Law&Crime Sidebar - O.J. Simpson Lawyer Breaks Down Best Defense for YNW Melly in Double Murder Trial

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

O.J. Simpson "dream team" lawyer Alan Dershowitz breaks down what rapper YNW Melly’s defense team should focus on to win a not guilty verdict. The Law&Crime Network's Angenette Levy talks with Dershowitz about how strong the evidence is against Jamell Demons in his double murder trial so far.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Follow American Scandal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Listen now: https://bit.ly/AmericanScandalLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&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 Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

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. If your honor didn't see, everybody else in the country saw Marsha Clark walking out after one of the jurors was disqualified, giving another prosecutor a thumbs up sign. We have an affidavit here that Mr. Darden told Mr. Cochran, we got your boy. He helped defend and win an acquittal for OJ. Simpson in his double murder trial. Now Alan Dershowitz is here to tell us how he would defend YNW. Melly. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy and welcome to Law and Crimes Sidebar Podcast. We are in the first week of the trial of YNW. Melly. His legal name is

Jamel Demons. The state says the evidence shows that Melly killed his friends, Chris Thomas, who went by Juvie, and Anthony Williams, known as Sack Chaser. The defense says the case was botched by the cops. Melly faces the possibility of the death penalty if convicted. In fact, he's the first person in Florida to face the possibility of the death penalty since the threshold for imposing it was lowered to eight to four. It does not have to be a unanimous vote by the jury anymore because of a recent law change. Joining me to discuss defending YNW. Melly is Alan Dershowitz. He's a professor emeritus of law at Harvard University.

Also, he's the author of a new book called Get Trump, The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law. Professor Dershowitz, welcome back to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for inviting me. It's always nice to have you. And I know that you have, obviously, the experience of defending O.J. Simpson and many other people. But this case is interesting because it's taken more than four years to get to

trial. And also, there isn't DNA evidence that we know of connecting Melly to the crime. They never found the firearm involved in the crime, in the murders. So there are things that they don't have, but there are things the state says it does have. One of those things is cell phone evidence. And the prosecutor in this case, Christine Bradley said that Mellie's cell phone tracked with the two murder victims' cell phones up until 15 minutes before Cortland Henry, the co-defendant, showed up at the hospital with their bodies in the car. So let's listen to Christine Bradley explain why she thinks this is significant. So ladies in German, you have individuals in two cars and all of the cell phone tracks together. Going across 595, going until they get to

the Miramar Parkway and 184th. At 184th, the Red Mitsubishi goes south, and you will then see it at 350 a.m. going through the guard gate at Sunset Lakes. That was the gated community in which the individuals were all living at the time of this homicide in October of 2018. On the Sunset Lakes, guard video, the Red Mitsubishi goes through, the Grey Jeep doesn't. The Grey Jeep, instead goes north and then proceeds to go to the actual scene of the homicides the great jeep goes north on 184th up to pines boulevard from pines boulevard it travels west all the way to the edge of the everglades where it is desolate where it is dark where there are no witnesses okay so what do you think of what she just said there about how these cell phones track and how, you know, they end up

eventually at the scene of the homicides? Well, this is clearly a 21st century case. Cases back in the day, never had cell phone tracking. You would have eyewitnesses late in the last century. We developed DNA evidence, but the tracking evidence is dramatic and interesting. It, it almost almost never provides a full theory of guilt, but it often provides information that disputes theories of innocence. It's a circumstantial piece of evidence, but it's fairly substantial, which what always is shocking to me is that people who are guilty or who do commit crimes take their cell phones with them.

You would think people know enough about tracking in cell phones so that if they're going to do something and want to hide those facts from the authorities, they would leave their cell phones home. I was involved in a case like that recently where the cell phone was not brought in and the authorities had a problem with the tracking. So cell phone evidence is strong, circumstantial evidence, not of the crime itself, but of presence. And that's one of the elements that prosecutors always want to prove and have to prove in a case like this. Let's listen to what the defense attorney David Howard says about the cell phone evidence in this case that the state contends is so damning. They have no motive.

Their entire case is hinged upon the technology of a phone they claim to have been in Mr. DeMons' possession. What they fail to tell you is that they have come up. evidence that Mr. DeMonds got out of that car before this incident. They ignore that because it's not consistent with their feet. What they failed to tell you is that phone comes back to the name of somebody other than Jamon Demand's. What they forgot to tell you is that their own witness will tell you that yes, that phone and Mr. Williams' phone and a number of other phones were all in the same account,

and all of the people in the house used to use them interchangeably. So he's calling into question whether or not Melly is the one who actually had that phone. Earlier in the state's opening statement, Professor Dershowitz, Christine Bradley said that you see Mellie with the phone in his hand on surveillance footage and that he's playing with it before the homicides as they're leaving the recording studio. But the defense attorney is saying anybody could have had that. There are other people who could have had possession of that particular phone. So what we see is a clash of circumstantial evidence on both sides.

That is the prosecution's evidence presents a kind of prima facie case, that a cell phone that easily could be attributable to the possession of the defendant. And then the defense says, wait a minute, that circumstantial. evidence, let's give you some circumstantial evidence. There were other people who had access to that phone and he left the car. So it's a battle of circumstantial evidence. Generally, defendants win battles of circumstantial evidence. Now, here there's more than the circumstantial evidence of the cell phone. But the cell phone evidence alone would not seem to satisfy behind a reasonable doubt standard and not necessarily as a matter of law but as a matter of the reality of jury deliberations

i can i can see a strong argument being made by the defense about reasonable doubt based on the two accounts regarding the cell phone just five years after perdu pharma began distributing oxycotton it became the number one painkiller sold in the u.s but despite the company's claims it would proved to not only be addictive, but deadly. In just over two decades, over a half a million in the U.S. have died from an overdose involving opioids. American scandal is a podcast from Wondry that takes you deep into the most infamous scandals in American history, from presidential lies to environmental disasters and corporate fraud. In their newest season, they look at the story of OxyContin, a painkiller that started an epidemic of opioid abuse and drug addiction.

It was supposed to offer new lives to patients suffering from chronic and debilitating pain. But as overdoses began ravaging communities across the country, citizens, journalists, and prosecutors were ready to fight back and hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable for its lies. Follow American Scandal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondry app. Let's look now at some of the other evidence that the state says it has. this was pretty interesting to me that Christine Bradley says that Mellie was basically a member of a gang and that he was engaging in some activity around the time of the homicides about a loyalty oath to the gang. So let's take a listen.

So what you will learn from the evidence, from the Instagram, from the private messages, was that Jamel Demons is a member of the G-Shine blood set. This is not a stage personality. This is not an actor that's playing a character. This was his real life. Ladies and gentlemen, you will see that as soon as October 24th, two days before the homicide, Jamel Demons is learning the oath of loyalty

to the G-Shine blood set. You're going to see things in these messages that will be in indicative of blood membership. For example, anytime a word would normally be spelled with a C, as in Charlie, they don't use that. They replace it with the letter B. So instead of saying, I'm at the crib, they say I'm at the rib.

Why, ladies and gentlemen, because C is associated with cribs. B is for bloods. So if you look through all the messages, you will notice time and time again. Jamel Demons is dropping C's and using these. And you're gonna see pictures, you're going to see videos of the defendant doing something called stacking,

which is a way to show a gang affiliation and to broadcast it to the world. And this is not just in music videos, This is not just in lyrics, because we're not going to get into that. That's artistic expression. That's not why we are here today. So she's saying that he was in a gang, and she's almost making it sound like this could have been part of the loyalty oath to the gang, committing these homicides. That sounds like a real stretch.

That's not the kind of evidence that juries generally will say satisfies the standard of beyond reasonable doubt. You know, it raises suspicions, it's killed by association, people don't like gang members, all of that. But were the victims gang members too? That's the other question. What was their association? What was their affiliation? It's getting very speculative. Now, you get convictions based on circumstantial evidence. If it builds one on top of the other, so far from what I've heard, the building does not lead to the general conclusion of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I know there's also a so-called admission or a statement that may be suggestive of some admission. Things like that often tie together the external circumstantial evidence. So in a case like this, that could be

somewhat important, even though standing alone, it would be ambiguous. It's a combination of all the circumstances that could lead a jury to find a guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but it could also lead a jury to say, look, yeah, it's very possible that this happened, but we're not satisfied that it's been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. That remains to be seen. But if the prosecution is saying, look, he's a gang member, here's our evidence showing he's a member of this blood gang. How do you push back against that as a defense attorney? Or do you kind of just leave that out there and not not contest it too much because you're almost bringing more attention to it. Well, the evidence is overwhelming of gang membership and the evidence that you put on about

changing letters and stuff like that seems fairly, fairly compelling. They might ultimately introduce an expert on gangs, don't know. That could be somewhat compelling. And it depends. I mean, the hardest job a defense attorney has is to assess the state's case and see what impact is having on the jury to determine whether to try to respond or ignore it. You do both at great risk. That's why being a defense attorney is such a subtle and difficult job. You can't do it by the books. You always have to see how the state's evidence

seems to be resonating with the jury. Are they shaking their heads? Are they leaning forward? Are they accepting the argument that's being made? And if they are, you may have to respond. If they're not, you might be better off moving on to different issues where you have the strength and they have the weakness. That's what defense attorneys have to do if they're going to really be very good at it. And I don't have an ability to assess this particular defense attorney's savvy or ability, but I can tell you in general, those are very, very hard judgment calls, whether to respond to what may be weak evidence and strengthen it or to ignore.

it thereby saying to the jury, look, we don't even take this seriously. Hard question. Let's look now at the prosecutor describing how Juvie and Sack Chaser, the fatal wounds, the wounds that actually took their lives, where they were fired from. And this is really important because literally in the hour or so, maybe even 40 minutes before the homicides are believed to have been committed, we have surveillance video from the recording studio showing all four men getting into the jeep and melie is getting into the back driver's side seat so he was sitting in that back seat and they say that's very important because the shots the fatal shots were fired from the back seat take a listen the fatal wounds for christopher thomas and anthony williams

are coming from inside the vehicle from the rear driver's side passenger going out towards the passenger The other interesting thing the medical examiner's office is going to tell you is that when the drive-by was staged at 402 a.m., the victims were already dead. The medical examiner will be able to testify and tell you that the fatal shots to Anthony Williams to his head that enters in the back of his head and exits at the top blowing out the front passenger window, was fatal and that the additional wounds that are consistent with the trajectories going through the vehicle he's already dead there is a post-mortem inflicted gunshot wounds basically christine bradley is saying those fatal shots were fired from the backseat of the vehicle she's telling the jury the medical examiner is going to say that that they were not killed by these shots fired from outside the vehicle. So if your client is sitting in the backseat of the car, the location

from which those fatal shots were fired, how do you contest that? Well, that's very, very circumstantial. It's going to be very hard to prove to the satisfaction of a jury that the shots were actually fired from a particular location in a car. When you think about it, a person could shoot from the front part of the back seat or the back part of the back seat or the back part of the front seat. It's all going to be somewhat speculative. So I don't see the great strength in that particular item of evidence standing alone. In circumstantial cases like this kind, it's the combination. It's the aha factor. It's the fact that the jury sits and listens to one piece of circumstantial evidence and says, hmm, interesting. Second piece, that seems.

compelling. And when you get to the third piece, they do the, aha, wow, yeah. Together, it seems very compelling. So it's the combination of factors. Standing alone, the evidence of the backseat doesn't seem to carry all that much weight. Social media messages are also a big part of this case, according to the prosecution. And there's one message in particular that the Prosecution says amounts to a confession. One individual, and specifically, sends out, and I want to quote the message exactly that you will hear, and says right after this, yo, homie, you good? Let me know something.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is where context matters. What does that mean? If you work at Google and you say my whole floor is coding, that's a good thing. If you work at our general hospital and you say my whole floor is coding,

that is a bad thing. The context around the messages matters. So in the context of this message, this individual is reaching out asking if Mr. Demons is good after he's been tagged in multiple social media posts about this driver through, this shooting. And Mr. Demons responds very succinctly. I did that. All right, Professor, how do you fight back against that? Well, that's hard to fight against because that is almost a summary of the prior evidence.

The prior evidence is all circumstantial. And here you have a statement, a direct statement. It's ambiguous, to be sure. And if the statement alone were introduced into evidence, it could be interpreted in multiple ways. And remember, too, that proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't require that each piece of evidence established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

This wouldn't do that. It requires that the evidence all taken together proves beyond a reasonable doubt. And if I'm the prosecutor, I use that. It's not a confession by any means. It's a misnomer to call it a confession. Use that piece of evidence which may constitute something close to an admission, not a confession, something that could be interpreted as incriminating. And I would use that to tie together the other circumstantial evidence and you know when you get evidence from the mouth pen or email of somebody themselves it's far more compelling than evidence directed against them by other people this really does put also a

burden on the defendant to explain and that's one thing is a defense attorney you never want because that may incline the jury to say gee this is something he could explain let's hear from him. And if he doesn't take the stand, obviously, that can be, although the jury is instructed never to infer guilt from the failure to take the stand, that could taken together with everything else, become an important piece of evidence. I feel as well that the defense has to explain that. And I don't know how they explain it unless they call an expert in something to talk about social media and maybe he's just you know maybe this is all bluster or maybe he's joking i have no clue so how do you explain that if you don't want your client taking the stand very difficult i would

not put an expert on if you put an expert on it just highlights the fact what do you need an expert what don't you put the defendant on the stand to explain what do you need a third party to explain so I would not put an expert on. I would either, if you could, and the facts, I don't know enough about the facts to know whether there's any possibility of putting a defendant on the stand. But if not, I think then the burden falls to the defense lawyer to try to offer an explanation, which you're entitled to do in closing argument. And so, but it's risky. It's risky. There's no perfect way of responding to a piece of evidence like that. There's an old stuffed fish experience when people have a stuffed fish on their mantle. And the plaque,

and the plaque says, I'd still be swimming if I'd only kept my mouth shut. And I'm sure the defense attorney is saying that right now, if only he hadn't written that on social media. If he hadn't said that, in that case, it's not your mouth shut. It's your, obviously, social media. But that is damning. It's not by itself conclusive, and that's why it's not a confession. But taken together with other circumstantial evidence, it could help put context, as the prosecutor said, put context on the other evidence. In this next clip, the defense talks about how they think this investigation was a mess. And this is really right up your alley because you guys claimed this.

and the O.J. Simpson case as well, so let's take a listen. Three years after arresting this young man and sticking him in a cell, the state looks at its case and says, oh, man, this looks a little incompetent. Miramar Police seems to botch this investigation, and they call the Browd Sheriff's Office and ask them to come and look at the investigation, upon which this entire prosecution rests. And he looks at it and he says he instantly knew he had to start from scratch.

I think his words were, it was the worst thing I had seen in my life. If all of that is accurate that the Broward sheriff reviews this case at the request of the state attorney's office and the sheriff is saying, this investigation is a mess. I've never seen anything this bad. If that is indeed the case, wow, I mean, aren't you as a defense attorney going to put

the Broward County Sheriff up there and say, tell us what you meant by that? Well, or not, or just argue to the jury that what you think he meant by it, because you don't put somebody on unless you know what he's going to testify to. We don't know what he's going to testify to. You know, arguments about messy prosecution. can cut both ways. It can create sympathy in the jury's mind saying, you know, these guys aren't particularly good, but look what they came up with. They have that statement on the social media. They have the material about the cell phones. You know, they didn't do a very good job,

but the evidence seems to point in the direction of guilt. So it's often an argument that that cuts both ways. I've done, I think, now about 35 homicide cases, either murder or attempted murder and I've won vast majority of them. And mostly you win those cases, not based on the sloppiness of the investigation, because that's something that the jury can be sympathetic to. But you have to focus the jury very, very hard on alternate explanations of the evidence, although the burden's on the government. When do you have a substantial amount of evidence, the burden really shifts in the minds of the juries to the defense. And the defense has to present a plausible alternative theories that allow the jury to give meat to the bones of proof beyond the

reasonable doubt. And I don't know enough about this case to know whether the defense attorney can do that. But I think just talking about how messy the investigation was, is not going to resonate that well with the jury in light of the evidence that they did come up. And we've seen plenty of cases over the years where there were a lot of mistakes in criminal investigations, a lot of missteps, missed opportunities, messy police work, and the state was still able to obtain a conviction. We've seen that many times. No, there's no question about that. And in fact, it's interesting because juries tend to be sympathetic to prosecutors. And they know how hard the job is. They know that the criminal defendants do everything in their power to try

to muddy the waters. And often juries are prepared to see through investigative, I've had the same experience, seeing cases that were extremely sloppy, but the jury in the end, in the end, votes for conviction. Mostly, I've done appeals from those cases. I've been able to use the sloppiness to raise hellate issues with sophisticated judges. It's very different when you have jurors who have life experience, sometimes more life experience than the judges, but they don't have the legal sophistication. So, you know, these are issues that require very delicate thinking on the part of the defense attorney how to respond to this, how not to contribute to the what the prosecution has said, how to make sure at the very least that you don't make it easier for the jury to convict based on their sympathy for the difficult job prosecutions have. After all, finding murderers, even with new technology and cell phones and DNA, is not that easy. And I think most jurors do sympathize with police who are there to protect them, with prosecutors that are there to protect them,

and not so much with a defense attorney. And so you have to be able, if you're a defense attorney, to shift that presumption and make the jury identify with you saying you're there to protect the average citizen from being convicted based on. surmise or lack of reasonable doubt. Well, Professor Alan Dershowitz, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much, as always, for joining us here on Sidebar. We appreciate it. Well, keep doing great work. It's very important for the American public to see trials. You know, as you know, I'm hoping that the Donald Trump trial will be on television as well, because the American public have a right to see so important the case. And I look forward to, if that happens you covering it calling on me to give my input even though as you know i was one of

donald trump's lawyer isn't the first impeachment but i'm looking forward to seeing if that case eventually ends up on television as it should well we would of course like to see that televised obviously the federal courts don't allow cameras but this is unprecedented maybe in new york in manhattan they will allow it to be televised that would be great because we have a former President of the United States for the first time ever facing criminal charges. So we hope that it will be televised as well. Remember, too, that the Supreme Court has made exceptions. Generally, the Supreme Court doesn't allow its deliberations to be broadcast. But in the case seeking to overrule Roe v. Wade, they made an exception. And they did in the public interest.

And it was fascinating to hear live with a couple of second delay the arguments in the Supreme court. And I think there are rooms for rules for exception. There's no absolute rule that's binding. It is possible that the courts could allow the trial of a former president and a potential future president to be on television so that every American can watch it. It would be the right thing to do. We are big fans and advocates and proponents of cameras in the courtroom because that lets the public see and be educated about how the system. works. And I am a big advocate of cameras always have been. Professor Dershowitz again, thank you so much. Thank you. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar

podcast. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcasts. And of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Ann Chinat Levy, and we will see you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.