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- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [00:52]
B
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. I'm alice. And I'm brett and this is the prosecutor's legal bl. Welcome back to the Prosecutor's Legal Briefs. I'm your host, Alice, and I'm joined as always by my highly credentialed co host, Brett.
- [02:04]
A
Oh, I'm high tonight, Alice. I would have written a script for this episode, but then I got high.
- [02:11]
B
He did not. Kids, we don't condone any of that behavior.
- [02:14]
A
That's right. That's.
- [02:14]
B
But we are high on life and high on the law today because, boy, don't you just love it when, like, I don't know, pop culture, especially for US 80s 90s kids, coincides with the Constitution.
- [02:28]
A
There you go. The Constitution, criminal law, all sorts of stuff going on with this one.
- [02:34]
B
This is a great one, guys. Who knew? Who knew? Let's just say, who knew that middle school Alice listening to Afroman, would one day be using Afroman as the pinnacle of the constitutional right to free speech that this country was founded upon. But here we are, Brett, legal briefs about Afroman. And if you don't know what we're talking about, you're going to want to stick around today because it's going to be fun on so many levels and it's going to be a little bit intellectual.
- [03:07]
A
Yeah, it is now there's been a lot of surface level analysis of this because this, it was hilarious. We're going to dive a little bit deeper into Alice's middle school, my college experience with Afroman. So, hey, yeah, I mean, I obviously remembered who Afroman was and that one singular moment in history when Afroman dominated the airwaves because it got high. But I had no idea of all the things on my bingo card this year, last year, this decade, Afroman, anytime after 1995. Yeah, Afroman coming back and being a pop culture phenomenon, really the symbol American
- [03:51]
B
freedom in a lot of ways as he is putting himself out, as he definitely is. You know what we should have worn? I have an Uncle Sam costume that I should have worn and I didn't.
- [04:01]
A
The dude literally wrapped himself in the flag.
- [04:04]
B
Literally wrapped himself in the flag and wore flags. I had multiple people ask me questions today about this. They're like, you know, from your legal perspective, if you had a client who was a defendant in a case, would you advise them for court decorum to wear an American flag suit and American flag sunglasses? And I said, in this situation, hell to the yes.
- [04:28]
A
That's the thing. Let this be a lesson to all of you. There's a time and place for anything. It turns out there's even a time and place for a American flag suit and American flag glasses, hat and everything else in the courtroom. And this was it. Okay, so if you've been under a rock, living under a rock somewhere, we are talking about, because I got raided, the Afroman lawsuit. So just to give you sort of a very general background and then we're going to give you more specifics than you've probably heard. So this all starts in August of 2022. So a few years ago. And what's funny about this, maybe some of you were aware of this before, like last week. I think the vast majority of us had no idea this was even going on.
- [05:12]
B
And here's why. We probably didn't know Afroman. Honestly, no one had really listened to him for a couple of decades at this point. And in a lot of ways, I mean, he was not dominating the airwaves. And the fact that he got famous on a song about getting high, the fact that there was a search warrant about drugs on his house probably wasn't that surprising. So if you didn't know about this in 2022, join club.
- [05:35]
A
Well, it's funny, this is getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, but there's a lot of videos about this raid. We're going to talk about that. Afroman did. One of them, though, is called will you help me repair my door? And of all the songs, that one is probably the least sort of offensive. And in it, he's going through the search warrant, which we're going to go through, and he talks about how one of them is for drugs. And he's like, yeah, I can see that. Because he is.
- [06:04]
B
To his credit, he's like, you know what? This is what my career is based on.
- [06:08]
A
I can see that. Yeah. Anyways, for those of you don't know if you're somehow unaware. August 2022, the Adams County Sheriff's Office in Ohio, they're going to execute a search warrant on Afroman's house. They're going to burst in, break a bunch of stuff, eye some cake greedily, and eventually leave without finding anything. An Afroman gets kind of irritated and he releases much songs about it. And this is all going to end in a defamation lawsuit, which became news last week. And there's been a lot of hilarity that's ensued because Afroman is naturally a funny person. And the whole thing is kind of absurd that this even happened. But we're going to dive into this a little bit and talk you through the legal aspects of this, why there was a search. We'll talk about defamation, we'll talk about legal strategy. Was this a good idea to have this lawsuit? We talk about all those things and hopefully you are going to enjoy it. Okay. So As I said, August 2022, Adams County's Sheriff's office in Ohio. This is important because a different Adams County Sheriff's office put out another hilarious video saying, we're not the ones who did it. Which you can look that up as well. This is the one in Ohio, and they received a tip from an informant that Afroman, also known to, at least I don't know, his parents maybe is Joseph Foreman. Was engaged.
- [07:28]
B
I didn't know who Joseph Foreman was before this.
- [07:30]
A
Yeah, yeah. Was engaged in marijuana trafficking and apparently kidnapping. So a lot of people have talked about this affidavit, but I haven't seen a lot of people actually have the affidavit and talk about what it says. So here's the thing about affidavits. As you know, in order to search someone's house, you have to have a search warrant. And that search warrant has to be signed by a judge, which this search warrant was. And it has to be accompanied by an affidavit. And the affidavit has to lay out the probable cause for the Search. And in this case, we have this informant. And there's been a lot of talk about this informant. And it's been as if someone just randomly called up the Adams County Sheriff's Office and said, hey, Afroman selling drugs and he's kidnapping people. You should go raid his house. That's not what it says. When you have an affidavit based on an informant, it needs to be a reliable informant. And I'm really interested to know what people think after they hear this, because this affidavit is so much more detailed than I expected and it tells a crazy story, but it's one that I can understand why the police, upon hearing this story, were like, we need to go do something about this. So let me read you what it says. Affiant Further states, on August 21, 2022, during conversations, Confidential Informant Number One stated that she has known Joseph Foreman, aka Afroman, aka Fro, for approximately 10 years, where she originally started working as Joseph Foreman's personal Assistant. Confidential Informant 1 continued to state that she routinely traveled the United States of America with Afroman to concerts and marijuana dispensaries where they would obtain large amounts of marijuana to be transported back to Adams County, Ohio. Confidential informant number one further stated she and Afroman have been intimate for approximately eight years. Where he she, which it's obviously they
- [09:29]
B
already said she earlier.
- [09:31]
A
I think we already said she, so
- [09:32]
B
they messed that up.
- [09:34]
A
But I think everybody knew it was a she. Where he she being Confidential Informant 1 visited the quote from Farmhouse being Afroman's residence. So let's just stop there for a second.
- [09:46]
B
This is not just.
- [09:47]
A
What are your thoughts on.
- [09:47]
B
This is not just some person who has a vendetta or just some fan who wants to have some fun on a Friday night and call in a tip. This is someone who is basically Afroman's lover for the last eight years, right? Close. Not just lover, but like, worked for him, traveled with him, and not just saw kind of accidentally one or two times the allegations of this drug trafficking, but rather accompanying. So she's actually an accomplice here. Right. So that actually says something because you're not just reporting, oh, my goodness, I looked through my window and I saw some illegal activity. She's placing herself in the midst of illegal activity. And that is important when you're looking at whether someone has the opportunity to know if she's sleeping with him and she is going with him to the marijuana dispensaries, then she would obviously have the opportunity to see it. And if she's not distancing herself. That says a lot about what she's seeing because. Because she's putting herself at risk of prosecution as well.
- [10:44]
A
Now what we don't know if someone out there has this information, I'd be interested to hear it. We don't know what kind of due diligence the police did on this person. It should be fairly easy to confirm that she is essentially his personal assistant and had been his personal assistant for 10 years. They should be able to run her name. She should have pictures with him. I mean, whatever. It should have been really easy for her to prove this. I assume that they at least got that proof to show this isn't just some crazy person walking in off the street and saying, I'm his personal assistant. Now, the other thing that's interesting about this is she is putting herself in some sort of relationship with him. That immediately raises questions for me because I'm like, are you saying all this because you broke up? Right. Like, I'm automatically a little skeptical of this informant because. So you did this for eight years. Why are you just now coming to us? What is the catalyst for this? Is this some sort of revenge thing that she might be overstating? I don't know how much they looked into that, but it should have been pretty easy for them to confirm she was who she was. And if she truly was his assistant for 10 years, then this is a reliable informant. I mean, this is someone that you could trust their information at least enough for probable cause. And the fact, as Alice said, she's putting herself under criminal liability is something we often look to for credibility. So. So, for instance, in a hearsay. One of the hearsay exceptions is. Is something that you said, is it something that could get you in trouble? Because our presumption is a statement against interest is more reliable than another statement. So she is making a statement against interest. She's essentially putting herself in a position where she could get in trouble for this. So there's already some veracity there, assuming they confirmed who she was. So I'll keep going. Confidential informant. And also he wrote a song called Because I Got high. So, you know, we got some confirmation bias probably going on here as well. Confidential Informant 1 stated, during these last eight years, she has consistently observed large amounts of money and marijuana at Afroman's residence. Confidential informant number one further stated, Afroman has a basement referred to as the dungeon. This is where the kidnapping comes in. In which he, being Afro man, keeps women locked in, forcing them to urinate and defecate in a Bucket as punishment for upsetting or disobeying him. Okay. Things gone a little bit off the rails, but have also gotten very serious.
- [13:11]
B
Yes. So you have the first part where it's like, okay, it's completely believable that he has stacks of cash around because I don't know, he probably has a lot of money from singing some hits back in the 90s. Andy has a lot of marijuana. I think he himself said that he smoked a lot of marijuana. So both of those things totally believable. But then all of a sudden it takes like a 90 degree turn where it's like. And there's kidnapping and torture going on in the dungeon. Now it's really interesting because she's saying here that she's been with him for eight years, known him for 10 years. Is she part of this kidnapping? Was she a victim of the kidnapping? But no matter what, we're no longer talking about like some drugs and some money, right? Which can be serious if it turns into violence. But here we have very serious allegations of people being held against their will and essentially being tortured.
- [14:05]
A
And the problem here, you know, set aside everything you know about this case and Afroman and how funny it is and everything else. You now have an allegation that someone is sexually abusing women. This could be sex trafficking. It could be any number of things. It's a very serious allegation and it raises the stakes and puts a lot of pressure on the police to act immediately. So with the drug stuff, you might say, okay, we've got this woman who's telling us he's selling a lot of drugs. She seems like she's reliable. We can believe her. Let's set up a poll cam. Let's watch him. Let's do trash pulls. Let's. Let's see if we can confirm everything she's saying. No big rush. He's selling marijuana. That's illegal. But it's not like we have to go break down his door with a SWAT team, right? But when you add the he's keeping women in his basement against their will, forcing them to urinate and defecate in a bucket as punishment. Well then all of a sudden, if there's even a chance this is true, we gotta move now. Because who knows, we do have to
- [15:11]
B
bring a battering ram and full SWAT gear. Because if someone is actually holding someone in their basement, who knows how violent they are, right? Like this could turn into a shootout situation.
- [15:21]
A
And Ohio. I'm almost certain it was in Cleveland where you had that circumstance. I forget the guy's name, but where he had kept those women in his basement for years. Ariel Castro. Where he had kept those women in his basement for years and one of them finally escaped and got away. And just imagine if you had a situation where someone had told the police five years before that he's keeping women in his basement and they had ignored it because they thought, that's silly, no way that's happening. And then that comes out. I mean, just imagine how awful that would be. And you have a situation where the police are told by somebody who seems to be reliable, who seems to know him well, who I assume they confirmed her identity, that he's doing this. Now, I have read in one place, I can't confirm this because the one place I read this was on Reddit. So it's almost certainly false that Afroman doesn't have a basement. Wasn't able to confirm that. That should have been something they looked into because if he doesn't have a basement, he's obviously not keeping women in the basement. But I don't know if that's true or not. This is just what she's saying. She goes on to say that she was last at Afroman's residence approximately one month ago. Now, I'm going to stop here for a second. So in order for a warrant to issue, it has to with particularity and specificity that criminal conduct is ongoing. One month is kind of stale, like one month. That's a lot of time that's passed between when the person is claiming they saw the criminal activity and now. And I'll just tell you a lot of judges, I don't know that you could get a search warrant with information that's a month old. I don't know what your experience has been with that, Alice.
- [16:55]
B
Yeah, no, there's definitely been recency. I actually had one warrant. You know, these are not supposed to be rubber stamped and they typically aren't. I've had warrants denied before where the judge says, no, this isn't recent enough, this is two weeks old. You need to do more poll cam, you need to do more surveillance, do your job and show me that there's a reason that you need to go in today or tomorrow.
- [17:17]
A
But even though it's a month ago, and I can imagine one thing the police might have said is, okay, we know this part of the information is a month ago. But she said consistently over the eight years she's known him, he has had drugs there. Maybe the recency is less of a problem, but she's going to Double down on this, this dungeon thing because she says she was there a month ago and she observed a female known as Joe exiting the Dungeon. Confidential Informant 1 described Joe as a short dark haired woman, possibly Hispanic. Confidential Informant 1 also indicated that she believed Joe is from California. Although Afroman paid confidential informants estranged husband to pick up Joe in Mississippi. So more very specific information whether it's true or a complete fabrication, if she made this up, she made it up with a lot of detail. Now she's now implicated her estranged husband as well as her lover Afro Man. So all of this should be raising some red flags with the police. But I think try and put aside what you know about the case and everything else and how funny it is and just put yourself in the position of the police where someone walks into the police department and says hey here's what's going on in Afroman's place. Like what is the appropriate response when you hear a story like this?
- [18:37]
B
And getting it wrong in this situation could mean that someone is kidnapped for longer than they should be. Right? This would be horrible if in fact there was a Joe and maybe other people who are being picked up from Mississippi or other states being transported across state lines in order to be defecated upon and held against their will. That would be horrible if the police were sitting on this information because they didn't think there was enough to move on. So we've already noted that Afroman is famous for singing the song Because I Got High. So the marijuana allegations by this confidential informant at least they're really not hard to believe. And later on we'll see that Afroman himself is like yeah, that's probably true right there in terms of having the marijuana. But when this affidavit, and there's more to it, but that's kind of the bulk of the information presented to the judge there. Presented to the judge. The judge signs the warrant. The police then did what they do if any citizen was accused of such serious crimes. So not just marijuana trafficking but kidnapping, right. They get a large group of heavily armed officers together and they use a battering ram to knock down the door in order to execute the search warrant. So just so you know when you have something like very serious, so you usually don't knock on the door for these sorts of situations because you assume the allegations are so serious that something bad may happen. You can imagine if in fact, let's say this Afroman did have all these women chained up downstairs defecating into buckets and you know, is, is torturing them down there. All of a sudden he hears a knock. Police open up. What if he loses it? It's like, I'm not going down. And he shoots all the women and then turns the gun on himself. That's one of the worst case scenarios. Right. So in this situation, you do go through these plans when you execute a search warrant, how you're going to execute it, it does not surprise me with serious allegations like this. They didn't just knock and say, hey, can we come in? We have a search warrant. Rather, they're going to break down this door by force. And that's exactly what they did, break down the door. The police searched the house thoroughly, top to bottom. They don't find women being chained up. They don't find marijuana scales, baggies for sales. All these people, you know, setting up shop to do this trafficking business. They found really nothing at all in this house.
- [20:51]
A
Can I just say how shocked I am that they didn't find marijuana? Yeah. I can't believe it. I don't know if aphroman turned over a leaf, as it were, or what.
- [21:01]
B
Maybe he smoked it all.
- [21:02]
A
Maybe he did.
- [21:03]
B
Maybe he's like, I can't even get it around because there's so much. I just, I just have to smoke it all. Yeah. They didn't find one nary a leaf of marijuana, stale or new. They found nothing other than $4,000 in cash. And obviously cash is tender, you're allowed to have cash. But they seize the $4,000 because they say, you know, it's likely proceeds from this drug trafficking enterprise that he has,
- [21:29]
A
which is super common, by the way, just to stop here, because some people wondered why'd they do that. If you have probable cause that someone's involved in drug trafficking and you find a large amount of cash, you can seize that under all the sort of civil asset forfeiture, drug proceed stuff. And eventually, if you can't prove the case, you do have to return that money. But the seizing of the $4,000 is not that surprising.
- [21:51]
B
It's like rote. In fact, one time we were executing a search warrant and it was a similar situation. There were allegations of drugs and all these other things, and they executed the search warrant. They didn't find what they thought they were going to find, drugs and whatnot, but they found a ton. And when I say a ton of gold coins, gold and silver coins that I guess now this is many years ago, but nowadays that's apparently all the rage and people are buying them. When this warrant was executed, there was not a Big deal at all. So it was kind of weird to open up like closets full of gold coins. And because we had probable cause that there was actually in fact a lot of illegal drugs being changed hands here, we didn't find the drugs, but the officers were able to seize all those gold coins as likely proceeds of this drug enterprise. So search warrant executed. They essentially find nothing but $4,000. No charges were ever brought against Afroman. None about kidnapping, none about marijuana trafficking, drug trafficking. So because no charges were ultimately brought, the cash that they seized, those $4,000, it was returned to Afroman. But when it was returned to Afroman, he claimed that $390 of that $4,000 was missing. Now, Afroman wasn't present at the time of this raid, but his wife and kids were, whom he said were terrorized. Totally believable. If like a SWAT team came in your front door, I would be terrorized too. And he said that the police, not only did they terrorize his family, but they also broke his security system and most famously his door. Because remember that battering ram? They didn't knock on the door, they broke down the door.
- [23:33]
A
And so this. Actually you guys ask this question all the time. What happens if you execute a search for it and you break a bunch of stuff? Who's responsible for that? Well, as Afroman's about to find out, he is under pretty much every, every state law that I know of. If you have probable cause, search house, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending I guess on your perspective, the homeowner is responsible. So Aframan, he goes to the sheriff's office and he asked them, hey, can you pay for the property that you broke during your search, which resulted in nothing. And the police said, we are not responsible for that. Not responsible for damages that occur pursuant to a valid search warrant and we're not going to pay for it. And this was sort of what I imagine will be the moment in the movie that eventually will be released based on this, where Afroman decides, no more Mr. Nice Guy. I'm gonna take matters into my own hands. I'm gonna use the one thing I have, my humor and my limited ability to produce music to go after these officers and to recoup some of these losses. So he decides, I'm gonna put out some videos about this. And what he does is he has his security footage, his own security footage of the search. He eventually gets the body worn camera footage from the police and he puts together these videos, five minute videos with sort of just hilarious lyrics over the top of them. Describing what's happening. And these videos are mocking these police officers. The first one, which I advise everyone to go watch because it's hilarious. It's called will you help me repair my door? And it's in the style of like a 70s or 80s love song. Think Islands in the stream, but a little bit slower. It's got that feel to it and it's really funny. And it includes a section where one officer is eyeing a lemon pound cake in the kitchen and he's like looking at Afroman's like, you can take as much cake as you like. If you want a slice of cake, you take a slice of cake. And he eventually releases another song called Lemon pound Cake about this particular officer. And this deputy would end up receiving hundreds of pound cakes from people around the country. Now, as far as I'm concerned, of all the things that happened in the case that guy got the least to complain about, he got cakes. If people want to direct the lemon pound cakes to me, I will take them. You know, I will eat those pound cakes and be proud of it. But this was something that bothered this officer. Now, one thing that I think is worth noting just as we move on, because it's about to get a little less funny. So remember how all this happened. Typically you have a police officer who is the affiant for these search warrants. So there's probably one sheriff's deputy, an investigator with him, who met with this woman, took her story, got the affidavit in some jurisdictions would work with a local da, and a lot though they don't. A lot of officers actually get search warrants on their own and only then does it go to the DA's office. So we don't know if a lawyer was involved. Got this, went to the judge and got a search warrant. One thing that I think is worth remembering, most of the officers involved in this raid had nothing to do with getting the search warrant. They were just the people who were on duty when somebody said, hey, we're going to go raid this house. There's this accusation that women are being kept chained up downstairs. And so these people are just along for the ride, as it were, so. And that you could find it out. But I don't know which officer it was who got the search warrant. But a lot of these officers are just doing their job, like whatever their job was that day. One of them was to conduct this raid. And so they conduct the raid and then they get wrapped into this and they become the target of these songs.
- [27:21]
B
And this really is like Something that could only happen in this day and age because of course these videos and these songs went viral and then so did these deputies. But not all the songs were so harmless. They didn't just result in delicious lemon pound cakes being sent to officers. Because Afroman didn't just release one song, he kind of dropped an entire album all about this raid. So in a video called Lick Em Lo Lisa, not about pound cake or popsicles, Afroman actually hires an actress to portray one female officer having oral sex with other officers wives. So we would read you the lyrics, play it for you in fact, but we would not only get an E on Apple, they'd probably ban this podcast. And I don't think I could bring myself to read you the lyrics anyway. So I'm not going to recommend you go watch it or listen to it, but you can imagine just how explicit that is. So in addition to suggesting that this officer is a lesbian based on nothing other than the fact that he wants to jab him right, he's just, he's angry. He wants to make them feel as embarrassed as possible. That's all it's based on. The song also suggests that this woman may in fact be a man. Again, based on absolutely nothing. Except this is like kids on the playground just shouting insults. That's what he's doing here. He's using everything in his toolbox to degrade and humiliate these officers as much as possible because they waited his house and found nothing. So one segment includes the line, man or a woman? You really don't know her. I noticed her voice is a few octaves lower. She's not too ugly, she's not too fine, but she might whoop out something. Something that's bigger than mine.
- [29:06]
A
Yeah, so look, I mean, this is an Afroman will say, well, you know, she was part of the people terrified my children. Like she would have shot me. All this other stuff. Okay, fine, I get all that. This one goes too far. Then this one. You know, a lot of people when they're commenting about this will be like they filed a defamation lawsuit because he said they like pound cake and maybe that one officer did. But you have this officer, this female officer who's a woman in a male dominated field, has probably dealt with a lot of this kind of crap before, who now all of a sudden has someone singing a song about her and portraying her in this light, you know, calling her a man, calling her lesbian, demonstrating what she's doing with other officers wives. And this is where the defamation thing starts to come in. And we're going to talk about defamation more here in a second. And this is not the only video that arguably crosses the line. In another song, Afroman suggests an officer was a pedophile using a picture of the officer with a young boy taken during a program that pairs officers with low income children for Christmas shopping. So basically this officer, and you know, his free time is out in the community, he's working with this program with low income children, he's doing this really nice thing and then all of a sudden he ends up in an Afroman video being called a pedophile and it being suggested that this is a child he's grooming for pedophilia. And then in another one which became somewhat famous, Afroman sang about sleeping with a deputy's wife. So these videos in particular, along with some of the other ones that are much more innocuous, culminated in a lawsuit against Afroman alleging defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. For Afroman's part, he argued he was simply exercising his first amendment rights when he did this. And as far as the, the invasion of privacy, he's using publicly available footage. So the footage of the raid, and honestly we'll, I mean we can talk about some of the other ones more. The invasion of privacy is completely weak. That's not going anywhere. That's a loser. Because yeah, I mean this is all public stuff. I don't even know how it could be invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, even if some of that sounds pretty bad, to actually get someone for intentional infliction of emotional stress, it has to be something like you stole the body of their dead mother and destroyed it. Like it's, that's literally, it's incredibly high.
- [31:43]
B
And it's almost never a standalone charge. It's usually something you add on to whatever other charges you are. So it's really as great as it sounds. Intentional infliction of emotional harm, you almost never ever get it, even if you get the underlying substantive claim because it's such a high.
- [32:01]
A
Defamation. Yeah, defamation's the real thing here. The idea that he is spreading false information about these officers and therefore he has defamed them and therefore he is liable.
- [32:14]
B
Okay, so this is really interesting because if you have no touch points with the law, you haven't been to law school, you don't care really much about legal stuff. You probably, of any like challenged potential lawsuits, you've probably heard someone say, I'm going to sue you for saying that or that's a defamation Claim. People throw it around in pop culture like it's nothing. You would think that to bring or to win a defamation claim is easy peasy lemon squeezy. That's actually not the case. So to prove defamation, you have to show a published free false statement of fact. Published. This is important. That caused harm. And this is important because they were public officials. You also have to show actual malice. So actual malice means you knew it was false or you should have known it was false. If, for instance, Aframan truly believed the cops stole money from him, saying they did that, even if it turned out they didn't, it wouldn't be defamation.
- [33:14]
A
And this was one of the claims. One of the defamation claims from at least one of the officers was, he called me a thief. He said I stole money from him. I didn't steal money from him. That's interesting, because everybody out there, when they talk about this, they say they stole his money. Well, that's what Afroman says there. During the trial, they actually put on evidence about how this happened, how Afroman came to believe that money was stolen. It seems like what happened was a simple miscount. So they got 4,000, however much money. An officer testified about it and explains how he miscounted it and why he miscounted it. So the $390 wasn't actually stolen. They didn't steal his money. I mean, let's just be clear. They didn't steal his money. These things happen. But Aphraman believes they stole his money. And so it's really hard to win on that claim. So that's the stealing claim. Now some of the other ones, like, I mean, I don't know, arguably, I guess Afroman could truly believe that Lisa is a transgender lesbian who's having an affair with cops wives. But I think most of us think he doesn't believe that. And I think even he's acknowledged that he didn't believe that. He just said that because she was one of the ones who did this horrible thing to him and terrorized his family, and she deserved this and et cetera, et cetera. But he has another defense, particularly to these really outrageous claims, and that's that this was obviously satire. So these videos are incredibly over the top. If you're familiar with the movie the People versus Larry Flint, you've probably heard of the case Hustler magazine versus Falwell. In that case, Larry Flint, who's the publisher of Hustler, made some derogatory comments about Jerry Falwell, who was the famous sort of evangelical preacher. They were obviously not true. Everybody knew they weren't true. And in fact, in very small print at the bottom, it said, this is obviously a parody. Falwell sues on the basis that this is defamation. And a unanimous Supreme Court, it's actually an 8, 0 decision, held that when a statement is obviously parody and when it's obviously just satire and over the top, the fact that it's outrageous and the fact that it's outrageously insulting to the person who's targeted is not enough to overcome the protections of the first amendment. So you may recall there was this famous interaction in the Afroman case where one of the officers, the one who he rapped about having sex with his wife, is asked, do you really think Afro man had sex with your wife?
- [35:51]
B
And.
- [35:51]
A
And he answers in some sort of equivocal way like, well, I mean, I don't think so, but I don't know. How can I know when somebody puts that out there? And so people are like, he can't even say that he doesn't think Afroman had sex with. Well, there's a reason for that. He's obviously been told by his lawyers, if you truly didn't believe there was any way this is true, we're going to lose. If it is so outrageous, it's obviously not true, then it's also not defamation because anyone who heard it wouldn't believe it. Then you're not damaged. Just someone saying something about you doesn't damage you. If I say something about you to someone and they believe it and it's false, then you've been damaged, your reputation has been hurt. So that's why you saw that discussion about that particular song.
- [36:44]
B
And so, you know, the reason that's an 8, 0 decision at the Supreme Court is because if it weren't, that would basically be the death of comedy and satire in the United States. Right? Like you couldn't make a joke. And we in America here, the first amendment is where we enshrine the freedom of speech, especially speech that's offensive.
- [37:04]
A
Especially, especially. And that's a big difference. A lot of you in other countries, like, we poke at you about whether you're free or not. And you are always get upset about that. The one place where the United States is 1000% freer than basically anywhere else in the world is this. Like, this is the kind of thing that if it happened in the uk, Afroman might well have lost. It's just a different thing in countries that don't have these vast protections for, as Alice said comedy, satire, jokes, statements that are obviously false. We have those in the United States. And that was always going to make this a very difficult lawsuit to win.
- [37:42]
B
So just knowing the law as we've given it to you in the last kind of 15 minutes here, you can probably predict how this trial went. This defamation lawsuit that these officers brought against Afriman, the cops lost and it wasn't even close. So it's worth noting though that this wasn't a frivolous lawsuit. It did survive summary judgment. So before you go to trial, there are different dispositive motions along the way. You can file a motion to dismiss that is just based on the law. Like they didn't plead a claim under the law. It didn't get kicked out. Then before you go to trial, once you've taken all your discovery and you've gotten all the facts that you're going to get in the case, these are the facts you're going to then go try the case. Before you go to trial, you can file something called a motion for summary judgment, where you say there are no disputed facts here that need to be determined at trial and therefore, judge, you can rule in our favor. So it didn't get kicked out in either of those case ending phases. And this case actually made it all the way to trial. Something that around 65% of civil lawsuits can't say most of them are kicked out by then. Still, it's hard to imagine suggesting the officers actually file this lawsuit. Look, as we're describing some of these videos, I can see the people in the chat be like, oh, okay, lemon pound cake kind of funny. Now we're getting a little bit too far here. And they are, they seem colloquially defamatory. And these statements are pretty outrageous. And I wouldn't like it if someone were making these videos about me or suggesting these things about me and making songs about me along these lines. But these officers were not likely to win. And they opened themselves up to just the kind of negative publicity that they've received because they brought this lawsuit, not to mention greatly expanding the reach of a washed up one hit wonders YouTube videos about them. And because of this lawsuit, even if you didn't hear about this raid, and you probably didn't hear about these videos that Afroman dropped, you have now heard about them because the cops lost at the civil trial.
- [39:45]
A
This lawyer, I mean whatever lawyer told him to bring this lawsuit, like, look, just be very clear, lick them low. Lisa. He should not have done that. That was bad and wrong. He shouldn't have Done it. He should pull that video way too far. And I don't care what happened to him, frankly, it's still way too far. There's no indication that this officer was there because she had some vendetta against him or anything. She's just an officer doing her job. And she ends up with a video that should be offensive to basically everyone who hears it, whether you're her or not. He shouldn't have done that. That was wrong. But it wasn't defamation. And I can't believe that any lawyer I know, you see dollar signs. Does he even have that much money? I mean, I don't know how much money he made off.
- [40:35]
B
Did you see his door? It wasn't even a nice door. It wasn't even a nice door.
- [40:38]
A
He had to release his videos to repair his house. Like, I don't think he's rolling in cakes.
- [40:42]
B
It was $4,000, not 40 or $400,000. $4,000 is a lot of money. But we're not talking about like he's swimming in cash over here. And, and here, here's the other thing. Just in case. Here's some free legal advice, guys. I have had dozens, like upwards of 50 potential clients or clients who have asked me, can I bring a defamation lawsuit? And 100% of those cases that have come before me, I have said I can make money if you bring it. But as your lawyer and because I'm a good person, I'm not going to go, you know, chase after bad money. This would be a very bad idea to bring this and I advise you not to bring it. That's 100% of the cases I've seen. And here's the other thing. If you actually were to bring a worthy defamation claim, you cannot litigate a defamation claim for under a million dollars. It's one of the most costly suits because of anti slap laws that have been passed in almost every state. Anti slap, I forget what it stands for, but essentially protects speech even more. And it's trying to protect people against frivolous defamation lawsuits. So just so you know, it's one of the most costly types of civil lawsuits you can bring.
- [41:52]
A
Yeah, an anti slap slap stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. And it's like when we covered the Adnan Syed case and we had several people involved in that who threatened to sue us for defamation. That was a strategic lawsuit against public participation because they didn't want us to tell the truth about them and about
- [42:15]
B
people who threatened it were lawyers who should know better, but they may not because not all lawyers know the law
- [42:20]
A
and they're not really lawyers anyway. Guess what? They never did. They never filed the lawsuit because it
- [42:25]
B
would have cost them a lot of money. And if they even checked the law books they would know they had no claim.
- [42:30]
A
And I was like my position on was two things. Number one, yes, please do that because I can't wait to take your deposition. Which is exactly what we saw in this case. Like half of the hilarious videos that you've seen are from the depositions of the cops and Afro man. Right? Number one, can't wait. Give me Adnan said for seven hours. Can't wait. You know, give me Robbie a chaudhry for seven hours. Can't wait. Let's do it. File it now. Do I need to say something defamatory right now to make that happen? I will make it happen. That's the first thing. And number two, just hire a lawyer I like because they're going to make a lot of money and I look forward to you paying my lawyers when you lose because that's what you're going to have to do. So this was a total loser of a lawsuit. It was always going to be a loser and they should have known it was going to be a loser. And I can't believe a lawyer suggested they do this.
- [43:21]
B
Well, I can believe because there are bad lawyers out there, but. And part of that advising of the client would have been okay, Afroman, washed up rapper from the 90s. No one even is hearing him. No one sees these videos. But if you take this, it's going to be a major headline and we're gonna lose and then everyone's gonna go look up because all of you right now listening probably have looked up the videos. You never heard of these videos before? I didn't hear about them in 2022, 2023, 4, 5. I heard about them this week when Afroman showed up on CNN dressed in his American flag suit with his American flag sunglasses talking about how he beat the man and he is standing up for the common man in the first amendment and all of us are laughing and googling the videos. That's what the lawyer should have told the officers and been like, look, I get it, this is super offensive. You know what? Send a cease and desist letter, you know, like try to do something but don't. By the way, I think cease and desist letters, if some lawyers tell you to send them, they work sometimes in some situations, depends on the fact. But for the most part, unless you threaten to bring lawsuits, they mean Nothing. So if you get a cease and desist letter, don't worry too much about it. Unless they're threatening some sort of action here, like maybe, like, appeal to him. Say you have children and a wife. Can you not just, like, ruin, you know, my social circles? This really sucks as a human being. Honestly, Afra man seems like kind of a nice guy. He may have been like, all right, all right, Lisa. Taking that one off the airways was funny for a little bit, but, you know, didn't like what you did.
- [44:53]
A
Yeah, I mean, I thought there were other ways to deal with this. And also, and this is just a lot of cops listen to this. I get it. We ask a lot of police officers, but you're a police officer. Deal with it. I wouldn't want anybody singing this about me.
- [45:06]
B
For example, when we prosecute cases, people draw cartoons that are not very flattering of us prosecutors, and they intentionally leave them on the floor of the courtroom as we leave so we can see, you know, a stick up someone's butt that looks a lot like me. And it's like, your honor. Okay. It's like, part of the job. Am I going to bring a defamation lawsuit? No, I'm not. Because that's the best way to first lose a lot of time and hours of my life and money. But also to get everyone else to look at that photo or that picture.
- [45:39]
A
It's like you tell your kids if someone's bothering you, just ignore them. They'll go away because they want the reaction. It's like the trolls online. They want the reaction. If you respond to them or whatever, they want the reaction. You know, there have been some pretty insignificant people who've done, like, rebuttal podcasts and everything else about us. We don't respond to that. They're not going to, like, elevate that. Come on. It's just going to give that person attention. And that's what happened.
- [46:07]
B
Right. The fact that I don't read one star reviews means, honestly, the reviews about how I'm a woman and my voice sounds like a woman's voice, and. And yada, yada, yada, they've kind of died off because it's not fun to poke at a bear that won't react. And boy. Okay, can I say this, though, Aphraman, whatever publicist you had, you did great. Like, you've now shot up back in. You are now part of the lexicon of this new generation, and people are watching your videos, and you are going to make some money. I don't think he's Going to make a ton of money, but you're going to make some money from all these clicks. And then this time next year, no one will be listening to your music anymore unless you drop a great album. So, you know, that could happen. I mean, I really like the song we just played at the beginning, but this was. He seized a point in time, and he's probably made enough money to fix his door.
- [46:56]
A
And I really hope you're not locking women up in a dungeon. That's the other thing. I assume you're not. If you're out there. I would never say you were, because I'd hate to be sued for defamation. But hopefully these allegations were false. And I'll just say this. If they were totally false, I hope they went after the informant. I mean, if she walked in that police station and gave them false information that led to this search of his house, she needed to be punished for that. I don't know if she was. Obviously, all this is under penalty and perjury. You absolutely could be charged with presenting this information to the police if it was false for all the reasons you should be charged. If Afro Man, I mean, look, marijuana is illegal. Shouldn't do marijuana where it's illegal. Don't really care about that. But if Afro man had women in a dungeon, he needed to be arrested for that. But if he didn't, then he's an absolute victim, and that never should have happened to him. And I totally understand why people are on his side about this, even if some of his videos went too far.
- [48:00]
B
And I'll say this, we just said the cops had the bad legal strategy. They shouldn't have brought this lawsuit. On the flip side, Afroman handled this correctly. He did not bring a lawsuit against them because he would have lost.
- [48:11]
A
He did eventually, and he did lose. And he did bring a counterclaim. And he lost in the counter.
- [48:16]
B
But, like, that's within the counterclaim. Counterclaims are, like, within the same lawsuit. I almost feel like when you answer, you might as well just throw in some counterclaims anyways. But he made these videos that went viral and he went basically to the masses, as opposed to bring a loser of a lawsuit in the first instance. And that was the best way to win. And he did. Between the two of them, like, if you want to talk about winners and losers in, like, the public sphere, he won.
- [48:39]
A
Oh, he totally. He totally won. Both in the lawsuit.
- [48:41]
B
He crushed it.
- [48:42]
A
And the cops definitely lost. And look, I feel sorry for the cops who were just doing their jobs and now are in the situation. But it was a really bad decision to bring the lawsuit. Lawsuit was a terrible, terrible decision. Even if you had a non frivolous claim for defamation. Horrible decision. And that's just something important to remember. And I made this comment on Twitter and there were some people just. They could not comprehend the idea of. I get why they brought the lawsuit, but they never should have brought the lawsuit. Because even if you felt personally offended and even if you had a colorable argument that only gets you so far, and Afroman was never going to settle, that's the other thing, right? So maybe you think, well, sue will get past summary judgment and then he'll settle. He was never gonna settle.
- [49:31]
B
This was making him more famous. This is free publicity to the max. It was awesome. He got to play the victim. He was the one who was sued. I mean, this was playing right into what he needed. He needed eyeballs on his videos. And this was the way to get eyeballs on his videos.
- [49:46]
A
And I just gotta give him, before we sign off, shout out to why not Pugs. He smoked them. That's right. That's right. That's a great way to sum this up.
- [49:54]
B
I think we gotta end on that. Afromance smoked em. Well, I do hope you guys learned something here. But we're also entertained and I don't know, this is a fun kind of legal briefs because nobody died. And we get to learn something about the law as well. Think twice before you threaten to bring a defamation lawsuit and talk to us. You know, we'll probably tell you not to bring it.
- [50:16]
A
Not that we would give you legal advice, but.
- [50:18]
B
No, just as a friend, this practical advice. Just practical advice. Well, Brett, did we answer a question or is this fun enough for today?
- [50:25]
A
You know what? I think this is good enough. I think everybody's gonna be happy with this one.
- [50:29]
B
All right, guys, well, this has been great. Thank you for letting us know what you think. If you totally disagree with us, if you're personally offended and you're like, no, he should have won. He should have lost the lawsuit, then let us know. We are happy to hear your thoughts, but until next time, I'm Alice. And I'm Brett, and this is the prosecutor's legal briefs.
- [50:48]
A
Sam,
- [51:23]
B
Are you gonna play? Okay, you can play the song. Not the dirty, dirty song. Not that we don't want.
- [51:30]
A
I wasn't planning on it. But they're low, is the thing.
- [51:34]
B
No, I'm not talking about the reset ones.
- [51:36]
A
Oh, hold on.
- [51:39]
B
The. The one that everyone would know and by.
- [51:42]
A
I'd have to download it and then.
- [51:44]
B
No, no, no, no. Don't do that.
- [51:45]
A
Don't do that.
- [51:46]
B
I was just. I just thought we'd have walk on music is all. Okay, I have to think of a.
- [51:51]
A
Hold on. I mean, if my wife hadn't stolen my phone, I'd have that.
- [51:56]
B
Oh, I have it. You want me to play it?
- [52:24]
A
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