Skittles Unfit for Consumption? Disgraced SC Attorney Alex Murdaugh, and Big Business lawsuits and the state of Delaware.

This week on The Outlaw Lawyer, Josh and Joe remote in to discuss the law and how it affects everything around us. We have Josh in studio.

Also, Cassandra, looking forward to that. And as always, Josh and Joe tackle burning legal questions such as, are Skittles unfit for human consumption? And what did South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh just get charged with now?

And when big business sue each other, why is it always in the state of Delaware? That's all coming up on The Outlaw Lawyer. Studio. We have Joe remote.

We have Josh here, so it's gonna be a lot of fun. We're gonna get into these different discussion points, but you're gonna have a legal situation, possibly that you're facing. You've got questions. You can always call and get answers. 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact info briefly what the call is about, and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can always email your questions to the program. We love answering them on the air for future programs.

Questions at theoutlawlawyer.com and check out the website, theoutlawlawyer.com. Josh, I hand it over to you, and you have a special guest in studio. Morgan, we do. We've got Miss Cassandra Nicholas with us today again. We're always happy to have her here. She's in studio with me. Cassandra is nice to have you.

Thank you. Happy to be here. It's always nice. I think it's always nice for our listeners to hear someone besides me and me and Joseph. But Joseph is here, too.

He's remoting, and he's not in studio with us. Joseph, can you hear us? Hey, I can hear you guys.

You sound really, really good. And I'm sad not to be there looking at your faces, but I am looking at my computer screen and the wall. So everything's going pretty good here. Well, I'm gonna have to apologize, guys. I'm in a bad mood today. Pretty bad mood.

Can I ask why? I went home yesterday, and the house has, we got two AC units, two air conditioning units. It's very hot.

We're recording this in the middle of July. And I went upstairs, and it was about 80 degrees in my bedroom. So I had one AC unit. Kind of on the fritz. I was like, Oh, that's disappointing. But we still got the other side of the house was cool. And about five hours later, that one went out. So I have both AC units at my house. Cha-ching.

Not working, right? I've always said that air conditioning is a crutch for the week. Well, it's a hard sleep in the 80 degrees, and you can set up fans. You can do a lot of stuff. I try to pretend like I'm camping, right?

Because when you go camping in the summer, you're gonna be a little warm. Still not very good sleep. Our fantastic AC guy, our HVAC guy will be out today, and hopefully we'll get a good sleep tonight. But I felt like I needed to warn everybody ahead of time that that's what I'm dealing with. I'll be honest with you, man. It seems your energy, your mood seems about the same as it usually is to me, man.

I don't really notice much of a difference. I was reading about they got the heat wave happening in the UK. They've got a big heat wave, and most of them, a lot of them don't have central air, right? Because they're used to trying to keep their houses warm, not necessarily keep them cool. So I saw a stat. It was like 5% of the houses in the UK have central air, and I don't know what the temperature is over there. It just sounded like it was really, really hot.

Yeah. In Spain, it's been like 105. They've had 1100 deaths. It's been really bad.

1100 deaths from heat. Josh, I wasn't worried about you. I'm kind of concerned. I'm not in my peak physical shape here either.

As a younger man, I could have handled it better. You're going to be getting your exercise at night sleeping in 92 degree heat, sweating it out. So that's going to be good, man. But it reminded me, you know, my wife is a Western New Yorker, and when you go up to Western New York, we always are there in the summertime, and I'm always there during a heat wave. And a lot of people, it's changing up there, but a lot of people don't have central air the closer you get to the Canadian border.

So this is what that reminds me of, you know. The house I grew up in that my sister still lives in doesn't have central air. We'd have one window unit in the living room.

We'd hang like quilts on the doors to keep the cold air in that one room, and you stay in there as much as you can in the summer. And for our listeners, where are you originally from? North Dakota. North Dakota. What's the what's the summers like in North Dakota? I mean, they're short, but they're really hot.

There was when I was in college. Fine, really hot. Give me some temperature ranges. I mean, it's over 100 at least a few days every summer. And one day when I was in college, it was the hottest place on earth for one day. It hit 126 degrees.

Real temperature. What? I got home to my apartment, which also didn't have central air, and the paint had peeled off all the walls and was like in rolls on the floor. Oh my God, that's terrible.

It was terrible. Yeah. Yeah, you were complaining about 80 degrees of Josh. Josh is fine.

126 in the Dakotas? Yeah, just one day. It was fine.

You know, just sit in an oven for one day. It's OK. I'll tell you what, I don't I think I saw a meme or something at one point, but this is the time of the year where if you're going to have an event or something that doesn't have AC, like don't invite me.

Right. Just don't I don't want to be there. Don't. I think that meme for you, Josh, would just be don't don't invite me. You know, if you've got AC, don't invite me.

Don't invite me. You know, this screams, though, this screams if there are, you know, young people out there looking for careers, HVAC. Yeah, don't don't sleep.

Don't sleep on the trades, first of all. But but yeah, don't sleep on the HVAC, man. Those people are they're awesome lifesavers. Yes, like legit lifesavers. But anyway, that now you guys know where I'm coming from. So if I speak to you and I sound a little angrier or come at you the wrong way, you got to give me the benefit of the doubt today. But we do have legal stuff to talk about. As always, we have legal stuff to talk about. Not one of our big segments, but the the Elon Musk Twitter deal, potential deal has apparently fallen apart. And there's that that's a big story.

That's like the most you know, when I when I usually look at legal news before we come and sit in the studio, that's the one that comes up the most. And I thought maybe for our listeners, the most interesting part of that right now is that everything's happening in Delaware. And you see this a lot when big companies sue each other. A lot of them are incorporated in Delaware.

At least one will be. And so Delaware, a very small state compared to New York or California or Texas, has a lot of business litigation. And so that's being litigated in Delaware.

I think that was one of our intro questions. But Cassandra, we see that a lot. Yeah, they have very business friendly laws in Delaware.

So a lot of businesses choose to incorporate there. However, I haven't been really following the Twitter Elon stuff as closely as I have been his personal drama, which is way more exciting. He's got secret twins. Yeah. Yeah. That came out. Yeah.

And he's I saw him in Greece with his shirt off. Yeah. He's got that. He's got a body type that you really strive for.

It's funny when he's the richest man on earth body type. Yeah. When you these famous people or these real rich people, if you get a picture of them with their shirt off, that's big money, I think.

Right. Even if, like, I don't think there's a lot of people clamoring to see Elon without a shirt on. If you're kids, if you're listening and you don't want to be a tradesman, then next next on your list should be shirtless pictures of billionaires.

That's your job. Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos' body sculpting team has done a great job. So if Elon can hire them. Bezos.

I read I don't know if it was I didn't I didn't research or anything, but I heard he was trapped on his yacht in like Germany or something. There's like a stuck. There's a bridge that he can't get through. Yeah. And they won't take paying them to remove it. And they said, no.

Yes. It's just stuck on his big yacht. I think he's OK. Yeah.

He's doing just fine. Extended vacation. You think if you were a multi billionaire, you'd like I feel like you have access. You could just pay someone to cook you the perfect meals nutritionally.

You can have the best personal trainer. That's what they do. They're doing that now. Well, then you got to you look at Elon Musk and he's you know, I guess he's a workaholic. He's busy.

He's worried about the the population issues. I'll tell you guys this. You give me a billion dollars. I don't look like this anymore. Yeah. I'm going to recognize you and clean it up. I look like a Marvel superhero. You know, so then me as a society, I think we need to come together.

Just something else I found out is talking about Bezos made me think about it. When is when are we going to have 24 hour stores again? So last night when my AC went out, I was like, I got to get some fans. I couldn't get fans, man. I had to go.

I had to go to the office and take some fans we had at the office because you couldn't go buy fans. There's nothing open after like 10 o'clock. I figured we'd be Walmarts not open. I don't think so.

No, man. And that's and that's tough because that's like for me personally. That's when I would go to Wal-Mart so you could avoid some of the traditional Wal-Mart. Pitfalls. Yeah. You get in there. You get in there at like 12 o'clock. Nobody's in there. You've got peace. You've got harmony as opposed to like six thirty in the afternoon.

And you see some real some creatures from the lagoon in there. It's not even an option anymore. I didn't know it was an option in North Carolina.

I've only been down here two years and it's been infuriating that things closed so early. Well, I think it's I used to be. Yeah. So you came you came at it. COVID came. Did you bring COVID?

It's your fault. Yeah. Yeah. There was a time like you needed a fan at 10 o'clock.

You just go to Wal-Mart or I mean, and other things would be open to Wal-Mart was the one that was traditionally open like the whole night. But like, are we just not as a society? Like, I was mad. I was like, look, I'm an American.

I live in America and I need a fan at 10 0 1 p.m. And I can't get one was mad. That's ridiculous. Somebody needs to do something. Yeah, I agree. Let's come together as a society and let's let's get Wal-Mart back open 24 hours back to our original question.

We were trying to answer. But yes, Delaware has an extensive history of being business friendly. Their business laws are very well litigated.

Right. And so they and they have courts that are just special business courts. And so they really cater to the business community.

So that's why a lot of folks are incorporated in Delaware. And so that was the big story today on the Twitter Elon Musk front is that they were getting fast tracked. They have a program to fast track these type of lawsuits.

That's coming up in October. We spent a lot of time talking about the the Dodds decision and the right to abortion, right to privacy and all that. And so I thought it would be interesting to bring up that the House did pass a marriage protection act to protect interracial and same sex marriage. And that's interesting because, you know, I think a lot of people are worried that, you know, the same logic that was used to protect the right to abortion. It was also used in cases that, you know, said you have a constitutional right to marry who you want to marry.

And so there's some fear there that that those decisions may be revisited or overturned in the next couple of years. So the House did pass a marriage act with bipartisan support. And there was a quote there that I really liked. So there was an article.

I can't remember where I pulled this from, but there was a you know why they did this. They want to make sure, you know, they protect these rights. And there was a Republican from South Carolina, Representative Nancy Mace, who had a quote, If gay couples want to be as happily or miserably married as straight couples, more power to them. I thought that was an odd quote from a Republican out of South Carolina, Representative Nancy Mace.

But this is what we were talking about. You know, the Supreme Court didn't make abortion illegal. They just didn't again, just it was a big a big thing, but didn't protect it as a constitutional right. The House, the Senate, Congress can always say, hey, this is legal on a federal level. And they have our Congress seems to have a hard time doing it. I didn't read about the prospects of this, making it through the Senate since the Senate so deadlocked. I haven't seen either, but it's encouraging that it had bipartisan support in the House.

So we'll see. Well, we got a couple more topics to talk to today. So there's a big Skittle lawsuit that's going to be our next segment. When we come back from break, we're coming up against a break. But there's a lawsuit. Someone alleges that Skittle is Skittles are unfit for human consumption. So we're going to spend some time talking about that lawsuit.

I always mispronounce mispronounce his name. But we have an update in the what case, Cassandra, the Murdoch murders, the Murdoch murders. So we got an update there.

There's been some action there this week. And as always, we got our listener questions to end our show. So we got some good listener questions. Let's go around. So that's what we got lined up, Morgan.

All right. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, the managing partners. They're our special guests today, also an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer Cassandra Nicholas.

And we will get into more topics if you've got a legal situation you are facing and you need answers. I've got a phone number for you. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. You can always email your questions to the show. Questions at the outlaw lawyer.

Now, if you go to the Web site, make sure you leave your information there as well with that question. But also with the phone number is just briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker Hamer will be in touch again.

That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. And talk some skittles coming up next on the outlaw lawyers. Welcome back into the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

In studio today, Cassandra Nicholas, also a attorney with Whitaker and Hamer offices located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. We talked the legalese. You may have a situation you're facing. You can always call and get more information. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. And leave your contact information briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can always email your questions to the program.

Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. All right. We're going to talk about rainbows, skittles.

I'm excited. What's going on with skittles? First of all, Joseph, do you eat skittles? When was the last time you had a skittle? Oh, man, I hate skittles. Skittles are probably my least favorite candy.

Never resonated with me. I'm this edition of the outlaw lawyers brought to you by Skittles. No, it's nothing against them and my kids. I keep them in business. My kids love them.

I buy them for the kids. But I never been a fan, man. Like candy for me. Like I like chocolate, I guess. So like sweet candy, like sweet tarts, skittles, hairheads.

That's never it's never really been my thing. I know you can't tell by looking at my unfit body, but I don't eat a lot of sweets like that. Josh, you know, speaking of unfit, I'm in that club.

I'm definitely not in peak physical condition in, you know, I don't know what's up with my tick tock algorithm, but I'll be looking at tick tock. And for some reason, I'm getting all these videos of people like me who are who are not super fit, getting on stuff like zip lines, mainly right zip lines and horses. And people are having to help them on there. Right. And I feel like as a general rule, if someone's having to help you ride something like help you get into it, you shouldn't ride it. And I think that is definitely a rule for zip lines and and horses. I think that's the biggest thing I'm seeing.

But I don't know how tick tock decided that's what I wanted to see. But they feed me a lot of those. I don't know if you guys see those on your. I've got I've had zero of those. Zero. Just me then.

Videos of people having trouble getting on things and riding them. Our algorithms are different. You might be hipper than me. I'm not on tick tock anyway, but the Instagram algorithm, I could feel the judgment in your voice. I fought it for a long time. And then my my one of my kids got on there and started sending me stuff.

So are you posting any videos? No, no, no. He's never going to tell you. Maybe it pops up in your algorithm. Maybe if you get that algorithm that has people struggling to get on things, you're going to see just trying to climb a ladder. I saw this when it was like three people trying to get this dude on a horse. I was like, maybe you shouldn't be on that horse, man, if it takes like three people to get you on. How did the horse feel about it? Well, the horse, they always fall off the horse bucks, the zip line breaks. Something happens. And so you're just watching videos of people get injured, man.

It's not even people haven't. That's that's just injury videos. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, in my mind, they didn't get hurt. You know, they're not moving right away. But, you know, I figure they just got the wind knocked out of them.

I'm going to make I'm going to tell you, this is a bold claim. But if it takes three people to get you on a horse and you fall off of that horse, you're hurt. Yeah, you're you're injured. That's it.

That is a debilitating injury. Cassandra, you eat these Skittles, these things called Skittles. I don't. I'm in the same like not a big sweets person camp. If if I have more room, I'm going to have another plate of nachos versus a dessert. So Morgan Skittles. No.

Yeah, I don't either. I'm not a big candy guy. I like keeping these people in like I guess my kids. We went we went on a vacation here earlier. I guess it would have been last month by now, but we always get them something long ride.

Right. We always get the kids something. We're like, hey, what do you want to have in the car? And maybe we'll get some Pepsi or something, you know, and my middle kid, tropical flavored Skittles, huge bag. That's what he wanted. So I had some of those.

They weren't terrible. But anyway, a California man has sued in federal court. They have sued Mars, Inc., the company that produces and sells Skittles. And they are claiming that the titanium dioxide in the candy makes it unfit for human consumption.

And to be clear, he is the class representative, but this is a class action lawsuit. So there's there's a bunch of people that think it's unfit for human consumption. And and so I didn't you know, there's there's a lot of things I've learned in my old age.

I shouldn't have eaten. You know, they tell you not to do drugs and stuff when you're little. And, you know, if you drink a lot of alcohol, that has some side effects. If you smoke cigarettes, you know what you're in for.

But when you're just innocently eating candy, you don't realize, I think, at a younger age how bad it is for you. But Cassandra, you did a little research. So, you know, a titanium dioxide, you know about it. I do a little bit.

Not very much. But it's a white coloring. And the the assertion is that it causes geno geno toxicity, which is damage to DNA that can cause cancer.

But the studies are pretty. You're fine, Joe. It's fine. No, man, I'm not.

I'll give you my reason why when you're done with your thought. This is not the only thing it's in. It's in like soups and sauces and all sorts of. It's in powdered donuts.

And I'm going to. The studies are relatively limited, but they're they're moving forward anyway. The FDA has not banned it. It's totally legal to use in products in the U.S. So I'm not sure what Skittles responsibility is versus the FDA is. Right.

Right. If it's legal to be banned in Europe, but not banned by the FDA. So the EU has said they will be banning it. It's still for sale in the EU.

And then the UK, now its own thing post-Brexit, decided there's not enough studies and they are not banning it. However, Skittles have already been banned in Sweden and Norway for a while, not due to this ingredient, due to other ingredients, primarily due to some colorings. Yellow five and six that cause like allergies and hyperactivity in kids. And I've heard some I've heard things about this yellow five. That's the Mountain Dew problem, right? That's the Mountain Dew problem. You know what they say about Mountain Dew, Josh? It's delicious. I know everybody loves it.

Note to self, sell Skittles stock. You know, titanium dioxide. It sounds delicious. What does it do? What is it? What's the genome toxicity, Josh?

Are you listening? No, but what is it? Why do they even what's the advantage of it?

You want to hear what it's in, Josh? It's in confectionery, pastries, cake decorations, toothpaste, all of your favorite things. What's it supposed to do? What's the advantage? Why even have it if it makes them prettier? It just makes it's just a white coloring agent.

You want to make it just it's a it's an agent of color. I saw this. I saw this yesterday.

I haven't I want to I want to get on the you know, the I want to get on pace or I want to get on the federal. I want to pull down the complaint. I want to see the the legal reasoning behind it, because, yes, if the FDA says it's all right, you know, how can you hold, you know, Mars negligent or culpable or responsible for using it? So I do believe that part of it is that the Mars company, the Skittles company has been representing since 2016. So for the last six years that they would be removing this from their product.

So people have in the meantime believed that it's either going to be removed or has already been removed, but they still have not done it. And they like purportedly hide it in their ingredient list. I've never looked at the ingredient list for Skittles, but I bet it's alarming just before this. You when you're eating candy, like no one thinks you're taking vitamins. I don't think anybody's eating any candy thinking like, wow, this is you know, this is good for me. You're going to help me out.

I think you have to assume you're killing yourself slowly. Look, I was at the side sidebar here, but I was at the lake and I was getting some sodas for the kids. And they had Mountain Dew, right? They had Mountain Dew, but they have all these different flavors of Mountain Dew. You know, I know they got the Code Red and all that stuff that's been around for a while, but they have all these new flavors. Have you seen those? Yeah, I've seen some. I'm not a big Mountain Dew aficionado because, again, there's a spicy scare around it.

Got me some. So my kids bought all the we bought all the flavors. So there was like a gold that's like a mango pineapple thing. And then there's like a hot sauce one. And then there was like there was like three or four.

Yeah, it's a Flamin' Hot Cheetos one. That's right. And they had like a little taste test. Right. They set up a little taste test.

But I just didn't want to talk taste test where you can't see them with the straws in them and they have to guess. I didn't know what it was, but yeah, they on tick tock. They did. I haven't.

That didn't come up in my feed. The way someone choking to death on that taste test. Sure, that's going to be a job. It's only people who, like me, are unfit, who are being loaded onto rides and things that they probably shouldn't be. Well, there's other stuff, but that's like warning you. I get some animal videos, too. Somebody was giving their guinea pig a haircut. I get that one.

I don't know the rhyme. Well, we know where you're spending your time, Josh, because the algorithms throwing it at you. Well, you know, they searching on Google to get a haircut.

I get a lot of golf videos. Look, my kids feel good about that. My kids are googling stuff, too. You know, it's not just me. Even on the kids. I think I think that's a warning to you, man.

Your kids might be setting you up to put you on. The anyway, this lawsuit, like I said, I hadn't been able to really research it. It came up. It is a class action. You know, these things are usually class actions don't happen overnight. There's some thought.

There's some process there. So I don't think this one will be going away, but we'll see. We'll kind of keep our eye on it. I don't know if it'll make the news again. This is the kind of thing that. You know, companies, they say no publicity is bad publicity, but your product being unfit for human consumption is probably not the best.

But I'm sure they'll find a way to settle this one or put it to bed, but we'll we'll keep an eye on it anyway. Outlaw Liars. We are talking all legalese and some fun, obviously skittles.

We got a little bit off track there, but that's a lot of fun. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are the outlaw lawyers. Our special guest in studio today is Cassandra Nicholas, also an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer, and she brought the skittles knowledge today. And we want to remind you, too, that Josh and Joe are managing partners of the firm and practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

Office is located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. If you've got a legal question of your own and you need an answer, I've got a number for you. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact info briefly what the call is about and an attorney will be in touch with you from Whitaker and Hamer. And you can always email your questions to the program. We'll answer them on a future program. Questions at The Outlaw Lawyer dot com. When we come back, Murdoch update. It is a made for TV movie, but we won't.

Well, basically it is. And we'll talk about that coming up next on The Outlaw lawyers. The Outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your host. They are managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. They are practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina. Our special in-studio guest is Cassandra Nicholas. She is also an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. We move from Skittles to the Murdoch case. And this, again, is just it is made for we're going to see some kind of TV show out of this.

But I can't wait to get the update before we get there. Morgan, I'm still stuck on this candy. Our Skittles debate here. I was just reading that some other candies don't rely on the was it titanium dioxide.

So they got a list here of candies that are brightly colored, but don't rely on the titanium dioxide to get that effect. But one of them was was nerds. And I remember as a kid when nerds because nerds haven't always been around.

Right. I remember when I was a kid, nerds were new. It was a new candy. And who would have thought nerds would still be around?

They're great. If I was going to eat a candy and be nerds way before Skittles. Joseph, Josh, I'm not a nerds guy. Nerds fall into the same category as Skittles for me, where they are sweet candy that doesn't have chocolate in it. And but again, my kids, man, my kids love the nerds.

Big fan of the nerds, the nerds, ropes, pretty much any type of nerds. So we we buy a lot of them. I just don't eat them. Do your kids when they get. This made me think about pop rocks. The kids.

Do you ever get this for kids? Pop rocks? Occasionally. Do they do they eat them or they just put them in stuff? Now they put them in their mouth. That's where you're supposed to put them, Josh. My kids get them.

And again, I think social media has conditioned them to where they get them. They put them in like soda or they put them in stuff because they want to see a supposed to do something reaction, do something explosion. Maybe you get that in your mouth, too, though, man.

And it's a very satisfying pop. Like my kids are very irresponsible when they get candy. They don't get candy a lot. And they're very they're very excited when it happens. You give them some candy. They got no moderation. They're going to blow it out.

And then they're going to they're going to drive you crazy for the next however long that sugar rush last. We got one kid. We have to hide his candy. He is not responsible enough. And by responding, like even on a kid level with candy is not responsible enough. So he is given the amount of candy. It's acceptable for him to eat.

And then we have to super duper hide it from him. So nice. The anyway. What's this guy's name? Alec Murdoch.

I cannot I cannot call him Murdoch the way his name spelled. But for a while there, that's all you heard about. This guy's was on every criminal podcast.

He was in every every every news outlet was was covering him. Including this podcast. Episode 29 hosted on WH Lawyer. It's not it's one of our older episodes, so it's not on our YouTube channel.

Is that the real episode number? And you knew that? I might have looked ahead of time.

You're amazing. Research, research. That's what this so desperately means. You've clearly been consuming a lot of titanium dioxide. Your brain is operating at full capacity. So we spend a lot of time talking because it's fascinating. You know, this is the kind of story. This is a this is an attorney, a millionaire attorney in a town where his family had been prominent for a long time and his kind of fall from grace. When you when you look at it in contrast and and the crimes that he's accused of are kind of spectacular in nature and certainly draws people's attention. So this was under the microscope for a long time.

It's been a little bit quiet on that front for a while. But this week he got new charges. What do you get charged with Cassandra? He was finally indicted with the murders of both his son and wife from last summer. He's been in jail since last October on a bunch of other like financial crimes.

But this is the first like like vicious, dangerous thing he's been really charged with. And you may know this, Cassandra. I was trying to look into it.

I didn't find it before it was time to get on the get on the radio, get on the mike here. But they got a murder weapon. They got I mean, they've got bodies, I guess they found the bodies, but I don't know what the theory. And then I guess that's part of the thing that the prosecutor bringing the charges has been very quiet on any new evidence or anything that's come to light since that, you know, because this happened.

This is a year ago, June 2021. They were murdered. I don't believe they have the murder weapons. They do know that two separate weapons were used, which I think is one of the reasons it took so long to narrow it down to actually charging Alec with the murders. But he did have gun residue on his hands.

And then the newer evidence that I've heard is also high velocity, like blood spray on his clothes, suggesting he was like nearby when they were shot, whether it was him or not. So he was finally indicted. Interestingly, his attorneys that are representing him on these charges were his son, Paul, his murdered son, Paul's attorneys related to a boating accident where he was driving and a passenger died. So that's an interesting potential conflict where his attorneys are representing him in the murder of their former client. Man, I thought you were going to stop at murdered son and say his murdered son was his attorney, like the ghost of his murdered kid. And that would have been a really interesting story. His living son is in law school or trying to get back into law school.

A kid better watch out, man. So Murdoch, Murdoch, Murdoch, I'm just gonna start spelling it Murdoch. So Murdoch is, you know, he's, I don't know what he's really admitted to at this point in his other crimes, or if he's admitted to anything. I think there was some. Anyway, he's constantly proclaimed his innocence in these murders. Yeah, his attorneys the entire time have said that he's got an ironclad alibi. But now there's also video from his son Paul's phone from that evening of them just like joking around.

But the timestamp on the video shows that he was definitely there with them. So holes being poked in that ironclad alibi. So he's, I mean, he's been in jail this. So today, I think today we're in the studio on Wednesday. I think today is a bond hearing. I believe so.

Yeah. And he's already in prison. He's already being held on his 70 plus other charges.

Yeah, I think it's over 80 now. Oh, and so and these new charges, there's a bond hearing. And then we were just talking before we went on again, this, this is something that just happened in the past day or so. But we, we didn't hear or I'm not sure if they're seeking the death penalty as part of this or not.

Yeah, it is definitely available. We don't know yet if they will be seeking it. But that'll be an interesting situation, too. So if it was just one murder unrelated to any other crimes, the death penalty wouldn't necessarily be available. But it's two murders.

And they may be part of some larger scheme, because he was implicated in other crimes at the time. So it could be a capital murder where the death penalty is available. But no one has been executed in South Carolina since 2011. Because the the lethal injection drugs haven't been available. But just last year, they have made in South Carolina, the electric chair, the default option for executions in South Carolina. They have also made firing squad available. They haven't yet used either one. But this is way down the road for the Murdoch case. But those are interesting possibilities.

Which one of those that you pick, Josh? Yeah, I don't know. I it seems so you know, I have a big I have a big problem. Just just from a professional standpoint, I have a big problem. I don't think the state really should be able to execute anyone because you know, you give the state you give the government that kind of power. And they're going to do something wrong with it.

Right. I mean, it's it's a hard it's a hard thing to come to grips with with me for me personally, I understand that it is an option in a lot of states, South Carolina. And I'll I'll tell you all the attorneys that are talking today on our show are licensed in North Carolina. We are not licensed in South Carolina.

So the South Carolina law that me and Cassandra and Joe are talking about are just what we've been able to glean from the reports and kind of what's going on. But yeah, firing squad or electric chair. I don't like the I don't like having to choose between those two. I can't imagine firing squad is the one I picked though. I don't know if I'm looking at the menu. I'm thinking about steak potato.

That's what I want to do. I don't want to have to pick on how I'm going out. That would be awful. Joe, where'd you land on that? Not committing a capital crime.

That's where I landed on it. Let's go one right. That's if it came down to it. If it came down to it between firing squad and electric chair. Oh, man. Um, fire firing squad.

Maybe maybe that's quicker. I don't know. I don't know, man. They both suck.

Really bad. Inject me. Take your time. Get the get what's needed to inject me and give me that one.

I think that's the one you take if you've got the choice. It's just so bizarre. You know, some of the things that are going on again, no matter what kind of what side of the political spectrum you fall on, no matter what what you believe. Things are things are, you know, we've got you can't get lethal inject. You can't get lethally injected anymore. That seems weird. And why can't we just Walmart is only somebody and just suffocate him. Like, I don't know. Isn't that better?

Walmart is only open for about 12 hours a day. I feel like I feel like we're taking the state of this country. I feel like I think I feel like things are changing for the for the worse. But anyway, this one this one will continue to be a national story. This will be one that continues to have people talking. And at some point, he's not pleading guilty to any of this stuff. So at some point, there's gonna be a trial.

I might have to take a field trip. The courthouse is only three hours away. However, I don't actually know where this one will be done, because all of his other like financial crimes and everything have been handled by the state, the South Carolina state attorney general, because of his like close ties to the solicitor's office in the county that I don't remember the name of. But interestingly, the grand jury for these murder charges was the county grand jury, not the state grand jury. Huh? Yeah.

Yeah. It's tough when you're I mean, he was him and his family were well connected. And so that that's it's been it's been interesting to see how all the conflicts take place. You know, his family's related to a lot of prosecutors, a lot of da's, a lot of solicitors. And so I'm sure that's been that's been interesting to watch that unfold. But there's going to be a trial one heck of a trial trioles at some point, because he's not he's not pleading guilty.

Yeah. Anyway, we'll keep you up to date as things things move on that one. The outlaw liars Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. You can find him at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They have offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. They're the managing partners of the firm. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. And again, our special in studio guests this week, Cassandra Nicholas, also an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer.

So we move from Alex Murdoch. We've got listener questions. And I look forward to these. And again, that's coming up next. On the outlaw lawyer, if you've got a legal situation that you are facing, you can always give the firm a call 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can email your questions to the program. Again, questions at the outlaw lawyer.com. And we will answer those on a future episode here of the outlaw lawyer. And you can always visit the website the outlaw lawyer.com.

We're back on the other side right after this. Welcome back in to the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your hosts. You can find them at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're the managing partners.

They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. Our special guest in studio, Cassandra Nicholas, also an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. And we start with a listener question. So one of the good things about this show is that we we try to encourage our listeners to call in. I talk to a lot of our listeners, try to give them a little bit of direction.

You know, obviously, if the firm can help them, certainly let them know that if but if there's any general advice I can give to get one of our listeners going in the right directions, I always try to try to do that. And so I did talk to a listener or to the past week or so. And again, I like to take some of these fact patterns because if if if you're a listener, you're not going to get a lot of attention. If it's bothering a listener, if it's something a listener is having to deal with, I assume there's probably other people that have to deal with the same situation. So I like to kind of take names out of it, change up the facts and just use these as listener questions that we can talk about on the show to see if it might our discussion might aid some some some other.

So we have a we have a listener question today. And the way I phrase this is my longtime partner, I'm using the word partner because because in this situation, our fact pattern, well, we've got two folks living together, they were not married. So we don't have a we don't have a married couple here. So I've got my longtime partner passed away unexpectedly. My partner did not have a will did not have an estate plan. I can't access their accounts anymore. And they had a car in just their name.

What should I do? And so in our fact pattern here, we have a you know, we'll just say we have a boyfriend and a girlfriend who have cohabitated lived together for a long time, you know, shared expenses, mortgages, bills, but had accounts in their sole name, had vehicles in their sole name, right? So they hadn't they hadn't joined the household together. And here we have no estate plan. And so in our fact pattern, our our person posing this question to us, they they need access to these accounts.

And in theory, gonna have to get the car retitled, or what have you. Cassandra works on a lot of estate, we'd call this a state administration, right? If we do some estate planning, before you pass away, help you with your will, that's that's helping you estate plan. Once you're gone, though, we work with your heirs on a state administration, right, putting that plan into effect. And Cassandra helps us a lot at the firm with a state administration. This person comes to you, Cassandra.

What do you got for him? Well, not the greatest news, right? It is a difficult spot because an unmarried partner doesn't necessarily have legal standing. As far as intestacy goes in North Carolina, a so heirs of a person would first be their children. So if their partner had any children, those are the legal heirs. If they did not have children, but do have one or both living parents, then the parents are the living heirs. If they don't have living children or parents, then their siblings are the living heirs. And then it goes out further than that if you still don't have any of those blood relations. So you'd first have to determine who the actual living heirs are.

And hopefully this longtime partner gets along with whoever that is. Because the legal heirs are really in the driver's seat when it comes to dealing with a state administration in an intestacy situation. Where there's not a will, is what, intestacy. Yeah, so Cassandra's using a lot of fancy legal words.

She sounds very, she sounds much lawyer-y than me and Joseph. But yeah, so when you pass away and you have a will, you have an estate plan. What's the legal word there? When you have a will? Intestate. With a will is testate. Intestate is without. That's right. You die with, you pass away, you die without an estate plan, without a will.

It's intestacy. And so if you die with a will, then we just look at your will, right? We go down the courthouse and say, hey, Josh didn't make it.

He fell off a zip line in an unfortunate ziplining accident. And he wants everything to go to his wife. He wants some things in trust for his kids.

He wants to make sure his best friend from kindergarten gets his original Nintendo, whatever it may be. The will just tells us and everybody's fine with that. We don't care about the laws in North Carolina.

Intestacy doesn't come in. We're just going to follow the instructions in your will. Now, if there's something wrong in the will, you've left something to someone who's died, who's not alive.

We've got to do some statute reading and figure out what's going to happen. But you can direct your estate any way you want to in your will. Here, of course, we didn't have a will, so we're stuck with what the laws of North Carolina say should happen. And in defense of the intestacy laws, their object is trying to get things to your natural heirs. So in the absence of a will, North Carolina wants things to go to your kids if you have kids. Of course, your spouse is in there if you're married. If they're not around, then it's going to go back up to your parents if they're around.

If not, it's going to go to siblings. But the law, in the absence of a will, in the absence of your estate plan, it's going to try to get things to where most people maybe would want them to go. But yeah, if you are cohabitating, not married, there's no common law marriage in North Carolina, there's nothing like that. So you're not in a good spot. So the person asking this question, we don't have a lot of good news for them. And I made a note here, renouncing doesn't really work. So even if you, let's say in this situation, there's a brother and a sister, we don't have any kids, parents aren't alive, there's a brother and a sister, even if they don't want the stuff, even if they don't want to be heirs, them renouncing doesn't get it to the partner. They're really in charge of this, and they're going to have to be involved, I guess is the easiest way to say it.

Yeah, essentially. They can renounce their right to be the administrator if an estate does need to be opened with the county clerk. But even then that just gives the longtime partner the opportunity to kind of handle the things, but it doesn't get like a bank account into the hands of the long term partner to use as they want or need.

So there are two issues. It's the bank accounts and the vehicles. Vehicles in North Carolina, if they are kind of a lower value, if they're under $5,000 of value, you can get a DMV form and transfer ownership of those without having to open an estate at all.

It would still have to be to an heir, so whoever that heir is would then get it into their name and then sign it back over to the partner if they choose to do so. I think there's maybe, some people still hold this view that where you have to have a lot of stuff to justify the time or maybe the expense of having an estate plan, having a will, but that's not the case. If you pass away and you've got a car and you've got some bank accounts, even if your estate is not $3 million or whatever it may be, your heirs who may depend on you are going to have some trouble getting to that stuff if an estate plan is not in place. So there's a lot of things you can do.

There's a lot of things to think about. And obviously the more assets you have, the more people who depend on you, the more important it is to have an estate plan. Because once you're gone, you may not be around to worry about it, but your family, your heirs, again, the people that depend on you are going to have a tough time.

We're going to have to come sit down with me or Cassandra or Joseph and try to figure out, all right, what's the easiest way to proceed at this point and to get things to where they need to go. But here, yeah, an estate plan would have prevented this. No one expects to pass away unexpectedly. But it's just something you get to a certain age.

It's just something you got to take care of because it can be difficult. And in the alternative to a will, or in addition to a will even, you can avoid having to open an estate with a county clerk by having someone else's name on all of your assets. So if this vehicle that we're discussing had already been owned jointly, if there were two names on the title, joint with right of survivorship, nothing needs to be done at all.

It is automatically owned by the other person on the title at the passing of the first person. Same with the bank accounts. If they had added someone jointly on those accounts, those automatically pass without anything else needing to be done. So setting up your loved ones for the least inconvenience possible is a really kind thing to do in your life.

And in my old age, I think about that anytime we're about to where we've been trying to buy a car for a while, they're hard to find right now. But anytime you buy something, you know, getting it getting it titled in you and your spouse or you and your partner's name or you and a child's name. You know, when you do set up bank accounts, making sure they have payable on death beneficiaries or they're jointly held. There's a lot of things you can do without sitting down with an attorney to try to like you said, Cassandra, to try to make it easier when that time when that time does come.

But this is an example of a tough spot to be in and not a lot of not a lot of good advice to give after the fight, but definitely a learning experience that maybe others can benefit from. The Outlaw Liars, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, where you can find them. They're the managing partners. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

Our special guest in studio, Cassandra Nicholas, also an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. They have offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. If you've got a legal situation you are facing, you've got questions, give us a call. 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact info briefly what that call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch.

And you can always email your questions to the program. That's questions at theoutlawlawyer.com and we'll answer those on a future program. And always check out the website, theoutlawlawyer.com. We're back to wrap this one up right after this. Welcome back into the final segment of the Outlaw Liars. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina.

Offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. And our special guest in studio here is Cassandra Nicholas, also an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer. Closing up the show, Josh. Yeah, I had an update or two I wanted to share. I saw at least local media outlets. I don't know if you guys remember about a year ago, all me and Joe could talk about were spitting cobras. There was a zebra cobra on the loose in North Raleigh and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people watched on local media as city employees approached a house where we thought the zebra cobra may be. So someone had an exotic pet. It got away and it haunted North Raleigh for a couple of days. Anyway, this little eight inch, nine inch cobra that was out there on the loose.

We talked about it a long time. Chris Gifford was the was the young man who's now 22. He was the young man who had a exotic snake collection that made him. I feel like this is the most we've ever talked about TikTok on one of our shows. But but he was a TikTok.

Would you say star, Cassandra? I don't know what the threshold for that is. A trending TikTok star. Trending. Trending snake handler TikToker with a hundred. Big in the snake reptile community of TikTok.

Exactly. It's a it's a subset of TikTok famous. He has one hundred and ten thousand followers on TikTok.

So it's not not nothing more than I've got. Right. And six million views on his TikToks. So he would he would I think if I recall correctly, he would he would let him go in his backyard. He would kind of film them. And that was kind of his he was creating that was how he's creating content, you know. And so one got away.

And so he's kind of shown up to apologize. You know, he had 40 misdemeanor charges, I think. I can't remember what he pled to, but there was a reduced amount that he pled to and he lost his snakes. Seventy five of them. He had to surrender 75 snakes. Yeah.

Yuck. And and then he had to pay some fines and what have you. But, you know, it's a year in the past. So he is coming forward now to apologize. And it looks like he's prohibited from owning snakes again until maybe I think it was August.

And so it looks like he intends to maybe venture back into the snake ownership platform when that. Watch out, Raleigh. Yeah. You know, I got somebody local made a I guess it was kind of all dodgeball, but they made a North Raleigh Spitting Cobras T-shirt that was kind of like a dodgeball reference. And I got one, but it doesn't fit me anymore.

But it was a nice shirt. I liked it. I bet you can fit into it. I can. I can. I can get in there.

It may not fit you comfortably, but it'll get on your body. So, guys, in this situation, if you're in, you know, you've been irresponsible with snakes. Do you have to register as an irresponsible snake owner for future?

Because if I lived in a neighborhood and I knew somebody had 75 snakes in their house, I'd have a problem. I remember talking about it because I think the statute I think the I think on the state level, I think the statute was changed a little bit because I think that's one of the things we did on the show back then as we looked at the statute. And it was it was we thought at the time was severely lacking. Didn't have a lot of penalty unless someone died from your from the exotic animal that got away. But I remember there being some changes to it, and I honestly didn't have time to look at it before we got on the air. But no, I think there is a registration type requirement now. But I have to look at that, Morgan. I don't I don't recall what they changed. But, yeah, it's something you'd want to know, right?

If your neighbor was harboring 75 poisonous snakes. I don't think there's a map. There's not an app you can download. In other North Carolina legal news, though, there was a case and again, we're bouncing back between state court and federal court, but there was a case in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is federal and includes the state of North Carolina. But there was a case where a charter school was had a dress code that required girls to wear skirts, and that was being challenged and was on appeal. And that decision came down in the court. Cassandra, my understanding is the court found that you can't do that. That is a equal protection, probably a Title nine violation, Title nine violation, gender based discrimination.

The court ruled 10 to 6. I'm actually surprised that it was I mean, it's not closely split, but there were people that said, yeah, you can force girls to wear skirts. And so, you know, that's a charter school. So charter schools in here, they talked about how a charter school gets its authority from the state. It's a state actor similar to what a public school. Right.

Just a normal public school would be. And yeah, it seems cut and dry to me. But that was that was that was a case that came down to I feel like we had another case that came down.

But sadly, I see that we're out of time. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer again, you can find them at Whitaker and Hamer law firm managing partners. They're also our special guest and attorney at Whitaker and Hamer.

Cassandra Nicholas in studio with us today. If you've got a legal situation that you are facing and you have questions, you can always call the firm 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what that calls about. An attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. You can always send your questions to the program. Email them questions at the outlawlawyer.com and we will answer those on a future episode. Another one is in the books. We'll see on the radio next week. This is the outlaw lawyers. If you have any questions about the content of the show, contact us directly.