Miguel Salguero-Olivares' Defense Attorneys present their closing arguments in his murder trial

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Let the record reflect the jury is back in the courtroom. Will there be a closing argument from the defense? [00:00:08] Speaker 2: Yes, sir. [00:00:08] Speaker 1: All right, this jury is with Mr. Murphy. Thank you, sir. [00:00:18] Speaker 2: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Just like the state and their closing arguments, you're going to be here for two attorneys and what we have to present to you. And I wanted to come and talk to you about just a couple of things specifically. All those lab tests, all those DNA tests that you heard about, that you heard the state talk about, that we were going to ignore. That's what I want to talk about. And I want to talk about tunnel vision. Tunnel vision by the state from the beginning of this case until the day that we stand here right now. Specifically, 2021. There was forensic evidence that was gathered by the state that they say in 2021, hey, we found whose this was. They say we found a match to whose DNA they say that that was. And oh, September 2012, this was for a 19-year-old. This was for a teenage boy. Oh, he lived in Chapel Hill. This wasn't some 45-year-old drifter life scene in South Carolina. Oh, he worked at a restaurant in Chapel Hill at the time. Oh, but he's Guatemala. So he was probably across the street in September of 2012 with Luis Lopez, who doesn't know him, getting drunk and catcalling people across the street. He was a 19-year-old teenage boy at the time. Why wasn't the first thing considered as, hey, maybe he was doing and living the same life as other 19- and 20-year-old children that we've heard about? Well, what were Faith and Karina and Talib and Jordan and the people that they knew and that they spent time with? What were they doing around this time? We heard from the September 8, 2012 recorded interview from Ms. Rosario that on Wednesday, September 5, she and Brandon Evers went out. And what did she say? She had a lot to drink. Faith stayed at home. She doesn't know what Faith was doing and she stayed in. But they were going out and they were drinking. What happened on September 6? They went out to the Thrill. You heard from Mitch, who was a security guard at the Thrill, who knew Faith and Karina because of his role working at clubs, working at restaurants, working in Chapel Hill. So this 19-year-old teenage boy that lives and works in Chapel Hill, why the first assumption that he's not living the same life that a teenager would be living in Chapel Hill? Why wouldn't he be going out to Latin night at East End? Why wouldn't he be going out and drinking and meeting people? Why wouldn't he be going out and maybe sometimes having too much to drink? Forgetting things. Forgetting encounters. Why wouldn't he sometimes have an intimate encounter with somebody, maybe even on a one-time basis, and not tell anybody else about him? He was a teenage boy. He lived in Chapel Hill and according to what the state's evidence was, he stayed there. They found in 2021, he didn't move to another state. He didn't get out of the country. He was here. He was here. And he didn't remember. The state has put a lot of emphasis on everyone believing that it makes sense that Ms. Rosario doesn't remember a conversation the next day when she was sober about having blood on her hands with Jordan McCrary? She said, I wish I did. In that interview, I wish I did. If she's a person who's there to give as much information and evidence about the death of her roommate and help provide information that could get there, what in the world relevance would a conversation that she had after she got in the car with Jordan McCrary at a time that the state says that Faith was still alive and asleep in her bed. What relevance would that have? Why would she wish she did? Unless maybe she did remember having that conversation, but when asked, I don't remember that. But memory, memory, something being forgotten is something that's inherently important the state has asked you to accept. And why would it be? Why would it be so out of the ordinary that a 19-year-old teenage boy who's living and working in Chapel Hill may have been doing the same things that these people were doing at the time? Maybe had too much to drink and maybe forgot about an encounter. Even as we sit here today, the state's talking about in closing argument about planting DNA and maybe Ms. Rosario had a vial of semen and how ludicrous that was. Even today, there seems to be this tunnel vision on the concept that the state's witnesses talked about, which is you can find DNA up to five days after intercourse, even more than that. That was part of what Ms. Wileski told you about. That's not something that's surprising. That's the standard. You look for that. You look for that. And even in some circumstances, in the study that Ms. Wileski cited, up to ten days after intercourse, even when a woman is on menses, 50% of the time in that study, in some circumstances, you still find DNA. Why is that still not being considered? It was a rare, a rare amount of sperm that was found according to the current standards of the SBI or the crime lab, according to what Ms. Ermesh found. Why wasn't it considered that he was a 19-year-old boy living and working in Chapel Hill and doing the same things that aren't surprising for a 19-year-old boy to be doing? I'm sorry, sorry, but you heard. That are normal for a 19-year-old boy to be doing. I drop too low sometimes. And I want to talk about, it wasn't just the sperm cells. It wasn't just the five, the five sperm heads found on the vaginal swab. There was other pieces of evidence that the state says, hey, that is DNA. Lots of big numbers. What's the commonality between the white bag? The Picardic. And the boxer shorts. What ties those all things together? Where do they find the white bag? On the bed. On the bed. With the sheets. Did they test the sheets? Do we know what kind of DNA was left behind on the sheets? Because you know what's reasonable to infer after a prior consensual sexual encounter? You might find some DNA on those sheets. Where was the bottle found? Where was the Bacardi bottle found? It was wrapped up in a comforter off the bed. Where were the boxers? Well, if, as the state contends, Faith was wearing those boxers, she was wearing them in the bed with the sheets. DNA transfers. DNA transfers sometimes when we touch things from bodily fluids. It doesn't have to be contamination. It doesn't have to be misapplying the procedures that Chapel Hill or some police department may have. Think about just simply what the evidence at the scene shows us. And I did take note, and I want to display space exhibit 15 on the screen. I saw that the state puts up on picture that I hadn't seen the evidence of the profile showing you where the DNA had been taken. but that's the one that was admitted in the evidence. That was the one that you heard from Ms. Hermish. There was not a big circle that Ms. Hermish drew around this part of the bottle saying, this is where I swabbed for DNA. That is the spot. That is what the evidence shows. The top, the tip top of the cap of the Bacardi lab swabbing taken for DNA. It wasn't here. It wasn't here. And it wasn't any parts of this that were taken right in 17-1. It was the very top of that Bacardi lab. My question, if you have a bottle and you've got DNA here but nobody else, where, how do you pick that up? How do I pick that up? They didn't tell you about all the other places that were swabbed for DNA on the bottle in which Miguel was excluded. You didn't hear the words excluded during the state's closing that I heard. Speaking of which, you heard about the tampon, did you notice it was male DNA? Male DNA. Because if they said in relation to DNA testing on the tampon, Miguel, they would have had to say in that same sentence, excluded. Excluded from the tampon stream. You heard about the lack of indication of semen on the tampon. You also heard that Aaron Urmish tested out just for the acid phosphatate test, the AP test, on the absorbent part of that. And she said, yeah, there are times in which I've done that test and I still microscopically found sperm. Yeah, there can be times in which semen is still present. She had encountered that in her own work. But what she didn't do was microscopically test the absorbent part of the tampon. What was on there? Was this one of those cases in which the AP test was going to be negative but there may have been some sperm cells? Frankly, if there were none, even if she had checked, there were five. There were five sperm heads that were found in the band in the Lezois. Would it be that surprising to not find it? The bag, the Cardi bottle, just the tip-top. What do they have in common? The boxer shorts. Five days. Up to five days is the standard where you find this kind of evidence after a consensual sexual encounter. Why wasn't this considered? Why is he some strange, angry monster across the street catcalling and maybe not just a teenage boy? You have to have tunnel vision because what is being ignored? What is being ignored? The person who was reported to have literally left the apartment with blood on their hands. That's being ignored. The turn of phrase we use to indicate when someone's guilty. Blood on their hands. And I would submit to you this isn't some sort of unanswered question that maybe it was vomit. Where was Jordan earlier? Where was Jordan hours before he picked her up? The thrill. What were they serving at the thrill? Those red slushies. You think it would have been bizarre for him to think that after Miss Rosario had called to pick him up after leaving the thrill and what she says is in a very drunken state of mind and he says oh yeah she was drinking those red slushies. Oh yeah. But no. The one person who you would want to hear from and you did about what this stuff was had no hesitation from the first time that you heard him speak back in September of 2012 when you saw that interview. She got into the car. I looked over and she said I don't know why I have blood on my hands. And he said yeah why do you have that on your hands? I don't know. And then he went on to discuss it with Investigator Matthews. They didn't call it red stuff. He didn't say dang are you sure that was blood? They said it was blood. It was blood. It was blood on the right hand. Jordan McCrary sat right there years later. Was he even questioned like Mr. McCrary are you sure there's no possibility that this could have been vomit from the red slushes? You remember being there at the Thrill don't you? Is there any possibility you could be mistaken? He said blood. I don't think that's a question. There was blood on our hands. It certainly wasn't a question that was asked of Mr. McCrary for a mistake. Consistently. From 2012 to today there's been never a question in his mind. And he is the one person whom you should be looking to rely upon for that information. Not Mr. Rosario. Not Mr. Rosario says that I don't remember that. Not Mr. Rosario in 2013 that says you know what actually I do remember red stuff in my hands. I didn't know what it was. I just didn't do anything about it. Mr. McCrary was unequivocal that there was blood on our hands. And this is the tunnel vision. You've got to assume that Miguel is a monster. An angry monster. You've got to assume that he can't be a 19 year old boy living in Chattanooga. You've got to assume that maybe he couldn't have an encounter with a faith or with a Katie Allen like you saw during that jail. You've got to assume that he is just a killer. Not just a boy. 19. Because if you start to look more at the evidence it's hard to ignore. It's hard to ignore the person who left the blood on our hands. there's a lot more to talk about in this case and you're going to hear from Mr. Ransford. But that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Thank you very much. [00:14:15] Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Will there be a closing argument from Mr. Ransford? Yes, Your Honor. This year is with Mr. Ransford. Thank you, Your Honor. I do a [00:14:31] Speaker 3: I do a lot better when I take things chronologically otherwise I'm going to be jumping around all over the place. The state has brought a case against my client before everybody took their oath in this case. They said there's a burden in this case. Hold us to our burden. He promised to hold us to our burden because that's sacred in this courtroom. We have to prove beyond reasonable doubt all elements of this case. And if we don't do it you have to come back not guilty. That's before this trial starts. Trial starts. What do we hear? We hear from Alexis. She was great on the stand. Lost somebody very close to her. Tragic. We heard from Ms. Rosario. She was at the thrill drinking. She got really drunk. Who corroborated that? What other witnesses were brought in and said yeah she was drinking so much she really was falling down drunk. There was no way for her to I mean faith messages have been holding her up to get her into her apartment. That wasn't corroborated. She said she threw up in the apartment. You've been giving her text messages. Did those seem like text messages from somebody who could barely put a sentence together? Somebody whose memory as Mr. Murphy alluded to doesn't really exist in the bedroom. I'm in the bedroom with Faith but I can't really remember anything except throwing up. So there's all this unaccounted for time in the apartment in the room where Faith was later found. Where there's blood. But then after that the memory comes back and I'm in the bathroom that has no door sitting on the floor texting vomit could have been vomit that smell was all in the apartment right? Even Ms. Price said that when she testified. She said yes it was wreaked of vomit in the apartment. So the entrance to be drawn is Faith Hedgepett who has gone out of her way to take care of her friend got in her home got in a trash can is just going to be hanging out in the bedroom with a trash can full of vomit not walking around the corner not checking on her friend not taking that trash can out just hanging out in there there's no way Ms. Rosario accounts for Ms. Hedgepett that she cannot be in that room she can't put herself back in that room I wasn't judging somebody when I talked about how they didn't wash their hands or brush their teeth after vomiting I brought that up because one it's preposterous it doesn't make any sense but two somebody who knew there was a little bit of blood around the sink would not want to be associated with the sink so no matter how bizarre the story was they would have to stay away from the sink because otherwise maybe they were the one to transfer blood to the sink and so despite how peculiar this would sound oh yeah I threw up look at the bedside table in the photographs you were seeing what are there four water bottles on there a big cup from Hardee's this is not somebody who was averse to drinking water and yet that person isn't going to have a sip of water after throwing up after coming home from a club when they're sitting in one place where you can get all three things at once you can get a toothbrush and get soap for your hands and you can get a sip of water to rinse your mouth out I don't think that's a hard question and these aren't things that we make we didn't make this up this is when I heard red herring it's not like we're up here arguing to you you know there was a green van in the parking lot and we don't know who was in the green van and you know there might have been some evidence under the couch they didn't look under the couch this is what we were given this is the evidence that we were presented this is the evidence that came from the witness stand that you have been able to hear this is not some shiny thing that we just found and we're you know look over here don't look over here this is the evidence this is what exists in this case and so then if somebody all of a sudden at 420 leaves with nothing except a telephone on Thursday night class is next day gets in a car with Jordan and all of a sudden the memory goes away can't remember I just can't remember that conversation why is there a double standard you find somebody nine years later hey you know this girl show an iPhone screen no I don't want somebody with a silver frame photo but if you know that you're going to arrest Agent Heinrich said there was a meeting to talk about the arrest and you want to get as much as you can from somebody why don't you take something with you did he seem defensive in the video when he has two police officers talking to him insinuating he's done something horrible this isn't 2012 anymore when he is being questioned this is 2021 things in this country are a lot different at that point and yet he's surrounded by these two officers and what does he say let's go upstairs and talk my mother's a part let's go up there right now we can talk about this but by the way I'm late for work I have a crew I've got to pick up paint it's a very important day for me it's a big deal he's not being evasive he's saying these are the things going on in my life that I need to do if you want to come sit down and talk I will talk to you but I really have a lot of things going on and you know this girl everybody else gets some questionnaire which we've never seen apparently they were given a questionnaire to people asking them about how they knew faith or might know Karina it was talked about on the witness stand it's not in evidence I don't know what was on the questionnaire I don't know how it was used I don't know if it had detailed information that would put somebody on notice why they would not have told Miguel when they approached him nine years is a long time that's I mean COVID was six years ago we go three years prior to COVID it's a long time a lot of things happen and so for somebody instantly to think oh when I was 19 yeah I immediately saying I don't know this person is not the same thing as we've never known each other saying I don't know this I don't recognize this photograph that does not mean I'm hiding from something that may or may not have happened at some point in the past so we go back to the apartment and Miss Rosario has left the apartment and she is gone so what do we know what's happening at that time there's some barbecue that we haven't heard anything about except from one witness who says we had barbecue I don't know so when the state asked him questions about this mystery person who came to the barbecue what did we find out the person spoke Spanish they didn't say was it a teenager or was it a grown up was the person tall short were they big skinny glasses long hair they heard nothing there's this barbecue where there must have been something terrible and that must have been the genesis of it is this barbecue and when Miss Rosario Miss Hedgepap got home that night he must have come over and gotten in their faces and wouldn't take no for an answer and then got brushed off and so he went and opened the gas tank and unscrewed the gas cap because yeah that makes sense that's the only inference you can draw there he was so enraged that he had two people outside one apparently falling down drunk and so he used that rage to not take advantage of the situation where somebody wasn't inside but rather go and hopefully one of them would leave later but in the meantime I'm going to unscrew the gas cap and open the gas tank which by the way I believe Miss Rosario testified you had to open from the inside of the car or maybe you look at that evidence of the gas tank being open and the gas cap unscrewed and you think to yourself now who's that benefit now if somebody leaves at 420 in the morning suddenly and they got no explanation for why somebody randomly would have gone in at that time of night well maybe unscrew the gas tank the cap and open the door and say maybe she left after I was gone and got abducted see gas tank it's open there's no explanation for that she must have left after I left and encountered someone and that's what happened and have the police going in that direction and keeps pointing at the gas cap being open in the back and I looked at this last night and I had forgotten this a written statement one of the things that Miss Rosario writes about in a written statement that was given to you goes out of her way to say let's see I noticed that the gas tank was open and the cap was off she wouldn't have just left that open of course she wouldn't have but any inference that she got gas earlier the day you know the day before she did at five o'clock and somehow left the gas tank cap off and drove around and didn't hear it flapping around banging against the side of the car even Miss Rosario says she wouldn't have just done that somebody did it and somebody did it because they wanted to have another theory for what might have happened to Faith to get her out of that apartment because otherwise what else made sense because according to Miss Rosario's statement statement to Mr. Heinrich I was outside waiting for Jordan I didn't see anybody I didn't see anybody in the woods I didn't hear anything that's in a written SBI report when I talked to her on the witness stand that part of things she didn't remember no Jordan was there by the time I got outside Agent Heinrich Special Agent Phillips Stevens she said she was outside before Jordan got there she didn't see anybody in the woods she didn't hear anybody all of a sudden there's a barbecue where people are sitting around waiting for their chance because they're so enraged and now they have their opportunity to go up the hill and all the other people at this barbecue that we haven't heard from they just sat around and let that happen because that's that's how they are it's ridiculous it doesn't make any sense that is something that has been created because when they found cell phones they couldn't match anything to the tower but we heard well that would be dangerous to say that someone wasn't somewhere if the cell phone didn't hit off the tower and we wouldn't want to do that so we did have cell phone records we didn't hear any testimony that they were hitting off the tower for my client but that probably just means he wasn't making telephone calls what about all the other people at this supposed barbecue what were their telephone numbers what were they asked were their telephones pinging off the tower I didn't hear anything from the state saying this Abel that he has gone to Guatemala nobody testified that he's gone I heard this broad stroke this a lot of people are gone who which people which people from the cookout that we're hearing so much about who ran down that information which part of the investigative team I'm hearing broad statements but I'm at a more beyond reasonable doubt kind of level the kind of thing you bring in a murder trial who are the people that are doing these things and that goes for so many pieces of evidence in this case for instance we heard testimony well we got Bates computer and we got Miss Rosario's computer and we got my client's computer with 120 gigabytes and people looked through it and found there was no connection what were the parameters what were the search terms who did this what were their qualifications I mean I don't need to have a huge powerpoint showing everything they did to search the computers but something something would be nice who at the SBI was part of that computer crimes and what information were they given what were they told how did somebody say these are the terms we want you to look because we're trying to link these computers and find some sort of overlap but there was none of that information there was none what the process if the computers are a forensic discipline tell us who did it how they did it when they did it because all we know is one image taken from the computer turns out to be a meme and so you have to forgive me if that creates a little bit of a lack of confidence in the state's vetting of its own evidence that it is presenting to you in this case and asking you to rely on to reach a verdict of guilt and murder and rape a life sentence we have memes that's the vetting of the evidence what else did they miss what else with the computers we downloaded lots of cell phones who who downloaded them what programs did they use who were the team members what were the parameters for the searches well we didn't find any connection what names did she use and it was interesting the first couple of witnesses Ms. Rosario she wasn't asked if she knew anybody named did she ever hear the name Mike Miguel Jordan who didn't spend that much time with either of them hey do you know that guy do you know the name Miguel they never showed him a photo they never said hey we went through his computer here's a photo of him when he's 19 does this look familiar a lot of times past it's been 10-15 years people change here's a picture of him when he's younger did you hear the name Mike the first time we heard a witness asked if they remembered the name Mike was Marisol all the other witnesses were given Miguel and all of a sudden it was subtle but it was there and it's important because when you saw the video of Katie Ellen what was she calling him she was saying Mike she was not saying Miguel Katie Ellen the UNC student we heard that he came to this country and learned just enough English to write a note and spell jealous correctly and use a contraction but he flipped it doesn't make any sense at all Agent Heinrich said that I want to make sure I get this correct I don't take the best notes but we go through and type them but I thought this was quite telling and I appreciated his honesty on this point we talked about the handwriting one of my last questions to him was about relying on handwriting that you find from somebody not being an expert and he said oh I'm not an expert that's not something that I do in this case and I asked him if it would be dangerous to do that to look at a handwriting sample not being an expert and try to make your own comparisons and he said he agreed he agreed that that would be a dangerous thing to do and yet what do we have here the question because in just looking at a note in someone else's handwriting if someone's not an expert that could be I mean a dangerous thing to try to make a determination would you agree that was my question the response absolutely despite that response the statesman is part of its presentation showing you writing from part of a note card against the back it's dangerous to do according to agent heinrich but now the jury's got the case we're asking you to do even though you're not handwriting experts and he's not a handwriting expert and it's dangerous to do that's the evidence in a murder trial how do you vet that nobody said the state couldn't try to hire an expert in handwriting and say hey do you see anything here is there something that we can use to present how about the crime scene itself do you remember when SBI agent Lanham testified she only testified for a couple of minutes she talked about the handwriting kind of the fingerprint transfer process and how the database is maintained but what she also said which I thought was interesting was that she is an expert in crime scene reconstruction apparently that's a discipline people study they can look at photographs and say objection not evidence she said you had someone say they were a crime scene reconstruction expert and you hadn't heard from that person in that discipline in this case you did hear that people looked at these photographs and drew conclusions and if you look at the photographs and you go quickly through it it's easy to see one thing and miss the other thing the photograph that was shown to you doesn't get shown to the public which I am quite glad for but the one that you were shown for quite some time there's a pillow with a cell phone on it in miss hedge paths across her waist so this is your crime scene underneath a comforter someone has put pillows on top of her and then placed a cell phone on it's in the photograph you look at the photograph and if you disagree that there's a pillow on top of her with a cell phone balanced on it and then a comforter pulled over the top that's what somebody who gets so outraged at being rebuffed in a parking lot that they break in and murder someone but then they put pillows and put a phone down and then put a comforter over the top of the person because that actually sounds the comforter over the top sounds empathetic like somebody who doesn't want to see what has happened not somebody who is so crazy that if somebody says hey leave us alone that they break in and kill them what else did you see in the crime scene pillows against the wall and there was blood behind the pillows but you couldn't see it at first because the pillows were against the wall and what does that do somebody who walks into the room says we didn't think anything was wrong at first we just saw we just saw a comforter in some of faith's hand we didn't see all that blood that was on the wall why did somebody put pillows to cover up blood that's on the wall whose interest does that serve some violent person who saw control that someone rebuffing them in a parking lot leads to murder but they're going to take the time to then put pillows against the wall and somehow this trash can that's against the side of the bed I mean right against it doesn't get knocked over and all these things on top of the bedside table these water bottles and this clorox bottle and this hardy's cup all that stuff gets knocked over it's all standing up even though there's some sort of violent offense that's happened in here does that make sense does that say yeah it must be somebody came in here we asked about the light switch I don't think asking whether or not somebody swabbed the light switch in a private apartment is asking too much now the courthouse a lot of people touching light switches here I can understand that but Ms. Rosario said well the lights were off when she left so my client came into the apartment and it was a messy apartment found bottles in on that countertop got two because that's you know he would need both except getting into the bedroom decided you know what I just need one somehow pulled the light to turn it on not in evidence had some sort of light source and then immediately because he was so enraged from an hour earlier when something happened in the parking lot beat someone's head in because that's what a 19 year old does who has been rebuffed at some sort of barbecue because that makes sense because that's the only explanation that could be here is that he got angry about something waited an hour later and went and beat someone to death because he was so upset that somebody had said something to him in the parking lot you open the gas tank first of course and unscrew it it doesn't make any sense but if you look at the pictures quickly it's like instant replay when you see the play the person was out of bounds clearly you slow it down you can't believe it they weren't but if you have what Mr. Murphy said tunnel vision when you were looking at it and thinking about it as an investigative team and you come in and you say well this is only one thing that could have happened well there's sperm it's found hangs around five days I don't think that's common knowledge I was quite surprised Ms. Wells talked about that it was in the investigation manual that we discussed during her cross-examination I was going to call a biology professor from UNC because I thought we were going to have a fight about that we didn't we had an agreement about that but if you're an investigator and you don't know what Ms. Wielski knows Ms. Wileski knows you don't know that part of the forensic discipline then maybe you look at the evidence and say oh there's sperm it must have happened that night because if you don't have communication with another member of the team or somebody I think Ms. Wileski was hired in August of 2026 you don't have that information and if you don't have that information then maybe your eyes are looking at something the wrong way and maybe if you had that information earlier and understood that then the idea that there was sperm recovered by a rare amount from a vaginal sample tells you this does not automatically mean that there was a sexual offense this means there was sexual contact and that's what Ms. Wileski called she said sperm is evidence of sexual conduct she was very clear you can't just make this quantum link that there was a sexual assault you don't need to just do that you have to look at the evidence you look for things like bruising on the thighs or if my client's hand were just covered in blood as alleged in this case where was the blood all over her legs it wasn't there where's this dripping blood all across the carpet you don't see in the crime scene photographs there was a bottle of spray cleaner on the floor in the bathroom that might account for why you didn't see blood on the floor in the bathroom the Clorox I'll never understand but if you aren't communicating with each other about the disciplines if part of the forensic teams and the computers isn't talking to the investigators if everybody's not on the same page and information that may have you think one thing you stay on that fault because you don't know the rest of the story and you don't know how to put it all together and that's what a trial is about the trial is about tying all that together you bring the people in and you say we we said hold us to our burden and that's how we showed that we ruled out this five day window that people wanted to bring up except how was it ruled out the testimony we had in this case was Ms. Rosario back in 2012 video interviewed saying I can't remember what I think Faith stayed in the night before because I went out I was out with Brandon okay well that's the night before what about the night before and the night before you rule these things out in an investigation so that you can come in and say we closed the window on all of these days on this time frame we used these phones we showed you where people were at different times on all these days but you didn't get that you got about 12 hours worth of cell phones and that was it Ty McNeil gets some messages sent from Faith's phone what's Ty McNeil's response wow I didn't know you felt that way what was the interview of him what was his explanation for his response being so surprised at getting this random message didn't hear from him what did he say when he was interviewed who knows it's not in front of you and that is not my job we are not here to prove anything we are here to test the state's evidence and say what does it mean what can you draw from have you been given enough to make a determination about what you think about who even sent that message and I'd say no you haven't and it's up to the state to rule these things out to close these things down and this is a tragic some of these have lost their life and that will not change but to say that because of that we can gloss over things that's not the law that's not fair if you want to put weight on evidence you corroborate if somebody says hey I was at a particular place this night I made a lot of phone calls then you go get the phone tower records and you see their phones hitting and you've corroborated the statement and wait now you've got more this evidence it's heavier it's better it's stronger which is why I keep bringing up the people we haven't heard from in all these forensic disciplines did you hear Miss Irmish say anything about what her findings meant as far as whether or not a crime had been committed no you were shown by the state these huge numbers billions and quadrillions and everything else it's the prosecutor's fallacy you're given a big number and it must mean that that big number is associated with the time you know it's 10 billion times more likely that a crime was committed that's not what those numbers mean they're running hypotheticals on whether or not it might be somebody's DNA I still have a problem with several of the hypotheticals where you don't consider faith in both of the hypotheticals especially on the rumbop I don't understand why hypothetical one would be faith in my client and hypothetical two would be two unknown unrelated individuals if the swab is taken from the blood why would you do that why wouldn't you want to know I don't think it would have been a guessing game to use that hypothetical why wouldn't you use subpopulation groups why focus the evidence vet the evidence so that you could come in and say we've done all those things we did those hypotheticals yeah yeah we did those hypotheticals and the numbers are different Mrs. Irmish came back after one day of testimony and said well it would have been about a power of ten based on what what study what science was that something that she looked into had read about I thought she was quite candid when she seemed to not really remember about the subpopulation groups that she could use to test the different pieces of evidence I asked her what Hispanic meant for purposes of testing she couldn't recall all of the different things if the courtroom gets ahead of the science then we have a problem and what I heard about the DNA testing is back in 2012 it was a lot different and we were using these random match probability but as the software got better and as the science got better we started testing more locations and so we could really hone in on different sorts of things the science is changing one of the samples went from a mixture to a single source there wasn't much of an explanation for that but I think Mr. Murphy addressed it the best when he said why wouldn't you assume two 19 year olds would know one another why is that something that would not be on a radar at all because when we saw this encapsulates this entire trial this entire investigation the entire thought process the state puts in a piece of evidence that we get published it's Katie Ellen trying her best to talk to her friend Mike weeping raw emotion so happy to see him he's in an orange jumpsuit with a really bad beard everybody says he's a murderer because that's what he's been alleged to and this person [00:44:33] Speaker ?: and this person [00:44:33] Speaker 3: this UNC student looks at him and says I fucking love you despite all that stuff stacked against him what does the state see when they look at that piece of evidence a part of a note card even though it's dangerous to look at handwriting and compare it to other handwriting that's what the state takes away from that piece of evidence that encounter between those two people the way she describes him the way she's talking to him the state takes away well there's part of a note card that maybe you could sort of look at even though it's a dangerous thing to do they don't even look at the other two note cards they're written in underhand language on the video itself because it's difficult to get screenshots if it's difficult to get screenshots from the video the SBI crime lab that doesn't give me great confidence in the way the rest of the evidence may have been vetted in this case and that has been the problem all along it's it could only have been this one thing they talked about the tampon and this acid phosphatidate test somebody stepped on it which investigator who how was it stored how was it collected how long what container was it put in what sort of bacteria tracked on it from the carpet after was it a boot a shoe one of the investigators I tried my best to figure out how many people were there before the evidence technicians and that seems like a closely guarded secret it was like you know we keep that under you know that's in evidence the number of police officers that were there ahead of time this is a murder trial and if somebody's going to say nothing happened to the evidence it wasn't moved everything was right where it should have been bring in the witnesses bring in the locks they wrote all of this down these five officers were there this officer Savinoche he was only in there for two minutes it's on the crime scene law this officer the officer now Captain Britt it's written down she was there for 12 minutes how hard would that be to bring that in so that this idea that people may have done you know inadvertently moved stuff around like the police officer that apparently collected the parking services receipt with no gloves on and there was a thumb print on it when they tested it at the SBI crime went out people not wearing gloves yeah apparently it did happen at this crime scene why not put that on why not close the window on these questions and say see you've heard from them all this is how this investigation was done there were no problems with it I heard a lot about we can't test every piece of evidence for DNA okay I can agree to that but in looking at the crime scene photos I saw ten yellow placards for pieces of evidence that were collected ten only five were tested so I don't think asking to test the ten pieces of evidence that were collected that were marked with yellow placards at the crime scene is asking too much and why would those need to be tested well for what Mr. Murphy said about sheets for starters two the pillow against the wall somebody's DNA on it they put it against there but you get fingerprints out of it I don't know I'm not in these disciplines but out of ten pieces of evidence that were collected on the drive got tested that seems strange that seems like the sort of stuff that you want to test if that's all that you had collected at that time I showed you I still don't understand the pen I don't even know what color the ink was I think that might be one of those red herrings but to say that the defense is making too much out of the fact that we didn't test everything in the crime scene there were ten placards and only five were tested I don't think that's making a big deal I think that's a big question about what were on these other pieces of evidence the state says Ms. Hedgefath's shirt had been pulled up did you swab the area on the shirt somebody's DNA right there where it was pulled up and say see this shirt that has blood on it see we can blood goes to the timing DNA sticks around for a while fingerprints stick around for a while the blood put the blood in the bathroom it got lost and was never tested now the state says we had tested that and it was base blood and it had Karina's blood you know mixed in with it that wouldn't be that much of a surprise well that's lucky for them to say because we don't feel that way in fact we think that would have been a piece of evidence that a jury would deserve to get to see in a case where somebody is sitting in the bathroom where blood is found where somebody goes out to a car and has blood on their hand by their own account while there's a presumptive positive the blood in the Lexus see that's the sort of thing that I think matters and if it didn't matter if the state didn't care they wouldn't have a slide up there calling it bread stuff on her hand they would own it they would say it's blood if they care if they're worried you should be why call it red stuff if in every interview it's blood it's on the witness stand Mr. Rosario says no reason to doubt Jordan Jordan came here from Washington sat on the witness stand said the same thing and he said so concerned about what he saw and he called the police to report it on September 7 2012 and sat down the next day and gave an interview that's not a red herring that is something the state needs to rule out the act is it was just nothing how is that nothing if we want to talk about forensics blood is forensics a blood sample from a car or a presumptively positive blood sample from a car that's forensics blood collected from a bathroom that's forensic tube top was the whole thing tested for blood or just the front of it because there were spots on the front there were spots on the back and the fact that somebody says it's tube tops red hair that doesn't mean anything why doesn't that mean anything the person that left in the middle of the night comes home wearing different clothes and says oh the clothes I had on are at this guy's house you'll find them there except they're not there but that's red herring because somebody who leaves in the middle of the night and comes back with different clothes that's just one of those things that happens right around the time that you find your roommate dead with all these other accompanying circumstances pointing at you didn't test the blood in the middle of the shorts I don't think that's a big ask if blood is associated with a person who's at a crime scene in the one spot in the middle that wasn't tested for DNA I don't think that was asking too much to have that tested this is a murder trial you have accused someone and said beyond a reasonable doubt this person committed these horrible crimes we couldn't test everything you know five out of ten of what we collected that's good enough the front door knob a stranger came in we can't you know a lot of people must have come in there how hard is that to do to say we got his DNA and a little bit of blood on that door when it was closed we did a aluminum test on it you couldn't see the blood or it was on the bottom side of the knob the person who had blood they didn't test it and it leaves questions questions that should have been answered that cannot be answered because it was not done everybody wants to go back in time and try to do investigations differently they're never going to be perfect nobody's coming in here and saying if anything was done wrong then you never can convict on anything because they forgot to collect something small blood stain's not something small front door knob light switch things that might say an intruder was in here these aren't small things these are things that you use so that that doubt that somebody looking at it says well on one hand you know I've got DNA on the other hand I've got this witness in the leaves and the blood and how do we sort this out you collect these things you find a way you put the evidence in front of a jury and you say we're the state beyond a reasonable doubt it's a red herring because why because it doesn't fit with our theory of the crime that makes it a red hair this isn't a random van somebody saw in a parking lot this is forensic evidence this is biological evidence it is gone through no fault of his so if we are testing evidence and we are sincere when we hold our oaths and we are sincere when we say hold us to our earth and test their evidence that's your job it's to test the evidence did they give you enough of this sprawling investigation years and years and years who'd you hear from you heard from one SBI agent you heard from you heard from Tameka Price you heard from Shalithia right quick about one issue from the state too tough issue from the defense did you collect blood sample yes did you lose it yes it's gone and that was it you heard from one police officer Castro who went inside five minutes it's gone officer Rick Ennis died before the trial July we heard some things that he talked about we heard him from the state about calling in for the two distraught women Marisol and Ms. Rosario and then there was the question about whether she had a bruise on her shoulder or whether it was a birthmark oh it's a birthmark ask Captain Britt was it I don't know you'll have to ask her this is a murder trial these things matter because if there was a confrontation if somebody had a bruise now things look a little bit different but we don't know because nobody was asked nobody testified to it it is not my job it's what they are supposed to do so the sprawling investigation you're right we didn't call Joy Barker as the defense we did not we did not have her come in here and corroborate what Captain Britt said that she said that she heard thumps upstairs between three and four [00:55:08] Speaker ?: and four [00:55:08] Speaker 3: in the morning Agent Heimer testified about that too so yes I didn't keep my end of the bargain on calling Joy Barker into the courtroom to say what the two other officers said that she said about what she heard on the night in question she had no motive objection not suspense draw your own conclusions from what she had from what she told Captain Britt at noon or a little bit after noon on September 7, 2012 maybe it was pots and pans what are the crime scene photos are there pots and pans dumped out in the crime scene photos does anybody testify we came in and there was a big pile of pots and pans must have been dumped out from that trash can it's not an evidence there was no testimony it does not exist in this trial so if that's some sort of alternate theory for what these sounds must have been where's the evidence rule it out because you're being tasked with sitting in judgment of murder and rape the worst crimes that you can think of and you have been tasked with sitting in judgment testing the evidence it is not your job to carry the water to anybody their case see police officers lined up all over here nobody prevented them from testifying nobody said well you can't call any more witnesses state to flesh these things out and to you know an agent Heinrich said yes all of the Ms. Hedgepeth sentiment partners will talk to who over their names who talked to them what do they have to say where are the specifics it was just this broad brush stroke just trust us we talked to these people we didn't really get anything how do you test that evidence how do you test that evidence when one of the last pieces of evidence entered in the case it was a meme and if that's the standard that the evidence has been vetted against before it's been put in this courtroom before it's been put in front of you and before everybody says his faith is in your hands we got some gaps here but it's okay the computer people that you didn't hear from they did the right stuff they asked the right questions they had the right protocol they had the good parameters the teletone people they knew what they were doing they got the software right you can trust them they weren't in here you don't know their names you don't know when they did these things you don't know where they did these things you don't know how they did these things but trust it's it's fine it's not standard the judge sent instruction on the wall and you hear these jury instructions and the things that you hear about and what I'll talk to you about in jury selection is the weight of the evidence that you are the sole judges of the weight to be given to any evidence they want to make it heavy fantastic we really like the weight of that evidence but they're not going to tell you who did what and when and how and what the system was and they're just going to say no there was DNA and that means he's guilty because you know DNA sperm you can only find it for like five days close the window when you heard I didn't ask you a whole lot during jury selection but I focused on one thing in the reasonable doubt instruction and the thing because I had a thought about what might happen in this trial I kept saying a reasonable doubt is a doubt based on reasoning common sense arising out of some or all of the evidence that has been presented a reasonable doubt can come from some of the evidence some people call it a red herring other people might call it reasonable doubt and if it hasn't been ruled out by the state you can't test it and that thing in your mind that says this just doesn't feel quite right that's a doubt based on some of the evidence reasonable doubt can also be based on lack or insufficiency of the evidence so maybe you like parts of the state's case you need a little bit more these people testing people who interviewed maybe hear from Mr. McNeil maybe hear from Mr. Edwards hey Mr. Edwards Mr. Brandon Edwards why was your response to that message sent from Facebook who is this why was that the response you didn't hear from it draw your own conclusions if your conclusions are you don't know and you have some more questions about it that's the state's word we have a federal constitution and we have a state constitution and I have spoken about those at length in my objections in this case because we have a right of confrontation he has a right to have every element of every charge prove in a reasonable doubt this case has been in jail for years waiting for this trial and you heard from so few people take them at their word I'm sure it was all done right I'm sure it was fine I'm sure all the parameters were correct and I'm glad we found out over the weekend that that one piece of evidence actually he didn't do and if that doesn't give you pause in this monumental task of what you are thinking about if that doesn't give you just a little bit of pause put that together with your reaction that Katie Ellen showed to Mike and ask yourself the state of North Carolina is prosecuted and they can watch that video and they can watch his motion to that video and their only takeaway is hey there's part of a note card maybe that's sort of similar to the bag even though we don't have an handwriting expert and it's dangerous if you take nothing else away from this defense argument please take that away because that is what this whole trial that encapsulates everything that's everything that's wrong with this they have not proved their case hold them to their burden they did not he's not guilty thank you [01:01:47] Speaker 1: thank you Mr. Rainsford