Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. On
Speaker 2: this show, we try to apply political and cultural analysis
Speaker 2: towards speculative futurity. What can we learn about the future
Speaker 2: by looking at how our present relates to our past
Speaker 2: and now? As we approach a whole decade of a
Speaker 2: resurgent far right gaining cultural prominence, we're entering a moment
Speaker 2: in time where pop culture and media is starting to
Speaker 2: catch up to the current political zeitgeist. Our media landscape
Speaker 2: is inundated with depictions of unreality, political extremism, collapse, and
Speaker 2: rising civil tensions. Some of these succeed more than others,
Speaker 2: but most are still deeply neoliberal in their depictions. The
Speaker 2: Obama produced a Netflix movie from last year, Leave the
Speaker 2: World Behind, was a speculative look at a collapse orchestrated
Speaker 2: to jumpstart a second American Civil War. Alex Garland's voyeuristic
Speaker 2: Civil War movie just released, which sort of gestures at
Speaker 2: politics with offhand mentions of portlaind maoists and the Antifa massacre.
Speaker 2: But as a movie it completely fails to understand the
Speaker 2: moment we currently occupy, and I believe is even more
Speaker 2: out of touch than the Obama Collapse movie, but we're
Speaker 2: not talking about that today. For my thoughts on that,
Speaker 2: you can look at my review on Letterboxed and refer
Speaker 2: to the reviews I liked for a more robust critique
Speaker 2: of Garland's deeply troubling depiction of quote unquote neutral war
Speaker 2: journalism as uncritically virtuous. Instead, this episode will be turning
Speaker 2: to a depiction of modern day extremism that I'm not
Speaker 2: sure is better. It's still deeply neoliberal and honestly more
Speaker 2: overtly copaganda, but one that I still find more interesting
Speaker 2: and I believe does understand our political moment much better
Speaker 2: than Alex Garland does, who comes off as less and
Speaker 2: less intelligent in every single interview he does. Last month,
Speaker 2: the television show Law and Order did an episode focusing
Speaker 2: on Robert Rundo's far right fitness groups, the White Supremacist
Speaker 2: to Active Clubs. To discuss, I am joined by longtime
Speaker 2: far right researcher Molly Conger.
Speaker 3: Hello, Molly, Hey, thanks for having me on. And you
Speaker 3: probably didn't know this about me. I am a secret
Speaker 3: enjoyer of police procedurals, so I've actually watched a lot
Speaker 3: of Law and Order.
Speaker 2: I have never seen a single episode of Law and
Speaker 2: Order until this week, so I was really inundated. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I watch a lot of kind of troubling media, though,
Speaker 2: and media that tries to comment on current political extremism,
Speaker 2: and often when I talk with my friends about my
Speaker 2: interest in viewing things like this episode, I get confused
Speaker 2: or even adversarial reactions, and I do truly understand their hesitations.
Speaker 2: Pop culture media like this is often very sensational, turning
Speaker 2: very real pain, trauma and death caused by the far
Speaker 2: right into this form of kind of mindless entertainment, and
Speaker 2: often reifying the role of like good government and good
Speaker 2: cops to maintain order against racist insurgents, even though more
Speaker 2: and more of their ilk begin to occupy public office
Speaker 2: and become cops themselves. But politics and culture are hand
Speaker 2: in hand. Lots of what became the al Right grew
Speaker 2: out of gamergait, and I think there is a real
Speaker 2: use in understanding how the political activities of fascists and
Speaker 2: anti fascists are depicted in mass media. I believe there
Speaker 2: is some value in knowing what NBC and the writers
Speaker 2: of Law and Order think an active club is as
Speaker 2: like a sort of cultural litmus test, and also to
Speaker 2: see how well people like us are doing in trying
Speaker 2: to educate about these types of groups. But I totally
Speaker 2: understand that not everyone wants to suffer through a forty
Speaker 2: minute Law and Order episode about cops beating the Nazis.
Speaker 2: So instead I will watch it for you and talk
Speaker 2: about exactly how they depicted this with Molly here today.
Speaker 2: So I think the most efficient way for me to
Speaker 2: do this is to kind of give a recap of
Speaker 2: the episode, and as I start going through it, we
Speaker 2: will discuss at certain points. I can't just summarize all
Speaker 2: of it in like a short paragraph. I mean I could.
Speaker 2: I just think that would miss out on a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff. So instead we're gonna go through the episode
Speaker 2: and comment as things happen. And this episode ends up
Speaker 2: being about a lot more than just an active club.
Speaker 2: It's actually pulling from a few other influences that we
Speaker 2: will talk about probably towards the end.
Speaker 4: Anyway, that felt sloppy to me.
Speaker 3: I feel like they try to tackle several specific Like
Speaker 3: I don't know how familiar are with with the Law
Speaker 3: and Order franchise, but they call these episodes the ripped
Speaker 3: from the headlines episodes right where they take a real life,
Speaker 3: high profile case and write an episode about it. But
Speaker 3: they tried to combine several elements that I felt didn't
Speaker 3: blend well, and it deeped them more material to work
Speaker 3: with than they were able to address, and so it
Speaker 3: just felt it just felt unresolved to me.
Speaker 2: I mean, I assume lots of these police procedurals are
Speaker 2: kind of undercooked, as like pieces of art.
Speaker 3: I mean, the Dick Wolf Exting universe is cheering out
Speaker 3: so much content that, like, I don't know how they're
Speaker 3: still doing it. I mean, Olivia Benson has been on
Speaker 3: television since I was a child.
Speaker 2: So let's get into the actual episode. The cold open begins.
Speaker 2: It's night in New York City. A nervous looking white
Speaker 2: woman enters a subway station, and she's startled by a
Speaker 2: sleeping homeless man. As the subway approaches, eerie music starts playing.
Speaker 2: The anxious woman walks onto the subway and a black
Speaker 2: man cat calls her as a group of other men
Speaker 2: kind of join in. The woman quickly switches to a
Speaker 2: more empty subway car, where she then bumps into another
Speaker 2: black man whose eyes look kind of vacant and is
Speaker 2: making weird grunting noises, and then the man appears to
Speaker 2: lunge towards the woman. We cut to crime scene tape
Speaker 2: stretched across the subway station. Two police detectives to enter
Speaker 2: the subway car, where a dead body lies on the ground.
Speaker 2: But it's not the scared white woman. It's the oddly
Speaker 2: grunting black man who appears to have been strangled to
Speaker 2: death with no apparent witnesses. He's identified as twenty four
Speaker 2: year old Ellis Joyner, a stand up comedian who a
Speaker 2: detective says, quote came from down South love to talk
Speaker 2: about how much he loved New York. The other detective remarks,
Speaker 2: great place to live, not such a great place to die.
Speaker 2: Cut the title screen with music that I assume has
Speaker 2: not been updated in like thirty years, because the actually
Speaker 2: it's it sounds so so nineties.
Speaker 3: They can't change it now. There are thousands of episodes
Speaker 3: of the show Garrison, It's history.
Speaker 2: So already with the cold open, we have like ooh,
Speaker 2: the dangerous subway, scary homeless people, this poor white woman.
Speaker 2: A lot of stuff's being thrown at.
Speaker 3: Us, right and obviously playing on the idea that like, oh,
Speaker 3: the white woman is going to be under that that sheet,
Speaker 3: like that's going to be her body.
Speaker 2: Totally, totally. So, as we returned to the episode, a
Speaker 2: forensic pathologist says the man died after being put in
Speaker 2: a quote unquote sleeper hold, which cut off oxygen to
Speaker 2: his brain. His medical records reveal he also had severe
Speaker 2: asthma and as hyperinflated lungs indicate he was currently suffering
Speaker 2: an asthma attack when he was killed by the lethal
Speaker 2: chokeold in the fifty minute window for a time of death,
Speaker 2: the train passed through six subway stations, four of which
Speaker 2: all had broken cameras.
Speaker 3: Which is supposed to remind the viewer that we really
Speaker 3: need to fund the subway cops.
Speaker 2: Correct. A lot of this episode is about how subway
Speaker 2: surveillance is under equipped to deal with crime. And we
Speaker 2: could probably fix a lot of problems if there was
Speaker 2: more security cameras in the subway.
Speaker 4: Or just one hundred cops. What if they put one
Speaker 4: hundred cops on there.
Speaker 2: Sure, or more cops and like, to my surprise, the
Speaker 2: subway in New York City historically has not had security
Speaker 2: cameras inside the actual train cars, though they are expected
Speaker 2: to by twenty twenty six. But like the light rail
Speaker 2: and Portland the kind of like not not subway, but
Speaker 2: like the public transit train in Atlanta, they all have
Speaker 2: cameras inside the actual train cars. I was a prose
Speaker 2: I said that the subway in New York did not.
Speaker 2: I just never knew that anyway. Back to lawn Order, Ellis,
Speaker 2: Joyner's credit card identified the station that he got on at,
Speaker 2: which also had broken cameras, but police pulled streetcam footage
Speaker 2: from a few blocks away, which shows Joyner getting into
Speaker 2: a fight with another comedian where Joyner got punched. The
Speaker 2: other man is recognized as Malcolm Paige, a stand up
Speaker 2: who quote used to open for Chappelle back in the day.
Speaker 2: Quote so already setting up something fantastic. The detectives interview
Speaker 2: Page and show him social media footage of Joiners is
Speaker 2: set from last night, making fun of Page for being
Speaker 2: old and irrelevant. Page says that Joiner verbally attacked him
Speaker 2: because Joiner quote got his panties in a twist unquote
Speaker 2: over some of Page's jokes. Quote hit too close to
Speaker 2: home for fancy boy unquote, And when Page says fancy boy,
Speaker 2: he does this little shaky hand thing, which the detective
Speaker 2: asks if that's supposed to apply that Joyner is gay,
Speaker 2: which the older comedian says, yes.
Speaker 4: I mean I've seen this sort of like limpressed hand movie.
Speaker 2: Did It was just like a weird like.
Speaker 4: Shaking like hand like fancy you sort of.
Speaker 3: Shake your hand side to side when you mean like
Speaker 3: kind of or maybe exactly exactly hand movie. It was
Speaker 3: homophobic gestures, right, it was. It was really weird. I
Speaker 3: found this whole interaction kind of bizarre and unnecessary, like
Speaker 3: you write in this kind of red herring when you're
Speaker 3: trying to fill time.
Speaker 4: But they had plenty, they had plenty of script. They
Speaker 4: didn't need this.
Speaker 2: This episode's so focused on different forms of racism, so
Speaker 2: much adding in this like weird gay subplot doesn't. It
Speaker 2: doesn't end up going anywhere, and it's just kind of bizarre.
Speaker 2: So anyway, this basically this older comedian was telling homophobic jokes.
Speaker 2: Joiner then made fun of him on stage, and this
Speaker 2: older comedian Page assaulted him outside. Page then left in
Speaker 2: an uber, and Joyner ran off with his boyfriend, who,
Speaker 2: according to Paige, weren't getting a long either. So there's
Speaker 2: some kind of like like a new suspect arises exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: So police look through joiners emails and texts in the
Speaker 2: cloud quote unquote, and can't find any record of a boyfriend,
Speaker 2: making detectives surmise that he must have been in the closet,
Speaker 2: which is a baffling thing to surmise. Cops then contact
Speaker 2: quote the Traveler app. That's that's Traveler spelled t r
Speaker 2: a v l R.
Speaker 4: You have to cut out a vowel or it's not
Speaker 4: an apple.
Speaker 2: So legally, not Grinder gives NYPD complete access to Joiner's account.
Speaker 3: And it's I'm sorry, Like, are gay male sex apps
Speaker 3: usually like pink and purple. The color scheme is pink
Speaker 3: and purple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not my experience, but yeah, I think it's also
Speaker 2: a referenced to like like travelers, like fellow Travelers right
Speaker 2: right when it was obviously supposed to be Grinder. But
Speaker 2: it's just it's just Grinder. It doesn't matter. But cop Legally,
Speaker 2: not Grinder gives NYPD full access to Joiner's account, which
Speaker 2: shows he's dating a guy named Michael Zain. And this
Speaker 2: whole thing is, this whole thing's so wild because if
Speaker 2: you're dating someone you should not be primarily communicating through Grinder.
Speaker 4: And he said later they've been dating for six six months.
Speaker 3: Six months, They've never texted, They're just using Grinder to chat.
Speaker 2: Whenever you go on Grinder, the goal is to get
Speaker 2: off of Grinder as soon as possible. Why why would
Speaker 2: privately texting each other instead out you as gay anymore
Speaker 2: than having an identifiable Grinder profile.
Speaker 3: I feel like having Grinder up on your phone and
Speaker 3: it has a very distinctive like text tone, like that's
Speaker 3: way more likely to out you dog just text regular exactly.
Speaker 2: It makes no sense anyway. The Traveler messages between Joiner
Speaker 2: and Michael Zaane indicate a sort of ongoing fight or argument.
Speaker 2: Now Zain has a prior conviction for aggravated assault last year.
Speaker 3: They didn't actually, so I went back and I went
Speaker 3: back and double check this because I have some beef.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have a corect.
Speaker 4: They said he was arrested for assault last year.
Speaker 2: He was just charged. He wasn't connected at my mistake, yes,
Speaker 2: but also the episode does not make that very clear.
Speaker 3: No, because I have a reason, I went back and
Speaker 3: checked because it makes no sense.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, his boyfriend was charged last year for aggravated
Speaker 2: assault so the detectives pay him a visit because they
Speaker 2: think he's like a suspect, right. Zain says that he
Speaker 2: didn't kill Joyner, he loved him, and that their fight
Speaker 2: on the night of the murder was about to Joiner's
Speaker 2: own self hatred and Zayin believing that things would be
Speaker 2: better if they could just live openly as a couple,
Speaker 2: but Joyner was concerned that it would threaten his comedy career.
Speaker 2: Zain maintained nothing ever got physical between each other, and
Speaker 2: explained that his assault charge was from trying to break
Speaker 2: up a bar fight, but when the cops arrived, they
Speaker 2: targeted Zaane because he was black, to which the two
Speaker 2: NYPD detectives nod solemnly.
Speaker 4: They're like, yeah, it does sound like something we would do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, other cops are racist, but not us. They're like okay.
Speaker 2: Zain claims that Joyner wanted time, so he got off
Speaker 2: the train a few stops before and went home, but
Speaker 2: mentions that there was a white guy with short brown hair,
Speaker 2: bright yellow sneakers and a hoodie with some kind of
Speaker 2: symbol on the back who was looking weirdly at him
Speaker 2: and Joiner. Security camera footage shows someone matching that description
Speaker 2: exiting the train car one stop before Joiner's body was found,
Speaker 2: and one of the detectives recognizes the symbol. We will
Speaker 2: learn more about this mysterious hoodie, sneaker and symbol after
Speaker 2: this ad break. So I first, I just want to
Speaker 2: describe what this symbol is.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: It's this octagon with spiky corners and like two k's
Speaker 2: facing like like like one facing backwards. Yeah, one one
Speaker 2: facing forward with one facing backwards, but smushed together, and
Speaker 2: the shared middle pillar is like an arrow pointing upwards.
Speaker 4: It looked like nothing to me.
Speaker 2: They tried to desire something that looked vaguely racist, but
Speaker 2: it's just not. It just it just looks dumb.
Speaker 3: It looks like, I don't like a tech company logo
Speaker 3: or something like. Yeah, it does not evoke anything for me.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's not good. They're trying to make it
Speaker 2: scary with like lots of like different like angles, but
Speaker 2: like it's it's it's not it's not scary anyway. The
Speaker 2: detectives arrive at an MMA gym in Chelsea called the
Speaker 2: Kovak Academy. It opened about a year ago and they've
Speaker 2: been peppering the neighborhood with flyers.
Speaker 4: Well, that sounds familiar.
Speaker 2: Extremely accurate. The cops are graded by a jacked staff
Speaker 2: member with a shaved head, and they asked to speak
Speaker 2: with the owner, and this skinhead employee says that they
Speaker 2: just missed them. But there's a picture on the wall
Speaker 2: of the owner holding a trophy and he's wearing the
Speaker 2: exact outfit in the subway security footage. The detectives are
Speaker 2: told that he was getting a cab to the airport. Now,
Speaker 2: I thought I thought this was going to be like
Speaker 2: a clas Rundo move right, do some crimes flee the country,
Speaker 2: But allegedly he was actually flying to Toronto, which actually
Speaker 2: will kind of get explained later on. Cops are outside
Speaker 2: to see if they can spot him before he leaves,
Speaker 2: and they see a man in yellow sneakers and a
Speaker 2: logo emblazoned hoodie walking towards a cab. They sprint tap
Speaker 2: him on the shoulder. The MMA guy throws detectives against
Speaker 2: the car, starts fighting, not realizing their NYPD because he
Speaker 2: has like earbuds on. Cops pull their guns, then he surrenders.
Speaker 2: The owner of the gym is named Domino. Domino. It's
Speaker 2: a weird it's weird name.
Speaker 4: I think Dominall. It's like and I think it's an
Speaker 4: Irish name.
Speaker 2: Dominall. Yeah, dominol Kovak. He has four previous convictions for assault,
Speaker 2: all against black victims, with two charged as hate crimes.
Speaker 2: A detective notes that Kovak has a tattoo on his
Speaker 2: right arm of laced up combat boots with the number
Speaker 2: eighty eight, which the detective calls a white nationalists symbol.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, here, I looked. I looked hard.
Speaker 3: I looked hard through a lot of photographs of Nazi tattoos,
Speaker 3: and the boot tattoo is not common and you only
Speaker 3: see it in skinhead culture.
Speaker 2: And this guy's not a skinhead. The actual owner of
Speaker 2: the gym does not appear to be a skinhead. He
Speaker 2: has like a big beard. He has like long brown,
Speaker 2: like longish brown, not long, but like medium shaggy brown hair.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, he has this combat boot eighty eight tattoo.
Speaker 3: Like that's there are a lot of Nazi tattoos, and
Speaker 3: that's not the one I would have picked for this character.
Speaker 2: No, it's obviously like some lawn order writer googled like
Speaker 2: Nazi tattoo and just picked that.
Speaker 3: Like, but That's the thing is, if that's what they
Speaker 3: had done, I don't think they would have picked that because,
Speaker 3: like I said, I was looking through all of these
Speaker 3: sort of like lists of different kinds of tattoos, yeah,
Speaker 3: by different nonprofits. There is one one picture in all
Speaker 3: of these databases of a tattoo that's even similar to this,
Speaker 3: where it's a pair of boots with the number eight
Speaker 3: on each boot. I found one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that that is the one used.
Speaker 2: I think they did want to like bring in some
Speaker 2: level of like the idea of dog whistling kind of
Speaker 2: with eighty eight, which will come up later in the episode,
Speaker 2: but it's it's not well done anyway. Kovac says that
Speaker 2: he's never seen Ellis Joyner before and that the night
Speaker 2: of the murder, he was running a late night intensive
Speaker 2: training program called the Combat Academy based on the Navy
Speaker 2: Seals training course. So many red flags are going off here.
Speaker 2: It ended around midnight. Afterwards, Kovec said he walked to
Speaker 2: his girlfriend's near by apartment. He was never on the subway,
Speaker 2: but he explains that the gray hoodie and yellow sneakers
Speaker 2: are part of the Combat Academy uniform that all members wear.
Speaker 4: It's so important to wear matching outfits with your boys,
Speaker 4: And in one of the.
Speaker 2: More accurate moments of the episode, as soon as he's
Speaker 2: in even a little trouble, he gives out all the
Speaker 2: names of the members in his group.
Speaker 3: Did not even wait for a subpoena. He was like,
Speaker 3: would you like their credit card numbers?
Speaker 2: It did not hesitate. He's like, no, oh, absolutely, I'll
Speaker 2: I'll give a DNA, so I'll tell you. I'll tell
Speaker 2: you the names all the guys. It wasn't me, I swear.
Speaker 2: So the detectives locate they're recently divorced Brandon Arnaut outside
Speaker 2: of the I like that they added the detail he
Speaker 2: was recently divorced, but this never actually.
Speaker 4: Caught come up.
Speaker 3: Does not matter the second. The second they walk up
Speaker 3: to him on the street, he was like, oh, my
Speaker 3: wife left me.
Speaker 4: My wife left me last year.
Speaker 3: Me so I got really into grappling with the boys
Speaker 3: because my wife left me.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So they find him outside the elementary school
Speaker 2: he teaches that and which.
Speaker 4: Also never comes up again.
Speaker 2: Nope, and after very very little questioning, very tame questioning,
Speaker 2: he immediately admits to killing Joyner, saying it was an accident,
Speaker 2: and that Joyner was attacking a woman on the subway
Speaker 2: and Brandon here was trying to protect her. At the
Speaker 2: police station, the police say that they can't find any
Speaker 2: footage of the woman Brandon is talking about, But the
Speaker 2: defense attorney asks if the cameras were even working at
Speaker 2: every station, to which the cops roll their eyes if
Speaker 2: like really sartiastical answer. They're like, oh my god, this
Speaker 2: fucking guy asking if the cameras are broken. The cops
Speaker 2: tell Brandon that they found Ellis Joiner's missing cell phone
Speaker 2: in his gym locker. They searched his house, they didn't
Speaker 2: find anything, but they got his They got a Warren
Speaker 2: for his jim locker and found the cell phone and
Speaker 2: they alleged that he stole it after he realized that
Speaker 2: Joyner recorded a video of the fight that ended up
Speaker 2: with Joiner being strangled to death.
Speaker 4: And that's something we call consciousness of guilt.
Speaker 2: The defense attorney ends the interview immediately as soon as
Speaker 2: they bring this.
Speaker 3: Up, like, why wouldn't you tell your lawyer that tell
Speaker 3: him that before you go in the search.
Speaker 2: History, and Brandon's laptop shows him trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to unlock the phone to delete the video. Now
Speaker 2: this part's a little bit odd. The cops debate even
Speaker 2: though quote he admits to killing Joyner, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: we have enough evidence to charge unquote, which is not true.
Speaker 2: You have so much of it, you have a confession,
Speaker 2: you have so much evidence to charge.
Speaker 3: This is so bizarre, Like, how often do you have
Speaker 3: a recording of a murder happening and then the guy
Speaker 3: admitting that.
Speaker 2: It admits, Yeah, it's ridiculous. They charge on far far less.
Speaker 3: They have that conversation in the room where they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we can charge him or we can let him go.
Speaker 3: He's like, I mean, I understand a conversation about like
Speaker 3: is this murder too, is this manslaughter? Yeah, but it's
Speaker 3: not a question of whether or not you charge him
Speaker 3: with something. You're charging him with something.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's a reason actually why they
Speaker 2: had this conversation, which I will get to at the
Speaker 2: end of the episode if you remind me. I think
Speaker 2: there's a reason why they discussed this option of letting
Speaker 2: him go versus charging him. But at this point we
Speaker 2: now switch to the law half of the episode after
Speaker 2: we finished the order half. I don't know why these
Speaker 2: are reversed because they do the police part first, then
Speaker 2: the court part. But whatever, it should be called order
Speaker 2: and law, which just I guess, I guess just doesn't
Speaker 2: sound good. So a front page story in the legally
Speaker 2: not New York Post is being passed around the DA's office.
Speaker 2: It reads self defense or racist killing hero or zero.
Speaker 4: A recurring story in New York City.
Speaker 2: The prosecutor, who's played by Hugh Dancy I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: call Hugh Dancy because they don't know his character's name,
Speaker 2: states that half the city believes Brandon's self defense story
Speaker 2: and the other half justic sees a white man killing
Speaker 2: an unarmed black man. Quote, that is what happened. A
Speaker 2: litmus test for what people want to believe, says the
Speaker 2: main DA.
Speaker 3: I think at this point the writers in that room
Speaker 3: are just tired. Oh yeah, so like you can only
Speaker 3: do so much cocaine before it just like stops working.
Speaker 2: The DA's office says that Brandon held Joiner in a
Speaker 2: choke hold for so long after he was unconscious that
Speaker 2: even if it started as self defense, it escalated to homicide.
Speaker 2: The debate between manslaughter and murder, saying the former would
Speaker 2: be easier to win with a clear use of excessive force,
Speaker 2: regardless of Brandon's story of trying to help the girl,
Speaker 2: but based on the cell phone video, the DA decides
Speaker 2: to pursue a murder case due to a quote depraved
Speaker 2: indifference to human life unquote displayed by choking someone for
Speaker 2: full three minutes after falling unconscious.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure if you mentioned them. So they found
Speaker 4: the phone.
Speaker 3: So the victim had been recording the altercation and then
Speaker 3: it got knocked out of his hand, and so it
Speaker 3: was it was recording audio of the murder, but not video.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get to that once we get to
Speaker 2: the court scene. Hugh Dancy is nervous about Brandon's literal
Speaker 2: white night story and that he has no history of violence,
Speaker 2: but the DA insists on second degree murder, saying, quote,
Speaker 2: this is George Floyd all over again in what way?
Speaker 2: And I'm sure as hell not going to end up
Speaker 2: on the wrong side of it unquote, which does not
Speaker 2: make the DA sound like a good guy, just makes
Speaker 2: him sound like he doesn't want to have like a
Speaker 2: bad press. It comes off as very slimy.
Speaker 3: I you know, I said, I watched a lat of
Speaker 3: law and order, and so I have seen probably a
Speaker 3: thousand hours of it, but I haven't watched it in
Speaker 3: several years, so I don't know if maybe the tone
Speaker 3: has evolved a little bit, But I got the impression that, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe this is a guy who's consistently
Speaker 3: worried about getting re elected, right because his job is
Speaker 3: an elected position.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just doesn't want the press. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 2: finally we cut to court, the prosecution plays the cell
Speaker 2: phone video. Seconds after Joyner starts recording on his phone,
Speaker 2: Brandon knocks it out of his hand, landing the camera
Speaker 2: side down, Continuing to record only audio of the struggle.
Speaker 2: We hear Brandon putting Joyner into a choke hold, Joyner
Speaker 2: repeatedly saying he can't breathe before appearing to pass out,
Speaker 2: followed by three minutes of silence up until Brandon releases
Speaker 2: his arm from around Joyner's neck. He picks up the phone,
Speaker 2: sees its recording, and turns it off. As the video
Speaker 2: is playing, the prosecutor and the jury are all shaking
Speaker 2: their heads so that we know that they don't agree
Speaker 2: with it. Hugh Dancy questions the medical examiner, who explains
Speaker 2: it after Joiner lost consciousness, he could no longer pose
Speaker 2: an a lethal threat to the defendant, who continued to
Speaker 2: talk Donor for three more minutes. The defense suggests that
Speaker 2: a surge of adrenaline distorted time and awareness of his surroundings,
Speaker 2: which in the panic of the moment, made Brandon not
Speaker 2: realize Joyner lost consciousness for that long elis Joyner's secret
Speaker 2: boyfriend test Next, he says the defendant was weirdly staring
Speaker 2: at Joyner, at himself, and that Brandon moved aggressively to
Speaker 2: step in Zaye's way when he was trying to exit
Speaker 2: the train and said, quote unquote watch yourself in a
Speaker 2: quote unquote racist tone. The defense brings up Zayne's past
Speaker 2: to aggravated assault charge to cast doubt on his testimony.
Speaker 3: Okay, they can't do that, they can you cannot do that.
Speaker 3: There is a very limited set of circumstances in which
Speaker 3: you can bring up a witnesses criminal history, and this
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 2: There is a lot of funky law decisions going on
Speaker 2: in this episode.
Speaker 3: You can't do that.
Speaker 2: Speaking of funky law decisions, well, actually, speaking of speaking
Speaker 2: of this ad break, we are back speaking of troubling
Speaker 2: law decisions. The defense calls a surprise female witness, Rebecca Laski,
Speaker 2: something you cannot do.
Speaker 4: I looked it up.
Speaker 3: The average time to take a felony to trial in
Speaker 3: New York is a year. So from time of death
Speaker 3: to this going to trial, best case scenario probably like
Speaker 3: a fucking year. They had a year to find this
Speaker 3: woman and she shows up on the last day of
Speaker 3: the trial.
Speaker 2: It's definitely not the last day because.
Speaker 3: If this was you know, this is obviously sort of
Speaker 3: mimicking the was his name, Daniel Penny.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what it's always like.
Speaker 3: Making the Daniel Penny caase like this would have been
Speaker 3: on the New York Post like every day leading up
Speaker 3: to the trial.
Speaker 4: This woman would have been located. The murder happened in January.
Speaker 2: The trial starts, I believe in early March, and lasts
Speaker 2: about two weeks according to the timeline of the TV show.
Speaker 2: So that's not how it works anyway. Rebecca Laski, the female,
Speaker 2: the surprise female witness. She detifies that she accidentally bumped
Speaker 2: into join her who quote unquote appeared mentally disturbed and
Speaker 2: was making aggressive grunting noises, aggressive grunting noises before lunging
Speaker 2: at her. She then claims Joyner reached into his pocket
Speaker 2: and she was scared he had a knife or something,
Speaker 2: so she screamed. She screamed for help, and Brandon Arnau
Speaker 2: saved her. She testified that mister Arnau grabbed Joyner away
Speaker 2: from her and the two men started fighting. Laski calls
Speaker 2: Brandon a hero, and the jury looks on inquisitively. After
Speaker 2: the female witnesses quote unquote compelling testimony, the prosecutor talks
Speaker 2: with the DA about offering a manslaughter plea, but the
Speaker 2: DA is steadfast since the video clip of a man
Speaker 2: begging for his life and being choked to death for
Speaker 2: three minutes after falling unconscious has not actually changed. Hugh
Speaker 2: Dancy remarks that new context for the video isn't really
Speaker 2: in their favor, to which the DA just replies, just
Speaker 2: because a white woman saw Joyner as a threat doesn't
Speaker 2: make it true like okay, based in New York, DA
Speaker 2: I guess. Back in court, the prosecution asks Rebecca Laski
Speaker 2: if she was actually present when a quote, the defendant
Speaker 2: choked the life out of a joiner unquote. She clarifies
Speaker 2: that the train stopped as the men were still fighting,
Speaker 2: Joyner was reaching into his pocket. She was scared that
Speaker 2: he maybe had a knife again.
Speaker 4: He's probably reaching for his inhaler and.
Speaker 2: Hailer or his cell phone to record this fight. She
Speaker 2: curiously mentions, though, that after Brandon grabbed Joyner's arm and
Speaker 2: the fight started, Brandon kept yelling at Joyner. He was
Speaker 2: yelling to quote, surrender and that he was bleeding, and
Speaker 2: that he was dirty or fighting dirty. I don't really
Speaker 2: remember the exact words. Unquote.
Speaker 4: This destroyed me. I almost turned it off.
Speaker 2: Everyone in the courtroom gets a really funny look when
Speaker 2: she meant when she mentions the word dirty. So we
Speaker 2: will get to this in a second. Under questioning last,
Speaker 2: gaymits that she never saw any weapon of any kind,
Speaker 2: let alone a knife, and Hugh Dancy suggests that after
Speaker 2: being attacked by a fellow comedian and having an argument
Speaker 2: with his boyfriend, Joyner was probably suffering from an asthma
Speaker 2: attack triggered by high stress. He wasn't mentally ill, he
Speaker 2: wasn't acting aggressive or grunting in a threatening manner. He
Speaker 2: was stuck in a subway car having an asthma attack.
Speaker 2: And he addresses Laski saying, quote, you saw a scary
Speaker 2: black man making a noise. Objection sustained. So yeah, but
Speaker 2: they didn't. But that's so they objected there.
Speaker 3: But then when he says, like, and isn't it true
Speaker 3: that his behavior was consistent with an asthma attack, nobody
Speaker 3: objected to that.
Speaker 4: She can't offer She can't offer a medical opinion.
Speaker 2: Rebecca Laski a ballet answer, not a medical professional. Cannot
Speaker 2: offer an opinion on what his medical symptoms can be consistently.
Speaker 3: When she starts getting upset, saying like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: this is all my fault, like this happened because of me.
Speaker 3: Like at that point, no prosecutor would have allowed her
Speaker 3: to continue speaking. He would have said, just answer the questions,
Speaker 3: just answer the questions. He would not have let her
Speaker 3: get emotional up there, And that's that's poison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it makes not very good.
Speaker 4: Television, thrilling television.
Speaker 2: So after court for the day, the prosecution wonders if
Speaker 2: Brandon allegedly say something about blood and dirt could have
Speaker 2: really been quote the Nazi slogan blood and soil.
Speaker 4: No no, no, gear, no no.
Speaker 2: The new battle cry of white nationalist groups unquote.
Speaker 4: See here's the thing.
Speaker 2: So this is where the episode goes fully, fully off
Speaker 2: the rails.
Speaker 3: So like when I was watching her testimony, she was like,
Speaker 3: he said something about like, you know, he was bleeding
Speaker 3: and like he was dirty. At no point did my
Speaker 3: mind no connect that too. And and I quite literally
Speaker 3: just yesterday was watching videos of guys yelling blood and soil.
Speaker 4: This is something that's on my mind.
Speaker 2: It is a ridiculous jump. It's it's not there because yeah,
Speaker 2: he's yelling something about about like bleeding because his lip
Speaker 2: was bleeding. And sure a remark about being dirty could
Speaker 2: be could be construed as as like a racist remark.
Speaker 2: But the jump from bleeding and dirty to blood and
Speaker 2: dirt to blood and soil is fucking baffling.
Speaker 4: It's just not even the same words. But not to
Speaker 4: Nippick here, not to Nippick.
Speaker 3: I just don't know that blood and soil would have
Speaker 3: been the chant he chose as he was doing the choking.
Speaker 2: It's bizarre he would have said a slur. Hugh Dancy
Speaker 2: is also skeptical. None of the interviews with Brandon's family
Speaker 2: or co workers indicated anything about racial extremism, but the
Speaker 2: other prosecutor suggests that they look into his fitness gym
Speaker 2: the Kovak Academy, as the owner quote has ties to
Speaker 2: a few white nationalist organizations.
Speaker 4: Uh oh.
Speaker 2: The DA's office decides to investigate further. They arrive at
Speaker 2: the gym as the buff Skinhead staff member from the
Speaker 2: start of the episode is closing up for the day.
Speaker 2: He claims to not know Brandon very well, and when
Speaker 2: he's asked if he's ever heard Brandon say something that
Speaker 2: could be interpreted as racist, he responds by saying, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: but I can't help you. The prosecutor makes a Snyder
Speaker 2: remark and starts to leave, and the man quietly says, look,
Speaker 2: I can't get into details, but let's just say you're
Speaker 2: heading down the right path. But I can't help you
Speaker 2: because it would be low my cover unquote.
Speaker 4: Whoa, oh my gosh, he's a.
Speaker 2: Cop infiltrating the Nazi fight club.
Speaker 4: I mean, there are some cops in there right. I
Speaker 4: don't know if I would say they're infiltrating.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: The next scene is the funniest in the whole episode.
Speaker 2: After stumbling onto the undercover operation, the head DA arrives
Speaker 2: at the NYPD counter Terrorism Bureau as they have info
Speaker 2: pertaining to the prosecution's murder case. But the counter Terrorism
Speaker 2: Bureau explains their scope is much larger than this one case,
Speaker 2: and they have quote had their eye on Kovac for
Speaker 2: a while now. They explained to the DA that his
Speaker 2: MMA gym is actually a quote active club, part of
Speaker 2: an international network of a white supremacist sleeper cells that
Speaker 2: all front as MMA style gyms unquote. So okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: White nationalists have been using MMA gyms to front for
Speaker 2: activities for decades.
Speaker 4: I just found a new one the other day.
Speaker 2: This does happen. This does not mean they are active clubs,
Speaker 2: nor do active clubs have to be MMA gyms. These
Speaker 2: are these things are venn diagrams that can sometimes overlap,
Speaker 2: but not always. The version of active clubs we see
Speaker 2: in this episode now starts getting pretty fictitious.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 3: Immediately first I was like, ah, that's like a fairly
Speaker 3: reasonable like yeah, like we do have active clubs at
Speaker 3: MMA gyms, that's the thing. They were like, And they're
Speaker 3: stockpiling weapons to do a January sixth Yeah, so what what?
Speaker 2: So they say they've identified over thirty active clubs across
Speaker 2: nine states and several provinces of Canada. So nine states
Speaker 2: far too low. There's active clubs in way more states
Speaker 2: than that. There's also not necessarily like if you have
Speaker 2: thirty active clubs across nine states, that's a bizarre ratio.
Speaker 2: That means there's a lot of active clubs in like
Speaker 2: a few states, which generally isn't how it kind of
Speaker 2: ends up being there's maybe like one or two, maybe
Speaker 2: three like per state. We don't fully know, but I
Speaker 2: will give them points for adding in the Canadian chapters,
Speaker 2: which most people kind of overlook.
Speaker 3: But also like, why is the NYPD investigating something happening
Speaker 3: in nine states?
Speaker 4: That's Feds To be fair, that is fully accurate.
Speaker 2: The NYPD counter Terrorism Bureau investigates things all over the world.
Speaker 4: But it's like just let if it's interstate, let the
Speaker 4: FEDS handle it.
Speaker 2: Their jurisdiction is fucking bonkers. They're like the third biggest
Speaker 2: that counter terrorism like law enforcement group in the entire world.
Speaker 4: It's like one of the world's largest standing armies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it is. It is absurd, they say. Quote
Speaker 2: the clubs operate as recruitment centers. They lure in a
Speaker 2: young white men under the guise of getting fit while
Speaker 2: indoctrinating them in racist ideology and training them in military
Speaker 2: combat unquote. Now, the training that people receive in active
Speaker 2: clubs very often does not equal military combat training. In fact,
Speaker 2: they often have very poor fitness regiments and really bad
Speaker 2: advice on how to get fit.
Speaker 3: I mean, if getting hooked on gear and rolling around
Speaker 3: on the floor shirtless with the boys is military combat training,
Speaker 3: then absolutely.
Speaker 2: If if you look at the there's a pretty sensive
Speaker 2: docks of some of the active club members of the
Speaker 2: State of Georgia last year, and they were their fitness
Speaker 2: information was not up to stuff. They were mostly seventeen
Speaker 2: year olds who were arguing about different ways to like
Speaker 2: lift better. Anyway, lawn Order says that these active clubs
Speaker 2: are quote trying to build an army. It's the new
Speaker 2: face of hate unquote, a very kind of retro slogan.
Speaker 2: We don't really use that anymore, but if you look
Speaker 2: like ten years ago or like, yeah, around ten years ago,
Speaker 2: you would see a lot of like liberal articles talking
Speaker 2: about the new face of hate. Quote no more white
Speaker 2: sheets or burning crosses. They've adapted and created a facade
Speaker 2: to mask their racist beliefs unquote. So the DA wants
Speaker 2: their undercover guy to testify to secure the conviction against
Speaker 2: one of the Active Club members, but the count Terrorism
Speaker 2: Bureau doesn't want to blow their nine month undercover operation
Speaker 2: even for a murder conviction, as they've quote recently received
Speaker 2: credible intel that Kovak is now stock pile leg of
Speaker 2: firearms and explosive materials unquote, so.
Speaker 4: They should probably go ahead and arrest him for that.
Speaker 4: Huh yeah, yeah, right, it's time to move.
Speaker 2: I guess now they're combining like active club stuff with
Speaker 2: some like Adam Woffin and militious stuff just like throat,
Speaker 2: just just smushing together all these different groups into one
Speaker 2: like mega boogeeyman. I guess quote these men are terrorists.
Speaker 2: They're capable of significant violence unquote. So the Count Terrorists
Speaker 2: in Bureau suggests that the DA takes a quote big
Speaker 2: picture of view of the situation unquote. So the DA
Speaker 2: breaks the news to the prosecution team that the undercover
Speaker 2: will be unable to testify because the active Club is
Speaker 2: quote planning a coordinated attack along the lines of the
Speaker 2: January sixth insurrection unquote.
Speaker 3: So you should probably like the undercover operation is over,
Speaker 3: Like if you have credible intel that there's an imminent.
Speaker 5: Attack, like the operation is over. So also like this
Speaker 5: is just not what active clubs do. Like this is
Speaker 5: like they don't care about J six. That's like a
Speaker 5: proud boy thing and some militia dudes, like most active
Speaker 5: club members would be like no, all of the JA
Speaker 5: six people are like fucking like conservative like Trump Trump,
Speaker 5: brain brain dead losers. They're like it takes really that thing.
Speaker 3: A couple of years ago where those members of the
Speaker 3: base were arrested right before they were going to try
Speaker 3: to kick off the Civil War by inciting.
Speaker 4: They were going to shoot into the crowd at.
Speaker 3: The gun rally in Richmond at the Virginia and then
Speaker 3: the plan was that everyone would start shooting each other,
Speaker 3: you know. And it's like so they had a pretty
Speaker 3: large stockpile of weapons that one of the guys was Canadians,
Speaker 3: so like.
Speaker 4: Maybe they got mixed up with that in the base.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like they're combining elements of the base, Adam Offfen,
Speaker 2: active clubs, proud boys into like this like mega boogeyman, right,
Speaker 2: just a villain. The DA says that this new attack
Speaker 2: will quote only be more violent and without advance warning
Speaker 2: this time.
Speaker 4: And what do you mean without advanced warning?
Speaker 2: He just says, are right, right, let this happen.
Speaker 4: The greater good is for us to allow this to occur.
Speaker 2: The undercover investigation cannot be justitized in any way. But
Speaker 2: as this looks more and more like a racially targeted
Speaker 2: murder according to the DA, the DA's office is to
Speaker 2: find a different way to show that Brandon is racist.
Speaker 2: Quote it's for the greater good a phrase, a phrase
Speaker 2: that Hugh Dancy says helps justify a lot of otherwise
Speaker 2: unjustifiable positions. And true, they start getting into this kind
Speaker 2: of debate around like the ethics of like doing a
Speaker 2: long term infiltration operation versus seeing like a like like
Speaker 2: an active like like seeing an active threat, or like
Speaker 2: seeing a way to like currently clamp down on a
Speaker 2: like arm of an organization even if they can't get
Speaker 2: the whole thing yet, And they have this debate like
Speaker 2: is it is it better to like do like a
Speaker 2: long term strategy or to like just like chop off
Speaker 2: as many limbs as we can. As we go on
Speaker 2: and again, it doesn't make sense because if they have
Speaker 2: all this credible intel, why not just like get them
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 4: But like what I wrap it up?
Speaker 2: So back in court, mister Kovak is on the stand.
Speaker 2: Hugh Dancy asks if he and the defendant have ever
Speaker 2: discussed quote racial ideology, to which Kovac says, I don't
Speaker 2: know what that means. Believable, the prosible, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: that is the correct answer for this situation. The prosecutor
Speaker 2: elaborates racial purity into racial marriage, what role black people
Speaker 2: should or shouldn't have in society, and Kovak once again
Speaker 2: feigns ignorance. Hugh Dancy asks about Kovac's eighty eight tattoo
Speaker 2: being a Nazi symbol, and Kovak just says, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I just like the number eighty eight, and.
Speaker 4: Then he doesn't.
Speaker 3: The prosecutor doesn't explain to the jury, no does mean
Speaker 3: Kyle Hitler.
Speaker 2: He just he just he just moves on. Never once
Speaker 2: in the episode is it explained that the eighty eight
Speaker 2: symbol me is a reference to high Hitler.
Speaker 4: Never ever actually say it, never say it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Dancy does bring up mister Kovak's four prior convictions
Speaker 2: for assaulting black men, two of which were charged as
Speaker 2: hate crimes, and Covec just says, that was a long
Speaker 2: time ago.
Speaker 3: And now see, I do want to say, because you
Speaker 3: made such a big deal about it earlier, about how
Speaker 3: you can't ask about prior convictions. I think in this
Speaker 3: case it is an allowable exception because it goes to
Speaker 3: direct impeachment, like if he said, like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: he made a statement himself about how he's not racist,
Speaker 3: and you say, well, you have a hate crime conviction, and.
Speaker 2: Later in the court room he says that he of
Speaker 2: course obviously doesn't have any problems with black people. When
Speaker 2: being a questioned by the defense attorney, but Hugh Dancy
Speaker 2: pulls up Kovac's social media accounts, all of which contained
Speaker 2: the phrase blood and soil in his bio objection relevance.
Speaker 2: The prosecution then argues that Rebecculaski's testimony of hearing something
Speaker 2: about blood and dirt may have been a vague recollection
Speaker 2: of hearing blood and soil. No Dancy describes blood and
Speaker 2: soil as a Nazi reference to a racially uniform society.
Speaker 3: The jury would not have been allowed to hear this.
Speaker 3: This happened outside the presence of the jury.
Speaker 2: Covect just says the phrase means that you're proud of
Speaker 2: who you are and where you come from. Kovac taught
Speaker 2: the defendant how to fight, how to do a choke hold.
Speaker 2: So to end the questioning, Hugh Dancy asks if he
Speaker 2: also taught the defendant to hate black people. Objection, objection,
Speaker 2: all right, So, The defense's closing argument frames the subway
Speaker 2: as a dangerous, lawless zone and Brandon as a peaceful
Speaker 2: elementary school teacher who has never gotten as much as
Speaker 2: a speeding.
Speaker 4: Ticket, probably because he doesn't drive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you live in New York. U who saw
Speaker 2: someone in danger and bravely decided to step up and
Speaker 2: do something. The prosecution's closing argument frames Brandon Arnaut as
Speaker 2: a closeted racist who saw an opportunity to put his
Speaker 2: white supremacist ideology into practice in a situation where he
Speaker 2: thought he could get away with it. Quote. People like
Speaker 2: mister Arno their bigotry buttoned up. They only discussed it
Speaker 2: as people who share their hateful worldview. They rely on
Speaker 2: plausible deniability because if the racism isn't overt, many good
Speaker 2: people are all too happy to assume it isn't there.
Speaker 2: But every once in a while, in moments of panic
Speaker 2: or anger, the mask will slip. Unquote. Hugh Dancy closes
Speaker 2: by saying that Elis Joyner was an innocent, unarmed black
Speaker 2: man suffering a medical emergency, and the two white people
Speaker 2: on the train assumed he was a violent threat and
Speaker 2: they attacked him. And even if there was no intention
Speaker 2: to kill at the start quote, at some point the
Speaker 2: defendant's focus shifted and his racial hate began to manifest unquote,
Speaker 2: yelling blood and soil at Joiner quote a declaration of
Speaker 2: hatred for all people of color unquote, as Brandon choked
Speaker 2: him to death.
Speaker 4: Okay, here's the thing. Here's the thing, this whole situation
Speaker 4: with the.
Speaker 3: Undercover of the counter terrorism I have to believe that
Speaker 3: they're trying to set up a longer plot arc that
Speaker 3: that's going to come back in a later episode or so.
Speaker 4: They have a new spin off called.
Speaker 3: Law and Order Organized Crime with Christopher Maloney Elliot Stabler
Speaker 3: from SVU. So I wonder if they're going to cross
Speaker 3: it over to organized crime, because it makes no sense.
Speaker 2: That's what I assume. I think this White Nationals group
Speaker 2: is going to come back and be even a bigger
Speaker 2: plat point in a future episode. It didn't need to
Speaker 2: be in here otherwise, the inclusion in this in this
Speaker 2: piece is really bizarre.
Speaker 4: So but no, So, but what.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, is they did not need
Speaker 3: that undercovers testimony because the only testimony they wanted to
Speaker 3: elicit from him was like as a character witness to
Speaker 3: say like, oh, yeah, I've met him and he's racist.
Speaker 3: That wouldn't really even be admissible in most like like
Speaker 3: even if the even if the judge allowed the jury
Speaker 3: to hear that, Like, this isn't a hate crime case.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter. What matters is.
Speaker 3: Whether or not he used excessive like more force than
Speaker 3: was necessary for a self defense argument.
Speaker 2: Right, the entire legal strategy they shift to halfway through
Speaker 2: the corpora cet is so obviously a dead end that
Speaker 2: doesn't actually relate.
Speaker 4: To and wouldn't have been allowed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so it's so bizarre.
Speaker 3: And if they wanted to and if they wanted to
Speaker 3: get information about like his views that maybe his family
Speaker 3: didn't know about, that people at work didn't know about,
Speaker 3: why did they not get warrants for his phone and computer?
Speaker 2: I mean I think they did because they mentioned in
Speaker 2: searching through his phone and computer multiple times through the.
Speaker 3: Episode, found that he had searched for like how to
Speaker 3: delete from cloud or whatever from the guy's phone.
Speaker 2: But like, again I think that's mostly just like undercooked.
Speaker 3: He didn't open like his telegram account to see what exactly.
Speaker 2: You didn't see the active club chat season. You didn't
Speaker 2: see like you didn't talk to any other members of
Speaker 2: the Combat Academy, no other members of the gym really anyway,
Speaker 2: So the jury finds the defendant not guilty because yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: Outside the courtroom, the head DA says, quote, we did
Speaker 2: the best that we could.
Speaker 3: Here's another problem or another problem. So not all states
Speaker 3: allow this, but in New York, the court can submit
Speaker 3: to the jury what are called lesser included charges. So
Speaker 3: if you're charged with murder two I think was what
Speaker 3: they charged him with his case, you know, the jury
Speaker 3: can deliberate on the actual charge murder too, but they
Speaker 3: can also consider what are called lesser included charges, so
Speaker 3: something like manslaughter. So the jury can say, well, we're
Speaker 3: not going to convict on murder, tube we do think
Speaker 3: it was manslaughter, so we're going to convict on that,
Speaker 3: even though that wasn't the charge in the indictment. So
Speaker 3: I can't imagine that this DA would not have pushed
Speaker 3: for lesser included charges.
Speaker 2: Well, Hugh Dancy may agree. He says, quote no, we
Speaker 2: could have done better. We just chose not to for
Speaker 2: the greater good.
Speaker 3: No, but they they could.
Speaker 2: I think I think he said that kind of sarcastically.
Speaker 2: The DA affirms that one day soon they will take
Speaker 2: down the whole racist organization. But behind the two days
Speaker 2: here Brandon walks out of the courtroom and celebrates with
Speaker 2: the other members of the Active Club. End of episode.
Speaker 3: Okay, so, but when they put Kovac on the stand
Speaker 3: and they were saying, like, oh, like, did you teach
Speaker 3: him about racism? The better line of questioning at that
Speaker 3: moment would have been, Okay, you're his grappling coach, did
Speaker 3: you teach him how dangerous choke holts are?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Because, like, I don't know anything about a choke holds,
Speaker 3: So if I accidentally killed someone with one, maybe I
Speaker 3: didn't know that would happen. If you are taking five
Speaker 3: hours a week of private hand to hand combat lessons,
Speaker 3: you probably do know, and that would go to you know, foreknowledge,
Speaker 3: and like, didn't why didn't they ask that?
Speaker 2: Again? I started this episode because I thought it would
Speaker 2: be about active clubs, and it turns out by the
Speaker 2: end it's really not.
Speaker 4: It's really about Daniel Penny it's really.
Speaker 2: About the killing of Jordan Neely. So this is the
Speaker 2: actual rip from the headlines piece that they're doing, which
Speaker 2: I did not really realize until the episode was over.
Speaker 2: So this is this is kind of riffing on the
Speaker 2: incident that happened on my first twenty twenty Jordan Neely
Speaker 2: was a thirty year old black man. He was Michael
Speaker 2: Jackson impersonator at the time. He was homeless. He was
Speaker 2: running the subway in Manhattan and appeared emotionally distressed. He
Speaker 2: was yelling about needing food and water. No one was
Speaker 2: helping him. He was yelling that he didn't care about
Speaker 2: going to jail. He was ready to die, and this
Speaker 2: was reportedly frightening other writers. Daniel Penny, a twenty four
Speaker 2: year old former marine, approached Neely and placed him in
Speaker 2: a lethal chocold that lasted anywhere from five to seven minutes,
Speaker 2: depending on if you ask the prosecution or the defense.
Speaker 2: Penny was repeatedly told by other writers that Neely appeared
Speaker 2: to be dying. By the time first aid was being administered,
Speaker 2: he was already dead. Daniel Penny was let go after
Speaker 2: being questioned by police, and only arrested eleven days later.
Speaker 2: I think this is the part where they're like, do
Speaker 2: we want to let him go or charge him? Now?
Speaker 2: I think that's kind of what they're doing here. On
Speaker 2: June fourteenth, twenty twenty three, he was indicted on a
Speaker 2: charge of second degree manslaughter. The trials scheduled to start
Speaker 2: on October eighth, twenty twenty four. So this episode also,
Speaker 2: I think it fails in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 2: this depiction of active clubs, it uses certain terms like
Speaker 2: the term active clubs, which I was surprised they just
Speaker 2: I'm surprised they use because that's kind of more of
Speaker 2: like a niche term, but they just made it to
Speaker 2: be this like MMA elite Nazi squad. And I think
Speaker 2: them trying to include this bit does an incredible disservice
Speaker 2: to trying to depict the killing of Jordan Neely, which,
Speaker 2: first of all, like there's already problematic aspects right of
Speaker 2: turning this like this like really fucked up thing into
Speaker 2: a piece of entertainment. That's kind of why I started
Speaker 2: this episode with that monologue. But I think by cramming
Speaker 2: so many other elements in here, like this like like
Speaker 2: this homophobia angle, this this this active club angle, it
Speaker 2: does a real disservice to the actual incident that they're
Speaker 2: trying to comment on, where there was a man in
Speaker 2: a very crowded subway who very publicly was basically lynched
Speaker 2: because a few writers were not super comfortable when riding
Speaker 2: the subway because this man was yelling for food and water.
Speaker 2: So it's not it's not great, But after watching Leave
Speaker 2: the World Behind Civil War on this, I think this
Speaker 2: is the best depiction of our current political moment out
Speaker 2: of all of those three things, which is a pretty
Speaker 2: fucked up bar. I guess, Molly, do you have any
Speaker 2: other thoughts on how they depict Nazi stuff in this?
Speaker 2: I mean not.
Speaker 3: Well, not well, bitch, uh no. The I was just
Speaker 3: gonna say, I was looking on Reddit and seeing people's
Speaker 3: people's takes on it on the Law and Order Reddit,
Speaker 3: and I found this fantastic comment. They did take the
Speaker 3: Daniel Penny case but changed the whole story to make
Speaker 3: Penny look guilty, probably to make the real Penny look
Speaker 3: like a bad guy in real life.
Speaker 2: Object objection, objection.
Speaker 4: Objection in your Honor object mods mods.
Speaker 2: Not yeah, not great because also yeah, it also like
Speaker 2: for people who are like looking at this as a
Speaker 2: Herald to Jordanai like, oh, why did they change so
Speaker 2: many details to make them look even more guilty, and like, no,
Speaker 2: that's not what's happening at all.
Speaker 3: Like, I think they did a disservice to that story
Speaker 3: by changing so many elements. I mean, like you said,
Speaker 3: there's there's a conversation to be had about the ethics
Speaker 3: of depicting the story as entertainment, period. But if they're
Speaker 3: going to do it, and they've been doing it for
Speaker 3: thirty years, right, that's just what law and Order does.
Speaker 3: If they're going to do it, I think they have
Speaker 3: a responsibility to not do this, to not do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, again, they have bigger fish to fry, since
Speaker 2: there's that upcoming worse than January sixth attack head led
Speaker 2: by these MMA guys who are stockpiling explosives, So watch
Speaker 2: out for that, I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I'll have to watch the rest of
Speaker 3: the season to see if the MMA gym blows up
Speaker 3: New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will not be until they release a direct
Speaker 2: follow up, So I think that doesn't for us today.
Speaker 2: This is already way too.
Speaker 4: This episode's already long. On the episode, it's.
Speaker 2: Already longer through the Law and Order episode. So that
Speaker 2: does it for us today. Thank you for listening. If
Speaker 2: you want to check out my review of Civil War,
Speaker 2: It's very short, but it's kind of to the point.
Speaker 2: I'm on letterboxed at Hungry bow Tie, and then the
Speaker 2: reviews that I liked, which are underneath my own review,
Speaker 2: go into more depth about kind of the problems with
Speaker 2: that film in my opinion and other people's opinion. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Where can people find you online? Molly?
Speaker 3: Oh, I am on Twitter at Socialist dog Mom and
Speaker 3: my newsletter The Devil's Advocates on ghost and I guess
Speaker 3: that's it for me. Oh, I'm podcasting sometimes now.
Speaker 2: No objections from me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess By the time you're listening to this,
Speaker 3: you can listen to my latest episode of this show yesterday.
Speaker 2: All right. See on the other side.
Speaker 4: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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