Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Hey, everybody, it's Lacy. And as you see, if you're watching on YouTube. Not Lauren today for another episode of the Llamas podcast. Instead, we have one of my friends, Amy Zimmercheck, with us today. Our guest, I guess star of this show, because you're gonna. You're gonna run it. I'm so excited.
So Lauren can't be with us today.
We had set this up late in the day and had some things fall through, and one of her kiddos is sick, and one of her kiddos has a soccer game, and family comes first with us always. So this is, like we said, the Llamas podcast. Law mamas. And I'm gonna law with Amy. And Lauren is just gonna miss us this week because she has to, Mama. So, Lauren, we miss you, and we hope you enjoy this episode.
So, Amy, I told you, we have been reading.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Oh, where'd I put it?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: I think I put it on my bookshelf. The book framed, and it was 10 stories, and we only highlighted six on our podcast of people who have been exonerated. One of those was actually executed before his exoneration. I don't know if you remember that arson case out of Texas, Todd Willingham.
But yeah, so I wanted to talk about Thomas James this week, but then as I was talking to Amy, kind of thinking about it, actually, Amy has worked on a case where somebody was exonerated, Gary Bennett, and that's here in South Carolina.
So I.
I know a little bit about the case because one of my friends, Amy Lovely, was on the case, and Amy that we have here today jumped on this case as well. And I don't think y'all knew each other before this case. So I guess I don't know where you want to start, how you got involved in the case, or if you want to back it up to the first trial. You tell me where we're starting with this thing.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Probably how I got involved, and then we can.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah, okay.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's funny. I got involved where I'm part of a program. You're a group that I know you're a member of as well, called the South Carolina Defense Lawyers Association, Criminal Offense Lawyers association, and part. Um. So Amy and Sarah actually put this kind of help text out there one year, one night, and. And I saw it immediately, picked up the phone call and said, hey, sounds like y'all got a mess on your hands. How can I help you? And so thus began, like, some of the most amazing friendships and. And trial work that I have that I have done. So it.
You never, you never know what that next contact is going to lead to. But, but what it led to us was Gary Bennett. And Gary Bennett was think.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Say that I think that is just such a woman thing to do. Like I've always said, like whether you have biological children or not, we just have this motherly instinct. And so to see a fellow attorney in need, especially another woman female attorney team, I think, you know, and that's one of the things we highlight on this podcast. I think that's just such a woman thing to do and motherly thing to do to jump in and help somebody in a case. And I, I don't even know that y'all got paid.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Oh we did not.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it was all volunteer and yeah. And it was you know, a good week and a half long ten day trial.
And the amount of time that we spent in prepping for that was even before but was a case that they had taken on pro bono because this man Gary Bennett just kept writing them from the jail and saying look, I'm innocent. I am innocent. I didn't do this.
My case was overturned on pcr which is it post conviction relief. Just it's the kind of the last opportunity for somebody to look at the case and say hey, some things were done that were. That weren't on the up and up. We need to.
He needs to have it. Sorry has. He needs to have another trial. And so that's what we. That's how it got overturned in the first place. So we didn't have anything to do with the.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Do you remember what the issues were? I know one of the things had to have been discovery not turned over by the state. I remember the tapes being an issue in Yalls trial. So I'm assuming that had to be one of the grounds for pcr.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: It was, it was really a. More of a. Of a kind of a blanket.
What we call a chronic ineffective, ineffective assistance of counsel where the attorney just really fails to challenge any of the evidence that they have and really just does not do a competent job in the, in the adversarial role. And the attorney that he had and I can't remember his name off the top of my head and quite honestly I'm not here to embarrass anyone. It's just right. He was going through some personal issues as well during that time and I think that that affect his ability to represent but also that there were some, some glaring discovery violations that still to this day hardly got resolved. But we were able to prepare with what we had very, very thoroughly we did our own investigation and really came to learn and believe that, that it was impossible for him to have committed this crime. And, and really. And so we took it to trial a second time and thank goodness the jury, you know, agreed with us and, and acquitted him of all the charges. It, you know, it's the second time I've had a case that was overturned on PCR and retried and the person be acquitted. The first time was a death penalty case and it was overturned. He got a new trial and he was acquitted. So, so he didn't even. He was on death row for 19 years.
And so that's why like a lot of times PCRs are just like people like throwing Hail Marys up. But sometimes PCRs are when they are granted the right thing happens because you know, there, there's a one person that could have been executed and, and that was Jodyard. And then, and then with Gary Bennett, I mean a life sentence is a life sentence. It's not like they get out. It's life without the possibility of parole. And so he, that's what he was facing until we got the, the second acquittal from the, from the jury.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: So, and for everyone listening, PCR's Post Conviction Relief and I talked about that on one of the episodes from the book series. So you can go back and listen to one of the episodes. But in essence it's designed for people who are innocent. That's why it was originally designed to try to catch mistakes and errors in the judicial system and give someone a new trial. And if you want to know ins and outs, like I said, you can go on my law firm page I talk about it as well as a prior episode. So going back in Gary's case, what I know, he was convicted originally of murder and then later acquitted. What are the, the facts surrounding who, who was murdered? How did Gary know him if he did know him? Kind of run us through his, his case.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: So this case was really was a tragic case. When I say tragic as far as what happened to the victim because it was a woman named Marie, she worked at a Taco Bell, had befriended, had befriended obviously the people that work there. I think that's kind of how that happens in Restaurant World and, and would go. And they would do karaoke or they would do, they would go out as a group together. And in that. And so Gary's the mother of his child worked there. She was also his wife. She, she's no longer his wife, but still the mother of his child. Obviously, but so they worked together at Taco Bell. And so Gary would. And he. Gary worked with another.
They did kind of like construction, like cleanup, like rental cleanup, when people would rent places, things like that. And so they.
Anyway, so it's a group of people that Gary was kind of in the middle of those two groups, meaning like he and the codependent. And when I say codependent, he ended up snitching, selling lies, getting a deal. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But. But there was a co defendant there, so they. He was friends with him. He also knew Marie and Because she worked with the daughter. So anyway, that's how they all knew each other, this kind of small group of people. And she lived out in a. In a trailer in Socasy.
And. And that is where this took place. So. So one.
And the timeline was very clear once you. Once you were able to get the timeline. We actually drove it several times. So she was also so kind. She let Gary and his wife borrow their car to. To get the daughter to and from dentist appointments or just to run errands. So she was a very, very, very good human. It was so terrible what happened to her. So. But what happened to her was Gary had gone and taken his wife to work, and they used Marie's car, and Marie asked him to take home another employee that they had borrowed from a different Taco Bell. And so Gary did all that and then brought. Got back to Taco Bell, gets. Gets dropped off.
Everybody's going to work. He goes home, he's talking to his neighbor. He's on the phone. His daughter was watching tv. By all accounts, he was a very, very good dad. None of that had ever changed.
And then Marie had gotten her car back, and so he had gotten a ride home. So he is at the location now at his house without a car and no ride and his daughter there. And so that was real key to his timeline as to when this happened, because there were phone calls that were made on a home phone so that we know where he was at certain times. Well, sometime in the middle of the night, someone had gone to Marie's trailer, and either the door was unlocked or she left them in. It's. It's really unclear.
The scene was clearly not preserved. And there are. There are witness statements about hearing certain things or hearing people. But the. The tragedy of it was Marie had gotten home from work. She had changed out of a portion of her uniform. It was on the ground. And she was discovered with her by her roommate. And her throat Was slit literally from ear to ear like, like Nicole Simpson's. The best way that I can describe it.
The room had been completely ransacked but nothing really of value taken. I mean but the room was clearly staged to make it look like a burglary.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: What was so sexually assaulted?
[00:12:10] Speaker A: She was not sexually assaulted. There's no evidence that she was. In fact her pants were still on and kind of. It almost looks like she was in the middle of changing and then it looked like her body was staged on the bed because she somehow fell, slid off the bed.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: The.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: But like I said, it was definitely staged because there was so much stuff like all the drawers and everything had been emptied on the bed. But when you took off all of those items, the, the bed was clearly the crime scene. It was covered in blood.
There was also blood spatter on the, like the, this little curtain like I have here. She had one right by her bed and, and so we could see the direction that obviously that the blood came out so the direction she was facing on the bed. So it really did appear that somebody came up from behind her and, and, and, and cause this, this mark really what was incredibly interesting. There were so many interesting things about this case once you get past the, the horrific, the just the brutalness of the crime because it, it was very brutal. But the pictures that were taken and again this happened I think 19.
No, I can't remember exactly. It was in the 2000s when it happened. But when you look at the pictures and like the crime scene logs in the Grand St. Evans, you would have thought this happened in like 1970 because the pictures were literally little Polaroid three by five pictures that we had. And so we're just laying them out there and there were some like. They never recovered a murder weapon.
But one of the pictures of her laying on the ground shows her laying on the ground and, and I'm using just my scissors as a prop. There was literally a, a box cutter right next to her head that they never collected. Was there blood on.
To me it looked like it. I don't know. Because they didn't collect. Right.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: We wouldn't, it wouldn't have gone flat if they didn't collect it.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: In the bathroom there were blood droplets on the ground and a. Some scissors sitting on the toilet that clearly had blood on them. Photographed, never collected.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Oh my gosh.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: It was. The things that weren't collected were, were insane.
Then the.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: I don't understand why. Like that just doesn't make any sense.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: There were at least three separate items that could have, that could have caused that mark. I mean, scissors in general, you know, with enough force.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: And it's. And I keep doing it, you know, because it was just so vivid to me. But I really, truly, in speaking with some of the jurors afterwards, one of the things that they really, they really focused on was the evidence from that cut. And so, and I'll talk about that in a little bit. But yeah, so she's discovered by her roommate. Her roommate had some, some issues as well.
She had, she was friends with somebody and was having relations with people, different men that kept coming in and out and that she had introduced to her roommate that maybe had some questionable behaviors and things like that. So it's not a great group of people. They all had, they all came with issues and they all came with problems. None of them, you know, Marie never deserved to be murdered. Nobody deserves to be murdered like that. But, you know, but it was a rough crowd. It was, yeah, it just, you know, it was a lot of, some of the behavior was explainable. There were some drugs that were found in the house that could have, that were not the, the decedents, the victims, I think that they could have been, you know, through friends with the roommates. So that there were, you know, they didn't have really any suspects or motives at that point. They're trying to talk to neighbors. They, they talk about different cars being used or being seen in the driveway and, and different stories. So somehow it comes just by talking with the people that they're talking with. They say, well, you know, what about, what about people with who she hangs out with at work? So they start to look into that. And the friend, the co defendant that, that had hung out with them before, turns out had a very checkered past, was in the Navy and had killed another woman with I think, and this was information that was kept out of the first trial. The, the, the attorney, the defense attorney was not allowed to ask the co defendant about the previous murder charge that he had. And we had to really fight to be able to cross examine him on that murder charge. It. I cross examined him for seven hours during the trial. But, but it took us forever to, to even to get the judge to allow us to bring that in. And the reason, the way that we did it, we got Amy, of course, Lawrence Lovely is so resourceful. She got a copy of the plea transcript, a copy of the discovery.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: So he pled to this. This was not a dismissed murder, right.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: This was a murder charge that he had had 12 or so years earlier.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: I mean he must have played it down.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: He did. He, it wasn't. He like they, you know, in different states they have like murder to murder, whatever. So they pled it down. He only got 12 years and he was let out. But when I looked at the crime and the discovery in particular and compared it with this time, there were I think 12 similarities.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Oh wow.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: And our theory, yeah, our theory was always that he, the co defendant did it. Of course he jumped to get the deal and then just his story didn't make any sense. All he did was blame Gary.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Now he's never been charged.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: He was charged, but because he snitched, he got charged or he pled to accessory after and did no jail time.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: So he was charged with the murder.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: He was charged with the murder.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Is this before or after Gary was charged?
[00:18:48] Speaker A: During. They both got charged, they were both charged together.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: So the police kind of hone in on him and then he gives a different name.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Probably a false tune and throws Gary under.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Well, and, and, and like the story that he said never made sense, none of it made sense. And, and they just, they didn't care because they didn't have anything really on either one of them. And so.
Yeah, so they just wanted no fingerprints, no DNA.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: You can't do anything.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: None, none. No weapon, no nothing. And yeah, I mean the, the, there were clear footprints in the carpet that could have been preserved, you know, and measured. I think none of that was done at the trailer.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Physical evidence that ever tied Gary?
[00:19:44] Speaker A: No.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Is there any physical evidence that ever tied his lion Codefendant?
[00:19:48] Speaker A: No.
Wow. Nope. But because they got the line codependent to lie, which is exactly what he did, you know, that's all they needed. And did he ever confess at or.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: What was on these tapes?
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Oh, so on these tape. Oh, so the co defendant is a let. So the coat so messy. The co defendant had a wife also that wife was the daughter of a police chief.
Not in Socratesy but. Or maybe he was the police chief of sacase but this was investigated by Ori police department so but it, but she still had connections to the police department through her dad and she was married to this codependent and so they, once they're arrested, she's like, oh, I want to see him and I want to talk to him. And so the police were video recording all of those interactions and so the police improperly let her into the interrogation room with her the codefendant husband and they have sexual relations all on videotape, but at the same time. Oh yeah.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Oh yeah, Made in the jail.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Uhhuh.
But also they're having a discussion about what to say and what to do.
And so we've never actually seen. We've never actually seen the. The whole complete tapes because they still have disappeared. We don't. Nobody knows where they are kind of nonsense. But we had enough people be able to testify that they did exist.
We did have some tapes that were partially interviews or conversations, but the videotapes are long gone.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: So there could have been any confess in these tapes, but there was impeachment material right on them.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: And that showed what his motive was, which was to set up Gary just to. To get him out of all this trouble.
And the things that didn't make. There were so many things that didn't make sense. A. Just the brutality of this crime. And to have no matching fingerprints, DNA. Right. You're gonna. And you know, and when you stab someone or cut somebody, the chances of you cutting yourself just on these sharp objects are incredibly high, which sure is. So that's why it's so important to collect anything that could be an object. But the most important and I think the.
So Amy's husband Justin is such a great human and he was so great for us because he kept playing devil's advocate in the case. He's like, but what if he did it? What if he did it? Finally one day I was able to throw. First of all, the amount of time that it took to get to the different places would not. Have. Would not have rendered or left enough time for Gary to have been seen by completely random people that had nothing to do with this case.
And for him to have committed this crime, it just, it, it wouldn't. It just wasn't possible.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: But were those witnesses called in the first trial and were they called in your trial?
[00:23:11] Speaker A: So they were called in our trial. But. But they weren't. Then this goes back to the PCR being granted, they were not meaningfully challenged. We met with these witnesses over and over and over again to really get their stories down and not to. To sit to make sure that they would lie, but just to make sure that what they were saying was consistent with what they remembered from so. So many years ago. Right.
And, and, and we, the defense, I mean, I ended up calling police officers. We called police officers in our case because they did not want to put police officers up. They spent like a day and a half calling everybody from sled to talk about how nothing matched the defendant.
But the most important part to me was so when someone is stabbed the way she was stabbed that you can get a lot of information about that directionality being, being the most important part. And I was thinking that when you're.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Saying it, you could determine if they were right or left, most likely because of the direction of which they were cut.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: Right? And so what. So when someone is cut, when the, like. So if somebody's cut from behind, right. So they're going to use their dominant hand. So if there's. So if this pencil is me and I'm the person doing the cutting, I'm right hand. Well, I'm ambidextrous but I am predominantly right handed, right. So if, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to enter the head or the neck here on this side.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: So of course opposite and then natural dominant hand, right.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: And, and naturally come across. And for several reasons.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: One, unfortunately we've seen this in the movies and stuff like that, but also.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: When that blood comes out, these, these two veins, the carotid arteries are they, you know, they're major arteries that carry blood and it's going to, that's what was, that's how we know the person was behind her is because there was so much spatter and stuff coming out the front.
But when you do that, you leave a tail. Gary Bennett is left handed. Their, their pathologist and our pathologist both agreed that the person who committed this crime was right handed. And the reason that they were able to determine that is because once you go across the way that you pull it out, it leaves a tail, the scar leaves a tail. And that's so how you know what goes in and what side it comes out. So that's how they knew that it went in this way and it went in that way, right? So it goes, it enters into her left, it enters into, in the left side of her neck. And the exit, exit wound for lack of a better, you know, but the exit, the path goes through right to the right. And so if I'm right handed, that would make sense. The codefendant coincidentally right handed.
And he would, he refused to admit that for so long. And maybe hour five or six, I came back to it again and he got so mad and he slammed his hand down on the, on the thing and he grabbed something. He goes, I have told you, I have answered this question many anyway, I didn't care what that he was yelling at me or that he wanted answer questions, but he did all of that with his right hand. And the jurors said that that made such an impact on them. And he admitted, everybody admitted that Gary was left handed. So we, you know, so in a very simple presentation like we knew that he couldn't have done that with being just being left handed.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Right. Right.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: But it, it, it was just, you know, and, and you would think that if you took that information to the, to the state that they would say, oh, you're right. Oh, you know, they, we took that information to the state, didn't care.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Do you think they genuinely don't care or that they are trying to save a lawsuit?
[00:27:14] Speaker A: No. Okay. I think they genuinely, I genuinely think that they don't care about who commits crimes as long as they can arrest somebody and get a.
Yeah, I really, you know, and I think that that's particular to, to at least those groups of prosecutors.
I've seen prosecutors that get to know the victim's families and they, they really want to, you know, seek justice and do the right thing for victims. And, and you know, I, it's easier for me to understand when they take what I consider unrealistic positions, but it's because I know that they're doing it from a place of emotion and general caring where with these prosecutors, it's like they didn't care. They care that, that you know, they made a deal with the devil. They didn't care about any of those things. They just, they just wanted the conviction.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: And I remember other Amy, our friend that we're talking about that was, you know, pretty much the lead. This was her baby, lovely Lawrence. She was going to sit down and, and meet with the solicitors on this place and she was worried. She's like, I'm going to throw. Show him my whole hand. But she had such faith that they would do the right thing, you know, And I love her heart and I, I don't, I mean maybe this has changed her. But you know, she did, she decided to do it. She decided to go in with all the information to show and prove it and they didn't care. And that's why it still went to trial. She tried, she tried her entire cards for trial and they, it goes to show, like you said, they really didn't care.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: And it just, it blows my mind like, because like even with, like I said with Justin, he would go back and forth and he did not speak spend the time that we did. But it was so great because we were having to convince him, which eventually we had to convince a jury. And finally I literally like, I put him in the car one night and I was like, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna go yeah, we're gonna go to all the places that we know that we can independently verify. Right. And then we'll see if we have time. And. And once we did that, he was like, he. I remember he. Because he was driving. I let him drive. So I wasn't speeding or slowing down or doing whatever. And.
And we get back to the office and he just goes, holy, he's innocent.
It's like, welcome. And this was like day two of the trial, by the way.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: This is. This is a. These are the police officers jobs. This is their job to collect evidence. This is their job to investigate. Investigate. Would have been talking to those witnesses that you mentioned that would have established his alibi. Um, and we. One of the stories we covered, a man was convicted for killing his wife. They were married for decades.
No issues in their marriage. Anybody. He was at a conference. He was a principal, she was a teacher. He was like three hours away at a conference. And they saw him that night, they saw him the next day. His wife was murdered in the middle of the night. And they literally said he drove three hours for his conference to kill her and then come back.
Yeah. So that is a common theme that we have. Or not. That wasn't a common thing, but that's actually one thing we saw in the book. And the police did drive it. They just didn't care. They didn't care. And it was just complete, I think, tunnel vision and just trying to appe. And I do feel like they do want to give the victims closure. And I can't imagine from an officer's perspective, feeling that weight and have. Have met with victims families and, you know, I know that they're going to there. I'm promise you, I'm gonna do everything I can to find out who did this and that. That weight. But you have to still get it right, because otherwise you're going to contribute to the amount of victims in a case.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Right. And that's the thing. And you just create more victims and more. I mean, and more, you know, in more challenges and more problems. And it's. You know, and then it makes. It makes me, as a defense attorney, when I see it, question everything that they do as officers. And I hate that. You know, I do. Yeah.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Same, same.
So you said that what kind of what stuck out to the jury and then the second trial. Is there anything else you would want to add to. To that?
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Well, so, yeah, I mean, the jurors, I'll tell you, they were. They were really appalled at the state's behavior and that the State would just rest on that behavior. You know, the fact that we had to call their officers, their officers that they, you know, that. And they knew that we were going to call sled if they didn't. But the fact that they wasted all of the, I mean we could have stipulated that there was no, you know, they collected all of this evidence and then they never ran it through, through aphis, which is the National Fingerprint Fingerprint Database. They never ran anything through codis, which was a DNA database. And you know, and, but they did run a comparison against Gary Bennett and then it came back that it didn't match. And they're like, eh, well, you know, whatever. And they, and they felt frustrated that they were wasting the jurors time with that and that they just refused to accept these, you know, these real inquiries into whether or not the evidence that they were presenting was factual. And you know, and in, in meeting with the witnesses, you know, there was one guy that I felt like could have been a potential witness because there was a claim that he had been rebuffed by a sexual advance he made on Marie.
And they even collected his machete, his grandfather's machete that had blood on it. But they never tested it. But I talked to that kid. I learned that it wasn't, you know, that the blood like I learned likely where the blood came from. We didn't have it tested because we're not trying to get, you know, it's, we're not able to, to, to do a lot of, you know, our independent testing, especially when, you know, when we have to do it ourselves. But, but just the fact that in talking to him and, and, and getting an understanding, nobody ever did that, you know, and we put that machete in, in evidence as a part of the defense evidence to, to show, look, this is something that they didn't test, you know, and, and this is somebody that had a problem with, with the, just, you know, with, with Marie and you know, and it's not that hard to get it right. And, and so they were frustrated about that, but mainly with the co defendant. His name was Andrew Lindsay, not that it matters, but Andrew Lindsay.
Once I was able to break him and they saw his temper, which, I mean it took me a long time, but because he was so trained and so like he knew what he needed to do, right. And, but once I was able to break him and they really got to see his explosive anger, they said that that was, I mean, they visibly jumped when he slammed that table and started yelling at me. The jurors like visibly jumped and, and you know, and it was, they were just, they were so heartbroken that, that he had done this. Like, I think 18 years is what he had done.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: You almost got a mistrial and opening.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: Yeah. So what did they say? So my mentor, John Delgado, he has always trained me to push the envelope. Always, always, always. And, and I was struggling with my opening because it is so important. And you know, but these jurors were.
[00:35:04] Speaker B: Talking about opening statement for anybody knows, you get, it's not evidence, it's just our perception. So this is what Amy's talking about.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: We out there. I say it's a guide for what the evidence will show, but blah, blah, blah. But I mean, what the evidence was going to show. And just looking at the pictures alone, like I said, it was clear that this case had some age on it. Right. And so I said, so I said that something along the lines of we're here because he didn't. The Supreme Court said he didn't get a fair trial the first time.
And the prosecutor went crazy ballistic. But I needed to explain that, that gap. And I was like, john, am I going to get in trouble for this? He's like, I mean, you're not going to get in trouble. You'll probably get objected to. Which I did. But at least it was out there. The jury got to understand that.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: Why the Polaroids were coming in.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Why we were having, you know, these things from, you know, and like, like cassette tapes, you know, when now everything is digital and CDs and things like that. And so, you know, and so I think that.
So he encouraged me to do it. I'll tell you, I was glad I did because one thing that I've learned, and I try to talk to a lot of juries just because. Because we always get feedback, win or lose. I like to talk to them, you know, say, hey, what could I have done differently? Or what, you know, please don't just, oh, you did a great job. Those aren't the kind of comments I'm looking for. I'm looking for the, you know, what can we do better? And you know, and these jurors, though, really enjoyed the, the demonstratives that we used. The, you know, the thoroughness and the time that we put into it. It made a difference to them.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
So all together, how much time as we wrap up, did Gary spend in jail?
[00:36:53] Speaker A: A total between pre trial and then his sentence he got. He was in for 18 years.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: His babies growing up.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: So when he was. Oh yeah, miss his daughter still Trying. Now that he's out, he's trying to. I mean, one thing that I've really learned about. About both Gary and. And Jody, the two people that I had in there the longest, is they become so institutionalized. It's really. And it's really its own form of ptsd. Like when. When Jody got out the first day, Jody called me at, you know, at 6:30 in the morning, and he was like, you know, can I go to the shower? Can I go to the bathroom? And I'm like, I don't care what you do.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Because they don't know how to learn.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: They're not used to not having. Yeah. Doing something without permission.
How is Gary? I know that y'all went and saw him after the trial a couple months and visited him. How. How is he?
[00:37:52] Speaker A: He's good. He's back in Myrtle beach area.
He is actually doing real well is. Is playing pickleball.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Oh, I love that.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. He's real big into that and still golfing and has gotten in with some. Some groups. Some. He was a veteran, he said, so he's gotten in with some veteran groups that have really helped him kind of live a stable and much, you know, a much just more structured life, which I think is. Is really good for it for these people. He. I know that he does try to offer some counseling to. To some, you know, friends or. Or people that he met in the detention center to. To not to not make bad choices. I mean, he was no angel. Right. I mean, he made some bad choices in his life, but murder was never one of them. Not in.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: You know, and he is slowly building a relationship back with his daughter, who is grown now. And so that's, you know, that he lost all that time. And so.
But I think that, you know, most importantly, he's not gotten in any trouble, you know, and. Because, you know, I think people just get so fearful that, oh, well, what if. The what if? And. And it's just such a dangerous way to live, you know, and that what if gets so many people convicted when. When they really, really shouldn't be. And that's, I think, what we struggle with as defense attorneys, you know.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: Sorry, one quick question before I'll let you go.
The first murder for the co defendant. How did the victim die?
[00:39:33] Speaker A: She was. She wasn't stabbed, but she was strangled and strangled across the neck. The way that the body was. The way that the scene and the body were disposed of varies. There were. There were similarities, like I said, the concentration. There were. There were 12 very very interesting connections. And it. And it.
And I'll tell you that that, that's the one thing especially that I hope that people understand that, you know, there are snitches and there are cooperating codependents, and there is a difference between the two. A snitch is somebody that will lie or say whatever they need to do to get out of trouble. A cooperating codependent is somebody that, you know, accepts the responsibility of what they did and, and tell the truth. And I think that the jury should, when they're just weighing the credibility of. Of that type of evidence that should come with such a higher scrutiny, because I agree. The fact that, that he got up there and was, you know, allowed to say all this when he had the past that he had and they didn't even know about it, you know, just. I just hope that when people are. Watch this or they hear things on the news or hopefully when they get to be a juror, that they. They take these things with a. With a huge grain of salt.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.
And that's, you know, in closing, some of the things we saw in the book is we couldn't believe some of the things jurors actually believed and used to convict people. So I do think, I hope that this podcast and especially this series has helped everyone listening because we could all be potential jurors on a case one day, and it deserves our full attention. You know, we talk about the importance of voting, but then everybody wants to get out of jury duty. And, you know, people ask me, how do you get out of jury duty? And honestly, I take offense to that because to me, I think jury duty is more important than voting, and it is affecting people's lives around you.
So thank you, Amy. I definitely learned so much, and I think a lot of this, like I said, ties into the. Some of the themes that we've talked about in our series. And I've an attorney friend of ours that's a mutual friend one time said that they look out after you because they never want to. They'll make sure you never take on too much because Amy is just somebody who wants to always help as a. You know, as you see in this case itself, in Thomas's case as well, she is just always willing to jump in and help a friend. And I just think you're a badass lawyer and a phenomenal female friend. And I'm so grateful to know you. I love you so much.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Oh, I love you too. You know that.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: And bye, everybody. We'll see you next week. And please follow us on all our socials, and hopefully we'll have Lauren back next week.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Bye.
