Ep. - 1709 - SATURDAY SERIES: ALICE LACOUR

0:00You know those pieces in your closet that you just find yourself reaching for over and over again? That sweater that somehow works with everything. Maybe the jeans that you know will always just fit right, or maybe that bag that you carry everywhere. Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe, and that's exactly what Quince does so well. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and washable silk. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. Their 100% mongolian cashmere sweaters started just $50, giving you the softness and quality that you would expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. My quintessential Quince outfit, white jeans, mongolian cashmere sweater, black ballet flats, tote bag and sunglasses. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands, and they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality in that brand markup.

1:00And it's not just a peril. Quince brings that same approach to everything that they make, from hotel quality bedding and bath to kitchen essentials, and thoughtfully designed furniture. They make well-designed pieces for everyday living. Find the fall pieces that you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to quince.com slash Kate Casey. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too, that's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash Kate Casey. I can't control what my kids bring home from school, or who's coughing on my flight, but I can control whether my kids and I are getting the nutrients we need every day with grooms. Grounds kids is the same comprehensive formula for ages 2 to 13 for when back to school and cold season, hit at the same time. Grounds are a convenient comprehensive formula in one delicious daily pack of gummy bears. This isn't a multivitamin, a green scummy, or a prebiotic.

2:02It's all of those things, and then some, at a fraction of the price and the bonus, it tastes great. Vegan, nut-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, no artificial colors or flavors. A generic multivitamins that only contain around 7 to 9 vitamins. Grounds have 20 plus vitamins and minerals and 60 ingredients, which include nutrient, dense, and whole foods. Low carb, low calorie, and low sugar also a sugar-free option too. It includes 6 grams of prebiotic fiber, which is 3 times the amount of dietary fiber, compared to the leading greens powders and more than 2 cups of broccoli. And the Grounds ingredients have gut health, beauty, energy, immunity, recovery, and cognition benefits. And the ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. I've been taking my greens for 20 days, and this is why I love them. You can save up to 61% off with free gifts with code Kate Casey at groons.co. That's g-r-u-n-s dot co.

3:11Welcome back for another episode of Reality Life with Kate Casey, and welcome back for the Saturday series episode. My guest today is Alice LeCurr, a former federal prosecutor, current litigation partner, and co-host of one of the biggest legal true crime podcasts out there, The Prosecutors. But before we get into the cases that she's worked on, I want to start with her origin story, because it's not what you would expect. Alice grew up the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants in a small town in Georgia. She didn't even speak English until the end of kindergarten. She was one of the only Asian kids in a town she describes, in her own words, as quite literally black and white. She was bullied. She didn't know it at the time. And she spent years thinking her job was to blend into the background. It took her decades she told me to realize that she actually had a voice, and that voice would eventually become her career. She studied economics because it was math-based, something her engineer father could relate to. Law was not even on a radar until a professor pushed her toward it.

4:14She laughed out loud when he suggested it, and we'll fast forward, yell law school, a clerkship for Judge Keith Ellison in the Southern District of Texas, then a second clerkship on the fifth circuit, then federal prosecution working, spanning guns, drugs, white color crime, child sex trafficking, domestic violence, and along the way she served on the confirmation teams of two Supreme Court justices. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, she had a baby, literally during a trial. She stayed on her feet through closing witness cross-examination while in labor, handed off her closing argument binder to co-counsel, and then went straight to the hospital, and months later a juror recognized her at the grocery store and told her that the jury had run a pool on one sheet of birth. And now she's a mom of four. Then we get into the podcast itself, and specifically to her most consequential cases, the first is at Non-Sahead, the subject of the podcast, serial, whose conviction for murdering Hayman Lee was vacated in 2022 before being reinstated by Maryland's high court.

5:19Alice and her co-host Brett spent years combing the trial record and landed somewhere deeply unpopular, that the original conviction was correct. That conclusion brought them cease and desist letters, defamation threats, and online harassment, including she told me, people posting her children's names and ages. The second is the case dominating headlines right now. Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother on trial for killing her three children, who was arguing she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis. Alice is covering that trial in something close to real time, and she was pretty candid about the backlash. This time she said the anger is aimed at her specifically because she's a woman in a way. Her male co-host simply has not experienced. So her larger point was this, whatever the jury decides, that verdict shouldn't become the entire referendum on how we treat postpartum mental health. Lindsay Clancy, she said, is one woman being tried under one very specific legal standard, and the larger conversation about maternal mental health has to keep getting spoken about

6:23regardless of the outcome. It's a wide-ranging conversation about immigration, imposter syndrome at Yale, motherhood in the middle of trial work, and what it actually means to sit with the case that the public has already made its mind up about. Here is my interview with Alice. Well, here's my new friend, Alice. I'm so excited to talk to you. I'm very inspired by your career and thrilled that you're with me today. Thanks so much for having me. I always love talking to another woman doing incredible work in the space. Oh, thank you. All right, well, you have to first tell me about your family growing up because it's easy to look at somebody who has an incredibly exciting career, and that's on the back of years and years of study, but it starts with a little girl who at some point decides, like, I want to pursue a career in the legal field. So tell me about your family growing up. And the moment where you thought, this is the career I want to move towards.

7:26No, thanks for asking that. I think people forget. It's easy to get lost and think. I'll never get there when you don't know such an origin story. So my story is, I think, not like many others. I never knew a lawyer growing up. My parents moved to the United States as immigrants from Taiwan. My mom barely spoke English. We spoke Mandarin at home. I was born here, but I actually didn't speak English until the end of kindergarten. So when I went to school, it didn't know any different. We had a strong community. We went to like literally a Chinese bank, a Chinese church, a Chinese grocery store. So though we lived in the United States, I didn't know that I didn't speak the language that other people did. And my parents actually didn't even intend to stay in the United States. Their jobs ended up keeping them here, but they always loved their home. They loved being back there. So we would spend every summer there. And so in a lot of ways, it was like that was my home. I kind of grew up into cultures.

8:27And then I show up at school and all of a sudden I realized I don't look like anybody else. I grew up in Georgia. The small town that I lived in, there were no other Asian people there. People were black and white and quite literally black and white. And people couldn't understand why I looked different. And then on top of that, I didn't speak their language. And of course, I didn't understand that the problem was me. So I was immensely bullied. I didn't know it was bullying at the time. I just knew that I was strange. I was different. And my job was to blend into the background because if you blended in and no pick on you, I think that was really formative in the sense that I didn't have a voice that mattered. And it took me, I think, decades to realize not only do I have a voice that matters, but I've been given a voice that I can use for others, which ultimately led me to my career as an attorney. I don't think if I didn't have that experience in the beginning, I would have quite appreciated

9:30how important it was to be able to take a gift and use it for good. So that's a very long way of saying, I'd never had to be a lawyer quite frankly. What did your parents think about this? So they, my dad's an engineer. So very different from the law. I read growing up, but I didn't know anything about the law. I didn't watch the news. This was a really foreign world to me. Even when I applied to colleges, they didn't know how to help me. They'd heard of famous schools, but they didn't know application fees. They didn't know how to help me study for the SAT. And so in a lot of ways, I went into it blindly. And I'm thankful for that. So there wasn't pressure to necessarily go to the best schools. It was just, I don't know, this is what Americans do. I guess go to a school. And so I studied economics in college because it was math based. And I understood math. My parents understood math. It was something that they could relate to. But then as I was studying it, I graduated and thought I was going to be an economist.

10:34And things took a funny turn. I did research with a professor who was a law and economics professor. He was the one who suggested that I go to law school. And I remember laughing out loud when he said it. And I said, not me. He goes, oh, yeah, no, absolutely you. And I didn't even know how to go about it. I didn't know that you had to take an LSAT at the time. And so he invited me to it. And my parents didn't, again, didn't understand the process, but they were supportive. I will say, I say this to people who may not have family members who fully understand what they do. It's okay. My parents support me. They're proud of me. They have no idea what I do. Quite frankly, and it's okay. I try to explain it to them, but we do live in such different worlds. You know, lawyers in their country are very different from lawyers here in the United States. And they see my name on briefs. They see me do oral arguments. They hear me speak, you know, as a legal commentator on TV. And they can be proud of me. But they don't know, you know, what I'm doing.

11:36And that's really wonderful because this is an amazing country. Like I could go from not speaking English to being able to speak, you know, on TV, explaining the law of a country that is foreign to my parents. Like how amazing. When you get to Yale Law School, did you feel like it was a diverse community? It was. They did an incredible job. You know, maybe decades ago it wasn't. But when I went, there were a lot of us who we found each other quickly. Well, we thought of ourselves as the misfits in the sense that I didn't feel like a belonged. I think everybody has imposter syndrome if they go to an Ivy League. And certainly I did. I mean, I'd seen Yale in the movies. I didn't know that that was somewhere I could go. And so I had good friends who, you know, their parents were federal judges. They founded quite literally court TV. It was one of my classmates. These people who had grown up in this world, I felt like they knew everything. But Yale was clear to tell us, you know, we're all here together.

12:39It doesn't matter how much you started. We're all on the journey together. And so again, there was that imposter syndrome, but I was really lucky to be surrounded by other people who were there for the right reasons. You know, everyone had different paths. They were pursuing. But people really went there with genuine hearts to want to do something good with their legal degree. Do you feel pressure as a law student to know immediately what kind of law you want to practice in the same way that an undergrad is asked, you know, even before they get to freshman year, like, oh, what do you want to study? What do you want to do? And it's like, you don't even have a minute to just sort of study just general stuff. So do you feel pressure as a law student? You have to know now, especially to place like Yale, you have to know what kind of practice you want to go into. Oh, absolutely, especially in the law, you kind of have to plan everything here as an advance. So when you're lost in it, you're applying for clerkships with judges three years out. Maybe four years out. You decide cities to apply for law firms in. Here's an example.

13:40I applied for all law firms in one city where I was dating a guy and as soon as those interviews, he broke up with me. Oh, well, there you go. That's a life lesson never planned for a guy. Exactly. Don't plan around a guy. But yes, you're right. You are people think, you know, you've made it here. Surely you know what you want to do with your life. And I will say one thing. I certainly never in a million years thought when I went to Yale that I would be a podcaster in a decent, being a lawyer, but that was certainly not, you know, what I'm going in. Now, clerking kind of puts you inside a judge's head before you're inside of a courtroom yourself. What is something that Judge Ellison taught you that you still carry with you? I was so lucky to get to clerk for two amazing judges. The first one on the district court was Judge Keith Ellison in a Southern District of Texas, which is in Houston. Key was phenomenal. You want to talk about someone who on paper looks like he belongs in all the ivory towers

14:42of the world. I'm pretty undergrad one, all of the awards there. He was like the best student at Harvard, basically. Then I went to Yale Law School. One, all the awards there was essentially the best student at Yale became, you know, went to, was it got a Rhodes scholarship scholarship? Yeah. prestigious, you know, academic scholarship and goes to study over at Oxford wins all of the writing prizes there. This is the man I'm supposed to write for. And he was a man was, he still is. He is a man with such incredible humility. And that's what makes him an incredible judge. This is having quite frankly the most stellar resume of anyone he will ever meet. He comes to every single day with immense humility. I remember, you know, we would go help out on the border of Texas. We would go to Laredo, which had a judicial crisis in the sense that they didn't have enough judges to deal with a lot of the immigration and criminal cases that they had there.

15:42And the courts were drowning quite literally. And that's not good for the criminal defendants because if you are waiting for a judge to determine your fate, you're not getting to be free. You have to sit, you know, usually in a jail waiting for the judge. So that's not just for the defendants. And he would go down there and take us clerks with him. And we would knock out hundreds of cases in a week. And you would think in dealing with 300 cases, something like a legal reentry, something like that, which you can imagine may become wrote after a while, not with Judge Ellison, each individual person. He heard from their families, he heard their stories, he heard their struggles. Now, he was in a position and when she had to make hard decisions about their lives, but he never lost sight of humanity, of all the thousands of people who appeared before him. And that's why, you know, this is not true about judges. If you go visit his chambers, which is kind of like a museum and you're allowed to go visit it because it's a public space, there are thousands of letters from criminal defendants

16:44that he has sentenced to jail, writing him letters of criminal events. And he was in a position where he was not able to make a decision. And he was not able to do anything, for changing their lives in the way that he treated them. I mean, if that's not a life well lived, I'm not sure what is, but that instilled in me very early on. Never get too big for your bridges. There is no ego in this job. If you're willing to work hard, you can do good, but never think yourself bigger than, you know, what you may be. Is that a decision that came later maybe even during the clerkship itself? Yeah, no, not at all. And after when I took that clerkship, I thought, great learning experience. I can't imagine myself as a litigator, partly because I didn't really see people who looked like me. Honestly, the litigating world is male dominated. They tend to be older men too. There was a true, you know, this man comes in with white hair and they, they kind of pal around with the judge who's usually also an older man and everyone is just pals

17:47and their friends. How am I supposed to enter in when people think I look like I'm 12 years old and I don't look like anyone else and I'm the only female in the entire courtroom. So it never entered my mind that I could do it, but my judge really instilled a lot of confidence that we needed different voices because that's the important courtroom is going to be, that they need different representation. And so that was the first time I thought, you know what? There are so many people, this is supposed to be a court for the people and there are women, children, immigrants, you know, all these people, people who may think their voices don't matter or don't have the voices to be able to speak because they don't know the language. Maybe this is my opportunity to be able to represent, you know, much bigger population than just myself. And so that was the first time kind of an inkling in my mind. I thought, I want to do public service. And I think I have a voice that can be magnified for others. I also wonder too, yeah, for lawyers, how hard is it to turn the volume down on your own

18:50lens? Like your job is to look at things so black and white, but you are a woman, you are a minority. I mean, those things are very core to who you are. So how difficult is it and how much do you have to turn that volume down? So if that's a great question and this is actually something we tell Jerry's all the time, we don't ever say you have to check your experiences and your life views at the door. In fact, what we want people to do is bring it with them because it's actually the beauty of the different experiences in which we can view the law and the facts that hopefully these different views illuminate closer to the truth. So I don't claim that my view always will get to the truth, but maybe if my view and then another side is looking at it with their lens, if we're all looking at it with prisms, trying to reflect truth and maybe we can get to truth closer together. But recognizing that you come with preconceived notions is great and then to recognizing

19:51check that as well. So if I have a feeling about something, I dealt with a lot of domestic violence and child sex trafficking cases. Devices. The first thing you want to do is just be like, that person is a monster. Usually they are, but take that initial gut reaction and you know what's going to lose and what's not going to get justice for the victim. If I just come blazing into courtroom and say, like, look at that piece of trash, throw them in jail, where's your evidence? Madam prosecutor, I have none. He's just a horrible person. Absolutely no conviction. The victim will not get justice and potentially a dangerous man can go walking if I let my own initial gut reaction be unchecked by evidence and good investigation. And so I always think about it that way. It's not that I'm necessarily even trying to change my mind, but I recognize, okay, I am predisposed to want to see this way or to believe this particular witness. Let me double check that and make sure that I can back it up, corroborate it so that what I want to be true doesn't somehow stand in my way of being able to seek justice.

20:55And I think all lawyers do try to do that always to varying degrees of success, but if you're able to come from a place of humility, it could help you from being blinded where your case may have holes. Last week I decided to spring clean and it turned to do a complete gutting of my youngest daughter's room. And now we're in half later, it looked totally barren. It felt so good to get rid of so much stuff. But I knew I had to add things back into the room to make it look more refreshed and homey. And that's why WayFair is the best. WayFair helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value and trusted reviews. WayFair verified products are hand vetted by product specialists using a 10 point quality inspection. You can shop thousands of products across every style and budget, whether you're trying to refresh your space for fall or maybe transform your space for Halloween. Use filters, customer photos and reviews to find the right fit for your home.

21:56More than 20 million verified five star reviews help shoppers buy with confidence. Plus WayFair rewards members 5% back on every purchase. So the girls got new blankets, new lighting and adorable accent pieces that make it seem like the best version of a kids room. My next task is looking through all of the storage options to find a great way to hide all of those stuffed animals. There are so many options in every style and for every budget at WayFair. Transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join WayFair rewards today and get 5% back on every purchase. So head to WayFair.com or shop the WayFair app for all things home. That's w-a-y-f-a-i-r.com. Okay, make this back to school season. You're smooth to start yet. Get your family back to school ready with expert online tutoring. Weizant tutors will review last year's material and then prepare them for what's ahead. So your child can start the school year with more confidence and fewer nerves.

22:58Weizant is the nation's largest network of tutors trusted by parents nationwide, with more than 65,000 expert tutors across 350 plus subjects. They make it easy to get personalized one-on-one online tutoring that fits your schedule and budget. Lessons are online from the comfort of your home and scheduled around your family's busy routine. So whether evenings, weekends, or after practice, Weizant makes tutoring work for you. And you pay as you go, no subscriptions, no costly packages, just the help you need and when you need it. Over 12 million lessons booked and 4 million five star reviews and they also help you with extra curriculars like piano, chess, and more. Help your child succeed in school and boost their confidence with Weizant. Go to Weizant.com. That's w-y-z-a-n-t.com and book your first lesson today. Use my code podcast15 to enjoy $15 off your first lesson. Go to Weizant.com. Use code podcast15 and give your child the tools they need to thrive.

23:59Do you hate that heavy cake on makeup look? Oh, it is the worst. I hate that feeling of being in a makeup prison like my skin can't breathe. I like makeup that feels light and dewy and that is exactly why I love Jones Road Beauty Miracle Bomb. It actually enhanced my skin instead of masking it with layers of makeup, with the effortless natural look that I was looking for. You can use it as a highlighter, bronzer, blush, or a lip tint and it's the ultimate no-fuss multitasker. I love it as a pop of color on my cheeks. No brushes, no complicated routine. You just use your fingers and go which has simplified my routine and it gives me that your skin but better glow in under 60 seconds. I rub it right on before I walk out that door. It's my everyday 5 minute face. You can touch up right before work, school drop off, errands, or dinner plans. It's the makeup you reach for when you don't want to overthink your routine and the best part of Jones Road Beauty, all of their products are actually good for your skin. Modern day makeup that's clean, strategic, and multifunctional for effortless routines

24:59and for a limited time my listeners are getting a free full-sized mascara on their first purchase when they use the code Kate Casey at checkout. It's head to Jonesroadbeauty.com and use code Kate Casey at checkout. After you purchase they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support my show and tell them that my show sent you. Have you recently cleaned out your closet? Are there clothes that you keep saying you're going to wear but you never do? You keep thinking to yourself, I swear that trend is going to come back. Are you trying to make room for new pieces? Have you realized how much money is actually sitting in your closet? You need to try Vinted, a second hand marketplace app with a mission to make second hand your first choice. Vinted helps their members find great deals and easily sell the clothes that they no longer wear, giving quality items a second life again and again. So whether you're clearing out pieces that you no longer wear or want to find unique items at great prices, Vinted makes it simple to refresh your wardrobe, earn extra cash,

26:03and give your clothes a second life. Plus, with no seller fees you get what you earn from every sale and the app is a free download. I think you deserve more space in your closet and more money in your pocket. And to know me is to know that I love getting rid of things. It's my favorite pastime, you can just ask my kids. I love the feeling of having a refreshed closet. Are you ready to clean your closet and make some extra money? Feel the Vinted app for free and start listing. With no seller fees, you keep every dollar that you earn and for a limited time, enjoy free shipping in the US on Vinted. During trial, what makes up the biggest part of your work is that the front load, you know, before you get to trial, do you find that the bulk of the work is in the middle of trial? Is it at the end? I mean, obviously, it's like a marathon, but what do you... Maybe a difference?

27:04There's a difference in each case. It could be different, but what does it seem like is the heaviest part of the work? Trial is its own animal. There's a case. There's a legal case that all leads up to the ultimate trial and the entire case that much of the public doesn't see. Like if we're watching this publicized trial, you're just seeing the Koda, the finale of years of work. The work actually goes all the way back to before you indict a case if you're the prosecutor, the investigation stage, because even though you continue to investigate a case throughout trial and into trial, you determine at the front and before the public even knows there's a case whether you hold this very important duty to the public to make sure that you have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt because you're thinking about trial, which maybe year is down the line. And that's a heavy load because you have to think about strategy and you have to think long-term. You're always playing a game of chess and not checkers.

28:05You cannot be doing just one step in front of the other. But when it gets to the actual time of trial, it is an animal and a beast like no other in that you eat, sleep, and breathe the trial. So I don't see my kids quite literally weeks leading up to trial because I will be spending every waking moment usually in a conference room. We call it the war room prepping for trial with witnesses, with your law enforcement offices, with your experts, with your co-councils in order to piece your case together. And that is an immense amount of planning on the front end because while the rest of the world may just see a trial where witnesses are called, you ask questions, you sit down. If you're the prosecution, you have to build out the entire narrative of the case in the first instance. So in a lot of ways, the trial is handed to you like a blank sheet of paper and your job before you ever step foot into that courtroom is to sketch out what is the narrative and

29:05then how do each of the witnesses place within it. That's why it's so much work and it is an art, not a science. Once you're in trial, it is like a marathon. It's fatiguing your up is 5, 6 a.m. You are in court 12 hours a day. What you see in court is just maybe half the day because afterwards there's going to be legal briefings. You're going to be filing emergency motions with the court. You're arguing legal arguments to the court. You then leave, try to grab a snack bar as you run off to prep the next day's witnesses, which is usually 8, 9, 10 p.m. or you're gathering with your other attorneys and you might go to sleep at 1 or 2 in the morning, try to sneak in a shower because the jury notices when you start thinking. You do that day and day and day out for however long the trial is. If it's a month long trial, it feels like a lifetime. I remember I would emerge from month long trials thinking, what year is it? Have years passed? I haven't seen anyone or thought about anything except for this trial in that time.

30:08Have you ever run into people or walk past somebody or sit next to someone at a restaurant and you remember that they were on a trial that you worked on? Yeah, it's funny because I haven't remembered because I try very hard not to look at the jury. I don't want them to actually feel self-conscious but all they do all day, especially for the long trial, is stare at your face. I mean, they do inside and out. I mean, so it was funny because I never wanted a jury to feel that on the spot and it's the duty of the attorneys to make sure that there's decorum and so I feel like we have to take even more precautions but they can do whatever they want the jurors. And I had been very pregnant during one of my trials. I actually ended trial and went directly to the hospital and had a baby within hours of the end of trial. Complete end of trial. Not the end of the trial day. You mean the end of the actual trial. It was one day left and I was supposing arguments and I gave my binder of closing arguments

31:10to my co-council. I knew I had been in labor since about 11 a.m. that day. You wait, you're in trial during labor in labor. This is so killer and loud. I don't recommend it to anyone. This is so up my alley. It's just terror. Yeah, don't do this, ladies. Truly don't. But I knew I was in labor and it wasn't my first child and I tended to have slower labor so I was like, I have some time. We had the defendant on the stand. It was a intense cross examination. I was like, I am not going to draw attention to myself. We are just going to do this around 4 p.m. I stopped standing up. I would just stay in my seat because I was like, this baby might drop out if I stand out. Oh my God. Oh my God. Why? Wait a wait a wait a wait to win trial. This was a very, very bad bad man. He was a pill mill doctor. We can be 101 counts. So no sympathy in the sense of it was so clear what he says it on going to trial. This is not a case of false conviction whatsoever.

32:13And I was the only woman in the courtroom in the sense every other attorney was a man. I was so pregnant. I was so pregnant. I was like, literally like 10 months pregnant at this point. And so I stood out. So all the jurors very much knew who I was. I've never spoken to them. But they all knew that I was very pregnant. I didn't show it for the last day of trial. So they all just assumed I was having a baby. They were correct. Month later, I was at the grocery store and no longer pregnant, obviously. And a woman walked up to me and said, I was on your jury. We were all taking up. We did a pool. I hope that the baby was in the cart. I know, I know. And they were so sweet about it. I mean, it was easy in the sense that they ended up convicting, which was my position. So there was no awkwardness on that front. But it was actually a very sweet moment because it was such a harried moment. I had worked on that case for three years. That's why I didn't hand it off. I cared deeply about justice for the many victims in that case.

33:16And I had a child during that trial. And to have this kind of all come together, to have a jury say out loud like, thanks for showing up. You could have stepped away. There were other people who could try this case. But it was so clear you cared about it very much. And you were professional throughout all of it. And congratulations. It was a really beautiful moment. I mean, pointing to it was a woman that said that. That's true. Right? Because the men that you were in trial with, they were thinking about the pressure that was on your abdomen and your lower extremities during a pivotal professional moment. Yes, yes, exactly. In fact, this juror noticed something, maybe because she was a woman, which made me chuckle because I didn't fully appreciate it. But as soon as she said it, I knew what she was talking about. She said, I loved the power play you did. And I said, what power play? And she said, well, when you spoke at the podium, questioning a witness,

34:19you would turn to the side and lean against the podium. And so we could see your full belly. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, it was because my belly was to be. I couldn't reach the podium if I didn't hurt. But she thought it was power play. Go with it. Go with it. It was nature's power play. So I mean, we have to also note that you have four children and they're under the age of eight, correct? Yes, yes. I had so the trial, that was number two. He's six years old now. So actually, this is maybe a little, I don't know, more bid, but he knows who the doctor was that I prosecuted. And he's very fascinated by the story. It's his own story. He's going to say, yeah, that kid's going to be an attorney. Yeah, or a judge at some point. That's right. So he knows the story of what I did and how he was born. Because it is a great story, great story. But he follows the sentence of that man, because he's going to be in prison for most,

35:21he's still been in this whole time. So every now and then he'll ask me, so and so still serving his sentence. How was his habeas appeal? By the way, I love this kid. I love him too. He is something special, getting born and trial. But I just love that about him. So yes, I have four kids. You can do it too. I know that you five children, they make me better. They make me a better lawyer. They give me purpose. You are so efficient because you have to be truly no time wasted on anything. And I think I like to say it's my superpower for anyone who feels beaten down, because it's incredibly hard, of course, to be a working mother is I say, they give me a superpower. Judges can yell at me all day long, opposing counsel can yell at me all day long. Mistakes are made in a different time in my life. I may crumble because I think I did a terrible job. I'm not good enough. Those voices have no space in my mind because all I have to think about is, I don't have time to be sad or to self-wallow.

36:22I need to just get this done, fix the mistake, let it roll off my back because I have to get to soccer practice. Yeah, you're right. And I think that you probably pick up on nuances that others may not, because each child is a different person. So you have to study four different humans every day of your life. And that probably makes you a better attorney in the process. Yeah, that's a great point. It's really hard to group people together, which is always something that you can fall into a trap of, especially when you're prepping witnesses or picking jurors. You think this person looks like they fit the mold so they must therefore be great for my case. Not so if you don't pick up on little lots of annoyances or read a little extra when you mention something that they don't like the way you call something, or the way that you treat people.

37:22But I think the biggest thing is being able to use the EQ that children force you to develop because kids can't always communicate with their words at the time what they're feeling. Yeah, when you're on attorney, EQ is so important. You can't talk directly to the jurors. So you have to feel what they are picking up on, whether something is rubbing them the wrong way, the right way, when a witness is sitting across from you and you know they're lying to you. But all you care about is getting the truth. So it's not going to help anyone if you just start yelling at them other lying. They'll just leave. And then that doesn't help you or them. So to pick up on that lie, but then to be able to use that situation to get them to want to trust you and tell you the truth. Anyone who's a parent is probably your chuckling along, thinking I can be a great lawyer because you're right. This is what we do with kids all day long, is to almost help them communicate what they know

38:22but don't know how to communicate. And I feel like a really good lawyer can do that in the courtroom as well. There's information and knowledge in someone's mind, not necessarily just a witness, could be in an attorney's mind. And if I can pull it out in the right way to tell my story, then I've succeeded. But also a lot of your immigrant story probably leads into that too. I mean, your parents were in spaces where they couldn't effectively communicate and you probably paid a lot of attention to their body language. And you picked up on things about them because of the circumstances that they were in. Yeah, you're totally right about that. And also to, I think, grow up, a lot of immigrant children describe it this way, growing up in two worlds, like at home, it's one world at school, it's another world. Very much felt that. And so I remember when I worked, when I represented children in abuse and neglect proceedings, I was a guardian ed lightem. I remember one of the trainings told us,

39:22be careful about the language that you use. Instead of ask men, where's your house? They may not have a house. They may have a van, but that's home. So just adjust your language and recognize that not everyone may have the same life experience. So tell me about your home. Home could be anywhere. Home could be the shelter for the night, but then there's not that stigma of how to have a house. By the way, that's a great life lesson for everybody in general because you don't know if somebody has a home or an apartment or whatever. Right, right. And having grown up every single day in that, like quite literally going to a home that didn't speak English. And so when you speak a different language, you express the world in a different way. There are English words that there are not in Chinese. And there are Chinese words that just do not exist in English. And to understand that those words mean something very visceral and very real, but not to even exist in another language, is incredibly eye-opening to recognize. Not only do we see the world differently,

40:23there are entire life experiences that cannot be described in another language. Like talk about a total culture view shift. Now, you have kind of moved into a new chapter. It's not even new chapter because you still practice law, but you've added a chapter, if you will, to your career as a podcaster. And I think what people really love about you is your insight. I mean, you have incredible life experiences, but they really value your point of view. And you've worked on some really incredible cases through the podcast as well. And I wanted to ask you about a couple of them. The ad non-scied case. Tell me at this point what you make of this case. That case is really, it was an incredible journey because I never intended to be a podcaster, but I probably joined podcasts listening with a lot of you

41:25with the ad non-case in serial, this is decades ago. I like probably a lot of people, I was hooked. I binge listened to all of the episodes and that was it. I remember listening to it then, didn't do my own research, didn't come away, necessarily like, ride till dawn on either side. I was just thought it was a very entertaining storytelling vehicle. Fast forward decades later, I hadn't followed this case. I didn't know that there had been such a innocence movement of getting him released. And then it really drew my attention because obviously you have lots of podcasts and lots of movements typically around cases of innocence where people make documentaries and say that the prosecutors got it wrong. So that itself wasn't new. What was new about this case was that it was getting traction within the courts. So it wasn't just media. It was affecting real life. There was talk of him being released from prison,

42:26dropping the charges completely. And this was incredibly unusual in the judicial system. Once the case has gone through the jury and the jury has reached a verdict and all of the appeals have been exhausted. That's the end of the case. And so we were seeing something legally that was incredibly interesting and it was not interesting because the law had changed or the law was moving, but it was purely driven by popular view. And I found this incredibly interesting because it was powerful in the sense that you could move mountains quite literally. This is an unmovable mountain with media and or if we're wrong, you can use essentially mob rule to decimate the judicial system which is meant to stand in place of mob rule. And so both sides, kind of same size of the coin, but the implications were massive.

43:27And so when we started this case to cover it, it was really, we had no preconceived notions on it. It was a massive trial record. We went through all of the primary sources. We read every single transcript. It took literally years of research because we also had full-time jobs and children at the same. And we wanted to understand everything. So when I started episode one, I didn't know where I would end up in going through the evidentiary record and then the evidence that came out after the trial. We ended up somewhere that was very counter to what was the popular view of the time. The popular view of the time was that this was a wrongful conviction and that he was not guilty of the murder for which he was charged and convicted of. And the end of our saga, I say saga because it was a very long series, was based on the evidence he was rightfully convicted and he was in fact responsible for the murders. We've done this many times before. We have like hundreds of episodes of different cases.

44:29And I thought this was just another case. We'll do the case, we'll move on. No, how innocent I was at the time, not knowing the media world. We got season-discludders. We got people saying that they were going to sue us for defamation. You should never say these things to a lawyer when they know that they're legally rooted in nothing. And a lot of online bullying, and podcasts that grew up to attack us personally as human beings, Reddit came out, trying to post all of our addresses and my kids' names and their ages. I'm sorry. All because of a case that we were just looking at the record. And I mentioned all this because it was full circle. It was interested in this case because of the power of popular thought and media and what it can do for the judicial system, which carcans back to our very constitution, which is meant to protect our rights and the implications of it. It could be good and it could be bad. They're two sides of the coin.

45:30And here it was being used for the same harassment that we, that originally interested me in the case. The case. Are you feeling the same kind of fever with the Lindsey Clancy case? Oh, absolutely. And I chuckle at that all the way because the fury has grown in the last few days because we're getting close to, we're getting close to when the jury is going to have to come to a verdict. And what's been really interesting this time, I will say with the ad non case, that was a case of a man who was accused and convicted of killing his girlfriend. Whereas here we have a very devastating case. Of a mother who admits that she ended the life of her three children. And the question at the trial is whether she's criminally liable and she's claiming postpartum psychosis prevented her

46:30from knowing or being able to do anything but that she was controlled by it. So she's not criminally liable. This has obviously struck lots of parts in mind because it touches upon an incredibly important topic, which is mental health struggles postpartum. Mothers and the support of the medical system and family. I mean, this is all things that are incredibly important but our system is looking at whether she is criminally liable for these three children's deaths. And in covering this case real time, we are trying to convey what's happening in court every day because not everyone can sit in front of their computers, live streaming the trial. And a lot of it actually is foreign to the lay person because of what's happening. So we try to deliver what is being testified to, what's evidence, giving our insight into what's happening because it may not be totally clear to everyone who may not have a legal background. But in doing so, I specifically as a woman

47:32have angered a lot of other women who are watching this trial. And I'm okay with that. I always say criticism is wonderful. But I think, and it's people from both sides, people who think she's guilty, people who think she's not guilty by reason of insanity. The inflamed emotions, I think, come from a good place. They come from a place where people want to seek to understand and want to prevent this from ever happening again. But the way in which it is expressed is the exact thing that we want to prevent, right? The way we're attacking. It's usually ad homin and attacks. But I do note that this time around, the attacks are at me directly because I'm a woman, whereas my co-host is a man. And he doesn't get this much. You're kind of funny. He's been saying, what about me? Do I not matter? Because I'm a man. Like considerably more. And one, like, yes. Well, not just a little bit. But like I would say in Adnan, it was 50-50. And people would attack us individually.

48:33But this time it's very much so. The woman. And I do, again, I think it comes from a good place. But I think people need to be very thoughtful and how they express their disagreement. We've had this conversation at times before. Disagreement is the bedrock of democracy and I love it. That's why we love criticism. And we love good debate. And we want good rational thinking. But the moment you begin to just attack, it doesn't advance any cause, whatever cause you may be. Whatever cause you may be fighting for, it doesn't advance mental health for women. It doesn't advance anything to simply tear someone down because they disagree with you. The harder thing, of course, is to open your mind, perhaps receive an idea that you absolutely disagree with, then dismantle it with reasoning, rather than with anger. Mm-hmm. It must be so weird too, because you could have lost school. And that's this very idea you take one piece of evidence,

49:35maybe in a law school class. And you can talk about that for a week. And then we live in a time where someone can do that in a sentence and without healthy debate that's around it. Social media has allowed many people to feel emboldened to say things when maybe they haven't really vetted something or really thoughtfully researched it. And so it's just a cauldron of opinions when, I think, at the heart of it, we all kind of really want to get down to truth. So I don't know how to fix this problem, but I guess the one thing that I've come out of this with the Clancy cases that I think everyone wants to stop post-partum psychosis. They don't want this ever to happen again to any other children.

50:36And maybe that's the one good thing that's come out of it. No, I think that's right. And that's what's so ironic. I do think people yelling on both sides want the same thing. This case is just utterly devastating for everyone involved. No matter what happens, whichever side quote-unquote wins, there's no winners because those three children are not going to be brought back. And we want to live in a world where this can never happen again. So I completely agree with you on that. And I think if we all take a step back and think about it in that lens, we are hopefully able to work together with our powers to mind, be able to achieve that incredibly worthy goal. Also to set a tone for our own children, they look to us and that if we see something in a post or on the news and we immediately react to that, we're setting a tone for them to do the same. So it's better if we practice that where we have thoughtful conversations where we listen to another person's point of view

51:37and then just kind of talk it out. I think that is the best thing that we can do in a very small controlled environment, right? We can only control kind of our own selves, not the world around us. But in our own homes, we could do that to show our children that's the best way to come to answers solutions truth. I think that's exactly right. Now that's that we definitely have the model of the behavior we want. And one thing I wanted to note about the Clancy case, which I hope both sides will take to heart because we are probably days away from a verdict, whichever side and the jury very well may, not reach a decision, they very well may be hot. And I really hope for everyone's sake, like the witnesses' sake that they do reach a verdict, one way or the other so that we don't have to go through this again, because it's been a very devastating case to have to go through. Let's say for some reason, in this case,

52:37the jury finds her not guilty by reason of having postpartum psychosis. That doesn't mean there aren't steps to be made for postpartum help for women and help in general for everyone across the board. On the flip side, if she is found to be criminally liable and she's found guilty, that I hope the response isn't, well, there's nothing we can do. There goes the entire mental health system. No, she is a specific case that we are trying in the court of law under a very specific message she says standard. It may, the jury may or may not get it right, but it does not have to be the only answer for what we view on all postpartum help. She could very well be a woman who is criminally liable and we need more help in the mental health system. Both things can be true. And I think part of the heatedness of this debate around the case is that the two are being conflated understandably, but I don't think Lindsey Clancy

53:40should be for either side, however, this comes out like the only barometer of the mental health system that we are. If she's guilty, great, no work to be done or she's not guilty, you know, not guilty, we can never do anything about this. So I understand the passion behind that, but the way our judicial system works is that she is an individual person and she understandably has become the center point of a larger discussion about mental health. But there are steps after this that should go far beyond this case. I'm very hopeful. I really think that it's brought on conversations that people typically do not have. I feel like online, especially, I seem many more women discussing their own personal experiences. And it seems like in many cases it's something that they've never shared before. And I feel like once people open up and they share their story,

54:42it propels other people to do the same. And once you feel like you're not the only person in a room, I feel like that's, there's room for growth. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And that's one of the things we're hearing in the Lenti Clancy trial. She felt like something was wrong with her because she was experiencing this. And at least from all the women who are sharing their stories all over social media, I don't think she was alone. But in that moment, she did. Maybe because no one else around her expressed feeling those same feelings as she did feel alone. And that's a scary place to be. When you feel that no one else understands you. And I know that there were 300 women that dressed in pink that were outside the courtroom. And there were some people that took that as, I pro Lenti, I kind of thought it as, that's just pro women. That's women standing out of a courtroom and saying, please pay attention to the issues that matter to us, that affect us. And let's keep this conversation going,

55:44this momenta moving forward. Yeah, you know, that what we're seeing in these, several of these trials, I love this. I truly do because the courtrooms are supposed to be open for everyone. And when we do get to watch these trials online, they make them more accessible to the whole country. You don't have to be in Ducksbury to be able to go see this. I love that people take an interest in their civics, right? That you can make your views known in this way. That's a great thing, wanting to connect about these issues and have these broader conversations as a society. I think are wonderful. That's a beautiful thing about people watching trials, which historically are pretty boring. But we need to be necessarily watching. So I agree with you that, you know, it is a wonderful thing, I think, when people want to be educated about the civics of their country and to take part in it because it's easy to complain, but to want to be a part of it is, you know, we're one of the great countries where we can do that. Well, I really want to point people to your podcasts

56:44because especially if they're following those two cases, in particular, Lord knows you've covered other ones, but can you tell everybody where they can follow you and listen to your great work? Yeah, thank you so much for asking. So we have two podcasts. My co-host Brett and I, he went to Harvard, I went to Yale, so we have that fight sometimes. We were a prosecutor quite literally together. We shared a wall and tried cases together. So we've known each other for a long time before doing the podcast. We have the prosecutors podcast where we started as prosecutors and we cover cases that you've heard of or not heard of, you know, we've done John Bonet-Ransi. We've done the Murdoch case, of course, and sometimes we cover trials in real time like we are for the Lindsey Clancy case and we also tell the stories of these cases from our experience of having tried cases, having interviewed witnesses, having, you know, done these cross-examinations and not having a special insight, but rather taking our experience to try and demystify the entire process for everyone who's watching. And then we have another podcast called Legal Briefs

57:45where we cover true crime news in real time. Those both come out every single week and you can find them wherever you have podcasts. And then where can they follow you? Oh, yeah, so we are on all the social medias at Prosecutors Pod and we really do, we have no people. We read all our stuff. We love hearing people. You can email us at ProsecutorsPod at gmail.com or on Facebook or on Instagram or on TikTok. And we post very often and we love engaging with our listeners because we see ourselves as kind of being educators of civics, something that we love and think that the more people know about it, the better our judicial system gets. No, I'm so grateful for your time. And thank you again for all the work that you do. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. A very amazing KC. I want to thank my great guest and remind you to make sure that you click subscribe. Please leave a five star review.

58:45Join the Facebook group Reality Life with KKC. You can get my weekly What to Watch list of What to Watch in Unscripted TV by going to kkc.substac.com and make sure you follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram at at KKCCA TikTok. It's KKC and Twitter Threads and Blue Sky at at KKC. Check that Monday for an all new episode. Think