Welcome to the advisory opinions podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isker. And I just want to start with a bit of an apology. I mean in some circumstances we might have done an emergency pod after the Texas SBA decision was announced. In fact, that would have been a lot of fun.

But I had a good excuse Sarah. My oldest daughter was graduating from the real UT. So we were in Knoxville when the decision was handed down. And we're also helping her move her and her husband and and baby Lidela helping them move. So it just it wasn't in the cards. Sorry.

Another time we would do an emergency pod, but this one. So just may occult a family commitments had to trump emergency pod our deep apologies. But this is still it's only Monday. I mean, this is pretty recently after the decision.

And so we'll just dive into it. We're going to do that. We're also going to talk about a night circuit. Vaccine mandate case that denied religious exemptions to a school vaccine mandate and the unified school district of San Diego.

But before we get into those two cases, let's start with another case, just a brief discussion of a state criminal case involving Jesse Smollett that was also his he was convicted. And I know Sarah, you had some thoughts on it. So let's start with your thoughts. Then we'll dive in to the Supreme Court.

Yeah, so remember this is the hate crime hoax case. He says that he's attacked. They yell racial and homophobic slurs at him and then put a news around his neck.

And there's countless number of man hours spent by Chicago PD on this comes out later that perhaps he hired the two men who attacked him that they were friends of his from the show or whatever else these two brothers. And so he is charge and convicted on five of six counts on on, you know, lying filing false reports.

First of all, a juror has come out afterwards to discuss it one of the female jurors. It was a split six six female male jury to say that actually they knew right away. They were going to convict him.

But they wanted to go over all of the evidence again. So they took about nine hours to deliberate. It just gives me some faith in our jury system, not the outcome, but the process.

I, I like that that they went in and even though they, I guess had the votes at that point, they were like, you know what, though, like there's a lot of people watching this. A lot of people want confidence in it. Let's just make very sure that we're sure about our opinion after reviewing the evidence.

But something stands out to me, David. So several months ago, I think it was back in June, the defense raised a double jeopardy problem. And the judge declined to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds. The case went to trial.

But they have preserved that for appeal. And I'm looking at it and I'm thinking it kind of looks like Cosby to me. David, I'm not sure this conviction is going to stand and I understand sort of a small ball conviction.

But it's gotten a lot of media attention. So I kind of thought it might be worth talking about. You know, you and I talked a lot about the Cosby case. He got out of prison on double jeopardy grounds.

Remember that they had a non prosecution agreement, which in that case paved the way, basically, to force Cosby to testify at a civil trial.

And his comments at the civil trial were then used against him in the criminal trial. Kind of a no brainer on double jeopardy grounds.

However, when it comes to trials, guilty pleas, all of that, it does get kind of messy. So on trial, for instance, usually double jeopardy attaches when the jury is sworn in or the first witness testifies it can get very little from jurisdiction of jurisdiction.

But basically when the trial starts double jeopardy attaches in a guilty plea, it is normally when the guilty plea is accepted actually. So the court has to accept the guilty plea. That's when double jeopardy attaches, although interestingly, there's a bit of a circuit split on that.

Alright, so here we get though to small it. Remember, there's the controversy over the fact that the first prosecutor drops the charges against him. And then there's discussion over why was that prosecutorial misconduct at the time.

It was a slam dunk case in a lot of ways as obviously has been evidenced here by this trial.

She agrees to drop charges in exchange for him relinquishing his $10,000 bond.

But that's it. He doesn't have to admit guilt. There's no incriminating stuff. It's $10,000.

And the question is, is that more similar to Cosby or less similar to Cosby? On the one hand, the Cosby one has an actual implication at his trial.

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