Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hey, everybody, it's Lacey.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: And I'm Lauren.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: And we're here for another episode of the Llamas podcast.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: And today we're going to kind of talk about what happens before a trial. Everybody thinks that there is so much drama in the courtroom, but a lot of the drama plays out beforehand and what rights you have and don't have kind of leading up into that process. Process.
But today, and since this is kind of trending this week and all this has really recently happened, instead of doing a question, I kind of wanted to just take a second to talk about Jean Hackman's estate.
As we know, him and his wife passed away and really, really sad situation. The wife passed away of a disease, some rare disease type thing, or like, I can't remember, but she passed away. It was all natural causes. Nothing is being investigated in that sense. But he had dementia and Alzheimer's and had some heart issues. And he passed away a few days after her because he was. Nobody was taking care of him.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: I didn't even know that. I didn't know they came out with how they died.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: She had some type of. It was natural causes, both of them, but she had. It was some rare thing that is not very common in the US but she passed away of that. And then pretty much because she was his caregiver, he passed away about a week later due to, like he said it, cardiovascular event, but probably came in from dehydration, starvation, those type of things. Their dog actually passed away of dehydration as well.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: I was wondering about the dog because I knew a dog had passed too.
She was just taking care of everything, and then she just up and dies and nobody comes to see and take. Take care of what she was taking care of.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Right. So. And she. So with Gene Hartman, his wife, she's 30 years younger than him.
His estate is worth 80 million.
He does have children, obviously from a previous relationship kind of thing. And the big thing is how his will was done. So considering he had 80 million, you know, most people would think, you know, doing something, some really intense like planning. But it seems, just from what I'm saying, I have not, like looked up any court records, anything like that, that in his will, he pretty much left everything to his wife and didn't have a backup clause. And so now his wife actually predeceased him, which. This is a completely sad, horrible situation.
And I think it all makes us, you know, if you have older friends, family members, or if you know, people that live alone and you haven't heard from Them, check on them. Like I think that's the biggest thing to take away from this.
But in this situation, he had this will, everything was left to his wife, but his wife died before him and he had no contingents in there. Her will leaves pretty much everything to charity.
So the question now is what happens to his 80 million dollar estate? And this is, you know, if it was only, you know, a hundred thousand dollars here, we're not probably going to be spending a lot of money litigating, but this is an estate worth a ton of money. So what I think is going to play out, I think probably it'll settle outside of court without going to court because. But realistically, I think if it went to court, I think the kids would stand a good chance of inheriting whatever is going through probate. Because I think my argument would be, well, if he didn't properly dispose of assets in the wheel, it goes by the laws of intestacy, which would then be his children. But I think this is going to be an interesting one to play out, see what all happens in the news with it. And I think it's a good point to say, you know, yes, he had 30, his wife's 30 years younger. We definitely think, you know, naturally she would live longer than him. But I think it shows when we're planning for like in like our wheels and estates, we got to plan worst case scenarios. Like we have to think beyond just the spouse. We got to think, well, if something did happen to both of us or there was an accident, we got a plan longer. And I think this one's just going to be interesting to see. But it definitely was kind of shocking to me if all this, this coming on Tik Tok is true, that he had a will that just left everything to his wife with no contingents.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: I still need you to update my will. I sent you the information.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yes, I think it's all ready to go. But definitely one of those times where it's important to have your will done and really thought out your estate plan. And you know, even if you are leaving it to someone younger than you by a lot, that doesn't always mean they're going to survive you. And I think in this case it's important to note that their deaths were not simultaneous deaths. There are statutes that if you die within, you know, 24 hours or 36 hours of each other, that you're counted as, you know, the estate being split in half between the two of them because there's no true survivor. But I think in this situation she lived. He lived a good bit longer. Where these survivorship statutes may not. Now, I don't know what the one. I think they were in Nevada or California. I don't know their exact survivorship provisions, but probably because he did outlive her by days. Yeah, we're gonna have it all running through his estate. So I think it's just going to be interesting. And I just wanted to kind of touch on that, since we do talk about pop culture and everything and definitely check on your friends and family. I think that's the biggest takeaway, too.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: And I know I have backups for my children, so I have somebody to get my children and a backup to that just in, because you never know what's going to happen in life either. You know, if my first choice has five kids before I pass, that might not be the best fit. But I hadn't changed my will. So, you know, that was one of the reasons that when I came to you for selecting a guardian, if something happened to me and my husband, that I have a backup.
So I do think it's always important to have a backup. And I am currently, I think, third to get Lauren's kids and comment below and tell her that I should be bumped up. I'm sorry, to your parents.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yes. She's actually behind my parents and one of my cousins. And then there's Lacy. And I will say, as life changes, you know, like, things change. Like, you never know, like, who you won't, like, if Lacy does end up, you know, having 10 kids, I don't know if. I don't know, maybe two more wouldn't even make a difference at that point. Or maybe it would.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Right now I have two boys, and I hope you live forever, Lauren. But if not, I had two girls, it would just be perfect.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: And they're all the same age.
I'll be going to the same schools.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Yes, they would, because they're so close in age. So.
But hopefully that never happens for you and Wes. But I'm at least honored that I'm third.
Moving on to the topic at hand today to kind of kick it off, one of the ideas that. Or one of the things I talked about when we talked about this topic was people have all these misconceptions before going to trial, like Lauren said. And the biggest one I have seen is Miranda. So I don't know if y'all watch or if you've ever watched the Madea movie, but in one of the movies where she goes to jail, there's. She actually has a case at the beginning of the movie that gets thrown out and dismissed because they didn't read her her Miranda rights. And so the officers are all beat up because she resisted arrest.
And they, she was like, no, Miranda wasn't even there. They didn't do nothing. So because they didn't read her her Miranda rights, her entire case was dismissed. I mean, there were officers on crutches and with bruises and scratches, so they have to let her out. And that is one of the biggest pre trial misconceptions I see in my job is people, well, they didn't read me my Miranda rights. Guess what? They don't have to. Ever. It used to be in our statutes that they had to read them for driving under the influence. That was in the statute. And cases would get dismissed if Miranda was not read on camera. And there were certain arguments when it had to be read and where, whether it was roadside or the data Master video or just at any time before they are booked in. But that law has since changed. So at this point there's no statutory requirement for an officer to read somebody. That Miranda writes, the only thing that comes into play with Miranda is if someone makes incriminating statements in response to an officer's questions. So not just blabbing, you know, it has to be in response to a question. If they say anything incriminating and Miranda was not read, they can't use those statements against you. So for example, if I were brought in for interrogation purposes and the officers did not read me my Miranda rights, and they start asking me, where were you on March 5th? And I'm like, oh, I shoplifted at the Walmart. Yeah, I stole like $2,000 worth of stuff.
They can't use that statement against me if they didn't read me my Miranda rights. So that's one of the biggest misconceptions I see. And I love the Medea movie and stuff like that. But whenever I get that call, which is pretty regularly, and they're like, oh, they didn't read me my Miranda rights. Always laugh about the Madea movie because Miranda wasn't even there. But it don't matter. She don't have to be.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: When I guess even as an attorney I just assume like the second they put those handcuffs on you, it's going to be, you have the right to remain silent. You know, like, and I think we all know like from watching Law and Order, like what did actually all the Miranda rights I probably could quote them from, right?
But yeah, you definitely see that or even watching, you know, years ago. Growing up, I watched Cops like the true crime stories. That was one of the first things they did was read the Miranda rights. So I think it's, I think a lot. I mean, I don't practice criminal law, so I don't know as much there. But even as an attorney, I just assumed like the second they put the cuffs on you, it was read those rights.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: And most of the time they do. I will say I was watching body cams this morning and they didn't read Miranda to my client. They were asking questions and there were some incriminating statements. So if that case were to go to trial, I would move to exclude those statements. It doesn't mean there's still non evidence, not enough evidence to convict. Right. Because if there's video footage of the crime, it doesn't matter that your incriminating statements are suppressed.
But yeah, so it just means that we can get those statements suppressed if it goes to a trial and sometimes it weakens a case. Right. So if there's a confession and that's like the main evidence, there's not really much evidence other than the confession. And they didn't read Miranda prior to then the state's going to have a case, an issue proving their case because that confession may not be able to come in as evidence.
And that's one thing that happens prior to trials as well. It's called a Jackson v. Deno hearing where if there is a confession, the judge will rule whether it's admissible or not. And the judge is looking for Miranda there to see if any of those incriminating statements are coming in or not, making sure the officers that did the interrogation or ask the questions, you know, rep. Advise the defendant of their rights before they made those statements. So it does come into play as far as evidence rules go. But it doesn't mean that your case is being dismissed.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Now, question in the criminal world, do you have to provide like witness list and all that before trial?
[00:11:26] Speaker A: No. And we usually don't get the prosecutor's witness list until right at trial as well. We get an idea of the, the witnesses though, because we get the discovery right. And usually the state finds files a reciprocal discovery where we have to turn over every. Anything that we have. So sometimes if there's things that we plan on introducing, they'll kind of have an idea of like the witnesses that we're going to call.
But no, we don't have. There's no like rule for how many days before trial or whatever that we have to exchange witness lists and see.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Like we have different. On the civil side of things, we, you know, exchange. There's no surprise witnesses. You've exchanged a witness list because we've had the opportunity, if we wanted to depose them, that type stuff. So it is definitely different that we have the opportunity. Depositions, discovery, written discovery, ask them questions, all that stuff before trial. So usually, like, on the civil side of things, the whole case, realistically, the whole case is laid out before you go to trial. And a lot of times there's been motions before, like summary judgment motions, which is saying, like, we're asking a judge to rule on the case.
It's it's just crazy, like, the fact that most of your stuff's already there. It's just like, who's the finder? The. The jury is the finder of fact, and they're just seeing which side they agree with. But, like, even in the criminal side, you've seen their evidence. They have to give over.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: And discovery is things like videotapes, communications, witness statements. Yeah, witness statements. And then, you know, things like toxicology reports, all those type things that they have. None of that is just randomly brought out. We've all seen those type things before going. And I think kind of on our whole topic of misconceptions in the legal world, I think that is one of the biggest ones is just that there's so much surprise stuff happening that we don't know.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Thank you.
McDonald's wants to sponsor us, hit us up.
And, you know, that's something that, like, talking about depositions. I wish we had depositions, but we don't. So I think we do have a little bit more surprise in the criminal world.
And because we don't know every little nick and cranny, sometimes it's hard to weigh whether or not our clients should go to trial or not. I mean, ultimately, it's always the client's decision, right? I can't tell my client they have to go to trial or take a plea offer. And also, fun fact that maybe not a lot of people know the state isn't required to even give an offer. They don't have to offer anything ever.
Of course, it's beneficial to the state to make offers because it clears up the docket and doesn't backlog it for trials because it's already backlogged enough. But just so you know, everybody's aware, they don't have to extend an offer. But I can't make my client take an offer, go to trial. But sometimes it's hard because we get the discovery and there's missing pieces, right? Like the witness statement. I have a lot more questions I would have asked if I was that officer that could have either hurt my client's case or helped. And I don't know. And I don't know if we go to trial what all they're going to expand upon with those questions. You know, there's been times I'm prepping for a trial and I'm scared to ask a question because I don't know which way it's going to go. Is it going to go south and hurt my client? But if it didn't, it could be something very helpful. But because we don't have depositions, I don't know in advance, so that's kind of hard for us in the criminal world.
We can send out an investigator and see if they want to talk to us, but we have to disclose that the investigator is working for the defense and that the, you know, especially if it's an alleged victim in a case that they're under, you know, no obligation to talk to us. It's their choice.
But yeah, I, I do wish we could get depositions in at least some cases. It, it would help a lot. I think.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Once again, the civil world here in South Carolina, probate cases are not required to mediate yet, but most judges require them. Family law, I believe, is required to meet. I don't practice any in family law, but I believe they're required to mediate. But for sure, no magistrates, not. It's not worth the money to mediate because magistrate court here in South Carolina, your value of the whole case is 7,500 or less. So obviously we're not going to mediate that because we just go to trial. Magistrate court, you really just go to trial real quick.
But if you're in like common pleas, which is the higher level trial court, you're required to mediate it, which means you are kind of pushed into settling a case in the civil world before you actually come to court. And now I have heard, now I don't know how true this is. At one cle I was at before, they were talking about possibly even making criminal cases have some form of mediation beforehand. How would you feel? And mediations, where a neutral third party comes in who understands the laws and goes back and forth and tries to strike a deal. How would you feel about that? It helps a lot in the civil world, but I know criminals completely different.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Either way. So let's say in part of it, I do think it's good because, because I did have A trial one time. I don't think my client should have been convicted, but she was. We had jurors regret it after, after the trial and felt like they were pushed.
But afterwards my client and the alleged victim hugged.
And I do think it was a misunderstanding that blew way out of proportion.
And I think if me and the prosecutor could have had a discussion about like what my client says happened and why she was in such fear and what the alleged victim did wrong, if we could have sat down and communicated some of the things that went, came up in the trial, we probably could have resolved that case very favorably to my client, maybe even a dismissal or, you know, something to not get it that far.
I'm also negotiating now with a prosecutor and he is not seeing my way and I'm not seeing his way. And I do think there's some, there's going to be some struggles on the state as far as getting some of the evidence in. And there's some exculpatory evidence too. And so I think mediation could potentially help that as well, and maybe not. But then I also think if it doesn't work, I've shown so many cards to the prosecutor and if this goes to trial, it's going to hurt my client because they can use it against us.
You know, like, perfect. I have a DUI right now trying to get dismissed and rewritten to a reckless and the prosecutor doesn't want to do it. And I've offered to get a report from a data master expert to see if that would show her why I think the breath sample is inaccurate. And I've asked her if she's wanted this report a couple times and she hasn't said that she wants it. So I haven't requested it. But you know, that could even backfire. You know, I'm asking her to consider it as mitigation to avoid a trial. But it is a risk because it's showing my defense if it goes to trial and she's going to be able to prepare better to cross examine that expert by handing it over. So I'm really, by even offering that, I'm putting a lot of faith into her to do the right thing, buy it and truthfully consider it.
So I think that's the same as mitigation or a mediator in mediating these. I can think of some cases where I do think it would have helped in the past. I can think of one that I think it could help now, especially if we could meet with some alleged victims, you know. You know, because trial is scary. I Can't imagine, you know, that. So if you. So if the victim can get what they truly want, a conviction on somebody's record to always acknowledge what has happened, that might be better than putting them through a trial and subject to cross examination. So those kind of things, I think mediation might. Could help, but I could definitely see where it could backfire, too, in a criminal case.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: And one other thing, this happens a lot in the civil world, so I'm curious if it happens in the criminal world as well. So, like, usually all the times you get to the case and either you go to the judge's chambers, the judge calls you up front, and he or she's like, do y'all think y'all should just step in the back and try to work this out? Do y'all want to talk about it? Does that happen? It happens almost every case in the civil world. They're going to push you one more time to be like, can y'all work this out in the criminal world? How does that play out?
[00:20:28] Speaker A: No, no. Usually before we get in front of a judge, we are going in front of the judge for me to make a motion to dismiss or move for evidence or something like. Or going in front of the judge to do the plea. Or I've emailed them that they're not, you know, we're not do. We're not taking any pleas. We're declining the offer. And if they're not going to dismiss it, to set it on a trial docket. So.
And so. And the judges never know about the negotiations. So that's definitely not something that, you know, comes up.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Well, see, they don't know about. Like, they know we were forced to mediate. And whether we mediated and successful or not, I just feel like they usually are like, let's try one more time for y'all to see if there's anything you could do before we go through this whole trial procedure. And so a lot of times, like civil, there is more of a push. Not, I guess, because you don't have, like, the right to a trial, maybe there's a lot for settlement. And in probate as well, there's a push. I think in family, there's a push.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: The problem with us is when you plead guilty, because that's what it is, right to settle. This is pushing for somebody to plead guilty because a push by a judge to resolve it is most likely not asking the state to dismiss it.
So a push is to. And one of the things that a judge has to do when accepting a plea and say, where you promised anything where you threatened or coerced into pleading guilty. And so I think in that situation, you could almost make the argument that a judge was coercing a plea if you did send the parties back to, you know, discuss negotiations further. So I don't think that would work.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: I think it really shows the difference between our procedures between civil and criminal. It is two different worlds. But one interesting thing here in South Carolina is the same judges sit for both criminal and civil. I don't know how it is in every state, but you have judges that are just circuit court judges. And some weeks they hear civil and some weeks they hear criminal. So they've got to be pretty much experts on both lines of work. And in today's time, I think it's harder because we are. The days of general practice, I think, are pretty much gone. Like, you don't have a lot of people who are doing a lot of areas of work. So I think, you know, a lot of the judges that are on the bench now have. A lot of them did do criminal and civil, because that's what you did in the past. But I think as we move forward, we're going to have to think about our judges and like, are we going to have separate judges for criminal versus separate judges for civil? Because, like, Lacy's never touched a civil case in that matter. So would she be qualified to sit for civil trials and actually understand them? And same for me, like, I don't want to touch a criminal case. Like, I'm not going to.
I don't know enough about criminal law to get up there. I don't want to be a judge either, though. But in that scenario, a lot of attorneys that are going for the bench are like us. We're very separated now. So it's going to be, I think, interesting to see how in the next 10 to 15 years how this plays out.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: If I get close, like, you know, want to hang it up practicing like this. I do. I could see myself being a bond court judge, like a part time bond court judge. Just go out the jail and do bond hearings like once a week or twice a week or something like that. But that's the only right now judge job that would intrigue me with mandatory minimums. And we could save that for another episode. I just couldn't in my heart be a circuit court judge. That would kill me dealing with mandatory minimums.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: I just don't want the death threats or the pressure.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Right. Did you clerk for a judge?
[00:24:11] Speaker B: I did, I. And it was an amazing experience, but it is a stressful job. And I know every job has this level of stress. And let me tell you, these judges, for the most part, aren't in it to make big bucks because you make bigger money doing, like, PI work than you ever would. So sitting on.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Yep.
Well, I think that kind of wraps it up. If anybody has questions about what happens, you know, before a trial, the process or anything like that, definitely drop a comment, send us a message, and we'll address it on the podcast.
But for now, we're looking forward.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Oh, Lord, that's loud.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: To our series kicking off next week where we are going to do our book club. So please pick up a copy of the book framed.
We are going to go, I think we're doing three episodes and we'll pick one story a piece to go through. Kind of the things that intrigued us the most with these stories broke our hearts. Common themes that we see in these wrongful convictions. So please join us next week. And Lauren, you want to tell them where to follow us? Yeah.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: If you want to follow us, we are on YouTube. We're on Apple podcasts. Check out our Instagram and definitely DM us. If you have these questions, send comments.
And we will be posting some like teasers about the book club. So get the book, read it and we would love to hear any of your thoughts.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Yep, I'll see you next week.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: Have a good week.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Bye.
