Kouri Richins to Stand Trial / Robert Telles GUILTY / Karen Read Gets Sued & More!

Overview he made statements to his friends this idea of I think my wife is trying to poison me now is that hearsay absolutely he is making a statement he is not he is not present in court to testify to it obviously he's making a statement is out of court statement and it is being offered for the truth of the matter asserted that's what makes it heay if it wasn't being offered for its truth then what's the relevance of it Utah mother and notorious grief author Corey richens accused of poisoning her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl has been ordered to stand trial for his murder plus Vegas politician Robert teus has been found guilty for the stabbing death of an investigative journalist despite his personal pleas to the jury during 3 days of grueling testimony and the family of Boston police officer John O'Keefe have decided to take matters into their own hands by filing a lawsuit against Karen Reed for wrongful death all this and more this week on courtroom confidential [Music] it has been one of those weeks folks there is so much going on a lot to cover and so much going on from different sides of the uh legal field I mean we've got cases that are just beginning at preliminary hearing stage we've got cases that now have verdicts we've got cases that have gone from Criminal to civil uh and are continuing to be criminal um but we're going to jump jump into all of that and cover as much of the interesting um aspects of each of those as we can so let's go ahead and begin with a Utah mother of three who Kouri Richins Must Stand Trial published a children's book about grief after her husband's death and was later accused of fatally poisoning him will stand trial a judge ruled this week Utah State judge Richard mzik ruled on the second day of Corey Rich's preliminary hearing that the prosecutors had presented enough evidence against her to proceed with a jury trial prosecutors say in March of 2022 richen slipped five times the lethal dose of fentanyl into a Moscow Mule cocktail that her husband Eric Richard drank before dying at their home in a small mountain town near Park City the second day of her preliminary hearing centered around an additional attempted murder charge filed earlier this year that accused her of slipping fentanyl into her husband's sandwich on Valentine's Day of 2022 causing a severe but not fatal reaction prosecutor Brad Bloodworth argued the state's theory that Cory richens learned lessons during the first unsuccessful attempt under her husband's life that helped her carry out the killing 17 days later in written testimony two friends of Eric richens recounted phone conversations from the day prosecutors say he was first poisoned by his wife of 9 years after injecting himself with his son's EpiPen and chugging a bottle of badro he awoke from a deep sleep and told a friend I think my wife tried to poison me charging documents alleg defense attorneys Kathy Nester and Wendy Lewis argued that because police never found fentanyl in the richens home detectives could not be certain the drugs that Corey allegedly bought from their housekeeper match those found in Eric richen system these are great trial arguments razik responded but ultimately decided that the arguments were not strong enough to make the case that there was not probable cause to proceed to trial Cory richen sat expressionless as the judge delivered the news that a jury would soon decide her fate her trial is set to begin April 28th of 2025 all right what's happening here first I think it's really important to understand what a preliminary hearing really is and what it is not a preliminary hearing or a prelim is what we call a probable cause hearing every single state handles this a little bit differently a lot of States handle it by way of indictment many many states handle it by way of a preliminary hearing all of them essentially function in the same way and what that is is the idea that you cannot be charged according to our constitution with a felony or misdemeanor any crime quite frankly but we're dealing with felonies here without a judge an independent arbitrator an independent review of that evidence taking place to determine that there is enough probable cause to quot quote unquote hold that person or bind that person over for trial meaning we are putting past the days when we wrote the Constitution of people just getting arrested and locked up and held for forever with zero evidence now we're saying you have to show your hand the prosecution has to present some evidence to a judge to show that there's quote unquote probable cause to to hold this person to answer at trial probable cause is a much lower standard than Beyond A Reasonable Doubt obviously and because of that a prelim is a much shorter hearing and you're not going to have it in front of a jury it's only in front of a judge and it's not going to present all of the evidence and there's a lot of different shortcuts in some of the rules for instance hearsay rules in California where I practice uh there is a rule that allows for a police officer to testify to almost any hearsay many times in a prelim in California you will see one officer get up and testify to what nearly every other officer did this officer uh found the weapon that officer collected the weapon that officer spoke to the defendant all of these different things and you'll have one police officer testify to all of it and it's a way of fast tracking this process because I like I said the same evidentiary rules don't apply at a prelim because we're not dealing with locking someone up forever we're only dealing with the concept of binding them over for trial and we want to be able to kind of streamline these things so that the whole system doesn't get clogged up at the prelim level in Utah they do a little bit of the same thing in regards to hearsay in in that their rules are the best way to put it a little bit more flexible and some things are allowed to come in that might not otherwise come in at a trial one of those things happened here with Eric Rich's friends he made statements to his friend friends this idea of I think my wife is trying to poison me now is that hearsay absolutely um he is making a statement he is not he is not present in court to testify to it obviously he's making a statement is outof Court statement and it is being offered for the truth of the matter asserted that what that's what makes it heay if it wasn't being offered for its truth then what's the relevance of it so its only relevance is the idea that he believed that and actually believed that's what she was trying to do and that's the whole reason the prosecution wants it in front of a jury now they got it in that prelim the question becomes will they get it in at trial well as you know hearsay um doesn't necessarily mean it's not coming in there's there's exceptions to hearsay we have the dying declaration uh statement if he felt and they can argue that at the time he was making that statement he actually believed he was dying perhaps then there's some trustworthiness to it this is all what hearsay is about is trustworthiness of the statement I don't think that argument will win dying declaration it could be his State of Mind what was he thinking of the time he was talking to someone and he thought his wife was going to kill him and therefore he uh adjusted his insurance policies or therefore he spoke to his business partners about plans in case he died those might be um a reason to allow it in because you could understand why he took next steps based upon his current state of mind also a current just statement of someone's existing physical state if somebody says oh my God my stomach hurts that's usually the kind of hearsay exception that we might allow in because they're giving this almost kind of contemporaneous um expression of how they're feeling the problem in this case and why I think a judge might really scrutinize it is like I said hear say comes back back to trustworthiness but in every decision a judge makes he's weighing two things he's weighing the probative value of that evidence against its prejudicial value and many times those things could be can be high on either side as we're dealing with here the probative value of Eric richen saying I think my wife is trying to kill me is huge as far as the prosecution is concerned in this case but if that statement lacks certain amount of of trustworthiness because of perhaps it running a skew of the hearsay rules does its prejudicial value the way that it would hurt the defense case outweigh its probative value I know we're really getting into the weeds here I guess the the long and short of it of what the point I'm trying to make is this these statements are incredibly powerful the prosecution wants them in they got them in for the purposes of prelim but this could be a real GameChanger on whether or not they get those statements in at trial and that is to yet to be determined because even the judge himself said he's going to wait to decide that issue all right what do you guys think though that's what I really want to hear do you think this evidence is as crucial to the prosecution case as I think that it is please let me know in the Robert Telles GUILTY comments moving on a former Las Vegas county official was found guilty on Wednesday of murdering a longtime investigative reporter who wrote articles critical of him Robert taus hung his head shaking it slightly from side to side as the verdict was read a panel of seven women and five men found tus guilty of first-degree murder in the September 2022 slaying the jury spent nearly 12 hours over the course of 3 days deliberating until reaching a guilty verdict and then deliberated for just over an hour before determining that taus should spend life in prison with the possibility of Parole in 20 years jurors weighed 8 days of testimony from dozens of witnesses including detectives forensic experts and those who knew teus along with 3 days of testimony from tus himself tus gave a narrative testimony to the jury without being interrupted by his attorney before facing cross-examination by prosecutors if you would like a more indepth discussion of this testimony I did two videos where we went through all of his testimony reacting to it uh and giving commentary on how effective or not it was if you'd like to check those out available on the channel now prosecutor Christopher Hamner told jurors during closing arguments Monday that Tas blamed Gman for destroying his career ruining his reputation and threatening his marriage he said Gan fought to the death with his attacker and reminded them that DNA that matched tees was found beneath garan's fingernails te age 47 will return for sentencing scheduled for October 16th What's Happening Here I don't have a whole lot to say about this other than you just never know what jurors are thinking I have been doing this long enough to know that I do not know what juries are thinking one of the favorite Pas times of trial attorneys aside from doing trial is trying to read the Tea Leaves of what jurors could possibly be thinking and to me this case was a slam dunk to me the the the evidence in this case was overwhelming I mean you had you know the the videotape evidence that captures the killer wearing a hat fragments of that cut up hat are found inside ta's home the getaway vehicle matches a vehicle registered to ta's wife the the high motivation Factor on and on on on on on and if that wasn't enough if all of that wasn't enough the defendant's DNA is found under the fingernails of the victim two people who had no reason on Earth to ever meet each other other than taus taking this man's life during a stabbing to me that's a a rock solid case and it took the jurors 3 days to arrive at that during that time they they had some questions one of their questions was how do you zoom in on on a video I can only imagine what it was like for the prosecutors as this was going on they must have been pulling the hairs out of their head to think what are these people thinking where what question could they possibly have where did we fall short why in the world do they want to reexamine this evidence and zoom in on the video and there was a lot of discussion and I follow your comments online and the comments that you leave on the channel about an argument that the defense made in closing arguments about the silhouette profile of the driver of the getaway vehicle and whether or not that looked like the defendant and there was some discussion made by the defense or argument made by the defense that that person in the videotape there that profile has hair and you take a look at the defendant and he obviously has no hair one of his distinguishing features his his bald head was that the question was that a good question was that something that maybe made jurors think twice about this could be but the answer is who knows who knows what they were really hung up about they obviously um were diligent and I'm not criticizing them uh I'm just remarking on the fact that sometimes you have a case that you feel is rocksolid and it takes forever to come to a verdict sometimes you have a case that you feel has big problems with it and verdicts are red at quickly if you've been doing this long enough either as a practicing trial attorney or as a courtroom spectator you know that you just never know but what do you guys think were you shocked by how long this all took do you think that this was just a long complicated trial and they were really trying to do their best job um please let us know in the comments the family of a Boston police Karen Read Faces Wrongful Death Lawsuit officer filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday against Karen Reed the Massachusetts woman whose murder trial and the officer's death ended with a hung jury in July the civil suit filed in Plymouth County Superior Court by relatives of Jon O'Keefe also accused two bars of wrongful death alleging they served Reed alcohol when she was already intoxicated on the night of January 28th 2022 the lawsuit accuses one of the bars CF McCarthy's of serving Reed seven drinks over roughly 1 and 1/2 hours on the night of January 28th the second bar waterfall Bar and Grill allegedly served Reed a shot and a mixed drink shortly afterward the suit goes on to allege that after she left the second bar around midnight on January 29th Reed drove O'Keefe to the Canton House where another Boston officer was having a gathering according to the lawsuit O'Keefe and Reed had been arguing when O'Keefe got out of the vehicle and Reed fatally struck him the lawsuit goes on to conclude that Reed quote knowingly and deliberately ch changed her story and fabricated a conspiracy knowing the same to be false she publicly communicated this false narrative thereby frustrating Justice for o'keef such false narrative caused the plaintiffs aggravated emotional distress what's going on here well shots fired absolutely this is the O'Keefe folks going on the offensive I think they are frustrated with how long this has all taken I think they are frustrated that the first trial ended deadlocked I think that they have seen um a lot of missteps by the prosecution they have seen the police department come under Fire uh in in ways that we're going to talk about even more later on today and they have thought to themselves we're not going to wait anymore this is not entirely uncommon for there to be both a civil lawsuit and a criminal case fous ly we saw this in the OJ Simpson case during that entire trial the families of the victims that OJ Simpson was accused of killing had attorneys and they had lawsuits and they were waiting in the wings for that trial to end um and that's usually how it goes for a couple of reasons one a Civil Trial can rest upon the work done at a criminal trial if you a verdict of guilty at a criminal trial you can you could submit that verdict as evidence in your Civil Trial to show that essentially already 12 people have decided at a much higher burden than a civil burden that this person is guilty of the crime which is related to the Civil cause of action we are bringing in this case but another reason they wait and kind of important to our discussion here is Fifth Amendment protections part of why a civil suit is interesting in this case is the Discovery process in a criminal case the police can sit down and ask questions of the defendant and the defendant can say I don't want to talk to you I got nothing to say by the way so can witnesses witnesses do not have to cooperate with police now I don't want to get into the the Weeds on whether or not they can actually lie to police but in some jurisdictions you can even lie to the police and that not be a crime ferally things are a little bit different but my point is this the Gathering of evidence the defense enjoys many more protections criminally than they would enjoy in a civil Forum being sued when you're being sued you have to comply with things like interrogatories written questions that are sent to you that you must answer under oath requests for admission things that they ask you to admit to yes or no do you admit this under oath the penalty for violating those things or lying on those things can be severe again we're not talking about criminally we're talking about civy so when I say severe I'm meaning probably hurting your wallet more than it's hurting your freedom but still requests for documents they can start asking us hand over your phone records hand over your bank records hand over a bunch of things um and they're compelled to do that but where where the real teeth in a civil case lies is in the taking of depositions believe me when I was a prosecutor I would have loved to depose my defendant sit him down and say I got some questions for you before we even start this trial can't be done because of Fifth Amendment Protections in a civil context you don't have a fifth amendment protection now you can still refuse you have the freedom to say I don't want to participate but there will be remif ations and those ramifications might be that you lose your lawsuit by default and all this money is awarded to the plainist so it's in your interest to cooperate now getting back to when you have both of these things happening at the same time it's going to be hard to depose a defendant civile who's also a defendant criminally because they can say I still have a fifth amendment concern and I don't want to participate and answer questions in this deposition and judges will often times allow the criminal process to play out and not force the defendant to take the fifth during these depositions so what I like about this is one it's aggressive on the part of the o'keef family and two it's really starting to open up a lot of interesting avenues for finding out things that we might not have learned before through the routine uh criminal investigation process certain people can be deposed not just talking about Karen Reed Karen Reed's father Karen Reed's mother other people she may have been close to and confided in they can be deposed whereas their cooperation was not compelled from a criminal uh perspective during the criminal case and the investigation of that and that's why this last kind of sentence added in that lawsuit of changing her story fabricating a conspiracy that caused emotional distress also becomes interesting in a criminal case you're allowed to you're allowed to have a defense that defense can be something that and again don't throw start shooting arrows at me here but that defense can be something that you make up the burden is on the prosecution and the only burden on the defense is to try to poke holes and all of that zealously advocate for their client and not flat out lie but they're allowed to present theories and that's what they did in Karen Reed's case now this lawsuit is saying you knowingly promoted and not so much in the courtroom but in her conferences outside her news uh um conferences and her um statements to the to the media was that something that was a false narrative that she knew to be false and how do they get to the bottom to that other than by deposing her or deposing people close to her so again I'm doing a lot of kind of uh looking to the Horizon but to me this was a very interesting move because of all of the interesting things that could could come out of it and it's also putting a lot of pressure on the Karen Reed camp but what do you guys think was it a good strategic move is it a waste of time is this all a big uh big nothing and to be expected please let me know in the comments before we dive into the other cases making headlines this week I only want to take a moment to ask you one very small favor and that is if you haven't already please subscribe to this channel it helps us out immensely and growing this Channel and being able to offer you more and more uh content and perks and all of the things that we have in store and uh don't forget to check out courtroom confidential as a podcast as well please join our community on all of the major podcast platforms also making headlines a Man AMH: Wade Wilson, Carly Gregg, & Matthew Farwell convicted of killing two Florida women in 2019 was sentenced to death Tuesday with a face covered in tattoos Wade Wilson dubbed Deadpool killer as he shares a namesake with the Marvel Comics character showed no emotion as the judge handed down the sentence the 30-year-old was found guilty of strangling Christine Melton to death as she slept the morning after he met her at a bar and then beating strangling and running over Diane Ruiz with his car after seeing her on a street later that same day the evidence show shows the murders were heinous atrocious and cruel and that the second murder was cold calculated and premeditated said Circuit Judge Nicholas Thompson during sentencing agreeing with the jury's recommendation of two death sentences one for each murder a teenager accused of killing her mother lying in wait to shoot her stepfather and inviting a friend to view her mother's dead body will head to trial after rejecting a plea offer from prosecutors Carly Greg only 15 years old was indicted on charges of first-degree murder attempted murder and tampering with physical evidence for the shooting that killed her mother Ashley Smiley and injured her stepfather at a hearing on Tuesday Greg told the court that she had rejected a deal from prosecutors that would have sent her to prison for 40 years for murder and dropped the additional charges if convicted Greg faces a sentence of life for the murder she is due back in court on September 10th for a motion's hearing including a motion to transfer her case to Youth Court a former stoen Massachusetts police detective has been federally indicted in the death of Sandra burchmore accused of killing her and then staging her apartment to make it appear she had committed suicide Matthew Farwell of North Easton is accused of having a sexual relationship with burchmore from the time she was 15 years old until she was 23 killing her sometime after she told him she was pregnant with his child Federal prosecutors say he did so to prevent her from revealing their relationship and his alleged crimes tied to it the former officer was arrested on Wednesday morning and charged with one count of killing a witness or victim he pleaded not guilty according to prosecutors and will remain in custody until a detention hearing next month before we get into Listener and Member Shoutouts! what's on the docket for next week I want to just take a moment to tell you guys how much we appreciate the love and support from our growing Community it has been absolutely amazing but we wanted to give a special shout out to AG kirley for their wonderful review on Apple podcast and to our newest members SEI sharp 9911 and Linda mcog 3645 for their kind words on YouTube keep them coming folks we highly appreciate your feedback on the docket for next week New On the Docket: Matthew Nilo, Ali Abulaban, Lori Vallow, & Wednesday Night Lives! Jersey lawyer Matthew Nyo will return to court on September 5th for charges he raped three women and tried to rape a fourth as prosecutors continue to gather the evidence they need before trial former San Diego tick tocker Ali abulaban known as Jin kid convicted of killing his estranged wife and her friend at an East Village high-rise apartment building in October of 2021 will be sentenced on September 6th abulaban faces life without parole doomsday Mom Lori Val will be back in an Arizona court for a status conference on September 6th Val is accused of conspiring in the fatal shooting of her fourth husband Charles Val and plotting the attempted murder of her niece's ex-husband Brandon Buro finally folks in an effort to continue to bring you guys more quality content we have decided that it's just too long to wait to every Friday to get updates on what's been happening during the week that's why we are adding new programming to our lineup Wednesday night lives join us every Wednesday as we catch up on breaking news or just hot takes on what's been happening in continuing cases please stay tuned to our Channel and Community Feed for more updates that is it for us this week folks I am your host Josh Ritter you can find me on social media at joshuar Ritter Esq or at joshuar r.com thank you again for joining me have a great weekend and I will see you again next week for another episode of courtroom confidential [Music]