Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I know I said last week that I was going

to take this week off, but you guys know me better than that by now. So I decided to drop

in your feeds to give you another precedent episode.

You know you're a real bonafide crime junkie. If you roll your eyes every time someone

on a podcast starts to explain what a Brady violation is. Yes, we know. The prosecution

didn't share evidence that could have helped the defense at trial. Everyone deserves the

right to a fair trial. But that actually wasn't always an actual rule. And even though I could

spot a Brady violation from a mile away, I never knew the whole story behind it until now.

Before there was the Brady rule and a right to a fair trial, there was John Brady. This

is his story.

On Friday, June 27th, 1958, it was a warm, stuffy summer night in the rule outskirts of Baltimore,

Maryland. 25-year-old John Brady and his friend, 25-year-old Charles Donald Bobblet, who

most publications just called Donald, were sweating and nervous as they dragged a heavy tree

log across a dirt road. According to the Washington Post, the two men had a plan. They were

going to block the road for the next oncoming driver, ambush them and steal their car.

But they're not just trying to steal any old car from any old stranger. They're waiting

for someone specific. John's good family friend, a man named William Brooks. William was 53

years old and worked a late night shift at a plastic factory in a town about 20 minutes

southwest of Baltimore. He'd been friends with John's grandfather for years and even worked

with John at one point doing random manual labor jobs on his grandfather's farm. According

to a story by Thomas Dibdell for the Marshall project, William had a brand new car and

John needed a reliable car, badly because John and Donald were planning to rob a bank

...