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Welcome back to another Courtroom Confidential Weekly Roundup! This week, host Joshua Ritter shares his insights on some of this week’s updates in true crime, including:
- The defense suddenly rests in the Kouri Richins murder trial without calling any witnesses, putting the accused Utah mother and so-called grief author one step closer to a jury deciding her fate.
- Plus, a senior prank turns deadly in Georgia after a beloved teacher is killed – now the family of victim Jason Hughes is asking prosecutors to drop the charges against Jayden Wallace and the other students involved.
- And, a grand jury indicts former University of Kentucky cheerleader Laken Snelling on a manslaughter charge, accusing her of leaving her newborn baby to die inside a trash bag.
Plus, more breaking headlines and a preview of next week’s biggest cases.
Thank you for listening! Please leave us a rating and review, and send this episode to a friend! We appreciate your help and support in getting the word out about Courtroom Confidential.
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DISCLAIMER: The information in this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. This content does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is established by listening to this podcast.
The defense suddenly rests in the Corey Ritchie's murder trial without calling any witnesses
putting the accused Utah mother and so-called grief offer one step closer to a jury deciding
her fate.
Plus, a senior prank turns deadly in Georgia after a beloved teacher is killed.
Now the family of the victim is asking prosecutors to drop the charges.
And a grand jury indicts former University of Kentucky cheerleader Lincoln, smelling
on a manslaughter charge, accusing her of leaving her newborn baby to die inside a trash
bag.
All this and more, this week, Uncourtroom Confidential.
As you can tell, there's a lot for us to dive into this week, as always, we are very
honored that you have chosen us to bring you these updates.
I'm your host, Joshua Ritter.
I'm award-winning.
Los Angeles prosecutor turned criminal defense attorney with over 20 years' experience
working in the criminal justice system, bringing you my unique insights from both sides
of the courtroom.
Today is Friday, March 13th, 2026.
And this is the 100th and first episode of courtroom confidential weekly roundup.
Let's jump right in.
First of all, Corey Ritchie's.
It's now entering week three.
We've been following this case closely.
If you've been following it along with us on our sister channel, courtroom confidential
live trials, you know that it ended with, I think, what it was a strong note for the
prosecution.
There was an issue about Carmen Lauber first that I think we should talk about.
There was a lot of discussion about whether or not she could be how the prosecution could
rehabilitate her with that be through documents or with that be through live testimony, back
and forth between the judge and the defense, lots of objections.
They're curious about their ability to bring in other documents in the spirit of completeness.
With all that build up, it all ended with not much of a splash by just simply recalling
Carmen Lauber to testify.
And all of that build up was just about whether or not she had actually violated some terms
and conditions of her probation from a long time ago.
I don't think it moved the needle in any direction on this case.
What did though was the last couple of items that was covered by the prosecution.
First of all, the book, are you with me, the prosecution was able to bring that in, present
that to jurors?
Remember, these jurors may not even have known about this, had not certainly heard testimony
about it until this point.
Now they realize that this person, the prosecution has been accusing of committing this horrific
crime, actually tried to profit perhaps on top of that, at least from a publicity perspective
by showing, by telling the world that she's this person who has lost her husband, her children
have lost a father, and this is how she's dealing with grief.
Interesting couple of things about that.
One is that we find out she didn't even take the time to write the book herself, a children's
book she got a ghost writer for.
It sounds like it was just this enormous PR scheme on her part to try to perhaps even
further distance herself from any kind of culpability in the minds of at least the public
on this case.
And then the walk the dog letter.
We've all been hearing about the walk the dog letter, would that come in?
What impact would it have with the jury?
I think it has a tremendous impact, and I've said this before because jurors are very moved
by the actions of a defendant after they've been arrested.
Many people can wrap their heads around the idea that innocent people might be accused
of crimes, jurors themselves wonder how would they handle it if they were accused of a crime
that they never committed?
Would they defend themselves?
Would they take the stand and how would they behave after they were arrested?
When you see someone who appears as though they're trying to orchestrate testimony while
they're behind bars that can have a pretty phenomenal effect on jurors.
So what's happening here?
Well, first, as I said, I think the prosecution ended strong.
I know a lot of this case was confusing in the way that it came out, but this is where
the rubber really hits the road.
He's in these final couple of pieces of evidence, especially that walk the dog letter and
how is the prosecution going to wrap it all together for jurors?
Remember, trials don't always come out as you plan.
Sometimes it has to do with witness availability.
Sometimes it has to do with just unpredictability from witnesses on this stand.
But you can at least plan out how you're going to explain what they should expect in opening
statements, and you can at least plan out how you're going to wrap that all up cleanly
for them in closing arguments.
And the prosecution really does have a job ahead of them because there's a lot of information
here and they've got to make a convincing argument to jurors because some folks watching
this are still not all that convinced, I think.
Some folks watching this are confused, perhaps, and now it's up to the prosecution to bring
that all home.
The defense, I think, made an interesting choice by having no presentation of evidence.
Corey didn't take the stand, not really surprising.
I think that was actually a smart move.
I think we're taking the stand would have been devastating to the defense, but they didn't
call any witnesses.
And I know a lot of folks have said, well, why not?
Why not at least call an expert on the narcotics and how that might have affected him or fentanyl
or your own medical expert?
Many times in these situations, you ask yourself, OK, the defense can call someone, but who?
And will that person actually be helpful?
Here it seems like she's got no friends that would be willing to testify on her behalf.
Her own mother looks like she may have been implicated in some of the cover-up to this.
Her boyfriend took the stand for the prosecution.
There's not many people left as far as character witnesses, and then as far as experts, remember,
this is in a case of she did it, but it was an accident or a case of self-defense or
a case of anything else, but her saying, I didn't do it.
So if your defense is, I didn't do it.
What is a medical examiner expert going to do for you?
Remember, she's saying, yes, he did die the way that the state has alleged.
I just didn't have anything to do with it.
Finally, let me take some questions from viewers.
O'Dell Burgess says, is it a good idea for the defense to paint Eric as a bad person
and quarry as a victim?
I think it was not a good calculation, not a great strategy, but also, again, they weren't
really left with much else.
They had to say that she didn't do this, and they're only explanation for who did do
it.
They could have gone in here and said, she didn't do it, and it's up to the prosecution
to show you who did, but she didn't do it.
But they wanted to offer some alternative.
And that alternative was to perhaps he did it to himself.
That may have misfired.
Eric's not a bad guy, no history of criminal record, no real history of drug use.
I know they struggled to establish that, but I don't think that they did.
So now you're taking a fairly nice-looking guy, a guy who peers that have been a led
of fairly good life, a fairly forgiving guy, as well, trying to paint him as the bad guy.
Good luck with that.
Someone says, why did the book come in?
Why was it relevant to the case?
I know a lot of people have asked about this as well.
And you could see where equal, reasonable minds might disagree on this one.
I could see judges saying, no, I'm not going to allow that in.
No, I don't see the relevance of it.
But remember, too, this is all during the time before she's been arrested.
And her post-crime pre-arrest conduct, I think, is very important.
It all has to do with this idea of consciousness of guilt and what was she up to.
And if part of their theory is that she was attempting to cover up her involvement
by even launching this sort of publicity campaign, then there is some relevance to
it.
The relevance of it great enough that it would make an argument over the probative value
of it.
I mean, is the probative value of it greater than the prejudicial value of it?
You could see an argument where it was not.
But then again, how prejudicial is the idea that you wrote a book, a children's book?
You might even say that there's an argument there for the defense to say, an innocent person
writes a children's book, not a guilty person.
In any case, I was not as shocked as others that the book came in.
Estelle says, why do you think defense asks for 30 minutes with their client after the
state rests?
I think it was to talk to her about whether or not she's going to testify.
This is that time.
They may have talked to her about it before.
She may have had thoughts about it before.
She may have told them, I'll make a game time decision.
This was that game time decision.
They're going to sit there and go, listen, we've already made a decision.
We're not calling any other witnesses.
The only witness that we're going to call is you.
What do you want to do, Cory?
We've suggested to you.
It's not a good idea, but this is your call, understandably so.
Christine Canary says, why would Cory's mom send a copy of the kids book to the police?
Because of what we said before, I think this was a publicity campaign and she wanted
the police to see that with the idea of, hey, she's so innocent, she's so uninvolved.
In fact, she's mourning the death of her husband and helping your children get through
that.
By the way, isn't she such a great person that she's decided to help others out along
the way?
And finally, Sunny Az says, is Nester a good attorney?
I think that she is.
I think that in this case, she was frustrated by the judge and maybe frustrated by the facts
more than anything.
It's difficult sometimes as a defense attorney to stand next to someone that you know there's
a no overwhelming amount of evidence pointing towards their guilt and still lodge some arguments.
Now, where I feel like she may have miscalculated is with some of the arguments that she made
to the judge, some of the things that she asked on Chromic cross-examination backfired,
I'm not going to attribute everything that the defense team did to her.
But I think she knows what she's doing.
I think she's a very qualified attorney.
It's just, you know, you can't pick the facts and circumstances of a lot of your client's
cases.
But what do you guys think?
You're the jurors on this.
Where do you stand on this?
Guilty or not guilty?
Please let us know in the comments.
Let's move now to Georgia with another case that has a lot of people scratching their
heads and a lot of people really concerned about how the administration of justice is being
handled here.
We're talking about the case of Jaden, also known as Jay Wallace, who's 18 years old,
and he was involved in a school prank that went horribly wrong when he went to go toilet
paper or roll the house of one of his teachers, a math teacher from North Hall High School,
Jason Hughes, who's 40 years old, this took place just on March 6th of this year in
Georgia.
And during that incident, during that prank, the teacher, Jason, ran out.
He was actually the accounts go that he was actually expecting them to show up.
He was kind of excited about it, wanted to catch them in the act.
Apparently, this is kind of a tradition that takes place at that school.
He was not bothered by it, not telling his wife to call the police.
He was actually looking forward to almost participating in the mischief of it.
And tragically, as he's running out to catch them, he slips and falls in his run over by
Jaden and kill.
Now, Jaden and his friends stop to help him.
They stop to administer aid and he's taken to the hospital and, unfortunately, succumbs
to his injuries.
Jaden now is facing first degree vehicular homicide, reckless driving and criminal trespass
and littering in faces three to 15 years in prison.
Four of the other students who are along with him are also facing criminal charges.
Jason's family has come out and said that he was aware of the prank, that he was hoping
to catch them and they said this, quote, our family fully supports getting the charges dropped
for all involved.
This is a terrible tragedy and our family is determined to prevent a separate tragedy
from occurring, ruining the lives of these students.
Then Jaden has also come out with his own statement saying, I pledge to live out the remainder
of my life in a manner that honors the memory of co-choose by exemplifying Christ.
He will never be forgotten.
So where do we stand on this?
What's happening here?
Well, first of all, I think this case demonstrates how hard a prosecutor's job can be when I was
in the prosecutor's office.
Many times you are confronted with cases where it's not just a bad guy, it's not just a horrible
thing that took place and a horrible person that you're going prosecuting.
Sometimes you have a good person who made a horrible mistake and what do you do about
them?
You can't simply ignore what took place, but you can't simply ignore the good person
that is in front of you now, which is, by the way, sometimes difficult to work yourself
out of because you're so used to this seemingly never ending conveyor belt of people who
do have criminal records and who have done incredibly horrible things.
And the prosecution has to balance all of that.
Now should the victim's voice matter or the victim's family's voice matter in all of
this?
Absolutely, they should.
They should take it into consideration, but should they be the ones calling the shots?
We've all heard on TV shows before where somebody says, well, I don't want to press charges
as if that somehow affects the case moving forward.
No, it doesn't.
The prosecution does not represent the victims.
The prosecution does not represent the victim's families.
The prosecution represents the state where they are operating out of.
I represented the people of the state of California.
Now that includes the victims and the victim's families.
And so of course, we're going to listen to their voice and we're, of course, we're going
to take that into consideration.
But if a crime has been committed, something needs to be done about that.
But that leads us to my last point, which is, was a crime committed here?
Why are we looking at this case?
Why can't, why does every case that involves the tragic death of another person have to
lead us to criminal charges?
It doesn't is the answer.
Sometimes it's simply an accident and simply a tragedy.
And I think that might be what is taking place here.
Now the theory under which the prosecution is pursuing this is that they're saying that
he was driving recklessly.
Well, that, I don't have the reports.
We're going to have to see what the reports actually say.
But that's going to have to be something more than him trying to just drive away as the
teachers trying to catch him.
I mean, reckless driving to the point to get this to a felony would have to be something
like breaking traffic laws, not, not just simply speeding, but driving through a red light,
driving on the sidewalk.
I don't know if any of that is present here, but if it's not, then I get us back to
the question of, yes, this is a tragedy, yes, someone lost their life.
But it is, is it actually a crime?
If there is a place for this to be resolved, it might be in civil pull.
But what do you guys think?
Do you think a crime was actually committed here?
Please let us know in the comments.
The last case I want to consider for the moment is the case of Lincoln smelling.
Do you remember this case arose back in August of 2025 out of Lexington, Kentucky, where
a baby boy was found wrapped inside of a towel inside of a trash bag in the closet of
this young woman who was a former University of Kentucky cheerleader.
Now this case had kind of been hanging around as prosecutors were trying to figure out
what to do with it.
Well, what they decided to finally do, and I think this was the right thing, is they brought
it to a grand jury.
Sometimes you can bring an indictment simply by the prosecution saying, I believe a crime
to a place here, and I'm going to file a criminal complaint and bring charges against
a person.
But other times, if it's a very complex case, if it's a case involving somebody of a
high profile, or if it's a case where you simply want to kind of get an understanding
of how the general public might feel about it, you can present it to the grand jury.
And I think that's what they've done here.
They've actually tried to, I think, test to some extent the strength of the case by actually
bringing it in front of the grand jury.
And that's why interestingly enough, they brought several options to the grand jury.
This is a quote from the Commonwealth's Attorney Kimberly Baird who said, they were given
the information about homicide, the four levels of homicide, and then deliberated and decided
that manslaughter first degree was the charge that should come out of the grand jury.
Isn't that interesting that they gave them all the different levels of homicide and said,
listen, you decide what if anything to charge her with here?
Well, they did charge her, like I said, with first degree manslaughter and she will appear
in court within the next two to three weeks.
So what's happening here?
Well, it's a horrible case anyway you look at it.
I know a lot of people feel very strongly about this, but I don't know the circumstances
of this young woman.
I don't know what kind of past she had.
I don't know what kind of resources she had available to her.
I don't know what her family life was like.
I don't know what compelled her to hide this entire pregnancy and then hide the fact
that she had a baby.
But what I do know, or at least what the grand jury is telling us, is that she is now responsible
for the death of that baby and that is a horrible thing.
So whatever circumstances she was dealing with, whatever reason that she felt that she
couldn't come forward and say that she was pregnant, whatever reason that she felt that
she couldn't come forward and give that baby up for adoption or present that baby to
some sort of abandonment shelter, I don't know, but I do know that if she is responsible
for that baby's death and something that does need to be done about it, what do you guys
think about this case though?
Where do you fall on all of this?
Because this case bother you as much as it does me, please let us know in the comments.
Before we dive into the other cases, making headlines this week, I only asked one very
small favor and that is if you haven't already, please take a moment to subscribe to the
channel now.
It's completely free and it's a great way to help support the work that we do here.
We want to continue to bring you the highest quality content that we possibly can and the
best way that we can do that is through your support.
After making headlines this week, Dale Warner was convicted, found guilty on Tuesday, a
second-degree murder and tampering with evidence for the death of his wife, Dee Warner.
The trial lasts five weeks with 12 days of testimony by 35 different witnesses.
Warner himself did not testify.
Interestingly, one of the big points that I think may have turned the jurors in this case
if they weren't already convinced were a review of Dale Warner's electronic devices found
searches for get this one quote, what to do with a thousand gallon propane tank, chemical
cremation, what is liquid cremation and why is it illegal, and searches for the 10 widow
dating sites, not exactly the best type of stuff to be looking up when you're looking at
murder charges, sentencing is set for May 7th and he faces prison with a possibility of
parole.
Very far well was also in court this week.
He is accused of the murder of Sandra Birchmore, this case was in front of a judge because they
were trying to decide whether or not to dismiss the superseding indictment.
You remember that he was indicted first for the murder of Sandra and then later on for
the murder of the unborn child.
The judge did end up denying that motion and it all came down to the idea of federal jurisdiction.
Remember that the feds cannot bring straight murder charges.
They need what's called some sort of federal hook and here the judge felt that that was
established by the evidence, by the idea that this crime was committed to cover up a person
testifying against him and that he likely believed that Sandra was going to come forward
and report this and that might likely have led to federal charges against him.
So the judge felt that there was enough there at least to allow for federal jurisdiction
and he's going to face all of those charges coming here soon.
Also convicted this week were the Alexander brothers out of Florida, tall Alexander,
Orrin Alexander and Alon Alexander were all convicted found guilty on all charges for
a trial that lasted for four weeks of testimony with the testimony of 11 women coming forward
saying that they had suffered greatly at the hands of these three men and the testimony
was incredibly graphic and very brutal to the point that I can't even really explain
the details of it for you here now.
But after four weeks they were convicted sentencing, he's going to be set for August 6 and
they face up to life in prison.
Before we get to what's coming up next week, I just want to say thank you.
Thank you all for being a part of this growing community, but I wanted to give a very special
shout out to meme Karen for your review on Apple podcasts and to Stanley Thomas and Tracy
Pope for your comments on YouTube.
We can't thank you enough for your continued support.
Please leave us a review on Apple podcasts and Spotify and leave us a comment on YouTube.
We appreciate you helping spread the word about courtroom confidential.
On the docket for next week, Samuel Hushdettler, the Amish teen from Ohio facing charges in
the death of Rosanna Kinsinger will return to court on Monday, March 16th for a hearing.
Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Huerman will return to court on Tuesday, March 17th
for a hearing.
Aaron Spencer, the Arkansas man charged in the 2024 killing of Michael Fossler, who was
out on bond after allegedly sexually assaulting his daughter, has a status hearing on Wednesday,
March 18th.
California woman Ashley Buzzer, charged in the shooting death of her nine-year-old daughter
Melody Buzzer is set to return to court for a hearing Wednesday, March 18th.
Gregory Moore, a former diversity attorney accused of killing his client, Aliza Sherman
in 2013, has a pre-trial hearing on Thursday, March 19th.
Michael Smith, the Utah father who took his young children on a near deadly hike will return
to court on Friday, March 20th for a preliminary hearing.
And finally, please join us for our special question and answer series Sunday, Sunday coming
up this Sunday.
All are invited to leave us a voice message with a true crime question at thecourtroomconfidential.com,
which I will answer live during Sunday show at 90 in Pacific noon, Eastern.
You can find the live stream on YouTube, X, and Facebook.
And that is it for us folks.
I am your host, Josh Ritter.
You can find us on social media at CR Confidential on X at thecourtroomconfidential on Instagram
or at thecourtroomconfidential.com.
Thank you again for joining me.
Have a great weekend, and I will see you again next week for another episode of Corproom
Confidential.

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