Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

All right, Steve Palmer here. Lawyer Talk, lawyerTalkPodcast.com if you have questions or comments, you can send them there or check us out in the socials. Leave me a comment. I'll try to cover it. I'm going to talk about.

Steve Palmer [00:00:12]:

I don't always do this, but sometimes.

Steve Palmer [00:00:14]:

We all get in arguments or debates or discussions with our cohorts. And I got into a discussion, believe.

Steve Palmer [00:00:20]:

It or not, on another podcast the.

Steve Palmer [00:00:22]:

Other day, about a case here in Ohio.

Steve Palmer [00:00:24]:

It's a horrible case, an infamous case, we should say.

Steve Palmer [00:00:27]:

And ironically, the gentleman accused is a.

Steve Palmer [00:00:31]:

Guy named Brian Wilson.

Steve Palmer [00:00:31]:

We're not talking about Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Rest in Peace, phenomenal musician. We're talking about a guy who, it seems, killed two police officers up in the small town of.

Steve Palmer [00:00:44]:

Up in Morrow County, Ohio, a small.

Steve Palmer [00:00:45]:

Town here in Ohio, where I practice law. And the discussion sort of involved this. So somebody was sort of scoffing or with a little bit of disdain, upset that Wilson entered a plea of not guilty to the charge of murder. And I think he killed two officers. He's charged with two counts of murder. And I can understand that position. I hear this a lot. It's like, how dare that guy go plead not guilty? And to me, as any criminal defense lawyer, really, anybody in the system, I think, would understand that, yeah, that's exactly.

Steve Palmer [00:01:23]:

What he should do and would do in any situation.

Steve Palmer [00:01:26]:

In fact, it would be really odd.

Steve Palmer [00:01:28]:

For somebody at their initial arraignment where such things happen.

Steve Palmer [00:01:31]:

Pleas of guilty or not guilty would.

Steve Palmer [00:01:33]:

Actually go in and plead guilty.

Steve Palmer [00:01:34]:

In fact, the judge presiding over that might not even accept the guilty plea at that point. Not that he couldn't or she couldn't, but maybe not, because there's lots that needs to happen. All right, let me break this down a little bit. If I go, and it's maybe part of the misunderstanding or the misconception about this, is the term guilty or not guilty or innocent or guilty or whatever it is. See, in Ohio, we plead not guilty. Others have different things, they call it. But what we're really saying is, for.

Steve Palmer [00:02:07]:

Now, I'm saying not guilty, meaning I'm.

Steve Palmer [00:02:09]:

Telling the prosecutor, prove your case or show me the evidence that you can prove your case. And we don't talk in terms of factual innocence in the courtroom very often. It comes up sometimes on appellate sides of things, but for the most part, it's whether the prosecutor has proved somebody.

Steve Palmer [00:02:28]:

Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Steve Palmer [00:02:30]:

And what's the. You know, people hate this crap because people hate the legal twisting and gray areas. But it has to be this way so the prosecutor doesn't have to prove somebody actually guilty in order to win.

Steve Palmer [00:02:42]:

Their case, and nor would the society.

Steve Palmer [00:02:44]:

Want that the same is true the other way.

Steve Palmer [00:02:47]:

On the defense side. All I have to do in theory.

Steve Palmer [00:02:49]:

Is show some reasonable doubt that the.

Steve Palmer [00:02:52]:

Prosecutor didn't meet that burden.

Steve Palmer [00:02:54]:

Even if my client's guilty, there could still be a not guilty verdict because.

Steve Palmer [00:02:59]:

There is some doubt about it. And the system has to leave room for that. It has to, because it's too much to ask one way or another if.

Steve Palmer [00:03:06]:

It doesn't leave room for that.

Steve Palmer [00:03:08]:

If I had to go into a courtroom and plead some and prove somebody.

Steve Palmer [00:03:11]:

Actually innocent, I'm proven a negative.

Steve Palmer [00:03:14]:

It's almost impossible.

Steve Palmer [00:03:15]:

And the same is true for those.

Steve Palmer [00:03:17]:

Tough on crime folks out there.

Steve Palmer [00:03:18]:

You wouldn't want the prosecutor to bear the burden of proving somebody definitively, 100% completely guilty. It would be a bridge too far that way. So the system bakes this into the cake and talks about proof beyond a reasonable doubt. So when Wilson in this case pled not guilty, really what he was saying is, look, I'm pleading not guilty.

Steve Palmer [00:03:37]:

This means that I'm going to set.

Steve Palmer [00:03:38]:

This case on, on a path so.

Steve Palmer [00:03:41]:

We can figure out what's going to happen with it.

Steve Palmer [00:03:43]:

His first step will be to file a demand for discovery and get all the evidence against him.

Steve Palmer [00:03:49]:

After that, he'll evaluate the case with his attorneys and decide whether he wants to change his plea from guilty or not guilty to guilty or go to trial. Now, here's another interesting twist on this.

Steve Palmer [00:04:01]:

Is that the prosecutor, I think, is.

Steve Palmer [00:04:03]:

At least saying that they're going to say seek the death penalty.

Steve Palmer [00:04:07]:

And that means that if Wilson goes.

Steve Palmer [00:04:09]:

In and pleads guilty to the offense.

Steve Palmer [00:04:12]:

He'S sort of skipping the guilt phase.

Steve Palmer [00:04:15]:

Of the case and jumping right to.

Steve Palmer [00:04:16]:

Whether he wants to go on trial to see if he lives or dies as a result of his guilty plea. Look, people ask all the time how I square my job with my bigger picture of morality. How do I do this? How do I represent those horrible, rotten guilty people? And I always flip this around and say, well, those are the easy ones. The ones that are hard are the ones that may not be guilty, but in this case, how would I represent the guilt?

Steve Palmer [00:04:38]:

The question here is, all right, maybe.

Steve Palmer [00:04:40]:

Wilson is definitively, 100%, categorically, factually, use whatever adverb or adjective you want, guilty. The question now becomes, what happens to him? Should he be killed?

Steve Palmer [00:04:52]:

Should we impose the death penalty?

Steve Palmer [00:04:54]:

There's a whole other trial for that and a whole other set of factors that the prosecutor has to prove in order to get the death penalty imposed against Wilson. And, you know, you could say, well, hang him, you know, kill him, he deserves to die. And maybe so, but we still have to go through the process, and there.

Steve Palmer [00:05:14]:

Still has to be a trial, and we still have to be sure that.

Steve Palmer [00:05:16]:

That'S not only the right decision, factual decision, that he's guilty, but it's the right decision to punish him with the death penalty.

Steve Palmer [00:05:22]:

It may be.

Steve Palmer [00:05:23]:

It may well be. But as I say it all the time and in this show and elsewhere, it's like, you have to have these standards in place for the worst of us, because if we don't have them.

Steve Palmer [00:05:33]:

In place for the worst of us, they're not going to be in place.

Steve Palmer [00:05:35]:

For the best of us. And it has to be uniform across the board. So if they want to impose a death penalty against Wilson, more power to them go to trial, prove the facts and aggravating circumstances that you need to prove in order to impose a death penalty. And I'm sure the jury, considering all the facts and circumstances, will do the right thing, whatever that is. We shall see. But anyway, don't be confused by the semantics.

Steve Palmer [00:06:01]:

It is semantics, but the semantics actually mean something here.

Steve Palmer [00:06:04]:

If you've got a question, you want me to cover a topic, check me out. LawyerTalkPodcast.com off the record, on the air till now.