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Caalarogus Shark Media. Good morning. I'm Garrett Fisher, and this
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is Daily Crime Injustice. It's Monday, August third, twenty twenty six.
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Before we go anywhere, a warning about today's episode. We
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are going to talk about the killing of children, about strangulation,
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about suicide, and about severe mental illness. Some of what
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first responders described under oath last week is genuinely hard
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to hear. I'm going to handle it carefully, but I'm
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not going to pretend it away either. If that is
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not something you can carry today, skip this one and
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come back tomorrow. There is no wrong answer there. Nine
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days ago on this show, I asked you a question.
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Colt Gray had just pleaded guilty to all fifty five
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counts against him for what he did at Appalachi High
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School in winder Georgia. Four people dead, nine more wounded.
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He was fourteen years old when he did it. He
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is six team now, and there was no jury left
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to decide anything because the plea took care of that one.
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Judge Nicholas prim was going to decide alone whether that
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boy would ever have a chance at parole. I asked
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you where you landed. You answered a lot of you answered,
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and last week, so did Judge prim Today, two sentencings,
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two days apart, same courtroom, same judge. The sun got
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life without the possibility of parole. The father, the man
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who put the rifle under the Christmas tree got fifteen years.
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The district attorney asked for more than seventy. We are
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going to sit with that gap for a while, because
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I think it tells you something about how this country
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actually calculates responsibility. Then we go to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where
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the Lindsey Clancy triple murder trial spent Thursday listening to
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the people who ran into that basement, and Friday putting
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jurors on a bus to see the house for themselves.
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Cora Dawson and Callan Clancy five years old, three years old,
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eight months old. And then Kentucky, where a man who
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strangled a college freshman in his dorm room stood up
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and asked that boy's family to forgive him. What makes
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that one land differently is that the boy's father had
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already told a room full of grieving students to do
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exactly that two years ago, before anybody asked this is
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daily crime and justice. Let's start where we left it
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on Friday, July twenty fourth, Colt Gray pleaded guilty to
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fifty five felony counts, including four counts of malice murder.
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Then came a three day sentencing hearing, and it was
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not a formality. Note Books with plans in them, cell
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phone records, messages showing a fascination with the man who
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shot up a high school in Parkland, Florida in twenty eighteen,
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a man who killed seventeen people there. An investigator played
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jail calls between Colt and his mother, and on those calls,
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he talked about his own rising profile, le compared himself
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to other people who had done terrible things and gotten
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famous for it, and told her he was in the
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big leagues. The defense put on a forensic psychologist who
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said cult was not schizophrenic and could not have credibly
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run an insanity defense, but who did describe anxiety, depression,
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and paranoia. His grandmother testified about substances in the house
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and three neglected children. On Tuesday, July twenty eighth, Judge
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prim sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility
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of parole. The Supreme Court has said you cannot execute
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a juvenile and you can only hand a juvenile life
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without parole. In rare cases, prim said he believed this
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was one of them. That Grey's crimes reflected what he
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called permanent incorrigibility. And then he said, the thing I
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have not been able to shake all week. He told
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that sixteen year old he had not been bullied at
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that school, that it was not hatred, that he did
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not even know the people he shot. In the judges' words,
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it was done for the infamy of it. Colt Gray
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wrote in his own notebook that he wanted to make history,
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that he wanted people to remember the pain he caused.
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The judge quoted it back to him, told him he
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had succeeded and took away every day of the rest
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of his life. That was Tuesday. Two days later, Thursday,
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July thirtieth, the same judge sat in the same courtroom,
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and the man in the orange and white stripes was
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the father. You know this case. We covered the trial
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back in February and March. But let me put the
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spine of it in front of you again, because the
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spine is the whole point. May of twenty twenty three,
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more than a year before the shooting, the FBI got
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anonymous tips about online threats to shoot up a school,
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with photographs of guns attached, and the tips traced back
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to Colt Gray, who was thirteen years old. Sheriff's deputies
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came out to the house. Colin Gray sat there on
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body camera and told them there were guns in the
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home and talked about hunting and about teaching his son
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firearm safety. No charges. Everybody went home. December of twent three,
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seven months later Christmas, Colin Gray bought his son an
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Ar fifteen style rifle and gave it to him as
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a gift. By the following fall, that boy's bedroom wall
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had become a shrine to a mass shooter. District Attorney
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Brad Smith held up a poster of it in court
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on Thursday. Photographs and articles about the Parkland gunman taped
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up over a teenager's desk in a house where the
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FBI had already knocked about school shooting threats, in a
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house with a rifle his father bought him. That is
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not a mistake. That is a choice. It is a
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series of choices made over sixteen months by a grown
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man who had been warned. On September fourth, twenty twenty four,
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the boy carried that rifle into Appalachi High School and
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used it. Richard Aspinwall thirty nine years old. Everybody called
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him Ricky, math teacher and a football coach. He left
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for work that morning, excited to do the job he loved,
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and he never came home. Christina Irremi fifty three years old,
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also a math teacher. Mason Shermerhorn fourteen years old, Christian
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Angulo fourteen years old. Nine other people were wounded in March.
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A jury convicted Colin Gray second degree murder for Mason
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and for Christian, involuntary manslaughter for Ricky Aspinwall and for
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Christina Eremi reckless conduct, cruelty to children. He is the
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first parent in Georgia ever prosecuted over a mass school
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shooting committed by their child, and by most accounts, the
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first parent in the country convicted of murder for it.
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The nearest comparison is the Crumbles in Michigan, and those
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were involuntary manslaughter convictions. So Thursday was the day the
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number came. The family spoke first. Shana Aspinwall talked about
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her husband. She has post traumatic stress disorder. She is
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raising their two daughters by herself. Now. Ricky's father Rick
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Aspinwall looked at Colin Gray and told him he was
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responsible for all of it, that he could not see
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it any other way, and said he hoped Gray would
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sit in a corner somewhere and have to remember every
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bit of what he caused. And then Mason Shermerhorn's mother,
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Brianna said, the thing that should follow Colin Gray into
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whatever cell he is in. She had been a single
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parent herself, and she was tired of hearing the difficulty
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of parenting used as an excuse. She drew a line
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between a person struggling to parent and a person refusing to.
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Colin Gray was not an overwhelmed teenager figuring life out.
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He was a grown man with years of experience, chance
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after chance, warning after warning. District Attorney Brad Smith asked
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for more than seventy years. He told the judge that
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Colin Gray handed his son the exact tool he needed,
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that he is the reason four people are dead, and
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that he is the reason a sixteen year old boy
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had been sentenced two days earlier to die in prison.
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The defense asked for roughly ten years to serve grace.
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Attorney argued his client should be sentenced for what he
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did not for what his son did, and that the
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week of testimony at Cults Hearing had actually shown Colt
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hid his intentions from his father and even accelerated his
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plan because his father was trying to get him treatment.
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He conceded that what Colin Gray did was not enough.
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He said it also was not nothing, and it was
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not indifference, and he laid out what is left of
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the family. One son in prison for life, a daughter
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in foster care, a younger son in foster care. On
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his attorney's advice, Colin Gray did not say a word.
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Judge prim said he had never found his own position
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less enviable. He said punishing criminal negligence is hard, precisely
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because the person did not intend to commit a crime.
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That the punishment has to come out of what was
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foreseeable and out of the damage that followed. He said
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the warning lights had been flashing brighter and brighter. He
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told Gray that if he had used gunlocks or taken
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the ammunition out of the house, he would not be
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standing there and then quote no parent thinks that their
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child is going to be the next school shooter. End quote.
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But he said it became more and more obvious that
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something bad was coming. Then he told Colin Gray that
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he had failed as a parent, and then he gave
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him fifteen years, fifteen on each second degree murder count,
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ten on the reckless conduct counts everything running at the
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same time, total sentence fifteen years. He has already served
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about twenty two months of it. Look, I'm going to
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be honest with you. I have been chewing on this
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for two days and I still cannot make the arithmetic
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feel right. I am not going to tell you Colin
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Gray deserved seventy years, because I do not believe the
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man wanted this. Criminal negligence is a real category, and
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it exists for a reason. The judge is right that
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it is hard, and I understand the argument that a
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father should answer for his own failures and not be
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handed his son's sentence. But here's what snags. Four people
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are dead, nine more were shot. A whole community is
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caring this for the rest of their lives, and the
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judge said so from the bench, and the total accounting
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for the adult in that story, the one person who
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could legally buy the rifle, the one person the FBI
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actually sat down with, is fifteen years, of which he
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has already done. Nearly two. There is a playbook for this,
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and it runs through every case where an adult builds
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the conditions for a catastrophe and then stands back. I
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did not pull the trigger. I did not know. I
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was doing my best, and a system built to punish
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intent keeps finding itself in front of harm nobody intended
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and reaching for a smaller number. I do not think
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Judge prim did anything lazy. He did what the law
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gave him room to do with his eyes open. What
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I think is that we have built a legal architecture
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that is very confident about a person who meant it,
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and almost helpless in front of a person who simply
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would not look. Ricky Aspinwall should be teaching math this fall.
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Christina Irami should be teaching math this fall. Mason Shermerhorn
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and Christian Angelo should be starting their junior year complaining
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about homework and arguing about cars. Someone has to say
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your names coming up. The jury in the Lindsay Clancy
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trial gets on a bus and goes to see the house.
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And in Kentucky, a killer asks a family for forgiveness
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they had already offered him two years ago. Welcome back
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to Daily Crime and Justice. I'm Garrett Fischer, and we
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are on this trial every day now because it is
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going to run six to eight weeks, and because the
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question at the center of it is one this country
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keeps refusing to answer. Lindsey Clancy is thirty five years old.
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She was a labor and delivery nurse. She has pleaded
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not guilty to three counts of first degree murder, and
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I want to be precise about what that plea means
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here because it is unusual. Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, is
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not disputing that she strangled Cora, Dawson and Callen in
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the basement of their Duxbury home on January twenty fourth,
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twenty twenty three. He has offered to stipulate to nearly
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all of it. The fight is not about what happened.
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It is about whether she was criminally responsible when it happened.
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Prosecutors say no. Assistant District Attorney Shaneon Buckingham told the
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jury this was a woman acting deliberately and meticulously, not
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a woman in the grip of psychosis. The defense says
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she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis, that she had
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been begging the medical system for help for months, and
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that she was over medicated by the very people she
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went to for that help. That is the whole case.
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Everything else points at one of those two answers. On Thursday,
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the prosecution put ten first responders on the stand, one
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after another, and it was the hardest day of the
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trial so far. Duxbury police officer Stephen Hall went first,
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and he cried on the stand. He described arriving to
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find Patrick Clancy calling for help from behind the house.
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Officer Brian Josephine described going down into that basement after
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they heard screaming, and knowing before he ever got a
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hand on the child that there was very little he
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could do. I am not going to walk you through
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all of it. You do not need the inventory and
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those three kids do not need it read out loud,
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but you should know what those people carried out of
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that house. A Duxbury firefighter named Jennifer Stratton testified that
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she picked up eight month old Callen and ran him
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to the truck herself and rode with him and he
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never took a breath. Firefighter Patrick Dwyer worked on five
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year old kra with everything he had. Cruz worked on
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three year old Dawson with CPR and medication. None of
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it changed anything. A Pembroke paramedic testified that he treated
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Lindsay Clancy on the way to the hospital, including for
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a possible opioid overdose, and that she never fully came around.
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Reddington objected through all of it, calling the testimony repetitious
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because prosecutors were handing each new witness the same photographs
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from that basement. Legally, he has a point since he