Speaker 1: In this podcast, we're going to talk frankly but sensitively
Speaker 1: about issues some people might find disturbing, including rape and suicide.
Speaker 1: If you or someone you know is suicidal in the
Speaker 1: US Down nine eighty eight, check out this podcast notes
Speaker 1: page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources in
Speaker 1: your community.
Speaker 2: This is shattering the system. I'm Sinari and Glinton.
Speaker 3: This is the notebook that I brought to the trial.
Speaker 3: So these are all the pages from every single day
Speaker 3: while I was in the viewing room with family and
Speaker 3: friends of Jamel and Timothy.
Speaker 2: I recently sat down with Jonathan Hunger. He is one
Speaker 2: of the executive producers for this show. He attended every
Speaker 2: day of the trial. He'd never been to a federal
Speaker 2: court before. Jonathan would sit in the viewer section with
Speaker 2: the family and friends of the victims. I came along
Speaker 2: for some of the key moments, but Jonathan went every
Speaker 2: day and he kept an incredibly meticulous notebook that really
Speaker 2: gives you a sense of what the trial felt like.
Speaker 3: So just pages upon pages, so from everything to what
Speaker 3: was going on, from the jury selection to behind the
Speaker 3: scenes stuff before the procedings actually started.
Speaker 2: Because of COVID nineteen for this trial, the courtroom was divided.
Speaker 2: There was one room for where the principals gathered, you know,
Speaker 2: the lawyers, the judge, and ed Buck, and then in
Speaker 2: a completely different courtroom was the viewing section where spectators
Speaker 2: could watch the trial on closed circuit television.
Speaker 3: Every day was starting with me being in a line
Speaker 3: of folks that were there not only for the Buck trial,
Speaker 3: but also any case within that building. It's a huge
Speaker 3: building downtown, so when you walk up it, it kind
Speaker 3: of feels almost larger than life, like how you were
Speaker 3: describing it.
Speaker 2: The Federal Courthouse where ed Buck was stride was completed
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen. The building's architects, Skid moll Owens and
Speaker 2: Meryl envisioned it as a floating cube with curtains of
Speaker 2: glass and enduring materials like limestone. It's kind of a
Speaker 2: secular temple to justice. A quick review of where we
Speaker 2: are in this story. Ed Buck shot up twenty six
Speaker 2: year old Jammel Moore with a lethal dose of meth
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen. Buck wasn't arrested, and eighteen months later
Speaker 2: another man died the same way. His name was Timothy Dean.
Speaker 2: Timothy died on January seventh, twenty nineteen. Then a third
Speaker 2: man escaped Buck's apartment on September eleventh, twenty nineteen. He
Speaker 2: told a horrifying tale of being bound and injected with
Speaker 2: a dangerously large dose of meth. Finally, finally, ed Buck
Speaker 2: was arrested, and eventually he would be brought to trial
Speaker 2: by federal prosecutors. Today, we'll take a closer look at
Speaker 2: Edbuck's trial, as well as the defense strategy his lawyers
Speaker 2: put forth. I wanted to talk to someone who could
Speaker 2: give a sense of what the trial felt like.
Speaker 3: So from the very beginning, he was always coming from
Speaker 3: a place of anger of like, how was this man
Speaker 3: able to live on the streets and do all this evil?
Speaker 3: And really, you know, maybe it's now after hearing all
Speaker 3: the things from the trial that I say so openly
Speaker 3: evil because there's no other way to describe it. Disgusting, evil, horrific,
Speaker 3: the things you would never want to either see again
Speaker 3: or hear about again.
Speaker 2: Finally ed Buck would have his day in court. Letitia Nixon,
Speaker 2: Jamelmore's mother would now have at least the chance to
Speaker 2: get a measure of justice for her son. Buck was
Speaker 2: arrested in late twenty nineteen, and while waiting for his trial,
Speaker 2: the world would stop because of COVID nineteen and the
Speaker 2: Black Lives Matter movement would bring renewed scrutiny to this case.
Speaker 2: This is shattering the system. I'm your host scenario Glinton.
Speaker 2: In the last episode, we heard about the investigation and
Speaker 2: what made federal prosecutors take up the ed Buck case.
Speaker 2: In this episode, we'll hear about the struggle to get
Speaker 2: Buck into an actual courtroom, and we'll hear from one
Speaker 2: of Buck's defence lawyers.
Speaker 4: If I was white, no one would have questioned my integrity,
Speaker 4: no one would have dragged me. And if I won
Speaker 4: or lost as a lawyer, as a white lawyer, nobody
Speaker 4: would have had.
Speaker 5: Any issue with me.
Speaker 2: The United States versus ed Buck after this break Wow.
Speaker 2: After he was arrested in September. On October two, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: Nick Hannah, the US attorney, filed an indictment against Buck,
Speaker 2: charging him with five counts. The delays from COVID make
Speaker 2: many wonder if ed Buck would ever get a trial.
Speaker 2: Those the ladies gave prosecutors that much more time to
Speaker 2: go over evidence and hone their arguments. For many people involved,
Speaker 2: it was emotional, not just the victims' families, but all
Speaker 2: those involved. Here's the federal prosecutor, Chelsea Norrel, on the
Speaker 2: stakes she felt during the trial.
Speaker 6: When we brought our criminal complaint our first day and
Speaker 6: magistrate court, when Buck was appearing on our charges, one
Speaker 6: of Jamal Moore's friends came up to me with his
Speaker 6: urn of ashes and put my hand on it and said,
Speaker 6: you're fighting for my best friend. And from that moment on,
Speaker 6: this was just the most important part of my life.
Speaker 2: Ed Buck wouldn't go on trial until July twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: but when he did, the government was ready.
Speaker 6: We tried to come out of the gates swinging.
Speaker 2: Chelsea Norrel is a federal prosecutor. She was on the
Speaker 2: team that tried ed Buck.
Speaker 6: So we tried to make the testimony compelling throughout. And
Speaker 6: one of our earliest witnesses was a neighbor of Bucks
Speaker 6: who had asked Buck about all of the men cycling
Speaker 6: through his apartment who came out looking like they were
Speaker 6: in a stupor. And the neighbor testified that Buck said
Speaker 6: they were his social work clients and painted himself as
Speaker 6: this social worker who was attempting to help the victims
Speaker 6: and I think that was a good prism through which
Speaker 6: to then see victims come forward and say, far from
Speaker 6: getting the help I needed, Buck was creating or amplifying
Speaker 6: drug addictions in that apartment by monetizing and incentivizing us
Speaker 6: to take more drugs, by dangling another fifty dollars to
Speaker 6: inject a bigger dose of methamphetamine.
Speaker 2: Part of the delay in Buck going to trial was
Speaker 2: the court system essentially had to figure out how we
Speaker 2: would do court with the onset of the global pandemic.
Speaker 2: Buck's attorneys would argue he was at a greater risk
Speaker 2: of COVID and should be returned to his apartment on
Speaker 2: Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood on bail a rating trial.
Speaker 2: Nana Giamfi, a lawyer working with Letitia Nixon. Jamel Moore's mother,
Speaker 2: responded to Buck's attempt to be let out of jail, saying, quote,
Speaker 2: when these people say they want him on house arrest,
Speaker 2: I don't know if they're paying attention. That's where he
Speaker 2: kills people. End quote. Buck was considered an increased flight risk,
Speaker 2: and a judge would refuse to send Buck back to
Speaker 2: the apartment. Was Jamel and Timothy died.
Speaker 3: Judge Schnyder was very by the book. From the very jump,
Speaker 3: you knew that she was meaning business.
Speaker 2: That's Jonathan Unger. He's one of the producers of this podcast.
Speaker 3: She knew immediately right when the trial started, from the
Speaker 3: jury selection down to the very end, that she was
Speaker 3: not going to either cut corners or take any bullshit.
Speaker 2: The no nonsense judge Jonathan is referring to is Christina
Speaker 2: and Schneider. She's a senior United States District judge. She
Speaker 2: was nominated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3: Well, the elephant in the room is Christopher Darden, And
Speaker 3: like I feel like, especially maybe this is the kid
Speaker 3: from Virginia and me, but knowing that someone of that
Speaker 3: profile was defending Buck, I think there was just a
Speaker 3: lot of eyeballs on this case.
Speaker 2: Christopher Darden. For those who remember, is that Chris Darden.
Speaker 2: That Chris Darden had been a prosecutor in the nineties
Speaker 2: when oj Simpson was on trial for the murder of
Speaker 2: Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Since that landmark trial,
Speaker 2: Darden would switch sides and become a highly paid defense lawyer.
Speaker 2: He would be joined at the defense table by Ludlow
Speaker 2: be Query. We asked to speak to Darden, but he declined.
Speaker 2: I did have an extensive conversation with his co counsel,
Speaker 2: Ludlow be Query. I had to ask him, given all
Speaker 2: the evidence that we've just heard in this podcast, why
Speaker 2: would a black lawyer who had been head of the
Speaker 2: Black Students Association in law school, why would he agree
Speaker 2: to defend that buck let's take a lesson.
Speaker 4: Well, it was going to be a challenge. It had
Speaker 4: some very intriguing elements to it. I mean, basically the
Speaker 4: racial components were intriguing to me, you know, because to me,
Speaker 4: as a criminal defense lawyer, I've had a lot of
Speaker 4: cases dealing with people distributing and using methamphetamine, and it
Speaker 4: didn't seem like something that I couldn't tackle. It seemed
Speaker 4: pretty straightforward, at least as the allegations went. I do
Speaker 4: like the challenge of federal court, and I found it
Speaker 4: fascinating because to me, case wasn't what it was being
Speaker 4: blown up to be for political purposes, you know, from
Speaker 4: the media's perspect you know, how the public was viewing it.
Speaker 4: It was just not what it was being portrayed as
Speaker 4: it was just to me, meth distribution case, and unfortunately,
Speaker 4: two of the individuals that mister Buck was partying with died.
Speaker 4: I didn't see it as, oh, he was doing this
Speaker 4: because he hates black men, you know.
Speaker 5: I didn't.
Speaker 4: That's not what I saw in this case, that he
Speaker 4: hates black men, so he's trying to kill them, which.
Speaker 5: Is what was the public perception.
Speaker 4: So I found that intriguing and I found that a challenge.
Speaker 2: You said multiple times that the court of public opinion
Speaker 2: believed that had Buck murdered Jimmel Moore and timything Dean
Speaker 2: like that was the court of public opinion. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: it helped me understand. How do you argue for a
Speaker 2: client when you understand that the court of public opinion
Speaker 2: things they're wrong.
Speaker 5: You have to ignore it.
Speaker 4: You have to ignore the court of public opinion because
Speaker 4: the court of a public opinion is not due process.
Speaker 4: The court of public opinion is the very thing that
Speaker 4: the Constitution of the United States of America protects the
Speaker 4: individual from.
Speaker 2: Can you help me understand, then, what was your strategy
Speaker 2: to defend mister Buck.
Speaker 4: Our expert found that Jammel was suffering from AIDS if
Speaker 4: I recall correctly, and Timothy Dean. He had heart disease,
Speaker 4: he had advanced heart disease, and he's also intoxicated. He
Speaker 4: at a very high blood alcohol level, and I believe
Speaker 4: he might have done methamfetmine prior to going to mister
Speaker 4: Buck's residence, if I recall. So, those were the factors
Speaker 4: that our expert opined were the main causes of these
Speaker 4: gentlemen's deaths, not the ingestion, not acute methamphetamine intoxication, and
Speaker 4: obviously the government's experts disagree.
Speaker 2: I want to step away from the idea to talk
Speaker 2: about the defense. That expert opinion was that the main
Speaker 2: reason for the death of Jamel was that he was
Speaker 2: sick with aids and that Timothy died of a heart
Speaker 2: attack as opposed to being injected with a legal amount
Speaker 2: of drugs. The visitors area was filled with friends of
Speaker 2: the victims and you could hear audible groans when the
Speaker 2: defense took that tack. The strategy was essentially to attack
Speaker 2: the credibility of the witnesses, men who had already admitted
Speaker 2: to doing sex work and taking drugs.
Speaker 7: That difference is not that uncommon.
Speaker 2: That's April Prayer. She's a defense attorney without ties to
Speaker 2: the case.
Speaker 7: As despicable as it sounds, is basically, the victim wasn't
Speaker 7: worth you caring about. The victim isn't worth this trial.
Speaker 7: The victim isn't worth the jurors being concerned about them
Speaker 7: no longer being on this planet. It's not that uncommon.
Speaker 7: As despicable and awful as it sounds, it's kind of
Speaker 7: a form of jury nullification, kind of saying, yeah, if
Speaker 7: you did it, so what is that such a bad thing?
Speaker 7: It is such a bad thing if you wipe these
Speaker 7: low lives off the face of the earth. I don't
Speaker 7: think it's a very sophisticated defense, but you don't necessarily
Speaker 7: need your defense to be sophisticated to win.
Speaker 2: The team of dardening Query didn't appear sophisticated, at least
Speaker 2: not in the courtroom. During the trial. The defense seemed disorganized,
Speaker 2: to say the least. That didn't keep them, though, from
Speaker 2: going hard against the witnesses. The prosecutors, like Chelsea Morrel,
Speaker 2: weren't surprised by the defense strategy. They were surprised by
Speaker 2: the defense's doggedness, especially on cross examination.
Speaker 6: They cross examined on every aspect of their testimony and
Speaker 6: presented false choices to the jury, making it seem like
Speaker 6: everyone was there willingly and that none of the conduct
Speaker 6: was surreptitious or non consensual, and sort of lost over
Speaker 6: all of the evidence that we presented showing that there
Speaker 6: were non consensual sexual encounters, that there were non consensual
Speaker 6: distributions of drugs, and there were surreptitious distributions of drugs
Speaker 6: where Buck would drug someone's drink to give them a
Speaker 6: CNS depressant, so like a klonipin or a GHB, to
Speaker 6: then reduce their ability to resist injections of methamphetamine. So
Speaker 6: they kind of they tried to discredit all of those
Speaker 6: accounts and really paint these as consensual encounters, and tried
Speaker 6: to paint the victims as wanting their fifteen minutes of fame,
Speaker 6: As if anyone wants to be famous for being injected
Speaker 6: by ed drugs, it.
Speaker 2: Seems cynical, to say the least, that Buck, who was
Speaker 2: accused of killing two black men, would pick two black lawyers.
Speaker 2: Darden and Query were criticized by activists and people on
Speaker 2: the side of the victims. A good amount of the
Speaker 2: interview was Query and I discussing race and his sensitivity
Speaker 2: to claims by activists that he was a pawn in
Speaker 2: ed Buck's game, or that he was an Uncle Tom
Speaker 2: for defending Buck.
Speaker 4: You know, at some point, as a lawyer, I've got
Speaker 4: to look at myself as a lawyer and not just
Speaker 4: as a black lawyer, because then I'm being ghetto wised,
Speaker 4: you know, as a lawyer, as I am as a
Speaker 4: black man. If I'm told I can only take certain
Speaker 4: types of cases, I can only represent certain types of
Speaker 4: people because I'm black, What does that say about our society?
Speaker 4: If I was white, no one would have questioned my integrity,
Speaker 4: no one would have tried to cancel me, no one
Speaker 4: would have tried to drag me.
Speaker 5: And if I won or lost.
Speaker 4: As a white lawyer, nobody would have had any issue
Speaker 4: with me.
Speaker 5: I'm just doing my job.
Speaker 4: But as a black lawyer, there's only certain I can't
Speaker 4: take ed Buck because the alleged victims are black. So
Speaker 4: as a black lawyer, that's off limits to me. So
Speaker 4: that was one of the biggest cases of the year
Speaker 4: when it was filed twenty nineteen. It was one of
Speaker 4: the biggest trials of the summer of twenty one. Yet me,
Speaker 4: as a black lawyer, I should have prevented myself from
Speaker 4: representing this criminal defendant because I'm black and because of
Speaker 4: the nature of the allegations. But if I'm white, it's okay.
Speaker 4: I have a problem with that. I have a problem
Speaker 4: with that.
Speaker 2: This is shattering the system. The True Crime podcast that's
Speaker 2: about more than crime. We'll hear more from my conversation
Speaker 2: with low b Query the lawyer Fred Buck after this break.
Speaker 2: I'm a black man, Yes, I understand, yes, that you
Speaker 2: have to defend people because you know the criment. I
Speaker 2: live in West Sullywood. Yes, no one is like this
Speaker 2: is not this is not a show that's on the
Speaker 2: side of the police, whatever that means.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: As a gay black man who followed this case, I
Speaker 2: was offended by the way that the people who were
Speaker 2: in his apartment, the people who testified, the ways in
Speaker 2: which they were cross examined. It seemed for me, from
Speaker 2: my ears, it seemed like a defense out of a
Speaker 2: Law and Order episode from the nineties.
Speaker 5: That is I mean, that is it like we don't.
Speaker 2: Understand that there's you know that you can get treated
Speaker 2: for a that most black men have. Hearts of these
Speaker 2: are high high blood pressure, but they're not also slamming
Speaker 2: that nfetomin.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, and I understand your point, but obviously we're
Speaker 4: not the medical experts. Those were the statements of our expert.
Speaker 4: Those were the statements of the doctor who examined the
Speaker 4: autopsy reports and the lab reports, and that was his summation,
Speaker 4: and that's what he testified. We didn't make that up.
Speaker 4: That's what he said, and so of course what our
Speaker 4: expert says is what we're going to go off of.
Speaker 5: So that's where that came from. It came from our expert.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you ed Buck was convicted, yes, the
Speaker 2: jury did not agree.
Speaker 4: If you just didn't agree that your jury did not
Speaker 4: agree exactly, if you had to.
Speaker 2: Do it over again, would you have chosen the same strategy?
Speaker 4: You know, I still don't see that there was another strategy,
Speaker 4: at least in terms of dealing with.
Speaker 5: The cause of death.
Speaker 4: The whole case was really about cause of death because
Speaker 4: the distribution you have video of them doing what appears
Speaker 4: to be meth amphetamine. You have you know, officer satisfying
Speaker 4: that they found meth amphetamine, they found paraphernalia.
Speaker 5: You know, the distribution charges were really.
Speaker 4: Difficult to defend because you had all this evidence that
Speaker 4: pretty much spoke to the charges of distribution. What this
Speaker 4: case really was about, in a nutshell, was about cause
Speaker 4: of death, because the causing death part was really the
Speaker 4: most important part of the case in regards to what
Speaker 4: mister Buck's exposure was. So that's where the fight was,
Speaker 4: and so we had to get a medical expert. We
Speaker 4: had to get an expert to examine the reports and
Speaker 4: examine the medical history and all the things they needed
Speaker 4: to do and give us an appear on well, what do
Speaker 4: you think kill these two men? They're really I mean,
Speaker 4: there's no other strategy than that, at least in regards
Speaker 4: to that part of the case.
Speaker 2: The trial was genuinely emotional. The testimony and the exhibits
Speaker 2: were truly disturbing and triggering, not just for the friends
Speaker 2: and family of Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean, but for
Speaker 2: the lawyers and everyone in the courtroom. One potent part
Speaker 2: of the trial was even for this moment, hearing these
Speaker 2: men who don't usually have a voice speaking out loud
Speaker 2: in a federal court. The testimony of victims captivated the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Here's the prosecutor, Chelsea irrelegant when victim dB testified that.
Speaker 6: He was in Buck's apartment overdosing for the second time
Speaker 6: after Jamel Moore and Timothy Dean had died. He was
Speaker 6: lying in the same spot where he knew the men
Speaker 6: before him had perished, and he felt himself slowly slipping
Speaker 6: away as well. He talked about hearing his deceased mother
Speaker 6: call out for him and say his name, and get
Speaker 6: yourself off the floor, get help, get out of there,
Speaker 6: or you're going to die, and hearing that account and
Speaker 6: knowing that that was the jolt that saved his life.
Speaker 6: To this day, it gives me chills because dB saved
Speaker 6: himself in that moment.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Unger, one of our producers, says it was hearing
Speaker 2: the way the witnesses describe what they went through in
Speaker 2: ed Buck's apartment that left the lasting impact. He describes
Speaker 2: the damning details that the court heard from Cody Hoffman,
Speaker 2: one of the witnesses who testified against that book.
Speaker 3: Cody Hoffman, the evidence that was brought up was not
Speaker 3: only correspondence that he had had with a Buck way
Speaker 3: back in twenty eighteen and beyond, but also a particular
Speaker 3: incident where Cody went into detail about how Ed would
Speaker 3: put gas masks on Cody and when we talk about
Speaker 3: gas masks, these are masks that you would find really
Speaker 3: your rituals. I mean, these were devilish type masks, red
Speaker 3: kind of what you would find at carnivals, but at
Speaker 3: the same time, in the very dark, again evil way.
Speaker 3: He went into detail about how it would take a
Speaker 3: long tube blowing meth smoke down it with one end
Speaker 3: of the tube and Cody's underwear, and then on the
Speaker 3: other end of the tube, Ed was smoking the math
Speaker 3: and essentially shotgunning it into Cody's mouth. He would talk
Speaker 3: about the gas masks again, the sexual devices that Ed
Speaker 3: would use, but also the gates of hell. That's how
Speaker 3: he referred AT's place, particularly the doorway into ed Buck's apartment.
Speaker 3: And so as these were going on, as you could
Speaker 3: tell that Cody had a lot of details to his story.
Speaker 3: When Dardan was cross examining him, he just immediately went
Speaker 3: into how he was in escort and was trying to
Speaker 3: nullify anything that Cody had said.
Speaker 2: Donata says, listening to the cross examination of witnesses, he
Speaker 2: kind of felt like he wasn't witnessing a scene from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, but from a whole other century.
Speaker 3: It felt like an old eighties or nineties episode of
Speaker 3: a after school special where AIDS and HIV were brought
Speaker 3: up to the point where it sounded like AIDS was
Speaker 3: a death sentence, which I don't know about you, but
Speaker 3: within the queer community, I'm pretty sure we all know
Speaker 3: that it's not anymore. And it was pretty clear from
Speaker 3: the jump that Darden and Ludlow were hanging their entire
Speaker 3: argument on the fact that anyone with AIDS or HIV
Speaker 3: you could tell that they were sick and.
Speaker 5: This is why they died. How did it make you
Speaker 5: feel sick?
Speaker 3: To my stomach? And that is the lightest way I
Speaker 3: could put it. I'm shaking right now even thinking about it,
Speaker 3: because it felt like we were going back three decades
Speaker 3: within that trial, and ironically enough, a trial that had
Speaker 3: a gay man who was doing this to other men
Speaker 3: as well, And so it just I don't really, I
Speaker 3: don't really know how to like fully put in towards
Speaker 3: how it felt, because you know, I have friends who
Speaker 3: not only have struggled with HIV and AIDS but also
Speaker 3: are thriving. Now it's so irresponsible.
Speaker 5: How didn't land in the room?
Speaker 3: Oh, it didn't land. It didn't land One bit if anything,
Speaker 3: everyone would groan every single time they would bring it up,
Speaker 3: because they brought it up every single day of the trial.
Speaker 2: I mean in a case about injecting firstibly injecting people
Speaker 2: with math and fetamain aids came up every day.
Speaker 5: Every HIV, every day.
Speaker 6: Not convicting was not in my.
Speaker 2: Frame of mind, again, Chelsea Norrell from the US Attorney's Office.
Speaker 6: It was not something that I even considered to be
Speaker 6: an option. The anxiety and the stress of this case
Speaker 6: was how am I going to get to hearing guilty
Speaker 6: nine times? That's what kept me up at night. How
Speaker 6: I was going to hear guilty nine times? How I
Speaker 6: was going to get that for Letitia Nixon, Jamal Moore's mom,
Speaker 6: and Joanne Campbell and Joyce Jackson, two of Timothy Dean's sisters,
Speaker 6: who all of whom supported me tremendously through this case.
Speaker 2: In total, the trial lasted nine days. The jury was
Speaker 2: called to the courthouse at nine thirty am on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: July twenty seventh, twenty twenty one. After nine days of
Speaker 2: hearing evidence, it was time for the jury to decide.
Speaker 2: The defense had objected to calling the witnesses. The people
Speaker 2: who'd been in ed Buck's apartment, has quote a small
Speaker 2: sample of victims, the implication being there were a lot
Speaker 2: more of victims. The judge instructed the jury to look
Speaker 2: at the evidence and the testimony of the witnesses, not
Speaker 2: the statements or characterizations of the lawyers, and the jurors
Speaker 2: were sent to deliberate. On the day of the verdict,
Speaker 2: I joined Jonathan at the courthouse. I remember being in
Speaker 2: the hallway as the guards moved ed Buck out of
Speaker 2: the courtroom. He was above us in this brightly lit atrium,
Speaker 2: and there, pale, stooped over and shuffling was ed Buck.
Speaker 2: We stood and stared for a moment, and he stared back,
Speaker 2: absolutely blank look on his face, no acknowledgment, just to stare.
Speaker 2: As he moved off. We decided to go to the
Speaker 2: cafeteria to hang out and have some food. Johnathan, my producer,
Speaker 2: and I were having lunch in the grand courtyard of
Speaker 2: the Federal Building when at one fifty in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: word came back that there was a verdict. The entire cafeteria,
Speaker 2: which was filled with spectators, was collectively shocked. It had
Speaker 2: happened so very quickly, and as we made our way
Speaker 2: to the viewing area. Ed Buck sat alone in the
Speaker 2: courtroom waiting to hear his fate. The deliberation had been
Speaker 2: lightning quick, and if you include lunch, the jury only
Speaker 2: deliberated for less than four hours. From the earliest days
Speaker 2: after Jamel Moore died, you could feel the rage at
Speaker 2: protests and victims forums. When Timothy Dean was found dead,
Speaker 2: that rage only amplified. It didn't really subside even when
Speaker 2: ed Buck was jailed after seven hundred and eighty two days.
Speaker 2: The rage was present in all nine days of the trial.
Speaker 2: On July twenty seventh, exactly four years since the death
Speaker 2: of Jamelle Moore, has witnesses, lawyers, advocates, friends and family,
Speaker 2: and journalists and Jonathan and I piled into elevators. The
Speaker 2: rage was still very tangible, and as we filled the
Speaker 2: visitors area, we could feel something very, very unusual. Finally,
Speaker 2: there was a feeling of hope. This is shattering the System.
Speaker 2: On the next episode, the verdict and the fallout of
Speaker 2: the case against that book and what we can learn
Speaker 2: about how the media covers cases with black victims. Shattering
Speaker 2: the System is a production of Macro Studios and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: I'm your Host Scenario Glinton follow me at s O
Speaker 2: N A RI I one on Instagram. Our series executive
Speaker 2: producers are Charles King, Asha Corpus, Win Royal Reccio, Jonathan Unger,
Speaker 2: Lindsay Hoffman and Scenari Glinton. That's Me. Our show is
Speaker 2: co written and produced by Ralph Cooper the Third. Erica
Speaker 2: Rodriguez is our associate producer. Dana Conway is our archival producer.
Speaker 2: Chris Man is our audio engineer. Here sound design and
Speaker 2: music provided by Chris Mann with pod Shaper special thanks
Speaker 2: to Karen Grigsby, Bates Portia, Amigas Robertson and Lisa Pollack.
Speaker 2: We'll be back next week with another episode of Shattering
Speaker 2: the System. I'm Snari and Glaton. Thanks for listening.