Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 4 Shocking Developments in Ohio Dad Accused of Executing 3 Sons' Case: 'Chad Knows What's Right'

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Prosecutors in the case of Chad Doerman, the Ohio father accused of killing his three young sons last summer, have revealed new information about what they claim he did and said shortly before killing the boys. The new revelation came in a court document that details the charges against Doerman, who recently said he'll use an insanity defense at trial. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy details the new developments in Doerman's case with criminal defense attorney Andrea Burkhart in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering this biggest stories in crime.If you’ve used Incognito mode in Google’s Chrome browser, find out if you have a claim in a few clicks by visiting https://incognitoclaims.com/crimefixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Andrea Burkart / https://twitter.com/aburkhartlawCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. New information in the case of Chad Dorman, the Ohio father accused of murdering his three young sons. Prosecutors now revealing what they claim Dorman said and did before killing the boys. I have that, including other major developments in the case. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Chad Dorman could get the death penalty if he's convicted of murdering his three young sons, seven-year-old Clayton, Hunter, who was just four, and three-year-old Chase in June of last year. Prosecutors are

now revealing what they claim Dorman did on that summer day. It's actually hard to think about because it was a beautiful summer day. The sun was shining. You can see it in the body camera footage. The three boys, Clayton, Hunter, and Chase, were likely just playing as kids do during those summer months. But according to an amended bill of particulars filed by prosecutors, Chad Dorman was acting strangely that day in June. The document, which details the charges against a defendant, says Dorman returned home early from work and at one point obtained a Bible and was walking around the house with it. Prosecutors write, while walking with the Bible, the defendant was mumbling, quote, Chad knows what's right. Dorman then began to get into the gun safe located in the master bedroom.

But then Dorman's wife told him that he was scaring her and that she didn't like what he was doing. She planned to call his parents. That's what the document says. Then prosecutors said Dorman responded that he was, quote, just kidding and playing around. Dorman's wife told investigators that she didn't want him to be alone because of the way that he was acting. So she and one of the boys stayed in the room with him. Then Dorman got out of bed and pulled a.22 caliber rifle out of the gun safe and shot one of his sons.

Prosecutors say Dorman's wife called 911 and tried to help her wounded son, and she also tried to protect the other boys, but Dorman chased them down and shot them. Even demanding his stepdaughter put one of the boys down as she ran for help. They said the girl put the boy down and Dorman shot him. Police body camera footage showed Dorman sitting on the front steps of his home. He has that rifle sitting next to him and he does not resist being taken into custody by sheriff's deputies in Claremont County, Ohio, east of Cincinnati. Can I roll over? I ain't gonna hurt you. I ain't gonna hurt nobody. You got anything on you? No, I ain't got nothing, man. Phone, that's it. Dorman calmly stated that no one else was left in the house.

My daughter, she ran over to the fire department. Sit down. It's my stepdaughter. Put him in the cage. This is a law and crime legal alert. Google Incognito tracked users browsing data without their knowledge. Mass Tort Alliance, one of our legal sponsors, is helping users file for compensation because Google misled users about the privacy of their Incognito browser. If you've used Google Incognito anytime since 2016,

you can start your claim by answering less than 10 questions. Just log on to incognitoclaims.com slash crime fix. Now you may be asking yourself, why are prosecutors now releasing this information about doormen coming home early from work, walking around with a Bible you may be asking yourself, why are prosecutors now releasing this information about Dorman coming home early from work, walking around with the Bible and saying Chad's always right? Well, a lot has happened since Dorman was first charged with murdering his sons last summer.

One major development that we've covered for you here on Crime Fix, the judge presiding over Dorman's case granted his request to suppress his interview with law enforcement. That means the jury is not going to see it. I believe that he wanted to talk to me based on our short interaction earlier in the interview where I said that I wanted to talk to him. And he said, that's fine. Actually, I said, I want to talk to you if that's OK. And he said, that's fine. That was Claremont County Sheriff's Detective Michael Ross testifying earlier this year about his interaction with Chad Dorman following his arrest. Several times, Dorman mentioned talking with, quote, a lawyer. I felt obligated to explore it a little bit. Yes. So I did. I asked him if he had a lawyer.

And what did he indicate to you? He said, we have family lawyers. And did you follow up on that? Yeah. Again, I felt like pulling teeth. I'm trying to get him to talk about it. Tell me who's your lawyer. So I asked him if there was somebody we could call and he said, Keith Norman and Ruby Franklin. And did he give you any information about those two individuals? Yes, I followed up with them. Keith Dorman is his father and neither one of those people are attorneys. So he was able to tell you Keith Dorman is his dad. What did he say about Ruby Franklin? He said that she was in the CIA. And I said, well, is she a lawyer in the CIA? And he said, she's in the CIA.

So neither name that he gave me were even close to lawyers. So right there, Detective Ross detailed an exchange he had with Chad Dorman, where he talked about wanting a lawyer. And he's talking about a woman named Ruby Franklin, whom he claimed was in the CIA. It turns out, of course, that Ruby Franklin was a woman he used to know. And back to that statement about Dorman carrying around the Bible. Here's what Detective Ross said Chad Dorman said to him about the Bible. He had made a comment that the Bible says that you kill your firstborn, you kill your secondborn,

you kill your thirdborn, but first you're supposed to kill your wife. I didn't kill my wife. So I really thought that was a very important comment that he had just made. And I was, um, I wanted him to repeat to me some of the things that he had said. And I was asking him about that and he cut me off. Um, he stopped me from talking and said, um, I'll just, and I'll hold one sentence. He says, I'll just wait for a lawyer. I really don't know. Like, give me a couple of days. I'll talk to a lawyer and get nice, good answers. He says that all in basically one breath. Again, that was another exchange in which Dorman discussed wanting to speak with a lawyer.

And all of this discussion by Dorman led Judge Richard Farrink to throw out his interview with law enforcement. Judge Farrink found that Dorman had unequivocally asked for a lawyer. Dorman had made other statements during that interview that prosecutors can no longer use against him at trial. He said, almost like under his breath, like a whisper, what the did I do? Another point, he says, what the fuck did she let me do? Another time, it looked like he was checking the back of his shirt for blood. There was another point where he's looking around and he says, where's the cameras? Where's the cameras? So he was looking for cameras. Now, after Judge Farrink determined that Ross's continued questioning of Dorman after he had asked for a lawyer violated his rights,

Dorman changed his plea from just not guilty to not guilty by reason of insanity or mental disease or defect. So he's admitting right there that he killed his sons, but he's saying he was so mentally ill at the time that he did it that he didn't know it was wrong. I want to bring in criminal defense attorney Andrea Burkhart to talk a little bit about the new actions and statements we're hearing about from Chad Dorman on the day that his sons were murdered. Andrea, this is some really kind of crazy stuff we're reading about in this Dorman on the day that his sons were murdered. Andrea, this is some

really kind of crazy stuff we're reading about in this amended bill of particulars. The prosecution is saying that he came home from work a little early that day. He's carrying around a Bible and he's saying things about Chad's always right, things of that nature. Why do you think the prosecution amended this document to include that information? Well, this seems to be pretty explicitly a response to the not guilty by reason of insanity plea that Chad Dorman is pursuing here. Ohio follows the conventional insanity standard, which is not based on does a person have a mental illness, is a person out of touch with reality, or something like that that we commonly associate with a lot of mental disorders in this type of context,

the standard is very specifically whether he understands the difference between right and wrong. And so that is the precise question the jury is going to have to answer in evaluating his guilt or innocence in this particular case. So by including this information that would appear on its face to relate to his ability to tell right from wrong, that he understands that shortly before committing these terrible killings, that that would go to the substance of the defense. And from the Commonwealth's perspective, it would tend to undermine that. And just from our viewers and listeners, just so they understand what this means in this case, the not guilty by reason of insanity, the defense is basically saying and

conceding, our guy did it. He pulled the trigger. However, he shouldn't be held legally responsible because he didn't know right from wrong. He's so mentally incapacitated. There's something so wrong up here that he needs to be maybe in a mental institution and not in prison or possibly get the death penalty. Yes, that's correct. And so the general idea behind this is that a person who is not mentally fit at the time that they commit a crime, they're not as of decisions as people who aren't suffering from this type of illness would be able to make. So this is a fairly conventional approach to legal responsibility throughout the United States. Not universal. Idaho, for example, doesn't recognize a classic insanity defense,

but it's certainly consistent with the common law tradition that goes back to England and has really been the case in this country in most places for about as long as we've had legal cases here. Chad Dorman's statement to investigators was suppressed. And in that statement, law enforcement said that he said things like, you know, under his breath while the law enforcement officers were out of the room. Why did she let me do that? Or why did I do that? Or, you know, things of that nature. But he also made a lot of statements in there that made it sound like he was not all there mentally. He's talking about somebody named Ruby Franklin that when he's talking about a lawyer that he says was in the CIA, but it was really somebody he knew from years past. I mean, there's something definitely maybe not right up there. Does this statement about carrying around the Bible and, you know, Chad's always right. And then maybe when his wife is saying, you're making me uncomfortable getting the guns out. And he's like, oh, I'm just joking.

That shows right there that he knew what he was doing. He was able to make that decision to not take the guns out at that moment. So that means he knew full well what he was doing and that it was wrong. Yeah, I think that's certainly the argument that the prosecution is going to make in you know, even in this situation that they're perhaps, you know, hallucinating or delusional about. So having the ability to conduct moral reasoning, it's not something that you typically are going to lose just by virtue of having some type of mental illness. So it is this very distinct legal standard that doesn't necessarily correlate very well with is somebody with it or not. Now, with these statements that have been suppressed,

I think there's a little bit of a challenge here because the fact that some of those are potentially helpful to the defense in this case. And he may want to use those in order to show, for example, Chad is always right. Well, that's not necessarily rational. You know, most people's morality isn't self-referential. We're not gods here. And so that type of thing could potentially be helpful to the defense to show he's not capable of making that kind of rational evaluation. But the problem is, because it's been suppressed, if the defense wants to be able to use those statements, that could potentially open the door to allowing the prosecution to use the rest of the content of

that interview, which we understand includes information that could be extremely damaging to his case as well. So that is a strategic choice they're going to have to make in terms of how they present their case on insanity. What makes a lot of this even more strange is the fact that during the interview with law enforcement, which the jury will never see now, Dorman apparently denied killing his sons several times. And at any point during the interview, did the defendant deny shooting his sons that day? Yes, multiple times throughout the entire interview till the very end. So it's all a little confusing. Chad Dorman basically denied he killed his sons to detectives.

So are his lawyers just saying he was just literally out of his mind that day? Prosecutors, of course, are saying he did it. He knew what he was doing and did it deliberately. Did Chad Dorman think he was following some guidance from the Bible? Prosecutors revealing that statement that Chad Dorman made that Chad knows what's right and he was carrying around the Bible makes it make a lot more sense. Dorman is saying he didn't know right from wrong by pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. But saying Chad knows what's right might indicate he knew what he was doing, along with carrying around a Bible. Chad Dorman may very well be mentally ill, but that doesn't mean he was insane at the time he killed his sons.

The jury will decide that question. It's certainly not a decision I'm making here on this show. And prosecutors will likely argue the fact that Dorman said he was just kidding around when he tried to get in the gun safe and his wife said it was scaring her shows he was able to stop himself. He had some level of self-control and ability to reason. Dorman's lawyers will likely argue at trial that anyone who acted the way that Dorman did would have to be insane. He hunted down his three little boys like prey and executed them. Few people can imagine doing something so horrific. So we have the new information about Chad Dorman's actions and words before shooting and killing his sons,

and he changed his plea. His attorneys are now getting a second psychological evaluation to present evidence to the court about what his mental state was like at the time that he committed the murders. His trial is scheduled to begin in July, and because the case has been widely publicized, the number of jurors who will be summoned has been increased from 500 to 750. The prosecution is also asking the judge to allow the jury to visit the home where Chad Dorman shot his children. It's called a jury view. Those site visits sometimes happen in cases, and it's a really good thing, I believe. It allows jurors to get a sense of what a crime scene looks like, the dimensions and distances between certain locations.

Some people don't like them. I personally do, not only as a news person, but I was a juror in a murder trial a long time ago, and I thought that it was really helpful. So we're going to keep an eye on this case and see what happens next and keep you up to speed. And that's it for this edition of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for joining us. I'll see you back here next time.