Why This Parrot is in Witness Protection

this video was made possible by brilliant learn complex subjects simply at brilliant org / H a I / its are terrifying not only are they likely actually CIA spy drones but they also talk and boy is the idea of a little thing in my home that consoling knows what I'm doing and can speak terrifying unrelated second point but the other day I was consulting with my Alexa for legal advice and she mentioned as some precedent an interesting case the case of a parrot in witness protection program one day sometime in the mid-90s a woman named Suzy hack who was director of a wildlife rehabilitation center in Louisiana received a visit from an old friend who had with her this bird named echo I promise you that's the real name of this bird this isn't all subliminal amazon advertising it's just as much of coincidence as that time I used prime now to order groceries from Whole Foods and the delivery drivers favorite TV show was also the Amazon Prime original series the Grand Tour available now echo was a chestnut fronted McHale with beautiful plumage a green body red shoulders and a dark dangerous secret you see echo had been owned by a New Orleans crime boss and as sometimes happens when you live in the house of a crime boss one day echo was in the wrong place at the wrong time and it seen something he wasn't supposed to see now normally that might not be a problem so long as echo kept his mouth shut but the problem was no matter how many times you show them the Godfather parrots don't seem to understand that snitches get stitches at night echo would make certain creepy concerning and possibly incriminating sounds sounds of a child crying sounds of moaning sounds of a loud thundering hitting noise followed by the sound of eerie maniacal laughter this left the authorities who now possessed him only two options one hide echo in a haunted house or to hide him in a makeshift animal witness protection program they chose the latter stashing him at Hawk Haven rehabilitation center in Lake Charles Louisiana where the staff were instructed not to tell anyone about his presence now you might be wondering why was echo in danger an animal can't really testify in court can it well there's actually a long history of animals in court in fact until the 18th century animals would regularly be put on trial for their supposed crimes they would often have legal representation from actual lawyers human witnesses would be called and a judge would rule on the outcome in 1394 a French Pig was hung for sacrilege for stealing and eating a communion wafer how you hang an animal with a neck like this I don't know in 1474 a rooster and Switzerland burned at the stake for supposedly laying an egg in 1508 a group of French rats were tried for the charge of eating a barley crop but they were acquitted thanks to the work of their defense lawyer who argued that the rats could not reasonably be expected to come to court because of the presence of dogs and cats throughout the city who might eat them should they show their faces in public today though there have been a number of cases in the modern day where animals were in the courtroom but not facing prosecution the actions of properly trained bloodhounds tracing a scent are admissible in court as evidence and even when they're untrained sometimes dogs can be used as witnesses in 2008 a dog named Scooby who had been in the room when his owner was killed appeared as a witness in a murder investigation to see how he responded to a suspect echo the parrot isn't even alone in the category of avian testimony on several other occasions a parrot has witnessed a crime and lawyers have attempted to use the parrots as part of their cases now whether or not a parrot is allowed to testify in court is a difficult legal question that's a bit hard to explain in answering it I could do a bunch of googling try to understand all the legal implications of this really weird thing not understand all of it and then give a really short answer that I justify by saying that I don't want to bore you with the details when actually I just don't understand the details note that I've ever done that instead though I've decided to get some help from someone who actually knows what they're talking about I'll just try to keep it short because he bills by the minute thanks disembodied voice hearsay is an out-of-court statement used for the truth of the matter asserted statement is usually defined as coming from a person so a document written by a person or an audio recording of someone speaking is considered hearsay but a truly computer-generated image is not so even though birds aren't people they still arguably relay the words of a human which brings in a hearsay problem in the same way that you run into hearsay issues when you try to admit an audio recording into court that said if a parrot ever says don't shoot don't shoot it might have heard a dying declaration which would be an exception to the hearsay rule and it might make that testimony irrelevant and admissible but even if you get over the hearsay issue parrot based testimony faces an even greater problem unfair prejudice the Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 403 allow the judge to throw at evidence that is considered quote more prejudicial than probative in other words the risk of unfairness is higher than the relevancy of that particular evidence here can we really trust a witness that is so bird-brained and while bird law seems all cute and fuzzy what if the animal in question turns state's evidence when completes use animals against you this has been actually a huge issue at the Supreme Court over the last few years because in particular dogs are really good at sniffing out drugs sure they're man's best friend until they narc on you and while Polly only wants a cracker Fido wants your crack the Supreme Court says that using a dog at a traffic stop to sniff out drugs is not an unreasonable search and seizure and if the dog alerts it's sufficient for probable cause to search the whole car which the police may not have had otherwise that said the police can't hold the car for an unreasonable amount of time to call in a dog so woof thanks Devon you can email me the invoice at brian at real engineering calm now I know this will seem strange for HIV viewers but Devon is actually qualified to talk about what he's talking about because he's a real lawyer with a real youtube channel called legal eagle where he just put out a very interesting video all about hearsay in a slightly more real context which you should check out now there is one thing that parrots and I have in common we both love to repeat the same thing brilliant is the best place to learn complex topics as their courses work to break concepts down into small intuitive chunks and then build them back up to one bigger concept it's easy to understand small chunks but harder to understand big concepts so brilliant style of learning is perfect for these big complex topics like vector calculus 3d geometry gravitational physics all things that you might think are out of reach but truly are not with brilliant if you're looking for one to start I personally recommend the fascinating statistics fundamentals course but also you can sign up for free at brilliant org slash H AI then the first 200 people that go to that link will also get 20% off upgrading to premium

Channel: Half as Interesting

Views: 764,998

Rating: 4.8769336 out of 5

Keywords: parrot, testifying, legal, court, legaleagle, echo, law, witness protection program, animals in court, wendover productions, hai, half as interesting, explainer, fun, funny

Id: 88mwF7MnX0A

Length: 6min 32sec (392 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019

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[u/MrZsc]

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