Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Friendly Fire | 5. Something Bad is Going to Happen

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

If the prosecutor won’t take Marty to court, Lori will. She hires a famous and relentless lawyer to start building a case, one she learns won’t be easy to win. Lori reveals why she believes Marty wanted to get rid of her husband. A Campside Media & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It hadn't been publicly announced yet, but Marty Carson was about to be promoted to Chief Deputy of the Scott County Sheriff's Department. That's the highest ranking officer right below his father, the sheriff, but then he shot his partner, so his father delayed that promotion. The optics, you know, promoting his son after he just killed his partner would have been terrible. But a few months later, Marty was in fact made chief deputy. Laurie Antsie had already been living with a low, gnawing fear, and it was only getting worse, because Laurie is living in a county where she believes the chief deputy intentionally

killed her husband, and it seemed as if Marty was being rewarded. You feel like you have no law enforcement enforcement because I don't trust them. Basically, I just tried, you know, just to be careful, watch my back and, you know, just always be aware of my surroundings because I knew anything could be possible, what these people might do or, you know, what was their next step going to be. So I did have a gun here at the house, we had several. So I did feel comfortable, you know, if I needed to use it.

I added on a security system here at the house and it was just always making sure the doors were locked. At that point, I feel like I didn't have anyone, no one to turn to. There was something Lori didn't know yet, which is just as well because it would have frightened her even more.

In the weeks before he was killed, John John had been trying to leave the Scott County Sheriff's Department. He never told Laurie, but he called the O'Nighter Police Chief, Mike Cross, looking for a job. He called him twice. John John had told him that he needed to get away from the Sheriff's Department. Cross has since died, but he said that John John was vague when he called. He didn't give the chief any details. Just told him, quote, something bad is going to happen.

And that would have been the week before he, you know, he died. From campsite media and Sony music entertainment, this is season two of Witnessed, Friendly Fire, episode five. I'm Sean Flynn. En la media de Campside y Sonny de la música de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Iglesia de la Ig El Museo Picasso Málaga presenta Picasso es cultor, al igual que en el resto de su creación, la escultura de Picasso se distingue por innovar en el uso de técnicas y materiales poco ortodoxos. ¿Puedes imaginar cuál es y cómo? Descobrela. After John John was killed, Laurie had a conversation with a man named Arzo Carson. The case wasn't sitting right with him either. Arzo is from Scott County, but he's not related to Marty or the sheriff.

He is, however, related to John John. He's his great uncle. But he wasn't just an angry relative or some hopped up conspiracy theorist. He was actually a mentor to John John, because Arzo had a long and distinguished history and law enforcement. He was the elected district attorney general in Scott County until 1979. He left when the governor appointed him to help reform what was then known as the Tennessee Bureau of Criminal Identification. Arzo wrote a lot of the legislation that replaced that agency

with an independent one called the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Yep, the TBI, the same agency investigating the shooting. He gave the TBI its motto that guilt shall not escape nor innocent suffer. He ran the place until he retired in 1990. The agency's headquarters is in Nashville, and it's named after him. It's the Arzo Carson TBI State Office Building. After John John was shot, the local authorities were keeping Arzo informed about the investigation. This is a big case, a dead officer,

and Arzo's got a personal stake in it. So he starts poking around too. We were both feeling that something more was going on and that this was not an accident. Yeah, we both had come to that conclusion. Arzo, you know, was the only person I knew, you know, to go to that, you know, could offer any advice on what to do or, you know, to help or what direction to go to, you know, further investigate and get something done.

Arzo tells Lori, get a lawyer. Lori had actually already met with a lawyer, but hiring one is tricky. Scott County is very small. Everyone knows everyone and that could be a problem for Laurie She ends up finding a country lawyer who practices some distance away and tells them about the inconsistencies the question she has and he agrees to meet with her We went into the trailer. He was very scared. He was scared to death of this area. I mean this was a big But absolutely terrified of this area. I mean, this was a big, but absolutely terrified of this place. I almost like to see his hands shaking when we were at the trailer and he was talking to the neighbor. I mean, he was definitely afraid.

I get it. Scott County had a reputation. When I first reported this story back in 2008, I was told by a number of people, you don't want to go to Scott County and start asking questions. A lot of people we interviewed told us about scary rumors of intimidation, of a boys club, things we can't begin to verify. Whether any of it was true didn't matter. Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of the carcines.

The sheriff is often the most powerful person in a small county like Scott. And consider what Laurie was asking this Laurie to do. Yeah, go into a rural county with a lot of back roads and places to get lost and accuse a sheriff's deputy, the sheriff's own son, of deliberately killing his partner. If that were true, if a sheriff's deputy could literally get away with murder, well, a lot of lawyers might be afraid to take that case. I knew this wasn't gonna work. He would not fight these people.

And it was gonna take someone that wasn't afraid, you know, to go here with this case and investigate and find out what's happened. See, Laurie wasn't interested in suing for workers' comp, a cash settlement because of a big mistake. She believed a crime had been committed. But when the prosecutor says there is no crime, at least not evidence of one beyond a reasonable doubt, that's that. Those are the rules in criminal court. So she can accept the prosecutor's decision, just let this all go, or she can move this

battle to a different arena, with a different set of rules. If the prosecutor won't take Margie to court, Lori will. She'll sue him. She'll take her case to a civil jury. Let them sort through the evidence. Lori was scared, just like that lawyer she called. She'd be going up against the community that raised her. She was declaring war, and she needed a wartime lawyer. She found the perfect one. Her bonfire. He's a super famous hardcore criminal defense lawyer. Everybody in Knoxville knows her months here. This has been Barton, a law professor at the

University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I talked to Herb years ago. He wasn't feeling up to an interview this time, but Barton has it covered. Barton used to practice and he clerked for a federal judge and he represented indigene clients for a dozen years. He also knows a lot about her because every lawyer in the area knows a lot about her. He's one of the few lawyers in all of East Tennessee who will bring this kind of claim. You can imagine if you're a lawyer and you're in the business of suing police departments or jails or other government entities in Tennessee,

you're going to be persona non-grata and herb his entire career has been persona non grata with those folks, but very much grata with with criminal defendants. There's a joke in Knoxville. I've someone says, well, if you have a criminal charge, who's the lawyer should you should hire? And they say, you're not asking the right question. The question is am I guilty or innocent? Because if I'm guilty, I want her months here. Because he's going to put them through the ringer. He's going to make their lives a living hell. And I mean that as price. Herb defended the only person ever accused of being a serial killer in Knox County. And he got him a hung jury, which for four alleged murders

is as good as a win. The guy went to prison for rape, though. Herb sued the Knox County Commission for violating open meeting laws, and he would eventually go after the law that let the TBI keep all of its record secret. Glory needs Herb. I remember the first time meeting him go into his office in Knoxville downtown. She takes an elevator up and meets this big, garalless man with a flop of gray hair. Herb is very successful. Drove a jaguar. But he often looks kind of rumpled as if he's too busy to notice that his suit needs pressing.

He's loud. He's very talkative. He just kind of tells you how it is. I didn't sugarcoat anything and kind of just let you know how you think this is going to happen. He's just one of those people as a go-getter. I don't think he's afraid of anything or anyone, you know, to be threatened. He will do what is right. Like, he's a bulldog, he's a motion filer, he's a scorched earth guy, and so once you're already in that category, right, that's his brand. That's how he gets business.

Then this is right in line with that. So this is a perfect case for him. It wasn't going to be easy. We would have to sue civilly. It's basically a tort case and torts a fancy word for wanting money for an injury. The typical tort case is like a slip and fall. This is a really special type of tort case because what you're claiming is a constitutional violation

by a government actor. So you're suing a government actor and saying they took away your constitutional rights. This one's not super complicated, like another officer shot him. So that is like, you know, he murdered me. He didn't shoot me by mistake. He actually murdered me.

So that's definitely a taking of life, liberty, and property there. This is basically a civil murder case. Yes, yes. But that's different than murder, murder, which is a criminal offense. A state criminal case is beyond a reasonable doubt and the neutral position,

the beginning position is innocent, until proven guilty. You've got a high burden of proof on the prosecution. The rules of evidence are much tighter, much harder to get through in a criminal case. In a civil case, it's not like anything goes, it is a little bit looser on that. Basically, they state their theory of the case, and their theory is that this officer operating as an officer of the Scott County Sheriff's Office shot and murdered this other officer purposefully. They don't actually have to prove one of the other. You just have to get to preponderance of the, I say it's the 51%. Basically, it's just a hair closer to true than not true. On balance, you think that it's more likely than not.

Think of it like a scale. On one side, you've got, he shot him on purpose. On the other is total accident. After all the evidence is in, after all the testimony, a jury looking at that scale has to see a tip just a tiny bit to one side of the other. Now, in reality, that's probably not a decision a jury is going to make based on what amounts to a little more than a coin toss. Laurie's accusation is so serious that she'll have to tip that scale way beyond 51%. If she does, if she and her convinced a jury, then she'll be owed damages. Marty will not go to jail, in civil court you can take their money but not their freedom.

However, she's working on that too. The plan is to win the civil case. With the hopes of getting a criminal case, that would be the avenue we'd have to take by soon the Sheriff's Department. A civil trial could unearth all sorts of new evidence, maybe new witnesses. A prosecutor, in turn, might then look at that evidence and take another look at criminal charges. The first herbs got to win our civil case. It's actually really, really hard to win one of these cases. There aren't very many lawyers who take these cases because they're so hard to win such up-hell fight all the way through it.

That starts with the defendant. He's a police officer and the police are really hard to sue because they have what's called qualified immunity. What that means is they can't be sued simply for making a mistake, even a fatal one. And courts have interpreted what counts as a mistake, very broadly. Pretty much anything short of intentional evil. That's a really gigantic shield.

If the story on this had been that Carson was sloppy, he knew Yanty was in the trailer, and he burst in anyway, it's just guns blazing. This case would have died immediately. That kind of mistake would not have been enough to go to trial. Even in civil court. And dude, all you have to do is look at the officer involved shooting so the regular people, you just said this wide latitude to make mistakes, to make errors.

And again, if you wanted to be fair about it, you could be like, it's not an easy job to be a police officer. You know what I mean? So we can't have people suing them just because they made a mistake or a mistake in judgments. Alligation has to be so strong as to get by qualified immunity, but then you have to get by the factual part of it. Like you actually have to establish some facts that suggest that that might have been

what happened. And the facts in this case Ben says are, well, unusual. What they found is a frickin' hornet nest. I mean, basically, like each one of the witnesses had a different version of the TikTok of the event. In a typical drug raid, it's not that uncommon to have one officer say, these three officers were in the back and another officer say, uh, two in the back, two in the front. Like, little, that sort of little misunderstanding is pretty common. Under these circumstances, the police will gather and come up with a story where they can agree on the story.

We came in, this happened, that happened, but it's not the case at all. This disagreement shows like a significant schism within them and great disagreement about how all of this should have been handled. Laurie's lawyer, Herb, was looking at all the facts, all the discrepancies, and he saw an injustice, a wrong that had been committed. Even so, Herb knew how thoroughly and how densely the odds were stacked against him and

stacked against Laurie. But here's the thing about Herb. He doesn't care what the odds are. He doesn't care they're stacked against him. I asked another lawyer in Knoxville to explain Herb's tactics and strategies. He laughed a little and he said, you know that old saying about how you have to pick your battles? Herb doesn't pick.

Herb will take every battle. And he takes Lori's case. Did he tell you what a long shot that was? Uh... He did make it sound like it would be difficult. Yeah. Remember, John John's death was publicly dispensed with only days after it happened. The prosecutor, the sheriff, the TBI, they were all in the same page of that press conference, an accident.

But Laurie kept pushing on her own. She went to the scene. She interviewed witnesses. When her first lawyer was scared, she pushed harder, found Herb. Now Herb and his co-counsel, David Wiggler, are going to assemble a team of witnesses and a catalog of evidence to bring down a man

they believe is a killer, or at least make and pay. Uncover from CBC Podcasts brings you award-winning investigations year round. Infiltrate an international network of neo-Nazi extremists. Yeah, granted with racist language. Discover the true story of the CIA's attempts at mind control. Their objective was to wipe my memory. Or dig into a crypto-king's mysterious death

and a quarter billion dollars missing. There are deep oddities in this case. With episodes weekly, uncover is your casa para in-depth reporting y excepcionalidad. Fíjate uncover donde tienes las podcastes. Electronics careers to offer personalized recommendations to improve the content of your electronic careers, segment your public, among many things more, divine less, and sell more with Intuitive Mail Sim. The brand number one in email and marketing and automation. It started today, and Mail Sim.com.

You will know more about your public markets, and you will know more about the global number of clients in 2020-22. in 2022. Once John John is shot, the clock starts ticking, meaning the statute of limitations begins to run. Laurie had one year from the time of John John's death to file any civil action, but filing is just the first step in a long process, just as can grind along very slowly. That first step, though, is the biggest one. It's when Laurie announces that she's going to fight and with a lot of people. When she files her suit, the complaint names Marty and the other two deputies who are there that night,

as well as Sheriff Jim Carson, Chief Detective Robbie Carson, and Scott County. She includes all of those people and the county because she's alleging that they had all conspired to cover up the fact that Marty murdered John John. An allegation by the way that they all denied. It's scary making those accusations, making them official. Laurie filed her suit on November 22, 2004, six days before the one year anniversary of John John's death. It was really a very odd day because I may have been paranoid,

but I felt like we were being followed. I just felt like everywhere we went, we saw kind of shared department, which is of course, still in office at that time. So that's really when everyone found out that I was going to see the shared department, because I didn't discuss that with anybody. I didn't really want the shared department and I was suspecting them because I

was really just more worried of what they might do to me and my sons here. I just, you know, I really wasn't telling a lot to people and just kind of keeping quiet. The District Attorney General, Paul Phillips, he told me he was trying to stay in touch with Laurie throughout the investigation. He could tell she wasn't happy with the progress. I was frustrated because I kept telling the officers who were investigating, specifically Robbie Carson, to let Laurie know that if he wanted to come to the office, we'd go over where we were with the investigation, or I would come to her office and do that and I kept not hearing

from her so I went to the hospital where she works and she was very gracious took time to talk to me for a few minutes and I just said you know if you want to come and I scroll over this investigation, I have the TBI there. And we, I think agreed on a date and then I was contacted by an attorney and I think we had a date that they were going to come. And then he later called back and said, well, Lori's not sure what she wants to do. And then the next thing I knew, the lawsuit has been, had been filed.

Here's how Lori remembers it. I did meet with Paul Phillips. He actually came to the emergency room on the day that I was working. And it wasn't a long conversation. He asked me, if I had any questions, I don't think he gave me a lot of information or anything like that.

Philip says the investigation remained open even after Laurie filed her suit. And that eventually he exhausted all of his options. Before the federal trial. The trial for Laurie's case. I asked the federal government to review the case. And the reason I did that, and we had shared with them our file, but the reason I did that is because I knew that the family was dissatisfied with our review of the evidence. And at that time, the U.S. attorney declined to review the case.

Laurie will have almost three years to keep building her case. Her lawyers will take depositions, which is where some of the interview tape from Nikki and Marty you've already heard came from. And she'll learn new facts. That's when she'll learn things like John John was trying to leave the Sheriff's Department that he thought something bad was going to happen. And her lawyers will hire experts to study all those facts and offer some perspective,

like this guy. My name is Richard Culea. I'm a retired FBI special agent. Culea retired in 2004 after 32 years with the FBI, and he went to work as a private investigator. But his history with the FBI, in addition to being very long, is also very relevant. He was a firearms instructor. He taught New recruits how to use weapons. He taught agents in the Washington Field Office and the Knoxville Office and the agents

who protect dignitaries and high-ranking officials. He's also an expert in tactics, especially high-risk tactics or HRT. Not just how to use a gun, but when, and how firing a weapon in a life or death situation is so different, physically and emotionally, than being a dead eye at the range. And so I've taught SWAT and HRT and all the firearms that new agents get. Well, since 1983, and there's one more thing. I wrote a book while I was at the FBI Academy called High Risk and Counter Techniques, which is given to every special agent that goes through the FBI Academy. That's the guy Herb and Laurie hired to take another look.

He starts with the mobile home where it happened. I wanted to see for myself go go in there, photograph it, take measurements and see, tactically, what couldn't, couldn't be done under those circumstances. Eventually, he drafts a 16-page report laying out a case against Marty. I had like three opinions.

First is that Marty Carson is responsible for shooting John-John Yanceancy. Secondly, Carson didn't shoot John John Yancy for his own self-defense. John John Yancy didn't do anything but back him up. And three, Carson's account of the shooting indicated to me a consciousness of guilt. That's the key phrase, consciousness of guilt. You know, when you tell the truth, you don't have to remember what you're said. And when you say something to John John's wife, that's different than what you say in your deposition, that's different than what you might tell the other people involved on the outside perimeter. And you don't think it's ever going to come back on you, it's kind of crazy.

When John John, the answer is shot with one shot, one projectile, and you tell people that he was shot with a shotgun, and you know that your weapon is the only one that's been fired. The circumstances don't line up with the facts of the case. Marty's shifting accounts of the lighting conditions are a problem for Kulia. He says that the physical layout of the home makes Marty's version of events implausible. Marty said that at one point, when he was in that tiny hallway, the bedroom door swung open three quarters of the way. And that door had hinges on the right hand side, meaning that the door swung into the room, as opposed to out into the hallway, which is critical

in this particular case, because anyone that opened that door would expose themselves. They couldn't use it for cover, and they'd be easily seen. Which curiously is what Marty said, that he saw silhouette of a man standing there like a big fat target after the door suddenly swung open. But that man would have had to pull the door into the room to get it open and then sort of step around it. At that point, he would have been close enough

for Marty to grab. Culea's fundamental problem though, is that Marty's story just doesn't make sense. At least not for a law enforcement officer with even minimal training, like the idea that he would tell other deputies to stay out. If he were to say, well, don't come in, he has a shotgun.

Where does it go from there? I mean, what's he gonna do? Is he gonna handle it himself? John John's there, it's got two other deputies there. I mean, what's he going to do? Is he going to handle it himself? John John's there. It's got two other deputies there. You know, if he if he was of the mindset, it's too dangerous in here, he should have left and said, okay guys surround the trailer, set up a perimeter. We're gonna call him out and one way or the other, he's gonna come out. But we're not gonna call him out and one way or the other, he's going to come out. But we're not going to get anybody shot here. There's another issue.

After John John is shot, Carson said that he holsters his weapon and gives aid to John John in the hallway. That just does not make any sense. Turning his back on someone who allegedly just shot his partner with a shotgun. Carson admitted also that he fled the residence after the shooting and says he was not trained to stay with an officer who's down. That's incredible. You never leave an officer that's down. You just can't do it. But what if Marty was in a fight or flight panic?

If he's a migdala, the hijacked his brain? We teach a lot of this in the FBI Academy. If your life is threatened, and I mean really threatened, like this would be a serious threat, you get tunnel vision, you get tunnel hearing, you can't take your eyes off that threat. No matter what happens, people could be doing anything in back of you and you don't know it because you don't have time for that. You're in the survival mode. One of the things that happens also when you're in the fight or flight response is that you lose fine motor skills.

And what is the we need to shoot effectively is fine motor skills. Most people in law enforcement that get into a gun fight, if you ask them how many rounds did I fire? That's part of that fighter flight syndrome. You're pulling the trigger, you're trying to save your life, you're not shooting accurately. In other words, most people in a liver die situation will keep pulling the trigger. They'll fire wildly and not remember how many shots they got off. Marty? One shot.

He wasn't even worried about it. He holsters his weapon, turns us back on the door that supposedly had the threat. If we put everything in the best possible light, is there a chance that Marty was just dangerously incompetent? No. He was dangerously incompetent, but that's not the only thing. The final issue for Culea, and it's a big one, is John John's gun propped up behind the toilet. The investigators have never been able to explain that, other than assuming it flew out of John

John's hand and into the bathroom. Then it made a 90 degree turn and slid a couple of feet before improbably coming to rest against the wall, balanced on the barrel and the butt. There's only one way that it could have gotten there. His partner, quote unquote partner, who drew a shot of him, took his weapon, placed it behind the commode so that he couldn't get it, even though he wasn't moving just in case. So since John John wasn't dead, he's laying there. I'm convinced that he wanted to take that gun and place it behind the commode and put himself between John John and the bathroom so that he is not going to get his hands on that weapon. That gun, by the way, was never checked for fingerprints. At the time, there didn't seem to be a reason to believe anyone other than John John had handled it.

So no one knows if Marty's prints were on it. A couple of years later, when Laurie's case finally goes to trial, Culea won't be allowed to present any of this. Federal courts have rules about evidence and about who can express opinions about what. The defense will object to Culea speculating about Marty's state of mind or telling the jury what he thinks Marty should have done. He'll be able to answer only objective questions on the witness stand. How wide the bathroom doorway is.

Whether that's a washing machine in the hallway, that sort of thing, pretty dull testimony. Still, he's a retired FBI agent and firearms expert. And the jury will know that he has opinions about the way Marty said it happened, and that Marty's lawyers do not want him to express those opinions. That's not a bad witness. He can help make Laurie's case just by showing up in court. El Museo Picasso Málaga presenta Picasso es cultor, al igual que en el resto de su creación,

la escultura de Picasso se distingue por innovar en el uso de técnicas y materiales pocortodoxos. imaginar cuáles y cómo descubrela. It should be clear by now that Laurie will go to trial. I mean, hell, there wouldn't be much of a story here if she didn't. But that wasn't a given. And here's why. Just because she filed doesn't mean she automatically goes to a jury. She's first got to convince a judge that her case has merit. That it's not just some legal Hail Mary. Lori's case was assigned to a judge named Thomas Varlin. Dr. Varlin is not a person who is easy to convince at the state, meaning the government has done something wrong. UT Law Professor Ben Barton again. No surprise. He knows this guy too.

He's a tremendous judge. I know him personally. He's super smart. He's hard working. He's great. He's a George W. Bush employee. He's a law and order guy top to bottom all the way through it. So it's a hike. It's an uphill battle to make it out of his court and to a jury on a claim against a police officer for murder. And remember, Laurie isn't suing just one cop. They sued all the other officers who were there. They sued the Scott County Sheriff's Department. That's a lot to ask Judge Varlan to believe

that all of these people operating together to murder our guy, Yancey. And he didn't actually find that. He didn't find that because everyone Laurie sued, the officers, the county, filed for summary judgment. It's very common in civil suits. They want Judge Violin to say Laurie's case is so thin, so lacking in merit that it should just be dismissed outright.

As it turns out, a little more than a month before the trial opens, that's exactly what Violin finds. For most of them. I mean, all the other officers get dismissed, Scott County gets dismissed, and then we're just stuck with the case against Carson. Now, Laurie's left suing only Marty Carson. For Judge Varnalum, they were like, we're asking you to say that it's at least plausible that this thing was not a mistake, that it was done on purpose. He does find that there's enough of a dispute of fact that they can go forward on the trial against Carson. And just that alone, that's a crazy finding.

alone, that's a crazy finding. Maybe, in fact, too out there for a jury. It's not a watching a DC jury. You know what I mean? It's not a jury that's suspicious of police power or suspicious of the government. These Tennesseans aren't exactly squishy when it comes to supporting their local police. Drive through some of the small towns,

and you might even see it spelled out explicitly. Like when we're doing some reporting in Jamestown, the next county over, there's a big sign at the main crossroads. We respect the police. Trying to convince the jury that deputies are killing each other could be a big lift. Maybe even a bigger lift for Laurie. She's never wavered on her fundamental belief that Marty meant to kill John John, but she wasn't entirely sure why Marty would want him dead. You're missing that one important thing.

The motive. Yeah. That's something the jurors are going to want to know. The only theory Laurie has, and she's not the only one who has it. It is that John John was going to be a threat to the Carson family's power. He wasn't happy with the way the things were ran out of the sheriff's department. He wanted to say things done right.

And, you know, be able to get a better control on the drug situation in this county. You know, John John had planned on running for sheriff. You know, John John had planned on running for Sheriff. John John was planning to run against Marty's dad. When I talked to Herb and we were discussing, you know, what possible reasons could they have had, you know, wanting John John out of the picture out of the way. And that's the only thing I knew could possibly be at that time was him going to run for Sheriff, which that was still going to be,

I think maybe two years away. So, you know, he had already made his plans and he was going to run. He hadn't officially announced that, but he had told me that he had planned on running for Sheriff on the next election. And a lot of people we talk to agreed that John John's potential campaign would have been

a threat to Sheriff Jim Carson. I believe that that deputy would have become sheriff eventually. I don't want to be talking out of turn, that John John would have been like, he was that well-loved. Is this it? The reason? The mode of Lori's been searching for? It's all she has to go with.

And in any case, Jim Carson does lose the next time he runs. What was your platform? The professional change. That by implication suggested that the Sheriff's Department wasn't professional. No, no. Next time, on friendly fire. When the Carson's lose power, people talk. There were things about that incident that

was handled properly and things that were not. Jim Carson was unbeatable until that happened. He gives me mischiancing. He is. You've got this all wrong. Sorry to interrupt, oh we just have a thing. We have a podcast called, Comet and Mayo's Take. Oh that thing, yes, but not just one. If you become a subscriber on Apple podcasts

or at extratakes.com, you can listen to not one, but two shows, add free every week. The main show drops on Friday and is available for free, tune in to hear the biggest film and TV reviews wherever you get your podcast. Just search for Comet and Mayo's Take. And the extra self-drops on the Monday morning head to extratakes.com or subscribe on Apple podcasts to listen.

Witness is a production of campside media and Sony music entertainment. Friendly Fire was reported and hosted by me, Sean Flynn. Lindsey Killbride is the senior producer and Callie Hitchcock is the associate producer. The story editor is Daniel Riley. The series was sound designed by Shani Avigram with mixing by Iwen Lytre Muin. This episode was fact checked by Alex Yablon. The theme song is Booly by Shook Twins. A special thanks to our operations team, Amanda Brown, Doug Slaywin, Alia Papers, and

Alison Haney. Campside media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriatus, Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. If you enjoyed Witnessed Friendly fire, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. you