listen, you can t prove the case against me because there are no witnesses to testify. that is the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing, and the supreme court said you can t get away with that. that s exactly what donald trump is trying to do. so these witnesses, the boltons, the mulvaneys, the pompeos, need to be subpoenaed. the motions that are going to be made by the house managers, the prosecutors, to chief justice roberts for subpoenas for these witnesses, those motions must be granted. then the question becomes do 51 senators override chief justice robert s decision to subpoena those witnesses to testify? if you look at the polling on this, voters seem to have questions about why these witnesses are not being called. we have a poll showing that 71% of americans think that they
and yet we all know donald trump has prohibited the witnesses with relevant and incriminating information from providing testimony that could sink him. there s a mechanism in the criminal law to address this exact scenario. it s called forfeiture by wrongdoing. unfortunately when i was a prosecutor, from time to time, we would have a witness killed, killed because they could provide incriminating information. if we could prove by a fairly low standard, a preponderance of the evidence, 51%, that the defendant arranged to have the witness killed or go missing, we could introduce everything that witness ever said to anybody against the defendant at trial on cross-examine. why? because you can t benefit from an evidentiary standpoint from your own wrongdoing. this is just like if donald trump had kidnapped all of the witnesses and held them in a van down by the river and then said,
law. all right? and the theory of forfeiture by wrongdoing allows the prosecution to do it this case is whittled down over and over again. gregg: you know what else may be troubling to people, to vigorous defense lawyers, i used to be one, the jurors admitted afterwards, yeah, we did have some knowledge that the fourth wife had vanished. so what? every on the planet knew that. i mean, look, gregg, here is the thing, when i was a judge, i would say to the jurors, look, even if you heard about this case, you promise me that you will make a decision based upon the evidence that you hear within the four walls of this courtroom? gregg: what if jurors said to themselves, he s got to be guilty cause the fourth wife is probable will he dead. that s not right. you ought to be what does that mean? if i tell enough lies that i can t get a fair jury and therefore, i could get away with it? crop on. gregg: speak of which, he could be charged now with stacy
wouldn t have to pay her divorce money, that i should be able to get away with the murder on the grounds of hearsay? there is something called forfeiture by wrongdoing. you forfeit the right to claim hearsay when you kill the witness in order to stop her from testifying. gregg: the defense still has a shot of getting this conviction thrown out by going up on appeal. there was a motion before the trial ever occurred in which they challenged this hearsay evidence. it wasn t all the way through the court system to the appellate court in illinois. what does that tell you, gregg? gregg: it tells me the supreme court in illinois could decide differently. what it tells us, as lawyers, the of two us, that the appellate courts have already ruled. the motion in limeine said this is allowable and the judge has limited what the appellate court said. gregg: it didn t go to the illinois supreme court, did it? it went to the appellate court. the bottom behind, the hearsay has been allowed
then expect to be able to go forward after you killed the person who you made the statement about. it s called forfeiture by wrongdoing. you can not benefit from the fact that you killed your fourth wife to get her to not say something about the third wife, and you killed the third wife to not testify in the financial settlement. there is good basis for this. on my show, we ll have all these people. gregg: all right. then this was also astonishing. a priest takes the witness stand. i always think of the priest pen tent s privilege. doesn t apply here because the wives are missing. so the priest says that the fourth wife says she saw drew peterson come in the night kathleen savio, the third wife, allegedly died. and he s all dressed in black late at night. okay. first of all, the third wife did die that intoity and wife number 4 goes to bed with drew