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Sept. 9, 2026

Lindsay Clancy's Lawyer Asks Trump for a Pardon, Barry Morphew Lasts One Day on House Arrest, and Two Women Killed by Their Caregiver

Lindsay Clancy's Lawyer Asks Trump for a Pardon, Barry Morphew Lasts One Day on House Arrest, and Two Women Killed by Their Caregiver

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington asked President Trump to pardon Lindsay Clancy during a Good Morning America interview Tuesday, days after her murder trial ended in a mistrial — a request the president has no authority to grant, since the pardon power under Article II reaches only federal offenses and Clancy is charged under Massachusetts law. Reddington also said he hopes to reach an agreement with Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz, softened his earlier remarks about the prosecution as "bravado," and said the eleven jurors who agreed were at not guilty by reason of insanity. Clancy has not been convicted or acquitted; the parties return to court September 29. Also: in Colorado, Barry Morphew was arrested and booked into the Boulder County Jail roughly a day after Judge Amanda Hopkins confined him to his home with no exceptions, following a citizen's email about a Denver hit-and-run; prosecutors now seek to revoke his $3 million bond. And in Pomona, California, caregiver Jianchun Li was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole for killing Monica Moon Lee, 75, and Hee Sook Park, 83, at a residential care home in Diamond Bar.

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WEBVTT

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Calaroga Shark Media. Good morning. This is Daily Crime and

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Justice from Calaroga Shark Media, powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fisher.

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It's Wednesday, September 9th, 2026. Yesterday morning, Kevin Reddington sat

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down on national television and asked the President of the

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United States to pardon Lindsay Clancy. I'm going to explain

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briefly why that cannot happen, not why it should not happen,

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why it is not legally possible, and why a defense

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attorney with 50 years in Massachusetts courtrooms knows that perfectly well.

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Then we go to Colorado, where Barry Morphew has had

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a genuinely remarkable week. On Wednesday, a judge confined him

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to his house with no exceptions. By Thursday night, he

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was in handcuffs. He is currently in the Boulder County Jail,

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and prosecutors are now asking that his $ 3 million bond

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be thrown out entirely. And then to Pomona, California, where

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a man who was paid to look after elderly women

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was sentenced last week to two consecutive life sentences without

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parole for killing two of them in the same bathroom

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half an hour apart. Let's get into it. Quick recap

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for anybody who has been away. On Friday afternoon, after

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seven days and roughly 38 hours, the jury in the

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Lindsay Clancy case deadlocked and Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial.

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Jury notes indicated the panel was split 11 to 1

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in favor of acquittal. Sullivan has set September 29th to

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figure out what happens next, and Plymouth County District Attorney

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Timothy Cruz has not said whether he will retry it.

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On Friday at the White House, President Trump was asked

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about the case. He called it a shame and a

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horrible tragedy. He said it looked like a hung jury

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and that there would be another trial. He said she

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did a horrible thing, that it could not be worse,

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and that there would be a price to pay, and

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that the price would be a mental institution or jail

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or something. And on Tuesday morning on Good Morning America,

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Kevin Reddington responded to that directly. He said that perhaps

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the president, who felt compelled to speak out about this case,

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would consider his client. He addressed him directly and said

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he hoped he would consider this young lady, the type

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of person she is, and what she has been through,

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and consider a pardon. Now here's the thing. The president

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of the United States cannot pardon Lindsay Clancy. Not today.

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Not after a conviction. Not ever. The pardon power comes

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from Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution, and it

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is written narrowly. It applies to offenses against the United States.

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That means federal crimes. Lindsay Clancy is charged under the

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laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in a Massachusetts courthouse

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by a Massachusetts district attorney. No president has any authority

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over that, and no president ever has. In Massachusetts, clemency

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runs through the governor. A petition goes to the parole

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board sitting as the advisory board of pardons, which makes

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a recommendation to the governor. And if the governor decides

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to act, that decision still requires the consent of the

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governor's council, an elected body most people in that state

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could not name. And there is a second problem underneath

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the first one. There is nothing to pardon. A mistrial

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is not a conviction. Lindsay Clancy has not been convicted

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of anything. You cannot pardon a person who is awaiting

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a decision about whether they will be tried again. So

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what was that? Kevin Reddington has been practicing criminal law

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in Massachusetts for about 50 years. He knows every word

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of what I just said. He has probably explained it

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to clients. That request was not a legal maneuver, because

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there is no legal maneuver there to make. It was

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a message, and it had exactly two audiences. Because a

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pardon request that cannot legally be granted is not a filing.

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it is a press release with a constitutional costume on.

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The first is the president who put himself into this

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case voluntarily on Friday and who has an enormous megaphone.

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The second is Timothy Cruz, the district attorney who has

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to decide in the next three weeks whether to spend

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another six weeks and an enormous amount of public money

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retrying a case that 11 jurors were ready to walk

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away from. Cruz is not gonna be moved by a

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television appearance. But he is a politician as well as

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a prosecutor, and a president weighing in from a podium

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changes the temperature around a decision that was already going

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to be unpopular whichever way it went. And Reddington said

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the quiet part in the same interview. He said he

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is willing to listen to Cruz, that he has known

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him for 30 years, and that he hopes after this

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trial they could work something out acceptable to both sides.

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That is the actual news out of that appearance, not

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the pardon, the word resolution. And one more thing about

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the pardon request that I do not think is cynical,

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only sad. Reddington also said in that interview that he

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did not know much about postpartum depression before he took

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this case. That is an honest thing for a lawyer

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to admit on national television, and it is also the

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entire problem in one sentence. One of the most experienced

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criminal defense attorneys in Massachusetts had to learn this from

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scratch at 75 because a woman he was representing had

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killed her children. A couple of other things from that interview,

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asked whether he regretted saying Cruz was crushed, Reddington said

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he does not regret it at all, though he allowed

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he could have been more circumspect and simply said he

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did a good job. And he disclosed something we did

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not know, that to his knowledge, the 11 jurors who

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agreed were at not guilty by reason of insanity, not manslaughter,

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not a compromise, an acquittal. That number, if it is right,

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is what Cruz is looking at on his desk right now.

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And I want to be fair to Cruz here because

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he is going to take a beating this month and

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some of it will be unearned. He said Friday that

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the first degree charges were warranted and appropriate. He also

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revealed that his two prosecutors were doxed and endured weeks

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of threats and ridicule for doing their jobs. And he

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brought it back to where it belongs, saying his office

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was at that courthouse because Cora, Dawson and Callen are not.

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He is not a villain for having charged this case.

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Three children were strangled. A prosecutor who looked at that

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and filed nothing would have been derelict. The question in

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front of him now is different, and it is harder.

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It is not whether the charge was right. It is

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whether a second jury, hearing the same 84 witnesses and

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the same six experts, is going to come out anywhere

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different from the first one. Cora Clancy was five. Dawson

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Clancy was three. Callan Clancy was eight months old. September

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29th is the date. Someone has to say their name.

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When we come back, Barry Morphew got put on house

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arrest and was in a jail cell about a day later.

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Suzanne Morphew was 49 years old. She was a mother

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of two daughters. She disappeared on Mother's Day in May

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of 2020 in Chaffee County, Colorado, after reportedly going out

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for a bike ride. Her remains were not found until

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September of 2023, 45 miles from her home, by investigators

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looking for something else. There was no sign of trauma.

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But investigators say her bone marrow contained traces of a

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chemical cocktail used to tranquilize wildlife. Prosecutors allege that Barry

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Morphew was the only person in that area, other than

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wildlife officials, authorized to use those chemicals. He was charged

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in 2021. That case was dismissed in 2022. a grand

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jury indicted him again in 2025. He has pleaded not

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guilty to first-degree murder, he denies killing his wife, and

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he is presumed innocent. His trial is set for next summer.

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He was released on a $ 3 million bond over the

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objection of prosecutors, who argued he had the means and

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the motive to run. The conditions were narrow. Stay home

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in Southern Colorado except for medical appointments and emergencies, work,

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meetings with his lawyers, and court. Wear GPS. Now here

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is the week he just had. On August 26th, at

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about 7.30 in the evening, there was a hit and

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run in Denver at 8th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. Two

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vehicles were struck, one of the drivers recorded video. A

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private citizen with no connection to any of this saw

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a news report about it and emailed the judge in

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Morphew's murder case. Judge Amanda Hopkins watched the video herself.

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And in a written order, she said that the person

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in that footage is very clearly the defendant. The order

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describes a truck driving aggressively before striking two vehicles. A

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man refusing to give his name or identification, saying he

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has no insurance. Offering the other driver $ 300 cash, being refused.

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Then trying to buff the scratches out of her car

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with his hand and his t-shirt. And then, when she

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said she was calling police, leaving, nearly hitting someone and

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going over a curb on his way out. On Wednesday,

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September 2nd, Hopkins ordered him confined to his home at

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all times, no exceptions. Not medical appointments, not work. If

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there is a medical emergency, he calls 911 and leaves

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in an ambulance. She was also careful about what she

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could not do. Under Colorado law, she explained, a court

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cannot independently revoke bond without a probable cause finding on

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a new felony, and no court with jurisdiction over the

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Denver incident has made one. Prosecutors or a bonding commissioner

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have to ask, and Morphew gets a hearing first. So

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prosecutors went and got the GPS data, and what they

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say it shows is this. On August 28th, Barry Morphew

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drove from his home to Denver International Airport, arriving late morning.

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He left the airport almost immediately. Then he spent time

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in areas of hotels and a mall, and then GPS

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puts him in the area of the alleged crash. His

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attorney told prosecutors he was not working at the airport

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and that it is possible he was picking up his daughter.

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District Attorney Ann Kelly's response was that going to the

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airport for any purpose other than work is a breach

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of his bond and that it presents an extreme flight risk.

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She asked for a warrant. On Thursday night, Boulder County

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Sheriff's deputies arrested Barry Morphew and booked him into the

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Boulder County Jail. He had been on house arrest for

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roughly a day. Read that sequence again. Wednesday, a judge

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orders him to stay in his house at all times,

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no exceptions, and explains on the record that she is

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doing it because she watched a video of him leaving

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the scene of a crash. Thursday night, deputies put him

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in handcuffs for failing to comply with that order. One day,

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a bond hearing was set for yesterday afternoon in Alamosa

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District Court, and prosecutors are now asking that the bond

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be revoked outright rather than merely tightened. Let me be

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precise about the presumption here, because it matters. Barry Morphew

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has not been charged with anything arising from the Denver incident.

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Denver police say the case is still under investigation and

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that they were working to contact the registered owner of

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the truck. He is presumed innocent of murdering his wife.

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None of what I just described has been proven anywhere.

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But look, I'm going to be honest with you about

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the picture. An airport. That is the detail. Of all

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the places a man on a $ 3 million bond, accused

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of killing his wife, with prosecutors on record calling him

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a flight risk, could drive to on a Friday, he

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drove to an international airport. And according to the state,

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he was not supposed to be there. There is an

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innocent version of that. His lawyer offered it, and it

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is a completely ordinary thing. He picked up his daughter.

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Fathers do that every single day. If that is what happened,

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it is a bond violation and nothing more sinister than that.

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And there's a playbook for this, which is that when

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you are out on bond in a murder case, you

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do not go anywhere you cannot justify on a piece

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of paper. You go to work, you go to the doctor,

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you go to your lawyer, and you go home. That

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is the deal. $ 3 million is what the deal cost.

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There is also a piece of this that has nothing

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to do with Barry Morphew and everything to do with

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how pre-trial release actually works in this country. The whole

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justification for letting somebody out on bond in a murder

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case is that technology can watch them, so a cell

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does not have to. The ankle monitor is the reason

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a judge can say yes. And in this case, prior

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monitoring reports had reportedly shown no violations at all. Whatever

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the GPS recorded on August 28th, nobody flagged it in

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real time. It only got looked at because prosecutors went

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and pulled the data after a stranger emailed a judge

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about a news report. The monitor was on his ankle

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the entire time. It worked exactly as designed and it

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caught nothing. Because a device that records where you are

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is not the same as a person who notices. Suzanne

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Morphew has been dead for six years. Her body lay

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in the ground for three of them before anybody found her.

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The man charged with killing her will not face a

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jury until next summer, and this week the question in

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front of a Colorado judge was not whether he did it,

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but whether he can be trusted to stay in his

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own house until then. Suzanne Morphew, someone has to say

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her name. When we come back, two women, one bathroom,

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30 minutes. Monica Moon Lee was 75 years old. She

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used a walker. She had dementia. He Sook Park was 83.

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They both lived at a place called Happy Homes Care,

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a small residential facility for elderly women on Sapphire Canyon

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Road in Diamond Bar, California. It operated out of a house.

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Neighbors have said as many as six people lived on

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the property. On the morning of June 24, 2023, the

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overnight caregiver on duty was a man named Jeon Chun Lee.

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Shortly before seven in the morning, prosecutors say he ushered

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Monica Moon Lee into the bathroom and killed her with

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a plastic bag and electrical tape. 30 minutes later, he

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did the same thing to He Sook Park in the

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same bathroom in the same way. Deputies found both women

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that day. Lee was arrested. He confessed quickly. On August

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20th of this year, a Los Angeles County jury convicted

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him of two counts of first degree murder and found

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the special circumstance of multiple murders to be true. That

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special circumstance is what took life without parole off the

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table as a maximum and made it the floor. Then

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came the part that makes this case relevant to everything

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else on this show lately. Lee's defense was not guilty

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by reason of insanity. In California, that gets tried in

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a separate phase, after guilt. So on August 27th, that

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same jury came back on the sanity question, and they

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rejected it. They found he was legally sane when he

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did it. I want you to hold that next to

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the first segment of this show for a second. In Plymouth, Massachusetts,

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11 of 12 jurors were prepared to find that a

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woman was not criminally responsible. In Pomona, California, 12 of

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12 found that a man was. Same legal concept. Two juries.

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Two completely different outcomes. That is not a flaw in

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the system. That is the system. Criminal responsibility is decided

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case by case by ordinary people looking at a specific

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person on a specific day. And it produces different answers

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because the cases are different. Anybody telling you there is

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a clean rule here is selling something. And notice which

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way the split ran, because it cuts against the lazy assumption.

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The sympathetic defendant with the documented psychiatric collapse got 11

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jurors ready to acquit. The man with the confession and

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the search history got 12 who said no. Juries are

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not soft on insanity defenses. They are skeptical of them,

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and they should be, and occasionally one of them is real.

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On Thursday, in a Pomona courtroom, Superior Court Judge Mike

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Camacho sentenced John Chun-Li to two consecutive terms of life

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in prison without the possibility of parole. He said there

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was overwhelming evidence of guilt, and there was one piece

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of that evidence I keep thinking about. Detectives searched Lee's phone.

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Among what they found were Google searches about choking someone.

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and a search asking what the sentence is for murder

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in California, and a search asking whether people convicted of

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first-degree murder get treatment for their illnesses. That third one

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is the one that stays with you. Somewhere in that

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record is a man looking up what happens to him afterward.

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Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said afterward that

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these two women's lives were taken by the very person

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expected to keep them safe. And that is the whole thing,

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and it is why this segment is on our show today.

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Nobody was paying attention to Monica Moon Lee and He

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Sook Park. I do not mean their families. I'm sure

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their families loved them. I mean the rest of us.

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Two elderly women were killed inside a licensed care facility

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in a residential neighborhood by the person the state and

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their families trusted to be alone with them overnight. That

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happened three years ago, and I would guess almost nobody

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listening to this had heard about it until right now.

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There is no documentary about Happy Homes Care. There were

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no crowds outside that Pomona courthouse. Nobody flew in from

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another state. Nobody wore a color. And I think I

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know why, and I do not like the answer. Two

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women in their 70s and 80s, one of them with dementia,

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living in a converted house on a suburban street, are

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the least visible people in this country. They had already

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been moved out of view once. Then somebody killed them,

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and they stayed out of view. There are roughly 30,000

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assisted living facilities in the United States and well over

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a million people living in them. Most of those places

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are fine. The people working in them are overwhelmingly doing

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hard and badly paid work with real care. But the

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residents are, almost by definition, people who cannot easily report

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what happens to them. And some of them cannot report

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anything at all. We have spent six weeks in this

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country arguing about one courtroom in Massachusetts, and I include

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this show in that. Meanwhile, a jury in Pomona quietly

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did the work, took a sanity phase seriously, and gave

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two women who could not defend themselves the only thing

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anybody could still give them. If you take one practical

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thing from today, take this. If you have somebody in

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a care facility, the people who do this work are

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overwhelmingly decent and underpaid and doing a job most of

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us could not do. This is not an indictment of them.

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But you are allowed to show up unannounced. You are

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allowed to ask questions. Every state has an elder abuse

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reporting line, and in Los Angeles County, that number is 1-877-4R-SENIORS.

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Monica Moon Lee was 75 and had dementia and used

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a walker. Hee Sook Park was 83. Someone has to

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say their names, and almost nobody has. That's the show

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for Wednesday, September 9th. If this was useful, send it

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to one person. That is the whole engine here. And

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if you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment on the

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Diamond Barcade. Tomorrow we have Brian Koberger's motion to remove

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the judge who sentenced him and a surgeon in Florida

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who goes on trial Monday with no lawyer and no jury.

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And Friday is September 11th, the 25th anniversary. We are

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going to do something different that day and look at

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it entirely through the law. Because there is a legal

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story there that almost nobody tells. I'm Garrett Fisher. Do better.

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A few notes on sourcing. On the Massachusetts case, a

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mistrial is not a verdict. Lindsay Clancy has not been

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convicted of anything and has not been acquitted of anything.

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Our description of the jury split and of the 11

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jurors' position comes from defense attorney Kevin Reddington, both in

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open court and in his television interview. Jury deliberations are secret,

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no juror has spoken publicly, and the court has not

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confirmed any numerical split. Treat those figures as reported rather

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than established. The Plymouth County District Attorney has not announced

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whether he will seek a retrial. Our description of the

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presidential pardon power reflects Article 2, Section 2 of the

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United States Constitution, which extends that power to offenses against

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the United States. Massachusetts' clemency procedure runs through the Advisory

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Board of Pardons, the Governor, and the Governor's Council. On

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the Colorado case, Barry Morphew has pleaded not guilty to

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first-degree murder and is presumed innocent. He has not been

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charged in connection with the August incident in Denver. and

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police there have said the matter remains under investigation. The

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description of that incident comes from a judge's written order

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and from prosecution filings, not from any finding of fact.

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His attorney has said he was not working at the

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airport and may have been picking up his daughter. Sources

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have differed on the dates involved, with the alleged crash

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reported as August 26th and the airport trip as August 28th,

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and some accounts placing both on the same day. We

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have described them as reported and separately. On the California case,

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Jianchun Li has been convicted and sentenced and retains the

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right to appeal. Accounts of his age at various points

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in the case have differed. The description of what happened

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at the facility comes from prosecutors and from the court record.

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This episode discusses the killing of elderly people in a

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care setting, child deaths, and postpartum mental illness. If you

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suspect abuse or neglect of an older or dependent adult...

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Every state has an Adult Protective Services reporting line, and

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the National Eldercare Locator can connect you to it at 1-800-677-1116.

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If you are struggling, you can call or text 988

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in the United States to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.