[0:01] Welcome to The Rucker Report, Criminal Cases Explained.
[0:05] Everybody watches the verdict.
[0:10] Lawyers watch everything else.
[0:12] Welcome to The Rucker Report, criminal cases explained
[0:15] with board certified criminal defense attorney
[0:17] and former prosecutor, West Rucker.
[0:20] West has handled everything from homicide trials
[0:22] to white collar investigations.
[0:24] And on this show, he breaks down the courtroom strategy
[0:27] cross-examinations, media narratives, and legal moments
[0:30] most people miss when a case explodes into the headlines.
[0:34] I'm Sean O'Connor, and today, West and I are talking about
[0:37] how internet narratives, viral clips, and online commentary
[0:41] can completely reshape the way people understand
[0:44] a criminal case, even when the facts inside the courtroom
[0:48] tell a different story.
[0:49] Hi, West. Good to see you.
[0:51] Good to see you, Sean.
[0:52] I mean, the very premise of this episode, you know,
[0:55] like, what the internet got wrong, like, what?
[0:57] You know, like, what didn't it get wrong?
[1:01] What kinds of criminal case narratives
[1:05] tend to spread the fastest online?
[1:08] You know, even when the underlying facts, you know,
[1:11] they're so often out over their skis on the facts side of things.
[1:15] Is that your experience?
[1:16] Yeah, so, you know, the general public
[1:19] is only going to have access to use with the media portrays
[1:23] and the media will only have access
[1:25] to what little blurbs they've seen
[1:27] from either the state of the offense
[1:30] and sometimes only during press conferences,
[1:32] sometimes during some case filings.
[1:34] So there's going to be very limited amount of information
[1:38] and only the more salacious details will make the headlines.
[1:43] They're headline worthy, but they're not necessarily reflective
[1:47] of the facts or actual status of the case, I suppose.
[1:52] What do you find to be the biggest differences between,
[1:56] say, the way lawyers evaluate a criminal case
[2:00] and the way the internet reacts to one in real time?
[2:04] Yeah, it's volume of information.
[2:06] When an attorney is going through a case,
[2:08] you're looking at all the witness statements,
[2:10] what the videos are showing, the forensic evidence,
[2:16] there's a lot to tackle, a lot to digest,
[2:18] and especially on a lot of high profile cases
[2:20] or self-defense cases.
[2:24] Or if they're, let's say they're kidnapping cases,
[2:26] then a lot of it's going to be forensic-oriented.
[2:32] So I'm kind of some boring scientific stuff,
[2:34] but it's going to mean a lot.
[2:34] And that's not going to catch a lot of headlines.
[2:38] And so, you know, from a practitioner standpoint,
[2:42] you're going to be going through more information
[2:44] than a lay person will have
[2:46] and trying to make sense of some scientific pieces
[2:50] of information and evidence
[2:52] that a lay person may not see.
[2:54] I'm thinking about, you know,
[2:56] I mean, you can't go anywhere these days without, you know,
[3:00] without a video,
[3:00] without a being videotape probably somewhere, you know?
[3:02] I'm curious about what certain,
[3:04] or, you know, what causes, you know, certain courtroom clips
[3:08] or witness moments to completely take over online discussion
[3:12] during a major trial?
[3:14] Yeah, a lot of times, you know,
[3:16] whatever's on a camera,
[3:16] whatever's on surveillance will be leaked to the media.
[3:18] And so, that will get out to potential jurors
[3:22] or that will get out to the public
[3:24] that's following the headlines.
[3:26] But not everything does.
[3:28] You know, our trials nowadays,
[3:30] if you, you know, these things are,
[3:32] they are the digital evidence.
[3:36] You know, I had a recent trial where they,
[3:38] it was actually a high publicity trial
[3:40] where the movement of the phone,
[3:44] depending on how you interpreted it,
[3:46] either meant that my client was preparing
[3:48] to commit a murder in the middle of night
[3:50] or was actively sleepwalking.
[3:54] And, you know,
[3:56] who would have thought that a cell phone
[3:58] would have that much information
[4:00] and, you know, not let alone,
[4:02] you know, text messages, voice mails, pictures,
[4:04] all the other things that can either be used to incriminate you
[4:08] or exonerate you.
[4:10] Yeah, and you mentioned the, you know,
[4:12] the sleepwalking client.
[4:14] Can, is there a high profile case
[4:16] that you know of where, you know,
[4:18] internet commentary created a very different impression
[4:20] from, you know, the actual reality
[4:24] on the ground inside the courtroom?
[4:26] Yeah, I tried a case involving an officer involved shooting.
[4:30] It was national news,
[4:32] even international news.
[4:32] And the media narrative was
[4:36] that the officer shot an unarmed person
[4:40] who was just mining their business in the street.
[4:42] In fact, they were, they were handicapped
[4:44] and they had a mental illness.
[4:46] That was the narrative.
[4:48] I was, you know, seeing that in all,
[4:50] in the New York Times was calling me.
[4:50] I was getting calls from all different media outlets
[4:54] with that narrative in mind.
[4:56] I even told one reporter I said,
[4:58] I promise you this case is going to go a different way
[5:02] than you think it is.
[5:02] And what I'm going to be curious to see is
[5:04] if you're going to call me after the verdict
[5:06] and ask me these same questions.
[5:10] I usually, you know,
[5:10] you never, you never call your shot in trial,
[5:14] especially when you grow up as a Houston Oiler fan,
[5:16] you know, that nothing never,
[5:18] nothing, nothing is ever in the bag.
[5:20] You definitely don't want to do that in trial
[5:22] because you just don't know.
[5:22] But this one won't,
[5:24] the media narrative was so wrong.
[5:26] And the shooting, what we call a good shoot,
[5:30] it was such a justified use of force
[5:34] that, you know, the jurors in our case
[5:36] were pretty, pretty ticked off to the case,
[5:39] even went to trial.
[5:41] They thought it was something that,
[5:43] you know, they had seen,
[5:44] they had seen the media reports too.
[5:47] And so I think they went into the trial thinking
[5:51] there was going to be something totally different.
[5:53] What, in your experience,
[5:54] what do people most misunderstand about evidence
[5:58] after seeing short clips or documentary
[6:01] or, you know, trial coverage online
[6:04] that, you know, all of that's been heavily edited, I think.
[6:07] Yeah, you know, the jury selection is a huge part of trial
[6:12] that never is publicized.
[6:15] And so jurors will spend an entire day,
[6:18] sometimes multiple days,
[6:21] being asked questions going through the law
[6:23] by both sides of the state and the defense.
[6:27] They'll have committed to a certain set of legal principles
[6:31] and agree that if these legal principles apply,
[6:34] their verdict will be x, y, and z, for instance.
[6:38] And so that's never televised.
[6:40] I've not seen one trial where the jury selection was publicized.
[6:45] And that's a massive piece.
[6:47] So the lawyers will know in trial that,
[6:49] all right, look, my facts may not be great,
[6:51] but these jurors know what the law is here,
[6:53] and they've at least sworn under oath,
[6:56] they'll follow the law.
[6:58] And that's a huge element
[7:00] that, you know, you're not going to see during trial.
[7:03] Yeah, and it's obviously going to inform your in court strategy
[7:06] and what you're saying in front of the jury,
[7:08] because you have already had conversations with these folks
[7:12] and certain principles, like you said.
[7:14] Yeah, that is interesting sort of context that gets missed.
[7:17] I mean, I do feel like...
[7:18] And you're always, when you're doing to go back to that,
[7:21] when you're picking a jury, so in Texas, we say it wrong,
[7:24] we call it Vordire when it's really Vordier.
[7:28] So in Vordire for jury selection,
[7:30] you generally want to give the jurors a hypothetical
[7:33] that's worse than your own facts.
[7:35] And so if it's a self-defense case, for instance,
[7:38] you'll want to present to that jury a hypothetical
[7:42] that they would be okay with the person using self-defense
[7:45] in that scenario.
[7:46] So by the time you hit play and trials going on
[7:50] and your facts are unfolding,
[7:52] they're already okay with some pretty gory details
[7:55] that a lot of jurors may not be okay with.
[7:58] And again, so a person watching it online
[8:01] may not know all these principles,
[8:03] or they may not have been a proper juror for that case,
[8:06] because they didn't see what happened in jury selection.
[8:09] And they haven't been in some ways inoculated against
[8:12] what you're about to say in a courtroom.
[8:16] That's interesting.
[8:18] I feel like there's...
[8:20] I mean, I know Vordire from...
[8:22] Certainly from just being in the world
[8:25] to a degree in jury selection.
[8:27] I feel like there's been a movie or two
[8:29] that's given a movie version of, you know,
[8:33] jury selection process.
[8:36] But it's a different podcast, you know?
[8:39] Yeah, yeah.
[8:40] You're trying to piece together information on,
[8:43] you know, sometimes there's questionnaires
[8:45] or sometimes there's two or three questions.
[8:47] And you're trying to really get a profile on this person
[8:50] in a such a short amount of time.
[8:53] It can be very, you know, anxious
[8:57] to try to hammer that out.
[8:59] Yeah, it's like dating with very, very high stakes
[9:02] at dating.
[9:03] Well, you know, in some cases,
[9:05] but both will change the course of your life.
[9:08] Especially if the accused and your,
[9:11] you know, your lawyer gets it wrong
[9:13] and puts the wrong juror on men.
[9:16] Yeah.
[9:17] Well, and you mentioned that, you know,
[9:19] I'm thinking about, like, there's always parts of a trial
[9:22] that, you know, never get captured for, you know,
[9:25] sometimes for privacy reasons, right?
[9:27] Once a case starts.
[9:29] Are there, you know, jury selection is one of those things
[9:32] where, you know, there's just no access
[9:35] and maybe it doesn't make for good, you know, online fodder.
[9:39] Are there other parts that people don't see?
[9:42] You know, I have seen judges not allow media
[9:46] or cameras in for younger witnesses.
[9:49] That can happen from time to time.
[9:54] And, you know, like, the most recent self defense case
[9:57] here in Texas, the Carmelo Anthony trial.
[9:59] None of that was public as far as video.
[10:03] So it wasn't, you know, in court footage of that trial.
[10:09] And then there's obviously any time that lawyers approach,
[10:12] they approach the bench.
[10:13] Sometimes they have conversations back in chambers.
[10:16] And that won't get picked up by the media.
[10:19] Or if it is out in the courtroom, if they're approaching the bench,
[10:22] usually the cameras and microphones aren't picking up those conversations.
[10:26] So that you, you can miss some, some important information signals
[10:31] from the umps.
[10:34] What, what changes, if anything, you know, you know,
[10:40] just to turn these witnesses, jurors, you know, they become aware,
[10:44] like, oh, wow.
[10:46] Millions of people are watching aspects of this case online,
[10:51] as if, you know, as it unfold.
[10:53] So have you seen like a like, you go in the next day?
[10:57] And it's like, oh, okay, everybody saw the footage, so to speak?
[11:00] Yeah. Well, obviously you'll get a lot more adaboys or bad looks
[11:05] in the elevators.
[11:06] If it's a high publicity trial.
[11:08] I've had a trial where a sitting member of Congress came in and sat behind the prosecution.
[11:18] We thought it was a way to try to intimidate the jury that jury didn't buy it.
[11:23] So that doesn't happen in a normal run of the mill trial.
[11:28] You get late night phone calls from the media.
[11:33] It's not for the young, let me put it that way, it's a lot more difficult to handle a media case
[11:41] just because there are outside issues that you have to deal with.
[11:47] Are there signs that could be late night calls from journalists that public discussion
[11:55] around a particular criminal case has kind of wafted it off into a different reality
[12:03] than what the jury is actually dealing with?
[12:05] Yeah, I find that expert witnesses will, the online community is very good.
[12:11] It's sniffing out BS from an expert witness.
[12:15] Usually when I see feedback on high profile cases that I'm even watching myself,
[12:22] you'll see the comments section, even if they may not be going with the theory of the,
[12:28] let's say the defense is crossing the expert, the defense is, they're just not doing a great job,
[12:33] but they can expose the state's witness as kind of a hack.
[12:39] The online community usually gets that right, they'll like this guy's a clown.
[12:45] That usually is reflected pretty accurately by a verdict.
[12:48] Let's wrap it up with one more question kind of out towards the viewers, Wes,
[12:54] what should viewers start questioning?
[12:58] As they become, as I think in popularity of being able to see some of these cases and the
[13:04] documentaries get made, what should viewers really start to question more carefully the next time
[13:11] criminal case catches their eye and maybe blows up online?
[13:16] You know, that's a good question. I think, I think local filings, so anytime there's a document
[13:23] filed with the clerk of the court, that can be a treasure trove of information for someone who's
[13:30] really invested into watching a trial. You'll find little nuggets that you're not going to see during
[13:37] testimony or that maybe you've missed during testimony.
[13:40] I really was fascinated by the Johnny Depp trial, and so what I was watching, and good lawyers
[13:50] on both sides also, but you started to see when Amber Heard's lawyers started to, what I would call
[13:56] chicken shit moves, or tic-tac moves, you know that they're probably slipping with the jury.
[14:03] They're now trying to go for some hay makers when they shouldn't, and so those are little
[14:10] tell tales that I look for, you know, as the other side getting a little bit snipy,
[14:15] and then, you know, maybe the facts aren't unfolding how they were hoping.
[14:20] Yeah, you can kind of sense that the grasping at or the, you know.
[14:25] Petty, patty-ness, yeah, that's.
[14:27] Wes, great stuff. Thanks. I could talk for many more episodes, and perhaps in the future we will
[14:35] for sure. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate it.
[14:37] Thank you, Sean. That's it for today's episode of the Rucker Report.
[14:40] Criminal cases explained with Wes Rucker. If you'd like to learn more about Russ and Rucker Law,
[14:46] visit the website, wesruckerlaw.com. As always, we appreciate you listening.
[14:52] If you found it helpful or interesting, leave us a review, subscribe. That helps others find us too,
[14:57] actually, and share a link with someone in your world who loves following high profile criminal cases
[15:04] in courtroom strategy. I'm Sean O'Connor. Have a great day.
[0:05] Everybody watches the verdict.
[0:10] Lawyers watch everything else.
[0:12] Welcome to The Rucker Report, criminal cases explained
[0:15] with board certified criminal defense attorney
[0:17] and former prosecutor, West Rucker.
[0:20] West has handled everything from homicide trials
[0:22] to white collar investigations.
[0:24] And on this show, he breaks down the courtroom strategy
[0:27] cross-examinations, media narratives, and legal moments
[0:30] most people miss when a case explodes into the headlines.
[0:34] I'm Sean O'Connor, and today, West and I are talking about
[0:37] how internet narratives, viral clips, and online commentary
[0:41] can completely reshape the way people understand
[0:44] a criminal case, even when the facts inside the courtroom
[0:48] tell a different story.
[0:49] Hi, West. Good to see you.
[0:51] Good to see you, Sean.
[0:52] I mean, the very premise of this episode, you know,
[0:55] like, what the internet got wrong, like, what?
[0:57] You know, like, what didn't it get wrong?
[1:01] What kinds of criminal case narratives
[1:05] tend to spread the fastest online?
[1:08] You know, even when the underlying facts, you know,
[1:11] they're so often out over their skis on the facts side of things.
[1:15] Is that your experience?
[1:16] Yeah, so, you know, the general public
[1:19] is only going to have access to use with the media portrays
[1:23] and the media will only have access
[1:25] to what little blurbs they've seen
[1:27] from either the state of the offense
[1:30] and sometimes only during press conferences,
[1:32] sometimes during some case filings.
[1:34] So there's going to be very limited amount of information
[1:38] and only the more salacious details will make the headlines.
[1:43] They're headline worthy, but they're not necessarily reflective
[1:47] of the facts or actual status of the case, I suppose.
[1:52] What do you find to be the biggest differences between,
[1:56] say, the way lawyers evaluate a criminal case
[2:00] and the way the internet reacts to one in real time?
[2:04] Yeah, it's volume of information.
[2:06] When an attorney is going through a case,
[2:08] you're looking at all the witness statements,
[2:10] what the videos are showing, the forensic evidence,
[2:16] there's a lot to tackle, a lot to digest,
[2:18] and especially on a lot of high profile cases
[2:20] or self-defense cases.
[2:24] Or if they're, let's say they're kidnapping cases,
[2:26] then a lot of it's going to be forensic-oriented.
[2:32] So I'm kind of some boring scientific stuff,
[2:34] but it's going to mean a lot.
[2:34] And that's not going to catch a lot of headlines.
[2:38] And so, you know, from a practitioner standpoint,
[2:42] you're going to be going through more information
[2:44] than a lay person will have
[2:46] and trying to make sense of some scientific pieces
[2:50] of information and evidence
[2:52] that a lay person may not see.
[2:54] I'm thinking about, you know,
[2:56] I mean, you can't go anywhere these days without, you know,
[3:00] without a video,
[3:00] without a being videotape probably somewhere, you know?
[3:02] I'm curious about what certain,
[3:04] or, you know, what causes, you know, certain courtroom clips
[3:08] or witness moments to completely take over online discussion
[3:12] during a major trial?
[3:14] Yeah, a lot of times, you know,
[3:16] whatever's on a camera,
[3:16] whatever's on surveillance will be leaked to the media.
[3:18] And so, that will get out to potential jurors
[3:22] or that will get out to the public
[3:24] that's following the headlines.
[3:26] But not everything does.
[3:28] You know, our trials nowadays,
[3:30] if you, you know, these things are,
[3:32] they are the digital evidence.
[3:36] You know, I had a recent trial where they,
[3:38] it was actually a high publicity trial
[3:40] where the movement of the phone,
[3:44] depending on how you interpreted it,
[3:46] either meant that my client was preparing
[3:48] to commit a murder in the middle of night
[3:50] or was actively sleepwalking.
[3:54] And, you know,
[3:56] who would have thought that a cell phone
[3:58] would have that much information
[4:00] and, you know, not let alone,
[4:02] you know, text messages, voice mails, pictures,
[4:04] all the other things that can either be used to incriminate you
[4:08] or exonerate you.
[4:10] Yeah, and you mentioned the, you know,
[4:12] the sleepwalking client.
[4:14] Can, is there a high profile case
[4:16] that you know of where, you know,
[4:18] internet commentary created a very different impression
[4:20] from, you know, the actual reality
[4:24] on the ground inside the courtroom?
[4:26] Yeah, I tried a case involving an officer involved shooting.
[4:30] It was national news,
[4:32] even international news.
[4:32] And the media narrative was
[4:36] that the officer shot an unarmed person
[4:40] who was just mining their business in the street.
[4:42] In fact, they were, they were handicapped
[4:44] and they had a mental illness.
[4:46] That was the narrative.
[4:48] I was, you know, seeing that in all,
[4:50] in the New York Times was calling me.
[4:50] I was getting calls from all different media outlets
[4:54] with that narrative in mind.
[4:56] I even told one reporter I said,
[4:58] I promise you this case is going to go a different way
[5:02] than you think it is.
[5:02] And what I'm going to be curious to see is
[5:04] if you're going to call me after the verdict
[5:06] and ask me these same questions.
[5:10] I usually, you know,
[5:10] you never, you never call your shot in trial,
[5:14] especially when you grow up as a Houston Oiler fan,
[5:16] you know, that nothing never,
[5:18] nothing, nothing is ever in the bag.
[5:20] You definitely don't want to do that in trial
[5:22] because you just don't know.
[5:22] But this one won't,
[5:24] the media narrative was so wrong.
[5:26] And the shooting, what we call a good shoot,
[5:30] it was such a justified use of force
[5:34] that, you know, the jurors in our case
[5:36] were pretty, pretty ticked off to the case,
[5:39] even went to trial.
[5:41] They thought it was something that,
[5:43] you know, they had seen,
[5:44] they had seen the media reports too.
[5:47] And so I think they went into the trial thinking
[5:51] there was going to be something totally different.
[5:53] What, in your experience,
[5:54] what do people most misunderstand about evidence
[5:58] after seeing short clips or documentary
[6:01] or, you know, trial coverage online
[6:04] that, you know, all of that's been heavily edited, I think.
[6:07] Yeah, you know, the jury selection is a huge part of trial
[6:12] that never is publicized.
[6:15] And so jurors will spend an entire day,
[6:18] sometimes multiple days,
[6:21] being asked questions going through the law
[6:23] by both sides of the state and the defense.
[6:27] They'll have committed to a certain set of legal principles
[6:31] and agree that if these legal principles apply,
[6:34] their verdict will be x, y, and z, for instance.
[6:38] And so that's never televised.
[6:40] I've not seen one trial where the jury selection was publicized.
[6:45] And that's a massive piece.
[6:47] So the lawyers will know in trial that,
[6:49] all right, look, my facts may not be great,
[6:51] but these jurors know what the law is here,
[6:53] and they've at least sworn under oath,
[6:56] they'll follow the law.
[6:58] And that's a huge element
[7:00] that, you know, you're not going to see during trial.
[7:03] Yeah, and it's obviously going to inform your in court strategy
[7:06] and what you're saying in front of the jury,
[7:08] because you have already had conversations with these folks
[7:12] and certain principles, like you said.
[7:14] Yeah, that is interesting sort of context that gets missed.
[7:17] I mean, I do feel like...
[7:18] And you're always, when you're doing to go back to that,
[7:21] when you're picking a jury, so in Texas, we say it wrong,
[7:24] we call it Vordire when it's really Vordier.
[7:28] So in Vordire for jury selection,
[7:30] you generally want to give the jurors a hypothetical
[7:33] that's worse than your own facts.
[7:35] And so if it's a self-defense case, for instance,
[7:38] you'll want to present to that jury a hypothetical
[7:42] that they would be okay with the person using self-defense
[7:45] in that scenario.
[7:46] So by the time you hit play and trials going on
[7:50] and your facts are unfolding,
[7:52] they're already okay with some pretty gory details
[7:55] that a lot of jurors may not be okay with.
[7:58] And again, so a person watching it online
[8:01] may not know all these principles,
[8:03] or they may not have been a proper juror for that case,
[8:06] because they didn't see what happened in jury selection.
[8:09] And they haven't been in some ways inoculated against
[8:12] what you're about to say in a courtroom.
[8:16] That's interesting.
[8:18] I feel like there's...
[8:20] I mean, I know Vordire from...
[8:22] Certainly from just being in the world
[8:25] to a degree in jury selection.
[8:27] I feel like there's been a movie or two
[8:29] that's given a movie version of, you know,
[8:33] jury selection process.
[8:36] But it's a different podcast, you know?
[8:39] Yeah, yeah.
[8:40] You're trying to piece together information on,
[8:43] you know, sometimes there's questionnaires
[8:45] or sometimes there's two or three questions.
[8:47] And you're trying to really get a profile on this person
[8:50] in a such a short amount of time.
[8:53] It can be very, you know, anxious
[8:57] to try to hammer that out.
[8:59] Yeah, it's like dating with very, very high stakes
[9:02] at dating.
[9:03] Well, you know, in some cases,
[9:05] but both will change the course of your life.
[9:08] Especially if the accused and your,
[9:11] you know, your lawyer gets it wrong
[9:13] and puts the wrong juror on men.
[9:16] Yeah.
[9:17] Well, and you mentioned that, you know,
[9:19] I'm thinking about, like, there's always parts of a trial
[9:22] that, you know, never get captured for, you know,
[9:25] sometimes for privacy reasons, right?
[9:27] Once a case starts.
[9:29] Are there, you know, jury selection is one of those things
[9:32] where, you know, there's just no access
[9:35] and maybe it doesn't make for good, you know, online fodder.
[9:39] Are there other parts that people don't see?
[9:42] You know, I have seen judges not allow media
[9:46] or cameras in for younger witnesses.
[9:49] That can happen from time to time.
[9:54] And, you know, like, the most recent self defense case
[9:57] here in Texas, the Carmelo Anthony trial.
[9:59] None of that was public as far as video.
[10:03] So it wasn't, you know, in court footage of that trial.
[10:09] And then there's obviously any time that lawyers approach,
[10:12] they approach the bench.
[10:13] Sometimes they have conversations back in chambers.
[10:16] And that won't get picked up by the media.
[10:19] Or if it is out in the courtroom, if they're approaching the bench,
[10:22] usually the cameras and microphones aren't picking up those conversations.
[10:26] So that you, you can miss some, some important information signals
[10:31] from the umps.
[10:34] What, what changes, if anything, you know, you know,
[10:40] just to turn these witnesses, jurors, you know, they become aware,
[10:44] like, oh, wow.
[10:46] Millions of people are watching aspects of this case online,
[10:51] as if, you know, as it unfold.
[10:53] So have you seen like a like, you go in the next day?
[10:57] And it's like, oh, okay, everybody saw the footage, so to speak?
[11:00] Yeah. Well, obviously you'll get a lot more adaboys or bad looks
[11:05] in the elevators.
[11:06] If it's a high publicity trial.
[11:08] I've had a trial where a sitting member of Congress came in and sat behind the prosecution.
[11:18] We thought it was a way to try to intimidate the jury that jury didn't buy it.
[11:23] So that doesn't happen in a normal run of the mill trial.
[11:28] You get late night phone calls from the media.
[11:33] It's not for the young, let me put it that way, it's a lot more difficult to handle a media case
[11:41] just because there are outside issues that you have to deal with.
[11:47] Are there signs that could be late night calls from journalists that public discussion
[11:55] around a particular criminal case has kind of wafted it off into a different reality
[12:03] than what the jury is actually dealing with?
[12:05] Yeah, I find that expert witnesses will, the online community is very good.
[12:11] It's sniffing out BS from an expert witness.
[12:15] Usually when I see feedback on high profile cases that I'm even watching myself,
[12:22] you'll see the comments section, even if they may not be going with the theory of the,
[12:28] let's say the defense is crossing the expert, the defense is, they're just not doing a great job,
[12:33] but they can expose the state's witness as kind of a hack.
[12:39] The online community usually gets that right, they'll like this guy's a clown.
[12:45] That usually is reflected pretty accurately by a verdict.
[12:48] Let's wrap it up with one more question kind of out towards the viewers, Wes,
[12:54] what should viewers start questioning?
[12:58] As they become, as I think in popularity of being able to see some of these cases and the
[13:04] documentaries get made, what should viewers really start to question more carefully the next time
[13:11] criminal case catches their eye and maybe blows up online?
[13:16] You know, that's a good question. I think, I think local filings, so anytime there's a document
[13:23] filed with the clerk of the court, that can be a treasure trove of information for someone who's
[13:30] really invested into watching a trial. You'll find little nuggets that you're not going to see during
[13:37] testimony or that maybe you've missed during testimony.
[13:40] I really was fascinated by the Johnny Depp trial, and so what I was watching, and good lawyers
[13:50] on both sides also, but you started to see when Amber Heard's lawyers started to, what I would call
[13:56] chicken shit moves, or tic-tac moves, you know that they're probably slipping with the jury.
[14:03] They're now trying to go for some hay makers when they shouldn't, and so those are little
[14:10] tell tales that I look for, you know, as the other side getting a little bit snipy,
[14:15] and then, you know, maybe the facts aren't unfolding how they were hoping.
[14:20] Yeah, you can kind of sense that the grasping at or the, you know.
[14:25] Petty, patty-ness, yeah, that's.
[14:27] Wes, great stuff. Thanks. I could talk for many more episodes, and perhaps in the future we will
[14:35] for sure. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate it.
[14:37] Thank you, Sean. That's it for today's episode of the Rucker Report.
[14:40] Criminal cases explained with Wes Rucker. If you'd like to learn more about Russ and Rucker Law,
[14:46] visit the website, wesruckerlaw.com. As always, we appreciate you listening.
[14:52] If you found it helpful or interesting, leave us a review, subscribe. That helps others find us too,
[14:57] actually, and share a link with someone in your world who loves following high profile criminal cases
[15:04] in courtroom strategy. I'm Sean O'Connor. Have a great day.
