Kouri Richins Full Panel: Motta & Dreeke on the Trial Nobody Is Fully Explaining

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3:07done. The defense hasn't shown their hand yet in the trial, LaCory Richens. Two mistrial motions are already filed. A jury sitting on a mountain of circumstantial evidence with no video, no confession, and no one who actually watched it happen. This is where the case gets decided. Not in the evidence, but in how all of it lands. Joining Robin Drake retired FBI Special Agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program and myself is Bob Monted Defense Attorney, host of the podcast, Defense Diaries, to get into the Land O'Cory Richens. There's a lot to get into today. I'm just going to pick up where a lot of it left off as of our recording the night before. The private investigator on the stand and the defense going down a road. In this first segment, I want to focus on the defense and where they've been going, but they took us down a path that I certainly did not have on my bingo card for this case. Did anyone have that the defense of Cory Richens is going

4:10to try and insinuate that Eric was having in a lucid affair with his male friend in this trial? I didn't think he was going to go there. I was like, what? And clearly, clearly, there was texts amongst friends and they're screwing around and they're saying stupid things to each other the way people do. Well, the defense of Cory Richens sees it very differently. Let's start there, Bob. Did you have this on your bingo card for the trial of Cory Richens? I did not. I did not have a lot of shock. I didn't have Todd Gabler on my bingo card. Yeah. What he ended up being, which I thought was an absolutely fascinating witness. He's interesting because he's typically, he's a PI in Robinal tell you. I mean, typically government uses cops. They don't typically use PI. So it's rare to see a PI being

5:11called by the state. In any case, usually it's us calling our PI who's gone out and done the investigation, which we have an ethical duty to do. Yeah. No, man, I did not see that coming and we were talking about it after the facts. I don't think that there was so much even that the defense was kind of leaning into it. But I think that they wanted to put it out there to kind of support this proposition that they are putting out there, which is that Cory didn't know exactly everything that Eric was up to. Just not that it was necessarily even true. Well, what I'm saying, they just wanted to put it out there like, Eric might have been popping pills and I didn't know about it. Maybe Eric was involved in some kind of relationship with this party price that I didn't know about. So I thought that that was kind of the goal because if you look back and when Bryce testified, that would have obviously if they were really digging into that concept, that would have been the time where they would have asked them on the stand. So I think they put it out there just

6:16for the purposes of again, just trying to build this concept up in the jurors' minds that potentially Eric had some shit going on in his life that Cory was not privy to. That's the way I took it. Bob, that's an interesting observation. I didn't quite think of it that way before. Not anything that the defense is going to do to kind of go down that road and say, hey, he's got these illicit affairs with men as a big point, except like you said, to kind of prove the point that Cory didn't know anything. I'm curious doing a thought experiment on this one, say Cory is your client and you're on defense. I'm curious. She has had such a zero reaction in the courtroom to most things. Do you think it either helps or hinders or is not even involved at all when they put out there that Eric might have this secret life that she's not aware of and she doesn't have a really reaction to that? Does that help or hindered you think?

7:17Look, I always tell my clients, if you can, I want you to show zero emotion to anything. Don't like nothing because everything that a defendant does in a trial, especially if it's being televised or streamed is going to be, and I always like we always say, I always consider our chats to be the jury. You know what I mean? Those are citizens that are watching this thing and you see it all the time when anybody makes any kind of facial movements in a trial or they're not doing something. Well, why aren't they crying at this point or why are they crying at this point or they're faking crime? I don't want to have to have any of that come into play if we can avoid it because it's never helpful because people are going to take what they will from whatever kind of facial contortions that the defendant is going to make. So if possible, I'm always telling my client, being stone faced possible, I want your poker faced on the entire trial, I realize

8:19it's going to be hard to do. Now, if prosecution is painting her as this heartless individual, and she's been told not to have a response, does that kind of feed into the confirmation bias of what the prosecution has been trying to painter as? Or is it still better to just not have an effect? In my estimation, it's better to not have an effect because of the fact that I think that it'll be misconstrued. It's too easily, it's the same concept of why we don't put our defendants on the stand if we can avoid it. You know, because one thing that's misconstrued in terms of tone, tenor, or a word can sink your ship, you know, and it's the same thing. You saw it in the Karen retrial, you know, everybody in trial, one was like Karen was making all kinds of faces, you know, and again, you have to look at what the general public is saying is kind of an ability to be able to glean what the jury might be thinking as well. And then that particular

9:22situation, it was not helpful to read, you know what I mean? Yeah, do you think it was a, you think it would have been a big leap for her to not react or do you think this is her natural state of being? Oh, Cory or Reed. Yeah, both. Well, Reed couldn't help herself, you know, she, she just spills over all the time, but in Cory's case, but it worked for, for Karen. I mean, second time it did. It's second time. It did not. The second time, yeah, one of the counts in the first one. So yeah, it didn't work the first. True, true. But the second time it did, how do you think Cory's reactions are landing here? I mean, we're getting the, the look, I'm trying to figure out how to describe it. It kind of reminds me of like a mother watching her child's like play and you're okay, read the lines right. I hope you get that right, honey. You know, and then, and then also just utter shock when someone almost over the top shock, when someone is saying something allowed that, that you are going to act like you are you just,

10:22this could, how, how dare you say that? That's crazy. That's insane. I got to say her reactions look fairly genuine. I believe she's actually reacting in a genuine way. It's just, I don't know that reality and the cognitive distortions and Cory's mind line up with reality. So like, is she being, is she genuinely having these? Yeah, but, but is it, is it because she's genuinely shocked or, or what is the reasoning behind the faces that she's making in that courtroom? I thought that you described them perfectly because there is that kind of like mother watching her child watching her attorneys perform and, you know, you can see sometimes she's like, okay, you know, I, I need you to be saying something different or I need you to be more on top of your shit. And then, you know, you get the raised eyebrow on. You know, she gets where if she was out and still getting her Botox, you wouldn't see the lines in her face. Yes. Yes. Yes. Here, we, because she's been in jail waiting trial for all the time where we're,

11:22we have the ability to be able to see when she raises her eyebrows every time. And that's typically in response to somebody saying something on the stand. I mean, I, I think they're genuine, you know, but Ellie, again, I'm always looking at it from both. Sure. Back to us. I'm looking at it from, okay, is she guilty sitting in that room or is she innocent and approaching it from that in terms of what I think she's doing because it's like, I don't know how good of an actress Corey Richens is because I don't know her from a hole in the ground. You know what I mean? All the we have to kind of gauge that on is the 911 call, which I think we talked about in length last week. And also the, you know, the body can, the body war and cam footage were, you know, like, I thought that her behavior was very bizarre. And that, which kind of tells me she's not a great actress because, you know, her hiding her face the entire time was strange to me. Was she trying to hide the fact that she wasn't producing tears? Do her tear ducts work? I don't know. They answer me any of these questions. So it's like, to me, it's always a dangerous path,

12:26you know, to kind of walk down. But I also am hyper aware that that's the kind of shit where the jury lives, man. It's like, those are the things that the jurors just pick up on and they run with it. You know, I've seen it over and over and over throughout my career. You know, it's like, I'm always begging the jury, please don't go to the emotional place. It has no place in the lot. It has no place in this courtroom. But humans are going to human, you know, and people are going to feel things and people, you know, they can't, they can't put that aside a lot of times. And, and ultimately that ends up really being a big boon to the state, typically. You know, and you say we don't know her because you're right. We don't spend every minute of the day with her, like her family does and even with her attorney. But same time, though, they do present information in a pattern and points in her life arc that kind of gives an inclination. We don't know how good of an actress she is, but we do know she has a semblance of being able to really, really, really take advantage of men as, as, as testament to her boyfriend that gets up

13:32that looks like the, like the saddest mope that just got taken advantage of by this woman who, with no pay, no salary, maybe some gifts promised along the way. He relocates to Utah. So I, I think the data points that they lay out say that you might not know her, but we know enough about her to say potentially possible. And yet, and to say, and I get it, you will because data, evidence and details, but human beings are emotional, no doubt. That's, there's no, there's no moving off that. We try to, you know, sell that concept that you got to put your emotions at the side at trial, man, they just, it's, it's, it's really, really hard to do. Who's steering the ship here? I mean, obviously at the end of the day, Corey's the one that can make the calls, but how, how much do you think the attorneys for Corey are pushing back at her ideas and saying, maybe we shouldn't go down that road or are they just like, whatever you want, Corey, because I mean, it, it, it, it feels a little unhinged at times where, where they're making a lot of

14:37spur the moment decisions right there about admitting this or not admitting that there was that the other day. What was it with someone that was at the walk the dog letter or something where they decided right there like, Corey, how much should we add in? Just let it all go, Corey was pretty much. I mean, there, there seems to be, I don't know, I don't know if it's a level of unpreparedness or if it's just kind of how these things go when you're in the courtroom and things are moving at the way that they're moving. Bob can speak to that a hell of a lot more than I could, but, but how much, how much do you think is, is this is a, there's attorneys with experience that know how to captain the ship and they are, are taking this thing through the waters the best they can, or you have, it's, it's invite a passenger to steer the ship day, which seems to be kind of, Corey, what's your thoughts? No, I don't think it's, you know, Nestor and Lewis and, you know, I, I see you in, in our friend Jay's chat, Jay, Jay doesn't want to think about the like he, he, he's a strict emotion guy. He's just saying, I hate Corey, these women are morons.

15:41They're not, they're both very, very talented attorneys. This is a tough case. Yeah, a very, very difficult case and, and people that have never tried a case that, you know, are sitting and calling lawyers, morons that are working their ass off, trying to get through a five week trial that has a massive amount of messages. I mean, there's, there's just a lot of evidence here, like, like thousands of pieces of evidence in this case. And, you know, what you're seeing is a result of some of the pretrial motions wherein the judge deferred to make decisions on things. So we're in, you know, they're trying to keep certain statements suppressed or out. And then you've got the judge saying, all right, well, I've got to see what ends up kind of happening organically through the flow of the trial. And we'll take it as it comes, which is, which is what you're seeing, like warning they spend an hour going through some emails and they're now going through the jail calls, which in theory, you would have liked to have seen done prior to because you got a jury

16:45sitting back in the room waiting to come out, you know, and it's been going on for an hour now. But I mean, they're important facts in terms of what's going to come in, what's going to be redacted and in how it's going to be presented to the jury. So they're all important things. I don't think Corey's running shit. Okay. Both Nestor and Lewis, they're both federal defenders. Yeah. And Robin will tell you, you know, I mean, when you're talking about the federal criminal system, just federal courts in general, you're talking about the brightest judges, the brightest AUSA's and the brightest attorneys on the defense side in the country, typically. Like, if you were to look at the pedigree of these folks that try federal cases, they're of the highest caliber typically. And, you know, it's like, we also know that Nestor is representing the Robinson guy who, you know, with the guy, Charlie Kirk. So she, you know, she's got a fucking lot on her plate. You know, I mean, that case is an on pause in everything. So she's, you know, and she's

17:48lead counsel on this thing. So she's got Lewis helping her and you got Ramos down there at the end who's younger. I think he's eight years in. But both Lewis and Nestor are both, you know, 20 plus years federal defenders. They know what they're doing. You know, they really do. And, you know, I mean, it's a tough case. There's a lot of bad facts and they have to preserve a record. So defense attorneys don't give a shit. Well, we're saying out here. No, no. Well, she looks like she's confused. No, dude. It's like, I mean, I look at it differently because I've been doing it for a couple of decades. You know what I mean? I can see how it might appear to the general public. And again, what I think doesn't fucking matter at all because it's 12 people in that box. And if the 12 people in that box are feeling the way that the general public is, like that Nestor looks like she's unorganized or that she's getting lost in, you know, in the weeds occasionally, then that's the way they're going to feel about it, which is not helpful to at all. But at the end of the day, in terms of strategic decisions, I'm positive that the

18:50attorneys are the ones making any kind of because Corey doesn't understand the rules of evidence. You know what I mean? She may have a concept of how she would like to proceed in this case in terms of because we know from the walk the dog letter. Like that's what she thinks her defense should be. And so, you know, whether or not the defense is going to fully adopt that, we have to wait and see until they put their case in chief on. You know, Bob, I'm so curious about this because I'm always so attracted to the human element of things as you know. And I but I've never had the privilege of really working alongside of defense attorneys, you know, like yourself. I'm curious, you know, say, say your Corey's attorney. Do you want to play like multiple double duties here because you're not only defending her? Do you wind up being a counselor for her? I mean, how do you keep a client like that going every day and showing up and presenting what she needs to present to do the best she can for herself as well? I mean, are you a confidant? I mean, does there's someone else on the team?

19:53You know, because that's, I know it's kind of getting into me, but I'm really curious about that because you got to be, you got to be everything to this person. 100% and you are. I mean, you're your lifeline. And then we were talking about that like last week of it in terms of like the difference between prosecutors and defense attorneys in terms of our relationships. Like what the family as well, you know, I mean, and it depends Robin. It's a client by client think is everybody's different. Now Corey is very engaged in her own defense. You could see it. She's constantly taking notes. She's very involved with it. You know, I've had defendants that just sit there like a bump on a log, you know, that are like occasionally in my ear when I'm trying to listen to a direct examination. And I'm like, Hey, man, I gave you that, that pad of paper to write your questions on I need to listen to this because I'm cross examining this person in like 25 minutes. So I mean, in terms of kind of keep her, you know, I think that Corey believes that she's got a strong case. You know, and whether that's born out of the fact that she actually didn't

20:59dose her husband with fentanyl and kill him or whether it's because she just thinks that they don't have a strong enough case to prove it. I don't know at this point. You know, I'm going to wait until everything comes out in the wash. And then I'm going to reach a conclusion. But yeah, to your point, Robin, I mean, yes, you are wearing many, many hats as defense attorney. Obviously, the strategy side of it, you know, you're going to talk to your client about it, but ultimately, that particular decision is left to the attorneys, whereas that incredibly important decision on whether or not the defendant is going to testify is left with the defendant. Now, I can of course advise them, you know, and say, look, it is a, it is a land, a land mine filled field that you're talking about walking through. If you take the stand because there are a lot of questions that are going to be very difficult to answer and can be easily misconstrued if you say one thing the wrong way, which is going to get you found guilty. You know, so you're wearing

22:02that habit in terms of trying to keep your client up and, you know, kind of plowing through. I mean, yeah, you're paying, you know, that psychology hat is worn as well. So it all comes into play. That's why I was saying, man, it's such a different job than the prosecutor's job because they just, they don't have that connection in with the defendant, you know, they're looking at somebody that is presented to them from evidence that is all on paper or on video or audio, you know, and they're trying to put together pieces to have it fit their narrative, whatever their theory of the case is, it's what they went, you know, what went on that night or that day. And it's just a different experience for defense attorneys because we have the ability to be able to talk to our clients, right? Like, when you have that, that access to the person that the state does not, you know, but that's challenging as well. You know, it's like, my job, frankly, doesn't require me

23:02to do what you see on TV, which is like, you have to tell me the truth. You have to tell me. Depending on what kind of defense I'm going to employ, right? Well, if I'm employing an insanity defense, if it's available to me, then I need to know everything because because that's what I'm fighting. I'm trying to show, okay, look, this is this is the defense we're employing. It essentially means by operation of law that you've admitted to committing the crimes. We're trying to say that you're not, you're not legally responsible. You know, so I need all the details in that situation. If it's a situation wherein it's highly just or wholly circumstantial in that, in that particular situation, I'm never asking my client, did you do it or didn't you do it, because it doesn't matter to me in terms of what the job is. The job is to ensure that my clients getting a fair trial and to ensure that they understand their rights, to ensure that the cops and the prosecutor did their job correctly. And if I get all those things accomplished,

24:03the facts as they come out are typically going to win the day. You know, if they have the evidence, 90, 95 or higher percent of the time, they're going to get convicted. Most of the times they get it right. And then it's those cases where maybe they didn't get it right. Maybe there was tunnel vision. Those are the ones that you're worried about as a defense attorney where you're really making sure your job's always the same. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter. So in plus, that question, I always get probably the first question if you're representing that somebody who's been accused of doing some really, really horrible shit is how? How do you do that? How do you put your morals to the side and like plunge forward with that? And I just answered the question. You know, it's like, I'm not focusing on that. I'm focusing on the things that are my job. And frankly, everybody in that courtroom prosecutor, judge, defense, families of the victim, they all need it

25:03done right the first time, because nobody wants to go through that thing again, especially the victim's families. And how do you keep yourself going? I mean, that's a lot. It's a lot. I mean, it's, I didn't really appreciate the burden of a defense attorney until really working and listening to you for so long. Yeah. And so how do you keep yourself going with that kind of energy level? Because we talked about how you kept cori going, but how would you keep yourself going playing so many has to so many people during lengthy trials like this? And just got punches, man. You know, I mean, when you're going up against the power and the resources of the government and you know, you're consistently taking got punches, you know, because it's just the state has the advantage just in terms of those resources. I mean, things as simple as, you know, the prosecutor's office is typically in the courthouse. Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but in terms of prepping for a trial and the state having the ability to be able to roll all of their things out from their

26:04office into that courtroom. Like for us, you know, I'm having to go ask the state if we're in a courtroom that's not completely tacked out like some some some are some aren't right in terms of screens, the access to be able to show videos, the access to be able to make things easier in terms of the mechanics of trying a case, which is a huge amount of work. It's a huge amount of work. That's why you see, you know, there's so much evidence to go through and you're trying to plow through and you've got different witnesses that you have control of in terms of that you're going to be either crossing or directing when it's your case in chief and those people are your responsibility, you're trying to prep your questions, you're trying to keep track of all the evidence is coming it. So it's like like little things like having kind of a home field advantage as the prosecutors just being in house in terms of being in the courthouse as opposed to us dragging everything, not being able to bring our tack, not being able to get everything real fluid like we'd like to be able to do it is like just a small microscopic example of the advantages the state has.

27:10And you know, for me, Robin, I mean, it's I got burnt, you know, I was 23 years in and that was really the impetus of me saying I went to my wife and when I started the the buried podcast, you know, and I had these tapes from my father and I'd hold on to them. I went to where I said, look, babe, I'm not I'm getting to the point where I'm burnt out like and that is that is doing a huge disservice to my clients. So, you know, I feel like I need to take a step back, you know, so I essentially retired from it because it was for all those things, man, it just it grinds on you and it is hard and you just feel the weight of the world on your shoulders because you know, if you have a client that you in your heart of hearts believe is innocent and they go down, I mean, that is that is a tough burden to live with every single day of your life and it's not like, you know, I always say to me being a defense attorney is probably the toughest job in the planet because somebody's liberty and or life literally rests on your shoulders and it's different than

28:15say a surgeon who can save somebody's life. But, you know, if if things take the course that they're going to take and that surgeon can't save that person for various reasons, I don't think that that surgeon is carrying that on for years, you know, and I mean, whereas for me, if I have a client who I felt I didn't do the job for and they got convicted, like that's sticking with me forever. You know, when I mean, or if I have a client that's getting the death penalty and they're going to execute them, where, you know, ultimately I felt like my job was just to preserve that person's life more than innocence or, or, you know, guilt. Like that's just it weighs on you. You never, like my dad defended Gacy who's like, easily one of the top five monsters to ever walk the planet or at least in this country. Guy was an absolute nightmare, but my dad still felt responsibility for Gacy getting executed because my father truly believed that Gacy was insane. You know,

29:17that because of that, he should have been in a mental institution for the rest of his life as opposed to the eye for an eye being executed, but try convincing 12 people that somebody who killed 33 people should live. You know, that's it. All to ask. It all comes down to everybody is human. The defense attorney suppressor cuters, the defendants, the jury. You have the human element in, in every single aspect of, of all of this, even when people are acting in human, the rest of them still are. That's, that's the thing to, uh, to remember your thoughts in the comment section on substack in YouTube on this segment. We'd love to see them and hear your thoughts. Beyond the legal chess match, there's something else happening in the court room of Corey Richards, 40 witnesses, text messages, jail calls, a boyfriend who broke down crying on the stand. A life story Corey wrote about herself in the third person at a wellness retreat. That's another piece of evidence that's going to be introduced and discussed very soon as the defense takes

30:18to stand. The question isn't just what the evidence says. It's what the jury is actually absorbing. Bob Mata is with myself and Robin Drake as we continue to break down the case against Corey Richards. Let's talk about Corey and this, this letter that she wrote. She wrote basically her life story at a wellness retreat back in 2021 in the third person. She described a marriage that emotionally exhausted her, a mother with a gambling addiction, a childhood that never really stabilized. I mean, it's heavy stuff. When, when I heard about this, when I started to look at it, my reaction was, well, there's the recipe. That's how you got Corey. That's how Corey is the way she is. A lot of instability, a lot of chaos. You bring somebody up in that environment. This is your odds of getting somebody like Corey, if she did it, are pretty high. I mean, at least to have if she has, again, we can't diagnose her. But if we look at this from personality disorders and things of that nature, all of that is a recipe for exactly this, for the type of behavior that the

31:22prosecution is alleging that Corey was undertaking and behaving. And then defense asks the whole document for it to come in, not just the redacted version. Let's talk about that, Bob. What does a jury actually do with that? Is this going to make her look more human or does it frame everything that came after it? I mean, it depends. It depends on what the jury is already feeling about her. What they've already decided about her. Because it's like that thing with every trial is the defense is always standing up during openings and asking the jury to please wait. The state has the opportunity. They have the ability and they are the ones that always put their case on first. When people make up their minds and defense attorneys understand that. They're putting on their entire theory. So it's like you're asking these jurors, all right, they're going to put on their case. In the way, I look at it as if a state puts on their case and they don't get to

32:28the end of their case in chief. And it doesn't look like the defendant's guilty. Well, then you've fucked it. The defendant better look guilty at the end of the state's case in chief. Otherwise, they got a real problem with their case. So you know, you tell them, look, you got to wait. We're going to give you context. We're going to we're going to fill in the gaps. They're telling you what they think happened. And that's all it is. That's what they think happened. They weren't there. So depending on how they're feeling about Cory, it plays a lot of different ways. I mean, if feeling sympathetic, you know, like you said, T, it's like troubled childhood, emotional, yeah, absolutely like an emotionally absent marriage that she clearly wasn't happy in. You know, she's a woman under pressure. You know, her entire childhood was probably not too dissimilar from a lot of people. You know, I mean, it was like, unfortunately, we have we have a lot of families that are just a mess in this world. And like you said, humans are going to human. And life is hard. And you know, like everybody doesn't have a clean, easy path, you know,

33:31and all those things that happened during the course of your life mold you into the person that you're ultimately going to become. Does that mean that it turns you into a murder? Not necessarily. Does it mean anything? And yes, I'm sure it can. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where I like to look at and go, okay, well, it explains it. It's the recipe. It's part of what made this person to be the way they are. And we can look historically at other cases and go, oh, yeah, this person who exhibits a lot of these same sort of characteristics traits and actions also had a very similar upbringing. I mean, it's certainly I have empathy for it. And I feel bad for anybody who has to go through it. It doesn't excuse the behavior though at the end of the day. And obviously no one's asking it to, but it to be introduced, I think it's fair. It makes sense that everybody should have context as to what this person is, who this person is. It doesn't like, oh, you had a really horrible childhood and you were abandoned left and right by the people that you should have been able to trust, but they weren't there for you, which explains why you acted

34:33the way you did in so many ways. And I'm even saying murder. I'm just saying what we know about her actions in other ways. Again, doesn't excuse it, but it explains it, which is important for context. What is the back and forth here in this trial? Because there's been a lot of back and forth with some interesting statements coming from both Eric and from Corey. We've heard now that Eric had said to some friends, I believe family members, that if something happens to me, I'm just paraphrasing, look at her. I don't trust her. He was moving money around. He was moving beneficiaries with life insurance policies around because he didn't trust her. If something happens to me, look at her. She probably did it. And then we find out at the same point when he's saying this, well, guess who also starts saying this to people? Corey, Corey starts telling other people that if something happens to me, Eric did it. I mean, one has a back kind of track record

35:37history of this looks kind of shady like there would be a reason to say it. The other not so much. I don't know. What's your take on this with both of them saying, if something happens to me, it's the other partner that did it. I mean, to me, the take away is that this was a broken marriage and broken in two different ways. I thought kind of to dovetail back into that retreat journal letter of thing she wrote. You had the friend who I thought was a powerful witness for Corey wherein she was talking about, you know, she really kind of brought to light the fact that Eric was very financially controlling, you know. And then that Corey's in this marriage with three kids. And she feels extremely nervous about moving forward with the divorce because of the fact that Eric controls all the money. And she's looking ahead at what is that going to look like. Eric's going to live in the nice house. He's going to have the four wheelers and all

36:40the toys. Eric's going to essentially be living in Disneyland. And I'm going to be living in a fucking hovel, you know, and like my kids aren't going to want to be with me, you know, which is a real thing. Like maybe if you weren't cheating and being a shitty human being, that wouldn't be the outcome. I don't know. I mean, Eric, it's come off an Eric was not faithful either at least emotionally. You know, let's say again, like we're listening to that. We're listening to the steam ace and chief. True. We are. Like, no, let's wait and hear all of it. You're right. And you know, it's like, you get that J thing going on. Sometimes TV. You know, I'm like, well, I take a breath. Man, that's like, I hear you. Yeah, I definitely could have done this. There's no question. I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying, I'm waiting. I want to hear it all come out. I want to hear all the context because I understand more than most that obviously this is a theory. The fucking state wasn't there. They don't they don't know what happened. They did a shit investigation. They couldn't even like they didn't collect the evidence. It's like we have

37:45these huge gaping holes in the state's case because the cops didn't do a good job on the front end. And we had a cop get on the stand yesterday. And and I'm talking about what's her face? I can't remember her name. She was the the one cop who was on the stand. It was like Oh, Triskil's coming today. But she yeah, I know you're talking about. Yeah. Well, Amy Richens, who is one of Eric's sisters. You got Amy and you got Katie had allegedly told her going into the house that she thought that that Cory had something to do with us. So she goes into the house with the mindset. All right. I'm going to give that the weight that I think that it deserves as a cop. But she's planted the seed. At least that this there might be foul play going on here. So if you're that cop going into that house, I think that and they got a consent search. And you know, I think that they limited it to the garbage can. You know, but when you

38:45have Cory saying that I made drinks and you know, then I we had we celebrated a bit and then I went into my kids room. He was having a nightmare. That's where I fell asleep. I came back three in the morning to go back to my bedroom. And Eric was called about all that shit. You have to be thinking, okay, well, I need to be looking for the cops that she made the drinks in. And it's just like it never happened. I know nothing about whether it had been in the dishwasher, whether they had already been washed, whatever the case may be. I mean, if the cops are there and they're already washed, to me, that's evidence. Because if I find out that Cory typically left dishes in the sink and she wasn't wanting to immediately wash dishes, well, then that's that's kind of powerful evidence. You're not able to pull the fact that there's fentanyl laced somewhere in that couple and they send it to the lab. It's still powerful evidence. So I mean, man, I don't know. I know what your question was, Tina. I know I got a little far field, but it's

39:49hard to answer because there's so many gaping holes. And I just don't know either of these people in real life. And yes, we're seeing tax messages and certain things from certain snippets of their life, but it's not the whole picture. So I don't know, man. I don't know. You know, but when I mean, they've had a lot of people hit the stand on this and I'm curious as a defense attorney, do you typically go into the day, no one who's going to be on the stand and pretty much scripting out or at least have a really good idea of how you're going to do cross? And at any point, are you kind of thrown and do a lot of improv and I was the improv based on your emotional reaction, other things that stimulus coming at you from the courtroom, the jury, you know, it's just kind of walk me through. I'm just always curious about how your mind's working on those moments because it's just more layering of burden on top of what your brain is being exhausted by. Yeah, it's, it's a great question and it's, I love those like how the sausage are made questions. I love them too. I'm sorry. It gives people context. Yeah. If you were to go into a

40:54court TV chat room, everybody's got pitch, you know, pitch forks and torches like a fucking burger tell her and I'm like, oh my god, you know, it's like all these two women are idiots. I'm like, you know, it's, so I like these questions because it kind of flushes out. So you got three defense attorneys on this team, all right, and they got the witness list and you can tell Ramos is the guy that was handling kind of the science type stuff and then between Lewis and Nester, they split up the other witnesses and they're looking at our like, so they know going yet, you know, no, no one is being surprised. We don't do trials by ambush in this country. You know who's going to be called. So yeah, you're looking through in terms of what the police reports are saying. If they've had the opportunity to have their investigator speak to a witness and they've gotten more information that's always helpful doesn't often happen. But yeah, you're like I typically in alley my wife, we would typically bullet point and make somewhat of a script for a cross,

41:55knowing who we were going to be handling, you know, and one of the other parts is that the state is playing somewhat nice here in the sense that they're giving the defense the heads up on who they're going to be calling the next day, which is, again, is a big deal because you can, like, they have no obligation to do it, you know, I've been in plenty of trials where the state was, you know, basically like pound sand, dude, I'm not telling you shit. Good luck. You know, you're guessing on who we're going to be calling, which is you can imagine when you're trying to prep going to that trial day and you know, there's going to be anywhere between four and eight witnesses, depending on length called during that day. And you don't know if you're getting called in terms of my witness is getting called, I got to be prepped. So you're trying to prep your cross questions ahead of time. And then when you get into it, right, when you're in the direct and you're listening and you're trying to take notes and see what the state is asking, you know, it hasn't been anything that they said that was inconsistent. You know, you're unhigher

42:58because those are the things that you have to catch in the heat of a trial with a million things going on in your mind, just racing. So yeah, I mean, there is a fluidity to it. I mean, you want to have your bullet points, you want to have the things that you want to attack going into the direct. But if you're surprised and there's been surprises for the defense here, you know, there's been things that have popped up where people have changed their stories. You saw a nester struggling with it, you know, like last, I think it was week one where the witness had, and we're talking about Carmen Lauber changed her fucking story. They're now became a fourth deal, which the defense didn't know about until the first time in trial. And so you've got her trying and when people were just ragging nester, she doesn't know what she's doing. She's okay. I'm like, no, man, like this woman is having to refresh the recollection of a witness who doesn't fucking remember anything on top of trying to impeach her, which is a different thing. So you've got her, because she was trying to go back to all of her seven interviews, 926 pages or whatever

44:04it was of transcripts of all the seven interviews she did with law enforcement. To go through to show that at no point in time that she ever tell any of the law enforcement agents that she was talking to that she had ever done a fourth deal. So, but she couldn't remember any of it. So then she had to go through the process of refreshing a recollection and then trying to impeach her, but Lauber would forget what she was just recollected on. So it was like, like watching it was super painful in a lot of ways, but it wasn't necessarily nester's fault in the sense that she was surprised by it and you have a witness who has basically no memory. You know, so like that's a really, really tough witness to deal with. So yeah, I mean, you try to be as prepared as you can. You're always going to be surprised by something when you're doing cross. And you know, I mean, the golden rules, you just don't ask a question that you don't know the answer to because you know, that can end in disaster for you. How do you think it all played

45:08out at the end of the day, Bob, with the with the drug dealers, with the the housekeeper and Croster and the whole the whole chain of everybody explaining, we don't really, we didn't, none of us really knew it was fentanyl. We all claim it was something else from the Michael Jackson drug to oxy cotton or codone or depending on the day of the week, what he was buying. How do you think that played to the jury because they were fairly unreliable witnesses. They weren't the most credible folks, but at the end of the day, the overall message that everyone pretty much could agree upon was that somebody got Corey really powerful drugs. We don't know, we can't make me necessarily name exactly what that drug was other than when we do the testing of what killed Eric, but there was a drug exchange between all of these people. When it comes to the defense of Corey Richards, the only way to really tear that down is to say that Corey had no knowledge of any of this and that she never got any drugs from her housekeeper, but there's a lot of evidence

46:10pointing to the contrary, like text messages. So I mean, I don't know how you're going to, how are they going to counter this when it's the defense's turn? I know they obviously had crossed, but can they go any deeper? Is there any other place to go on this? Or is it just let it let it lie where it's landed? I think they're going to have to dig into it because at the end of the day, again, it's like, what are these 12 people in the box? Actually, it's eight. I was shocked to find out. So it's eight and four alternatives or alternates. So it's eight person jury, which is always unusual. I mean, in Illinois, it's always 12, unless you do it in like a padded jury. But so, I mean, it depends on who they found more credible. You know, it's like that thing where people were feeling a certain way about Nester going at Lobber the way that she did, which I thought she was not being real bitchy or shitty to her. I thought she was struggling trying to get her

47:15to remember and recollect things. But people that walked away, the public seemed to feel like that she was like shaming her, the whole thing with the fact that her daughter had owed deed. People were taking exception to the fact as to why she would have brought that up when it was evident why she brought it up. It was evident because she needed to show she being Nester that Lobber wouldn't fuck with fentanyl because her daughter owed deed on it. Yeah. It was in a very important way. I don't mess with that null or fentanyl. I don't take fentanyl. I don't deal fentanyl. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, it ain't my thing. Unless you don't know that that's what said your stuff. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So that was important, but people didn't look at it that way. Yeah. Like lay people were like, oh my god. Like what? And then, you know, the whole thing with the disability, you know, which was a fair question because she's trying to show that again, she being Nester that that Lobber was very susceptible

48:18for for various reasons, one being that whatever her disability was, what she wanted to know what it was, the learning disability. And she also needed to know about her drug use. And by her own admission, Lobber's like, I've been using since I was six. My brain is basically a cooked egg at this point. You know, and when you're talking about somebody, somebody being susceptible to law enforcement, coerc, like being able to coerce that person, you have to lay that shit out because that's exactly what the defense is saying. The defense is saying they planted the seeds with you. Like you didn't write out this statement. She wasn't trying to say, oh, you can't even write. She was saying, the cops wrote the statement. Those aren't those aren't your words written on there that's the cops interpreting what you said to them and them writing the statement. It's a big deal. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, but it doesn't matter how I look at it. It matters how

49:2012 people are people on the jury looked at it. So man, like an I thought closure in my estimation was the more credible of the two witnesses. I just did. You know what I'm saying? Like I thought, and ultimately at the end of the day, I walked away from that, not feeling like the state proved that Corey Richards knowingly purchased fentanyl. You know, and it's like, we had that long discussion last week about does the Michael Jackson drug, does that cover them? If she mentioned the Michael Jackson drug, is that enough to meet specific intent? And I don't think that it is. I mean, I would certainly be arguing that in closings. That ain't it. Yeah. The intent means that she knew she was getting something that if I doseed enough of that particular substance, it was going to kill my husband. My intent was to buy it for the specific intent to kill him. And from neither of those people that I get that because you have closure who that statement

50:21and I think we covered it last week when you played the clip, or I can't remember, I might have been on a different show, where, where closure is not the one who said there was fentanyl in here. The cops said it. And then closure agreed. But closure was very clear. He's like, I was, I was not dealing in Fent at that point. I was dealing because at that point, the Fent had the bad Fent had already made it in. So when it was killing people left and right, if you're a drug dealer, dealing drugs that kill your customers is bad business model. So it's not going to be something they're going to continue to do. They're going to stop back from it and say, okay, I'm not going to fuck with the Fentanyl shit. So at that point, he's dealing in hydrocodone exclusively. So that's where you had the M30s. To me, it's the biggest hole in the state's case because everything else points to a pretty strong motive, right? If the jury's going to lean on the motive alone and they're going to say, well, you know, I don't necessarily think that the state,

51:26I mean, if I'm the defense, I'm saying you can't do it. I know that you want to because they put on all this evidence that makes it seem as if it happened. The problem is that they couldn't prove the most important elements of the murder charge. So you can't find your guilty on that. Yeah. I mean, there's so many, and that's again, it's going back to the people. They have to, you're dealing with humans and how they're going to interpret the information. Your thoughts in the comments section on YouTube were sub-stack on this segment. We'd love to get your feedback. Let's go wider because this case isn't just about Cory Rich's and Eric Richens. It raises questions about how this kind of crime gets detected. How juries are supposed to weigh evidence when there's nothing definitive to point to and whether the story the public has been following for three years is even the same story that the jury is being asked to decide. Eric apparently suspected something was wrong. His friends knew the marriage wasn't trouble. His sister hired a

52:26private investigator. He'd already quietly met with a divorce attorney and he still ended up dead. Let's talk about this a little bit. Not necessarily about what's going on in the courtroom because a lot of people are going to look at this case and this is more of opinion, more of a conjecture type question. I'm going to go to you first, Bob. I want to get from you, Robin, too. The question I think a lot of the jury is going to be looking at in this whole thing is, why didn't you all just get divorced? Why don't we just go there? How did it get this bad that one is literally fearing for their life, having to set things up legally in case I get murdered by my spouse, my funds and my money goes over here. I mean, if you're already in that mode and you're fearing for your life, a lot of folks who've never been in that situation will say, why don't you just leave? I mean, if you're in the situation, you can speak to it differently. But it's complicated. It's emotional. It's a mess especially when you got three kids involved. But, Bob, I mean, how would you answer that question? If you know a juror is you're having that

53:28question with a juror at a coffee shop after all this and they're just going, why didn't they just leave? What the hell are they thinking? I mean, it's the same question I asked myself. It's inexplicable. I never understand why I'm always screaming divorce. Just divorce. I think in this particular circumstance, I think that we got a little bit of a mind's eye into what Corey's mindset was. And again, I don't know how deeply religious Eric and Corey were into Mormon religion, where the worst is obviously frowned upon as it is in most religions. I don't know if that was even an impediment for them at all. Yes, his murder. Usually that ranks higher. But sometimes people are surprised after the fact. They're like, what do you mean murder is bad? But divorce is a two-way street. I was following Nephi, like Laurie Valo likes to argue.

54:29I'll be like Nephi. I mean, that was a whole different type of crazy. Laurie Val. Yeah, I'm talking about different types of crazy. Yeah. Robin, what do you think? You know, I think, and we covered a little bit yesterday, too, Tony, you know, hope keeps us alive a lot of times. And, you know, just thinking about Eric's point of view, you know, is he saying, making all these statements? And to some degree, you know, Corey's claiming she did, too, that my wife is going to kill me, you know, just because you think it doesn't necessarily mean that you think the person's capable of it as well. You know, because when you look at her, you are living with her, you see her interact with kids, you know, you have hope, you have those things, and you have believability, and the lack of our understanding of room mortality and how fragile our lives can be at the hands of someone who's really intent. So it's, it's tough, but yeah, I mean, why not just divorce? It's, people, you know, we get addicted to our habits that we have. And if you have a habit of being

55:30together, if you have a habit of chaos, people, I mean, Corey's a great example. She's addicted to creating chaos. And as well as, Eric might have been addicted to just being married and dealing with that chaos. And so anything that upturns that apple cart, you know, we generally don't do it. Plus we don't know. I mean, it doesn't sound like we have any kind of trauma bonding going on. But, you know, we just get addicted to these things. And then the kids play into it as well, you know, the impact of kids. I, I'll, again, as Eric says, I'm an Eric, as Bob says, really well, you know, we don't know what was going on in that family on a day-to-day life. But, you know, we can have some conjecture from what the dad was saying and the other family members at Eric was a really, really good dad. And if he was worried about the impact of divorce on his kids, he might be reluctant as well. Yeah, 100%. Man, and that's, that's always the thing. I mean, you, you hear that all the time that people stay in bad marriages because of the kids, which is the worst thing. I did for 10 years. Yeah. I was thinking of you, Tony,

56:31I really was. Yeah. I mean, you fear. I mean, look, if you're in a situation where you're dealing with somebody with a personality disorder or something like that, you fear. I mean, you're like, okay, at the end of the day, am I, you know, what's, what's worse, me dealing with this and taking the heat and hopefully it never comes, I'm going to be murdered. But it can. But I'd rather be there and protect my child over 50% of the time having zero control over what's coming and going around my child's life. And a lot of parents will take that bet, will take that risk. It's reality. It's not the safe risk. It's not in that moment. It seems right. Long term when you're out of the picture, you look back and go probably still not the best idea because if that person is capable of killing, they're capable of killing whether you're there or not and those around you. And that's, that's the reality of it in a risk that you're going to have to take. One of the directions has to be, one of the levers has to be pulled. Either you're going to wait till it goes to the absolute shit. And, and you are putting your life on the line,

57:33which many of us get to that point, have been by self. Or you get out early. And then you deal with the repercussions to that. But it's, it's a calculated move for a lot of parents. So I, I get where Eric was on this. What's happening? Well, yeah, hold on. I want to add one more thing that I think a lot of people can relate to just in a work context. I mean, how many of us have actually been someplace or been the person ourselves where we're in a work context. So it's not even as consequential as family where you've had leaders that are inside a credibly toxic organizations that actually stay in place instead of quitting to protect the people under them from the crap on top. You know, and so, and that's just a, and that's even a small microcosm. They're willing to take that weight and burden on themselves to protect those under them. And so it could also, you know, it's just a real world example too. I want to talk about one more thing here. And that's the congruence of Corey Richon's behavior. Cause I think that's, that's the problem. I know it's funny. You're, it's one of Robyn's hot favorite words. It's right. It's obvious file congruence. Today's show was brought to you by congruence. I love it.

58:41It's, it's something obviously when things aren't congruent, things feel a little off. And things certainly feel off here in the Corey Richon story of she's this widow and her husband died because he was using drugs, you know, illicitly and secretly big surprise to her. She's innocent. They were going to work on the marriage and all this. That's not congruent with reality. She was cheating on him. We don't know what else was going on. Everything that's continuing to come out. But the thing is Corey had a propensity to move in the motion of whatever was going to benefit Corey most. That's, I think the lesson that we're learning here needs a money. Steel from your husband. Need more money? Well, steal from your best friends from childhood. Take their life savings that they're thinking you're going to be putting into the investment property that they're investing in. You need more money? Go take out a payday loan to, Rob Peter to pay Paul. The, the track record of Corey's reality versus the image that she's trying to portray are two very different things. Now, I'm not saying that they point to her being

59:45a murderer, but they show one where she's completely full of bullshit and the other one where it's a completely different story. And, and, and if you're trying to, to come into this with credibility for a jury to go, yeah, we believe you when you say you didn't kill your husband. Having a track record that does it that isn't filled with all lies and taking advantage of everyone and everything in your life, doesn't exactly help. Yeah. I'll take one all day. Yeah. Off-ball, man. And, and again, I'm going to go back to that earlier part of the foundation where I thought that the most compelling witness in terms of giving you and I, like, you, your elk, the people, they kind of feel that way. Yeah. A mind's eye into it. If Corey was being financially abused and controlled by Eric, which I think that she was, I still need to see more evidence. What evidence was that of it that other than her saying, I feel trapped to a friend, which seems like it would simply feel bad for me. Well, I think that there was a prenup that

1:00:51gives you a kind of like a, sure, from, from initially, like when you kind of look at a prenup and it's prudent in many situations, this is a situation where we're in. I don't know that either of them were married prior to. Eric was, I believe. But it is only one data point. Yeah. Right. And, you know, and they have, she's the mother of his kids, but she has no access to the funds, really, at all. Like, I mean, she's like, she was like, like, when it came out, when she says this thing that I feel like I'm a capped woman that he's controlling everything, like I want to become financially independent. But she's taking like hundreds of thousands of dollars from him. I don't know how she's kept in being held back. He didn't start by taking hundreds of thousands. No, it started small and it built up. Well, no, what happened is the problem we have with Cory is that she's a fucking awful business person. She decided that she could do

1:01:53this flipping business and she quickly realized that she wasn't good at it and that she was in over her head and she was buying. I've seen it. I know, but I do think she thought she was bad. I think she thought she was good. I assure you, she was absolutely panicked. She's kept all falling apart. Yeah. That's again, you pretending like you know who Cory Richens is. Well, we just kept dig books. She kept digging. I mean, she did. She did dig herself. I just, you know, I got to tell you, I love Bob's empathy. You know, Bob has the ability as, you know, you can tell Bob's recipe as a defensive turn to understanding the point of view of his client. I mean, that was just, you know, and that's, and that's what he does. It's just, but to everyone's point though, you know, we're talking about congruency here. Her congruence of her behavior of chaos is really at that life arc that she's had the entire time and potentially immoral or bad actions, you know, and so I'm going to, I'm going to side, not side. I can, I'll make that leave

1:02:55just because someone is unethical doesn't mean that they can kill someone. No, get that aspect of it. I'm just saying it's not congruence. The behavior of I'm a good person. And that congruency, like it's, it's a black and white thing and it's not. It's kind of behavior though. Everything else, but is it because again, if you've got a woman who's like, all right, like, I'm in this marriage that seems loveless or whatever, whatever is going on with her. And she, as I said earlier, she's concerned about what divorce looks like in turn, the three people that are most important to her, which are her kids. In terms of Eric's, the family has all the money, the family has all the power. I'm going to be that woman who's going to get destroyed in court because Eric's going to get the best lawyer possible. And I want to hire some schmuck, and I'm going to get hammered. Eric's going to get to get, so her other approach is like, okay, I'm going to try to become financially independent. I want to start my own thing. Eric's faulting around that. I do. Let me finish it. Okay. Oh, so, so because you're like, you're

1:03:59faulting around things. When the business starts to fall apart, and when I'm telling you, I've seen it firsthand, I've had clients in this exact situation, when flipping was the thing, and they thought it was, yeah, everybody, oh, you could flip. You just want to, oh, she'll rehab, put some shit up and you're good. Right. And the realization is that when she started taking all these balloon notes out, and everything started to, the other shoe dropped, and when a balloon note hits, it's all due. And if she's not able to get the work done, and the rehab work done, and pay for the materials, and she keeps buying the properties, because she's a really bad business person. Desperate times call for desperate measures. But that ultimately leads her to it to doing the heat lock scam, right? Yeah. So like, my point being she didn't go into it, wanting to be a thieving, conniving scumbag. And it's like she ended up being that out of necessity to try it, and she's panicking. Like, she didn't go in trying to rip her best friend off. That thing fell apart, and she was

1:05:01always counting on the next deal closing in order to fund everything else that was behind it. So it's a snowball for her that just ended up. But ultimately, that being the case, that could have been the motive for her to kill him. So like, I'm not, I'm not excusing it in any way, because that absolutely could have been the only way I see out of this. Yeah. It's killing Eric. So like, but I, like, I just give the weight that I think again, you know, it's just I have professional experience and kind of do a little of these things. So I look at it a little differently. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but like, for me, I give that the weight that it deserves, which is not that much, but ultimately in terms of a linchpin type of motive, it certainly is a big motive, because it got it got to the point for her where I don't think there was any way for her to get out of it, you know, is, you know, but the counter argument that be like when she closes on the mansion, that seems incongruous to me that that would have been

1:06:08theoretically, excuse me, her one opportunity to make everything right. But, you know, like, what we haven't gotten a ton of in terms of when I'm saying make it everything right, is I don't know where the foreclosures were. Like, I don't know where everything was in all the properties in terms of the legal process. Sure. Like, like, like, the, like, the ships of Mayo have already have sailed, you know, and I'm saying to where if she's able to flip that thing and turn it around, you know, and again, the relationship with, with Grossman, I mean, it's like Robyn said, I don't think that she had any real feelings for that poor guy. No, I mean, she was clearly using him because she had a lot of properties that she needed a lot of work done on and she didn't have the money to pay for it. So, what he did is she created a relationship with a guy who could do the work and she was going to say, yeah, I love you. We have this relationship. We have a future together. Oh, in the meantime, can you get all that work done for me? Yeah. They say,

1:07:12it's like, I'm not excusing any of your behavior because it is what it is. Sure. In terms of, like, trying to get to that ultimate question, yeah, you do this. I don't know, man. I think that an important question that came to my mind, somebody made the comment, HGTV made everyone think they were home flippers. They did. There was that trend for a while. But my question is, how many marriages did HGTV ruin? Because, or did people ruin their own marriage? You know, obviously, after watching too much HGTV, and then one of them starts thinking, oh, I can go do this. This looks really easy. How many marriages were ruined? Not ending in murder, but ending in just financial destruction because everybody, some people invested in far too much shipwrap and just shit went to everything in the fun. And I think, one of the really congruent things here, and again, Bob, you may always make a great point. We don't know what's in her head. We don't know what's in her head. But the result of our observations of every action

1:08:14she took that Wanda Picasso was, it was always, always self-serving. You know, no one, you know, she took advantage of, and I'll go with you on this, you know, probably not intentionally. No one wakes up in the morning and says, today I'm going to be an asshole and take advantage of everyone in my life. I did yesterday. You said that to me before, too, Tony. You know, it was the one day for a lot of people. Why are my friends with Tony? But, you know, but to that point, you know, if your life arc is always, the result is that it's all your actions are always about you, and I think that's what they're presenting to the jury. As part of this is that the motive of me, me, me, me, me, and the path of destruction. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you're capable of murder, but it definitely puts it in the realm of possibility. Well, let me ask you this, Robin. I mean, like, why is everything me, me, me, me, me, if she's trying to start this business, and she's just not good at it, right? But she wants to, she wants the business to succeed. I mean,

1:09:16like, I don't necessarily take that as a meme. Like, everybody who starts a business wants to succeed. I think there's, I think her methodology is, I think, is, again, only from the optic that we see, which we don't see everything because we're not here, her and we're not in our life. But the optic that I see from what's being presented is the results are continually disastrous for herself, and every, every once she touches in her life. And a lot of times for people that are more outwardly focused, they take accountability for their own actions, they own up to their own behaviors, they share what's going on, they seek help from others, and they're open us with their communication, their transparent and vulnerable. Those are actions that are actually trying their best to serve others. But when you act with a lot of secrecy, when you act with a lack of transparency, ultimately, that behavior can definitely be interpreted as a self-centered behavior. That's why I kind of jump to that. Yeah, but I mean, the pushback on this, we don't know. Right, I caveat it,

1:10:19I caveat it, we don't know, but it's the observed behavior. All you've heard is the states theory, and I said it, and I said it, I caveat, you know, I hedged my bed here, asking them to help. I mean, we know that she went to see any and got alone on one of them. So there was a point time she wasn't sneaking around doing anything. I guess, I guess I'm laying it mostly on probably from what we know about the state theory of the case, cherry picture. Well, and the forged signatures on the life insurance policy, stealing from her friend, the waitress. I mean, there's, I'm going to go, so I'm going to hang it on the forged signature money where she was supposed to. I mean, she closed, they closed down the house, though. And also, and also the boyfriend that, you know, got duped to travel across the country. That wasn't serving him. That was serving her. You know, so again, it's cherry picking data points. And I do my best too. I don't have the reps you do in this, but really, and I think, you know, even during a conversation about this case,

1:11:21I'm extremely open-minded all the time for new data coming in always. And I am excited. And like you said, you know, if the, I love that statement, if you don't feel like she's guilty at the end of the prosecution's case, then the prosecution hasn't done their job. Right. And then, and now we're going to really see the reverse flip of it. And I'm curious about what we are going to see on that. And, but also, so, so think about this book. You know, again, I'm cherry picking data points. Was that book serving really serving her kids or was it serving her? And I think she's trying to control. It depends, right? If, if, if she did it, then it's the most self-serving, horrific disgusting thing. It's like the most warp thing. I mean, it's what put this case on everybody's was the book. Yeah. That's up that she killed her husband and then wrote a, a grief book. An op-ed. Yeah. It all depends. I just want to feel secure in any conviction. That's her. That's the bottom line. And I don't get lost in the minutiae of like, oh, yeah, she was a,

1:12:23she was a complete A-hole to everybody in her life. She was self-serving. That may all be true. And this goes to my burning question. This goes to burning question. I've had throughout most of the show, Bob, and this is, I'm so curious about this. And it might waver from case to case. And I love, again, I learned something from you every time you're on and you're on the list in robin. That's, that's the thing. You're so dedicated. One of the reasons why, at least I took away, I'm paraphrasing on you, is that you're so dedicated to the defense attorney because you want to make sure things were done right. And that justice has served according to the law. And I think that is extremely profound and righteous. At the same time, you know, you're trying to prove someone innocent or, I mean, so where's that balance between innocence and make sure it's done right and does it fluctuate from case to case? I mean, I don't know. I'm generally really curious about that. It's a great question. And again,

1:13:25it depends on the case. Like if, if Nestor and Lewis went to Cory Richards and said, okay, which I'm sure they didn't because it's not the job of the defense attorney to go, again, this isn't TV. So you're not saying Cory, did you do this? Right. Right. Right. Now I have to try to work around and like get you off it. Like that's, that's that's explicitly why you don't do that, right? Because your job is your job is your job is your job. Right. But what you're going in and you're going in and saying, okay, look, this is the evidence they have. My client and 99.9% of the time, our clients say they didn't do it. Just like, understand that is kind of like the base jump off point. 99.9% of people that are arrested say they didn't do it. Does believe it'll never matter to? They will come in, huh? Does believing them ever matter to you? No, it doesn't because it doesn't affect my job. So what happens is, and again, I think like, I always like to point out

1:14:28there's this misconception that everything goes to trial. Nothing goes to trial. 95% of cases are pled out. Right. So most of what is going on in the courtrooms in this country is plea agreements because the state has the evidence, the defense attorney's job switches from trial lawyer to I'm trying to get my client a reasonable plea because the state is overcharged. Let's have the punishment fit the crime. And so that it becomes a negotiation, right? So that's a majority of the work. So when you get to the point where you're going to trial, it's typically one of two reasons. One, you've got a client who is refusing to look at the evidence that the state has against them because I've had plenty of clients where I'm like, come on in. I know you told me that you didn't do this. I'm going to tell you what the state has and we're going to go through it. We've got some real problems here. Like this isn't some silver tongue magic show. Like we're going to go in. This is evidence that I have to contend with and I don't have any way to do it. So, you know, we're probably

1:15:29looking into conviction here. Like I'm always very pragmatic and honest with my clients because they deserve that. Right. And I want them to make informed decisions. So if I get a situation where I got a client saying I didn't do this, well, then my job becomes to look at the evidence and see what I can do with it. And so if Cory has provided Lewis and Nestor with enough that they think you could put on a case to frame this in a different way than the state has framed it. Because again, everybody is simply looking at what the state has framed this as being and that did. Like so we we've got no context from Cory Richards. Everything that we've heard about her being this awful human being has all come from the state's theory of this case. So we have to wait and see. When we're done, when Cory Richards and I saw this, there was a comment here about that I wanted to point out because it's just not accurate. Cheryl Hoffman's 60183 said lawyers are just like doctors and that they'll always publicly defend their respective peers no matter how bad they

1:16:30perform at their job. Keep that in mind. As far as I go, that could not be further from the truth. I've been from defense attorneys all the time. She do. Yeah, all the time. Yeah. If I think somebody I call balls and strikes all day long, I've got no vested interest in Cory Richards being innocent or guilty. In this case, I'm strictly looking at it from the perspective that I can avoid, which is that is a defense attorney. And at this point, I want to hear all the evidence. And when I hear all the evidence, I'm either going to come to the conclusion that Cory did it. Or she didn't. Or that the state hasn't proved it, which is a different thing all together. Right. Right. And I think that's wonderful. And I think, and I thank you so much for always bringing that perspective to this show because you bring it even in cases, I mean, like this where it can look pretty damning for one side, you still are challenging us to think and look at it from another

1:17:31perspective and not just from from the state side or the emotional side or this side. And that is always important because at the end of the day, everything ends up in a gray area. And that's how things are. It's not always absolute this way. I'm excited to hear defense. I mean, you know, listen, but I cannot wait to hear what the defense doesn't put on because of Bob. If they if they go in there and they put on a turd, she's going down. It is what it is. Yeah. Right. I mean, the reality is they may not have answers. Like the fascinating part about the defense case in chief strategically looking at it is I keep wondering and Alice and I keep having the conversations. How are they going to get certain things and if Cory isn't taking the stand? Yeah. But how you get evidence is in a trial is always the biggest piece of the puzzle for both sides. How are we going to get things introduced? Who are we going to bring them in through? Is it hearsay? How do we work around the hearsay rule? Because this is an important statement

1:18:35that the jury needs to hear. So in terms of the defense and how they're going to present their case and what they're going to be limited to based on whether or not Cory Richards is going to testify or not is fascinating. Like that is going to be worth watching the case in chief of the defense in and of itself. Your thoughts in the comment section on our YouTube and our sub stack. The links are in the description. We'd love to get your feedback there. We read it and we'll continue our conversation there. Be sure to press subscribe wherever you're downloading podcasts as well. So you don't miss any of our coverage of this in the many cases we follow for you right here. Until next time for Todd and Bob and Robyn I'm Tony Bursky. We'll talk again real soon.

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