Jim Terrell on Coronavirus and Tiger King
Hey Folks. This is Attorney Jim Terrell and normally when I make these videos it’s after we’ve had a successful settlement or something has been bothering me, like someone has been beaten by the police. To be quite frank with you, one of my favorite topics are and I’ve only ever talked about these in the past are bad police shootings, bad police, bad police beatings, jail suicide, jail torture, bad police investigation, false arrest, and a host of a bunch of bad activities that seem to be going on. Some of the places I love to talk about include San Bernardino County, that’s for certain. Lately, in the spotlight Fontana is doing a marvelous job of coming up, and just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, here comes Fontana and now joined by Ontario and that’s just right in our area. Don’t feel left out if you are in Keren County because we know what is going on there and you can always get ahold of us. Lately that’s not even been the calls we’ve been getting due to the coronavirus. This coronavirus has changed everything. My phone is ringing [off the hook] because they are dragging people out of cars based on race, nationality, all kinds of stuff, or they’re bored and just want to beat people up. That’s not the calls I have been getting. Due to COVID-19, the police are [saying softly] “Sir, could you not speed?” because they’re afraid of catching COVID-19, the coronavirus themselves – the police. In fact, the police are actually polite. They’re so polite, it’s unbelievable. You heard that old story ‘how do people treat you when you are at a gun store?’ Everybody is very polite. That’s what coronavirus/COVID-19 is like right now. The police have been very nice to the people on the outside because they don’t even want to get neria because you could be taking out their whole family. I don’t blame them but this is the way to do business, this is the way you should be doing it anyway.
What I cannot believe is I’ve been receiving calls about Carole Baskin. First of all, I’m not a prosecutor. Second of all, people call them when they’re upset. They like to vent, not just me but my partner, Sharon Brunner. We listen constantly to people talk and it helps them, but not on Carole. There is something unique about Carole. If anyone was going to be charged, and I’ve done criminal defense for years and I never like to see anyone charged. There’s a tv show on how to get away with murder and it’s fiction. I think Carole Baskin could do her own show on how to get away with murder and I think she could do a fine job on it because she has gotten away with murder. If it wasn’t for the Tiger King, we wouldn’t even know about this little murder. The Tiger King has brought up a lot of issues here, that I think are very very relevant to civil rights. First of all, he has a first amendment right to protest against somebody that’s out there killing her husband and if he wants to voice that opinion, she can go ahead and sue him like she did but I think the authorities should have looked into that I don’t even think the lawsuit that got against him, that was based on a trade violation on her business. I don’t believe she sued him for libel and slander and when after him after he said she killed her husband. I think they went after the fact they were using her product, her name that she was using for the tiger business, and copying it. You’d think that Carole would be more mad that [Joe] is saying that she murdered her husband and would sue for slander and defamation for that but I didn’t think she wanted to bring attention to herself. Instead they [sued] for trademark violations and other misuses. But where is Carole’s husband? Are [the authorities] really looking into her? That seems a little unfair to me.
Then we get into the Tiger King himself. We haven’t had discussions on who is going to play him in the movie. Some people are saying Brad Pitt or he wanted Brad Pitt. It’s obvious the man that should play Joe Exotic is (David Spade). The way he wears that mullet and the way he talks, the way he knows about things. That’s an obvious, that’s a given. Matthew McConaughey, I guess he could pull it off, sure.
I’d give him an opportunity but that’s not my first choice. I would like to talk about the conviction of the Tiger King, Joe Exotic. The Tiger King himself was talking about all the stuff he would like to see happen to Carole Baskin but in reality, he didn’t hire anybody I believe to kill her. The reason why I say that is this, they had an undercover FBI agent come side and he came back with nothing to convict him with. A professional FBI agent undercover, goes in, talks to him, and doesn’t come back with an ounce of evidence to convict, how is that possible? Because he wasn’t about to but who does come up with the evidence? That’s a cast of characters who are as dirty as they can be. Right? The guy that wants to take over his business (Jeff Lowe), the guy who is in trouble with the Feds and a felon (Allen Glover). [The felon] said “he paid me $3,000 to kill Carole Baskin” and one of the things I do know from working in this kind of business is if you are going to out and you’re going to get involved in putting a kill/hit out of somebody, guess what you’re probably going to be doing, [is] calling [who you ordered to kill that person and constantly ask]”Did you do it yet?” or a call [from the hitman]”It’s been done”, none of those calls ever occurred. He paid him $3,000 to get the thug off his property.
What brings to mind is how did they get a conviction? This all comes back to civil rights and what happens. The United States District Attorney’s office through the Department of Justice, when they got involved in this case, knew they could not provide The Tiger King committed any kind of plan or conspiracy or try to induce anyone to murder anybody. They added animal charges and nobody likes people who hurt animals. I certainly don’t. You don’t. You’re going to be very sympathetic.
They merged two cases totally unrelated. What if they had just done the case just about – ‘Did Joe Exotic try to get someone to commit a murder?’ That would have fallen flat out on its face.
I think if you were to watch the video, you would say “That’s a weak case so we have to add some other cases” so they add cases against tigers that were allegedly killed 5 years earlier.
To me, it gets down to money, getting in the right experts, doing the examinations of the animals, and what have you. It kind of teaches you what the government will do to get a conviction. The answer is the government will do just about anything. Do they add charges? Everyday.
Right here over at the courthouses, they will come up with 16 charges. You’re looking at 33 years or you can take one of them for 6 months for credit of time served. They stack up charges constantly. Can you really fight 16 charges? No. Throw in animal cruelty, cruelty to a child, you pick up one of those other cases they put together and the jury hates you so much, they’re going to convict you. Here we got the Tiger King, here in jail, in prison, because they added those other charges. If we did that to the animals and I don’t know, they did not give us very much information on that. [If he did do that], certainly, he should be charged. If you watch the video, you’re going to see the attorney talking about combining the two charges and it happens to people in our courthouses constantly. They take one series of events and another.
In my opinion, they were separating it by so much time and so unrelated to one another, they should have never been combined whatsoever for a fair trial. That should have never, ever happened. They shouldn’t have done it that way. I’d thought I would check with you and talk to you about what’s going on with the Tiger King, the coronavirus, and a lot of you know I’m still here. The police are still out shooting people like never before, especially in San Bernardino County constantly, abusing people, violating people. They took a break because they don’t want to catch the coronavirus. They want to take care of themselves first. If you want to talk about who should play the Tiger King, I’m interested. My number is 760-561-2699. Stay safe, lock yourself down, and have a good day.