Reflections on Sentencing and Behavior

He gave me a book. on art forgery I found myself drawn to these Old masters. How did these artists take paint from a palette, arrange it on a canvas? I began to unlock the secrets I was a storehouse of knowledge of how to create an illusion present it to a experienced expert manipulate his mind and convince him and bring him to the inevitable conclusion that the painting is genuine We flooded the market with my paintings And I couldn't believe what I did. I couldn't believe it Then the dominoes started falling and eventually the FBI will led to my door They uncovered a mountain of evidence against me. But they never actually got you At this point, you've sold a lot. You've got like a million dollars in cash. You've sold one painting for seven hundred seventeen thousand Why did it go away? Why did you never get indicted? And How are we having this conversation? I guess it's the greatest story of all To hear how Ken Perei made millions in art forgery, dodged the mafia and the FBI, suubbscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show and check out episode two hundred eighty two in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now. I'm Bread And I'm Alice And we are the prosecutors Today on the Prosecutors. A teenager drives her car into the side of a building, seriously injuring herself and killing her boyfriend and another teen Was it a horrible accident or murder Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined as always by my speed deemon of a co host Alice That is fair because I did say that I was not in favor of speed limits. That's true. Except this is the type of case that definitely tests the limits of my reasoning because I don't really think it was the speeding that got her It was the speeding paired with the end of the speeding that got her. Exactly, exactly. and You know, Alice, she's got the hottesty So There's no talent What she's like onn the roads, the highways and byways of America. Watch out The amount of car seats I have in my codessey, it like weighs down the back of it that I'm pretty sure I would never reach one hundred miles per hour, which is what we're going to be talking about today. Exactly And if it's not obvious by now, we are talking about The McKinzsey Cherilla case made famous in a couple of documentaries onene of them that's stirred up a lot of controversy lately, the crash. Netflix. If you just can't get enough of this case, there was another I'm gonna call it a documentary. It was an episode of M Girl Murders called Under the Influence onn Hulu, that is season two, episode seven And Hulu couldn't get enough of this case. They also had killer cases, murder on wheels Season four episode twelve. So You can get you can watch this mini sensational documentaries as you want to in this case, but we thought We'd break the case down, talk about the facts, talk about the law, talk about what's going on right now and give you our opinions on this case. Alice, I assume you watched the crash. I watched the crash and I just have to say I can pretty definitively say that if I either were a victim or the perpetrator, no one's gonna to make three documentaries about me. So we're gonna talk a lot about what led to Mackenzie Sarilla to do what she did and what kind of a crime that is. if it's a crime, it's a crime But This is extraordinary in the sense of like many other cases we've covered in that teenager crashed the car That's like the age old story. That's why car insurance for teenagers is astronomically more than once you hit like thirty years old, right? So this is something that all teens really do. spepeed, obviously, get in car accidents. but what makes this case different? Why has it captured Media such that three documentaries or episodes have been made about it and we're talking about it today. And we're always here to talk about the extraordinary, which also sheds light obviously on kind of more commonplace events. So with that, let's dive into the facts of this case So in the early morning hours of july thirty first, twenty twenty two, police responded to reports of a vehicle that had crashed into a building at the intersection of progress dririve And now a meter drive in the town of Strongsville Ohio This area was sort of an industrial area. This was an industrial building, a little unusual place to have this kind of wreck When police arrived on the scene, what they saw was absolutely Hrific. They found the Black Toyota to be almost totally destroyed, nearly cut down the middle police would report Inside, there were three teenagers. The driver, seventeen year old MackKenzie Serilla, her boyfriend, twenty year old Dominic Russo, known as Dom and a mutual friend Daveon Flanagan, who was nineteen. Now Cerella was squeezed into the floorboard and her legs and torso were in the driver's side of this wreck. while the rest of her body was on the passengers side with a dashboard caved on top of her. You know, car wrecks insane things can happen. I had a friend once who he was driving down the road And as he's driving This Dump truck Full of Rocks turns in front of him The guy was going to miss his turn. He did this last second turn When he does this, the dump truck flips over and lands on top of his car lands on the driver's side of his car flattens the car The police show up. they will expect he's going to be dead. When they get there, they're like, Is anyone in the car? And he's like, Yeah, I'm here. Can you get me out? The way the dump truck had done this is it had pushed him over sort of like this into the passenger seat. So he's now parallel to the road with like the lower half of his body in the car squished into the car. He can't move because the top of the car is now folded around him police cut him out, he was perfectly fine. He wasn't even injured. So w things like this happen in crashes and you see this in this case. This incredibly destroyed vehicle, but she's just in the one position she could be in where she isn't going to be Unfortunately the two other people with her were not so fortunate. Dom was in the passenger seat and Davon was actually laying on top of him Both were dead from severe head trauma though Davian, at least, had been alive when police arrived He died on the scene before rescue could be attempted So the police and first responders went to work trying to save Sarilla because you can hear on the bodycam, they say, she's still breathing and she's the only one. I mean, the way the car looked, you hear the police kind of go into a panic. and this is what they do. They respond to these accidents and they say things like looks like the car exploded and it does. It doesn't even resemble a car. So they extract Serlla and she's not in good shape at all. She'd suffered severe injuries Butush she was conscious enough to ask, how is Davion? A helicopter arrived on the scene and airflighted her to the hospital. Meanwhile, the police continued to search the vehicle. Inside, they found eight point one grams of mushrooms At digital scale, two cell phones, a bong, and a bag of marijuana. Dominic and MackKenzie had been dating for four years, starting when Mackenzie was just thirteen years old By the time of this crash, they lived together in Dom's home But appeared to be kind of a fairy tale high school sweetheart situation may not have been all paradise. And Alice mentioned this earlier, you see a car wreck, a devastating car wreck like this with three young people in it and unfortunately There is a feeling of this is horrible But man, tragedies like this happen all the time. I mean, I'm sure car wrecks are pretty high up there, if not number one. in the ways the teenagers are killed. You know, they're dyie of heart attacks, right So this unfortunately is something that the police see a lot. It is striking how shocked the police are when they show up at this scene becausecause they probably responded to dozens of car wrecks, horrific car wrecks. What they're saying is just insane It is interesting and this may play some part in the case The passenger side is worse off than the driver's side. I don't know whether that's intental. I don't if it could be intentional given the violence of this accident, but it's not surprising that the people on the passenger side The police would later say had no chance There was no chance they were going to survive. Davian obviously was thrown into the front seat when the wreck happened McKenzie also had her seatbelt on. It wasn't really the seatbelt or even the airbags. I'm sure they helped, but it was just sort of luck that she survived this. Police are startorting to thing Is this a crime You know, they see the drugs, they're thinking, wereere they under the influence? Like how does something like this happen? And eventually they start to learn things that will play a major part in the trial that's going to happen They learn, for instance, and a family friend will later testify that there had been an incident earlier in July, only a couple of weeks before this happened Dom had called his mom to get him out of what he called a bad situation A friend of his mother's forty one year old Christopher Martin Drives to a location off of Interstate seventy one where McKenzie's car is parked parked off the side of the road. Dom is in the passenger seat. As he's walking up, there's an argument going on and he hears McKenzie tell Dom Who is the passenger? I'm going to wreck this car right now. Dom tries to exit out of the vehicle, Mackenzie starts hitting him And this would turn out to be only one of the most visceral examples of a fractious and volatile relationship. The prosecution would end up playing videos that Dom had recorded on a friend's phone These videos were very damaging to McKenzie as they showed her in an extremely agitated state yelling and cursing at Dom threatening him and threatening to break into his house. And by July, according to his friends and family, the end of July was considering ending the relationship for So remember how they searched the car, of course, they're looking for anything that could give them a clue to what happened The drugs, this again, kind of sounds like what would always happen. Sounds like maybe they were impaired But they have to dig deeper because you should never, ever Do illegal drugs number one, and you should never drive when you're impaired. But This wreck Did it look like your typical impaired wreck So the only person who was there at the time who could give them information firsthand is of course, MackKenzie But Mcenzie claimed not to remember the accident She stated in text messages to Dom's mother that she remembers turning onto the street, and there's video footage of her turning onto the street in a very controlled manner. It's a deliberate turn. She kind of slows and then you know accelerates through the turn, but it's not a crazy wild turn out of control or weaving, as you may expect, someone who's out of control or impaired She even uses her turn signal. She even uses her turn signal, indeed But she says that after she made that turn, her memory fades to black. Now That in and of itself is not completely unexpected. She obviously suffered a lot of trauma. Your brain blocks out usually like moments before and moments after a traumatic event like this. This is more than just a couple seconds before and after, especially when you see the deliberate nature of the turn where nothing should have really been impacting the driver's ability to drive at that point But she says, that's all she can remember. So she's no help to the police here because she says everything is black in my memory. And when they're talking to her She is at the hospital, She's like hooked up to all these tubes. She's in a whole body cast basically. She's gone through surgeries. If you saw the car, you can imagine it's a miracle that she walks away from it, but clearly she is very broken phically, and she resembles this. And so there's only so much pushing really the police can do at this point, especially when she's exclaiming, I don't remember anything You know, you can't exactly squeeze water from a rock. I would say this. I think it is almost certainly the case that she has some memory loss It's very common in people who are in serious accidents that they have memory loss. A lot of them do not remember the moment. of the accident. Now I will say this. there's one thing about it She's got some injuries They're not really to the head. likeike she doesn't have serious head injuries. It's one of the reasons she lived She has a lot of lower body injuries and certainly it was an incredibly traumatic event. So it might not even matter whether you have head injuries or not. She was conscious when the police arrived. She told them her name when they arrived. she asked them questions. So It's impossible to know. I think if you put a doctor on the stand, they would say it's not unusual for someone who have memory gaps when they're in an accident like this. How long those gaps would last, how far back they would go, whether you would ever recover that memory hard to say. On she will really know how much she remembers, but it's not surprising to me that she says she doesn't remember. And in fact As I was watching the documentary, I was saying this to the television tell me you don't remember anything That was my like lawyer position. Like your position should be, I don't remember anything about the wreck. And sure enough, that's what she said. So then let's look at the street that this happened on because McKenzie takes that deliberate controlled turn onto Progress Drive, which is a commercial industrial area and the speed limit is thirty five miles per hour relatively slow And it's often used this road as a cut through by drivers seeking to reach state route eighty two and I will say if you look at the map, this really doesn't make sense. It's been said that there's no reason for MackKenzie to have been on the street. This is not like On the way to her house, she didn't have to take this road, especially because it kind of dead ends into this industrial building. Now thirty five is pretty low for speed limits, right? And we all know that especially with low speed limits, people often take liberties with it. Well It's true on this drive. Progress drive, no one really drives the speed limit, but this road isn't smooth and it does kind of have a little bit of a C shaped bent curve. so it's not just a straight shot where you can go as fast as you can without some type of control And if you were to drive over sixty miles per hour on this kind of bumpy road, It would not be particularly easy. I say this because Brett and I recently We got to go to the Salt flats, which was Aazing. I mean, literally, I think I thought it was going to be cool. I didn't realize how breathtaking it was going to be. So the salt flats are in Utah and it's like billions of years ago, it was an ocean and has since dried up and like the salt crust is it looks like snow, but it's all salt and it's incredibly flat And they have races there, speedways there, and you get drive on them. So Brett and I Bret drove, I got to just be in the passenger seat, which apparently is a dangerous place to be anyways gotot to drive like as fast as we could on the speedway and it was really exhilarating. But part of the reason we could drive as fast as possible is it's completely flat and slick and there's nothing around. Like you can be spinning your car crazily and you can't hit anything because the mountains are miles and miles away and there's no trees because it's all salt, so no vegetation can grow. And that's part of the reason why you're able to drive so fast at that area Not the case on Progress Drive though If you wanted to drive sixty miles isn't even that fast. You drive faster than that on the interstate sixty miles is difficult to navigate on this road. So at the end of progress is a T intersection with the industrial brick building MackKenzie hit behind it There's video surveillance that shows the camera she was driving progressing through this area normally, making that normal turn onto Progress drive But then at that point, something changes completely. There's other footage of the car And you hear it before you see the car because the car begins to accelerate after that controlled turn onto progress. And when the camry reached the T, it was traveling at ninety seven miles per hour. It hit the curb airborne and then landed and crashed into the building at eighty and a half miles per hour. It's amazing that she survived It's amazing that Davon was still alive when the police arrived. And it's just incredible speeds into A brick wall, literally And I always think I've been thinking a lot about my driving experiences as often do whenever I cover these cases, I always think about things I've done in the past. And I remember one time I was in high school And I had a job. It was out in the middle of nowhere And I had to get up really early in the morning I'm driving to the job and it's this Rural area I didn't really drive that often I'm going faster than I should G bit fast and the speed limit And I come around urns And there's like a stop sign right in front of me in a cross street And so I slam on the brakes, but I don't have enough space to stop. And so I just hit the cross streets I don't know if I went in the air, it felt like I went in the air hit the cross street, flew over the cross street, and then continued down the road on the other side and eventually got stopped and just sat there thinking how if anyone had been crossing, I would have just ran right into them or they would have ran right into me and it would have been terrible and horrible and awful So, you know, you just imagine how fast she's going When she hits that curve and she absolutely goes Airborne lands on the ground and then crashes. into that Well And we're going to talk more about the details of this and some of the facts about it that might lead you to think this maybe wasn't as much of an accident as McKenzie would want you to believe So at the hospital, now they're trying to figure out what happened too. didid she have a stroke? Did she black out? Was she under the influence? She had no alcohol in her system. She did have marijuana in her system, though she was known to smoke marijuana in prodigious qualities especially for a seventeen year old So the amount in her system might not have even made much of a difference. It was noted that she suffered from something called postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome or And this is a disorder that may cause dizziness, elevated heart rate, and In extreme cases Blackouts. So There was this feeling that maybe this could have had some sort of involvement in this However, It's important to remember the postoral orthostatic aspect of that and because The whole point of this syndrome is that its symptoms are tied to a change in posture. So if you stand up quickly, for instance, many of us get dizzy if you stand up quickly that can happen to you Well people with this syndrome, that's a really bad thing to do because the body can't react quickly enough and you can often have blackouts or something along those lines. It is not tyypical for someone to be driving normally in their chair and then do suffer from pots, especially in such an extreme way There's no. obvious triggering event that would cause this and there's no other medical conditition she has that would cause a stroke or some sort of seizure or something else that might occur to her while she's driving and medical experts could find no evidence of a stroke, no evidence of any sort of seizure a neurological issue that could have explained what happened in this case. And so one other thing to note, then if it's not the person driving it is the car, right They also had, you know, an expert look at the car, notothing had malfunctioned in the car. The pedal wasn't stuck down, the brakes weren't broken. In fact, it looks like the brake was never engaged at all And so when you have It's not a mechanical failure it's not human error, then what do you have? And this is a good point Alice brings up because she was driving in Toyota Camry and there was a period of time Montoy' actually had a mechanical issue with accelerators that would stick and cars would drive incredibly high rate of speed and be very difficult to stop That was something that was addressed by Toyota This vehicle did not have that issue. It was examined by multiple experts to determine, is there anything mechanical that can account for this? And they could not find anything that would explain it. So they have a situation where it seems like there's no medical issue, as Alice said, there's no mechanical issue There's really not an issue of being under the influence of some sort of drug that would lead you to do this And so the police eventually settled on something of a murder suicide theory with McKinzie deciding to kill her boyfriend and herself as a result of their failed relationship. I hate to put it this way, but in this theory Dave Yon is collateral damage. He was someone who just happened to be there. It wasn't that she wanted to kill him But because he was in the vehicle and because that was going to be the method of the murder suicide He unfortunately Dad. as well and that's the theory. the police have and it is why she will eventually be charged and taken to trial So Is there enough there for a crime though? Because like we said, accidents happen all the time In fact, now that we're about to go to Crime C You guys will listen to this after we're already a crime C. but what? two, three crrime Cons ago? I got hit I got totally demolished a person who was actually under the influence, very under the influence of meth. Wh she was pregnant. wasow, I was pregnant. Sorry, but nobody knew Oh yeah, I forgot about that. You did know. I'm sorry about that. you stopped at Bucky'. I should have just stopped at Bucky' and I would have avoided meth Lady. I actually was looking through the notes on my phone and I have her insurance number saved as methl ladies. ice I hope she's doing okay. I really do. actuallyct hope she's doing okay because it was She was probably in a really difficult life situation, more so than just the drugs. But my point being, accidents happen all the time. Drug induced accidents happen all the time. People get killed in car accidents all the time. It is actually way more dangerous to drive a car than it is to fly an airplane or go for a walk. It is a highly dangerous activity that we engage in every single day our modern industrial life go round. So what makes this a crime So let's start with the timeline here. march twenty third, twenty twenty Police are dispatched to the Serilla home after reports that Mackenzie had threatened suicide Now her parents declined to transport her to the hospital as they didn't believe that her threats were real. I know those of you who've watched the crash probably have a lot of thoughts about her parents. and look, She's seventeen Not legally an adult, I guess, and they do allow her to go move in with her twenty year old. boyfriend at this age because in their words, they think she's mature enough at this point There probably are a lot of things, but I will say this. There are a lot of types of parents, and I do think parents for the most part, unless they are actively trying to sell their children into sex trafficking, which is unfortunately something Brett and I have both prosecuted. They really are trying to do their best. Not any parent is perfect. Yet most kids, despite the failings of their parents as parents Don't choose to end other people's lives So Keep that in mind here. but There's a lot to be said. This case is not about her parents. this case is about Mackenzie and the choices that she made. And I'll say this, if you're really interested in this case, you can spend a lot of time on it. There's a lot of tabloid stuff out there. You can listen to all of her phone calls with her mom jail, There's all sorts of stuff on Reddit. You can read her mom's Instagram post There's a lot of that We're not really going to focus on that because we really just want to focus on the facts and whether or not this girl did this But it is all out there. I think frankly, it's more relevant to maybe her future than is to her past. They do not bathe themselves in glory in the Netflix documentary They really don't and they come across very poorly This little incident here is it's interesting just because the murder suicide theory you know, her parents will say and her defense team took the position that she was not suicidal, never been suicidal. was very happy. So this is an interesting data point because it seems to contradict that. Now look She's a teenager in the modern age. She's all over social media very very invested in her looks and her reputation and everything else It wouldn't shock me if she did say something about suicide and it wouldn't shock me if she actually wasn't serious. So I don't know if she can rest a lot of weight on this, but It's an interesting data point given what we're going to see. Right. So that was in twenty twenty And fast forward a couple years, july seventeenth, twenty twenty two The incident on the interstate, the one where Dom called his mom asking for some help Well, it was on the internstate and occurs where a witness hears MackKenzie threaten to crash the car, the same car that she's actually driving, the subject of the current case we're talking about In text messages sent that day to Rosie Graham, who is one of McKenzie and Dom's best friends, MackKenzie accuses Dom of trying to grab the wheel while she was driving and that it was him who threatened to cause an accident, not her She also texted Dom's mother, claiming that he had attempted to grab the steering wheel and hurt her saying, quote, just grabbed my steering wheel on the highway, trying to spin out my car This is really interesting because of course, we have kind of an independent witness who's not the mom or the best friend saying what she heard, which is that McKenzie is the one threatening to crash the car. Now, McKenzie's mom released the following text trade between her daughter and Dom. The first part's from her. Yes. So this is text tres. about Iby McKenzie, you'd be done So MackKenzie types, how can I believe that you're never going to do that again? I can't because I don't know your limit. Somebody who loves me would never do that. N I couldn't even do it if you told me to, but I guess that's different for you Yeah, I wasn't trying to do anything. I was trying to kill myself first question mark I would die at first, LOL. Like if you don't believe me, then yeah, just break up with me. If you can't believe me, there's no point anyway. Okay, let's talk about these texts. Guys, we are back with the greatest blanket in the history of the world. Lola blankets. You guys know I am absolutely obsessed. with Lola blankets. at this point, I'm getting them for everybody. I bought one for my mom for Christmas. I'm getting one for my brother in law for his wedding. 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Now as you know We're at trial. and we're going to trial. We're trying to prove that she's committed some sort of We're going through the timeline because this was very important at trial She's charged with boat looad of counts, okay? She's charged with two counts of murder. She's charged with one count of Assault, felonious assault She's charged with two counts of vehicular homicide. She's charged with drug possession And she's also charged with possessing contraband stuff. So The question before the judge because as we're going to talk about, this was a judge trial, not a jury trial The question is what happened here? Was this a pure accident Did she intentionally drive into that wall? Is it vervehicular homicide? She was driving incredibly recklessly and it resulted in death. But she didn't intend to hit the wall and she didn't intend to kill anybody. drug stuff is obvious. I mean, she had drugs all over, including like in her bars and I think she had like some more marijuana. Those are all the charges and that's what the judge is trying to figure out. The defense's position is this is at worst recklessness. So maybe there's some sort of vehicular homicide But frankly, we think it's maybe more like a negligent veicular homicide. We're like involuntary manslaughter and some sort of murder, they're trying to limit her liability as much as possible. prosecution' saying no. She intentionally drove into that wall. She got that car up to one hundred miles an hour. She jumped that curb, she drove into the wall because at that moment She had decided she was going to kill Dom, She's going to kill herself. Honestly, it doesn't matter what was in her mind. The important thing is did she drive into the wall intentionally The prosecution's using this event that happened two weeks before on the side of the road. and they're saying, lookook, A witness heard her say, I will crash this car She had already thought about crashing the car that shows some sort of intention. And her position is no, there was some sort of incident on the interstate. Dom tried to grab the wheel at some point And what she was saying was more in the vein of if you keep grabbing the wheel, I'm going to crash the car. More saying That'll be the consequence of you interfering with My driving. That's what they're trying to say. So these text messages have become important for a couple of reasons. Number one, s pure I'm going to call it propaganda, but I don't mean it in the pejorative sense and getting their messaging out It was something they talked about in the Netflix documentary and's something they've talked about more in Internet posts since the documentary came out. And it actually is part of their post conviction collateral review. One of their allegations in collateral review is that their attorney did not fight hard enough to get these messages into the record There was some discussion about it, but these messages didn't come in So let's talk about, let's break it down. There's three text message to Rosie, the text message to Dom's mother, and then the text messages between them The first two are utterly unreliable McKenzie spinning what happened on the interstate, including to Dom's mother, is being Dom's fault completely unreliable, not to mention Hearsay. theseese are out of court statements that she's trying to offer for the truth of the matter asserted. If she wants to argue that what happened on that roadway wasas actually Dom doing something? She has a great way to do that. She can get up on the stand and testify she did not do that. And since she didn't do that Those two text messages definitely not coming in the Dom messages are best equivocal Once again, I don't know what happened on that road But I'm fairly certain that McKenzie is going to attempt to G Domb be the one who's responsible. For all we know, McKenzie was driving like a maniac And Dom was trying to get control of the vehicle to stop her and she flipped out about it. We don't know anything about what happened because she hasn't told us. She hasn't even testified to it. She hass not been subject to cross examination. So I find these text messages to be somewhat interesting, but not really that illuminating And there's only one person it's a two way conversation and one of them is no longer with us and the other person is on trial for his murder. So yeah, I agree with you. theseese text messages are not the smoking gun that I think her parents or her maybe defense thought they are Okay, so let's talk about GPS data from her phone. On july twenty eighth, so two days before this rg McKenzie's phone showed her driving downown progress towards Alameda The same location where the incident would occur two days later. This was unusual as the route was relatively obscure and not one she routinely drove The prosecution presented this as a test run Essentially, she was driving this road. not necessarily planning to commit this crime but knowing where it was if she needed it, I think was more along the lines of what the prosecution was presenting. Recall. She wasn't actually tried for aggravated homicide. She was not tried with premeditated murder The argument was not, she played this, she put them in the car, she drove into a wall. They did initially charge her with that But those charges were eventually dropped. I think Honestly, they just didn't have enough to move forward of those charges. so they did the murder charge instead. So This is how this is presented her being in the same area as where the wreck would occur was her sort of planning this out. ahead of time I do think that's interesting. I think they have this bit because they were initially charging her with that. It would have been a much harder and I don't think they had the evidence for it. But when you are investigating your case, you go down all these routes. And so it makes sense that they have this, even if it doesn't squarely fit within there Theory. because they're not charging her with premeditation. But what this does show is we have to get around the this is just an accident Or like we, you know, a murder, suicide. Who wants to end their life at seventeen? You know, she had everything going for her. She has this online social media presence. She's trying to get these modeling deals. Why would she end herself? So even if this is not going to an element We've always said this, the best story ones at trial. You have to explain to the jury why someone who seems to be in This loving, stable relationship of four years, living together has this Great online presents, you know, all she does is hang out with her friends and have fun all the time. Why would she choose to do something so you know, tragic So this is part of the storytelling. So the defense has what they consider a rebuttal to this. They argue that McKenzie would often go to a prodo store near this location. And in fact, the woman who owned the store testified to this fact and said that McKinzie and Dom We're often at the produce store Once again, speaking to McKenzie's collateral attack on her conviction, she argues that her attorney was her attorney was ineffective for not pressing this More. So We got some maps we're going to show you here and some a little bit later If you're listening to this When the podcast comes out, these will be on prosecutorspodcast. com So go and check those out. if you're curious about this because I will tell you This doesn't really make any sense. So let's start with the route from Dom's home. to the produce store. So as you can see, she lives Dom lived and she lived with Dom on the south side of Strongsville Close to Strongsville High S school The produce store is to the north So to get there, basically, you drive down the road they live on, you take a rite And it's a straight shot. You cross Highway eighty two. it takes you three minutes to get there. It's about a mile and a half away. So that's the trip to the produce store Very direct I don't know why you'd go any other way to get to the produce store from Dom's home. Then there's imagine you were starting at Dom's home where she lived and you wanted to get to the crash site order to do that, basically, you gota keep going That's what's unusual about this. You would have to keep going past the produce store You would then have to take a rightite drive for a little while, you would then have to take a left which would take you up to the intersection where this eventually happens. It's about two point two miles away from their home It's not incredibly far away. I don't think it's a stretch to say that she might have driven past it at some point, but it doesn't really make any sense that you would drive past this location or even close enough that your phone would ping to this location if you were only going to the produce store. Now, this wasn't really fleshed out at trial because although it was mentioned, the defense didn't dig into it. and look This is strategy. Okaykay? So if you watched any of that, of the documentary notice in the defense case, the defense would present possibilities to raised doubt. Oh, will you say was was in the area isn't the produce store they would go to only about Three quarters of a mile away Did she go there a lot And one oft her phone have pinged there a lot? No further questions, Your Honor. Now you've put doubt in the fact finder's mind. It's like, oh, well, maybe she was at the store. If you really go hard on this and you make it the whole point of your presentation, what's the prosecution going to do They're going to rebut it aggressively It' the same thing with potTs. So one thing the defense didn't do, they did not call a medical expert to go up there and talk about potTs and talk about her pots and how it affects her and everything else. This is another that her attack on her conviction claims was ineffective Absolutely not Pbably the most effective thing the defense attorney did because you get pots out there without inviting the just obvious crushing rebuttals that you're going to get about how that's not how Pods works. She's never had an incident like that. It's not that serious for her, et cetera, et cca. So putting this stuff out there but not really diving into it is more convincing. and you probably out there in the world have heard this claim That wasn't a drive run. She was just going to the produce store. Well unless you look at the map, unless you dig into it, you might think, that seems pretty reasonable. But once you look at the map, you realize, no, That doesn't make any sense at all Yes. So then let's talk about the night of the crash It starts a little before midnight on july thirtieth, twenty twenty two. att eleven PM MackKenzie and Dom had a really tight knit group of friends who some of them appear on this documentary. They hung out basically every night. Maybe they had jobs, I'm not really sure, but it seemed like late night hanging out is something that they did often. So MackKenzie, Dominiic, and Davion, along with some of these other friends, arrive at Paul Birlinghouse's home to hang out Now they've been friends since middle school, so they had a long history together And the atmosphere as described by other people who were there that night was it was chill. This is kind of something they did all the time. They just got together and hung out as old close friends. And a few of them were smoking pots at around midnight. Birling House goes to sleep Now sometime between three and four, Birlinghouse wakes up and Everyone had just been hanging out there and kind of fell asleep where they were at the house And he says that he saw Mackenzie asleep on the couch and Dominiic is nowhere to be seen. while Dave Vonne was still up watching TV with another one of their friends Birlinghouse goes back to sleep and he wakes up to a text message later about the crash. At five thirty, according to Davon's lifeife three hundred and sixty data, which it's an app that allows you to track people. A lot of parents have this on their teenagers' phones just to make sure they know where they are if they can't reach them or there's been a car accident, for example But Davon had his life three hundred and sixty hooked to one of his friend's phones. so his friend could see his data and where his phone was pinging So according to Davian's life three sixty The trio being Davian, Mackenzie, and Dominiic, left the Berling House home aroundround five thirty And for six minutes, Daveon was on the road At five thirty six, Davianne's life three hundred sixty data shows him traveling at ninety miles per hour when the crash occurs. this crash. presumably based on this life three hundred sixty happens really within minutes of them leaving the house. It is interesting. The defense puts on several witnesses who talk about how, yeah, you know, they they had fights like anybody else. Their relationship was fine. Everything was great that night. There was no fight that night. There was no knockdown. Drag out, nobody witnessed them haveave any kind of bad interaction before they get in the car at five hundred thirty But What we can't say about their interpersonal relationships We can say about the accident. We don't know what was going on in that car, but we know what the car tells us. So let's talk about that portion of the timeline. four point six seconds before the crash, the accelerator pedal is depressed fully So it's pedal to the metedal four point six seconds before the crash. at no point During those four point six seconds was the brake pedal ress The brakes are never applaied And there's no skid marks or anything else that would indicate breaking at such a high rate speed. At no point did the accelerator pedal depression drop below one hundred percent. So the gas was all the way down The brakes are never applied. This is also important for the potential mechanical malfunction. If you look at prior accidents in Toyotas back when they had that issue with the accelerator sticking, one thing you always saw was braking. peopleeople were trying to brake and their car just wouldn't stop, but that was reflected in the black box. one reason they figured out it wasn't just people driving crazy, there actually was a mechanical problem. No indication of that. That's four point seconds before the crash, four point six seconds before the crash pedal to the metal. four point five seconds before the crash. So point point one second after someone pushes the pedal down all the way, there's an initial small turn on the Steering wheel Over the course of the next few seconds, there will be a number of turns on the steering wheel, small turns on the steering wheel with one So forceful that the data recorder actually notes a rollover event So the data recorder going that fast with that much of a yank on the steering wheel thinks the car is flipping over. It is not accident reconstructionists would call this a hard yank of the steering wheel. So someone, it seems like at some point after four point five seconds before the wreck And as you're going to see aboutbout two seconds before the wreck. grab the steering wheel and Yanked it At the same time this is going on The gear shift is moved back and forth between drive, sequential and neutral Drive to I guess sequential is probably when you can change gears manually into neutral and then push back into drive So in these handful of seconds, something is going on with a steering wheel and with the gear shift Now obviously this is just a black box telling us what it is, but zooming out. and obviously we don't know for sure what happened. But what you can know is if there is such a hard inink on the steering wheel that the black box itself is noting a rollover event. In other words, this is not just like a little turn, but a hard tug, someone else because the car did not roll over at that point had enough control of the steering wheel to resist that sort of a hard yank. Remember, this road has a little bend in it and it's also bumpy and it's already going to be hard to drive this, not to mention whatever is happening. There is clearly a struggle Whether it's with one person or multiple people, More likely it's multiple people who are struggling, one person intent on keeping the pedal to the metal and the car on the road and likely someone else pulling at it to stop. swwitching to neutral, trying to stop the engine from going so fast and someone else in the midst of this, probably having to Take a one hand off a steering wheel goingoing speeds that this road typically is not conducive to to push the gearshift back into drive That shows a lot. of strength and thought into keeping this car on the road because those four point six seconds, no accident happens And I think y'all have to remember You know, like some people including her family have said, well, if Dom wanted to stop her, he was bigger than her, he could have stopped her. Like how would she have fought him off? Remember this is not minute thirirty seconds, fifteen seconds, ten seconds. This is a total of four point six seconds that this happened The reaction time, what you would be thinking if you're in the passenger seat, she slams the gas down. Initially, you're probably either in shock or you're thinking she's being stupid. She's going to stop. A some point you're going to take action, but you took just very little time Like there's not a whole lot of fighting her off pllus she's going a hundred miles an hour. just try and put yourself in those shoes in that moment trying to do something about it, but not also wreck the car. It's a very It' hard to even imagine what would have been going through the minds of the people in that car in the four point six seconds between when she pushes the pedal to the pedal and when she hits something and as you're going to see, it's not even four point six. It's really they're really about three seconds before There was really no hope here So basically She's now one point six seconds before the crash. The engine hit a hundred percent throttle. So, you know, She's got the pedal all the way down. The engine's now at max capacity. You know, it's it's speeding up towards its top speed, but they can't put out anything else. We're going as hard as you could possibly go in that Toyota twenty five seconds later onene point one seconds for the crash is when the yank happens. So basically whoever's in that car with her, know who' in the car with So Dom or Davian, they have for three point five seconds basically doneone whatever This is the point where they grab the steering wheel. and yank it. This is when the hard yank is noted on the steering wheel But it's too late at this point You might wonder, if you yanked the steering wheel, why didn't they turn? Why didn't they curve? Why didn't they go off? Well right after this happens, they hit that curve. So They hit the curb right after the hard yank. The vehicle lifts into the air. The airbags go off When they hit the curb So now they're flying through the air with the airbags going off. They land on the ground and then they hit the wall It'll take police about forty five minutes later. to get there, not because the police were super slow, but because this is in the middle of nowhere. It's an industrial area, not a well traveled route. It takes a while for someone to see the car And then when they do, they call in and obviously police arrive as quickly as they can, but it takes them about forty five minutes to get there. So that is the timeline of the crash. And I think this was said at trial, but these last four point six seconds, because you see action going on inside the car It was horrific for Davian and Dom. until the very end And if you see the video of this, it is actually really disturbing. It's just you don't even see the crash, but you hear the car and then you hear the effects of the crash and it's Metal crunching is devastating because of the high rate. it sounds like a rocket taking off, actually is exactly what it sounds like And to imagine that there are people inside that car, it really is a miracle that she's alive And unfortunately, she's the one who's driving, and if only that miracle had been for the two other, you, innocent bystanders, it seems like it would have been a lot more fair So previously, Brett talked about those maps That was from where she lived at Dom's house to either the produce store or to the site of the crash. Basically to show like You know, She's driven here before a couple days before, but it wasn't planning ahead. It was because she's always going to this produce store. Okay, remember, she didn't take off from Dom's house. She was actually at Paul's house that night. They'd spent the night there basically, and they were kind of all just waking up, you know They decide to go Davian kind of just decides last minute to ride with him to go home so he can get some sleep before getting on with his day. But it doesn't really make sense why from Paul's house they would have been on progress drive. So the map that you see on the screen right here It's the trip from the map from Paul's house to Dom's house So Paul's house is a little bit North of where Dom's house is. The trip would have taken them past Progress dririve, but it makes no sense to turn ono Progress Drive. Remember again, this is an industrial place. so even if Sishu wanted to go to the produce store, nothing's open here. It's five thirty in the morning So they would drive past progress, but why would they possibly turn on it? There was nothing there. In fact, it teboned to that industrial building And in the trial, when they talk about this area and how no one would have gone there. The defense tries to say, well people used it as a cut through. And you see that now? Well, people use this a cut through. She probably us a cut through. They was doing a cut through and like she was driving too fast and then oh, shoot Like my the time I was driving. She wasn't that familiar with it. It was early in the morning. She's going really, really fast and it's a te bone. There's nowhere to go. She can't She got to turn right, She got to turn left Maybe she jerked the wheel to try and turn, and that's when she hit the curbs Well the problem is the cut through argument doesn't work at all It would be a cut through If you were trying to get from forty two to two thirty seven So those are two roads that mean nothing to most of you out there in the world. If you want to see this. Like I said, go to prosecutorspodcast. com. If you're trying to get from forty two to two thirty seven, it makes sense to take this as a cut through because otherwise you got to drive all the way down to looks like eighty two My eyes are failing me and then take a write and that's going to take forever or you got to get on the interstate. You don't do that So you can just drive down tah cut through makes no sense if you're driving to Doms. It's not even clear how you would do it if you were driving pubs. It would take you way out of your way. if you tried to get there. Okay, so Davian's in the car with him Sure. Maybe Davian didn't want to go to their house. so what if they were going to Davian's house instead? So let's look at that map. still doesn't make any sense. So if you start from Paul's house, To go to Davian's house, you still wouldn't turn ono progress because you wouldn't need to go on two hundred thirty seven at all because Davian's house is actually further south than Dom's house. They would have gone past Dom's house in order to get to Davian's house Of course they could have been going somewhere else at five thirty in the morning But it's hard to imagine why they would use progress Road to get anywhere because at five hundred and thirty, nothing's open on that road. There are no shops over there. The produce store isn't there. Nothing is open at five hundred thirty. In fact, if you wanted to say this was premeditated, that would be a good reason to go down that road because there aren't other cars passing by to mess up your acceleration to one hundred percent full throttle. If you hit a building, likely no one's going to be in it because it's five thirty in the morning. So there's a lot of good reason to be on a relatively deserted road at five hundred thirty. But because it's deserted, there's no reason for them to be on that road at five thirty if they're not cutting through, which they didn't need to do no matter where they were going. So a couple things about this. Num one. We don't know what we don't know We don't know if they were going somewhere else. We don't know What they were saying in the car when she turned down progress M mayaybe they're like, whereere are you doing? You know, we don't know. and If McKenzie's ever said they were going somewhere else at five hundred thirty, like there's a really good hardardies on the other side of town. And so we were going to go to Hardy's and get a biscuit If she's ever said that, I don't know about it. If that's what she said and you know that, send us an email. I'm happy to follow up on it and take a look at that map and see how it looks. But maybe she has an excuse if she didn't testify. She doesn't remember a lot. so I don't know I think the cut through argument doesn't work. att least in this event, that's the first thing The second thing I'll say though She absolutely had driven that way before. I think there's same question about that and not just the quote unquote test drive. She knew that area enough that she had thought about the fact that, man, if you just kept driving, you'd run right into that building. She had thought about that before I can think of a specific road that leads to this same kind of te where you come to it and you got to take a left, you got to take a right And there's always just past the stop sign, crosses all sort of stuff. because people will often come up the hill Get to the stop sign, keepep going and run right into the berm. and die. It happens enough that there are multiple memorials on the other side of that stopside And so when I heard about this case, my mind immedately went there because of course, you know, I thought like, wow, this is really dangerous. She certainly knew about it. She knew enough to go there. She knew enough to drive into the building. She knew enough to know this was the perfect place to do what she was doing Some people have said this was a popular drag raacing spot The people would go down there and drag race. Wn't shock me. There's no one on the road. There's no reason to be there. Now she wasn't drag racing. How do we know that We got video. There's no other cars So this wasn't. they turned and then all of a sudden they saw know Johnny Hot Rod and said, let's race him in our camry And things went horribly wrong. That didn't happen. But she might have known this is kind of place she can get up a lot of speed And if you kept going, you're going to run right into that wall hardard to say exactly. Maybe she turned on this road for no good reason. Maybe she wasn't supposed to turn on this road. Maybe they got into a fight while she was in the car And she got really mad and hit the gas hard to say exactly what was happening at that moment. But what I think I can say for certain is That wasn't a cut through they were taking to get to either Dom's house or Davian's house, nor was it a road They would have taken in a lot of cases They spend a lot of time at Pauls, for instance. They wouldn't have taken that road going home before It just wasn't a common place for them to be And eventually when the judge reached herer decision She would note that based on the evidence that was presented, this was an unusual place for McKenzie to be. Now I say when she reached her decision. because there's something interesting about this case. This was a bench trial in Ohio, unlocking the federal system apparently, which we learned when we did previous case The decision to seek a bench trial is entirely the defendants, which is the way it should be. So the defendant can make the decision Judge is going to hear this. and we had a bench trial in this case And the judge would ultimately find McKenzie guilty on all counts that we discussed earlier People have asked why they did that To me, this is a no brainer because if you've seen the documentary, we haven't focused a lot on The crushing stuff that she did. that's all relevant because it goes through state of mind. A ton of stuff came in that was really bad for her that goes to her state of mind that goes to things. These are things we're to talk about four hundred four B and why it comes in state of mind, lack of accident. You know, she's claiming this was an accident. Well, here's some things you did that seem to show it wasn an accident. thingsings like The next Halloween dressing up like a corpse. Now hey Skeletons, great thing to be. for Halloween, but maybe not few months after you killed two people in your car. Maybe that's bad thingsings like that, things she had said, texts she had sent, all sorts of really bad things that make her look really bad. devastating in front of a jury The Jury is going to see that and be like, wow The Jury is going to look at her the way most of you look at her if you watch that documentary. notot going to like her very much So going to the judge, I think was smart and because argument is very technical and legal. You know, we know she drove into the wall We know she was driving really fast We're not going to be able to show this is really mechanical So what you're trying to show is The state can't prove anything more than recklessness They can't prove intent, they can't prove premeditation. It's recklessness at most. That's the kind of argument that a jury might find difficult to parse when they're two dead kids. but a judge can do it better. So I think it was the right call to go with a judge trial, but It did not Work out. 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Thus, if MackKenzie intended to crash the car at such a high speed, that's sufficient for murder Her state of mind is otherwise irrelevant whether she meant to kill herself meant to kill the other two or didn't actually intend to kill anyone is irrelevant If the state was able to prove she purposely crashed her car That reckless disregard for human life is enough to constitute murder if death results from her actions. Now MackKenzie was initially charged with aggravated murder, as we noted, which would have required the showing of premeditation and intent, but that charge was dismissed early in the process and they only moved to trial with the murder charge. And it was interesting in the direct appeal You know, the defense tried to argue because it makes sense If you look at the murder statute, it says You acted with the intent. I forget exactly how it's worded, but it's like the intent for the result to happen that happened, you know? L you had to intend for it to happen And so the defense in their brief was like, wow, so you know, I mean, based on that, you got to have intended to kill them. If that's what the statute says, but the appellate court cut through that very easily and noted no, based on what happened, if you intended to crash that car Given that we've said before, you know, intent's hard to prove. It's hard to get into someone's brain and know exactly what they meant. Well, we said in Ohio, if what you're doing, if the natural reasonable and probable consequence is somebody's going to die when you do it And you did it voluntarily, that's enough to show intent for murder. So the appeals court was like, lookook, all that matters is did she intentionally crash your car or not That's the question. Did the state prove it that she intentionally crashed her car and They concluded that she had her first direct appeal was denied. There was oral argument We've got the Delphi case going on. There's going to be oral argument in that case and some people thought it was a big deal that they are going to have oral argument. said it wasn't at all thatv was to be expected. They had a oral argument in this case, unanimously denied her appeal The Ohio Supreme Court denied cert. I don't know. There's something poetic about this. I don't know I think it's poetic. No one else will. So she files a collateral attack, which is her habeas appeal. So your direct appeal fails. So now she's got to prove her attorney was ineffective That's what she's got to prove Well, this is kind of ironic So her appellate attorney writes this brief about how her trial attorney is ineffective and then files it a day Late You had And that really matters. Yeah. It really really matters. completely bars you. if this is not like discretionary The judge cannot consider it if it's a day late. Particularly in Ohio. It is absolutely. It's jurisdictional in Ohio. In some places, it's not quite jurisdictional. Jurisdictional means the court doesn't even have jurisdiction to consider it if you fil it late There's some exceptions. She's not under any of those exceptions. She files a day late. Now why Why do you think she filed it A day Late. Well I'll give you h, Let's see if how Ise can figure it out She filed it in the fall of twenty twenty four Lapier So you have three hundred and sixty five days to file it, notot a year three hundred and sixty five days So they filed it on the what would have been the three hundred sixty fifth day from when the clock started running. This is attorneys out there donon't wait toill the last minute. file everything a couple of days early I literally do that. when it's like jurisdictional like this, I do fire a day early. Yeah, three hundred sixty five days. And day do. This makes me feel good because it's people are laughing at me and they're like, what can you not do math for fourteen days? I always use a deadline calculator. There's like free ones you can Google. I always put it in because federal holidays, weekends, leap year These change like the days as I know them. And now I don't feel so stupid. get I get laughed at all the time for doing the deadline calendar. The deadlines are important. So yeah. So rather being three hundred sixty five days because it was leap year. February had twenty nine days. It was three hundred sixty six days. therefore it's barred. So she didn't I told you what her arguments were She didn't get to make ' them because it was barred She has now appealed that to the Ohio Supreme Court. Doubt. I mean, maybe they're going to make new law just for her that leap year doesn't count It is jurisdictional and Lap here is not And we all have access to a deadline calendar and a calendar and counting to three hundred and sixty five Now, what will be interesting is, well then she turn around and fil an ineffective assistance for filing it late. And that's sort of a back dooor way of getting the substantive arguments in. but The problem there is you're then under like a double presumption because you have to show Prejudice So you have to show that your arguments would have succeeded The problem is her arguments are ineffective assistance of counsel which also have a prejudice prong So she has to show that she was so prejudiced, the prejudice was so obvious What her counsel did, not only would she have won in the lower court, but it's so obvious she would have won in the lower court that her appellate counsel was ineffective for filing it a day late She's not going to succeed there. Her arguments are pretty weak anyway. We talked about them and exactly what the response is. So herer appeals her collateral attacks They're all gonna to fail. that she's not going to get out of prison. because of all this. She was sent us to fifteen years to life That means she has to serve at least fifteen years before she'll be eligible for parole. Really the only hope for her is parole in fifteen years. and I'll say this She's not doing herself any favors Be becausecause at this point The parole board or like the governor, her only hope. L her only hope is that you could generate so much sympathy By doing the documentaries and everything else, that people would be so overwhelmed with sympathy for you that they would cry out for justice. This is too much time. You know, And while there have been a few people online who I haveve seen say things like that, the reaction to the documentary was not that. It was not wow, this is somebody who's really justs tragic miscarriage of justice and she needs to be Let out. All right So Alice, we've talked about the whole thing, talked about the facts The law? What do you think? Did the judge get it right? She could have been guilty of murder or she could have been guilty of vehicular homicide. I'll say this about the sentence. Do she got fififteen years to life. on both murder counts They run conurrently Currently. I thought they should have been consecutive. Yeah, I know. you always always feels like one person's life doesn't count So that's fifteen years. One thing that's interesting, if you've knocked out the murder, got rid of murder altogether and just had the assault and the icular homicide. You can still get to fifteen years. So imagine a world in which something wacky happens and the sentence is vacated And maybe even the convictions on murder are vacated. you didn't prove sufficient intent So we're vacating the murder convictions. I don't think there's any world in which the vehicular homicide is vacated because number one she was under the influence of marijuana All all that was proven. She was convicted of that. They didn't even really attack that in their appeals. So I don't know how they could do that. You could still get to fifteen years very easily. just by running them Consecutively, you run the penalties for vehicular manslaughter consecutively along with the assault consecutively and you get fifteen years, which is what I think the judge would do. I think the judge feels like fifteen years at least is why she should serve So I don't really think evenven if some miracle happened for her It would change much better sense. But anyways, given all that As far as the convictions go Are we talking if I agree with the conviction or the sentence? Murder Start with murder, Start with conviction, then move on. U undernder Ohio law, absolutely The judge got it right because the natural, reasonable and probable consequences, this isn't like one second thing. We have four point six seconds of her depressing the pedal to the metedal. and likely, Dom or Davianne, someone else in the car was trying to stop her. So she didn't have a stroke and blackout and her foot slammed on the pedal. By the way, usually when you have a medical emergency, the opposite happens, like you go limp and you don't actually depress theal the pedal all the way down I mean, I don't know, Have you ever we talked about this with never I never you had to get twenty eight miles an hour. And she pressed the pedal and I can't remember it was like seventy percent or so. It was not one hundred percent, rightight?'ve never Plosis honest lose Probably us on the Salft flats. Yeah. I happen't there, I didn't. You did not, though because it was kind of scary. It was kind of scary even going as fast as we were, which we just had no concept of how fast we were going because everything was white. But that was even kind of scary, right? Because the effects of flipping or accidentally turning your wheel are so catastrophic that I've certainly never done it So it takes a lot of intent. I think the jerks of the steering wheel really really sealed it for me, that this is certainly not a POT incident. It's not a medical emergency. And the shifting gears. And the shifting gears. It's not even a panic attack or something. Like she messed up and she's in a panic attack What it shows is a desperate fight inside the car from the passenger seat for life from the steal ring wheel with jerking of the gear shift. and she knew ahead of time that this was what she was going to do, foresaw that other people would be clawing their ways to life And she held on, yes, she is a lot smaller than both Daveon who played football and Dominiic who was a bigger guy than her because she's this like wafy tryrying to be a model seventeen year old girl So she went in, she had the advantage of the boys in that she knew exactly what was going to happen and she was prepared for them to fight. and she fought back And because of all of that, I mean, it was correct not to charge her with premeditated because I think that would have been a reach based on the evidence just because there's one person living and the person living is the defendant and says that she forgets everything But I think this reaches very close to premeditated murder. So yes, absolutely. I think the judge got it right. Yeah. let's just talk about It's easy to hate her, but I think it's important that her conviction be based on the evidence. and Let's just talk about sort of the possibilities. what are the possibilities of what happened that night? I mean, one is this is some sort of wild accident. They were going to that hardast I mentioned. And they're driving down the road. It's an industrial area so they know they can drive fast She doesn't realize she's going to come to the te and then acccidents happened, right? Second, she's trying to scare them, but did not intend to drive through the stop sign into the building. So she's mad and so she floors it to scare them She doesn't actually intend to drive it through the stop sign into the building. Three she has some sort of medical incident Which results in this accident. She drove into the building on purpose. I think those are for. Am I missing anything? Is there? No think I think Th those are the scenarios. Okay, so let's think about it as scenarios then Yeah, what do you have to believe to believe any of those? And One of the big problems, if you want to believe that it was an accident or she was just trying to scare them. She didn't intend to hit the building you have to believe that accident and not intending to hit the building with her keepeeping the pedal to the pedal to the bitter end and never hitting The Brakes. The fact she never hits the brakes is the how can you believe that it was an accident or she didn't intend to hit the building if she's in control of the vehicle? And she never hits the brakes It doesn't even make sense. Or even let off the pedal. or even let off the pedal. So not even hitting the brakes, let's talk about just easing off from one hundred percent. It's fully depressed. Almost five seconds. That five seconds. That's an incredibly long time. And add that you also have to believe that while she's trying to scare them or while this accident's happening, she's shifting gears. The gear shift is going into neutral, It's going into sequential and then getting pushed back into a drive I've heard people say there's this private investigator that works with the family who says, Well maybe it got shifted when she hit the curb. And then when her body went down, it got pushed back into to drive, mayaybe that's what happened Well, the black box seems to say that those things were happening before she hit the curb. Be the airbags deployed, which is a major incident for the vehicle. So as we've learned from various cases that we've looked at Not all incidents are as major, but Airbags deploying is a pretty big one So I think we can say those shifts were happening before the airbags deployed You have to believe all that's happening. and yet somehow this is an accident. This is somehow she's just trying to scare them and it turns into something horrible As far as a medical incident, it just doesn't make any sense. Number one, as Alice said, you gott to believe she has this medical incident. and it causes her to dririve in a straight line with the pedal fully depressed, you know, she does this and the boy like she passes out She's driving a straight line. The boys just stare at her. For three seconds. And then eventually grab the wheel. And oh by the way, somebody's changing gears. Who in that scenario when she's having a PotTs incident is putting the car in neutral, which is a smart thing to do if you're trying to stop the car, but then put it back and drive and then the pedal doesn't do anything. Exactly. Putting it back and drive, That's pretty bad So how do you explain that And Why are you trying to explain that? Like if you look at just everything about this case and everything we know about this case I don't know what happened on the interstate. I don't know why he tried to grab the wheel. I think he probably did Maybe she was acting crazy, Maybe she wasn't. Well, I can tell you about their relationship, incredibly volatile the kind of thing that can turn on a damp. I saw somebody who was like, I just find it hard to believe that she's executing this controled turn And then a few minutes later, she's C crashing the car trying to kill every bbody. and'm like,ave you ever been around somebody who's unstable I mean, can you imagine it may have just been she took a wrong turn And he looked at her and was like, what are you doing here? And that pisses her off. She's like, the F I'll show you what I'm doing on this road It could have been a complete accident that she turned on the road because it's five thirty in the morning. It's dark and they're trying to get home and maybe he just said something along the lines of like, what are you doing? And she heard it as or even he said, whyy are you being so stupid? You drive this every day And she's like, I'll show you I think there's like it's very possible something like that could have happened because In the videos that are captured of her, where she's on the other side of the door screaming at him. You can tell that she's a very incredibly volatile and destructive type of personality. whether she's going to do things things or not, her words are very destructive. So in the video that's played at trial, She is threatening to break down the door and threatening to do a lot of harm and using a lot of Really like if someone's standing outside my door, even if they lived with me using that language I probably called the cs. Like it's not a reasoned way of talking And so we know that that is the way that she tends to talk T dom And we also know that this isn't the first time That's happened That Her Dom's mom's friend had to come basically rescue him on the side of the road one time because she was having such a An emotional fit, shall we say Like I think this was a Absolutely Dysfunctional relationship I think she is a domestic abuser I think there's a lot of evidence, of course of control in this case, I think she was losing her grip on him He had told other people that he was thinking about leaving her ending the relationship. You know, what of the mysteries of this case? This is pure speculation, so If don't want to listen speculation don'tisten me for the next thirty seconds Well, the mysteries of this case is why are they driving somewhere at five thirty in the morning? Why is Davian in the car I think there is a not insignificant chance The Dom wanted to break out with her and wanted somebody with him when he did it I think that is a possibility that I've, you know A lot of people like to have somebody with them when they break up with someone who's kind of crazy And I can imagine him saying, hey, let's go for a drive. And he gets in the car and He's having some sort of conversation with her while they're on that road. Maybe they're just driving around Maybe she knows where she's going I don't know. He says something to her while they're on that road and she responds with F it. I think that's an absolute possibility. We'll never know unless she tells us Unfortunately, there's three people in that car, two of them are dead. But the thing that I am certain of is she abbsolutely was in control of that vehicle She flood the gas And she controlled it till the very end and drove it into that wall And I think Davianne unfortunately was collateral damage because remember. sureure, she doesn't remember anything. So take it all with a grain of salt. But the thing she asks police as they extract her from the wreckage is How is Davian N how is my boyfriend Basically fiance, they talked about getting married all the time. whether they were actually going to get married or not. They lived together. they'd been together for four years, and he was sitting next to her and they lived together. They were driving back, presumably, to the house that they lived at together. and her first words were not How was Dom? It was how was Davion who At trial it was noted that he was a quote, new friend. New friend or not, even if they'd been friends forever, you would think the first person you ask about would be your significant other unless you didn't care and the purpose of driving that car into the brck wall was to do harm to Dom, even if it meant doing harm to yourself. and Davey on. And look, she may well regret it. She may feel bad about it. She might have regretted it as they were flying over that curb. People who were violent and controlling Do horrific things in a moment. And then later on at least pretend to feel bad about them and maybe some of them do. I don't know. That's hard to say, but If what you got from the documentary you got from her, you got from her videos was someone who was remorseful which I don't know how you got that, but if if that's what you got That does not necessarily mean she didn't do this on purpose I think she is remorseful that she has to spend her beautiful years when she could be modeling in a jumpsuit. I think that's what she's remorseful about. she told her, I mean, I said we were' gonna to talk about this stuff, but she told her mom one of the jail calls that she was going to be old by the time she got out. I hope she I hope she's wrinkly and has no retinol when she's in prison. because you know what? she's still getting out in her thirties. She still could like have kids, right? Those are her childbearing years So we'll touch quickly. This is the only time I'll talk about her parents The sentence, I think the sentence was wrong. I think fifteen to life is much too short. At the very least, if you're gonna to give her fifteen to life and I get it. She's seventeen. Most seventeen year olds, you'd be like, okay, your're like frontal cortex isn't fully formed. No, hereere's why I don't think it is the right sentence for her. Another seventeen year old, honestly, we see a lot of like eighteen, seventeen year olds who are getting busted for like selling drugs. and'm like, you know, let's do some diversion program Let's do low end of the guidelines because they're really young, they're doing stupid things, they're going to grow out of it. Here's why I don't think she's going to grow out of it and why I thought her sentences should have at least been consecutive, because she independently decided to kill two different people. She knew this was she probably wanted to kill herself. and she's actually really glad she didn't die because Most people don't want to die, but she did she wanted to hurt Dom so badly it didn't matter who else died with him even if it was her and Davianne. So Davianne independently was murdered, not for a good reason, but a complete disregard for human life because the person she wanted to hurt was sitting in the front seat. When she gets out, And this whole time, as is shown in the documentary. I don't feel bad talking about this because her parents very freely talk to the documentary and sure Media may cut things and make things Make you sound bad They don't think she's done anything wrong. They and look, I get it. As a parent, you want to stand by your child and all these things, but the way in which they have provided an incredibly permissive life for her as a teen and continue to provide this. She's not going to change and she will come out still in the prime of being a psycho, which I think she is. with parents who have continued to give her this permissive lifestyle allowed her to do something this horrific. Most seventeen year olds, no matter how undeveloped their prefrontal cortex is, would never do something like this when they don't get their way on something And her parents are continuing to feed this. She is in prison where she's not around other people. She's not going to school. She's not getting like socialized like most seventeen year olds are, whether they go to college or they start working and are kind of kicked in the butt by life, none of that's happening. Yes, she's in prison. N fun. I get that. onlyn input she's getting is from her parents who have, I think really laid the groundwork to allow this type of behavior to take place in the first place. So I don't think the sentence was enough. And I'll say this, the fifteen years was the minimum you could get for this crime. I just don't think this is a minimum crime. To me, this is not the least egregious murder. And I realize, you know when you're trying to weigh murders against each other, that's a little strange. But to me this is it's not the bottom murder. Every murder is worse than this I don't feel that way. And I think She killed two people, like you said. We talk about this sometimes. People always get upset about concurrent sentences and I get that. and usually I'm one of the first people to say Look, you know, this's the way the system set up and there's all these reasons for it, et cetera, et ccetera. In this case I agree. I think she should have gotten separate sentences for both of them. If you were going to give her fifteen years Give her fifteen years consecutive for both orr give her thirty concurrent. I would have been fine with thirty concurrent And even if she'd gotten thirty, she gets out when she's forty seven. thirty years. She was so young when she did this. The judge speculated that she might not ever get out She get out. She will be parooled. I think her behavior in this documentary in prison is going to hurt her. I don't think she'll be paroled the first time I think probably she'll miss Pl that first time which is could be coming up in a few years, you know? But she'll be paroled eventually and she'll probably be parooled in her thirties. She'll probably be about forty when she gets paroled. Maybe younger than that. I mean, she got fifteen years. She was seventeen. like What year. Yeah. I mean, she's going to be probably We'll be lucky. We'll be fortunate If she makes to thirty five in prison. She's probably going to get out before she's thirty five. And there's there's also some things this type of behavior we have seen, right. She is as special as she'd like to think she is, she's actually an entire prototype of a type of controlling domestic abuser. And what scares me is that so she did this to a boyfriend, If she ever has kids, I am really scared for those kids. And she's going to be out in time Like I said, in her childbearing used to be able to have children and kids are unlike other adults who've maybe had other influences in their life completely under the control of their parent This is a type of behavior that typically does not stop with just one person. It's usually exerted control on two. everyone around you, including and especially your children So I am worried about that aspect I' want to say this too because I think this is important. So as we said, we haven't talked about the tabloid stuff and the rumors and everything else, but I think there's one aspect of her that is important and that's just her behavior when she was in high school. She apparently really idolized Regina George. She missed the point of that. Movie And Reginia George is the mean girls character who gets hit by a bus because she's so mean But And the point is not to be her. She wanted to be that kind of queen bee person. And we got a lot of people a lot of kids who listen to this. and if you're in high school, you're going into high school, you listen to this, there's always going to be people like McKenzie Sherlla A lot of them aren't going to be as bad. They're not going to intentionally run into a wall But they' ban rotten people and they may grow into something better and special and wonderful. And if they do, congratulations. Thank you so much that you matured and grew up But there's going to be bad people like that in your school And let me just tell you They don't matter at all. I realize it feels like they matter because they're quote unquote popular, which just means a few people like them. It doesn't mean everyone likes them. In fact, most people probably don't like them. Don't let those people Ruin your life, ruin your experience. You know, the kids they interviewed talked about how when she had a bad day, everybody had a bad day Just you need to block those people out and put them in a box and don't let them ruin your life. Enjoy what you're doing Be with your friends, be special for the reasons you are, and let them be miserable alone And I'll switch slightly sides because I was I was like you Regin George? No. I was like absolutely not Regina George. I was probably made fun of by Regina George's. and we end up fine, by the way. You can say no to drugs and you can say no to alcohol and you can turn out just fine and have lots of friends, a wonderful family and a wonderful career. And in fact, that's probably why I have those things because I didn't take all these stupid like life ending and career ending decisions when I was younger. But I was gonna say the flip side for parents If you think you have a child who doesn't need to be disciplined, think again. I don't care how angelic you think your child is I have one of those. I have a pretty angelic child who is terrified. He's not angelic because he is angel. He's angelic because he's afraid of consequences. Guess what? He needs a heck of a ton of disciplining Do doesnn't mean you need to do corporate punishment. No child. doesn't need structure or boundaries. And no thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, probably even seventeen year old knows where those boundaries are by themselves Like I don't think necessarily it's like Taba Rasa, complete blank slate, whatever your philosophy on humans are, whatever. But if you think that your child doesn't need discipline, I think you need to think again and maybe ask around school to see if they're the bully And let me also say that while we're just waxxing poleetic, Let me also say this Every one of us than every child in high school Whver All of us have some weakness All of us do. We have some weak point that if that weak point is pressed hard enough, we are liable to go down a dark path. And today in today's society, social media and its pernicious effects are one of the just worst influences on kids. and kids want to be liked. They want to be praised, they want attention. It's just something they want And it is so easy for Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and all of that mess to press those buttons and to turn them into people like her And I think as parents, we have to see that. Her parents encouraged it Her parents were locking her post. Her parents were excited when modeling agencies reached out and they completely missed the monster. Regardless of this, she was a monster before this, the monster everybody was turning into. They completely missed it. And maybe if someone had intervened in her life, you know The last day of school, she got in trouble and her dad had to come pick her up. And her dad was like, I asked her if she didn't. She she said, no, and that was good enough for me because my der I know when my daughter lies to me. It's like, manan, you are so blind and stupid Like why did you do this? Anyway, just as parents, if you're a parent, if you're a friend of children, if you' a friend Yeah. If you have friends who have kids Watch y out for this stuff because it's a nightmare. And I don't know. She wasn't built. She wasn't built overnight. No. And I would love to think that social media would have had no impact on me when I was coming up, but I don't know Who knows? Wh wind do gummy now I doom scroll and I'm like, I can stop watching these videos right now and an hour later, I'm like, gosh, I'd better go to sleep. I could have gotten an extra hour of sleep. I don't even have self control and I didn't grow up with it. And I have a lot more self control than I would say, a thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old. Well, we've gone way longer than we intended to. but You guys asked for it. and we did this case. so Yes, I do think the judge got it right. And really, I feel so sad both for Dom's family and Davon's. family but really feel sad for De Beond because man, his parents were just heartbreaking. Because talk about good parents. They seemed like greatay parents in the documentary, who knows if they actually are or not. but It is incredibly devastating because these young people Three lives were all ruined two. never saw the light of day after that morning And that's devastating because House J future is cut off completely. And I'll say this, we've covered this case, ton of people are covering this case. It's getting a lot of media coverage just now She loves it She loves every minute of it. She's eating it Unfortunately, we're all contributing to that now because she she's in prison She's loving this coverage. She's wondering maybe she can turn this into something. You know she is. All right guys. well that's our thoughts on this case. If you have thoughts, let us know shoot us an email prorosecutorspod at gmail. com at prosecutorspod for all your evil social media trying to use it for good, Turn it to good It's like coffee It's a totle asade, but An know story about coffee So coffee gets discovered, it's a new world thing, right They bring it over. Everybody loves coffee Coffee houses become this place of like dissent and rebellion and all this other stuff And so there's a push in the Catholic church to get the pope to enter like a decree that coffee is evil and should be banned. And so he's like, makeake me some coffee They make him some coffee, he drinks the coffee, and he says Actually I think we should Baptize the bean So Then thenenceforth Coffee is't banned and now we all drink it. Coffee was turned to good. It was baptized Well it was baptized. So let's try and do the same thing with social media. You could start with that prosecutor's pod And if you leave a five star, if you answer questions, don't know we'll do that'sight ' because it' been going long. If you want to see us record these and you can see the maps in real time. you can always pay three dollars a month and you can watch us record these episodes. You also get the edited episodes early and ad free. or if you don't want to do Patreon, you can still get early and ad free episodes on Apple subscriptions far the same dollars a month, but as always, you will receive everything we do eventually for free. so I know times are tight So you can always listen to it the good old fashioned Al right, Alice, you you got anything else before we sign off for today? No. just I don't know if she should get another documentary or more attention because like you said, it kind of kills me that she loves this attention. And she hasn't learnnted her lesson. So maybe turn this to Davon and Dom instead. There you go. There you go. Absolutely. Remember them, you know, Davon's sister is just very impressive young lady. He's spoken and most of the documentaries speaking out for her brother. And one of the things she says is my brother wasn't just luggage. He wasn't just in the back seat. He wasn't just collateral damage. He was a real person people need to remember. So absolutely, remember them, keep their families and your thoughts and prayers. All these cases we talk about So many victims Now we often talk about the direct victims the just spiraling of destruction from stuff like this is always Always something that we need to keep in. Allright guys, well, I hope you've enjoyed this. We'll be back next week with a new case, but until then I'm Breittt And I'm Alice. and we are the prosecutors Hello Als I'm sorry, Kat. Thanks for finally joining us. We're late because of me because I don't know where where you guys are, but it's rain. It's been raining for like five days straight here. And so We're like, forget it. We all were still crazy. We decided to take the kids to like the local lake. It's really just the water reservoir. It's a lake, sure, but it's a water reservoir. And we were like about to get in the water. And it was just like the heavens opened up and all like our like the car seat is like completely drenched, my phone was drenched. It was great. It was actually super fun We already got there, so I left the k his play for a little bit