Sarah Alvarez

not even from the state, the information that we're getting now.

It's in connection with public records requests, which is ultimately how we had to go about getting the discovery in this case because very little was turned over to us.

And so just like Christian mentioned with the whole ICE agent debacle, that came out after the jury had already been sworn.

And it was obviously huge, obviously very potentially exculpatory evidence.

We weren't able to get into it anyway, but as the defense, we have a right to prepare our defense to use that information to find evidence that could be admissible in court.

And throughout, we have been fronted from pursuing those avenues.

Yeah, so that definitely was not our finest hour in that video.

But things had been boiling, coming to a head for a long time.

The first time that we tried to get the judge disqualified was after a series of hearings where we felt that not so much the rulings that were actually being made, although we clearly took issue with those as well, but the way in which

both sides were being treated, you know, just to say this as diplomatically as possible,

It just did not feel like there was a neutral arbiter in the courtroom.

And so we moved to disqualify.

That didn't work out.

The second time was because the judge said to Rashawn when she was asking him whether he wanted to accept the state's plea or whether he wanted to make any other offer.

And that was pretty significant that he was being essentially disqualified.

asked repeatedly if he would make a plea to the court and she would allow him to potentially plead no contest instead of admit guilt in a murder case, this murder case.

And so during that interaction, after he clearly asserted that he wanted to go to trial, he said, deep in my heart, I know that I'm innocent.

The only thing that I would accept is a dismissal.

The judge then said to him, well, OK, if you roll the dice and you go to trial,

and you're convicted, the only way that you'll come out is in a pine box.