Willie Nelson, Alex Jones, Breonna Taylor, and LIV Golf on The Outlaw Lawyer

And now, Outlaw Lawyer. Welcome in to the Outlaw Lawyer. We have Josh Whittaker, we have Cassandra Nicholas, and we have Taylor Scruggs-Smith on the program this week.

Joe Hamer is on assignment. This is the Outlaw Lawyer, and again, powered by Whittaker and Hamer Law Firm. They have offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, and Gastonia. And again, this is an opportunity for you to hear the different conversations about the legal world. We have a number of different topics today, but you're going to probably have some questions.

Maybe you're going through something and you need some answers. You can always call Whittaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. And just leave your contact information briefly, what that call is about, and an attorney with Whittaker and Hamer will be in touch.

And you can always email the program that question. That's questions at theoutlawlawyer.com, and we'll answer those on a future show. So this week on the Outlaw Lawyer, Josh, Taylor, Cassandra are going to discuss the law and how it affects everything around us. And as always, the Outlaw Lawyer's tackled the burning legal questions such as, has any attorney ever had as bad a week like, say, Alex Jones's attorney just had?

And how many Americans actually know the facts of the Breonna Taylor case? And just how many times, this is an important one, just how many times has Josh seen Willie Nelson in concert? I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Josh, we'll let you answer that last question first. How many times have you seen Willie in concert?

Morgan, the answer is I don't really know. I know it's more than 10 and I believe it's less than 20, but I started thinking about that because they just announced this past week that Farm Aid will be in Raleigh again. So Farm Aid was last in Raleigh.

Let's see, I think my wife was pregnant with our second child. I don't know what year that was. Roughly eight to 10 years ago, Farm Aid was in Raleigh and that was a lot of fun. So Farm Aid is coming back and that brings Willie Nelson back. That's funny because I think Willie Nelson, I didn't look it up, but Willie Nelson's 89.

Yeah, 89. I saw him for the first time last year at the Outlaw Music Festival in Raleigh and that was a great time. He puts on a good show for, at that time, an 88 year old. And his sister is a year or two older than him and she plays the piano next to him and she's amazing. She's passed away. So she will not be playing. She was amazing. They've always had Willie Nelson, if you've never seen him, he plays the same, or at least, I mean, maybe it was different at one point, but the more than 10, less than 20 times that I've seen him, he plays the same set.

Starts with the same song, same order, but they would always for his, I can't remember his sister's name, but they would always break out and she would do a couple of piano solos, but she was very good. But she did pass away. I did read that the other day. That is sad. It does seem like a family event though. His youngest son was there last year at Outlaw Music Fest.

Does he bring him with on Farm Aid too? Lucas, his oldest son, Lucas usually comes, Lucas Nelson and... And Lucas Nelson's well known, but his younger son was there last year too. He was, he's the guy, his band was like robots versus dinosaurs or something. He had one of those weirdo, like a jam session type bands. But yeah, he was there. We were at that concert too.

Taylor, by the look on your face, I'm assuming you have seen Willie Nelson less than 20 times. But I thought that was exciting for Raleigh to get Farm Aid. That's a lot of fun. That's all day.

So we're, I think we're on the hunt for a sitter for an extended period of time. Cause that's 12 to 12, I think is how Farm Aid goes. But... When is Farm Aid coming?

What are the... I don't remember. It's in September. It's coming up soon.

They don't, they don't give you a lot of lead time when they announce it. But we, we, we got our, we got our tickets for Farm Aid. I was thinking about this this morning. You know, I got the watch, right? That dings and tells me what's going on. And we all got our phone on us and I'm usually in front of a computer like I am now.

But I was going to ask you guys, I was going to pull you guys. Do you, if someone tells you, let's say you text somebody or you email somebody and they just say they didn't, they didn't get it right. Or they, you don't hear from them until the next day. Do you believe that they really didn't get it? Or do you believe they just, they willfully ignored it?

They're definitely ignoring it. But I, I let them have that grace because I need that as well. So, Well, I, I want to, I want to jump in on this. I've had a situation where, you know, I have a 22 year old son and I will text him and I won't hear back. And he hit me with this. He said, dad, I'm trying to put my devices down. I'm trying not so that my notifications are off. It's on vibrate. If I don't answer you right away, it's nothing personal. You're my dad.

I love you. But I just don't want to be looking at my phone. He goes, he was alarmed by his screen time. And he said, you know what? I'm going to step away.

And at 22, I was actually impressed by that. And then I started looking at what I'm doing. It's hard to put the phone down. So I get what you're saying. If it says delivered, they saw it.

Oh yeah. I'm going to take the opposite approach because it could say delivered on my phone and my phone's on a set. Do not disturb after certain hours. So you could send me stuff all day, but after certain hours, so you are still willfully ignoring people. You're just enabling your device to ignore us. Exactly.

So I didn't see it. My device is already set up to snooze all my notifications, like, especially when, cause I had to stop my notifications cause like, you know, Josh thinks of random things throughout the whole day and he'll message us at like 11 o'clock at night. So I have to have my phone on, do not disturb. Otherwise all those vibrations wake me up. So also my mom will call me and I'll look at it and text her later and be like, I was trying to sleep.

So I ignored you. That always amazes me because I'm old enough to remember, you know, of course I predate cell phones and, and predate, uh, there was a time where like you would, like, I remember like we had a big group of friends in high school and we'd all, you know, at school we'd all drive, you know, we decided, okay, we're going to meet here and then we're going to go here and you had to meet there. And if you were late, you know, like we couldn't get ahold of you.

We could call your parents' house maybe if somebody picked up the phone. And we always had a friend who was habitually late, like really late, like, are they okay late? You know, and we just couldn't get ahold of them. So eventually you'd give them like 15, 20 and eventually you just leave and they wouldn't know that you left them. You wouldn't know if they're okay. And then we started getting pagers, uh, so you could at least page people, but then you still had to find a phone.

Right. Um, well, I think about the times where, you know, Cassandra, you're closer to me. So, you know, when people would call and you'd be like, Hey, stop calling me.

It's not nine o'clock yet. My minutes aren't free. Or you know, you accidentally press the internet on your phone. You're like, Oh no, quickly trying to get out of it. So you don't get charged like disabled. That was, yeah.

It would bankrupt my family exactly for like two seconds. And now like, internet's always on our phones. The, uh, we were doing some spring cleaning. I had this old cigar box and I opened it up and just had some like, uh, pictures in there and like, uh, tickets, you know, before, like, now that tickets are digital, you don't save tickets, but add some ticket stubs in there. But I had my sprint phone card in there. I was like, man, and I picked it up. I like ran around and showed everybody and that threw it away. Cause what are you going to do with it? You know, did you have the Nokia phone?

You know, them things last forever. I had, I had the Nokia Nokia was my first phone. And then I had a series of flip phones. And I remember in law school, I had the fanciest flip phone you could get at the time and had two video games on it. One was like a space call. It was called space blimp and she heard a blimp and you shot things.

And one was like the worm game, but anyway, the Nokia had the snake, the snake game. That was great. He's played all the time. You guys probably don't care as much as, uh, I like to rib joke cause he's a Duke football fan.

Joe's not, uh, if you're used to hearing Joe, he's a little under the weather today, so he's not with us. But, uh, the first college football polls came out. NC state was number 13. Do you see that Morgan?

I have not seen it, but I see it on my notes. Congratulations. Wolfpack preseason means absolutely nothing. We're all very nervous about it. Cause we're not used as NC state fans. We're not used to these kind of accolades. So that, that gives us even more reason to, to lose the first game to ECU. Do we have any other local teams that are ranked? I didn't look, I think wake forest was in the top 20, but, um, I think that was it for local teams. There was a couple of ACC teams.

I think pit was in there. Okay. Uh, things like that. But, um, but anyway, so we've got Cassandra, we've got Taylor here in studio with, with me and Morgan today. And so we're going to talk about a couple of things, a couple of legal news items. So the past couple of shows we spent a kind of dedicated to listener questions are going to go back to legal news.

Cause we had a couple of, I think kind of interesting topics pop up. So Alex Jones, uh, was in the news, uh, Cassandra, what was going on with him? So he had a defamation suit against him, and he's also dealing with a bankruptcy issue, but he did end up, um, losing to the parents of one of the children of the Sandy hook massacre. So he's 50 million deep in bad judgment.

He, uh, yeah, that's it. And that's an interesting case too. We're going to talk about the attorneys and discovery and, and you may have heard this on, on the national media outlets, kind of what happened to him and his attorney, but I thought that was an interesting angle to look at. And then Taylor, where there's some news in the Brianna Taylor, uh, I guess I won't say case, just kind of the ongoing saga associated with her death. And so we've got some, we've got some updates on how that's going.

Yeah. Like Brianna Taylor was, uh, her death was about a year ago now, and it looks like some charges are finally getting laid from the justice department in that ongoing investigation into how her death occurred. Um, so that's always interesting to see how that's progressing because that's been going on for like a year or some change. And I want to talk about that case because I don't think the average, uh, American consumer of media really knows what happened.

I think early on, I got reported kind of at a polarizing time. And I think, uh, depending on what side of the narrative you fell on, you kind of, you kind of ran with the facts that suited your side or that were being reported to you by your favorite, you know, news delivery service. And I think there's a lot going on there that if you, if you look at the facts kind of makes more sense. And, uh, so we're going to actually look at the facts, look at what happened, look at what the feds are doing now. And then the last topic is kind of a sports law topic. I like to throw in sports law when, when things are happening, but, uh, there's a lot going on. When you, when you pronounce this, Morgan, how are you pronouncing the new Saudi Arabia backed live live?

Is that what you say? Cause I know it's supposed to be Roman numerals, but yeah, everybody's calling it the live tour. Uh, it's, it's really, I didn't think it was going to be around a very long. I thought a lot of these guys were taking big money up front and then it would kind of go away. And obviously they, they made a tremendous bank, but now we're starting to see some serious numbers go over to the live tour. Uh, European golfers seem to be going right and left, uh, PGA is in trouble. A lot of big names are getting ready to go and they're going to have to figure out something because the war of words that started this thing, I don't know if they can kind of go back, but it's a, it's an ugly situation.

Yeah. So the live tour is, has got a, some big money backers in the, what is it? The Saudi Arabia public investment fund or whatever they call it, but, uh, they've decided they're going to start a rival, uh, tour to, to rival the PGA Norman former, uh, you know, champion on, on this tour here.

And, uh, obviously very well known, uh, is the, uh, the big name behind the tour. So they've been luring away with some, some big money deals, some PGA golfers, you know, golfers are, are, I guess we'd call them independent contractors. They don't work for the PGA. The PGA just puts on the tour commission only, right.

They, and they have rules on how you can participate. And so the PGA said, Hey, if you're going to join this live tour, you can't play PGA tournaments. And that was out there.

Everybody knew about it. They went in and took these big contracts. And there's some golfers who went to the live tour who want to come back and play some PGA events. And there's a federal lawsuit. The PGA said, no, you can't do it. And so there was an antitrust lawsuit put together by 13 of these golfers. And there was an injunction that was heard this week because I think three of them were trying to get on the, well, what were they trying to play the FedEx playoffs? Because obviously there's a nice purse at the end of this thing, but yeah, it's, it's big money. And I mean, the, the numbers are actually staggering.

They have almost like a, you know, bottomless pockets when it comes to cash with the Saudis and the amount of money that they rumored to offer tiger was 800 to 900 million as a tip just to come over and play. And he said, no. All right. So we're going to deal, those are our topics today.

So we'll, we'll tackle those. And Morgan, it should be a interesting hour of radio. I tell you, we're missing Joe, but it's fantastic to have Cassandra and Taylor with us today. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, again, offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, and Gastonia. Josh and Joe are the managing partners at the firm. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, as are Cassandra and Taylor.

We're going to talk about all these topics when we come back. But we want to remind you too, if you've got a legal situation that you're facing and you've got questions, you can always call the firm 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information briefly. What that call is about an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can always email your questions to the show questions at the outlawlawyer.com. And we'll answer those on future programs and check out the website, the outlawlawyer.com. We're back right after this. Welcome back to the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina, offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, and Gastonia. We have Joe Hamer on assignment, not feeling well today. So this week, Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs-Smith are joining us on the program.

Obviously, Josh Whitaker is here. There's a lot going on in the legal world. We're going to get to that. If you've got a legal situation that you're facing, you can always call the firm 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 from Whitaker and Hamer. Josh, take it away. I have to keep every time Alex Jones gets in the news, like I don't know who he is right away. Like I have to, I have to like look into it and figure out who he is and who was he or is he still with us? So who is he? He's the host of Info Wars, which is like a conspiracy theory type news outlet. And that was only on YouTube, right? I mean, I was, I know he's not there anymore, but I think that was only on YouTube. It was never on a network or anything like that.

It just existed out the world. High following and subscribers. So even though it was only on YouTube, it had some influence on a lot of people. And then he'd get a lot of playtime on Facebook. The YouTube videos would be clipped on Facebook.

So all my elderly relatives would share his videos. And so I am familiar with Alex Jones. And so I, you know, I really, you know, when we, we do this show and we talk about news like this, I really try to make the show apolitical.

Really. We just look at the facts and, you know, if we do this right, you don't know what side of the fence me, Taylor and Cassandra, Morgan Joe are on. We really just want to look at the facts, just like we would if we were an attorney, if someone came into our office and we're presenting us and we were kind of just doing a consult and trying to figure out what was going on. And so I usually don't, you know, when I, when I take in media, I try to be very careful about where the media is coming from, what I'm taking in. It's like eating healthy. You're right.

Take what I'm taking into my body. Not that I do that, but that's how I view my news intake. And so Alex Jones being, I don't consider him an unbiased deliverer of the news. So I've kind of ignored his entire existence. So I only know about him when he, I know when he got kicked off YouTube or whatever, you know, I know all that. I know he, he kind of leaned towards the more conspiracy side of news. Um, but anyway, the news today, the news that we want to talk about as a, so he was involved in a lawsuit, right?

Cause Andrew. Yeah. So he was sued by the family of children that were killed in Sandy Hook. That was back in 2012, 10 years ago already. Um, when 20 six and seven year olds and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook elementary school and that's in Massachusetts.

So the, he was sued by that family and the family ended up winning in, I believe in hope that they would have won anyway, but the incompetence of Alex Jones's attorney really contributed, um, to his demise in this case. Yeah. I figured this was a, this would be a good time to explain. We haven't done it on the show. You, you may have had experience with, uh, the trial process, but no matter where you're at, again, we're all licensed attorneys in North Carolina. We're, we're real attorneys and we, we practice law and, uh, that's kinda the take that we try to deliver on the show as what a practicing attorney would think about something like this.

And so Taylor, just a little bit, can you give our listeners just the discovery process in general? Um, let me, let me jump in. Sandy Hook is in Connecticut. No way. Yeah. New, new, new town. Thank you.

New is up North. I just can't remember what state. Um, so discovery is a way to get information before a trial. So typically, you know, by this point, something's been filed against you. There may have been an answer, um, filed by the opposing party, but essentially discovery is the attorneys sending a bunch of questions and requests for documents to the other side. So it's a way to get a lot of information before the trial. And some of those questions are sometimes objected to, they're considered overly broad, or you limit the information given to just what they asked for instead of giving them full documents. Um, so discovery is kind of a lengthy process, but it's a way to get a lot of information in before, uh, you actually end up in trial. So you already have evidence to go off of to say, okay, you may be lying or okay.

Uh, this is the proof that you did this, right? So let's say, let's say me and Taylor say, Taylor decides she's going to sell me a car and I buy, I buy this car from Taylor and it's not a good car. That wasn't a good idea to buy a car from me, Josh, not a good car. So I decide I'm so unhappy with this car that I'm going to sue Taylor for breach of contract. And so I would go and I'd file a complaint against Taylor for breach of contract. She would answer and say, you knew this car wasn't great.

That's why it's so cheap. And she would assert all her defenses. And then we'd be, we'd be in discovery phase. And so there's rules of evidence. There's rules of discovery that govern how attorneys, how the attorneys representing parties can get information. So obviously I can ask her questions. I can depose her. I can take her deposition.

I can, I can do a lot of things, but I can only ask her questions that are relevant to this breach of contract case. I can't ask Taylor about, you know, what she does for work necessarily. I guess that could be relevant, but give me, I'm trying to think of something irrelevant. So you probably couldn't ask me like, am I married or not? Like if that matters, because it has no bearing on anything, how many dogs you have has no bearing on anything. So that would be a question that if you had sued me and I was representing myself, I would object to because it has no relevance.

I'm not answering this. So the, the point of this is that the other side, the opposing side can, can ask questions, request documents about things that are relevant to what the lawsuit is over. We can't just use this as a fishing expedition to get all the information we ever wanted to have about Taylor.

It has to be relevant. And so here in the Alex Jones case, during the discovery process come to find out the the plaintiff side got some information from Alex Jones attorney. They, that wasn't relevant.

How did you, how did that happen Cassandra? So they, they did ask a relevant question and for relevant documents, any texts that Alex Jones had sent that mentioned Sandy Hook, and that was denied. Alex Jones and his attorneys told the plaintiff's attorneys that he did not have any such texts, but somehow during the course of discovery, Alex Jones's attorneys sent a link to the plaintiff's attorneys, to the attorneys for the family of the children killed that contained his entire cell phone for the last, at least two years, all of the texts, all of the data, it was hundreds of gigs of data, including all of the texts where he did talk about Sandy Hook. There are legitimate reasons and ways that attorneys can hold back certain information privilege. Yeah.

So privilege and there are various types of privilege. If you are texting about Sandy Hook with your attorney and your attorney's advising you about how to deal with something, you, your attorney wouldn't necessarily have to turn that over in response to a discovery request, but you have to like inform everyone that that's what's happening. That is not what happened here.

Yeah. The fact that they got his entire phone is mind boggling to me completely because usually attorneys, when, even if you're sending the information, most of it is redacted to just what you asked for or somehow limited in, okay, here's these messages from this date to this date, but you don't get everything. And the plaintiff's attorneys are the ones that had to inform Alex Jones's attorneys that this happened. Hey, you just sent us a link for all of this. And Alex Jones's attorneys said, okay, please ignore. We'll send you a new link.

They never sent a new link. So they didn't get the actual discovery that they intended to send. And there are processes as well where you can then, if something is accidentally disclosed, you can claw it back. And there was no attempt made to claw it back either.

I don't, I don't understand. This is a, I mean, I know this is like the biggest attorney, just blunder that I've, I've read about recently and definitely like in the Nash and like a national arena, but not only did you make the mistake to send us this treasure, I mean, for the other side, this was a treasure trove of information and they used it as such. I mean, they really used it about as well as you could, but they didn't try to get it back once they found out they made it. It's like a double mistake.

Oh yeah, for sure. It's not a good day. And for our listeners, this is why if you ever email an attorney, it's always this long paragraph at the end of their email saying, if you got this in error, please send back, delete, get rid of things like that because you weren't supposed to get it. But then the third mess up is that Alex Jones seems to have been completely unaware that all of this happened. He didn't know that the other side had all of his texts. So he answered the questions as if the other side did not know that he had been texting about Sandy Hook for years.

So it was teed up perfectly for the plaintiff's attorney. And he was so pleased with himself when he pulled out the cell phone records and says, are these your texts? And Alex Jones says, yeah, they're, they're right there. You, you have them.

So obviously we gave them to you. And the plaintiff's attorney says, indeed, Mr. Jones, indeed you did. And that was just the greatest moment. He had been waiting his whole life for that. Oh yeah.

It's an excellent week in that guy's career. Further beyond this case. So those cell phone records have also been requested by the January 6th committee and the plaintiff's attorney brought this matter to the judge in the Alex Jones case and like inquired whether that would be allowed, whether the judge would say, no, this is limited to this case. The judge did not say that the judge told the plaintiff's attorney that I'm not going to stand between you and Congress. So the plaintiff's attorney turned over all of Alex Jones's cell phone records to the January 6th committee. So now the January 6th committee has all of his texts. And if he was talking about Sandy Hook, he could have been talking about anything else. I mean, he's a public figure who has like, this was all of his records, not just regarding Sandy Hook.

So I'm sure he's had a lot of topics he's discussed in the last few years on his cell phone. It's not good. No. And I read it. I can't remember. It was an opinion piece. I can't remember what newspaper it was in, but it was somebody saying, you know, the attorney made a mistake. I didn't even get the attorney's name who made this mistake. Do you know his name? I don't know.

We'll probably never know his name. Talking about how this, this probably isn't malpractice. The malpractice is a four, you got to prove four things and whatever.

And he was like, yes, it was a mistake, but I was like, how could it not have happened? If Alex Jones would have lost anyway. Right. So, but that Alex Jones might get another attorney that says that he totally could have won this lawsuit. And that'll be a whole nother can of worms. We'll be able to review in the future. Again, I don't know.

Look forward to another episode. I don't, again, I don't know Alex Jones. I don't, I don't follow Alex Jones, but I still felt so bad. I felt so bad for him when he got, when the, when the plaintiff's attorney did that to him, like you never want to see any, I guess maybe you do, I don't know, but see him that surprise and that taken off balance and not knowing, you know, what to do or what to say. And then he did continue to talk and the plaintiff's attorney informed him that he could use his fifth amendment right to not incriminate himself further. And Alex Jones's eyes got big.

Like he had never heard that before. So there might, I don't know if it's malpractice or not, but it doesn't seem like good practice on his attorney's part. I love that, you know, all these trials are becoming such headline news because it gives us more fun to talk about on the show, but also like just in our daily lives, like the law is actually becoming headline news on a regular basis. Like before this, it was the Amber Heard trial, which everybody was talking about. Like people I know who never cared about the law were talking about that trial. But then that also brings in more like armchair internet lawyers and my head explodes. So pros and cons, pros and cons.

It gives Josh great material for the show though. That's right. Speaking of material, we've got a lot to get to on the program today. You're locked into the Outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They are your hosts. They are practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

Joe is on assignment, not feeling well today. And we have Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer joining us on the program. Again, offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, and Gastonia. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, call this number 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

And just leave your contact information briefly what that call's 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 outlawlawyer.com. Speaking of questions, email to the program.

We're going to get into one. Breanna Taylor, that case, that is coming up next on the Outlaw Lawyer, so stay tuned. Welcome back to the Outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer law firm managing partners. They host this program. They are practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina.

Today, Joe is on assignment, not feeling great. So we have Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer joining Josh Whitaker in studio. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Reminder, Whitaker and Hamer offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, and Gastonia. And if you're facing a legal situation, if it's just kind of something that you need answers to, you can always call the firm 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.

Email your questions as always to the show questions at the outlawlawyer.com and we will answer them on a future program. So Josh, we go to Breanna Taylor. Yeah.

Breanna Taylor was a 20 something year old African American female that was fatally shot in her apartment in Louisville, roughly a year ago, give or take. And so there was a lot of stuff going on then. And there was all kinds of issues that came out of this, you know, the legality of no knock warrants, you know, no knock searches. And it led to a lot of discussions about how officers have to present evidence to get a warrant for something like that. We've talked about it a couple of times here on the show, no knock warrants.

Well, we'll, we'll start from the beginning. What is a no knock warrant, a no knock search? So essentially a no knock warrant is a warrant that allows the officers to kind of just go into the home. Like as soon as they get there, they don't have to announce themselves or if they do, they only have to do it and wait five seconds or some small amount of time before they enter the home. So essentially a way to give the cops a way to just enter the home quickly. Most of the time, there's a fear that if they announce themselves, evidence will be destroyed. So they're saying like, or, you know, there's a fear that there's already weapons in the home and if they hear cops, they'll just react. So it's a way to kind of, in a sense, catch people off guard legally and make sure that, you know, evidence isn't destroyed and lives aren't lost in the serving of the warrant.

Right. So just practically speaking, you know, the cops, the SWAT, you know, whoever's, whoever's going to serve this warrant, you know, they're there in a group and they're ready to open the door with a ram or whatever they have. And they have, they still have to announce that they're the police, but they do that very fast.

And then they're in. And we had, and I can't remember the gentleman's name, but it wasn't too long ago. One of these was getting served. I think it may be, I can't remember where it is now, but we talked about it on the show because he was, he was in his, he's legally in his apartment, not doing anything wrong with his gun. And, you know, the no knock was served within seconds, you know, cops, I think it was within nine seconds, cops were in his, in his room and he reacted much the same as I think anybody would. He drew his firearm and was shot and killed. And I think after the fight kind of comes out that he wasn't doing anything wrong.

He wasn't really who they were after. He just was in his apartment legally with a gun and died, you know? And so I think you've seen, especially after Ms. Taylor's death here, you've seen a lot of states and municipalities just flat out say, Hey, no knock.

We're not, we're not doing it anymore, but that's not what we're really here to talk about. We're really here to talk about some things that have happened in her case, just as a review Taylor. So the, you know, there was a no knock warrant served. There was an exchange of gunfire. She was killed in that exchange of gunfire and no officers have been charged at this point in her death. I think that's kind of a summation.

Yeah. So when the officers entered the home, her boyfriend was in the home. She was asleep in her bed and boyfriend thought that it was somebody trying to break into the apartment. So of course, took his gun and started to fire back at the officers who fired as well. No cops were charged in connection with the actual killing of Breonna Taylor. A cop was charged under state laws for reckless endangerment for how many shots he did shoot at the time.

But that was more reckless endangerment for the fact that it was an apartment building and others could have been harmed from the shots. I think he was ultimately found out guilty but no other cops have actually been charged in connection with her death for the raid or anything like that. And I do want to note that the warrant wasn't for her at all.

No. The warrant was not for her at all. And that's kind of how these new charges have come up is that the Justice Department has been looking into this for, it sounds like, a very long time reviewing all the evidence. And they have now found that evidence to suggest that the, that other cops that weren't involved in the actual execution of the warrant lied to get the warrant that did affidavits and presented false information to secure the warrant for the home, knowing that it, what they were saying was false. And so, you know, I'm sure everybody kind of knows this, but just again, by way of review, law enforcement has to go to a judge and every county and state, municipality kind of has a different system, but basically law enforcement is going to go to the judge and present their evidence and why they should, should get a warrant, why they should get a no-knock warrant or a regular search warrant or whatever it may be.

And so the judge kind of looks at what's presented to him or her and then, and then will grant it. And that's when law enforcement can then go serve the warrant. And so here Merrick Garland's department, I think they have been for a good year. I think they've been investigating the Louisville Police Department and this matter and specifically, but it sounds like some evidence was presented that Ms. Taylor's boyfriend was living at the apartment and was getting packages shipped there. I didn't, I didn't see if there was like an affidavit from a postal inspector, but that was part of the evidence as a postal inspector confirmed that packages were going. And so I guess Merrick Garland's folks have decided that that was made up, or at least there's no evidence of that whatsoever.

Right. Because after the shooting, they did actually arrest the boyfriend and then he was released rather quickly. Like all charges against him were dismissed. So they're actually thinking they lied about it even being her boyfriend that was receiving the packages. Like it may have legitimately been a crime they were looking into, but they lied about it even having anything to do with either of them.

Because as far as I know, her boyfriend was never charged with anything and was released even though he was detained and put in custody after the shooting. So, and just to add into like, this was during, like you said, this was during a crazy time with police interactions. So George Floyd was maybe two months after her. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Not too long. And then before her, it was Fidel Castro or Castell, sorry. I always say his name wrong, but it was a couple of things going on. So a lot of people thought that this kind of got overshadowed by everything that happened after George Floyd. So the family's been fighting for her for about a year to make sure that this didn't get overlooked.

The state actually ended up passing a Breonna Taylor law not too long after her shooting though, that said, essentially, no more no knock warrants were going to be allowed in that state. Yeah, the no knock stuff. I've always had a problem with that. You know, you always you want to, you know, it is a thin blue line.

And so we certainly, you know, here, I think it's a good example. The Fed. So the news this week is the Fed's charged for police officers who they thought were instrumental in not presenting evidence, maybe lying. Again, I haven't seen the formal charges on obtaining this warrant. And none of the officers who actually were on the ground serving the warrant have been charged with anything because I think Garland has a quote where he says they were in their minds, they were executing a legal nothing wrong with a warrant. Yeah. So they're saying that everybody on the ground thought they had a legal warrant and nothing was wrong with it. But that the cops that introduced the evidence to the judge knew they were lying and were getting a false warrant is what their allegations are. So that'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

Yeah. The argument for and against no knock warrants seems essentially the same because it's a danger if you announce yourselves as cops, if it's someone who actually would want to harm a cop. But if you don't announce yourself, you're also in danger because they think they're being, you know, attacked, robbed, broken into their home. I don't know how to solve for that if getting rid of no knock warrants really alleviates the risk of cops being hurt, harmed when they... And I wonder how this all ties into with warrantless searches. So for our listeners who may not know, there are searches that can happen that are without a warrant as long as there's probable cause. And some of those are the same reasons that we have no knock warrants, which is like exigent circumstances, destruction of evidence, fear of danger to others or yourself, like things like that can't allow a warrantless search. So the same reasons we have warrantless searches are the same reason these no knocks are allowed. So like you said, it's a hard trying to find a balance and act between making sure somebody is not just going to shoot you because they think somebody is breaking into their home, but making sure the cops are in a sense safe and actually obtaining the evidence they need when trying to solve a crime. It's a hard pill. Yeah, it is.

I don't care who you are. I mean, if someone, if I go home today and someone busts down the door, I don't care if they say they're police or whatever, your first thought is, is, you know, fight or flight, you know, you're in an emergency situation. I don't know. It's like you said, it's a tough, it's a tough spot and you can kind of, you can kind of understand it both ways, depending on the facts or the situation that that's before you. But, but either way, these guys have been charged. And I think something like this that has been in the news so much, when you have new developments, it's important to kind of go back and, and, and, and figure out exactly what has happened, not what you've just decided.

You know, your mind's already absorbed information and we compartment, you know, we, we have our understanding of it and we just kind of put it away. But as things develop, I think it's interesting to kind of go back and look at what's, what's actually going on and, and, and yeah, there'll be, I think there'll be more fallout. I think the Louisville police department will have more, more issues. And I wonder if parallel state charges will follow because it's interesting that these federal charges came first, that it's been over a year and there have not been state charges related to these it's primarily civil rights violations that the federal, that the justice department's going after. And I think we'll see state charges probably if the fed's crime is proven because they lied to state officials to get the warrant. So I think we'll start to see more coming out of this.

Well, we'll talk about this again, for sure. Breonna Taylor again, no knock warrants talking about it on the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your host Whitaker and Hamer law firm that are managing partners at the firm. Also practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. And today Josh is joined by Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer.

We've got more to discuss coming up on the other side. Welcome back into the outlaw liars, Josh Whitaker, Cassandra Nicholas, and Taylor Scruggs Smith joining us on the program today. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate, Josh, Cassandra and Taylor. They can be found at Whitaker and Hamer law firm, the power behind this program. And again, they are practicing attorneys here in North Carolina, Josh and Joe Hamer is normally here managing partners of that firm.

Joe not feeling well. He is on assignment today. Office is located for Whitaker and Hamer, Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. And if you've got a legal situation as we get into all these different topics, and you've got some questions, you can always contact the firm 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information 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 questions at the outlaw lawyer.com and check out that website. It's a nice one.

The outlaw lawyer.com. We're going to go to the golf course, Josh. Do you know what live golf stands for?

Do you know this? I don't know what it stands for. I just know it's causing a whole bunch of brouhaha. I did not. I just assumed it was an abbreviation for something. I didn't know what it was. I thought maybe it was even like a abbreviation for something in a foreign language, but actually was reading last night.

And so this is what this article tells me. It says the name live LIV is a reference to the Roman numeral for 54. The score of every hole on a par 72 course were birdied and the number of holes to be played at live events. And I think guys, everybody out there that plays golf can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they've got some kind of weird, wicked bonus. If someone actually cards a 54 in a live event, they got a lot of money over there.

They have a lot of money. All right. So, so just to explain the, when did this live come in? I mean, I only remember hearing about it for like the past six months or so, but I guess this just recently came into existence.

Yeah. I mean, it's been in the, it's been in the works for, I think a number of years. And finally, um, you've got someone in Greg Norman who has kind of always been at odds with the PGA. Um, he, uh, is kind of the focal point and the lead figure, but his backing is the Saudis and there's a lot of question marks. Uh, the Saudis are in a lot of things. They're an F1, uh, they're in premiership soccer. Um, and they're being accused of trying to sports wash their, what they're doing and their human rights records.

It's just awful. And um, so there's been a lot of, um, a lot of issue with, with what they were doing, how much money they're throwing at some of these stars, how much money they've given them to come on over. Phil Mickelson's one of the big names, uh, DJ Dustin Johnson, who played his college golf right down there and, uh, Myrtle beach, uh, very popular, you know, top 50 play. You know, these guys are some of the top players in the world, but they're taking large amounts of money as a tip to come over. Uh, they've shortened the rounds.

They're only playing three rounds. Uh, they play Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and the purses are huge and they have a team concept too. So they have an individual purse and then they have a draft and you have four players per team.

Uh, and if one of the players on the team wins, uh, everybody gets a piece of that. Uh, so in theory, if you won the golf tournament, you could win, uh, four or five, six, $7 million as the individual, but you could attack on another three or $4 million. So you could walk out of a tournament with about $12 million for three days of play. So you can understand why some of these contract workers, these golfers, these commission only guys are taking a serious look at it. And they're trying to play off all of the negativity about the Saudis. Uh, and then you, it's a little bit hypocritical when you look at how much the Saudis are involved with over here anyway, and people are starting to scream about the golfer. So I think the PGA and, and, and live, or they're going to have to kind of sit down and figure it out. It's not going to be anytime soon though. Is that PGA is issue.

It's a philosophical issue only related to it being like Saudi backed money or it's, it's an actual, just like they don't want a competitor. They don't want to get PGA, the PGA. So, so the way I had to sit here and think about it from a legal perspective is, you know, if you, if you play for the Charlotte Hornets, you got a contract, right? You're, you're a contract employee. If you, if you play with the Carolina Panthers, you got a contract, uh, PGA is just a tour and you can come as long as you meet the rules and do what they say you, you come and play, but you're not employed by the PGA. You don't have a contract.

You're a, you're an independent contractor. So they, in theory, shouldn't be able to limit what the independent contractors are doing outside of their time at PGA events. They could get money and work for whoever they want. And again, just from a number standpoint, it's going to be difficult to figure out world rankings. They're not playing the same. They're not playing the same golf. They're not playing 72 holes. They're not playing the same fields.

So it's, it's a very slippery slope. The initial conversations that you're going to hear is, you know, it's a money grab. A lot of these golfers are older. They're on the, the, the twilight of their careers. They're looking at retirement. They're looking at really, really big cash. And again, I said this early on in the program, I don't know how much longer lives going to be there.

So some of these guys might be thinking, you know what, I'm going to take the big money up front. I'm going to take a lot of heat, but then eventually for maybe for a legal situation, they're going to be able to get back onto the PGA tour. They're going to be able to play in a lot of these events right now. The British opens available. Obviously they played that number of the guys were in that, but these other majors, how how's the masters going to handle it. Things like that. Stateside going to be very interesting to watch.

Yes. So the, so the PGA has taken the position early on, like, Hey, if you take this money from to go play on the live tour, you will not be welcomed back. You will, you know, your card will be taken. You will not be able to play PGA tour events.

And they've taken that stand early. And then people still, after the fact went and took the money, which I'm not saying is wrong, but PGA stances, we told you not to do it. If you're going to do it, you couldn't play.

Now you can't play. And so there's 13 players who took the money, went to the live tour. They fought a federal antitrust lawsuit, basically saying the PGA is a, is a monopoly and they're not allowing them to play for arbitrary reasons. And anyway, so this is something that's going to get heard at some point, but they filed an injunction because they wanted to get in the, uh, with the FedEx cup.

Right. So three of the players filed it for an injunction. It was heard in federal court. The federal judge did not side with them and, and said the PGA, at least now is within their rights to do this.

And so it's going to have to go through the normal process, but there will be a trial on it at some point. Um, and I, you know, honestly, I think the PGA loses this one, but we'll see. I don't, I don't know. Taylor, big golf fan. I don't think you said anything in this segment. I know when I'm not supposed to speak golf is not my thing.

I'm not like, I can't speak to a lot of things. Like I'll play golf. I don't watch a lot of golf. Cause I will instantly fall asleep if, if golf is on the TV. Um, and I, I get the side eye when I, when I like, I like to play, I like to watch, um, you know, it'll be a beautiful day outside and, and um, you know, Michelle will sit and just kind of look at me. She's gonna sit in here and watch golf. And I go, honey, it's major.

She goes, what? It's beautiful outside. Yeah. And so, you know, again, it's different strokes for different folks.

Sorry. A little golf. If it's a nice day, I really want to be in the lake.

You know, if it's a nice day, there's no reason not to be at the beach or to be in the lake or to be in the water. But, uh, but yeah, everybody, Hey, I still watch professional wrestling and I can't justify that to anybody. I keep it secret. Like I'm doing crack cocaine. I put out there for the radio. Not that you've ever done crack cocaine.

You do love wrestling. All right. All right. Well we are up against it.

We're going to take our final break, come back on the other side and wrap up the program. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Again, the power behind this program and visiting with us today, Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer. They have offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, and Gastonia. If you've got a legal situation that you are facing, you can always call 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 show, questions at the outlawlawyer.com.

We're back to wrap it up right after this. Welcome back to the final segment of the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. And again, Whitaker and Hamer, the power behind the program. Pricing attorneys here in North Carolina, they are again, the managing partners of the firm. We have Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer filling in for Joe Hamer. He's under the weather this week.

We wish him a quick recovery. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. If you've got a legal situation, you can always call the firm 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact info, briefly what that call is about. An attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. All right, Josh, take it away. Morgan, I think, uh, I think we need to circle back around here and really drive home the point that I have never smoked or used crack cocaine in any shape, form or fashion, just for the record.

You were describing your just absolutely ravenous appetite for professional wrestling, which would normally embarrass most people and compare that to crack cocaine. And I want to, I want to remind everybody one that me, Cassandra and Taylor, we're all real attorneys. We're practicing attorneys in the state of North Carolina. Uh, we practice with the law firm of Whitaker and Hamer. We all have different practice areas, but we're happy to help you with any legal issue that you may have encountered. Uh, you know, please call us, please email us, please reach out to us. We'd love to sit down with you and meet you and see if that's something whatever you're going through is something that we can help you with. Um, I've really enjoyed, I enjoy our time together where we sit down and we talk about stuff that's not, it's legal, but it's not work, right?

So most of the time we're talking about work. So as soon as we get done today, we're all going in different directions. So Cassandra, you're going to our burner office. Taylor's going to go over to our Raleigh office and I'm headed down to Fuquay Varina today.

So I'm going to stay right here. You're welcome to visit us at any of our locations, Morgan, but we have, we have a lot of locations that we do that on purpose. You know, we can have telephone consults with you. We know that everybody does zoom, right? So we can zoom or Microsoft team and, and meet with you.

But we still like to be where people live, like where our clients live. We like to, you know, when possible meet with folks in person. I know everybody's still a COVID's back. It's definitely coming back around again.

School's about to start. So, oh, wow. But we, we still like to sit down with folks when we can and, and, and be convenient to use our attorneys. Uh, I'll spend time in our offices and again, our offices where we're in Raleigh, we're in Garner, we're in Clayton, we're in Fuquay Varina, we're in Goldsboro and we're in, uh, Gastonia. I'll be down in Goldsboro and that office, uh, tomorrow for a little while, but, uh, we try to be around where our clients are. And I think before the end of the year, we'll have another officer too, to, to add on to that.

But we do, we, we try to bring the customer service element back into, uh, legal services. And so that's very important to us. A busy day. We had a lot to talk about. Morgan, I think that's all we got today. All right. I'll take us home. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina and our special guests this week, Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith filling in for an ailing Joe Hamer.

He'll be back next week. I'm Morgan Patrick. And for the record, I was a big Ric Flair fan. I took a shot at wrestling fans.

I don't want them to get upset at me. I did watch back in the day. Woo.

All right. We're back next week on the outlaw lawyers. Outlaw 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.