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Good morning. You are listening in to Dateline's morning meeting here at 30 Rockefeller Center.
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This story is getting some attention. Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news around the country.
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She and the husband both meet with the police to report the stalking incidents. How long after the interrogation was he arrested?
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As you may have gathered, you know these open marriages can get a little crowded.
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Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's April 10th, and here's what's on our docket.
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Earlier this week, Lori Vallow Daybell gave the opening statement at her own trial in Arizona.
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Accused of conspiring to murder her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, she's decided to represent herself.
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But will her high-stakes legal gamble pay off? I guess it will be seen if it really goes off the rails. So far, it has not.
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Later on, we'll be talking to NBC News legal analyst and defense attorney Danny Savalos about his take on defendants like Lori who choose to represent themselves.
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There's an old saying, he who represents himself has a fool for a client. Plus, other stories we're watching this week. Karen Reed's defense team tries to stop her retrial in its tracks.
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And new criminal charges are filed against music mogul Sean Diddy Combs. These new charges relate to a woman referred to as victim two.
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But before all that, we're headed back to a California courtroom for the final chapter in the trial of the woman accused of plotting to murder her celebrity hairstylist husband.
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Yesterday, after nearly 40 days of testimony that included two convicted killers taking the stand, the jury finally began deliberations in the murder trial of Monica Sementilli.
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She's the woman accused of conspiring with her lover, Robert Baker, to kill her husband, Fabio.
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In her closing statement, Los Angeles County Deputy DA Beth Silverman told the jury that the evidence spoke for itself.
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We're not here because she's a horrible person. We're not here because she's a cheater or a liar or any of the other words that you could use.
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We're here because she's a killer. But the defense told the jury the state had not proven its case against Monica.
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They said she had nothing to do with the crime. Robert Baker, who admitted to killing Fabio, even testified to that.
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The defense argued in closings that the evidence proved the only thing Monica was guilty of was having an affair.
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If you presume she is innocent as the law requires, everything she did was to protect the affair, not to cover up the murder.
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You know what? Everything falls into place. Dateline producer Jessica DeVera has been following the case throughout the trial and joins us now to tell us what's been happening in the courtroom.
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Jess, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. There's been so much leading up to this. How did prosecutor Beth Silverman begin her closing arguments?
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She basically took them back to what she said in opening statements, right? she reminded the jurors that this would be a case about betrayal. Because jurors can't look
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things up during deliberations, she actually read them a dictionary definition of what betrayal
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means. Deception, disloyalty, treachery, duplicity, devious, cheat, trickery, fraud,
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cunning each of those words perfectly describe this defendant who was the mastermind
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behind her own adoring husband's gruesome murder she talked about monica and fabio's marriage
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and how she betrayed his trust as well as her own family friends and children and she described the
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love affair between Monica and Robert Baker as not just, you know, a regular affair. She said it
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was obsessive and all-consuming. And this affair, this really goes to what the prosecution says
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was Monica's motive to kill Fabio. That's right. Beth Silverman said that Monica knew her family
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would never accept Robert Baker and that she needed to portray herself as a victim in order
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to get her family on board. The prosecution also highlighted how Monica's behavior after the murder
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did not match what you would expect of someone who believed their home was the target of a burglary turned murder, right?
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Instead, Monica was spending time with Baker, going to comedy clubs, bars, partying it up at night
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instead of staying home with her kids. Yeah, the prosecution pointed out that Monica's behavior made sense
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if she knew who the killer was. If she didn't know who the killer was, You think she would be leaving her kids alone in the home?
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No, the reason she does that is because she knows they're not in any danger because the real killer is out with her.
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The prosecutor's closing remarks also really just summarized a lot of the testimony that you had heard all through the trial.
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And this was a particularly long closing argument, not something you usually see.
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Usually both sides are over in like a day, not in this case. That's right. I've never seen this before. This went on for three days.
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That is incredible. And of course, the defense also had their turn. Let's take a listen to
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defense attorney Leonard Levine. Most of those witnesses were here to establish that Monica
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Cimentelli had an affair and to disparate her character. And they did a damn good job.
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And much of it was earned. But we're not here to decide whether or not Monica Cimentelli
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was a bad wife, an adulteress, you are here to decide if she's been proven guilty
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beyond a reasonable doubt And I submit to you if the evidence was that clear it would not have taken eight years and eight weeks of testimony to prove it Levine was quite critical of Monica
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in his closing arguments. You often hear that from the prosecution, and we certainly did hear that
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from the prosecution, but this was her own defense attorney pointing out her flaws as a strategy.
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That's right. You know, he urged the jury not to look at her with sympathy because she, you know, did
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have this affair with Robert Baker, but to find her innocent because of reasonable doubt.
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Before you go into your deliberation room, take one last look at her, not with any sympathy,
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because she doesn't deserve any sympathy. but look at her and say to yourself, innocent, because what the law requires you to do
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is exactly that. The defense also went back over some of the testimony in detail. They focused on
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the testimony of Christopher Austin. He was the man who committed the murder alongside Robert Baker
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and testified for the state during the trial. Why did the defense go back at his testimony?
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Right. So the defense reiterated that Austin took a plea deal, right, and is expected to receive a shorter sentence as a result of his testimony.
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So they wanted to make sure to point out to the jury that he had an incentive to lie to make up a story that was far from the truth.
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And they also emphasized that Christopher Austin never spoke with Monica directly or really even heard conversations about the murder plot.
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Correct. So the defense pointed out to the jury that he never heard, you know, a conversation between Monica and Baker.
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This was all information that Baker was telling him. Austin said, Baker told me she wanted him dead.
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Baker told me it was for insurance. Baker told me this is how it was going to happen.
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Did you meet with Monica? Never. Did you talk with her? Never. Did she tell you anything? Never.
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And that's the evidence they want you to convict her of a first-degree murder. The jury has the case and we are waiting for a verdict.
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I know, again, it's so hard to know what jurors are thinking, but just a lot of information to go over, a lot of testimony, a lot of evidence.
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Right. I mean, and who knows how long they're going to take. We've seen it. We've seen it all at Dateline, right?
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Sometimes they take an hour. Sometimes they take days. And so who knows how long they will take to deliberate.
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All right. Thank you, Jess, for your breakdown of this. Thank you. Coming up, drama in an Arizona courtroom as Lori Vallow Daybell defends herself against charges she conspired to murder her fourth husband.
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Lori Vallow Daybell. Her name is one most of you probably know. Keith Morrison has been covering her story for five years now on TV in his podcast series, Mommy Doomsday. And just last month, he had an exclusive jailhouse interview for Dateline.
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Did you watch your children die? That's a really sad question. It's a terrible question. And it's one I hate to have to ask.
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Back in 2023, an Idaho jury convicted Lori of murdering two of her children as well as conspiring to murder Tammy Daybell, the wife of Chad Daybell, a man who called himself a doomsday prophet and who went on to become Lori's fifth husband.
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This week, Lori is on trial again, but not in Idaho. She's in Arizona accused of conspiring to murder the man she was married to before Chad, her fourth husband, Charles Vallow.
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She's pleaded not guilty. And unlike her trial in Idaho, this time around, Lori has made a bold decision to represent herself.
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Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have been charged with a crime, a serious crime.
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And the only question here is, did I commit this crime? Here to tell us how she's doing is Nate Eaton, the news director at East Idaho News, who's been following this case since the beginning and even worked with Dateline as a consultant.
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He's calling us from outside the courthouse in Phoenix while the court is on break.
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Thank you for joining us, Nate. Thanks for having me. Good to be back, Andrea. You have been in Arizona, Nate, this whole week for the trial.
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Members of the public have been lining up outside the courtroom as early as 5 a.m.
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And some have come as far as Australia. What is the draw here? I think one of the big draws about this is that Lori Daybell is representing herself.
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People want to see how she acts in court, what type of questions she asks, and if she
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will be able to present a strong enough defense to let the jury find her not guilty.
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And she has an interesting reason why she's representing herself. Yeah, I would actually say there's probably a few reasons. One of the main ones being that
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she wants this trial to happen now. If her defense attorneys are on her case, they need more time.
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They probably wouldn't even get to a trial this year. She also feels like she's able to represent
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herself better than somebody else. She does have a couple of advisory attorneys who do assist her,
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But Lori Daybell is leading the charge in this case on behalf of the defense. Last time we saw Lori, she was with Keith in an orange jumpsuit.
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Now she's back in regular clothes, which is, you know, kind of a bit jarring. Right.
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And it's definitely different. She been wearing business suits And the interesting thing though Andrea there no handcuffs There no ankle shackles But underneath her clothes she wearing what called a rack belt And that is like a taser belt that the deputy near her has a button
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Yeah, she tries to run or misbehaves or tries to lunge after the judge, which, you know, she has shown no sign of that.
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But if she does, the deputy will hit this button and that will kind of shock her and make her freeze.
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So how is Lori representing herself affecting courtroom proceedings? Is she getting it? Is she not getting it?
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I'd say a little bit of both. I'd say she definitely has studied the law or learned from her old attorneys.
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But there's also moments where she'll start to ask a question and there'll be an objection.
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I just didn't see it in your report, but I saw it on the body cam, so I wondered if you knew.
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I'm going to object to the defendant testifying. All right. Please only ask questions.
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Sure. When you make statements about what you saw or heard, that's testimony. I apologize, Your Honor.
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But she had everything written out and prepared. She is questioning the witnesses.
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And I guess it will be seen if it really goes off the rails. So far, it has not.
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Opening statements started Monday of this week. Let's start with the prosecution.
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What do they say happened to Charles Vallow? We know he was Lori's fourth husband and that she was actually estranged from him when he died.
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It was July of 2019 when he showed up to pick up his son to take him to school when Lori's brother Alex shot and killed him in the front room of the home.
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The prosecutor said this was a murder that was preplanned and the motive was that Lori wanted $1 million in life insurance and that she wanted to be with a new man, her new lover, Chad Daybell.
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After the prosecution, Lori made her opening statement. What did she want the jury to know right out of the gate?
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Lori and her brother Alex, who's now dead, say that this was a self-defense action.
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Lori said that Charles tried to attack her, go after her, and that he hit her brother with a baseball bat in the back of the head.
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The evidence will show that after the struggle on the ground between Charles and Alex, that Charles prevailed with the bat and began to come towards me with the bat as I ran away from him into the kitchen.
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The evidence will show that at some point while I was running away from Charles, who was chasing me with the bat, that Alex apparently retrieved his gun.
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The evidence will show that I ran outside to the children and that Alex shot Charles in self-defense.
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She's saying Alex intervened to defend them. Right. You saw her get emotional telling this story in her opening statements?
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Yeah, she took off her glasses, was wiping away the tears. The evidence will show you that I drove the children away from the residence towards JJ's school.
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Can I grab a tissue? Yes. And then she ended with, this was a family tragedy. tragedy. Spouses having insurance policies is not a crime. Collecting social security is not a crime.
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Self-defense is not a crime. A family tragedy is not a crime. It's a tragedy. Thank you.
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The prosecution has already questioned a number of witnesses. Who and what did we learn from them?
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We've heard from the firefighters and the police officers who arrived at the scene.
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They have evidence that Charles was shot once by Alex Cox, and then when he fell to the ground, it appears he was shot again.
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You could argue, if it was self-defense, why the need to shoot a wounded man who was on the ground and a bullet was lodged in the wooden floor.
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So we're expected to hear the medical examiner testify about that. One of the interesting things they've said, all of them have said, is just how calm Alex Cox was and how unusual Lori Daybell's behavior was.
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She was laughing. She was calm. She did not show the normal signs that a spouse would had their
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husband just been shot. How has Lori been when it's her turn to cross-examine these witnesses?
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Lori has prepared herself with questions for these witnesses. She asks questions that a juror might
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assume any defense attorney might ask. Can you tell me what the weapon was that you found?
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It was a handgun. Was it a 45? Don't recall. Now, where she might be missing things is
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an objection to the prosecutor, things like that. We haven't heard her object once.
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What can we expect for the rest of the trial? Well, we know that the prosecutor has 21 witnesses that they want to put on,
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and they're moving pretty quick. Lori has a list of around a dozen or so witnesses,
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but many have not been served subpoenas. So the prosecutor has argued that none of them should be
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allowed to testify. So we will see at that point in the case if the judge allows some of those
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witnesses in or not. The big question, will Lori testify? That is the big question.
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And she has said she's unsure. And I believe that. I believe that this may be one of those things we may not know until the morning of.
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Nate, thank you so much for joining us. We so much appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
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Up next, is it ever a good idea to represent yourself in court? NBC News legal analyst Danny Savalos gives us his opinion.
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Plus, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got the latest in two blockbuster cases.
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the retrial of Karen Reed, and the federal sex trafficking case against music legend Sean Diddy Combs.
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Welcome back. Joining me for this week's Roundup is Dateline producer Rachel White. Hey, Rachel.
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Hi, Andrea. Okay, so first up, music mogul Sean Diddy Combs has been hit with additional criminal
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charges ahead of his sex trafficking and racketeering trial that is coming up in May Rachel what do we know so far Yeah so federal prosecutors have added two new charges to the indictment against Combs One additional charges for sex trafficking and there another for transportation to engage in
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prostitution. These new charges relate to a woman referred to as Victim 2, who prosecutors
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allege Combs forced to engage in commercial sex acts from 2021 to 2024. for. Rachel, we should remind everyone that Combs has pled not guilty to the charges against him,
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and thus far he has denied everything that has been out there. That's right. And his legal team
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did respond. They released a statement about this updated indictment saying, quote, these are not new
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accusers. These are the same individuals, former long-term girlfriends involved in consensual
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relationships. This was their private sex life. Privacy, no surprise, is a big issue in this case.
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The indictment is redacted in places and refers to the alleged victims as victim one, victim two, victim three.
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But there was a big reveal about victim one. What did we find out? So according to prosecutors, victim one will be using her name in court.
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And it's a name we've heard before. It's Cassie Ventura. And to remind everyone, Cassie was Combs' ex-girlfriend and a well-known musical artist in her own right.
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She made headlines in 2023 when she filed a civil suit against Combs, accusing him of abusing her.
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And that was nearly a year before any criminal charges were even filed. Yeah, so Sean Combs has denied any wrongdoing, but he quickly settled Ventura's lawsuit out of court.
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But several months later, a surveillance video surfaced on CNN, which appeared to show Combs striking and kicking Ventura in a hotel hallway.
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Combs apologized for his behavior, although recently in court, his attorneys allege
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that the footage might have been altered, but CNN denies that. Back when Combs was first arrested, there was a lot of speculation that victim one in
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the indictment must be Cassie because the indictment mirrored many of the allegations
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in her civil suit and described the video. So now we know. The women prosecutors are calling victim one is Cassie, and she will be testifying.
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That will be a big day in court when she testifies. What about the other alleged victims?
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So we know that they will testify, but they will likely remain anonymous. Earlier this week in a court filing, prosecutors requested measures to protect their identities throughout the trial.
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But we'll see if Combs defense team pushes back on that. Up next, we're off to Massachusetts, where jury selection for Karen Reed's trial continues.
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She is the woman accused of killing her police officer boyfriend with her SUV three years ago.
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Rachel, what's the latest with Karen? So we're taping this at the end of day seven of jury selection.
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So far, 15 jurors have been seated, eight men, seven women. The court is seeking 16 total jurors.
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So there will be 12 who will deliberate and four who will be alternates. These are some stats from our affiliate NBC10 in Boston about the jury pull after that first week of jury selection.
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92% of potential jurors said they knew about the case. 60% said they'd formed an opinion.
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And 17% felt biased for or against Karen Reed. Those are tough percentages there for both sides.
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In Karen Reed's first trial, it took only five days to seat a jury, Rachel. And now, you know, it is moving, I guess, fairly quickly given the challenges. And in the middle of jury selection, Reed's defense team filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking an immediate stop to her retrial.
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That's right, and we took a look at that petition. In it, Reed claimed her retrial violates the
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double jeopardy clause, which prevents people from being tried twice for the same crime.
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Remember, after her first trial, Reed's defense team said several jurors contacted them to say
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the jury had agreed unanimously to acquit Reed on charges of murder and leaving the scene of the
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crash, but had deadlocked on the manslaughter charge. In the petition to the Supreme Court,
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Reid's defense team argued that manslaughter charge should be the only one she should face this time around.
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So what happened? The Supreme Court has refused to take up her case. It looks like Reid's trial is moving full steam ahead.
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Rachel, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. For our final story, we're taking a deep dive into the good and bad of pro se representation,
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or in simple English, acting as your own attorney. We talked about Lori Vallow-Daybell earlier in the show,
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but she isn't the only person to take the reins of her defense this year. Just last week, we aired a Dateline episode about Dana Chandler,
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a woman accused of murdering her ex-husband and his girlfriend at their home in Kansas back in 2002.
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Dana recently chose to represent herself at her third trial and was convicted. So we asked NBC News legal analyst Danny Sabalos to give us his take
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on whether it's ever a good idea to represent yourself at trial. Hey, Danny, welcome back.
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Hey, thanks for having me. So let's start with the basics. We just said what the basic premise of pro se representation is, but break it down for us a little more.
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The pro se defendant is both the bane and the glory of the criminal justice system.
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And I say the glory because there is a constitutional right to represent yourself in the Sixth Amendment.
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But even that right is qualified. It's not absolute. It means a judge can take it away.
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A couple examples are is if a defendant is disruptive, if they're just making a lot of
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nonsensical objections. Another example is if the defendant simply isn't competent, if they suffer from some mental
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illness, a judge will not automatically allow that person to represent themselves if they're
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not competent to do so. So, you know, we were focused here at Dateline on high profile murder cases, but there are
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Or other courts? Oh, absolutely. I mean, commonly in traffic court, people represent themselves all the time because simply the
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cost of paying a ticket isn't worth hiring an attorney. Sometimes people represent themselves in civil cases, divorces, all kinds of cases.
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But I stand by this one. It is never a good idea to go it alone. And sometimes defendants feel like they know their case better than anyone else.
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And so who better to represent than me? Yes, they know their facts better than I will ever know their facts.
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but you lose objectivity when you're a defendant. That's why even someone like me, if I needed
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a lawyer, I would hire a lawyer rather than represent myself. You're too close to it sometimes. An infamous defendant that comes to mind
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with pro se is serial killer Ted Bundy. Absolutely. He just had a rambling defense, made no sense. And by the way, Ted Bundy
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was a pretty educated person, but it simply doesn't matter. Pro se defendants are warned,
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you will be held to the same standards as an attorney. You'll need to know all the rules of
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procedure. This is why they're destined to fail, because they simply don't have access to the same
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information, the rules, the law, especially when they're in custody as a lawyer.
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In the case of Dana Chandler, it was said that by representing herself, she opened the door to things that the judge had ruled were inadmissible The other thing that was pointed out with Dana Chandler was that by taking the stand in her own defense and essentially giving the jury really a monologue
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because she's not asking herself questions, that a lot of people felt like she showed her true
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colors and that was her demise. Do you think there's some instances where the jury may feel
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sympathetic to a defendant when they speak on their own behalf. It's possible, but here's the thing. Juries, I think, are very sensitive to how self-interested
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a pro se defendant is. And, you know, you mentioned the monologue and different courts
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do different things. Sometimes the court will appoint a standby counsel and they can do that
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over the defendant's objection. Sometimes they'll require that lawyer to ask questions on
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direct examination instead of that monologue style. And the monologue style, in my view,
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is a bad idea because an untrained defendant is going to veer into areas that are either inadmissible,
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irrelevant, or open the door. Maybe if they make a comment about, I'm not the kind of person that
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does this. Uh-oh, you've just opened the door to character evidence. You've absolutely torpedoed
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your own case. One other thing that stood out in the Dana Chandler trial that was uncomfortable was
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Dana Chandler ended up having to cross-examine her own daughter. And the jury is seeing this mother and daughter dynamic And Dana is not being so nice to her daughter Exactly right If you a criminal defendant you are privileged to sit there and say nothing
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But instead, if you take take on your own defense, now you have the uncomfortable position of questioning witnesses, including family members like this.
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And you have to ask questions like, did I do this? Do you remember when I did this?
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And jurors see that as really the defendant arguing with the witness because that's what it is.
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I mean, you can't detach what's happening and just think of this as another lawyer questioning a witness.
00:27:25
Yeah. All right, Danny. Thank you for your insight into this unique form of representation that I think we got the message loud and clear.
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Don't represent yourself. Not a good idea. I think I said that a few times. Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:40
Of course, it's up to the individual, but sound advice. If you like what you hearing please go online and vote for Dateline We included the voting link in the episode description Coming up get ready for a Dateline weekend Josh has a two episode airing this Friday night on NBC at our usual time of 9 8 Central
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And Dennis will be here on Saturday with a weekend mystery. Then on Sunday, watch Blaine's all-new episode about a mother on a mission to find her missing daughter,
00:28:35
even if it meant bending some rules. Could we possibly go to a local business and ask them to pull up footage so we could see if she's driving her car?
00:28:45
But they're not just going to pull it up. I understand that. I can't just not. Anything we thought could be a clue to help us find her, we were chasing that.
00:28:59
Watch The Pin at Apartment 210 this Sunday on NBC at 10, 9 central. Thanks for listening.
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Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson Our associate producers are Carson Cummins
00:29:13
and Caroline Casey Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kurloff Production and fact-checking help by
00:29:19
Sara Kadir Veronica Mazzaka is our digital producer Rick Juan is our sound designer
00:29:24
Original music by Jesse McGinty Bryson Barnes is head of audio production Paul Ryan is executive producer
00:29:30
and Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline See you later, bye bye Thank you.