Tales from the Brown Desk - Episode 23 - Operation Legend, Stacking Charges, Wadle v. Indiana, Double Jeopardy, & Florida Man

Weekly Criminal Law Podcast, Tales from the Brown Desk, brought to you by Rigney Law LLC. Tales from the Brown Desk is a free flowing conversation involving two foul-mouthed attorneys. It may include graphic descriptions of sexual activity, violence, and traffic law. It may not be suitable for children. Listener discretion advised.

Episode 23. In this episode, Indianapolis criminal defense attorneys, Jacob Rigney and Kassi Rigney, talk about Operation Legend, Stacking Charges, a Recent Indiana Supreme Court Opinion (Wadle v. State of Indiana) which changed the controlling law when it comes to double jeopardy. And of course, the latest Florida Man news.

Transcript

Podcast Transcript

Jacob Rigney – It’s Friday afternoon. We’ve locked the door because we did so many drugs, we can’t feel our face, and we love it. Shout out to the weekend. And also because it’s time for another edition of our weekly podcast Tales from the Brown Desk. I’m Jake Rigney of Rigney Law LLC. With me as usual is my law partner, wife, and the Karen of my dreams, Kassi Rigney. Teri Ulm is our host, manager topics selector, Florida Man monitor, and email screener. Friendly reminder Tales from the Brown Desk is a free flowing conversation involving two foul mouth attorneys. It may include graphic descriptions of sexual activity, violence, and dusty old case law. It may not be suitable for children, Supreme Court justices, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, or Merrick Garland. Listener discretion is advised here’s Teri.

Teri Ulm – Hello, everyone. Hi, Jake. How are you today?

Jacob Rigney – I am pretty good. I had a delicious cheeseburger for lunch. So three days closer to death, but I feel good about myself.

Teri Ulm – Nice. Hi, Kassi. How are you?

Kassi Rigney – Very good. Hi, Teri.

Teri Ulm – So last week we talked about some recent Indiana Court of Appeals opinions and defend the police movement. This week we’re going to talk about stacking charges and about a very important Indiana Supreme Court opinion that changed the controlling law in Indiana when it comes to double jeopardy. But before we begin, I want to talk a little bit about Operation Legend.

Jacob Rigney – I know that this is the one where John Legend and Chrissy Teigen dropped off a bunch of stuff in the Gulf, right? For the for the people that got hit by the hurricanes?

Teri Ulm – No. This is a this is a little bit more widespread.

Jacob Rigney – Okay.

Operation Legend – Extended Indefinitely in Indianapolis, Indiana

Teri Ulm – Yeah. So Operation Legend is a federal law enforcement operation that is taking place across the United States. According to the White House, Operation Legend was implemented after Trump began deploying federal law enforcement agents to crack down on crime in the wake of the George Floyd protests.

Jacob Rigney – Right.

Teri Ulm – Agents from various federal agencies were deployed to aid and assist city and county law enforcement officers. And in August of this year, the operation was expanded to include Indianapolis, Indiana,

Jacob Rigney – To assist them? Right?

Teri Ulm – Yes, yes.

Jacob Rigney – Even if they didn’t ask for assistance.

Teri Ulm – Right. They’re here. The operation was announced as a collaboration between local police and federal agents to tackle gun violence, drug trafficking, and gaming activity. US Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana Josh Minkler,

Jacob Rigney – Yeah, you got it. Oh.

Teri Ulm – There’s your song.

Jacob Rigney – Kassi, they’re playing our song. Police sirens.

Teri Ulm – Now US Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana. Josh Minkler told the Indy Star that there were 57 federal agents dedicated to Operation Legend in Indianapolis. They have recovered 49 firearms from the streets of Indianapolis. They’ve arrested 18 fugitives and over 20 individuals have been federally charged. Minkler said the operation has been so successful that on October 1, he reported to the Indy Star that the operation is extended indefinitely.

Jacob Rigney – We decided to do our job for a little while and it’s going so well. We’re going to keep doing it. Who knew?

Teri Ulm – Now, however, Keith “Wildstyle” Paschal, a west side music producer and photographer called Operation Legend a propaganda campaign to make the public feel like somebody is doing something about public safety. He said the issues that need to be addressed are poverty. And that is what is going to solve and help the gun violence and crime in Indiana.

Jacob Rigney – Yeah, this brings me to a sentence that I always hoped I would get to say.

Teri Ulm – Yeah.

Jacob Rigney – Which is that Keith Wildstyle from the west side is right and Josh Minkler, the attorney for the US Southern District, is wrong. Thank goodness we have someone like Wildstyle out there to set Josh Minkler straight, and I’m not being sarcastic. I think Wildstyle is right

Kassi Rigney – Yeah. I was a boots-on-the-ground Deputy Prosecutor in the war on drugs for eight and a half years. This is a bigger stick. Swifter stick. It doesn’t solve the problem long term. Looks good. Makes scared people feel safe. It does solve an immediate problem. I mean, I’m not going to say there’s no value to it. They are sweeping up people with histories. They’re going after people that are doing things that obviously they can charge. But that’s not a long term solution. It’s poverty, its education, its healthcare, its employment. Those things need to be addressed.

Jacob Rigney – It amazes me that people with a very high stake in how this community turns out, and with very high level degrees, still haven’t been able to figure this simple truth out, right? Which is that if you do not give people something to live for, they will not care about what happens to them in their lives, right? They will not make self interested decisions to not break the law. So you pack them together in poverty, you create systems that makes it extremely difficult for them to get out, including funding their schools poorly, poorly over policing their neighborhoods, and you make them feel like they don’t have any opportunity for advancement. And they will not make decisions based on concern about going to prison. They just won’t do it. It doesn’t matter. Prison is not much worse than where they live. And so it’s just amazing how they think that what we need is more punishment, what we need are bigger sticks, what we need is send people to prison for longer enhanced enforcement. The people who are breaking the law don’t care about enhanced enforcement. It doesn’t deter them. Deterrence only happens when you have something to worry about not having anymore. And if you don’t have those things, you will not be deterred from committing crime just because the law or the government says they’re going to punish you. Or because they say they’re going to punish you harder. It just it doesn’t work like that.

Teri Ulm – Right. I agree completely.

Jacob Rigney – Right. Doing what they’re doing is like, is like taking a hungry person and giving them a big stack of $100 bills and saying here you go, but all you can do is eat it. Like I mean, they can eat $100 Bill and it may provide some nutritional value in the short term. But it doesn’t really help them in the long term. You have to help these communities. You have to figure out ways to improve their schools to show them a way out of the financial situation that they’re in, instead of making it harder, instead of making it worse, instead of creating schools that are nearly Ponzi schemes where you can just where executives make a bunch of money, you make them for profit schools, and then they don’t teach them anything. And they’re stuck right back where they started. And that’s what you have to fix in order to do this. Enhanced enforcement is like, it’s like telling them to eat $100 bill. It won’t help long term.

Charge Stacking in Criminal Cases

Teri Ulm – No, it won’t. So now we’re going to talk a little bit about stalking charges are charge stalking. Does this phrase mean anything to you? And which one is right?

Kassi Rigney – I hear charge stacking. But I mean, I would assume they mean the same thing. Two different ways to say the same thing. It’s just really a prosecutor taking a factual or evidentiary situation and brainstorming to charge it every which way they can think of. And that may be like how you see, OWIs, for example. You’ll have multiple OWI counts. Oftentimes, we’ll see, you know, a C misdemeanor operating with no endangerment that a misdemeanor operating, plus endangerment. If you have a chemical test with a certain range, you would charge the OWI with the BAC in that certain range. And it’s just they get three shots at trying to make their case if they ended up in trial.

Jacob Rigney – And that’s before we talk about metabolites.

Teri Ulm – Now, some say that prosecutors will stack charges against the defendant building a very long potential prison sentence of convicted, and then approaching the defendant with a plea deal that would result in a guaranteed but reduced charge and sentence if the defendant agrees. Is this standard practice for prosecutors?

Kassi Rigney – I know when I charged as a prosecutor, if I was going to trial, we’re going on everything. So, but also it’s kind of misleading, because that seems to indicate to me that someone thinks that you just take a sentence and add them, one on top, one after the other, after the other. That indicates to me, they don’t understand how it works. Because you don’t actually get sentenced for multiple times for the same act.

Jacob Rigney – Actually, it’s a very good example of sort of when lay people look at charges, they don’t see what lawyers see, right? Because if I see a case where a guy’s charged with five or six things and he wants to know, Chad wants to know what he’s really looking at in terms of sentence. One of the first things I do is I start trying to figure out which one of them are double jeopardy barred, right? Because they can’t… Even though they can charge you with however many things they want to charge you with, they can’t always convict you of all those things. And people don’t understand that a lot of times. Especially lay people who don’t have any training with it. Although it is an extremely complicated area of criminal defense work. And not all attorneys understand that either. But yeah, usually it’s much more complicated than just figuring out what the range for each sentences and adding them together, because a lot of them are going to be barred by constitutional considerations.

Prosecutors Adding Charges After Criminal Case Has Been Filed

Teri Ulm – Now, can prosecutors add charges once a criminal case has been filed? Or are they stuck with the charges they initially filed?

Kassi Rigney – After what’s called the omnibus date, they can still try to amend. Potentially you can amend up until one until you rest, or at least until the trial commences. The thing is due process. And due process is only notice an opportunity. So a lot of people like to think oh, well, you got this omnibus date. Well, you missed that date. That’s a magic line. Like I always think the Dukes of Hazard. There’s that magic line. If you can just beat that line, you got it. Everything’s good beyond that. That’s not really how that works. So they could potentially file amended charges on the morning of trial. And if the defense had notice of that occurrence before that would be okay.

Wadle v. Indiana – New Controlling Law Regarding Double Jeopardy in Indiana

Teri Ulm – Now, a couple months ago, the Indiana Supreme Court published an opinion, Wadle v. The State of Indiana, and this opinion changed the controlling law in Indiana when it comes to double jeopardy. Now, we touched a little bit on double jeopardy in past episodes. Can you explain to the listeners what double jeopardy is?

Jacob Rigney – Yeah. Well, I can try. Like I said, it’s become a very complicated area of the law. But the the Indiana and US Constitution say that a person cannot be put in jeopardy twice for the same offense. Interesting, it doesn’t say three or four times. So maybe if we just tried it three or four times instead of twice. Now, that’s a joke. A really bad lawyer joke. Which means that if, originally, what it meant was that if you were charged with a crime, and you were convicted of it, or acquitted of it, they couldn’t charge you again, and punish you again for it. So that’s what it meant originally. But once this practice of filing five or six different charges for the same event, started happening more, which is largely a 20th century occurrence. This didn’t happen really in the in the 18th and 19th centuries, but in the 20th century, we started making a lot more things illegal. And as a result, the prosecutors had a lot more power to charge a bunch of different theories on the same thing. And eventually, the the US Supreme Court said, well look, we’re going to start applying double jeopardy to this so that you can’t convict the guy for stealing. It sort of gotten to the point where if somebody had stolen $1,000, the state could charge them with 1,000 counts of theft for stealing $1.

Teri Ulm – That’s ridiculous.

Jacob Rigney – I mean, I’m not saying that’s what happened. I don’t know if a case where… But it’s like that, right. Where it’s gotten to the point where they can pile a bunch of different things on and then try to get stacked sentences out of it. And because of that, the Supreme Court eventually applied double jeopardy to that practice as well. So that if you are convicted of multiple offenses, in the same course of conduct, then they will look at them to determine whether double jeopardy bars conviction on those things, and that’s what happened in Wadle’s case.

Teri Ulm – Now, can you give the listeners a little background on Wadle’s case and explain what has happened in this opinion?

Jacob Rigney – So I can give you some background. Okay. But I’m going to be honest with you about this. All right, Teri. You assigned us a… was it a 42 page opinion?

Teri Ulm – 37.

Jacob Rigney – 37 page appellate opinion that completely rewrote an entire area of subset of criminal defense work. So I got to about page eight.

Kassi Rigney – It doesn’t currently apply to any of the cases I’m working on. So I didn’t find it particularly interesting.

Jacob Rigney – Right. Now, I mean that is no disrespect to the Indiana Supreme Court, because everything they write is very important, and it all matters to someone, if not lots of people. But I’m busy too. Very busy. Very busy. So I skimmed through parts of it yesterday and I made it through about eight pages this morning. Before one of the many things that I had going on interrupted me over and over again. Mainly you two with questions about one thing or another, including setting up our new sono speakers and everything else. So basically, with that disclaimer, here’s what I remember about what happened in Wadle. Okay. Jordan Wadle, was out drinking at a bar in Connersville, Indiana. Shout out to Connersville, Indiana. By the way, many of my cousins live there or near there. My parents graduated from high school there.

Teri Ulm – Do they know Wadle?

Jacob Rigney – I don’t know. I didn’t text them all to ask. But it’s in the words of Everclear, it’s a small town. So probably. Most likely someone. One of my cousins knows him. Anyway, he went out drinking at a bar. The bar isn’t identified. Which is a shame because I bet my dad’s been there, but and he hit on a girl while he was there. This is according to the Supreme Court opinion. Mr. Wadle may have different opinions about what happened that night. But he hit on a girl and it turned out she was married and her husband and her husband’s brother did not appreciate his advances. And they had a discussion with him out in the parking lot about it. Now when I say discussion, I’m not using that as a euphemism for tried to beat him up or beat him up. It just means they said some shitty things to him out in the parking lot about it. Wadle apparently responded by taking a swing at the brother. So the brother in law of the girl he was hitting on. And kicking him too, apparently. And then everyone kind of decided the fight was over, and the alleged victim, I should just call him victim at this point whose name was Woodward. He’s the the brother. Turned to walk away. Then Wadle went to his car, jumped in, and ran him over in the parking lot. Then you let Woodward get up, and ran him over again. Slamming him, like pinning him up against the guardrail or something like that. Woodward is probably lucky to have survived. He was in the hospital for a long time had a fractured skull, among other injuries. And then Wadle left. Which turns out to be the most serious crime he got convicted of, the leaving.

Teri Ulm – Not the almost killing a guy?

Jacob Rigney – No. No. I mean, he got convicted of some of that too. But he was charged with aggravated battery.

Kassi Rigney – I was just going to say he didn’t get convicted of the battery.

Jacob Rigney – Right. Here’s the thing. He was charged with aggravated battery, which is a level three felony. He was also charged with leaving the scene of an accident where you were in where he was intoxicated, and it caused serious bodily injury. That’s a level three felony. Aggravated battery is also a level three felony. And then he was also charged with a series of other DUI counts. DUI causing or OWI causing SPI and OWI with a prior. He went to trial and the jury found him not guilty of aggravated battery. It’s peculiar that the jury found him not guilty of aggravated battery. We will never know why. Although it’s clear from the opinion that justice Goff didn’t really seem to agree with it. He went out of his way kind of to describe the situation in a way that was very pro state and pro Woodward. He even wrote it almost like a novel, like left his victim there broken as he left the scene. He took specific time to sort of paint a very flowery picture of what must have been a very ugly scene that night in that parking lot in Connersville. But for reasons nobody knows the jury found the defendant not guilty of aggravated battery. They did find him guilty of leaving the scene of an accident while operating while intoxicated, causing serious bodily injury.

Teri Ulm – But… Didn’t the serious bodily injury, isn’t that the battery?

Jacob Rigney – Yes. But with the battery, in fact, batteries, the aggravated battery statutes, a little different than serious bodily injury. But it is entirely possible. And this is one way to reconcile. The jury decided he didn’t hit him with the car on purpose

Teri Ulm – Twice.

Jacob Rigney – Or knowingly.

Kassi Rigney – And this is where it comes in because generally on the SBI, on the OWI count, the knowing act there was the driving. And in the battery, the knowing act would be what made the injury. So this is where until you’re really in a jury seat looking at instructions and looking at what your elements are of each charge. And what really has to be proven that you don’t get a clear picture of how this all works.

Jacob Rigney – Yeah. And it brings up another point that most people don’t understand when they see appeals opinions. Right. So when a criminal case is appealed in Indiana, from a conviction, the Court of Appeals assumes that the evidence presented that supported the conviction is true. So justice Goff’s explanation about what happened that night, when he explains it in his facts, may not be correct. But because of the way appeals work in Indiana, the law requires him to assume that the facts that supported the conviction are what happened. It’s possible that what happened in the trial is that Wadle testified and said, I hit him and I was scared, and I took off, but I didn’t do it on purpose. And he may have denied several of those other things. And the jury may have decided that was reasonable doubt, and they weren’t going to find him guilty of aggravated battery. But he was definitely driving drunk and hit a guy hurt him and left the scene. And so he’s guilty of that other level three felony. That might be what happened. That’s a reasonable explanation for how he got found not guilty of aggravated battery. But I don’t know, because I wasn’t at the trial. Justice Goff will assume the facts that support the conviction are true. Even if the jury didn’t accept all of them is true. It doesn’t matter at that point. Wadle left the scene, went to trial, he got convicted of all the driving stuff, but not the aggravated battery. And then the trial court sentenced them. They entered judgment of conviction on all the counts and sentence stem. The Court of Appeals said yet you can’t enter judgment of conviction on all these counts. And they cited a well known Indiana Supreme Court opinion called Richardson. Richardson v. State. I almost called it Robertson v. State because I had a case go to the Indiana Supreme Court that I tried called Robertson v. State. And it was a sentencing issue too, but kind of cool. Anyhow, so Richardson. Richardson is very complicated case. And I don’t have time to go into all of what Richardson says. But basically it says we have a two part test for how to determine whether two different counts are the same. And in Wadle, the Indiana Supreme Court overruled Richardson. They said that’s not the law anymore. It’s created too many problems. Justice Goff weirdly took a moment to thank the people who wrote it, and to tell them that, sort of give them that: it’s okay, you tried. You did. You tried hard.

Kassi Rigney – While also saying it wasn’t anything you did. It was basically all the times the Court of Appeals messed it up. Yeah, there is this paragraph that yeah. It’s funny.

What Does “Same Offense” Mean?

Teri Ulm – Now, can you define what same offense means for our listeners?

Jacob Rigney – No. Especially not now. Because I haven’t finished reading Wadle. But the old… And this is why it’s so complicated. The old standard had an either/or. It was the same offense if all the elements of one offense were included in another offense, or all the facts you used to prove one offense, we’re also used to prove the other offense.

Teri Ulm – All facts? Can you some facts? One fact?

Jacob Rigney – Well, all the facts that prove one, also proved the other. I’ll try to give you a simple example. Although like I said, this is a very complicated issue. So for example, burglary. Burglary is a level four felony if you break into a house, and it’s a level five felony if you just break into some building,

Teri Ulm – A house because there’s people there?

Jacob Rigney – It’s a house.

Teri Ulm – A home?

Jacob Rigney – People care more. So it’s a little bit higher level offense, right. So if you are arrested for burglary, the state could charge you with both crimes. But if you were convicted of both crimes, the judge could not enter judgment of conviction on the level five felony, because all the elements of the level five felony are also in the level four felony, right? So you could only punish you once for doing the same thing that they charged two different ways. Okay, that’s the lesser included test. The other one is the actual evidence test. The example for that is say I shoot and kill someone, and I get charged with murder, but also aggravated battery. Right? I mean, I did cause a substantial risk of death to the guy. You can tell because he died.

Teri Ulm – Yeah.

Jacob Rigney – In that case, the elements of the offenses are different. So it is not a lesser… One is not a lesser included of the other in terms of what the elements are. But the state would use the same facts to prove both. Which is that I pointed a gun to dude shot, right. So in that case, if I was convicted of both of those offenses, I could only be sentenced on one of them. And the double jeopardy clause would prohibit the court from entering judgment of conviction against me on the second one.

Teri Ulm – And I’m assuming this is like those deals, you go to a store, if you buy something, you get another one free, like you’re convicted on the higher one, the other one is… you’re not sentenced on that one.

Jacob Rigney – Right. You’re not supposed to either be convicted or sentenced. But that’s, that’s the old rule. That’s the the Richardson rule. But the Supreme Court just did away with that. And they adopted a different two prong approach that is difficult to explain. And mostly because I haven’t read the whole opinion. But that’s part of being a lawyer, man. I’ll read that opinion when the issue comes up. And I know it’s there. Shout out to defend net for continually talking about this opinion, to the point where I thought, man, maybe I should go figure out what the hell they’re talking about and read it. Defend net is a listserv where people send out questions in Indiana, about defense, criminal defense issues. Anyway, I’ve been talking way too much. Please ask Kassi something?

Kassi Rigney – Well, I can tell you that the new test explanation starts on page 17. Because that’s where I was like, well, I’ll just skip to the new test. And then if I can answer questions about what the new test is, then I’ll seem smart.

Jacob Rigney – Oh, can you?

Kassi Rigney – Oh, well, I got there, and then I got distracted by other things I had to read. But I know where it is.

Teri Ulm – Because the next question is, does this new opinion, provide more clarity than Richardson did?

Jacob Rigney – Well, here’s what I’ll say about that, I was not a lawyer when Richardson was handed down, I don’t think. So I have no idea how difficult it was to deal with these issues after Richardson. Subsequently, a bunch of appeals court opinions have clarified Richardson. And I think Supreme Court cases have clarified Richardson to the point where I had a pretty good understanding of it. Justice Goff seemed to take some exception with some judges on the Court of Appeals who didn’t seem to have such a clear idea about what it was that it meant. He pointed out that sometimes they would confuse the two tests, or use the same thing. You use the same analysis for the two different tests, even though they’re different, because one just requires looking at the statutes. The other requires looking at the facts. And I think it looks like the Indiana Supreme Court was just frustrated with people not being able to get it and not being able to understand it. And so they just wiped it away and created a new offense. I’m reading a lot between the lines. I could be wrong about that.

Kassi Rigney – And this brings up a point that we talked about before, which is that we attorneys don’t have all this stuff in the front of our mind all the time. It’s important that we keep our finger on the pulse enough to know that this new cases out there. So when we have a case with an issue, we know we need to go look it up and do the research on it. And that’s how being a competent practicing attorney works. You don’t know everything all the time on the tip of your fingers in every practice area that you work in.

Jacob Rigney – Right. Honest lawyer moment for a second, because we haven’t been being honest in this podcast today admitting that we didn’t read stuff. But if you’d asked me last week what Richardson was, Richardson v. State, I’ve been like, yeah, it’s got to do with sentencing and double jeopardy, I think. And that a bit about all I just said about it. Obviously, I’ve been reading Wadle trying to get up to speed on it. So I’m a little bit more competent. And I’ve certainly read Richardson before, but I’ve read hundreds of cases, if not thousands of them at this point. And my memory is good, but it’s not that good. So, you know, sometimes you got to go back and read things. You got to go back and read things that you’ve read before to when you’re a lawyer a lot. Just check and make sure you remember him right. Remember last week, we were talking struggling to remember what the elements of resisting law enforcement are. I think together we figured it out. And it’s a thing where if I had a question about it, I just go read the statute again. It’s written down for a reason.

Kassi Rigney – Well, it’s also the facts of every situation. We get a lot of calls and they want to apply apples to apples to apples, and the facts of every single case is very important. And even if you’ve handled a situation repeatedly, it maybe treated differently under a new factual situation.

Florida Man Brought to You by 8 & 1/2 inch x 14 inch Legal Pads

Teri Ulm – Now we are going to cut to a short commercial break and when we come back, we will bring you the latest Florida Man news.

Jacob Rigney – Today’s update on Florida Man is brought to you by 8 & 1/2 by 14 inch legal pads. When you need to let your opposing counsel know that you have more room on your legal pad to take 33% more notes, choose 8 & 1/2 by 14 inch legal pads.

Kassi Rigney – One time I walked into an office and a guy was packing 8 & 1/2 by 14 inch legal pads. I was like, oh, look at that legal pad. Can I touch it? I’d never seen a legal pad that big before. And I touched it, and the guy actually spilled whiteout on my dress.

Jacob Rigney – Please don’t tell our daughter this is how we met. Also this message is not brought to you by legal pads.

Florida Woman Busted After Turning a Bag of Meth She Bought into the Police

Teri Ulm – So Newsbreak 8 in Florida reports that Florida Woman was busted after turning a bag of meth she bought into police because she thought it was junk.

Jacob Rigney – This meth does not meet my standards officer.

Teri Ulm – That’s exactly what she said when she turned her $20 worth of methamphetamine into the police, because it was not up to her high standards.

Kassi Rigney – And this is why they call it dope, kids.

Teri Ulm – Yes. And after confirming that the drugs were indeed meth, Florida Woman was charged with possession of a controlled substance and later released from jail on a $2,000 bond.

Jacob Rigney – Yeah, that will happen. Unwise.

Teri Ulm – Very unwise. You don’t take your drugs to the cops.

Jacob Rigney – And we originally created the Florida Man segments so that I could then say and in Indiana that is illegal under this law or that law. But this is just like, yes, possession of meth is illegal everywhere.

Teri Ulm – Everywhere? What about Amsterdam?

Jacob Rigney – Okay. Everywhere in the United States. I don’t know about Amsterdam. It’s probably illegal there to.

Florida Man in Training Brings 3 Guns to School

Teri Ulm – Probably. Now the Daily Mail reports that Florida boy,

Jacob Rigney – Florida Man, he prefers Florida Man and training.

Teri Ulm – Yeah, he’s Florida man in training. 12 years old. He was arrested after taking three handguns to his private Christian School in his lunchbox and showing them off to his classmates.

Jacob Rigney – Oh. That’s just cool.

Teri Ulm – Oh. He thought he was cool.

Jacob Rigney – He’s cool. I don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s a boy with three handguns. That’s cool.

Teri Ulm – Yeah, Florida boy was arrested after bringing three handguns to school. He was led away from the lighthouse Christian school and taken it into custody. He was arrested after a teacher at the private school, which charges $8,200 for annual tuition, noticed how heavy his lunchbox was. And she decided to look in it.

Jacob Rigney – Why was she carrying his lunch box?

Teri Ulm – That’s a good question. I’m not sure.

Jacob Rigney – Keep your hands off my lunch box, lunch lady.

Teri Ulm – Right?

Jacob Rigney – That’s weird.

Teri Ulm – Yeah. The teacher discovered two handguns and two boxes of ammo inside the lunch box. And inside the lunch box was a large revolver, a sub compact, semi automatic pistol, and two boxes of 38 caliber ammo.

Jacob Rigney – For the revolver.

Teri Ulm – Yeah. A loaded semi automatic gun was later found in the boys possession as well. Mother of Florida boy told police that her son recently killed a family pet with a pellet gun.

Jacob Rigney – Good job, mom. Way to snitch the kid out.

Teri Ulm – I know. Now the boy’s mother reportedly unlocked the gun safe from her uncle, but mistakenly left it unlocked allowing the boy to access to weapons. In addition to the arrest, the incident was reported to the Department of Children Family Services and the boy was expelled from school. And that’s all the time we have for the day.

Jacob Rigney – Thanks, Teri. And thank you for listening to Tales from the Brown Desk. Please remember, while we may discuss legal issues and provide information regarding the law to our listeners, we do not intend to create an attorney client relationship with any listener. Our advice may not be applicable to some legal issues. Please consult with an attorney you have hired to review your legal situation before you attempt to apply the things we have said to your case. Tales from the Brown Desk is produced by Rigney Law and edited by Teri Ulm. If you want to ask a listener question email Teri at teri@rigneylawindy.com and entitle your email: “Podcast question” and we’ll read it on our next podcast. Give us new content for free, you suckers. Buzzsprout says with this podcast will get 24 downloads. 24. Yeah, it’s getting worse. That’s weak as hell, yo.

Kassi Rigney – Weren’t we we almost at 40 last week?

Jacob Rigney – It goes up and down. But yeah, it’s been bad and it got worse. It also… This doesn’t make sense, because we had more downloads in September than any other two months combined in the history of this podcast. So I don’t know how Buzzsprout is making that prediction, but I think they’re wrong. I’m suspect. I don’t buy it Buzzsprout. I hope you hear me. I don’t buy it. I mean, I do buy it. I buy hours from you every month to air this podcast, but I don’t buy your your suspect stats. Our last podcast only went live yesterday. So the farthest away listener new listener is in Fishers, Indiana. One county over. Shout out to Paris, France, though. They are hanging in there with us still. After all these months. The attorneys at Rigney Law do not come in on their current pending cases. Nothing we’ve said in this podcast is a comment on a case we are currently working on, even if your name is Chad, or if you just bought a hundred 8 & 1/2 by 14 inch legal pads. Take care.