course i can't be sure but i think that even when we did this original episode we were like look he admitted to this violent attack on her isn't this self-defense i mean it wouldn't this be a clear case of self-defense had it not been her i believe so i think who she is is what made this turn into not self-defense i'm gonna say this i'm not gonna like opine or or give much about the duke lacrosse case i have no idea i just want to be clear whether crystal was attacked or not i've always thought of this case as a wrongful accusation and um that the the duke lacrosse kids were kind of exonerated but my opinion may have also been colored more by mike nyfung's illegal actions and not mango's testimony remember mike naifung was the prosecutor who would help brady violation correct um and it was it was really extreme so i'm not sure if my opinion is steered more by his actions or by hers i know there were inconsistencies with her statement so i'm not going to say i have no idea i'm not even going to attempt a position on that i do believe that the stigma attached to crystal though is the reason she was treated so harshly by the police and prosecutors and regardless of her arrest at the very least the police should have offered her medical treatment she was clearly hurt this would have been the standard for anyone else and in the end i believe that reginald day would not have been in the hospital again have it not been for the stab wound but i think that his cause of death was absolutely an accident due to medical mistakes and not a homicide those are my final conclusions on the case after re-reviewing all the materials i have and after interviewing mangum i'm still open amy final thought what are your thoughts on this i seem to be a little more hung up on not the self-defense because we know self-defense is tricky we saw that in the nicki adamando case we see it a lot it's it's very upsetting because we see a lot of domestic violence victims that then use self-defense and then we see the battered women syndrome and you know this case it's just so hard to talk about that because it's hard to know without being in the room what really went down true but i do think that even though you just said had it not been for the stabbing right then he wouldn't have you know been in the hospital and then he wouldn't have needed to be intubated however i don't think if i was on the jury i would have been able to convict on second-degree murder i think maybe aggravated assault possibly that was the initial charging it was aggravated assault which they upped it to murder when he died yes but i would i don't believe that they had the right to up it to murder and i also if i understand it correctly had it just been aggravated assault she'd be home by now absolutely and now she's practicing what another decade or so in prison she got 14 to 18 years she served about seven now i mean i don't think we're gonna release her earlier i think at least seven years is what she's probably facing because she'll get out a minimum of 14 i'm thinking and she did sorry she was offered a plea bargain and she didn't take the plea you heard that right so she was offered a plea deal to time served and that was after she had been in jail like 22 months she said so it's right around here got home to be with her children right then she could have gone home she was offered time served with 10 years probation she said she was adamant about not taking it because she was innocent she thought the system was going to get it right this time unfortunately a lot of innocent people take plea bargains thinking that everything will work out the way it should but obviously it's not i'm sure after the fact that she was convicted and sentenced 14 to 18 years she wished she would have taken that plea i mean maybe not maybe she still stands behind it because she's an innocent woman i don't know i wonder if her lawyers were strongly advising her to take the play i would imagine they were i think they were absolutely and most lawyers would that's you know that was uh i mean good for her for standing by principal but look where it got her yeah i'm not sure that this was justice served by any measure to be honest i don't i don't really believe that punishment of someone who i think was acting in self-defense is appropriate um well i know i don't believe that but whether or not uh we can be certain about it i think that the murder was an overreach and i think the prosecutors punished crystal for being christian yeah all right well that's everything i have for today thanks for joining us for this update thank you mike and i hope we get to see some justice for crystal women in crime is written and hosted by megan sachs and amy schlossberg our producer and editor is james varga our music is composed by dessert media if you enjoy the show you can get access to ad-free episodes exclusive amas and other bonus content for a small monthly contribution through patreon to find out more visit [Applause] [Music] [Applause] patreon.com [Music] [Applause] [Music] blendjet 2 is water resistant go to blendjet.com women right now to save an extra 12 percent save an extra 12 percent at blendjet.com women that's blendjet.com women w-o-m-e-n women a-n-d crime 5-0