Episode Three: Part 1 - Your Friend’s Ex Boyfriend

Lawyer: Recording in progress. . Hi. Hello.

Host: So how are you? It is a beautiful, beautiful day. I have to start with,

Lawyer: I almost was like, man. How badly do you think she'll kill me if I try to reschedule again? cause that sun…

Host: Badly.

Lawyer: That sun is shining girl.

Host: I've been getting, I've been getting lots of inspiration on how badly I could kill you.

Lawyer: You know how I am.

Lawyer: Alrighty, then disclaimer: no one, no one was hurt. No one was hurt in the making of The Murderer You Know

Host: Just kidding. But I will say, I mean, the sun is shining. Like you said, the birds are chirping. The butterflies are fluttering. There's flowers everywhere. The only thing I have to say is that pollen is slowly suffocating me. Speaking of being killed.

Lawyer: I can hear my husband upstairs, sneezing repeatedly.

Host: Another sound effect for the podcast

Lawyer: But all the, all the butterflies and the birds chirping, just make me realize it's a perfect day to talk about murder.

Host:  Muuuurder.

Host: Well, I don't know if I should say now. Don't get yourselves too hyped up, cuz this is an attempted murder.

Should I say that? Should I wait? It is the truth whenever I decide to reveal it, but it's a really interesting story, I think.

By the way, I was listening to our episode from last well, first of all, I should say, my mom was listening to our episode from last week. she had some, she had some comments, some edit feedback wanted to know the suggestion box was, some criticism.

Lawyer: Do do do … what’d she say?

Host: Her main, and you know, the thing is it's such a delicate subject to talk about any of this, and I don't wanna talk too much about rumors. I mean, it's hard not to, but, and this isn't even a rumor, I guess it's an experience my mom directly had, but she - the part where I said that the victim's sister said that she was like a fiercely protective mom and she loved her children and all of that -my mom was like, “that is not true. I knew her. She was terrible to her daughter”, the daughter who coincidentally ended up, poking her . So yeah, that was, I was like, sorry, mom.

Should we have a, a mom segment where she comes on and tells us all of the things that were inaccurate?

Lawyer: All the things that she knows for a fact of the matter to be true. She was there. She knows all.

Host: She knows, she knows everything as, I mean, everything, all moms do from what I've heard.

Lawyer: True. Very true.

Host: And then I also noticed, I personally noticed that we didn't really talk about this career of yours. And I, maybe that's fine. Maybe we just wanna keep it that way.

But it was, it was something that I noticed. I was like, oh, we're, she's just out here talking about cases and clients, and I don't know the words for any of these things. I'm just throwing words out there, but we didn't, we don't know still really what it is that you do for a living.

Lawyer: Well, I'm an attorney. I've been an attorney for five years. I've been in criminal law for five years. I've done that from both sides of the spectrum. And yeah, I think the thing for me I've almost played every single part in the criminal justice system. If that makes sense…

Host: …to me, it doesn't because , I don't know what any of the parts are.

Lawyer: well, I mean, I've, I've been a defense attorney. I've been a state's attorney. I've been a victim. I've been a witness. So yeah, I think the criminal justice system has played a really, really huge role in my life. And…

Host: Wow. That's awesome. And I mean, I've heard you say that it was like your childhood dream and I'm not sure how many people end up smack dab in the middle of their childhood dream, but that's pretty amazing.

Lawyer: Yeah. I've wanted to do this for my entire life. I think the, the law is misunderstood. I think it's something that when, if you understand how it functions yeah … parts of it are broken, but parts of it are pretty damn. Awesome.

Host: That's good. I'm glad there's some awesome out there to hear it from someone who knows.

Host: So yeah, I think it's really cool that you are. So involved in, in that community and making a difference and working to help people, protect people that don't have a voice, and making sure that the law isn't just about, I feel like a lot of the podcasts I listen to and the like, you know, true crime things generally that I watch documentaries all kinds of things.

It seems like a lot of the time, the. Legal representation doesn't seem, I - I feel like maybe, maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm gonna say it - I feel like sometimes it seems from the outside looking in, like they don't really care about the truth. They just care about getting a win.

So it's comforting to me to know that there are people like you who really care about the victims and what actually happened regardless of what that might mean for you personally.

Lawyer: Yeah, I think the hardest thing about the gig is realizing like there are two sides to every story. And so for me, I'm very emotional in my work.

Like it's very difficult. It's difficult for me not to almost see myself or see a member of my family in every single one of my victims. If that makes sense. Like, you know, I've had a family member who's been in a similar situation, I've been in a similar situation, you know, whatever the case may be. And so, for me, it's hard for me almost to pull away from that and remember, like, yes, I have to be objective. I have to consider cuz that's another, that's another part of it. Like I have to be concerned about the impact on the entire community. You know, I don't only have one client anymore. But I think the best thing about my job is I care so much and it's almost like you said. It's almost a self comfort because I've, you know, I've known people in these positions that have no business being here. And the only thing they care about is the number of convictions and how many, you know, trials they've had that they've gotten “the guilty” and I don't care about any of that.

I couldn't tell you if you offered me a million dollars, how many trials I've had that have resulted in convictions. I have no idea. I've had, I've had people take the stand because I. or because they more so really, wanted that opportunity to, to have their moment in court, even though we had that conversation about, “hey, this may not be, this may not be the outcome that you want”.

So for me, it's more about, you know, people deserve access and people deserve transparency and people deserve justice and yeah, hopefully one day the criminal justice system will only be about that.

Host: We can only hope

Lawyer: We got on a weird soapbox here. Let’s get off it.

Host: Get off the soapbox!

Lawyer: it. You need to keep me off my soap boxes. You know how I get

Host: Let's get into it then. And then maybe we'll have time to go outside and make like pollen angels. In the yard.

Lawyer: Alright. Let's move. So, what did it look like? What are we talking about today?

Host: The guy today was in my group of friends in high school.

One of my best friends actually dated him for a little while. And…

Lawyer:  🎶 🎶 🎶 He was a skater boy. He said, see you later, boy.

Host: Yes!

Lawyer:  I'm sorry. I saw that in the notes.

Host: Totally. That was perfect. But now I think he fancies himself a little bit more of a philosopher, so we'll get into it a little bit more. But he has the most insane blog from the other side, from where he's locked up and okay.

It's full of all of these, quotes and just musings and ponderings. And I put here at the top of my notes. I think this is his favorite quote: “We all have our time machines, some take us back. They're called memories. Some take us forward. They're called dreams.” And that's by someone named Jeremy Irons.

So like I said, I, I think he fan fancies himself a little bit more of a philosopher nowadays than a, a skater boy. But so…

Lawyer: Probably doing yoga. Ohhh, some stretches.

Host: Oof, absolutely magic stretchies.

I guess we'll talk a little bit about him. Most of what I have here, actually, which is interesting and kind of different, I think is his personal account of himself, his life, the crime…

So I think it's, going to be a little different, but I think it's gonna be pretty cool. And let's just start by talking about him a little bit.

So when he talks about himself, he talks about how his parents divorced at a young age and how much that impacted his life but he said he never let it impact him. He didn't use it as a crutch, but he did spend his time split between his mom and his dad and his paternal grandparents. And he just absolutely loved. And worshiped his paternal grandpa, who was another father figure to him, and his grandpa owned, apparently this adorable little ice cream truck that he would help him on in the summers. He said, mostly he counted the money, which led to his love of money, which he now loathes actually, and thinks that money is the root of all evil.

Lawyer: The root of allllll evil.

Host: Which I think will come up again throughout this story. So he grew up in the, the same small town that we grew up in, and he did drop out of high school before he graduated and got his G E D. He described the town that he grew up in as a place where he worked on a John Deere combine, he was a passenger in a tractor trailer full of soybeans, and he drove dirt bikes through corn fields barefoot until his feet were bloody. So romantic…

Lawyer: They're really gonna think we're Hicks now...

Host: … we are. This and this next line resonated with me personally: he also said it was a place where he became well acquainted with bonfires, lifted trucks, country roads, and Jack Daniels.

Lawyer: Now that, that is the title of a country song if I've ever heard one.

Host: Absolutely. And I'm laughing cuz here here's the next line you already got for us - He was a skater boy. And he was, he was a skater boy, but apparently a really you know, deep, there was some, some depth to this skater boy, cuz he also liked bonfires and Jack Daniels and tractors.

So, he wasn't your basic skater boy.

Lawyer: It's like an onion…layers.

Host: Layers mm-hmm .

So I remember him as being really funny and very friendly. He was, even after this crime that we're gonna dig into, a lot of people who were friends with him and the victim came to his defense. Even the victims seemed to kind of have some compassion for him about what happened and how they ended up where they did.

He was described by others as kind, selfless, and a really hard worker. And I just… Immediately when I'm reading all of this stuff, and this is all coming from his really incredible blog, which I want to plug because everyone should read it. It's insane. But I just wonder, like the same thing I wondered last week with our story. How do you go from this popular skater boy kid at a bonfire to someone who tries to murder your best friend and roommate?

Just the psychology of it is always so amazing to me.

Lawyer: Well, I mean, I think, I think you might have alluded to something for us. You're talking about. Money money, money mm-hmm mm-hmm

Host: So he described himself as covered in tattoos with a contagious smile and personality that you'd have to kill him to take any of that from him. He had pretty much a clean record before this craziness that we're gonna get into. He was charged in 2008 with misdemeanor, reckless driving, but like, same. Who hasn't been charged with reckless driving, am I right?

Lawyer: Yeah. I was laughing when I was reading this little spreadsheet and that you had put that on there, that he had a reckless driving. And it's funny like cuz reckless driving, you wrote out the entire like title, endangerment of life, limb, and property. And I was like in my head, I was like, does she think this is different than like just regular reckless driving?

Cause it's just the same. It's the same thing that all of you got charged with when you were 18…

Host: When you were speeding to take your friend to pick their homework up during lunch. Oh. That was me.

Lawyer: Crim-i-nal, crim-i-nal intent. Absolutely.

Host: He was also pulled over once in 2010 for an expired inspection. And in 2011, he missed a court appearance for a ticket related to an illegal window tint. Which also like, not me personally, but so many people that we grew up with - same. I mean, I couldn't even count how many people got in trouble for a dark tint on their windows in high school.

Lawyer: I had an illegal tint on that Nissan I got in college. I got pulled over like, four times and dad was like, “just take the tint off”. And I was like, “I. Will. Not.”

Host: They’ll have to kill me to take my tint and my contagious smile!

Lawyer: Pretty much. So yeah, me and this dude, me and this dude sound pretty similar. I'm feeling it. Yeah.

Host: I think we have a lot in common with this guy.

Host: He was apparently a very hard worker. He got his undergraduate degree while working. There's a big, well, this is a big military area where we live and there are a lot of ship building companies here. And he worked at one of them during the time that the crime took place. And he was also working on his graduate degree at a really prestigious local college. He was working on his MBA there at the time of the crime.

He worked his way up at this ship building place pretty quickly. He started in 2010, just as a cleaner, he literally picked up trash. He wanted more for himself, so he applied to night school at the shipyard and eventually, they have something called the Apprentice School. He progressed through that really quickly. He built a reputation for himself as a go getter with a really strong work ethic.

His apprentice school interviewer actually told him that she received more calls of support and recommendation about him than any other candidate she'd ever interviewed. And by 2017, he'd completed his associate's degree through the apprentice school and his bachelor's in business administration from Averitt University. And he had a 4.0 GPA. So like I said, it's just crazy. It's crazy. I mean, this whole story is just crazy to me, and we're gonna get into it. So I think everyone…

Lawyer: It don't take that much for you to snap under certain circumstances.

Host: It's like my dad always says, anyone just needs like a certain and this, I don't even remember the details, it's just gonna sound like a dumb blabbering, but he always said anyone just needs a perfect set of circumstances to steal and that anyone could find themselves in that situation based on this certain set of circumstances. And I feel like this is almost kind of similar. I mean, obviously it's more extreme, but he felt like he was in a set of circumstances where that was his only way out.

Lawyer: Well, let's get into it.

Host: So he was doing really well in life. He had his bachelor's working on his MBA. He just purchased a new house, 2,500 square feet. He had two really awesome vehicles. He was on his way, a clear track to making six figures. And he was promoted to entry level management at the shipyard where he worked a fortune 100 company.

But obviously all of that. Is gone now. And he later reflected on his life as an act where he was pretending to love life in his small town, full of the same losers and the same drama every weekend. And that was kind of eating away at him over time, I guess. He was really, really a competitive person and he had this crazy drive to succeed, and he would say this was because he wanted money to provide for his parents and those in his inner circle. So that money is rearing its head again. He would give anyone the shirt off of his back and he wanted to be able to give more than he could in his current situation.

I remember a story someone told me about him that they actually bumped into him at the shipyard and they were talking about their jobs. They'd both gone to high school with us. And they were talking about their jobs, and a lot of people work at this shipyard, cuz we're from a small town, and it's a big employer around here. And the, the assailant here in our story asked this mutual friend, what their job was at the shipyard and that person said, “Oh I do engineering. I do sound testing.” I do this, that, and this guy later told other mutual friends that the guy he bumped into was lying. He was like, “he doesn't have an impressive job like that. He's just lying. He made all of that up.”

Lawyer: Hmm.

Host: So it definitely highlighted that really fierce competitiveness for me.

Lawyer: So you talk about this guy a little bit differently obviously than we do in our last story. So it, from what I'm gathering, he's kind of in your circle of friends, but you're not, you don't have a ton of direct like friendship with him?

Host: No, no. Yeah. He, he was in my circle of friends. And we were friends throughout high school, but, you know, the last person that we talked about, she and I had been friends for like, 15 years.

Lawyer: Right.

Host: So this is not that same level of friendship, for sure. It's more of just a kid that, you know, you kind of run in the same circle with.

So this all brings us to 2017. He's doing really well. He has the house, he has the cars, he has everything. He's working hard to have the absolute life of his dreams. He describes 2017 as the best and worst year of his life, the best because he bought that house. He got promoted, he got into William and Mary and he had the best summer of his entire life, but it was the worst because his eight year marriage ended in divorce, he had two really horrible relationships after his divorce, and then a series of events took place that eventually led to him being in jail.

So the story takes place on October 22nd, 2017 at 8:50 in the morning, I need to add that the assailant had purchased that house just like he mentioned several times in his blog. He was so stoked and he had a roommate move in with him. A friend, a really good friend, apparently. And they had been living together for a couple of weeks, but things were kind of rapidly, going down the wrong path after they moved in together. So Harley had actually moved out, but he was visiting Mark the night before the crime took place.

They had gone to a concert the night before. Harley, he friend and former roommate, was in a band. He was playing a show and Mark, our assailant, went to see the show, hang out with his friends. And he asked, apparently asked Harley if he wanted to come over and play video games after the show. So flash forward to the next morning cuz I don't wanna get into too many of the crime details yet, at 8:50 in the morning, the Sheriff's office received a call about a shooting that occurred in the part of the county where these two guys lived, and the guy who called actually had been shot twice and held hostage for three hours while being denied medical care.

Lawyer: So, I guess he eventually gets access to a phone and he's reporting that he, these details, these hideous details? Geeeez.

Host: Yeah. He gets access to a phone in the morning and he calls the cops to report that he's been shot in the foot and the arm and that he is alone in the guy's house. And that the assailant fled in his car. So when the cops get to the house, they discover a man, and he had indeed been shot, and they took him to the hospital for treatment of non-life threatening issues. This guy obviously was the roommate and close friend who had gone over to play video games. Just to have a nice night on the night, actually very, very early morning of October 22nd.

I will say, he got there around three o'clock in the morning, which I'm like, could anything good possibly happen at three o'clock in the morning?

Lawyer: That's when you already knew, you already knew this wasn't gonna have a good ending. It's the witching hour. You better take your ass home and go back to sleep if you aren’t fixing to get shot. See, you're just making bad decisions.

Host: And also, this guy had moved out of this house with his friend because something similar to this happened like two weeks prior. So I'm like, you know, this guy has kind of been spiraling out of control and you're still gonna go over to play video games at his house at three o'clock in the morning?

I mean, no victim blaming at all. I just. I wouldn't have done it, but I'm scared of everything. my dad raised me to be extremely paranoid!

Lawyer: Way to go pops. We appreciate you.

Host: After the shooting took place. The homeowner, the assailant was seen fleeing from the scene in a gray Honda civic, one of those nice new cars that he purchased, with a weapon, and he fled to DC and was arrested there at 2:00 AM on October 23rd and brought back to face charges of maiming and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

And I feel like they always throw that commission of a felony on there. Like that was in the charge for our assailant last week too. It was like stabbing in the commission of a felony. Does that mean anything, or it could just be literally anything else going on?

Lawyer: I mean, it kind of depends. There's a lot of different, I say ancillary, and that's not the correct legal term for it because ancillary means something else in the law. But. There's a lot of, kind of ancillary felonies that you can kind of tack on in these sorts of situations, you know, use of firearm commission of a felony shooting, stabbing, maiming, in the commission of a felony.

Those are kind of in addition to whatever, the bad thing that they did is, and it seems kind of silly because it seems like the bad thing, you know, subsumes that use of firearm commission of a felony, but they have different elements at law. So technically they can be charged simultaneously for the same course of conduct. It kind of depends on the jurisdiction you're in, I mean, sometimes you're just gonna get situations that are like hideously, horribly overcharged with like every single crime that even possibly was violated. But obviously, and thankfully, jurisdictions are moving away from that, but you are still gonna see those kind of attendant felonies in these sorts of violent circumstances.

Host: Could the commission of a felony just be that he was holding someone hostage? Is that?...

Lawyer: Yes, because the abduction is a felony.

Host: Gotcha.

Let's talk about the other evidence that the officers found at the scene. Like I said, Mark fled the scene in his car with one weapon, but also found in the house was a Smith and Wesson rifle on the dining room table, a Sig Sauer pistol on the kitchen peninsula, and a Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun in a walk-in closet, adjacent to the kitchen. This guy had a few weapons. And he indicated at various points in time that he kept them for protection. We're gonna get into a, this a lot deeper, but for now, I'll just leave it at that. The victim indicated that his attacker also owned a revolver. And it turned out that that was the weapon that he took with him, or at least they think. That weapon was never recovered but they think he took that weapon with him when he fled the scene.

There was also blood on the carpet, in the living room, on the kitchen floor, on the carpet in the upstairs hallway and a more significant amount of blood - and interestingly enough, in the police reports this time, they called it blood. So I don't know if they just did a bad job, but they didn't call it a red liquid consistent with blood this time. Some of the officers did, but not this first report that I read. So I'm like, does he just not know the lingo? What's up?

Lawyer: That is too funny. I mean, yeah. They're, they're not really supposed to make conclusions about that sort of thing because they don't actually, I mean, it could be red paint for all they know. So they really aren't supposed to say things like that.

Host: Listen, is it ever red paint? I'm just asking.

Lawyer: Ever, ever?

Host: Yes

Lawyer: Yes. Yes! There's totally times.

Host: Okay. I'm also asking, do most people do their cocaine in a rolled up dollar bill? I felt like that was a thing from the movies, but there was apparently also a rolled up dollar bill with what appeared to be cocaine on the kitchen peninsula and a table in the upstairs hallway. And in the bathroom upstairs, where all of that blood was, that one appeared to have some blood on it and a bag under it with what appeared to be consistent with cocaine.

So I said to my husband, I was like, “people don't really do” cause I'm a cocaine expert so I was like, “people don't really do cocaine with a rolled up dollar bill”. And he was like, “you're fucking stupid. Yes, they do”.

Lawyer: I was gonna say having never done cocaine, having never witnessed anyone doing cocaine, I'm not sure what the method of consumption typically is.

Host: Well, my husband was really sure. Let me tell you.

Lawyer: Are you not worried about that? Should we pause this segment and talk about something else?

Host: I don't know. I don't wanna talk about it. No, I don't know. I think he's. I don't know, he wants to be cool.

Lawyer: He knows all the things, he knows all the things there is to know. Absolutely.

Host: Absolutely.

Other evidence included a spent bullet on the living room floor, some Adderall pills, a clear fluid on the kitchen floor, which was swabbed along with all of the blood. They also took an iPhone, a flip phone… By the way, I put a note here, a flip phone in 2017? That was like the drug, that was a drug phone. That was like a burner phone. Don't you think?

Lawyer: In 2017? Yeah. You didn't have no business having a, having a flip phone in 2017.

Host: There were also like a very weirdly large amount of different surveillance cameras and home security systems routers. There was a laptop… and then my favorite: three black digital scales with white powder residue on them.

Lawyer: So nowwwww we're getting into it. They, they, they was dealing drugs. They was drug dealer.

Host: Allegedly. Allegedly. Is that the right terminology?

Lawyer: Allegedly, mm-hmm mm-hmm. Allegedly. Every defense attorney's favorite word .

Host: So after this crime took place, and like I said, we're gonna come back to the crime because it's a crazy story. But after the crime took place, the victim was in the hospital for three days and needed multiple surgeries. He has posted a lot on his social media about his struggle to become so sober after being shot and all of the friends that he lost and hard lessons he had to learn a. It sounds like he really went through a lot, which this whole situation is like, all jokes aside, this whole situation is very sad. And I really feel for both of them. I didn't really know the victim, he was a little bit older than me, but by all accounts, he was a fantastic human. And I just think, like I said, this is a very sad story all around.

So after Mark was caught in DC and brought back down to his hometown he spent time in four different correctional facilities, close to home and as far away as three hours, During this time, he did a couple of interesting things as far as leading up to his trial, and decisions he was making for his representation and what his plan was.

So during this time he fired his original lawyer and hired a new one that was experienced in jury trials. And up until about one month before sentencing, he actually wanted to take his case to trial because he thought he would be able to convince a jury that he was innocent, but he ultimately decided to plead guilty and not withdraw his agreement because he felt like it was the right thing to do. So they offered him like a plea arrangement. And he decided to take that route instead. He did make, he thought, several mistakes. He thought pleading guilty would help him accept responsibility and move on. But ultimately in the end, he felt like, apparently that was the wrong decision. I guess he didn't feel any relief of all of that guilt that he had, unfortunately.

And he pled guilty to malicious wounding, use of a firearm, and a felony first offense abduct by force/intimidation. I don't really know. If there's anything you wanna add to that?

Well let me say first that he, his trial was pushed back from August 20th, 2018 to October 23rd, 2018 which is where he ultimately pled guilty and he pled guilty to the class three felony of malicious wounding, which carries according to what I have, a max sentence of five years? He also pled guilty to a class U felony. Is that wrong? Did I miss the number?

Lawyer: It means unclassified.

Host: Oh. Which was use of a firearm while in commission of a felony. Which according to my research for a first offense had a max of three years, and then he also pled guilty to a class U five felony which was abduction by force/intimidation. Which according to my research was a max of two years in prison. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for this, basically what is an attempted murder and we'll get into that - why I think it was an attempted murder.

So you were saying that, and I don't remember, unfortunately if I got this from just a like website somewhere or that court website you told me about, or. Mark's blog or I have no idea, obviously it's not in the police reports, which is the only like official document I researched from. But you're saying that I have these max sentences incorrect? Which is why you're here, cuz I'm just the blabberer.

Lawyer: Yea so, in Virginia, there's obviously felonies and misdemeanors. And then in your felonies and misdemeanors, there's different subsections within both of those categories. So for felonies, you have six different classes of felony and the sixth classification, a class six felony, is actually the lowest felony. So a class six felon felony is punishable by one to five years in prison. A class five felony is punishable by one to 10 years in prison. Class four felony is two to 10 years. Class three felony is five to 20, a. Class two felony is 20 to life. And then that class one felony is life.

So it kind of moves up in terms of punishment available. And then you also have, and you mentioned this just a minute ago, you also have unclassified felonies, which kind of is a felony that as I was saying earlier, you know, the different code sections and things of that nature, sometimes it says this felony is punishable by 20 years or 25 years, and so that makes it an unclassified felony, cuz it kind of has its own punishment structure in its own specific code section. It's all, it's all super convoluted, unfortunately. But one of the crimes you mentioned, I know abduction is that class six felony or excuse me, class five felony, which is one to 10.

Malicious wounding has a couple different. Types if that makes sense. So there's malicious wounding and then there's unlawful wounding, and then there's aggravated malicious wounding. So there's so many different levels. So those

Host: So those aren't all class three felonies? Those different types of malicious wounding are different classes of felony?

Lawyer: Right. So malicious wounding is a class three felony, and that that's just kind of the, not the least serious version, but there's an aggravated version, which is aggravated malicious wounding. And I believe that's punishable by life.

So the malicious wounding is a class three felony, which is, as we were talking about earlier, the period of five to 20, and I think ag mal wounding is punishable by life. So there's, there's again, the code sections are all just so convoluted. And that's why I think people, people read them and they're like, oh, I have an idea of what that means, but sometimes that's not, sometimes it means something a little bit more specific.

Host: And would aggravated malicious murdering, aggravated malicious, murdering, aggravated malicious wounding is that, I assume different than like attempted murder or is attempted murder, not even like an actual official thing you can be charged with?

Cause I'm just interested to hear that you could potentially get life for aggravated malicious wounding, when sometimes people who attempt… And in this case, I mean, when we get into the. Craziness of the entire story that I definitely want to dedicate a whole episode two. So please come back next week because I'm gonna tell the whole story of what actually happened from 3:00 in the morning, till 8:00 in the morning when Mark and Harley were hanging out together, from their perspectives... But I just think it's interesting that he got only 10 years for attempting to kill someone, but it sounds like you could potentially get life, from what you said about that aggravated malicious wounding? And that's what made me wonder, is that the same thing as an attempted murder? Is attempted murder even a felony or even a real thing? Or would it be something like aggravated malicious wound?

Lawyer: Yeah. So again, it's all gonna be different depending on where you are, but you know, in the, in the jurisdictions, we're talking about how it usually works is You kind of have discretion. You have discretion at the police level, you have discretion at the prosecutorial level, to determine how a person should be charged. And what I mean by that is typically officers can go seek whatever warrant they believe fits the facts and circumstances, and there's gonna be different a couple of different charges that sometimes fit the facts and circumstances.

And sometimes cops go and get warrant based on their own assessment, sometimes cops contact their local state's attorney and say, Hey, this is what I've got going on. What do you think we should do? How do you think we should charge? So sometimes that decision is made in consultation but it. It can kind of go a number of different ways.

I mean, attempted murder is definitely a thing. So every felony can be charged as an attempt. So you can, hell you can charge 'em with attempt to commit aggravated malicious wounding. So you can absolutely charge attempt, attempted murder, and it would have to be tied to a code section of murder. Obviously there are different levels of murder, depending on all different sorts of things.

Host: Like premeditation and those sorts of things?

Lawyer: Right, exactly. Right. But the difficulty, I think that you, that people don't realize when you're charging an attempt, you have to actually, for the most part, prove that elements of the crime that you're saying they attempted to commit. So you would have to prove in theory, the premeditation, the intent to, you know intent to actually kill that person, things of that nature. So if, if you don't, if you don't know if you're gonna be able to do that, sometimes it makes more sense to charge in a code section that requires less intent because obviously for malicious wound and aggravated malicious wounding, you don't have to have an intent to kill. You just have to have the intent to maim, disfigure, disable… So it's a little bit broader in terms of what you can prove. And so sometimes those avenues make more sense. You can kind of, there's almost always gonna be more than one way that you can seek a charge or charge an offense.

We just have so many laws honestly they just cover certain situations kind of for more than one angle. If that makes sense.

Host: Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot to kinda wrap your mind around.

So back to Mark, after he pled guilty, he was moved from jail to the state penitentiary in August, 2019. And we'll talk a little bit more about his time in prison and jail, but one thing he talked about in his blog a lot was that he wasn't sure how different prison was going to be than jail. So what do you think about that? Are there big differences and what are the big differences? And do you think that that's something that most people are really well versed in?

Lawyer: No. I think most people use those terms interchangeably or some people might understand there's a difference, but it's a difference they don't quite understand. I've known people who think that prison is federal, and so you only go to prison if you've been charged federally, that's not true.States have prisons.

I know people again that just kind of use the terms interchangeably, but they are, they are two different beasts. A jail is typically your local correctional facility. So your local county jail, where they take you, when you drive drunk, when you punch somebody in the face of the bar, whatever the case may be. And so those jails, typically, if you're serving a sentence and again, it's all gonna depend on where you are, but what I'm familiar with, is if you're serving a sentence less than a year, you typically stay in your local jail. So, if you get picked up on whatever the offense may be, it could even be a felony.

You could, in theory, even serve a felony sentence in jail completely in your local jail. If you're serving a felony sentence, in theory, you're supposed to be, you know, transferred to the department of corrections which is the, the prison circuit or the prison facilities, but if you're not serving more than a year, they're honestly just not gonna go through the work of transferring you.

Host: Well, because if you look at this case even, he pled guilty in October, 2018 and wasn't moved to prison until August, 2019. So, if it takes that long to organize the logistics of the move, and you're only serving a year sentence then. Yeah. I mean, it almost doesn't even make sense.

Lawyer: And especially like, if you're in a case where there's hearings and stuff going on. Post-trial or post-sentencing or whatever the case may be. They just don't wanna even transport you back and forth a hundred times. They're just gonna leave you local until, you know, you're flat serving sentence and then they might ship you out.

But so yeah, the prisons are different, obviously. I think at this point, our state only has a couple prisons left. And so obviously prisons are not gonna be necessarily geographically close to where your jurisdiction is. I mean, the closest prison to my jurisdiction is several hours away. And so obviously people who are serving prison sentences, it's harder for their families to see them.

Host: And he talked about that a lot, the stress of being so much further away from his family than he was. And he, he was in a couple of different, like I said, he kind of bounced around in four different jails.

But this was even further away than any of those jails were from his family. So there was a lot of stress, I think, still a lot of stress for him, and I'm sure for lots of people, to be that far away from their family, especially when you're not seeing your family frequently, regardless once you're in jail or prison

Lawyer: And the setup of both institutions is very different. So typically in jail you're gonna be in a cell. You're gonna be in a cell, potentially with a roommate. You're gonna have a common area that everyone can access outside of their cell, but you're gonna have a cell with a bed in it.

I haven't been to actually, I don't think I've been to any of our adult prisons - I've been to some of the juvenile prisons - but the adult prisons, for the most part, they're gonna be like, what you see on TV. They're gonna be like, Orange is the new Black. You know, beds in a common area, everyone's staying in a similar space. They're not necessarily gonna be individual cells. So that's why you're gonna have a lot more of the kind, I don't know, kind of the horror stories that you hear about incarceration in terms of sexual assault and drugs running rampant, and, you know, prison guards who are doing things they shouldn't and taking advantage of inmates. That's happening in prisons because of the fact that there's so much more intertwine of the inmates and kind of intertwine of their space that they're cohabiting. That's usually not something you see in jails because they are a little more spread out.

Host: That's so interesting.

I think we might end this part. We're gonna make this a twofer, but I think we're gonna end this part with a quote here from Mark. We have your professional opinion on what prison is like, and how it compares to jail. But after spending a little over a year in prison, Mark put this in his blog about his experience. So let's end this episode, I think with this quote here. He said, “if you're wondering what life is like in prison, I have a simulation for you. Lock yourself in a bathroom for as long as your schedule permits, have someone bring you slop three times a day, two out of three can be dumped in the toilet. The third slop might be partially edible. You can have a few books and a television. See how long you can last. And then upon completion, document how much better of a person you have become.”.

Lawyer: Ooh.

Host: Yeah. We're gonna go a little more into his blog next week too, because it's fascinating. And like, I don't wanna glorify this person who did this horrible thing, but like I said, he fancies himself a little bit of a philosopher, and I think he brings up points that are worth discussing and some other interesting things like that. Does prison really reform you? Is there a better way that some of these things could be done? But we're gonna get more into all of that next week.

In the meantime, you can check us out on Instagram: Murderer You Know Podcast; Facebook: also Murderer You Know Podcast (@MYKpod); and you can always email us at murdereryouknow@gmail.com.

Do you have anything to add?

Lawyer: Yeah, I guess it's, it's funny that I was talking about the differences between jails and prisons. And I was saying that prisons, you're kind of gonna be hanging out more, but I guess I really wasn't considering the fact that obviously this is gonna be a violent inmate based on his convictions. Or, you know, not necessarily a violent inmate, but a violent categorization. And so, yeah, he probably was in a circumstance where he was in a cell and didn't have a lot of access to, you know, general population or, kind of that stuff that in theory would make you less segregated, less isolated during your time. So I can't imagine what that would be like. Yeah.

Host: Yeah, no, I can't imagine what any of this would be like, but it's interesting to think about and talk about, and we're gonna get, we're gonna go deep next week, so

Lawyer: I'll see you there.

Host: Bye.

Lawyer: Bye.