A Conversation with Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland and Chief Public Defender Tim Sledd: Part Two

Summary

Murder Sheet: A Conversation with Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland and Chief Public Defender Tim Sledd: Part Two (August 26, 2025)

---

Overview

In this in-depth, candid episode of Murder Sheet, hosts Anya Cain and Kevin Greenlee sit down with Nicholas McLeland, elected prosecutor of Carroll County, and Tim Sledd, chief public defender of Lawrence County, for the second part of their wide-ranging conversation about the realities of working criminal cases in rural Indiana. Drawing from their years of experience as both prosecutors and defense attorneys, McLeland and Sledd unpack the emotional and ethical toll of their work, the impact on their communities, perspectives on drug addiction and trauma, and the complexities introduced by social media and public scrutiny of high-profile cases.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Pet Peeves and Professional Annoyances in the Courtroom

• Defense Attorney's Annoyances with Prosecutors
  • Tim Sledd laments prosecutors who rush through witness examinations, missing opportunities for the truth.
    • Quote: “Not listening to the responses that their witnesses are giving them. It annoys me when prosecutors rush...Take your time with them.” – Tim Sledd (04:50)
  • Sledd also decries “monsterizing” the defendant, turning a human with mistakes into a caricature in front of a jury.
• Prosecutor's Annoyances with Defense
  • Nicholas McLeland expresses frustration with unprofessionalism, particularly when defense attorneys violate agreed-upon motions or attack him in front of the jury.
    • Quote: “When they just act unprofessional or I make an objection and they talk over me, or they just don't respect the procedure, that really, really, really frustrates me to no end.” – Nicholas McLeland (08:19)

---

Ethics, Duty, and the Tension between Idealism and Pragmatism

• Balancing Duty and Morality
  • McLeland: Needs to be “convinced beyond a reasonable doubt” before charging someone, prioritizing both ethical and moral obligations (10:13).
  • Sledd: Defends those presumed guilty to uphold constitutional rights for all—"protecting those who are actually innocent from the same governmental action." (11:44)
    • Quote: “In defending a person who I know to be guilty, I'm protecting those who are actually innocent from the same governmental action.” – Tim Sledd (11:44)
  • Both stress that true justice means respecting due process, not “winning at all costs.”

---

Community Relations and Life in a Small Town

• Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys in the Community
  • McLeland: Receives mostly positive reactions, but is mindful about encounters with family members of defendants he's prosecuted (19:08).
  • Sledd shares poignant and sometimes tense stories—including a moment when a formerly convicted man sought him out years later, now grateful for a comforting word to his mother.
    • Quote: “He said, ‘I hated you...but she [his mother] told me the nice thing you did and how you cared for her.’” – Tim Sledd (20:13)
  • Both remark on the importance of compassion, whether sending someone to prison or supporting a defendant through a hard process.

---

Emotional Toll and Coping Mechanisms

• Dealing with Trauma
  • Both men describe secondary trauma: the emotional cost of repeated exposure to violence, addiction, and heartbreak in their clients and victims.
  • McLeland: Details the stress of child victim cases—“It's hard to unsee those images” (39:43).
  • Sledd: Candidly discusses his own struggles with nightmares and PTSD after repeated exposure to homicide and autopsies. He speaks openly about therapy and self-awareness as essential tools.
    • Quote: “To be blunt, messed me up big time...Trauma wasn't a word that was being talked about as much then as it is now. But there was a fracture in my character that I didn't think could exist...” – Tim Sledd (41:03)
• Advice for Prospective Lawyers
  • Both recommend experience on either side (public defense or prosecution) for developing courtroom skills, resilience, and perspective.
    • “If you want to be a litigator, then yes, criminal law needs to be where you're at. Cause that's where you're gonna get the most opportunity to be in court and to argue.” – Nicholas McLeland (49:11)
  • Emphasize the importance of support systems and maintaining healthy, pro-social activities to cope: golfing, family time, hobbies (50:29).

---

Drug Addiction and Criminal Justice

• Methamphetamine Pandemic
  • McLeland and Sledd stress that most probation violations are for meth and marijuana—discussing the "one-time use" nature of meth addiction, the near inevitability of relapse, and the difficulty of true rehabilitation under current systems (33:40–35:40).
    • Quote: “It amazes me too, that somebody can use meth one time and then they're addicted...and then they're full blown addiction.” – Nicholas McLeland (33:40)
  • Both express frustration with how the justice system struggles to address the root causes (addiction, mental illness, poverty), and how sentences often destabilize families and fail to achieve rehabilitation.

---

Social Media, Public Perception, and Courtroom Transparency

• Challenges of the Internet Age
  • McLeland voices frustration at misinformation and trial-by-social-media, particularly after high-profile cases like the Delphi murders. The rush to judgment by the public undermines due process, presumption of innocence, and fair trials (52:33).
    • Quote: “Sometimes they want to convict the person before we've even had the initial hearing...The amount of false information that's out there is really, really, really frustrating.” – Nicholas McLeland (52:33)
  • Sledd adds that echo chambers online create warped narratives, fueling division—even among legal professionals consuming different media (54:22).
• Cameras in the Courtroom
  • Both debate the merits and pitfalls of greater transparency, ultimately leaning toward supporting cameras—at least in adult criminal cases—so the public can see proceedings directly, rather than filtered through media or rumor (58:45–63:45).
    • Quote: “If cameras were in the courtroom, then they. You could have seen it for yourself...just watch the tape.” – Nicholas McLeland (63:45)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Professionalism and Ethics
  “I don't ever intentionally violate the rules of evidence...I respect the defendant has a right to a fair trial. And again, I've said this tons of times. It cuts both ways. We do too.” – Nicholas McLeland (08:19)

• On Defense Work
  “Often as a defense lawyer, you are the only person that's going to show care, sincere care to this person in the months that you get to have their case.” – Tim Sledd (22:58)

• On Courtroom Moxie
  “If you're chicken when it comes to getting ready to go in court, you're not worth a whole lot...you're going to back out in a lot of ways that you may not need to.” – Tim Sledd (46:47)

• On Living with Trauma
  “I have a lot of emotion and a lot of care, and I grieve very badly, even for people that I don't know.” – Tim Sledd (44:50)

• On Public Judgement & Transparency
  “Remind everybody that they are presumed innocent. So don't convict them in social media, you know, at the end of the day that's somebody's son, daughter.” – Nicholas McLeland (53:45)

• On Misinformation
  “We live in a world of disinformation, misinformation. It's only going to get worse when all you have to do is provide a nugget of information into a system that then can interpret it and create a whole narrative…” – Tim Sledd (55:58)

---

Timestamps for Significant Topics

• Pet Peeves in Courtrooms: 04:42–09:40
• Duty vs. Morality / Ethics: 09:40–18:11
• Community Reactions: 18:38–24:24
• Secondary Trauma & Coping: 24:24–52:21
• On Drug Addiction & Recidivism: 33:40–39:29
• Impact of Trauma, Personal Stories: 39:29–46:47
• Advice for New Lawyers: 46:47–51:46
• Social Media, Misinformation, and Cameras in the Courtroom: 52:21–66:30

---

Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• The justice system is as emotionally demanding as it is procedurally complex—both for those accused and those tasked with prosecution or defense.
• Real justice requires professional integrity, uncompromising ethics, and deep personal resilience.
• Drug addiction and mental illness remain the great unsolved challenges of local criminal justice.
• Misinformation and online speculation threaten the fairness and privacy of all involved in high-profile cases.
• Cameras in the courtroom may help counteract misinformation, but they are not a complete solution.
• Self-care and support systems are vital for anyone considering a career in the criminal legal system.

---

This episode is especially recommended for listeners interested in the lived experiences of rural legal practitioners, the intersection of law and mental health, and the ripple effects of digital media on justice.

Transcript

[Anya Cain]

The brand Quint has become our go to when it comes to clothing that's classic, well made and high value. Seriously, I'm about to go on another shopping spree there and the big question I have is what pieces are going to make me the happiest as summer winds down?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Quince has good stuff that will last you for years to come. Their items are half the cost of that of their competitors. They pass the savings on to you by cutting out the middlemen. I just recently got their 100% European linen utilities shirt in martini olive. It's just like the kind of shirts I'm used to wearing, only it feels better made, so it's like an elevated version. I love how comfortable the fabric is, how it breathes. What's most important is that Anya likes what the color is doing for my eyes.

[Anya Cain]

I also got a little blue beret because Kevin insists I wear more hats. It's very cute. I love it. I'm also looking at their 100% European linen dresses as well as more cashmere and cotton sweaters starting at $40, not to mention their washable silk tops and denim pants. I can't wait to see the latest selections from Quince and we'll definitely let you all know about what we get next.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Elevate your fall wardrobe essentials with quince. Go to quince.commsheet for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince.commsheet to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.commsheet hey murder sheet listeners, it's Anya.

[Anya Cain]

I wanted to pop in here super quickly and tell you all that we're doing a number of events and book signings around our new book, Shadow of the Bridge. We'd love to meet you, sign the book, say hi to, talk about fish sandwiches, whatever you want to do. I will be including a link in all of our future episodes that goes to our website, which is murdersheetpodcast.com events and that way you can follow along with this and get any links you need to get in order to purchase tickets. Our launch event is going to be on Tuesday, August 26th from 7pm to 9pm we're so excited to be doing an event with Turn the page books and it's going to be taking place at the Christ United Methodist Church in Westfield. This is a ticketed event, so please purchase your tickets. And in addition, we're going to be doing a August 30, 2025 signing from 11:00am to 1:00pm in Delphi, Indiana at the wonderful Buttermilk Biscuit Company. You can also go on our website and check out what events are coming up in the future. We're going to Greenwood, Columbus, Noblesville, Kendallville, Franklin and Carmel, and we'll also be going to Louisville, Kentucky. We're probably going to be doing even more events than what I just listed. Please keep an eye on that events page and you can follow along and we'd love to meet some of you and it would be just delightful. And we' love to sign your book and get to thank you in person for supporting us. Content Warning these episodes contain discussion of murder, drug addiction, mental illness, rape, suicide, the sexual exploitation of children, and the murder of children. They also include some profanity.

[Kevin Greenlee]

It's one thing to cover criminal cases, it's another thing to take them to trial. We recently got the chance to sit down with Nicholas McLeland, the elected prosecutor of Carroll county, and Tim Sled, the chief public defender of Lawrence County.

[Anya Cain]

They both have experience as both prosecutors and defense attorneys. They were kind enough to meet with us and discuss their experiences to go into the toll that working criminal cases can take on attorneys, and they even took some questions from our listeners. This is the second of two parts of our conversation with them. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist and I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney and this is the Murder Sheet.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet and this is a conversation with prosecutor Nicholas McCleland and chief public defender Tim Slett. Part two.

[Nicholas McLeland]

It.

[Kevin Greenlee]

What do prosecutors do most during the trial that annoys you? Can I see this?

[Tim Sled]

Oh my goodness. Not listening. Not listening to the responses that their witnesses are giving them. It annoys me when prosecutors rush. You got the, you got the case, you've got the facts. You've got probably in, in a rural red county, you've got the support of the jurors, your guys and gals with badges that are coming in there are, are protected. Take your time with them. I mean, I loved as a prosecutor in this county, I loved examining law enforcement officers, building them up, talking about their training and experience, listening to them talk about their training experience, highlighting the ways that the training and experience here fits the facts of this case and really, you know, makes them a person that should have been investigating this case and makes their conclusions that the evidence is done, being collected at this given time appropriate. But when you rush through it. Like you're just. You don't want to be in a trial, so you want to get out of the trial as quickly as possible. And you, you say, okay, you went to law enforcement academy this year's and you got trained and you did this sort of thing. Then I get to come up there and be like, well, you, you got trained for a very long time. And didn't they train you in how to write police reports? And didn't they tell you to put every important fact and detail in the police report? And now you're wanting to say it's a red carpet. You didn't call it a red car on your report. You didn't even call it a car. You called it a vehicle. Was it a truck? Was a car. I'm making something up now. But, you know, you get into sort of chipping away at them. And that shouldn't have been fair play for me had, you know this. I'm a trained state trooper, and part of our training as state troopers, we sit on the road and we visually are required to identify speed of passing vehicles. We have to be within five miles an hour of a passing vehicle that's being tested by a gun. And until we're that good, we don't pass that test. So when, then, when you have a vehicle speed case, I saw him pass by. My radar indicated that. How do you know your radar is accurate? Well, I'm also visually trained. Oh, well, crap. I'm not going to get up and chew on him much about the speed of the guy's vehicle if it's a reckless driving case or something like that. So I think that's it. I think rushing. I think it annoys me because then it's like, if you didn't care this much, why are we sitting here? You're in. So let's be here. Let's do this. And not listening to the witnesses, because sometimes the witnesses are telling the prosecutor and the jury what they really want to say. And if it doesn't fit the script, then it doesn't come in and it's just like missed opportunity. I've been blessed that I've never practiced against any prosecutor that trained up the witness to say things that the witness wouldn't have said otherwise. You know, I. That wouldn't just annoy me, that would anger me. But so you, you talk about annoying. It's just rushing things that anger me is just not being reasonable. And, and then, you know, monsterizing. I think I just made up a word like making. Making a monster out of my client, who's just a human who made a mistake and, and really like the theater that goes involved in that, that can get really annoying. But that's just part of it too.

[Anya Cain]

And angers you.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Unprofessionalism. I respect our system, and I believe in our system 100%. And attorneys that act unprofessional when they knowingly and blatantly violate the rules, especially if we have a pretrial hearing to outline a motion limine, and then they blatantly violate it, that makes me angry. When they attack me personally in trial in front of the jury, that makes me angry. You know, I, I, I, I stick to the rules, and I respect the rules, and I don't ever intentionally violate the rules of evidence. I don't ever intentionally bring in 404B evidence. I just, I'm, I'm very respectful of those rules, and I'm that way because I respect the defendant has a right to a fair trial. And again, I've said this tons of times. It cuts both ways. We do too. And so I expect that from the defense attorney not to blatantly violate the rules and not to attack me personally. And so those things, when they just act unprofessional or I make an objection and they, they talk over me, or they just don't respect the procedure, that really, really, really frustrates me to no end. And so that is my biggest complaint. And it doesn't happen often. Most of the attorneys that I work with are professional and they abide by the rules, but occasionally it does, and that angers me just to no end.

[Anya Cain]

One of our listeners had a question about, you know, in terms of defense attorneys and prosecutors, do you ever run into difficulty squaring sort of what your jobs require versus what you believe is right for the case? Should those always be in complete alignment? Is there kind of some gray area? And another person asked something kind of similar about, you know, is it all about winning a case or just getting the best out from outcome of a client versus getting to the truth? I guess kind of getting on the scale of, you know, cynicism to idealism here. But is it different for prosecutors in defense as well?

[Nicholas McLeland]

For me, again, I have to be, I think I have an ethical obligation to be convinced that I have the right defendant. I think that we're obligated morally and ethically to do that. And so I want to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that I have the right person before I charge them. And so that is kind of the meter that I use when I'm charging somebody. And so it's kind of, again, using my personal experience in my life and the way I was raised to, you know, what is right. And so it kind of does cross those lines in that fashion. And so that's what I use to determine whether or not charges are when I think at the end of the day, for the defense and for the state, you're looking for the best outcome for the person you represent. So I represent the state of Indiana. A lot of times I represent in that capacity, I'm representing the victim or the victim's family. What's a good outcome for them as a defense attorney? Yeah, it's not about. I think Tim said it earlier, it's not about just, I want to go to trial on every case. You've got to consider the offer and say, okay, what is my best day in court? What is a good outcome for my client? Now, inevitably, you're going to have a client at some point in your career that's going to say, look, I don't care if you got me all probation. I don't care. I'm not pleading guilty. And you say, what's the defense? And the only defense is, I didn't do it, although the evidence is stacked against them. And you have to have that trial. And it's horrible, and it's miserable because you're sitting there and you're trying to make lemonade out of lemons. But it's difficult. But I think it's always when I'm negotiating a case, I always try to say, what is the best outcome for the state of Indiana? And in most cases, what is the best outcome for the victim? And what's going to protect the community, too? Yeah, it's the.

[Tim Sled]

From the defense side, it's the cocktail question of how can you represent people, you know, who are guilty? You know, like, I mean, when you got 92% of cases resolved by way of plea agreement, then the logic is that, you know, a lot of times you're representing people who you know are guilty. And my favorite answer, best answer for this is that we have the Sixth Amendment right to representation to. And many and most of my friends are what I call conservative. And I say, so what are we trying to conserve? We're trying to conserve our constitutional rights. We have that First Amendment right to freedom of religion and association, people we want to. And freedom of speech. We have the Second Amendment right to bear arms, and we have a Third Amendment right to have nobody quartered in our house by the government. To spy on our neighbors and ourselves. We have the right to not have the government go through our Facebook feeds without a warrant and find out all the things we're writing, messages we're sending. You know, used to be called our papers effects. Now it's our Facebook and social media. You have the 8th amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. You have the fifth amendment right not to be taken into a room and questioned until you finally say the thing that incriminates you and the founders. Those are things we want to conserve. Everybody can agree we want to conserve those things. Well, we gave the sixth amendment right that people who were accused of crimes have a right to a public and speedy trial and a right to be represented by a lawyer. If you are innocent and any one of those rights has been violated, most likely there's not going to be any observation of it or prosecution of it. Because if your fourth amendment right to search and seizure got violated and you don't have any dope in your car, you don't get charged with possession of methamphetamine if you did not have a body in your trunk, but you did have your religious accoutrement in your trunk and your car gets searched and there was no probable cause to search the trunk of your car, your constitutional rights got violated, but there's no crime that's been committed. So you won't get charged and there will be no recourse to the bad government action that occurred. The only time we get to check and balance bad government action in the criminal realm is when the suspect had something that led them to have probable cause to be charged or for a court to believe there was probable cause. So it's just a matter of fact that in defending a person who I know to be guilty, I'm protecting those who are actually innocent from the same governmental action. Now is that easy? No. Is that something that makes you comfortable? No. Do you like winning cases where the that are heinous and ugly and horrible? I mean, you don't want to. You want police to be doing their job better and. Right. And you want the state to be charging with all the evidence that it can to make it a solid and sound case. But sometimes that's not what happened. And the societal good, through our system, through our bill of Rights, through our state constitutional rights to counsel put in this prophylactic so that you and I can drive home and have the opportunity to have Pertle read to us before we consent and have the opportunity to talk to a lawyer before we give consent to search our vehicles, even if we've got nothing in there other than something we don't want a police officer to see. A police officer doesn't necessarily need to see everything you got. And that was really important to our founders. So I often am looking not only at the individual that I'm representing and saying I needed to protect your constitutional rights, but it's also that I need to make sure that the behavior that led to the violation of constitutional rights gets known and corrected so that it doesn't happen again. I won a suppression case. And in the deposition with the law enforcement officer, it was an operating, well intoxicated case. The officer did a bunch of stuff wrong. Field sobriety tests were done wrong. There was, there was just a bunch of stuff. So I did a deposition. And after the deposition was done, I knew I had won. I mean, I just, it had fallen apart. I said, hey. We turned off the camera and I said, hey, this is so you do it right when it matters. In this case, it didn't really matter. This was a, you know, low hanging fruit, not a big deal case. You went a little far. You were actually wrong on when the blood draw and everything came back. You were wrong wrong. But now, you know, you can be angry at me and I'm okay with that. But hopefully I have annoyed you enough that the next time you take these extra steps to make sure that you do it right and that case doesn't get thrown out, that's the hope is that we a protect the innocent and B, correct the behavior so that the government actor doesn't continue to violate the constitutional rights. That's the cocktail question of how I can sleep at night when I represent people I know who are guilty. Now morally I'm not allowed to commit perjury nor suborn perjury in court. And that's how I protect myself from being an immoral defense lawyer who will win at all costs. Because some people say, isn't that your job? Win at all costs? No, my job is to zealously advocate. I have a duty of candor to a court and to a tribunal. I have a duty not to suborn perjury. So am I capable through my skills and training as a lawyer, to get somebody to say something that's not true in trial? Maybe you can cross examine somebody to the point where they just give up and tell you something that's not true. And if I know that what I got them to do was say something that was not true, then I've suborned perjury Ethically, I think I have a problem there, and I think professional rules of conduct, I have a problem there. And I would expect the prosecutor to be very angry at me for a very long time and probably only deal with me in writing from that point forward. So it's hard. And like you said, you do have clients that it doesn't matter what the offer is. They want their trial, they want their day in court. And sometimes you just got to go in there and you got to give them your day in court. You got to make your objections. You have to be effective to give them due process. They are the accused. They have the right to a trial. And so that's, that's how I answer that question. Imagine being on a vacation for a very long time.

[Anya Cain]

Now imagine saving money nightly while you do it. Sounds pretty great, right? With vrbo's long stay discounts, you can.

[Tim Sled]

Stay longer and save more.

[Anya Cain]

Our customers save an average of 10% when they book select properties for a week or longer.

[Tim Sled]

Just in case you needed another reason.

[Anya Cain]

To extend that vacation vacation, book the perfect Summer getaway today with VRBO Private vacation rentals. Your future self will thank you later.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I'm curious. Prosecutors are political animals. Defense attorneys also obviously operate in a community. How are the two of you treated in the community? Do you think they understand and appreciate what you're doing? I was talking to a deputy prosecutor the other day, and he said he went into a restaurant and the person serving him his soda with someone he had prosecuted and incarcerated, he says, oh, my God, I wonder if they spit in my soda. So what is it like? What kind of reactions do you guys supposed to get from the community?

[Nicholas McLeland]

I get a fairly positive reaction. Now that is in the back of my mind when I go to a restaurant and if I see somebody that I prosecuted, it's typically not the person I prosecuted, but one of their family members. And their mom or sister or brother will be a waiter, bartender, or whatever at the restaurant. So it always concerns you if they're going to be angry at you. You know, when I, when I do talk to family members of defendants, I try to say, tell them that, yes, you know, it's bad that he got in trouble or she got in trouble. But this is, and I guess I'll relate it to a drug case, ultimately this may save his or her life. If we can get them help now and rehabilitate them so they're clean. Isn't that what you want as the mother or father of this person? So. But I get a fairly positive reaction. You're always going to have a few members, you know, family members that have prosecuted their loved one. They're just, they. They blame me. It's the state's fault. You're always going to have people that'll do that. But I get a fairly positive, I guess, welcoming from the community. I did as a defense attorney, too. I mean, I. It's a small community. We know everybody. And so my reactions have been fairly positive.

[Tim Sled]

Yeah, I think it. I don't think it. I think it's. It can go both ways. I, as a. As a prosecutor, I had situations where I. One situation where I went into a restaurant with a guy that I had charged, and he was a cook in the back and had no reason to be a server, decided to be a server when we all came in to sit down and eat. And the sweat dripping off of him into our food made it such that I wasn't going to eat it that day anyway. So that happened. But I also had a gentleman that I prosecuted, and he went to prison for operating a vehicle, resulting in. While intoxicating, resulting in death. And he went to prison and he hated me, and he cursed me on his way out of the courtroom, on his way to prison. And the only person sitting in the courtroom as I walked out after that sentencing hearing was his mother. And I sat with his mother for a second and I said, I can't imagine how hard that was. I prayed with her and then never heard Hyde nor Hair again. Well, I left being a prosecutor. I was in private practice in this town for a short minute, and receptionist calls back and says, hey, this gentleman is here to see you. And his name is. And I thought, okay, today's the day I get killed by one of the people that I formally prosecuted. So I walk up front, I walk him back to the conference room, and I sit down. And he won't sit down. He's got his hand out, he wants to shake it. And so I shake his hand and I. And then he sits down and he says, I hated you. I said, I know. He goes, and I called you bad things. I said, I remember. He said, and I sat in my cell and fumed and just festered over how much I didn't like you. He goes, but I was talking to my mom, and she told me the nice thing you did and how you cared for her. And he said, she died last week, and it was just something that made me think I needed to come see you because you gave her comfort while I was away. And I said. I said, I really Appreciate that. And he said, no problem. And I think we both were a little teared up. And he goes, now I need you to help me get my license back. So I did. On the defense side, you know, I have gone into the jail to visit with clients. And in our jail, there's glass, plexiglass or some form of glass windows between the cell blocks. And you walk up and to go into one of the visiting rooms, several of the cell blocks can see you. And I've had former client bang on the window and, and say, hey, sled. You, me, you, me. And that doesn't help build rapport with your next client.

[Anya Cain]

That's awkward.

[Tim Sled]

But. But I've also countless times bumped into somebody and had them come up to me and say, hey, Tim, how you doing? And it's somebody who I've talked to, and they're clean and they're sober and they're doing well and they're proud of themselves and they understand that they ducked a bullet with the deal I got them, and they're. They're happy. And so I, I think a lot of it just comes down to, with. If you're a prosecutor and you're a tyrannical dick, you're going to have a lot of enemies. And if you're a defense lawyer and you're just crappy and you. And you treat everybody badly and, or you treat. Treat them like they're the next thing you got to tackle, the next problem you got to solve, they're going to sense that, and they're not going to find the value. Nick. And the prosecutor's caring comes to the victims, but also treading gently with the defendants and understanding that this is the bed they made, now they're going to lay in it. But, you know, with, with care and compassion, you can, you can, you can send somebody off. And then for defense lawyers, it's. Often as a defense lawyer, you are the only person that's going to show care, sincere care to this person in the months that you get to have their case. I mean, there's going to be people giving them false care as the same people that were encouraging them to use drug, same people that were helping them live whatever life they were living that got them charged. And you can say, I'm going to walk through this process with you and mean it. And if you do, then they feel valued and heard. That's what's important.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Hearing stories like that. Some of the other stories you guys have been telling, I know how much you're invested in the fake dunks how much you're investing in your clients. How do you deal with that kind of pressure?

[Nicholas McLeland]

I don't know. I, you want to get, I, I guess justice for the victims. I, I know it's kind of a company line that a lot of people use, but you do get invested and you live through this trauma with the victims. Because at least when I prep victims, we go over the incident several times and I'll, I practice with them, asking them questions, what happened next? What happened next? And so you have to relive that with them. And especially for me, with children victims, it's extremely difficult. And you do get vested and same thing with the defense attorney. When I was a defense attorney, vested in your client and you, you start to believe in them and, and you do those kind of things. And so you do get vested and it's, it's hard if you don't get things that go your way. It is difficult. It's just hard to lose because you do feel like you didn't do a good enough job. And the hardest thing for me is there's obviously a lot of pressure to win, especially when you have a child victim on a child molest case for a couple reasons. One, you've got a child victim out there and you've got to go to that. If you lose, you've got to go to that victim and the family and say, I'm sorry, I did something wrong or the jury didn't believe the child's statements. And those are hard conversations to have. The other side of that too is if you lose now, you've got a person you think is a child molester back out on the streets and could possibly re victimize the same victim or other victims. And so there is a lot of pressure. I think there's more pressure on the state side to win, to win the case, because you're expected to. You get to bring the case and you get to gather the evidence before you bring the case case and you get to choose that. I felt like when I was a defense attorney, people just expected you not to win. The pressure was more on for the defendant to say, okay, especially when it's a big offense, talking about the murder case that he has, you know, to tell a victim or to tell a defendant, look, if we lose, your minimum is 45 years. And oftentimes, given their age, it is a death sentence, because I think it's 80% on a murder for good time credit. So they're going to spend the majority of that 45. And that's the minimum, the advisory is 55. And so a lot of judges on murder will go above the advisory because it is murder. The nature and circumstances of the offense is an aggravating factor. They will go above that because it's, it's murder. And so it's hard to tell a defendant and there's pressure from the defendant to say, look, if I lose this or if we lose this, you are going to spend your life in prison. And so there's a lot of pressure when it gets to those higher level offenses, or it was for me as a defense attorney, when you get to those higher level offenses for the. Also as a defense attorney, when you get vested in the defendants and they have a family or they have kids, and especially if they're the breadwinner for the family in realizing that if they get sent to prison, this family is going to be in dire straits. And so there is pressure on both sides. I just feel like the pressure, I feel maybe it's self inflicted that I have more pressure to win on the state because I'm expected to win.

[Tim Sled]

It's become clear to me now that I'm the department head and I have five lawyers underneath me that we on the defense side, specifically in the public defense realm, we experience a lot of secondary trauma when our clients get sanctioned, get sentenced, get convicted. If we're doing it right, we're caring. If we're doing it right, we're analyzing the evidence against the burden of proof. If we're doing it right, we're helping people be heard who nobody else really wants to listen to and maybe justly doesn't want to listen to, but they still have a voice that needs to be heard. The law, like he said, a 45 year sentence minimum, and you have to serve the minimum. That's a long time. You start to think what's life expectancy generally? And then what's life expectancy inside the department of Correction? And it's lower, significantly lower. So I mean you're, you're eating up a lot of quality time doing that sentence. And if you believe you had a justification, whether it was heat of passion or self defense or you have, it's not some, you know, just garden variety or heinous, unexplainable sort of murder, but it's, it's sort of a more common killing. And as he and I sit here and we talk, well, there's different grades of homicide. I have to tell juries that all the time because most people think when one human kills another human, it's murder. Well, there's a, there's a spectrum of homicide, right? And so you have accidents are homicide. A car accident is a homicide. You have suicide is a homicide. You have reckless behavior. That's a homicide. You have all the way up to murder, intentional and knowing. But when our clients are getting sentenced and they're going away and there's a, there's a grief that happens there, and how do you deal with it? You better have a cohort of people around you that you can have walk with you to say you did everything you could. That helps. You may need mental health professionals involved that can, that can measure your, your. How are you handling the stress and the grief that comes along with that. If you haven't already had that sort of training and conditioning. You know, IPAC for prosecutors has a, has wonderful resources and training on, you know, especially with prosecutors that are devoted to sex crimes. Like, they have to be finger on the pulse with those people all the time because the high rate of drug and alcohol abuse, high rate of divorce. I mean, all, all the, all the bad stuff that can happen. Prosecutors in that realm. When I went to the, when I was a prosecutor, I went to the national center for Missing Exploited Children and got trained in Internet crimes against children when the Internet was still a baby. And they told us what was coming, and they also told us, here's what you got to do to take care of yourself. And, you know, I was a young little buck and thought, oh, this is no big deal. You know, you get a couple, you get a couple Internet crimes against children cases under your belt, and you start to realize there's a lot of evil out there, and you start to get depressed and you start to realize we're never going to even slice away at the perversion that exists in the dark world. And prosecutors bear that weight because guess what? He's the tip of the spear in his county for making sure that stuff doesn't happen there. So there's that stress then on the defense side. You know, you get an addict who just can't beat their meth addiction, and the court is done with them, and they're going to go to DOC for three to five years. And you know that. I know that in DOC they can get just as many drugs as they can get on the street. They've got to want recovery, but then they also have to want recovery in a place where recovery isn't, you know, celebrated. It's very hard. So you're putting them on a three to five year pause, and then they're going to come back in the community that harder to employ. And, and you, you've come to, in a sense, love the person because you know that they're what kind of a human they are underneath their illness. And our. It's not Nick's fault, it's not the judge's fault that our system is in a sentencing code is the way it is. We don't have substance abuse sentences. We do have drug courts, and they do what they can do. But, you know, as far as real rehabilitation, we're loathfully delayed in figuring out how to address what is a pandemic. He's talking about it in Carroll county forever. I would say of all my people in jail, you could classify them as either having methamphetamine, mental illness, or both. Right now I have one guy over there that doesn't fit that category, so I can't say that right now. But meth, mental health, or both. And it's rampant, it's insidious, it's rampant. If anybody in your listening population has a loved one that is affected by it, I would ask them to look into how the brain heals to understand that this is a long walk. I've heard data that says somewhere between 12 and 18 months of abstinence before you get all the right chemicals balanced back in your brain. So somebody being clean for a month or three months is wonderful. But. But keep them close, keep them in recovery, keep them pushing forward, because it's going to take a long time for the brain to heal. And these are often good people, often hard working people. I mean, around here we have quarries. The Empire State Building was built out of limestone from Bedford, Indiana. The Pentagon was made out of limestone from Bedford, Indiana. Indianapolis is a lot of Bedford limestone. And we still have stone quarries. And it's a hard job to lift stone, to cut stone, to carve stone. And these are good, hard working people that work good, hard working hours. And a little bump here or there can often get people through that job. But then they end up addicted. They end up getting arrested for a dime bag. And then, you know, the next thing you know, they're now, they're now their system involved. And, you know, it can, it can spin out of control. You can take somebody that is a breadwinner and their addiction and their criminal involvement then spirals them into, you know, a prison sentence and poverty.

[Nicholas McLeland]

It amazes me too, that somebody can use meth one time and then they're addicted. I mean, we've heard the story. I know Tim has, I have. You Know, I just tried it once with friends and then I tried it again and then they're addicted. It's so quick. And again, I would say 80 to 90% of our probation violations are failed screens for meth. And typically it's meth and thc. I don't know why those two go together, but typically our probation violations, it's a failed screen for meth and thc, marijuana. And so, and that's, you know, if we give someone a plea up front of all probation, a level five felony, three years suspended on the condition you comply with three years of probation, they don't go to prison at the onset. Right. We give them an opportunity on probation. The way they end up going to prison is because they fa. They violate probation. And typically it's by failed screens. Now, in our county and in most counties, if you fail a screen once, typically probation will work with you because we all understand, we've all been to the seminars, that relapse is part of rehabilitation. It's just a fact that it is. And so we will try to work with them. But at some point, Tim's right, the courts, you know, if you have six probation violations, all for failed screens for meth, and you're on probation for meth, the court at some point is going to say, okay, you're going to go do a sentence and you know, you failed probation, you're going to do some time in jail. Tim's right. When they get out, sometimes they do rehabilitation in jail. Sometimes they just sit and do their time. It kind of depends on the length.

[Tim Sled]

Of time they have.

[Nicholas McLeland]

But they're no better when they get out because they've had no rehabilitation. And then you've got nobody to supervise them when they get out. They're hard to employ. Oftentimes they go back to their addiction because it's a comfort place for them. And oftentimes they'll go to be petty dealers. They'll deal a little bit to their friend because their supplier will give them their next high if they deal a little bit. And so it just, it's kind of, it's kind of a snowball effect. But it just amazes me. I've heard tons of stories where people just use it one time and then they're full blown addiction.

[Tim Sled]

Yeah, the. I think the seminar that I went to that was talking about. Because the society and especially the justice system has to just be wondering why? Because by the time we're interacting with them, you're looking often at people that are emaciated, poc, faced Toothless, you know, and you're just like, why? When you can look back three years and you're looking at an attractive human being or a person who was, you know, didn't tattoo their face and, and all of these different things and the way it was explained to me, and I'm sure there, I can be corrected on this, but there are essentially a few chemicals in your brain that, that matter. You got adrenaline, you got dopamine, you got norepinephrine, and you got serotonin. Those are all feel good chemicals that serve different functions in our body. Serotonin helps you get sleepy. Adrenaline helps you get amped up to fight or flight. Dopamine covers pain. Well, different things that happen in life cause us to dump little bits of those chemicals at a time. A sneeze feels really good. You're getting a little bit of those chemicals, and orgasm feels even better than that. You're getting a little bit of those chemicals. It's true. I mean, this is what I was taught. You go to a wedding and it's moving. You go to a funeral and it's moving, and you're getting these chemicals that dump out. Well, I've heard methamphetamine and heroin, they both have the process of dumping all of those chemicals at once. And so I can't imagine, never have done it, can't imagine, don't want to do it. But that and then chasing, that would be amazing. Right? But the problem is it takes a long time to get that bath back. 18 months or is what I've been told. So, you know, and it is so that I can see how that could be very addicting, especially if you're in a state where, you know, things are hard, things suck, you're going through poverty. And here's something that's very cheap that can take you to euphoria. You know, some people, some people, it. It impacts differently. I've had other. I've had clients tell me that they don't get that, but what they get is they get clarity. You know, it's like I've heard people with ADHD who are adults with ADHD say, you know, they don't have the money to go to a doctor, but when they take their methamphetamine, they can work, they can do everything, they can function.

[Nicholas McLeland]

And I don't know if this is true, but somebody told me a story that the Nazis used it in World War II to give their troops so they could march all the way across Italy of days on end without sleeping.

[Tim Sled]

That's Right. And therein lies several criminal problems. I prosecuted two people for killing a baby when I was a prosecutor and they had been awake 25 days. They didn't know what in the world was going on. They didn't know what they were. I've been awake the most I've been awake that I can remember was like 25 hours. And that was came to work, went home, picked my kids up and drove to the northern boundary waters. Up at the end of the Gunflint trail. By the end of the Gunflint Trail. When I was up there, I was seeing things cross the road that weren't there that was sober sleep deprivation, like no intoxication whatsoever. And you know, so I can't imagine what another two days would be. On top of that, you know, you get a couple hours of sleep and you still feel sleep deprived and things aren't tracking well at 25 days of non sleep and homicide occurs. And you know, we, we only found that out at sentencing of the mother because I asked the question, how long had you guys been awake? It was 25 or 23 is some number up there, but it was sickening. But that, but yeah, that. I mean I. I've heard the same thing about it.

[Nicholas McLeland]

I don't know if that's true. I may be one of those.

[Tim Sled]

I think it's true.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Okay, all right, I've heard it. And that's how it came to be prevalent over there and then. Yeah, I mean I've had a lot of defense clients say that, you know, I don't get to high, but it keeps me up and I can get all my work done and I could work on end and you know, clean the whole house or do whatever. And so I've heard that too.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I'm struck. Do you guys spend your professional lives dealing with things like drug addiction, murder, child molest, shaken baby? How does seeing all of this stuff day in and day out, how has it changed you?

[Nicholas McLeland]

It's gotten harder for me and it's hard to for. It's becoming harder for me to forget. So he brought up the child porn case. I have one now and I've had a couple recently. And it's hard to unsee those images. I tend to not look at the images until I absolutely know that we have to go to trial. But I've had a couple cases where you've got to look at the images and it's just, it's hard to forget those. It's hard to see. It's hard for me to forget autopsy photos. It's hard for me to forget murder scene photos and crime scene photos. And so it's getting harder for me to kind of forget. I think a lot of that is because I have young children now. And so the child victim cases are becoming harder for me to kind of forget and to let go of afterwards. But he's right. I mean, it is stressful. We, as prosecutors and defense attorneys, we see some of the most horrible things ever. And typically if you're dealing, you're seeing me or you're seeing him, it's oftentimes because you had the worst day of your life. And so it's very difficult. And it gets hard because you do get emotionally attached. And that's why, you know, IPAC has those resources and Defense Bar has something like that too. I can't. I thought the public defender's office had something like that, but it is. It's difficult to forget those things, especially the traumatic cases, because it's just hard to forget those things.

[Tim Sled]

So to be blunt, messed me up big time. Go back to Delphi. I grew up in a town of 3,500 people. My parents never locked the door. I rode my bicycle around that town non stop shoot. Did all. I mean literally had the Leave it to Beaver. I've never even watched the show Lifestyle of safety.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Leave your keys in the car.

[Tim Sled]

Leave your keys in the car.

[Nicholas McLeland]

My grandparents and my parents, they never took the keys in ignition all the time.

[Tim Sled]

Went to a school where I knew everybody in my class, my grade knew their middle names. At graduation, I could. I could tell you the middle names of just about everybody in my graduating class. Had the opportunity to be a captain of a wrestling team, be four year varsity on a wrestling team. Got to be president of my class and part of the National Honor Society. Got to do all of these things. Completely set up to be this able to succeed because of the. Where I grew up. Go to undergrad, knock it out of the park, have a lot of fun, do all kinds of crazy stuff, go to law school. First person in my family to go to law school. I'm setting myself on this course of type A masculine. I can do it all superhero Tim in my own brain. This is my own character that I created and was doing fine. Became the chief deputy prosecutor. And in this county, the policy was you had a prosecutor at every suspicious death because there was concern about law enforcement stepping over warrant lines and doing all of that stuff. At the time I started the elected at the time needed a break from doing that. So guess who got to do it. And guess who volunteered and happily went to 13 different homicide scenes, 13 different autopsies and murder cases, a number of other suspicious death autopsies in person. And then, you know, things you can't unsee, things you can't unhear. And there was one particular one that ended up really impacting me. And I thought I was tough, thought I could handle it. And about, you know, after having nightmare after nightmare and waking up and being in that crime scene over and over again, I was at the post office one day and a car pulls in, and it has an in memoriam sticker to the victim of that case. And I just started bawling. And I knew right then something was wrong. Like I had trauma. Trauma wasn't a word that was being talked about as much then as it is now. But there was a fracture in my character that I didn't think could exist because I thought I was impermeable. Fortunately, unfortunately, the marital relationship I was in at that time was strained and tense, and I was not present and not being a good husband in a lot of ways. And that happened all together. And so, because there was a temporary breakup at that point, I got to seek mental health and counseling and therapy, and I got to learn a lot about trauma and how it was impacting me and what post traumatic stress means. You don't have to be a soldier. You don't have to be a law enforcement officer. You can be somebody that can have this happen in other ways. And that was really, really important. But it changed my life from that year until today. You know, on how I manage sort of what I've seen, and I'm. I'll tell you right now, I don't think I could go back to the prosecutor side as a chief deputy prosecutor or an elected prosecutor for just the fact of. If I have to view it as a digital file on my computer, I can keep it a small thumbnail. But when you have to go to the scene and you have to, you know, you have to go to the autopsy, or you have to, you know, witness the aftermath in order to answer some questions, I'm done with that. As far as me and my personal life, I know who I am, and I've experienced enough of those cracks that I don't want any more of them. I know for a fact I could not be a law enforcement officer, a firefighter, an emt. I love those people for the fact that they can do that work and for prosecutors who can dedicate their life to doing it. But I tried my hardest And I thought I could because of my upbringing and my molding of myself to be something, when, in fact, when you look at who I really am. My mother was a children's librarian, and my dad was a. An introverted carpenter who makes furniture. And neither of them are hardened, you know, sort of fisticuff style people that I chose to sort of model and mowed my body and mind into. And so when I got met with that, in reality, it was something that. It caused a severe identification for me of, ooh, that's really not me. I'm not Timmy tough guy. I have a lot of emotion and a lot of care, and I grieve very badly, even for people that I don't know. Sorry. Kind of went in a cob.

[Anya Cain]

No, it's really important to say that, and I'm so glad, and thank you for being so vulnerable with just, you know, secondary trauma is very real. Secondary, you know, PTSD and whatnot is. Is something that I imagine a lot of people in both of your positions go through. And so talking about it, I think, is really helpful for destigmatizing it and letting people know, like, hey, you know, this. This. Talking about it is probably a good first step, but I guess, would you recommend someone go into public defense or prosecution or what advice would you give them to maybe kind of be aware, like, be kind of checking out for some of those red flags about this might be getting kind of hard.

[Tim Sled]

Yeah. Two. Two questions there. You asked, would I recommend somebody to go into public defense or prosecution out of law school? 100%. 100%. This is where you're going to get your repetitions, your licks, your exposure to the rules of evidence. When you were a kindergartener, you were learning how to tie your shoes. It took every bit of your mental acuity to cross the laces and push one through and pull them down and make a rabbit ear and circle the rabbit ear and shove it through to make your bow for your knot. But I can imagine if you tied your shoes today, you wouldn't even think about it because of the number of repetitions that you've put in of that motor skill. Right. Arguing in court, knowing the rules of evidence are very similar. The more repetitions you have at it, the easier it becomes. The slicker you can be. The more savvy you can be, the more anticipatory you can be to adversarial arguments. And I think no matter what, what level of law you want to practice, if you have courtroom moxie, you're much more Valuable. If you're chicken when it comes to getting ready to go in court, you're not worth a whole lot. You're going to end up, you're going to posture different, differently in mediation. You're going to, you know, you're going to back out in a lot of ways that you may not need to. So I definitely, I think either side, deputy prosecutor, deputy public defender, I would encourage law students to look into and push toward that. With that comes the. There are so many stresses and strains on deputy prosecutors, elected prosecutors, but prosecutors, public defenders, defense lawyers that do public defense work because of volume, because of workload, because of pay differential, because of secondary trauma. But I think law in general, I mean, unless you're doing adoption law, you're probably not having a whole lot of celebratory hearings. Even the good days aren't really that good. So, you know, you're going to have to deal with the fact that you've chosen a profession of dealing with problems and struggles. You got to keep an eye on how that's impacting you. And I, I often tell the law student interns that I've got and even young lawyers, I'm just like, pay attention to your relationships. That's how you're really going to know those are the most important things in your life, are your relationships. If your relationships are in the tank right now and you can point to your work as being part of the problem, that's correctable. But you got to be tender to it, and hopefully you can pick up on those problems before they blow everything out of the water.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Yeah, for me, I, I, I think just because my own personal experience, I, I would recommend going to the defense side first and then going the prosecutor. I think it's made me a better prosecutor. That's just my own personal experience, because that's the route that I took. But I, I agree with Tim. I, you know, I think it depends what kind of law you want to practice. If you want to be a litigator, then, yes, criminal law needs to be where you're at. Cause that's where you're gonna get the most opportunity to be in court and to argue. And, and Tim will tell you this, things happen at a thousand miles an hour when you're in court. And so the better you can be at the rules of evidence, the better you can be at making objections. Because you're watching the jury, you're watching the witness, you're watching the judge, you're listening to the person ask questions, you're listening to the witness. Answer those and it happens fast. And he's right. Practice makes perfect. The more repetitions, the better you're going to be. It's like anything. If you want to do it well, you have to do it a lot. I would recommend the defense side in terms of dealing with the stress. I mean, the way you got to know yourself, like Tim said and you got to know, okay, there's a problem. The way I balance it is you got to try to have healthy, proactive or pro social activities. I like golf, so I golf a lot with my friends. I'm in a golf league. We golf every Thursday. It's something where you put the phone down, you don't worry about work for the two hour period.

[Tim Sled]

Period.

[Nicholas McLeland]

I like to ride four wheelers. I like to ride four wheeler with my kids. I enjoy seeing their happiness. I enjoy seeing the excitement on their face. I like doing stuff with them. I took them to the amusement park last week and ride roller coasters. I like doing that. But I put the phone away and when I'm with them, that is my time with them. I missed a lot of time with them last year because of the trial. So this year I dedicated myself to, okay, I'm going to spend more time with them if I don't have court and I can handle stuff, stuff from home during the summer when they're out of school that I'm going to spend the day with them and we're going to go do something fun. So I think you have to find, you have to balance. If you get sucked into where you're only working and that's your only pro social activity is to go into work, then you're going to fall in that trap where you're going to get overwhelmed and you've got to find, and I'm not saying a pro social activities. Go out and get, you know, binge drink with your buddies. It's got to be something that's healthy. Everything in moderation is as they say. But it's got to be something healthy. And I, you know, like I said, I like riding four wheels or side by sides with my kids. I like golf, I like being outdoor with the kids. I like swimming with them. My kids love soccer, so we have a couple soccer goals. I love playing soccer with them. Anything you can do. I love spending time with family. You know, I think when you lose a close family member, your time with the other family members becomes more valuable.

[Tim Sled]

Absolutely.

[Nicholas McLeland]

So I love spending time with family and just those pro social things. I think if you balance that, it Makes it easier to deal with. You're still going to have that PTSD and you're still, like Tim said, I, you know, you get these, these images you can't get out of your head. You just can't. I am not able to separate live action from a picture. Like, it's the same for me. And so it's very difficult for me to even view the images. It's hard for me to forget about them. But I find that if I do these pro social things, it helps me mitigate, I guess, the damage that it does and helps me cope with it.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, that was amazing. Was there anything we didn't ask you both about? I'm sure there's like, I could hear you guys talk for hours, but is there anything thing we didn't ask you about that you think it's really important for people to understand about any of this?

[Nicholas McLeland]

This is off topic and we didn't talk about it. But the thing that I have seen a trend in that's frustrating for me is just the way that the public, when a case is filed, the. You have social media and you have the public and you have these youtubers and, and podcasters and it's becoming, it seems like there's always a case in the news where you've got podcasts. It seems like the public almost doesn't respect the process. And we want to. Sometimes they want to convict the person before we've even had the initial hearing. Sometimes they want to blame the state, they got the wrong person. And so it's frustrating to see that and not be able to just go into court and say, okay, look, everybody's going to have their day in court if they want it, let's try the case in court, not in the public. And so that's something, I guess, take away. Know I believe in the system. Don't make a judgment until you've heard everything. I, I guess and don't. And the amount of false information that's out there is really, really, really frustrating. And so that's been a big frustration. I think a lot of it is because the Abby and Libby case and all the, the stress that we dealt with in terms of social media and just the leaks that we had and all that stuff. And so that's fresh in my mind still. And so it's just a frustration that I have with. I, I agree the public is entitled to information, but not at the cost of having a fair trial for the state. Trial for the state and for the defendant. And so that's been a Frustration, just remind everybody that they are presumed innocent. So don't convict them. In social media, you know, at the end of the day that's somebody's son, daughter. In victim driven cases. A lot of the. The social media would like to victim shame the victim. You know, that's equally as inappropriate in my mind. And so that's just been a frustration of mine. But again, I think it's because of the case we had last year and it's just so fresh in my mind still.

[Tim Sled]

Yeah, voyeurism used to be a crime. And then we had, I think I forget late 80s. We had MTV, come up with the Real World and it became a Thursday night sort of something people would watch. And now we've gotten into a minute to minute availability of information where people think they're actually looking at facts and looking at the whole picture when all they're getting is often echo chamber because of algorithms. And when the Abby and Livy case was going on, there was contrast within my office over what people thought about different things. Right. I had perspective. Another lawyer in my office had a different perspective. And we would have debates, but our YouTube feeds and our podcast feeds were disparate. Like I'm getting fed one one system and perspective of the case. This other lawyer was getting another perspective. And those are worlds that two people live in that are completely different. And neither one of them was actually knowing what Nick had in his chest of evidence and what the defense had in their chest of evidence and defense. And we didn't get to see it till the trial. It's like with the whole coburger situation, you know, all the people saying why in the world would anyone ever sign up for four life sentences consecutive with no appeal? And I was like, we don't know what the evidence. Oh yeah, we do. The prosecutor stood up and read that. Well, if that was it, then we probably wouldn't have the deal we've got. There's more to it.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Hold back.

[Tim Sled]

But we're. And I'm guilty. Don't live in a glass house. If you're throwing stones about wanting this voyeuristic information and wanting to know everything. You know, when, when, when the case was going down and, and, and in Delphi and there was arrest, Nick and I texted one time. Time. And then I left him alone. You don't know how many. You don't know how many times I wanted to text him throughout the after, after the Allen arrest that I wanted to text him and just pick his brain. But that's not my lane. Not My wheelhouse. Nothing he would have ever needed to tell me would have been good to come from that. So I left him alone. Plus the appearance that, you know, hey, I'm a chief public defender and how's that going to shake out? But, you know, I, you know, I, I wanted to know what in the hell are you thinking sometimes? And I wanted to know, go do this on another, you know, but it was, it's. I'm guilty of that, wanting to know all of that, but it's just not. It's, it's. We, we are, we live in a, a world of disinformation, misinformation. It's only going to get worse when all you have to do is provide a nugget of information into a system that then can interpret it and create a whole narrative out of that compared. And you get a bunch of those and AI, what is true and what isn't true. And then people get fed their echo chamber and sound. And we're going to have to work with that in the next five or 10 years in a very big way. I do think a lot of the frustration that Nick was talking about has come from the change in our moral fabric. From being people that say, what happens in my house is fine and what happens in your house is fine, to I want to know what's going on everywhere else, but I don't want anybody to know what's going on over here. And it's, it's just, hang on. Especially when, when the government is involved in making the accusation, the victim deserves to be protected with privacy. In that process, there's like a time stamp that begins, once that's formal, it should be, the victim is safe, the defendant is protected with and cloaked with the presumption of innocence that should be honored. He's prohibited from doing certain things and saying certain things. The defense lawyers are prohibited from saying certain things. And so to draw them, to try to draw information out is just violative of both the, the victims in a case and the defendant, the accused in a case. And ultimately then if they get convicted, the convicted in the case. And even after all of that, those people have to build the rest of their life in one way, shape or form, whether it's off to be an in mate or off to freedom. And then the victims have to continue with their grieving and healing.

[Nicholas McLeland]

But both the victims and defendants, they have families, and the families are equally affected by the defendant's actions and what happens to the victim. And so, you know, the public's got to think about that. This is somebody's son, daughter, brother, sister, mother, or father. You know, it brings up the interesting question, which I think I've talked to Kevin Anya about, about cameras in the courtroom. I was adamantly against it at the beginning of the Abby Levy trial. I just thought it would cause a lot of extra hoopla. I was worried about audience members standing up and yelling to try to get, you know, 15 minutes of fame. I was worried about protecting the identity of the jurors, because during jury selection, we had people following jurors out, taping them, recording, offering to sell their biographical information. And so it just got really, really nutty. But then, you know, the aftermath, you. You see people leave the courtroom, and you can have 10 people in the courtroom, and all of them give a different story. And so you kind of. I kind of been weighing that in my mind. Well, if cameras were in the courtroom, then they. You could have seen it for yourself. But it's just. It's a question that I struggle with. And we may be in Indiana going towards cameras in the courtrooms. I know there's a few pilot courts now that have it, but I don't know. I'd be interested in your take. I. I go back and forth because of all the misinformation that out.

[Tim Sled]

So I am. I am a proponent of cameras in the courtroom. I just feel that, save for certain cases.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Sure.

[Tim Sled]

Chin's cases, juvenile cases, I think there are some that you can. You can sort of say, yeah, I.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Mainly focus on adult criminal cases.

[Tim Sled]

Right. Adult. Adult criminal cases. I. I think that there's just. There's more good than harm, because then you. You literally can say, play the tape.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Sure.

[Tim Sled]

And. And that can be. That can be your answer versus pointing to that person and their interpretation, which their interpretation may be based upon the way they heard and the. And the conjecture, the eyebrow they can do. They can be reading in all kinds of things that give them their interpretation. So then if you call them a liar or say that they're wrong, well, they're never going to believe you because they saw the eyebrow. But if you just tell the person who's asking the question, you watch it.

[Nicholas McLeland]

And that's where I find myself today. I wish I could say, here it is. That is not what happened. Watch the tape. You know, Know. So I was against it at first, but I'm kind of coming around to, I guess your side to say it would be a heck of a lot easier just to say, play the tape.

[Tim Sled]

Yeah. The other reason that I'm pro camera is because we are never going to get away from having the voyeuristic community. So let them watch. They want to. They want to see what this looks like. They want to see how this goes. They want to hear, you know, they want to hear how a judge. Judge gets, postulates and gets to their sentence in an open sentencing plea. If they want to hear how well the state does, let's just let them watch it versus some ragtag person comes in and gives their point. It goes out there because I never opine on my cases win, lose, or draw in the media afterward as a defense. Why? Because I believe my clients deserve win, lose, or draw for this, to have as little hoopla as possible. If they're guilty, they just need to sit in it and they're going to face their consequences. If they're not guilty, there's no real victory in having another headline that attaches them to whatever. I mean, I got a not guilty verdict in 2023 and no press releases about it. If you googled that guy's name, you would never find out that he was. He was acquitted. The press didn't come and write about it, nor did I release a statement. Every single one of my clients that have been convicted, there's been a press release about it. But if I were to give the tit for the tat on that, then there would be another headline, and it's another search engine optimization on that name that doesn't need to be there. But you get people that say, I don't know how in the world you could lose that case, or, I don't know how in the world you won that case. It'd be just so much better to say, say, well, the Supreme Court has the feed right there. Go hit play and watch it for yourself. So I do understand, and this is something he raised up that I never even thought of, because it's never been a situation in a case that I've had somebody trying to get 15 minutes of fame in the gallery. And then I'm thinking about, oh, on the cases that I do watch on YouTube or on Court TV, whatever it is, how do they keep that from being something that happens? And I would imagine the judges are going to have this whole new function of also being courtroom producer and managing.

[Nicholas McLeland]

And we had that. I mean, we had a couple people step up and say, you know, we can't hear. We can't. And the judge had to, you know, kind of wrangle them in. I mean, just the hoopla around the case was so much that it was A real concern of mine that, okay, you know, something was going to happen. And so I was just concerned. But, you know, I'm starting to lean more towards your, I guess, mindset because now that it's over and people say, oh, this happened, that happened. Just watch the tape.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah.

[Nicholas McLeland]

It would be so much easier for.

[Tim Sled]

Me to say that during COVID Indiana had many of the courtrooms, you could, you could get into the live feed. I loved that from a practitioner standpoint because I was in private practice at that point in time, practicing all over, mostly the southern half of the state. If I wanted to know how a judge was, I would plug in. I mean, so there's a legal education reason why, you know, that's great. You find out that one of your contemporaries is going to go try a case and you want to see how they try it, or you hear about a prosecutor trying a case, you want to see how they try it. You, you know, I think that that's a, you know, a great educational tool as well. I, I just don't see any reason to hide, hide the courtrooms from the public. And since the public now, no, no longer has to be butts in the gallery to, to view it, you know, why not, why not make it open access when it's really not that difficult? It's not that costly and not that difficult there. I mean, they just passed the legislation that all governmental meetings in the state of Indiana have to be live streamed. That's glorious. I mean, that's fantastic. I mean the county commissioners, county council meetings that I have to go to and speak to now the community is going to know what was really said and what my budget really is and all of those things because it's there and it'll be. And so it's not going to be that much more difficult to plug the courtrooms into it. But there are the, just like with anything else, there are the hang ups, there are the potential pitfalls.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, it's funny that you guys have become more optimistic on that because I think we went from being very much like, of course you'd have cameras in the courtrooms to still supporting cameras in the courtrooms, fundamentally, but seeing a lot of drawbacks because, you know, when you look on YouTube and TikTok, I mean, plenty of cases that have all the sunlight on them and people are still just being like, well, you know, he smirked a little bit so he must be guilty or like, oh, this prosecutor sucks, I hate him and like, let's stalk his family.

[Kevin Greenlee]

So it was so frustrating. The Abby And Libby trial because we, we were there every day and we saw what was happening and it was what was being reported.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Exactly. I felt like we were frustrated.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, we were like in the Twilight Zone. Because we'd be like, hey, guys, here's what we think. And everyone be like, you think that? And we'd be like, are we losing our minds?

[Nicholas McLeland]

Well, and I think a lot of offices was like Tim's, where you'd have two people in the same office and they'd have completely different views about what was going on. I mean, I respect Tim a ton for texting me once and leaving me alone, because there were a ton of people that didn't do that, and it's very difficult. And, you know, my family was one of those people, you know, what, what, what's going on? You know, and it's, I mean, Tim probably gets this too. It's just, you know, and so it's hard to kind of fight those people off. So I really respect Tim for kind of leaving me alone and letting me do what I had to do and of course, and get it done.

[Tim Sled]

The other thing is there cameras aren't a panacea. I mean, look at the Richard Murdoch case. I mean, there were cameras all over that courtroom. Everybody you could see everybody. You could see the audience, you could see him, you could see the witnesses. And then. And from what I can gather from how little I track it anymore, there was a clerk back there smoking cigarettes with the jurors and maybe talking to him about the case. I mean, you're not gonna, you and I. And I don't know whether that's true or not. I don't mean to pass aspersions onto her, but that, I think that's an issue. And so they're not gonna solve everything. But I do think that there's transparency to it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

But my audio cut out here. But I was asking about how people were saying we were biased for criticizing the defense. For instance, we were unimpressed with Andrew Baldwin's performance in his opening statement. We were noting, some felt that the court transcript backed up our analysis. We were being really biased. And now I was seeing comments online on social media saying, my God, this opening statement is really rambling. And he apologizes and he goes on for another five pages. So even though there was no cameras, at least there's some information given getting out there that people, if they want to take the time. And of course, I understand there's a book coming out about the cases.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Yes.

[Anya Cain]

What was that? Geez, I, I, yeah, I I. It's one of those things where, you know, it. It is something where I think people should just be aware too that in cases you can have creators or journalists or mainstream media, new media, trying their best, but it's just best to get a lot of different information and, and really just kind of often if you can go to the original source, which is the court, you know, transcripts, filings, things like that, that's going to help you make up your own mind. So you're not just getting it from somebody who might have a, an agenda.

[Nicholas McLeland]

I think it's Brett now should always say, you know, don't, you know, you can absorb this information but kind of trust, but verify. Right. And don't make a judgment based on, you know, what somebody on YouTube says. You've got to consider it from where it's coming from and all those kind of things.

[Tim Sled]

And so, yeah, awesome.

[Anya Cain]

Well, guys, thank you so much. Was there anything else you wanted to ask him? I think we got it. You guys were amazing. So thank you so much for join. We really appreciate it.

[Nicholas McLeland]

Not a problem. Thank you for having us.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Thanks so much to Nick and Tim. We really appreciate both of them.

[Anya Cain]

Absolutely. Thank you guys so much and thanks everyone for listening.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email [e-mail] if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[Anya Cain]

If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support. Support.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the [e-mail] if you're looking to talk with.

[Anya Cain]

Other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You know, Anya, we are in this true crime space. It's such a difficult place to be in sometimes and one of the reasons is because you're talking about cases that people have a real emotional involvement in. And so if you reach a conclusion that some people don't like online, they're going to, like, start attacking you and even threatening you.

[Anya Cain]

Yes.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And I know when that first started happening to us, it was really, really unsettling and difficult. And I know one thing that really helped us feel better and safer to continue on with the show was SimpliSafe.

[Anya Cain]

SimpliSafe has been a company we've trusted for years. We've used them for years to protect our home. And one of the reasons is they just give us that peace of mind. As Kevin said, we're no strangers to controversy. And sometimes that can mean getting threats or getting basically hit veiled threats where people say they're going to come hurt you because they disagree with what you're saying about a case. And so with SimpliSave, we're able to kind of keep the murder sheet train chugging along and not worry about that too much because we know that they are so proactive about how they keep homes secure. This is a company, I mean, their new active guard outdoor protection, that's there to stop break ins before they happen. They're not just letting you know about, oh, this bad thing happened. They're trying to prevent it from even happening, happening so you don't have to go through that trauma. They have live monitoring agents on hand 247 to possibly detect suspicious activity around the property. They have cameras. And also, one thing I like about them is they're flexible. They know that different people have different needs. They know that if you're a renter, you can't necessarily set up the same amount of equipment and it can't be on the walls permanently as you could do if you're a homeowner. So they're great for renters, they're great for homeowners. No contracts, no hidden features, fees. Visit simplisafe.commsheet to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplisafe.com msheet there's no safe like SimpliSafe. We're obsessed with our quince pieces. Is that fair to say?

[Kevin Greenlee]

That's fair to say.

[Anya Cain]

What is quince?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Quince is a company. It lets you get really high quality clothing for very affordable prices.

[Anya Cain]

They do that because they basically cut out the middleman. You're just getting cut him right out. Yeah, they're getting it from the artisans. They're giving it to you. It's wonderful. Wonderful. It's going to be 50 to 80% less than those of their competitors. And you're just going to get some wonderful things. We recently went shopping to get some summer styles. We'd previously gotten some winter styles, but we wanted to update. So we went on quints and we both got something. Let's talk about what we got. I got this wonderful a hundred percent European linen dress. It's a button front dress and it's in blue chambray stripe. I love this dress. I'm picky about dresses because like, I feel like I'm have a weird shaped body and sometimes they cut me off in a weird way. This one just fits like a dream. I love the way it fits. It is very much a classic sort of style. So I'm not worried about it going out of style in like two minutes and then I'm looking foolish. It just looks like something I can wear for years and years. I know I'm going to be wearing this dress a lot this summer.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I got a great shirt. I can't paint word pictures like you do, but I'm very happy with the shirt. I've gotten compliments on the shirt. Shirt is a comfortable shirt.

[Anya Cain]

For anyone who is interested in learning more about the products that we purchased, he got a hundred percent European linen utility shirt in martini olive. So I think it looks really cute. I think that you look very cute in it. So I love it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And keep watching our Facebook page because we will probably, if I convince her, take a picture of Anya wearing her dress and her beret.

[Anya Cain]

Oh, I got a beret too because Kevin insists on me buying new hats. So I got a little blue beret. And yeah, I just really. Quince is one of those brands. I just love working with them because it's just stuff that I love to kind of come back to and keep buying because I love what they're doing, I love how ethical they are and I know that they're going to get me quality pieces fast. And with their wonderful return policy, you can try on different things. Make sure the sizing's right for you. And it's just a great deal for Murder sheet listeners. So give your summer closet an upgrade with cool. Go to quince.commsheet for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince.commsheet to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.commsheet.