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Happy New Year, Year of the Snake. You're listening in to Dateline's morning meeting in 30 Rockefeller Center.
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So this story, it took 13 years for this to get to trial. Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country.
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We're totally following it and we're trying to work through the relationship. Why don't you try to talk to her?
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We've got these big attacks on the DNA. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning.
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It's January 30th, and here's what's on our docket. In Oahu, Hawaii, opening statements in the sensational second trial of a husband accused of murdering his wife's acupuncturist turned lover.
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Eric Thompson executed this murder nearly flawlessly. In Dateline Roundup, Brian Koberger, the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students in their beds, is back in court as his defense team cries foul.
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She said things that were just absolutely untrue and couldn't have been true. Law enforcement knew that.
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Plus, you've definitely heard about defendants pleading guilty or not guilty. But did you know there are some other kinds of pleas defendants sometimes make?
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NBC News legal analyst Danny Savalos will be here to give us the basics. Many judges, many courts, many states will not allow Alford pleas.
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They are controversial. But before all that, we're heading back to West Virginia and the trial of Natalie Cochran, the pharmacist accused of poisoning her husband Michael to cover up a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.
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Nearly six years after Michael's death, we finally have a verdict. We've been bringing you inside the courtroom for the trial of Natalie Cochran over the last few episodes.
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Last week, we finally got more insight into Natalie Cochran's defense as her attorneys began to make their case, calling to the stand friends of the couple, medical experts and family, including both of the Cochran's children.
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Do you know the defendant, Natalie Cochran? Yes, she is my mother. Dateline producer Jay Young was in the courtroom and joins us now to tell us all about the dramatic testimony and what the jury decided.
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Jay, thanks for joining us again. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so let's start with one of the first witnesses the defense called,
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Natalie and Michael's daughter, Nicole. What was the reaction like in the courtroom when she took the stand?
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It was palpable. You know, she took the stand. She was very quiet, very reserved in how she started off and how she described her father.
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And she painted quite a picture. So the prosecution argued Michael died from an overdose by insulin injection given to him by his wife.
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But Nicole's testimony pointed to other potential sources of his health problems, which had started in the years leading up to his death.
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Well, she testified Michael was really into bodybuilding and how he appeared. And so he was an athlete and he took supplements to increase his muscle mass.
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And so she talked about how she would see her dad put a basically a plate out and just dump a bunch of pills onto the plate and then take them every morning.
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She also talked about how toward 2017, this was a couple of years before he passed, that his health wasn't great and that his health was in decline.
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And she painted a picture of her dad as someone who wasn't his robust self. Nicole spoke about Michael spending time in hospitals, and she mentioned how his poor health was affecting him.
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She noticed a big difference in his demeanor. She did testify about visiting him in the hospital, and this was in the fall of 2018, prior to his passing in February of 2019.
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He said some kind things to my brother and I because he didn't think he would get another chance to.
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Is that what he told you? He told me that he always appreciated my intelligence and that he never told me that, but he wanted me to know it now just in case he never got to say it again.
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Did you take it as a farewell to life? I've always considered that to be kind of like my goodbye.
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Natalie's son also took the stand. He talked about his parents' business and about who was in charge and who wasn't.
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That's right. He actually testified very specifically about a time he remembers.
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His mom was watching something on television and his father was on a computer. And he asked his dad what he was doing.
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And according to the son, he said his dad told him he was working on some contracts with the company that he and Natalie had started.
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So that was all to indicate that his dad was very involved in the minutia of the company.
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I think we all know who wore the pants in the situation. He definitely ran it way more.
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Right, because the prosecution had said that it was Natalie who was in charge, correct?
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That's right. That's right. All along, the prosecution said the Ponzi scheme that ultimately
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was revealed was all Natalie's doing, and Michael had no idea what was going on.
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So the defense also challenged another key part of the prosecution's case, that Natalie poisoned Michael with insulin.
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And remember, investigators exhumed Michael's body twice to examine it. The first time, the manner of death was undetermined.
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And then the second, they found it was homicide. The defense argued in court that the body was simply too decomposed to make a determination.
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And they showed photos from the first autopsy in court in a very emotional moment.
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These are photographs and they somewhat gruesome It was pretty hard to take um you know i seen a fair amount of crime scene
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photos over the years and you heard michael's mother's sobbing um after looking at the photographs
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and it was a very disturbing moment i think for everyone in the courtroom what did the defense's
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experts have to say about the findings from the autopsy. They concluded that the first autopsy,
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done seven months after Michael's passing, was in fact the correct ruling that the manner and
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cause of death could not be determined. Yeah, and we have some sound from Dr. Priya Banerjee,
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a forensic pathologist, speaking about that. Unfortunately, embalming and burial does not
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keep the body in the same state as when one passes away. So even though the procedure is
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supposed to, it's still not perfect. The prosecution took an opportunity, you know, to cross
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Dr. Banerjee. She really, she stood her ground with her findings. Yeah, she did. She basically said, look, there's very little that we can determine
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from Michael's autopsy? We don't practice in a black box. We always consider the circumstances.
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We consider whatever records we have made available. But the autopsy is the gold standard, okay?
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His body is too decomposed. And in our field, it is acceptable to use undetermined as a cause of death
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and undetermined as a manner of death. So we move on, Jay, to closing statements.
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What were the arguments both the prosecution and the defense each wanted to leave the jury with?
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Well, I think on the part of the prosecution, they wanted to demonstrate that Natalie had a motive.
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And Natalie's motive was that Michael was about to uncover the Ponzi scheme that she had created.
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And so what she decided to do was to kill her husband. And so the defense tried to take the wind out of the prosecution's sail by saying Michael knew it was a Ponzi scheme.
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So Natalie had no motive to kill him. And if you believe that Natalie didn't have motive, then the prosecution's case collapses.
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So the jury started deliberating Wednesday morning and they came back with a verdict about only two hours later.
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We, the jury on the issues, joined unanimously found the following. the defendant is guilty of murder in the first degree.
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Was that a surprise to you? Yeah, I mean, I think no one knew what was going to happen.
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The prosecution made it very clear they had no direct evidence in this case. It was a circumstantial case.
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Now, they said that they had a mountain of circumstantial evidence, a blizzard of circumstantial evidence.
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But that was still going to be a stone that they had to get up the mountain. I think everybody was surprised at the outcome.
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All right, Jay, thanks so much for coming on and keeping us up to date on this case.
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Thanks for having me, Andrea. Up next, heartbreak in paradise. We've got details from inside a Hawaii courtroom as a man accused of shooting his wife's lover is tried for the second time.
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Three years ago, 47-year-old John Tokuhara, an acupuncturist in Honolulu, Hawaii, didn't show up for dinner with his mom.
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The next morning, she went to open the clinic their family owned and found him dead on the floor.
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He'd been shot in the face three times. A month later, our affiliate KHNL reported that a contractor named Eric Thompson had been arrested.
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Prosecutors say Eric Thompson shot and killed Tokuhara after he discovered that the acupuncturist was having an affair with his wife.
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But Eric's wife, Joyce, wasn't the only one having an affair with John Tokuhara.
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There were other love triangles, other angry husbands. Thompson's defense team has argued that police zeroed in on him and didn't thoroughly vet or consider other suspects.
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Eric Thompson pleaded not guilty to murder in the second degree and went to trial in the summer of 2023.
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A jury deliberated for more than three days but could not reach a verdict. Earlier this month, a new jury was sworn in and Eric Thompson's retrial began.
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Mark Carpenter from KH&L covered Eric's first trial and now he's on his second. He's here to tell us what is new this time around.
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Mark, thanks for making the time. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me.
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Mark, what happened here? So Eric and Joyce, our high school sweethearts, they had been having a hard time having a baby.
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And so Joyce had been going to Tokohara's clinic for fertility treatment, for acupuncture.
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What we learned in trial is that over time, their relationship turned into something more.
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5,600 direct messages exchanged between the two of them on Instagram. They say it was a sexual relationship.
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They say it was a romantic relationship. Yeah. And even after she had the baby, not only did they keep seeing each other, but she kept going to the clinic to get treated.
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Yeah, that's kind of how it all came out. That summer of 2021, Eric was on another island for a business trip and he got a notification that the door was open and he looked at the cameras and he saw that Joyce was meeting somebody. And then so when he came back from the island, he confronted her about it.
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And she admitted it. She admitted it, and from our understanding, the relationship ended right after.
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Six months later, Tokuhara was found dead at his clinic. What does the prosecution think the motive was then if the affair had ended?
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They're trying to portray Eric Thompson as a controlling husband. He liked to keep tabs on her at all times and that when he found out of the affair especially with somebody that they had gone to for something so personal He was incensed and he had spent six months carefully trying to plan this and make it as
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perfect as possible. So lay out what prosecutors say happened. This is the middle of January 2022.
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They say that they have video surveillance that Eric Thompson parked maybe a few streets down,
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had walked to John Tokuhar's clinic. You never see him actually going into the clinic,
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but in the area of completely disguised. He's wearing a white bucket hat, sunglasses, a mask,
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even one of those masks that you see during the time of COVID, gloves, and long sleeves.
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They say he brought in a handgun, there was no fight, shot Tokuhara three times in the face,
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and walked right out back to his car. Now, the whole crux with all this is that the white hat
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that this individual was seen wearing had fallen off his head and was picked up by a homeless person. Police in the area ended up recovering this bucket hat.
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This hat was then tested, and they say it can't be ruled out that the DNA found on there
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does not belong to Eric Thompson. The prosecution says DNA evidence is pointing straight to Eric. This is like the smoking hat. Yeah, precisely. Or could be because the defense
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has a counter to that. They say the hat was mishandled by the police, and this summer,
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their lab came under scrutiny. Honolulu Police Department's crime lab was audited by the FBI,
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saying that it had outdated technology. This is equipment that is obsolete. This lab is said to
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be subpar in an FBI review of it. Okay, and the defense's theory, how does it differ from the
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prosecutions. They say that Eric wasn't even there at all. They say that surveillance video will show
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that. They claim that he was actually on the other side of the island dumping construction material
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because of his work as a contractor. They also point to a theory that police only honed in on
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Eric because he was the convenient suspect. The most recent affair, there could have been other
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people out there who had motivation to attack him. John Tokuhara was seeing other women who had been
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in relationships. None of them had been married. They brought up the ex-husbands. They brought up
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the ex-boyfriends of these women. They say, the men themselves say that HPD, yeah, while they did
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question them, they didn't question them and investigate them so thoroughly as Eric Thompson
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was. How are things going to play out differently for the prosecution with this second trial?
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Because, you know, whatever they were doing the first time didn't work if it ended in a deadlock.
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Yeah, the prosecution was shocked that there was no unanimous guilty verdict the first time around.
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And our understanding is going into this second round here is that they're really going to ramp up the DNA evidence.
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What we're hearing in opening statements is that this time around, this white bucket hat was taken to a very reputable lab on the continental U.S., which the prosecution, they say, is much more accurate and zeroes in on Thompson even more.
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So Eric's second trial began last week, and the first witness the prosecution called was John's mother.
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This is actually her second time having to testify in 18 months. That can't be easy.
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Yes, and completely awful. As I entered, I saw John on the floor. He was in a prone position.
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Yeah, and she's suing Eric for wrongful death? Mm-hmm, yes. The prosecution also called witnesses to set up the surveillance video.
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they say shows Eric near the clinic that day. And they're arguing if you can't tell it's Eric,
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that's because he went to great lengths to conceal his identity. Eric Thompson executed this murder nearly flawlessly.
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They say that he disguised himself. He disguised his truck. Whereas the defense said there are so many of these trucks out there in Hawaii,
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the white Chevy Silverado. That is a very vague description right there. Also, too, they say when he found out about the affair, there was no confrontation.
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No contact with John Tokuhara. Calls, checks, nothing, direct or indirect. No threats or anger directed at John Tokuhara.
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Eric Thompson testified in his own defense in his first trial. I came to the realization that, you know, the problem was with me and Joyce.
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It wasn't, I mean, she cut him off. Did you kill John Tokuhara? No, I didn't. Do you think you'll see him take the stand again?
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Absolutely. I think for the jury, they want to see, like, can we believe this guy?
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Joyce is standing by her husband. Has she been appearing in court this time around?
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Yes, she has. Yep, she's been right behind him in the first row. All right, Mark, we'll keep an eye on this one.
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Thank you so much. Yeah, very fascinating. Thank you so much. coming up we've got two big stories to talk about in dateline roundup new information from the
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courtroom about the roommate who was inside the house and survived when four university of idaho
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students were murdered and updates from the trial of monica cementilli the woman accused of plotting
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to kill her hairstylist husband plus did you know there are lots of different ways to plead guilty
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nbc news legal analyst danny savalos will be here to break it down for us Welcome back. Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline digital producer Veronica Mazzica.
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Hey, Veronica. Hi, Andrea. So for our first story, we're off to Boise, Idaho, where there was an important hearing last week in the case of Brian Koberger.
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He is the man accused of the 2022 fatal stabbings for University of Idaho students Brian Koberger has pleaded not guilty and as of now is set to go to trial this summer Veronica bring us up to speed on this latest
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hearing. Yeah, so there was an evidentiary hearing that took place over the span of three days last
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week. It was basically just for the judge to consider some of the defense motions attacking
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the prosecution's case, anything from how they collected evidence to the credibility of their
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witnesses. And their arguments focused a lot on the investigators' DNA analysis.
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Yeah. And for people who don't remember, law enforcement initially connected Koberger to the
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crimes through DNA on a knife sheath found at the crime scene. They used genetic genealogy to
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connect that DNA to Koberger by finding relatives of his in public online ancestry databases,
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which we're seeing so much of these days. Koberger's defense, they basically are saying that this violated Koberger's privacy.
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They really just want that evidence excluded from trial. They said that the police should have had a more specific search warrant before they
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analyzed the DNA from the crime scene. Someone we haven't heard much about until these hearings was a surviving roommate who
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was in the house at the time of the murder. She's expected to be a witness for the prosecution, but the defense had questions about her.
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So the defense is arguing that the surviving roommate isn't a credible witness. They allege that what the police reported in their affidavit to get the search warrants of Koberger's DNA and property isn't actually the story that the roommate told police.
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The defense also says that the police withheld information about the witness's possible memory problems or impairment on the night of the murder.
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She's not sure what she heard or saw was real or whether it was a dream. And she said things that were just absolutely untrue and couldn't have been true.
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But the prosecution really pushed back on that. We know it wasn't a dream because they found the evidence discovered the next morning.
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How did the judge react? The judge has not made an official ruling yet, but seems skeptical of these arguments.
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I can't find any case law that would support that idea, that somehow a warrant would be needed for DNA left at a crime scene.
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Okay, we'll keep an eye on what the judge decides on these various motions. For our next story, we're off to Los Angeles for an update on a case we first told you about last week.
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Monica Sementilli is on trial for allegedly orchestrating the 2017 murder of her husband.
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Respected Hollywood hairstylist Fabio Sementilli. Monica's trial got started last Friday.
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How's it going? So the prosecution gave its opening statements on Friday, and they really laid out their case
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against Monica. She was wiping away her tears as they called her the mastermind of the plot to kill
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Fabio. The defense on the other hand, they are calling Robert Baker as their star witness. He
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was Monica's lover. And in 2023, he pleaded no contest to Fabio's murder and is currently serving
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a life sentence. Yeah. And Robert Baker, you know, isn't trying to trade favors or anything. He
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maintains that Monica was never involved in the plot. How does the prosecution plan to dispute
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that? Right. So they said in their opening statements that he's changed his story over
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the years and therefore he's an unreliable witness. Okay. Lots of updates. Thank you so much,
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Veronica. Thank you. Most of the cases we cover on Dateline end up with a defendant in court having
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to make a decision how to plead to the charges against them. And it probably seems obvious they
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can plead guilty or not guilty. But covering the case of murdered Hollywood hairstylist Fabio
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Simentelli these past few weeks, where one of the defendants pleaded no contest to the murder
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charge against him, it reminded us there are some special kinds of pleas you can make.
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Here to walk us through it is NBC legal analyst Danny Savalos. Hey, Danny. Hi, Andrea.
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So good to have you back. So to start, defendants, of course, have that choice, as we mentioned, guilty or not guilty, which seems like the obvious two choices.
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Yes. And there are actually some other pleas that are much more rare. And those are the
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Alford plea and the no contest or no lo contendere plea. So what is the difference between the two?
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In a no contest plea, you're basically not pleading guilty. You're not pleading anything.
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And you're sort of going limp and allowing the government or the court to find you guilty.
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In an Alford plea, the defendant is pleading guilty, but maintaining their innocence.
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And they enter an Alford plea because they believe in their heart of hearts they're innocent,
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but the evidence is just so overwhelming. Right. And some of our listeners might recognize that term, Alford plea, from two big cases.
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One of them is Michael Peterson, famously accused of murdering his second wife, Kathleen,
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after her body was found at the bottom of a staircase. He took an Alford plea. And then there was Pam Hupp, who our listeners might recognize from Keith's podcast, The Thing About Pam.
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She was accused of killing a man she'd lured to her home. And before facing trial, she took an Elford plea, too.
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So why was an Elford plea right for them, Danny? Yeah, for Peterson, he'd been convicted of murdering his wife, Kathleen, in 2003.
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He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2011, a new trial is ordered after a judge vacates his conviction.
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And then in 2017, he takes an Alford plea instead of going to face a second trial.
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So you can see the benefit to the state is that they get their guilty verdict. He's sentenced to time served.
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He's able to leave prison. And he can tell himself that the nature of my plea was that I am innocent, even though
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as far as the government and the paperwork and the courts are concerned, I am guilty.
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And Pam Hopp? Yeah, Pam Hupp had entered an Alford plea to avoid the death penalty.
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Who does it favor Does it favor the defendant more? Because they're still going to face some consequences.
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Absolutely. There is a real world consequence of pleading no contest because you can later on dispute
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your liability if you're sued in civil court for the same conduct. That is not the case with an Alford plea.
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You're essentially foreclosed from even arguing against your guilt or liability in a later
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court proceeding. But other than that, there really isn't a whole lot that differentiates either an Alford plea or a no contest plea from a straight up guilty plea.
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I'm assuming you can't appeal this plea deal later on. Is that true? Yes, for the most part, you'll go to sentencing. You will be sentenced.
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And in fact, you might get a worse sentence because you haven't accepted responsibility.
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And one of the key factors in sentencing at the state and federal level is whether or not the defendant is accepting responsibility after they pleaded guilty So why does a judge allow it then if they don like it Is it because the person just won budge and you know plead straight up guilty
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Yeah, you know, we've all sort of grown up with the idea of plea bargaining, but this
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is not something that courts are required to accept. And the federal rules, for example, expressly disfavor the idea of an Alfred plea.
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Many judges, many courts, many states will not allow them. They are controversial because for people like victims' families who come to court, they want to see someone take accountability for their actions.
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It's understandable that they're frustrated because the person is not taking responsibility, even though they may be, at least on paper, pleading guilty.
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And Danny, you are not just a defense attorney who plays one on TV. You are actually a defense attorney.
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I always think about when a defendant has to make that decision if a plea deal is being offered I can even imagine being an attorney with a defendant sitting in the room mulling over that life choice It one of the most terrifying things for me and I the attorney
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I don't even have to make the choice. I have to deliver those options to a client.
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Go to trial where the evidence is very strong. Spend a lot of money, and then at the end, you roll the dice.
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And if you're convicted, you will get a much worse sentence than if you plead guilty and enter into a plea bargain.
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And imagine if you're innocent and you have to make that choice. Absolutely. Just very complex. Thank you so much, Danny, for breaking it down for us.
00:26:36
Thank you. That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. If you want to learn more about the cases discussed in this and other episodes, head to our website at datelinetruecrimeweekly.com.
00:26:49
And coming up this Friday on Dateline, Keith has an all-new two-hour mystery. She was a criminal mastermind on a deadly crime spree She was also a mother The inside story of Sante Kimes and her two very different sons He could not believe what had happened because hadn his mother told him a thousand times
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we're innocent, we're innocent. Watch The Devil Wore White, airing this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC,
00:27:19
or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock. To get ad-free listening for all of our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium.
00:27:26
Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson.
00:27:31
Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kurloff.
00:27:38
Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir. Veronica Mazzaka is our digital producer.
00:27:43
Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.
00:27:49
Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
00:27:55
Anything else, anyone? All right. Thanks so much.