Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK. Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening, the best selling author of Narco eighty, returns
Speaker 2: to true Murder with a riveting story of mid nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty San Diego that placed one young black man at
Speaker 2: the center of a whirlwind of crime and punishment that
Speaker 2: profoundly altered southern California. March thirty first, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: two white patrol officers in search of a gang member,
Speaker 2: followed a pickup truck carrying seven young black men up
Speaker 2: a dirt driveway in the Encanto neighborhood of southeastern San Diego.
Speaker 2: Minutes later, gunshots rang out and the truck's driver, Sagon Penn,
Speaker 2: fled the scene in an officer's patrol car. The incident
Speaker 2: stunned the city. What followed would change it forever. Penn
Speaker 2: was an idealist who believed in the power of Buddhist
Speaker 2: chance to bring about the oneness of humanity. The two
Speaker 2: police officers were rising stars in one of the most
Speaker 2: progressive police departments in the country, yet one that had
Speaker 2: suffered more officers killed in the line of duty than
Speaker 2: any other. While the facts of the case were never
Speaker 2: in dispute, what remained unresolved was what, if anything, could
Speaker 2: justify such a violent confrontation. For over two years, a
Speaker 2: determined prosecutor and a charismatic defense attorney engaged in a
Speaker 2: sensational courtroom drama that revolved a round matters of mental health,
Speaker 2: racial biases, and the self image of a once sleepy
Speaker 2: beach town grappling with its transformation into a major metropolitan area.
Speaker 2: The Sagon Penn incident forever altered how San Diego would
Speaker 2: respond to incidents involving police and communities of color. The
Speaker 2: book they were featuring this evening is Reap the Whirlwind, Violence, Race, Justice,
Speaker 2: and the Story of Sagon Penn, with my special guest,
Speaker 2: freelance writer and author Peter Holahan. Welcome to the program.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 2: for this interview.
Speaker 3: Peter Wholahan, Dan, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, and congratulations on your new book credible.
Speaker 3: Oh terrific. Thank you so much for that.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about right away, as you do in your book,
Speaker 2: about Southeast San Diego, San Diego, but also specifically Southeast
Speaker 2: San Diego where this takes place, and also the state
Speaker 2: of San Diego, Southeast San Diego in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: Sure, there's an important setup to all this, and one is,
Speaker 3: of course, the era. This was March thirty first, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five, and the place was San Diego. One thing
Speaker 3: that's interesting about San Diego is it was a little
Speaker 3: bit of a different kind of city. It was a
Speaker 3: city that had experienced very fast growth, so it had
Speaker 3: become one of the top ten most populous cities in
Speaker 3: the country, but it still had this attitude that it
Speaker 3: was a beach town, you know, that it wasn't a
Speaker 3: big city. It didn't it didn't have big city problems,
Speaker 3: and it was easy for it to see that to
Speaker 3: feel that way because it economically did very well. But
Speaker 3: the area that was that was having troubles in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five, as were most inner cities of most bait
Speaker 3: big cities, was Southeast San Diego, and that was a
Speaker 3: whole minority community and the area of Encanto and the
Speaker 3: areas around that within Southeast San Diego were primarily black.
Speaker 3: The black population San Diego has never exceeded more than
Speaker 3: six or seven percent, So this was a community that
Speaker 3: was small and was very easy for the rest of
Speaker 3: San Diego to overlook. So this was a community that
Speaker 3: was starting to experience violence, harder drugs, more deadly gangs,
Speaker 3: and a lot of guns. The rest of the city
Speaker 3: sort of refused to believe it. The people in saying
Speaker 3: Southeast San Diego felt like they were being ignored and
Speaker 3: underserved and under a appreciated. There was another group that
Speaker 3: also felt that way, and those were the police officers
Speaker 3: who policed the area. Symptoms of San Diego not believing
Speaker 3: it was a big city with big city problems was
Speaker 3: it kept its police force extremely small. Per capita is
Speaker 3: about the easily the lowest per capita police officer per
Speaker 3: citizen in the country. That force was also feeling like
Speaker 3: they were having increasing difficulty controlling the crime levels that
Speaker 3: were in that area, and they had become by nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five, the highest line of duty per capita death
Speaker 3: rate of any police force in the country. If you
Speaker 3: were a San Diego police officer in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 3: you were more likely to die in the line of
Speaker 3: duty than in any other major city, fifteen times as
Speaker 3: likely as Los Angeles. So that's kind of the setup
Speaker 3: behind the events that happened.
Speaker 2: Then in the book, let's talk about March thirty first,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five and tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: Segon Penn and his brother Sean and five others why
Speaker 2: they were out that night near this Balboa Park. Tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about the circumstances that led them
Speaker 2: to be Sagon Penn with his brother and these other
Speaker 2: five friends.
Speaker 3: Certainly, Segon Penn is a twenty three year old black man.
Speaker 3: He is a at the time, very involved in Buddhism
Speaker 3: and a Buddhist organization, and he's kind of naive and idealistic.
Speaker 3: He believes in chanting for world peace, the brotherhood of man,
Speaker 3: and things like that. He's quite a searcher, He's kind
Speaker 3: of he grabs onto different ideologies and different beliefs and
Speaker 3: things like that. He's also a black belt in taekwondo,
Speaker 3: which comes into play in this incident. On this Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 3: Segon Penn took his younger brother, his teenage brother, and
Speaker 3: some of his teenage brothers friends to Balboa Park. That's
Speaker 3: the very big city, beautiful big city park in San Diego.
Speaker 3: While they were there, they bumped into three other friends
Speaker 3: and who joined them when they drove home at approximately
Speaker 3: five forty five PM leaving the park. One thing is
Speaker 3: important to remember about this is while there is seven
Speaker 3: people in the truck, Segon Penn and six others other
Speaker 3: than his younger half brother and one other twenty one
Speaker 3: year old twenty two year old in the truck, Segan
Speaker 3: Penn had no did not know anyone else in this truck.
Speaker 3: So this was not a whole group of This was
Speaker 3: not Segon Penn and six of his best friends. These
Speaker 3: others really didn't know him at all. Coming back from
Speaker 3: Balboa Park, he's on his way to drop some of
Speaker 3: the riders off. He's driving a white pickup truck. Five
Speaker 3: of the young black men are in the back, a
Speaker 3: black female and another young black man, and Segon Pen
Speaker 3: are in the cab of the truck, all of which
Speaker 3: is legal at that time, and they are making their
Speaker 3: way back into the southeast, into the community of Encanto
Speaker 3: when this incident occurs.
Speaker 2: Now tell us about Officer Donovan Jacobs a little bit
Speaker 2: about his background. You say he's a twelve year veteran
Speaker 2: of the San Diego Police Department. So tell us about
Speaker 2: why he and what is he responding to in terms
Speaker 2: of dispatch sending him to an area. What is he
Speaker 2: responding to?
Speaker 3: Sure, Donovan Jacobs is twenty seven years old at the time.
Speaker 3: He's a rising star out of the patrol officer ranks
Speaker 3: in the San Diego Police Department. He's been he's been
Speaker 3: promoted to the rank of agent, which is still a
Speaker 3: uniform patrol officer. It's one step above a patrol officer
Speaker 3: and one step below a sergeant. So he's got authority
Speaker 3: and he's on the streets now. Donovan Jakes is a
Speaker 3: guy who makes a lot of what they call contacts
Speaker 3: and a lot of arrests. You know, he pursues crime.
Speaker 3: He's one of the five percenters they call him, that
Speaker 3: are aggressively pursue crime. They go where the crimes are
Speaker 3: and they they approach and make contact with anybody they
Speaker 3: think is or he thinks and that it may be
Speaker 3: involved in a crime. He's kind of aggressive on these stops.
Speaker 3: His method is to approach people pretty abruptly and try
Speaker 3: to rattle them and if they in order that they
Speaker 3: might slip up and give him a reason, a probable
Speaker 3: cause for a search. On this day, he is responding
Speaker 3: to the report of a gang member with a gun
Speaker 3: in the Encanto area, about a half mile away from
Speaker 3: this where this incident eventually occurs. The report was a
Speaker 3: young man in the neighborhood had an altercation with three
Speaker 3: other young men and one of the three pulled a
Speaker 3: gun on him and threatened him, and then they went
Speaker 3: walked away in the direction of the inc to a
Speaker 3: recreation center. And so responding to the call was Donovan Jacobs,
Speaker 3: backed up by another officer who was Thomas Riggs. He's
Speaker 3: also twenty seven years old and he's also an agent.
Speaker 3: But Tom Riggs is kind of a laid back cop,
Speaker 3: a guy who just kind of observes and is really
Speaker 3: also rising through the ranks, but really kind of a
Speaker 3: different method of policing. And along with Tom Riggs is
Speaker 3: a thirty three year old civilian ride along named Sarah
Speaker 3: Pina Ruiz. She is just a woman who is interested
Speaker 3: in possibly joining law enforcement. So the three of them
Speaker 3: respond to this. They take a pretty routine report, and
Speaker 3: then they leave that scene and they begin heading eastbound
Speaker 3: on Brooklyn Avenue looking for a gang member with a gun.
Speaker 3: It's not an especially high alert call or it's this
Speaker 3: is not all that uncommon in the Encanto area, but
Speaker 3: that's what they're doing. They are now searching with Tom
Speaker 3: Riggs and the lead Donovan Jacobs, following, looking up and
Speaker 3: down side streets as they had east on Brooklyn Avenue.
Speaker 2: You're right that Donovan Jacobs is the first to arrive
Speaker 2: and see this white vehicle. Is there something that he
Speaker 2: notes about the white vehicle or believes about this white
Speaker 2: vehicle for a reason to stop this vehicle.
Speaker 3: Yes. When they reach sixty fifth Street, they turn up.
Speaker 3: These are the two police officers. They turn up sixty
Speaker 3: fifth Street in the direction of the Encanto Recreation Center.
Speaker 3: Coming the other way down the road is Segon Penn
Speaker 3: in the white pickup truck, on his way to drop
Speaker 3: off some of his riders at a house on Brooklyn Avenue.
Speaker 3: Donovan Jacobs later said that he believed that one of
Speaker 3: the young men in the in the bed of the
Speaker 3: truck was wearing crip colors, which are traditionally blue but
Speaker 3: sometimes black, that he therefore thought that he might possibly
Speaker 3: be their suspect, and he radios Tom Riggs and says,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna need to turn around and pull over that
Speaker 3: truckload of crips.
Speaker 2: You talk about the corner of sixty fifth Street there
Speaker 2: happens to be the Apostolic Faith Garden of Prayer Chapel,
Speaker 2: but also the home of Irma and Carlton Smith and
Speaker 2: their six children. There is Sunday school teacher Dimitri Shelby
Speaker 2: visiting with Irma. The church organist David Demps sat in
Speaker 2: the back room with Carlton and a friend, Alan Sapita.
Speaker 2: And you also talk about next door where a person
Speaker 2: named Anthony Lovett and his girlfriend Angela mckibbon tell us
Speaker 2: about the proximity of these people and what they saw
Speaker 2: and how they reacted.
Speaker 3: Yes, the location that this occurred was a up a
Speaker 3: dirt driveway at sixty five sixty four Brooklyn Avenue. And
Speaker 3: what happened when Donovan Jacobs turned around and began to
Speaker 3: follow Segon Penn and then Tom Riggs did the same.
Speaker 3: They really only followed for like half a block eye
Speaker 3: before Segon Penn just turned up this long driveway. Now
Speaker 3: important to note about this neighborhood again south central southeast
Speaker 3: San Diego, a primarily minority and primarily black neighborhood. It's
Speaker 3: a very social atmosphere. Brooklyn Avenue is a dead end
Speaker 3: street right there. So there's a lot of children playing,
Speaker 3: people are out in their front yards, they're talking to neighbors.
Speaker 3: And then there are these two kind of storefront well
Speaker 3: a little bit more the churches at the corner. And
Speaker 3: we're only talking about, you know, eight hundred feet long
Speaker 3: dead end portion of that road. And so there are
Speaker 3: in the end there will be forty at least forty,
Speaker 3: maybe forty to fifty eyewitnesses to some or all of
Speaker 3: this incident that occurs, of which our children fifteen years
Speaker 3: old or younger. So this is a very heavily witnessed incident. Segon,
Speaker 3: and as you mentioned, a few that come in very
Speaker 3: large role later on and witnessed. This was the family
Speaker 3: of Carlton Smith that was immediately adjacent to this driveway
Speaker 3: that the officers drove up to follow Segon Penn, and
Speaker 3: he had six children. There was a large amount of
Speaker 3: people in his yard. He was kind of the center
Speaker 3: of activity that house at the end of that dirt
Speaker 3: driveway where they were dropping off. Some of their writers
Speaker 3: were indeed Anthony Lovett, who was a aspiring rapper, his
Speaker 3: girlfriend Angela mckibbon lived in any duplex, and this is
Speaker 3: you know, this is kind of a gritty neighborhood, but
Speaker 3: a very socially active neighborhood. The others folks, there was
Speaker 3: members of the church, there was people who taught the
Speaker 3: Sunday school teacher, and others that were around that eventually witnessed.
Speaker 3: This played a very intimate role in the entire story.
Speaker 2: So let's get to what the witnesses do. See what
Speaker 2: does a Segon is asked by police to do?
Speaker 3: First off, Yeah, there is, of course, much of what
Speaker 3: occurred is contested, and I try to make sure I
Speaker 3: represent that very clearly, particularly in the trial that followed. However,
Speaker 3: there's quite a lot of it that is not contested
Speaker 3: and is agreed upon, and I'll tell you what that is. Then,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe we can talk about where the two
Speaker 3: sides differed on who was responsible for all of this
Speaker 3: in general. Segan pen gets up to the top of
Speaker 3: this driveway, it's about one hundred foot driveway. He steps
Speaker 3: out of his pickup truck. He parks up near the house,
Speaker 3: and the other members riding in the bed have already
Speaker 3: seen the police officers, and they start to kind of
Speaker 3: jump out of the back and the people in the
Speaker 3: front kind of get out of the cab. Donovan Jacobs
Speaker 3: follows with his lights on, not sirens, and parks about
Speaker 3: twenty feet short of segon Pen's truck and it is
Speaker 3: blocking his exit, blocking the exit from the driveway. At
Speaker 3: about twenty feet behind him, Tom Riggs pulls up in
Speaker 3: his vehicle. Donovan, this is what universally agreed upon is
Speaker 3: Donovan Jacob's eggs his vehicle. He approaches Segon Pen, who's
Speaker 3: already out of his vehicle. He begins to ask him
Speaker 3: for his driver's license. Segon Pen appears to be surprised
Speaker 3: to find that a police officer is approaching him. He
Speaker 3: becomes what people generally described as blustered or discouraged, and
Speaker 3: he tries to hand over his entire wallet, and Donovan
Speaker 3: Jacob says, I cannot take your wallet. You're going to
Speaker 3: have to take your license out. Segan Pen just keeps
Speaker 3: insisting you could take my wallet. Man, You know I
Speaker 3: got nothing in there. It's this little thin kind of
Speaker 3: nylon wallet. He's saying, you know, I got nothing to hide,
Speaker 3: and Jacobs keeps saying, I can't take your wallet. You
Speaker 3: need to you need to take a license out. And
Speaker 3: this goes on, you know, three or four times, with
Speaker 3: Pen getting more frustrated, Donovan Jacobs getting more stern with
Speaker 3: his insistent with his instructions to take the wallet out.
Speaker 3: Penn becomes frustrated, throws his hands up in the air,
Speaker 3: turns around to walk away, says oh man. Jacobs reaches out,
Speaker 3: grabs him by his shoulder and pulls him back. Pen
Speaker 3: shrugs off Jacob's hand from his shoulder and says, don't
Speaker 3: touch me. Man. By all accounts and very few people
Speaker 3: can figure it happens so fast. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 3: what happened, but within seconds Donovan Jacobs had his baton
Speaker 3: out and then an altercation physical altercation occurred between Donovan
Speaker 3: Jacobs Segon Pen, in which Jacobs was swinging his baton
Speaker 3: at Pen, and Penn, being a essentially a black belt
Speaker 3: in taekwondo, is blocking almost all of the baton brows Biggs,
Speaker 3: who is speaking with the riders in the back of
Speaker 3: the truck on the other side of the truck, looks
Speaker 3: up and sees that this has erupted into an altercation
Speaker 3: very quickly, by the way, this is all within you know,
Speaker 3: within half a minute of the first encounter. And he
Speaker 3: comes around and all he sees is that Donovan Jacobs
Speaker 3: is involved in an altercation where he is getting his
Speaker 3: baton knocked out. You know, he's not succeeding in handing this.
Speaker 3: This suspect Riggs pulls his baton and hits a Segon
Speaker 3: Pen several times in the back, and then this altercation
Speaker 3: continues from there.
Speaker 2: You write that meanwhile there are people again, a crowd
Speaker 2: of over forty people are yelling things at these police
Speaker 2: that this is not necessary. And there's also soon after
Speaker 2: someone calls police. Andy mckibbon.
Speaker 3: Yes, obviously, when the when the truck, followed by two
Speaker 3: police cars goes up a dead end street, truck with
Speaker 3: six young black men and it people stop and they
Speaker 3: look the folks in the truck again, they're not good
Speaker 3: friends with Segon Pen, but they sort of can't believe
Speaker 3: how this has suddenly turned into this physical confrontation. I
Speaker 3: think it's important to note that it was never contested.
Speaker 3: It was agreed upon that Segon Pen was breaking no laws,
Speaker 3: that nobody in the truck had broken any laws, and
Speaker 3: they were not carrying anything you know, that would be
Speaker 3: illegal at the time, so this is all a pretty
Speaker 3: shocking development to all of them. The riders in the
Speaker 3: truck begin to circle in pretty close and saying stop,
Speaker 3: hey man, stop, and I think some of them are saying,
Speaker 3: you know, what are you doing? And Penn is also saying,
Speaker 3: hey man, stop, you know, you know what are you doing?
Speaker 3: And but he's not giving up, quote giving up, He's
Speaker 3: not submitting. So then of course people from the neighborhood
Speaker 3: start to come up the driveway, They wander up, people
Speaker 3: in the church start to come up to look, people
Speaker 3: in houses start to come out and there, and soon
Speaker 3: as this physical confrontation with the officers throwing baton, blows,
Speaker 3: Pen blocking but also being struck, Pen striking back a
Speaker 3: few times. He apparently like kind of open handed thrusts,
Speaker 3: but he knocks Donovan Jacobs down and Jacobs loses his
Speaker 3: baton at one point. So this moves down this dirt
Speaker 3: driveway with the crowd following and people yelling and people saying,
Speaker 3: you know, is this how you protect and serve? You know,
Speaker 3: what are you doing. You don't have to hit him
Speaker 3: like that. But also some people are trying to encourage
Speaker 3: segon Pen to submit, and then what happens is segon
Speaker 3: Pen and Donovan Jacobs fall to the ground. This appears
Speaker 3: to be Donovan Jacobs, no longer with his baton, kind
Speaker 3: of tackles segon Pen. Pen says he kind of allowed
Speaker 3: him to go down because he figured that would end it.
Speaker 3: But segon Pen is on his back. Donovan Jacobs is
Speaker 3: straddling him. By Jacob's own admission, he punches him a
Speaker 3: few times because segon Pen is waving his hands above
Speaker 3: his head, saying stop stop, you know you got me,
Speaker 3: but he's not giving up. He's thrashing his hands around
Speaker 3: because he's starting to panic. Tom Riggs is standing above him.
Speaker 3: Some say he was striking Pen hard with a baton,
Speaker 3: many others say he was sort of tapping at it
Speaker 3: at his arms to get him to drop his hands.
Speaker 3: Both were telling him to turn over. Some people in
Speaker 3: the crowd are telling Pen to turn over so he
Speaker 3: could be cuffed, but by then Penn is in a panic.
Speaker 3: He's lying on his back. He's got one officer on
Speaker 3: top of him. He's got another one by his head. Now,
Speaker 3: let me tell you a very crucial part that you
Speaker 3: brought up, and that is the phone call. That is
Speaker 3: the nine to one one call that is put in
Speaker 3: by Angela mckibbon, and it is put the call is
Speaker 3: placed around the time that hen is on the ground
Speaker 3: struggling with the other with the officers. A neighbor had
Speaker 3: called had walked out of his house, Carlton Smith, and
Speaker 3: yelled to her and Anthony Lovett, who was standing in
Speaker 3: their doorway, astounded by what's happening, and he said said
Speaker 3: to them, call the police and make sure they send
Speaker 3: black ones. Angela mckibbon is nineteen years old, I believe
Speaker 3: at the time, and she is absolutely unnerved. And she
Speaker 3: picks up this phone and she places a call. But
Speaker 3: when she places it, her first sentence is very calm.
Speaker 3: So when the nine woman officer says, what's your emergency,
Speaker 3: she says, I want to report some police brutality going
Speaker 3: on right in front of my house. The nine one
Speaker 3: one operator is not very receptive to this. She kind
Speaker 3: of turns cold and says, what's the emergency? And this
Speaker 3: flusters Angela mckibbon, who hands the phone to Doria Jones,
Speaker 3: who was a young woman in the truck, the only
Speaker 3: woman in the truck. She says, when she comes on
Speaker 3: the phone to talk to the nine one one officers,
Speaker 3: there are gunshots erupt outside. She says, hurry up, they're shooting. Well,
Speaker 3: he says, hurry up, he's shooting him. And then the
Speaker 3: the of course nine one one officer operator becomes a
Speaker 3: little more serious about this call, a little more alarmed.
Speaker 3: The call quickly degenerates into screaming and yelling of panicked,
Speaker 3: you know, hysterical panic people in the background and can't
Speaker 3: hear what's being said as the operator asks, you know,
Speaker 3: where are you located? Where are you located? And then
Speaker 3: the call goes dead because the cord and the phone
Speaker 3: got kicked out by somebody, and the people in the
Speaker 3: house had run at the sound of the first gunshots.
Speaker 3: They were the people in the truck, other witnesses. Everybody
Speaker 3: ran for their lives the minute the first gunshot rang out,
Speaker 3: and nobody at that point really knew what the heck
Speaker 3: had happened and how that gunshot had had come about.
Speaker 3: Only a few could later testify as to how that came.
Speaker 2: About, but Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now you say, there's chaos ensues. They hear
Speaker 2: the popping sound, and while she's on the phone, she
Speaker 2: hears in the initial two or three pops and then
Speaker 2: a couple additional other gunshots. So again nobody knows what's
Speaker 2: going on. The police are on the line. There is
Speaker 2: confusion as to the location. As you say, they seem
Speaker 2: to be confused as to exactly where they're supposed to
Speaker 2: arrive at the police. But let's get back to Thomas
Speaker 2: Rigg is on the ground, Donovan Jacobs is on the
Speaker 2: ground at this crime scene. But where is this ride along,
Speaker 2: this person that was had an interest in being a
Speaker 2: police officer, where is she in this situation?
Speaker 3: During this whole encounter, she remained in the police car
Speaker 3: with the wind the windows rolled up. You know, you're
Speaker 3: not supposed to put a ride along in danger, nor
Speaker 3: did she want to be, so she is observing this.
Speaker 3: The original altercation is about forty feet away. When they
Speaker 3: go to the ground, they're right outside the past the
Speaker 3: driver's side when of Tom Riggs and she's in the
Speaker 3: passenger seat and she leans up trying to look at
Speaker 3: what's going on on the ground. The driveway between the
Speaker 3: dirt driveway again between Riggs's vehicle and the neighboring yard
Speaker 3: is only about fourteen feet, that's the amount of driveway.
Speaker 3: And then that driveway drops off a retaining wall about
Speaker 3: two to three feet into the neighboring yard. So that
Speaker 3: driveway is built up two to three feet and that's
Speaker 3: Carlton Smith's yard. So the ride along, Sarah Pinerluiz is
Speaker 3: in the vehicle. Now what those who see when the
Speaker 3: shooting starts and they step out of the house and
Speaker 3: they look, what they see is Donovan Jacob's shot lying
Speaker 3: in the driveway. Thomas Riggs is lying motionless, face down
Speaker 3: in Carlton Smith's yard at the base of the retaining wall.
Speaker 3: The side window to the police vehicle is shattered. Sarah
Speaker 3: Pinerluiz is cowering inside having been shot, and Segon pen
Speaker 3: is at first nowhere to be found. And this of
Speaker 3: course is absolutely disorienting and inexplicable to those who were
Speaker 3: just a minute ago had been witnessing what they had
Speaker 3: been witnessing. And then the next moment, the people up
Speaker 3: in the house, which is now most of the truck
Speaker 3: riders and I love it and mckibbon see Segon Penn
Speaker 3: step up from the retaining wall hold, holding a handgun
Speaker 3: and walking towards them and towards his truck. What has happened,
Speaker 3: and is again mutually agreed upon, is at some point
Speaker 3: Segon Pen reached over took Donovan Jacob's gun out of
Speaker 3: his holster. Donovan Jacobs, being the officer straddling him, held
Speaker 3: it to his chest. Riggs sorry Jacob's chest. There was
Speaker 3: one gun shot struck Jacob's in the neck, wounding him
Speaker 3: but not killing him. The next three shots hit Tom Riggs,
Speaker 3: fired by Pen while Penn is still lying on his
Speaker 3: back and Riggs is standing. Riggs is killed, and then
Speaker 3: stands and fires into the police car, striking Sarah Pinerruiz
Speaker 3: twice in the back and then the abdomen, and she
Speaker 3: is miraculously not injured that badly from those shots from
Speaker 3: being shot point blank with a thirty eight. So that
Speaker 3: is what happened. Now the question is why it happened,
Speaker 3: how it happened, and of course who's responsible and who's justified?
Speaker 3: You know, who was Penn justified in those actions. I'll
Speaker 3: just punctuate one other thing on this is what Penn
Speaker 3: had done, is then he had thrown down the empty gun.
Speaker 3: He'd fired six shots in less than six seconds. And
Speaker 3: they figured that out by listening to him in the
Speaker 3: analyzing mckivvon's nine on one call, and they were not
Speaker 3: audible to the human ear, but they were impulses on
Speaker 3: that tape, so they could piece it together. He threw
Speaker 3: down his gun. He took Riggs his gun out of
Speaker 3: his holster. Riggs was motionless, face down on the ground.
Speaker 3: He went up to his truck, found his truck was blocked,
Speaker 3: got into Donovan Jacob's running patrol car with the police
Speaker 3: lights overhead lights still going, and on his way out
Speaker 3: the driveway he ran over Donovan Jacobs with his own
Speaker 3: patrol vehicle and he fled the scene. He went straight
Speaker 3: to his grandfather's house in a panic, and twenty minutes
Speaker 3: later he turned he and his grandfa his grandfather took
Speaker 3: him down, turned himself into Central Police headquarters in downtown
Speaker 3: San Diego. Now that may seem like I've given away
Speaker 3: this book, and certainly what it is astonishing, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of tension in how the turns that this
Speaker 3: took and how it came to be that it was
Speaker 3: not Donovan Jacobs who got shot, but the other way around.
Speaker 3: But I have to tell you, and I hope you agree, Dan,
Speaker 3: there is so much that is astonishing about this story
Speaker 3: that I'm really not giving away the most startling twists
Speaker 3: and turns that occur in this story and the subsequent
Speaker 3: trial followed.
Speaker 2: No, you're not. Let's talk about the uproar immediately. Obviously,
Speaker 2: police officers have been shot. There is a media response
Speaker 2: that they have these witnesses to the event. But we're
Speaker 2: talking about this media sensation this story, and so tell
Speaker 2: us about the fight for bail, what initially the bail's
Speaker 2: amount was and what it was reduced to, and who
Speaker 2: Sagan Penn picks as a lawyer, or how his attorney
Speaker 2: came to be his attorney, before we talk about how
Speaker 2: Milt Silverman comes into the picture.
Speaker 3: Segon Pen, you know, you did not see the polarization
Speaker 3: that you saw that you would see today. And let
Speaker 3: me explain that this of course happened before social media.
Speaker 3: It happened before twenty four hour news stations. It had
Speaker 3: when there was still kind of a feeling in the
Speaker 3: news media that what you did strive for was impartiality.
Speaker 3: Now obviously that was not a perfect that was not
Speaker 3: perfectly attained. But what happened was you had two narratives
Speaker 3: that very quickly developed, I mean before the night was through.
Speaker 3: They certainly caused polarization. I do not want to diminish
Speaker 3: that at all. The most of the witnesses were saying
Speaker 3: that Segon Pen was being beaten and that he had
Speaker 3: acted in self defense. The police, of course, say it
Speaker 3: was two police officers doing their job and being gunned
Speaker 3: down in the line of duty, as had all of
Speaker 3: them before them in the past decade, making their police
Speaker 3: force the you know, the deadliest one to be a
Speaker 3: part of the in thentry. And so those are the
Speaker 3: initial narratives that take hold. And of course you know
Speaker 3: you can tell, I'm sure you can guess who who
Speaker 3: rallies behind each of those to begin with. And one
Speaker 3: of the things, just just briefly about San Diego again
Speaker 3: that makes it so interesting, there kind of was an
Speaker 3: old San Diego and a new San Diego. Traditionally, San
Speaker 3: Diego was a career military town, so many people who
Speaker 3: who eventually moved there first became exposed to San Diego
Speaker 3: on their way to you know, the Pacific theater in
Speaker 3: World War Two, we're simply serving in the military. It
Speaker 3: was a major Pacific naval station, and then you know
Speaker 3: air force around that or airfields, and then the up
Speaker 3: in Camp Penalton the army. So that was the traditional
Speaker 3: power structure, conservative, white military, very much law and order.
Speaker 3: The new San Diego was this huge influx of a younger,
Speaker 3: more highly edge educated in the formal sense, college educated,
Speaker 3: and ethically diverse group that we're moving in because of
Speaker 3: the huge academic institutions and the booming industries that were
Speaker 3: creating so much employment and high tech and things like
Speaker 3: that biotech. So you really had this tension in the
Speaker 3: community there. And of course, you know, you had a
Speaker 3: lot of the new San Diego more sympathetic or tended
Speaker 3: to lean towards one narrative and then the conservative towards
Speaker 3: the other. So let me switch to the attorney situation
Speaker 3: very quickly. A prosecutor from the District Attorney's office is
Speaker 3: a sign that's Michael Carpenter. He's ex military, he's a
Speaker 3: very idealistic guy, believes in law and order, very fair
Speaker 3: marathon runner, triathlete, accomplished prosecutor about thirteen, fourteen years. I
Speaker 3: believe on the DA's office, Thomas Penn, Sagon Pen's biological father,
Speaker 3: retains through a family recommendation a local attorney named Robert Slattin.
Speaker 3: Now Robert Slattin is entirely adequate private practitioner attorney. He
Speaker 3: has done criminal cases before, he has you know, represented
Speaker 3: his people, his clients well. But he is not a
Speaker 3: remarkable attorney. He is considered kind of you know, middle
Speaker 3: of the pack, not charismatic in or especially creative in
Speaker 3: the courtroom. But Thomas Penn, Robert Slattin, sees this is
Speaker 3: quickly shaping up to be probably the biggest trial in
Speaker 3: San Diego history. He is he drops everything to take it.
Speaker 3: Thomas Penn is his advocate. But there are people who
Speaker 3: are whispering in Segon Penn's ear, in the Penn family's ear,
Speaker 3: and in the attorney's ear who eventually takes over this
Speaker 3: case that they really have to get another attorney. They
Speaker 3: are telling Segan Penn exactly who that is Atorney needs
Speaker 3: to be if he ever hopes to lock the streets
Speaker 3: free again.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now give us Milt Silverman's background. What are
Speaker 2: the important cases that he wasn't involved with before we
Speaker 2: talk about Milt Silverman becoming involved in this case.
Speaker 3: Milt Silverman at the time was about forty years old roughly.
Speaker 3: He had always been well, he's a civil attorney, but
Speaker 3: mostly a criminal defense attorney. He had been involved in
Speaker 3: some astonishing cases. I mean absolutely, if you took eight
Speaker 3: to ten of Milt Silverman's cases, they would be some
Speaker 3: of the most incredible cases you've ever heard of in
Speaker 3: your life. Just briefly, he had a woman had hired
Speaker 3: a as it turns out, an undercover San Diego police
Speaker 3: officer to kill her husband after finding out the husband
Speaker 3: had been molesting their teenage daughter for years. She of
Speaker 3: course was arrested. She had even given plans to find
Speaker 3: out where where the husband was. Mil Silverman defended her
Speaker 3: and eventually uncovered and showed the jury that she had
Speaker 3: done this while under hypnotic suggestion by a kind of
Speaker 3: shady character around her who had been hypnotizing her and
Speaker 3: her daughter, suggested to her that she go and have
Speaker 3: him killed. The jury believed it and found her not guilty.
Speaker 3: There was another one where Milt Silverman had a client
Speaker 3: who a young man and a little bit older woman
Speaker 3: went up a canyon to smoke some pot and do
Speaker 3: who knows what, and ended up with the young man
Speaker 3: killing the woman by hitting her in the head with
Speaker 3: a rock. Segon Penn defended the young man Clifford Stone
Speaker 3: and said that Clifford Stone was homosexual in the terminology
Speaker 3: of the time, the technical terminology, which was true, and
Speaker 3: that he was acting in self defense because it was
Speaker 3: the woman that was raping him. Of course, that raises
Speaker 3: a lot of questions, and mil Silverman brought in experts
Speaker 3: and in that case Clifford Stone got an involuntary manslaughter,
Speaker 3: a manslaughter conviction and only eight years. And it goes
Speaker 3: on and on. I mean, there are just incredible moments
Speaker 3: within his cases and they are all against their kind
Speaker 3: of against all odds cases. And his investigative skills are incredible.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was always finding things at crime scenes
Speaker 3: that the police had missed. He was always and he
Speaker 3: was very charismatic in the courtroom. You know, he would
Speaker 3: if a witness on the stand said this had happened
Speaker 3: this way, in this way and this way, he would say,
Speaker 3: please step down, and he'd hand him a police baton,
Speaker 3: or he'd hand him a gun or whatever and he'd
Speaker 3: say show us and he'd engage in role playing with
Speaker 3: the witnesses or even and you know, so he would
Speaker 3: be he's very physical, he's but you know, he can
Speaker 3: be called theatrical. But he was also very highly respected
Speaker 3: even by the people he went up against. Nobody ever
Speaker 3: accused Milt Silverman of being unethical, he thought, but he
Speaker 3: was known for his preparedness, he was known for his
Speaker 3: investigative skill, and he was a master communicator in the courtroom.
Speaker 3: That's what he was doing, is he was really driving
Speaker 3: home his point with the whole visual aspect rather than
Speaker 3: just having people talk on the stand. And so that's
Speaker 3: Milt Silverman, and that's the person. There's four very different
Speaker 3: people particularly who have been telling Segon Penn and the
Speaker 3: Penn family that they need to get Milt Silverman and
Speaker 3: get rid of Bob Slatin.
Speaker 2: So the family listens to that advice. And you say,
Speaker 2: you write in this book that as a public defender,
Speaker 2: he was going to get people think that he would
Speaker 2: be wealthy from this case. He was be paid sixty
Speaker 2: dollars per hour for his service.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Penn could not afford his going rate. Mil Silverman
Speaker 3: took this and had himself named as a public defender
Speaker 3: and got sixty five dollars an hour public defender rates
Speaker 3: plus expenses. So no, this was not a moneymaker for
Speaker 3: Mill Silverman. Mil Silveran was a very idealistic guy, no
Speaker 3: doubt he had a bit of an ego. There's no
Speaker 3: doubt he liked the high profile of this. He loved
Speaker 3: the challenge of this because understand, you know, no one
Speaker 3: gave Segon pen a chance. I mean, yes, the prosecution
Speaker 3: has the burden of proof, but when you shoot two
Speaker 3: police officers and a thirty three year old housewife, you've
Speaker 3: got some explaining to do. You know, for much of
Speaker 3: San Diego, let's say, outside the southeast, they could not
Speaker 3: conceive of any scenario in which such an act would
Speaker 3: be justified. But if those who lived in the southeast could,
Speaker 3: you know, they were wary of it too. They weren't,
Speaker 3: you know, they weren't completely one sided, but they they thought.
Speaker 3: You know, there are times when it is conceivable that
Speaker 3: a young black man might have to resort to that
Speaker 3: to defend himself. It's just two ways of looking at
Speaker 3: the world to life experiences. So it's rather astonishing how
Speaker 3: the moment that Milt Silverman takes over this case. They
Speaker 3: were one day into jury selection in this trial, which
Speaker 3: is pretty much the point of no return unless there's
Speaker 3: something specially extraordinary happens. The judge gets passed a note,
Speaker 3: and the note is a handwritten note from Segon Penn's mother,
Speaker 3: who is more involved in Segon Penn's life a lot
Speaker 3: more than Thomas Penn, his biological father. They'd been divorced
Speaker 3: at age two, and Thomas Penn did not pay a
Speaker 3: huge role in Segon Penn's life. She said, I have
Speaker 3: been trying to get a note to you, and we
Speaker 3: have been trying. Segon wants Silverman to be his attorney.
Speaker 3: He does not want Bob Slattin, but that my ex husband,
Speaker 3: Thomas Penn, has been blocking this. I gave a letter
Speaker 3: to the court clerk yesterday. It got given to Robert Slattin,
Speaker 3: who gave it to Thomas Penn, and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: we want this stopped and we want Milt Silverman. And
Speaker 3: so the judge says, WHOA Okay, tells the clerk you
Speaker 3: go out and find Milt Silverman and get him in
Speaker 3: here now. And there's this very dramatic moment when uh,
Speaker 3: you know, of course they closed the courtroom and all
Speaker 3: the press, reporters and the spectators are all out in
Speaker 3: that hallway and waiting, not knowing what's going out on inside.
Speaker 3: It's pretty routine that court. You know, courts get stopped
Speaker 3: for all things all the time. Trials get stop, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, coming down the hall is this
Speaker 3: lone figure striding down the long marble hallway. And by
Speaker 3: now Milt Silverman is well known in the press. He's
Speaker 3: not a celebrity lawyer, because they didn't have any in
Speaker 3: San Diego. He's not an f lee bailey. He's not
Speaker 3: somebody that you know, people would immediately see but there.
Speaker 3: But the reporters covering the courthouse know ex exactly who
Speaker 3: it is, and they just can't believe it, and they're
Speaker 3: so astonished they just step aside. Silverman swings open the
Speaker 3: courtroom door and walks inside without them ever even asking
Speaker 3: him what he's doing there. The judge, pretty quickly, to
Speaker 3: the protests of the prosecutor, picks Latin off the case
Speaker 3: and puts on Milt Silverman and says, you got three
Speaker 3: months to prepare for this trial.
Speaker 2: Mister Silverman, Let's get to that trial and that preparation.
Speaker 2: You say that the hearings begin December eighteenth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: and it starts with jury selection. And what I found
Speaker 2: fascinating was that Silverman even employs his wife, Maria involved
Speaker 2: in the jury selection, and they take that very seriously
Speaker 2: and employ investigators in separate areas to be able to
Speaker 2: have as effective jury selection as possible. Tell us what
Speaker 2: they're aiming for in that jury selection and some of
Speaker 2: the things that they're employing to take on this case
Speaker 2: that is, to say, the least an incredible uphill challenge.
Speaker 3: You know, attorney's criminal criminal justice attorneys will tell you
Speaker 3: that there are the two most critical parts of any trial,
Speaker 3: or probably two of the most boring to outsiders, and
Speaker 3: that's jury selection and jury instruction by the judge before
Speaker 3: they go into deliberation. Mills Silverman incorporated a lot of
Speaker 3: things that well number that were unorthodox, but also ahead
Speaker 3: of his time. He had a public opinion poll that
Speaker 3: showed that the greatest determining factor in how someone would
Speaker 3: lean in the case certainly was race, but almost more
Speaker 3: important and more interesting is that it was age. They said,
Speaker 3: you know well. First of all, the person who did
Speaker 3: the poll, he asked him, what are my chances of
Speaker 3: winning this? And the guy says none. He said, well,
Speaker 3: if I was, what would I need? And he's told
Speaker 3: him to get young ethnically mixed jurors, try to get
Speaker 3: no one over the age of forty. And then pat
Speaker 3: Silverman also used a handwriting expert, so she'd take the uh,
Speaker 3: she'd take the jury questionnaires and go back and read
Speaker 3: them and come back and say, this person doesn't like men,
Speaker 3: this person won't change her mind to this person, you know,
Speaker 3: forget about this guy now, this person too good. And
Speaker 3: then also his wife, Maria, who you know his Maria
Speaker 3: and Milt Silverman were inseparable. I mean they were devoted
Speaker 3: and adored each other. She would be in the she
Speaker 3: tended every day of all of his trials, and she
Speaker 3: would he'd look over to her after a juror is
Speaker 3: questioned and she would just slowly shake her head or
Speaker 3: maybe give him a little nod look because she he
Speaker 3: considered her to be the most intuitive person he'd ever
Speaker 3: met in terms of judging people on short notice. And
Speaker 3: in the end, Milton Silverman had a jury that skewed
Speaker 3: very young. I think five of them were in their twenties.
Speaker 3: They weren't, you know, there was two black jurors to
Speaker 3: black women. But again San Diego is only six percent,
Speaker 3: so it wasn't like he was going to get a
Speaker 3: lot and the jury, you know, really skewed young, but
Speaker 3: it matched the demographic of San Diego at the time,
Speaker 3: you know, to the credit of both attorneys, and I
Speaker 3: think especially my Carpenter, my Carpenter was also dedicated not
Speaker 3: to you know, he did not challenge you know, Mike
Speaker 3: Carpenter wanted this jury to reflect community and he never
Speaker 3: wanted although it would be a defense thing, he wanted
Speaker 3: to move to ask for a relocation of a trial.
Speaker 3: But neither Silverman nor Carpenter wanted to move that trial
Speaker 3: out of downtown San Diego. They wanted to be tried
Speaker 3: in the community and they both felt that was important.
Speaker 3: And so that was the jury selection process.
Speaker 2: Let's get to what Silverman is concentrating on, trying to
Speaker 2: get the jury to hear what is he trying to
Speaker 2: obtain and turn of something and how are they what
Speaker 2: is the narrative of this rather than the gone pen
Speaker 2: being the aggressor, how do they turn this around to
Speaker 2: have the police be the wrongdoers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me start with Prosecutor Michael Carpenter's case. Michael
Speaker 3: Carpenter's case is, you know, what you saw is exactly
Speaker 3: what happened, and you don't need to really explain it anymore.
Speaker 3: You know, it's almost the universally agreed upon things. You know,
Speaker 3: Donovan Jacobs asked for his license, he didn't give him
Speaker 3: his license. All he had to do was give him
Speaker 3: his license. You're required to give a police officer your
Speaker 3: license when requested. That's you know, Mike Carpenter says, all
Speaker 3: he had to do to give his license, and none
Speaker 3: of this happens. Don Penn turned and walked away. Well,
Speaker 3: it's not legal to turn and walk away when you
Speaker 3: are detained by an officer or engaged by an officer.
Speaker 3: And you know, why did Penn walk away? Why didn't
Speaker 3: he submit when they tried to put him under arrest.
Speaker 3: All he had to do was put go under arrest,
Speaker 3: and then you know White obviously Penn then took you know,
Speaker 3: for Carpenter, you know, Penn grabbed a gun, shot one person,
Speaker 3: shot it, killed another with three shots, and shot a
Speaker 3: thirty three year old woman. Got in the car and
Speaker 3: drove over the wounded officer. You know, I don't think
Speaker 3: I need to explain much more. You know, of course
Speaker 3: he's going to make his case around that, but you know,
Speaker 3: let's not complicate this, folks. Milton Silverman's case was that
Speaker 3: none of this would have happened if it were not
Speaker 3: for Donovan Jacobs. Donovan Jacobs has a history of aggression,
Speaker 3: and as Silvermen attempted to prove and made a very
Speaker 3: big part of his defense was that, in his opinion,
Speaker 3: Donovan Jacobs had a bad history with young black men
Speaker 3: and violence and aggression. He says that Donovan Jacobs was
Speaker 3: overly aggressive and approaching Segon Pen, that he pulled out
Speaker 3: his baton and began striking Segon Pen and used excessive force.
Speaker 3: He really put all this on Pen. He his his mills.
Speaker 3: Silverman's investigator, Bob McDaniel said to him, well, do you
Speaker 3: want me to look in some of the background on
Speaker 3: Rigs and you know, build up some stuff on him.
Speaker 3: Silverman said, Bob, there can only there can only be
Speaker 3: one villain in this story. So he was going right
Speaker 3: after Donovan Jacobs and you know, saying this is Jacob's fault,
Speaker 3: not Penn's fault, Donovan Jake. None of this would have
Speaker 3: happened if it wasn't for Donovan Jacobs. And once it began,
Speaker 3: uh Segon, Penn had every reason to believe his life
Speaker 3: was in danger and therefore justified in his actions. You know,
Speaker 3: he basically said, the young man was in a panic.
Speaker 3: He believed he was going to be killed. He believed
Speaker 3: he was going to be killed by those officers. He
Speaker 3: believed he was going to be killed by the officers
Speaker 3: who were flooding into the scene in response to the
Speaker 3: you know, the officer down call, you know, the sirens
Speaker 3: coming in. Of course, it's a very complex case in
Speaker 3: which they have to go step by step through this
Speaker 3: whole encounter, and at any one point, if Milt Silverman's
Speaker 3: theory is not believed by jury, the whole thing breaks down.
Speaker 3: It becomes an incredibly dramatic trial that goes on for
Speaker 3: three three months, with so many surprises and so many
Speaker 3: I mean, there's heroic behavior, there's bad behavior in the courtroom.
Speaker 3: They're you know, from witnesses, you know, Frankly on both
Speaker 3: sides accuse a you know, Carpenter and Silvermen are cordial
Speaker 3: in the courtroom up until they're not, and then it
Speaker 3: gets gets pretty They're always they always observe court decorum,
Speaker 3: but professionals. But it got very acrimonious. You know, I
Speaker 3: could focus on a few key parts, but to try
Speaker 3: to tell this whole this whole trial is too much
Speaker 3: and I don't want to take all of it away.
Speaker 3: But one thing I'll just bring up is that within it, so,
Speaker 3: Donovan Jacobs was horrendously injured. I mean he'd been shot
Speaker 3: in the neck and run over, you know, temporarily paralyzed.
Speaker 3: He was anesthetized with a tracheal tubin for four days,
Speaker 3: and he finally gets interviewed four days later by a
Speaker 3: San Diego police detective. He says things that will universally
Speaker 3: be agreed upon later on to not be true, and
Speaker 3: Donovan Jacob says, well, it's because I just got run
Speaker 3: over by a car. I'm just it's my memory is
Speaker 3: playing tricks on me. If I'm wrong, My memory is
Speaker 3: playing tricks on me. But it immediately he becomes a
Speaker 3: very problematic character in this. He becomes a problematic witness
Speaker 3: because when he said this on the first interview by
Speaker 3: the detective, it was tape recorded and so there was
Speaker 3: no going back if indeed he'd wanted to. Again, things
Speaker 3: are contested. I'm not drawing a conclusion, but there was
Speaker 3: a lot of fought over whether Donovan Jacobs was lying
Speaker 3: or whether Donovan Jacobs had a memory organic you know,
Speaker 3: memory problems from from the traumatic experience and physical trauma.
Speaker 3: So that's just one of the things that went in.
Speaker 3: But very complex and methodical and detailed trial that followed,
Speaker 3: and incredibly.
Speaker 2: Dramatic that just as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now you say it's a very dramatic trial,
Speaker 2: and we'll leave some of that for the reader obviously,
Speaker 2: but also because it's not over with the first trials,
Speaker 2: so let's talk about what happens. You say that Milt Silverman,
Speaker 2: despite you know, doing a vigorous defense and employing all
Speaker 2: kinds of innovative strategies and he's a very determined and
Speaker 2: successful attorney, You say he's doing dramatizations, re dramatizations in
Speaker 2: the courtroom. He's on the floor employing the defense partner
Speaker 2: the prosecutor to try to recreate the situation. In fact,
Speaker 2: there is all kinds of efforts for the jury to
Speaker 2: understand exactly what happened according to the witnesses, so that
Speaker 2: they can again relay their perspective narratives to the to
Speaker 2: the jury. So let's let's talk about what happens with
Speaker 2: this miracle that he's looking for, and we're talking about
Speaker 2: the verdict is being in. The jury deliberates and then
Speaker 2: has a verdict. Tell us about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me let me just center on one thing
Speaker 3: on the trial again. There are so many different things, uh,
Speaker 3: critical to the trial, and I'll do this briefly. Critical
Speaker 3: to the trial is what happened when the six shots
Speaker 3: went off within six seconds, And so Milt Sellerman had
Speaker 3: to prove at each step why did the first step?
Speaker 3: Why did the first shot go off? Second, why did
Speaker 3: Penn shoot Rigs? And third why did he shoot Sarah Pinorruiz? Well?
Speaker 3: He his The defense content is that the gun went
Speaker 3: off because Riggs kicked the gun the pen in a panic,
Speaker 3: held it, cocked it and even says he cocked it,
Speaker 3: held it to Jacob's and Riggs kicked it. Well, why
Speaker 3: then shoot Rigs? Well, Riggs was going for his gun,
Speaker 3: says the defense, And then there's this Riggs is struck
Speaker 3: three times the first of which a is they determine
Speaker 3: or allege went through the bottom of his boot and
Speaker 3: then hit him in the chest. Well, Silverman is saying,
Speaker 3: that shows that his foot was up in the air
Speaker 3: and he was trying to kick him the gun a
Speaker 3: second time. And then the third one is why did
Speaker 3: he jump up and shoot a woman in civilian clothing
Speaker 3: point and blank through the side window. And he said,
Speaker 3: there was glare in the window. I couldn't see in
Speaker 3: the window. All I saw was movement, and I thought
Speaker 3: it was someone inside, another police officer about to shoot me.
Speaker 3: So there is so much this centers on each of
Speaker 3: those things, and it is astonishing, astonishing the twists and
Speaker 3: turns that are at each of those moments and what
Speaker 3: gets brought in and you know, but that is really
Speaker 3: kind of at the core of the Carl and the
Speaker 3: rest of it is just is him going after Donovan
Speaker 3: Jacobs and Donovan Jacob's history and other things. And of
Speaker 3: course the prosecutor's making a good case. My Carpenter's no,
Speaker 3: you know, he's no pushover. A very different breedy cat,
Speaker 3: but he's he's no pushover. I'll switch now to what
Speaker 3: you're speaking of, and and I believe, And that's that's
Speaker 3: what happens. You know, at the end, after the jury
Speaker 3: retires to deliberations, there are some astonishing things that happen
Speaker 3: just when you think you know you've gotten you know,
Speaker 3: just when you think you can catch your breath on
Speaker 3: this thing. One is that there's an early conviction comes in.
Speaker 3: I suppose I should not give too much of this away,
Speaker 3: but there's a but really a moment when they pull
Speaker 3: the jury that's that's you just absolutely do not see.
Speaker 3: And it throws that initial conviction and it involves one
Speaker 3: of the jurors was pregnant. One of the African American
Speaker 3: female jurors is pregnant, and two weeks into our weekend
Speaker 3: or less into deliberations had to go in the hospital
Speaker 3: to have a baby. And so the judge said, well,
Speaker 3: what have you guys decided so far? And they said,
Speaker 3: we've decided this one count and it included a conviction
Speaker 3: on a lesser charge, which was a huge news story, Penn.
Speaker 3: You know, they've signed some responsibility for this. It did
Speaker 3: not portend well for the defense. And then you have
Speaker 3: this miraculous moment where everything changes with that, and then
Speaker 3: you have the prosecutor beginning a secret investigation, not illegal,
Speaker 3: but secret investigation into one of the jurors who he
Speaker 3: believes is a lone wolf juror that he's got on
Speaker 3: his hands, a juror who already made up her mind
Speaker 3: before this trial started and is just simply going to
Speaker 3: hang the whole jury and is never going to vote
Speaker 3: for conviction. And the reason why they're so worried about
Speaker 3: in the district attorney that in the District Attorney's office
Speaker 3: had just happened in a high profile case in which
Speaker 3: the mayor San Diego has had overwhelming evidence against him
Speaker 3: and bribery and campaign contributions and serious felonies, and every
Speaker 3: single count got hung eleven to one by juror who
Speaker 3: proudly said afterwards, I thought it was a political witch hunt,
Speaker 3: and you know so they were very well. Of course.
Speaker 3: That is just absolutely sends Milt Silverman over the edge
Speaker 3: when they find out about it. They find out about
Speaker 3: it because somebody at her work says, Hey, there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of guys from the DA down here and interviewing
Speaker 3: this jurors coworkers to ask him what she's ever said
Speaker 3: about this. It just blows up. I mean, Milt Silverman
Speaker 3: alleges misconduct to very dramatic moments, and then after just
Speaker 3: when that gets calmed down, this really incredible document surfaces,
Speaker 3: and that is a counseling session with Segon Penn while
Speaker 3: he was in the police Academy seven eight years earlier.
Speaker 3: He'sickly being reprimanded for his viewpoint and an exercise that
Speaker 3: went on in one of the classes that was about
Speaker 3: dignity and respect for the citizen. They were role playing
Speaker 3: and showing some police officers who were incredibly disrespectful to
Speaker 3: either gay people or other scenarios. Donovan Jacob said, and
Speaker 3: this is all recorded and on it was recorded and
Speaker 3: then put on a transcript. The transcripts survives saying I
Speaker 3: think that's okay because it got the job done. You know, look,
Speaker 3: if it's not, he'd say, you know, I I wouldn't
Speaker 3: do it. Maybe I wouldn't, but if I had to,
Speaker 3: I'd do it. You know, professional profanity. Well, would you
Speaker 3: use racial slurs? No, I mean I personally I wouldn't,
Speaker 3: but I could see where, you know, if it prevented
Speaker 3: violence or something, Yeah, I mean you know it could,
Speaker 3: because sometimes you got to do what you know to
Speaker 3: get things done, and they reprimand him. They come down
Speaker 3: on him heavy, and it is a miracle that he
Speaker 3: survived that and was allowed to join the force because
Speaker 3: they told him you're going to be a danger to yourself,
Speaker 3: to your partner, and to the department and the citizens
Speaker 3: of San Diego. And all of this starts and happens
Speaker 3: after the juries and deliberation. Well, Milton Silverman's just wants
Speaker 3: to stop this deliberation enter this document in because it's
Speaker 3: he sees it as you know, backing up everything he
Speaker 3: said about Donovan Jacobs for three months, you know, and
Speaker 3: so it's just a complete upheaval of the deliberations. But
Speaker 3: in the end, this turned out to be a very
Speaker 3: thoughtful and patient and methodical jury. They really turned out
Speaker 3: to be people who, no matter how anyone feels about
Speaker 3: their verdicts, they were people who tried to do the
Speaker 3: right thing and that and their story is rather phenomenal too.
Speaker 2: You're right about the impact of the first trial and
Speaker 2: what the judge has to say about remedying this situation
Speaker 2: of all these things happening after the jury was deliberating,
Speaker 2: and of course the pregnant juror and what she has
Speaker 2: to say, so what does the judge do for the solution?
Speaker 3: The first judge is judged Ben Hamrick. What he did
Speaker 3: while this was breaking hell was breaking loose is he
Speaker 3: tried to sequester the jury to begin with, because the
Speaker 3: media were all over I mean they were taking tape
Speaker 3: and taping shut the cracks in the courtroom door and
Speaker 3: putting cardboard over the little windows and the door so
Speaker 3: the media couldn't hear what was going on inside and
Speaker 3: the acrimonious yelling had to move the media away. So,
Speaker 3: you know, all the fighting over this then the you know,
Speaker 3: the the very quickly the jury mute need over this,
Speaker 3: this sequestration, especially the Vernel Hardy, the female juror who
Speaker 3: had had the baby. The judge said, well, we'll let
Speaker 3: you go home and see your infant for an hour,
Speaker 3: and then you got to go to the hotel and
Speaker 3: you know, you guys aren't allowed to call people and
Speaker 3: you are allowed to watch TV. And she had a
Speaker 3: sixteen day old infant and she just fell apart, I mean,
Speaker 3: understandably tried to make a go of it, and eventually
Speaker 3: he had to pull the sequestration on it. And of
Speaker 3: course there was just tremendous battles and name call well
Speaker 3: not name calling because they were very professional, but acrimonio
Speaker 3: and accusations between the two attorneys. And the first trial
Speaker 3: did end up with it did not settle all the charges.
Speaker 3: The jury was hung on a lot of mostly lesser
Speaker 3: but not unimportant. I mean, these are manslaughter charges. The
Speaker 3: attempted murder of Sarah Pinarruiz was still in play, you know,
Speaker 3: enough that still could send Segon Penn quitted of some
Speaker 3: of the major, more serious ones. But he has tried
Speaker 3: again in his second trial on charges that could still
Speaker 3: send him away for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: You say. In the second trial there was the academy transcript,
Speaker 2: so again as you mentioned, just talking about clear warning
Speaker 2: and predictive of his behavior later on, but also that
Speaker 2: there were a journalist's named Michael Tuck had had a
Speaker 2: lieutenant with the San Diego Police Department had come forward
Speaker 2: with some interesting information. So in this second trial there
Speaker 2: was testimony from former police officers as to Donovan Jacob's behavior.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Michael Tuck is a very interesting personality in this
Speaker 3: I'll just touch on it briefly, and just one of
Speaker 3: the fascinating characters if you will in this story. And
Speaker 3: he is a very handsome, very charismatic young news anchorman
Speaker 3: and he kind of represents the new San Diego and
Speaker 3: he was really shaking up the media, and he, you know,
Speaker 3: was just a great journalist and a great, great anchor person,
Speaker 3: but he kind of rubbed some people the wrong way.
Speaker 3: Definitely kind of representative, as I say, of the new
Speaker 3: San Diego. And he kind of went to war with
Speaker 3: the editorial writer at the San Diego Union newspaper, which
Speaker 3: was the old school conservative paper controlled by some old
Speaker 3: school journalists who essentially you know, said, you know, in
Speaker 3: an editorial said Segon four days after he was the incident, said,
Speaker 3: you know, Segon Penn is clearly the problem here, not
Speaker 3: the police. And he took them on head on. Well,
Speaker 3: Michael Tuck also was one of the people who had
Speaker 3: gone to the Penn family, said you know, I know
Speaker 3: I shouldn't be doing this as a journalist, but I
Speaker 3: got to tell you you need no silverman. But also interestingly,
Speaker 3: as Tuck came into contact early on, and it's a
Speaker 3: little hard to it's a little difficult to figure out
Speaker 3: exactly how this connection got made. But with a retired
Speaker 3: San Diego Police Department lieutenant who had very strong feelings
Speaker 3: about Donovan Jacobs. He felt that Donovan Jacobs had was
Speaker 3: successive force, that he made arrests that were bogus, that
Speaker 3: he pulled people over for no reason, and that he
Speaker 3: was violent towards especially black suspects or even black citizens
Speaker 3: or and that he had tried to block him from
Speaker 3: being put on the SWAT team by telling the commanders, Hey,
Speaker 3: you know this, this guy. You can't get near this guy.
Speaker 3: This this Litenan's name is Doyle Wheeler. But Doyle Wheeler
Speaker 3: is a in some ways problematic but also a very
Speaker 3: interesting guy. He was the youngest person ever to be
Speaker 3: named a lieutenant in the department's history. He had he
Speaker 3: was a Vietnam veteran with medals. He was highly decorated
Speaker 3: at the police department all accounts. An incredibly smart guy,
Speaker 3: but an incredibly troubled guy. You know, in addition to
Speaker 3: his Vietnam War record, and you know, of course terrible
Speaker 3: experiences and reconmissions there and things. He was part of
Speaker 3: some some terrible things at San Diego Police Department. You know,
Speaker 3: helplessly watching two offs bleed out on a crime scene
Speaker 3: because they couldn't get to him under fire, the Brenda
Speaker 3: Spencer shooting, which was really one of the first notable
Speaker 3: school shootings, and that's the young woman who shot into
Speaker 3: the schoolyard, hitting killing faculty members and then said famously
Speaker 3: why she did it because she I don't like Mondays,
Speaker 3: which is what that song at the time came from.
Speaker 3: And then you know, the PSA plane crash was a
Speaker 3: horrific scene, and anyways, other things that were just traumatic,
Speaker 3: and the McDonald's massacre, which was the first really well,
Speaker 3: it was the largest mass shooting in American history at
Speaker 3: that point, twenty one people killed at a McDonald's in
Speaker 3: San Diego, and he was right in the thick of it.
Speaker 3: So he had been medically discharged for basically post traumatic
Speaker 3: what we call post traumatic stress disorder these days. He
Speaker 3: was doubted by the prosecutor, who went after him very hard.
Speaker 3: So let me back up a second. Eventually, Doyle Wheeler
Speaker 3: testified in the trial and said all of this about
Speaker 3: Donovan Jacobs. And it was rather moment because even though
Speaker 3: the defense had heard these rumors, people within the police
Speaker 3: department were telling them Donovan Jacobs they called him a
Speaker 3: you know what, magnet meaning meaning he tracted trouble and
Speaker 3: people didn't like him, they said, because some people didn't
Speaker 3: like him because he got him in trouble on scenes
Speaker 3: that never should have turned violent, and then suddenly they
Speaker 3: have to back him up and things. So they were
Speaker 3: hearing all this, but nobody on the police force would
Speaker 3: step up and testify. They just and the only one
Speaker 3: who did was Doyle Wheeler, who at that point was retired,
Speaker 3: and he said, you know, this is Donovan Jacobs and
Speaker 3: he didn't say my opinion, but obviously it's what he alleges.
Speaker 3: And then the defense attorney, i mean the prosecutor of course,
Speaker 3: my Carpenter went at him very hard. And it is
Speaker 3: one of those incredible moments in a trial where you know,
Speaker 3: it is it is sad, it is heartbreaking, it is shocking,
Speaker 3: you know, Doyle Wheeler going up there and what he
Speaker 3: goes through on the stand, and he remains one of
Speaker 3: the most controver figures in that trial. And he also
Speaker 3: testified in the second trial. The second trial had some
Speaker 3: developments that he just didn't see in the first trial.
Speaker 3: Much of it was the same, of course, they were
Speaker 3: stating their same cases, but there were several new developments
Speaker 3: that came in that were I know, I used the
Speaker 3: word astonishing and shocking and incredible, but they really are.
Speaker 3: I've just never seen them before. I've never seen even
Speaker 3: heard about a trial like this before. This is a
Speaker 3: trial that Flee Bailey called, well, there's two trials, but
Speaker 3: Flee Bailey was referring to the first one as the
Speaker 3: real trial of the century, and he thought Milt Silverman
Speaker 3: was one of the best defense attorneys and said, so
Speaker 3: the best defense attorneys in the history of this country.
Speaker 2: That's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that second trial a little bit
Speaker 2: in terms of In the first trial, Donovan Jacobs testifies,
Speaker 2: but in this second trial he testified first.
Speaker 3: On his first trial, Carpenter had saved his two star witnesses,
Speaker 3: the most important witnesses, Donovan Jacobs and Sarah Piniluise the
Speaker 3: ride along, the civilian ride along, who said, you know,
Speaker 3: pen methodically looked at that gun, grabbed that gun, pulled
Speaker 3: the trigger of that gun. There was no kick. Riggs
Speaker 3: wasn't going for his gun. Very damning stuff for the defense.
Speaker 3: He called them. Last. Carpenter did second trial, he called
Speaker 3: them first Carpenter knew he needed to shake up his thing,
Speaker 3: or he couldn't do the same case, or he had
Speaker 3: ended up with the same result. There are yeah, and
Speaker 3: you know, of course the testimony of Donovan Jacobs and
Speaker 3: Sarah pinilrowize are very dramatic moments. Second trial, especially Donovan
Speaker 3: Jacobs had prepped for twenty hours with the prosecution again
Speaker 3: completely acceptable, not on ethical at all, and Silverman had
Speaker 3: cross examined him on the stand for five days now
Speaker 3: with the Academy transcript saying, look what you said in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight, and look at all the things you
Speaker 3: told the detective that are not true. You know, we
Speaker 3: know didn't happen, and why are you lying? And you know,
Speaker 3: and then at the very end there's kind of this
Speaker 3: classic moment when at the very end Silverman says, how
Speaker 3: long did you how long did you tram or you know,
Speaker 3: how long did you practice for this testimony? He said
Speaker 3: twenty and he said, he said, a long time, mostly
Speaker 3: preparing for your cross examination. He says, well, I hope
Speaker 3: I didn't disappoint you. Donovan Jacob says, mister Silverman, you
Speaker 3: have met my every expectation and it's really again a
Speaker 3: dramatic moment. Cryle too has some very interesting differences, and
Speaker 3: one is that when Segon Penn turned himself in, he
Speaker 3: made three statements to police. Two of them were simply
Speaker 3: the officer that were looking over him, you know, guarding him.
Speaker 3: He was handcuffed to a chair in a lieutenant's office
Speaker 3: and while they waited for the homicide detectives to come
Speaker 3: down and put him under miranda and interview him, Penn
Speaker 3: was so hyped up that he was just babbling. He
Speaker 3: was just just spewing out information, mostly talking about all
Speaker 3: the things in his life. And he was you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm involved in Buddhism. I mean it really
Speaker 3: sounds like and they believe pretty quickly this this young
Speaker 3: man has some emotional problems. He's got some mental illness issues,
Speaker 3: was their key takeaway. But they just put up, they say,
Speaker 3: they just put a tip recorder in front of him
Speaker 3: and recorded what he had to say, all sponted. He
Speaker 3: never asked him a question, never put him under miranda. Well,
Speaker 3: that happened twice, and then he was put under miranda
Speaker 3: and made a third statement. All of them were recorded,
Speaker 3: and when he does talk about the incident. He's very consistent,
Speaker 3: he's very focused, whereas before he's all non sequiturs all
Speaker 3: over the place and really sounds nutty when he's talking
Speaker 3: those unless Mills, the only person who could put those
Speaker 3: tapes into the trial was the prosecution. Otherwise, if Milton
Speaker 3: Silverman did it, he would then have to put Segon
Speaker 3: Penn on the stand. He thought from the beginning that
Speaker 3: Segon Pen would be a terrible witness, that he would
Speaker 3: just get torn apart on the stand. He was a
Speaker 3: fragile young man. He was idealistic. He's talked too much,
Speaker 3: you know, he and he was certainly, as became apparent later,
Speaker 3: suffering some some you know, the emergence of some significant
Speaker 3: mental illness. So the prosecutor, when you listen to these tapes,
Speaker 3: there's one thing that comes across and the jurors said
Speaker 3: this is that Pen sounds sincere. He sounds like he's
Speaker 3: just rambling. It sounds like, you know, these have these
Speaker 3: tay recordings are within hours, someone within one hour of
Speaker 3: the incident, and he appears to be he sounds believable.
Speaker 3: You know, he doesn't sound like a guy concocting a
Speaker 3: story and you know, and so Carpenter didn't play him
Speaker 3: the first thing. He said, I don't want the jury
Speaker 3: hearing Segon Penn's version of events unless you're going to
Speaker 3: put him on the stand. Shockingly, Carpenter introduces all three
Speaker 3: tapes into the second Early in the second trial, Bill
Speaker 3: Silveran cannot believe it, and he turned to his investigator.
Speaker 3: He said, we just won the We just won this trial.
Speaker 3: And again more dramatic moments while these were played. They're
Speaker 3: played on the precisely on the two year anniversary of
Speaker 3: the incident itself. The second thing that was very dramatic
Speaker 3: and shocking, not to reuse my adjectives here, but was
Speaker 3: the fact that now this time around, several other police
Speaker 3: officers took the stand and told of stories where they
Speaker 3: were accusing Donovan Jacobs of some pretty blatant and severe
Speaker 3: acts of racism, mistreatment of young black men, excessive use
Speaker 3: of force, getting them into trouble, dragging them in, you know,
Speaker 3: into difficult situations, always going rogue, you know, in these
Speaker 3: in two cases were well in all cases were officers
Speaker 3: who did not want to testify because they said, we
Speaker 3: don't want to break the quote code of silence. We
Speaker 3: know what happens to snitches, as one said, and I
Speaker 3: don't want to be a snitch and know they were.
Speaker 3: What they were fearing was retaliation against them forever testifying
Speaker 3: against a police officer and violating you know, the quote
Speaker 3: code of silence, where you never one officer never says,
Speaker 3: never turns another officer in, or certainly never says goes
Speaker 3: against them outside the department and off an inside. They
Speaker 3: protect each other, you know, protect your other officer at
Speaker 3: all costs, several of them do. At the last minute
Speaker 3: of the trial. Of course, Mike Carpenter mounts the defense
Speaker 3: against them. They are not perfect witnesses, but they certainly
Speaker 3: made an impression on the jury.
Speaker 2: You also talk about Caroline Cherry. She had spoken to
Speaker 2: Sarah Pina Ruez and contradicted things that she had said
Speaker 2: about not being able to see, and so that was
Speaker 2: a important admissions from her against Sarah Pina Ruez, contradicting
Speaker 2: some of the things she said in her testimony.
Speaker 3: Sarah Penrouiz was a problematic turned out to be a
Speaker 3: problematic witness for the prosecution, but she was also rather
Speaker 3: roughly treated for someone who had been you know, there's
Speaker 3: no doubt she was an innocent victim was shot at
Speaker 3: point blank range. Mil Silverman firmly believed that she was
Speaker 3: moving things around in favor of the police. She had
Speaker 3: wanted to become a police officer. She continued her pursuit
Speaker 3: to become a police officer after this happened, and mil
Speaker 3: Silverman said, well, you know, she's siding with the cops
Speaker 3: and she's saying stuff. And he spent much time saying this.
Speaker 3: You know what you're saying, couldn't you couldn't possibly have
Speaker 3: seen it. You know, you didn't have that kind of
Speaker 3: angle where you were sitting in the car. You couldn't
Speaker 3: have seen Segon Penn look at that gun because you
Speaker 3: know he would have been shielded by don By, you know,
Speaker 3: Jacobs's backs straddling him and things like that. Well, at
Speaker 3: the very very end of the trial, he calls in
Speaker 3: a woman who works at the Navy Housing office. Sarah
Speaker 3: Pinnerluiz is married to a young naval not officer, a
Speaker 3: young sailor, naval sailor on an aircraft carrier, and after
Speaker 3: this she was she she lived two blocks away from
Speaker 3: the this incident happened. And the thing about Sarah Pinluiz
Speaker 3: is that you know, Sarah Pinnerluiz. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: accusations about what Donovan Jacobs had yelled racial slurs, and
Speaker 3: very controversy about whether that had happened or not. And
Speaker 3: at one point she gets asked, did you hear him
Speaker 3: say racial slurs? And and she says no, And he says, well, well,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a dialogue there that includes some racial
Speaker 3: slurs that I want to say now, but I do
Speaker 3: mention them in the book because they're part of the story.
Speaker 3: And she says, I was married to a black man,
Speaker 3: I have two black children. I think I would have
Speaker 3: remembered that she lived in that neighborhood, which is a
Speaker 3: mostly black neighborhood. But when she came back after she
Speaker 3: got out of the hospital, she was very unwelcome, and
Speaker 3: so the Navy the police asked that she be the
Speaker 3: Navy finder in new housing. So she went down to
Speaker 3: the housing office, spoke with some people there, and looked
Speaker 3: at some new housing outside of that neighborhood, and at
Speaker 3: the very end sat with the manager of that department,
Speaker 3: African American woman named Carolyn Cherry. No Silverman calls in
Speaker 3: Carolyn Cherry at the end and says and Carolyn Cherry says, yes,
Speaker 3: I was talking to her and she told me it
Speaker 3: all happened so fast, she didn't see any of it.
Speaker 3: And then several other things, you know, she said that
Speaker 3: she wanted to run but she couldn't because she thought
Speaker 3: and would shoot her, and some other things, but mostly
Speaker 3: the most importantly, she alleges that Sarah Peneruice told her
Speaker 3: I didn't see a thing. And so they bring Sarah
Speaker 3: pa Ruiz in and she says, no, I never said that,
Speaker 3: And mil Silverman says, well, did you say this? Did
Speaker 3: you say this? Did you say this? Did you say
Speaker 3: this less incriminating things, She says, no, I never said that,
Speaker 3: I'm sure, and then Milt Silvering brings Derek. Carolyn Cherry
Speaker 3: back reveals that she recorded this conversation, that she was
Speaker 3: playing a tape at her desk, and when Sarah Piniluiz
Speaker 3: came in, she hit the record button and recorded it. However,
Speaker 3: Carolyn Cherry's tape does not include Sarah Pinluiz ever saying
Speaker 3: I didn't see anything that happened so fast. She said,
Speaker 3: she said that just before I pushed the button. In fact,
Speaker 3: that's what caused me to push the button. The problem
Speaker 3: was for Sarah Pinerluise and the prosecution was that she
Speaker 3: is on tape saying a bunch of things that she
Speaker 3: told the day before. Told mil Silverman on the stand
Speaker 3: denied she had said, and again they're not incriminating things,
Speaker 3: but she said I never told her that. I never
Speaker 3: told her that. I'm sure I never told her that,
Speaker 3: and then she's on tape, so it damages her credibility.
Speaker 3: Of course, my carpet to the prosecutor is absolutely livid.
Speaker 3: He had asked Cherry the first time around, did you
Speaker 3: record this? Or he said did you document this? And
Speaker 3: she says, well, I wrote it down. She hasn't mentioned
Speaker 3: that she taped it. And he's just like he said,
Speaker 3: I've been sandbagged here, he told the judge. He said,
Speaker 3: this is classic sandbagging. I've been sandbagged by Mills Silverman.
Speaker 3: You know, this is ridiculous. This woman has no credibility.
Speaker 3: And I must say that it played up very much
Speaker 3: more in the media than it probably than the impact
Speaker 3: it might have had on the jurors, who probably didn't
Speaker 3: know what to make of it. And that's kind of
Speaker 3: what the handful that I interviewed said. But they called
Speaker 3: it Silverman's cherry bomb, and it happened on the last
Speaker 3: day of the trial, and it was it was kind
Speaker 3: of a media sensation, and you know, again to remind
Speaker 3: or to point out, this was a huge media sensation,
Speaker 3: really foreshadowing or not or you know, before sensational trial
Speaker 3: before and before other sensational trials, you know, became a
Speaker 3: pastime for Americans. City of San Diego was just absolutely
Speaker 3: glued to this. It was not it's not broadcast, but
Speaker 3: it was. But they had, you know, then news clips
Speaker 3: and you know, overflow crowds trying to get in and
Speaker 3: everything like that. So that was a very that was
Speaker 3: a very interesting and unusual moment in the trial.
Speaker 2: Let's just as as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now heading up this second trial was Judge Lester.
Speaker 2: So tell us what happens in this second trial, what
Speaker 2: the verdict is, the public and the media reaction, and
Speaker 2: then before we talk about Judge Lester's controversial statements to say.
Speaker 3: At least the trial again, a jury deliberates for thirty
Speaker 3: days or more, longest in San Diego history, and they
Speaker 3: come back with mostly acquittals for Segon Penn, which again
Speaker 3: and is just causes outrage, but the city does not
Speaker 3: explode like you would think that. Of course, the the
Speaker 3: you know, or Tom Riggs's widow, who's a very thoughtful
Speaker 3: I interviewed her. She's a very thoughtful, intelligent person. Of course,
Speaker 3: felt justice had not been served in that no one
Speaker 3: eventually ever paid the price for her husband being gunned down.
Speaker 3: And you know, officers were bitter about it, but they
Speaker 3: the city mostly accepted it. The verdicts. At least they
Speaker 3: kept calm and they tried to you know, move on
Speaker 3: and things like that. But of course it's it's very
Speaker 3: again dramatic when these when these verdicts come in, I mean,
Speaker 3: they were shocking, you know, the the accolades to mil
Speaker 3: silveran our immediate. That's when Flee Bailey is quoted in
Speaker 3: the paper saying, I think he's one of the best
Speaker 3: attorneys in the history of this country. And the jurors are,
Speaker 3: you know, speak out. They actually say quite a lot afterwards,
Speaker 3: and they say, you know, this was true of the
Speaker 3: first year. They said, they said, you know what, we
Speaker 3: have to go by the letter of the law. They
Speaker 3: took their jury instructions seriously, you know, some of them said, hey,
Speaker 3: we might have thought Segon Penn bore some responsibility and
Speaker 3: there was a major you know, there was a charge
Speaker 3: of shooting Sarah pen Ruez that was never resolved a
Speaker 3: lesser charge. But so they some you know, they felt
Speaker 3: some responsibility there, but this just didn't meet the definition.
Speaker 3: And plus they clearly said Donovan Jacobs caused this. This
Speaker 3: was their opinion. It never would have happened if it
Speaker 3: wasn't for Donovan Jacobs. So the city is kind of
Speaker 3: starts to you know, it seems like people are being
Speaker 3: are going to observe caution and patience and you know,
Speaker 3: just just move on and accept and try to do
Speaker 3: better the next time. And that's when this whole thing
Speaker 3: with well a lot that happens after the second trial.
Speaker 3: Judge Lester really really shocks everyone. And he was the
Speaker 3: interesting guy. He was a very well respected young judge.
Speaker 3: Had a funny thing about him as he could write.
Speaker 3: He was amdextress and could and would take notes with
Speaker 3: both hands. Now some say he would could write with
Speaker 3: both hands at the same time. He said that's not
Speaker 3: true and it doesn't sound true, but he would write
Speaker 3: with the left hand on the left side of the
Speaker 3: paper and the right hand on the right side of
Speaker 3: the paper, and it made for very interesting There's a
Speaker 3: few video clips and you can see him doing it
Speaker 3: in the background. It's really interesting to watch, ye. But
Speaker 3: and he was a guy who he was close to
Speaker 3: the Indian try and the Indian nations in his area,
Speaker 3: the ring Calon Indians and represented them robono and sweated
Speaker 3: in the lodges with them, and had the nickname Golden
Speaker 3: Eagle because he was part Iroquois. A really interesting guy.
Speaker 3: After the end of the second trial, about four days later,
Speaker 3: he gives an interview with the La Times, and he
Speaker 3: offers his opinion that the police had that police officers
Speaker 3: had covered things up, that they had multiple officers had
Speaker 3: either lied on the stand or had withheld information that
Speaker 3: the San Diego Police Department. He did not accuse the
Speaker 3: prosecutors of anything. He accused the police department, the people
Speaker 3: who took the stand of not being forthright. He thought
Speaker 3: that he noted a few specific things. The academy transcript,
Speaker 3: which had been actually discovered eight months earlier and before
Speaker 3: the first trial and thrown in a drawer and did
Speaker 3: not surface until jury had started deliberating. He said, you know,
Speaker 3: he accused them of hiding that and withholding evidence. And
Speaker 3: it's a very shocking thing for a judge to say.
Speaker 3: I mean, he said, he said, I've never in my
Speaker 3: life seen anything like this. He said, it was incredible
Speaker 3: to me. The district attorney and the police chief were livid,
Speaker 3: but they didn't have anything. They couldn't really do anything
Speaker 3: under these accusations from a you know, a respected superior
Speaker 3: court judge, and they had to refer the whole matter
Speaker 3: over to the California Attorney General's office to investigate the
Speaker 3: conduct of San Diego Police Department, including the conduct of
Speaker 3: the two officers involved, who Judge Morgan Lester said, had
Speaker 3: used to quote a nightstick justice and said that they
Speaker 3: had used excessive use of force and that it was
Speaker 3: a power thing. And you know, there was no point
Speaker 3: for Donovan Jacobs to have done this, to have pulled
Speaker 3: his baton. What did it matter if the wallet, if
Speaker 3: the licensees out of the wallet, you know, And so
Speaker 3: these were serious charges and it went to the Attorney
Speaker 3: general to investigate. Of course, the Attorney general is only
Speaker 3: investigating whether there's enough evidence to prosecute. That is a
Speaker 3: lengthy that's a lengthy process and stretches on through for
Speaker 3: months after the trial. But in the process they interview
Speaker 3: they bring mill Selverman brings in Don Sorry Segon Penn
Speaker 3: for an interview with the Attorney General. Now this is
Speaker 3: after the second trial. Segon Pen is free. He's not
Speaker 3: being tried again. They've declared they're not going to try
Speaker 3: any of those minor, minor, lesser charges that are left over.
Speaker 3: And Sigon Penn is so incoherent and erratic and clearly
Speaker 3: suffering from some significant emotional and psychological problems. He's erratic,
Speaker 3: he's all over the place, He's acting things out so
Speaker 3: vigorously they have to tell him to stop. He's now
Speaker 3: turned to Christianity, so Silverman has to keep taking him
Speaker 3: out and train with him to calm him down. And
Speaker 3: in the end they say, you know, and it's it
Speaker 3: is no doubt true that they could The attorney Gnawal says,
Speaker 3: we never could have used any of this in a trial,
Speaker 3: so you know, whatever he has to say about what
Speaker 3: happened that day, we can't use it all. And then
Speaker 3: they cited that a lot of the witnesses had varying counts,
Speaker 3: which was problematic, and in the end, they chose to
Speaker 3: not prosecute anyone, although they said, we believe that you know,
Speaker 3: him and Jacobs used excessive force, and we believe that
Speaker 3: this lieutenant was not truthful on the craft on the stand,
Speaker 3: and we believe that you know that this academy document
Speaker 3: was hidden on purpose, and blah blah blah. So they said,
Speaker 3: you know, no, we think there was a lot of
Speaker 3: bad stuff going on here, but we don't think we
Speaker 3: have enough to prosecute any of it. A media person
Speaker 3: asked the head prosecuted for the Attorney General's office, well,
Speaker 3: in the fifty investigations you've done of police officers or
Speaker 3: police organizations, how many have you prosecuted under this attorney general?
Speaker 3: And he says, he says, we have not prosecuted any
Speaker 3: So of course that casts a big shadow on that.
Speaker 3: But that old thing with the Morgan, the Morgan Lester
Speaker 3: incident episode is really something that's just you just absolutely
Speaker 3: don't see.
Speaker 2: You right that when Sagone Penn was acquitted, or basically
Speaker 2: the decision was to not retry them on these charges.
Speaker 2: During the entire first trial and the second trial, he
Speaker 2: was instructed by Milt Silverman to remain stoic to not
Speaker 2: show any emotion. So he sat there well dressed in
Speaker 2: a suit and didn't respond to anything. In the second
Speaker 2: trial as well, what was dramatic was when you wrote
Speaker 2: that when he was released, he sat in the window
Speaker 2: and remained stoic and stared out the window.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he put his entire future, trust and everything in
Speaker 3: Milt Silverman did whatever mil Silverman told him. Mil Silverman said,
Speaker 3: I just don't want you to react to anything in
Speaker 3: that courtroom. He said, I want you just to disappear
Speaker 3: in plain sight. I don't want you know, I don't
Speaker 3: want them to be able to jury to be able
Speaker 3: to infer anything from your actions. And he literally sat
Speaker 3: just staring straight ahead during the trial, and to the
Speaker 3: point that people conject, you know that there was a
Speaker 3: speculation that he was on, that he'd been drugged so
Speaker 3: he wouldn't and all kinds of things, but it was simply,
Speaker 3: you know, he's a terrified young man. He's got these issues,
Speaker 3: and he's his life is on the line, and he's
Speaker 3: got a defensi attorney who told him what to do.
Speaker 3: And now he did that through two trials, even the
Speaker 3: most dramatic moments and even the humorous moments. He would
Speaker 3: sit there like he'd never heard it. Yeah, afterwards when
Speaker 3: he's because he was out. He was free on the
Speaker 3: second trial. His bail had been two hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 3: which that family could never never get, and it was
Speaker 3: reduced to twenty five thousand, and that was met by
Speaker 3: a benefactor in the society out there, and he was
Speaker 3: free for the second trial. You asked me that question
Speaker 3: about an hour ago, but here's the answer. But after
Speaker 3: that verdicts, he was rushed out of the hurried out
Speaker 3: of the courtroom by some bodyguards and put in a
Speaker 3: car and taken to their office, away from the media,
Speaker 3: away from anybody who might want to harm him. And
Speaker 3: what he did was he walked to a big picture
Speaker 3: window overlooking golf course. They got him a soda, and
Speaker 3: he sat in the chair, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: he just assumed that exact same position for hours, just
Speaker 3: staring out at the golf course. And there's kind of
Speaker 3: this realization that there's never going to be anything resembling
Speaker 3: freedom for this young man, no matter what the verdicts are.
Speaker 2: Us. Before I let you go, there's so much more
Speaker 2: for the reader to discover in this story. You talked
Speaker 2: about the mental illness that was evident when he was
Speaker 2: to talk to the Attorney General regarding Donovan Jacobs, but
Speaker 2: also that he had a relationship soon as he was
Speaker 2: released with a woman named Donna Parks, and there was
Speaker 2: a child named Brittany, and so this mental illness that
Speaker 2: he was descending into became a feature. They had a
Speaker 2: troubled relationship. You say that he suffered from PTSD, but
Speaker 2: his relationship that he felt was most important, and the
Speaker 2: relationship with his child, Brittany grated incredible problems for him,
Speaker 2: and he had many encounters with the law over that
Speaker 2: relationship and his anger and his temper, didn't.
Speaker 3: He Yeah, Segon Pen really spiraled from emotional issues afterwards.
Speaker 3: He didn't go out and rob banks or anything like that,
Speaker 3: but he just could not deal with the close intimate
Speaker 3: relationships with women in his life, and when they went bad,
Speaker 3: he could not leave them alone. You know. He became obsessed.
Speaker 3: He became violent at times, and he certainly became threatening.
Speaker 3: And this went on and on on a part he'd
Speaker 3: become acquainted with while he was in prison. She was
Speaker 3: a telephone operator at that placed. One of his calls
Speaker 3: from prison when he was released after his first trial.
Speaker 3: They quickly fell into a very intense relationship. And you know,
Speaker 3: Segon Pennin really hadn't had any of that those before
Speaker 3: in his life. He's kind of a shy guy. He's
Speaker 3: very you know, he's a strikingly handsome young man, but
Speaker 3: he's always shy, you know, And he'd never had a
Speaker 3: serious relationship before. And she very soon got pregnant. And
Speaker 3: then it was only a couple months after the second
Speaker 3: trial that they had the baby, Brittany. But by then
Speaker 3: Segon had been displaying all kinds of volatile behavior, erratic behavior,
Speaker 3: and even though you know, you know again he's got
Speaker 3: these issues that some thought were schizophrenia Layton schizophrenia, but
Speaker 3: could marry very well have been bipolar, because they certainly
Speaker 3: resemble those kind of actions like severe bipolar. Two months
Speaker 3: after Brittany is born, Donna leaves and takes Brittany with her.
Speaker 3: Segon is allowed to see his daughter. He's, by all accounts,
Speaker 3: a capable father, adores her, and but just cannot get
Speaker 3: over Donna arcs. He you know, he shows up at
Speaker 3: the house, he kicks in the door, he threatens the
Speaker 3: new boyfriend, He lights, the new boyfriend's the car on fire.
Speaker 3: He does hit Brittany and I'm sorry. It never hits
Speaker 3: Brittany Donna. You know, she files restraining orders. He's astonishingly
Speaker 3: he's not arrested because nobody said nobody. All of them say,
Speaker 3: oh no, we don't want to press charges, you know,
Speaker 3: they they know how he's struggling. And it just gets
Speaker 3: worse and worse and worse at years go by, you know,
Speaker 3: which makes up small part but the end of the
Speaker 3: the book, because there is a lot of things that
Speaker 3: happened after that second trial, and I follow Segon Penn
Speaker 3: and Donovan Jacobs as the years kind of go on.
Speaker 3: But within a few years, uh, Segon Penn has been
Speaker 3: stripped of his parental rights. He's a he's been served
Speaker 3: a couple terms for you know, prison terms or jail
Speaker 3: jail terms for you know, domestic disturbance or accusations by
Speaker 3: you know, by women for hitting for hitting them and
Speaker 3: things like that. And he's his behaviors just across the board,
Speaker 3: erratic and bizarre. So he so when he finally they
Speaker 3: he is script of his parental rights. Donna's husband, who
Speaker 3: she subsequently married, raises Brittany, and Brittany really does not
Speaker 3: ever know who her father is until only relatively recently.
Speaker 3: It really is the thing that sends him on his
Speaker 3: final downward spiral. He just and people say he's never
Speaker 3: even you know, the tremendous damage done by his what
Speaker 3: he went through in the incident and the trials. You know,
Speaker 3: it was even more so almost when he was blocked
Speaker 3: from ever seeing Brittany again. He never saw again. It
Speaker 3: really he then spiraled over years and became a very
Speaker 3: sad and tragic pers you know individual and historians very
Speaker 3: baddly and very tragically for him. And on the other hand,
Speaker 3: Donovan Jacobs kind of you know, he goes back to
Speaker 3: the police force. He's very successful. I mean he was.
Speaker 3: He's partially paralyzed in one arm and you know, he's
Speaker 3: very injured. It ended his his career that the only
Speaker 3: career he'd ever wanted would just be a you know,
Speaker 3: an officer, detective and all that. And he then is
Speaker 3: more doing desk stuff. But he's very successful in what
Speaker 3: he does. He gets a very good pension when he
Speaker 3: does decide to retire four years later, he becomes an attorney.
Speaker 3: He publishes two books on a you know, small public
Speaker 3: minor published books on effective street policing have some kind
Speaker 3: of curious parts to it. But he's a very very ambitious,
Speaker 3: incredibly intelligent guy. He really is, I don't know, incredibly
Speaker 3: very intelligent guy. Let's just say that, you know, and
Speaker 3: by all accounts and by all evidence, you know, he
Speaker 3: kind of no doubt there's damage from this. I mean,
Speaker 3: he saw his partner die, no matter who might have
Speaker 3: been to blame. You know, he's terribly injured. So I'm
Speaker 3: not diminishing what he went through, but he generally succeeds.
Speaker 3: There is kind of a feeling among some that, you know,
Speaker 3: this is the way it happens. You know, this guy
Speaker 3: like Segan Penn just he's going to lose out and
Speaker 3: the guy like Donovan Jacobs is going to succeed. Just
Speaker 3: to punctuate here that I took no sides in this book,
Speaker 3: I have no agenda. I didn't want to extreme length
Speaker 3: to be very fair, you know, and balanced, and tell
Speaker 3: the whole story and completely leave nothing out that might
Speaker 3: have spoke well or ill of either side. So but
Speaker 3: you know, there is kind of that feeling and that
Speaker 3: the losers, the people who are disadvantaged in this world
Speaker 3: continue and others go on. But that's a matter of
Speaker 3: you know, obviously, perspective on a story like this.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have view write about Milt Silverman being involved
Speaker 2: with Segon Pen right to the very end, even his
Speaker 2: wife seeing him near the end in the throes of
Speaker 2: mental illness, he asked her for money for a pair
Speaker 2: of shoes. I want to thank you very much for
Speaker 2: coming on and talking about your incredible reap the Whirlwind
Speaker 2: and violence, race justice and the story of Segon Penn.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 2: For those that might want to take a look at
Speaker 2: this book and other books, could you tell us about
Speaker 2: your website and you do any social media.
Speaker 3: My website is Peterhulahan dot com. My previous book, Norco eighty,
Speaker 3: who you were so nice to interview me about, is
Speaker 3: out there in the world, and this one is also
Speaker 3: available pretty much everywhere books are sold. I do a
Speaker 3: little bit of social media. I might start a Facebook
Speaker 3: page for this, as I did with Norco eighty, but
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not tremendously active on Twitter. If you
Speaker 3: put my name in there or x as we I
Speaker 3: suppose it's called if you put my name in there,
Speaker 3: you'll find it. I do so little that I can't
Speaker 3: even remember. I think it's Peter dash Hulahan. But if
Speaker 3: you put my name in you it'll pop up.
Speaker 2: Yes. Thank you so much, Peter Hui Han for coming
Speaker 2: on and talking about REAP, the Whirlwind, violence, race, justice,
Speaker 2: and the story of Segan Penn. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for this interview.
Speaker 3: Thanks Dan, I appreciate it and I love your show,
Speaker 3: so thank.
Speaker 2: You so much. Thank you very much, Peter, and you
Speaker 2: have a great evening.
Speaker 3: Thank you and bye.