Law&Crime Sidebar - Lawyers Battle Over 'Broken Rules' in Teen's Family Massacre Case

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

A 15-year-old is accused of killing five of his family members, including his parents and three siblings, at their home outside Seattle, Washington in October. Since then, his defense team has sparred with prosecutors over when and how they can search the Humiston family home. According to prosecutors, they may have broken rules put in place by the judge. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber has the details.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Get a FREE title history report AND a 30-day free trial of Triple Lock Protection TODAY by going to https://www.hometitlelock.com/sidebar and using promo code SIDEBAR HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY 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.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. We're not trying to make this difficult. We're not trying to violate anyone's privacy. We're trying to make this as easy as possible for a family who's obviously going through a very extreme and awful tragedy. Again, defense could have brought back to our attention. They did not. They waited until Saturday morning.

Some very interesting back and forth between the attorneys representing a teenager accused of murdering nearly his entire family and the prosecutors looking to bring that boy to trial. We're going to dig into why the defense team needed a court order to look for evidence that could help their client and how they may have broken the rules laid out by a judge. judge. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Now we first told you last week about a family home outside of Seattle, Washington that basically turned into a house of horrors. A 15-year-old is accused of brutally slaying almost his entire family. One sister was able to escape, and she told police what she says happened inside of that house. And since

our last episode, we have uncovered court documents and hearings that reveal some very serious drama that is going on behind the scenes, at least when it comes to the investigation. So a little bit of background here. On October 21st, a slew of 911 phone calls came into dispatchers about a very serious situation unfolding at the home of the Hummiston's. This is a family of seven. First, a 15-year-old who police and prosecutors now believe is the actual killer, called 911 to say that his 13-year-old brother had shot the rest of the family and then took his own life. Now, the 15-year-old tells police that he goes into the bathroom, locks the door all to protect himself again from his 13-year-old brother. Here is the problem for the 15-year-old.

Minutes later, minutes after he placed that call to 911, dispatchers get a call from the teen's 11-year-old sister who apparently managed to escape the carnage inside of that home and run to a neighbor's house for help. She tells police the shooter was actually her 15-year-old brother. So police come, they arrive on scene, they rest the teen in the driveway of the home, and they find the bodies of five people inside. Parents Mark and Sarah Hummiston, along with 13-year-old Benjamin, 9-year-old Joshua, and 7-year-old Catherine. All of them were shot to death. And this 11-year-old, she was also shot and says that she actually had to play dead until her brother left the room, and that's when she escaped out of a window. Just an incredibly harrowing story and disturbing story, to say the least. And also I'll tell you right now, authorities have not

indicated what the motive is behind this shooting, which makes this, again, even more chilling and disturbing if you take these allegations are true, whether it was the 13-year-old or the 15-year-old, although the evidence would suggest it is the 15-year-old. And I'll get into that in a second. But I'll tell you, prosecutors right now, they are trying to try him as an adult. They have asked for a hearing to determine if he should be charged as an adult, and that hearing is scheduled for January. Until that time, though, we're only going to be a identifying the suspect by his initials A.H. Now, this teen had told dispatchers again that it was his 13-year-old brother who'd gone on this killing spree. But when detectives get to the crime scene,

they reportedly found Benjamin, the 13-year-old, with a bullet wound on his left cheek and a large amount of blood on the ground near his head. The affidavit says a black-glock handgun was on his left hand that was lying on his chest. No apparent blood spatter was observed on BDH's left hand or the Glock. And so Benjamin had been shot twice in the head, apparently from different angles. The medical examiner even found at an autopsy that there was no stippling around that first wound, meaning it was fired from more than two feet away, and the second wound was likely made from six to 24 inches away. So if you take that as true, it would suggest that the scene was potentially staged to look like this 13-year-old took his own life. By the way,

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especially with their triple lock protection, which gets you 24-7 monitoring, alerts of any changes, restoration services at no out-of-pocket cost to you. So to protect your home, go to hometidallock.com slash sidebar. Use our promo code sidebar. You'll get a 30-day free trial of their triple lock protection and a free title history report to make sure you aren't already a victim. Now the autopsies were also performed on the mother, the father, the two other siblings. Mark Hummiston had four gunshot wounds. This is according to an affidavit. Three projectiles were recovered from his body. Joshua, Catherine, and Mom Sauer, they were all shot in the head. This is essentially an execution. And the 11-year-old, this sister referred to

as B-A-H in a probable cause affidavit, said that the black lock that her brother allegedly used in the shooting, it belonged to their father. And she says all the children knew where the gun was being kept in this lockbox, but apparently it was only AH, the 15-year-old, who knew the combination to this case. According to neighbors, the children were homeschooled, but they were very well-known within their community. In one of his initial hearings,

AH's defense team told the judge that her client was a good kid. Given the coverage in this case and given the seriousness of these charges, we also want the court to know that multiple people in the community have reached out to us, who know . And they have attested to his good character. He's been described as kind and caring. Someone who has friends, who engages in pro-social activities, someone who's been a positive contributor to his community.

We're not addressing release at this time. We wanted the court to know that information. Since the only information the court really has right now is this certification for probable cause in the charging documents. Now, those charging documents accuse AH of five counts of aggravated murder in the first degree, as well as one count of attempted murder in the first degree with respect to the sister. And if this case stays in juvenile court, if convicted, it is our understanding that the 15-year-old could be held only until age 25, so just 10 years.

However, if this case is moved to adult court, what the prosecutors are moving forward with, according to them. The sentence set by state lawmakers is 25 years to life in prison with a presumption of release after 25 years. So for now, defense is sticking with this theory that 13-year-old Benjamin was the one who shot his family members and then himself, while A.H, again, hid in a bathroom. But what I want to talk to you right now is about what happened after,

after the shooting, after A.H had been arrested, after BAH had been admitted to a hospital, and the crime scene was examined by both forensic investigators and the defense team. And once that was done, the home was handed over to Catherine Ogden. This is the defendant's maternal grandmother. Now, according to a statement filed in court by Ogden's attorneys, quote, after Ms. Ogden retook possession of the property,

the defendant's attorneys asked Ms. Ogden and her son, Joseph Ogden, to permit them additional access to the property. The Ogdens declined. The cleaning of the residents by a professional cleaning service was scheduled to commence on Saturday, October 26, 2024. The Ogdens were informed by the company they have retained to conduct the cleaning that the longer they wait to clean, the more damage to the property and the more expensive it is to clean. So you see them saying, we don't want the defense coming in here. We want to get this cleaned and fixed as soon as possible. Well, that is when the defense team asked the court to step in.

They requested an emergency motion be granted to preserve. the crime scene. But the judge did order that the home should be locked down, that it should be guarded, all until a hearing could be held to sort all of this out. So the hazmat team did not come and clean this residence. What happens? The following week, all the parties were in court in front of the judge for this case, the Honorable Veronica Galvin, to figure out just what was going on with the property and why the defense wanted to get inside the home once again. Now, according to the defense, they say they've only been allowed inside the home for one hour. And they thought that they would have the family's permission to go inside, but they weren't. They were denied. So they said

they had to petition the court. They had to move quickly. Okay. We were able to obtain audio from this court hearing. Take a listen. First of all, I think there's material information in there. This is a crime scene. And what we wrote in our declaration is we think that law enforcement quickly jumped to conclusions in this case narrowly began to focus on one suspect, our client. And we are concerned that while it does appear they took a lot of photographs and did a lot of things, that that investigation may be tainted by that bias, that they had their eyes focused on one person. And so we do believe that having defense able to go in there

to access potential material information is absolutely crucial. As we outlined in our declaration, there are things in there that we noticed just for the hour that we were in there, We don't know if they were photographed, frankly, but if they were not photographed, they certainly weren't collected. We would like to photograph those things. With regard to the stipulations, we are not going to take one thing out of that house. If there's something that we believe has evidentiary value that cannot be contained in a photograph, we will contact the prosecution, and they can arrange for the King County sheriffs to come get that if they so choose.

We're not permitted to take things out of the home. We're not asking for the court to authorize us to do that. We also have no problem for law enforcement, letting us into the home, and standing outside the home. And the defense told the judge, they don't want police following them around the home as they do this because they're going to bring a forensic expert with them, and they don't want confidential conversations being overheard by law enforcement. In response, the prosecution said, you know your theory of the case, your theory of the crime, doesn't hold up. My particular concern is counsel's representation that the forensic evidence that has been collected is at this point still consistent with the story that the 13-year-old

may have committed these acts and then killed himself. The forensic evidence shows that the 13-year-old suffered two gunshot wounds to his head. He had two bullets in his brain. Those shots came from different angles, one from the left and one from the right. Council indicates that from a quick Google search, they were able to find documentation that said that could be possible. An individual could do that to themselves. I'd be very interested in seeing where defense is finding that. And the prosecution also pointed out that the crime scene hadn't been secure for days. And there was no telling what might have happened inside to compromise evidence. The judge seemed to agree. They waited until Saturday morning to seek

an emergency order. If they were hearing from the family that the family needed to talk to us first before they could make their decision whether to grant access to their property, again, defense could have brought back to our attention. They did not. They waited until Saturday morning. The state's other concern is that now there's been this period of over 48 hours where that house has been handed over. No one has been watching what's been going on in that house. The family has been going through that house. The family has been bringing in cleaning services to analyze how they could... Let me a second. That begs the question. What exactly was preserved? Well, Your Honor, we don't know what exactly was taken and what wasn't and what has happened in that 48

hours. We haven't preserved the crime scene. The crime scene has not been preserved. And that would certainly be a question as to the reliability or the weight of anything we uncover. But if there are things, for example, like documents that were written by B.H. I mean, those documents may still be very relevant. I understand that that's the case. You're asking for a forensic expert to go inside to do a scene that's no longer the scene of the crime. I mean, if people have been traipsing through that scene, the scene has already not been preserved. It's not the scene that was originally investigated. It's not the scene whether things are the same.

So what you're basically asking me for is just go in and search. This is not, I mean, forensically, I mean, would your expert seriously? Would any forensic experts say that this is the scene of the crime at this point? Your Honor, I respectfully disagree. I mean, by the time we got to the crime scene, multiple people had already gone through it from law enforcement. But to be fair, the judge did have some pointed words for the prosecution, too, for why they were fighting all of this,

and then the judge put limitations on what would actually happen here. I'm a little surprised that the state is willing to gamble the potential of four aggravated murder charges on a due process violation that could be addressed today by allowing them with limitations to conduct their investigation. It is their job to investigate this case. They have a duty and an obligation constitutionally to do so. I have a duty and obligation for their client to make sure that, and I understand the Washington Safe Control has been through it, your forensic experts have been to it, they have the right to conduct an investigation of their own.

And I'm going to allow them that. I am not giving you till Thursday. You've got one day. This has to be concluded by 6 p.m. tomorrow. That's eight hours. So let me be clear about the guard rails. This is for the scene. This is not a scene. This is not a search for documents. We're not going to be going through books to see if somebody wrote a note. It is not for that purpose. I'm going to be very clear about that. This is not a search. Ms. Parker, this is not a search. We're not going to be going through drawers. We're not going to be doing any of that. Your Honor, there's a couple of things that we highlighted in our declaration, things that we saw in the home that would require us to look. With regard to medical information and school records, we can get those by subpoena.

We're happy to agree if that we see something that appears to be a medical record or a school record to not document that. That's perfectly fine. But I think you read in the declaration there were notes from BH in a different language. We don't know what those notes say. We don't know if they were, you know, what the purpose of those notes were. Those are things that were left by law enforcement. Those are things we want to look at.

They may have zero evidentiary value, but at this point we don't know because, you know, they're in a different language. We can't look at them. You may take pictures of any notes that are out in the open that are in a space. In other words, just to be clear, we are not going through every single room. We are not, again, going through drawers. We are not going through books. We are, whatever is out in the open.

If those notes, you saw them before, presumably those notes were out in the open. Now, you heard the mention of notes written by Benjamin in another language, while the declaration from defense attorney Amy Parker filed in court gives us a little bit more details about that. It reads, it appears BDH writes notes in another language called Dwarfish. We found at least one document that was not taken by law enforcement that we would like to photograph. The note we observed was in a pile of things and documents on the floor. Because we were unable to touch anything, we cannot look further at the pile to determine if there were other things written in dwarfish.

And remember, this initial search by the defense is happening after the forensic investigators have already gone through the crime scene. It's not entirely clear what these notes written by who they're putting the blame on, the 13-year-old. If they're written in this other language, what that has to do with the overall theory of the case. Maybe they're trying to say these are clues into what he was thinking or his psyche, or maybe there's coded messages, not entirely short. But, according to the attorney's declaration, quote, we also observed substances on the counter that would appear at first to be excessive. We also noted small Ziplock bags of potentially other substances contained in a backpack in the master bedroom. Because we could not touch anything, we were unable to look in the backpack to determine what was contained in the Ziploc baggies. So the judge granted the defense's motion in part, giving them specific parameters for what they could and could not do inside of that home in the subsequent search.

And the judge also ruled that while law enforcement had to be present at the scene, they couldn't follow the defense team and their expert around. But the very next day, the attorneys were back in front of Judge Galvin with a new request. You see, they wanted to be allowed to pull up a huge piece of carpet to do various forensic tests on blood and footprints. There's potentially four to five blood types throughout this area, and that we need to be able to do some independent testing on that blood to determine whose blood is where to potentially recreate the scenario and the sequence of events from a forensic perspective. Anything else? At this point, the only other, I think, notable piece of information that we did not have available at the time of the hearing yesterday is that we did receive some additional photos and discovery of there is no. no blood on him in any of those photos, which given the scene that we are aware of seems quite notable. And so we are, we think that that lack of blood combined with the large volume

of blood on this carpet that we are seeking to have removed shows its materiality and our need for, to preserve it for independent testing. Now, the prosecution took issue especially with the defense inferring that since AH appeared to not have blood on him, he couldn't possibly be the killer. I would first note to defense's statement that there was no blood observed on in support of the materiality of this evidence. I would also note that I'm sure as counsel can see from the photographs, there was no blood on the 13-year-old Ben as well, except for the blood that was coming from his gunshot wounds to his head and one blood smear around one of his knees. There was no blood to him at all, no blood on the bottoms of his seat, as is also laid out

in the PC certification. There is evidence that the shower in the boy's bathroom was used. The shirt that is described as wearing by the surviving victim is on the bathroom floor. blood was seen on that shirt, there also was a presumptive positive test for blood found around the drain of the shower. So there is strong circumstantial evidence that took a shower or at least very quickly cleaned himself off after this. So the fact that he doesn't have blood on him does not support the materiality of this evidence. So now here's what happened.

The judge denied the defense's request to remove that carpet. but days later on November 1st, the defense lawyers filed to withdraw from the case, saying that their client had, quote, obtained other counsel. And it turns out the defense may have broken some of the rules that were laid out while they were doing their search, including that no items be moved. Why? Because according to a document filed by the state, the King County Sheriff's Office photographed everything in the home before and after the defense lawyers were inside. And this reads, a comparison of photo.

of the bench at the front entryway of the residence taken before and after defense were allowed inside the residence shows that one of the children's backpacks was moved slightly, while another backpack is now in an entirely different location. Additionally, pairs of shoes are now arranged under the bench, including a shoe that was previously found outside the residence. A comparison of photographs of a group of three backpacks on the ground and the front entryway taken before and after defense were allowed inside the residence shows that the backpack have been moved and that items on top of the backpacks have been moved as well. A blue backpack that was previously covered with other items is now uncovered and is open. And the prosecution's motion goes on to say that photo comparisons showed items had been moved on both the top and bottom bunk of the bed in the girls' room and that it appeared multiple

pieces of paper found in the boys' room had been rifled through. So the prosecution files a motion to compel discovery saying they want Everything the defense has from their original search on October 23rd, as well as the more in-depth search on October 29th, including photographs or video, digital scan, swab, samples, prints, renderings. And the prosecution requested a hearing on this new motion to compel discovery, saying basically as a matter of fundamental fairness, they have to be provided this information. So will the defense have some explaining to do, even though this is going to be new counsel representing this 15-year-old? we shall see really interesting development and we're really at the start of this case we're all talking about the crime scene what is it show what is it not show we'll continue to follow it and keep our eyes on it really really disturbing case but that's all we have for you right now here

on sidebar everybody thank you for joining us as we cover this uh as always please subscribe on a podcast spotify youtube wherever you get your podcasts i'm jesse weber i'll speak to you next time You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.