The First Internet Murder Trial (ft David Nickola)

0:06 Hello, this is Arthur Bush. Thank you for joining us at Radio Free Flint. Today's podcast is about the Cherie Miller case, people vs. Sheree Miller. It was a murder that happened in 2000 in Genesee County and in Clough, Michigan. I have the trial attorney that tried that case to verdict, and I, of course, was the prosecutor in that case. We've decided, uh, in light of recent national publicity on 2020 and uh Dateline and other outlets, we'd decide to do our own panel discussion and fill you in on what we feel uh really happened in this case.

0:49 So join us. This is the first true crime broadcast we've had in quite some time, and I hope you enjoy it! This is David Nicola, who is a super lawyer from Flint, Michigan.

1:38 Welcome, David, to Radio Free Flint. Welcome, Art. Thanks for having me. And I must say, after all these years, uh we're actually not fighting. Yes, that's correct. We're on the same team now. Yet, welcome, by the way. We had a case, it was People vs. Sheree Miller, and it obviously turned into a national media frenzy on Court TV and the Good Morning America. These all these different uh networks were covering it because it was uh so salacious at the time, uh, because there was videos set back and forth from her to her uh friend that she had uh allegedly conspired with to kill her husband.

2:20 So uh she's started this affair, and but this was the this was the very beginning of chat rooms and the very beginning and the very essence of non-commercial use of the internet, and uh this was right in the heart of it. So there's a lot of new things happening, and it was uh, you know, the technical stuff. There's there weren't a lot of experts at that time uh that weren't teaching at schools or whatnot. And so it it was really fresh, new, very salacious, naughty. People like that stuff, but it was serious too, because uh uh an individual was murdered, her husband, and it uh you know, it became the oh, she did it, that type of thing. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't.

3:01 And there was a lot of evidence on each end that went both ways. And quite frankly, uh, as this matter went along, uh in the conclusion of it, the jury was split between men and women, uh, right down the middle. And uh the men were voting to acquit, and the women were uh didn't like her. So the case we're talking about is people versus Sheree Miller in Genesee County Circuit Court. It was tried uh in front of uh Judge Judith Judith A. Fullerton, a circuit judge. I just happened to be the prosecuting attorney. David was the defense attorney, as things would turn out. I did not try the case, I put the case together as it was rolling long, uh, and then uh assigned a team of lawyers to work on it.

3:49 And we worked together throughout the case uh until the verdict came back. So it's unusual to see the prosecuting attorney on one side and the defense attorney on the other chatting about this case that they both handled, but there are some unusual developments this past week. David, why don't you tell us what those developments were? They they re redid in this case on 2020, and it's been many, many years, over a decade. And before that, Dateline did a couple hours special on it as well. So we're talking about network TV, national TV. ABC is 2020, and I think Dateline is NBC, correct? Yeah, yeah. And the trial was uh filmed, or or at least it was uh projected uh in the courtroom, and that was at that was at the height of court TV, and they played the whole trial, and every year on New Year's Day was like their biggest trial, and they played that over about three times or four times every January first.

4:48 Yes, there was a lot of people watching the television show, but they've they just replayed it over and over again, so new audience members didn't know what happened. So I they they liked that part about it. Well, they actually covered it gavel to gavel, yeah, and live. And uh in those days, uh it wasn't uncommon to have our trials covered gavel to gavel by even the local media. Sheree Miller was an interesting defendant, and this is an interesting case for a lot of reasons. Number one is it's everybody's interested in uh who did it and why, and it also has sex, it has jealousy as a motive, it has all the all the ingredients, you know, manipulation, love, love.

5:36 I don't know if love was in this. She did profess love in her confession letter. Uh, but it's it's an interesting case because it contains all these elements that uh Dave and I have seen over many years in homicide cases in Flint. And there was something weird about this case. And the weird part was back then, David, a young lawyer who had quite a bit of experience at the time he tried this case, emails. We didn't use emails, we're the documents. So we're taught in law school and how to how to make sure this document's often authentic. And so we learned all the procedures about how to prove that something should be considered as truth by the jury, as as uh that has veracity.

6:26 And uh this case presented a whole different wrinkle to it, which was email. Talk about that for a second, David, because that really set this trial off in a direction that I didn't want it to go. Yeah, yeah. Well, well, we we now know, and we we were learning at the time and was progressing, that uh you know, you do you could do an email and uh someone would send something as much as like, hi Dave, this is art. And on my end, when you send that, I could change whatever you wanted, it's didn't want to say, or I could put anything in there, I could put a whole paragraph in and it would be associated with you. And that was really dangerous for some people because if they're out there playing around and uh poking around, or maybe adulterous uh situations going, uh, people could really add enhance to something and maybe get get them to say maybe things that they didn't want to say, or you know, really get put somebody in in a bundle because they could uh basically blackmail them.

7:22 Correct. And besides making up their own story, at that time we had no concept of what cyberspace was, and and the email process to prove it's authentic, you have to show that that person that touched those keys is the same person who sent that thing that went into your email box. You remember that when the showing that process in between sending it and when it was received, and when the police then forensically took a laptop and discovered the emails, you had to show this thing's bouncing all and it bounces all over the world, right?

8:05 Right. Was that difficult for you? Well, I I hired an expert uh who is a Michigan State uh young professor, and uh he he went through and did the whole analysis of the of the software because the uh law enforcement and your office obtained that, and that was uh vitally important in this case. But the same situation with the on my point was is exactly what you said. Somebody can write anything in. At that time, there were no safeguards, so I could just say hi, and you could put in anything you want from me. And when we're dealing with somebody who is like this, and they have this relationship and you know, back and forth, it was this torrid relationship. Sometimes it was great, sometimes they were fighting, all sorts of things like that.

8:49 You just wondered, is this real? Because she was acting like she was assaulted by a whole bunch of people that her husband made her do. It just it didn't seem realistic, and there was no evidence really of it, but you could take a picture and pretend, you know, use it to make up and show that you're all beat up by your husband, which which occurred in this particular case, and it really didn't happen. It really didn't happen. And I I was looking at this like, wow, this thing is uh this thing is so manipulatable. It's almost as if she sat in the in the dark recesses of her home and constructed a narrative for this fabulous soap opera. Yeah. Well, she met she met Jerry first. Uh he was uh he had some problems, used to be a police officer, he lost his job doing that.

9:32 He was drinking a lot. That's no one's gonna argue with that. Okay, Jerry Cassidy was his name. Jerry Cassidy, yeah. And and that's how they met out in Reno. She took a weekend with the girls, and her husband went down to watch the NASCAR uh in Vegas. And so she ended up meeting him, and it was the tour to fair, you know, basically. And that's where it started. And the emails that were subsequently back and forth were just like uh out of like a book, you know, a Harlequin romance type of thing. Some of it was nice and some of it was dirty, and some of it was filthy. And that was one of my concerns. You know, we had uh it was split. There was uh women and men on this, and some good people, you know. I saw some some crosses on some of the women's uh come out of their sweater wearing their their crucifix.

10:15 And I thought, man, this is gonna get this. We got to be real careful about who we get put on this jury because so you weren't looking, you weren't looking for the little old lady with blue hair from the first Baptist church of Mount Morris. No, no, that's but but guess what? We went through all of our choices basically to pick a jury, and that's we when you get down to the nitty-gritty, you only have a few picks left, and you can't just kick somebody off because there weren't a crucifix. So we had it, we had uh some some home moms, home moms that did have those crucifix, and I had to talk to them about it. You know, here I am from Powers Catholic High School, and I gotta walk a fine line to make sure that they don't get offended because likely they're gonna be on the jury because we were down to just one pick uh to pick off out of a crowd.

11:00 Uh that's how the process works. So it was uh walking on a minefield that uh we didn't know where the mines were. Well, let me come back to the jury here in a second, but uh let's lay out the facts of this case a little more as we're we're talking. One of the things, one of the things that I did want to say was not only was it on television and these what we call news magazines, a lifetime movie was made of this. It was a movie made from uh a best-selling book. So the script came from from the book, I believe, and then it became a movie on television on the Lifetime Channel. Uh, this is cases just had, as you mentioned, the regular press.

11:42 I'm talking TV, radio, newspaper magazines have just been uh relentless and not wanting to give this case up to the great gods in the sky. But what happened is essentially is he committed suicide and uh he lived in, as I recall, it was Kansas City. He left a handwritten note, and that note was essentially a suicide note, which laid out his relationship with Shri Miller as well as his involvement in this homicide uh of her husband, uh, which occurred in Flint, Michigan, actually in Clio, Michigan.

12:24 He had come to Michigan at her insistence, that he came to Michigan and they discussed killing their husband. Uh, and there's a lot in between all that. The case was assigned to the Genesee County Sheriff's Department, was investigated there by a couple of detectives, Kevin Chanlon and Ives Betrovka, who later became an investigator for the Attorney General's office, and he was an expert in uh cybercrime or a computer crime, and that really was how he got involved in this case. Tell us about your experience, David, with picking that jury. What we did, you know, I wanted to have people that were real and sort of had some involvement in the internet.

13:10 Some people didn't, some people did, but that way they would have a concept that you can really live whatever you want to live, be whatever you want to be. And just because you're not being truthful doesn't mean you're a bad person. You're just enjoying the benefits of having this new creation. So you can be Superman to women, or they can be uh, you know, beautiful Daisy May, and in reality they're not, but they're just seeing pictures. And uh, but they like that there was this the the honeymoon of this thing was it started, was a lot of people using it for sexual sexual advances that never would happen. They never would meet up. It would just people would have multiple different people. Jerry Cassidy had multiple different women that he was flirting with and talking dirty with, and you know, there's even some gay porn on his uh his uh hard drive.

13:56 So I'm not sure what how that correlates to him or not, but it was on there. And uh so you you can really be whoever you wanted to. And if you had time on your hands, because most people have to work, but Cherie wasn't, you know, she's dabbling with some work and taking care of her kids, but also Jerry was out of work and he's living in his cousin's basement. And so they he had lots of time, you know, his hard drive showed his he's he was working other women too. And that's was a point I was trying to get at. If we're gonna play this game, this sexual game, because believe me, we couldn't even say this on the internet. Uh, but it was really uh really salacious stuff about what they wanted to do with each other here. You know, I said I during the trial when I was doing closing, I said that this material would make a pimp blush because it was that bad.

14:41 It was that bad. Well, when you were picking the jury, you actually had a man who was actually a member of the media, yes, was sitting in that jury pool and uh ended up in the box. Yes. And tell us about him. You can identify him by name, he's quite proud of his work. Oh, yeah, yeah. Michael Thorpe. And he was just interviewed uh on that uh special they had uh in 2020. You know, he's a charismatic guy, he was a newscaster, and then he was involved in the media for a long time and Boy Scout leader, just a good, really good guy. I I thought, well, from his TV persona, and and that goes to his real life because I met him privately away from uh you know uh the television.

15:24 Just he was a very good guy, a very straightforward guy. And uh I knew that there was, you know, that could be a problem, but it might not be a problem because I know he's fair. And we had exhausted a lot, and I was more concerned about some of these people that had deep religious uh tendencies, and they didn't seem like they really wanted to be there. I asked a few questions, but I left him on at the time. Um, and he was very friendly. Judge Fullerton, who was our presiding judge, she knew him well from media because these cases have media. And so she was smiling at him, not smiling at me, but smiling at him. And so I knew that there might be the possibility of something, but you know, the client approved leaving him on.

16:04 The attorney that tried the case on my side, which was Marcy Mann, came back and reported that he ended up on the jury because our prior conversations was if he's in that jury pool, we weren't too keen on him as a juror in the case, not because we didn't think he'd be particularly fair, but we thought that we could we knew him and and he had covered crime in Flint, so he he was gonna have some expertise that we were worried about, you know, him dominating the jury. So I indicated to her I wasn't real crazy about that idea, keeping him on a jury. When he finally was selected, I really had my doubts.

16:49 Uh, and it was only because when you put somebody like this on a jury, not that he couldn't be fair or impartial, but what he would become is uh he would dominate the jury, is what my fear was. So because of his special knowledge, because of his status in the community. Yeah. He always seemed to me to be a very fair guy in my previous uh meetings with him, sort of right right down the middle. Exactly what you said is exactly what I thought. Well, okay, uh there could be problems with that, and you don't want somebody who's so strong. And he's a religious man, and that can have a factor because I knew what was coming. All right. I knew it was coming, you people knew it was coming, you saw the pictures, you saw the video, you saw the back and forth with uh, you know, the information that uh, you know, at that time it was way out there, but now it's like everyday situations you'd see.

17:43 But but he eventually got to be on the jury and and as I thought, and I think you probably did too, he would become the guy in charge of the jury, basically. He was the only male that was uh that we had this problem because between he and the and the women on this, they all voted for a guilt to some degree. Yeah, I don't and I don't know what degree it was at that time because I think that uh the judge wanting to get this case over with, that they had been out for a long time. And we took this thing right up to Christmas Eve almost. We were Friday at 10 o'clock p.m., which is very unusual. They don't keep the courts open like that anymore. But at that time, the jury was out for several days and people were crying and screaming and yelling.

18:27 You know, I had a walked in the office of the Judge Fort's office, and I'd see a couple lawyers or maybe some staff members, you know, they can hear everything that's going on. You know that. We know that that goes on, and they're not supposed to do that. But uh that everyone was so interested in what's going on. But there was yelling and screaming, and they come out, some people crying. So I thought, well, okay, I figured that the men would think this guy's full of you know BS. He's just trying to get some uh you know free ride from a gal that my client pretended she had lots of money, her husband had lots of money, but they didn't. They were living a very uh, you know, he he had been married before and two other times. And so they just kind of crashed into each other and fell in love, and things were going great until this situation occurred.

19:10 And I think that was just like a fantasy that got pushed too far, and then they were all in on it. It's like your chips in Reno. You push your chips in there and you're all in. And that's what I think really happened to these two because it turned into something way different than a fantasy. The plot basically has this sort affair as its central focus, and Jerry Cassidy becomes sort of the forlorn lover at some point, doesn't he? He was dishonest with his own family too, because he's pretty broke. And he told his mother, could he borrow a flight to go see Cherie? Because he told her, he told the family all about her, and he didn't go into all the details about her being married and everything, but you know, he made it sound like she was, you know, Rolls-Royce material driving, and that that just wasn't the case, you know.

19:52 She's a Vermont Morris, you know, working at the auto uh race place, and you know, she's just had a little job time. She really liked that uh that whole sort of game, if you want to call it that. You know, she could she could dress up and look very professional because she did do some Mary K cosmetics. And so anyway, that's uh that she she came off like that, but he did say to his mom he needed 700 bucks to fly to Flint because Sri was having an abortion. And that that didn't that was not true. And this is before the that came out in and the stuff going back and forth on the emails. So he he had lied to his own mother, and we got into that trial, you know. So that was an important. I thought that was very important because if he's gonna lie to his mom for money, he's gonna lie to anybody about getting money.

20:35 I I didn't think that he was gonna be the one that would uh would would shoot him. Now she did uh she was uh extremely manipulative, and she described her husband uh to this Jerry as somebody that was in the mafia. Yeah. And then she went on to describe him as somebody who beat her, and who also once this affair started, she convinced that Jerry Cassidy that she was carrying his children. You recall that? Yes, yes, and I I can't remember if it was twins or just one kid that she made up. I thought it was twins, which was pretty fantabulous.

21:16 Yes, and then she takes a picture of herself and she says, Well, I just pooched my belly out or arched her back so her belly would look like she was actually pregnant, and then sent Cassidy in Kansas City a picture, and uh also she had bruises and all this, and she was I don't know where she got those, but Mary K Cosmetics. Uh she was said she she had her she had her access to him, and uh she she she admitted that even on television here recently that she used uh her makeup to make it look like bruises. This this sort of honeypot scenario that's playing out here that if he if he somehow does her does her bidding that you know there's this honeypot waiting over the rainbow for him, uh didn't quite materialize as as he thought.

22:09 The story, which I found shocking at the time, I still find it shocking, is that she had convinced uh Jerry Cassidy that her husband had done all these things to her and actually caused her to lose the child that she was make-believe pregnant with, and in order to try and enrage Cassidy because he thought that was his child or children. Yeah, there was it was getting a little too uh hokey, uh the way I saw it too, because uh, you know, he's not he's he's a he's an ex-cop. He knows what this what's going on, and I think that a lot of it turned into fantasy stuff they were both doing, and they both agreed. I mean, they were both having these fantasy conversations, and that was just way over the top.

22:53 And I think that I don't know, I don't think he bought that. I don't think he bought that. His mom, he's up there because she's having a baby, and that that wasn't even a part of any what anybody knew at the time. So he was lying to his mom just to get money to fly up there, and basically they hooked up for a weekend. Well, eventually he gets convinced to come to Flint with a gun, right? Well, that's uh that's how how it's laid out. I I don't I wasn't there personally, but I had some questions because you know this other suspect that I I brought into the thing, he and I had a brother that said that he killed him and he told him he killed him. I I had that going for me, which was damaging on your end, but I think they went through that and and and successfully cross-examined those folks to take that out at the trial.

23:37 But I was shocked uh because uh she was seeing this one fella and that he owed uh Bruce owed him some money, or it was vice versa. He owed Bruce money. So the argument was this guy killed Bruce uh because he didn't want to pay the debt. And so we put we put that in there too. So there was a multiple, there were multiple facets, positive for the prosecutor, positive for the defense attorney, but they all sort of they were also wrangled around the truth and what we thought the truth was, because both of these people had been lying back and forth to each other, but they also seemed very passionately connected. So it was like a scalpel, you had to take a really easy, easy cut there, because otherwise you're gonna cut yourself off as an attorney. Yeah, so you've got a plot going on in the plot, is you've got your alibi, somebody else did it, and you're deflecting.

24:25 But at the same time, it seems pretty apparent to me and to the jury that Cassidy did in fact come to Flint and did shoot the husband at his place of business in Clyde. Cassidy drove his car all this way, allegedly, allegedly in a fit of rage. That was the story uh that the jury seemed to buy anyway. That's the basic fact, as they're alleged. You disputed some of this, obviously. It sounds like your strategy was to uh describe it in a different term, such as this was really make-believe and fantasy that got got out of control.

25:10 Was there some other theory that you had? Well, what it came down when it came down to I I've talked to some of the jurors, you know, one guy from who worked at the post office called me up and said I I didn't feel comfortable, even though I said guilty and all that. And I was like, Well, listen, I I'm not gonna get into that because you know, you never know if a juror is gonna be called back or something if something comes up. The the precipice of the conviction I think came when she demanded to uh take the stand. You know, I've won a lot of cases more than I've lost, and I haven't really lost many uh on the on the button. I didn't want her to take the stand. And I've won doing both of them. And I, you know, you when you're comfortable, I just think that the cross-examination uh showed some things, and they caught her in what they claimed was a lie, but there's a document that was written.

25:57 And that was really uh in my that was the real killer here in the case, uh, because it she couldn't explain it. That was a part of her image, you know. She thought she knew it all. You know, you should listen to your lawyer. You know, there's two kinds of lawyers, those who listen and those who lose witnesses why. And uh she wanted it, she wanted to get up there and testify and say I didn't do it, but that was a mistake. I didn't I didn't want her to. Because I thought we I thought we had an acquittal if we just rested the case back then, because things were going our way with the computer technology. Everything that was came at us was it we were able to push back on. But Marcy did a great job. I don't know if Peter helped out a little bit on that, but Marcy did a great job.

26:38 And it was a wonderful cross-examination, uh, you know, looking back on it, of course. But uh, she got her caught up and twisted around, and there was a couple of letters she forgot about exposure, and that uh that connected it. And I think that was really the most, I think if you ask the jurors, it was her taking the stand, because a couple of them told me that after the fact. They still fought about everything, but when it came right down to it, it was her testimony, it was a long testimony. She was she was not used to that. She she, you know, she she could do all this with other people and make people believe her. And but you know, jurors are sitting there and they're not happy that they're there. Christmas is coming up, they're getting stuff read to them. The judge allowed a couple of uh people from the sheriff's department to actually portray them.

27:20 And I had to jump up all the time and say, hey, they're accentuating it. Yeah, they're not just reading it like computers, you know. And I said, I said, judge, just let them read the stuff. We'll take a uh you know, half a day and let them read it because they don't have to do, they don't have to look at evidence, they don't have to, you know the rules, they don't have to rub it, push it down their throat, but but you know, and the gal is older and she's wearing a sheriff beat up outfit, and the guy's young and he's handsome, you know, he's a detective now there, but he was uh he was all dressed up in a nice suit, looking good. And I could I could just see the charisma oozing away from my case. And so I I when I with that going on there, I thought, well, I still can beat this thing easily, I thought, with just an argument, but she wanted to take it, she was convinced.

28:01 And I, you know, when your client says I want to do it, you can't say no. When people want to take the stand and they're accused of murder, it almost never works. Like it's not very often that somebody gets on the stand and in almost any kind of criminal case, you know, takes the stand and actually tells something to the jury. You know, you get some of these people like her, obviously, she's fairly narcissistic and manipulative, who think they can convince anybody of anything. Yeah, I've had clients that uh took the stand in these types, not this type of case, but basically when they're talking about what happened maybe on the street before they shot and killed somebody, they had the juries follow along in his acquittals.

28:45 However, there's so much information out there in writing and that could be associated with her and him. And even though I, you know, I could throw all these other women that he was dealing with, it wasn't to the extent that it was with this one. They were they were much more intimate with the conversations, and uh, you know, and these people are looking at it, and I could see some of those jurors with acoustic sticks on their sweater, just sitting up a little bit, uh perking up a little bit. And it was uh that that is not the same as what we did in the street. There's paperwork and paperwork and you know, on and on. And so it was just a matter of did she do it, did she not? And and there was a lot of circumstances. Jerry blamed her in a letter suicide note, and I think that that got to the that got to the jury.

29:29 And at one time, I think the appellate court threw it out. I tried to get it thrown out too, um, but the judge didn't for the trial. One judge in and and down in Wayne County, but it was a federal judge. I was there when she made the decision. She was released for several years. Sheree Miller gets convicted by the jury. Yes. She gets acquitted of the biggest count. Right. No possibility of parole. So she's got at least got parole opportunity. She doesn't get a life sentence, uh, a natural life sentence. But she does get convicted basically as of a second degree murder. So that carries any term of years up to in life. Early on in the case, we assessed the case and said there's hills and there's valleys in this case.

30:15 There's there's parts of this case that are going to be really on our side, probably would convict the jury or you know, convince the jury. And then as you pointed out, the holes in the case, there were many. Based on that, prosecutors generally weigh uh the value of getting a shirt conviction versus uh betting the farm on something and having somebody who's involved to the extent we thought she was in engineering a homicide. So we made here an offer of a 15-year. We communicated that to her lawyer, which would you that would be me, yes. Yes, and somehow her family and her forgot that someplace along the line.

31:00 I can tell you how this was encouraged by the uh by the offer because as you have done and I have done, you do trials, you you get a feel for juries, and you can tell a lot of things, uh, how they're acting, body, nonverbal communication and whatnot. And some people just flat out disgusted, shaking their heads, and that's some of that was going on there. So I uh I thought that uh she should take the deal because guess what? Had she taken that deal, she'd be out right now. Probably so. And she thought that this thing about making this stuff up about nobody told her that there was a plea offer, uh, was rather fantastical. Uh she had one member of her family going around the community trying to say that our office had been unreasonable, that I specifically was unreasonable in the handling of this case.

31:51 Well, when I reminded uh those who inquired, I said, Well, she had a path to walk, which was go to prison for some period of time or go to prison for all the time. I found it quite remarkable that she was going to say the lawyer never told me what the deal was. Yeah, yeah. Well, that that uh that was after we had lost communication and and I cut off communication. She had hired another lawyer uh for a lot of money and said that that guy screwed her. And at the court appointed appellate lawyers who did a very good job in this matter because they got her out of this thing at first.

32:32 I wasn't the lawyer, I just went down there to support. And and so she uh she had her back up against the wall, and so she did this uh on her own, but she blamed all the lawyers uh except her. Yeah, well, the jury convicts her, the jury convicts her on at least some of the evidence, if not all of it, that had been given by Cassidy's family to the police, because Cassidy left his computer sitting by his bed along with the note. And the computer was then examined by experts. That's how you got all this salacious material. And essentially it was a slow guilty plea on the on the chat logs if you believe they were true and you believe they were uh accurate.

33:14 That all creates this conundrum for judges who say, What's email? and I you know, I'm not used to this, and you know, and then it winds through the state system, and I think pretty much it was upheld. It was upheld, yes, and then she wanders into the federal court system at that point in 2009. She gets another trial because we used the the suicide note and then releases her. Yeah. The crime wasn't like, you know, she went shoplifting at Walmart yesterday. She poses a threat uh to a free society, as far as I'm concerned. So I'd never seen anything in 40 years of practice in law where somebody is releasing somebody who's charged with uh homicide.

33:59 Like I don't think the judge was the trial judge was happy either. Of course, she wasn't happy. Uh we went through a lot of stuff together, all of us, and uh and it was uh tough on everybody, tough on everybody, tough on your office, you know, it's and tough on on the defendant's end of the family. And you know, those people were good people, good family members that are, you know, just were you know held aghast because of you know what's going on there, and they have to sit there, but they're supporting their child who's an adult. Obviously they are. Uh the problem is is that it wasn't like she was acquitted, she was uh let loose on a technicality pending another trial. Yeah, I think the content, the content was a bit of a problem.

34:39 I mean, it was a big problem for me because I objected to it uh wholeheartedly. Because it's not, he just the the the only thing he said about her was, you know, I went there and shot and killed him and didn't say anything else. You know, there was a lot of room for him to say, I this is where I did with the shotgun. I threw it in the Odessa River or it's somewhere, back up what was written. And also he he went into a long paragraph, you know, talking about his son and I love you and dad's, you know, messed up in life, not not over this, but other failures. You know, my position was look at he's combining a lot of failures in his life that have nothing to do with his case. The jury shouldn't hear any of that. My point was to with the judges, like just put in where where he said that he went there and she did it, and she did it for him.

35:23 But putting in all that very sad stuff to his son and whatnot, uh, about hunting and this is our favorite hunting tree. And you know, that that was over the top, I thought. That was not about uh the guilt or innocence of this thing. And it and it really played. I think when the federal judge looked at it, said the same thing that I thought, which is that shouldn't be in there because that's uh it's inflammatory. He was making himself out to be a great guy when he wasn't. I mean, he really wasn't. We would say it's more prejudicial than probative, in other words, it didn't go to the opinion. We and and my team argued that it was uh circumstantial evidence that it that buttresses the rest of the evidence that we have.

36:03 Uh that's really what the legal give and take was. That was successful with the with the with the federal court of appeals, so they they set that aside. So exactly. She ends up coming back for round two. By then, the federal court, higher court had ruled in another case, had essentially made her her mission impossible because the judge who initially found that this piece of evidence that was pretty damning, it was improper, only to find that that higher court had made a ruling that that said essentially that this kind of evidence was proper.

36:44 So that kind of put an end to the case, is what more or less happened. She had a case, and as you know, sometimes you get stuck with several different cases. And the case that was up there with her was a horrible, horrible. I mean, this was horrible for what was uh alleged, but a mother and a daughter were raped and killed by some nut job uh over on the west side of the state, but they were in a federal, they were in a federal park, so it was a federal offense. And he took his appeal up. And unfortunately, we were right alongside of that, that fact pattern. And they were making the decision based on his situation. And then because they made that decision, then that wiped out her, really wiped her out. It cleared the way for it to be uh to a loss at that point.

37:27 So the judge, the federal judge in Detroit reverses courses. She ends up three years later, after being set free for three years awaiting trial. She ends up returning to prison. Well, that's that's that. It comes back and she uh reinstates the uh conviction and she she can appeal it again. And I believe there were some appeals, but there came a point where she was doing her own work because I don't, I don't, you know, she was she went after court-appointed lawyers, she went after hired lawyers. She takes on one who later becomes the Supreme Court Justice in Michigan, uh Bridget McCormick was her attorney. Yes, and uh of course all of them told her in their own words was not to tell the truth, not to tell her story.

38:15 Well, I I was I worked, I was doing work for nothing. And I met with Bridget and she uh she did a fantastic job. She's a fantastic person and she is very smart. So anyway, she gets out and then she believes that confession is good for the soul. Is that right? Is that what happened? Well, I I think there's she was setting herself up to try and get that appeal uh to for her sentence or maybe get uh be eligible for parole. That's you have to you don't find too many people that uh are accused of a serious crime and they maintain they didn't do it and they get parole at any time, unless there's some some new evidence that comes in is breaking or DNA evidence that we didn't know about.

38:59 Uh but this happened during the course of DNA was admissible and whatnot, but it wasn't really that part of this case. So it you know, she filed a petition on her own without even a lawyer. And while I think that a mistake was saying that all the lawyers all you know screwed her over, uh that was a big mistake because everybody fought pretty hard for her when they were the lawyer at the time. And that was the start of this motion. And then it went into that uh, you know, she should get out and blah, blah, blah. It's a form motion, and it just it tried to blame everybody else but herself. And that's uh that's that's the sort of the general uh scenario of what this case is about. She's blaming everybody else but herself. She realized probably, or somebody told her, that if you confess your crime, then that you have a better chance with a parole board than if you don't confess and the overwhelming evidence and convictions against you in a heinous crime like this.

39:52 So I thought that was plotted out that way a bit. She was in my room, I wasn't a part of her team for years. She wanted to take shots at me and everybody else. In 2017, she confesses in a letter to Judge Fullerton and to prosecutor. She she basically acknowledges her responsibility for this crime. In her words, it was her that was responsible for two men being dead or killed, as she said. And I found her statements uh to acknowledge her own uh criminal misconduct. But we understand why people do this. I mean, there are a lot of reasons, but when they're after a case is pretty much dead, the only reason to do it is to say to the parole board, look how I've really been here sitting in jail for 20 years, and now I get it.

40:43 I get it that I did something wrong and I screwed up and I'm really sorry. And it's a terrible thing, but I've learned that way you can get out and walk down the road. Yeah, I thought that uh she made a uh you know, what a horrible mistake to sit there and spend the first couple paragraphs uh telling about how terrible the lawyers were across the board. And then she goes into this uh look oh woe is me, because she's she's making an excuse, but she's saying I didn't, I did it at the same time. She'd be better off just saying, I feel terrible about this, and I did it. I think that would have gone a lot further down the road. It's not going to work in front of Judge Fullerton, but it's gonna down the road, she'd have a better opportunity to get parole because uh you know, blowing away the lawyers, she's still making an excuse that why she got convicted.

41:30 And that no, I just don't think the parole boards, I don't know who's on them, but I know that those people are usually uh not just giving away freedom in situations such as this and waiting years before she can confess too. If confession's good for the soul, then confessing twice is better because Cherie Miller went on national television, it would have been yesterday or the day before, and does it again in front of God and everyone else, small children. I I'm perplexed by that. I I understand what her game is, I understand why she's doing this, at least I think I do, but I don't understand this whole thing with the news media that wants to continuously re-victimize the people who suffered.

42:23 The families of these men are being re-victimized by the person who perpetrated this crime, and there ought to be some consciousness on the part of the news media that they're not going to allow this to happen. And one of the reasons that that law got passed to keep them out of the prisons, the news media cameras, came out of Flint in a case that I handled years ago. Uh George Creer. Yeah. And every time he wanted to make some kind of statement, because he was manipulative with self-serving statements, he'd call the news media and they'd run to come and see him.

43:04 And then there'd be another story, and then the families were all upset, and the people who were victims of victims who had been molested were you know really upset. And it seems like there ought to be some humanity on the part of some of these news producers. I mean, enough is enough of this story. That's the way I look at it. How do you look at it? Well, I think that uh they must not have known about the past that she already confessed in writing about it uh 10 years ago or whatever, how many years back, seven, 10 years, the story was uh good to play out the way they thought it was gonna play out. Like all of a sudden, this is not known to the rest of the country. It was just on the records in Genesee County Circuit Court.

43:46 I didn't, you know, it didn't go any further than that, really, after that motion. I don't think they appealed it. You know, trashing all every lawyer you ever had that fought for you uh was not a very good uh good idea to start that letter out. She's making an excuse, and that's not what you do at that point. You if you're gonna open your soul up, uh and again, that would that was not gonna work with Judge Fullerton. I she saw and she was involved in that case. She's a very smart person. She's she's retired now, but she she knew what was going on exactly, and she uh was not gonna allow that. Now let me say this about Judith Fullerton, by the way. The appeals against her were the least likely to succeed of any of the judges. Civil and criminal both.

44:26 Correct. Civil and criminal both. She did her own research on top of research, and and you know, you couldn't run anything by her. Uh you could she was not somebody who would uh you know think emotionally uh about things. She was very matter-of-fact and concise with the law. And I respected that because sometimes that was on my side, sometimes it was against me, and I knew you knew what you're up against. You know, she doesn't play any games. And real realistically, we need judges that that are gonna be strong and not be swayed uh by uh things that might not be supported. Looking back at this say, uh, do you have any final thoughts about its impact on the community? The case, as I said, it when they played it four times in New Year's Day uh when people were gonna be home, and there was a lot of people who are putting in uh things on the internet in there talking about this and that, she's guilty, and no, she's not, and that you know, it's it's one of these things where there's two sides.

45:21 Even with our jury at one point, there were two sides a side of men that said uh this doesn't meet the the smells, the smell test, and then yet uh they uh they came over eventually at the end and uh they made the decision they made, which is now since a confession was made, the right decision. Well, Dave Nicola, thanks for joining me on Radio Free Flint. I've really enjoyed talking to you about this case again, and I wish you the best. Thanks for joining us.

46:12 Well, the water was brown, smell like a green. People broke out of rashes, somewhere losing their hair, they can play into the mare, but it just didn't care. It says water. Well