← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Melodee Buzzard Found Executed in the Desert, Mom Charged with Murder | Matt Murphy Breaks It Down
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:05]
C
Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is drop dead serious. I know it's different. It's a very different backdrop. I am at my mom's place in Florida. She has the nicest living room and so there may be a few things that you're gonna see in this podcast. I think the sun has gone down by now, but you might see a tiny little white dog flying through the background and jumping up on the furniture. Her name is Kelty, she's extremely cute and she may bark.
- [01:30]
D
So.
- [01:30]
C
So now that we have that out of the way, I have been missing you. I took a little vacation, but I had to jump back in because of this horrifying news about the discovery of little Melody Buzzard. When that happened over the holidays, my heart sank. I kind of expected it. I think you did too. Look, we've all been following this case for quite some time, since October. I want to bring you up to date on everything, especially if you've been in the holidays and you've missed some things. Melody is of course this adorable little nine year old girl from Lompoc, California. She went missing back in October and now, sadly, we know what happened to her. We all thought maybe she would come back alive, maybe she'd be found, not because of her mother. Mom was no help, but we all just had it in the back of our minds that maybe there's just something out there. And she's okay. Maybe she's being held by someone or mom may have sold her, whatever. We just kind of thought she'd be okay. She was not okay. She was never okay. Melody's remains. Melody's body was found in Utah. And that mother of hers, Ashley Buzzard, has been arrested and charged with murder. Murder of her little nine year old girl. And as a reminder, back in October, it was Melody's school that reported that Melody and her mom had not picked up her assignments. Red flag. And so law enforcement followed up and they, you know, paid a call to Melody's mom. And Melody's mom could not answer for Melody's whereabouts. And Melody was not at that house. Right. Not only that, but the investigators say that that mother had no explanation for why Melody was not at the house, nor where Melody might be. There was nothing. There was no information that that woman, Ashley Buzzard, would provide to the people who showed up at her door. And you know what? They didn't have a warrant. Right. Because why would they? They're not expecting there's anything other than, hey, you missed your schoolwork. So that starts the clock and it starts the process. Cops are like, okay, this isn't right. She won't tell us where the kid is, she's not picked up the schoolwork, she doesn't seem to care, and she's nasty to us and she's shutting the door on us. Okay? So then they start looking into the case. And not long after this whole intransigent Ashley Buzzard bullshit, the detectives learned that Ashley had rented a car and then she had traveled across multiple states with little Melody seen on camera at the rental agency. Right. She returns the car three days later, without Melody comes back to Lompoc from this three day excursion across multiple states. No Melody. The surveillance images of the two of them together showed something pretty bizarre. Video showed that both Ashley and this little nine year old girl Melody were wearing wigs. Right? To disguise themselves. So Melody is last seen alive on October 9th. And she's near the Colorado Utah border. And the investigators believe at this point that she was killed shortly after that moment. Now Fast forward to December 6th. A decomposed body was discovered by two people who were taking photos in a remote area along east State Route Number 24 near Caneville, Utah. Just grab a map, look where Caneville is. It's real rural folks. So the authorities in Utah notified the investigators in California about this discovery. They did that two days later because they don't know they've Got a body there. They don't know if it's a local body. They don't know if it's a body that was dumped there from New York or, you know, New Mexico. They don't know. But they start to realize this looks like it's the body of a nine year old. Oh, my God. There are all these reports. So they contact the authorities in California, and the investigators say that the remains were too badly decomposed to be able to do a full identity visually. So they got to go the DNA route and they did the DNA testing and that is what confirmed that it was Melody. It was little Melody Buzzard. And according to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown, Melody died because she was shot multiple times in the head. That you can tell even with a decomposed body. Right? You can tell if someone's shot in the head, the bullet wounds will be in the skull. You can often tell if someone dies with an ax because that tool mark will be in the bone. They could tell without DNA that that tool mark child, that little skeletal remain they found had been shot in the head multiple times. And then they found shell casings, Right? They recovered at least one where Melody's body was. And that shell casing was matched to another casing that was discovered during a search of Ashley Buzzard's home on October 30th. And guess what else was found? A live round of with similar ammunition found inside the rental car that Ashley Buzzard had been driving on that allegedly murderous expedition. So Melody's remains were positively identified. That was on December 22nd. And it was the next day that they picked her up. Ashley Buzzard was arrested and charged with first degree murder of a child. She's currently being held. No bail. Big surprise there. I can't imagine anybody would get bail because, you know, what do you got to lose? First degree means either death or life. No parole. And she entered a plea. She got her chance to enter her plea, not guilty. Guess I'm not surprised there. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff again, Bill Brown, said that investigators have not recovered the murder weapon that we know is a gun. Right. They also say at this point they don't know the motive. I can't tell you the motive either, other than that woman is off her rocker. Has been for a long time. Kept that child out of school, kept that child from her family, kept that child from seeing her late father's family and refused to cooperate with any authority that came to her door. So maybe the motive is just that she lost her shit and didn't Want a kid around anymore? We're gonna get to that in a minute, right? Because you might say, well, isn't that insanity? Wow, that sounds like a viable defense. No, no, no, no, it is not. You are not automatically insane just because you're crazy. You don't want your kid anymore There. It gets a lot deeper than that. In order to prevail in an insanity defense, my friends, I know a lot of you already know this because you're true crime fans, but no, you don't get to just say, I lost my mind. Not when you cover your fucking tracks. You cover your tracks. You ain't not guilty of insanity. You do not prevail in an insanity defense if you cover your tracks because you know something's wrong. If you cover your tracks, you know something's wrong. And in every insanity defense across this country, you need to not know right from wrong. And in a minute, we're going to get real deep with Matt Murphy into the real, like, nuts and bolts of what you have to prove. In different states, it's different. Generally, they're very similar, but in certain states, there are rules, and you have to hit those markers in that defense. And I'm sorry, but Ashley Buzzard don't qualify. And that's not, you know, me being a layman talking. That's me with 40 years of experience in this business. I know an insanity case when I see it. Sometimes juries will disagree, but generally speaking, she ain't gonna qualify nothing. No way. She covered her tracks way too many times. And Matt and I are gonna go into the details in a second of just which tracks she covered in which way that the prosecutors are going to outline. So in that sense, I'm feeling a little more satisfied about where this case may be going. But I will tell you, there is a lot of upsetting information here. Anytime a child dies, it's upsetting in the way that this child died is just so infuriating and upsetting. There's still a lot we don't know as well. And so again, I called Matt Murphy to help me wrap my head around this case morally and legally. And he gets me off the ledge on a lot of stuff. But you, Matt, because he was the senior Deputy DA in Orange County, California, Matt has prosecuted dozens of murder cases out there. He knows that jurisdiction like the back of his hand. He's written the book, literally the book of murder. It's called the Book of Murder. A Prosecutor's Journey Through Love and Death. And so I had a lot of questions for Matt and I think you're probably going to find this conversation interesting, satisfying, and at the same time, because there's a child involved, I think. So, so frustrating. But here's my conversation with Matt. I guess it was just a matter of time, but I couldn't believe how long it took to actually see an arrest in this case.
- [10:23]
D
Yeah, one of the really interesting things about this, Ashley, is there's. There's two areas of forensic science that have advanced remarkably and one of them is like the rock star and then there's like the, the little stepbrother that everybody's forgotten about. I guess it's a bad analogy for a case like this, but there's a system called NIBIN that as DNA was getting all the accolades and all the amazing advances, all of which well deserved in that area of forensic science. Very quietly behind the scenes, there's this expanded shell casing program that the federal government funded that is essentially very similar. It's a national database of expended shell casings that are matched to other expended shell. And I solved, not I, but we put together a murder case out of Costa Mesa, my Joshua Blount case, which was a mass shooting that happened. Gosh, this is probably, I can't believe I'm saying that's probably 15 years ago now. And it was remarkable. And essentially what it is is they take the. Every, every firearm is unique on a microscopic level. So there's the bullet, and we know about ballistics, but there's also for semiautomatic firearms, there's a shell casing, an empty shell casing that gets dumped out and expended. And in this horrific case, that is one of the ways that they broke it. They found shell, expanded shell casings and they're able to microscopically match those to an expanded shell casing that they found in, in the mom's house in Lompoc, California. And that is something in the rental.
- [12:00]
C
Car like as well, which I thought they found.
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D
Yeah, they found, they found an unexpended bullet, which was the same type of ammunition and the same caliber of firearm that she, that she used for this murder, allegedly.
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C
I have a trifecta there to have all three together.
- [12:14]
D
Then it's a trifecta. And, and that is one of the things I, I don't think I've ever seen a show in the true crime world where they've talked about nibin. But this is, this will probably be the first one, the first big case with a, the forensic science, the, the people that do it. It's nibin, it's N I B N. And it's basically the national ballistics database that they were able to take. Like my, my Joshua Blount case was really interesting, was a drive by shooting and they. And a couple of them went inside the car. But a couple of expensive shell casings were found at the scene and an innocent young man was, was murdered and, and four others were, were shot. And they basically, the detectives at Cost Mesa in that case found those, entered it into the NIBIN system and they came back to another unsolved drive by that took place at a house on Halloween earlier that year. And they were able to trace that back to a fight that happened at a Halloween party at that house where a guy named Joshua Blount was kicked out. And that's how we broke that case. So it's just. That was really good investigative work. And it sounds like this was in really good investigative work as well by the FBI. So. And that's another interesting thing about this case is that typically, you know, most murder cases are handled at the local level, but when you have a missing little girl, and I've worked those cases before too, the FBI is very good about coming in and assisting local law enforcement. And that's, and that's what we had. So FBI forensic scientists that put those things together are probably the best in the whole world. So we have a, we have a kniven match, like you said. We have a trifecta of evidence. You've got an expensive shell casing found in her house, expanded shell casings found at the scene that match. And then you have a, an unexpended bullet in the rental car. And like we call that in law enforcement, that's we call a clue, right? So it is a really, really good forensic trail of evidence.
- [14:15]
C
I am surprised that they found anything in the rental car. I remember a case a long time ago, and I think it actually might have been the New England Patriots football player who was accused of Aaron Hernandez, a double murder and then an additional murder. And there was a blue bubble gum, a wad of blue bubble gum in a rental car that had already been cleaned. And I think that this woman Ashley Buzzard's rental car had been returned many days prior, hadn't it? I don't think they got it the minute it was returned, do you?
- [14:46]
D
Well, those guys, when they cleaned it out, you know, and that's, that's another funny thing about bullets. They're heavy and they roll, right? So that's. She was, she was sloppy in this. And the Way it's been charged is interesting as well. There is the, the firearm enhancement, which in the state of California is it passed under what's known as the 1020 Life Bill, where any use of a firearm is automatically 25 years to life if it results in injury or death. So you have a murder and they've already announced they're seeking it as a first. First degree murder is 25 to life in California plus the firearm enhancement, plus the alleged what's known as a special circumstance for lying in wait, which essentially is ambush killings. If you ambush somebody, that's a recognized special circumstance, which means she's not entitled to bail, not that she would make bail anyway. And she's also theoretically not entitled to a parole hearing. It's life without possibility of parole. But there's a big but and that is there's a movement in California as well as Washington state being California, to eliminate life without possibility of parole as a sentence, which would be a real travesty, I think, especially cases like this.
- [16:02]
C
Me too, because I, I always feel, and I'm going to, I'm going to get to the crazy part in a minute because I, you and I can have a real robust conversation about just how crazy is she? Because you know that's coming the defense, you know, the insanity defense, which I find to be almost non existent because the min you show any inclination to hide your tracks, you're out, you're done. You don't get that benefit of using the insanity defense. Let's talk about that in a second. But life without the possibility of parole gives an option for those who just don't know if they're there yet for the death penalty. Because some people, whether they deserve it or not, in your morals, they're the worst of the worst. And a lot of jurors, they can't get there or you can't death qualify them. But if you have life without the possibility of parole, those are the people you want them to have that you want them to get that if they can't get to the death penalty?
- [16:57]
D
Well, absolutely. And remember, death penalty. The DA of Santa Barbara, I have a really close friend who was a DA in that county for a long time. She doesn't work there anymore, but she's a dedicated career prosecutor. We were clerks together in Orange county when I first started and she has a very high opinion of the DA of Orange County. So they've already announced that they're not seeking death and. Which I think is the right call. I think that's the right call. On this one.
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C
Why?
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D
Because it is a, the, the death, death penalty in California is a very interesting thing and we, we, of course we have a moratorium on it. But death cases are like. I sat on the, the committee in Orange county for 15 years where we would, we would formally review every special circle homicide. Just to give you an idea. We would seek death in less than 4% of the cases that came before us.
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C
Wow.
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D
And those are the, those are the cases that qualify. Okay, so, and that's of all murders, there's only a small percentage of those that are what are known as special circumstances or death qualified cases. Of those we sought it in less than 4%. And I think that what, that, what that signifies here, I think that when the evidence comes out, just like you said, there's going to be some mental health issues that should not rise to the level of legal insanity. For all the reasons that you hit on and reasons you've hit on before in one of your previous shows that I watched. You're exactly right on that. Mental illness and legal insanity, a lot of people need to understand are not the same thing. Nobody in their right mind. Yeah, whatever euphemism we want to use. Nobody in the right mind ever commits a murder.
- [18:37]
C
First of all, I say that, let alone I say it in a way more salty way, Matt. I say everybody who commits crimes, that is crazy. However, legal insanity is very formal and requires some very specific elements and most people can't meet them.
- [18:53]
D
I've never argued it that way exactly in front of a jury. Ashley. Crazy. But you're exactly right. And that's, that's a great way of putting it. I mean it is language that we would actually use on a podcast where we can front of a jury. I, I would use slightly more gentle language and that's explaining like, look, you can be wacky, you can be out to lunch, you can be not playing with full deck. Because nobody that ever commits murder, especially of their own child, is ever going to be like a mentally sound mind. However, this the standard for legal insanity in the state of California. Talk about crazy. As crazy as my state is and as hard left as it's going towards, like the defendants away from victims over the last 10 or 15 years, it still uses what is known as the McNaughton rule. And the M' Naughton rule goes back about 150 years and it essentially stands for. Yeah, it's old common law. That's right. It's old common law essentially means if you understand the nature and quality of Your actions, you are legally responsible. So the example that we would give as, as homicide prosecutors was if you've got suffering from mental illness and you got a devil that pops up on your shoulder, and that is, and it's real and it's a delusion and devil says, hey, go stab that banana over there. And somebody goes and does it. And it's a person. They don't understand the nature and quality of their actions. Right. They're so mentally ill. They don't, they don't understand the wrongfulness of what they're doing because in their own super mentally ill brain, they believe that they're stabbing a banana, okay? But if the devil pops up and says, hey, go and stab those people over there or else I'm going to change you into a demon or turn your legs into, you know, zebra legs or whatever craziness, you still have a moral and legal responsibility under the McNaughton Rule to not do it. It's like that, that. And that's essentially a very rough explanation.
- [20:47]
C
Do you understand right from wrong and do you understand the nature and consequences of your actions? It's usually that two prong, right? Isn't there oftentimes, not at every state, but isn't there often an additional requirement to show that there is significant mental illness that has been, or there's been an attempt for treatment in the past?
- [21:06]
D
Not in California, no. Under the non rule, you don't have that. That's. There are states that use something similar to that. But I remember Washington state, there was.
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C
A guy who shot up a Jewish center and he shot a bunch of women in the Jewish center. And I covered that trial. Navid Hawk. Oh my God. It's going back two decades, Navid. Haq H, A Q and A. That guy showed up in court, Matt, and he was drooling. I mean, he was catatonic and drooling. And I listened to his recordings. There is no one who should have qualified more for the death penalty, in my opinion. But the one category that they didn't feel he met was enough mental health treatment prior to this incident. And I couldn't believe it.
- [21:49]
D
Well, imagine. I mean, look, there's, there's so many problems with that. And one of them is we get with people from all around the world that, that, that come to the United States legally for good reasons, but come from countries where they either have very little mental health care where they come from, or there's no way for. How would, how would a prosecutor get documentation of somebody's mental health history in An African nation or a Middle Eastern nation or an Eastern European nation under the Soviet Union. That's a really tough thing. And that puts an unfair burden, I think, on the.
- [22:24]
C
You're not kidding. And I will tell you about Navid Haq. His parents begged the court. Please understand, we have tried and tried and tried to treat our son. We have taken him in and out. We have given him the medications. He'll refuse to take them. So they actually had tangible evidence. It wasn't enough. And I remember thinking, well, what is enough, for heaven's sake? These people are nuts. You can't have a perfect file.
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D
Yeah, no, I had a, I had one of these one. And by one of these, I mean a guy who was suffering from legitimate organic mental illness in the city of Costa Mesa who just had a, had a mental break. He was from Lithuania and he was, he was like middle aged guy at a family. He was, you know, hard working but had a, and it was legit. Had a legitimate like psychotic break and he went out with an ax, killed some poor guy getting in his car, just going to work. Totally innocent. Absolutely brutal thing to, to, to see. But if that, if that was on us as prosecutors, how would I get like, send my investigator to Lithuania and ask for like, can you serve a subpoena on a Lithuanian psychiatrist or mental health facility? Like that is. Yeah, that's tough. So one thing about this, that's California does not require that. It's. The prosecution must show that she understood the nature and quality of her actions. And of course, when you talk about right and wrong, there are 100 little, little things in this case that really cut against a legal insanity plea, like putting on the wigs. We've all seen those videos. Driving her to Utah, you know, using a rental car to do it. That's something. Yeah, like backing into the gas stations. All of that indicates that she understands the wrongfulness of, about what she's about to go do. As deluded or as kooky as her motives might have been in doing it, it doesn't matter. She knows that she's killing her little girl. And that's another really interesting thing from my perspective, Ashley, about this case is that, you know, Santa Barbara county is, is pretty liberal and the juries tend to be pretty tough on the prosecution. Again, this district attorney is, and I've worked with them on death penalty cases before. I, on my Golden State Killer case, he had, he had victims. D' Angelo had two victims in Santa Barbara county, so we had to deal with them. And the prosecutor they assigned to the case was wonderful. But the elected DA was kind of one of these Soros back very, you know, I don't want to say hostile towards the police, I don't want to throw her name out there, but the new guy is much better. And by new I mean like last four or five years, but he's open to it. But this is. When you're talking about an intra family murder like this, domestic violence, even though it's the abuse of a child, any sort of mental illness, layers or elements to that, most days in the state of California are going to see that as not being a death case. Believe it or not, if it was a stranger it would be, it probably be different.
- [25:26]
C
And that makes me crazy because I think of a nine year old girl as putting 100% of her faith and trust. Even if there was an abusive situation in that house, which I fully expect from someone. Again, she isn't convicted yet. She's innocent until proven guilty. The signs don't look good. But if she's guilty of this murder, I fully expect that. There was so much abuse, multiple layers of it, emotional, psychological, probably physical abuse in that house. And yet those children still, you know, revere these parents. They look to these parents, they're nine, they don't know anything else. And so she put her full faith and confidence in this parent who was leading her talk about lying in wait, leading her to her desert death. If that's not the worst of the worst, Matt, I mean that's kind of how the, the people who aren't in your world say, people in my world will look at it saying, well, how much more evil can it get if there, if we hold the death penalty for the worst of the worst, how could she not be the worst? Doing that to a child who depended on her, entrusted her with everything.
- [26:27]
D
Totally agree. I mean everything you just said. There's a great line in the movie, the Crowd, tragic movie where Brandon Lee was killed actually during the filming if you remember. But there's a, a line where he goes, and he, there's the drug addicted mother and there's the girl on the skateboard, the character, and he, he goes in as like the phantom, you know, presence and like, and tells the mother, mother is the word for God in the mind of a child. And it's, and it's exactly, you're exactly right. And you see those, those videos of that poor little girl and she was homeschooled as well. And to the, you know, to the school board's credit, the school is the one that reported her missing to the, I guess, discredit of social services. I don't know. I think that for people that want to homeschool their kids, you would think that there would be some sort of, like some sort of monitoring by social services that, or something that, you know, you'd like to think that there would be some, some sort of checkup. And I'm not, I'm. I have a incredibly high opinion of people who go into social work, so I'm not offering any criticism at this point. I don't know enough about the facts of, of their situation and what you told the school. But I bet, I bet when we get into it, there was somebody that was asleep at the wheel somewhere along the line. And I, I don't want to, don't want to cast any aspersions, but I.
- [27:47]
C
Mean, what you're saying is such a key issue that makes me frustrated beyond imagination that anybody out there who has bad inclinations to their children, what's the first thing they do? They take them out of school. So flag number one for anyone who's homeschooling kids, flag number one for the government should be, oh, double check on that one. And so, yeah, what you're saying is spot on. Where was social services? I don't understand why this child didn't deserve the same thing that Lori Valo's children got, which was produce the children or we arrested you. She didn't produce the children. She had a countdown and she missed her countdown and they flew to Hawaii and arrested her. Why didn't that happen with this child? This is two months ago, this hober where this child was missing. How come that didn't happen?
- [28:33]
D
Yeah, and look, hopefully that this is the type of thing that, that, I mean, I. Hopefully that sort of thing wouldn't have saved them. Like didn't save the, the kids in the Lori Val murder. Because that would be, that would make it even worse if, if somebody's negligence or inattentiveness to the, to their caseload or whatever led to the death of this little girl. I hope we don'. That. But one. Another thing that's interesting about it is, remember, this was a, it was a Lompoc family, right? And Lompoc is north of Santa Barbara. It's a very rural area of California. It's got some good surf spots.
- [29:05]
C
I thought it was Lompoc. I think it's Lompoc. I was calling it Lompoc for a long time and I think they were, they refer to as Lompoc. I Heard them say that in court as well.
- [29:12]
D
Yeah, well, I went to ucsb and it was, it was Lompoc at UCSB when I was there. I, I don't know. It's, there's a, there's a military base up there and there's some, there's a lot of great white sharks swimming around in the ocean there, I can tell you that. And there is a kind of a blue collar, working class area. But, but what's interesting is anywhere that she went with that child on the way to Utah would have territorial jurisdiction over this murder. It sounds like they've decided to let the locals do it. But I'll tell you what, you know, Utah is the 10th Circuit Court of Appeal, not the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal. If Utah would have proper jurisdiction if they wanted to do that, and that's, that's a place where the death penalty could actually be in play, unlike the state of California. But they also don't, they have the.
- [30:03]
C
Firing squad in Utah?
- [30:04]
D
That's an option. Yep, they have the, they actually have the firing squad in Utah now, by.
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C
The way, why is that? Why did Utah cede the control of this prosecution to Santa Barbara? The trip originated in Santa Barbara, but I think we're all pretty clear the murder happened again. She's innocent until proven guilty. But I think we're all pretty clear that the murder happened in Utah, right?
- [30:26]
D
Yeah, it's, it's, I think they, and that's all going to be behind the scenes stuff. I'm sure that there were plenty of conversations between authorities in both areas, especially when the, when the DNA came back to this poor little, this poor little Melody buzzard. You know, I, I, I, I, I've been in those meetings before and I think Santa Barbara just probably said, look, it's one of ours. We're going to do it. Now also, these are expensive trials. I don't know the county where the little girl is found and it could be perhaps less funded. But I guarantee that's a, it's going to be a better jury pool for the prosecution than it will be in Santa Barbara. And I've got some familiarity with Santa Barbara juries. Now this is one where I think the, the evidence will be overwhelming. However, remember there was a guy when you were talking about the drool on that case that you did. One of the techniques that some defense lawyers will do, especially in mental health cases, they'll, they'll have their client pumped up on Thorazine. So they sit there and they look a thousand times more mental than they.
- [31:26]
C
Actually are because he was without question medicated. Because like I said, he was catatonic in that courtroom. And I think the trial lasted multiple weeks. Like I think we were in there for about five weeks with Navid.
- [31:38]
D
Ha.
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C
And he was catatonic for the whole damn thing. So I did wonder if he wasn't medicated. It looked pretty clear he. He was, yeah.
- [31:46]
D
And there was a case, a famous case at the time, which still breaks my heart. It was a, it was a student kind of almost similar to the Rob Reiner case. It was a famous director in, who lived in Santa Monica, who had a freaking socially awkward, very entitled, very wealthy son who he sent to UCSB who got mad and had some sort of tantrum. And he got behind the wheel of his car and he drove down. I think it was Embarcadero del Norte, one of the, one of the college streets, and killed five or six students. I don't remember the exact number. This is probably 15 or 20 years ago now. But he, in Santa Barbara county, he pled legal insanity. And to one of these sort of very defendant friendly juries. The, the defense lawyer is a friend of mine named Jack Early. He also defended Betty Broderick in San Diego, if you're familiar with that. I've done murders against Jackson. Jackson. Jack's a rock star. I think he's mostly retired now, but very, very effective criminal defense lawyer. And same thing. That guy went into court every day and he drooled. There was a lot of drooling that happened in that trial. That jury in California, it's a bifurcated system. It is. First you have the guilt phase, then you have the penalty phase. And that guy, that case, jury found him legally insane. And as soon as that verdict came back, he wiped his friggin lip and smiled at his lawyer. And he, he, my, in my opinion, that guy conned the jury. The, the defendant, not Jack early, although Jack is very, very good. And he was. That guy was released, you know, killed, killed multiple students in his car, jumped out and wanted to fight everybody.
- [33:24]
C
And it's just, he's not guilty by reason of insanity. So many people think it means you walk out the back door. You don't. You walk right into an institution. And then you have to be judged by several doctors to be safe and not a heart, you know, not a threat to yourself or others.
- [33:38]
D
That's right, you get, you get institutionalized. The problem is in a case like that, using that as an example, is this guy murdered? I should have looked it up before I Before I got on with you today. But it was like five or six people died from that. And that is somebody that never should have seen the light of day again. And what happens is if you do that and you, you manage to con a jury, which in my opinion that guy absolutely conned a frigging jury. And so. And the, or the jury just blows it for whatever reason once he goes up. If you have medical, you know, mental health professionals like actual psychiatrists and they're doing a job, they're looking at a patient who is not legally insane. Right. So their, their job is to certify that person for release and based on their, on their mental health. And that's what happened in that case. And I guided, I want to say did. And again I should have looked it up but it was like six or seven years for murdering, you know, for murdering five people because he's having a bad night and drives over him with his car. It's. It's awful. That was a sin of our jury.
- [34:42]
C
Hard to say murdering those guys. I mean in an opinion it would be you're a murderer, but in law he's not.
- [34:49]
D
No, well, no, it's. He was guilty of first year murder announced they found him guilty of the murders. And then they. So you're, you're guilty, but then you are. There's a second phase where they say you did the murders, they're actual murders, but you were legally insane at the time. You're saying that's the way it works.
- [35:04]
C
In the sentencing phase. They decided he was not guilty by reason of his.
- [35:06]
D
No, it's in the, it's in the sanity phase. So there's a guilt phase. It's kind of like the death penalty case in California are bifurcated. So you have the guilt phase, then you have the penalty phase. For mental health cases like this. You have the guilt phase. Did she commit the murder? And then you would have the sanity phase after which is basically a battle of the experts. She's suffering these mental illnesses. She's got. She's, you know, this diluted and that's the direction this case is going in. Because I think that they're not going to run a whodunna. It's the only thing that they have to work with and it's been successful in the past in Santa Barbara County. So I don't know, I would love, I personally as a, as a prosecutor, I would love to much rather do that in front of some no nonsense jury in the state of Utah that is going to go hey mom, mom killed her daughter. What's the rule, McNaughton? Sounds good to me. You know, not. I don't want to make light of it or make it be glib, but that's essentially like. I'd much rather try a case like that with a lamentable woman. And again, she's presumed innocent. But everything I've seen, it gets my blood boiling. Those are the. These are the cases, actually. They make me want to be a prosecutor again, to be honest.
- [36:12]
C
I know, but I think I can see it in you right now. I was thinking, oh, it fires me.
- [36:16]
D
Up, the pictures of the. The pictures of that poor little girl. And everything you said is right. She is dependent on her mother. And also. And the purpose of school, as much as anything, is to socialize people and to. And so they can learn how to have allies and deal with teachers and. And handle bullies and kids that are mean to them. And all of that is already being deprived of a lot of kids, not all, but a lot of kids that are homeschooled by somebody that, that, you know, doesn't. That isn't. Isn't the world's best mom. But she was totally dependent on her socially and everything else. But that's another interesting part about this case, actually, is that whatever social workers went and did talk to the mom and whatever. Whoever made the decision that she was competent enough to homeschool her child and there would be. There's a process there. It's not just, I'm not enrolling my kid in school. There's a process. Say, I'm going to educate the kid at home that's going to come back, invite her in the, in the, in the sanity phase of this thing when they go, and I guarantee it, because they're going to line up the people that talk to her and said, yeah, she was. The home was clean when we went in. She was. She was relatively organized. She had a weird, you know, a lot of wigs in the house, but she seemed perfectly competent to do that. And also, remember, she was arrested for that false imprisonment of the paralegal at the beginning of this. And, and then there was that recording. And look, I watched. I watched one of your segments because I'm actually a fan of your show, and you nailed it back then when she got. When, when the, when the judge, the preliminary hearing judge didn't bind her over for the false imprisonment, which, by the way, was insane. Sorry, I don't want to. I don't want to criticize a judicial officer in the state of California. But I totally disagreed with that call back then. Me too. But it was largely based on that recording where she, she had the presence of mind to record something that she might come back and get her all the wigs, all that stuff. So hopefully even in Santa Barbara county, as, as defendant friendly as it can be, it's not going to work in this case. I'm hoping.
- [38:17]
C
Yeah, you're right. I want to ask you two other things. First thing is, and I feel again that this is like an aggravator in this case, the family of little Melody's dead father because he died when she was a baby. Motorcycle accident. His family wanted some connection to this girl. Right. They wanted connection to little Melody and, and this woman, Ashley Buzzard, refused. She refused to allow her late father's family to have any connection to this child. If she didn't want the child. That was an easy, you know, exit strategy. She could have easily ceded this child over to her late father's family because they wanted something to do with this little girl. She didn't do that. How does that play into, if she's guilty of this crime? How does that play into the sentencing or even the guilt? You know, the guilt innocence phase of this is that you had every other option. You had every other option.
- [39:16]
D
I watched an interview with the, with the grandmother. I think we all might have seen that. And, and she seemed like a really nice lady who was appropriately emotional and that there's about a dozen different ways that comes in against the defendant in a case like this. And it's going to be, you know, when you're talking about battle of the experts, if, if I'm the prosecutor in that case, I'm bringing that in and I probably wouldn't. First thing I do is tell mom to stop talking to the press. Helped us like it gave us a sense. But Santa Barbara's got to get a handle on, on her because I think she will be a critical witness. She will, she will be able to testify regarding every interaction that she had. And that will almost certainly come in. And I, I, we don't know it yet, but I, it would be really interesting to see what sort of legal action took place and when you have interested, interested family. I mean, they don't have parental rights per se, but yeah, she fought it. And I, I wonder if there's a transcript that's going to turn up from any sort of family court proceedings regarding, you know, the, some plea to the court. Now they, she didn't strike me as being, you know, a woman with a Lot of resources. She. So I, I could be wrong there, but maybe that played a part in it.
- [40:36]
C
Well, her friend who had gone to the police saying that he had been falsely imprisoned, he told me that she is dead broke, she relies entirely on government assistance. And he could not understand why she was, was ordering all of these things from Amazon. You saw all the boxes just piled up in her home. And the video that the, I think it was a police video, but she had just Amazon boxes and packages everywhere and they were arriving. We saw them at the door because we had somebody who was videotaping her front of her house all the time and there were deliveries arriving all the time. So there's something definitely screw loose with her finances. But she didn't have any money and she was yet spending all the money that she did have on, on packages. Which also brings me to the second question I had for you. There's no way she'll get an Alan Jackson. There's no way she's going to get a defense lawyer that could help her get out of this bind. She's going to have to rely on, you know, a government paid lawyer who, by the way, are some of the best out there. But what's your read on the kind of lawyer that she will either be assigned or at some point will get?
- [41:45]
D
So, yeah, your analysis on that is exactly right. I mean, it's kind of funny. I, I smile because I've known Alan for so many years now and the idea that Alan's name is thrown out there as among the best. He is among the best. But it's just, it's sort of funny. I remember when Alan and I were both doing misdemeanors back in the day. So.
- [42:05]
C
Did you watch him, by the way, total aside, did you watch him in the Phil Spector case? Because that's where I got to know Alan Jackson as a prosecutor. And he was solid. I mean, there was a nutty juror, a nutball juror on the first jury who I think was an engineer and if you didn't have a perfect connection, couldn't jump over a chasm as little as my finger. That's the only reason.
- [42:25]
D
But they got him. Yeah, they got him a second time around. He also did another one out of Orange county called the Mickey Thompson Murder. That he was, Alan was superb. He was, he was the real deal. And that's why he's, that's why he's had so much success, you know, out there.
- [42:38]
C
And I'm shocked, I'm shocked about the, I'm Shocked that it's that, that, you know, Nick Reiner's got him. I, I am surprised at that. I'm surprised that there's enough money in Nick Reiner's world to afford Ellen Jackson. But anyway, tell me so.
- [42:54]
D
Yeah, so what she's gonna get our, our favorite mom. She, she'll get a very experienced public defender from, from Santa Barbara. And, and you're right, a lot of public defenders are, are excellent Their, their career. Now, the Santa Barbara is a much smaller office than say, LA would be or Orange county would be, but they still have some really good trialers in there. And they've got a, a fundamentally, you know, frustratingly, oftentimes sort of sympathetic jury pool there in Santa Barbara County. So it, they will have. Another thing is that they will have plenty of resources to properly defend it. So what they will do is they're going to be getting experts in. Now there's, when the, when you go down the mental health track in the state of California, from a defense perspective, they will have the option of what's going. What's known as going 1368, where it's one of the, one of the few times that a defense lawyer has the unilateral power to do what's called declaring a doubt. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see that in this case moving forward where the essentially defense order comes in and says, my client has decompensated. It's a word you hear a lot. My client has decompensated. Now that she's in custody, he's decompensated. And I know I am declaring a doubt about her ability to effectively assist me in preparing her defense. And then what happens? The court will assign two experts to evaluate her mental health. And we've created this, almost this cottage industry in the state of California among psychologists and psychiatrists who will come in and do these evaluations. And typically the prosecution will get to request one and the defense will get to request the other. And I wouldn't be surprised if that happened. And if they, if they both say she's not competent at this stage, they'll send her to a mental facility to establish some sort of medication regime that stabilizes her. And it's, it's kind of a part of, you know, the process is the nice way to put it. A game is maybe a less sympathetic way to describe it, but it's, it's kind of part of the game. And they will, you know, sometimes you'll have criminal defendants that will, you'll, you'll pay the jail will play ping pong back and forth with Patton. State Mental Hospital is a place I think Santa Barbara uses, used to be Camarillo back in the day, but now I think everybody goes to patent for this evaluation. So this is going to be interesting to see. Like the, the, the, the process will play out and the, the downside is it tends to take a while. So for people that are, that are interested in this horrific case, I am certainly one of them. It's. I represent the family of, of a man who was murdered in Dana Point, California by a guy who's mentally ill. However, he decided he was going to go and stab a white man and he got up and he, and he drove and he found this poor guy just riding his bike and stabbed him to death. And it's just horrific, totally random. But that's, I think we're on our third round right now where he is, the defense declares a doubt, they send him the patent, he comes back, some criminal proceedings take place, and then they declare another doubt back to Patton. And that's part of the process in these cases.
- [46:13]
C
Just to use, just to use common parlance, declare a doubt just means not competent, not, not able to assist in his own defense. Can't be here in court. Because a lot of people think, right, competency is the same as insanity, two different things. Competency gets you into the room in front of a judge and a jury, and if you can't even help your lawyer to defend your case, you're not competent. So that's what you mean when you say defend a doubt.
- [46:35]
D
Right, right. And look, it should be that way. Mental illness is, is real. And especially in California, the, with the homeless problem, you know, it's not uncommon at all where you, you've got, you'll have homicides among homeless people committed by a homeless person. And sometimes they're, you know, it's, it's, they'll, they'll murder somebody in, as a part of a drug ripoff or a drug deal where they're just as competent as you or me. But a lot of times you do see these cases where they are, they are, they're nuts. And they will. I, I mean I've, I've had more of those than I can count actually, where some homeless guys murdered some poor innocent person. Because they are the case that, the.
- [47:19]
C
Case that, that stands out to me the most when it comes to competency is Elizabeth Smart's kidnapper and his wife. They were both absolute lunatics. And it took close to 10 years of drug fighting over Drug competence. They were, wanted to inject them with competency. And they fought even that they were incompetent for the longest time until finally I think they lost the battle to be injected with the kinds of drugs that would make them competent. And then ultimately, you know, they, they went ahead with that prosecution. But that was one of the longest competency stories I've ever seen.
- [47:53]
D
Yep. No, and I, I, I've seen cases where it takes 10 years in Orange county, so it can take a very long time. Now we're speculating a little bit. We don't, we don't know exactly what the defense is going to be. So. But I can tell you that that's, that's the road they're going down, almost certainly.
- [48:12]
C
And guess what I'm going to do. I'm going to call you the minute we start hearing that it's now a competency issue. And you and I are going to have a more fulsome conversation about all the strategies and all the shenanigans when it comes to competency, because I think there's a lot of cheating the system there too.
- [48:29]
D
Well, it certainly can be, hopefully. And like I said, look, I like this DA in Santa Barbara wasn't a fan of the last one, to be honest, having dealt with her personally on, on my, on my Golden State killer case. But new guy is he's squared away and they're gonna have a, hopefully a very good prosecutor in their, you know, presenting this and, and yeah, and you know me, Ashley, I love your show. Come on in, Simon. I'll break it all down for you.
- [48:59]
C
So I always appreciate it. Thank you, Matt. I am so thankful when I get a chance to talk with Matt in depth and I will call him back because I just know it and I think you do too. I really sense that they're going to fight competency in this case. I think that's going to be one of the first moves that Ashley Buzzards public defender. I guarantee you she don't have the money for any private fancy lawyer. She's going to go public defender and it will probably be a very good one. And I think one of the first moves will be she's not competent. I, I can't get her to help me help her. That's the big thing. Two prongs. Can you help your attorney in your defense? And do you understand the charges against you? Those are the two questions you have to answer in order to be determined competent to stand trial. I guarantee you that lawyer is going to come forward and say, I Can't get her to help me. I don't know that she understands the charges because she refuses to talk, whatever it is. I think there'll be a competency issue. I may be wrong, but Matt and I will have a conversation when that happens. And then we're going to have lots of conversations all the way along because I can't wait to find out what the strategy is to defend this woman. I have gone through my entire soul searching for a strategy to defend this woman and I can't find one. I had a tough time with Bryan Kohberger, too. I couldn't find a strategy for a defense for him either, other than please don't kill him. And that's ultimately what they ended up doing. Ann Taylor probably decided there's nothing else I've got for Bryan Kohberger. Just please don't kill him. And I have a feeling that with this woman, since death penalty's off the table already, it's just going to be a strategy to somehow get her some parole later in her life. Right, because she's only in her 30s. But they're seeking no parole ever. And I hope if she's guilty, that's what she gets. I'm going to continue to follow this case as it moves forward. I will bring you updates as we get them. Holidays coming to an end, so I'm going to be a little more on the ball with it. But I thank you so much for watching and think, you know, that I'm so appreciative of our community. I can't do this without you. I'm Ashley Banfield. Just remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.