Crime Weekly - S3 Ep227: Crime Weekly News: Internet Troll Finally Shut Down, Donna Adelson Trial, & Alec Baldwin Acquittal

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Last week we had Kim Devins, the mother of Bianca Devins, on to talk about her efforts to pass federal legislation towards slowing down internet trolls, including one that we asked all of you to report on Instagram. Well, we have good news about that! Also, Donna Adelson's trial is coming up fast, and Alec Baldwin's case involving the Rust set shooting has been dismissed. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. PDSDebt.com/CrimeWeekly - Get your FREE debt assessment today!

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4 hydration mixes, and 4 enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar. Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Again, go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products plus free shipping. Again, go to EatIQBar.com and enter code BAR20. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And we're going to open up the show talking about criminal coffee quickly. If you're not

subscribed to our newsletter, make sure you head on over and subscribe to that so you get updated on the newest information regarding criminal coffee that could involve cases, that could involve new products. It could involve a new announcement, which we just sent out to our newsletter subscribers. And by the way, it's absolutely free. Shipping prices. It is one of the biggest complaints that we've had over at Criminal Coffee. And it wasn't anything we could really do about it at the time. It was mainly due to just the pricing of USPS. We weren't upcharging at all, but I'm happy to report based on the volume that we're shipping and also some new opportunities as far as how we can ship it to you and get you a much lower price. We're able to do this now and I think you guys are going to be extremely happy with

the new pricing for the shipping regarding criminal coffee. I had put out the newsletter that some people are saving anywhere from $3 to $4 on their order. So if you were paying $8.50, $8.60 before, you may be down to $5. If you were paying $14.50 for a bundle to get it to California, it's around $9 now. So there's a big savings there for everybody. So if that was your barrier to entry for buying before, we've now fixed that. And also if you're someone who's been subscribed to us already, as far as a subscription coffee service, those prices will automatically be updated in your subscription. There's nothing you have to do. So thank you to everyone for the patient who's been with us for almost two years now with Criminal Coffee, paying those

shipping prices. Now that we're saving on shipping, we're going to pass those savings on to you. We'll make nothing on shipping. You'll just save on it. So thank you for everyone for holding the line, sticking with us. And again, if you haven't subscribed to our newsletter and you'd like to be updated, it's absolutely free. Head on over to criminalcoffeeco.com. You can sign up and you'll be updated as soon as everyone else. And that includes stories on the newest characters, which will be coming out. A new story will be coming out later this week. Yeah, I think the new shipping prices for criminal coffee are amazing because I know that for many years, especially since COVID, we did struggle with that. And I know talking to Derek, who handles all of this stuff, how difficult it was to get any good pricing

for shipping. And as a person who buys and has things shipped, it's not fun when you feel like you're paying as much or more for shipping as you are for the product. So this is definitely going to be a positive for criminal coffee. And hopefully more people can get their criminal coffee and start their day right or end their day right if you're me and you drink coffee constantly. Also, new boxes. We're going to have new boxes, new tape. So not only are they going to get to you cheaper, but they're also going to get there safer. So solved two major problems that we were having with the coffee.

It took a little bit of time to get it done because, again, I was waiting on United States Postal Service, which, as you can imagine, not the easiest to work with, but we got it done. Now switching over to something much more positive. We've been covering Bianca Devins and the last couple of Crime Weekly News. We had the privilege of interviewing Kim Devins last week and we talked about a lot, but one of the things that were brought up is this account on Instagram that had been sharing the photo of Bianca and out there for public consumption. And we asked you guys to go report it and you obliged. And I'm happy to report that within a week, the account has been taken down. Yeah, it was the two days ago you called me and said that it had been taken down. So less than a week. Yes. Yeah. Less than a week. And Kim had been trying to get it down for

a while now. So it does go to show you like when used in the right way, the true crime community can have a positive impact for the victims and their families because strength is in numbers. And clearly Instagram got the hint. They must've just been inundated with reports or responses for this account to get it taken down. So finally, after a couple thousand, they probably said, oh, what do we have going on here? And they went and looked at it. And I guess somebody finally took their head out of there, you know what, and actually looked at the photos that were on this page and said, oh my God, yeah, this has to come down. So that account has been taken down. There was a backup account associated with it. I think there was a two at the end of it. It's private right now, so I can't see it. But if we happen to get

any reports that that account is doing the same thing, we will solicit your help again. But I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who went over and took a second to report the page. We could tell how much it was affecting Kim and her family, and nobody should have to go through that and should have to see that online. So I was happy to see all of you guys step up and take a second to pause the video or pause the recording to go over there and just do something very little to you, but had a big impact on Kim. And I believe, Stephanie, you already talked to Kim about this as well, right? Yep. I actually have some texts from her here and she just wanted to thank us for having her on. She wanted to thank everybody for going and reporting the page. She did say that a lot of

people who were reporting the page were getting responses that it doesn't violate community guidelines, which is something that she did mention when we talked to her last week, which she said when she and her family and friends were reporting it, they were getting similar messages. I think that a lot of this is an automated system, to be honest. I don't think that there's a lot of real people working behind the scenes at Instagram handling these kinds of things, which is one of the things that Kim also talked about, that there should be. There should be real people who can look at a picture or a post objectively and say, okay, the AI didn't pick up that this doesn't violate community guidelines, but we clearly see that it does. And we're going

to take care of this for you. That that should be something that Instagram really works on. And I mean, we got the page taken down. That's a battle. We didn't win the war. I think the winning the war has to do with going directly to these publishers, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or X, formerly known as Twitter, and basically inundating them with emails and customer service complaints, requesting that they each have teams of people working for them that can handle these very sensitive situations. Yeah, I agree with you about the Instagram thing. I think what's happening, which is why I said getting their heads out of there, you know what, is a lot of the people that are responding to these reports are not even looking at the page. They're looking at the profile. Yep.

No, it's good. They're not taking three seconds to actually investigate what they're posting. And it could be automated or it could just be someone where there's no accountability saying, yep, no, but it's good. We see the same thing on YouTube sometimes where you'll have a video get demonetized and then you put it in for a human review. And we've done it where we've done the same video, nothing's changed with two human reviews, one gets approved and one doesn't. It's because the person isn't taking the time to even check out what they're reviewing. So that's what happened here. And that's why the strength was in numbers, because I would guess we had thousands of reporting on that page. And unfortunately, I got the same response that Kim was getting, where a lot of them were saying, this page doesn't violate any

of our policies. Like, what are you talking about? But then you get a couple people who actually take a look at what they're saying and go look at the page and go down past the first six posts and see the actual photos and go, oh my God, yeah, no, this is gone. And so that's what you got to do in these situations. But I'm just happy to see that we were able to do something for her. We can't change what she's been through, but to have her be re-victimized every day, having to look at that photo is horrible. And we're never going to find out who the person is behind that account. But we, like you said, we won the battle. We didn't win the war, but it's good to see that if something comes up like this again for someone else, because I'm sure it will, we have the ability to do something about it. Again, we can't change what happened, but we can help the families who are still suffering. If there's

something social media wise with the, with the power of our community, we can make a difference, which, which makes me feel good inside. Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, won this, this battle didn't win the war. Eventually, we're going to have to end. And even if they just went along with what we wanted because they were being inundated and we were annoying, sometimes- That's all it takes. That's all it takes. And if we have to be inundating and be annoying to these social media publishers to get them to change their policies in general, to not just protect people like Kim Devins, but everyone else who's affected by this, then that's what we have to do. And that's fine. We'll do that. We'll do that.

We will do that. And again, thank you to everyone. And also there was a ton of people who DMed me and said they used that template that Kim had provided to send it off to the legislators. We appreciate that as well. So we're going to talk about Alec Baldwin tonight, if you've seen the title of this episode. But really, really quickly before we do, did you hear that Donna Adelson's getting ready for trial? She was in court today, actually, as we're recording this. to find out so much more from this trial than we found out. And we did a multi-part series on this case. And it was absolutely, the Dan Markell case, it was absolutely insane with all the information we already had. But Donna Adelson's role in this has been, to some extent, obvious. But to other extents, I don't think we really have a grasp. Yeah, we don't have a grasp on how deep it went and how involved and active in what was happening. As far as putting the hit on Dan Markell, I don't think we understand how involved she was in that. So I think we're going to find out a lot of details that are going to sort of support our speculation that she was quite involved in it. Absolutely. And I think the trial starts in September.

The reason I brought it up today is I was scrolling through Twitter and they were just going, she was in court today and they were giving a summary. The prosecutors were giving a summary of her involvement. And even during that, she's scoffing at it, making comments. The judge already had to tell her, hey, listen, stop talking, Mrs. Adelson, let them finish. So it's going to be a very interesting trial to follow. And I do agree with you. Not only do we not know how deep her involvement runs, but there may be more that comes out of this because from what we're hearing as well, it's being reported, is that one of the hitmen are going to testify against Donna Adelson. So what's going to be revealed there?

Is this the tip of the iceberg or is this the whole thing? We have to wait and see. We will absolutely keep you guys updated on that because, as Stephanie said, we did a, what, six, seven-part series on it. So we got to see how this story ends and where I'm definitely interested to see what we learn from these trials, because that's, I think when we get the most revealing information as far as what was done, who did it and how many people were involved. Have we gotten everybody or is there more, is there more things to come? And yes. And I mean, it's been 10 years. So it's 2024.

Dan Markell was killed in 2014. It's been 10 years. We've got Charlie behind bars now. It's time for Donna to answer for her audacity, basically, thinking that you can just get rid of people that are inconvenient to you. Yeah. She's got some problems for sure. And we'll keep you guys updated on that. thinking that you can just get rid of people that are inconvenient to you. Yeah. She's got some problems for sure. And we'll keep you guys updated on that. We're going to talk about Alex Baldwin. Before we do, let's take our one and only break.

So if you haven't already heard, and we covered a little bit about the case against Alec Baldwin in a Crime Weekly News months ago. Yes. This case against him has been dismissed. It was dismissed on Friday, July 12th. So last week. And they did have a few days of a trial before the dismissal happened. And the trial was for involuntary manslaughter. But it seemed for the first two days like the prosecution was actually gaining some headway. They laid out the case against Alec Baldwin, who Helena Hutchins and it injured the director, Joel Sousa. And, you know, basically Alec Baldwin said, I didn't know the gun was loaded with real bullets. There was a bunch of talk about who was responsible for the gun having bullets in it. And

in the opening statements and for the first few days of the trial, the prosecution was really taking hits against Alec. So one of the prosecutors said that he didn't follow proper gun safety protocol, which directly contributed to Helena's death. Baldwin's defense attorney basically said, listen, Alec is just an actor acting. What happened is a tragedy, but he didn't commit any crime. Basically, it's not his job to check and see if the bullets in the gun are real. He's supposed to depend on people who are on set and have their jobs specified to the armament of the actors. And he should be able to depend on them and know that they're basically doing their job. The prosecution

then called a bunch of witnesses because remember Alec Baldwin was saying he never even pulled the trigger, which you and I right from the get go when we covered this earlier said we don't believe that. OK, we believe you might not have known that the gun had real bullets in it. But to come out here and say with with a straight face that you didn't pull the trigger is ludicrous because guns don't typically go off unless you pull the trigger. Am I right? His team backed off of that, too, when they kind of, I guess, softened the edge a little bit where when they were given their argument, they were saying, listen, whether he pulled the trigger or not, he wasn't responsible for the ammunition that was in it. So they kind of, they backed off of that where they knew the argument wasn't, hey, he didn't even pull the trigger. This gun just miraculously went off because that's an angle that can be disproven.

So they did back off that part a little bit. But we all know that he claimed he didn't pull the trigger. And that was a bad move by him. That was a bad move by him. Because now it looks like you're lying and innocent people typically don't lie. Right. He could have easily said like, yeah, of course I pulled the trigger. But how was I to know there was live? That's something we can all understand. But to be there being like I was just holding it and not only did I not know there was live ammo, but I didn't even pull the trigger. The gun just went off.

Yeah. So that's a little ridiculous. did I not know there was live ammo, but I didn't even pull the trigger. Makes it seem like, yeah, so that's a little ridiculous. Now, Baldwin's attorney, Luke Nikas, he made a surprise motion and he asked the judge to dismiss the charge against Baldwin. And he claimed that the state had violated the Brady rule. We've talked about Brady violations before on this channel. I believe Adnan Syed was one where we discussed Brady violations pretty thoroughly. And basically, the Brady rule requires prosecution to disclose material, exculpatory information in the government's possession to the defense. So if the prosecution knows something or has evidence that might make the defendant seem not as guilty and they withhold it, that is a Brady violation. So apparently they'd learned via testimony from crime scene technician Marissa Papelle the prior day that a man named Troy Teske, who's a friend of Thal Reed, the father of convicted Rust Armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed,

who was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for loading a live round into Baldwin's gun, this person turned over ammunition to authorities that he thought was connected to the case. Now, the defense was never made aware of this, and this robbed them of their own ability to determine its relevance. Though it wasn't publicly known at the time, the prosecutor who gave the opening statement, she actually resigned on the spot on Friday morning when all of this started coming out. And yeah, that kind of doesn't look great either. And she actually said, quote, prosecutors have high ethical obligations. And when a prosecutor learns of evidence that could be material to the defense is not to closed, the right thing to do would be to dismiss the case, end quote. And then she said, when I when that was not done, my ethical obligations compelled me to withdraw. So she withdrew even before they dismissed the case because she thought that that was the right thing to do. Yeah. And the other element to it that was not good was essentially the judge learned that even after prosecutors were made aware of this ammunition, they had decided amongst themselves that it wasn't important, that it wasn't relevant.

And that's not, again, back to the Brady rule, that's not what their job is. Their job is to disclose everything they find and then both sides can argue whether or not it is important to the case. And so, yes, the judge dismissed this case with prejudice, which means that Alec Baldwin cannot be retried. It is done. It is over. How do I feel about it? I'm fine with it. Do I think Alec Baldwin knew more than he led on? Of course. But I also understand where he's coming from. This is an opportunity where he could lose his freedom because of something someone else was responsible for. He is an actor. He is a producer. He is not an armorer. He is not responsible for what's being loaded into that gun. Now, you can make an argument that even though it should be a safe weapon,

he did not follow proper firearm safety protocols. That is without a doubt the case. He didn't. Loaded, unloaded, safe gun, fake bullets, doesn't matter. You should never point a weapon at another human being and fire it. We are trained, first thing, is regardless of the situation, you never point your weapon at anything you don't intend to hurt or kill because that's what can happen. And so the bottom line here is he could have been more safe, but he's juggling seven different things on set. And it's a precedent where we have to hold the people who are actually responsible for that task accountable for what they did. And I don't think Alec Baldwin should be in a position where he is also criminally

responsible. As far as this case and what it represents, there are times when we talk about this on different cases where you may think someone's guilty, but if the prosecution does it the wrong way, you have to make it a point because we don't want a situation where prosecutors are deciding what is important and what isn't because it could be you on the other end of that, where you're someone what is important and what isn't because it could be you on the other end of that, where you're someone who is innocent and because the prosecution is playing judge and jury before getting to trial, you're found guilty on something you didn't do. So this is not only for Alec Baldwin, it's for the entire judicial system to put them on notice that

when you have this type of misconduct, not only are you going to lose the case, but people on both sides of the aisle in the judicial system now, lawyers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, have all come out and slammed the prosecution team, how egregious this was, and how important, how could you think that ammunition that could be involved in the case wouldn't be relevant to a case involving an accidental shooting. It almost has to be malicious in nature, right? This isn't incompetence. It seems almost like they knew this could be bad and therefore they left it out. I think a lot of Brady violations are malicious in nature. I'm going to be honest with you because I do. I do. It's like their job. They do this job every single day. That's what they do. I mean, it's like their job, but they do this job every single day. That's what they do.

Prepare for trial. This wasn't like a small piece of evidence that kind of got lost. I think a lot of Brady violations are, you know, human error in the way of once you get into your head what you think happened, you kind of try to ignore all of the things that pop out. What do they call that? Something bias? Confirmation bias. Try to rule out everything else that doesn't necessarily fit with that narrative. And so, yes, human error in that way, because everyone is a human, all these people handling these cases are human, but not human error as in this got misplaced. This was an oversight. It was genuinely an accident. I don't believe that. Yeah. No, I'm with you. And I think it's something where it's got to be a case by case basis, but it does put the entire system on

notice that if you try to sneak something through or leave something out and we find out about it, your case is gone. We're not even going to give you another shot at it. It's gone. It's dismissed. You cannot retry this person. And for me, I'm happy with that. We need to have a better justice system for everybody, both the guilty and the innocent. And this is a small cog in that wheel. It doesn't earth shakily change the system, but it is something where it got a lot of public attention, and I think it puts a lot of prosecutors on notice. And for me, final words on Alec, I'm fine with this. Like I said, I think it could go either way. I don't know his responsibility as far as the gun was concerned, but I can only imagine based on the fact that he's acting in the movie, he's producing the movie. I believe he might even been assisting in directing the movie maybe. Am I wrong in saying that? I don the movie. He's producing the movie. I believe he might even been assisting

in directing the movie, maybe. Am I wrong in saying that? I don't know. It's Alec Baldwin. He probably was. He's wearing a lot of hats. And so he picks up this prop, quote unquote prop, and he thinks that it's ready to go.

And it wasn't. But do I think that he's criminally liable in that sense? No, I don't. I don't. But I do agree with you where he said some things initially, and we harped on this on the original Crime Weekly News, where instead of just being completely forthright, he had said some things that didn't make a lot of sense, which is what I really jumped on when we were talking about it, saying, yeah, there's no

way. There are accidental discharges if a gun drops drops but a gun just doesn't go off because the air hit the trigger it's not how it works so that was something i hopped on and it could have genuinely been one of those things where it was like so much was happening that afterwards he was like did i pull the trigger i don't think i did you know but either way i'm glad they put him on trial because he's a big a-list Hollywood actor, I guess. Is he A-list? I guess that's a different conversation for a different day. He was at one time.

It was good that they put him on trial, and that sends a message, I think, too, to have everybody, actors on set, it doesn't matter if you're Alec Baldwin, George Clooney, or an extra, maybe take a little personal responsibility when you're dealing with firearms. Maybe from now on, these celebrities will be a little bit more careful when handling guns, right? Because who wants to go through this? I mean, I feel like this guy's aged overnight. It's a stressful situation. You think you're going to go to prison, honestly. And I think the prosecution was at a disadvantage going into this trial because Hannah Gutierrez, the armorer,

she was already convicted of involuntary manslaughter. So it was almost like we got our guy. You know, this is the person we've deemed responsible for this. And they were trying to show he was also responsible. But even the jury going into this was like, why are we here? One of the juries, one of the jury members said, I started moving in the direction of thinking it was very silly. He should not be on trial, basically. And these jury members were like, well, let's just see what happens. But even as it went on for the very short time it did, a lot of these jury members and two of them have come out and said, yeah, we didn't really think that they had a case here to begin with. And even if this case hadn't been dismissed, we probably would have found him to be not guilty

anyways. It was clearly an accident. Yeah, there's plenty of reasonable doubt here. So I think overall, good for Alec, good for the judicial system, not good for the prosecutors. I wouldn't go so far as to say good for Alec. Like I said, and I think when we talked about this initially, though, I was like, I just I'm paranoid and I think when we talked about this initially, though, I was like, I just I'm paranoid and I maybe I'm a super anxious person, but I don't think I could ever in good faith or with a clear mind point a gun at somebody and pull the trigger, not checking myself to make sure that it was a safe thing to do. You know, like I don't have enough trust for any,

and you're a big celebrity. Somebody could be setting, trying to set you up. Like, you don't know, dude. At some point you have to take a little personal responsibility for the direction your life takes. And I do think that's the threshold, personal accountability and criminal responsibility as far as where he fell on that spectrum.

He could have definitely, again, we already said it, as far as firearms he fell on that spectrum. He could have definitely, again, we already said it, as far as firearms safety policies and procedures, he definitely didn't abide by those. Pointing a trigger, pointing a gun and pulling the trigger at any other person, that's a problem. When we have firearms on a range, even as police officers, after we fire our last round, we have to point a show to our left, show to our right, the two people on our left and right show them that, and they have to say firearm clear. That's actual police officers who deal with guns every day, still having other people check to make sure their firearms are clear before holstering them. So you, there's an

abundance of caution when it comes to guns. You don't want accidents like this to happen. And I can see how there's a level of complacency on a set where the gun is just a small thing in a bigger in a bigger set i guess a scene so there was just a lot of a lot of negligence a lot of complacency and unfortunately someone's dead now because of it so yeah yeah exactly i was gonna say he'll never do it again but across the Across the spectrum of Hollywood, I'm sure things will change as they should. But this isn't the first time this has happened. Who was it? Bruce Lee's son. Wasn't he killed on a set by a firearm? Brandon Lee? Crow. The Crow, yeah.

Was it Brandon? Is it Brandon Lee? I want to make sure that I'm... Yes, it is. It's Brandon Lee. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's happened before. It was a while ago, but it should never happen. So... And then it's the jury's still out on what happened Lee. Yeah. So, I mean, it's happened before. It was a while ago, but it should never happen. And it's the jury's still out on what happened there, okay? Okay. Well, different story, different day. You'll go down that rabbit hole and it's a whole other Crime Weekly News. Any other thoughts on this or anything else?

No, obviously our thoughts are with the victim who didn't deserve this. And it doesn't matter how many people learn from this. Her life was still cut short for a very stupid thing that could have been easily, easily avoided if there was checks and balances and people taking personal responsibility. Okay, that's all I'll say. Yeah, absolutely. Our thoughts and prayers are with Helena Hutchinson's family. And I know her husband. I think there's already a civil thing going on. But as far as Alec is concerned, I do think this is the right call. Hopefully everybody learns from this. Um, and there, there are lessons in all of these cases and there's a couple of big ones in this one. Uh, I have nothing else. Uh, we will be back later this week with part two of the Dr. Coleman series.

The, the, uh, first episode did extremely well. You guys are really invested in it and i am interested to see where it goes on part two so if you're already up to date on that series we will be back later this week on audio on friday and youtube on sunday until then everyone stay safe out there and we'll see you real soon bye Thank you.