america reports with my partner for this friday, how are you today? i m good, well, thanks for joining us on this friday. welcome to america reports. this has been fascinating to watch, day 2 as the prosecution now cross examinates alex, and what s interesting to me, jonna spilbor said the prosecutor is seemingly getting outlawyered by his own witness here. let s bring in now criminal defense attorney phil holloway to get his take on what we have seen so far, as they take a break there in south carolina. phil, you know, yesterday you said that you thought that he needed to testify. he s admitted to stealing from clients, admitted to lying repeatedly, do you still think that was a good idea? yes, i do, good afternoon. thanks for having me back. i think so far the defendant is doing quite well as a witness in this case and honestly this is a master class how not to conduct a cross examination. open ended questions, and even in law school in trial advocacy classes young
they need to point out the key points that they want from cross examination. when we are trained in trial advocacy, trained you need to make a list of 4 or 5 or 6 or 8 key points you want to make in your cross examination. you get in, make the points and get out. instead what they are doing is they are beating this horse to death over and over again to the point that i think they are losing the jury. i think they need to have a better organized process here for cross examination because as of right now, any gains i think the prosecutor made up until today i think are being erased by a pretty good job of the answers given by the defendant on cross examination. john: so phil, this is all about instilling reasonable doubt in the minds of at least one juror in order to be able to escape the most dire consequences here, and what we have been seeing on the stand in the last day and a half of alec murdaugh being up there is this kind of good old boy network
that is why it s like never before in the fight to get the right to choose our own destiny, and to prove to the world and to russia we exist and has the willing to define its own destiny. aishah: you are proof of perseverance for your people, and general keith kellogg said this was an endless war. we hope it is not for your sake and your people s sake. thank you for joining us on this one-year anniversary and we will stay in touch. thank you very much. john: and we ll be rolling into hour two here on america reports. back to the alec murdaugh trial as lunch is just about done on the lunch break. we ll hear more testimony from him. cashback on flapjacks, baby backs, or the tacos at the taco shack. nah, i m working on my six pack. well, good luck with that. earn big with chase freedom unlimited with no annual fee.
deliver a verdict, we really don t know. but the lawyers for the defense, that was their job, i think, at that point was to humanize their client. i think he had to get on the stand, he had to convey emotion, he had to convey how he felt as a human being, you know, seeing this gruesome sight where his wife and son were laying dead by the dog kennel. so i really think that that s about all they could do with it, how well it was received by the jury we ll have to wait and see. i think that s what the defense was going for, they had to bring out that emotion, he had to appear emotional and there s some people saying maybe it was fake tears or he wasn t really crying, but we really don t know. the lawyers, i think, for the defense did what they had to do at that point in time. john: phil, and for the control room, call for number 4 as the prosecutor again went to the idea that alec murdaugh just keeps making things up. listen here. you, like you ve done so many