From NBII Studios, this is Truth and Justice, a crowdsourced investigation in real time.

I'm Bob Roth. Ahoy, friends. Thank you for tuning to Truth and Justice.

You are listening to the Friday follow up for Season 17, Episode 17, The Defense.

This week we heard a breakdown of what the defense presented at the trial, as well as Graddock's closing argument.

This episode has raised a lot of listener questions, and Bob Janet and I are here to dive into

them. But before we get into that, do we have any housekeeping?

Just one thing for housekeeping, and I mentioned last week that there's going to be a Thanksgiving

break. I think I've got that figured out. So this is the plan. They're, this coming episode, This coming Sunday, so two days from now,

there's going to be an episode on next week. We haven't talked about what day, but next week

we'll record the follow-up for that. Next Sunday, there will be an episode. That's the Sunday

before Thanksgiving. After that episode, we won't be back until a week from that Friday. So we're going to take the Friday ride for Thanksgiving off and that weekend off, and then we'll be back for the follow-up after that. So just so you guys know, you've got two more main episodes coming and then we're taking a week off. So just want to remind you guys about that last week. Just want to get everybody a heads up. So I think we didn't just bail out on you for that week. That's what's going on. Other than that, we can get right into this thing. I kind of, I talked a little bit about during the Patreon pregame that I wanted you guys just kind of hear the defense closing and I didn't, I have a lot of thoughts on it. I didn't really want to get into it because I wanted to put it out there and I wanted you guys to kind of hear the defense closing and I didn't I have a lot of thoughts on it.

I didn't really want to get into it because I wanted to put it out there and I wanted you guys to

kind of absorb it and kind of formulate your own opinions on it from what I've seen on

social media since then. Most people have the same thoughts I had. So now we can talk about it a

little bit. So before I even get into you guys, because I'm

curious what you think about it, I'll tell you my thoughts on it. Remember when Dr. Jackson was on

and she said that there was some sort of like mental decline and health issue, something going on

with with Graddick. Yeah. As I was going through the trial, on its face, it seemed like, yeah, like he didn't

hardly put up any defense, like he didn't know what to do. But then as we like talk through it

through the last week, like, how do you counter a false confession when there's no recording,

there's no transcript? You can't really put a false confession expert on the stand because

there's nothing for them to work with. You don't want to put other cops on the stand that if you're dealing with a corrupt police department, if you put more of them on and could just make it even worse, you know, the cross-examining of Larry Brooks, that's tricky because, you know, if you push too hard against a 12-year-old kid, that stuff, plus he was handcuffed with Dame not being there, which I know we're going to talk about that. So I was really like, I mean, he didn't, he missed the mark on some big things with cross-examination, but I don't think he did that bad. And then I got to his closing argument. And to me, I mean, I read that thing 50 times.

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