Plea bargain

You can't pretend that it's just a blood transfusion or routine surgery or something like that.

Did we have all the plea bargaining in the past that we do now?

I don't know.

I think that for the death penalty specifically, because remember, it was actually ruled unconstitutional for a while, and then they changed their mind, as the Supreme Court often does, and apparently we're allowed to do it.

If the only tool in your toolbox is life imprisonment, maybe he won't tell you where the bodies are because what can you threaten him with after all? But if you say, all right, I mean, you tell us this, we'll keep you off death row.

That's something he understands.

Well, and, of course, sometimes you have plea bargaining, for example.

Somebody gets arrested for drug possession and says, okay, we won't charge you but tell you who your supplier is.

And, you know, I have a lot of questions about those search warrants, in other words.

tonight of course we have dr john matthias with us he's a clinical and forensic psychologist a criminal psychologist in other words he's also my husband so that's why we're at our table and uh why we are sitting so close together but um we have a lot of questions i have a lot of questions for you about the search warrants and the new information and this plea agreement and the search warrant details.

For those of you that are new to this case, here are the details.

This is what you need to know, but again, this is heartbreaking.

He doesn't talk about how heinous it was.

He doesn't give any details.

Referring to the plea agreement last week in court.

Correct.

what's their next move?

Well, so they decide to plea bargain.

To take this information to the prosecutor and say, I

have information that will help you solve some cases.

But, I mean, if you think about it from Frank's perspective, he's got this information.

As a person, he doesn't want to have to keep that secret.

So if he plea bargains, then that's a way for him to get some closure for the family because he can give the information to the prosecution.

But he's also not selling out his client.

It was police officers, FBI agents.

And all of their concerns fell on deaf ears as Jeffrey Epstein was able to just skate right in to the plea deal and do whatever he wanted, basically, when he should have been locked away in a state prison.

As you all know, instead, he did his time in a stockade where he was basically alone, and not only that, he was able to spend basically every day out at quote-unquote work, which we know is BS, considering we've already talked about how police officers tried to hit him with parole violations, and those parole violations were declined by his parole officer.

So it's just been a circular layer of shit when it comes to Epstein and the way he's been protected throughout.

We just did an article.

We just talked about how he was walking down the street in Palm Beach and a cop rolled up on him, tried to hit him with a parole violation and was stopped at every turn.

As a result of the plea deal, Epstein, 55, will be placed on the National Sex Offender Registry.

Sounds like a good idea and sounds like a good move.

We're talking about the latest in the Sandra Birchmore case.

We're going to hit on the cruise ship murder and the plea deal for Timothy Hudson that is being put on the table.

Will he take it? But we're going to start this morning with Lindsay Clancy.

The trial ended September 4th with a hung jury.

manifest necessity.

Yeah, I don't think it's going to be double jeopardy either.

I think what they're currently doing is is Cruz is trying to figure out, you know, working with Reddington behind the scenes here is are we going to go for a plea deal or are we going to go for a lesser charge? I think Cruz, if I again, pure conjecture, pure, pure thought experiment.

The likelihood of it going down, and Jen, what do you think about this, of it going down exactly the same way they did it before is pretty slim to none because it was a really rough road for everyone, both from all the testimony, from all those people, getting the same people in again, the emotional turmoil was on everyone, having to listen and witness that whole thing again, as well as getting a jury to not be hung again is really rough.

Over the last two years, Hidden True Crime has been covering the case of Summer Roney, a 30-year-old vulnerable adult who was found brutally murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Jacob Holt Johnson, on New Year's Eve in 2024.

Well, this past week, Jacob actually took a plea deal in Utah, pleading guilty to aggravated murder in exchange for life in prison without parole.

Our next episode will focus on that plea deal.

I was in court when it happened.

But we also have some new bombshell information that only Hidden True Crime has uncovered.

And we just two days ago, we attended what was supposed to be the preliminary hearing of Jacob Holt Johnson, the man charged and actually now guilty of murdering your sister, vulnerable adult.

And it was supposed to be, again, his preliminary hearing.

But it ended up being a plea deal where he pleaded guilty.

But because Sally didn't really witness anything, neither did the bartender, because Sarah was drunk and high that night and has a criminal record and various other factors, Catherine does not feel confident that the jury would rule in Sarah's favor.

Because of that, I think like other DAs encourage Catherine to do a plea deal so that the case doesn't go to trial.

And it also is interesting, though, that at the beginning, I think that, again, I don't know about this specifically, but this movie is so effective at getting you, reminding you about how many systems need to actively fail someone who has been raped in order for something this horrific to, for it to happen this horrifically.

Because with the Kelly McGillis character, there's at one point a man who will become very much her, like, op character.

Catherine agrees to this because it carries the same like prison sentence as rape.

That being five years, although these rapists will likely only serve about nine months in prison.

So they come to this plea deal.

This makes Sarah furious.

The Mile Zero Murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

The plea deal meant there wasn't going to be a trial.

Chris Brown, the Crown Prosecutor, read an agreed statement of facts into the record.

That's a summary of the case put together by the defense and the Crown.

After he was caught, Bob was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The prosecutor said these mental health problems should count in favor of a lighter sentence because they could be related to his job as a police officer.

In Canada, a judge is expected to accept a plea deal, unless it's contrary to the public interest or brings the administration of justice into disrepute.

And Judge Mary Lynn Beaton said what she called the magnitude of the offending behavior that she'd heard in the victim impact statements hadn't come through in the agreed statement of facts, meaning what the lawyers put on the record and what the women were saying didn't match.