Chad Doerman Demands Judge Toss Out His Alleged Confession to Executing 3 Sons

I told him to shut up and also during that I told him he had the right to remain silent to use it deputies on the stand as the Ohio dad accused of executing his three young Sons claims detectives violated his rights we have the top moments from the hearing in Chad Dorman's case I'm Anette Levy and this is crime fix Chad Dorman could be put to death if he's convicted of murdering his three young Sons Clayton Hunter and Chase at his home in Claremont County last June what Dorman's accused of doing is absolutely Unthinkable prosecutors said Dorman laid down in his bedroom with his wife and sons to take a nap and then pulled a rifle from a gun safe and started shooting the boys prosecutors say Dorman's wife and daughter tried to save the boys running away with them and even suffering gunshot wounds as they tried to stop the Carnage can you get the wallet out of my back pocket shut up yeah right Sheriff's body cameras recorded deputies finding Dorman sitting on his front porch with a 22 caliber rifle sitting next to him prosecutors say Dorman made multiple statements including I did it take me to jail and I shouldn't have done that but Dorman's lawyers say the detectives violated their client rights when they questioned him in several ways they claimed Dorman asked for a lawyer and detected ignored that request at a hearing this week deputies and detectives were questioned about how they handled Dorman beginning with him being taken into custody I told him he had the right to remain silent toing use it okay um I'm sorry what was that last comment you said you I told him he had the right to remain silent to use it okay and uh did he respond to you sir he did and what did he say yes sir okay and what did you take that yes sir to mean that he understood said I didn't want him to talk so after Dorman arrived at the sheriff's office he was placed in an interview room detective Michael Ross testified about reading Dorman his Miranda writes from a card but he didn't read the entire card take a listen one's talking about advice before you question and the others talk about having a lawyer present during questioning isn't it yes um I'm not a robot I I probably should have read the entire card but I'm not a robot um and then you read if you cannot afford a lawyer one will be appointed that you left out for you before any questioning if you wish right again yes I must have left that out so that's a little concerning in a triple homicide you should probably read the entire card word for word to ensure you're dotting all of your eyes and Crossing all of your tees to ensure you've read the suspect his rights and that he understands them the questioning by Dorman's attorney continued I um believed that he wanted to talk to me based on our uh short interaction earlier in the interview where I said that I wanted to talk to him and he said that's fine actually I said I want to talk to you if that's okay and he said that's fine were you afraid he was going to say no I talk to you no I wasn't afraid I'm just not a robot I didn't read the card word for word um I I read to him his Miranda rights and Miranda warnings how many interviews do you think you've done to probably hundreds as a detective and probably thousands as a road Patrol assistant prosecutor Laura Baron Allen asked detective Ross about other statements Dorman made during the interview U he had made a comment that um the Bible says that you kill your firstborn you kill your second born you kill your third born but first you're supposed to kill your wife I didn't kill my wife so I really thought that was a very important comment that he had just made and I was um I wanted him to repeat to me some of the things that he had said and I was asking him about that and he cut me off um he stopped me from talking and said um I'll just in all one sentence he says I'll just wait for a lawyer I really don't know like give me a couple days I'll talk to a lawyer and get nice good answers he says that all in basically one breath so detective Ross he revealed a lot there but at the end you heard him say that Chad Dorman said that he would talk with the lawyer and get quote good answers Ross went on explaining what he said happened with Dorman when it came to this discussion about a lawyer I I felt obligated to explore it a little bit yes so I I did I asked him if he had a lawyer and what did he indicate to you he said we have family lawyers and did you follow up on that yeah again I feel like I like pulling teeth I'm trying to get him to talk about he tell me who's your lawyer um so I asked him if there was somebody we could call and he said uh Keith dorbin and Ruby Franklin and did he give you any information about those two individuals yes I I followed up with them uh Keith Dorman is his father and neither one of those people are attorneys so so he was able to tell you Keith dormant and his dad um what did he say about Ruby Franklin he said that she was in the CIA and I said well is she a lawyer in the CIA and he said she's in the CIA so neither name that he gave me were even close to lawyers when questioned by Dorman's lawyers detective Ross said Dorman's request for a lawyer wasn't exactly clear to him so what do you understand you're supposed to do when a suspect who's in custody clearly asks for a lawyer if if they clearly ask for a lawyer yeah which I've done on other cases on other homicide cases they clearly ask for a lawyer I stopped questioning them right which I've done before in this case he did not clearly say he wanted a lawyer but you said that you tried to clarify with him that's what you're saying these questions you asked him about whether he had a lawyer or not were designed to do I I did try I did try to explore that and clarify his comments um but he continued playing games with me while prosecutors say Dorman admitted to shooting his three sons they also say he denied it and at any point during the interview did the defendant denied shooting his sons that day yes multiple times throughout the entire interview till the very end it also came out that Dorman was captured on camera saying a number of other things um he said um almost like under his breath like a whisper uh what the did I do um another point he says what the did she let me do um another time it looked like he was checking the back of his shirt for blood um there was another point where he's looking around and he says where's the cameras where's the cameras um so he was looking for cameras and Dorman's defense attorneys dropped a little bit of a hint about what they might claim at trial you've dealt with mentally ill people before for 26 years I've dealt with mentally ill people yes you understand sometimes they're not dealing in reality I believe that's probably true yeah sometimes they understand what psychosis is well now you're getting outside of my um knowledge of mentally ill people okay so do you accept that sometimes mentally ill people will behave in ways it may seem like one thing when it's not in my experiences U and again as a police officer my experiences dealing with mentally ill people typically don't know that they're mentally ill judge Richard fing did not rule on the defense request to throw out Chad Dorman's statement he could do that in the next month or so the prosecutor in this case Mark talvi has made it clear he will not settle for anything less than having Chad Dorman executed so what does all of this testimony mean for this murder case Mark Weaver has prosecuted death penalty cases in the state of Ohio and he's a former deputy Ohio attorney general Mark uh first off let's talk about this issue about the Miranda waiver card and what the detective in this case said he read to Chad Dorman he said he didn't read the whole card is he required to read the entire card because the suggestion is is that Chad Dorman may not not have understood all of his rights uh under the circumstances and that the cops messed up when they're sitting there trying to read his rights and they don't read every little word on the card yeah defense Council here doesn't have much to work with I prosecuted a couple death penalty cases against the lead death penalty lawyer in this case Greg Myers I saw him in the hearing and uh they often have very little angles they can pursue so at the suppression hearing they're trying to stop the confession from coming and we all know there's lots of evidence he did this this is not uh some other dude did it defense everybody knows who did it but it's the job of the defense to try to to impede or slow down or otherwise delay the states case and this slatest hack is the notion that the Miranda card was not read from Miranda comes from the US Supreme Court Miranda versus Arizona that decision and its other case law that came from it don't require a police officer to read the right wres from a card but it is the best practice a police officer who always reads from the card word for word will have an easier time in future suppression hearings than one who looks at it and summarizes the main point the standard is did the officer warn the defendant of the key messages from the Miranda warning which we're all familiar with in TV sounds as though they that they did that the judge will make the final decision another uh concern here watching this hearing was the fact that the detective on the stand testifying said you know he he said stuff about a lawyer and this is under questioning by the defense you know he said stuff about a lawyer and then it sounded like he said Laura and so I was confused um but there was mention of a lawyer and possibly wanting a lawyer by Chad Dorman so I always thought and correct me if I'm wrong Mark that once a defendant mentions a lawyer the question you know the questioning should stop and you know it's kind of incumbent upon the detective in the room to say wait are you asking for a lawyer uh but the defense is saying you didn't do that you didn't ask that clarifying question your response to that two things can be true at the same time first it is blackletter law that means it's well settled law that when a defendant who's in a custodial interrogation which the defendant was in this case makes a clear request to speak to a lawyer before answering any other questions that the questionings questioning must stop that's that's no doubt that that's the law the question for this judge is whether that's what happened in this particular interrogation uh the facts as I understand them show that the defendant was kind of vague wasn't very clear made a reference to a lawyer and then immediately followed up with I don't know and then talked about some people who could be lawyers turns out they weren't lawyers one was his father someone works for the CIA frankly I didn't quite follow it some of this could be uh construed as confused mutterings by this defendant and so this judge will have to decide whether that was enough to stop the interrogation the prosecution early in the hearing pointed out several different phrases involving lawyers that were so vague that Ohio courts have said that's not enough to trigger the required but to stop the questioning so the judge is going to have to read those cases and decide whether or not that was enough to stop the questioning so you're saying the defendant has to basically say I want a lawyer like it has to be a clear request you can't just start talking about a lawyer all of us have rights under the Constitution but we also have obligations to make known whether or not we're waving those rights or whether we're standing on those rights officers do not have to be mind readers the judge I think is going to find that the combination of words that this defendant said was not enough to stop the question there was also some testimony by some of the deputies who arrived on the scene and you know you and I have talked about this before that um the defense took issue with the fact that I think one of the deputies said you know close the door you know when they put dorant in the cruiser um close the door so I don't kill the mother effer and stuff like that they were cursing and and you know that that was like an intimidation tactic uh do the courts really care about that is there any case law on uh deputies and cursing at and you know making their disdain known for a suspect especially when they arrive on the scene and and see three young children um dead deputies are human and they're going to react as humans do particularly in this horrific case of course uh the founders of our country who wrote the Constitution wanted to make sure that interrogations didn't look like the torture chambers of Europe and that's why they wrote some of the things they did in the Bill of Rights the only reason I think they're raising this defense council is to suggest that somehow this was some abusive process of this defendant that perhaps forced him into confessing calling him a name slamming the door um not adjusting the Cuffs to his liking uh not adjusting the air conditioning to his liking this is nowhere near the sort of abusive environment that might trigger some judge ruling to hold back the interrogation from evidence and finally Mark there was some discussion about Hippa and the fact that Chad Dorman received some care from medical professionals and that there were body cameras rolling um during during all of this and that that should not be used according to the defense that shouldn't be allowed at trial because he was in a medical setting even though he was in custody so that anything he said there shouldn't be used against him your response to that these defense lawyers have very little to work with so let's give them an a for creativity I've not seen hipper raised in a suppression hearing before I don't even quite sure what what I'm not sure what they're trying to achieve here early on in the hearing one of them acknowledged it would not be a basis for suppression suppression hearings are supposed to be when constit tional issues are raised typically Fourth Amendment and fifth amendment constitutional issues Hippa is a federal statute that provides privacy uh in health Communications that are stored digitally and as the state mentioned there's an exception in Hippa for people who were in jail or prison so I I don't think the judge will do much with that it struck me as an odd thing to bring up but remember I've not been a defense lawyer I've always been on the prosecution side these defense lawyers don't have much to to work with and they're trying to do what they can for their client Mark Weaver thank you as always for coming on we appreciate it we'll wait to see how the judge rules probably in the next month or so always good to be back with you Anette thank you and that's it for Crime fix I'm Anette leevy thanks so much for being with us we'll see you back here next time

Channel: Law&Crime Network

Views: 575,890

Keywords: law and crime, law and crime network, chad doerman, chad doerman case, chad doerman confession

Id: 9bs8joCwXM0

Length: 16min 18sec (978 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024