Objections: With Adam Klasfeld

The man who went on to become Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's key medical witness in his murder trial was hit with a lawsuit late last year accusing him of a cover up in a case filed by the family of a 19-year-old Black man who died in a "chillingly similar manner" to George Floyd.

Though the similarities between the two incidents have received widespread press attention, Chauvin's jury never heard of the allegations against his main medical expert: Dr. David Fowler, the former chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland.

In the latest episode of the Law&Crime podcast "Objections," Law&Crime Daily host Brian Buckmire—who is also a public defender—reflects on the trial that captivated the country and probes why prosecutors never questioned Fowler about the allegations.

"So the jaded public defender in me wants to say it's very possible that the someone in the government could mess that up, because we already saw that happened once in this case," Buckmire said on the podcast, referring to a moment when the defense criticized authorities for supposedly failing to perform a carbon monoxide test on Floyd.

But as Buckmire noted, authorities had performed that test, and prosecutors discovered that fact via their expert, Dr. Andrew Baker, too late to admit the evidence.

"Dr. Baker was listening to the testimony of Dr. Fowler saying, ‘Well, they should have done this test,’ and Dr. Baker out of nowhere finds that test that would have been able to slap down that argument from Dr. Fowler," Buckmire said on the podcast. "But because of rules of evidence, you cannot spring new information on a defendant."

As the episode airs, jurors are engaged in their first full day of deliberation

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Breaking a nearly weeklong silence following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in December 2012, the National Rifle Association’s longtime leader Wayne LaPierre introduced what would become a Second Amendment rallying cry.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre declared in the wake of that mass shooting, which killed 26 people, including 20 children.

More than eight years later, LaPierre’s testimony at the NRA’s bankruptcy trial showed him apparently adopting a different standard for his own safety. LaPierre claimed that he accepted trips on a Hollywood producer's 108-foot yacht named the Illusions after Sandy Hook for “security” reasons. The NRA chief offered the same rationale for flying exclusively by private charter jet, and he defended his receipt of nearly $300,000 in Italian suits from a Beverly Hills Zegna, which the group's longtime public relations Ackerman McQueen bought him for television appearances.

The latest episode of “Objections” features highlights from court-released audio of LaPierre’s blockbuster testimony from a federal bankruptcy court in Dallas, Texas.

For Shannon Watts, the founder of the anti-gun violence group Moms Demand Action, LaPierre's self-described method of protecting his safety is sharply off-message with his organization's line.

"Wayne up here has spent decades and made millions of dollars, saying the only thing that can protect you from danger is a gun, right?" Watts told Law&Crime's podcast "Objections" in an extended interview. "That the 'only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.' Well, apparently in Wayne LaPierre's case, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good friend with a 100-foot yacht."

Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo, whose Connecticut city is a less than half-hour drive away from Newtown, reflects on the tragedy. The police chief testified at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence.

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For all of the political furor surrounding so-called "vaccine passports," certain countries have long required proof of immunity for tropical diseases, and experts note that the law on the issue is not a close question.

"Are vaccine mandates legal? There are lots of hard questions in the universe of law, but that's not a hard question," University of Pennsylvania law Professor Eric Feldman noted on the latest episode of Law&Crime's podcast "Objections." "That's an easy question," the professor added. "The answer is yes."

The Supreme Court settled that matter in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, affirming penalties against a Swedish-American pastor who resisted a smallpox vaccine back in 1905. That watershed case was over a true mandate: Pastor Henning Jacobson was convicted of refusing the vaccine and forced to pay a $5 fine, but so-called vaccine passports operate differently. They are not compulsory, but such certifications through voluntary programs could make it easier for participants in the program to travel, dine in a restaurant or attend a sporting event.

In this episode, Professor Feldman, from UPenn's Medical Ethics & Health Policy, answers questions about vaccines and the law.

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Before the #FightBack Foundation came to be associated with lawyer Lin Wood’s post-election conspiracy theories, the non-profit group known by the Twitter hashtag had been affiliated with Kyle Rittenhouse.

Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he was charged with killing two men and injuring a third during protests and riots that broke out in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Rittenhouse claimed self-defense, and #Fightback raised the $2 million that his legal team needed to bail him out on Nov. 20, just weeks after a presidential election whose results Wood repeatedly tried to overturn.

In exclusive interviews for Law&Crime’s podcast “Objections,” the teenager’s mother Wendy Rittenhouse and #FightBack’s former executive director Dave Hancock speak out for the first time about their demands that the non-profit conduct an audit of the money that it fundraised.

Ms. Rittenhouse claims on the podcast that two of #FightBack’s directors—Wood and conservative firebrand John Pierce—latched onto her son’s case for personal reasons. “They used Kyle to gain money, gain Twitter followers,” Ms. Rittenhouse told Law&Crime. “I felt now they didn't care about Kyle.”

This is the untold story of #FightBack, including allegations backed up by multiple on-the-record interviews, police dash cam videos, business records, and recordings provided by Wood's former business associate.

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When the Supreme Court gutted protections from the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote an immortal dissent comparing the majority's reasoning that the provisions were no longer necessary to throwing out an umbrella when one is dry.

Common Cause director of voting and elections Syvia Albert believes that Ginsburg's warning is increasingly relevant. "We're about to be soaked to the bone," Albert predicted.

In a wide-ranging interview, Albert breaks down the Supreme Court backdrop allowing a flood of legislation restricting ballot-access, the countermovement to expand voting rights, and a new high court drama that she believes could remove the last part of the Voting Rights Act that "still has teeth."

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Two days before his newspaper ran a surprising editorial calling for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's resignation, Albany Times Union editor Casey Seiler sat down with host Adam Klasfeld for a lengthy interview identifying a through line of the governor's three-term tenure: an aversion to independent investigations.

"You can call it a Shakespearean flaw because, as in so many Shakespeare characters, his virtues are so close to his faults, right?" Seiler noted. "In Cuomo’s case, it is control. When there is a flood, the governor wants to be there wading through the water. When there is a snowstorm, he wants to be helping drag your truck out of the snowy ditch, right? He wants his hands in everything."

"The flip side of that, the flaw, is the pathological horror at any independent investigation that has anything to do with him," he added.

In an article titled "The Andrew Cuomo Show Has Lost the Plot," New Republic reporter Alex Pareene contrasted "TV Cuomo" with "newspaper Cuomo," and the author argued that the nursing home and sexual harassment stories have introduced a nation previously familiar with the television character to the print subject.

No news outlet has covered the latter subject more closely than Cuomo's hometown paper, the Times Union, which endorsed him three times for governor before calling upon him to resign this past weekend. In this episode, Seiler traces the trajectory of Cuomo's career, how the governor wriggled out of past scandals by pulling the levers of power—and what changed with the latest round of controversies.

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On the latest episode of "Objections," experts unpack why federal prosecutors opposed dismissing Steve Bannon's indictment after his pardon and what to do about the Supreme Court's growing "shadow docket."

Former Southern District of New York prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers explains why ex-President Trump's pardon of Bannon does not fully shield the former White House strategist from federal prosecution, let alone a state probe reportedly heating up across the street.

University of Texas School of Law Professor Stephen Vladeck discusses his recent House Judiciary Committee hearing about what legal scholars dub the Supreme Court's "shadow docket," rulings decided outside the court’s regular docket without oral argument.

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The largest county in Texas has undergone a sea change in political leadership in recent years, and the elected officials' focus—like everyone else in the state—has turned to outages last week that affected millions of people, killed dozens and launched investigations into what went wrong.

“Folks are overwhelmed, and there's a big element of trauma," Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, who became the top civil lawyer here in November, noted in the latest episode of Law&Crime's podcast "Objections."

In a city beset by multiple 500-year weather events within the past half-decade, the Houston Chronicle called trauma the Bayou City's hidden tax, and Menefee agrees, noting it's a price paid more acutely by the poor and communities of color. Part of a new movement of younger, more diverse and progressive leaders, Menefee—the first African-American Harris County Attorney—sounds off on environmental justice and his just-launched civil investigation into regulators previously obscure outside the Lone Star State: the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and Public Utility Commission (PUC).

University of Texas Professor David Spence unpacks the complicated history of Texas's independent energy grid.

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Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), Orlando's ex-police chief, and ex-Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), a former Air Force intelligence officer, make impeachment personal on the latest episode of Law&Crime's "Objections."

A former manager from ex-President Trump's first impeachment, Rep. Demings passed the torch to her successors with advice to weave personal narratives as the voices for U.S. public. In her interview, she elaborates on that advice, reflects on the "Thin Blue Line" as a former Orlando police chief, and talks about her new post as chair of the House Homeland Security's Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery.

When delivering his farewell address on Dec. 10, then-Rep. Riggleman warned about the dangers of disinformation, and he recalled telling his then-colleagues in the GOP that there would be an "80 percent chance of violence" around the time of the transition. He reflected on this episode about how he "hated to be validated" on Jan. 6, bemoaned the direction of his former party, and described a political career bookended by misinformation campaigns directed at him.

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One of the most visible participants in the U.S. Capitol siege, Jacob Chansley became known throughout the world as the "QAnon Shaman" as photographs of him standing behind then-Vice President Mike Pence's dais in face paint, wearing a fur-pelted-and-horned headdress and carrying a spear hit the wires.

Telling reporters that his client is willing to testify at Donald Trump's impeachment trial, Chansley's attorney Albert Watkins answers hard questions: Is his client's claim that he was only following the president's orders the Nuremberg defense? Will Chansley renounce the QAnon conspiracy theory that galvanized the insurrection? And was Chansley just Trump's dupe—or what prosecutors call a leader of a dangerous movement?

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