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Hi friends, Gene Valentino. Welcome to another episode of Gene Valentino’s Grassroots Truth Cast. Hey, when you come across someone you’ve been doing

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some of these broadcasts with and you say, “Boy, that’s someone I’d like to have on with me.” Well, here she is.

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Welcome, Wendy Patrick from San Diego. How are you, Wendy? Oh, Gene, it’s a pleasure to join you. I’m a fan of your show.

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career politician, done over 170 cases in her role in law uh pro in the

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prosecution of the law uh against criminals u primarily on the West Coast, but she’s morphed into a sort of a an

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interesting role of providing a balance of thinking in this criminal in the

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cases that are being publicly seen in the in the world news and in the media.

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and we’re going to have a longer conversation with her on many of the hot issues that now are before us here in the United States, not just locally,

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right after this. Hey everybody, this is Mark Mitchell, head pollster of the honest poll, the honest poll.com. Make sure you go check out Grassroots

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Truthcast at grassroots truthcast.com with Gene Valentino and subscribe while you’re there. It’s a great show.

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Welcome back everybody. I’m with Wendy Patrick. Uh we’re going to discuss some political issues facing the United

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States of America from crime to public safety uh to the criminal justice system. We’ve got some constitutional

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questions which become the ripple effect of a a broader conversation and legal stories that are now today dominating

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the headlines. Wendy had one or two points and I said to her before the show, Wendy, it’s your show. bring forward the the top two or three issues

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that are hot and in this context today I’m going to jump in on some of the stuff you’re interested in talking about. Go for it.

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You know, one of the stories that we’ve been following very closely recently is, of course, the Tyler Robinson prelim from last week. Yeah.

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This is the assassin who took the life of Charlie Kirk, just a beloved Christian activist and spokesperson and inspiration to so many. I had him on my

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own radio show last year and you know the this the high-profile nature I would say combined with the uh public safety

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issues that were involved in the prelim really helped to to get this on the map and then of course it became plagued with conspiracy theories but credible

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evidence is the antidote to false beliefs and I think that last week was really an opportunity for anybody that wanted to watch to be able to see that

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front and center. But I think I shared with you um before the show that it is true that we saw a week’s worth of testimony. Everything from forensics to

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ballistics to DNA to video footage to statements that Tyler Robinson’s lover, his roommate, that

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were actually played on Zoom. The roommate of course will have to be present in person at trial. But all that to say, it really made a lot of people

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think to themselves, how do we have an assassination able to be pulled off in broad daylight with a crowd of 3,000

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people in attendance? Like, how does that happen to begin with? And many parents of collegeaged kids are having

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these conversations with their with their teenagers, with their young adults, saying, “You’ve got to keep your head on a swivel.” Even if you appear to

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be in a broad open space where there’s been no warnings, no threats level of any kind. You just never know when

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something is going to happen, even here, right out in the open. And I’m sure that’s a conversation you have with your loved ones as well as we continue to

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watch these cases unfold. We talked about it right after Butler, Pennsylvania, after the president was shot and we’re continuing to see these attacks today.

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But Wendy, what is the issue that has taken a hearing uh to for probable cause to meet the threshold of probable cause

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now become uh weeks in as if this was the full trial itself? What’s going on

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with the court case itself that causes We don’t even have a a a an admission of guilt yet. We don’t have a plea yet. Uh

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what is going on with the court case in this case?

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Well, Gene, that’s been the question that many have asked me all last week.

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And the answer continued to show itself as solid and then even more corroborated as the week went on. It’s the

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significance of the hearing. It’s the public scrutiny of the evidence. It’s the objections that were made by the defense to every piece and every piece

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of evidence which every single time led to extended discussion and argument on both sides. So it’s a very latigious

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hearing every single day. Not to mention the fact that is so closely watched and it’s a death penalty case. The charges

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are so serious that this judge did not want to take any opportunity for error.

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Prosecutor didn’t either. They were crossing their teeth, reviewing their work to make sure there’s nothing that might cast doubt on

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the integrity of the conviction and a potential death sentence down the line.

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So, you heard day one, day two, they were laying the foundation. They were talking about video footage of the man alleged to be Tyler Robinson, then

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linking that dot up, connecting it with other dots like DNA evidence, uh, gun ballistic evidence, and then finally

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culminating on Thursday with statements that were actually made by Tyler Robinson, not on social media, not just

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in text messages, but in a note left for the roommate. And then finally, the day after the assassination, verbal

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admission of guilt to the roommate who of course testified on Zoom last night.

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But full stop right full stop right there. There’s enough it leads to the abil I’m not a lawyer, but I’m I know

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enough to know that you’got probable cause there, right? You don’t need to be a lawyer.

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That’s a great point, Gene. That’s the reason that we were I was asked that so many times last week is, you know, armchair lawyers are saying, “Wait a

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minute. There is no Oh, we haven’t seen enough for probable cause. And that was true. Hence the sort of over production of evidence um

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overanalysis. And we still don’t have a ruling by the judge because that’s going to be uh briefed between now and September 1st. But it’s just one of

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those cases, Gene, that nobody wants to make a mistake. And sometimes in cases like this, which could have taken a day,

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you do have extended analysis just to make sure no mistakes are made. You know what? It may seem like time spent now,

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but it will end up being time saved in the future down the line when we get to trial because a lot of this has just

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been fleshed out by both sides and the judge in the courtroom last week.

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Folks, we’re talking with Wendy Patrick uh honored among California’s leading professional responsibility lawyers. And Wendy, that kind of gets to the point.

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Have they put more of the case in the pre-trial hearing process or or to to

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short circuit the length of the trial case itself or is this just an exacerbation of a longer case?

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No, not that either. And it’s such a great question because wouldn’t you wonder that as a civilian not a lawyer, you would think, wait a minute, why are

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we doing all this now? Don’t we have a trial? Isn’t that going to be the purpose? It’s actually just the purpose of probable cause. But the defense appears to be testing the admissibility

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of a variety of different pieces of evidence. And a prelim is the place to do that because you don’t want to go into a trial and think, gosh, I wonder what my trial strategy is going to be. I

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have no rulings to guide my thinking and what I’m going to emphasize. If you’re the defense, Gene, I’ll share with you.

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I I started my legal career as a criminal defense attorney, so I know a little bit about that side of the aisle as well. Yeah.

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And here’s the other here’s the equities there. you, a judge is not going to allow such explosive, gruesome, gory

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photos and details to be put into the public sphere now at prelim stage because that could potentially taint the

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ability to retain a fair jury by the time we get to trial because the defendant’s entitled to due process. He gets a fair jury and he has the right

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that jury tainted by too much pre-trial evidence being out there in the public sphere. Now, many people might say, “Wait a minute, it was already there

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before prelim.” But that wasn’t admissible and that can’t be the basis upon which a jury is allowed to base a

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verdict. In fact, in the deliberation room, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years, you will find that jurors act as checks and balances on each other. When

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somebody says something and then other jurors will say, “Where did you hear that?” you can only use evidence that came out in court, not back on X in

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February or in social media um by a commentator or on a podcast somewhere.

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So that’s the reason that’s the reason you don’t see Gene this um overexacerbation of evidence this you know over production at prelim. It was a

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long prelim but that didn’t necessarily make it overinclusive when it came to the evidence that was presented. A lot of it was argument.

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Is this process the exception or the rule though? I understand Utah has some uh unique um pre-tri pre preliminary

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hearing rules that are not unlike other states.

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No, this was the exception. Even in Utah, a murder prelim wouldn’t have lasted 5 days. So you ask that question. This is the exception.

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Well, that’s my point. I I I don’t understand why what what’s the motivation for this? Is it television?

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Is it the nature of the case? the the level of the public figures being so no

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such notoriety. Uh, pardon me.

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It’s the nature of the case and the public figures involved. That’s what it is. And when you have a case like that, everybody is very very careful to make

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sure that they make a perfect record to the best that they can and it’s so closely watched. And there are so many conspiracy theories. I’ll throw that out there, Gene, as well, that the judge

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wants to make sure he does everything he can to only admit credible evidence. The amount of hoops that he required both sides jump through in order to introduce a piece of evidence demonstrated that.

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And remember also, Gene, not everything that the courtroom gallery got live streamed to the viewing public.

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So that also was a measure the judge took to try to prevent everything getting out there into the court of public opinion where it could be recirculated before trial.

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How are national politics and uh being impacted by state and local issues? This

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is what I’d call the ripple effect of uh local interests or regional interests

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now taking on a national having national import. What what say you about that?

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I have long said that issue uh really highlights the importance of public safety, which is a bipartisan passion.

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Yet, we often hear it discussed in conservative circles as if, you know, Democrats weren’t doing enough to try to uphold public safety. I’ve never met a

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Democrat that didn’t want their kids to be safe walking to school. We share that as humanity. We all want to keep ourselves safe, our family safe, our

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community safe. But it does seem when you look at statistics like we’ve seen a lot of high pro attacks in public being made towards

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conservatives and that’s one of the narratives. Now there’s a counternarrative to everything but it’s one of the narratives that is heavily

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been proven to be divisive in terms of you know what you talk about locally that’s going on nationally. We talked about the same thing in after Butler

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Pennsylvania when the president was shot uh in the ear. We talked about the same thing when you had that UFC fight. You had the plot that was going to go on on

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the president’s 80th birthday. Thank God that was a success story that uh that plot was foiled. But so many of these

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attempts that occur and that occur in broad daylight and that occur almost in the wake of a similar attempt when you would think to yourself, why wasn’t this

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avenue of approach short up? You know, we said that about the White House press correspondence dinner where the asalent

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was able to, you know, run right through the metal detectors. And so those are the kinds of those are the types of events that occur nationally but really

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do have a ripple effect locally. But I’m the ultimate, you know, Christian optimist. Everybody, no matter what your

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politics are, care about how can we keep our community safe for all of us. So, it’s actually an issue I enjoy talking about because it’s bipartisan.

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Well, your divinity studies as well seem to compl give an interesting angle to this discussion unlike your typical uh

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lawyer. Uh I I know you’re a doctor in in law, but you’re also with your divinity background having you’re you’re

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in injecting a social cultural uh humanitarian component to the way we

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look at law, which drives to my question, where the heck is the legal system go going in the future? I mean, I

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I I’m going to take some anxiety medicine because this is getting too crazy to try to keep in perspective.

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Just your ability to either defend an alleged wrongdoer or prosecute the alleged wrongdoer is a must be driving

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you nuts as well from your side of the bench.

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My PhD is actually in theology. So, you are theology. But that is that is one of the reasons this is so near and dear to my heart. Your question is is something

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I consider every day. It’s one of the reasons I followed the Supreme Court as closely as I did and I’ve reported on that which with much interest. That was

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another crazy week when they came down with their their decisions. But let me add to the list of potentially anxietyprovoking scenarios. The issue of

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punishment because if we don’t if we’re no longer a society that wants to make the punishment fit the crime, that

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creates an enormous problem of of recidivism. Now, we would love to be able to rehabilitate everyone that commits a crime, but we all know that’s

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not possible. It’s delightful that some people are open to to rehabilitation.

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And those people become public speakers on how not to get involved in crime to begin with. You know, they speak to high school classes about please don’t please

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don’t be my younger self. I wish I knew then what I know now. But that doesn’t characterize everybody that chooses to

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break the law. Um, so threat assess thing that’s always been near and dear to my heart because you’re talking about

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not prediction but prevention. You don’t have a crystal ball. You can’t always predict who’s going to do what, but you can prevent crimes from taking place by

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keeping uh venues safe, by making sure that before you have an event, you know, we were talking about the the event that’s going to happen in your backyard

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next weekend, there’s going to be sweeps of all kinds, dogs on the ground, drones in the air to make sure it is safe for

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people to show up. That continues to be something that we can all do together to try to at least to the extent that we

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can exhibit the situational awareness on the front end to be able to have people show up and enjoy themselves when the event actually starts.

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Well, the Tyler Robinson case is a another one-hour discussion. It’s uh as it morphs, I’d love to have you back in the future to see the outcome of this

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case and because I am concerned about the future of how criminal justice is um studied and then administered and

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managed uh and and how the the legal system, the um the legislature gets

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rules in place that make it work uh in a cohesive way for folks like you either on the defense or the prosecution side.

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you had another topic or two you wanted to jump into.

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Well, the the other topic sort of stem from the issues that we discussed in detail surrounding the fact pattern, let’s say, in the Tyler Robinson case.

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I’ll keep going. Sure.

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The reality that we do have lots of opportunities to gather together in open spaces. Now, we had this exact discussion after the Mandalay Bay

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shooting. Remember that? Where the Steven Paddocket the asalant was able to take those, you know, take that aim from the hotel room. One thing that I think

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really that brought up uh it got brought up in Tyler Robinson as well is you have somebody freely moving through society perhaps exhibiting red flags or at least

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odd behavior and nobody sees them. Now one of the reasons for that Gene as you and I both know having grown up in a different era is because nobody’s

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looking up from their cell phones. You know cell phones aren’t used to to call each other. They’re used as devices.

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we are glued to them. I mean, we we we almost need our own lane to walk in because we’re not paying any attention.

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You may recall we covered a story a couple years ago where there were texting lanes at universities. But the problem with that is you miss the Tyler

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Robinsons, the Steven Paddocks of the world. You know, um I did a deep dive into the Paddock case and realized everybody at the casino, you know,

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recognized him, but no one knew him. We often see that same phenomena with school shooters. A lot of people know

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who he is. um and the pe the persons that maybe he has leaked to. Leakage of course in the threat assessment world means forecasting, telegraphing, telling

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somebody you’re thinking about committing a shooting. That was such a small group of people that never went up on social media and nobody saw it. So I

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think one of the other broader takeaways from last week is the extent to which we could take to get to know the people around us whether it’s school, the

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workplace, uh our fitness center, you know, wherever we spend our time. the firing range. I mean, what great

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opportunities to really be able to from our our devices and get to know our friends, neighbors, family, fans,

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followers. I mean, wouldn’t that be a great world, Gene, where we knew more about Well, hopefully. Yeah. And hopefully we’re learning more from this that which

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brings up something you said a second ago, social media. Does it make violence more likely or just more visible? what

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what’s coming out of what we’re seeing in so many outlets these days, some of which you and I broadcast on and give

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opinions to as well, but is it making us more violent and reactive or is it just more informative?

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Social media is helping inform where and when crime is going to occur. You may think, you know, I mentioned the statistic earlier. It is true a

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significant amount of leakage of people saying what they’re going to do happens within a close circle of family and friends. Another percentage of it

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happens online. So, if we had the manpower, I know with AI, maybe it’ll be easier in the future. If we were able to proactively monitor the social media of

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a person of interest, we would learn about plans and be able to to work. How do you do that, Gene? And that

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we never hear enough about how many mass shootings have been thwarted because it’s impossible to prove. But you can see the warning signs. You can see it

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discussed. And we have seen law enforcement allocate resources to areas where there’s a lot of chatter. There’s

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a lot of talk about creating a scene for mass violence. Remember that back to the UFC fight, you know, um on the president’s 80th birthday, that’s that’s

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one of the ways they were able to thwart that. But let me also juxtapose that with good oldfashioned police work. that one of the suspect’s mothers called in

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that her son was spending a lot of money on firearms, talking to these people online. So, at the end of the day, it all came back to the type of murder she

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wrote plot my own mother watched when she was younger. Is we can never discount the value in addition to social media of good old-fashioned person-toperson communication.

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Is it promoting fairness? Is it promoting uh uh it’s certainly promoting more awareness, but is it promoting more

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fairness in um the adjudication of crimes?

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Often promotes conspiracy theory. It does provide accurate information depending on who you’re following. But we all want to make sure we don’t silo

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ourselves and only follow people we like, we believe in, we think are credible because you’re denying, everybody would be denying themselves

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the opportunity to hear different viewpoints. And I mean, people are smart. You know, that’s one thing I learned 30 years as a prosecutor. Most

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people are really good, kind, compassionate, and everybody is smart.

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Who wouldn’t want to be exposed to more information to be able to make up their own minds about what happened? I mean,

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wouldn’t you want to have whatever you’re saying on your podcast or social media platform to be informed by a variety of evidence? And wouldn’t you

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also want it to be informed by admissible evidence in court? If you watched even one day of the Tyler Robinson prelim, you recognize how hard

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it is to get anything in front of this judge. He wanted to hear from both sides. They rearview it. They argued it again. They cited case law. Whatever

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eventually made those hoops was pretty solid evidence. It wasn’t a theory. It wasn’t some type of speculation. It was vetted.

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It was tested. It was authenticated before it was able to be published. So, I would say whoever is engaging on social media would be doing themselves a

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favor by broadening the extent of information they consume. That’s the way it would be more informative. And to

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that point, what reforms would you suggest or recommend to improve uh not only public safety but justice itself,

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the system you’ve been licensed to work in?

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Yes. The the way in which I I would want that to go down would be ways we can make the court of public opinion more like the court of law. Um on on social

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media, you’ll see a suspect, you know, uh arrested, tried, convicted, and executed before a single shred of evidence makes it into a courtroom.

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That’s not fair to anybody that’s accused of a crime. And that makes it even harder to pick a fair jury pool

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because everybody that’s following social media will come into the courtroom, report for jury duty, fulfill their civic duty, but tainted by

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whatever they saw online. And that’s not fair to anybody that’s accused of a crime. And I would also say that’s not even fair to the prosecution because they’re coming from behind sometimes if

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what they if what a juror a potential juror has read on social media has made them believe they’re going to see an entirely different case in court or has

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made them believe well wait a minute the fact that the prelim took 5 days must must mean the evidence was weak. No it wasn’t. But some people come away with

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wrong thinking as a result of consuming too much social media. Now, by the way, Gene, jurors aren’t allowed to follow

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the trial they’re sitting on on social media while they’re jurors. In fact, we’ve seen some high-profile cases even result in sequestering a jury. Boy, no

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juror wants to be sequestered. That means you’re in a hotel room, you get your meals served to you, you have limited limited contact with your family, with each other. That is a very

23:55
that’s a last resort. But if you have hype just take on a life of its own.

24:00
Sometimes in some cases that’s all you can do to try to preserve a fair.

24:06
But but in this evidentiary hearing, this proof of of legitimacy for a case,

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how do you sequester a jury that hasn’t been picked yet? and uh and they’re throwing everything in the in the media.

24:21
The defense would say, “Well, I would say uh your honor, we can’t get a we can’t get a fair trial. Everybody in the world has been watching our our

24:30
preliminary hearing.” That’s right. That’s why you didn’t see but a fraction of the evidence that’s going to be presented at trial at a

24:38
prelim. It’s for exactly that reason, Gene. You don’t put everything in in evidence in the court of public opinion.

24:44
That’s why a prelim only has a probable cause standard. Like I was saying, a lot of the time it took over the five days was arguing over pieces of evidence.

24:54
Arguing over the fact that, you know, something may have been inadvertently visible to the gallery, to the general public. So there was a bit of staging

25:02
that occurred there, too. It wasn’t five days of throwing things into evidence.

25:06
In fact, if anything, it was five days of objecting shouldn’t be admissible in evidence. All that is done to preserve as you point out a fair jury.

25:16
Yeah, that’s you’ve make the distinction. I was about ready to argue and you you’ve corrected me already because I do think it was not five days

25:24
of evidence. It was five days of pro uh pro procedural wrangling between the judge and [laughter]

25:33
I except I don’t know what that gets us except a public that’s pretty uptight about the the way. So that drives to my point with you as my guest today, folks.

25:42
Wendy Patrick uh is with us. And so where does the future of criminal justice go when they I is this not being

25:51
on TV the way it is basically um making either the prosecution or the

25:58
defense, not to mention the judge, a little bit more sober in their approach, uh more cognizant that they better dot

26:06
the eyes and cross the tees. ergo the delays we’re seeing here. Is that is that where you’re going?

26:13
I I Good way to put it, uh, Gene, because think about it. You know, it’s one thing to say that courtrooms are public. They are, you know, um,

26:21
throughout my entire career, we had court watchers. A lot of people in the community would come, they live, they just they enjoyed being there, you know,

26:28
the excitement, they love cross-examination, they love closing arguments. But when you start televising trials, you are correct that you bring

26:36
everything to an entirely different level. You asked earlier, where does legal legal wrangling get you? It gets you to the point that credible evidenc