Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Dad Accused of Executing His 3 Sons Gets Key Statements Tossed

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

A judge in Ohio has thrown out an alleged confession by Chad Doerman, a father accused of executing his three young sons last summer. Clermont County Judge Richard Ferenc said sheriff’s detectives violated Doerman’s rights when they didn’t fully read his Miranda warnings to him and they continued to question him after he asked for a lawyer. Law&Crime’s Angenette Levy talks with Ohio prosecutor Mark Weaver and defense attorney Bill Gallagher about the judge’s ruling in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show that delves into the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME 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 & Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Because we were talking about Laura. So I looked at him and I said, who's Laura? And he corrected me. He said, the lawyer. That's just one exchange that a judge in Ohio says violated Chad Dorman's rights when detectives interviewed him. So that interview has been thrown out of court. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. The judge in Chad Dorman's case has made his decision. Detectives in Claremont

County, Ohio violated Chad Dorman's rights when they questioned him following his arrest last June. Dorman faces the possibility of the death penalty for the murders of his three little boys, Clayton, Hunter, and Chase. What he's accused of doing is so heinous and sickening. He's accused of laying down with them to take a nap and then hunting them down with a rifle and shooting them. Deputies found Dorman with that rifle sitting next to him on his front porch when they took him into custody. And while the crimes he's accused of committing are unspeakable, that's not what the judge's ruling is about. This is about the rights Dorman and the rest of us have when we're taken into custody by law enforcement. Judge Richard Farrink says detectives in Ohio violated Dorman's rights in two ways.

First, the judge said detectives did not properly advise Dorman of his Miranda warnings. That's what you hear about on police shows. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you can say, it will be used against you, and you have a right to a lawyer. This is what Detective Michael Ross said when questioned by Dorman's lawyers about his failure to read Dorman his full rights. One's talking about advice before you question, and the other's talking about how a lawyer present during questioning, isn't it? Yes. I'm not a robot. I probably should have read the entire card, but I'm not a robot. And then you read, if you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed.

It'd be left out for you before any questioning if you wish, right? Again, yes, I must have left that out. Judge Farrink ruled that the detective did not fully and properly advise Dorman of those rights. I'll have more on my thoughts on Ross's comments in a bit. Second, Judge Farrink said detectives continued to question Dorman after he unequivocally and unambiguously invoked his right to counsel. This is what Dorman said. He stopped me from talking and said, I'll just, in a whole one sentence, he says, I'll just wait for a lawyer. I really don't know.

Like, give me a couple days. I'll talk to a lawyer and get nice, good answers. He says that all in basically one breath. So when he said, I'll just wait for a lawyer, I don't know. Give me a couple days. Let me talk to a lawyer and I can get some nice, good answers for you. What did you think of that? I didn't know. I was confused because initially he says that he'll wait, but then he covers it up with he really didn't know. Now, it's important to point out there are other times that Dorman believed that his rights were violated. For instance, he argued his statements were not voluntary

because he was coerced since deputies intimidated him, dropping some F-bombs when they spoke to him. The judge didn't buy that argument. Joining me to discuss this pivotal ruling in the Chad Dorman case are two people who've dealt with death penalty cases in Ohio in the past. Mark Weaver is a former deputy Ohio attorney general. He's prosecuted death penalty cases, and Bill Gallagher has defended 13 death penalty cases. Guys, thanks for joining me. Mark, I'll start with you on this. Your thoughts on the judge's ruling.

This is a reminder that procedures matter. Law enforcement officers are trained to be very careful with their Miranda warnings. It's not required to be in writing. The judge made that clear. There's no obligation that you give a copy to the defendant. That was made clear as well. And you also don't have to use a certain set of words.

Although it's very helpful, that's why many officers carry a Miranda card and read it word for word. The thing that bothers me about this, Mark, and Bill, I'll ask you about this as well, is the fact that this detective on the stand, when he's repeatedly questioned about this, well, you didn't read the full card or you didn't read his full rights to him. And he said, well, I should have, but I'm not a robot.

You are a robot when you're a cop. I'm sorry. There are parts of your job in which you are a robot because, as Mark mentioned, Bill, there are policies and procedures. And this is a triple homicide involving a man accused of gunning down his three children and everything should be done by the book. All the I's dotted, all the T's crossed. And the judge found that was not done in this case. So I would argue that when you are doing something like reading Miranda warnings, you better turn into a robot. Yeah, I think also that you've got to slow down.

And that's the other part of this. You know this is going to be a long slog. Any detective that's been involved in doing homicide work and realizing the gravity of this offense through small kids, you sort of got to slow down as you talked about, you know, crossing T's and dotting I's to make sure that you have time to do that. You know, having the card and then not taking the time to read it is one of those things where you just slow down and read the card. You wouldn't have the problem that you have after this ruling. Mark, you're a prosecutor.

You get this ruling on Friday from the judge and you start reading it. And we don't know exactly what is in that statement, the custodial interrogation in which, you know, Chad Dorman apparently did make some statements. We don't know exactly what was said. We know that in the bill of particulars, he allegedly said things like, well, I've been thinking about this since October. We didn't hear about that in the suppression hearing. But you get that ruling from the judge. They had to have in some way seen this coming. Are you just kind of like, oh, my God. I mean, you might have some witnesses to this crime, but it doesn't exactly help your case when you're trying to get the death penalty.

No prosecutor likes to lose a motion to suppress, much less in a capital case. But as you mentioned, Jeanette, luckily, there are witnesses to this heinous crime. Luckily, there's other evidence that can be put forward in the case in chief of the state when it proves its case. So this is still a winnable case, but you don't like to have a motion to suppress. But there is the part about the premeditation here. And we don't know exactly when he said to them, I've been thinking about this since October. We don't know if that was when he was in the interview room or maybe when he was in the cruiser, things of that nature. That goes to the premeditation aspect of this. Well, that's true, but there's a lot of ways to prove premeditation, not just what the defendant said. And so I imagine the prosecutors spent all weekend are now, as we speak,

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Well, this is a win for the defense, I'm sure. I'm sure they looked at this and said, well, we got a win here. You know, there are things that he said in that interview that were not good. And he asked for a lawyer. And these are pretty basic things as a police officer that you're trained. When somebody asks for a lawyer, you're supposed to stop and get them a lawyer. You are supposed to inform a defendant, somebody in custody of their rights, of their Miranda rights. You know, you see it on how many procedural police dramas, law and order, CS csi all these things so if you're looking at this ruling you're like okay so we knocked one more thing off of the state's plate that they can introduce at trial and that might have been some statements that made your guy look even worse than he may look once he gets in front of a jury right i mean, it makes your job just a little bit easier. I guess

they're a little less onerous in terms of the burden that you have going forward with the allegations as they are. As a defense lawyer, you're better off not having to do those cross examinations. And they were eliminated now by the judge's ruling. So we don't have to worry about that statement. There are some things, though, that were in that statement, Bill, that might have been helpful to the defense. I mean, Chad Dorman made some statements in there that, and we haven't seen this, we've only read it in the paperwork, but the guy sounded like he could be really mentally ill. He's talking about some woman named Ruby Franklin that might be a lawyer. He's talking about his dad being a lawyer when his dad's not a lawyer. Ruby Franklin, he's saying,

is in the CIA and apparently she's just somebody he's known from the past who was not a lawyer. So could that hurt the defense in some ways? Because then you're looking at this and you're like, the guy was looking really out of it nuts in this statement and now

we can't use that? Well, obviously they made a strategic decision for themselves that they were better off without that statement and all the other things that were hurtful in it and that they would give up any of the helpful things. And they made those things that would help the defense about his mental illness or things that he might've said are probably available in some other sources. And so I would trust the defense lawyers that they had those conversations and made the decision that they needed to get rid of the bad information first. Mark, how rare is it in your experience for a judge to throw out a statement made to law enforcement by a defendant? Because

I don't think I've seen many of these granted before. I have seen them granted in homicide cases. I've seen it in Wisconsin in some cases I've covered in the past. But I feel like I don't see this happen all that often. You don't see a lot of motion to suppress granted. They are routinely made and rarely granted. And in this high profile of case, it's a big deal. And Jeanette, you mentioned that the defense must be worried that some of what could have come in to help their case won't come in. On behalf of the prosecutors of America, I'd like to invite the defense counsel to call their witness to the stand during the trial and that he can elucidate any of the evidence he'd like on along those lines but he did sound

and we haven't seen it obviously i think we'd all like to see it but you're saying oh ruby franklin you know they're like do you have a lawyer yeah my dad and uh ruby franklin well who's ruby franklin she's in the cia i think it's like a lady he dated in the past or something she's not in the cia but he does sound like there's something really bad going on with this guy. I mean, obviously, he's accused of gunning down his three children, his little small children. Horrific allegations in this case. But there's something not right with this guy. You have a defendant who seriously worked, whether mentally ill or just evil. Bill, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, do you think that this is going to be a mental

health defense? Do you think that that's where this case is going now that that statement is gone? Because, I mean, I don't know what their defense is going to be. I mean, I think this is a really tough case because you have a father and his wife, is now ex-wife, witnessed all of this. His daughter witnessed all of this and tried to save the children. This is tough. It is. And mental health defenses in terms of the guilt innocence phase are really never really well received by jurors. I mean, you haven't seen any motions

that I've seen about competence or a suggestion of not guilty by reason of insanity. And so some other men, they may lay some of the groundwork for mitigation, but I don't think in terms of a straight out defense that they're gonna somehow claim that he was mentally ill and was unaware of the consequences of choices that he made. You'd also mention about statements being thrown out. I think in the

age now where we have body-worn camera worn by almost every police officer, you'll see them happen maybe a little bit more frequently because I think you can see what is actually said to a defendant as opposed to what a police officer remembers having told a suspect off-camera, off-recording. That detective saying that he read his Miranda warnings to the defendant, I'm sure he would have pulled out the card and read it in court. And now we know on video that that's really not what occurred.

But it's a very, very difficult defense that's ever raised that your client was too mentally ill and therefore his actions should be excused. Mark, if you're a prosecutor, this, I'm assuming if you were in Mark Toccolvi's shoes, would you just be cringing right now? Or would you just be having a talk with the sheriff's office and being like, guys, come on, in the future, you just got to do it right and not make my job harder? Yeah, I've prosecuted in 13 Ohio counties. And so often working with sheriff's deputies and investigators, there is a natural tension between prosecutors and law enforcement officials as to the quality of the work and what they expect. That's rather typical. Rarely is that tension brought into the sunlight of national media

and televised trials to the extent it has in this case. So I'm sure there's some tense conversations happening behind the scenes. So what do you do with this, Mark? You just take your lumps and move on and head toward trial? You know, those of us who prosecute cases, we live in a world of burden and proof. We carry the burden every time. And so what you do is you look at what evidence you have and you begin fashioning a case that will show that this defendant did this beyond a reasonable doubt and that the aggravating circumstances that's laid forth in the indictment are correct. Mark Weaver and Bill Gallagher, thank you so much for coming on.

Really lucky to have two people who have such expertise in this area. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thank you. Not a problem. Glad to help. And that's it for this edition of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy.

Thanks so much 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 Bynes. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabey is our audio editor.