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The Gay Panic Defense is Ridiculous · Brief Recess: A Legal Podcast with Michael Foote & Mélissa Malebranche

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Brief Recess. I'm Michael Foot Melissa Alburt. Today
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about the Enron meltdown of
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the early two thousands, nineties talk shows, gay panic defenses,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: and all the times that we both cried on the
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: f train.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: And I want to tell you something funny. So, as
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: you know, I have a ton of cousins, way too many,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: and one of them.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Have you ever done account?
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Thirty on my mom's side, and.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Like that is okay, sorry, that's like a lot, but
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: there are a.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Lot of the I mean they had my grandparents had
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: a lot of kids. Like they had ten kids. So
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: all you need is to have each person have at
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: least two one or two have four and then the
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: next thing, you know.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: You have to do you have to like blow out
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Thanksgiving to like a swing of the house or something,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: or an extension this like on the White House ballroom.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Not quite so this side of the family, well, they
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: were mostly in Haiti, so there is no Thanksgiving, okay,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: But my other side of the family, they're about eighteen
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: of us and yes, we've I've we have never had
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: a traditional sit down Thanksgiving. People just like grab the
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: mill about grab plate.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: We're the same.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, sit on the floor, the same.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Come. My mom doesn't like to cook, so it's very
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: like usually pretty casual. And the house isn't like we
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: usually invite a lot of people over. The house isn't
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: like big enough to do like a big full like
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: sit down, silverware work from the outside end kind of situation.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: We have had full sit downs when my cousin who
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: does Thanksgiving rents a tent.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Oh that's fun. Wait in New York in Jersey and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: it's not too cold. Thanksgiving is my actually favorite holiday.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Thanksgiving is yes, not mine.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Because there's there's no stress around, like getting people's ship,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and I love to cook, so it's like it's the
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: super Bowl.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: For people to Thanksgiving is very stressful.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: No, I disagree because because cooking is cathartic, it is
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: like an exercise in like working through something, but having
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: to like shop and figure out what someone likes. The
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: stress of the holidays will actually it does me in
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I have a mentipe every time.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: No Easter is my stress free holiday. Itetta I do
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: not always, but porchetta.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I know I've been trying to get an inature fucking
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Easter for years. Well, she still says she keeps me
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: around each year. I'm like this, this is it.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Well, remember you were you were mistaken for a Haitian,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: so this might be your year.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that could that could be. That could be. Did
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I tell you what happened this weekend?
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: No?
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: My friend texted me and I wasn't going to go out,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: and he was like, it's final fantasy drag night with Magami,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: who's like a famous drag queen from her Pels Drag Race.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: So it's like, I can't miss this.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, that was the text that you.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: He didn't understand that mcgommy list. It's okay, apologies to mcgommy,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: but anyway, So I went. Twenty minutes later, I'm there.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I hop in the lift. We don't take ubers, they've
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: been canceled, right, and so I hop in the lift.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Get there. Everyone's naked, every every everyone. I said, wait,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: did you get naked? No, there are no pictures. No
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I didn't get naked, but I asked my friend. I
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: was like, where's the drag show? Like I came here
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: to give a dollar bill to a drag queen and
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: like see a show, have a drink and goal.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Well that is the show the nakedness, he said.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, drag show ended fifteen minutes ago. It's a jockstrap party.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Now I'm in jeans and a sweatshirt, no jacks, which
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: is it's wearing like a full garb and like a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: full flannel. Yeah sure, yeah. So I'm like, okay, you
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: guys have fun, Like I'll be up here at the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: bar with like the clothed people.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: So they were so you weren't the only clothes.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's like a main space and there's like
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: the bar, so like where you sort of like mill
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: in an.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Out and naked, like naked naked.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: It was a lot of jocks well.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Like full on frank and means like.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: It's never the person you want to see, like it's
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: always It's like the Newton's Lost law of physics is
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: like for every person you want to see in a jockstrap,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: there's an equal and opposite person you don't want to see, and.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: They are a strip there they are.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: So it's late. Brad and I have had a couple
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: drinks because we were like, we're the only people in
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: clothing here and.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: You didn't have to be that choice that you made, yes,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: And we.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: End up a Taco Bell again, and Taco Bell if
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: they want to sponsor this show, they should because it
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: keeps happening and keep ending up there. But this girl walks.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: All I hear is excuse me, Do I recognize you
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: from somewhere? Yes? I was like, uh oh, Now it's
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: like three or four in the morning, so I'm like,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: where is there? Really, We're like in deep Brooklyn, and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I'm in no position to be like interacting with the public.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: I've got well, now you're a public person.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like standing on Wednesday. I've got one eye
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: on last week and one eye on next weekend. Like
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: they're they're going and they each have their own sort
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: of trajectory. So she sits down and she tells me
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: this whole legal issue she has where her landlord's snuck
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: into her apartment. It's three in the morning, and I'm bombed,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: snuck into her apartment, pissed on her bed, and then
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: set the building on fire. He's now being tried criminal charges.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: She has to testify. I literally I had to say to her.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I was like, I can't help you right now. I
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: am too intoxicated to giving Wait, you can remember, I
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: honestly can't remember. I was like, if you DM me,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: I'm happy to chat more.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Well, the young woman who met Michael while he was
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: intoxicated in the taco bell, please reach out to him
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: over his dad with the guy.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Who does diva girly pop.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: You were unwell and you didn't listen to my story
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: about my cousin.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, tell me about your cousins. Well, now I
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: don't want, no, I want, I do want to hear.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: We talked about Thanksgiving.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: So my cousin reaches out to me and she wants
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: to interview me. She and her friend have their own
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: podcast and it's about sort of like parenthood and whatever
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: whatever else.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Right, So it's perfect for the two of us who
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: have no children.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Well, it's that's just parents. It's about childless by choice,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: childless by choice, choices, the choice choices were made. But
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: she and her friend they do this thing where they
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: talk about living outside the country of origin all this
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: other stuff. Right, So she says to me, our next
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: topic is going to be about interracial marriages. And I
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: would love to talk to you. But interracial marriage.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: You've already done a round off backhandspring. You're there and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: you've got the glasses on.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: I text her back and I was just like, I'm
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: happy to talk to you, except not. And she writes
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: back and she was like, not what I was like
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: in an interracial marriage, special marriage. My husband is not Haitian,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: but he's African American, he's not white. So I'm waiting
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: to hear back from her because I am a couple
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: of hours. I am waiting, get the waiting for her
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: because what's been happening?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Right? What does think is happening? You know there's a
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: separate text chain about how you're you married a white guy?
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Well? Or is there and were corrected her?
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Or did she think she was texting someone else?
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: No, she knew she was texting.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, well you actually have to do an update on No. No, no,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I will traumatic reading. I am yes, Yeah, I'm nervous.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I'm nervous. I can't person.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to tell Andre.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: But like you, I would have called at work. I
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: would have called his office.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: No, he's out here cosplaying a white guy apparent unbeknownst
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: to him. Unbeknownst to him.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Halloween just got a lot easier to get trust for.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: He's a lot of things.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Being confused for Haitian and Andre is being confused for
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: White is gone mad. No, we need better health care
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: so people can get their fucking eyes checked. This is SIDEBARB.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: We're just going to talk about what happened in court
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: this week. I had a hearing this morning. Actually it
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: was really early. They're all early, but this was a
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: quick It was a quick one. It was in and out,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and it was where was it. It was down in
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Lower Manhattan. Okay, Yeah, So thank god I didn't have
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: to go to like family Court in Brooklyn because that
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: is always an I bike everywhere. So for me to
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: get over the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge is
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: that early?
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Are you all sweaty when you get over there? You
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: don't sweat?
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I mean it's usually there's like the thing about if
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it's hot in New York. Yeah, and you're on a bike, Yeah,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: there's a breeze because you're flying. You're like going pretty fast,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: so it actually is kind of nice.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Continue simple assault.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I got there, and I've got quite the docket of
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: cases in war Cam right now. It's a little bit
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: we're approaching unmanageable, but it's okay. I'm handling it well.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Are you help?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I've got people supporting me.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: You have people team.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: No, I don't have a team. But they brought my
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: client in and I was like, huh, he looks different
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: and this person's incarcerated.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: M hm.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at the haircut, I'm looking at the tattoos.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I'm like, this is the wrong fucking person. It took me.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: It took me like a minute, and I said something.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: I said, I well, I of course said something, but
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: like I said something to the judge, and then I
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: was I said something to the bailiff too.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: I was like, did they have the same name.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: No. And also they use like an identifying number for
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: people who are incarcerated, so it's like they call the number,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: they bring the wrong person.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Where's your person?
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: And so they had to go like swap them out.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: And when this random person shows up and looks at you,
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: what do they say?
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Well, they were looking at me like, oh wow, you're
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: my public defender, Like this is like they had never
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: They were just sort of like coming for their calendar,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: their master calendar. Hearing uh huh. Yeah the bailiff, I
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: was like, you brought the wrong person. Do often mix
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: people up?
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, I'm sure they do.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he didn't.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: I'm sure he didn't. Doesn't mean that it's not true.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Do they apologize to you?
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: No, cops will never apologize to me for anything, No,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Matt never. I've never gotten an apology from a cop
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I hated here. Judges have I think I have received
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: an apology from a judge. They're usually pretty reasonable.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I feel like a judge will apologize
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: for something that's not their fault, right, like we're sorry
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: that's the calendar or whatever, but not because they actually
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: made a mistake, right.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's usually situational. Yes, there's usually not like, oh
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I fucked this up royally. Yeah, it's usually because they're
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: receiving all the information, documents, people, agencies that are mismanaged
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and unorganized.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: We're sorry this is happening, Not sorry because I did
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: something right, gotcha. I'll bet you what happens Swap one
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: brown person for another brown person, you know what I mean?
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: I think that.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I've witnessed like people get kind of like confused
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: or mixed up in court before, like it does happen.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I know that sometimes lawyers who are people of color
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: are mistaken for clients like that is the thing that
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: happens a lot. There are lawyers who are on social
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: media who talk about that happening all the time.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: I still hate it.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Here, moving on, welcome to under Oath. We're going to
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: do a deep dive into a lawsuit from history, a case,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: some sort of situation that deals with the law, deals
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: with the court, and we're going to get into it.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: So Melissa I brought the people versus Jonathan Schmidt's I
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: think is how it's pronounced. It's from Michigan, It's from
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, and this is the lawsuit. Usually, like
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the name of the lawsuit doesn't really match up with
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: the situation. But this is infamous as the Jenny Jones
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Show Murder Lawsuit collab. So to set the stage, it's
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, and.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: You should also say it like in the nineties there
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: were a lot of sort of dueling talk shows, right,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: So it was Jenny Jones, Winfrey, the Phil Donahue Show.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: The only thing that was on when I was homesick
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: from school. It was Jerry Springer and Jerry. I forgot
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: it was Ricky Lake.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Go Ricky Go, Ricky. I remember that, Yeah.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: It was it was these It was these talk shows
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: or daytime soaps or the Prices, right is right? That
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: was on TV. That was all or the channel you
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: went to to see what shows were on, and that was.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: PBS, right right right?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So the Jenny Jones show maybe you
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: tell us about because I actually didn't watch Jenny Jones. No.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: I feel you would have been a child.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I was too young, but you were too young.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is what I was watching. Came home after
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: school and I would watch this show. So, I mean
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: her show. It was sort of, I would say, a
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: cross between the Oprah Winfrey Show and Jerry Springer, like
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: it never do you know me? It never got as
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: volatile as Jerry Springer did, but it also didn't always
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: sort of have the same sort of class as.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: The Open Show is like a little bit more low brow.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: A little bit more low We were not. We were not.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: And I think Jenny Jones's background is that she used
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: to be a stand up comedian and I don't know
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: how she ended up doing this, but this is what
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: she did. So she used to have these shows where
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: she would it was like a secret crush, right, so
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: she would have somebody on.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: And which is like you're the messy, bitch y.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely a sloppy it's a gotcha, it's for sure.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: And she would sort of have the person come out
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: and be like, well, there's somebody out here who throw Jane, get.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: The headphones off of John, and let's have John come
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: out here and see who has the crush on him.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Here's who has a crush on you and you don't
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: know who it is, and we're going to bring them
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: out and then.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Imagine the casting for that, right, It's like, I've got
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: a huge crush on someone here right now, I'm not
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: going to say anything. Rather than talk to them, m M,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna blow it up on TV, ship up on
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: TV TV. Right, it wasn't cable, it was regular TV.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: It was just regular. It was seven channels.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: It was like on Channel nine or something.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyway, the victim of this murder was the guy
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: who had a crush on someone, and so he had
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: a crush on what later became the defendant, someone who
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: was straight. And Scott Amador was the victim and he
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: was openly gay. So he went on the Jenny Jones
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Show and was like, I've got a crush on this guy,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Schmidt, and they had a real gotcha moment on TV.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: And if you've seen it, because I do remember, and
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: it's been it's happy, you know, the clips have come
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: up over and over again, you could sort of Jonathan
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: looking very uncomfortable, sort of like laughing nervously.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone was reacting like that though, right Like I.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Feel like I feel like the audience was more like woo,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: you know, like oh yeah, and like Jenny Jones is
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: just like no, you know what I mean? So no,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: And I wonder if, like people, if they're ever actually
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: like good things that come out of this like crush segment,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Like are people know that's a good question, Actually I
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: would that would be interesting. I met my partner on
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the Jenny Jones choke the Crush segment. Anyway, I mean,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: why not. So three days later, Jonathan Schmidt's bought a
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: shotgun and murdered Scott Scott they go to trial. He's
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: charged with first and second degree murder, and well the
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: big difference between like the two different kinds of so
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: he was charged with murder, uh premeditator murder, first degree murder,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: second degree murder, so first degree murder is really like
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: you plan this out, you thought about it, you mapped
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: it out, how you're going to get away with it.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of like you know, your serial killers
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: usually get first of rumder. The big one you're like
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: trying to avoid is first write well any murder charge right,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: or killing anyone right? But also like first agree murder
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: is like that's usually where the capital punishment comes in, right,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: And so those crimes you're trying to avoid life in
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: prison and possibly the death penalty. So about second degree murder,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: it's totally different. So it's usually without that premeditation piece
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: you and still intend to murder that person. This wasn't
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: an accident. We didn't get in a car accident. There
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: was some sort of intentional piece of like I am
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: going to do this thing. But it's usually like the
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: exigency is the thing. The big differentiator, like in my
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: mind is like this person, something happened incited extreme rage
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: violence in this person, and then they acted immediately.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: So it's so basically when we hear about a crime
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: of passion perhaps.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Right, and when I'm reading this case, I'm thinking about
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: those three days that would be the first thing for
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: me where I would be like, I probably am not
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: going to when a secondary murderer try.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Because he had time to think about it, he went.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Now days is like a kind of a long time
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: to cool off. Like when you're learning this in law school,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: they're talking about like the impulsive no thought, yeah I'm
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: going to kill you, which I don't know. Have you
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: ever felt like stream range like that?
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, And I'm so And I'm actually really glad that
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: anytime I felt like that, I have sort of known
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: that I'm feeling that way.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I like stop and you call me.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: I call you, or I'm just like raging by myself
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: because when you are, when you're back up against the
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: wall and you are so angry at something that's happening,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: there is this little part of you that sort of
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: the logical part of you that goes out the window.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe not like killing someone, but for me, I'm like,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: I'm so angry right now that there's like a physicality
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: to it. It's like it has to come out of
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: me some way. Well, Yeah, got a scream into a
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: pillow basically ice water, go for a walk, go for
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: a run, like there are these like I have felt
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: like that level of ridge where it's like it's actually
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: overwhelming my physicality. Anyway, the big differentiator between those two murders,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: first degree and second degree is that premeditation piece. If
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: you don't have that, it has to be second degree murder,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: so you intend to kill this person. So those heat
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: of passion crimes usually come from walking in on your spouse.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: And then there's like this, really, I mean, they're all
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: super gross and evil defenses, but the gay panic is
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: one of those defenses. So it's got a really long,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: sort of like ugly history where it came up through homophobia.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I mean that there were race related ones which were
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: essentially right, like lynchings and Scottsboro Boys, but with this
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: particular defense of the gay panic, it kind of came
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: up in the sixties and seventies when people were really
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: like dl in parks cruising for guys. Sure, and it
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: was and still is a successful defense that people use,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: and a gay panic defense are basically arguing that a
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: gay person came on to a straight person, and that
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: straight person I think is most always a man. I
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: would be curious if there's actually even a lesbian statute
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: on this. Off the top of my head, there was
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: a case, but she was like helping lure queer people
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: to their death with another murder. It was different. That's
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: different anyway. Gay panic defenses, it's usually it creates such
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: like extreme reaction in the straight person that a defense
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: attorney argues that this person should deceive a reduced sentence
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: because they should get that second green murder charge because
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: what they were feeling was so extreme that they couldn't
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: control their reaction, because being approached and solicited by a
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: gay person was such like an affront to their sexuality.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Right, So here, here's the thing with that. Right, let's
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: say that I'm going to understand the idea of a
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: gay panic defense. Wouldn't that be something that happens immediately? Yes, right, yes, So.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Most of the case all that I've read, I think,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I think, Matthew Shepard, I think they also use gay
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: panic defenses in that lawsuit. It's usually in like a
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: hate crime charge situation, so they're not formally recognized statutes
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: like this is just like a tool that defense attorneys use.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: And I've got to be clear who, Like I'm a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: defense attorney, right, Like I use defenses all the time
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: in court. I want to like break down like the
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: ethics of it kind of like I think that, you know,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: every attorney is different. I'm like privileged enough and have
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: enough money that I get to kind of pick and
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: choose the cases that I've worked on. But I've been
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: assigned cases by judges and you have to represent that person.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: You do you have to?
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you're in the bar registry, like you
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: can get a sign a lawsuit by a judge. I
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's what happened with these lawyers.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, But I'm just curious. So let's just say,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: let's just take you, for example, you as a gay man,
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: if you are now assigned this case, could you recuse
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: yourself by saying, you know what, I'm a gay man.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know that I would be able to adequately
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: represent this person the way that they deserve, assuming that
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: we all think that people deserve.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's like a very like thoughtful way
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: to put it. Knowing judges, right and knowing the judges
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: that have assigned madea cases that would never happen or
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: that motion would never be that motion to recuse would
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: never be accepted by the court, because if you're being
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: assigned it's because no one else will take it or
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the PD's office is overwhelmed or whatever.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, so what if you get assigned this case, and
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: what would I do? Well, you've already said that you
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: probably would not have a choice, right, Like the judge
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: assigned to do it, You now are charged with doing
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: your best to represent somebody, right. I wonder though, if
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: the person loses that the person ends up going to deal,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: could that person now turn around and say, my attorney
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: is a game that yeah, he did not try hard enough.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, I mean you can bring you know, inadequate
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: a seance of council.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: I mean I just feel like that would be the
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: risk that that judge now is taking, right, Like I'm
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: going to assign this person told me to appeal.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. The thing about it for me is like
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: it's so hard to be like, well would I do?
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I think about that all the time when I'm when
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I'm watching the news, when I'm watching the MANGI only
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: try out, Like whenever I'm watching I'm like, what would
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I do? The thing that people don't understand, and like
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: it even takes for me to understand. Sometimes It's not
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: like juries are so subjective. It's a group of twelve people.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Like when you hear oh the jury, it's just like
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: a morphous blob in your head. You don't have face
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: is you don't know who they are. The defense attorney
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: had a chance to interview those people and kind of
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: understand them, and the defense attorneys here in nineteen ninety
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: five interviewed those jurors before they were seated, so for
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: them to kind of use this defense, I'm like, what
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: did they see in these eyes of that jury that
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: they thought this would actually work? And the tea is
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: that like it did, like he got second degree murder,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Like they got it, they got it reduced. So for me,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I'm like, it's so easy for me to sit here
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: and talk about the ethics of a case or what
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a defense attorney should do or not do. And I
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: would never use a gay padic defense unless I was
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: literally up against the wall and it was like my
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: license was on the line, and probably even then I'd
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: be like, hmm, I would strongly encourage my client in
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: this situation to take a plea. And we're speaking in hypotheticals.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know any of these people, right, but today
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: it's twenty twenty five and this is going on. I
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: would really encourage this person to plea, but like that's
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the tea. Clients usually don't want to take a plea.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Right because if they want to hit their chances to
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: see what.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Happened, you need a prosecutor to offer a plea, right, Like,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: you can't just like take a plea that doesn't exist, right.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So the crazy thing about gay panic defenses is that
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: they still exist. They are still real defenses that you
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: can use in many states in the US. Some states,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: while these are not statutory defenses where it's oh, this
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: is like your menu of options of defenses you can use,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: some states have gone on the record and actually ban them.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: So New York it's banned in New York.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I wonder how often it is used.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: There's this like interesting clip I saw it on TikTok
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: of this attorney. She's a criminal defense lawyer, and she's
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: doubling down. She's really defending like the use of this
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: as a defense. She won't say, and she's a queer woman,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and she won't say like I don't think I would
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: use that or whatever. She really just like will know
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: answer the question kind of. It was really interesting to
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: watch because I mean I was kind of raised by
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: defense attorneys like that in law school, Like I was
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: sort of raised by this like very strict perspective of
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: like you defend no matter what right. It's nothing to
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: do with your ethics, it's nothing to do with your person.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm like ninety nine percent there, like I really
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: am like a very strong defense attorney advocate of like
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to defend, I'm going to help this person.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you and do your best. You go and do
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: your job, But.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Like acknowledging like the extreme privilege I'm in, Like I
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: pick and choose my cases, and there's enough inbound that
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: I'm able to do that and still pay the bills,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: right right, I don't have to take that. I don't
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: know what it's like to not be able to put
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: food on the table as a lawyer and have to
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: work on a case that I don't want to work on.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: So part of a gay panic defense or any sort
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: of like heat of the moment defense, in order to
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: get that reduced charge you're arguing, there's usually this like
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: exigency piece where it's like this happened immediately you walked
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: in on your spouse, You walked in on your partner
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: having an affair, and in that moment, you murdered the
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: person that they were cheating on you with. And you know,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: law school textbooks are like filled with like it's like
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the same exact situation. It's like husband and wife. Wife
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: is having an affair with whomever. Husband walks in murders
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the guy. It's like very or both of them. And
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: so it's like a very common situation that we see
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: all the time. So there is this sort of like
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: urgency to that rage. Right, So the notion that it
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: took this man three days of blind rage, it was,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't mean it wasn't it.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: Really had time. He had time to go out, find
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: a place to buy a gun, buy the gun, get
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: the bullets a little the gun, go to the place,
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: find the guy, and kill the guy. He thought about.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: It just getting to the studio today, I've gone through
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: like eight different emotions on well, but seriously, like you
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: get no reasonable shit, YEA throughout the day. If I'm
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: really pissed off about one thing, maybe a couple hours
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: like and I have a terrible memories that happened. At
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, I'm like, what do you
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: mean so the jury actual only partially bought this, Like
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: they rejected the first degree murder charge, but they convicted
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: him of second degree murder, so there wasn't the panic
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: argument got it reduced, but he wasn't downgraded all the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: way to manslaughter. It's usually gay panic is used to
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: get you down to manslaughter new.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Sentences twenty five to fifty years. Is he still in
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: I wonder where he is now. I did kind of
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: want to talk about like self internalized homophobia a little
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: bit and like this, I don't know, like reading this case,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: like usually the fact patterns really interesting just to kind
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: of get a sense of like where we were in time,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: and we talked about like you know, what it was
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: like in the nineties watching TV and stuff, but like
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: to be a gay person in nineteen ninety five and
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: have a crush on a straight person, Like I don't know,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: I think any gay person watching this, any queer person,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: knows what it's like to have a crush on someone
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: that literally, by definition of their sexuality, has no interest
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: in being with you, right, And I don't know, I
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: feel like it really like struck a chord with me
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: reading it and it's where you kind of like see
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: yourself in the eyes of the victim, kind of of
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: like to have a crush on like a straight person
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: is like it's almost like a rite of passage now
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: that you spend time pining for someone that you don't
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: really you know, will never have anything.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Absolutely no chance whatsoever.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: And it's like so awful and heartbreaking to see someone
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: like sort of go into that. And then of course,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: like anyone getting murdered. But just like even before the murder,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: just like thinking about that, I was like, Wow, I
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: spent like a lot of my twenties like either hooking
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: up with guys who were not out. I was in
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: a long term relationship with someone who wasn't out for
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: a long time who was like is like I think
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: married to a woman now, Like there is this like
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know for me and like and after doing
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: all that therapy and like ketamine treatments, like I got
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: to a place where I understood like my internalized homophobia, right,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Like what self loathing pieces of me were having me
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: seek out not to diagnose this victim of a murder,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Like no, no, no, what part of me was like
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: kind of seeking that validation from straight society, right, Like
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: what part of me sought out someone I could never
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: have to kind of like torture myself. I don't know it,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: just like it really got me thinking about that moment
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: in my life and how just like fucking awful it was.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: I think any time that you are a part of
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: like an other, right, no matter what it is, right,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: there's because of what the world constantly tells us about
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: being the other, Like there's something wrong with being the other,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: something less than about being the other. I think it's
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: really difficult to not have some self loathing, right, And
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: in order to break free of that, you got to
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: do a lot of work. Either the work is through
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: therapy or just sort of like reading books or like
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: just thinking about, well, there's nothing wrong with me. It's
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: somebody else or the somebody's else who can't accept me,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: whether I think you're queer, whether you're you know, a
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: person of color, or I think also this is something
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: that I've come to realize now. So for the majority
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: of my adolescents and my adult life, I was morbidly obese, right,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: and I think that there is a lot of self
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: loathing when you walk through the earth as that person
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: and having had weight loss surgery, I wish so badly
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: that I had not walked through life thinking that there
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: was something wrong with me. It's fine if you want
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: to lose weight, it's fine. But if you don't want to,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: that's okay to.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you because
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: your body is different.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Right, and doesn't mean it's something wrong with you. And
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: it doesn't mean that you are deserving of less or nothing, oh,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: or that you deserve for somebody to look at you
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: like a fetish, which is what happens. And I think
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: that that happens probably a lot too queer people, to
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: people of color, to fat people, to anybody who is other.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like I get the like straight guys hit
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: on me or come on to me, or because they
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: want like the validation of the queer community, like they
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: want to try and hook up with me, to get
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: like as close as possible to this group, just to
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: know that, like, oh, okay.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: If everybody finds you desirable, and if every.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Woman on earth rejects you, you've always got you know
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: someone you can Yeah yeah, no, but it's really real.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: No, I know, it's like I used to know this woman.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: We used to be friends this white woman who was
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: engaged to a white man, and it was like her
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: dream to hook up with the black guy before she
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: got married. God is, And and she asked me to
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: introduce her to somebody like I would ever introduce someone
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: like that to somebody that I cared about, either a
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: friend or a cousin or whatever it is, so that
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: you can.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Do that starting a quick group job friends.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Go oh my god, I was so And then she
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: couldn't understand why. She was just like, well, I just
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: wanted to have this.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: It reduces someone down to like the basics. Yeah, the
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: basis mostly, I.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Mean, and all of that stuff is so it's so
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: seeped in like racism.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, well it's very much, you.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Know, very but like also just how the world or
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: this country, how the people in this country view people
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: who were not straight, white, attractive, thin, whatever it is.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: It's like, yes, absolutely. As I'm sort of like closing
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: the loop on this case, I'm thinking about, like how
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: many people are still fucking hate crime to this day,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: how much like race based, queer based, like and sort
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: of violence, especially like black trans women, Like it's like
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the number one protect the dolls like we're saying it
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: at the.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: And we're living in a time I think where our
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: government is sort of sanctioning that.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Right. There's a lot of dogs.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of that, right, like be careful with
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: your kids, like all this stuff is happening in the
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: restroom and all these other things.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: And it's like I've seen a lot of sort of
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: like queer community like stepping up for itself because it
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: has to, like I have no choice, people taking care
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: of each other. And I've gotten a lot more text
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: in my phone, which like I totally love of, like hey,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going at this place to hook up with someone,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: like here's my address, here's their photo. So I do
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: love to see I mean, queer communities, communities of color
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: have always protected themselves. I think they've always had.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: To and say we have no choice, we have no choice.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Right. As everything sort of goes on in the world
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: and gets worse and worse and worse, it's like that's happening.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: But then I'm also getting like pulled into a closer
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: and closer, close knit unity of people like me. It's
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: kind of it's awful that it has to happen, but
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: it's also comfortable that's the upshot.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: That's the shot.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: And I'm noticing that, like I'm behaving differently too. Like
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: there was this guy when I was out this weekend,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: sitting by himself at the bar, and he was like, oh,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: do you guys want these seats? It was like a
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: group of us, and I was like, yeah, I do,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: and you're going to stay. He like got up to leave,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and I was like, sit your asspect down.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Where was he?
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: He was like, oh, I'll get up and you can
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: take the table. And he was alone. He was like
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: waiting for he was alone. I was like, no, no,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: you're staying. What's your name?
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Like?
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Were you waiting for him? And you stayed with us
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: all night?
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Like you are actually really good at at doing that.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: I am terrible at that. I don't like talking to
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: people very much. I don't. I don't like talking to
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: people usually if I become friends. I think you and
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: I are friends because for whatever reason you decided to
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: seek me out. I wouldn't have, and not because I
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: think I did. No you would. It's fine. I mean
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: it's lovely. Yeah, but like that's so good of you.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: I think the girl whose landlord set her bed on fire,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: she she's I made her sit down at taco and
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: I was like, she was with her friend and her
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: friend was talking about her boyfriend. Then I looked at
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: her and I was like, you're gay, right. She was like, yeah, no,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: pan of mine is straight.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: That's not true, that's not true.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that they're, you know, as your sort
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of queer community. Maybe you don't have one, maybe you
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: do if you don't reach out to me. I am.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: I do think I'm pretty good at pulling people in.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: And he's actually scarily.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I will text, I'll text everyone. I'm actually a psycho.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: And sometimes I'll post on my story. I'll be like,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: this is why I it's actually.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: It's actually very dangerous. Please don't do that.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Don't do that.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Don't do what Michael does.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, criminally insane, Michael. But I do think that, like,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: you know, definitely travel with allies. Let people know where
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: you're going. If you are hooking up with someone who.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Says, yeah, definitely, I think especially the letting people know
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: where you're going. I still have friends who were single.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: I have lots of younger cousins and I always tell them, like,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: let me know where you're going to be. Every now
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: and then I'll tell a friend like, let me track you,
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: even if it's just for this night.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Someone DM me and he was like, I need a
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Uber ride home. And I was up. The dog pissed
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: all over the rogue, so I was awake and I
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: then mowed that pitch you did.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, some random person. You're also very generous. I
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: don't know that.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I was like, this is actually kind of fun. I'm
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: glad this person reached out. He was all, like a circuit.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Party, don't don't reach out to me. I won't pay
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: for you.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: All financial all financials come through me. C F. Yeah,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: speaking of going bankrupt financially, we should talk a little
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: bit about Melissa's case. Melissa brought a case today.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: So remember when we first started to talk and you
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: asked me if I was a lawyer, and I was like,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: absolutely positively not. I don't think what I.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Seemed to be really coming from like this deep place
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: of trauma.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're going to talk about it. We're going
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: to talk about it. And I don't think I don't
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: remember if I had shared that before I started working
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: in nonprofit, I was a paralegal for a really.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Long time, and I think that's how we initially bonded
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: when I met.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: You, like probably talked about that right and again. I
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: wanted to become a paralegal because I thought it was
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: a sort of a natural transition to eventually going to
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: law school. Paralegals have a really difficult job. I think
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: it's like the shittiest job in a law of firn.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, any paralegal that I have worked with, either at
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: a firm or my practice, they are the backbone. It
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: is like such a thankless job. People go out of
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: my way to make sure that paralegals and court clerks
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: feel great. I think it's like really important and that
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: like you'll actually get better results.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Oh for sure.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: I guess any employee you want, if you treat them nicely,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: they're going to do right by you. But uh, it
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: is one of those jobs where you do all the
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: work and you get none of the glory.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: None of the glory, and attorneys don't respect you and
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: they treat you like shit. I remember one time I
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: had an attorney who threw a file at me, and
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: I remember watching like he threw the file and I
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: kind of like watched it and like all the paper
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: snowball down. I just kind of looked at him and
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: like walked away and was like, I'm not sure what
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: you want me to do, but you've just thrown this
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: at me and his secretary picks it up.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she didn't even pick it up. No, oh, that's
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: how you know a monster when if she knew to come.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: In, Well, I walked out and then she was like,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: what happened now? I was just like, he just threw
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: He just threw a file at me, and I can't
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Not the ma I know today, because the Melissa I
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: know today, Yeah, I was fucked someone up.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: It leaves verbally for sure, for sure?
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Whoa And I just.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Sort of worked.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry not to like justify his actions what precipitated
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: this though, I'm not trying.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: To just no, no, no, no, I can tell you exactly
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: what it was. He had given the file to me,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: and you know, you know those binder clippy things, Yeah right, yeah, yeah,
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: so I gave the file back to him, but I
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: had forgotten to put them back in the whole punch,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: so fucking what right? No? No, I mean, and he
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: could have said to me, you know what, Melissa, when
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: you're doing this, you need to give it back to
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: me the way that I gave it back to you
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: or something. But like throwing it at me was not
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: the way to get me to do anything.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, and to go from zero to a
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: thousand life.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Oh and I will say this particular attorney was notorious
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: for doing things like that. He threw things at people.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: He screamed at people. I will tell you every now
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: and then I google him and he's like, partner.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: I hate that. I really hate when shitty people are successful.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: He is.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: He's very successful. He's a very successful.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Evil I mean, it's not evil. And I'm going to
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: answer my own question, but like my first thought is like,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: how can we undo success? I'm like, how can I
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: be a part of his downfall?
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: It's not even worth it.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be actively I mean I was.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love that for every time. Yeah, he
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: was a her success, right.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: So how can we be more successful? Anyway, We'll do him.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Later, We'll talk about it all the time.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: But anyway, so you were apparently.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Was apparently go for a really long time in New
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: York at a firm in New York. I worked at
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: a few firms in New York. One of the things
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: I kept on doing, was kept on moving around because
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: I thought that the problem was the firm where I was,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: when actually the problem was me, do you know what
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: I mean? And in the sense that in the sense
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: that that is not the kind of work that I
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: was meant to do.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Practice of being a being.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: A litigation paralegal was absolutely not right for me. But
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: I had had experience being an immigration paralegal for a
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: nonprofit organization that helped people with HIV. I loved that crisis.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: I used to work at the Game Men's Health Crisis
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: back in the nineties. I loved that job and I
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: learned a lot, and I felt like I was doing
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: some good work for people who deserved it, who needed it.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: But I will say again, it was sort of early
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: mid nineties. I had not only did I have a
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: lot of clients who died, but my colleagues around me
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: also started to go which became really really challenging. And
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: eventually I was like I did it for about five
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: years and I was like, you know what, I can't
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: do this anymore. And that's when I was like, you
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: know what, my next step, My logical next step would
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: be to go work for some big law firms, and
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: it was one really terrible experience after another. And the
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: case we're going to talk about, the case, the case
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: that ended my legal career, and I kid you not
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: was Enron. No, so I don't know what anybody knows
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: about did Ron.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Thank the financial sector, but the Melissa's I couldn't do it.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: I could not do it anymore. So if you don't
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: know anything about Enron, Enron was this energy company. It
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: was originally based in Omaha, Nebraska, but I think it
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: ended up having a huge base in Texas. And what
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: ended up happening is that they they were making a
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: ton of money, but then they found out that a
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: lot of it they were reporting their income fraudulently. So
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: there was a lot of weird stuff going on in
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: the background. Right, don't don't do that, And eventually they
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: got found out. It exploded, right, And so they got
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: found out in two thousand and one. In two thousand
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: and two, the lawsuits started and there were at least
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: twenty different law firms that were working with Enron for
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: ran some way, and I ended up working for one
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: of the firms that was representing them in their bankruptcy.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Wow, And that is I mean, just for context, that's
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: like a huge Oh, it was an ilucrative one, like
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: if if you're a firm and you land a case
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: like that. Anytime I see some sort of like financial meltdown,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, next year there's going to be a
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: crazy ass lawsuit and somewhere is going to be making bay. Oh.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: And the amount of time, the hours, the hours that
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: I worked, and I was apparalleegal. I wasn't an associate,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: I wasn't an attorney, but you would be at work
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: all hours of the day and night, Like I'd be
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: at work at three o'clock in the morning, like it
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: was my god. And it was to the point where
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: the stress became such that my hair started falling out.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: This is too much information, but I'm gonna shot it anyway.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: I had the runs all the time, Like my stomach
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: was fucker. And I remember it was super late at night.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I was working beautiful hair. I would huge.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: When I tell you, a huge.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Sign actually one suitress.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: The stress, the stress of a lawsuit just guid.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: It all before and after.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: And I remember working with an associate and it was
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: the middle of the night, and I remember he looked
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: at me and he was like, I thought he was
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: going to cry. He was like, what are we doing here?
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: And I was like, that is a good fucking question.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: What am I doing here? And I feel like a
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: couple of weeks later.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Just one person looking at you and saying what are
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: we doing here? It's such like an internal monologue internalized.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: It also makes you feel like I am not alone
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: in recognizing that this is terrible.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Yes I am.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: I am not alone in realizing that this is not
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: only is it a really hard job, but for me,
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: the wrong.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Job and leaving is contagious, right, Like that is where
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: you kind of get this like hive mentality of like, oh,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: you want to go to safety numbers.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: I don't think he ever left, though, but I will
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: tell you that a few weeks later, I was on
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: the subway and I saw I wish I could say
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: her name, because I know you love it so much,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: but I won't. I saw a friend of mine that
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: I had gone to high school with and we sort
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: of connected, and she was just like, oh my god,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: how are you. It's missuch a long time. What are
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: you doing. I said, Oh, I'm a paralegal and she said,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: oh wow, that must be really exciting and on the
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: F train, Melissa Malbranch started to cry.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: The F train, I've cried on that train. We all,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, the quick breakup hard. Cut to twenty fourteen.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Michael foot full headed well on its way out, head of.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Hair, kind of curly, little curly, little curly, just.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Got dumped by the coach of my swim team, the
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: gay swim team in New York. F train blues hit
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: the music we're not allowed to say.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Oh sorry, Okay, well there's no music. There's no there's
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: fucking composer.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Quit God, damn it.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: There's no budget for music. Okay.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: So back to this case. So there's a huge financial.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Meltout, huge financial meltdown.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: You were one of the firms dealing with their bankruptcy.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a lot of work. It was awful.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: It was really really awful. But I meet this friend
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: from high school and she's like, what are you doing?
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: I end up crying and she was just like, do
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: you want to come work where I work? And I
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: was like, doing what? And she was just like, I
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: think the development office is hiring. And I was like,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: what's development and she said, I don't know, but they
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: raise money and they have parties, and that's what I did.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I quit, so should hit the fan with the Enron.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Their market value tanked from like ninety dollars to one
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: dollar in a day.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and people started. There were teams of people shredding.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: There were teams of people shredding documents. They were you know,
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: and I think I think also this is sort of
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: before people really recognize that just because you delete an
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: email doesn't mean that it's actually gone.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, people forget that all the time. I have
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: clients you could.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Delete a text message, it's still their friends.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Oh. So this is actually my favorite the Fourth Amendment
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: kid the music. So this is actually a Fourth Amendment
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: issue that comes up all the time. Right, So, when
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: you send a text message, you're actually sharing it with
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: your cell phone provider. Technically under the Fourth Amendment, the
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: law has decided, through much case law that because you
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: shared it with a third party, it's you did not
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the message you sent.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: So all the time your phone records can get subpoenut
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: and they just like see what you were texting.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So there were people like shredding documents, and eventually
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: they went to trial. The head person. I remember this,
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: the head person who was supposed to be sentenced. Before
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: he got sentenced, he died. He had a heart attack.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: I think the guild killed him or something else, you
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: know what though, or maybe the guilt didn't kill him,
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: something else killed him.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Suspicious, suspicious circumstances. There are pieces of and Ron were
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: basically sold off under Chapter eleven. Yeah, and it was
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: sort of like a wipe this like clean situation where
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: they were just like selling shit to pay off their creditors.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were selling everything. They were selling the furniture
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: that's supposedly was like the lawsuits were a battle.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and also making sure that the people who were
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: running and round were prosecuted.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: And they were prosecuted, but they weren't prosecuted before they
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: got away with a huge payday. They still had tons
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: of money. Meanwhile, people whose for oh one k's were
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: invested in and Ron lost everything. And that was the
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: other I think that happened with the Murdocks too correct correct.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: And that was the part of it for me when
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: I was this paralegal working at this firm. That was
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: the part of it that was killing me because these
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: were all sort of regular people. You know, my I
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: come from a very regular family. My mom was a
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: teacher and my dad was sort of middle management, Like
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: this is the kind of thing that could have impacted
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: somebody like that.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Of course, Yeah, yeah, it was awful. A few key
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: differences I want to call out about the Enron Chapter
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: eleven filing that Melissa worked on. This was not usually
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven or like one hundred thousand dollars. This was
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: sixty three billion dollars. We got to get into the DMS.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: This is tales from the DMS. These are all your
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: questions that you sent us. Send in your questions, leave
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: out identifying information, and always.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: Remember, while Michael is a lawyer, he is not your lawyer.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: So this first question, let's let's play it for the
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: for the group.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: Hi, Michael, this is more of a question from a
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: burgeoning young lawyer who is waiting bar results. But yeah,
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: if you could regale us with a tale of what
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: the bar was like for you and how waiting months
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: for it felt and what you did to cope in
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: the meantime, Bar results are awful.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Do you know anything the bar exam is like? It's
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: truly excruciating it is for me. I took it back
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: in the day where it was two days. I think
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: it might be three days. It was two days, and
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: it was at the jab At Center in New York.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: You're all the way over on the river. There was
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: no huts and yards when I was taking it.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: It was just sort of where did you take it?
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: Twenty fourteen? So it sure like this like wasteland down
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: over there. And the actual experience of like studying the bar,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: it really is like brutal. I will say, as someone
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: who's practiced law for eleven years now, I have never
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: experienced anything quite as awful as that, and I do
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I have mixed emotions about it, but I do feel
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: like it did prepare me. The experience of sitting the
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: bar prepared me to be a trial attorney. Just cramming,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: not having everything figure it out, and being forced to
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: do something at a deadline was actually like really real
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: experience for entering a workforce where you are going to
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: have to do that. You're going to have to go
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: to court not having all the facts. Sometimes you're going
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: to get a surprise. You're not going to under stand
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: the law one hundred percent every single time. So it
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: was actually like a really good way to like kind
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: of get prepared. And it was also like so excruciating
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: that every terrible experience I have now I can compare
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: it back to that and be like, oh well, at
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: least it wasn't like that's setting the bar. Yeah. So
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: I actually have a funny story. I was sitting in
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: the bar and the girl next to me. You're sitting
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: like it's like in those little desks. Yeah, you're sitting.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: It's like it's like long tables. So I was sitting
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: at someone's right next to you, and she finished, like
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: I was on like page two and she was done.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: And if you've sat the bar, or if you think
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: about sitting the bar, timing is everything you have like
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: less than you time it out of, like forty seconds
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: per question. You're trying to like get through as many
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: as possible because you need to. It's better to do
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: that than have unanswered questions.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: How long is the test supposed to last per day?
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: I think it was eight hour. It was a full
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: eight hours of testing each day and studyingly up to it.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: I think I was studying sixteen hours a day and
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: I would eat and then I would sleep, and like
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: that it really was. It for like six weeks. So
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: the girl next to me finished early, and I was like,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: oh my god, what the fuck is going on? And
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: I had just been talking to her she went to
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: a great law school. I'm like, Wow, I'm stupid, I'm terrible.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: This is this is awful. Right before the test ended,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: she scurried and like flipped back to pages she had missed,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: like a bunch of pages. Oh no, And she told
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: me after we like took a break, she was like,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I missed like four pages of the exam and had
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: to go back and she had like sixty seconds to
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: get through it all.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: I was like, do you know what happened to her?
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Dead? She died right there?
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: No, she didn't. Don't say that. If that's you, could
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: you reach out to Michael now. I want to know
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: what happened. Remember you remember to that guy at the bar.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: I know that would be such a fun.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: No, it actually really would be. I hope.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: I'm sure she's fine. We had two other days of
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: like prep and it was just one section, so she
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: could still nail.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: It four pages of questions.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: It was one of those moments where like, you know,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: the patient is in the doctor's office and like the
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: bone is sticking out and they're like, do you think
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: it's broken? Like she was looking at me like do
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: you think I fucked up? And I was the doctor
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: like no.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah you do.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Like my face was really like I really had to
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: try and hide the fact that she had a bone
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: stick it out.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: This is not the same thing at all. But have
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: you ever been in a final exam while you were
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: in college and you finish faster than everybody else and
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: you know it's because you fucked up? Right?
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Like you you know, I finished so quick, there's no
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: and I'm looking around.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: You finished so quickly. There was one word answers that said.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: Everybody's writing a soliloquy and I have just done.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: So I wandered the l is this the wrong clause? Money?
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: Or like you show up to final exams, yeah, and
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: there's like there's no one there. Oh no, not that,
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: but like you show up and you're like, oh, today's
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: a final exam, and what advice do you have for
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: this young woman?
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: Hard dorks and alcohol? Like that is actually the only
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: take that I think it's the only way.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: To get through, right, No, no, no, no, no no
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: no no no, don't do that.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: Don't want advice?
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: Why ask me?
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Don't prompt?
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: No, no, no. I think what you do is young person.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: I think that maybe you can't do anything. But wait,
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: so while you're waiting, do things that nourish your spirit. Right,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: go to yoga, go to Pilate's, go for a walk,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: eat some ice cream, have sex. Whatever I want, don't
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: I want to, don't want to?
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Hard cut to image of angel and devil on your shoulder,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: like I think we coult you saying all the drink
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: of green juice and I don't. Don't turn the party down.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Don't drink a green juice that's not going to help anything.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Maybe take an edible that I think you could do.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, but you hard don't break the law hard
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: drugs right, exactly, hard drugs and alcohol?
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Said you did hard dreads and alcoholic? Something else or
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: advice to break the law. How does the leaving all
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: of your money to your cat or dog in your
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: well thing work?
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: I love that this is so great, Like, how how
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: does that work?
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: I love that It.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Sounds like she just found out about this concept.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: That she's but it almost sounds like the background who
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: were just like, don't ask the more questions.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: Make him do it answer, Oh my god, that is
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: so funny. Well, Leona Helmsley famously did this. She was
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: a famous New York City social and.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Her husband was a big real estate guy.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: She left all her money to her cat.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: I think her dog.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you can't actually do that, and I don't
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: think that's what she did. I mean, and if she
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: did do that, like good for her. Groundbreaking. But technically
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: pets are property in the eyes of the law, which
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: there's there's actually some interesting articles about it. There's like
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: a dog lawyer on Long Island and he goes to
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: court and like represents dogs in situations where they like
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: bit someone, but it was really the owner's fault. Like
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: he always is like pro dog, which I absolutely love.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: But pets are property, so in the eyes of the law,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: obviously I have I mean, this is my dog. He's
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: on before bae, before all else.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: He's a bad dog.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: He is bad. But you can't leave money in your
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: will to property. But what you can do is you
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: can set up a trust for the explicit purpose of
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: taking care of that pet. So you can establish a trust.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: It's pretty simple. You could probably find a form online.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: You need like a trustee, someone who's going to hold
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: the money and administer it for that express purpose.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: What happens when the animal dies, So you would.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Need like a reversion clause. If the animal dies, you
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: would need a reversion clause in the will of like
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: what happens with the corpus of that money. So a
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: lot of the times trust money is like invested and
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: you're just spending the interest, right, But what you could
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: do is say, like after that it goes to an
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: animal charity, or it goes to the trustee who took
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: care of the pet.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: So the other thing you can do is a conditional
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: bequest and say, like Michael gives Melissa a one hundred thousand
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: dollars to take care of his mean dog. If she
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to take care of the dog or whatever,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: she doesn't get one hundred thousand dollars. So you're qualifying
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: that bequest to that person. But you would do it.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: I would, I would in theory. I wouldn't theory, but
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: Jackson doesn't like anybody I actually have.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: You are an incredible pet owner, and now you have
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: Arthur Weasley.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Now I have Arthur Weasley, who I who's a maniac.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: And she keeps running away. He keeps escaping your apartment.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know why he doesn't, but he doesn't.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: He doesn't mean to what's going on in the home.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: What's going on in the home. She's fucking spoiled. That
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: cat is spoilt.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, here we go. Leona Helmsley, the New York
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: City hotel magnet, left twelve million, twelve million dollars in
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: a trust for her Maltese named Trouble. A judge later
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: cut it down to two million. I guess the I
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: want to read. I want to read that decision. The
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: judge was like, this is actually excessive. Two million is
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: the right number. But the dog still lived out its
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: days in luxury with a caretaker. So what I imagine
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Leona probably did was she set up a trust for
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: that caretaker to watch the dog.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: What happened to the balance of the funds, So there
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: gets the money the caretaker probably no, I know, but no, no, no,
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: no, no no. So Leona left twelve million dollars for the dog,
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: and then the judge knocked it down to two million dollars.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: The dog probably, I mean, how much is a bag
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: of kibble right.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm what what
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: the ten million dollars? What happened to the ten million dollars?
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a lot of money. It is a
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: lot of We need accountability.
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: Let's do a full audit, and then I guess the
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: person who gets two million dollars, even if you're giving
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: the dog, I don't know, dog caviare you're the caretaker,
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: is really living off of the two millions.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: This is the kind of math that Melissa used on
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: the end Run bankruptcy case.
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: I had to to get through it. It was no
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: other way.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: Count her days to leave the firm.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: Oh my god. I feel like at one point I
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: was just like rocking back and.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: Eat your hair.
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: And that's why I.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Lost it all a twitch.
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: It was awful.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: Oh man, I was so unhappy. I was so unhappy.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: I was so happy, and your hair was falling. I
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: mean that is bad. Mine fell out because of shitty
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: genetics like yours fell out because of stress. That is
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: your body being like literally what's inside here is so damaging.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: It's like I was just full of hellish yuck. It
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: was the fucking worst. It was awful.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Melissa has the best ways of describing ailments. I pulled it.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: I pulled a muscle once and she called it a.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: Moment. That's what it is. It's it's a full movement
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: is French, and it means you moved incorrectly, and that's
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: what happened.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: I threw my back out. You how a poat? Move on?
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I do.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: What the fuck are we gonna do about it? I
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: I don't have the I don't have the solutions everything.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: That's another reneism. Oh your grandmother, grandmother.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Your grandmother, a flower without odor.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: A flower without a smell, movement, movement.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Well, this has been tells from the DMS. Please keep
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: writing in your questions and please leave out your social security.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: Please leave out the personal information, guys, please, it's for
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: your sake.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: Anyway. Thank you for watching Brief Recess. I'm Michael Foot,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: I'm Melissa malbranch. I'll see you in court. This has
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: been an exactly right production recorded at iHeart Studios, posted
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: by me Michael Foot.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: And me Melissa Malbranch. Our producer is C. J. Ferroni.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: This episode was edited by Nicholas Galucci.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. And our guest booker
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: is Patria Kuttner.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Our theme song was composed by Tom Brifogel with artwork
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: from Charlotte Delarue and Manessa Lilac, with photography by Brad Obono.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: Brief Recess is executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hart Stark,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: and Danielle Kramer.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram at Department of Redundancy
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: Department or on TikTok at Michael foot and.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: I'm on both Instagram and TikTok as Melissa Malbranch.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Got legal questions, reach out at brief Recess at exactlyrightmedia
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: dot com. Listen to Brief Recess on the iHeartRadio app,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and of
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: course we're a podcasts with video. Search for Brief Recess
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: on YouTube