Thrasher Banks
speaker
112 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Thrasher Banks’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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With Mick's guilty verdict, that chapter of our life together came to an end. As the years went by and we moved on with our lives, the box my mom gave me would sit collecting dust in my grandma's basement. Now that I sit here pouring over the documents in the box, I still wonder, was Mick telling the full truth or did he deceive all of us?
And not just my family, but his attorney, Isabel, the jury at his trial, and even Tim's attorney, Carl. It seems like just about everyone outside of law enforcement felt that Mick acted out of fear that night. I'm at the bottom of the box now. I've gone through nearly every scrap, every letter, every document.
What's left is a few items that shed light on what really happened on the night of Cindy Cozad's murder. From Tenderfoot TV, I'm Thrasher Banks. This is Lords of Death. With Mick's conviction for the murder of Cindy Kozad, there was a real chance he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. But it turned out that Mick and his defense team had a plan.
Mick filed an appeal that argued his conviction should be overturned in favor of a new trial due to ineffective counsel from his defense. They laid out three separate claims to prove that Mick's defense failed to properly represent him in court.
First, there was a chain of custody issue with the witness that prevented a forensic expert from testifying that none of Cindy Cozad's blood was found on Mick's clothing. Further, their testimony would have verified that there was no blood found in my mom's car.
This would have disproved the version of the story that Mick told my mom the night of the murder, that Cindy was shot while still in the vehicle. The second claim involved a rebuttal witness that was called by the state. He was a prison psychologist who conducted an assessment on Mick while he was in prison for murdering his uncle.
The psychologist testified that Mick showed signs typical of someone with antisocial disorder. During cross-examination, Mick's attorney, Chuck Smiley, pursued a line of questioning that led the psychologist to say that people with this personality disorder can exhibit, at times, a disregard for human life.
The last claim was that by deciding not to cross-examine my mom, Carrie, during her testimony for the state, the defense failed to establish that she feared Tim in the aftermath of the murder. The appellate court found that the first two claims, taken together, undermined confidence in the outcome of the trial.
They added that the testimony of a witness called by the state that heard the gunshots that night was consistent with Mick's account of the murder. This, according to the appellate court, supported a verdict of innocence on the murder charge.
The court stated that, quote, while this evidence would yet permit the jury to find that McWhorter shot Cozad while her body lie on the ground, even that version raises doubts concerning his criminal liability for murder. End quote.
Before the trial got underway, Mick's attorney, Dennis Adkins, proposed a deal to drop the murder charge for a straight 10-year sentence. The prosecutor declined and instead made a counteroffer. If Mick would plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, which would carry a sentence of 10 to 15 years, the prosecutor's office wouldn't oppose his release when he was eligible for parole in eight years.
Plus the other charges would run concurrently, reducing his overall sentence. Mick's attorney, Dennis, seemed confident that he would be released at his second parole hearing in about 10 years.
He said he just didn't want to put you through it again.
Maybe he didn't want to go through it again.
Every defense attorney I've talked to says, go to trial. Roll the dice. The plea deals are never...
Well, his attorney said that he'd be out in 10 years. They lied. Nick's pleedial sentencing took place on March 12, 1998. The official sentence was 10 to 25 years, plus three years for the firearm specification. That charge would then run concurrent with his other charges for tampering with evidence and weapons under disability.
Part of the plea agreement was that Mick was required to admit he shot Cindy, which he protested at first, but eventually gave in and admitted to it. But my mom tells me that Mick still had one last hope of escaping a lengthy prison sentence, and it would come from Tim, of all people.
The letter reads, Carrie, I got your letter, Tim wrote. I've just been trying to figure out if I should tell you or not, but I've also been reading the Bible and studying it and it says I should tell you the truth. I'm not going to keep in touch with you and I know you'll be glad to hear that. That stuff that Wade and Tom Lawson got Mick to say was the same thing they tried to get me to say.
So don't believe it because it's a lie. Mick didn't do any of the stuff I said he did. I only said it because I wanted to have you. And if I couldn't, then I was going to take him down with me. So I lied about it. Well, you don't need to write me back. If I hadn't been saved by Jesus Christ, you wouldn't know now.
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