Andy Warhol Foundation Vs a Prince Picture, Darrell Brooks Trial , and The Onion gets Serious About Parody

This week on The Outlaw Lawyer, Josh, Joe, and Cassandra discuss the law and how it affects everything around us. And, as always here at The Outlaw Lawyer, our attorneys tackle all of today's most urgent burning legal questions.

Such as, when is a picture of Prince not a picture of Prince? And what is a sovereign citizen? And why does Daryl Brooks think that this is a defense to murder? What caused the onion to go before the U.S. Supreme Court? That's all coming up next on The Outlaw Lawyer. And now, Outlaw Lawyer.

Welcome in to The Outlaw Lawyer. That's right, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, managing partners. Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm are your hosts. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. We are joined by Cassandra and Nicholas, also an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. And they have offices located conveniently in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and now in Morehead City. And we talk legalese each and every week. If you've got a situation you're facing and you've got questions and you need some answers, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information, briefly what the call's about, and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch.

And you can always, always, always email your questions to the show, questions at theoutlawlawyer.com. Josh and Joe, we welcome you in. Cassandra is remote, and you guys can start talking about where is she?

What's she doing? Morgan, so Cassandra is heading up our new Morehead City office, so she is, we're over here in Apex in the studio, me and my friend Joseph here. Cassandra, you can hear us? You're here? Yes, my first time remoting in. I can hear myself as an echo a little bit, but just some little tech hurdles here in the Morehead City office.

All right. Well, welcome in to the Outlaw Lawyer. Again, Josh and Joe here in studio.

We've got a lot of meaty legal topics to discuss today, as is our custom. But first thing I wanted to bring up, and again, you know, I'm not bringing this up as a way to make fun of Joseph. But Joseph, you were at the UNC-Duke game, right? Yeah, man. How'd that go?

I think it's highly relevant that we are a legal talk show because criminal would be a way that I would describe it. No, it went well, man. It was a good environment. It was a good environment. I tell you one thing, I haven't been to a game, a college football game in a while. And you know, you can drink there now. You can drink in the games. And not a great plan for these heated rivalry games, man.

I've been to several of them. By far the most contentious one that I've ever seen, as far as like the altercations almost happened. And especially at the end, as everyone was filing out, it was like a 2000% increase in those incidents. And I can only attribute that to the alcohol and the lack of class from the team who won the game.

That would be a contributing factor as well. I'm sure there was plenty of class from the team that lost. Yeah, when you lose the game, what do you do? You're just walking with your head down. People are yelling at you. What are you supposed to do, man? I think you're supposed to fight. Poorly officiated game. No, no, no. It's a poorly officiated game all around, I'd say. But some real head scratchers towards the end. You could argue that Duke was robbed completely and that there's no justice in the world.

No hunger. Some could even argue. There's a lot of arguments to make, man. But I'll tell you one thing that was nice. It's a good stadium. Improvements to that stadium come a long ways. They've got a legitimate coach there at Duke now. So the future looks bright. That's good.

This is my old man comment of the day, though. We go to a lot of state football games. We have tickets there. And I always get aisle seats because if something goes down, I want to be able to just skedaddle, right? So I never sit in the middle.

We're always on the end. But man, since they started selling the beer, people are coming up and down the stairs constantly. Right. You know, you go to a Hurricanes game, you don't really interrupt.

You don't walk up and down. It's a rule. Yeah. But at state games, man, is a constant parade of people walking right by you. So anyway, I'm glad that you can have beer at the game. Right. You don't have to drink it all in the parking lot and then come in and then go to half time.

That's a real art. Being able to drink just enough before you go. So I'm glad it's there, but they got to do something. You know, it's like I think, you know, we're considering not going to as many games because you just you pretty much if you're in the aisle seat, you kind of have to stand up to see over everybody that's constantly walking up and down and they're not doing that for peanuts.

Yeah. I mean, once you break the seal and you head to the restroom for the first time, you're going to go six times. So they just they you just lock the bathrooms for half of the game and make people hold it.

Sell diapers. So I didn't. Luckily, Syracuse State was an away game, so I didn't go to that game. I watched that on TV and that's you know, I can turn it off and I can take breaks. How do you like that game? It wasn't good, man.

And I didn't have high hopes for it. But there's still some questionable calls. There's been a lot of I don't I don't understand being an official is very hard. You know, there's a shortage of officials right now in high school and middle school and it's a thankless job.

And I understand that they get a lot of heat and that's a tough job and not a lot of people can do it. But I don't understand with the review how you miss so many calls, you know, like because almost anything can be reviewed. Well, that's the thing.

But yes and no. Like the Duke game, for example. You know, Duke gets a first down that puts the game away and there's a illegal shift penalty. You don't see many of those because it's a bogus baloney call. But that's the type of thing that can't be reviewed. It's a judgment call in the moment. And in that moment, this referee decides it's a great idea to call. And you can look at the tape and argue that there was no illegal shift.

That's what most sane people would do. And in the very next play, touchdown pass, fantastic touchdown pass, by the way, one of the best you've ever seen to end the game. And we call it chop block on a pass play.

That's a very rare thing to see, too. Also a judgment call. Neither play is reviewable. So you have these, you know, there are things that are reviewable, but still you have those those types of penalties. Like you're not reviewing penalties like that.

And those are unfortunately the more controversial type of things that you see after a game. It just adds to the rivalry, Joe. Come on. Yeah. Yeah.

Each team should have their own attorney there to argue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Our games.

Yeah. We really want that. Put that on ESPN for just the two attorneys arguing in the back. Well, actually, that's not a bad idea. ESPN seven split screen. You got two attorneys and they're arguing for their team during the game.

Yeah, I like that. It states attorney can just add layers of mandamus. Make an official do something. States attorney would be busy, man. States attorney.

He'd earn his money. But that's what we like to do here on that law lawyer when we get started. We like to talk about sports. We like to invite Cassandra here and talk about local sports that she's not paying any attention to. But Cassandra, one thing you have been paying attention to is and is is legal is kind of what's been going on with Alex Jones.

So give us tell us what's been going on with him lately. Just over here paying attention to all the legal topics. So Alex Jones, we've talked about the cases against him previously and there was already a judgment against him.

But there's a new one in Connecticut. There's a jury ruling against him for nine hundred and sixty five million dollars. But he's still on the air, still doing his Infowars show, talking about how he's not going to have to pay any of that because he filed bankruptcy. I'm not a Connecticut attorney. I'm not a bankruptcy attorney, but I'm hoping that the families can recover some of the nine hundred and sixty five million dollars against him.

Yeah. You know, so, you know, what you hear bankruptcy attorneys say and again, we're all licensed to practice in North Carolina. None of us are licensed in Connecticut. But what you hear bankruptcy attorneys say those are federal laws. You know, you you can get a lot of stuff discharged in bankruptcy, right? So you can be relieved of personal liability for some of your debts, depending on your your circumstances and what's going on in your life. But when you get sued for what would you call intentional torts, right? When you get sued for fraud, when you get sued for intentional torts, you get a judgment against you. In general, those are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Those those stick with you. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know what his earning power is, but it seems like whatever he's got, you know, he's going to constantly be subject to to some kind of collection action. Right. This isn't going away. Yeah. Question about power because he got removed from any like every viable platform like a while ago.

So I'd be curious to know. I mean, there's still people that are going to listen to him. There's he's got his he's got a very fervent audience, I think is the way that you would describe them.

And they're going to find him if he's even if he's on the radio. What is he on, though? Exactly.

You're not a part of his eyes. I'm not even sure. Just his direct Web site. Probably just a Web site. Yeah. Yeah.

I admittedly don't know for sure. And this article I'm looking at here estimates his current net worth between one hundred and thirty five million and two hundred and seventy million. So even if they recovered all of what he has, it would still be a fraction of the judgment.

And he is appealing this judgment, too. Oh, you got to. Yeah, you have to. What do you have to lose? And I. Yeah.

What you know, if I'm ever worth one hundred thirty five million, you guys won't see me. I'll you'll be remoting in from your island. I'll be I'll be on my island with my kids playing Madden. That's all playing Madden. You can do. Yeah. Football players to your island. You have real life.

Madden have two NFL teams come and let your kids coach them. All right. So we've got we've got three legal topics to get to today. Again, the Supreme Court, we talked about the Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court's back in session. They're they're hearing oral arguments. We're not expecting any decisions anytime soon.

That usually comes later in the year. But they're hearing cases. And one of the cases they're hearing is Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts versus Goldsmith. And so this is a kind of a trademark case that involves a very famous, I guess, famous. I didn't know what it was until I read it, but I'm not a big art guy.

But this is what I don't know what the title of this thing is. But Andy Warhol had taken this picture of Prince taken in 1981. And he took these the photo of Prince changed a little bit, used a couple of copies of it and and created artwork. I think that's fair to say. Cassandra, is that well, is is it? That's the change you have to be. Yeah.

Cassandra, you're our foremost Prince art expert on the show. So if you could just guys through that, we'll we'll we'll get there. We'll get there. That's it. That's a trademark issue or arguments for last week. Again, that piqued my interest. So that's that's one topic we're going to be tackling today. And then Joe's been following the trial of Darryl Brooks. And so just real quickly, what's going on with that, Joe?

Yeah. I mean, I don't say I'm not following it extremely closely. You can only watch so much of it.

It's like watching a train wreck. So but basically, Mr. Brooks, he's one of our. We've talked about these folks before, our sovereign citizens, the folks who argue that the laws don't apply to him. But he is the man that was accused of basically driving his SUV through the Waukesha Christmas parade back in November of 2021. Horrible, tragic incident. He's been on trial.

He fired his attorneys and he's been representing himself. And this has been one of those things that kind of has captivated social media because you can you can go and watch, you know, snippets or all of the trial. And he a colorful entertain. You know, I don't know that you describe it as entertaining, but again, like a train wreck, like it's you almost can't look away. But just craziness, man, pure craziness. And then the other thing I want to talk about, we have a case that has petitioned to go before the Supreme Court.

It's Novak versus city of Parma, Ohio. And we'll talk more about the facts. But I think the most interesting thing about about that case is the onion. You know what the onion is like the. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Parity news. So the onion is makes their living off satire and parody. And that's what this case involves. And the onion has filed an amicus brief. Right. So they have they have weighed in and given their legal opinion on this matter that will be coming before the Supreme Court at some point.

And so that's it's interesting that something has happened in the legal world to make the onion get involved. So anyway, that's what we're going to look at today. Good show for you, Morgan.

All right. Here we go. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your hosts of the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. We also have Cassandra Nicklaus, also an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. She is on the program as well, remoting in from Moorhead City offices for Whitaker and Hamer, conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and the aforementioned Moorhead City now.

And we talk the legalese each and every week. You're going to have questions maybe about a situation that you're in and you need some answers. You can always call Whitaker and Hamer, 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 always email your question to the show. We'll answer it on a future program.

Questions at theoutlawlawyer.com. When we come back, we'll talk about the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts versus Goldsmith. And we'll find out what the team's favorite Prince song is when we come back. Welcome back in to the Outlaw Lawyers, your host, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia. And as you can hear, Moorhead City. Cassandra Nicholas is joining us.

She is in Moorhead City's office and we look forward to having her comments on this latest. And it is Andy Warhol Foundation versus the Visual Arts. That's versus Goldsmith, I should say. And Josh, I said this going into the the segment. What's your favorite Prince song? I think I think before we get there, Morgan, I think before you get to your favorite Prince song, if you're if you're a child of the 80s. And I think some of our folks here with us today probably can't make that claim that they're not child children of the 80s. But if you grew up in the 80s, you were you were either Michael Jackson or Prince.

Right. You weren't both. You had to take a side. What if you were neither? You couldn't be both. Really? Why not?

I don't think you could. When I was growing up, you had to pick. You had to pick a side. Like your dad sat you down.

He's like, son, son, you can go this way or you can go this way. I was a Michael Jackson kid through and through. So I didn't dislike Prince.

I didn't. You know, it's not like state you and see where you have to dislike the other side. But you had to have your favorite. And so if I had I'm going to have to you're going to have to come back to me on favorite Prince.

Like Michael Jackson, I can give you a ton of songs. Well, I'm the longest and tooth here on the show. I'm the oldest. So Purple Rain was out when we were at Carolina.

So, yeah, he was huge. Little Red Corvette. You know, I mean, I that would probably be the one I would go with when dogs cry. Oh, doves cry. That's a good one. Is that yours, Cassandra?

Is that what you're going with? I know I would I would go the stereotype of Purple Rain, too. I, as I don't fail to mention in most episodes, I'm from North Dakota.

But the North Dakota, Minnesota border. So every person you meet around there, Prince is like. I don't know if there's anyone around here that compares or everyone has a story about they know someone who knows him that hung out with him in the music scene in Minneapolis.

I think they're all liars. Everyone claims they know someone who knew Prince. But right after he passed, I flew back to Minneapolis and then drove to North Dakota and swung by Paisley Park and saw all the memorials.

It was it was really cool. Well, real quickly, there is a Duke connection to Prince. And I don't know if you guys know this story, but Carlos Boozer, who played basketball at Duke and went on and played in the NBA, had a long career. I believe he was with the Lakers and played with the Jazz too, didn't he? Yeah, I mean, he's played a number of teams, but he had a house that was sitting dormant in the Beverly Hills area. And his agent contacted him, said that someone wanted to rent the house. And he's like, absolutely not.

Not going to happen. He says, well, hang on a second. They want to pay you ninety five grand a month. He said, OK. And so they went into this agreement and it was Prince. And Prince in the contract said that if he made any changes to the house, he would return the house to its original before he moved out. And apparently Boozer was in town, swung by just to kind of check things out and the entire gate area, all the stuff that he had put up there was changed.

It was like you completely redeemed. He made it like Prince out. Yeah, the gym was now a disco, a nightclub, purple, a lot of purple, absolutely blown away at all the changes.

And they're all for Prince. And then sure enough, he moved out and everything was changed back. He also, when Boozer said something to Prince's agent, they wired him half a million dollars basically to calm down. Just to be like, hey, chill out.

To calm down and we will make the changes back. And he could not tell that Prince was there when he did move out. Oh, that's crazy. I wish I could find a Prince to rent my house for ninety five thousand dollars a month. Great story.

Yes. Favorite Prince song? I'm like you, man. You know, Prince musically never.

I respect him as a musician. Right. But there's just I'm kind of like you. I had, you know, back in the back in the back in the day, we had these things called tapes. And if you didn't want to if you want to commit to a whole tape. Right. Maybe somebody released a single. You don't want to commit to the whole tape. You can buy a maxi single.

Right. You get like three songs instead of the whole, you know, save a little bit of money. I had a maxi single for I think the song was called Seven. That's when I was coming through high school was like the later the later Prince. But that would have to be my favorite Prince song. And then I think I've got the greatest hits when everybody started doing the greatest hits on CDs.

So I have that one. But but anyway, I think we can all agree that Prince was very good. Prince to me, the relevance of Prince to me more so is when Chappelle Show came out and they had the all time classic sketch with Prince and the Revolution playing basketball. That's one of Charlie Murphy's what they call those Charlie Murphy's true Hollywood stories.

The late Charlie Murphy. Yeah, it's a tragedy, man. All right.

Well, so here the Prince comes into play here. Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts versus Goldsmith was argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court last week. And it is a it is a trademark issue. And again, I guess at some point and again, I'm a bad guy for art. You know, I'm like just, you know, it doesn't speak to me. Right. Like you tell me something's a great piece of art.

I take your word for it. Art to you is just different. It's not like the fine arts.

Don't you don't connect with that. But your art is you do appreciate art, just a different kind of art, just a different different flavor of art, I guess. But so there was a famous picture of Prince taken. I think I think they said it was taken in 1981 by Lynn Goldsmith. She was the photographer and she took this this famous photo of Prince, which doesn't really translate on radio and podcast. But but Andy Warhol took this picture and he's kind of done this a couple of times.

Right. Andy Warhol would be reproduced it. I think there's like he used four images of the photograph to make his his art maybe changed. I think he changed the facial expression of Prince a little bit. Loud, unnatural colors is what the article says he added to it. He splattered some paint on there.

Whammo. He's got this multimillion dollar piece of art. And this lawsuit is basically not even Prince. This is Lynn Goldsmith, the photographer saying, hey, you just used my photo and you didn't really change it that much. And I'm entitled to some royalty, some money.

You can't you can't just do that. And so that's that's what was being argued. Is that what you took from it, Cassandra? Yeah, I just don't really understand why this is coming up now.

Well, you know, I thought that, too. And the couple of articles I read some of the oral arguments and a couple of articles, but I couldn't figure out why it was coming up just now either. And I guess the foundation would still be making money off of it now. So it's still like current violation if it's ongoing, as long as they're still making money from it. So there's no statute of limitations issues. Yeah, I guess not.

Oral arguments did not did not get to that. You know what this reminded me is back in the day when wasn't it Biz Marquis who came out? Biz Marquis did his album. And that's that's when all the sample stuff happened, right? So if you're if you're if you're creating a new rap song, a new hip hop song or I guess any song where you would use samples from other people's music and the samples were I can't remember how many seconds. But if they there was like there was like a ruling that, hey, you owe money if you use a sample of someone else's song and your song and it's I don't know, last more than a certain amount of time or something like that. So that's what this reminded me of.

You know, when you take someone else's work to try to create something new, how much do you have to change it? I think that's the questions that were going on between the Supreme Court justices. Yeah, I like that comparison better than the one that the justices were using in oral arguments, comparing turning books into movies. Yeah, they did say that. Yeah, because that's like a much more substantial like work. Yeah.

Versus a couple seconds of a song or a single image. You may you may not remember this, but Biz Marquis. So I can't remember the name of the album he released where he basically got sued. I don't remember who sued him.

I probably should have looked at this before he got on air. But his next album was called, you know what it's called? The album after the one he got sued on. No, no, I don't.

Are you sure? No, I like Biz Marquis, man, but I can't give you his discography. He's dead too. Biz Marquis dead.

Can you give us like multiple choice? Depressing show. All samples cleared. That was the name of his next.

Didn't really have a lot of big hits on that one. Yeah, but that's what people say. You know, if you go what was the was Paul's Boutique, the Beastie Boys album, where they if they they'd have to pay for any of those samples. But if they made it today, it would have cost like three whole bunch million dollars to produce that to produce that. But but yeah, that's that's the discussion going on here. And again, I don't know the justices didn't seem like they were ready to do anything big or to change things now.

Yeah, but they were really into it. It seems like it'll be a while before we get this decision. Yeah, I think and I think the justices were you know, I love cases where the justices just don't divide on on, you know, conservative liberal lines. Like I like it when they when they get a topic that's not politically, socially charged, when they get a topic that's just you really have to just make legal arguments. And no one probably has any preconceived notions one way or the other. So this will be interesting just to see how the justices split because it's going to be a weird split.

You know, it's not just conservative and liberal. This reminded me a lot of the Obama hope poster lawsuit back in like 2009. The Obama hope poster was everywhere, but it was based on an AP photo from 2006. An AP sued the artists that created the poster, but they settled so they never got to this very fair use issue.

Totally interesting. It's a difficult issue anytime you're dealing with something that you could argue is subjective, like determining how transformative something needs to be like that's that's a difficult standard to establish. Yeah, there's got to be there's got to be a line. You know, I heard I can't remember who I heard talking about it, but somebody was talking about somebody talking about how dress codes in in in offices has has declined. Right.

Like everybody used to wear suits, you know, and or what have you. And he was talking about where do you draw the line? Like it's you can't go to work naked. Right. What is this a Supreme Court ruling? Hang on a minute.

Have I been breaking the law? So you can't we all accept the fact you can't get a word naked and you probably can't go to work in your underwear. Right. We all we all kind of accept that in a professional workplace. That's probably not going to be allowed. And of course, you can always wear a suit.

Right. Everybody could wear a suit. You can dress up as much as you as you want to. And so where do you draw the line and what socially acceptable you know what to wear to work? At some point, every office has to draw that line, but it's just you got to make these rules.

You know, that was the guy's point. But here at some point, it would be just using someone else's artwork to create your own artwork. You know, like there is a point where you're right. There is a point 100 percent where we should have an issue with someone doing this.

But again, where do you draw the line? I think this I think this is I think the photographer makes a really good argument because I saw when I read this article, I saw Mr. Warhol's art that he produced. It really, to me, just looks like her photo with a different color scheme.

You're untrained, unsophisticated. That's right. I'm I'm the same. I look at art, man, and I feel like I look at it and like I think of people getting this deep, deep meaning from it.

And I just feel dumb because it's not happening for me personally. Yeah. And so maybe we're just we're just dumb apes, man. Well, you know, I don't know what to tell you about that. But anyway, I think this is clearly like this.

I think this lady I think the photographer is entitled to some money. I think he's you know, it's like it's Biz Markie made half of this. You know, half of his song was an old earth, wind and fire song. And, you know, I just think it's anyway. What do I know? Because I'm not a Supreme Court justice. I tell you what you know is a lot about Biz Markie releases. That was a very legally interesting topic when I was coming of age. Yeah, I mean, there's very few legal radio shows where they're going to bring Biz Markie into the fold.

So I'm going to give you credit for that. We talked about Biz Markie. We talked about Michael Jackson. We talked about Prince. Real quick. We're coming up against a break. But real quick, everybody's favorite Michael Jackson song. Mm hmm. You should have it on the tip of your tongue.

Billie Jean. Yeah, that's a good song. What's yours? Man in the Mirror. A hundred times a day.

Man in the Mirror. You listen to it all the time. It's soft for me, Josh. Cassandra, favorite Michael Jackson song. Can't say it's a criminal. Why can't you say thriller? Can't say thriller. I bet you I could say thriller right now.

We're in the same room together today. I don't know, man. I don't have a favorite anything. Killing me.

I just like a lot of like this is serious, man. What's your favorite movie? It's thriller. Okay. All right.

And your face. All right. There you go. The outlaw lawyers, 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. Office is conveniently located. Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verita, Gastonia.

And now in Moorhead City, where our third host is Cassandra Nicholas joining us remotely today. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you've got questions, you can always call the firm. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. 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 show. Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com.

We've got more right after this. Welcome back into the outlaw lawyers. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer managing partners. Whitaker and Hamer law firm are your hosts. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. Also an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. Cassandra Nicholas joining us from the Moorhead City offices. And speaking of offices, they are conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verita, Gastonia.

And again, brand new in Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. If you've got a legal question you are facing and you need some answers, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about. An attorney will be in touch. You can always email your questions to the show as well.

Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. Josh, where are we going next? You know, Morgan, you know, we have a segment like we had last time and then we go to break. And so I sit here and I think about the segment that we just had.

And and I feel like we have to take breaks to remind people that we are. Real, legitimate attorneys. That's right. Right. It's real as it is. Yeah, really. And I would I would argue good.

I would argue good, legitimate. And you're an attorney. You know how to argue things. But you're also human. You have other interests. I mean, you're a huge Simpsons fan. I mean, there's a lot going on in there.

I don't like art. I like really not. I like to I like to think that we have fun here. And so we come you know, our attorneys come in here and we let our guard down and we like to talk about these legal topics.

But I just think a helpful reminder, maybe halfway through every show, that we are licensed in North Carolina. We're attorneys who do real good professional work. We're just letting our hair down and and getting into some good, meaty legal topics. But the next one that we have for you, I'll let Joe give you the background, but we're going to talk about Darryl Brooks. We're going to talk about his he's defending himself from very serious about as serious as it gets criminal charges. But he's also this also gets us into a conversation. I think we've mentioned it once or twice on the show before. But the sovereign citizen thought, you know, this this mindset, the sovereign citizen mindset, which is not usually very helpful to you as a legal defense. But but just remind everybody who Darryl Brooks is and what he's accused of.

Yeah. So, I mean, simply put, Darryl Brooks, he's the man that's accused of basically driving his SUV smack dab into a Wisconsin Waukesha, Wisconsin Christmas parade, killed six people, injured 62 others. Eyewitnesses basically said, you know, he pulled into into the crowd and was deliberately trying to hit as many people as he could. A horrific, just horrific crime.

And like you said, Josh fired his attorney, originally pled insanity, withdrew that and has now pled not guilty. But surprisingly, his his defense of himself making a fantastic case that this man is legitimately insane, as if driving into a crowd of people wasn't enough. But horribly tragic incident, just terrible. And this is another case where social media is really taken, taken something that, you know, you hate to call it entertaining because you're talking about a horrible tragedy.

But it's one of those you almost can't look away. So there's there's daily updates because this guy's representing himself and it's and it's a spectacle. And the way he's just the rants he's going on, the ways handle himself in the courtroom. It's a very just different look at the courtroom proceedings. When you have a person who has no legal training, who's pretty clearly a crazy person just throwing everything they can out there in defense of themselves.

And if you I know you're not a tick tock guy or a real social media short video type of guy, Josh, but there's tons of it out there and you should go check it out because it'll just blow your mind just watching this guy operate. And the judge, you know, the judge is trying to be patient and you can see it and it's just struggling to keep order and they keep having to remove them to another courtroom and make them watch. But it's just insane, man.

That's the best way I can describe it. Cassandra, are you following this one? So of us, I am usually the one that's on top of these sensationalized trials, but I haven't been watching this one, but now I need to. Oh, you're blowing it, Cassandra. I know. I'm sorry.

But we have you, Joe. You're on. You're all over this. People send me these things.

So this has been sent to me. I don't seek them out. But you know, with the way that the algorithm is, you watch like one of these videos, you're getting 73 of these videos every time you pull it up. I'm ready for them.

I'm getting blasted with them now. But it's just, it's crazy, man. He's cross-examining these people that he has like run over to them or their family members. And the approach, he's basically trying to make the point that it's not him. And his lines of questioning, they're asinine, they're ridiculous, and the people are just staring them down. And it takes a, it's amazing to think about the level of patience and restraint that these people have to have to sit there across from him, maintain their composure. I could really take it some notes from those people during that Duke Carolina football game. I take this opportunity to apologize to the very old man that sat in front of me at that game.

So he's charged with six counts of first-degree murder and there's 77 additional assaults, things like that. Yeah, I saw him questioning one of the, was it the father of the eight-year-old who passed away? Or maybe it was the baseball coach of the eight-year-old. But he was questioning somebody who had suffered a loss. He was like, oh, but you didn't see me.

Yeah, that's his thing. Yeah, he's like, he didn't. And he's like, what's the name of the person who was driving that vehicle?

And they're like, it's you, man. He's like, and how did you know that? Did you, did someone tell you that name? And he's like, yeah, the police told me that name.

So you didn't know at the time when I was running you over that that was my name. And he's just, it's crazy, man. Just absolute insanity. I did see a clip after you told me about it. I was, I was kind of trying to catch up on it, but I did see a clip where he, he just yells hearsay. Like, I don't think he's doing it. And repeat, hearsay, hearsay. And, and they just, and the judge, just to the judge's credit, tried trying to maintain order, just gently chastise it.

And then gradually you can just see it's like every day, just the patience runs thin and starts running out. And he keeps insisting that he doesn't want to be called Daryl Brooks and just man. Well, one of his, I guess one of his, I'm doing air quotes. One of his defenses is the sovereign citizen arguments is this argument and they take all shapes or forms.

And when I, in law school, I interned at the DA's office and that was my first encounter with folks who, who come in charged with serious crimes. And they'll say, you don't have any authority over me. I'm a, I'm a sovereign citizen. And so they'll, sometimes they trace their origins and say, I can't be subject to the constitution or your, and they have all these arguments and you see this in different areas of law come up in different ways. It's all worthless.

Right? So if you're, if you know somebody who's, who's really getting into the sovereign citizen movement, like they're, they usually end up in jail, right? I mean, if that's the measure of their defense, but they're, but, but are they really in jail? They're sovereign in jail.

So does it really, you know, does it really even count? But, but you know, if you're, and this guy had, I would argue a probably pretty, he had a pretty experienced attorney. I think his attorney was, uh, had been doing this for like 20 or 30 years, so he didn't have like a new public defender or anybody. He had somebody who, and insanity defense sounds perfect for this guy. This guy was his, his defense attorney was probably doing the absolute best job he could, he could do. And, uh, you know, this guy's going, I mean, I don't know if he realizes it yet, but he's, he's gonna, I mean, they're playing 40 chess, man, his attorney letting him do this, showing the insanity 50 minute diatribe. He went on, it says in court, but no attorney, like the attorney's fired.

I know competency has to be different state by state and probably judge by judge, but like there had to have been some sort of competency determination. Right. But yeah, and that's the thing you, you watch him speak. And if you didn't listen to, I mean, I know you have to listen to the content of what he's saying, but he doesn't necessarily immediately present as an insane person.

You listen to him and you're like, clearly, yes. But, uh, there's a fine line between insanity and just being a gigantic moron, horrible human being. And that's also one of those tricky things to, where do you draw the line there?

Right. Because, you know, you, you, there's people out there that are just bad people that are just doing terrible things. Um, and you don't want to absolve responsibility by just being able to back out saying that these folks are insane.

But, uh, this dude, he's, he's, I think he's, he lacks some sane capacity for sure. 50 minutes. Can you imagine sitting in court, listening to a 50 minute sovereign citizen diatribe? I know you, you were going to be a sovereign citizen at one point, Josh, wasn't that? No, I didn't. Oh, okay.

I didn't look into that. Card carrying. Some of us have been confused with someone else. I can't imagine, you know, your, your jurors, you know, the folks that you're trying to convince of your innocence, you're, you're just blatantly wasting their time. And, you know, jurors, jurors are smart. They, they pick up on things, you know, I, when we have, when we have trials and the other side, you know, it's just try to reiterate a point over and over again.

Like you see the jury get tired, you know, and, and so the jury cannot be excited about having to sit through these, these hour long, uh, diet. Like I said, what's another word for diatribe? So we don't keep saying diatribe. I just keep saying it's a good word.

Dietribe. Only diatribe. Maybe you say that man, but then you got to think some of the, the, some of the things you can go and be a juror for the most mundane, just boring procedural. You're, you're going in every day and you're, you're seeing a crazy person put on a one man show. Um, again, tragic circumstances. Never want to make light of the actual situation around it. But, uh, I think there's, as far as just sitting in a, in a courtroom and listening to something, it's just.

You're never going to be bored listening to this crazy person ranting. I had a trial advocacy class and the final was like examining an expert witness and my jury had people actually asleep. So I can't, I can't, uh, criticize this guy for his entertainment value, at least for the jury. The, uh, no, yeah. Every jurors definitely not made equal, but, uh, but usually they know what's going on and, and it's their time they're there. You know, it's, uh, it's frustrating to be a juror to give up your time and then, and then have it kind of wasted, uh, and right in front of you.

So that never serves a party, uh, very well. But why don't you make a bold prediction? Do you think this guy's, uh, defense is going to work?

Josh? I think this guy is going to get convicted of every single charge. He's going to add some extras. Yeah. I think he's going to get coming to the area. I don't, I don't know what the death penalty, I don't know how that works there, but I mean, if you have the death penalty available to you, consecutive several consecutive life sentences, if I'm not mistaken, several.

Well, when we come back, we're going to get into another subject. The onion will explain when we come back from the break, the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your host managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Also Cassandra Nicholas, an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer joining us from the Moorhead city office. If you've got a question, a legal question that you're facing and you need answers, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly, what the call is about and an attorney will be in touch with you from Whitaker and Hamer. And you can email your questions to the show questions at the outlaw lawyer.com.

We're back right after this. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, where you can find them managing partners. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. Also joining us on the program, Cassandra Nicholas, an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. She's out of the Moorhead city office. And speaking of offices, they are conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and that new office in Moorhead city.

I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer and get some answers. Here's the number 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact info briefly what the call is about. An attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch and you can email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast questions at the outlaw lawyer.com.

Josh. You know, in thinking about our next topic, our next topic is going to be the case Novak v. City of Parma, Ohio. And for us, this is only important because The Onion, a satirical, used to be an actual, they would print up a newspaper like when it got started, right?

It had a physical. I bet you appreciated that. I did. I like to touch the papers, you know, you know, I like to feel the news, you know, but you know what?

Everybody knows what The Onion is, a satirical news outlet. Is that what you would call it? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and lately, like you said, they used to print up a whole paper. Now they can just, it's as simple as they can just do a tweet with a headline and that can be sufficient, you know? But yes, that's biting satire.

So back before that. That fools a lot of people, man. Fools a lot of people into being legitimate, unfortunately.

It does. That's always, that's always the best. That's, you know, you see someone, you know, on social media share.

When they share it and they just lose it about it. Yeah, it is good. Can you believe this happened? That's good. I feel that. Like, you feel the news, I feel that when it happens. So back before the internet, right back before the internet there, the reason I found out about it is I went to a friend's house and his dad in the bathroom because you used to have to have books in the bathroom, right?

Cause you didn't have phones. Yeah. Yeah. You got to read something.

You can't go to the bathroom and not read anything. Yeah, sure. Sure. I mean, we all agree on that, right? Yeah, for sure.

We're like monsters. Yeah. Yeah. View behind the curtain. Thank you for that, Josh. I appreciate it. Thanks. So people used to have books in their, in their bathroom.

Right. And so he had like this collection, this hard bound collection of onion articles where they pretended like the onion's been around since the turn of the century. So they just did the onions work, but they did it on old news stories. I was like, what is this? What is this hysterical, you know? You loved it.

But now of course, when you have the interwebs, you can see the onion all over the place, but. You had to go to that bathroom to get your fix. What are you doing here, Josh? I just. I was in the area. You weren't even invited. I was in the area. I ate a lot of hot dogs. I just thought I'd come by.

Josh, let me hang out for an hour in your dad's bathroom. So this, I don't know. I read like a brief on the facts. I'm not, I'm not dialed.

I'm a watch this one now, but I'm not super dialed into it. But Novak was apparently a gentleman in Ohio who made a Facebook page that was just mimicking of the local police department. And so he just, it kind of took the onion approach. It was kind of supposed to be satire. He's trolling basically, right?

Yeah. He was kind of trolling. And I guess at some point people got it confused with the actual police. And at some point the police arrested him and he was criminally charged for maintaining this satirical.

I think it was a Facebook page, if I'm not mistaken, but he was arrested. And so he's taken this fight all the way to the Supreme Court about satire, about parroting and First Amendment free speech concerns. And so this is right up the onions.

Yeah, this, this affects them. And so we talked about what an amicus brief is before. But real quick, Cassandra, what's an amicus brief? So it's in support of one side.

So they took a side and put it in a bunch of legalese on a lot of pages and submitted it to hopefully sway the justices. So, so when you remote in, I can just ask you a lot of questions. I'm not here looking at you, so I can just sporadically ask you questions. Got to make sure you're paying attention. Just to make sure you're there.

I'm here. So an amicus brief, amicus, I use all my Latin, my two years of high school Latin. Amicus means friend of the court. An amicus brief is you're a friend of the court. And so you're not a party. You're not representing a party.

You're not an attorney. Um, so, but it's Supreme court litigation is so important to a lot of other people. They allow people who may be, may be affected by the outcome to file a legal brief, a legal argument in support of or against, uh, you know, a party. And so the onion has done that. They, they have hired an attorney and they have filed an amicus brief, a friend of the court brief, uh, saying that, yes, all this should be protected. Everything this guy has done is, is an example of free speech.

He shouldn't be able to be criminally charged. Um, and the biggest quote from this article I read, uh, was imagine if the onion were required to disclaim that, how do you say that? Did we get a stumper of a word? It's a parodical. Parodical headlines are in reality faults. And so that goes to our friends on social media who may get fooled into thinking the onion is a real news outlet and sharing the, the angry, can you believe Obama did this?

You know, it says that this guy's Facebook page, he advertised and no means no fair where residents could remove their names from the sex offender registry by completing a series of puzzles. Like there's some things, man, that is a disclaimer. That's a disclaimer that, uh, that it is parodical in and of itself. Like, again, you, you, if there's anyone listening to this, that, that regularly gets fooled by the onion, uh, you just got to just search your heart, man. Like if it, if it seems too ridiculous to be true, and I say that, but we live in an ever increasing world of ridiculous things. So maybe, maybe we need those disclaimers, Josh. Well, you know, just, there is a fine line on some onion headlines, right?

And you know, that could be real. I know it's the onion, but that's not out of the realm of our world right now. Well, you know, another sign that our, that our world is crazy is that the onion is too liberal for some people.

And so the, what is it? The Babylon bee is the more conservative version of the onion, which I believe has been deplatformed or at least they're off Twitter or something. I can't remember, but, uh, but that, I think that's a sign that we need, you know, we're, we're, we're getting so separated. We need, we need, not only do we need our, our, our news outlet that kind of favors our viewpoint, but our satirical news outlet also has to favor, you know, our viewpoint.

I enjoy them both equally, man. We talked a lot about this whole, that whole transformative property and the, the parody and the line between that. Uh, you ever seen the show, Nathan for you, Josh, he did, uh, he did a thing where he made a, uh, a company and he opened a location called dumb Starbucks and, uh, that you should check you very pertinent.

You should check that out. We talk about it on an episode, basically open to, it went viral and people were coming. It was just dumb Starbucks, but it, everything was identical. It just, it was dumb Starbucks and, um, very similar. It all raises that question, man. Like where we, we keep coming back to it. Where do you draw the line at, uh, between parody or between, you know, art where, where, where is that line?

That's all the Supreme court does, man. Go ahead. Cassandra Facebook page does seem different than the onion because the onion has its own name. Um, this one, like they use the exact same profile picture, name of the page.

We're removing any comments on the page, like outing it as satire. Yeah. This, this is, I think this is much more clear. The, uh, well, I was gonna say the U S Supreme court is, uh, is, uh, a habitual line drawer.

Wasn't it from, uh, Charlie. Yeah. He's a habitual. Yeah. Rick James was a habitual line stepper. Yeah. So the Supreme court is a habitual line drawer.

I think we can all agree on that. All right. The onion in the books, the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your hosts managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, also Cassandra Nicholas attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. Joining us on the program this week, we have offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina, Gastonia, and Morehead city. If you have a legal situation you're facing and you need some answers to your questions, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact info briefly with the calls about an attorney will be in touch with you, and you can always email your questions to the show questions at the outlaw lawyer.com. We're back to wrap it up right after this. Final segment of the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your hosts, the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina, Gastonia, and now in Morehead city. And Morehead city is where we find Cassandra Nicholas joining us on the program.

Also an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. Josh wrap it up for us. Well, I was going to just summarize what we've talked about today. I was just going to summarize our main topics today. And so, uh, we talked about Prince. Yes. Right. We talked about Prince and Michael Jackson, both who have passed. Yes. They're not with us anymore. Yes.

We talked about Bismarck. He he's passed. I thought we talked about Andy Warhol. Also dead by Andy Warhol has passed.

This has been a very cursed show. It's been very, been very sad, uh, discussion, but I would definitely, I don't, you know, in, uh, over the break, Joe said, thriller was not his favorite Michael Jackson. Yeah. Cause you told me I can't, it can't be give us two. You said you can't name one.

Give us two. Oh man. I like the, the way you make me feel. Cause it makes me think about the way that I feel that's the worst.

It's very introspective. That's like dirty Diana. No, no, I like my Diana's clean. All right. Well, I just gave you, you're making me give you more. Yeah. You asked him his opinion. He gave his opinion.

I like the hardest Michael Jackson song out there. The man in the mirror. That's good.

That's the one that is really the only correct answer is man in the mirror. You think so? Yeah.

Yeah. You watch man in the mirror. You can't, you can't be mad at Michael Jackson. You can't?

Nah, you can't. All right. If you say so. The, uh, we talked about the onion and we talked about the Babylon bee. Those are very funny things to read. Yeah. I think we can all agree on that. Especially at your and your dad's, uh, your friend's dad's bathroom.

No better place to do your reading. When you were, when you were in college, you didn't have like your favorite on campus bathroom. Really man. That's a thing.

How is this a thing? Like when you were, when you were on campus for the day, you didn't have like your favorite. Look man, Barton at Barton college, one of the finest learning institutions in the world, very small campus, but I would just walk back to where I lived, man.

It's very easy for me. I can do that at NC state. I had to have it. I don't know that I even use the bathroom on the campus. I just walked to my, my place of living. I sense a plaque coming on, you know, at this establishment for Josh. That's what I'm thinking. Cassandra, how did that work for you?

Oh, I definitely had a favorite costume. Weirdos, man. Weirdos. I'm going to go back to my apartment. I'm going to go back to my dorm. Yeah. Maybe the park region basement.

Oh yeah. I don't remember the name of the building. Mine was, it was a computer science building. And if you went downstairs, they didn't have many offices downstairs. A lot of people didn't know it was even down there.

There was this bathroom was the biggest one stall bathroom I've ever seen in my life with a locking door. We get done with the show. Let's go, let's go track that down so you can, you can sit in there and relive some nostalgic memories.

Well, now we know that Josh bases it on square footage. Okay. Good stuff.

All right. The outlaw lawyers, another addition in the books, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your hosts, the partners, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Big thank you to Cassandra Nicholas, also an attorney at Whitaker and Hamer chiming in from the Moorhead city office. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. If you contact information briefly, what the calls about an attorney will be in touch and you can always email the show and we'll answer it on the future program questions at the outlawlawyer.com. Another great show in the books, guys.

We'll see you next week. How law lawyers hosted by an attorney licensed to practice law in North Carolina. Some of the guests appearing on the show may be licensed North Carolina attorneys. Discussion of the show is meant to be general in nature and in no way should the discussion be interpreted as legal advice. Legal advice can only be rendered once an attorney licensed in the state in which you live had the opportunity to discuss the facts of your case with you. The attorneys appearing on the show are speaking in generalities about the law in North Carolina and how these laws affect the average North Carolinian. If you have any questions about the content of the show, contact us directly.