Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How Celebrities Are Treated in Prison | Danny Masterson Sentenced 30 to Life

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

How Celebrities Are Treated in Prison | Danny Masterson Sentenced 30 to Life

Masterson was charged with three cases of rape, one per Jane Doe for three Jane Does. The jury had to convict him of at least two, or he would have not gone to prison. He's 47. He'll be 77 when he gets out. He'll try and migrate toward the other, probably more the white-collar criminals, and, you know, they'll either shrug him off or they'll be like, yeah, all right, you went to trial, you're saying you didn't do it, whatever. but eventually within three months he'd be okay in the federal system that's not going to be like that in the state system my buddy actually knows several women that are locked up with Elizabeth Holmes oh she's she's in rough shape yeah you mind she went from a mansion straight into you know granted it's like it's a camp but it still sucks so she they said she is miserable walks around like doesn't want to take a shower like she's shuffling she's mumbling to herself Hey, this is Matt Cox. I'm going to be interviewing Zach Morgan. He is a practicing attorney.

We're going to be talking about the Danny Masterson case. He was recently found guilty of rape and other related charges. But Zach's going to fill us in on that. Also, Zach has a YouTube channel, and I'm going to let him introduce it. I think it's your friendly lawyer, Zach or something about it. I'll let him introduce it real quick. Thanks a lot. Check out the video. My YouTube channel is your lawyer friend, Zach, L-A-W-Y-E-R.

First of all, just for the sake, you know, just to put it out there, like, I love that 70s show. And I haven't followed this case, by the way. Like, I had no idea up until a few days ago, someone told me, and I was like, what? Like, I had no idea. So I've watched like five videos on it on YouTube, and that's really the extent of my knowledge on the subject. you know like I don't know too too much about I understand they they wouldn't let like cameras in you know that's correct so so it's not like there's a lot of video there's some videos have maybe walking here walking there but that's pretty much it so the the basic of basis of the story is that like 20 years ago 15 20 years ago several women in Scientology that were in Scientology with him made allegations of him, of, uh, Dany, whatever, Masterson, I'm not sure what we should call it. Masterson, sounds more ominous. Um, Masterson, uh, you know, whatever, forced themselves

on them or rape them, drug them, uh, various different types of assault. Sure. And, and, uh, then, from what I understand that then they, then they went to Scientology and suggested they wanted to And they kind of, you know, persuaded them not to or made a veiled threat that they would be, you know, excommunicated or I forget the term they used that they were like. Yeah. So the term Scientology uses a suppressive person. If they're declared a suppressive person, their family that remains in Scientology is required to cease all communication of any kind with that person. what okay yeah so yeah so yeah so with that in mind they was like they were like yeah i'm just not going to say anything and then what was the what was the deal with the one woman who actually received a a settlement from him from mastersend yeah so there were at this point there's several you know at least five certainly more probably women who are making similar claims

he was charged with the forcible sexual assault and rape of three women. One of those women was his partner for six years. They were in a relationship as a couple for six years. The jury actually hung on that one, which although unfortunate is not as, I don't think that was terribly unexpected. It's sometimes to convince people

who have never been in a relationship with violence that those types of acts can occur in a relationship. And then there were two other people two other women who were also who also made allegations that Danny Masterson was charged with committing rape against and he was convicted on both of those okay and so there were there were essentially three charges because and so like you said it started way back in the 90s even

and so one of these women reached to some probably more than one reached a settlement with Danny Masterson for and not inconsequential sum of money especially for the 90s early $400,000? That's accepted for a lot of money. Yeah, he probably at the peak of that 70 show, that was probably one episode salary for him, maybe less when that 70 show was at its peak. You know, it's not uncommon to do $750,000 of a million dollars an episode if you have a high performing show. Um, so they, they went to, they went to whatever the,

I don't want to say elders, but the, no, no, they, they, they, they, they, yeah, yeah, they, so they went to the, the, the victims went to the, in the, in the, in the organization that is Scientology. Scientology is a fairly complex corporate structure, but I just refer to it collectively a Scientology, because they're all acting on behalf of the organization, right. So they went to their, to the respective counterparts, which would be, um, uh, auditors and so, some other people. And they were told, you don't, you don't. don't take this outside Scientology. We will handle it here. Scientology, as I understand it, convinced Danny to pay this settlement. And, you know, he did. And there was a confidentiality and an NDA non-disclosure agreement that was part of that. Of course, that has all been been set aside because a non-disclosure agreement, it's a little bit gray on whether or not you can actually testify against somebody if you sign a non-disclosure agreement. You cannot legally be precluded from providing testimony as the victim of a crime due to some NDA. Okay.

So like, you know, a crime supersedes, supersedes the non-disclosure? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, in theory. Yeah. So the settlements generally resolve the civil cases. If I settle a case and you pay me money, I give up the right to sue you in court because I took your money. Right.

But if you are charged with the crime, even if I go to police after, if you're charged with the crime, the state, the government still has the right to subpoena me to provide testimony at trial. And if I don't answer that subpoena, if I don't show up, then they're going to issue a bench warrant for failure to appear because a subpoena, as you know, is a court order to show up and give testimony. Right. But if I show up, I don't have to testify, right?

Like, I don't have to say anything. I could sit there and say, I'm not going to say anything. And I'm not going to answer. You could. Yeah, you could. I think that the law generally frowns upon using non-disclosure agreements by wealthy, powerful people to escape criminal culpability. It does adjudicate that, oh, I don't disagree. Right.

You and I both know that money makes the world go around. If I have a deep enough pocket and a big enough wallet, there's not a whole lot that I can't take care of. Yeah. That's the reality of our criminal justice system. And we're still one of the best in the world. When I compare our criminal justice systems to others around the world, we're pretty efficient about catching when we catch people about adjudicating their case. Those that do wrong things tend to go to prison. There are some who don't go to prison. And there are people who are in prison who didn't do it. And unfortunately, one is way too many. But there are some, but it's a very small percentage. Well, and I was going to say, too, that I think a lot of people are like, you know, oh, you can get it covered up. You can beat the case. And usually what happens is,

you know, let's say if you're poor, you don't get as good of representation, and I believe that's true, but I mean, you still go to jail. Like, you might get, if you were rich, you might end up getting two years. You were poor, you might get 15 or 20 for the same charges. But the truth is, you both went to prison. You know, I'm not saying it's fair that one person got 10, you know, a decade longer. You know, look at Elizabeth Holmes. That's, I mean, for me, her sentence is outrageously light in comparison to what most fraudsters would get. And it's not like she was the, you know, the CFO of a company that fudged the number. This was an active fraud that she knew was a fraud that she took place in. And there were, you know, I don't know if it was 600 or 800, you know,

million dollars missing or lost or whatever so but still you know she did go to jail she did get probably yeah well if you if you go all the way back to 2008 and you know knowing your history this this this you know may make a little more sense to you than it will some you go back to the subpride mortgage crisis and the failure of leman brothers every person that board of directors should have gone to prison right they didn't because it's leiman brothers they're a wall street staple they had these golden parachute provisions and the SEC sort of had had half in hand because they failed to provide proper oversight, arguably, over the subprime mortgage. And the fact that I think at one point Lehman was leveraged 65 and a half to one, for every

dollar in cash, they'd borrowed 65 and a half to buy bad mortgages. Every person on that board of director should have gone to prison. But Wall Street people generally don't go to prison unless you're Bernie Madoff and you walk into the FBI and say, I committed a $65 billion fraud and my bank accounts are empty. Right. Imagine how complicated that whole thing would have been, would be to go through. you know, like you started, they decide, I think the problem with a lot of these guys that are just extremely wealthy is that they can mount a defense that is daunting, you know, like if you're some, like, if I, if I, if you're me, like, you took all my money. I, I can't, I have to get a public defender. My public defender is just not going to be able to, you know, mount an adequate defense in my case with the amount of paperwork. That was required. But the U.S. government can put, you know, they can put 12 lawyers on it. Yeah. They'll bury her. Yeah. They're filing two motions a day. And she's, she can't respond to a motion until she meets with you. And she, you know, and it's a whole thing. And I'll say, I have friends who are public defenders who practice exclusively criminal defense, both in the private sector as and as public defenders. I have so much respect for public defenders. And they seem to come in two varieties.

they're either outstanding lawyers who are just taxed to the point that they can't put on an adequate defense, not because they're incompetent, but because they don't have the resources. Right. Or the public defender's offices are so short that they'll take anybody out of law school. Even if they didn't do well, it can't get hired in the private sector, because they do well academically, the public defender's office still needs them. So there's sort of these two extremes, really good trial lawyers who just are strapped for resources and lawyers who are barely competent.

And you never know who you're going to get. And so I have a ton of respect for anybody in the public defender's office, especially those who make a career out of it because some of the most seasoned public defenders could be making $5 million a year in the private sector. But they feel called to represent those who need them most. Yeah, that was definitely, I don't know if it was all of it, but definitely my experience with the public defenders that dealt with me. And here's the thing, or, you know, represented me, because I ended having three of them ultimately. But, yeah, the truth is, it's like, like, I didn't give them anything to work with. Like, I'm overwhelmingly guilty. So it's not like I can say, that, you know, like, they, they may have, they may have put things the way, your phrase things the way I didn't, I wasn't appreciative of, but, you know, who's nobody's asking me, you know, so like, they're saying, oh, it's 15 million and I'm saying, oh, it's. 11. Phil 11, you know, even if there. And so, I'll spot you four million. It's still 11 million

dollars, though. I'm good for it. So, yeah, but I, I hear you. So, yeah, so he's, okay, so he was, so he's, so he's actually, he's actively trying to quash these cases, back to Masterson, sorry, he's actively trying to quash these allegations for a decade. Another thing is, how long does the statute go back? There is no limitation? There is, and this is where it really gets interesting under California law. Now, I'll give the caveat, I am not licensed to California. I can tell people my understanding of the law. They should not take this as legal advice.

If you're running a similar situation to Danny Masters in California, find a California licensed attorney. That's not me. But California has a statute, and the best way to explain it, is very similar to the federal RICO statute. Okay. So just a standalone rape or sexual assault charge has a statute of limitations of some very short period of time, two, three, four, five years.

Some of these, some of these allegations occurred in the 90s, all of them occurred before 2010. So we're going back 20 years, 30 years, or close to 30 years in some case. And California law says the statute of limitations doesn't apply if you can prove a pattern of behavior more than once. Oh, okay. And that's what I mean by the RICO statute. You know, you have this common nexus of predicate crime.

that put you under the RICO bubble and that may not make sense to some of your viewers but it makes sense to you you've been yeah I actually have it's funny I actually have a guy that was committing tax fraud and he had done it like 10 years earlier he did it three years in a row he stopped for like four years

and then he did it again and then again so he had a history of let's say doing this six times but they could only charge him for two because there was that four year gap that seemed to span Yeah, a length of time they were like, look, there was a huge gap. I mean, yeah, it is a pattern of conduct.

And we can, and in the federal system, they could mention it. Right. But you can't charge him with, or they couldn't. Yeah, the rules of evidence allow you to put on that testimony of prior bad acts. Right. But he can't be charged with those. So the way the California statute says is Masterson was charged with three cases of rape, one per Jane Doe for three Jane Does. The jury had to convict him of at least.

two or he would have not gone to prison. The statute requires multiple convictions of this pattern. Okay. So if the government had gone, if the state of California had gone one and one and two, got one conviction, two acquittals, Masterson doesn't go to prison. The jury is not told that and they shouldn't be. The jury needs to be evaluating and adjudicating these cases independently based on the merits of each of the Jane Doe's testimony. Right. Which is exactly what they did. They got two convictions and one acquittal. He's still going to go up. away. But the statute requires at least two multiples, so at least two convictions of any number charged. Okay. So I'm, so it was it eight or nine months ago he was the first trial was roughly?

Yeah, the first trial was November of 2022, because the jury actually deliberated through, they took a break, but deliberated through the Thanksgiving holiday. Okay. And in that case, it hung, the jury hung on all three counts. Jane Do 1, Jane Do 2, Jane Do 3, and the jury will disclose their counts to the court. And in that case, in the November case, the original trial, all three counts were leaning acquittal. There were more votes to acquit than to convict. But in our system of justice, in the federal system, in the state system in California, the state systems in which I'm licensed to practice, in criminal cases, it requires a 12-0 vote. in civil cases you can have 8-4 you can have you know can't have 7-5 you know 8-4 9 3 10 2 111 and in criminal law it takes 12 nothing and so they were split I think the closest was 8 4 to acquit was the closest vote and the rest of them I think was laughing so they weren't very close so to the prosecution's credit they read the both sides both sets of attorneys had the opportunity to interview the jury and immediately after that interview the

The Deputy District Attorney, who's in charge of this case, Reinhold Mueller, says, we're going to try him again. We can get him this time. Whatever information he got from the jury was key to the way they presented the case. They changed the sequence. They changed some of the witnesses. They didn't call some witnesses they called last time. They called a different witness that they didn't call the first time.

And the jury was only out a couple of days. And I tell people, as a general rule, one eight-hour day of deliberation for every one week of testimony. Okay. That's not a hard and fast rule because OJ was tried for nine months and they deliberated for four hours. So there's exceptions to the rule. But as a general rule, eight hours of deliberation for every one week of testimony and the jury was out for like maybe a day and a half. Well, the first trial, they weren't allowed to let in certain testimony too, right? Or certain items of evidence.

Yeah. So, yeah, the rules of evidence govern what can come in and what can't. And the defense had said, we don't want in certain types of evidence that relate to Scientology. The judge said, okay, right, right? Scientology's not on trial here, Danny Masterson is. If a Catholic was on trial, you can't just inherently bring in Catholic doctrine. If a Baptist was on trial, you can't just inherently bring in Baptist teaching, right? It has to be relevant.

There's the relevancy standard. Just because somebody happens to practice a particular religion doesn't inherently mean the religion comes in. comma, however. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah. During the first trial, the defense made the mistake of what we call opening the door. They asked a question that they shouldn't have asked that opened the door to the Scientology evidence. But the defense could, the prosecution couldn't ask questions about it because the judge had already ruled against it.

In the second trial, the judge said, you opened the door in the first case. That now lets the prosecution introduce this evidence. But do you think that was the, the defining, the, the defining, difference between the guilty and the acquittal? I don't think it's necessarily the deal breaker. I think one, the prosecution put on a more cogent chronological case. Part of the art of trial is putting the puzzle pieces in the right order you want to present them. Because if I call witness A on day one and witness B on day 60,

and witness A and witness B's testimonies are needed to corroborate to collaborate. I've split them too far apart. The jury may not remember that part of A's testimony. So one, they called witnesses in a different order. Two, they put on a more chronological case. And three, I think they kept it simple. The last time it got a little bit complicated and down in the weeds and this and that and the other. So this time, they just kept it simple. Let's not overwhelm the jury. Let's keep this simple. and give a really simple roadmap and let the jury listen to the testimony and reach his conclusions. And I think that particular approach, especially with multiple victims, multiple crimes, half a dozen detectives over 20 years, the simpler you can keep it the better, because the defense's job is to make it

complicated and make a big deal about 20 years. And if we can keep it really simple for the jury, we're going to have a better outcome, I think, statistically. How long did the trial go on? I think the second trial was about two and a half weeks How long is the first one? Almost a month The second one was shorter

So I listen So I you know It's I don't know It's hard for me to You know one minute I think So, so, I mean, and I'm sure this is, I'm sure this is not the right thing to say.

But, you know, it, it always kills me because, you know, I just always remember these cases where, do you remember the case where the guy was, he was, basically, he was like a high school, a football star, he was, he had gotten a full scholarship to some college and a girl. high school. He was a senior. He was just about to graduate. And another girl in the high school went to winter, went to whatever, the school nurse or whatever, and said, he raped me. Yeah. You know, he raped me in the elevator or wherever it was. And, you know, I tried to scream and he choked me and he this and that and went. And so he went to jail for, I don't know how many years. I don't know if it was 12 or 13. I forget. Maybe he was seven. And then he got out and just.

she actually hit him up on Facebook and and essentially on the at he asked her like hey like she acted like you know oh yeah I'm sorry about that did you want to you know hey I always think about you how you doing like he's like what's going on like she asked he's acting like I said I'm sorry and then she came over and he videotaped her saying that she had made the whole thing up because she'd seen the news about another girl who had been raped by a high school student and they tried to sue the school in that one and then happened on school grounds so the city or the school board didn't have to pay so she decided I'm going to make an allegation but I'm going to say it happened on school grounds right and so she sued and she got whatever

two and a half million dollars he went to prison and so she had this whole conversation with him openly admitted the whole thing nothing ever happened to her sure statute of limitations was up you know she may be a pariah but she the way the world is now but half the women out there think she's she's cool oh wow she got paid the fact is this poor guy ended up going to to prison and he didn't do anything wrong um i know you know and i also i met a guy in prison who You know, whether his story is true or not, it was a whole met a girl in a bar on a cruise ship, had sex with the girl, and she ended up saying she was raped. So it was the same thing. Actually, there was like three guys met her in the bar, and they went back and they had sex. And during the course of the investigation, in his trial, in his trial, his lawyer found out she had made false rape accusations.

on two other occasions but she sued the cruise line and made some money and she was just an opportunist well he ended up going to prison the other two guys didn't end up nothing happened to them for some reason I forget the reason I'm not sure if there was no

they didn't find the DNA and they only charged him they also only charged him because he was married that he thinks and he's like so I couldn't it's not like you know I couldn't he did go to while, but he said it just looked even worse for me, I guess. So, you know, I think about that. And I wonder to my, you know, I wonder, like, if this guy is, is being targeted. But then I also think, wait a minute, this is over a long period of time, right? It's not like these people, these women knew each other. Yeah. And I think, I think that's exactly the key in what, in one of the ways that we can wait through and weed through these allegations is, one of them was a six year a six year intimate partner

and intimate partner violence IPV is a very real thing right we actually saw that discussed at LinkedIn the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial yeah yeah so you know intimate partner violence we saw all the 57 PhDs in psychology talking all about it so that's very much a very real thing

but when you look at the two other women who were represented in that case they also had a witness in the second trial from Canada, who said Danny Masterson had done the same thing to her, but she was not a, what we call a charged victim, right? He was not charged with that crime. But just like the tax fraud case, she was able to come in and give evidence of prior bad acts. And when you ask, Jane Doe 1, did you, have you met Jane Doe 2? Well, not until six months ago when we prepared for trial. Jane Doe, did you know the other Jane Doe's victim or, you know, witness from Canada?

Did you know any of those ways? I've never seen these women until today, but their allegations of what he did was the same. Right. The method, the manner was all the same. Right. So it's not a, it's not like it's a cash grab. It's not like you can say, hey.

Exactly. You could, I mean, to me, that would be like my defense if, hey, we all went to the same Scientology church. We were all, you know, friends. At different times, we've known each other. Like, hey, maybe they got together. I give you an example is in, in, in, Coleman. My wife met her in the halfway house, by the way. My wife was at the camp, at Coleman, the female camp. Now, you know, when we were in the halfway house, she was telling me just how insane the women were there. And she was like, listen, she's like, they're having sex with the guards. Guards are bringing them in, like, you know, gifts. They're meeting them, you know, in the woods. You know, they're meeting them, you know, in the woods.

there bringing you know it was just it was just a free-for-all and she said you know the guards would would the guards she said the guards like know who to kind of try and uh and she said and there were actually women that were getting into fist fights over who's going to like hey i'm dating him that's my that's my boyfriend like that guard's my boyfriend doesn't want the other girl sleeping with the same guard she's sleeping with so these women are according according to my wife, we're actively seeking out relationships with these guards. Now, at one point, this one woman, just as, I think it was about a year before my wife left, she actually was detained and brought to a separate jail and questioned about these women,

multiple women having sex with guards. And she was like, look, I don't know anything. You know, she was like, one of the girls she knew specifically was sleeping was actually her roommate. And she's like, but I didn't want to get her in trouble. I didn't want to say anything. So she just, I think she doesn't really say anything. Well, what happened was after she realized just before she left that there was one of the girls

that was getting to all of the other girls together and saying, we need to sue Coleman and say that these guards are, are raping. us. Now, according to my wife, she's like, they were not being raped. They were actively pursuing these relationships. Now, based on the law, it doesn't matter whether they want the relationship or not. An inmate cannot consent to a sexual relationship with a guard. It's right. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's a statutory rape charge because of the power dynamic. Right. But here's what happened. They got together. Several of them got out. I think there's something like it was maybe six or eight women. I'm not sure. I'd have to look at the article. They even contacted my wife and were asking her if she would be like interested in testifying. And she was like testifying and what? They're like, oh, yeah, we're suing. We're suing them. We may go to trial. We may need, we're getting girls that will testify. And she's like, I'm not testifying on y'all's behalf. Like, you're accusing these guys of rate. And then there, of course, they're saying, you know, well, based on the statute, she's like, based on the statute, not.

And I don't care what the statute says. You guys didn't say the statute in your lawsuit. You said you were physically held down. You were raped. You were threatened. This guy trapped you in a room. You were terrified. Like, they turned it all around on these guards.

One of the guards actually drove his car into the parking lot, stuck a gun in his head, and blew his head off. I mean, you know, like, what the guards did wasn't right. But, you know, like, I mean, I don't think you should get a rape charge for that. regardless, they got together and they saw a cash grab. And I don't want to say it was like 10 or 12 million dollars these girls made. Yeah. By putting themselves in the situation, there's a different. Like, I don't even know why they settled. To me, it seemed pretty, I would have, if I was a BOP, I would have gone a trial. It seemed pretty obvious. And they

certainly, if they'd done any investigation at all, they could have found other women in the prison that would have said, absolutely not. That's not what happened. But they buried it. And let's face it, it's just taxpayer money anyway. But this is a, completely different case. This is, you know, like you said, it's over the course of a decade or so. These women didn't know each other. Yeah. And I think one of the key pieces of evidence that came in, which was some Scientology evidence, was the ability to corroborate the timeline of these Jane Doe's, both the Canadian Jane Doe as well as the three Jane Doe victims. They said, well, did you tell anybody? Yeah, who did you tell? I told so-and-so at the church. I told

so-and-so at an auditing session. Okay, so they actually went and were able to subpoena and gather those documents. You know, some Jane Does had copies. Anyway, they were able to buy documents and said, yeah, look at the time and date. It matches that, you know, and well, why'd you go? It takes so long to go to the police.

Well, we're not allowed to go to the police in my religion. Right. We're not allowed to go. So it's not like, yeah, that happened to me two, ten years ago. Did you tell anybody? No, I was scared. I didn't say anything. No, no, I did say stuff.

Yeah. And then they had the evidence to back it up. Here's the report that I filed. Here's the, there's different reports in the religion. One is called a things that shouldn't be report, which is this is somebody who's breaking the rules. There's also something called a knowledge report, which is just anytime you see somebody doing something that you're not sure, you write this report on them, it's a snitch first culture. It's really kind of interesting. Not my cup of tea, but it's a snitch first culture. And so the problem is, one of the problems that the church has is these documents exist. They document everything. everything. They document that, you know, Matt sneezed without permission. There's a record of that. And when records exist and you say they don't and you're a non-profit entity, get some problems. Right. Which is why Scientology actually, so for years, they made this habit of suing everybody. Scientology won't sue anybody. Because they subject themselves to discovery. They subject themselves to deposition. They subject themselves to examination. They can't stand up to that. So they threaten everybody with a lawsuit, but they're never actually going to file the paperwork because they can't afford to back it up.

Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I remember they had sued several people like just like a couple decade, 20 years ago or something. Yeah. You know, I think one of their like local bases is in Clearwater, Florida. It is. So Clearwater, Florida is home to what they call the flag land base. And if you wanted to join, and I don't encourage anybody to do that, but if you wanted to join Solenton, Scientology, you actually can't join in Clearwater. You have to go to some smaller organization. Clearwater is what they call the flag land base. That is where the confidential super secret upper levels of Scientology are spoken

are taught, including Zinu, the galactic god who launched the body satans to Earth and DC8 looking rocket ships and blew them up with hydrogen bombs and volcanoes. Yeah, this is the creation of mankind, according to El Ron Hubbard and Scientology. this is great racket though you got to admit i mean like to have pulled that off yeah you know he i think he said one time you know the easiest way to get rich is found a religion right wow and it all started with so you know as as a sidebar scientology does not believe in psychiatry that all that goes all the way back remember tom cruise yeah yeah the bouncing on the couch and stuff yeah so back when he was in the navy he got out of the navy elron hubber felt he was in the navy originally

he felt like he had you know was having some sort of mental health crisis and petitioned the VA to it's for psychiatric help and for whatever reason he didn't get that help I don't know if they said no or they didn't follow up on it or anyway he didn't get psychiatric help so he then decided to self-treat his mental health and he wrote a book called Dianetics and they started so he tried to get the the mental health and the psychiatric and psychological communities to adopt this book and they said, dude, this is pseudoscience. This is made up nonsense. It's not based in science. We can't teach this. We can't embrace it. So then he used Dianetics to found this, what we now call Scientology. When book sales slowed down, he just invented a religion based on Dianetics. And where he made all the new members buy a book? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I forget. I forget exactly what it costs. But if you, in order to get to OTA8, which is the highest level of Scientology, it's going to cost. It's going to cost. cost you at least a half a million dollars in 15 years. Wow. Yeah. It's insane. Sorry, it was a tangent, but I thought it's sort of interesting. I actually, yeah, I, yeah, that's, it's very much a money-based religion.

I mean, and they definitely pursue, it's funny, like, you know, Catholicism, like they're going after the poor. you know it's like that's not a winning strategy um uh it's not a it's not a good business model but uh but yeah they're uh they're going after the rich so it's okay so so they're they allow in this testimony of from scientology and they allow in discovery and evidence and they're able to figure out that there's a pattern of conduct here and And Masterson is found guilty. It's a bad day. Even if you did it.

It's just a bad day. This is a bad situation. So he's probably looking at, and I'm not sure how California works. Because when I heard 30 years to life, I thought he might get 10 years. Because in the federal system, they'll say, he's facing 20 years. It's like, wait a minute. The statutory maximum is 20 years. But I watched a video and they were like,

yeah, no, that's not how it works in California. Yeah, so California, the judge will give the sentence of 30 to life, right? So what is that? 360 months to life. And as they would say in the federal system, right, we're going to give you this obnoxious number of months and then you get to count it by 12. Yeah, yeah, you get to divide it by 12. The judge will give him 30 to life.

And at 30 years, he will become eligible for parole consideration by the pardon of parole board of California. Doesn't mean he will get it. Doesn't mean he will get out. You think about it, Charles Manson was eligible for parole like 50 times. Yeah. So I tell people, don't be intimidated by that. It doesn't mean a whole lot.

Just because you're eligible doesn't mean you're going to get it. First of all, if you did 30 years, my God, it's 30 years. Yeah. He's 47. He'll be 77 when he gets out. So 30 years is that you don't get time off. But 30, it's. Yeah.

The only time that. I could foresee he might get credit for would be time served in the county jail but he was out on bond yeah he was living at home so he's not going to get any credit for time served in county listen

listen and being a sex offender in state prison being a sex offender in a state like in a federal system they'll send you right to a low where there's a bunch of sex offenders you'll have you know you'll be around a bunch of you know like-minded individuals and

It won't be that bad. It's not going to be great. People are going to be rushing to make friends with you, but there will be out of 2,000 guys. There will be seven or 800 guys that are there that have some kind of a charge similar to that. And so their numbers are big enough that they can sort of self preserve. Exactly. Because of the mass. Right. Now, the problem with him is that he'll go in saying, that's not true. And this is. So he'll try and he'll try and migrate toward, you know, the, the, the, the, the. other the probably more the white collar criminals and you know they'll either shrug him off or they'll be like yeah all right you went to trial you're saying you didn't do it whatever but eventually within three months he'd be okay in the federal system that's not going to be like that in the state system no so as i understand as i understand the california penal system uh in the states i practice we call something different california calls it the sensitive needs yard or sensitive needs unit okay And that's where you're transgender, your self-affirming, practicing homosexuals, you're mentally ill, intellectually disabled, your vulnerable population go. He will be put in a sensitive needs unit for his own protection.

Because he's not a physically imposing person either. He's maybe five foot seven on a good day. Yeah, yeah. So he's not a physically imposing man either. So he's not helping himself out there either. You know, it's different if you're six, eight, 400 pounds. Right. I don't care how bad what you did was.

You're just physically hard to screw with. Right. They're taking a whole bunch of people. He's not a big man. In fact, if you look at his crimes for which you've been convicted, I'm going to plow this person with alcohol, and then I'm going to put a drug or chemical in this alcohol that renders them either incapacitated or in a compromised psychological and mental state. Yeah, physically because I can't physically overpower them. Right. I get that.

Yeah. So he's not going to have an easy run of it. Even if it's only 10 years, that's going to be 10 miserable years. A lot of it by yourself or with individuals with whom you don't want to spend time. Right. Oh yeah. And there's some, there are, in the federal system, there are horrific individuals that will, they will try and defend themselves. They will argue with you about like they'll start talking about like in other countries, it's, okay it's for the age of consent is 14 or the age of this or you know a hundred years ago this would have been normal it's like what are you doing like maybe just don't talk about it you're not making anybody feel better just because you could have married her on the titanic it's sake see how well that went for him right so uh yeah he's got he's gonna he's gonna have a hard time he's had listen right now he probably the first 90 days is just horrific yeah i actually have a friend that does legal work for federal inmate. And so his name gets passed around. And so

he basically, he'll file motions for you. And he's not an attorney, but he'll file motions for you. And your family pays him very little money. But certainly not what a lawyer. A lawyer might pay, you know, $15,000. You pay a lawyer. $15,000 might pay him $500 or $1,000. And honestly, probably get just as no offense to your profession and probably get you. No, no, I get it. Get of an outcome.

Because here's the benefit prison lawyers have, a jailhouse lawyers have, and even when they get out, if they still sort of do the jailhouse lawyer thing on the outside, as you know, the best thing and the worst thing about being incarcerated is you have enormous amounts of time to just do whatever you want.

And if you spend hours in the library, that's how we get through law school. We just read constantly. But then we get out in practice and we don't have time to read because we're in court, we're in meetings, we're filing motions, we're writing, we're briefing, and you don't read like you did when you were in law school. If I had luggage, you're just reading cases all the time, I'd be an absolutely perfect lawyer. Some of these jailhouse lawyers also know exactly what they're looking for. So sometimes the jailhouse lawyers know more about the applicable

law than the actual licensed attorneys do. I was going to say, I've, well, anyway, real quick, I was going to say, and then I'll get back to that. So here's the thing. My buddy actually knows several women that are locked up with Elizabeth Holmes and the women that he's doing legal work for have been like oh she's she's in rough shape yeah you mind she went from a mansion

straight into you know granted it's like it's a camp but it still sucks and they said it's still hard time it is I mean look any time away from your family and very uncomfortable as as much money as you can try and pump in there in the end it's still a shitty

mattress, hard plastic chairs, everything's made of concrete and iron. It's just not a comfortable environment. So, so she, they said she is miserable, walks around, like doesn't want to take a shower, like she's shuffling, she's mumbling to herself. They said, she's, she's, it's been all of her time on the computer. And you can only go on the computer for like 15 minutes and you have to wait 30 minutes. So she goes on for 15 minutes and 30 minutes later, boom, she's right back on it. You know, she's using all of her phone minutes immediately. You can only get like three hundred a month. They're gone in a few days. So, um, but, so I was going to say right now he's, he's definitely going to go through it. The other thing I was going to say is the nice thing about

the prison lawyers is, you know, you can basically, these guys, let's say there's 12 legal computers that are connected to the federal legal system, which is a version of PACER. You don't get all of what PACER has to offer, but you get a lot of it. They, they, they only give you so much. So, but you've still got 12 guys on those computers, not 24 hours a day, probably 12 to 14 hours a day. And as soon as anything is found, any new law, any new anything, any new avenue of relief, it circulates throughout the whole prison. As soon as anything comes out, and as soon as one person gets a motion that gets relief, everybody's getting copies and reading it. So even though you're limited, your ability to get that information processed and, and circulate,

to come back to you, especially if you're a guy that does legal work. The other thing is you're mass producing these motions. So you're doing them for virtually nothing. So I'll do your motion. You give me a few hundred dollars. I do the motion. You have your family put it on my books or however you want to pay me in commissary. Get me some wham whams and some powder milk. And I'll do the motion. And you put it through. And the government comes back and you go back and they come back. you do back for, and then it fails. Okay, and then they tell you why it failed. Well, now the next guy that comes in had is a similar case, you know, that one didn't work last time.

So you do it again, did you throw enough, you throw enough spaghetti against the wall, right? Like something's going to stick. I'm not going to have that the same. But these guys get, they're mass producing these briefs, and they figure out what works. And so they get a lot of practice. Well, and that's the deal. What these guys are doing in a couple of years, it takes, It takes the actual law, the judges and the lawyers, 20 years to do, because they get this, they get an order back denying the relief.

It fails because of this issue. Right. Because you failed to prove or plead. So then the next one they file, they prove, they plead it and try to prove it. And then there's a denial. Okay, well, you failed on another ground. Eventually, you plug all, you stick your fingers in enough holes in the dike, it quits leaking. Yeah.

And they have to open the door. What's so funny is, so I don't know if you know much about my case. you know, I got 26 years, right, 26 years and four months, 316 months, which, by the way, the calculation for my lawyer, when she did the calculation, and the judge said 316 months, my lawyer looked at me, she goes, that's 20 years. And I went, that's 26 years and four months. So the fastest calculation I ever did. Yeah. So I got 12 years knocked off my sentence by filing two 2255s. Now, 2225s. Now, 22, 555, the ratio is out of every 3,500 that are filed, one gets relief. And I had two filed. One got me, one got me seven years off and one got me five years off. So, you know, like, it was impossible. But the guy that, it was just an impossible situation. Like I, I, but the guy that did file those for me was running a, mid-sized law firm out of that prison. He had probably six people typing up motions. He probably had another eight or nine people doing research for him. He had guys that he called his associates

that did things like divorces, child custody battles, got detainers taken off, or your state detainers taken off of people filed, you know, lesser motions. And then he handled all the 2255s and appeals. I forget what those are called in the federal system and the certificate of... It's probably a motion for post-conviction relief.

Right. So he was... And listen, he knew he knew all the statute. He could just quote the statutes for you. He knew it was insane. But he was mass producing these things. It was insane. And I think that's a testament to

when people meet a lawyer and they're super intimidated. Oh, you went to law school. Law school's not hard. It's just teaching. Right. Anybody could be a lawyer. I mean, it's easier to get into law school now than it ever has been. The problem is very few people have the work ethic to do what these prison lawyers do. But it's easy to have that work ethic when you don't have a choice. I mean, there's nothing else to do. It's either that or gang bang or commit some other act of violence that's going to get you more time. If you have a choice, it's, we might as well spend it trying to get ourselves out of here. If I can't get out, I might as well help my buddy get out of here. Right. I was going to say he, you know, the other thing is like, you know, you graduate law school, you're not ready to go into a courtroom. No. You know, so, but these guys, they, they could literally walk out of prison and go into a courtroom. And they're, they've, they've done so many briefs, so many motions, so many. I mean, they've done so many. So it's like when I got my, my license to be a mortgage broker, like, yeah, I have a license. I couldn't fill out a loan application. I don't know what these. these, what exactly they're looking for. I can't, you know, I don't really know how to put together a loan

submission package. I just know the, you know, I just know that an FHA roof is supposed to last seven years. Like, I know a bunch of rules that really don't help me, um, originate loans, fill out applications, put together packages, submit loans, you know, do a punch out list on, you know, for stipulations from on underwriter. Like, I don't know any of that. But these guys do. They, they've done all those. Now, walking into a courtroom, they might not. know, you know, where they're supposed to sit, maybe some of them, some minor procedural things, but they've, they've represented guys. They've gone back and forth, back and forth. And they've done it in the hardest way. They've done it through the mail. Yeah. They've done it using phone

calls and stamps and making copies. And whereas lawyers now, you know, they write it up and they submit it online and, you know, it's much easier. Yeah, we don't even have to physically sign the pleading anymore. I finish the pleading. I send it to a paralegal. He or she spell checks it, grammar checks it. I put eyes on it one more time. I say it's ready to go. They attach my electronic signature, upload it to PACER takes three minutes. No, no, no, no. This is a huge ordeal for these. Yeah. What you're so funny is at one point, the government in my case, they filed something on like a Monday. I received my copy in the mail on like a Wednesday for mail call at 4 o'clock, maybe Thursday at 4 o'clock, whatever it was. And I remember Frank

wrote a motion, had it typed, Frank was the name of the attorney to represent him. Sure. And he was obviously in court, in prison too. He read the motion, filed a motion, had it typed up and back in the mail within a couple of hours just because the government had requested something from the court. they put in what's called the rule 35 they put it in a reduction which is what I was asking for but not what I there was the minimum they were like oh he wants a reduction they fought back and forth back and forth

we fought back and forth for months and then finally they said oh okay you know what we'll give it to you boom 30 months and so before the judge could rule on it we had something back in the mail so he got it by Monday so that he and it was basically a do not rule

on this motion you know by law and by this statute I'm allowed to put evidence in front of the court before you make that determination. Their hope was before Cox even gets this and gets a response that judge will have already ruled. Yeah, because this is, this is what's different about the federal system than the state system. The federal court system is a very efficient, fast way to do things. Federal district court judges, especially appellate court judges, have tons of support. They've got law clerks. They've got courtroom bailiffs. They've got all this administrative support. And they'll give their law clerk. Here's the issue. Here's

how I want to rule on it, go find the research, and write it, write a draft. They have magistrate judges even have magistrate judges. Yeah, they have assistant judges to do all the legwork. Right. It's like, who signed off? This isn't my judge. Oh, this is a magistrate judge. What's that?

Yeah. My judge. Yeah. And so it's a very efficient way to do things. And so federal court, it's hard to get FaceTime in federal court. Federal court judges love to just read the pleadings, read the briefs, and rule on them. Listen, I don't need oral argument on this. The law's pretty clear.

I'm going to type up an order and submit it. And as a lawyer, it's nice to get those orders quickly, but it's frustrating that I can't go advocate for my client in person. The judge says, I don't need to see you. I'm going to write it down. Go away. So, listen, I'll tell you something. You'll probably appreciate this in a horrible, horrible way. I was locked up with a guy who his name was, gosh, come on, Matt. His name was, I really liked him, too. Keegan. Jim Keegan. I've talked about this before. So Jim Keegan was locked up and Jim Keegan had come from state, the state of, I don't know where it was, like Illinois or something. So he'd come from the state. Jim Keegan came and everybody was like, you know, oh, what's your deal? I'm here for co-mingling fund, right? So that was his argument was like co-mingled funds. It wasn't my fault. He blamed it on his partner, blah, blah, blah. They just hate. hated my guts because I was such a notorious lawyer and I used to represent gang members and

I went to trial like four different times and beat the state in court on murder charges for gang members and so they just hated me and they were desperate to pin something on me and this is what they pinned on me and so so I signed I took five years I'll be out in about three years you know um well and so as a result of him being a lawyer guys of course come to him and say hey will you take my case i i don't like to do look i don't even do federal law i do state law i know but you're still a lawyer and what am i going to do one to go to one of these guys and they don't really know what they're doing and so you know and he's like i don't know well how much money do you have well what kind you can't even pay me and and so he would put it off and put it off and it built up so much

there were just tons of guys who wanted, wanted to hire him. So he waits for about six, maybe eight months. Now, he'd come from the state system in Illinois, and he'd been doing a ton of legal work. And so other lawyers, other jailhouse lawyers, and even real lawyers, would come to him and ask him to look over, you know, review stuff. And he'd review that he'd talk to him.

And these guys have extensive legal background. Some of these guys went to law school. some of them just have been doing legal work for 20 years and he would talk to him and nobody ever suspected that he was just a con man it would tell people you know hey if you want your family to look me up

have them look me up here you know my name's Jim Keegan well he was Jim Keegan Jr his father was a famous lawyer and there were tons of stuff on his father who had represented gang members and people for multiple murders and got him off over and over again So there were all these articles and so these family members on the street are saying, oh my gosh, this guy's amazing.

This guy, yeah, we've got to hire this guy. How much will he do it for? And he'd say, look, put $1,500 on my books. Or his brother actually was a lawyer. Send my brother $1,500. Because I'm going to work at his law firm when I'm finished or when I leave here. So guys are sending his brother $1,500, putting $500 on his book, $1,000 to his brother. So he's like, look, you understand that it's not, we're not going to be done by the time I leave here. But I'll work on it when. I get to my brother's law firm and be in a better position then, too. So he wrote a few legal briefs back and forth and really in the end got about $30,000 to $40,000 out of the inmate over the next eight months and ate like a king. Yeah. You must have gained 20 pounds. And then he got out of prison and went, did go to his brother's law firm to pick up the check. And so what happened was and just stopped responding to anybody.

So there's a ton of guys that have. a whole bunch of motions that are halfway in in the process of fighting cases a lot of times they didn't have a prayer he just took the money and filed frivolous stuff anyway he got out and people started writing his brother's law firm and then his brother wasn't responding his brother people family members called the law firm and his brother was like my brother doesn't work here my brother's a con man what are you guys talking about he doesn't work here I mean yeah there was a guy he he had people write me checks but that was for like he was like you know he's gambling in prison or he you know for whatever reason like he gave his brother a whole slew of different

reasons so um then people started right inmates started writing letters to the to the bar his brother just started stroking checks to people writing all these people back yeah 1500 a thousand two thousand twelve hundred i knew guys in prison that didn't even give Jim Keegan any money wrote a letter to his brother and his brother wrote him a check for $850 you know they're just he's just desperate to he got him his brother in a situation well then his so he took that money he went out and he opened what appeared to be a law firm in in uh I want to say in Chicago I have the article he opened a law firm and basically talking about it was for immigration as an immigration attorney

collected over the next eight months to a year, I think he collected almost half a million dollars from illegals that he was filing paperwork. Even started printing out fake green cards or fake paperwork from the immigration, whatever, and giving it to these guys, thinking if they get pulled over and they give them the card and they realize it's fake, they'll arrest them,

I don't have a problem. So, I mean, this went on. until eventually he came and he got arrested by the feds again, went back to, back to, back to prison. But I mean, this guy has made it a career of pretending to be an attorney. And because of he, because he did for three or four years, he did legal work in prison, he could fool any attorney into knowing and into believing that he knew exactly what he was talking about. Yeah. Amazing, I thought. So some of the creativity by, by people who are doing time is pretty, impressive. You just sometimes wish that we had maybe redirected it towards something that's a little more practical. But there's some, I don't like it when people say that people in prison because they're idiots. No, people are in prison because they had some pretty darn good ideas. They just got caught. Yeah. But I was, I was getting in the comment section, I was get guys to tell me, well, all the, all the good, or if he was a good scam artist, or if he was any good at being a con man, he wouldn't have got caught. Everybody gets caught. Yeah, it's not if it's when. Yeah. There's just,

I mean, even Bernie Madoff got caught. The reason he got caught is because the housing market exploded and all the investors wanted their money back. But he had the hedge funds in Greenwich, Connecticut were just providing diesel fuel for that operation. And if we hadn't had that blip in the housing market, he probably would have died without having gotten caught. And there was no money. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, I knew a guy who went 15 years on a Ponzi scheme. Yeah.

And it only happened because the housing market crashed and people started wanting his money. You just couldn't come up with all the money. Like, I don't have $100 million. I got about $15 million. Yeah. And that's the deal. The government will catch you. And the deal is, especially the federal system, the FBI has a blank check.

Right. They will spend all the time it takes. They will spend all the money it takes to go get and get. secure a conviction of whatever it is they're trying to get. And we saw that. I don't know if you know who Michael Francis is, former mafia guy who moved out of Southern California, right? That was his whole thing.

He beat the state several times. But when he finally pled, the Fed said, we got people who are going to squeal. You know, we got your money, man. We got your partner in the gas business that's going to testify against you. Right.

John Gotti, the Teflon Don couldn't get the charge of the stick. They got him. Right. And these are guys who have buckets of money. just handing out $100 bills to everybody they see with all the protection in the world and violence to back up the ability to get out of things and they still get caught. Yeah.

Yeah, listen, I was in prison with guys that had been to the state, they'd been to state two, three times and beaten the state over and over again. I'm like, well, what happened? I took a plea for 15 years. I'm like, why? They're like, oh, well, the fed stepped in. Did you go to trial with the feds?

And they're like, no. No, if I lost at trial, especially with the bail reform act and the sentencing reform act of the 80s and in response to the white-collar crime in New York and Chicago and New Orleans and some of those in Kansas City, the bail reform act and the sentencing reform act, suddenly guys were getting 500 years. Yeah. They used to get 15 and we're out in four or five. Now they're getting 500-year sentences.

Yeah, it's insane. Anybody can do five years. Anybody can do 15 years. 500 years is a death sentence. Yeah. And 500 years changes the game. Suddenly, I'll plead to 30 years because if I lose at trial, I'm looking at 500. Are you kidding me?

I'll plead to 30, cooperate, end up with 10. Yeah. Make my chances on the street, you know? Because all those guys that I'm cooperating, they're going to go to jail. Either they're going to turn around and they're going to cooperate or they're going to get those 30 and 100 year sentences. And I don't have to worry about them killing me. Yeah, that's essentially what Franzi says. Now, he never did cooperate, but he said, he's asked, are you scared?

He said, no, everybody who has beef with me is either dead or in prison. Right. I've outlived everybody. The people who, the people who are still in the street life, they don't, I don't have issues with them. They don't have issues with me. I didn't do anything wrong to them. Yeah. Like, I'm not, I'm not worried about them.

The people that I had concerns about are dead or in prison. I've, I've beat them. Um, so, all right, so wait, so back to me. Masterson. He's got an appeal. What are the chances he, what are the chances he gets any relief at all on an appeal? Oh, probably very little. The state had a pretty solid case. The judge would have to make some pretty significant errors in ruling on, like, rules of evidence. And judges, as they should be, are given a fair bit of discretion with the rules of evidence. We don't, we don't want judges being micromanaged. We want them to be independent arbitrators of this process.

Right. And so unless the judge made very significant errors, I don't know that, that, you know, his best relief would be a new trial. There was certainly enough evidence to convict. So it's not like there was no evidence the jury got it wrong, which can happen. Well, I was going to say it didn't happen here. The first one, he got acquitted. No, so the first one, he was, it was a hung jury. So that's neither a conviction nor an acquittal. You go back to the starting line. and start over. Okay. So, so. I was going to say, so obviously, like, if he gets a couple of things, he only needs one thing or return to say, hey, this could have thrown the, thrown the case, and they'll give him a new jury. I mean, a new trial. Yeah. Yeah, theoretically, what you do,

what I do see a lot of criminal appeal opinions say, the defendant raises, the convicted person raises to say five, five errors on appeal. And the court says, the appeals court looks at, says, you know what, the judge got point one wrong. The problem is there was so much other evidence that even if this testimony was not allowed in, the jury still gets there. So yeah, this is an error, but there was so much overwhelming evidence

that even without this error, the conviction is still, they can still get to the conviction. Right. You have to, yeah, you have to prove that it would have, it would have changed the outcome. Yeah, that the error by the judge

created irreparable. harm to the outcome of the case, not to the person, not to the defendant, but irreparable harm to the jury process. They gave a bad jury instruction or they made a statement on the record they shouldn't have made. They allowed in evidence they shouldn't have allowed or testimony they shouldn't have allowed. And there's no way for the jury to unhear that. You can't unring the bell, put the cap back in the bag, whatever analogy you want. And it was so significant that his rights to an impartial trial or a trial in front of an impartial jury was violated. we have to try it again.

That's really his only hope is that there was some major issue. And although it wasn't covered heavily by the press, the second one was covered a little more than the first one. His first trial was at the same time as Harvey Weinstein. Same floor of the courthouse

as the Harvey Weinstein trial, which had all of the mainstream media. It was just a bunch of Scientology bloggers and Huffington Post and maybe a few other sort of internet-based media for the first trial. He was covered a little more, heavily during the second trial.

And most, in L.A., which is, you know, sort of the public publication capital of the world, the journalists who are working the crime beat, most of them are lawyers. So they would, if they saw or heard the judge do or say something that was very wrong, it would have made the papers. I mean, they don't have bubble right out of journalism school sitting in the back taking notes.

They generally have lawyers or legally trained people serving as journalists in this capacity because I'm not a professional baseball player. I'm very poorly equipped to write about baseball. Right. They're going to fight a baseball player to go write about baseball. It's sort of the same theory. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching. If you like the video, do me a favor and hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this. Also, consider joining my Patreon. It's only $10. Also, we're going to leave Zach's link in the description so don't forget to

click on the link and go subscribe to his channel. Leave me a comment share the video you know the deal. I appreciate it. I really do appreciate you guys watching and I hope you did enjoy the interview. See ya. And I'm going to end this so hold

on.