Speaker 1: Want to be an American flony back on seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 1: There is nothing like a sleep when it's pouring rain outside,
Speaker 1: so it just makes you sleep more. The only problem
Speaker 1: with that is you got to get you gotta get
Speaker 1: up right, and it was a slow move today for me.
Speaker 1: I might be with you as well. We have horrible news,
Speaker 1: of course with the fire. We'll get more than a
Speaker 1: bit later on in Warren County, but also the follow
Speaker 1: up from the mass shooting at Riverfront Live over the weekend.
Speaker 1: Nine people shot, hundreds traumatized, and the man now accused
Speaker 1: of pulling the trigger could walk free on a fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars bond. He's climbing self defense and the mayor
Speaker 1: is furious. The question, though, is why didn't prosecutors asked
Speaker 1: to keep him locked up in the first place? On
Speaker 1: that is attorney defense attorney, constitutional expert and all around
Speaker 1: decent guy, Steve Gooden, Steve, how you doing, buddy, good
Speaker 1: good boy?
Speaker 2: Suh.
Speaker 1: So we got the case of Frenny Cobb. He's twenty
Speaker 1: four years old, arrested on a single felonious assault charge
Speaker 1: in connection with the shooting. Nine people twenty injured in
Speaker 1: the stampede. The judge set bonded fifty thousand dollars. Cobb
Speaker 1: is a convicted fellon, illegally barred from having a firearm.
Speaker 1: He was just in jail, got out of prison and
Speaker 1: picked up a gun and went and shot an individual
Speaker 1: in the crowd at this event on Saturday. He's had
Speaker 1: two prior weapon under disability convictions before the shooting, including
Speaker 1: one just a year ago, and only served twelve months
Speaker 1: before his release. Steve, at what point does the systems
Speaker 1: repeated leniency in this whole restorative justice thing and bail
Speaker 1: reform towards an armed repeat offender across judicial discretion into
Speaker 1: just absolute negligence, Because it feels like this is negligent
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: Well, look, this was a complete failure of the system
Speaker 2: on multiple levels, and there's a lot to unpack here,
Speaker 2: but one thing I do want to make clear, thank god,
Speaker 2: that looks as of the US Attorney's Office has stepped
Speaker 2: in with federal charges. They slapped what's called a federal
Speaker 2: holder on these two gentlemen, both of whom I guess
Speaker 2: there was a straight up gun battle the you, and
Speaker 2: it looks as though that they're not going anywhere thanks
Speaker 2: to the intervention of the FBI and the US Attorney's office,
Speaker 2: so that at least, you know, they have rectified the situation,
Speaker 2: at least for the moment. They are facing federal weapons
Speaker 2: churages now that they could carry up to fifteen years each.
Speaker 2: So that's good news. The bad news is, you're right,
Speaker 2: there's no way either of these guys should have been
Speaker 2: getting out on any kind of a low bond. And
Speaker 2: you know, the saying is, you know, success as many fathers,
Speaker 2: but failures and orphan here the failure has many many fathers.
Speaker 2: It looks as though the prosecutors and the police officers
Speaker 2: wok forward with a single count of colonious assault. It
Speaker 2: looks clear to me that at this point they know
Speaker 2: there was a gun battle, but there seems to be
Speaker 2: a no nine people shot, twenty others injured, but there
Speaker 2: seems to be a lack of clarity at this point
Speaker 2: in the investigation is to who shot whom. So it
Speaker 2: looks as though they threw this kind of placeholder charge out.
Speaker 2: That was mistake number one. You know, it didn't carry
Speaker 2: the gravity or really communicate the gravity of what happened.
Speaker 2: And then number two, we do have judges and I've
Speaker 2: dealt with this judge before, Bernard Monday. He's actually overall
Speaker 2: a really good judge. But there are a lot of
Speaker 2: judges in this courthouse right now that have this ideological bent.
Speaker 2: They don't believe in cash bond. They think it's unfair
Speaker 2: that people like you and I who have means, if
Speaker 2: we're accused of a crime, that we can go get
Speaker 2: a put our house up, or have access sell stock
Speaker 2: and post a bond. They think it's fundamentally unfair that
Speaker 2: people who don't have means are being held in jail.
Speaker 2: It's an ideological thing that has nothing to do whatsoever
Speaker 2: with the facts of a case. And it got so
Speaker 2: bad in Hamilton County if you recall about three or
Speaker 2: four years ago, Judge Megan Shanahan, he's now in the
Speaker 2: High Supreme Court, actually put forward a statewide issue requiring
Speaker 2: judges to consider public safety is an issue in the
Speaker 2: posting or setting of cash bonds in addition to their
Speaker 2: ability to pay, which is like sort of the progressive
Speaker 2: democratic focus. It's always the ability to pay, not public safety.
Speaker 2: So there's a requirement these judges have. It's in the
Speaker 2: Ohio Constitution now imposed by the voters that they should
Speaker 2: look at public safety above all else, and that clearly
Speaker 2: just didn't happen here. So a fifty thousand dollars bond
Speaker 2: conceivably posted, you know, a ten percent, which is the
Speaker 2: standard I thing here. So someone could post five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars cash of walk out on some sort of an
Speaker 2: ankle bracelet. You know, that's a really bad, bad thing.
Speaker 2: And you know, back when I was a prosecutor, we
Speaker 2: viewed this very very differently twenty years ago. Not only
Speaker 2: were you trying to protect the public, but you also
Speaker 2: wanted to protect the defendant because you know, in the
Speaker 2: in the immediate aftermath of some big public shooting like this,
Speaker 2: you know, there tends to be victims, families looking for
Speaker 2: them too. It's in society's interest, they're interest everyone for
Speaker 2: them to sit. Look, if there's something flawed about this
Speaker 2: case and it turns out that got the wrong guys,
Speaker 2: you know, this will be presented to the grand jury
Speaker 2: within ten days. Anyway, they'll be out of the worst
Speaker 2: thing that happens here is that someone who is credibly
Speaker 2: accused of a mass shooting sits in jail for ten
Speaker 2: days while the authority sorted out. That's something that is
Speaker 2: not offensive to our system or to society or anything
Speaker 2: of the sort. And it's just common sense. And this
Speaker 2: is the kind of stuff again that makes people look
Speaker 2: at this and shake their head. And it's fascinating to
Speaker 2: me that even the mayor, wait, and the mayor is out.
Speaker 2: The mayor was somebody who was really really bragged about
Speaker 2: remaking the carhouse and pushing these things and attacked cash
Speaker 2: bonds and look.
Speaker 1: I remember that that isn't that irony? I don't want
Speaker 1: to say delicious, because you know this is such a
Speaker 1: serious crime, Steve Gooden, But here's a guy who campaigned
Speaker 1: on restorative justice bond reform. We got to be better,
Speaker 1: a gentler. We can't punch down. We've got to treat
Speaker 1: people better. Okay, great, And now he's in the podium saying,
Speaker 1: how the hell could this person get out into the
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars buck It's because you and I said
Speaker 1: progressive push for this, That's.
Speaker 2: All I mean, that's absolutely read. I read this quote. Iomas,
Speaker 2: you know, I think I still have a cell phone
Speaker 2: here somewhere else. Who was going to text it it
Speaker 2: Welcome to the party now, like we will have been
Speaker 2: saying this for years and look, this is just in
Speaker 2: This is one of those things that's been out there
Speaker 2: for about ten to fifteen years on the progress among
Speaker 2: progressive politicians that drives people. Not just one of these things.
Speaker 2: It's an article of faith on that side. And you know,
Speaker 2: like the way I try to explain it to my
Speaker 2: my democratic friends is like this, and like, you know
Speaker 2: how in seeing some people feel when you talk to
Speaker 2: a hardcore conservative and say, guys, look, we believe in
Speaker 2: gun rights, but we don't you think we should have
Speaker 2: some gun control. Maybe you shouldn't be able to carry
Speaker 2: an A forty seven out in public or AK forty
Speaker 2: seven in public, and they say, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's got to be it's all or nothing. That's how
Speaker 2: democrats sound when you in common sense people talk about
Speaker 2: balbell or form. Well, it's just fundamentally unfair that rich
Speaker 2: people can postpond and well, no, actually, when you look
Speaker 2: at the facts of the matter, when someone commits a
Speaker 2: violent offense, there ought to be an ability to hold
Speaker 2: on to them. And frankly, in the federal system there
Speaker 2: is no cash bond. You have what's called a detention hearing,
Speaker 2: where a magistrate, a federal magistrate looks at the facts
Speaker 2: of the case, and if you're caught with a bunch
Speaker 2: of drugs or guns, you're going nowhere. You have no
Speaker 2: opportunity to postpond. It's been like that in this country
Speaker 2: for two hundred and thirty four years in the federal system,
Speaker 2: and the country hasn't fallen apart, and it's not some
Speaker 2: grave injustice. So the idea that we're even we're just
Speaker 2: playing with ourselves in state courts over this stuff. Ideologically,
Speaker 2: at all they're doing is they're cycling more people out
Speaker 2: to hurt others get killed, and it's just bad. Well
Speaker 2: it's good here, but it's really bad here. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there are some judges out there. I mentioned names
Speaker 1: of Silverstein ordation and ordered banning objections during bond rulings,
Speaker 1: which is just absolutely I don't even know if that's
Speaker 1: legally permissible. The mont Is Merriweather thing. We bonded out
Speaker 1: on a weapons disability charge and participated in the downtown brawl.
Speaker 1: The Chiefs of Police Association wants to have roundtables the
Speaker 1: judges refuse to participate in that they feel them bold
Speaker 1: and to continue this pattern that puts the public in serious,
Speaker 1: serious jeopardy. And that's back, of course by people like
Speaker 1: mayor Pirival, who now wants to undo this and go, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this was a bad decision, with Au admitting it
Speaker 1: was a bad decision. The judge judge in this case
Speaker 1: you mentioned, Judge Mundy, he said a bond Steve good
Speaker 1: than fifty thousand dollars in a single full only as
Speaker 1: assault charge to the shooting on Saturday at Riverfront Live.
Speaker 1: He said, look, my hands are tied by the charging decision,
Speaker 1: says that's the max. That's all I can do. Did
Speaker 1: he have any more discretion, broader discretion or you just
Speaker 1: chose not to exercise it?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I it's arguable I would say that.
Speaker 2: I but I think he did. I mean, look, I
Speaker 2: mean is tech he is correct. They've put forward a
Speaker 2: single case of a flows assault, not the nine charges
Speaker 2: or however many this guy hit. They didn't also charge
Speaker 2: him with any of the gun offenses for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: which would have justified a higher bond. So they did
Speaker 2: put the judge here in a kind of a bad place.
Speaker 2: Why they made those decisions at this early stage, I
Speaker 2: don't know. Maybe they're waiting on additional ballistic evidence. I
Speaker 2: don't know, but it sounds pretty clear to me they
Speaker 2: were able to put a gun on this guy's hand
Speaker 2: and that there should have been more charges put there.
Speaker 2: So that's correct. But I want to zone back in
Speaker 2: on this public safety piece and if the judge could have,
Speaker 2: in my view, argued and found that because of the
Speaker 2: nature of the overall incident, that there was a true
Speaker 2: public safety issue and that that justified a higher bond.
Speaker 2: And what's going on in that arragement room all the time.
Speaker 2: We're having judges who are deviating from this public safety requirement,
Speaker 2: and because of the bond issue is usually washed through
Speaker 2: the system so quickly because we have what we call
Speaker 2: a rapid and dim grandury system. When all the felonies
Speaker 2: and serious churches are dealt with in about ten days
Speaker 2: and you have a new judge and it takes over,
Speaker 2: there really is no effective way for the state to
Speaker 2: appeal these bad decisions. And frankly, now we have a
Speaker 2: situation where you have the prosecutor's office and all the
Speaker 2: judges who are sort of on the same page it
Speaker 2: seems ideologically anyway, But if the prosecutor wanted to appeal effectively,
Speaker 2: they're not really going to have time. These judges are
Speaker 2: smart enough to know that. So they're really not posting
Speaker 2: these high bonds for their ideological reasons, it seems to me.
Speaker 2: I mean again, I don't know, but I mean we're seeing,
Speaker 2: you know, they're campaigning on these sorts of things that
Speaker 2: made public statements to this effect. So you're right. I mean,
Speaker 2: Bernard Muddy was put in a very bad position, I
Speaker 2: think by the charging decision, but he could have deviated,
Speaker 2: as I understand that under Ohio law and put a
Speaker 2: really high bond on this because there are clearly more
Speaker 2: charges coming, no question. And again the Feds didn't mess
Speaker 2: around with it. And I think that is the other
Speaker 2: really interesting thing here because traditionally, but the US Attorney's
Speaker 2: Office would work with the state attorney's office citing which
Speaker 2: case is to take. And here it looks as though
Speaker 2: from everything I have heard, that the US Attorney's Office
Speaker 2: and the FBI at HTF just came in unilaterally and said, no,
Speaker 2: we're taking we're taking this away because this isn't right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is an attorney. Former prosecutor Defenser Steve Good
Speaker 1: on the show on seven hundred WLWD News yesterday that
Speaker 1: the individual, one of the individuals responsible for the mass
Speaker 1: shooting at Riverfront Live on Saturday or left nine people
Speaker 1: shot and hundreds traumatized, could walk fan a fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars bond that was posted yesterday by Judge Munday in
Speaker 1: his court and said, listen, that's all I can do.
Speaker 1: Even have apt had Peerval and other Democrats backpedaling on
Speaker 1: the issue of restorative justice, because this is what it
Speaker 1: looks like. You know, it's one thing to cite someone
Speaker 1: or penalize someone and set a high bond because they've
Speaker 1: got a bag of weed. But when you hire a
Speaker 1: violent predatory criminal with a track record, that person needs
Speaker 1: to be locked up and knocked up sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1: In that regard, there's kind of an I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's a loophole or not. Steven, maybe this supplies
Speaker 1: with our standard ground law. I'm not sure, but take
Speaker 1: me through the fact that the shooter on Fountain Square.
Speaker 1: We sim shoot the two individuals at Citybird Chicken on
Speaker 1: Fountain Square. That person was led out because the claim
Speaker 1: that was self defense at the two inside the store,
Speaker 1: and the video inside City Bird backed up that. The
Speaker 1: I think the seventeen and eighteen year old if I'm
Speaker 1: not necessair, nineteen year old pulled guns out and we're
Speaker 1: going to shoot him through the glass while they're sitting
Speaker 1: having chicken at a restaurant, and Fountain Square with a
Speaker 1: bunch of people around, said it was self defense. This
Speaker 1: guy was prohibited from having a weapon because he is
Speaker 1: already convicted in this case. You've got individuals here who
Speaker 1: both had a jacket on them that prevented them from
Speaker 1: having a weapon, and yet they get around to turn
Speaker 1: around and claim self defense. Do we kind of like
Speaker 1: have a pattern of a loophole here?
Speaker 2: What a little bit now, I think, frankly, I heard
Speaker 2: this too. I saw this on the news, and I
Speaker 2: actually watched a club of the video. This guy's lawyer,
Speaker 2: the moprint Live Shooter. He is going to claim self defense,
Speaker 2: but of course, as you point out, he is legally
Speaker 2: barred from having a firearm. And it is exactly like
Speaker 2: what happened to Fountain Square. Now, it looks as though
Speaker 2: on Fountain Square they are still pursuing at least felony
Speaker 2: charges against the individual for having the firearm to begin with,
Speaker 2: even though it looks as though he did establish a
Speaker 2: right to self defense and some of that you know
Speaker 2: you're right stand your ground in Ohio actually make self
Speaker 2: defense claims easier to assert, I guess because you don't
Speaker 2: have a duty to retreat anymore. That's really all the change,
Speaker 2: and it's very fact specific to every case. But here
Speaker 2: in the Riverfront Live situation, I mean, the idea that
Speaker 2: this guy that there were multiple individuals going into this
Speaker 2: what I'm told was a private party with five or
Speaker 2: six hundred people getting in there with firearms, both of
Speaker 2: whom were legally barred from owning the firearms and having
Speaker 2: them on their body. I mean, that's unfortunately that doesn't
Speaker 2: under a highalog go to self defense piece. But they
Speaker 2: will both base some charges. And it looks as though
Speaker 2: the federal prosecuted US attorney is focusing on the weapons aspect,
Speaker 2: at least initially in the charges that he is bringing
Speaker 2: in federal courts. So it looks as though at least
Speaker 2: the system was correcting itself from this instance on this.
Speaker 2: But that is like that is the heart of the
Speaker 2: problem that we're seeing in Cincinnati, which is convicted felons
Speaker 2: carrying guns with impunity and it not being taken very
Speaker 2: seriously in the state courts.
Speaker 1: We spent like six million dollars on what they call
Speaker 1: targeted community alternatives to prison. It's a program, another program,
Speaker 1: no more programs, I swear to God. But and it's
Speaker 1: designed to divert following the offenders away from incarceration. Someone
Speaker 1: with the Cobbs record cocaine trafficking, two weapons under disability convictions.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how your candidate for diversion in that
Speaker 1: guy who decides why he would be eligible for diversion,
Speaker 1: how's that work?
Speaker 2: Well? I mean, typically it's a judicial decision where the
Speaker 2: prosecutor's office does sign off and they what they look
Speaker 2: at or non violent offenses, and for better or worse,
Speaker 2: by and large, under Ohio law, merely possessing the gun
Speaker 2: but not using the gun is considered, you know, non violent.
Speaker 2: I mean they're looking at they're looking as someone who
Speaker 2: actually has pulled the gun on someone or who has
Speaker 2: attacked someone. And and the kind of drift of where
Speaker 2: the system is right now, not just in Cincinnati but
Speaker 2: statewide is to look at drug offenses in sort of
Speaker 2: a more forgiving way. And I mean there's there's certainly
Speaker 2: an argument to that effect, but what the way I
Speaker 2: I always looked at it and the way we looked
Speaker 2: at it back in the day when when I worked
Speaker 2: in the in the prosecutor's office under very different administrations,
Speaker 2: is we looked at drug users and addicts in a
Speaker 2: very different light than we looked at drug dealers, because
Speaker 2: we saw drug dealers as folks who tended to be armed,
Speaker 2: who were capable of violence, whether they had committed violence
Speaker 2: in the offense or not, and that they were profiting
Speaker 2: off the misery and addiction of others. So we always
Speaker 2: looked at those folks very differently, and I think that
Speaker 2: has eroded over time, and now just drug offenses generally
Speaker 2: are looked at by a lot of the judges and
Speaker 2: a lot of the prosecutors, not just here but statewide.
Speaker 2: There's just being well, it's just part of the overall
Speaker 2: drug problem, quote unquote, And I think we would all
Speaker 2: be better served as society to look at if you
Speaker 2: had the way we looked at it at a grand jury,
Speaker 2: is drugs and you're using and drugs in your system,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe that's somebody that does need to be
Speaker 2: diverted into a treatment scenario and not have their lives ruined.
Speaker 2: Drugs plus a gun and the drugs are packaged in
Speaker 2: a certain way, that's the guy that that's the guy
Speaker 2: that deserves to go to prison because he's profiting from it.
Speaker 2: And that kind of common sense sort of analysis is
Speaker 2: sort of followed by the wayside over the years.
Speaker 1: From what I yeah, no question, Sarah Herringer, Patrick's widow
Speaker 1: is pushing a law that would require real time ankle
Speaker 1: monitor data and making cutting one off an automatic felony.
Speaker 1: And it hasn't passed. But if that had been on
Speaker 1: the book with his murder, Mordecai Black want to say,
Speaker 1: Patrick Herringer, does the same logic apply to supervision of
Speaker 1: repeat gun defenders post release like this?
Speaker 2: You know it should. And I'll tell you, I think,
Speaker 2: you know what if if we get a probation officer
Speaker 2: here on the phone with us and he was given
Speaker 2: some truth surm, I think they would tell you that
Speaker 2: the technology and the funds just aren't there at the
Speaker 2: county level to really monitor these ropes. And I got
Speaker 2: to know Sarah, unfortunately pretty well through all this, and
Speaker 2: I can tell you that you know that there were
Speaker 2: many many failures there. There were personal failures, but there
Speaker 2: was a system's failure. There's a technology failure. We have
Speaker 2: the ability to to do real time monitoring both on
Speaker 2: probation and then hurt the situation. Unfortunately with Mordecai black
Speaker 2: on parole, A's just we don't as a society spend
Speaker 2: the money there, we don't staff these things the right way,
Speaker 2: and we just have not made it a priority. And
Speaker 2: that's a shame because if we are going to let
Speaker 2: people out and have these inkle monitors, they ought to
Speaker 2: be able to work. And really it's the same technology
Speaker 2: they've had since the mid nineties. And you're right, you
Speaker 2: can take a kitchen knife and cut one of them off.
Speaker 2: You were so sure. So it's no way to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea that we don't have the technicians say,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got an Apple watch right now, and
Speaker 1: it'll sell you know, it'll wear it at night. You know,
Speaker 1: it'll tell you your quality sleep, will tell you how
Speaker 1: much you're sleeping. You'll tell you if you're snoring, if
Speaker 1: you tell if you're an a FIB, give you an
Speaker 1: EKG and do all these amazing things. You need to
Speaker 1: tell me that the technology doesn't exist to go, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: if you cut this thing off, instant alarm bells go
Speaker 1: off or in the case of a gun film like this,
Speaker 1: maybe they need one that uses that technology that would
Speaker 1: sense if that individual shoots a firearm and an automatic
Speaker 1: goes off and said, this person who is prohibited from
Speaker 1: having a firearm just shot one off, you go and
Speaker 1: arrest the guy. How hard is that? I don't think
Speaker 1: it's that hard. But we've got to have the political
Speaker 1: will power, of course, to do these things. He is
Speaker 1: Steve Gooden, attorney at law, former prosecutor around defense. Steve
Speaker 1: all the best, Thanks again for coming on the show anytime.
Speaker 1: Scott take care always got great legal analysis for us.
Speaker 1: Here it's it's mindless and you know how to show
Speaker 1: you the problem that I have with politics as a
Speaker 1: no nonsense, straightforward, common sense kind of guy, a political
Speaker 1: if you will, that this is a great example of
Speaker 1: progressives and Democrats talking out of both sides of their
Speaker 1: mouth that you know, you have have to have pure
Speaker 1: of all in other progressives who ran on the whole
Speaker 1: doctrine of restorative justice and bond reform, well, this is
Speaker 1: what it looks like. These are the effects of that
Speaker 1: that these guys get out and just commit crime after
Speaker 1: crime because some people you can't reform. Actually a lot
Speaker 1: of people you can't reform. Why give them a second, third,
Speaker 1: or fourth chance. It's just throwing lives. The blood is
Speaker 1: on their hands, on their hands. I'll switch up in
Speaker 1: a second here, and there's another speaking of politics in
Speaker 1: the squaretgard The same thing is kind of happening. You know,
Speaker 1: in an election, there was a lot made about you know,
Speaker 1: transgender people in bathrooms, in that stuff. There's not enough
Speaker 1: of them to cause the problems that were indicated during
Speaker 1: the election. But I got an example of, you know,
Speaker 1: turning the tables around here of that happening actually in
Speaker 1: Warren County in a very very serious, disgusting case that
Speaker 1: had this been someone that fit that category, you would
Speaker 1: hear more about it. But instead it's just a sad case.
Speaker 1: It faded away. You know what I'm talking about. If
Speaker 1: you don't, I'll explain next seven hundred ww