Tales from the Brown Desk – S2E6: Who Decides What Justice Looks Like, The Glock Switch & Florida Man

Transcript

Jake Rigney: 00:15
It’s not Friday afternoon, but I’ll be in Las Vegas on Friday, so you get what you get, which is a Tuesday afternoon recording. You deal with it. We’ve locked the doors because Aldous Huxley keeps coming in here and cleansing them while he blathers on about Infinity or something. And also because it’s time for another edition of our bi-weekly podcast, Tales from the Brown Desk. I’m Jake Rigney of Rigney Law LLC. With me as usual is my law partner, wife, and cat snuggler extraordinaire, Kassi Rigney. With us as always is our host, manager, editor, co-producer, topic selector, Florida man monitor, email screener, block switch point award giver, and the brown desk. Just kidding. It’s Teri. Teri Muehlhausen. Teri Muehlhausen is here. Sean Moore has been banished back to the ranks of mere listener this week. Sorry, Sean. Hi. Hello. Thanks for that thing that you did that one time. I appreciate it. Friendly reminder, Tales from the Brown Desk is a free-flowing conversation involving one or two foul mouth attorneys. It may include graphic descriptions of sexual activity, violence, and the rule of law. Sexy, violent rules of law. Look at you, rule of law. Looking all good over there with your rules. Damn, girl. You got that blindfold. Scale. Mmm. I’m into it. It may not be suitable for Americans, Iranians, people named Ronnie, people named Lonnie. People named Donnie. You’re out of your element, Donnie. I’m done. Here’s Teri.

Teri Muehlhausen: 02:04
Hi, Jake. It’s nice to have you back. We missed you last episode.

Jake Rigney: 02:08
Oh, come on. Everybody knows that Sean did a better job than me. It was awesome. I’m sure you guys loved it.

Teri Muehlhausen: 02:14
He did really great, but we we did miss you. It’s it’s nice that you’re back. Thanks. Hi, Kassi. How are you?

Kassi Rigney: 02:21
Hi Teri. I’m fine. How are you?

Teri Muehlhausen: 02:23
Pretty good. Did you get sick at all?

Kassi Rigney: 02:25
No.

Teri Muehlhausen: 02:26
Wow.

Jake Rigney: 02:27
Teri really missed me. Kassi’s just like, hi, I’m here. Hello, Teri. Good to see you.

Teri Muehlhausen: 02:35
Moving on. Okay. Today we’re going to talk about the death penalty.

Jake Rigney: 02:44
Yeah.

Teri Muehlhausen: 02:45
It’s gonna be so fun.

Jake Rigney: 02:46
You know, this is a comedy show, right?

Teri Muehlhausen: 02:48
It is.

Jake Rigney: 02:49
Um let’s let’s keep it lighthearted. Let’s keep it funny. We’ll do some laughs about, you know, state-sanctioned murdering of people who murder other people. Just, you know, giggles.

Kassi Rigney: 03:01
For sure.

Teri Muehlhausen: 03:03
We’ll also talk about the power of a jury, a new effort by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office. Now they’re different topics, but they all raise a similar question. Who gets to decide what justice looks like? Also on today’s docket is the Glock Switch and Florida Man. But before we start, we have a listener question.

Jake Rigney: 03:25
Oh, geez.

Teri Muehlhausen: 03:25
Yeah. Charlie from Noblesville, Indiana wants to know if you get a DUI, do you have to tell your employer? And could your employer find out if you don’t say anything at all?

Jake Rigney: 03:40
I’m gonna handle this one if that’s okay. Yeah. Charlie, I want to speak to you directly about this, okay? That is an extraordinarily smart question. Great job, buddy. Um, and it is you always suck up to the listeners, you guys. That’s an important part of it. Um, that way they keep listening. Charlie, you’re a genius. Um, this is a question I get from time to time, not real often, but sometimes people call and ask that one. Um, and the answer is there is no law that requires you to disclose the fact that you’ve been charged with a crime to anyone. Okay. Now, whether that lack of disclosure would violate some rule of your office is different. Right? When Kassi and I worked at the Marion County prosecutor’s office, there was no law that required us to inform them if we got arrested, but there was an office policy rule that said we had to inform them if we got arrested. Good news, we never got arrested.

Teri Muehlhausen: 04:49
Good job, guys.

Jake Rigney: 04:50
Yep, it was real hard, but we pulled it off. Uh so there is no law that I’m aware of that requires anyone to inform anyone when they’ve been arrested. But if they go find out about it, which they certainly can do, it is very easy to find out if they go looking and they discover that you violated some office rule by not disclosing it, then you can get fired.

Kassi Rigney: 05:21
And I’d say on a related note, uh when I was working as a prosecutor, even if you don’t tell your employer if they’re gonna find out, it seems more often than not, it’s a jilted lover, scorned friend that uh decides that they’ll take it upon themselves to be a good citizen and air quotes and “report it to your employer”.

Teri Muehlhausen: 05:47
All right, guys, we’re gonna start with a story that caught my attention for more than one reason.

Jake Rigney: 05:52
Okay.

Teri Muehlhausen: 05:53
And that is the military execution that’s scheduled to take place on December 3rd. You know the story I’m talking about, right?

Jake Rigney: 06:01
Yeah, didn’t we? I made I wrote this joke into the the the script last week. Did you guys not tell the joke?

Teri Muehlhausen: 06:09
The joke was told, but we didn’t talk about…

Jake Rigney: 06:12
Okay.

Teri Muehlhausen: 06:12
Yeah, so you never know when your joke’s gonna land.

Jake Rigney: 06:17
Yeah, I do. The answer is never. The jokes are never going to land. It’s they always suck.

Teri Muehlhausen: 06:23
All right. Now you know the military has scheduled an execution of a former army psychiatrist convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting that killed 13 people.

Jake Rigney: 06:35
Yeah, they were gonna live stream it, weren’t they?

Teri Muehlhausen: 06:38
The Pentagon initially said that the execution would be live streamed, then after significant backlash, Trump announced that it would not be. The argument for broad streaming it and broadcasting it was that an execution would deter future crime.

Jake Rigney: 06:56
Right.

Teri Muehlhausen: 06:57
Is there evidence to support that stance? Like, what do we know about that?

Jake Rigney: 07:02
You know, it it’s interesting that you bring this up because it sort of gets at the heart of almost every debate that sort of the liberal and conservative folks kind of have about the criminal justice system, right? The most common explanation for why we send people to prison among sort of the conservative or law and order type folks is deterrence, right? That uh people do not commit crimes because they are afraid that they will go to prison if they do it. The trouble with that is that almost everyone who says that would not commit those crimes anyway. And there is sort of this logical fallacy with that too. I’m trying to think of how to explain this. Um I’ve seen it kind of explained in sort of these religious discussions too. Um there’s a comedian, Ricky Gervais, has done this joke, I think, a couple of times and did it in one of his TV shows, right? Where um he says, I don’t believe in God, and somebody says, Well then, you know, if you don’t believe in God and you don’t believe in the Ten Commandments and all that, then why don’t you just, you know, why don’t you just go around murdering and raping as much as you want? And his response is, I do go around raping and murdering exactly as much as I want, which is none, because I don’t want to do those things. So when a person tells you like I don’t commit crimes because I don’t want to go to prison, a logical offshoot of that is that if there wasn’t a law against it, they would do it, but that’s probably not actually true.

Teri Muehlhausen: 08:42
Yeah.

Jake Rigney: 08:42
Right?

Teri Muehlhausen: 08:43
Right.

Jake Rigney: 08:43
People don’t say I’m I would molest kids except that I might go to prison if I do it. Right? People typically don’t molest kids because they aren’t attracted to kids.

Teri Muehlhausen: 08:55
Thank goodness.

Jake Rigney: 08:56
Right? And yes, that’s great. You’re not gonna get any pro-child molesting viewpoints on the show, uh, I promise. But even though there’s this fallacy in the concept of deterrence, right? Um, people still sort of always fall back on that argument. The reason that it’s persuasive is because the only way to disprove it is to travel to an alternate universe where there’s a different set of laws and see how much it happens in that place, right?

Teri Muehlhausen: 09:29
Yeah.

Jake Rigney: 09:30
Because we are not keeping track of all the people who are doing things that aren’t crimes.

Teri Muehlhausen: 09:34
Right.

Jake Rigney: 09:35
Right? So when marijuana was legal, we weren’t keeping track of how many people were getting arrested for it, because no one was getting arrested for it. We only knew how many people were getting arrested for it once we made it illegal. Does making it illegal deter it? I mean, with drug prosecutions in particular, it kind of seems like it doesn’t make much of a difference at all. Right? People still do drugs, they have not stopped doing drugs.

Teri Muehlhausen: 10:02
Nope.

Jake Rigney: 10:03
There is some evidence to suggest that deterrence isn’t really a thing, though. But it’s sort of this generalized evidence that you can’t like I can’t point to a single person, but I can tell you this. We’ve been having prisons for something like two thousand, twenty five hundred years now. Like even the ancient Romans used to send people to a version of prison. Basically, they just locked them in the sewers.

Teri Muehlhausen: 10:29
And executions for…

Jake Rigney: 10:31
Yeah, they executed people for all sorts of stuff. Um but we’re not even talking about the death penalty, we’re just talking about like deterrence by prison, right? Um and people still commit crimes and they have pretty much never stopped. There’s never any point in human history where prison’s existence stopped crimes from occurring. Um so that kind of suggests that it doesn’t really work, but people still love to point that out. I have talked a lot. Sorry, Kassi.

Kassi Rigney: 11:03
I agree with you. Um, yeah, I don’t think it’s a deterrent. I think when you look at the other quote unquote civilized world, um the you know, we’re only one of three countries that still even has it, and the murder rate is less. Um, but our societies diverged pretty significantly some time ago, and I don’t think there’s gonna be an easy fix to get back on track to a overall safer, healthier society this moment.

Jake Rigney: 11:32
Yeah, I’m so the idea that an execution executing him or executing him in public um would deter him from committing this crime. It also sort of doesn’t stand up when you think about when he made the decision to do this, whatever was going through his head, and I’m not trying to say it was the right decision or that it was rational. In fact, exactly the opposite. It was very irrational. But he very clearly was not afraid of dying.

Teri Muehlhausen: 11:57
Right.

Jake Rigney: 11:58
Right? Because he launched an attack on an army base by himself.

Teri Muehlhausen: 12:04
Yeah.

Jake Rigney: 12:04
The odds that he was even going to survive that were low. It’s kind of a miracle that he’s not that he didn’t just die that day.

Teri Muehlhausen: 12:12
Right. He’s paralyzed though, right?

Jake Rigney: 12:15
There’s no way he went into that thinking that there wasn’t a really big chance he was going to die anyway.

Teri Muehlhausen: 12:24
Right. He viewed it as a sacrifice.

Jake Rigney: 12:26
He didn’t care that he was going to die.

Teri Muehlhausen: 12:29
Right, or what the punishment would have been.

Jake Rigney: 12:32
Right.

Kassi Rigney: 12:34
One fundamental error in this idea is that it imputes a series of logical decisions that led someone to committing the crime.

Jake Rigney: 12:45
Right.

Kassi Rigney: 12:46
And by and large, people are under emotional distress. They don’t end up doing these things based on a series of decision making. It’s it’s it’s not that well thought out.

Jake Rigney: 12:59
Right. One of the other things I meant to say and didn’t, excellent point, Kassi, is like so when people say, I don’t kill people because I don’t want to go to prison, right? That is a very rational explanation. It it makes logical sense in that way. But not everyone is rational and not everyone is logical, and they will not apply rationality to their choices the way a person who doesn’t murder people would.

Teri Muehlhausen: 13:26
Right.

Jake Rigney: 13:27
Right? So you’re taking a you’re requiring people to think rationally while ignoring the fact that that will not happen, at least not at this point in human evolution.

Teri Muehlhausen: 13:40
So a little US military history here.

Jake Rigney: 13:43
Yeah.

Teri Muehlhausen: 13:44
The last death sentence carried out by the US military was in 1961. That was 65 years ago when Army private John Bennett was executed by hanging in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was convicted of raping and attempting to kill a young girl. Now, if the currently scheduled execution is carried out by firing squad, it would mark the first such case in 80 years. The last firing squad execution was on January 31st, 1945, when Private Eddie Jolvik was executed by the U.S. Army Firing Squad in France for deserting during World War II. So I’m curious what stands out to you about the fact that the U.S. military is now preparing to carry out an execution after 65 years?

Jake Rigney: 14:40
It it tells me a lot about our leaders. Right? Um and and in particular, I think a lot of it it seems like a lot of this is being driven by the uh the former Secretary of Defense.

Teri Muehlhausen: 14:55
Or the Department of War.

Jake Rigney: 14:57
Right. That’s why I said he’s the former Secretary of Defense, right? Because there’s no Department of Defense anymore.

Teri Muehlhausen: 15:03
Yeah. Oh, I gotcha.

Jake Rigney: 15:05
Um Department of War now. This is the type of government that our current leaders want to have. Right. And enough people voted and went along with it that this is now the type of government we have. Um, at least for a couple more years, right? It it tells me a lot more about those particular people than it really tells me about anything else. Right? It’s um that’s what those guys want to do. They want to kill people, you know. There it at least the Fort Hood guy. This is silly because it almost sounds like a defense, even though it isn’t. At least the Fort Hood guy got a trial.

Teri Muehlhausen: 15:47
Right.

Jake Rigney: 15:48
Right? The fishermen off of Venezuela that are hanging onto the side of an exploded boat, and they’re like, hit him again.

Teri Muehlhausen: 15:57
No trial.

Jake Rigney: 15:58
He didn’t get it, he didn’t even get a probable cause hearing.

Teri Muehlhausen: 16:02
Nope. Or handcuffs.

Jake Rigney: 16:05
He didn’t get to like put up his hands and say Pescadora. Like none of it. He just got murdered. I I think that’s the right word for it, right?

Kassi Rigney: 16:14
Well, yes, but you know, the orange god gets to do whatever he wants, so I guess maybe not.

Jake Rigney: 16:22
Yeah, I would rather you didn’t call him that because he might like it. He might start requiring people to call him that.

Teri Muehlhausen: 16:30
Yeah, new color revolution, like with him as the leader.

Kassi Rigney: 16:35
I’m too old and wrinkled to even get on his radar.

Jake Rigney: 16:41
It’s true. He got in trouble this week for oh no, he did not get in trouble this week for commenting on a woman’s posterior on stage in front of hundreds of people while she was standing there.

Kassi Rigney: 16:58
He would never why would he curb his behavior? There’s been no reason that he he should, you know.

Jake Rigney: 17:07
Yeah. I mean, the last thing he really got in trouble for was like the fake college, right? The fake university, the real estate university. He settled that right after he got the uh right after he got elected the first time.

Teri Muehlhausen: 17:19
Yeah.

Kassi Rigney: 17:20
Oh, and it it was against the law. And look how well that deterrent effect worked, right? You know how many things are against the law, it doesn’t keep the you know the president from…

Jake Rigney: 17:29
That’s right. I forgot about the New York fraud trial. There’s so many things. That’s right. After he got fined like a billion dollar, after he settled a fraud trial for running a fake university with his name on it, he then got convicted of fraud in New York for faking mortgage applications or lying on mortgage applications. I forgot about that. My bad.

Kassi Rigney: 17:56
Didn’t you know all of his cases against him are unjust? Every prosecution his administration picks up is righteous.

Jake Rigney: 18:05
Yep. No, that makes sense.

Teri Muehlhausen: 18:06
Naturally. All right, we are gonna bring this closer to home because Indiana has five people on death row.

Jake Rigney: 18:15
Uh-huh.

Teri Muehlhausen: 18:16
One is scheduled to be executed just days from now, on November 5th. Yeah. The case involves a man convicted of killing his girlfriend’s two children. Are you too familiar with this case?

Jake Rigney: 18:28
Yes. Jeffrey, I think Weisheit is how you say that name. It’s something like that.

Teri Muehlhausen: 18:34
“V”eisheit

Jake Rigney: 18:34
Is it with a V?

Teri Muehlhausen: 18:35
Yeah,

Jake Rigney: 18:36
V sound?

Teri Muehlhausen: 18:37
it’s German.

Jake Rigney: 18:37
Yeah, I buy that.

Teri Muehlhausen: 18:39
Um, well, that’s what my research told me.

Jake Rigney: 18:42
Okay.

Teri Muehlhausen: 18:42
I’m I didn’t just make that up. Oh, I had to go, I had to go figure out what how to say that. Um, do you want to tell the listeners a little bit about this case?

Jake Rigney: 18:51
Uh I mean, if I have to, I will. So I think it was maybe 13 years ago. It was it was a while ago, more than a decade ago. Um, this guy um was in a relationship with a girlfriend who had two kids, and they got into an argument, and she left to go to work, and then they argued further while she was at work, and then one of the the younger boy woke up in the middle of the night and didn’t want to go back to bed or something, and so he just kind of I mean, he can’t he still never explained what really would cause somebody to do what he did, but the basics of it is that he taped the boy down to the bed, the girl never woke up, he lit a phone book on fire, started a fire in the house, and the children died in the blaze and he left. Then he went to Kentucky, they caught up to him in Kentucky, he led them on a police chase, he did not succeed in evading the police. Um yeah, so uh it was in Evansville. Um they sought the death penalty, the jury recommended it, the judge imposed it. And he’s been fighting it through various means, trying to avoid um being executed, and so far has been unsuccessful in any of those efforts.

Teri Muehlhausen: 20:20
Yeah, one thing that caught my attention was this was a state court case and ended up in federal court, and they even asked the Supreme Court to review or consider it. So, how how does something like that happen?

Jake Rigney: 20:35
It’s very complicated because it has to go through about six different courts. Um, so here’s what happens. I’m I’m just gonna go through it as quick as possible. Um, you get charged in state court. The first part of the trial is to determine whether you in fact committed murder, then they do a second part of the trial um after the jury finds the person guilty of murder, where they then also determine whether there are aggravating factors that justify the imposition of life without parole or um the death penalty. If the jury recommends the death penalty, then the judge can impose the death penalty if that’s what the judge wants to do. I don’t think the judge has to do it, but um it’s kind of rare. I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard of one where the jury imposed it and then the judge declined to do it. So then they get a direct appeal straight to the Indiana Supreme Court. Capital cases skip over the Indiana Court of Appeals, they go straight to the Indiana Supreme Court, where the Indiana Supreme Court looks at all the issues that can be raised on a direct appeal. Assuming they find no errors, then the death penalty continues to be in effect. But once you have exhausted your state court remedies by appealing to the Indiana Supreme Court, you are then eligible to seek what they call. What people commonly call habeas corpus relief, but is actually codified um in USC. Oh, I forget the code section. It’s 2255. I forget the title. I think it’s Title 18. I don’t do a lot of federal work, so it’s I think it’s 18 USC 2255. Um, and that goes into a trial level court where you can raise issues related to whether they violated your federal constitutional rights in the state court trial. And so you litigate that in a federal district court. If the federal district court finds that they did not violate your rights, then you can appeal that to the circuit court, which in Indiana would be the seventh circuit. And if they don’t find that there were any violations of your federal rights, you can appeal that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court if they’ll take it. They don’t have to. And then if the U.S. Supreme Court says the the state trial court did not violate your federal rights, then the only other option you have is to seek clemency from the governor of Indiana. Which is which they are still trying to do.

Teri Muehlhausen: 23:21
And it has to go in that order. You can’t just seek clemency first.

Jake Rigney: 23:26
No, you can seek clemency at any time.

Teri Muehlhausen: 23:28
Okay, but the courts is in that order specifically. Um because they’re hierarchy.

Jake Rigney: 23:36
I think so. In theory, there may be a legal way to go straight from the Indiana Supreme Court to the US Supreme Court, but I don’t honestly even know what what the decision is there. I think you everybody wants to go to the district court level because typically you want to supplement the record. When you’re appealing straight to the Indiana Supreme Court, you don’t get to add anything to the record. It’s just what happened during the trial. That’s your record. If, for example, you’re going to argue that the person has See, and I left steps out. My God, this is so complicated. So after the Indiana Supreme Court, you can engage what’s called Indiana post-conviction relief. So then you go back to the trial level court in Indiana and say, hey, you violated my rights in some way. And if the trial court determines once again that they did not violate your rights, then you can go to the Indiana Court of Appeals for that. Although again, I think that goes straight to the Indiana Supreme Court. I think that skips over the Court of Appeals again. Then you go to federal court. So it’s state trial level, Indiana Supreme Court, state trial level PCR, Indiana Supreme Court, federal habeas petition, Seventh Circuit, U.S. Supreme Court. Those are the that’s the path, I think. There might be a way to skip over the federal trial court and the PCR, uh the PCR state level court if that’s what you want to do. But typically you don’t want to do that because you want to supplement the record and add additional facts. For example, if you want to argue that your trial-level attorney at your murder trial was incompetent or otherwise made some sort of mistake, there’s no way to get evidence of what the attorney did or why they did it, other than to call them as a witness and supplement the record, which is why you would have additional. This is so not funny.

Teri Muehlhausen: 25:31
Yeah. So I think by the time you get to the end of it, it’s really exhausted.

Jake Rigney: 25:49
Right. And that’s why it’s been 13 years, right, since these, uh, since these kids died, since he killed those kids. Um, because he’s been doing all of these legal things over the last 13 years.

Teri Muehlhausen: 26:05
Now there’s another significant part in this case. The child’s father has asked the governor to grant clemency, while the mother has urged the officials to uphold the death sentence. How do the wishes of the victim’s family members factor into the clemency decision? Like how how are they weighed?

Kassi Rigney: 26:26
Well, I mean, uh the ultimate weight that the their input is given is ultimately up to the the decision maker. Um, but they have under Indiana law victims’ rights, so they have the right to be heard. But how that weighs, I mean, this is kind of like sentencing, or are going to be all these factors, and we can all agree that the this is all to be considered in the decision, but there is nothing that says you have to, you know, mom’s mom’s preference, trumps dad’s or anything like that.

Jake Rigney: 26:58
Yeah, and the decision makers, which in this case would either be the governor or the parole board. I mean, the parole board hears clemency requests and then they make a non-binding recommendation to the governor. So the governor can ignore them or not, and none of them have to explain what it was that made them choose that. You know what I mean? So um it it could be I’m not saying it is, because I’m not gonna say that they would ever do something by flipping a coin, but if they wanted to flip a coin and as long and then they just never said like they don’t have to say why. They can they just say no. It’s it’s easy for a PR team like the governor would have um to craft a you know reasonable explanation. The seriousness of these crimes dictate that the ultimate punishment should be handed down, right? It’s not you know, it’s not hard.

Teri Muehlhausen: 27:53
Right.

Jake Rigney: 27:53
And if you wanted to get even more I don’t want to call it schlock because it’s not the kids died and they didn’t have a chance to even you know, they didn’t get a chance to live their lives, which is awful. Um but you know, if if the PR people at the governor’s office really want to drive the point home, they just talk more and more about the the children, right? Um which in a way makes a lot of sense, right? Because uh what happened to the kids is awful. On the other hand, using dead children as a prop to justify what you want to do is also kind of awful.

Teri Muehlhausen: 28:33
Yeah.

Jake Rigney: 28:34
Um I think the the truth is that no one wins these situations, right? If they commute his sentence, you know, uh there are a lot of people who are gonna say justice has not been done. If they execute him, there are a lot of people who are going to say this government does things that they should not be allowed to do. Either either way, we have all just lost. Yeah. I mean, there’s just no there are legal situations where even though there’s gonna be a ruling, we all kind of lose, especially if you’re anti-death penalty, right? Um, you know, the pro-death penalty people, I can congrats, I guess you got to kill a guy legally. It’s not my bag, but okay.

Teri Muehlhausen: 29:24
Yeah.

Kassi Rigney: 29:24
I just wonder how long we’re gonna keep trying the same thing to the same result before we actually change tactics. I mean, if we have a real goal, change is hard. It is.

Jake Rigney: 29:38
They don’t have a real goal. They do have a real goal, actually. The politicians’ real goal is to get re-elected.

Teri Muehlhausen: 29:43
Yeah.

Jake Rigney: 29:43
And as long as the population tells them, you know, that it’s close or that they favor the death penalty, the politicians will keep supporting it. And they don’t care whether, you know, whether he really lives or dies. What they want is to get re-elected.

Teri Muehlhausen: 30:01
So Weisheit’s attorneys have argued that he has brain injuries and mental health issues that were not adequately explored during his original case.

Jake Rigney: 30:12
Yep.

Teri Muehlhausen: 30:12
And they have been seeking additional brain scans and expert analysis to present to the governor. The Indiana Supreme Court rejected this and kicked it to the governor. Is it possible that brain injuries and mental health issues weren’t adequately explored at trial?

Kassi Rigney: 30:31
I mean, it’s possible. I don’t know what was presented at that time. Anything, I mean, anything’s possible.

Jake Rigney: 30:38
Yeah, so the the time to present that sort of evidence is during the aggravation phase, right? So first the jury would have been asked to decide whether he killed the the kids or not, right? They clearly determined beyond a reasonable doubt that he did.

Teri Muehlhausen: 30:54
Yeah.

Jake Rigney: 30:55
And then during the second phase of the trial, the state presents evidence in aggravation, right? They have to have they have to prove at least one of a big long list of factors, and if they prove one of them, then the jury may, not shall, but may recommend the death penalty if they want. Um, in this case, there were several aggravating factors that would have qualified it for death penalty consideration, including um that there were multiple deaths, right? So anytime you kill two people, um, you’re eligible for the death penalty. Um that doesn’t mean that everyone who does it gets it, but and I am sure there are other factors, um, but because I do not practice death penalty cases, I haven’t read that statute in a little while, and I couldn’t tell you what other ones apply. My guess is I don’t I don’t think position of trust is an aggravator for the death penalty. But if it is, obviously that would also apply.

Teri Muehlhausen: 32:00
One last question. People here, lethal injection, electric chair, firing squads, and possibly other methods hanging. What methods of execution are permitted in Indiana?

Jake Rigney: 32:15
I think it’s I think it’s just lethal injection here. I think.

Kassi Rigney: 32:20
I have not looked. I don’t I honestly don’t know.

Teri Muehlhausen: 32:23
You’re right. They did away with I have to go and find these answers. I’m like, oh, what if they don’t know this?

Jake Rigney: 32:29
You gotta fact check.

Teri Muehlhausen: 32:30
Um, I think they did away with it um in the 90s.

Jake Rigney: 32:34
The chair.

Teri Muehlhausen: 32:34
The chair.

Jake Rigney: 32:35
Yeah,

Teri Muehlhausen: 32:35
it went to…

Jake Rigney: 32:36
I vaguely remember that they used to have the electric chair.

Teri Muehlhausen: 32:39
That’s what I grew up remembering. Like it’s the electric chair. Okay, so should we ask that again? Or just x it?

Jake Rigney: 32:50
No, no, just just run it like that. We don’t know everything. It’s okay, it happens.

Teri Muehlhausen: 32:55
All right, Jake. Okay, that brings us back to the question we’ve been asking today. Who gets to decide what justice looks like? In this case, the courts have a role, the governor has a role, and the victim’s family has a voice. But in a criminal trial, there’s another group of people who can determine the outcome, and that’s the jury.

Jake Rigney: 33:16
Right.

Teri Muehlhausen: 33:17
Imagine you’re on a jury, you believe the defendant committed the crime, but you think finding them guilty would be unjust. That’s the basic idea behind the next topic: jury nullification. But what does that actually mean in practice? And how much power does a jury have?

Kassi Rigney: 33:38
Well, I mean, it’s it’s the jury gets to determine the facts and and the law. So, I mean, the power that they have, if they, you know, one jury can convince a whole panel, they can hijack the whole case and you know, say we’re not convicting here, state.

Jake Rigney: 33:57
Yeah, there are these sort of competing factors that um often we see run into one another in these sorts of in in trials, um, right? Um, one is that there are certainly jurors sometimes that are are willing to nullify, right? Which is to say, I don’t really care what the evidence showed, I’m gonna find the person not guilty anyway.

Teri Muehlhausen: 34:21
Right. For whatever reason.

Jake Rigney: 34:23
But one person does not make a verdict, and one juror to will cannot make a verdict, right? Um, so they have to find 12 for a major felony case or six for a misdemeanor or a level six felony case, who are all willing to nullify. Um, that is much less likely to happen. I’m not going to say it’s never happened because I’m pretty sure it has. Um and in particular, occasionally you will see verdicts where they find people guilty of some things and not other things, and it doesn’t make sense because you know, if if a person is convicted of burglary resulting in serious bodily injury, and the serious bodily injury is that someone died, right? Then they are also guilty of murder. That’s called felony murder. I think we’ve talked about it before, right? But we are aware of verdicts that have come down where jurors have found a person guilty of burglary or robbery resulting in serious bodily injury or even death, but not the murder that lawfully they would also be guilty of. So it’s it happens. Um, it’s you never know why necessarily. Jurors don’t have to talk to the attorneys afterward, and even if they do, they don’t have to tell you the truth.

Kassi Rigney: 35:53
The interesting thing about it is we as lawyers cannot argue for nullification to the jury. Uh they’re tak they take an oath that they’re supposed to apply the law, and they’re not supposed to technically they’re not supposed to hijack it like that. So we can’t argue that for them. But if they knew that they had the power to do that, they they could do that on their own.

Teri Muehlhausen: 36:18
So jurors get these instructions. And so nowhere in these instructions you’re saying does it inform the jury that this right of theirs exists?

Jake Rigney: 36:31
It it sort of does, but it doesn’t.

Teri Muehlhausen: 36:34
It doesn’t like lawyer work and legalese, doesn’t it?

Jake Rigney: 36:38
So here’s what the instructions usually say. You as the juror, I’ve heard it so many times. Um, you as the jurors ultimately determine the law and the facts. Um and what that means is that they can find, they can nullify, they can find someone guilty even if they think they violated the law. Um but the very next line in the instruction usually then also says you should refer to these instructions as your best source of the law. As I often say in juries during Vordeer, having a jury decide a criminal case is extraordinarily illogical. Right? It doesn’t make sense if you think about it. Um, you’re in a courtroom with at least three lawyers, right? A prosecutor, a defense attorney, and a judge, but none of them are gonna decide whether the person’s guilty or not. Instead, we’re going to pick 12 strangers with a lot, some or most commonly no training in criminal law whatsoever, and we’re going to let them decide whether a person is guilty or not. And um that it makes almost no sense. I I saw a meme once that was pretty funny about this too. It’s like criminal trials are so weird. It’s like, hey, bestie, take the day off work, we’re gonna go solve a murder. It’s like, what? Um, but that is that is what we do, and we do that because we want someone other than the government deciding.

Kassi Rigney: 38:22
It’s a vitally, vitally important role that people don’t generally want to pick up.

Teri Muehlhausen: 38:30
So at the end of the day, is the jury supposed to apply the law as the judge explains it?

Jake Rigney: 38:38
Yes, although the the judge doesn’t really explain it. I mean, the judge does read the instructions, but it’s all written down in a a packet of instructions that they take back to deliberate and they can review.

Kassi Rigney: 38:51
And by and large, the Indiana instructions are set, they’re called pattern instructions. So you know when they’re explaining a particular crime, every jury that’s questioning you know whether that happened is getting this, should be getting the same substantially similar instruction.

Teri Muehlhausen: 39:08
And this little part that kind of tells them they have this right is a pattern instruction.

Jake Rigney: 39:13
It is, yeah.

Teri Muehlhausen: 39:14
Which number?

Jake Rigney: 39:15
Uh, I don’t remember off the top of my head. They always get renumbered um before they…

Teri Muehlhausen: 39:20
And they’re always included because I know sometimes you pick and choose which ones you want?

Jake Rigney: 39:24
So you choose specific instructions that apply to the legal issues for that particular trial, but then there is also a large group of them that get sent that get read in every criminal trial, and that is one of them. Okay.

Teri Muehlhausen: 39:39
So you really need a law professor or attorney in your jury to really let the jurors understand their true power.

Jake Rigney: 39:48
Well…

Teri Muehlhausen: 39:49
Or like a really good reader.

Jake Rigney: 39:52
I well, here’s the thing. It maybe you do, maybe you don’t. I mean, the last jury I had with a lawyer in it um did not go the way I wanted it to, um, which is about all I can say about it. And because just because somebody went to law school doesn’t mean that they know anything about criminal work or jury nullification. And if they don’t believe in it or they don’t think it should be a feature, there is no chance they will tell the rest of the jurors about it, right? They will keep that to themselves, and they’re under no obligation to tell the other jurors about it. So um it’s you know, that’s not necessarily what you want.

Teri Muehlhausen: 40:33
Well, let’s move from the courtroom to what’s happening when someone returns to the community. Last month, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office has started publishing weekly lists of certain sex and violent offenders who have been recently released from prison or transferred from another county and registered in Marion County. The stated goals include transparency and public awareness. Have you two heard about this?

Jake Rigney: 40:59
No.

Kassi Rigney: 41:00
No, so it’s uh in addition to the database that you can search on demand and the database you can set your own personal notifications for.

Teri Muehlhausen: 41:10
Right. So this is a public notice that his uh office is uh publishing weekly with the names um and crimes of these people that are being released back into the community. And there is already the public sex offender registry, so yeah, not sure what this new list adds. Some people are saying it’s going to improve public safety.

Jake Rigney: 41:37
No, well, um it adds a new talking point to the sheriff’s re-election ads in three years. That’s what it adds.

Kassi Rigney: 41:45
Correct.

Jake Rigney: 41:48
I made it tougher for sex offenders to go on living their life after they get out of prison.

Teri Muehlhausen: 41:54
Yep.

Jake Rigney: 41:54
I’m tough on crime.

Teri Muehlhausen: 41:55
Hard on crime. Okay, so we’ve talked about punishment, juries, and public safety. Now it’s time to switch gears to something less serious. It’s time for the Glock switch.

Jake Rigney: 42:10
Yay.

Teri Muehlhausen: 42:12
You’re so excited, Jake. I am there. Calm down.

Jake Rigney: 42:15
I’m happy to be moving on from…

Teri Muehlhausen: 42:18
Death.

Jake Rigney: 42:18
State-sponsored murder, and sex offenders.

Teri Muehlhausen: 42:24
Okay, so the Glock switch is the brown desk’s full auto round. Five question silly rules. No mercy. Today’s house rule.

Jake Rigney: 42:37
No mercy.

Teri Muehlhausen: 42:38
No mercy. Answers must be exactly one sentence that starts and ends with the same word. Awkward loops only. Who’s up first?

Kassi Rigney: 42:51
If you want more time to think, I mean, I epically fail at every one of these, so I’ll go first.

Jake Rigney: 42:57
It’s fine.

Teri Muehlhausen: 42:58
All right, attorneys take cover. Jake.

Jake Rigney: 43:02
Yeah.

Teri Muehlhausen: 43:03
Can the police search you and your belongings if you’re not under arrest?

Jake Rigney: 43:10
Yeah, they can totally do that. Yeah.

Teri Muehlhausen: 43:14
That’s yeah, that’s too easy.

Jake Rigney: 43:17
Well, you just put some sort of explanation for you.

Teri Muehlhausen: 43:22
All right.

Jake Rigney: 43:22
Darn, I’m not sure, darn.

Kassi Rigney: 43:24
So fall back to Kassi’s fake find one in and just repeat it for my two or three questions.

Teri Muehlhausen: 43:30
Yeah. All right. Well, you know what? Next time there’s there’s gonna be a house, uh, musical chairs house rules. You’re not gonna know what house rule you’re gonna get for your questions.

Jake Rigney: 43:41
Uh-huh.

Teri Muehlhausen: 43:42
So you can’t plan ahead.

Jake Rigney: 43:43
It’ll be good. Yeah.

Teri Muehlhausen: 43:44
Yep.

Jake Rigney: 43:44
I like that.

Teri Muehlhausen: 43:45
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rigney: 43:45
Yeah.

Teri Muehlhausen: 43:46
Okay.

Jake Rigney: 43:46
Spin the spin the Glock switch wheel. Just do the 5 seconds and I can just time out thinking.

Teri Muehlhausen: 43:55
Kassi should have this one. Can the police make you do a field sobriety test?

Kassi Rigney: 44:01
No.

Teri Muehlhausen: 44:02
That works, right?

Kassi Rigney: 44:04
No is a sentence. No is a complete sentence.

Jake Rigney: 44:07
Hell no, copper’s ostyu in hell.

Teri Muehlhausen: 44:10
No. Oh, hell. Why’d I add two?

Jake Rigney: 44:14
You you get the buzzer, Teri.

Teri Muehlhausen: 44:19
I do. I can’t uh man this game.

Jake Rigney: 44:22
Rulemaker can’t follow her own rules today.

Teri Muehlhausen: 44:25
Alright. Who’s next?

Jake Rigney: 44:28
Uh I’ll go.

Teri Muehlhausen: 44:29
Okay. What happens if you delete the app and clear your phone before they get the warrant?

Jake Rigney: 44:37
Well, that depends on what kind of phone you have and exactly how you deleted it. Like whether you went into your storage and absolutely wiped your entire phone, or if, for example, you did something dumber like just throw it down a well.

Teri Muehlhausen: 44:55
Nice.

Jake Rigney: 44:57
You didn’t know where I was going with that one, did you?

Teri Muehlhausen: 44:59
No, but hold on. Let me go back to this house rule. Oh, answers must be exactly one sentence.

Jake Rigney: 45:08
Well, you can’t even follow your rules. Why am I supposed to?

Teri Muehlhausen: 45:12
All right, last one. Kassi. Does eating the evidence make the possession charge go away?

Kassi Rigney: 45:21
No. And I’m standing by no as a complete sentence.

Teri Muehlhausen: 45:28
It works. It works.

Kassi Rigney: 45:30
I don’t think you could possess anything more than taking it into your body.

Jake Rigney: 45:34
Well, but but people do it because it becomes much harder for the police to prove you possessed it while it’s inside you.

Kassi Rigney: 45:41
True.

Teri Muehlhausen: 45:41
Yes.

Jake Rigney: 45:42
But yeah, from a platonic viewpoint of did I possess this or not? Yes, while it’s in your belly, you are possessing it.

Kassi Rigney: 45:49
Can you completely consume it without the police finding it? Because usually we uh when we hear about it, it’s like somebody shoving it in their mouth while you know while they turn their back and the cop, you know, trying to get it to spit it out or whatever.

Jake Rigney: 46:01
But then they get second thoughts because they’re like, this is a lot of cocaine.

Kassi Rigney: 46:06
Yes, if you can get it all in and you know, you don’t have you know buds in your teeth or crack on residue on your lips.

Jake Rigney: 46:15
My favorite one, I think, are the mugshots of the people who huff.

Kassi Rigney: 46:19
I we haven’t seen any of the huffers with the paint on their face in a very long time.

Jake Rigney: 46:24
Yeah, people people have stopped huffing spray paint on it.

Teri Muehlhausen: 46:27
Some other drugs out there.

Jake Rigney: 46:28
Yeah, it’s just like it’s not um it there’s just cheaper ways to get high than to huff spray paint, but the people who used to huff the spray paint, then like you know, they spray it into a bag and then they breathe it in out of the bag, uh, but when they breathe it in, it all goes around and it just covers the parts of their face that are inside the bag. Like with just this perfect like paint circle.

Teri Muehlhausen: 46:51
It’s like the toddler they got in the mom’s makeup. No, I didn’t do that.

Jake Rigney: 46:56
It’s awful, but um and and obviously I feel bad for people who feel like they have to get high by doing that. Um but also they look hilarious. Sorry, bro, you do. I don’t I’m not trying to make fun of you, but I am

Teri Muehlhausen: 47:09
A little clownish.

Jake Rigney: 47:11
Sorry, man.

Teri Muehlhausen: 47:12
So awkward loops complete, and it’s time to cut for a short break. But don’t go anywhere, because when we come back, it’ll be Florida Man.

Male voice: 47:22
Today’s update on Florida Man is brought to you by the Law Office of Hamilton and Burr, LLP, your Twelfth Amendment litigation specialists. Did you write the Declaration of Independence and then almost lose a presidential election because the geniuses that wrote the election laws didn’t have a clue what they were doing? If so, call the law office of Hamilton and Burr today. Here’s a testimonial from our happiest customer.

Second Male Voice: 47:49
I ran for president in 1796 and spread rumors about my opponent’s genitals. That doesn’t have anything to do with these lawyers, it’s just funny.

Male voice: 48:00
Thanks, Thomas. Call the law offices of Hamilton and Burr today. Warning. Friday’s our free fire flintlock Friday at the law offices of Hamilton and Burr.

Teri Muehlhausen: 48:11
All right, welcome back. So Florida is always giving us plenty to talk about, and unfortunately, it’s not all that funny. So what better place to put it in than this year episode?

Jake Rigney: 48:23
Yeah, let’s let’s

Teri Muehlhausen: 48:25
But no, it’s just just to touch. So for the second year in a row, Florida is outpacing the rest of the country in executions. They took over Texas’s number one position.

Jake Rigney: 48:35
That’s that’s hard to do to kill more people than Texas.

Teri Muehlhausen: 48:38
Yeah, so Florida has executed a record 19 people in 2025. So far this year, they’ve already executed 18. They have two more scheduled, so those go ahead, it’ll be 20 executions break breaking their old record. Alright, so let’s see what’s going on in Florida. New York Post reports. Now, this one started in Orlando, and it stems from an event that happened back in February 2025 at a Tiffany’s and Company jewelry store in a mall. This guy walks in with no appointment, but he tells the staff that he is a representative for the Orlando Magic. Oh, cool. Yeah, so they take him in the back, a private viewing room for the expensive stuff. What do you think happens back there?

Jake Rigney: 49:29
Robbery.

Kassi Rigney: 49:31
Agree.

Teri Muehlhausen: 49:32
Yeah, yeah. He grabs two pairs of diamond earrings. One is one pair is a four point eight six carat set worth one hundred and sixty thousand dollars.

Jake Rigney: 49:42
Jesus Christ.

Teri Muehlhausen: 49:43
The other pair was an eight point one carat dollar set worth six hundred and nine thousand five hundred dollars.

Jake Rigney: 49:50
Why? Why do why does anything cost that much?

Teri Muehlhausen: 49:53
Yeah, so he and then he he obviously had to use force to get out of the store. And he had a ring and he dropped that on the way. So he just got out with two.

Kassi Rigney: 50:03
He made it out though?

Teri Muehlhausen: 50:04
He he made it out. So what crime did he commit? Right there.

Jake Rigney: 50:08
Oh goodness. Um, if that were in Indiana, it’s the highest felony theft, because the dollar amounts are so high. Um it’s also fraud for lying about who he was so he could get back there. It’s been I you know, I haven’t had a fraud case in a while. I don’t remember what the dollar amounts are on that anymore. Um, but it’s probably a high-level fraud case, too. Those usually run like level five felony, I think, up at the top end. Um so probably zero to six. Other facts could turn it into a robbery.

Kassi Rigney: 50:51
Yeah, I don’t I mean, I don’t have anything to add, I think.

Teri Muehlhausen: 50:55
Well, hours later, uh Florida Highway Patrol stops him on Interstate 10 in a rental car. He still’s he still has those earrings. So what’s the dumbest thing he could try to do to get rid of him while the troopers on him?

Jake Rigney: 51:10
Uh I mean give him to his toddler and turn him loose in the swamp. This is the same Florida man as before. Feed him to his gator.

Teri Muehlhausen: 51:27
No, Florida man, he swallows them. Yep. Dash Cam shows three troopers wrestling him to the ground and telling him to open his mouth, and he’s thrashing around trying to gulp them down. They get him into custody, but at the moment they charged him with resisting, but not theft, because they couldn’t find the earrings.

Jake Rigney: 51:47
Oh, they will. For that much money.

Teri Muehlhausen: 51:50
Yeah.

Jake Rigney: 51:50
They’ll find somebody to root around in the poop.

Kassi Rigney: 51:53
So it’s one of those things that you don’t even necessarily need to find the earrings. There’s that jewelry store, Tiffany’s going to have cameras, they’re gonna be able to identify who he is. So I mean, seizing that kind of evidence just makes their case better.

Jake Rigney: 52:08
This was an episode of a TV show called Raising Hope, where their senile grandmother lost her gold tooth by swallowing it. And then they had like a family, you know, one, two, three, not it, over who was gonna eventually search for and retrieve gold tooth since it was probably worth a few hundred bucks.

Teri Muehlhausen: 52:35
Right. Well, Florida man, he was sitting in the Orange County jail and and just out of the blue, he asked the staff if he’s going to be charged for what’s in his stomach. And the trooper also heard him say I should have thrown them out the window. So a body scan happened and they found the foreign objects stuck in his in his digestive tract.

Jake Rigney: 52:56
Uh-huh.

Teri Muehlhausen: 52:56
How do you think the recovery plan went?

Jake Rigney: 52:59
Yeah, so that depends on a couple of different things, right? One is how big the jewelry is. Um, actually, that’s kind of the biggest thing, right? Because if it’s small enough, they might just get a search warrant for all his poops until they recover it.

Teri Muehlhausen: 53:20
Do you need a warrant for that?

Jake Rigney: 53:20

Uh probably, yeah. I mean, I don’t know. You know, that’s an interesting question. I don’t know. Kassi, what do you think? Do they need to get a warrant to search your poop?

Kassi Rigney: 53:29
Is it maybe depends on where your poop is located? Why? Do you have an expectation of privacy?

Jake Rigney: 53:35
I hope it’s in the toilet.

Kassi Rigney: 53:37
Well, I hope so too. Um, I would think generally it’d be abandoned property.

Jake Rigney: 53:43
But but what if you’re not abandoning it, right?

Kassi Rigney: 53:47
Well, that’s why I said where is the poop?

Jake Rigney: 53:49
When you flush, it’s definitely abandoned at that point.

Kassi Rigney: 53:54
Do you have an expectation of privacy in your poop?

Jake Rigney: 53:58
I I mean I

Teri Muehlhausen: 54:00
I think to a point.

Jake Rigney: 54:01
Yes?

Teri Muehlhausen: 54:02
Right?

Jake Rigney: 54:03
I mean, if somebody said, Hey, I want to come watch you poop, I would say that’ll be twelve thousand dollars.

Kassi Rigney: 54:10
Well, like I said, where is the poop? You have an expectation of privacy when you’re pooping in your own toilet. When you go to my toilet and we know it’s going down and out into the public domain, you do not have expectation of privacy when you put your poop in that.

Jake Rigney: 54:26
The jail toilet. Do you have an expectation of privacy in the jail toilet?

Teri Muehlhausen: 54:31
Probably not.

Jake Rigney: 54:32
I mean, I haven’t been, I haven’t used a toilet in jail, so I don’t know. As with most lawyers, the answer is maybe. We’ve we’ve gone through seven awful questions to get to the same answer we get to for every other question, which is maybe gross.

Teri Muehlhausen: 54:56
Well, Florida man stayed in that hospital until nature ran its course. It took two weeks. The detectives recovered all four earrings and gave it back to the jewelry store, they cleaned them.

Jake Rigney: 55:08
Yeah.

Teri Muehlhausen: 55:08
Now, are there any uh issues with the chain of custody after something goes through a human digestive system?

Jake Rigney: 55:15
No, none. No, no, no, not for a diamond. Um the chain of custody uh people like talking about this. I I get a question about chain of custody every now and then, probably about I don’t know, six a year or something like that. Um the chain of custody, it basically says the police have to maintain custody of their evidence from when they seize it all the way through the trial. Right. Um but for non-fungible objects, in other words, objects that cannot be readily changed, the rules regarding chain of custody are significantly more lax. Like clear lax.

Teri Muehlhausen: 55:58
Or merelax. Yep.

Jake Rigney: 56:00
Clear lax is the generic version, Teri. We don’t brand name in the case. But Rigneys ain’t using brand name silica in our coffee. Or anywhere else for that matter. Um so uh when a diamond, which is a readily identifiable object that is not going to be easily changed and probably unchanged completely because it wouldn’t be digested at all. Um the there’s no issue of chain of custody. Even if it was something that was fungible, like blood or I don’t know, DNA or something like that, there would still be no issue with chain of custody because the police are only responsible for it from between when they seize it and when they present it in court, right? So they do not have to prove that the blood they took from my body was properly handled while it was still inside my body. Right? They only have to handle it correctly once they take it out of my body or my poop, and in your example.

Teri Muehlhausen: 57:24
I got one more if you want it.

Jake Rigney: 57:26
Oh good. Let’s do it.

Teri Muehlhausen: 57:28
All right, so dangerousminds.com reports that in July 2022, so this date states back, but we have a there’s a development that makes it relevant for today. Okay. So in July of 2022, Florida police officer was part of a group that was sent to check on a 71-year-old man named Dennis West. It was a welfare check. He went to his home.

Jake Rigney: 57:53
We’re calling him Denny.

Teri Muehlhausen: 57:55
Denny. Denny was dead.

Jake Rigney: 57:56
Oh, Denny.

Teri Muehlhausen: 57:58
Yeah.

Jake Rigney: 57:58
Gonna miss you, bro.

Teri Muehlhausen: 57:59
So far, pretty sad. Nothing Florida great going on here.

Jake Rigney: 58:03
Yeah, that sucks.

Teri Muehlhausen: 58:04
Now, one of the officers that went to this check helped take West’s body to the medical examiner’s office. Now, here’s where the first strange detail comes up. At that office, the officer allegedly identified himself as the dead man’s friend. He also said that West had no living family. Why might someone want to believe a dead man had no family? What do you think is going on here?

Jake Rigney: 58:32
I mean, what I’ve got, what pops into my head is the real Florida man in this story is the cop. And they stole a bunch of Denny’s stuff and didn’t want them to be notifying any or looking for Denny’s relatives who would then come wondering where all of Denny’s valuables disappeared to. But I could be way off, I’m just guessing.

Teri Muehlhausen: 59:00
That’s close. So the the allegations that he didn’t have uh family or relatives, they were false. But then things got a little stranger. The officer used his police database to get personal records on Deadman, his driver’s license, including address, date of birth, social security number, any information he can gather. What do you think he wants all this information for?

Jake Rigney: 59:25
He wants to become Denny.

Kassi Rigney: 59:28
Yes.

Jake Rigney: 59:30
He is unhappy with his life.

Kassi Rigney: 59:32
Maybe kill his wife and then become Denny?

Jake Rigney: 59:35
He is going to identity thief.

Teri Muehlhausen: 59:37
Oh, you’re getting close. He wanted to use the dead man’s identity to deal with the city to get a permit to make repairs on the dead man’s property.

Jake Rigney: 59:48
What what what so we could live there? Why would you fix someone else’s property?

Teri Muehlhausen: 59:53
Yeah, this isn’t the first time it happened, according to the report. This this happened over the next four years. So started in 2022 with that welfare check. The officer continued paying the taxes in West’s name. And anytime that they would have contractors come over to work on renovations of the house, Florida police officer and his wife would be there posing as friends of Florida dead man. He’s just not available. What do you think happens when someone spends so much time maintaining a house that doesn’t actually belong to them?

Jake Rigney: 01:00:26
They sell it.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:00:28
Well…

Jake Rigney: 01:00:28
They’re house flipping with zero overhead.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:00:32
In this case, there was a real estate company that became interested in buying the property, and the company tracked down the dead man’s actual heirs and bought the rights to this home. Then the company tried to claim the property, but we know who was there. That was Florida police officer. He claimed that he took control of the property so it would not fall into despair.

Jake Rigney: 01:00:58
Disrepair.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:00:58
Disrepair. Thank you. Disrepair. And do you think it was over when they asked him to hand over the keys?

Kassi Rigney: 01:01:06
No, I expect that all the improvements that he did, he said that now he’s invested in the property and he owns part of it.

Jake Rigney: 01:01:15
Adverse possession? Was he adversely possessing dead people’s property?

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:01:19
He he wanted he was living in that guy’s home and renovating it. And he spent, he claims he spent over $200,000 of his own money renovating that home and demanded that this real estate company pay him. They refused. So what’d Florida man do? He took him to court. And that’s when all of this fraud came out.

Kassi Rigney: 01:01:42
He should have left it.

Jake Rigney: 01:01:44
One step too far, Florida cop.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:01:46
Yep. So on October 23rd of this year, Florida officer was arrested on several felony accounts, including official misconduct and criminal use of a deceased person’s identification.

Kassi Rigney: 01:01:58
It does sound as brazen as a police officer would be, right? He his crime wasn’t successful and he decided to take it that next step.

Jake Rigney: 01:02:06
Yeah, it’s I hate to call back the flock episode again. Oh no. Like you saw the same thing with some of the flock officers, right? That got charged with inappropriately searching people on Flock. Like it was like, how do you think that like people weren’t going to realize this is what was happening? Like the one guy was like just showing up where this girl happened to be over and over again. It’s like you’re obviously looking up her car, man.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:02:32
Right.

Kassi Rigney: 01:02:32
Well, and I have a suggestion for the sheriff. Maybe that’s the list that would make this community safer. The list with photos of the police officers who were abusing their power to harass citizens.

Jake Rigney: 01:02:45
Yeah, maybe we should create a registry of all the flock officers who got convicted of using flock inappropriately. Maybe we should make them register for the rest of their lives so that everybody knows

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:02:59
Everyone.

Jake Rigney: 01:02:59
That they’re the creepy weirdos that will search you on the internet.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:03:04
Can’t be trusted with authority. Yeah.

Jake Rigney: 01:03:07
Public safety service that we would be providing everyone.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:03:11
That would be a good public safety service.

Kassi Rigney: 01:03:14
When you abuse you you accept a position of trust in the community, you should be held to a higher standard.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:03:19
You should. Well, guys, that’s all I have from the desk.

Jake Rigney: 01:03:24
By the way, I don’t I don’t really think that. I don’t think anyone should have to register once they get released from prison. It was just funny to anyway. Great job, Teri. Thank you. Um and uh thank you, dear listener, for listening to Tales from the Brown Desk. Please remember, while we may discuss legal issues and provide information regarding the law to our listeners, we do not intend to create an attorney-client relationship with any listener. Our advice may not be applicable to some legal issues. Please consult with an attorney you have hired to review your legal situation before you attempt to apply the things we have said to your case. Tales from the Brown Desk is produced by Rigney Law and Teri Muehlhausen. If you want to ask a listener question, email Teri at TalesfromThe Brown Desk.com and entitle your email podcast question, and we’ll read it on our next podcast. We will also keep lots of praise and compliments on you because your question will be so very smart. Um, but we won’t answer your question. Um, because we don’t know the answer. We will just read it and then sit there silently for 30 seconds.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:04:31
And then say maybe.

Jake Rigney: 01:04:37
We’ll make weird noises. Buzz sprout says this episode will get 76 downloads. That’s one more than the episode from two weeks ago. Um probably because of our newest faraway listener who is in Jaipur, India. I think what happened here is this person has a muscle tick in their hand, and they were trying to Google legal podcast in India. But then they stuck an extra N and A in there. That’s exactly what a shaky hand. Um, and so they accidentally got Tales from the Brown Desk in Indiana Law podcast, and then they got very confused because they did not understand what we were talking about. The attorneys at Rigney Law do not comment on their current pending cases. Nothing we have said in this podcast is a comment on any case we are currently working on, even if you are Thomas Jefferson. Take care.

Teri Muehlhausen: 01:05:41
Bye.

Kassi Rigney: 01:05:42
Bye.