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 to eighty eight, check out this podcast
Speaker 1: notes page for information on LGBT plus mental health resources
Speaker 1: in your community.
Speaker 2: Let's do a recap of the case of ed Buck
Speaker 2: and the key people who got us to this episode.
Speaker 2: There is Jamel Moore, who died in the apartment of
Speaker 2: ed Buck on July twenty seventh, twenty nineteen. Then there
Speaker 2: was Timothy Dean, the second victim. Timothy Dean's roommate Otavio
Speaker 2: today remembers him as being full of life.
Speaker 3: Timothy carried himself very elegantly and was a muscular, tall,
Speaker 3: good looking man and if you saw him on the streets,
Speaker 3: you know it's not a person that can pass completely unnoticed.
Speaker 2: Then there was the last victim, John Doe calling him
Speaker 2: for now, who likely escaped with his life from ed
Speaker 2: Buck's apartment on September eleventh, twenty nineteen, after he was
Speaker 2: injected with an off the charts amount of meth amphetamine.
Speaker 2: And then there is LA's District Attorney Jackie Lacy, who
Speaker 2: decided at first not to charge at Buck. She was
Speaker 2: the first black person or woman to be the La
Speaker 2: County District Attorney, and she would be criticized for being
Speaker 2: way too careful.
Speaker 4: And there's a responsibility with that. You want to not
Speaker 4: just be the first person of your race or the
Speaker 4: first woman, You want to be the best right and
Speaker 4: so you want to make sure that you do things
Speaker 4: for the right reasons, that you never embarrassed the office,
Speaker 4: that you achieved, that you accomplish things.
Speaker 2: To this day, Jackie Lacy says she couldn't have gotten
Speaker 2: a conviction for ed Buck. Her office says that the
Speaker 2: evidence that they had was quote insufficient to prove beyond
Speaker 2: a reasonable doubt that Buck is responsible for the death
Speaker 2: of Jamel Moore. Likewise, the admissible evidence is insufficient to
Speaker 2: prove beyond the reasonable doubt that suspect Buck furnished drugs
Speaker 2: to Jamel Moore, or that suspect Buck possessed drugs. And
Speaker 2: then finally there is ed Buck. When ed Buck was
Speaker 2: arrested on September seventeenth, twenty nineteen, he was not arrested
Speaker 2: on charges of murder. He was not arrested on the
Speaker 2: lesser charge of manslaughter even though two men died in
Speaker 2: this apartment of nearly identical circumstances. So what did the
Speaker 2: Feds get ed Buck on? What new evidence did they
Speaker 2: suddenly have that they didn't have since Jamel Moore died
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen or Timothy Dean died in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: while they had a living victim who could connect the
Speaker 2: dots between ed Buck and meth amfetamine. Buck was accused
Speaker 2: of distribution of meth amphetamine resulting in death. In addition,
Speaker 2: he was charged with maintaining a drug invol premises an
Speaker 2: enticement to travel and interstate commerce for prostitution. With ed
Speaker 2: Buck and jail, now is the time to build a
Speaker 2: federal case and prosecutors will need witnesses. The potential witnesses
Speaker 2: to the horrors in ed Buck's apartment would be the
Speaker 2: key to putting him into jail. It was in the
Speaker 2: months before at Buck's arrest the nation would be gripped
Speaker 2: by Black Lives Matter protests. These same witnesses, who had
Speaker 2: been ignored by the local police. Ed Bucket called the
Speaker 2: sheriff to his home where he was injecting black men.
Speaker 2: The sheriff took the victims away. This is the same
Speaker 2: sheriff that has a history of harassing black men and
Speaker 2: queermen in West Hollywood, and now two white women federal
Speaker 2: prosecutors would have to gain the trust of gay black
Speaker 2: men used to being ignored. This is shattering the system.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, scenario, Glinton. We'll hear what really led
Speaker 2: prosecutors to take on the case, and we'll hear from
Speaker 2: a defense attorney about why black, queer and transfolk need
Speaker 2: to be very careful around law enforcement.
Speaker 5: Always that has been my experience of how prosecutors and
Speaker 5: police officers treat witnesses as completely disposable, as completely at
Speaker 5: their disposal, and they don't give a damn about you
Speaker 5: unless you are helping them get to their conviction. So
Speaker 5: I understand the Dona snitch rule, but from a completely
Speaker 5: different vantage point.
Speaker 2: Before prosecutors can convince a jury, they're going to need
Speaker 2: to convince witnesses black men to trust the police in
Speaker 2: the federal government more after this, this is shattering the system.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Snari Glenton. While recording for this show,
Speaker 2: I wandered into something typical for West Hollywood. A protest
Speaker 2: politics can be fun in West Hollywood, and ed Buck
Speaker 2: certainly joined in. For those in the know, like Ed Buck,
Speaker 2: the WIHO City Council can be fun, wacky, and impactful.
Speaker 2: Before twenty seventeen, Ed Buck was a political donor who
Speaker 2: lived in a rent stabilized apartment in the city of
Speaker 2: West Hollywood. Now, if we were going to give you
Speaker 2: a snapshot of the man, say pre twenty seventeen, we'd
Speaker 2: call ed Buck a former Republican term Democrat who made
Speaker 2: a good deal of money as a young man and
Speaker 2: moved to West Hollywood, where he became an outspoken animal
Speaker 2: rights activist and a supporter of LGBTQ causes. Actually, by
Speaker 2: all accounts, it was only gay men's causes. Buck was
Speaker 2: one of the most prolific donors. He gave nearly half
Speaker 2: a half a million dollars to Democratic candidates over thirty years.
Speaker 2: And that may not seem like a lot, but whether
Speaker 2: it was say a school board race or spots on
Speaker 2: the West Hollywood City Council, it goes far. Buck gave
Speaker 2: money to everyone from John Duran, a local politician and
Speaker 2: weho to Hillary Clinton's bid for president. Ed Buck gave
Speaker 2: money a lot, and that's how the media saw him.
Speaker 6: It's been three months since twenty six year old Jamil
Speaker 6: Moore was found dead at the West Hollywood home of
Speaker 6: wealthy Democratic donor Ed Buck. Moore's mother, Letitia Nixon, has
Speaker 6: pressed police to continue the investigation into her son, Jamel's
Speaker 6: mysterious death and to interview other black men about the
Speaker 6: experiences with Buck. Buck, who has not been arrested or
Speaker 6: charged with any crime, has donated hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 6: dollars to Democratic candidates and Cause US over the years.
Speaker 6: Jamil Moore's friends and family have lost a petition calling
Speaker 6: on Democrats to return Buck's money. So far, only one
Speaker 6: has done so.
Speaker 2: Jackie Lacey, the local Democratic prosecutor, had previously said she
Speaker 2: wasn't able to press charges against ed Buck, and while
Speaker 2: the sheriff's office essentially bungled the case, the same sheriff's
Speaker 2: office would go over the head of the local prosecutors
Speaker 2: to the federal government. This is the part where the
Speaker 2: local reporter and me has to come out. One of
Speaker 2: the local sheriff's deputies tipped off the Justice Department. That
Speaker 2: is what got the ball rolling. Now, this is where
Speaker 2: timing seems important. Jackie Lacey, the local DA a Democrat
Speaker 2: would be up for reelection, and there was a Trump
Speaker 2: appointed US attorney Nick Hanna. Now, Nick Hanna says the
Speaker 2: case against Buck started long before his arrest in September
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. Hannah says it was the opioid crisis that
Speaker 2: got him thinking of ways to put ed Buck in prison.
Speaker 7: It was the full of two thy eighteen, so at
Speaker 7: that point, the opioid crisis was really coming into consciousness
Speaker 7: right and we were seeing being much like Cleveland and
Speaker 7: some other areas, we were seeing a lot of people
Speaker 7: starting to overdose on fentanyl.
Speaker 2: Hanna says. Historically, overdoses were treated more like an accident
Speaker 2: in judgment, and police showed up and saw drug paraphernalia
Speaker 2: and a dead body. While it might have been tragic,
Speaker 2: they really didn't treat it as a criminal offense. But
Speaker 2: the opioid crisis changed a lot of that thinking.
Speaker 7: And we were seeing people selling counterfeit pills that were
Speaker 7: laced with fentanyl, so people thought they were taking a xanax,
Speaker 7: take it it's fentanyl and they would die. We were
Speaker 7: seeing instances of drug dealers knowingly killing somebody and then
Speaker 7: going off and selling more of the same product to
Speaker 7: other people.
Speaker 2: Former La County DA Jackie Lacey said that the Feds
Speaker 2: had more resources, money, and people. They also had a
Speaker 2: variety of federal laws, including one with a twenty year
Speaker 2: prison sentence attached that made it a crime to give
Speaker 2: someone drugs that result in death. Nick Hannah says when
Speaker 2: he became US attorney, he was startled by the number
Speaker 2: of overdose.
Speaker 7: Deaths, spike and overdose deaths, and a lot of it
Speaker 7: was attributable to people who were selling drugs laced with
Speaker 7: federol and knowingly doing it and killing people, right, and
Speaker 7: so you know, that seemed to be an area crying
Speaker 7: out for somebody to do something about it.
Speaker 2: It was Nick Hannah who assigned the prosecutors to take
Speaker 2: a look at the information the Sheriff's department brought to him.
Speaker 2: He had the Drug Enforcement Administration take a look at
Speaker 2: the case as well.
Speaker 7: And see what we thought, and see whether we thought
Speaker 7: the evidence, you know, what the evidence was, what had
Speaker 7: already been gathered, what additional investigative steps could be taken,
Speaker 7: and whether or not we thought this was something that
Speaker 7: merited a federal prosecution.
Speaker 2: Now, remember, it never hurts for a federal prosecutor to
Speaker 2: dunk on a local prosecutor of another party, especially as
Speaker 2: an election looms. Nick Hannah says, this wasn't about politics,
Speaker 2: it was about something more.
Speaker 7: Ba You know, a case like ed Buck cries out
Speaker 7: for prosecution, cries out for someone to do you know,
Speaker 7: an investigation cries out for somebody to go to jail.
Speaker 7: And you know, we were I think maybe in the
Speaker 7: right spot at the right time, with the right statute
Speaker 7: to do that. This is about somebody killing people in
Speaker 7: his apartment. The mantra of the office is to prosecute
Speaker 7: federal crimes without fear or favor and try to do
Speaker 7: our best with the resources we have to make an
Speaker 7: impact on the community and vindicate the rights of victims.
Speaker 2: This is shattering the system. The federal case against ed Buck,
Speaker 2: This is shattering the system. I'm Sinari Glinton. We left
Speaker 2: off with ed Buck and jail and prosecutors building the
Speaker 2: case to take him to trial. I talked extensively with
Speaker 2: the US Attorney's office and with one of the key
Speaker 2: lawyers for ed Buck. We've heard from the defense, and
Speaker 2: we will definitely hear from the lawyer for ed Buck
Speaker 2: again later on in this story. The thing is for
Speaker 2: this story to be transparent. I didn't want the only
Speaker 2: voice that's critical of the police or law enforcement to
Speaker 2: be the lawyer for ed Buck, and I didn't want
Speaker 2: to be a shill for federal prosecutors.
Speaker 5: Defans take their time.
Speaker 2: That's April Prayer. She's a criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 5: They don't rush and arrest you in two or three days.
Speaker 5: They might take two or three years for research and
Speaker 5: investigates you and get video and audio and all your
Speaker 5: bank statements, and talk to all of your friends and
Speaker 5: get them all on a record before they come for you.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I needed someone to balance out the
Speaker 2: many law enforcement voices we've been hearing, and I wanted
Speaker 2: to get the perspective of someone who knows what's at
Speaker 2: stake for black men when they encounter law enforcement. I've
Speaker 2: known April Prayer for many years. She was a classmate.
Speaker 2: The thing is, she's made it her mission to teach
Speaker 2: young people, particularly young black and queer folks, what to
Speaker 2: do if they come in contact with the police. Just
Speaker 2: board game and teachers high school kids about their rights.
Speaker 5: I'm very I'm very anti police and anti prosecutors.
Speaker 2: See what I mean. I wanted to give you a
Speaker 2: sense of what is a stake. Before we go too
Speaker 2: far down the road of demonizing Jackie Lacy, let's remember
Speaker 2: that the Feds could pay special attention to ed Buck,
Speaker 2: and they had tools that a local prosecutor just doesn't have.
Speaker 2: April prayer, the defense attorney says, for those rooting for
Speaker 2: ed Buck to go to jail for a long time,
Speaker 2: a defendant has a much higher conviction rate with the Feds.
Speaker 5: You have a truly uphill battle in federal court. Now
Speaker 5: there are exceptions to that rule, because I've actually won
Speaker 5: a federal case, but for the most part of the
Speaker 5: Fiths come for you. They got you, and there's not
Speaker 5: a whole lot you can do about it.
Speaker 2: To give me an idea, there is a government evidence list.
Speaker 2: It's fifteen pages long. When you read it, it kind of
Speaker 2: gives you an idea of how deep the government can
Speaker 2: dig when they really want to get you. There's stuff
Speaker 2: you might expect on a drug case, syringes, a ziploc
Speaker 2: back with a crystalline substance. There's hard drive after hard
Speaker 2: drives of incriminating videos of Bucks fex play, six costume
Speaker 2: masks and one modified military style gas mask. And it's
Speaker 2: not just his computer and hard drives. The government swept
Speaker 2: up everything from his iCloud to Uber and Lift receipts
Speaker 2: to the purchase records of his Forward Edge and Nissan Morano.
Speaker 2: Then there's more than a dozen videos of Jamel Moore
Speaker 2: and here's the key part. Videos of Buck instructing victims
Speaker 2: to do met like Exhibits seventy nine point twenty seven
Speaker 2: a video clip of Buck instructing an unidentified man on
Speaker 2: how to smoke. The lead attorney in the case against
Speaker 2: ed Buck for the federal government was Lindsey Bailey. She
Speaker 2: says that ed Buck was a different kind of criminal
Speaker 2: and needed a different kind of prosecution.
Speaker 8: So this happens a lot in a lot of our
Speaker 8: cases where there baby state charges that someone can bring,
Speaker 8: but the federal charges have a lot more power behind them. Right, So,
Speaker 8: especially with these types of death resulting cases, we have
Speaker 8: a federal statute available to us that imposes a twenty
Speaker 8: year mandatory minimum if somebody's found guilty, and.
Speaker 2: In California, Bailey says, there was no local law that
Speaker 2: was as strong as the federal twenty year mandatory minimum. Essentially,
Speaker 2: the Feds had a much bigger book to throw.
Speaker 8: At Buck, because we have this power behind our statutes
Speaker 8: that the state doesn't have. Sometimes we will bring things
Speaker 8: instead of the state, and you know, sometimes that's coordinated
Speaker 8: ahead of time. Sometimes the state brings charges that they
Speaker 8: then dismiss in favor of federal charges. So I think
Speaker 8: when you talk about this case with someone like ed Buck,
Speaker 8: who you know is a danger to society and we
Speaker 8: were hoping to put him away for a significant period
Speaker 8: of time, the amount of time that we were looking
Speaker 8: at federally was just heads and shoulders above whatever the
Speaker 8: state was going to be able to bring.
Speaker 2: So ed Buck, in your mind, is a special case.
Speaker 8: Yes, I would say most of the death resulting cases
Speaker 8: that our office does are not rising to the level
Speaker 8: of criminality that you see with mister Buck, where you're
Speaker 8: having not a single individual overdose, but multiple people overdosing
Speaker 8: in his apartments. You're finding videos of him being very
Speaker 8: controlling over these people, providing them with drugs against their
Speaker 8: will in certain cases, providing them with amounts that are
Speaker 8: known to be extreme, as opposed to let's say your
Speaker 8: average dealer, who like you, may be soliciting.
Speaker 2: Chelsea Narel was one of the lawyers that the US
Speaker 2: Attorney charts with prosecuting ed Buck's case.
Speaker 9: I knew that this was going to be a case
Speaker 9: that rose or fell with victim testimony, and you.
Speaker 2: Can say she handles the toughest cases.
Speaker 9: I focus specifically on human trafficking and child exploitation, but
Speaker 9: we also have the largest influx of drugs likely in
Speaker 9: the country, certainly in California. We see it on our
Speaker 9: southern border.
Speaker 2: The key difference between where the FED started and where
Speaker 2: the local prosecutor started was victim testimony.
Speaker 9: There was not going to be a person who could
Speaker 9: say I saw ed Buck administer those drugs because ed
Speaker 9: Buck had killed the two people who could say that
Speaker 9: those were our two death victims in the first two deaths.
Speaker 9: So my strategy was to interview as many victims as
Speaker 9: we possibly could to get those commonalities to build a
Speaker 9: very strong, weaved narrative of these witness accounts that could
Speaker 9: talk about how Buck was always the one who distributed
Speaker 9: drugs because it was part of his ritual of party
Speaker 9: and play.
Speaker 2: The federal process secutors had to put together a story
Speaker 2: that a jury would understand.
Speaker 9: That when Jamel Moore went to ed Buck's apartment on
Speaker 9: July twenty seventh, of twenty seventeen that it could only
Speaker 9: have been ed Buck who provided the drugs, because we
Speaker 9: had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to twelve jurors
Speaker 9: that it was in fact Buck who distributed the drugs,
Speaker 9: and that the drugs were the Butt four causation, meaning
Speaker 9: the direct result of the death of the two victims.
Speaker 9: So to me, it was a matter of getting those
Speaker 9: victims to interview and memorializing those interviews, developing trust with them,
Speaker 9: earning their trust.
Speaker 2: This is the key difference between the local prosecutor and
Speaker 2: the feds. The resources. Let's hear from April Prayer, the
Speaker 2: defence attorney, who doesn't have ties to this case. She says,
Speaker 2: the FEDS are more highly trained and they print their
Speaker 2: own money.
Speaker 5: And because they're more highly trained and have better resource
Speaker 5: and can do a really thorough investigation, they have a
Speaker 5: ninety five percent plus conviction rate, whereas if you look
Speaker 5: on the state level or the city level, at different municipalities,
Speaker 5: if you're looking at police departments or sheriff's departments, they
Speaker 5: don't have a lot of resources.
Speaker 2: April Prayer, the defense attorney, says, on the local level,
Speaker 2: especially if it's a smaller town, there isn't always the money,
Speaker 2: the people, or the training for a tough case.
Speaker 5: Especially if it's a murder investigation. They may not have
Speaker 5: done many they may not know how to do them
Speaker 5: well because they haven't done them often. They don't have
Speaker 5: a lot of resources to devote to it, and so
Speaker 5: they're going to make a mess of it. And so
Speaker 5: there are a lot of different things that separate the
Speaker 5: FED from the local authorities that may have nothing to
Speaker 5: do with anything being nefarious. They don't have a whole
Speaker 5: lot of practice at this and they don't have a
Speaker 5: whole lot of resources. So that's why you'll see a
Speaker 5: conviction rate in pretty much any state or county being
Speaker 5: far lower than you will at the federal level in
Speaker 5: that very same state.
Speaker 2: And in this case, you had a full time lawyer
Speaker 2: for the Justice Department investigating everything about ed Buck's life.
Speaker 2: Here's Chelsea NoREL again. She's with the US Attorney's Office
Speaker 2: for the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles
Speaker 2: and West Hollywood.
Speaker 9: So we had to go through hundreds of thousands of files.
Speaker 2: Her job was to make a case stick against ed Buck.
Speaker 9: I watched personally thirty thousand videos from Bucks hard drive
Speaker 9: of him engaged in party and play with various men.
Speaker 9: So that took me years, and it was every day
Speaker 9: twenty four to seven, no days.
Speaker 2: Off, I mean years living in that darkness. Tell me
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 9: It's haunting. And this was during the pandemic, so I
Speaker 9: was siloed often on my own working on this at home.
Speaker 9: But they haunt you. And the only thing I can
Speaker 9: say about how I cope with it is I also
Speaker 9: look at child sexual abuse materials for my job, so
Speaker 9: I am unfortunately used to looking at very disturbing images.
Speaker 2: It was by combing through all those videos that would
Speaker 2: allow the FEDS to corroborate the allegations against ed Buck.
Speaker 2: They needed, however, witnesses. These were people who had been
Speaker 2: prepared to tell local prosecutors what had happened to them,
Speaker 2: but they weren't believed. And then when police would eventually
Speaker 2: question the victims. Remember the only training share of deputies
Speaker 2: got with the LGBTQ community was on flags. They would
Speaker 2: do it in the most hand fisted way you might expect,
Speaker 2: being insensitive, showing up to people's homes for interviews early
Speaker 2: early in the morning, essentially you know, being the police.
Speaker 2: Chelsea Narel would have to work against all of that.
Speaker 2: And it was by showing mel and Timothy's families that
Speaker 2: she meant business that would help prosecutors convince victims to testify.
Speaker 9: Not convicting was not in my frame of mind. It
Speaker 9: was not something that I even considered to be an option.
Speaker 9: The anxiety and the stress of this case was how
Speaker 9: am I going to get to hearing guilty nine times?
Speaker 9: That's what stayed with me, That's what kept me up
Speaker 9: at night. How I was going to hear guilty nine times?
Speaker 9: How I was going to get that for Letitia Nixon,
Speaker 9: Jamal Moore's mom, and Joanne Campbell and Joyce Jackson, two
Speaker 9: of Timothy Dean's sisters, who all of whom supported me
Speaker 9: tremendously through this case.
Speaker 5: A drug addict is less likely to be believed than
Speaker 5: the average person.
Speaker 2: Now, April Prayer, the defense attorney, says, as terrible as
Speaker 2: the crimes of ed Buck are, she would have been
Speaker 2: reluctant to advise any of his victims to talk to
Speaker 2: prosecutors for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 5: So that's a starting point. But just in my experience
Speaker 5: dealing with a client who is a drug addict, and
Speaker 5: pick your drug of choice. That means there might be
Speaker 5: gaps in your memory. That means that you recounting something
Speaker 5: to me might be unliable. It means that you might
Speaker 5: not intentionally be trying to deceive me, but you might
Speaker 5: have holes in your memory because of whatever drug you're on.
Speaker 5: So those are some initial problems that you would have
Speaker 5: just because of the drug addiction.
Speaker 2: In many ways, the prosecutors were the last people along
Speaker 2: the gauntlet that the potential witnesses would likely talk to.
Speaker 2: April Prayer, the defense attorney, says she would have us
Speaker 2: remember that these were black men who were being told
Speaker 2: that their civic duty was to talk to the police.
Speaker 2: Her number one piece of advice to black men especially,
Speaker 2: be extremely careful with any interaction with the police, especially
Speaker 2: for people like Jamel Moore or any of ed Buck's
Speaker 2: nameless victims, people who are living in la far away
Speaker 2: from their core family support.
Speaker 5: You need to be even more careful when interacting with
Speaker 5: law enforcement. And if you are gay, lesbie and trans,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna multiply that by about ten times because I
Speaker 5: have seen horble discrimination, horrible physical abuse by police against
Speaker 5: gay people here and across the nation, and I would
Speaker 5: also say, specifically, if you're a trance and I've seen
Speaker 5: terrible discrimination in the courts by female judges against trans women.
Speaker 5: In the courts, it's played out injuries, it's played out
Speaker 5: and pleas has played out in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2: It would take a tremendous amount of effort on the
Speaker 2: government's part to get withness is to tell their stories
Speaker 2: to law enforcement consistently and effectively and then show up
Speaker 2: in a federal court. Chelsea Norell, the prosecutor, says, under
Speaker 2: normal circumstances, there's unpredictability with witnesses.
Speaker 9: It was particularly challenging here, and I'm just so grateful
Speaker 9: to the witnesses who testified at trial, who stuck with me,
Speaker 9: who trusted me with their darkest, most terrifying, most humiliating,
Speaker 9: and deeply personal experiences, many of whom had negative experiences
Speaker 9: with law enforcement before this case, had a fundamental mistrust
Speaker 9: of law enforcement, and sometimes for good reason. The fact
Speaker 9: that they put their faith in me, I had to
Speaker 9: reciprocate and put my faith in them and do everything
Speaker 9: I could to make sure that they felt prepared, that
Speaker 9: they were corroborated. So yes, it was massively challenging.
Speaker 2: Were you surprised that you eventually went to trial? Like
Speaker 2: it seems wild to have gone to trial in this
Speaker 2: case to me, But am I wrong?
Speaker 9: I'm with you. I had the same impression at the
Speaker 9: outset because to me, the facts were just so egregious
Speaker 9: that this seemed like the type of case that would
Speaker 9: plead out.
Speaker 2: Ed Buck would not take a plea agreement, and as
Speaker 2: he awaited his day in court, the coronavirus pandemic would
Speaker 2: change the world, delaying the trial. But he was ready
Speaker 2: for a fight and could apparently afford to pay for
Speaker 2: a defense, a defense that would include one of the
Speaker 2: most famous black lawyers in American history.
Speaker 9: But mister Buck made it clear fairly early on that
Speaker 9: we were going to trial, and he hired trial counsel.
Speaker 9: He hired Christopher Darden and Ludlow Creery, who are trying
Speaker 9: a lawyers. They're known for being trial lawyers. He did
Speaker 9: not hire them to just simply negotiate a plea agreement.
Speaker 9: So it became clear to me that we were going
Speaker 9: to go to a trial and it was going to
Speaker 9: be a contentious trial.
Speaker 2: On the next episode, we'll take a closer look at
Speaker 2: defending ed Buck. This is Shattering the System. Thank you
Speaker 2: for listening. Shattering the System is a production of Macro
Speaker 2: Studios and iHeart Podcasts. I'm your Host, Snari Glennon, Follow
Speaker 2: me at s O n aar I one on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Our series executive producers are Charles King, Asha Corpus, Win
Speaker 2: Royal Reccio, Jonathan Hunger, Lindsay Hoffman and Scenario Glinton. That's Me.
Speaker 2: Our show is co written and produced by Ralph Cooper
Speaker 2: the Third. Erica Rodriguez is our associate producer. Dana Conway
Speaker 2: is our archival producer. Chris Mann is our audio engineer.
Speaker 2: Sound design and music provided by Chris Mann with pod
Speaker 2: Shaper special thanks to Karen Grigsby, Bates Portia, Amigas Robertson
Speaker 2: and Lisa Pollock. Clips provided by TV one LLC. All
Speaker 2: rights reserved. We'll be back next week, See you next time.
Speaker 2: Then came