Joe McCulloch Still Has an Active Case Against Alex Murdaugh. Let’s Talk About Credibility

hi guys I have a quick followup about Mandy Pierce juror 630 and later juror Z and her interview along with Jo molik on court TV yesterday I wanted to let this one sit overnight because it really kind of exploded everywhere and reading posts on X and comments on YouTube just really was a bit overwhelming and I wanted time to form my own thoughts I've watched it again today and I think there are just so many points to consider here I've done some clipping of the interview and I'm purposefully going to clip out the moments where Mandy freezes I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say maybe Joe was right and that this was her reacting to being on TV in the center of attention and I want to make it clear that my point is not to try to embarrass her but nervous or not she chose to go on national television and she's bold enough to have made claims in two separate affidavits so I really want to hear the evidence behind those claims because those claims have had a huge impact on this murder trial if you can make these bold of claims you sure better be able to back them up let's get started this is legal updates with Cassidy Joe mullik still has an active case against Alex Murdoch let's talk about credibility welcome before we get deep I want to share a small excerpt from Valerie bowlin's book The Devil at his elbow let's remember Miss bowline was present every day for this trial she was there watching everything with her journalistic expertise since she was in the courtroom she had an advantage that we watching from home did not have she could see the jurors for those of you who've never been inside the colon County Courthouse house it's tiny the camera add size to rooms too apparently not just people because when I saw it with my own eyes I couldn't believe how tiny and how close everything was from the place Miss bowline usually sat she was not far off from the jury at all notice what she says about the day Alex got up to testify in chapter 40 page 334 the defendant Richard Alexander Murdoch wishes to take the stand Wonder chin dropped another crossed her arms and lowered her chin all the jurors and alternates watched Alex rise from the defense table to his full height and walk over to be sworn in does that sound like a jury who was sitting there expecting Alex to testify like they were ready to just ignore or disbelieve whatever he was about to say skipping over to page 343 now this is after saying how defense had wanted a jury made up mostly of white men and that there were now five of them because of some changes that had to be made due to covid and Alternate stepping in so that there were now five men someone told harutan they'd noticed a white male juror on the front row actually had tears in his eyes so we have people dropping chins and jurors With Tears in their eyes does this sound like people who had been told he was about to testify and people who were influenced to not believe him harutan worked the courtroom like a post-debate spin doctor hanging out by reporter's row and talking about the crying juror putting his client on the stand was a gamble he said but it was paying off so far this guy's been a trial lawyer for 25 years harutan said of Alex if anybody could pull this off it's him Alex and his defense team clearly thought they had this case in the bag they thought like Alex is Grandpa Buster that they were going to win it's like it never occurred to them that they wouldn't it made me realize that in the middle of all of that unearthly arrogance sitting at that table imagining themselves some kind of group of mythological gods they can't fathom that they lost fair and square that their client was guilty and that a jury would be able to see that and would not see them through the ego maniacal glass cles that they seem to see themselves through I've covered interviews with dick discussing his legal prowess you hear the conceit dripping from his words he Prides himself on the way he thinks he can handle a jury he even went so far as to say that he prefers unattractive jurors who are so unattractive in fact that they have nothing else to do but sit home and watch TV here's a clip from one of my old podcast to show you what I'm talking about what do I mean about his secrets to success I want to share two interviews he's done and what was said for the first one it was a podcast called May the record reflect it was published on November 2nd 2021 by the National Institute for trial advocacy episode 24 let's listen is it's not just about your client it's how does the jury react to you and so your persona um your uh relationship with them I mean one of the things in South Carolina you can you can what I call work the jail jury rail you it's very important I mean um you need to adopt a persona for the case that you believe the jury um will um will um appreciate by the way when they looking at the back of the seat in front of them they're not looking at you they're not looking at you so I use and I still use big pieces of poster board this sounds like the Stone Age I'm sure to your folks out there now you do a poster board um with you know the key quotes from the key documents and you walk back and forth in front of the jury rail pointing it out and they're looking at you and they're looking at at the poster board I mean my Persona in front of that jury was sort of a I'm more like you than him you know they're from Greenville they're they're I went to Clemson they're they're much more um conservative than they would be perhaps down in Charleston but they're Common Sense people and they're going to read um me and the other guy and then they're going to listen I mean and that's the context for what they hear you've got to work the jury secondly what do you look like what how do you react do you look do you get eye contact the idea that he relies on tricks kinship and Charisma he thinks he has rather than honesty and evidence is so disrespectful and insulting to the jury in my opinion he's speaking like it's easy to fool them with his tricks like some kind of snake charmer to keep them from seeing evidence if I were jurors hearing this I would be insulted but it gets worse let's look at the second interview this was from a site called whistleblower laws the article's name was profiles Injustice a one-of-a-kind trial lawyer written by Reuben Gutman the introduction an unattractive itive jury and a stirring tale of conflict emotion sex and violence are some of the essential ingredients for success in a trial according to seasoned us trial lawyer dick harutan he shares some tips with Ruben Gutman let's have a look at those tips and I want you to notice how not one of the five tips he gives have anything to do with legal skill or evidence tip number one pick a jury not based only on on your client's profile but also yours if the jury hates you they usually won't like your client this has caused me to gravitate towards unattractive people on juries they don't feel threatened by me and aren't disdainful like Attractive people so do you hear that jurors if dick picked you he picked you because he thinks you're ugly if you're attractive he doesn't want you don't even try because if you're attractive you might feel threatened by him and you might be disdainful but if you're ugly hey you're the juror for dick tip number five throw away the script there is nothing more boring nor unproductive than to follow a script checking off the points you want to make to prove the elements of your case the jury wants a narrative a story an entertaining yarn full of conflict emot emotion sex violence yelling weeping Etc you get the idea that means you have to have a general idea of what you want but let the examination flow naturally set the witness up to confirm fact a and fact C then box them into B the jury will understand where you are going again insulting he thinks the jury wants to be entertained Not educated they want some yarn with emotion sex violence weeping they're not smart enough to figure it out they're just automatically going to vote his way because he entertains them he doesn't care about facts he's all about tricks but worst of all let's read the last two sentences remember these are unattractive people who watch a lot of TV and read most of their evenings they have lots of imagination did you touch that these are unattractive people and I'm assuming that because they're unattractive he thinks they have nothing going on in their lives I mean they're they're too ugly to to go out or have friends or have dates so because they're unattractive they watch a lot of TV and they read most of their evenings I mean where are ugly people going to go what's an ugly person going to do on the evening so because they have no lives they have lots of imagination sick in describing his success much like Randolph Jr Buster Murdoch it's never about actual legal knowledge legal skill but his descriptions are always about tricks and traps it's repulsive to me personally but that's why he was out lawyered by the likes of kraton waters who uses real legal knowledge real legal skill prepares very well for his cases losing this case had to be a crushing blow to the ego for them and rather than admit their client is guilty and the old tricks dick has relied on in the past didn't work on a younger generation they cry foul they think prosecution couldn't possibly have won they cheated so what did they do after licking their wounds for a while they found an angry ousted juror who is to this day complaining how she shouldn't have been removed her own Huish showing as if somehow she was Irreplaceable that her verdict would have been more important than anyone else's and they worked on that anger and that embarrassment and that hurt and that hubris this woman had been bragging to others about being on this trial and now she was cast off at the most important moment publicly humiliated nicknamed the egg lady laughed at so upset in fact that she hired a lawyer what did she need a lawyer for tell me that honestly was she being sued was she planning a suit no she has no grounds for a suit and once she was released by the court she was no longer relevant to the case at all but instead of walking away admitting she was wrong she carried all those negative feelings building up inside of her and got a lawyer not just any lawyer but a guy who wanted so badly to be a part of this case that even though he was not a witness or even close to being one he sat in a prominent place every day of that trial somewhere right in front of that camera why well it did get him a few minutes in some documentaries didn't it but he now says he did it because he was planning to write a screenplay what what's even odder about him placing himself in the middle of this is that the boat crash lawsuit where he represents Connor Cook against Alex Murdoch is still ongoing in fact here's the most recent filing from February of this year and what is this document for it's released ing Parkers and the cashier from Parkers but clearly states the action against Alex is still pending this case is separate from the regular boat crash case which Connor I believe was one of the people that won a settlement in that case this one is where Alex had recommended Corey Fleming to the Cook family the night they were all in the hospital to represent Connor just like with the setfield case the Cook family originally did as Alex said they met with Corey they hired him only to later find out the relationship between Cory and Alex after which they fired him and hired Joe mullik who still represents him now if you were Connor Cook wouldn't you be asking why Joe mullik is now working a case to defend the very man that he's suing on your behalf I sure would talk about a conflict of interest to me this leaves me with so many questions about Joe molik and just a big feeling of ick but back to the story at hand we have this angry juror Myra who's been let go the opportunistic lawyer that she's hired to do what exactly we don't know but in my opinion he's definitely eyeing an opportunity here what other explanation could there be for his taking this case and then we have a third person in this story Myra had a tenant still on the jury juror 630 later changed to juror Z that we now know as Mandy I think it's fair to say that they're friends with Mandy herself saying that she did this interview to support Myra's book it's not hard to imagine how things went after Myra's removal remembering that Mandy said in the Fox Nation interview that she didn't know anything was wrong till the lawyers told her so I think it's plain and clear that we can now see how this whole matter was probably born for the hearing conducted by Justice tol Myra was strictly banned from participating of course she was she had nothing to do with the deliberations that concluded in the jury finding Alex guilty but that didn't stop her from coming all the way down to the courthouse and sitting across the street just waiting for her moment to be allowed in it didn't come the whole point is anything Myra has to say is legally irrelevant because she had nothing to do with the verdict could she be a witness in any trials Becky Hil gets brought against her that's a different story but in the story of Alex Murdoch she plays no role whatsoever but never mind they had Mandy ever so supportive Mandy who didn't mind to say the opposite of what her first affidavit said and when she became befuddled on the stand she scurried off to write up a shiny new affidavit this time worded correctly to implicate Becky Justice toll the former Chief Justice was no fool to this game some thought that was wrong dick sure claims it was he's used to getting things started by making a statement and repeating it until enough others start repeating it and once it's been repeated enough it just gets taken as fact but why didn't Justice toll put any import to Mandy's new affidavit was it wrong let's talk about the word credibility in legal terms credibility is the quality of being believable or worthy of belief as a witness evidence or testimony in this case we're going to talk about The witness's credibility when assessing a witness's credibility a judge may consider whether the witness's testimony is consistent with the probabilities of the case and here are the standards for that these are not my standards these are the basic standards that Justice toll had to consider and I want you to keep these in mind as we go through the interview the first one is truthfulness are the claims Mandy is making truthful does Mandy come across as a truthful witness the second one intelligence is the witness intelligent enough to be credible could she explain the situation she's testifying about intelligently enough for it to be credible the third one bias does this witness have a reason to be biased about what she's testifying to for motive does the witness have a motive to be untruthful and the last one inconsistent state statements has the witness made inconsistent statements when you're telling the truth you have something called recall you can play what happened back in your mind so that when you're asked a question about it it just takes a moment to pull that memory up and you have your answer right there but when what you're saying didn't actually happen you can't consistently give answers because the recall is not there there's not a memory stored in your brain to tap into and that's why lies are so hard to cover and they result in inconsistent statements so inconsistent statements is probably the easiest one of these criteria to find some people are pretty good liars you may not be able to just easily discern whether or not they're telling the truth some people are very convincing Liars so you need all these parts in order to determine credibility before Justice toll how did the witness do she was inconsistent she had written one affidavit but her answers were different in her original affidavit she said she was pressured by jurors but now before Justice toll she said she was pressured by Becky she did it again as we saw in her interview on Fox Nation she mentioned pressure from the jurors later in the interview she said it was about half and half Becky and jurors but at the end when she was put on the spot by Martha and said why did you write guilty no mention of Becky it was back to pressure by the jurors but the moment she did that in front of Justice toll with her Decades of experience it didn't fool her for a moment and that's why Justice tol rightly dismissed her as a credible witness in my opinion Mandy continues to fail these standards and I think she will be hard pressed to pass them before the South Carolina Supreme Court if she is in fact called To Be A Witness which is very likely as it's her testimony that's actually at the Crux of this jury tampering claim a courtroom is a serious place it's not like out in the wild on social media where you can just say what you want to say and if you're likable enough or your message is likable enough you can just convince people and win in the court of public opinion that Court though is nothing more than Town gossip it may have a great impact on society but it has no legal basis or power behind it there are numerous laws numerous codes that all have to be followed no matter how many interviews are done on TV or how many books are written unless these can be presented as credible facts by the legally relevant people and ruled so in court it's all meaningless and worthless keeping that in mind let's go through this interview Mandy tell me as as you sit here uh today I'm sure people have to be asking you or people at home watching this may be wondering why come forward now and speak out now about this I I guess um with Myra's new book coming out I just was going to be there with her and just some of the things that happen Okay and taking these in turn Myra you're referring to Myra Crosby who was known as the egg lady for a long time she was dismissed from the deliberating panel because of speaking about the case to three people um she's writing a book you said yes ma'am okay um and then the other thing you said in addition to that to support her and be there with her in the interview you said some other things what other things Mandy other things like what do you mean well I was just asking you what you mean you said I asked you why I speak out now and you said well partly because Myra's book to be there with her and then because of some other things I just wanted to know what those other things are I guess because um it's it's kind of hard to say um I guess because his there trying to throw his case uh well not throw his case but they're trying to get him another appeal and um and they had an opportunity for us to come out there and so and I just came out just to tell my side uh and then the CH uh the uh the Justice uh uh then asked you Mandy um how did those statements influence your verdict um would you answer that question here for us please that she made it seem like he was you know already guilty and so when when you were deliber ating um walk us through that please are you saying that the statements affected your deliberations or were you unable to separate them from you know the facts and the evidence and you know is the the oath that you take you it says You must just focus on what's presented in the courtroom um I guess kind of explain to us how um how those statements might have influenced your ultimate decision well first I voted undecided and then like I said um in the other interview that some of the um the other jurors and some just thinking about like everybody was ready to go everybody was ready to get it over with and um so then that's whenever I had voted guilty then Joe is invited on and just like dick he doesn't mind to state things that are not true but if he gets it out there it serves the purpose of making other people look bad like this next statement I will say this about Myra her book as she has said on other programs and I regret she couldn't be on today her writing a book was a matter of frustration it was not a book she began to write while she was on the jury unlike others what does he mean like others did what other juror wrote a book during the trial he knows there's another book coming out by a juror so he's putting this out there and mark my words he'll repeat it just like dick in the hopes that if it gets repeated enough people will think it's the truth it is not the truth there were no other jurors writing books during the trial okay so you hear what Becky Hill said there under oath um Mandy what's your response to that when we were deliberating it was more of like she it felt like you know like she was trying to get us to like hurry up like that's the way I felt um I guess it's kind of hard to [Music] to think about it now um but I know the smokers in there they were ready to leave um and I don't know MH feelings are not evidence if she's going to make the accusation that someone tampered with her and her ability to come to a fair verdict it has to be more than I felt she's not providing evidence she can repeat her same response when she's thinking about it but the moment there's pressure applied and she actually recalls the memory of what really happened that's when you hear the truth every every time when under pressure and she forgets her rehearsed lines all she has to go on is her actual memory of what happened and that memory is she felt like she had to hurry up the smokers wanted to smoke people wanted to go home but the law is so very very crystal clear about pressure from other jurors it is not a reason for an appeal or a mistrial or a new trial and that's why she's been coached to blame it on Becky uh and myy let's talk a little bit about um the verdict the jury unanimously voted guilty you were one of those guilty votes uh at the time the judge asked all the jurors to raise their hand if they were in agreement with the verdict um you did then the judge even went through the polling of the members of the jury and asked all of you individually if you agreed with it you said yes are you saying today here and now you no longer agree with the verdict that you made I still had doubts um about the verdict even after whenever I was finally at home and started thinking about everything I wish that I could go back and change it but you know I can't so tell us please Mandy what makes you go back and wish you could change it I still had more questions um that I felt like didn't get answered sorry um so I guess if I could go you know have go back and redo that night then I probably would have said not guilty for what reason Mandy cuz like I said in the other interview um you know they never found their murder weapons and I I know they don't find them all the time but it just felt like they never look for anybody else yeah like I said um they didn't um they never found the the murder weapons and I know like on the other interview a lot of times they don't find in um murder weapons do you think Alec Murdoch disposed of the murder weapons I can't say that I have no idea this is absolutely Inc completely buyer's remorse she started to feel guilty or was made to feel guilty about this guilty verdict that doesn't count when she really speaks her feelings and isn't saying something she's been told to say it's other juror pressure and buyer's remorse she keeps mentioning she still had questions I'm sorry Mandy that's on you it was your job to ask questions if you still had questions it doesn't matter if someone's in a hurry or if you felt like other jurors were in a hurry you took an oath you took on being a juror you have to follow the rules and if you don't that's on you you can't come back later and say I didn't ask the questions I needed to ask so I take back my guilty verdict you said in the last interview you did it because he was going to prison anyway this woman is not credible and dick has spent all this time throwing around the word jury tampering Becky Hill the clerk of court tampered with the jury and it's been repeated it's been repeated until people believe it and they've been believing it without ever hearing any of the evidence to prove that the jury was tampered with and now and now that a huge percentage of the population truly and honestly believes that there was jury tampering the evidence is coming out and it's not evidence and how are you going to put all that back in the box once dick got people believing that there was jury tampering how are you going to get people who've believed it for all this time to unbelieve it but this witness is not not credible and this witness cannot prove jury tampering you may not like Becky Hill she's up against a bunch of other charges and those charges disgust me I did a couple of podcasts on that taking money out of the child support fund to buy Valentine's that's sicking if all these charges against her get proven I'm not here to defend it one bit but in the end truth matters credibility matters and this witness simply is not credible this is Cassidy Connell saying stay well and stay tuned