"Be Courageous"; Jury Deliberating NOW in Grief Author Murder Trial

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Hey there, folks.

Closing arguments are done.

And the jury is deliberating in the so-called grief, author, murder trial,

or also called the poison husband murder trial.

But Georgia Liberations got underway, and it didn't take long before.

Things got interesting.

And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Rose.

We expect and always gets interesting when you get notes from the jury.

Didn't expect one this quickly.

Yeah, this one happened 10, 12 minutes into jury deliberation.

So no time at all.

And kind of a confusing note.

But seems like they were able to give them some instructions.

But they were already asking questions.

You know what they said to me?

They are really taking this seriously.

Because we looked at the note and saw what they were asking.

You're like, what exactly are they asking?

What does that mean?

What did it say again?

A factual stipulation.

A question mark.

And that was all it said.

They sent a note according.

And again, as we record, there's the jury only got the case literally minute to go.

And they said before they even got into the jury room for the most part,

they handed a note to a bailiff.

Asking a question about a factual stipulation.

Something they expected the judge to give them some instruction.

And he forgot to do so maybe.

But I thought it was cool.

Like, wow, they are really.

They're on top of it.

Yeah, that's what it said.

They are on top of things.

And I think that's probably good news for both sides and the fact that you want a fully engaged jury

that is ready to really carefully go through all the testimony.

So they had to.

We had an episode one right before this going through the prosecution's closing argument.

They did get a rebuttal.

We'll get into that a little bit.

Just didn't take as long.

But the now we'll go through what the defense, their theme I guess was during their closing argument

in robes.

It was pretty clear, pretty early.

They tried to humanize her and they harped on this point.

Reasonable doubt.

They are beating that into the ground.

What is reasonable doubt?

And they're trying to put every bit of evidence into question.

That's right.

In fact, they said if you think she maybe did it.

If you think she probably did it.

If you think it's very likely that she did it, you still have to find Corey Richens not guilty.

I thought that was interesting.

Which actually isn't the legal threshold, right?

But they kept telling the jury everything the lawyers saying closing is not evidence.

But the lawyers can say what they want to say.

And yet wrong.

They're beating this thing into the ground.

Reasonable doubt.

Reasonable doubt.

Did you think it was effective?

They were essentially saying everything that the prosecution is telling you.

We have a reasonable explanation on the other side that counters it.

Yes.

And I think they made the point very clear that there was no direct evidence.

This was all circumstantial.

There is no way that the state or prosecutors could actually without doubt tell jurors how

Eric Richens ingested the lethal dose of fentanyl.

And that is true.

And then I also thought it was interesting.

It seemed a little hokey.

They had some visuals up.

But the defense started with the state looks at facts one way and sees which.

But if you look at those same facts another way, you will see a widow.

And so they were asking the jury not to take all of the examples of how she grieved,

how she reacted, what she said and did in that body camp footage, what she sounded like in that 911 call.

They were trying to make the point you don't know how one person grieves versus another.

They spent a lot of time on that.

And it makes a fair point.

Does it not robes?

How are we don't send a woman to prison for the rest of her life punish her because she's not grieving the way you think she should grieve?

It's the worst moment of her life and you're going to judge her for it.

That's a fair.

That's kind of a reasonable point.

Is it not?

Yes.

And they had to go there because the prosecution putting up that video the next day of shots and laughter and celebrations

where Corey Richens and her friends say they were celebrating Eric Richens' life.

But it looks like she's celebrating his death.

And that is certainly how prosecutors tried to present it to the jury.

It does feel icky watching, but that was just another example of how they were saying to the jury.

The defense was you, every person grieves differently, every person reacts differently.

And this is where the defense attorney injected herself into this.

She actually said she lost her spouse a number of years back.

And she said based on what I have learned in this case, I didn't grieve appropriately.

She didn't go into details, but she put herself into it.

And that was a moment, at least you sit up.

And there was a personal story there about how one grieved.

I don't know what to do with that.

What is one supposed to do when they grieve?

I can tell you, I've seen grief.

I've seen it up close.

I've seen it in movies.

I've seen it in real life videos.

You get a general idea of how people behave when they grieve.

But I don't know.

I thought that was a fair point.

How can I judge her, put her in prison the rest of her life?

Because I say how she's supposed to react to her husband being dead.

I thought the defense scored points with that.

And I do think they scored points by really bringing that home that it's such an individual experience.

And just this, they were truly trying to humanize her throughout it all.

Talking about how, when she left Eric initially,

this is when she claims he died and she didn't know it because she went to go lay down with her child

because her child was having nightmares because her child needed her.

They were trying to create the mother, the human, not this black widow,

this premeditated, evil woman who was trying to kill her husband for money.

I thought some of that.

There were several times where it was obvious where they said she did this just like any parent would.

Kind of a thing.

And it was obviously, I don't know how effective it might have been.

But this was happening.

Robes, this was, okay, fine, let's do this now.

And right, she's innocent to a proven guilty.

But a big part of this in the conversations the last couple of days have had to do with her reactions.

How she has behaved in the courtroom.

And the faces she has made and whatever else in the prosecutor used that in his closing.

Robes, today it, look, how do you judge what she was doing?

I don't know.

But what she was doing today was smirking.

She was reacting sarcastically even in some of her faces and reactions to what she was hearing from the prosecution.

How that plays for a jury, I don't know.

But today, she almost in her reaction, Robes kind of countered the sweet lady they were trying to create.

In the narration.

I agree.

So just as we could see her face, you know the jury is looking at her face.

And while the prosecutor was giving his closing arguments, she was rolling her eyes.

She had a smug look on her face.

And look, I imagine I was trying to give her some grace and say, okay, if someone was saying the worst possible things about me,

I don't have a poker face.

I likely probably would roll my eyes too, maybe, out of frustration and annoyance.

And just like, are you kidding me?

That is not what happened.

That is not what I did.

So there could be that, and you could give her that.

But I have seen, look, there's rolling commentary and a lot of these feet and a lot of people watching this just at home.

Just people who like to watch trials, they were all commenting on, someone needs to wipe that look off her face.

I don't think it definitely wouldn't, it didn't do her any good.

And I guess the only hope would be if you're the defense is that you're looking at it saying, well, what would that be like if somebody were making up lies about me?

Yeah, that was, I don't, it didn't look good.

Oh my God, you know, I just had a flashback to a stand up.

How do you react when you're innocent?

How do you behave when you're innocent and you're being accused of something?

She doesn't, people can judge it and people are the way you say it, but she just, she's not coming off necessarily as an innocent woman.

She's coming off smug in some of this.

And that is the best way to put it.

She needs to wipe that look off her face.

That's what people were saying.

That's a good way to put it.

Because what it, it ends up looking like you're seeing.

That's a good way to put it.

You're getting a window into her personality that she's used to being right.

She's used to getting things her way.

She's used to not having to die there.

There's just this like entitlement about her reactions that make her not likeable.

And that is what I was saying.

And the problem is that robes plays into the storyline of the prosecution of who she is.

It actually is matching up.

Let's talk about this video.

You mentioned a second ago.

You said during, like earlier during the trial, I might have missed this video.

Yes.

But to see it, this is the day after or the day after.

It was the day after he died.

Bro, this is, this is what they ended with.

So the video is of her, who took this video, by the way?

I think they were just, there were some of her friends.

I don't know if there were some of Eric's friends, but the couple's friends, the kids, the sons.

I remember when I first saw it, thinking even if that is something people do,

where they celebrate someone's life the next day after someone tragically and suddenly dies,

it seems like a tough emotion to feel that quickly when something is so sudden.

Like, I understand if somebody was slowly dying of cancer and you prepared for it.

And when they passed, you could celebrate.

Like, there'd be a different feeling, but this was shocking.

This was sudden.

This was unexpected.

And these poor kids are reeling.

And to see adults taking shots, lapping and going to Eric, it just seemed so out of touch, tonally,

to even put it mildly.

Who else was with her?

It was friends.

It was her.

Okay.

And this is, so this, after the defense finished with their closing, the prosecution gets the last word,

so they get a rebuttal.

They get to come back up and kind of close things out.

And Rose, this is what, that video they used.

That's one of the last things the jury sees before they go into the deliberations.

That is impactful to me, because I'm seeing it for the first time fully today.

Rose, her husband died the day before.

You see laughter, giddy.

This looks celebratory.

I've been to funerals.

We call them, yes, celebrations of life and they are parties and they are.

They have good energy and joy, but they don't look like this.

This looked like not a celebration of his life, but a celebration of his death.

That's two different things.

That's how it comes off.

Judged for yourselves with Rose.

And I don't know what context you put this in, but this to make sense.

That's, I think that was a really, really tough visual for them to actually be able to fully explain.

Now, look, it wasn't just Corey, her friends were there too.

So if she were doing it like with her and her.

Three or four of them.

But there were several people, several adults there.

So look, I don't know.

She was saying, I believe the defense attorney was saying she's Irish and they celebrate life.

And this is part of what they do.

So, you know, culturally speaking, I couldn't, I wouldn't, I've never seen anything like that, but they say that's part of what they do.

Well, stay here, folks.

The defense had answers for everything.

They really did have a, let me explain approach to the whole case, if you will, will explain that.

And one guy sat in that courtroom today and had his entire reputation eviscerated by the defense.

Stay here.

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I'm continuing here on Amy and TJ, that lead investigator had a...

It was tough to sit through that today, the defense giving their closing arguments

in the Corey Richens trial, and they went after the Richens family to some degree,

saying that they were responsible for putting the police down this wrong path

and pushing the investigation and making sure of Corey Richens, who was charged, but rose.

She went after the lead investigator and they kept doing cutaways of him in the courtroom.

This was uncomfortable.

That was when it got uncomfortable.

They just stayed on detective Jeff O'Driskel's face, who has sat...

I think in court, I believe every single day through all the testimony,

but he got to hear, yes, the defense attorney take a tactic that we've seen

many, many, many defense attorneys take.

Of course, attack the investigation.

Attack the lead investigator.

Say that he didn't do his job, that he created a theory, that he decided what happened

and then found evidence to fit his theory.

We see this all the time and so just go after the investigators, go after the police

to deflect from any culpability your client may have.

Does that work?

I mean, is that effective?

I don't know.

This jury, as much as we watched of this case, and I really do believe

we saw at least 90% of all the testimony in this case.

I mean, robes, they were paying attention closer than we are.

I'm always surprised by juries.

I have no idea what these folks are going to do.

That lead investigator came off to me as a straight shooter.

Like, he just came off as a guy.

Now, he got a little testy with the defense.

He was definitely not willingly helping them in any way.

Well, he was defensive.

He was being attacked.

He was a little defensive, but he was getting attacked, sure.

But yes, he definitely got eviscerated in the closing argument today.

And then in her, let me explain moment, I actually appreciated some of this.

And I thought some of this did land, especially when she was explaining

why Corey deleted messages, why she searched about whether or not

police could find deleted messages once they took your phone.

And she said this, she was having an affair.

She didn't want her husband's family to know that she was having an affair.

She didn't want police to know she was having an affair.

So yeah, she was deleting messages.

Just that made sense to me.

Again, that I could get that now.

It also makes sense.

She might delete them because the affair gives motive for the murder.

Of course.

It's all kinds of stuff.

Of course.

This is why I don't like circumstance or cases.

This is tough.

And then in terms of the suspicious searches that they said she found,

including about expensive female or sorry, what was it?

It was jails or prisons for rich for the rich.

And they were saying, yeah, she was being investigated for murder.

She was nervous.

She was concerned.

She started looking at what her options were.

You buy that.

That was a little tougher for me.

OK, I didn't know where you were going.

That was a little tougher for me.

But then when she said that, look, we didn't know what they were going to say

about the housekeeper and Carmen Lover.

And how they were going to get around this testimony that Carmen Lover said that

she got pills.

She got drugs for Corey Richens.

Well, they basically admitted that she asked Carmen for pain or if she asked Carmen for

pain pills, that doesn't mean she asked her for fentanyl.

And it certainly doesn't mean that she killed her husband.

That's fair.

OK.

That's what I was thinking.

They have an answer for everything.

Is it reasonable?

I don't know.

If this collection, this preponderance evidence all taken together

is circumstantial enough that I am really supposed to not use my common sense.

You're supposed to use your common sense.

But I don't know.

This is why I hate circumstantial cases.

I was confused too because when the defense told the jury,

what we said at the beginning, even if you think she probably did it,

you still cannot convict.

You can.

That's the whole point.

You don't have to be convinced 100%.

That is the thing.

And yes, the defense, excuse me, the prosecutor got up.

And that was the first thing in his rebuttal.

He put up a graphic.

Actually, what reasonable doubt means and what you're supposed to consider.

And it doesn't mean there's, there are very few things that you know beyond the reasonable doubt.

Excuse me.

Of absolute certainty.

There's almost nothing.

Because that's not the, I'm not 100% sure you're not an alien.

Right?

I'm pretty sure.

But can I know that 100%?

No, I don't.

So no, it's that reasonable doubt thing is so fascinating to me, Rob.

It's, it's this slide.

It seems some weird scale.

I'm just a smoking gun kind of a juror.

Well, yes, it's wonderful when you can actually have fingerprints,

I need it forensic evidence that puts you on the scene with motive.

They have it on CSI every single episode.

But this case did not have that.

And I actually really liked, I, I will say just from the effectiveness of it.

The way the prosecutor ended his rebuttal.

This was the final sentence the jurors heard.

See through her facade.

Check her ambition and do not let her get away with murder.

I thought that was effective.

I don't know.

I, you know, so far what I've seen from this jury.

They, they are taking this job seriously.

And oh, yeah, by the way, and you taught a jurors.

Eight.

Eight.

So they just let four alternates go today.

So they, yes, they had 12 sitting in there.

But four alternates were sent home.

They are still supposedly beyond standby in case somebody gets six.

But out, sick, but out there it's only eight.

That is fascinating.

And look, the other thing.

So where we have the prosecution telling the jury don't let her get away with murder.

You have the defense attorney telling the jurors.

And she said this more than once to be brave.

Be courageous.

Find Corey Richens not guilty.

And so it was just fascinating how they were appealing to the jury's emotions.

Be brave.

Be courageous.

Don't send this innocent woman to prison.

On one hand and on the other, you have quite the opposite.

Basically, check her ambition, see through her facade.

What's your prediction?

I am going to predict that she is going to be found not guilty.

I'm sorry.

Woo, that was wrong.

I am going to predict that she is going to be found guilty.

Hmm.

On, look, on, on murder charges.

I don't know about the attempted murder.

I don't know that that was as strong in terms of what I saw and heard from the testimony.

But I feel like once they convicted of murder, they're probably just going to find her guilty of attempted murder.

We forget.

There's fraud and all kinds of other stuff.

And once you find her guilty of the big, the big charge aggravated murder, probably the rest will follow.

I don't know what I would, if I was forced to put money on it.

I would go probably a thung jury.

First, after that, not guilty.

After that guilty.

I don't know why.

There's something about these types of cases and these types of defendants.

Sometimes, robes we've seen.

Karen Reed.

That juries can be very sympathetic.

Now, she is not necessarily a sympathetic character.

They didn't say what she was abused or she was cheating on her.

I mean, even though he was, but she was cheating as well.

I'm just saying, she didn't, they didn't make the case that she used some battered woman kind of a thing.

So that might play into it.

But I just circumstantial cases are so hard for me, babe.

I know.

I know the meaty, the cases that I made, the came up Karen Reed and Casey and those are Casey Anthony.

Remember that one also surprised me.

That was a not guilty verdict that shocked me beyond fully.

But you never know.

No one ever knows what juries are going to do.

We'll find out that I guess in a little, we'll jump on, of course, if anything were to happen.

But it looks like most likely the jury will keep deliberating until court ends for the day.

There are two hours behind us here on the East Coast.

So likely the jury will pick back up with the deliberations tomorrow morning.

What did he tell them though?

What was it? He told them that he was giving them so long.

Going to check in with him.

He was going to check in with them.

And the timing what it would have been 6 30 Eastern time, 4 30 mountain time to see if they wanted to keep on deliberating or go home for the night.

So if anything develops, of course, we would jump on.

But I think it's fairly safe to presume that they will likely go home and re and begin deliberating again tomorrow morning.

So we will of course stay on top of this trial for you.

As always, we appreciate you listening.

Thank you so much.

I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ Holmes.

We'll talk to you soon.

Thank you very much.

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