Unheard: True Crime in Their Own Words - Mark Geragos on Diddy, the Menendez Brothers & Defending America's Most Controversial Clients

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Mark Geragos has spent more than three decades at the center of some of the most high-profile and controversial legal battles in America.From Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, Winona Ryder, and Scott Peterson to Erik and Lyle Menendez, Geragos has represented clients whose names dominated headlines around the world. Most recently, he served as an advisor to Sean "Diddy" Combs' defense team during one of the most closely watched federal trials in recent memory.In this episode of Unheard: True Crime In Their Own Words, Justin sits down with one of America's most recognizable defense attorneys for a candid conversation about the justice system, celebrity defendants, media narratives, public perception, wrongful convictions, the Menendez brothers' fight for freedom, and the challenges of defending clients in the age of social media.Whether you agree with him or not, Mark Geragos has had a front-row seat to some of the biggest legal stories of our generation.Topics include:Sean "Diddy" CombsErik & Lyle MenendezMichael JacksonScott PetersonCelebrity trialsMedia influence on juriesThe court of public opinionHigh-profile criminal defenseAmerica's justice system🎙️ Subscribe for more conversations with the people closest to the stories that captivated the world.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today's guest has spent decades at the center of some of the most famous criminal and civil cases in America. He's represented everyone from Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, Winona Ryder, Scott Peterson, Roger, Roger, Roger, Richard Clinton to Eric and Lyle Menendez. Most recently, he made headlines as an advisor to Sean Diddy Combs' defense team during one of the most closely watched federal trials in the country. Over the years, he's faced off against prosecutors and cases involving murder, sexual assault allegations, celebrity scandals, political controversies, and media firestorms that dominated the national conversation. If you've watched high-profile trials over the last 30 years, chances are you've seen him standing on courthouse steps surrounded by cameras, defending clients in cases where public opinion was already often decided before a jury ever even heard a word of evidence.

You can love him or hate him, agree with him or disagree with him, but there's no denying that Mark Garagos has been one of the most influential and recognizable defense attorneys of our generation. Today we're talking about the justice system, the media celebrity defendants, public perception, the Menendez brothers, Sean Combs, and what it's really like defending some of the most controversial people in America. Mark Garragos, welcome to Unheard. All right, Mark, so you spent decades sitting next to the most hated person in a courtroom.

From that seat, what do you see about our justice system that the rest of us refuse to admit to ourselves? Well, there is no such thing with people who are infamous getting a presumption of innocence. When you walk in there, I've got the, I can't tell you the number of times I sat next to a client. especially in federal court. They say the United States of America versus and then their name. That's one of the most frightening things you could ever hear,

not only as the client, but as the lawyer. I mean, you know, it's like I often say they have an unlimited expense account on the government side. Yeah, and this is a good segue into this. So you've represented some of the most hated people in America where the government's gone after them. and when you walk into a case,

because usually when you have something like what we're talking about, there's been a lot of media coverage already. And so when you walk into a case where the world has already made their decision, they've decided that your client is guilty, what is your first job as a defense lawyer? You try to freeze them to remind jurors,

and I fervently believe this. And next to military service, I think jury service is the most, the most stivic duty you could have. And the reason I say that is we fight all the time about what is a democracy, you know, is there still a democracy? The one thing that separates us from other countries is a real trial system with jurors who stand between clients and the courthouse door, front door and the jail door. So you defend these people, a lot of them are already hated, right? I'm sure you've probably

gotten the question more times than you can count, how do you defend these people? How do you defend these monsters. What's your honest answer after doing this for all these years? And I will tell you, anybody who's done this for a living will tell you, I think, the same thing. It's not original with me. That if you're not doing your job to the best of your ability and you worry about that, it's misplaced. When you really worry, the time you really lose sleep, the time that really Nazewea at chief is if you truly believe your client is innocent. There's nothing more nerve-wracking than having an innocent client's fate in your hands because it's almost inconceivable that in a system that's designed to let nine guilty go free so that we don't convict one innocent

to have the hands or the one innocent in your hands. hands is just, it's, it's, it shatters you to the core. I never thought that's got to be very heavy. It is. I mean, especially when we're talking about, well, there was a period of time in the 80s and the 90s in California, reminiscent of now what we're going to, the kind of tough on crime, we've got to warehouse people. We look at humans as inanimate objects.

And, you know, we cycle through that period through American history. But what's interesting about that is back of the 80s and 90s. I had a string, I wanted to say for maybe seven years where every single case I tried, that I was trying cases back to back to back, was a lifetop case, meaning the consequences were that if I lost that trial, the person was going away for life. You know, I'm a guy who likes to go to Vegas and gamble or I used to. And gambling didn't have the same rush for me after you go through, you know, a year, a couple of years worth of lifetop trials. I mean, that can shake even the most steady a hand.

With that, what would you say your most nerve-wracking trial that you've done was up to this point? Well, you know, that's interesting because there isn't a case where I still don't get. get butterflies nervous, anxious, even now. I'm doing this, I'm going, I hesitate to say this, but going into my fifth decade, I get as nervous now as I do, as I day originally. And I think if I lose that, I'd probably stop practicing. I will tell you the case I've probably lost the most sleepover

is Scott Peterson. And I thought, I thought, I tried as good a case as humanly could have been tried, and I still don't think, and I have never seen to this day the evidence that says he was good for it. In fact, I would say the opposite. I would say having sat there, and I think at one point, 20 years ago, I knew the evidence better than anybody in real time, and he just was not good for that case, and that's nerve-wracking to me ever since. I will tell you one of the regrets in that case, I've said this before, is I joined with,

kind of reluctantly joined with the prosecution in opposing cameras in the courtroom. I thought that would damp down the interest in the case and try to get, so, you know, the jury was not sequestered and I was worried about a jury that was not suppestered. That was a mistake because it just, it just increased the urban, legends and the craziness surrounding the case and made it incredibly difficult for Scott to get a fair trial, which he didn't. Well, I'll say two things to that whole thing. The first thing is the fact that you still get butterflies, that tells me that you still genuinely care about what you do, which after all, like you said, five decades, your word's not mine, of doing this. That's pretty

impressive that you haven't been desensitized to it. The other thing is I would truly agree with you. So, you know, I do this and I'll report on the facts and do the short form of the long form. But, you know, even most recently the Diddy trial, which your daughter, Tini just, you know, was part of the defense for when you didn't don't have cameras in that courtroom, which I know with a federal courtroom you can't. When you don't have cameras in there, then the urban legend becomes more and the people don't get to see exactly what's going on like they would. Well, and part of the frustration with Diddy and as you mentioned, the federal court is in the district court there are no cameras. And leading up to that Diddy trial, there was

all this, you know, he was kind of portrayed as the Black Epstein, if you were. He had tapes, he had this, it was blackmail. And it was all nonsense. And it was all complete nonsense. And then when the trial unfolded, people who were in the courtroom were like, what, I don't even understand. We were told one thing in the run up to this case. And now what we're seeing is completely at odds with what this is nothing but relationships, toxic relationships that he had, and in some cases not so toxic relationships. And so I think that's one of the reasons the jury acquitted on all the serious charges. And he was left with two Man Act convictions, which Alexander Shapiro, who was both on the trial team and as the appellate lawyer, just argued in front of the

circuit. Yeah, I saw that last week that they were from a recording last week when they did that. How do you think that's going to pan out based on your experience? Boy, I will tell you, you listened. I love listening to oral arguments. I like doing oral arguments in the courts of appeal. And it's always tough to prognosticate because you had one judge there who was very hard on both sides, which is one of my favorites. I love equal opportunity commons. And it's a lot of as long as they're not doing the heavy lifting for the prosecution on all for it. And so it was tough to see which way they were leaning. There was another judge who I think understood intuitively what was actually going on here,

which was that the prosecution had these two Man Act violations, which originally was called the White Slavery Act, which, by the way, you and I, before we start, recording. I said I did get my knuckles wrapped by the judge in the case for commenting that I thought it was a bad look to have a black iconic entertainer businessman billionaire being prosecuted by a six pack of white women and the judge told me it was inappropriate. And I respect Judge Sobrahamean immensely and would never disagree with him. Although I think the interpretation of a six-pack was not like a six-pack of beer. It was that in California, when you do a photo ID of a suspect, you put in what's called a six-pack,

which are six pictures of booking photos. So that's what I was referring to. Gotcha. I didn't know that. Yeah, nobody does. So my fault for using the nomenclature in kind of a flipping way. Well, let me switch gears real quick on you. I'm talking about another case that I know that you're dealing with,

one that I've actually worked very difficult or very closely with the family, well, Anna Maria Barralt. And that's the Menendez brothers. What are your thoughts on what's happening with everything? I don't even know where to start when there's just so much. It's hard to, it's hard to know where to start. I have become, especially with Lyle, in fact, I've got, if I were doing this podcast in my office, my home office,

I've got his, one of my, the great honors was he gave me his baccalaureate, out of UC Irvine robe, if you will, that he wore in his graduation. One of the top 10 professional highlights of my career was watching him graduate down in the inaugural class by UC Irvine's joint program with the Department of Corrections. And it was just wonderful to see lot of people who had turned their life around. There was a valedictorian speech, not by Lyle, but by somebody else that was truly impressive. And I went down there with my friend Brian Friedman, who most people know from the Baldona case, but he and I looked at each other and just said,

wow, this is what a testament to redemption stories and things of that nature. I, you know, another thing, I'd give a shout out to Judge Jessica, who was the judge who the DA's office in L.A. County and specifically the recently elected DA, Nathan Hawkman, went out of his way to kind of showboat and make a case against them getting resentenced. And I think did a disservice to his office saying to the case. But Judge Jessica saw resentencing for what it is. and did not get sidetracked by kind of all the bromide and plethe festival that the DAs engaged in and resentence them. And it's up to the parole board now. And I'm hopeful that the next parole hearing, that both Eric and Lyle, who've done tremendous work when they had no hope for over a decade. and when nobody was watching, so to speak, I forget the person who first playing the phrase is, character is shown when nobody's watching.

And when nobody was watching, they were doing the hard work and they made the right decision when they had no hope. And so they, if anybody deserves to get out, those two doves. And for the record, I agree with you. And for people who don't know, and while go into this more detail with Anna Maria's episode, but, you know,

if I'm not mistaken, they created a program, I think it was Eric that did it, for elderly inmates that's now been adopted throughout the entire state of California, and then also the green space initiatives that they did. So they really done a lot of things. So people understand, speaking of the 80s and 90s, in the 80s and 90s, California went off the rails, so to speak, and we just locked up everybody for everything. It was kind of a crazy moment, tough on crime, blah, blah, blah. And people will say, well, we should do that now. Well, the consequence of that is the law of unintended consequences. You now have this elderly population. I've been to these prisons.

You have nothing but people who were now basically bankrupting the state for because of the medical care for people who are on death's door and who've been locked up for decades and have no prospect of release, number one, and who have very little prospect of recidivism, rightful. So what Erit started is you've got all these people now dying and prisoning, started a hospice program. Well, one of the great things about that is that it really has had an incredibly emotional and psychological impact on the younger, inmates. The younger inmates are there, and for the first time there is an empathy is developed

in a lot of them for the first time. We will see them pushing around guys in wheelchairs. You'll see them tearing in the infirmary for inmates who are terminal. And it's had a, you know, a firsthand impact on these people in a way to your point where it's been adopted elsewhere. Now, the Green Space project is interesting. This is something the Lyle came up with. And the previous one was Eric's maybe separate and apart these guys were coming up to this. Green Space Project was originally a Norwegian concept that if you redesign the interior space of the prisons, that you reduce the rate of recidivism so that when they get out, it's a transitional path. And what's so fascinating about this is I often tell people, well, you can lock up people, you know, supposedly throw away the, the, the, the,

but there's always going to be people who are let out. And if you don't want them to come right back in, if you want them to be functioning when they're let out, do everything possible to give them that opportunity. And that's what the Green Space Project does. And it's really remarkable. I've been down there several times to Donovan, R.J. Donovan where they're doing it.

They've converted this kind of gray morass into this welcoming community. And it really is a phenomenon on a watch and it's been successful. In fact, when we did the hearing on the resentencing and put on at least one he made that I remember, who said he graduated from the University of Menendez. He's been out for seven years, does not have so much as a traffic ticket, and he credits both. He was with them both separately and said they were tremendous influences on him. And by the way, speaking of Anne-Marie, speaking of Anne-Marie, what a delightful woman.

I'm so taken with her and that family. It's amazing. I am too. And here's the thing I'll say about that. We all can agree that murder is wrong, you know, and should they have gone to prison for what they did, absolutely. But then you look at somebody like Gypsy Rose, who's out in 10 years,

and these guys have been in there now for close to 40, and it really just doesn't seem, with all the evidence out there, obviously I believe the abuse, you know, when we look at the signs, that we have now, the understanding of therapy and sexual abuse that we have now, they fit all of the signs of that trauma. Well, and by the way, you know, for everybody who doubts it or says it was concocted,

and I've heard the jokes and the me, I've seen the memes, but remember one thing, trial number one, who's separate juries? And they presented evidence over months to two separate juries, one for Eric, one. for Lya of the abuse. They got to present their defense. And both juries separately deliberated, and both juries split right down the middle between murder and manslaughter. But the most compelling to me is, and both of them are getting a little bit older, is both Kitty's older sister, Joan, who was almost both a maternal as well as a sibling figure because of the age difference has adamantly testified not once but twice, but she wants them out and she believes that Kitty

was enabling this horrible behavior. But Jose's older sister, who, I mean, imagine this is her baby brother and she considered Kitty, her closest friend, has also testified. I mean, that's pretty powerful to me. And whose interest, if you're the DA who's adamantly opposes. Whose interests are you vindicated? Marcy's law is designed to give victims impact in a voice, constitutionally in California. So other than showboating,

what difference says it makes to the DA and why are they so adamant in trying to oppose parole? It's grandstanding, in my opinion. I would agree. It almost feels like he's got a personal vendetta. Yeah, and I've got my belief as that too, and I, you know, it doesn't go unnoticed that when he was in private practice, we had his dad's firm represented one of the companies back in the 90s who was affiliated with Jose at the time. So there's always, somebody once told me, in any case, do you want to get an explanation, follow the money. you know, so I want to go back to something you said earlier if I can,

because as I would love to hear your opinion on this, when you were talking about recidivism and the Green Space Initiative that Lyle came up with, obviously, you know, you're trying to prevent people from going back into the system, but for a lot of the parts of the country, it's a for-profit prison system. They want people to reoffend and come back. What are your thoughts on all of that?

Well, I think, oh, I think there, There's a role for whether it's for profit or for here in California, we've got jails where for people who can both afford it and who have shorter sentences, they can serve it in a city jail which gives local communities sometimes on a revenue stream. And I think there's a role for that. And, you know, we've done the experiment with no cash bail. We've done the experiments with defund the police. I just think the criminal justice system, there needs to be kind of a recalibration as to what we're doing. You don't need to lock up everybody and consider all humans as inanimate objects and warehouse them. You don't need to dismantle a police force completely.

There is a happy medium and one that's rational and one that kind of takes, it takes protection of the victims and at the same time allows for robust defense of individuals who are accused of a crime. That's what makes America so great. You know, when it comes to, and I think that's a really great point, so thank you for that. When it comes to cases that you, I mean, I don't even know how many you've done over the years. I stopped counting jury trials at 300, and that was 15 years ago. Yes.

Wow. Is there a case that you regret turning down? And if so, why is that? I don't know that I, you know, it's interesting. Once again, I come back to Peterson. Everybody in the world told me not to take that case. Everybody. I'm almost uniform.

With the exception of my father, who told me at the time he was still alive, but he had just had a stroke, like two strokes right before that. And he said, listen, if you're worried about your reputation, well, if you're worried about what's going to happen to you, if you lose, because the odds are against you, you're in the wrong light at work. And that resonated with me. And that's why I took the case. And I remember when I lost CNN, I've still got a little snow globe.

Somebody made it for me. CNN did an online survey back in 2005 as to whether I still had a career. And luckily for me, the public voted two to one. I still had a career. Well, and you know, this may be an unpopular opinion, and I have stated this before. I don't care who you are. Everybody in this country, even if the facts are pointing straight to them, deserves a fair trial.

And once we get away from that, then the whole Constitution just goes to shit. Well, it's exactly right. If you don't have checks and balances, if you don't have, I've often said cases that it's kind of funny. People say, well, ask the question, I think you started or kind of danced around it a little bit in the beginning. Well, how do you defend somebody you know is guilty? And I often will examine that because I'll say, well, you know, a lot of times a client will come in and pretty much admit their guilt or they're, kind of a guilty conscience about it. But then when I start probing, it turns out this has happened more than once and with actually greater frequency than you expect. But sometimes that guilty

conscience comes from what they were really doing, which was not criminal, but was embarrassing. And they don't want to admit to what they were doing because the sheer embarrassment and shame overcomes what they're being accused of. So it's not my role, and it should never be the lawyer's role to be the judge. There's a role for the, a role for the judge, if it's not my role. My role is to investigate counsel and zealously defend. Contrary to the prosecutor whose role is not to convict, their job is to do justice. So they've got a prosecutor's actually got a higher duty and, uh,

a higher bar, so to speak, than a defense lawyer does. So I want to ask you, I'm going to give you a two-part question. So I'm trying to go through because I know that you're very limited on time. But you've defended everyone from Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, Colin Kaepernick. Which of those cases do you feel the public gets most wrong? And then second to that, it could be any additional cases. Is there a moment in a high-profile case that you wish people could see from your vantage point that they get law? You know, I think that Mike Tyson was an interesting, fascinating case to me.

Mike had and his wife Kiki are two of my favorite humans. I don't see them much or talk to them much in the recent past. But when they first came to me, Mike was in a place where he had been so taken advantage of And he was still under this kind of never-ending bankruptcy kind of constraint that he just couldn't get out from under it. It was awful. And one of the great things was to watch extricating him from that, helping to extricate him from that, watching his wife Kiki being just incredibly supportive. And I just watching what has happened since then with him and kind of his return. his always iconic status, but now kind of sage wisdom to where, in a lot of ways,

Mike is, I know this is hard for some people to believe, but when I was growing up, Muhammad Ali was in that exalted iconic status. And you thought, did anybody ever, nobody could ever get to Mahomet Ali iconic status? Mike is kind of there, in my opinion, in a lot of ways and has overcome the, all of the challenges and most of the challenges, and I think is just so wise. And I just don't know that a lot of the people have seen just what he had to deal with and what he had to overcome. And really, the love of a good woman in Kiki, who help him get there.

I mean, that's, to my mind, that story is one of the great redemption stories that I've ever been associated with in some small way. Going back to what I said earlier with Michael Jackson, I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't, while I have you here, if I didn't ask you about that case. Where were you at when you first took that one on, like going in with, with every, I don't even know how to ask you this question, but I'll just let you kind of take over because I think you probably know what people want to hear. Yeah, well, look, I've often said that the

I did an investigation before the case ever became anybody ever knew what was going on. And Michael had hired me prior to that. And that investigation led me to all of the things that later came out in the trial. I knew, however, when he was indicted that that first count was directly a kind of a shot in my direction at me that for a variety of reasons. I knew I would be a witness, which is one of the reasons that Ben Brothman was brought in by Johnny Cochran, because I called Johnny at the time. Johnny had his own health challenges then. And I said, Johnny, this thing, I need somebody because potentially I'm going to be a witness here. He brought

and Ben and Ben became one of my closest friends and we handled that case together. I'll never forget standing. Ben tells this joke better than I do, but it's really kidding on the square. At the arraignment, we were standing there next to the limo as we walked out of the arraignment, and Michael in one fell swoop kind of jumped up and was on top of the Lincoln Navigator of the Escalate and was dancing on top of it. And Ben turned to me, and without missing a beat said, if we don't get this guy under control, he's going to come to the trial in his pajamas. And I couldn't stop laughing, but it ended up happening. But I ended up testifying not once, but twice in that trial, because I did not at the time believe that

Those charges, there was anything to those charges. Based on what I saw, I can't speak to anything else. But those charges specifically I thought were infirm. And I don't think, you know, I tried mightily to talk with the late Tom Sneddon, who was the D. San Bernard B.A. Even taking to lunch one day to try to convince him that this was a fool's errand that he had no case. But he was determined to try that case. file that case in trial. So with Michael, some of his past accusers are rearing their heads again. What are your thoughts on that doing it? I briefly reped some and I've seen that

and I'll let that play out. I'm not going to weigh in on me and that. All right. That's fair. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, it broke up. Say that again. That's okay. I know that. I'm on a busy street.

And I'm here in beautiful California, and you're where all the L.A. people fled to in Nashville, right? I am. And there is a lot of California people here coming in in droves. But it's not a bad thing. I have a friend, his name is Dan Coutulo. He's a producer, director out there, and he's here half the time, there half the time.

And I'm trying to get out there. And anyway, it's a whole thing. Well, I don't know if you've seen it. But Rick Caruso, just, did a video, and I think it was from Nashville, lauding Nashville and what the local government has done there and comparing it to LA. So there's clearly some lessons to be learned. Well, I know one thing that they recently did, and I haven't seen it, but this might be it. I know in California they passed a law so that if you are an influencer and you're using your

children and they're under a certain age, you're not allowed to do that anymore. And so a lot of them fled to Tennessee for the freedom to be able to do that. And then Tennessee just passed a law saying the same thing that California said, which is you can't use your children, you can't exploit your children for financial gain by using them as, you know, as an influencer. As trops as influence as well. There was a woman in New York many years ago who I met at the Madison Square Eats, who had a kid that had become kind of a phenomenon on social.

media back then. I forget the handle, but, you know, I've got mixed emotions about that. My personal thing is, you know, I have a large following. I'm 3.2 million people across all platforms. I never show my daughter, never. So, but it's, I'm old enough to remember when you never, I'm old enough to remember when you blurred the kid's faces, you know? Yeah. I mean, I remember that too, but yes, you do have a couple years on me. Yes, I do. You have more than a couple. Well, it's, yeah, well, fair. What is a question that nobody has ever asked you that you wish they would ask you?

This is supposed to be something that, you know, I'm trying to get something out of you that maybe nobody else has. And you have your own shows for that. You know, the, I wish, nobody asked me this, but they asked my friend, I mentioned Brian Friedman. And Brian is kind of the. go to fierce entertainment litigator in Hollywood, but

he's my good friend represented the Menendez family during the re-sentencing. And somebody asked him who would be the most feared TV lawyer for you to go up against? And Brian answered, Mark Derrigus, he's on TV a lot. And I get a kick out of that answer.

And the old joke about I may not be a lawyer, but I play one on TV. I think the one question is, and I've kind of addressed this, do you like the name or the thing celebrity lawyer? And no, I will answer that, asked and answer that. I hate that term, celebrity lawyer, because even though I've represented celebrities, and I think those are some of the hardest cases to defend for a variety of reasons because of all, we could spend an hour, we could spend an on why. But I've also probably handled 10,000 other cases over the years of people who nobody's ever heard of. And one of the more gratifying things is when somebody will stop

me and remind me that I represent them and save them or save the loved one's life and they've turned their life around. That's a great feeling. And so from my purely narcissistic ego standpoint, that's probably the most gratifying thing. Well, now, now, now, I have to ask you though, what lawyer would you either, it doesn't have to be on TV either, but what lawyer would you fear going up against either for the first time or even again? Or would you hate to go out against again? I often say that incompetent lawyers or are the worst lawyers to try a case against, somebody who doesn't know what they're doing.

because if it's a jury trial, you do not want to come off as beating them up. And sometimes because they don't know what they don't know, it's virtually impossible to get them to assess their case adequately. And as a judge Alexander Williams once told me, who was a judge in the LA Superior Report, who I greatly admired and respected, a trial is to find out which lawyer is the bigger asshole. That's funny. You said something a second ago talking about how you hate the term celebrity

lawyer and even when you and you, but when you represent people who have huge names like Michael Jackson is a huge name, I don't think you can get much bigger than that. You know, you're going to get kind of, you're going to get that moniker. But you also said you've done like 10,000 other cases that people don't know. So kind of want to ask you this, how much of a difference do you think in getting a fair trial does money make? Because, you know, obviously somebody like Michael Jackson, you know, who's got the fame, who's got wealth, other people that you've represented.

How much of a difference do you think that makes when it comes to these cases? Well, you know, if you're infamous, you do not get a presumption of innocence. You have a presumption of guilt. If you're famous, you do get a presumption of innocence and you can fight. But, you know, I had this conversation not too long ago with Joe Takapino. And Joe was representing in L.A. who's in my backyard here, farming in my backyard. And he ably represented ASAP Rocky. And it was amazing to me that that case went to trial.

And I kept saying to Joe, why is this case going to trial? I mean, Joe brutalized the accuser. I mean, it was like nothing you've ever seen. And he never should have been, ASEP never should have been tried in that. But his whole life was in the grips of that. And he took the chance and he rolled the dice. And he turned down an offer that very few people would have turned down.

And there's a reason he vaulted into the audience section into Rihanna's arms. because that was the ball game for him. So I'm not so sure that being a celebrity, in fact, I know that being a celebrity is not helped. Sometimes you get charged because you're a celebrity. A lot of times you might beat the rap, but not the ride. And that's what usually happens. And with that, I must go.

All right. Well, I appreciate your time on everything and for giving us, you know, giving us some great insight. Thank you so much for joining us today, Mark. I appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Good to see it. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. Unheard is intended to provide a platform for personal stories and lived experiences, not to establish facts, determine guilt, innocence, or provide legal, medical, or professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to conduct their own research

and form their own conclusions. Thank you for listening to Unheard. heard.