WEBVTT 00:00.031 --> 00:29.312 [SPEAKER_00]: M-S-W-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M 00:29.798 --> 00:39.272 [SPEAKER_00]: Elliott Williams is a former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst who has spent his career thinking about law, crime, and politics. 00:39.933 --> 00:43.559 [SPEAKER_00]: Elliott Williams, welcome to that said, Michael, so Rachel talk to you. 00:44.420 --> 00:56.498 [SPEAKER_00]: So this book of yours is just a wonderful read by bullets and I'd like to talk at length about it, but before we do, can you tell us about yourself? 00:56.917 --> 01:11.827 [SPEAKER_01]: Hi, my name is Elliott Williams, Pisces, Washington, DC resident, and I've written this book five bullets, obviously about the Bernard Gets case in trial and aftermath and media circus there on. 01:11.848 --> 01:17.980 [SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, the story was important to me in that it's one of the first 01:17.960 --> 01:20.724 [SPEAKER_01]: big formative news stories I recall. 01:20.745 --> 01:25.873 [SPEAKER_01]: I was nine when I was eight when the shooting happened nine through a lot of the events of it. 01:26.394 --> 01:34.026 [SPEAKER_01]: And watched it play out on local television in just outside New York City where I grew up. 01:34.086 --> 01:36.069 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I live with the story for a long time. 01:36.310 --> 01:42.600 [SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, it wasn't until getting into the research and 01:42.580 --> 02:01.669 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, reporting of the book that I really like how many legs both sort of metaphorical sort of concepts from the story that we live with today, but also literally a lot of the central characters in it how much they never really went away and actually used it to their own advancement in some way. 02:01.649 --> 02:02.310 [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. 02:02.350 --> 02:10.446 [SPEAKER_00]: And just for the listening audience who may have been eight years old too when Verne gets broke onto the news story. 02:10.506 --> 02:21.948 [SPEAKER_00]: He shoots four black youths on a New York subway train because he anticipated in my view that he was going to be robbed or mugged or toyed with in some way. 02:22.329 --> 02:24.653 [SPEAKER_00]: And so before we get to the details of it, what 02:24.633 --> 02:30.321 [SPEAKER_00]: Why is it that this Bernie gets cases so seared into our collective consciousness? 02:30.361 --> 02:42.879 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, when Billy Joel in we didn't start to fire says, you know, foreign debts, homeless bets, AIDS crack, Bernie gets, you know, you've arrived, you know? 02:43.039 --> 02:52.513 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and what's be clear, you know, for people who may not be entirely familiar with that song, 02:52.493 --> 03:03.330 [SPEAKER_01]: rapid fire from something like 1949 to 1989 or whatever else and the kinds of things that appear in it are Reagan and Palestine and Shaz and Iran and 03:04.390 --> 03:14.104 [SPEAKER_01]: bridge on the river choir and Brigitte Bardot major events and so something for some reason puts Bernard Gatson that's shooting in that pantheon, what is that about? 03:14.124 --> 03:27.664 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a few things, one, New York City, like a lot of cities in the country, but particularly in the New York City in the 1980s was mythically rough with homicide levels that were around 1700 a year, compared to maybe. 03:27.644 --> 03:29.346 [SPEAKER_01]: two or three hundred a year today. 03:29.366 --> 03:36.914 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a different rougher, gritty or dirtier mismanaged city in a way, nothing like any of the cities that we know today. 03:37.114 --> 03:37.675 [SPEAKER_01]: That was one. 03:37.855 --> 03:52.150 [SPEAKER_01]: And two, the fact that he was seen as part of a tradition of Avengers of sorts who stepped in where the government would did not or would not or could not. 03:53.075 --> 04:08.020 [SPEAKER_01]: and people lifted him up as a hero now again that was incredibly problematic narrative but the world got behind it many people saw Bernard Gets as a kind of hero of the sort of the ilk of Paul Cursey the main character in the movie Death Wish. 04:08.040 --> 04:15.893 [SPEAKER_01]: He's a vigilante that just stepped up to keep other people safe and something about that fantasy made this story 04:15.873 --> 04:17.916 [SPEAKER_01]: bigger than it actually wasn't. 04:18.196 --> 04:28.111 [SPEAKER_01]: And then just beyond that, like I said, the characters at the center of it from Sharpton, to Mayor Ed Koch, to Rudy Giuliani, to Murdoch all around them, just made it into a much bigger story. 04:28.912 --> 04:29.153 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. 04:30.414 --> 04:39.568 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad you started with the context in which this shooting occurred, because New York was very dangerous then, as you said, they were 04:39.717 --> 04:45.584 [SPEAKER_00]: 2000 murders a year, 14,000 subway crimes a year, 40 a day in the New York. 04:45.684 --> 04:49.668 [SPEAKER_00]: And so people were on a state of high alert in New York. 04:50.049 --> 04:55.695 [SPEAKER_00]: What I'm wondering is, does gets become the cultural story that it is now? 04:55.755 --> 05:00.501 [SPEAKER_00]: Does he get his way into the song by Billy Joel? 05:00.561 --> 05:02.383 [SPEAKER_00]: If it happened yesterday, 05:02.363 --> 05:21.874 [SPEAKER_01]: It does, in a way, only on a count of the very different public information landscape we live in today, in a way that someone like Luigi Mangione becomes a national figure on a count of a violent actor, Kyle Rittenhouse, because of social media and the way people spread information. 05:21.854 --> 05:24.336 [SPEAKER_01]: a story like this would certainly have taken off. 05:24.436 --> 05:26.158 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, it is remarkable. 05:26.278 --> 05:40.832 [SPEAKER_01]: I must say that Bernard gets had the national, if not global recognition in a world that really only had near-cited what three or four major newspapers at the time, a few nighttime television programs, but it was not the world we live in today. 05:40.892 --> 05:43.554 [SPEAKER_01]: Yet still, the story went immensely viral. 05:43.594 --> 05:51.642 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think the world today still has a remarkable ability to make people into celebrities for the things they do. 05:51.622 --> 05:59.092 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think there would have still been some measure of notoriety, even if people would have seen him and the case, and the victims very differently. 05:59.953 --> 06:05.501 [SPEAKER_00]: You write something that was interesting to me on this point, and Thomas will get to the trial and all that stuff. 06:05.541 --> 06:11.890 [SPEAKER_00]: But you wrote that the internet has made us a more vigilante nation than ever before. 06:12.050 --> 06:12.711 [SPEAKER_00]: What do you mean by that? 06:12.851 --> 06:21.443 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just think look at what's going back to Luigi Manjillo and the fact that he 06:21.423 --> 06:43.296 [SPEAKER_01]: sort of marriage proposals online through social media right now is as much about how strongly people feel about healthcare and what they sort of have grafted onto the shooting, about their feelings on the shooting, but also the ability of people to lift up 06:44.575 --> 06:49.568 [SPEAKER_01]: whether it's violent acts or controversial acts because that's what sells on the internet. 06:49.628 --> 06:56.547 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, ultimately, what trends on social media are things that evokes strong feelings in people. 06:56.948 --> 06:59.475 [SPEAKER_01]: And violence evokes strong feelings in people. 06:59.695 --> 07:00.357 [SPEAKER_01]: And 07:00.337 --> 07:10.476 [SPEAKER_01]: people fighting people angry people being extreme actually sells and does quite well and trends and turns into eyeballs and engagement and add dollars and so on. 07:10.516 --> 07:22.058 [SPEAKER_01]: So now I do think that if anything the social media today has made it much easier to lift up and celebrate acts of the 07:22.612 --> 07:39.479 [SPEAKER_00]: And Luigi Manjohn for people who may have forgotten was the fellow who shot in cold blood, the CEO of United Health Care, because he was just sick and tired of being rejected, I guess, as he submitted his claims for reimbursement. 07:39.519 --> 07:41.302 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, tell us about Bernie Gets. 07:41.362 --> 07:41.823 [SPEAKER_00]: Who was he? 07:42.023 --> 07:43.405 [SPEAKER_00]: How was he brought up? 07:43.385 --> 07:53.225 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we grew up with a fair amount of affluence and comfort and just in Westchester County, New York. 07:53.686 --> 08:01.242 [SPEAKER_01]: Sort of a brilliant loner as a kid ultimately spent part of his childhood in boarding school. 08:01.222 --> 08:08.269 [SPEAKER_01]: And notably, his father had been accused of sexual assault of a few teenage boys. 08:08.810 --> 08:17.139 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, this was an interesting moment because it sort of created Bernard gets fueled his and his family's disaffection with the criminal justice system. 08:17.219 --> 08:21.844 [SPEAKER_01]: He felt that the system was aligned against people and stacked against people. 08:21.884 --> 08:27.870 [SPEAKER_01]: And you only cared about protecting criminals, not people who had been harmed and so and so that's, you know, 08:27.850 --> 08:34.697 [SPEAKER_01]: put a pin in that, that sticks in his head because he's ultimately mugged in 1981 by three young, to three black teenagers. 08:35.758 --> 08:39.021 [SPEAKER_01]: As he's coming out of the subway, he gets injured, his knee gets injured. 08:39.041 --> 08:46.268 [SPEAKER_01]: His face gets injured, but more than anything else, the thing that sort of riled him up is the fact that he felt the cops treated the perpetrator. 08:46.288 --> 08:48.410 [SPEAKER_01]: They caught one of them, better than he did. 08:48.470 --> 08:56.558 [SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately didn't charge the kid with a serious crime. 08:57.230 --> 09:00.454 [SPEAKER_01]: the victim of the crime gets starts carrying firearms with him wherever he goes. 09:00.494 --> 09:03.077 [SPEAKER_01]: He was just a unknown possessor of guns. 09:03.818 --> 09:10.407 [SPEAKER_00]: He was actually assaulted a couple of times, was he not leaning up to the events on the subway? 09:11.508 --> 09:14.111 [SPEAKER_01]: It's documented that he is mugged in 1981. 09:14.532 --> 09:23.863 [SPEAKER_01]: Now he says, I think anecdotally to his neighbor, my refried men, you know, I've been beat up before. 09:23.903 --> 09:26.747 [SPEAKER_01]: I've been 09:26.727 --> 09:51.267 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so you've got this loner, skinny, tall, white, nerdy-ish sort of guy who's been mugged at least once before who believed that the police were nowhere to be found to help him, that the system was, if you will, a sham and he'll talk about that word in it. 09:51.247 --> 10:00.664 [SPEAKER_00]: In a minute, he's living on 14th Street, which at that time was not the ideal place to live if you wanted to be in a crime-free environment. 10:00.684 --> 10:01.345 [SPEAKER_00]: That's so much. 10:01.365 --> 10:01.466 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 10:02.187 --> 10:09.981 [SPEAKER_00]: And he believes that the African American and Hispanic people who are, 10:09.961 --> 10:13.847 [SPEAKER_00]: on the streets in his neighborhood are the trouble makers. 10:13.867 --> 10:15.649 [SPEAKER_00]: They're the cause of the problems. 10:15.669 --> 10:18.714 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he uses racial slurs to describe it, right? 10:18.734 --> 10:19.715 [SPEAKER_01]: To get them out of the neighborhood. 10:19.735 --> 10:23.821 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the only way we'll clean the neighborhood out is if we get rid of the blanks and the blanks. 10:24.082 --> 10:26.706 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's unambiguous and documented that he said it. 10:27.186 --> 10:27.987 [SPEAKER_00]: Right. 10:28.007 --> 10:28.408 [SPEAKER_00]: So. 10:29.941 --> 10:42.376 [SPEAKER_00]: He decides that he's had enough with the criminal justice system, or the criminal law system, which he considers to be an injustice system, and he goes to try it up by a gun. 10:42.496 --> 10:45.720 [SPEAKER_00]: He wants to buy a gun legally, if he can. 10:45.780 --> 10:50.785 [SPEAKER_00]: But in New York, tell us about the concealed carry gun permit process. 10:50.805 --> 10:58.935 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, New York does have a system for allowing concealed carry permits, but one has to 10:59.472 --> 11:04.644 [SPEAKER_01]: demonstrate a significant need for them and simply living in a rough neighborhood wasn't sufficient under the law. 11:04.665 --> 11:09.837 [SPEAKER_01]: So he had applied for license ultimately was denied and that set him off even further as well. 11:10.087 --> 11:34.339 [SPEAKER_00]: right because he had a job at the time where he was actually transporting a lot of cash and expensive sort of audio video equipment he got robbed once carrying that money and he said look I'm carrying a lot of money like in the like in the in the diamond district and I need a gun to protect myself and they said no I'm sorry you can't get it yes exactly 11:35.247 --> 11:50.079 [SPEAKER_00]: So he gets a gun illegally, which he carries in his quick draw, holster, thinking, you know, Tom Mixer, something, and he boards a train in December on December 22nd, 1984. 11:50.380 --> 11:51.923 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, tell us about... 11:52.122 --> 12:01.054 [SPEAKER_00]: Barry Allen, Troy Canty, James Ramsour, and Darrell Kaby, and where were they when gets bored to train? 12:01.314 --> 12:06.341 [SPEAKER_01]: So they're 14ators they live in a subsidized housing in the Bronx. 12:06.982 --> 12:10.286 [SPEAKER_01]: All with families, they all had nuclear families around them. 12:10.306 --> 12:13.050 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I tried very hard. 12:13.030 --> 12:16.894 [SPEAKER_01]: and the reporting of this book to speak to the two surviving ones. 12:16.914 --> 12:18.255 [SPEAKER_01]: It's candy and KB. 12:18.736 --> 12:27.425 [SPEAKER_01]: I got as close as speaking with Darrell KB's sisters, but they just did not wish to participate in the book, or I couldn't get a hold of additional people or family members. 12:28.546 --> 12:31.749 [SPEAKER_01]: So they, and it was something that was really important. 12:31.789 --> 12:36.094 [SPEAKER_01]: I really wanted to give them an opportunity to be heard in the book they chose not to. 12:36.154 --> 12:37.215 [SPEAKER_01]: And I understand that. 12:37.295 --> 12:38.336 [SPEAKER_01]: It's, I think they wanted to move on. 12:38.657 --> 12:40.118 [SPEAKER_01]: But they lived in the Bronx. 12:40.638 --> 12:43.493 [SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, at the time, 12:44.536 --> 12:47.619 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, they weren't, they, they knew each other somewhat. 12:48.020 --> 12:51.323 [SPEAKER_01]: There were various constellations of friendships among the four of them. 12:51.363 --> 12:59.852 [SPEAKER_01]: But they were heading downtown to engage in what was a pretty common act at the time, which was using screwdrivers to break open video game machines. 12:59.912 --> 13:06.760 [SPEAKER_01]: They were, they were going down to sort of, you know, you could, this was at the height of the video game boom in the 1980s. 13:07.521 --> 13:11.725 [SPEAKER_01]: Every bodega bar bowling alley. 13:11.705 --> 13:17.216 [SPEAKER_01]: convenience store had a Pac-Man or a Donkey Kong or whatever machine or space invaders in it. 13:17.617 --> 13:24.991 [SPEAKER_01]: And they would go and pop them open and steal the quarters and there would be hundreds and hundreds of dollars at a time that one could gather. 13:25.011 --> 13:28.758 [SPEAKER_01]: So they were heading downtown from Bronx to Pace University. 13:28.838 --> 13:32.245 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a place in Lower Manhattan University in Lower Manhattan to do that. 13:33.878 --> 13:34.900 [SPEAKER_01]: they carried with them. 13:35.582 --> 13:36.244 [SPEAKER_01]: Screwdrivers. 13:36.464 --> 13:37.106 [SPEAKER_01]: They did. 13:37.366 --> 13:46.749 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it became a little bit of a red herring and actually I even go further than red herring is the quite misleading in the media, which ran with the idea. 13:46.769 --> 13:50.638 [SPEAKER_01]: I think probably from an early place report that 13:50.618 --> 13:58.265 [SPEAKER_01]: They were carrying sharpened screwdrivers in the media even ran with an arrow that they brandished the screwdrivers at one point in front of gets none of that was true. 13:58.325 --> 14:00.587 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, of course, they all had screwdrivers. 14:00.687 --> 14:03.710 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not a fact in dispute at all. 14:03.770 --> 14:10.656 [SPEAKER_01]: But they were very specific purpose for picking open those machines, not for using them as weapons. 14:10.696 --> 14:20.625 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, the media was very quite a pound on these sort of black thugs, brandishing ships, which was simply not true. 14:20.605 --> 14:42.327 [SPEAKER_01]: And this, you know, you touched on this, Michael, when talking about Bernard gets his skinny nerdy white meekness, it was a very easy narrative for the media to latch on to the idea that you had him, this person that almost society would be rooting for, to jump up and defend himself against these four sort of menacing toughs from the hood. 14:42.307 --> 15:09.107 [SPEAKER_00]: right so these four guys and and they were not angels by enemies they had prior records and they would get after the events even more serious legal issues but at the time they're essentially for 18 to 19 year old kids on the train with with with no apparent weapon to do anything terrible with 15:10.673 --> 15:14.477 [SPEAKER_00]: when they were on the train, they were causing a bit of a ruckus, right? 15:14.517 --> 15:31.535 [SPEAKER_00]: Because if I remember correctly from the book, you said that the other 15 or 20 passengers who were on the subway car had sort of like moved down to the other end of the car, leaving space for these guys, right? 15:31.555 --> 15:34.538 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, I don't. 15:34.518 --> 15:38.222 [SPEAKER_01]: recall of anybody specifically moves elsewhere in the car. 15:38.262 --> 15:49.152 [SPEAKER_01]: There was a mix of people with their antennae up and people who just thought, okay, these guys are a pin in the ass and I just don't want anything to do with them. 15:49.172 --> 15:50.253 [SPEAKER_01]: It was sort of a mix in there. 15:50.273 --> 16:04.187 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this, this, I do want the, the no angels notion, though, is a tricky one only and so far as, you know, I will know, for instance, Bernard Gats still emails me with some regularity and right before 16:04.167 --> 16:08.322 [SPEAKER_01]: He sent a note listing the criminal histories of the four young men. 16:10.124 --> 16:19.532 [SPEAKER_01]: He said, it's a part of me, an article to me listing their criminal histories outboarding them out and saying, you harped on my use of the N word. 16:19.733 --> 16:23.356 [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't include this note about their criminal histories, your book isn't fair. 16:23.676 --> 16:30.182 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I didn't respond, but I would note that number one, the book five bullets mentions the criminal histories of these young men. 16:30.222 --> 16:35.547 [SPEAKER_01]: I think 41 times, but number two, it's not relevant to get to his action. 16:35.587 --> 16:36.408 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not relevant. 16:36.528 --> 16:40.131 [SPEAKER_01]: He's not of that information in front of him at the time. 16:40.111 --> 16:51.977 [SPEAKER_01]: you know what for whatever the legitimacy of his fear or whatever else it is it is quite misleading to sort of latch on to yeah they did bad things but he wasn't aware of any of the bad things they'd done 16:52.362 --> 16:54.304 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, no, that's exactly right. 16:54.405 --> 17:03.295 [SPEAKER_00]: He, as far as he knows about them, they're just for kids from the south Bronx who are on his on his on his train. 17:03.355 --> 17:08.962 [SPEAKER_00]: So he has no prior notice to be on heightened alert about them. 17:09.543 --> 17:12.767 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not fair to say. 17:12.747 --> 17:27.468 [SPEAKER_00]: prior criminal activity featured in this but, of course, gets had his experiences previously about being beaten up by kids that looked like and acted like these guys. 17:27.488 --> 17:29.130 [SPEAKER_00]: So he's on, he's on high alert. 17:29.150 --> 17:38.063 [SPEAKER_00]: He's sitting there, said in a way, mind in his own business with his illegal gun and his quick draw holster and 17:39.764 --> 17:42.357 [SPEAKER_00]: Canty and Allen approach him. 17:42.678 --> 17:43.542 [SPEAKER_01]: Canty approaches him. 17:44.447 --> 17:45.994 [SPEAKER_01]: Canty approaches him. 17:47.003 --> 18:06.877 [SPEAKER_01]: quite frank and testimony comes up at trial that the others aren't aware that can't he actually made the approach that can't he just walked up to gets in some way and either said certain I have five dollars or demanded five dollars. 18:06.957 --> 18:08.280 [SPEAKER_01]: That's ambiguous, right? 18:09.161 --> 18:12.066 [SPEAKER_01]: But that was an 18:12.046 --> 18:17.014 [SPEAKER_01]: as you write a book, you learn things that you thought you knew or confirmed things, but also there's just new information. 18:17.054 --> 18:25.648 [SPEAKER_01]: And a central point that comes up is where these guys acting in concert was the fact that they were clearly together. 18:25.748 --> 18:29.293 [SPEAKER_01]: How does that factor into the approach did all of them surround? 18:29.354 --> 18:31.437 [SPEAKER_01]: Gets, and yes, Gets says he felt surrounded. 18:32.619 --> 18:39.049 [SPEAKER_01]: Interestingly, testimony came out that when canty approached, it was believed that 18:39.029 --> 18:46.082 [SPEAKER_01]: None of the other ones knew that he was going to do it, which sort of rebuts the idea that as a group, they went to sort of threaten their mugguess. 18:46.122 --> 18:55.538 [SPEAKER_01]: And he was to say, whatever happens, Bernard gets felt threatened by whoever was in his face or up to him or coming close to him. 18:55.719 --> 18:59.265 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what kicks off the events of the story. 18:59.347 --> 19:08.161 [SPEAKER_00]: So can't the approaches, although I thought Gets had said that he thought Can'ty and Alan were right there in his space. 19:08.562 --> 19:14.672 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, no, I think Gets goes further and says he, they, they surrounded him before. 19:14.692 --> 19:17.596 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, that's a little bit debunked. 19:17.636 --> 19:21.623 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, this all happens in the span of about 30 seconds and different people. 19:21.643 --> 19:26.130 [SPEAKER_01]: This is, you know, you know, from, from trying cases, the different people remember things differently. 19:26.110 --> 19:41.945 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a question, and Andrea Reed, one of the passengers on the train, does say, look at those punks bothering that man, that's one, but also someone says, one of the witnesses testifies that can'ty isn't gets his face. 19:41.965 --> 19:54.177 [SPEAKER_01]: Needless to say, it's a confusing jumble of something happens, but we know that can'ty is the one who says, either give me $5, you're going to have $5, and get says, 19:54.157 --> 20:23.590 [SPEAKER_00]: that what he saw in Cantonese looking as I smile on his face was that they were quote intending to play me like a cat plays with a mouse yeah so this prior the context of New York and his prior life experience he interprets this as uh oh here we go again yeah i mean he he thought it was going to be played with it it became 20:23.857 --> 20:26.242 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, or, you know, sort of psychological triggers. 20:27.325 --> 20:30.472 [SPEAKER_00]: Because he had been bullied and other things as a kid. 20:32.156 --> 20:37.308 [SPEAKER_00]: He stands up and shoots candy, point blank in the chest. 20:37.528 --> 20:37.749 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes? 20:40.375 --> 20:41.798 [SPEAKER_00]: What about the other three? 20:42.014 --> 20:55.633 [SPEAKER_01]: So in some degree of rapid succession, he shoots the other three, ultimately, Ramster and Allen get shot either on the side of the back and then Darrell KB ends up shot. 20:56.354 --> 21:04.765 [SPEAKER_01]: Apparently at one point, again, another muddled fact through the years, gets stands over him and says you don't look so bad. 21:04.745 --> 21:06.628 [SPEAKER_01]: here's another of them and shoots him in the chest. 21:06.688 --> 21:16.942 [SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, the shot paralyzes him, but Darrell KB ends up going into a coma a few weeks later coming out two months later and ultimately ends up brain-damaged. 21:17.102 --> 21:18.865 [SPEAKER_01]: So he's brain-damaged and paralyzes his result. 21:20.086 --> 21:20.206 [SPEAKER_00]: Right. 21:20.226 --> 21:30.060 [SPEAKER_00]: None of them die, although KB's life is completely ruined by his paralysis and 21:32.639 --> 22:00.958 [SPEAKER_01]: What does it get to do after the shoot runs he runs he ultimately ends up running and he You know, just heads up to New England where's the place to cool your jets if you've just engaged in attempted homicide and hides in New England ultimately for nine days Before turning it comes back and forth a couple of times, but then ultimately turns himself in Just before New Year's 1985 in in concrete New Hampshire 22:00.938 --> 22:01.519 [SPEAKER_00]: Right. 22:01.539 --> 22:10.169 [SPEAKER_00]: He goes up to Bennington, which of course, as we've discussed the meantime, so, Elliot, if we were going to commit a crime, after we committed that crime, we'd go to Bennington. 22:11.531 --> 22:12.893 [SPEAKER_00]: What else is in Bennington, for mine? 22:13.113 --> 22:13.714 [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. 22:13.734 --> 22:14.615 [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. 22:15.296 --> 22:19.321 [SPEAKER_00]: So, he turns himself in and he sort of gives confessions. 22:20.102 --> 22:25.208 [SPEAKER_00]: Assistant District Attorney Susan Braver is sent up and 22:25.188 --> 22:36.286 [SPEAKER_00]: They're conversing and she says to him, you know, essentially what's going on here and he says, this city, New York doesn't care about lawlessness. 22:36.386 --> 22:37.628 [SPEAKER_00]: It's all a sham. 22:38.129 --> 22:38.850 [SPEAKER_00]: Come back to that word. 22:39.231 --> 22:40.753 [SPEAKER_00]: Just so how's that a sham? 22:40.773 --> 22:41.374 [SPEAKER_00]: What do you mean? 22:41.895 --> 22:43.197 [SPEAKER_00]: And he says, 22:43.666 --> 22:50.358 [SPEAKER_00]: because people who are violent are just let back out on the street again and again, they're charged with nothing. 22:50.519 --> 22:51.340 [SPEAKER_00]: You understand that? 22:51.821 --> 22:59.335 [SPEAKER_00]: So we were seeing there his sort of state of mind that he has no choice in his mind objectively. 22:59.375 --> 23:00.277 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not true, of course. 23:01.459 --> 23:02.721 [SPEAKER_00]: But to act the way he did. 23:04.017 --> 23:11.685 [SPEAKER_01]: And I would, you know, he, the interesting thing about the confessions one, there's four hours of them, but two, he's all over the place. 23:11.806 --> 23:15.158 [SPEAKER_01]: It's, I mean, the, the, the unifying theme and you're absolutely right. 23:15.442 --> 23:18.967 [SPEAKER_01]: Unifying theme is the city doesn't care. 23:18.987 --> 23:23.053 [SPEAKER_01]: The city is mismanaged and broken and just sort of a terrible place. 23:23.454 --> 23:32.527 [SPEAKER_01]: But also there's elements of shame, there's anger, there's bitterness, there's embarrassment, there's unrepentant, it's just a mix of emotions and he's sort of bouncing around. 23:33.128 --> 23:36.994 [SPEAKER_01]: And I go through this in some detail throughout five bullets. 23:37.143 --> 23:37.564 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 23:37.584 --> 23:50.502 [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the wonderful things about this since when we get to the trial, we'll see what the jury instruction on self-defense, standard ground, requires or became to require as a consequence of the gets case. 23:50.542 --> 23:58.834 [SPEAKER_00]: But your sort of granular explanation of what is going on and gets his mind through these confessions. 23:58.914 --> 24:02.880 [SPEAKER_00]: And otherwise, really gives us a clear picture of 24:02.860 --> 24:08.372 [SPEAKER_00]: what we'll play out in the trial both by the defense attorneys and the prosecutor. 24:08.392 --> 24:19.176 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's take our first break and then I want to come back to how was the story treated in the press once gets his back in New York and then we'll see how it plays out at trial. 24:19.196 --> 24:20.278 [SPEAKER_00]: So we write back. 24:28.460 --> 24:48.612 [SPEAKER_00]: We're back with talking with Elliot Williams about his faginating new book, Five Bullets, we're talking about the murder attempts by Bernard Gets of Fort Black Youth on a close subway car and his arrest in his now back in New York and how is the press treating him? 24:48.727 --> 24:52.914 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think like a fantasy hero, they didn't know much about him. 24:52.934 --> 25:11.022 [SPEAKER_01]: Remember there was nine days where he's on the run and ultimately in that nine days, people could fill in the blanks as to who he was and they people just lost their minds, getting excited about who this death wish vigilante, it's literally with the daily apartment in New York Post had called him. 25:11.002 --> 25:17.809 [SPEAKER_01]: after the movie death was this this avenger for the downtrodden in New York who felt aggrieved by the roughness. 25:17.869 --> 25:25.437 [SPEAKER_01]: And so know that it really was turbo charged the support for him largely coming from the media. 25:26.077 --> 25:26.337 [SPEAKER_00]: Right. 25:26.418 --> 25:40.772 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was you sight that in 1985 25:40.752 --> 25:47.183 [SPEAKER_00]: of gets his actions, which is pretty, you know, pretty startling. 25:47.904 --> 25:52.531 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it didn't track cleanly on racial lines either. 25:52.712 --> 25:57.239 [SPEAKER_01]: Just a lot of people found this fantasy quite appealing. 25:58.401 --> 25:59.723 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that, 26:00.850 --> 26:11.787 [SPEAKER_00]: the New York Post, which then was owned by Murdoch, really fueled the fire of this, or was it just across the spectrum of news outlets? 26:11.807 --> 26:21.542 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was across spectrum news outlets, but Murdoch had purchased the post in 1977 with a goal toward sensationalizing the tabloid 26:21.522 --> 26:23.785 [SPEAKER_01]: the environment in New York City and he did. 26:23.805 --> 26:24.926 [SPEAKER_01]: It was successful. 26:25.407 --> 26:47.192 [SPEAKER_01]: The post focused on crime insensation and the city under siege and so on which brought the daily news and news day and other papers like so if you look at the headlines of that error they're all, you know, streams and dying and shooting and we're all under siege and it's all terror and that the old and narrative of people getting quite scared and they were in the city at the time. 26:47.932 --> 26:52.858 [SPEAKER_00]: So we're waiting indictment and trial. 26:53.298 --> 26:57.863 [SPEAKER_00]: The news media is covering this in a sensationalist way. 26:58.204 --> 27:03.770 [SPEAKER_00]: Popular support for him is sort of similar in a way to manjohn or O.J. 27:03.850 --> 27:09.737 [SPEAKER_00]: Simpson, even Twanne Brolly, 27:09.717 --> 27:19.100 [SPEAKER_00]: case which turned out to be a hoax, they latch onto this in the fires and crime cell stories, but it's much more sensation. 27:19.120 --> 27:25.836 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's really the beginning of what we see now on Fox News and other. 27:25.816 --> 27:26.537 [SPEAKER_00]: media outlets. 27:26.557 --> 27:28.820 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you see this as sort of the start of that? 27:29.261 --> 27:33.246 [SPEAKER_00]: Or do you think it was a continuation and ratcheting up of it and something like that? 27:33.267 --> 27:35.269 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, you know, I thought about that question a lot. 27:35.369 --> 27:38.794 [SPEAKER_01]: Did something, did this kick start anything? 27:39.035 --> 27:40.397 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't quite know. 27:40.557 --> 27:49.950 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think we were getting there as a country, and I think 24 hour news where we are today, certainly is the high point of all of that. 27:49.930 --> 27:51.992 [SPEAKER_01]: But no, there was just something about this case. 27:52.052 --> 28:01.119 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it was almost adjusted for every variable, like you said, he's white, he's me, he's timid, he's a law-abiding citizen, he pays his taxes. 28:01.580 --> 28:05.283 [SPEAKER_01]: These kids came from the Bronx, they were rough, they were criminal records, and so on. 28:05.543 --> 28:11.929 [SPEAKER_01]: And in the abstract of anything else, it was just easy for the narrative to write itself. 28:11.989 --> 28:19.515 [SPEAKER_01]: Regardless of the legal legitimacy of whatever gets did, it was just easy and the press ran with it. 28:19.495 --> 28:24.190 [SPEAKER_00]: So, the cases presented to a grand jury. 28:24.929 --> 28:32.339 [SPEAKER_00]: and something remarkable happens at least in my experience with grandjuries and diamonds tell us to tell us about that process. 28:32.359 --> 28:42.352 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, first they only, in diet, they only managed to indict him on exclusively the gun possession charge, not any violent crime charges. 28:42.392 --> 28:46.858 [SPEAKER_01]: They tried, they did not bring the testimony of any of the victims. 28:46.938 --> 28:53.367 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this was very ham-fisted effort by Robert Morgan, the district attorney at the time. 28:53.347 --> 29:07.305 [SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately, after there's public outcry from everything, no one's happy with Bernard gets being charged with gun offenses, gets in his people aren't happy because he's charged with the crime, people who are sympathetic to the victims don't feel like justice has been served. 29:07.745 --> 29:08.907 [SPEAKER_01]: No one is thrilled. 29:08.947 --> 29:15.855 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, ultimately, they decided to put two of the victims on the stand and reopen the grand jury. 29:15.936 --> 29:21.042 [SPEAKER_01]: They brought a second grand jury and ultimately ended up in 29:21.342 --> 29:27.411 [SPEAKER_00]: Right, it was interesting, because the prosecutor on this case was a very experienced prosecutor. 29:27.451 --> 29:35.424 [SPEAKER_00]: They sort of handpicked him among all of the Manhattan District Attorney's office lawyers to try this case. 29:35.484 --> 29:47.923 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting, his decision of who to put in the grand jury led to a nobial they did not indict on the serious charges and he had to bring them all back in the case. 29:49.237 --> 30:02.131 [SPEAKER_00]: gets dismissed and then it's reinstated by the court of appeals because they felt that it was bad behavior in the grand jury room and instructions were weren't bad. 30:02.151 --> 30:14.265 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a crazy period of time pretrial and time keeps ticking and the narrative about gets keeps being embellished and as you said the narrative about the 30:14.245 --> 30:18.955 [SPEAKER_00]: the victims keep getting embellished as well. 30:19.095 --> 30:19.275 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. 30:19.496 --> 30:29.556 [SPEAKER_01]: And I also think just what contributes to the legal drama in the whole thing is that it's the rare case in which at least too many people in the public. 30:30.077 --> 30:35.308 [SPEAKER_01]: And forget what the public says, what the media are saying, that's the most important one. 30:35.997 --> 30:45.415 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, it's the rare instance in which victims were regarded as the aggressors and the perpetrator or the accused was regarded as the sympathetic one. 30:45.435 --> 30:46.798 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, again, you see some of that. 30:46.858 --> 30:52.068 [SPEAKER_01]: And again, I want to, maybe this will be the last time I mentioned Luigi Manchiam because it's not a Luigi Manchiam book. 30:52.128 --> 30:59.001 [SPEAKER_01]: However, I will know that for many supporters of him and his action, 30:59.200 --> 31:04.849 [SPEAKER_01]: He's the sympathetic one, not the person that bled out on a New York City street from being shot in the back. 31:05.269 --> 31:13.862 [SPEAKER_01]: And somehow, whether it's the media narrative or the climate lead to this inversion of what we think of in a normal case. 31:13.982 --> 31:15.825 [SPEAKER_01]: And as of result, 31:15.805 --> 31:31.206 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, it was, it was actually quite hard to charge the case because you're charging to avenge the shooting of people that many people in the public just simply did not feel sympathetic to and a shooter that many people in the public felt some herverse connection to. 31:31.747 --> 31:37.375 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I remember one of the headlines that you have in the book, which is in quotes victim, the word victim in quotes. 31:38.013 --> 31:51.499 [SPEAKER_00]: Victim on subway shoots four, you know, so he was the victim of these these bad actors and he stood his ground, which I want to talk about in a minute. 31:51.519 --> 31:59.093 [SPEAKER_00]: So the grand jury finally gets a true bill and he's brought to trial 31:59.073 --> 32:03.679 [SPEAKER_00]: and tell us at this point about the legal standard. 32:03.699 --> 32:16.496 [SPEAKER_00]: What's his defense and how does the state of mind this two-pronged test of objective and subjective belief play out? 32:16.516 --> 32:18.499 [SPEAKER_00]: Because this is this is Elliot. 32:18.952 --> 32:24.142 [SPEAKER_00]: the beginning of where we are today on these stand your ground cases of as far as you say. 32:24.383 --> 32:25.305 [SPEAKER_01]: I think to some extent, right? 32:25.325 --> 32:37.028 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the New York law at the time just said that deadly force is appropriate if someone reasonably believes that violent force or a mugging is going to come his way. 32:37.008 --> 32:54.578 [SPEAKER_01]: it's written in whatever year's 1838 or something like that and they never define what the term reasonable means is that subjective reasonable mess which is that yeah and in his heart we believe that he genuinely felt scared therefore the fourth was appropriate or did they intend to mean objective reasonable mess which is 32:54.558 --> 33:00.025 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he acted in a way that we would expect other people in society to behave. 33:00.045 --> 33:02.989 [SPEAKER_01]: He acted like a normal, objectively reasonable person. 33:03.009 --> 33:03.970 [SPEAKER_01]: But we never defined that. 33:04.391 --> 33:08.036 [SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, there's a backboard that I've whole chapter on this in the book Five Bullets. 33:08.316 --> 33:17.448 [SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately, he ends up at the highest court of the state of New York and New York State Court of Appeals that decides, stop your both right and says that you have to proceed with both. 33:17.468 --> 33:20.312 [SPEAKER_01]: First, assess the subjective. 33:20.292 --> 33:34.339 [SPEAKER_01]: fear, do we trust that this person genuinely felt afraid, and then graft on top of that, the objective, the reasonableness of his actions, do we believe that he behaved in an objectively reasonable manner? 33:34.780 --> 33:39.128 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're confused listening to it, stop, you're right, it's 33:39.108 --> 33:56.670 [SPEAKER_01]: tricky and ham-fisted and requires I think a lot of juries required a lot of this juries well to put it together, but newables to say they manage to indict gets on that and that is the legal standard that governs the case and quite frankly many after it for decades. 33:57.171 --> 34:02.938 [SPEAKER_00]: Right, so how did I feel, subjectively, did I feel threatened? 34:02.918 --> 34:10.171 [SPEAKER_00]: did what I do conform to what a reasonable person, the old, and when we were in law school, they called it the reasonable man. 34:10.211 --> 34:18.786 [SPEAKER_00]: It's the end of the subject of wood, would a reasonable person behave this way in connection with also their subjective view of it. 34:18.906 --> 34:19.707 [SPEAKER_00]: So he's indicted. 34:19.888 --> 34:25.838 [SPEAKER_00]: He's charged now with all these attempted murder charges and 34:25.818 --> 34:33.936 [SPEAKER_00]: He gets a lawyer and as we said, the Manhattan DA's office picks who they think is really the best attorney for this case. 34:33.956 --> 34:43.658 [SPEAKER_00]: So tell us about the lawyers who were they and then go into if you would the government's theory of the case and the defense is defense theory of the case. 34:43.638 --> 34:49.193 [SPEAKER_01]: So a Gregory Wapels, as you mentioned, is a star young prosecutor, he's in his 30s. 34:49.434 --> 34:56.794 [SPEAKER_01]: He's went to Yale, top of his class at Columbia Law School, and he's brilliant and had been a prosecutor at the time. 34:56.874 --> 34:58.980 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, he's up against, and he's 34:59.669 --> 35:07.720 [SPEAKER_01]: what you think of when you think of almost rumpled humorless public servants and that's how many people described him. 35:08.121 --> 35:17.774 [SPEAKER_01]: Now he's in contrast Barry Slotnik is everything you think of when you think of almost a movie character flashy TV lawyer with the defense attorneys. 35:17.814 --> 35:20.698 [SPEAKER_01]: The defense attorneys, 35:20.678 --> 35:24.505 [SPEAKER_01]: The alligator skin briefcases and either hand the P.A.J. 35:24.605 --> 35:25.907 [SPEAKER_01]: watched the tailored suits. 35:26.368 --> 35:38.209 [SPEAKER_01]: The showmanship in court and it was really this almost duality or this epic or opposition of these two, not just sides of the case, but just personalities who came into court. 35:38.269 --> 35:41.134 [SPEAKER_01]: Now ultimately, you know, 35:41.114 --> 35:50.765 [SPEAKER_01]: Wapel's essential argument really came down to, okay, let's just pretend for a moment that imagine the shot against Troy Canty is justified. 35:51.006 --> 35:54.830 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to say that it is, but that's the first shot. 35:54.890 --> 35:56.773 [SPEAKER_01]: Imagine the first person issues is justified. 35:57.133 --> 36:04.962 [SPEAKER_01]: He's, Burr gets then is less justified in shooting Barry Allen, then even less justified in shooting James Rimm sir next. 36:04.982 --> 36:09.788 [SPEAKER_01]: And absolutely not justified in shooting Troy Canty, 36:09.768 --> 36:15.113 [SPEAKER_01]: once standing over him, potentially saying, you don't look so bad here's another and then shooting again. 36:15.133 --> 36:17.996 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's almost this cascade of reasonableness. 36:18.036 --> 36:28.667 [SPEAKER_01]: Ladies and gentlemen, this is point, ladies and gentlemen, even if you think he was justified that first time, each time he pulls the trigger those five times and in many respects, this is why I call the book Five Bullets, right? 36:28.727 --> 36:31.290 [SPEAKER_01]: It's this, what does each of these bullets mean? 36:31.970 --> 36:35.674 [SPEAKER_01]: But he just got less and less of a justification for it, right? 36:35.823 --> 36:45.755 [SPEAKER_01]: On conversely, Barry Slotnik, the defense attorney, his central point is, number one, these guys are thugs, number two, I'm going to make the jury afraid of these thugs. 36:46.056 --> 36:49.680 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to put them on trial and he literally said that in his opening argument. 36:50.321 --> 36:54.927 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to put these young men on trial because for some reason Bernard gets his on trial but these guys aren't. 36:55.328 --> 37:00.514 [SPEAKER_01]: And everything in the defense strategy was to vilify these four young. 37:01.068 --> 37:03.973 [SPEAKER_00]: and he was able, I was a little bit surprised with it. 37:03.993 --> 37:06.697 [SPEAKER_00]: He was able to bring in all of their priors. 37:07.558 --> 37:09.381 [SPEAKER_00]: He's got a lot of evidence. 37:09.401 --> 37:10.844 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I didn't understand that exactly. 37:10.884 --> 37:13.147 [SPEAKER_00]: How does he get that evidence? 37:14.029 --> 37:15.271 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a little mimic stuff here. 37:15.291 --> 37:16.613 [SPEAKER_00]: There's no motive and ten. 37:16.593 --> 37:28.151 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, a lot of it, a lot of it didn't come in, but for instance, when James Ramster got on the stand, in a pivotal moment of the trial of Ramster, who number one had the ugliest criminal history of all of them. 37:28.171 --> 37:33.058 [SPEAKER_01]: There was a really ugly sexual assault that he had been convicted of just before the trial here. 37:33.078 --> 37:39.188 [SPEAKER_01]: And all of that came into impeach him to undermine his credibility as a witness. 37:39.348 --> 37:42.533 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so, you know, Ramster's testimony, 37:42.513 --> 37:50.229 [SPEAKER_01]: And every time they, you know, one of them took the stand, they would be confronted with their with with some at least some aspects of their criminal history. 37:50.249 --> 37:52.093 [SPEAKER_01]: But Ram serves was far in a way. 37:52.133 --> 37:56.402 [SPEAKER_01]: One, he was the worst witness only because he lost his temper so much on the stand. 37:56.723 --> 38:01.753 [SPEAKER_01]: But two, you know, the jury just had a hard time seeing past the bad things he'd done. 38:03.151 --> 38:08.160 [SPEAKER_00]: Just to inside the beltway sort of thing, why was he put on the stand? 38:08.300 --> 38:21.784 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think I mean, I read that I know it was case, I know it will tell us because from when I heard it, yes, sir, I think because when I read the case, they had a ballistic guy who says, these were shots in the back and this was uncalled for and. 38:21.764 --> 38:22.965 [SPEAKER_00]: It seems to me he's safe. 38:23.546 --> 38:23.906 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm done. 38:24.667 --> 38:26.389 [SPEAKER_00]: I've finished my case. 38:26.449 --> 38:33.136 [SPEAKER_00]: I've proved that at least bullet two through five were uncalled for, but they bring Ram's sword on. 38:33.397 --> 38:41.766 [SPEAKER_00]: And he gets into a fight with Slotnik, who's known for his three Atrixies, John Gotti's lawyer after all. 38:42.467 --> 38:46.371 [SPEAKER_00]: And in the end, his testimony is 38:47.617 --> 38:48.138 [SPEAKER_00]: stricken. 38:49.001 --> 38:52.409 [SPEAKER_00]: He says he refuses to answer any more questions gets up and essentially leaps. 38:52.750 --> 38:55.958 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we can't leave because he's in custody, but it's held in contempt ultimately. 38:55.998 --> 39:02.976 [SPEAKER_01]: No, the prosecution had to call him because if the prosecution did not call him, the defense would have called him. 39:03.918 --> 39:23.781 [SPEAKER_01]: lawyers or non-lawyers may not realize in effect under the fifth amendment when you talk about pleading the fifth, you have a right not to testify against yourself in a criminal case, if you are a defendant, if you're a witness, it doesn't matter and a defendant can call whoever they want to testify at trial. 39:24.202 --> 39:25.183 [SPEAKER_01]: So if 39:25.163 --> 39:29.927 [SPEAKER_01]: Gregory Wapels, the prosecutor, did not call James Remster to testify as a witness. 39:30.288 --> 39:31.449 [SPEAKER_01]: The defense would have done it. 39:32.109 --> 39:39.776 [SPEAKER_01]: Wapels put Remster on the stamp to preempt the defense from doing so, knowing full well that the testimony was going to go badly. 39:40.096 --> 39:46.262 [SPEAKER_01]: But it would have gone much worse if Barry Slotnik, the defense attorney could have driven and guided the testimony. 39:46.362 --> 39:51.647 [SPEAKER_01]: I had a long interview with Gregory Wapels and he talked me through his strategy. 39:51.687 --> 39:55.170 [SPEAKER_01]: He said he 39:55.150 --> 40:09.768 [SPEAKER_01]: victims of the public, and certainly the jury saw as unsympathetic, but he had to do what he did to put James Ramsey on almost as a way of stopping the bleeding from what would have happened if the defense had called him. 40:10.249 --> 40:18.880 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, this is not a legal podcast per se, but why Ramsey, the camp put on KB, he's brain damage and he's not. 40:18.860 --> 40:25.256 [SPEAKER_00]: There is he in the courtroom or all four Victims I'm gonna call them with the shooting there. 40:25.317 --> 40:35.282 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't recall if Daryl Cady is in the courtroom because he's still in pretty pretty bad shape at that point I don't believe they were now there were there were blown up 40:37.051 --> 40:43.322 [SPEAKER_01]: posters of them in court and that turned to be a fight at trial, but not that the four victims were not in court, I believe. 40:43.763 --> 40:53.461 [SPEAKER_00]: So why, why, I'm so who has the, I mean, he's just been convicted of, of rape and Sodomizing a woman on the roof of their, why him? 40:53.841 --> 40:54.823 [SPEAKER_00]: Why not? 40:54.803 --> 40:55.665 [SPEAKER_00]: any of the other ones. 40:55.986 --> 40:58.912 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, but he, again, they had to put him on. 40:59.132 --> 41:09.876 [SPEAKER_00]: But why doesn't, why doesn't I'm sorry to interrupt earlier, but if, if Slotnik calls Ramsoor, right, does he not have right to, to plead the Fifth Amendment and refuse? 41:09.856 --> 41:17.028 [SPEAKER_01]: Not against, I think, if a prosecutor is not asking the questions, it's just questions from a defense attorney. 41:17.268 --> 41:30.430 [SPEAKER_01]: And even if he has the fifth amendment right, not to testify, it's still horribly embarrassing and devastating to the prosecution to have this guy. 41:30.410 --> 41:35.880 [SPEAKER_01]: just getting into a fight with the defense attorney that the prosecution can't get in the way of and try to fix. 41:36.441 --> 41:46.579 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he sort of ran into that with all of the sort of three, who, you know, the three non-brain damage one, they had to allow them to go on the stand. 41:47.673 --> 41:54.824 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of things that happen in this trial that, you know, I spent eight years doing public defender and legal aid work. 41:54.845 --> 42:01.836 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I look at it through my eyes as a legal aid lawyer up at the fender and then I spent all those ten years as a prosecutor. 42:01.876 --> 42:08.166 [SPEAKER_00]: And there are things that I shook my head about and I wanted to talk to you about two of them. 42:08.426 --> 42:10.710 [SPEAKER_00]: One is the field trip. 42:10.690 --> 42:12.332 [SPEAKER_00]: to the subway corner. 42:12.492 --> 42:13.373 [SPEAKER_00]: Tell us about that. 42:13.453 --> 42:19.000 [SPEAKER_01]: So in general, you know, there's, you know, you're touching on the, the mistakes made by the judge. 42:19.380 --> 42:32.054 [SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately the judge, and there's something a Gregory Wapels told me in my interview with him that he felt that the judge just got worn down by the defense and just gave them stuff that they weren't entitled to. 42:32.735 --> 42:36.900 [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, in general, 42:38.146 --> 42:43.135 [SPEAKER_01]: The laws in the Constitution governing how trials work really are for the protection of defendants. 42:43.496 --> 42:45.339 [SPEAKER_01]: They're not for the protection of prosecutors. 42:45.559 --> 42:51.110 [SPEAKER_01]: So most things in our system are designed to give defendants fair trials. 42:51.731 --> 43:01.268 [SPEAKER_01]: Judges, and certainly this judge was cautious about denying the defense something they'd asked for. 43:01.687 --> 43:03.729 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he gained, he granted a lot of their requests. 43:03.749 --> 43:09.837 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things they've requested was a field trip to the, to see a train car. 43:09.877 --> 43:14.142 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, the bizarre thing about all this is that number one, it wasn't the same train car. 43:14.782 --> 43:17.546 [SPEAKER_01]: Number two, it wasn't even the same type of train car. 43:17.586 --> 43:23.933 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a different model and make of, so really all of us, they were just going to the subway, but it turned into a media circus. 43:24.033 --> 43:31.322 [SPEAKER_01]: It was, there were people circling around of photographers and flash bulbs 43:31.302 --> 43:44.940 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, it just, there's no reason the judge needed to say, no, there's no, he could have said no, and the trial would have been fine, but he also had no reason not to say yes and ultimately agreed to it. 43:45.190 --> 43:47.773 [SPEAKER_00]: it's interesting because it cuts two ways in a sense. 43:47.913 --> 43:53.879 [SPEAKER_00]: One is they're on this train and they can see the defense argument that gets was trapped. 43:53.899 --> 43:55.581 [SPEAKER_00]: He had no way out. 43:55.961 --> 43:57.683 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he couldn't run away. 43:58.644 --> 44:08.234 [SPEAKER_00]: But second, you made a point which I thought was great in it, which was these young men themselves had no place to run. 44:08.314 --> 44:10.116 [SPEAKER_00]: They're on a moving subway. 44:10.156 --> 44:12.278 [SPEAKER_00]: So you've got, you know, said about 44:13.523 --> 44:24.142 [SPEAKER_00]: bad choice of places to commit crime, but nonetheless they take this field trip and they see this this train car and each get to argue their point. 44:24.182 --> 44:32.697 [SPEAKER_00]: The thing though that which that was surprising to me, but the thing that was most surprising to me was the bill list, sticks. 44:32.677 --> 44:34.801 [SPEAKER_00]: demonstration with the four guardian angels. 44:35.141 --> 44:47.484 [SPEAKER_00]: So tell us first who you said a lot of players in this in this saga use this case for their own personal advantage, um, sharp than Royenus, Giuliani, et cetera. 44:47.504 --> 44:50.449 [SPEAKER_00]: Tell us about the guardian angels and tell us about this demonstration. 44:50.429 --> 44:57.664 [SPEAKER_01]: So this is the Guardian Angels led by Curtis Sliwa who just ran for mayor of New York recently. 44:57.804 --> 45:01.612 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a civilian public safety or crime and safety patrol. 45:01.652 --> 45:11.813 [SPEAKER_01]: They would walk the streets trying to keep the streets safe and the with their little 45:11.793 --> 45:18.904 [SPEAKER_01]: Slyua had, and I did not realize this had, was in effect a de facto member of the defense team. 45:18.964 --> 45:25.734 [SPEAKER_01]: He helped out the defense quite a bit, and they provided around the clock safety and coverage for Bernard Gets. 45:25.874 --> 45:32.164 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, one of the things slot and they did one day they just taped off 45:32.515 --> 45:38.725 [SPEAKER_01]: an outline of a train car in the courtroom and staged a reenactment of the shooting. 45:38.805 --> 45:44.354 [SPEAKER_01]: Now ostensibly it was a ballistic demonstration, which yes, if you're listening, you heard the word right. 45:44.434 --> 45:50.584 [SPEAKER_01]: They're trying to establish how bullets are moving and where they're going and whatever else. 45:51.145 --> 45:56.734 [SPEAKER_01]: But still, it just by casting these four 45:56.714 --> 46:13.794 [SPEAKER_01]: young black men as literally props that's the word they used in court, except, you know, props one, two, three, and four, joceling this white man who looked nothing like Bernard gets literally is an overweight drunk X and Y piece disgraced and YPD detective former cop. 46:13.814 --> 46:20.562 [SPEAKER_01]: I think either resigned or fired from the department in disgrace and they're pulling him and tugging him and pounding on him. 46:20.542 --> 46:29.355 [SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately, it's just the whole thing degenerated into chaos and the judge felt that he sort of had to, well, he didn't say he had to do it. 46:29.456 --> 46:38.149 [SPEAKER_01]: He agreed to do it, and no one regards that demonstration as legally required or necessary of the trial. 46:38.169 --> 46:40.252 [SPEAKER_01]: It just came at the jury's minds. 46:40.613 --> 46:43.197 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was a reversible error, honestly, when I read it. 46:43.237 --> 46:47.443 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he explained next 46:47.423 --> 46:54.953 [SPEAKER_00]: pick the meanest, you know, baddest-looking guys, bring them in. 46:55.013 --> 47:00.821 [SPEAKER_00]: And as you said, this is like a grassy-null sort of demonstration. 47:00.841 --> 47:04.246 [SPEAKER_00]: And whatever, what was the, what was the, where was the bullet fired from? 47:04.346 --> 47:06.749 [SPEAKER_00]: Where was President Kenny when he was hit? 47:06.849 --> 47:08.051 [SPEAKER_00]: That was the left. 47:08.211 --> 47:09.353 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly. 47:09.894 --> 47:11.115 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what this was supposed to be. 47:11.195 --> 47:16.823 [SPEAKER_00]: And instead, he creates, he says recreation, but he creates 47:17.697 --> 47:23.805 [SPEAKER_01]: a myth, a mythical thing about, and just think about all the other things, the other variables that were not present. 47:23.886 --> 47:26.509 [SPEAKER_01]: So, number one, there's no other passengers in the car. 47:27.130 --> 47:40.228 [SPEAKER_01]: So, they reenact this ballistic demonstration ostensibly to show the jury what had happened, but there's no other number one, it's two-dimensional, it's taped out on the ground. 47:40.816 --> 47:50.337 [SPEAKER_01]: there's no other people in there so what is this other than to inflame the jury and make them scared and so yeah 47:50.873 --> 47:52.595 [SPEAKER_01]: it was really quite a moment of trial. 47:52.996 --> 47:53.276 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 47:53.517 --> 47:53.937 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 47:53.957 --> 48:04.332 [SPEAKER_00]: So the case gets argued, each argue, slonic arguing principally automatic pilot as as his defense. 48:04.453 --> 48:09.921 [SPEAKER_00]: And slonic, as you said, is arguing, maybe the first bullet is is justified. 48:09.941 --> 48:11.222 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not so sure about that. 48:11.263 --> 48:14.367 [SPEAKER_00]: He says, but giving it the benefit of the doubt. 48:14.347 --> 48:23.930 [SPEAKER_00]: the other the other three shot in the back shot in the side shot at point blank when you're cowering away from him and slotnik argues automatic pilot. 48:24.251 --> 48:25.113 [SPEAKER_00]: So talk about that. 48:25.153 --> 48:28.180 [SPEAKER_00]: That was an interesting approach that slotnik took. 48:28.200 --> 48:32.170 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, ultimately they the defense makes the argument that 48:33.483 --> 48:39.952 [SPEAKER_01]: His mind shut off, like a person in an adrenal haze, he was just out of his mind, didn't know what he was doing. 48:40.252 --> 48:57.176 [SPEAKER_01]: And wasn't conscious of his actions and just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, fire, not really having the ability to pause and exercise the recollection or thought of reflection part and thought to the security, we had a guilty mind or conscious. 48:57.296 --> 48:57.997 [SPEAKER_01]: And they succeeded. 48:58.037 --> 49:02.764 [SPEAKER_01]: They made the argument that his brain shut off 49:02.744 --> 49:08.773 [SPEAKER_00]: He was in a adrenaline rush, I think, yeah, they call it, you know, Jimmy Hendrix wrote about that in purple haze. 49:10.155 --> 49:14.260 [SPEAKER_00]: So the case goes to the jury and what's the verdict? 49:15.482 --> 49:20.449 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he's ultimately a quitted of all violent crime charges. 49:20.489 --> 49:24.415 [SPEAKER_01]: He's only convicted of possessing 49:25.205 --> 49:27.749 [SPEAKER_01]: only possessing the gun unlawfully. 49:27.950 --> 49:36.805 [SPEAKER_01]: He's not even convicted of the possession of a few guns he had at his house that are sort of widely believed. 49:36.825 --> 49:45.179 [SPEAKER_01]: There's no dispute that there is, but he wasn't convicted of those only the one that he used on the train, which was really hard to disprove or not believe. 49:45.259 --> 49:50.588 [SPEAKER_01]: He's seen using a gun in public, he admits to using a gun in public. 49:50.990 --> 49:59.025 [SPEAKER_01]: Four young men have bullet holes in him from the gun he possessed in public that we know he didn't have a license for it was sort of open and shut and the jury resolved back 50:00.254 --> 50:06.762 [SPEAKER_00]: You spoke to the jurors, some of the jurors, at least, the jury were too black and ten white. 50:06.942 --> 50:08.924 [SPEAKER_00]: And what was the gender mix again? 50:09.565 --> 50:10.366 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was something. 50:10.386 --> 50:18.476 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was, but I think the bigger the bigger or fact of the jury is it six had been victims of crime before three had been victims of crime on the subway. 50:19.137 --> 50:28.388 [SPEAKER_01]: And Wapels felt when he saw the jury, the prosecutor-grader Wapels felt that it was a fool's errand even by the trying the case, because he knew they were just going to be sympathetic to cats. 50:28.587 --> 50:36.038 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is that because using his forecaws and preemptory challenges, he couldn't get rid of crime victims. 50:36.078 --> 50:47.355 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've tried a lot of cases as a public defender, and when you're trying a case where someone is a crime victim and you raise your hand, who has been victim of a crime, generally speaking, 50:47.335 --> 50:50.960 [SPEAKER_00]: if you have a big enough jury pool, those people get excused. 50:51.721 --> 50:54.205 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, how did he end up with that jury? 50:54.465 --> 50:57.910 [SPEAKER_01]: Because New York City in 1984, there's nobody left. 50:57.950 --> 50:59.052 [SPEAKER_01]: There's nobody left. 50:59.092 --> 51:11.149 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, and I think the better example is at the time that Gats walked in for jury selection at the beginning of the trial about, you know, a few dozen prospective jurors applaud it, broke out to a pool. 51:11.129 --> 51:34.808 [SPEAKER_01]: So, there was just such energy around him as a defendant that, yes, it was hard for, yes, he got 12 people who could nominally say, of course I would put my personal feelings aside and judge this case fairly, but in the end he felt that they were inherently pro-defent, defendant in this case and he just didn't like what he saw. 51:35.362 --> 51:38.331 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's take our second break and I want to ask you a couple of questions. 51:38.371 --> 51:40.117 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to go a little bit longer than an hour. 51:40.157 --> 51:45.895 [SPEAKER_00]: To my listeners, they say yes or what's new, but let's take our second break and we'll come right back. 51:54.633 --> 51:55.134 [SPEAKER_00]: We're back. 51:55.154 --> 51:57.879 [SPEAKER_00]: We're talking with Elliott Williams about his terrific book. 51:58.620 --> 51:59.322 [SPEAKER_00]: Five bullets. 51:59.642 --> 52:15.932 [SPEAKER_00]: We have a jury verdict in the Bernard Gets shooting and he's acquitted of everything except for a simple possession of a firearm without a permit and the jury. 52:15.912 --> 52:21.367 [SPEAKER_00]: seems to feel that that was that was a fair verdict based on your interviews with them. 52:21.648 --> 52:22.651 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what they said. 52:22.911 --> 52:30.833 [SPEAKER_00]: But one thing that I was interested in talking about, which you raised earlier, which is the matter of race didn't 52:31.353 --> 52:38.421 [SPEAKER_00]: seem to factor into their deliberations and you I think make the point that you're not so sure about that. 52:38.461 --> 52:45.289 [SPEAKER_00]: You think you think there was a greater racial overlay to this, maybe subroso or something. 52:45.729 --> 52:47.571 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but so talk about race. 52:47.892 --> 52:48.913 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, to me it's in this case. 52:49.053 --> 52:50.254 [SPEAKER_01]: It's undeniable now. 52:50.555 --> 52:54.559 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I just think, you know, there's a I think it's a 52:56.024 --> 53:06.128 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a gross misconception that people are fully able to set aside their sort of racial biases and sort of what's kicking around the back of their brains. 53:06.168 --> 53:11.080 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, of course, of course, no juror. 53:11.060 --> 53:16.727 [SPEAKER_01]: comes in the jury room and says, I hate black people or wish for these black black kids to get their come up in. 53:17.448 --> 53:22.014 [SPEAKER_01]: Or I want to equip this man because he is a white man. 53:22.674 --> 53:30.003 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not that binary and not that simple, but you can't tell me that there was not an undeniable racial backdrop to this case. 53:30.104 --> 53:36.932 [SPEAKER_01]: I think something that came up in many interviews that I did for the book and certainly 53:38.363 --> 53:54.010 [SPEAKER_01]: voices across the racial spectrum, when critical of how the media were covering the case, would often say, look, imagine if the races of these individuals were flipped, imagine if this was the story of 53:53.990 --> 54:03.467 [SPEAKER_01]: a black man, a black adult shooting for white teenagers and the reaction from the public, the jury, everything else, just what the gut reaction would have been very, very different. 54:03.667 --> 54:09.197 [SPEAKER_01]: And I challenge anyone to deny that because I just think it's undeniable. 54:09.177 --> 54:28.755 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, again, they all pledge to put their overt racial biases aside, of course, and you know, God bless them for doing that, but I just think, one cannot then make the next sentence that, come on, there's no racial backdrop to the case, and we would have judged it exactly the same way if the races were reversed, that is just simply not true. 54:29.039 --> 54:34.887 [SPEAKER_00]: certainly absolutely true what you say in respect to the media coverage of it. 54:35.308 --> 54:46.985 [SPEAKER_00]: We've seen this in every shooting from George Floyd's murder to all the other victims of police shooting it just gets covered differently. 54:47.005 --> 54:49.208 [SPEAKER_00]: But what does one bring? 54:49.188 --> 55:11.553 [SPEAKER_00]: in terms of Gets himself, if Gets is approached by four members of the Gets from West Side Story, or Yakutsa, Japanese organized crime, or Hell's Angels, summing all those people, well the Japanese are Japanese, the Hell's Angels, and the Gets from West Side Story are white. 55:11.573 --> 55:13.575 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think he doesn't shoot? 55:13.555 --> 55:16.640 [SPEAKER_01]: That's just such a tortured hypothetical. 55:16.660 --> 55:25.456 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, those are all organized street gangs in a way that, and, you know, not no disrespect to the jets and their dancing abilities, but they literally were a street gang. 55:25.516 --> 55:31.887 [SPEAKER_01]: And this was, you know, I think it's just hard to make that comparison to particularly Yakuza. 55:31.907 --> 55:35.333 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's an organized crime syndicate. 55:35.353 --> 55:37.437 [SPEAKER_01]: I just think this is different than 55:37.417 --> 55:39.660 [SPEAKER_01]: a bunch of teenagers who are goofing around. 55:40.121 --> 55:51.356 [SPEAKER_01]: It's certainly causing some measure of threat or discomfort to the people around them, but I think that it's a big leap to then get to international criminal syndicates. 55:51.376 --> 55:55.982 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I don't know what he does in the same circumstance, but uh, but 55:55.962 --> 56:03.959 [SPEAKER_01]: you know, just just looking at number one his own unambiguous statements about race and to the unmistakable realities about race in America. 56:04.019 --> 56:04.861 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just hard to know. 56:04.901 --> 56:15.143 [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to believe that some measure of bias isn't kicking around where our gets his brain as it's kicking around in any of the rest of us, ours. 56:15.684 --> 56:16.165 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 56:16.145 --> 56:23.437 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, I raised this hypothetical, and yes, these are organized crime gangs, Yakutsa, and Hell's Angels, and the jets. 56:23.978 --> 56:32.112 [SPEAKER_00]: But I raised it from the standpoint of would he have acted the same way in the face of 56:32.092 --> 56:39.643 [SPEAKER_00]: this anticipated assault were the perpetrators in his mind, not black. 56:39.663 --> 56:41.125 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I was just trying to do. 56:41.145 --> 56:42.487 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, and it's hard to say. 56:42.507 --> 56:48.957 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's just hard to say and given how quickly these decisions are made, it's just hard to say. 56:48.977 --> 57:01.575 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, wow, I just all I know is what we know about him, what he said about the young man afterward, what he said before, when he said about black people, 57:01.555 --> 57:03.519 [SPEAKER_01]: it's just it's just so complex. 57:03.579 --> 57:17.665 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think part of why wrote the book is that any of these issues or any of these people can be reduced to caricatures or even the story can be reduced to being something that we just understand and it's it's all so much more layered and complex than that I think. 57:17.685 --> 57:22.113 [SPEAKER_00]: On the topic of race, this case could have we saw this in Rodney King. 57:22.413 --> 57:24.357 [SPEAKER_00]: This case could have been brought 57:24.455 --> 57:27.358 [SPEAKER_00]: by the feds as a hate crime. 57:28.319 --> 57:31.762 [SPEAKER_00]: Giuliani is the U.S. attorney and God knows he liked publicity. 57:32.303 --> 57:34.405 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, what was what was their decision? 57:34.705 --> 57:38.629 [SPEAKER_00]: What was the basis for their declining to go for this case? 57:38.649 --> 57:45.116 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and you know, I have a chapter in the book Five Volts about sharp and young Al sharp in meeting with young Rudy Giuliani. 57:45.376 --> 57:48.960 [SPEAKER_01]: They were both up in ambitious, up in coming young man. 57:48.940 --> 57:57.191 [SPEAKER_01]: At this point, they did not bring a federal civil rights case because they could not, and this is exactly what you and I were just talking about a moment ago. 57:57.231 --> 58:00.836 [SPEAKER_01]: That's why they couldn't, yeah, they couldn't establish racial animus. 58:01.357 --> 58:18.019 [SPEAKER_01]: No matter what Bernard gets in the set in the past or whatever might have been the media response, depending on different cases, depending on how they might have seen a different case, one cannot with any certainty that could be proven in court established that he did so, 58:17.999 --> 58:21.143 [SPEAKER_01]: with the degree of racial bias or animus. 58:21.204 --> 58:37.206 [SPEAKER_01]: By way of example, the case in Georgia from a few years ago, a Mod Arbery being shot by a few men in Georgia, literally the man stands over him and uses the N word after shooting. 58:37.186 --> 58:48.686 [SPEAKER_01]: Amad Arbery, you know, is a sort of a young man who was jogging through a neighborhood, and they thought he was there to steal, and so they ran him down, and they pick up truck shot him with a shotgun, and then again, when he's on the ground, using the inward. 58:49.287 --> 58:57.060 [SPEAKER_01]: That's the kind of case that one can typically establish under federal civil rights law as animated or motivated by race. 58:57.120 --> 59:00.426 [SPEAKER_01]: It was just far more tenuous here, and authorities couldn't do it. 59:01.013 --> 59:15.290 [SPEAKER_00]: And there was, you know, because there was another case, a similar Marine who strangled to death, African-American homeless guy on the train, and he too gets acquitted of that charge. 59:15.390 --> 59:15.570 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. 59:16.111 --> 59:19.595 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's Daniel Penny and Jordan Neale, Daniel Penny, the X Marine. 59:19.615 --> 59:21.978 [SPEAKER_01]: Now again, and I talked about this a little bit in the book Five Balls. 59:22.458 --> 59:24.861 [SPEAKER_01]: The tricky thing, 59:24.841 --> 59:42.377 [SPEAKER_01]: There, one, well, the interesting thing, not just tricky is the case that governs the definition of reasonable this, you might be familiar with it, ladies and gentlemen, it's state versus gets right because it's it ultimately sat the law on when someone's actions are reasonable. 59:42.813 --> 59:54.724 [SPEAKER_01]: In a similar vein, Jordan nearly, who had been mentally ill, got on the train was yelling, threatened people on Daniel Panney, ultimately put him in a chokehold. 59:55.785 --> 59:59.108 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I don't know if he threatened people, people felt threatened by him. 59:59.148 --> 01:00:00.709 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's use the correct language. 01:00:00.989 --> 01:00:04.432 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you know, Panney came up behind him, put him in a chokehold, and ultimately killed him. 01:00:04.833 --> 01:00:06.154 [SPEAKER_01]: He was acquitted too. 01:00:06.995 --> 01:00:12.820 [SPEAKER_01]: The interesting thing there, this is something that, you know, I talked about with Al Sharpton 01:00:12.800 --> 01:00:26.774 [SPEAKER_01]: is that their cell phone videos and the jury could ultimately partly ground their decision on what they saw on video, which you just did not have in the bird, gets case and there remains so much ambiguity about it all. 01:00:27.436 --> 01:00:30.403 [SPEAKER_01]: Over the fact that we just simply don't know. 01:00:30.788 --> 01:00:38.404 [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody really knows what happened, just because of how muddy the memories are and how fraught and emotional the whole case plus. 01:00:39.747 --> 01:00:41.430 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to talk about the aftermath. 01:00:42.272 --> 01:00:46.521 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with his 2004 interview with Nancy Grace. 01:00:47.904 --> 01:00:51.531 [SPEAKER_00]: She asks him, Did you ever 01:00:51.511 --> 01:01:15.663 [SPEAKER_00]: wish that you just gave them the $5 and his answer is I think it would have been a better thing for me in my life if I had just given him the money even though they might have pushed me around and beat me up for a while but then he adds, I think it was good for New York City what happened was very good for New York City because it forced them to address crime. 01:01:16.043 --> 01:01:18.767 [SPEAKER_00]: What 01:01:18.747 --> 01:01:28.198 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, even more than Nancy Gray's interview, my own conversation with him when I interviewed him, it's he is not, he has not learned the art of self reflection in these decades since the shooting. 01:01:28.258 --> 01:01:39.071 [SPEAKER_01]: If anything, he's unrepentant about it and thinks that he committed an act of public service when I asked him, how do you, you know, do you, I literally said, do you think you did something good with the shooting, you can make it a public service? 01:01:39.151 --> 01:01:41.694 [SPEAKER_01]: He said, those guys need a shooting. 01:01:42.114 --> 01:01:43.916 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not what I shot them, but they needed to be shot. 01:01:43.996 --> 01:01:44.837 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's his view. 01:01:45.118 --> 01:01:47.100 [SPEAKER_01]: And he believes that 01:01:47.080 --> 01:02:00.044 [SPEAKER_01]: One, he was the catalyst, like you said, for fixing public safety in New York, but also that almost in a eugenic sense, and this was the most troubling thing about interviewing him, that just some people need to go, and that's his view. 01:02:00.084 --> 01:02:01.647 [SPEAKER_01]: And, 01:02:02.234 --> 01:02:30.874 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the thing that struck me the most about interviewing Bernard Gets is that I just would have thought that any individual who had been at the center of a notorious violent action, even if they felt it was justified, might say, look, those guys threatened me, they were scary, they were thugs, I was scared, and I did what I did, comma, however, it's a tragedy, what happened there, and anytime someone's hurt, it's something tragic and sad, 01:02:30.854 --> 01:02:40.341 [SPEAKER_01]: No, he's sort of dug in on this and really does believe that those guys really had it coming and I had to do what I had to do. 01:02:41.317 --> 01:02:44.561 [SPEAKER_00]: There are a couple of aftermaths that I want to follow up on. 01:02:45.602 --> 01:02:48.725 [SPEAKER_00]: Most interesting to me, or not most interesting to me, the whole book was interesting to me. 01:02:49.266 --> 01:02:51.388 [SPEAKER_00]: But one thing that I knew, nothing about it. 01:02:51.428 --> 01:02:58.376 [SPEAKER_00]: The reason one of the reasons I love this podcast is that I learn new things, things that I thought I knew and they realized, well, I didn't know that. 01:02:58.857 --> 01:03:04.343 [SPEAKER_00]: And that which I didn't know anything about was sort of the rise of the NRA. 01:03:04.403 --> 01:03:07.186 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in relation to this case. 01:03:07.206 --> 01:03:10.750 [SPEAKER_01]: So, Sam, you tell us about that? 01:03:10.730 --> 01:03:21.924 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I knew the story and, you know, in becoming one of the world's foremost experts on the Bernard Getshooting, I sort of knew a lot and know who which meant us out about it. 01:03:21.944 --> 01:03:40.348 [SPEAKER_01]: I did not know this fact when I started the reporting of the book and this fascinating that the NRA really up until the mid to late-ish 1970s was about boy scouts and skeet shooting and target practice and summer camp 01:03:40.328 --> 01:03:41.549 [SPEAKER_01]: in the United States. 01:03:41.910 --> 01:03:44.272 [SPEAKER_01]: It was not a second amendment advocacy organization. 01:03:44.292 --> 01:04:07.635 [SPEAKER_01]: There was a literal coup within the organization where it got taken over by an activist wing that literally took the organization over at its annual convention in Cincinnati one year and just ousted the whole board 01:04:07.615 --> 01:04:13.409 [SPEAKER_01]: fighters for the belief that guns are a civil if not God given right. 01:04:14.171 --> 01:04:17.941 [SPEAKER_01]: And really took the realization over, gets his case happened a few years after that. 01:04:17.981 --> 01:04:20.427 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was the perfect public. 01:04:22.077 --> 01:04:24.160 [SPEAKER_01]: test case for who they were. 01:04:24.180 --> 01:04:27.604 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is exactly the kinds of things that we were talking about the beginning of the interview, Michael, that they were. 01:04:28.205 --> 01:04:32.090 [SPEAKER_01]: He Bernard Gets was law, regardless of how kooky he was. 01:04:32.150 --> 01:04:44.406 [SPEAKER_01]: And the, and the NRA very quickly picked up that this man was quite kooky, but he was a law-biting white citizen of a, who paid his taxes and voted. 01:04:44.386 --> 01:04:59.897 [SPEAKER_01]: who lived in a blue city in a blue state had tried to get a gun license had been denied a gun license and had been at least once the victim of a violent crime and potentially another one on the day he's so all of the variables for 01:05:00.147 --> 01:05:08.863 [SPEAKER_01]: a perfect test case were we're adjusted for there and they really latched on to it and ultimately ended up giving him $40,000 for his for his defense. 01:05:09.424 --> 01:05:15.355 [SPEAKER_00]: It's so interesting that they they migrate this way and and 01:05:15.335 --> 01:05:23.465 [SPEAKER_00]: It raises for me the second last question, which is, what do you see as the throughline from get to where we are today? 01:05:23.485 --> 01:05:35.841 [SPEAKER_00]: There are lots of different things, there's the Reagan crackdown on crime, there's this NRA, there's the birth of right wing sensationalist media, but when you look at the throughline from the 01:05:35.821 --> 01:05:36.982 [SPEAKER_00]: then to now. 01:05:37.363 --> 01:05:38.204 [SPEAKER_00]: What strikes you? 01:05:38.244 --> 01:05:44.131 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think one America has always been fascinated with vigilantes. 01:05:44.411 --> 01:06:00.310 [SPEAKER_01]: That is, you know, we've talked about Luigi Mangeo in a lot of those that I wouldn't say his name again, but Kyle Rittenhouse is the name we haven't said yet, and someone who ultimately 01:06:00.290 --> 01:06:03.674 [SPEAKER_01]: killing and wounding, seriously wounding people. 01:06:03.814 --> 01:06:24.660 [SPEAKER_01]: Like that's just when people believe and it's much easier to do now in our world with the internet, social media, whatever else, it's easy to lift, lift up these violent acts and ultimately America has long been a vigilante nation, consider, you know, I made a reference to death wish and the fantasy around these folks, typically white men, 01:06:24.640 --> 01:06:28.073 [SPEAKER_01]: who can engage in violent acts and be celebrated for them. 01:06:28.093 --> 01:06:34.195 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mentioned Jordan Neale and Daniel Penny, you know, Daniel Penny ends up 01:06:35.221 --> 01:06:45.960 [SPEAKER_01]: in Donald Trump's box at the Army Navy football game, like three days after he's acquitted, and then he gets a job offer from Andrews and Harowitz, the venture capital from within a couple of weeks. 01:06:46.020 --> 01:06:54.435 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is just simply by virtue of having, trying to kill somebody and getting acquitted for it, that's what made him a celebrity. 01:06:54.455 --> 01:06:57.060 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think the joelante point, I think, 01:06:57.040 --> 01:07:02.387 [SPEAKER_01]: anger by media is also something that makes America America. 01:07:02.468 --> 01:07:26.541 [SPEAKER_01]: We have long been whipped up by the stories we see in here and that happened in this case here and then of course finally just this idea that all of these stories that we grow up knowing and embracing and learning the realities and facts of are just far more complex people or far more complex and that's not 01:07:26.707 --> 01:07:31.655 [SPEAKER_01]: an ode to burn against being a nice guy or anybody that I'd want to socialize with or anything like that. 01:07:31.735 --> 01:07:37.103 [SPEAKER_01]: But he's complicated and these are all complicated figures in a profound tragedy. 01:07:38.185 --> 01:07:43.753 [SPEAKER_00]: You write at the end that the gets acquittal may have been legally 01:07:43.801 --> 01:07:52.651 [SPEAKER_00]: technically, legally, defensible, but not just supported by law, but not morality. 01:07:52.692 --> 01:08:04.706 [SPEAKER_00]: And you add that it falls on all of us as engaged member of the public to ensure that our laws and systems best serve and evolving society. 01:08:04.726 --> 01:08:08.290 [SPEAKER_00]: If that was brilliant writing, so let's take us out on that. 01:08:08.759 --> 01:08:14.415 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I would start by going to the sentence before that, which is that most people. 01:08:15.442 --> 01:08:22.912 [SPEAKER_01]: would not let someone who'd been accused of sexually molesting a child, but not convicted of it to babysit their children, right? 01:08:23.393 --> 01:08:25.796 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they haven't been convicted. 01:08:25.836 --> 01:08:32.365 [SPEAKER_01]: However, we have made a moral judgment about them, regardless of what the outcome of a legal case might be. 01:08:32.445 --> 01:08:39.475 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just think it's easy and we get very reductive and it's complicated, but we get very reductive about 01:08:39.455 --> 01:08:44.471 [SPEAKER_01]: when people, what's the difference between someone being just accused of a crime or convicted of a crime or whatever else? 01:08:44.491 --> 01:08:47.541 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, yes, Bernard Gats, you're, uh, 01:08:47.960 --> 01:08:51.865 [SPEAKER_01]: was lucky and blessed to have been acquitted of a crime. 01:08:52.446 --> 01:08:53.547 [SPEAKER_01]: And it doesn't end there. 01:08:53.607 --> 01:09:02.558 [SPEAKER_01]: We can still draw judgments about him personally or about the axiom gaged in and is not sorry for today. 01:09:02.578 --> 01:09:10.468 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just think merely the fact of his acquittal, which we ought to support and celebrate, yay, people get acquitted of crimes. 01:09:10.508 --> 01:09:12.370 [SPEAKER_01]: That's the way our system is built. 01:09:12.471 --> 01:09:17.697 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a wonderful thing. 01:09:17.677 --> 01:09:32.119 [SPEAKER_01]: either, you know, conviction is itself a sign of moral failing, or that one's acquittal is an absolute exoneration or absolving of one's body of sins. 01:09:32.300 --> 01:09:43.617 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just think this gets back to the things that gets says to me, almost even now when when he engages with me, it's this idea that by being acquitted somehow, 01:09:43.799 --> 01:09:45.061 [SPEAKER_01]: it makes everything go away. 01:09:45.101 --> 01:09:45.982 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just think it doesn't. 01:09:46.283 --> 01:09:46.743 [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't. 01:09:46.864 --> 01:09:57.079 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a story that caused and causes a lot of pain for many people that hurt several people one irreparably. 01:09:57.159 --> 01:10:00.344 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just think it's far too simple to say, well, it's fine. 01:10:00.384 --> 01:10:08.676 [SPEAKER_01]: The law based on some convoluted notion of 01:10:10.225 --> 01:10:21.869 [SPEAKER_00]: and to reiterate what you wrote, as engaged members of the public, we are duty bound to ensure that our laws and systems best serve in evolving society. 01:10:21.909 --> 01:10:29.685 [SPEAKER_00]: So morality, I think, has to play a larger role without a doubt in this whole saga. 01:10:29.918 --> 01:10:33.101 [SPEAKER_00]: Elliott Williams, thank you so much for appearing with me today. 01:10:33.121 --> 01:10:34.262 [SPEAKER_00]: The book is five bullets. 01:10:34.342 --> 01:10:37.184 [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's it's a wonderful read. 01:10:37.204 --> 01:10:37.665 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you. 01:10:37.725 --> 01:10:38.285 [SPEAKER_01]: That's okay. 01:10:38.305 --> 01:10:39.566 [SPEAKER_01]: There's always great talk to you, Michael. 01:10:39.586 --> 01:10:40.087 [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much. 01:10:41.068 --> 01:10:45.091 [SPEAKER_00]: Join us next week when we're speaking with Graden Carter about his memoir. 01:10:45.391 --> 01:10:50.616 [SPEAKER_00]: When the going was good, in editors adventures during the last golden age of magazines. 01:10:51.637 --> 01:10:59.824 [SPEAKER_00]: That said, is produced by Compro and the Museum of Public Relations. 01:11:00.563 --> 01:11:06.975 [SPEAKER_00]: The music by Sam Post, please address any comments to that said zeldon at gmail.com. 01:11:07.696 --> 01:11:15.150 [SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoy this podcast, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast app to help more people find us. 01:11:15.731 --> 01:11:20.800 [SPEAKER_01]: For that said, I'm Michael zeldon.