Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - DA Wants Death Penalty for Alleged Killer of Oklahoma Basketball Star

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Madeline Bills was a straight A student and a standout on her school basketball team at Moore High School outside of Oklahoma City. In April 2023, prosecutors say Bills' ex-boyfriend, 20-year-old Chace Cook, broke into her bedroom, recorded himself raping her and murdered her. This week, a judge entered a not guilty plea on Cook's behalf. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg about the disturbing case and seeking the death penalty in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show that delves into the biggest stories in crime.Host: Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Dave Aronberg  https://twitter.com/aronbergCRIME 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. A not guilty plea for a man facing the possibility of the death penalty for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, a high school basketball star. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Chase Cook appeared in court in Cleveland County, Oklahoma this week. He's accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend Maddie Bills in April of last year. Bills was a bright girl destined for great things. She was a straight-A student at Moore High School

and planned to play basketball at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College. Police say last April, Chase Cook broke into the pool house that Maddie Bills used as a bedroom at the home that she shared with her adult brothers and recorded himself raping her and then killed her. According to an affidavit, Bills told people she feared Cook so much that she actually thought about staying in the main house with her brothers. Recently, the DA announced he would seek the death penalty against Chase Cook with the support of Maddie's family. Greg Mashburn said there were aggravating circumstances and the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel. The DA

also believes that Cook would continue to commit violent crimes that pose a danger to society. This week, Cook stood silent when asked to enter a plea, so the judge entered a not guilty plea for him. Dave Ehrenberg is the state attorney for Palm Beach County in Florida, and he's joining me to discuss this case. Dave, you run a prosecutor's office, so when you seek a death penalty, that has to sometimes be a tough decision. I know that it's governed by state statute, but still, it's a heavy, heavy thing to have to decide. Yes, Anjanette. I have a committee, and the committee recommends to me, and I remember when I first started at this job, the committee of homicide prosecutors, my most experienced people

in the office met. There were about eight of them, and they came up with an eight to zero conclusion one way or the other. And then I said, okay, next case. And then they stood there and they stared at me. And I said, what? I said, you have to make the decision. We're just advisory. So, because the buck stops here. When you are the DA, or my case, we call them state attorneys, the decision is purely mine. And you want to make sure you have all the information because this is probably the most consequential decision that you have to make in this job. But when you have some guidance from state statutes, and every state has guidance, it's not just willy-nilly, you to seek the death penalty there have to be certain aggravators present and then you balance them against mitigators and here the district attorney i think did the right thing in seeking capital punishment it's a particularly troubling gruesome

accusation here yeah the allegations uh are really really sad and awful and gruesome um he called them particularly heinous and cruel, the DA did, citing the statute. And really the allegation here is that Maddie Bills feared Chase Cook and that he broke into the pool house that was essentially her bedroom. The police say that they have a video from his cell phone that recorded him sexually assaulting her before murdering her. That evidence, if that is indeed what that video shows, we haven't seen it. His defense attorneys, to our knowledge, have not seen it. It would be very strong evidence, wouldn't it? Definitely. He used the words atrocious and cruel heinous atrocious and cruel is actually in

the florida statutes as an aggravator that's why you see those words used a lot but yeah if you go in there and you are recording yourself committing a violent sexual assault and then you murder someone there those are a number of aggravators, and that would lead a prosecutor to seek the death penalty. I mean, the fact that she knew that she was about to die, and it's just awful, all the accusations. Now, these are accusations. They have to be proven in court. But a prosecutor just has to base their decision on whether to seek the death penalty on the facts as we know them and the allegations as we know them. And then it's up to the jury to have to decide unanimously. It's not easy to get the death penalty. A Florida member couldn't get it for the Parkland Massacre kid. I'm not going to say his name, the one who shot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas School. So we lowered the amount of people

to get the death penalty from unanimous to eight to four. But in Oklahoma, I believe it's still unanimous. Right. And the death penalty, it seems like there have been some things that have changed. I think society's viewpoints about it have changed. And in a lot of states, I know where I live particularly, I mean, they can't get the drugs to carry out these executions. And a lot of times they seem to not even happen because of reasons for those reasons. Also, these appeals on death penalty cases take a really long time. I mean, they can take 20 years or longer. And sometimes defendants go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court asking for stays.

It is frustrating because you want to have justice. You want to have the administration of the penalty that a jury and a judge come up with, and yet you have 20 years of death row. That's something that I think puts some sand in the gears of justice. And I think that's why there needs to be a better way to have faster reviews because it hurts not only the cause of justice, but also victims who are being victimized again, having to go through endless hearings, having to wait, not knowing if there's ever going to be closure in their case. So I do think that is a flaw in the system. Let's look at it from the defense side for a second here. You have to prepare for two phases of trial, of course,

the trial phase and then potentially mitigation phase if there's a conviction. The evidence in this case, we haven't seen it presented in a court, but we have the affidavit. They claim they've got the cell phone evidence. They have video of a man hopping a fence around the time that this offense would have occurred. They said they have him basically saying that he was in Galveston, Texas, but they say he really wasn't. So there are all these things. He eventually asked for a lawyer during the questioning. There are all these things that the state is going to say add up to him being guilty of this crime along with his DNA. So from a defense attorney's

perspective, what do you do with something like this? I mean, how do you defend this case? Do you try to say that somehow this was consensual and things got out of hand? I mean, I don't know how you go about that. It's in my experience when the evidence seems overwhelming, you attack law enforcement, you go after the investigation and you say, you jumped to conclusions and jumped to my client, but did you do this, this, and this? And you could have law enforcement that does everything right, that does a hundred things right. And you'd say, ah, ah well you didn't do 101. and all you have to do is to prove some or give one juror some reasonable doubt just give one juror some reasonable doubt and that's a hung jury and so that is one strategy another strategy is

try to cut the best deal you can for your client saying we're going to avoid the trial we're going to avoid the pain of putting witnesses through all this and take a plea to avoid the death penalty, for example. So we'll see which way they go. Already, you're starting to see the defense lawyers not argue the substance of this, but argue process, saying we don't have the documents we're supposed to get. This is a discovery violation. But of course, it's not because under Oklahoma law, you don't have to turn over this stuff until closer to trial. So I think right now, the fact they're arguing process tells you a lot about this case already. Yeah. And a lot of states, they are not required to turn over discovery, which is the evidence in

the case. That process isn't required to start until after the time of arraignment. And that just happened this week. Dave, something similar happened in this case to something that happened in Brian Koberger's case in Idaho. His attorneys, when asked to enter a plea, stood silent, meaning they said, we're standing silent. We're not pleading not guilty. That forces the judge then to enter a not guilty plea on his behalf. So what's the strategy there? There are different strategies. One explanation is that if he eventually tries to get a lighter sentence or to plea, it looks like he wasn't lying. If he wants to show remorse at some point and plead to the court, it's harder to do so when you first say not guilty now he can say i never said that and now he perhaps looks more sympathetic in the future as someone who's going to take responsibility so he

leaves that open but another thing is that you know sometimes if you have the right to remain silent not speak up you know you just don't do so in a high profile case. You don't give the internet, the court of public opinion, anything to work with. You just stay silent, let the lawyers do the talking, and then just live to fight another day. So there are different strategies involved. I mean, I personally think that if you have a client who is articulate and can just say a few words, that actually helps you in the court of public opinion. It humanizes you as opposed to someone who's been accused of the worst of the worst crimes and then just stays silent. But every defense lawyer has to come up with their own explanation. Interesting. Well, what do you see happening with this case? Do you think this is something

that will take a really long time to go to trial because they have to prepare for mitigation? Or do you think this is something where there's a potential for a plea deal? I guess that's always a possibility. Well, defendants have the right to a speedy trial. They can invoke what we call speedy, and then the clock starts ticking. But a lot of defendants waive speedy because they want to get more evidence. They hope that witnesses either become unavailable their memories fade evidence spoils so delays in there to the benefit of the defendant that's why they'll waste be a trial because it looks like the prosecution's got the goods already I mean they've got the most powerful evidence already I think they've got the cell phone video the defendant's own cell phone video showing this

violent sexual assault and perhaps more uh shows you that we prosecutors feast on the stupidity of defendants. Criminal defendants sometimes can make our job a lot easier. Dave Ehrenberg, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it, as always. Thanks for having me, Ingenette. I would like to note that I invited Chase Cook's attorney on this show to give her side of the story. She called my coverage sensationalistic and dangerous and referred me to the pleadings in the case. So she was invited on the show. I wanted to make that clear.

That's it for this edition of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks for being with us. We'll see you back here next time. Until then, have a great night. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby Zoki. Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Vine. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabey is our audio editor.