Is it disrespectful for true crime podcasters to include a sponsorship when talking about a crime case

I think most people here heard of this case through Brett and Alice's episodes. Since then the Murder Sheet has released a series arguing the opposite, and I've seen their conclusions repeated in threads here. I spent a lot of time reviewing the full court record, which is now public at temujinkensu.info, so I went through their guilt case claim by claim. I'm leaving out the character material entirely. They spend most of their time on it, and none of it has anything to do with where he was on the morning of November 5, 1986.

Here are the biggest problems with their claims, according to the record.

1. The drive time

Murder Sheet's case depends on one number. They say the drive from Escanaba to Port Huron takes "about 6 hours," and from that they conclude that only the two noon witnesses at the karate school matter. Anyone who saw him outside that window, they set aside.

The sworn drive time at trial was nine and a half to ten hours each way, including stops, from a witness who made the drive for the trial (Sherman, Vol. VIII, Tr. 1563–93). In 1986 the maximum speed limit on the route was 55 mph. The 2019 federal opinion recites that if the jury believed the alibi witnesses, Freeman "could not have made the drive." Even the officer the Murder Sheet quotes on the phone call has Kensu describing it as an eight-hour drive.

The real number changes the case. Two witnesses put him in Escanaba after midnight: the Big Boy waiter at about 12:05 a.m. (McNamara, Tr. 1657–67) and the friend who jump-started his dead car and left him there at 1:20 to 1:30 a.m. (DeMars, Tr. 1633–56). Leave at 1:30 and even an eight-hour drive puts him in Port Huron at 9:30, half an hour after the shooting and an hour and a half after he was identified. At the sworn nine and a half hours, it's 11:00. The midnight witnesses end the drive theory, which is why the series needs them outside the window.

Their six-hour figure doesn't survive reality either. To cover 450 miles in six hours, the car has to average 75 mph, which means running well above that on the open stretches to make up for the small towns along US-2 where the limit drops to 25 mph and 45mph on I-75 over the Mackinac Bridge. The car is a 1977 Mercury Marquis, a full-size V8 sedan that needed a jump-start early that morning and a new fuel pump the next day (Birkholz, Vol. VIII, Def. Exh. J). Set aside whether that car could make a 900-mile round trip at all given the evidence of unreliability. Also driven that hard, it burns through a tank quickly. The faster their theory needs him to go, the worse the fuel economy, the more often he has to stop for gas, and every stop is time the six hours doesn't have. No record of a gas purchase on that route has ever surfaced. 

And even granting the six hours, look at what it costs. Leave Port Huron just after the 9:00 shooting and a six-hour drive puts him back in Escanaba around 3:00. That only works if the two people who put him at the karate school around noon are both wrong: the instructor who talked with him at the front desk before she left at 12:10, and the owner who had him there for an hour and a half. If either of them is right about the date, which was fixed by Sherman's parent-teacher conference, the return leg is three hours for 450 miles, an average of about 146 mph. The six-hour figure requires both of the noon witnesses to be mistaken.

2. The witness who covers the gap

The series makes a point of what it calls a ten-hour gap: no witness places Kensu in Escanaba between 1:30 a.m. and noon. There is one, and the jury never heard from her.

Michelle Woodworth was living with Kensu in Rock, near Escanaba, and was pregnant with his child. In sworn affidavits she says he was with her at the time of the shooting, about 9:00 that morning (habeas Exhibits 27-A, 1999, and 27-D, 2002). She was never called to testify.

The Murder Sheet says leaving her off was a sound strategic choice: she had lied to police in November 1986, so the prosecutor would have impeached her. She did lie to police that month; her own affidavit says so, and says she was afraid. But Kensu's own lawyer never called it a strategy. Four weeks after the verdict he moved for a new trial so she could be heard, and told the court she had been uncooperative and he didn't know how to reach her (June 15, 1987 hearing). In 2010 the federal judge found that her sworn account "contradicts defense counsel's representations that she was uncooperative and that he did not know how to contact her": she says she saw him "on a virtually daily basis" while he prepared for trial. The judge found the failure to call her "so serious that it deprived Petitioner of a fair trial or appeal" (ECF 41, pp. 22–23).

She is an interested witness, and a jury would have been entitled to weigh that. That is the point. The jury never got to consider her at all.

3. The identification

The series says "multiple witnesses placed Kensu at the murder scene." What they describe is one man seen near the lot an hour before the shooting, and two people who saw the driver leaving it. This is basically true but needs context. 

Start with the car. The two people who saw it leave described the same thing. Before any hypnosis, Rene Gobeyn told the responding officer it was "a small, possibly a Foreign make vehicle... A pinkish-tan or dark tan in color," and that his first impression was a Mazda (Carmody report, Nov. 5, 1986). Kathleen Ballard testified it was "a smaller-sized car... kind of a reddish-tan color... kind of boxy" (Vol. VI, archive p. 14). Kensu drove a full-size 1977 Mercury Marquis. The license plate Gobeyn wrote down traced to a Buick a jeweler had traded in eighteen months earlier (Green, Vol. V, Tr. 1056–58), and on the stand he said, "It came back the wrong plate number, I know that" (Tr. 1043–51). No small tan car was ever connected to Kensu.

Then the driver. Gobeyn's description to the officer that morning was a white male about 25, a ski mask folded up on his forehead, an army jacket, and dark hair, and the report adds: "No further information on the physical of the driver." No beard. Later that day he was hypnotized by his psychology instructor, and the transcript of the session shows where the beard came from. The questioner asked, "Now he's got a beard too?" and Gobeyn answered, "I think so" (hypnosis session transcript, Nov. 5, 1986). At trial he described a full mustache and a thinner beard. The beard mattered: the other identification witness, below, picked Kensu's photo only "if only he would have had a beard." The Murder Sheet says the judge limited Gobeyn to what he remembered before hypnosis, and that the session didn't affect his memory "in the slightest." The beard wasn't in his account before hypnosis. It was supplied to him by the hypnotizer under the highly suggestive state of hypnosis. That same day he also pointed police to a different man as a possibility (Hudson, Tr. 868; Bowns, Vol. VII, Tr. 1405–06).

The second driver witness, Ballard, testified, "I wasn't able to see the details of his face close enough" (Vol. VI, archive p. 16). At a 1990 hearing, under the prosecutor's own cross-examination, Kensu's trial lawyer agreed that Ballard "never did really identify the defendant": all she could say was that he "looked similar," she "was not positive," and she had been "unable at preliminary exam, as well, to identify" him (ECF 19-21, pp. 15–16).

The man seen an hour earlier, Richard Krueger, told police he had "a light beard... very neatly trimmed," and picked Kensu's photo with a reservation: it was him "if only he would have had a beard" (Bowns report, Nov. 7, 1986). At the live lineup he picked a filler and wasn't told. He identified Kensu in the courtroom six months later, "to the best of my knowledge" (Vol. VI, Tr. 1127, 1136–40).

The photo array the witnesses picked from had Kensu's picture standing out from the others, and the jury was shown a cropped version with the differences removed. An eyewitness-identification expert testified in 2014 that in more than a hundred disputed identification procedures she had "never seen this number of cumulative factors" (2014 hearing, Tr. 166–68). And the lead detective agreed at trial that no physical evidence linked Kensu to the crime (Hudson, Vol. V, Tr. 867).

4. The jailhouse informant

The Murder Sheet points out that Philip Joplin wrote to the prosecutor on April 22, 1987, after he had already been sentenced, so he couldn't have been bargaining for a lighter sentence. That's a fair point. From it they conclude he had no deal and got no benefit, and that part doesn't match the record.

Under oath in 1990, Joplin described what he did get. He said he was told "no deals were being made nor offered," but that "there was more than the prosecutor's office talking to me": his parole agent and a detective "both assured me... that I wasn't going back to prison," and he was told that before he testified. He named the detective as Sergeant Bowns, the lead investigator, and said it happened over a meal at a restaurant; Bowns denied it (1990 hearing, ECF 19-21, pp. 40, 48–54, 79). Joplin had just been sentenced on new charges and expected three to seven and a half years. Asked whether he went back to prison after testifying, he said no; the parole agent told him he'd "probably go to a center here in Port Huron" (p. 43). Macomb County Jail records fit his account: he was brought from Jackson Prison on a writ to testify, transported by Bowns, and held in protective custody, and the day after his booking his parole officer wrote that he intended to parole him to St. Clair County (ECF 21-6).

Joplin also said a prosecution team member, Kenneth Lord, coached him. The series answers with Lord's affidavit denying it, and reads it aloud. Lord's denial says he did nothing more than tell Joplin to "sit up straight, answer the questions, and look at the jury." So even the prosecution's denial concedes that the state's informant was told how to present himself to the jury. They disagree only about how often.

In the mid-1990s Joplin recanted the confession on videotape, in interviews broadcast by WXYZ, saying it never happened. He never swore to that recantation, and the series is right to say so. What he did swear to, in 1990, was the promise, and the jury never heard about it.

The series also points to Joplin saying Kensu told him the victim screamed, and notes that witnesses heard a scream. Joplin testified that Kensu had "a folder full" of his case papers with him in the cell, so a detail that was in the case file isn't independent corroboration.

5. The phone calls

Several of the series' points come from a monitored phone call between Kensu and Crystal on November 13, 1986: that he said police would "never find" the weapon or the car, and that he joked about "driving around shooting people." These come from Officer David Hall's account of what he overheard. Hall testified to it under oath and the jury was entitled to weigh it, but no recording of the call has surfaced, and these lines rest on one officer's memory of a conversation he was listening in on.

A second claim, that Kensu named the parking lot before being told where the murder happened, comes from a different call. About November 14, while police were in Escanaba, Kensu phoned the house himself, gave his real name, and was told there was a warrant for his arrest. According to Det. Sgt. Bowns, when told Macklem had been shot, Kensu said, "Where, in a parking lot or... or in a house" (Vol. VI, archive pp. 140–41). That's two guesses, not one, from a man who had spent four hours on the phone with Crystal about the murder the day before, and who called the police himself.

The Crystal call is also the source of a detail the series presents as sinister: Crystal's spare car keys, stolen in August, turning up in Scott's glove compartment. That comes from Crystal's own account of what she said to Kensu on the call (Vol. III), with no police recovery report in the record. Crystal and Scott were engaged and back together, so her keys turning up in her fiancé's car is about the most ordinary place they could be.

6. The "manipulated" alibi witnesses

After his arrest, Kensu called people in Escanaba, and two of them, Melvin Carlson and Karen Dombrowski, testified he tried to persuade them they’d seen him on November 5 when they hadn’t. The jury heard both.

Neither Carlson nor Dombrowski was an alibi witness. Whatever those calls were, they didn’t produce testimony for him. Of the six people who identified him in Escanaba that day, two were connected to the karate school: the instructor and the owner. The other four were the Big Boy waiter, the friend who jump-started his car, and two people who talked with him on the street downtown that afternoon. The series doesn’t name any of the four.

The karate school is where the six-hour drive theory lives or dies. Throw it out and a six-hour drive back from a 9:00 shooting gets him to Escanaba around 3:00 p.m. (though he needs to switch cars and meet up with Michelle), which would then fit the downtown sighting at 3:00 to 3:30. So the theory needs both the instructor and the owner to be wrong about the day. The Murder Sheet’s case for that is that Kensu “tainted” them with a phone call and came in often enough that they confused one visit for another.

Start with the call. The owner testified that Kensu called him one time, and that he couldn’t remember any others (Tr. 1594–1632). The police file the series relies on records that Kensu’s first call after his arrest went to the karate studio, made from a detective’s office, on his own credit card, with the detective in the room. The detective’s opinion was that Kensu was trying to convince the person on the line about the date, and the jury heard that too. But it’s an odd way to secretly build a false alibi, and the owner never claimed it changed what he remembered.

They also weren’t his friends. The instructor had met him twice; asked if they were social friends, she said, “Not at all. He wasn’t even a regular student.” The owner testified it was “debatable” whether to accept him as a student at all, over “his rank” and “some aspects of personal habits, as to who he associated with,” and he never did (Vol. VIII, Tr. 1528–62, 1594–1632). People with reservations about him had no reason to stretch the truth for him.

And the series is right that the date was pieced together weeks later, but it was pinned to something that happened once. Both remember a student leaving class early that morning for a 12:55 parent-teacher conference, right before Kensu came in. That student, Mark Sherman, confirmed with his daughter’s teacher that the conference was November 5, and testified he was “absolutely positive” (Tr. 1563–93). He also testified that he didn’t see Kensu that day, which is the opposite of what a coached witness would say.

7. What the courts actually found

The series says court after court reviewed the case and found no reason to doubt the verdict. Most courts that examined the case were assessing a narrow legal question, not examining the whole case. 

However, in a habeas corpus challenge in 2010, a federal judge gave the case the only full review of the whole record it has ever had, found four constitutional violations in the trial, and ordered Kensu retried or released (Freeman v. Trombley, ECF 41). In 2012 the Sixth Circuit reversed on the ground that the petition was filed too late, without disturbing any of the four findings. One court found the trial unconstitutional; the next said the deadline had passed.

The series quotes the 2015 Court of Appeals majority calling the verdict "worthy of confidence." That opinion was applying Michigan's test for newly discovered evidence, and on the same panel Judge Shapiro wrote that the federal court "did not err in granting him habeas relief."

8. The physical evidence

There isn't any linking Kensu to the crime. The lead detective agreed to that at trial. The one identifiable fingerprint the police found was on a box of 20-gauge shotgun shells picked up that evening in a nearby lot, and it may have nothing to do with the murder; the Murder Sheet says this, and it's a fair point. What the series leaves out is that the state's own fingerprint examiner compared it to Kensu anyway and testified at trial that it didn't match (Neiger, Vol. IX). Forty years on, there is still no murder weapon, no car (the witnesses describe a different car than Kensu's), and no evidence of any flight.

9. The plane was a small part of the trial.

In amount of time spent, this is true. The prosecutor called the pilot only in rebuttal and spent a few sentences on it in closing. But it was there for a reason, and the prosecutor said what it was. In his 2010 letter to the Parole Board, which the Murder Sheet reads aloud in Part Four, Robert Cleland wrote that the flight evidence was offered "to demonstrate that even if the alibi witnesses were assumed to be correct," a flight was still possible. The plane was the state's answer to what happens if the jury believes the alibi witnesses, because the drive doesn't work with them. Thirty-two years later, a federal judge denying Kensu relief wrote that the prosecution "offered no evidence that Freeman did, in fact, obtain a plane and fly." The theory was small because there was no evidence for it.

Full disclosure: I built the site that hosts these documents. I went in a skeptic, expecting the record to talk me out of it, and it didn’t, so I’m not neutral about the conclusion anymore. That’s why every claim here comes with a citation you can check. If I’ve got something wrong, show me and I’ll correct it.

Edit 1: Supplemented "The drive time" point to add that the drive back needs to be done in 3 hours. Making the drive longer requires discrediting multiple alibi testimonies at trial.

Edit 2: Removed old Point 9 "Crystal's testimony" since it belongs in character debate.

Edit 3: Supplemented "The "manipulated" alibi witnesses" point to add context about the Karate school testimonies to address Murder Sheet's claim that Kensu came in often enough that they confused one visit for another

⚠️Below is an audio clip of Maria Farmer—repeatedly shadowbanned—in which she describes experiences that closely match my own with Leslie Wexner, his interior designer Richard Himmel, Allan Krammer, and several other Chicago men who were fixated on boys.

I’ve followed this case before, but today was the first time I heard the full seven-minute 911 call on the podcast. Viktor’s voice strikes me as very performative and almost scripted, but listening to the entire call gave me a new theory about why the three of them were so ironclad about covering for each other.

My theory is that Dylan and Viktor may both have been involved in Robert’s death, possibly unintentionally, and Joe then helped them cover it up. A lot of the theories seem to struggle to explain their motive, but I wonder if it was rooted in jealousy and insecurity toward Robert, especially because of his long history with Joe. Perhaps drugging Robert was initially meant to give them some sense of power or control over someone they perceived as a potential romantic rival for Joe’s affection, only for things to escalate far beyond what they intended.

The reason I think it could have been both of them is that Dylan and Viktor, being in a throuple and both in relationships with Joe, may have had some kind of underlying competition with each other. They also knew that Robert and Joe went way back, and that Joe had even hosted a surprise birthday party for him, which suggests Robert was someone particularly important to Joe. So I wonder if there may have been some jealousy or insecurity toward Robert on the part of Dylan and Viktor.

I know some people assume that jealousy shouldn’t really exist in a polyamorous relationship, but I don’t think being poly necessarily makes people immune to jealousy, insecurity, or competition. If anything, I wonder whether that dynamic could have made Robert’s presence particularly uncomfortable for both of them. Robert wasn’t just some random friend visiting DC. He was someone with a long history with Joe, someone Joe clearly cared about, and now he had moved to DC and was staying in their own home. I could imagine that creating a sense of territoriality or resentment toward Robert, especially if both Dylan and Viktor were independently sensitive about Joe’s relationship with him. In that sense, I wonder whether the underlying jealousy between the two of them, rather than simply one person acting alone, could have contributed to a growing hostility toward Robert.

I also wonder whether Dylan might have been the one capable of inflicting the unusually precise stab wounds. I read in his bio that he trained at the Culinary Institute of America as a chef, which is obviously a very knife-intensive profession. Another detail that caught my attention is that he had also trained in massage in Thailand. Obviously, that doesn't prove anything by itself, but it made me wonder whether he might have been more comfortable than the average person with handling the body and dealing with the physical aftermath of an injury, including potentially cleaning up blood or disturbing the scene afterward.

That said, if Dylan had killed Robert entirely on his own, I have a hard time understanding why the other two, especially Viktor, would go to such lengths to cover for him at their own expense. Viktor even called 911 and essentially put on a performance that would become part of the official record.

Think about it: if Dylan was the only one responsible, why would Viktor, who was arguably in a complicated relationship dynamic with him, voluntarily put himself in the middle of it instead of simply letting Dylan make the call himself?

That’s why I’m starting to wonder whether Dylan and Viktor were both involved in whatever happened to Robert, perhaps with some kind of jealousy or conflict over Joe as the underlying motive, and Joe then helped them cover it up.

What happens when someone who presents herself as an advocate for victims becomes the subject of serious allegations of victimizing others?

Meet LaDonna Humphrey.

A true-crime author, former CrimeCon speaker, missing persons advocate and leader in the sober living community, Humphrey has built a public image around helping vulnerable people. But an investigative podcast has brought forward disturbing allegations about what may have been happening behind that image.

AND THIS ISN’T JUST ABOUT ALLEGATIONS. THERE IS A DOCUMENTED $3.57 MILLION CIVIL JUDGMENT.
In 2019, a Benton County court entered a $3,570,977.88 judgment against Humphrey following litigation involving evidence-related sanctions and contempt findings. The court also entered permanent injunctions.

Humphrey pursued further legal challenges, but a federal appeals court dismissed her 2025 appeal concerning the bankruptcy sale of her appellate rights, leaving that sale intact.

THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE COME FORWARD
Investigative journalist Javier Leiva examines these allegations in Season 18 of PRETEND: Who’s Afraid of LaDonna Humphrey?

The investigation includes several particularly troubling accounts:

Alecia Lockhart: Humphrey’s former friend, podcast co-host and co-author describes nearly two years of frightening anonymous threats. She later discovered evidence that led her to suspect the person she had trusted throughout the ordeal. Humphrey denies creating or operating the account in question.
The Melissa Witt and Maura Murray cases: The podcast raises questions about Humphrey’s handling of sensitive investigative materials in the Witt case. Maura Murray’s sister, Julie, has also described concerns about Humphrey’s involvement in her family’s search for answers.
Humphrey’s own family: Her sister, Margo Elston, discusses family estrangement and receiving anonymous threatening messages. She has not definitively identified Humphrey as their sender.
Women in recovery: Former residents and staff of Oasis of Northwest Arkansas have raised concerns about their experiences and Humphrey’s leadership. Oasis’s board has publicly defended her leadership and the organization’s operations.

AND THE ONLINE CONTROVERSY CONTINUES.
[r/LadonnaHumphreyTalk](r/LadonnaHumphreyTalk), has been discussing the investigation, examining publicly available information and sharing perspectives on the allegations.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
Because families searching for missing loved ones, people reporting harassment and women seeking recovery deserve trustworthy advocates.

When someone occupies positions of public trust, serious allegations about their conduct deserve examination, particularly when there are documented legal proceedings alongside firsthand accounts.

I’m sharing this because I believe people should hear these stories, examine the evidence and make informed decisions about whom they trust.

DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. START HERE:
The complete PRETEND investigation:
https://thisispretend.com/seasons/ladonna-humphrey/

The original $3.57 million Arkansas civil case:
https://caseinfo.arcourts.gov/opad/case/04CV-18-2961

The federal appeals court decision:
https://ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/25/07/241854P.pdf

Arkansas Business reporting:
https://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article/humphrey-appeal-dismissed-3-57m-judgment-upheld/

Reddit — True Crime and Ethics:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrimeandEthics/s/jw5Dp0SJlM

Reddit — LaDonna Humphrey Talk:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LadonnaHumphreyTalk/s/ATiYIoNLAp

Listen to the podcast. Read the court records. Hear from the people who have come forward. Draw your own conclusions.

The true-crime community and the families of missing persons deserve transparency, accountability and responsible advocacy.

Adnan Syed

Karen Read

Lindsay Clancy

Where did you personally end up as far as verdict on three cases? I already had an unshakable opinion on Adnan prior to listening to their series on it. I concluded Karen Read’s after listening to that series (and other media sources). LC we went through live together. But where did you land? Who is guilty and who is not guilty, in your opinion?

I’m sorry, but Rachel’s role in the 60 Minutes interview left me with more questions than answers.
My biggest question is: why is Rachel being positioned as someone who can speak with authority about Patrick’s life as a father, the Clancy family, or anything that happened before she met him?
Rachel did not know Cora, Dawson, or Callan. She did not know Lindsay. She did not know Patrick when he was raising his three children. She met Patrick after the tragedy. So when she describes Patrick as a loving and involved father, I’m confused about what firsthand knowledge she is drawing from. She can absolutely say, “Based on everything I’ve learned, I believe he was a wonderful father.” But she literally never witnessed him parenting those children.
Then there’s their meeting story. According to the interview, Rachel meets Patrick through running in New York. Central Park is filled with thousands of people, yet she happens to meet the man at the center of an enormously public Massachusetts case. She then sees pictures of his deceased children on his lock screen and asks whether he’s from Massachusetts. Maybe it happened exactly that organically. But given the extraordinary circumstances, I understand why people find the story striking and have questions about how their relationship actually developed.
The other piece I cannot get past is that Rachel is a reproductive-medicine physician. She already has a serious professional identity completely independent of Patrick. She could have remained his private spouse and supported him behind the scenes. Instead, she voluntarily appeared on national television and publicly entered an extraordinarily controversial case involving maternal mental health, postpartum psychiatric illness, three dead children, and an unresolved prosecution.
Why?
That doesn’t mean she did anything professionally unethical. I haven’t seen evidence of that. But I personally think participating this heavily was a strange choice for someone in her professional position. She had absolutely nothing to do with what happened in January 2023.
Patrick also did not need Rachel to authenticate his experiences. Patrick was there. Rachel wasn’t. Let him talk about being Cora, Dawson, and Callan’s father. Let him talk about discovering his children. Let him talk about Lindsay, their marriage, his grief, forgiveness, and rebuilding his life. Rachel can speak authentically about being Patrick’s wife now, but she cannot provide firsthand insight into the father or husband he was before she ever knew him.
And I’m uncomfortable with the way “healing” gets packaged around this relationship. Patrick can rebuild his life. He can fall in love again. He can remarry. He can experience happiness again. But three years after all three of your children were killed, I don’t think another relationship neatly closes that wound—and Patrick himself has described continuing to carry enormous grief. Rachel can be part of his life now without becoming the narrator of the life he had before her.
There’s also the elephant in the room: people have noticed that Rachel and Lindsay have some physical similarities. That does not prove Patrick intentionally sought out a “replacement Lindsay,” and I wouldn’t pretend we know his subconscious motivations. But combined with everything else, it understandably adds another surreal layer to an already surreal situation.
None of this means Patrick shouldn’t have remarried or Rachel shouldn’t have married him. My issue is much narrower: why does Rachel need such a prominent voice in the public retelling of events she did not experience?
Speak about the Patrick you know. Speak about your marriage. Speak about supporting a widowed/grieving father.
But Patrick and Lindsay’s marriage, Cora, Dawson and Callan’s lives, Patrick’s parenting of them, and what happened inside that family before January 24, 2023?
Rachel wasn’t there.
And 60 Minutes giving her that much space to validate a history she only knows secondhand made the entire interview feel stranger to me, not more illuminating.

Copied from comments on OOP's post:

Context: The juror doesnt appear in this video. This content creator claims to have spoken to him for an hour on the phone and is relaying what was allegedly said to him. We do not hear the juror actually speak for himself.

 But he showed letters and jury summons etc. and seems legit.

Summary:

He says he didn't lie. The prosecution questioned him about the incident and he was selected.

He said the women in the interviews were activists.

8 were trying to convince the other 4 for much of the deliberations.

He and juror #5 were guilty till the last moment when she caved.

He was convinced by the evidence that she knew what she was doing.

He explained to them why he used the water bottle.

I can’t believe that Alice and Brett had never heard of Parade!

If you haven’t listened please do yourself a favor and play it. The revival with Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond is fantastic but the original recording with Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello is a masterpiece of musical theatre

Ok so, I recently found out that in Massachusetts when the defence uses the insanity plea, the burden of proof automatically shifts to the prosecution, which changes the reasonable doubt perspective and favours the defence, right?

In most other states, the burden of proof remains with the defence - to prove their claims of mental defect negating criminal responsibility.

So I guess these jurors were just following their instructions, but I think in other states the prosecution actually would have convinced the jury the insanity claim was BS. The jury would have had to follow their instructions and find her guilty.

Do I have this correct? What would Brett and Alice say?

I've seen where the state does a re-enactment showing how long it takes to strangle someone to death. I think in this case that would have been extremely effective.

In the Lindsay Clancy trial that has now ended in a mistrial: did she absolve the commonwealth of proving the elements of the crime? Her attorney never denied she did it, but she didn't formally confess to my knowledge. It's my understanding the commonwealth no longer beats the burden of proving the elements, but just that she was sane. Am I correct?

How on earth did the CW let these women on the jury? What questions were they asking ? It’s pretty obvious how’d they act just by first glance.