DA Breaks Silence on Jesse Butler Case — But Her Excuses Don't Add Up | Full Breakdown
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 910 Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In her statement, the DA defends the plea deal by claiming the victims' families were consulted, that trials for sexual assault are traumatic, and that Oklahoma law favors rehabilitation for minors. But the families tell a different story. According to victims' attorney Rachel Bussett, the plea deal was struck without the victims' approval, and both families were "vehemently opposed" to youthful offender status from the start. A motion has been filed alleging violations of Marsy's Law, Oklahoma's constitutional victims' rights amendment.
Court documents reveal one victim was strangled so severely a doctor said she was 30 seconds from death. Police found video on Butler's phone showing him strangling another victim until she lost consciousness. These weren't ambiguous encounters — they were documented, repeated, violent attacks. Yet the DA's statement frames the case as "conduct by a 16-year-old male directed at similarly aged young women" in "ongoing, consensual dating relationships."
In this video, we break down the DA's full statement line by line, examine what she claims versus what the court records show, and ask the question no one in Payne County seems willing to answer: When evidence is this overwhelming and violence this severe, how does community service become justice?
Subscribe for updates on the Jesse Butler case as the Marsy's Law motion moves forward.
#JesseButler #LauraAustinThomas #PayneCounty #StillwaterOklahoma #MarsysLaw #YouthfulOffender #CriminalJustice #TrueCrime #VictimsRights #OSU
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.3 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:06.9 | So the district attorney has finally talked in the Jesse Butler case. |
| 0:13.3 | We've been following this. |
| 0:14.5 | You've been following this. |
| 0:15.6 | We've all been following this because it's a case of insanity. |
| 0:26.6 | Unlike anything, I think a lot of us have seen or expected to see, |
| 0:28.7 | or thought could even take place. |
| 0:34.1 | After weeks of silence, after national news coverage, after protests on the courthouse steps, after victims' families went to ABC Nightline to tell the world that the |
| 0:39.5 | system failed their daughters. Laura Austin Thompson, Payne County District Attorney, |
| 0:47.0 | released a statement. And here's the thing about that statement. It's not an explanation. It's not accountability. |
| 0:55.4 | It's what we tend to call something that is known as damage control dressed up as legalese. |
| 1:05.8 | It's a document designed to make a horrific outcome sound reasonable, to make institutional failure look like careful procedural judgment. |
| 1:16.6 | And I'm going to walk through it piece by piece |
| 1:19.8 | because the people of Oklahoma and, frankly, anyone paying attention |
| 1:23.7 | to how the justice system handles sexual violence |
| 1:26.7 | deserves to understand what's |
| 1:28.7 | actually being said here and what's being left out. |
| 1:36.1 | Why your guess is as good as mine. |
| 1:40.0 | Why anyone's wanting to stand up for their horrible choice? |
| 1:43.9 | I don't know. |
| 1:45.6 | But, yeah. |
... |
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