Rebuttal

(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) What do you call a 6-week period in which you and a handful of very recent acquaintances get drunk every day at lunch, sleep through the afternoons, sell weed to each other, smoke weed with each other, and whip out a few bags of cocaine to snort when the time feels right?

For a group of twelve people in Florida in 1987, they would call it jury duty. That’s right. Since 1987, jury misconduct stories only got crazier and crazier...including one where a jury convicted a man of double homicide by breaking out a Ouija board and asking the victims' ghosts. Yep.

Reb tops off a martini and hosts a seance in Tanner v. United States (1987).

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0:00 - Intro

2:17 - Facts of Tanner v. United States

12:39 - Trial (Coke, Booze, and Court)

23:00 - Rule 606(b) and SCOTUS Majority Opinion

40:53 - SCOTUS Dissenting Opinion

54:11 - Juror misconduct still haunts us

56:19 - SCOTUS heard our complaints and ignored them<3

58:59 - Remedies for juror misconduct

1:01:10 - Case after case after case (Delusional, sleeping, drunk, racist jurors)

1:10:00 - The Ouija Board Jury

1:19:35 - Reb's Rebuttal

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(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) In the early hours of Saturday, May 15, 2010, Kalief Browder and a friend were returning home from a party in the Belmont section of the Bronx. He was 16 years old. Browder saw a police car driving toward them. More squad cars arrived, and soon Browder and his friend were squinting in the glare of a police spotlight. An officer said they had robbed a man. “I didn’t rob anybody,” Browder replied. “You can check my pockets.” . . .

Reb shares the cases of Kalief Browder and Inmate H, and thousands of other children and adults held in pretrial detention in the United States without ever being convicted of a crime. Some people say cash bail “creates Hell on Earth.” You might just believe them.

**CONTENT WARNING** Violence against children

Links:

https://www.facebook.com/KaliefsLegacy?mibextid=LQQJ4d

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-case-for-cash-bail-reform/

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2:21 - Kalief Browder

14:45 - Rikers Island

17:33 - Pretrial Detention, Cash Bail, and Depravity

22:38 - Inmate H

31:29 - Rikers Island Origins / #CloseRikers

37:18 - Cash Bail Reform

45:45 - A Murderer, A R*pist, and A Traffic Violator

47:38 - Cash Bail Reform

57:40 - Reb's Rebuttal

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(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Do political assassinations even happen in the U.S. anymore? Apparently yes. Yes, they do. Get ready to change your middle name, sue Puerto Rico for speaking Spanish, move to a hog farm in Tennessee, and learn that write-in ballots never win (except for the rare, *bloody* exception). Reb brings a murder weapon to the voting booth in Tennessee v. Byron (Low Tax) Looper (2000).

TRIGGER WARNING for sexual assault/abuse.

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***

0:00 - Intro

2:36 - Byron's early life

4:30 - West Point

8:55 - Honorable discharge to politics pipeline

12:38 - Young Democrats of Georgia/Byron has a temper?!

14:00 - Byron and the 1988 GA Democratic primary

20:41 - Byron gets #educated

21:38 - #PuertoRicoGate

32:46 - Byron meets Terri Guess in TN

39:43 - DUMP HIM

43:43 - Byron changes his middle name to (Low Tax).....and it works???

1:03:03 - Senator Tommy Burks

1:08:17 - Byron's been busy

1:09:00 - The last day of his life

1:14:44 - Looper v. Burks

1:19:21 - The arrest

1:21:30 - The ballot's a mess

1:22:02 - Charlotte Burks

1:25:56 - What's the evidence?

1:43:53 - The aftermath

1:45:50 - CONSPIRACY AROUND LOOPER'S DEATH

1:54:03 - Reb's Rebuttal

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(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Beef between rappers keeps music alive and well. But what happens when a video of you lip syncing to rap lyrics at a party helps put you away for murder? Hear all about it with Reb at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Larry Jean Hart v. Texas (2024).

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***

0:00 - Intro

4:01 - Sneak peek of Hart v. Texas (2024)

4:37 - Background - Can lyrics be used as evidence?

12:45 - Hart v. Texas begins / What happened at trial?

24:02 - Hart's first appeal

27:38 - Hart's second appeal

28:31 - Probative value of the rap videos

33:49 - Prejudicial effect of the rap videos

47:57 - Prosecution's need for the evidence

54:05 - Harm analysis

1:01:06 - Holding

1:01:59 - Reb's rebuttal

1:02:42 - Tiny teaser for Episode 26!

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(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Since Biblical times, self defense has been simple. Guard your castle. Retreat to the wall. Defend yourself. The U.S. stole its common law from the English, and the elements of self defense didn't change. Until.......Florida.

Why did Florida change its slogan from the Sunshine State to the Kill At Will State? Aren't Stand Your Ground Laws a good thing? How old is the Castle Doctrine? Whose castle is it anyway? Reb lowers the drawbridge on the madness and teaches you all the wheres and whens and hows on who is really allowed to "defend" themselves.

**CONTENT WARNING** Racial violence and violence against women and children.

0:00 - Content Warning

2:24 - Intro

8:08 - Trayvon Martin/Michael Brown/Tamir Rice

10:07 - Philando Castile

15:00 - People v. White (2010)

26:16 - Duty to Retreat

30:05 - The Castle Doctrine

30:45 - Beard v. United States (1895)

31:10 - People v. Tomlins (1914)

34:15 - Background on SYG Laws

36:00 - Self-defense elements/Duty to retreat

43:45 - SYG Laws and Imminence

46:27 - Removing Imminence > Race/Gender/DV

52:53 - Bernard Goetz (1986)

56:20 - Kathy & James Workman (Fla. 2004)

58:41 - The NRA & SYG

59:30 - Jimmy Morningstar (2003)

1:04:30 - Charles Harper (2009)

1:06:00 - Pedro Roteta (2011)

1:10:13 - Duty to retreat

1:11:10 - Domestic Violence & The Castle Doctrine

1:20:17 - Deven Grey (2017) / Brittany Joyce Smith (2018)

1:22:03 - Collected cases of men using SYG Laws successfully

1:23:41 - Peggy Stewart Case (1988)

1:31:18 - Kansas Supreme Court is on my sh*t list

1:32:00 - "Reasonableness" for a woman

1:33:50 - Collected cases on DV victims and Castle Doctrine/SYG

1:47:00 - Castle Doctrine clashes with Knock + Announce Rule

1:48:32 - Breonna Taylor

***

DONATE

https://www.trayvonmartinfoundation.org/

https://michaelodbrown.org/

https://www.tamirericefoundation.org/donate

https://www.philandocastilefoundation.org/

https://www.gofundme.com/f/freedom-and-reentry-fund-for-deven-grey

https://justiceforbreonna.org/

***

COMPLETE SOURCE LIST IN YOUTUBE EPISODE NOTES

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(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Humans have been digging moats, slingshotting arrows, poisoning food, and laying spikes for thousands of years — and modern day booby traps are still alive and well. But what do an Indiana Jones-inspired hot tub contraption and a haunted house’s 20-gauge shotgun have in common? Vengeance.

This episode starts the engine for Episode 24’s deep dive into self-defense, "Stand Your Ground" laws, defense of property, and the Castle Doctrine. But first, listen to Reb pick tibia bones and shotgun pellets off the floor in Katko v. Briney (1971).

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(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) There are 3 reasons one of the most important 4th Amendment rules in America exists as it does today: (1) Boxers in the criminal underworld, (2) A bomb in the house of famous boxing promoter Don King, and (3) Dollree "Dolly" Mapp - The young black woman who dated bad boys and stood up to an all-white police force in Baltimore...and won.

What started as a mobster/boxer gambling ring turned into a 4-year battle over...you guessed it...nude magazines. Come with Reb to throw some punches and start a Dolly fan club in Mapp v. Ohio (1961).

INTRO/CONTEXT: 0:00-7:29

CASE BEGINS: 7:30

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Sources Cited:

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(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) We protect the witnesses from the public, but who protects the public from the witnesses? Peek behind the curtain of the Witness Protection Program and prepare to be shocked, afraid, and bamboozled. Take cover with Reb and start questioning everything and everyone in United States v. Wilson (1981).

**CONTENT WARNING at 58:52 for violence against children**

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SOURCES [chronological order by reference or cite]:

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(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Most people would like to keep their heads. Thomas Donaldson isn't one of them. This mathematician and computer scientist wanted his cut off, and he wanted it to be done while he was still alive.

Bring a warm jacket and follow Reb into the frozen head refrigerator for Donaldson v. Lungren (1992).

INTRO/REB CHAT: 0:00-19:32

CASE STARTS: 19:32

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(WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE) Breathing through chemical smoke has been described as “drowning on dry land.” When one imagines chemical warfare, they often imagine a striking image of filthy soldiers choking in trenches on the frontlines through thick fogs of yellow-green gas. 

In 1993, the Convention on Chemical Weapons sought to end chemical warfare as we know it.

20 years later, the international treaty the U.S. signed in 1997 to ban and stop the creation, sale, and export of chemical weapons for warfare around the globe led us to an unusual suspect in an unusual place—Carol Anne Bond, a 34-year old microbiologist living with her husband in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

Carol Anne Bond was not a soldier.  She was not welding steel cylinders of chlorine gas to be released over trenches in Belgium. She was not spraying 19.3 million gallons of chemical herbicides over Vietnam. She was not using white phosphorus against civilians in Fallujah or Syria. She was not a guerrilla fighter on the front lines, a terrorist, or a military contractor.  She was an angry wife.

Hold your breath and wash your hands. This is Bond v. United States (2014).

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