- 14 minutes ago
Courtroom blunders and ethical violations can make or break high-profile cases. From withholding evidence to racially discriminatory jury strikes, some legal mistakes have shocked the justice system and overturned convictions. Join us as we explore infamous courtroom errors like the glove demonstration, withheld ammunition, and prosecutorial misconduct that cost defendants their cases and dramatically changed legal history.
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00:00The defense argues it was a warrantless search and has asked the judge to suppress
00:05evidence found in the backpack that includes the alleged murder weapon.
00:08Welcome to Ms. Mojo. And today we're diving into the courtroom blunders,
00:12ethical violations and shocking misconduct that derailed some of the most high profile
00:16legal battles in modern history. In this case, Tom, I don't understand why there would be any
00:22reason why that critical evidence in this case would be assigned to a different case number.
00:30Interference by a court clerk. Alec Murdoch's murder trial.
00:33A jury found Murdoch guilty of murdering his wife and son in 2021, but the state Supreme Court just
00:39found a court clerk interfered with the jury by attacking Murdoch's credibility.
00:44Alec Murdoch's double murder trial was already one of the most watched cases of the decade.
00:49The disbarred South Carolina attorney was convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul,
00:55seemingly bringing a dramatic chapter of the saga to a close.
00:58The state versus Richard Alexander Murdoch, defendant, indictment for murder, SC code 16-3-0010,
01:09CDR code 0116, verdict guilty, signed by the four lady.
01:14Then came a twist nobody expected. Former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill was accused of
01:21making improper comments to jurors during the trial, allegedly encouraging them not to be fooled by
01:26Murdoch's testimony and to pay attention to his behavior on the stand.
01:29To me, it felt like
01:35she made it seem like he was already guilty.
01:37In 2026, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously overturned Murdoch's convictions and ordered a
01:43new trial, ruling that Hill had improperly influenced the jury and compromised his right to a fair trial.
01:49Failure to disclose evidence. Ted Stevens' bribery trial.
01:53Alaska's Ted Stevens, guilty on all seven counts of lying to conceal more than a quarter million in gifts.
02:00For a moment, it looked like federal prosecutors had brought down one of the most powerful politicians in
02:05Washington. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was convicted on seven felony counts related to gifts and home
02:11renovations allegedly provided by oil services executives. The verdict came just days before his
02:17reelection campaign and contributed to his defeat at the polls.
02:21A week before the election, a federal jury found Stevens guilty of concealing $250,000 in home renovations and
02:28gifts. A defiant Stevens maintained he had been railroaded.
02:33Then prosecutors own conduct came under scrutiny. Investigations revealed that key evidence favorable
02:38to Stevens had not been disclosed to the defense, including material that undermined the prosecution's
02:43star witness, Bill Allen. I think what's most shocking about all of this are the allegations that these
02:48prosecutors or the people who work for them may have absolutely fabricated evidence, which is an order
02:54of magnitude worse than simply not turning over certain documents. The Brady violations were so
02:59severe that Attorney General Eric Holder asked the court to dismiss the case. The conviction was
03:04vacated and the indictment thrown out entirely. The judge is calling to question the conduct of the
03:11very people whose job it would have been to make sure the justice was done in the court and they're
03:14supposed
03:14to do that every day. Here, the conduct was such that it probably deprived Mr. Stevens of a fair trial.
03:23Blocking access to a defense witness. Katrina Leung espionage case. The allegations
03:28against Katrina Leung sounded like the plot of a cold war thriller. The long-time FBI informant
03:33was accused of secretly working for Chinese intelligence and compromising decades of American
03:37counterintelligence efforts. We continue to play defense. We continue to wait until the cases manifest
03:43themselves here in the United States. And because that's the way we've gone about doing the
03:48counterintelligence business, we are behind. Federal prosecutors appeared to have a major espionage
03:54case on their hands. Then, Judge Florence Marie Cooper discovered a serious constitutional problem.
04:01Retired FBI Special Agent James J. Smith, a central figure in the case, had entered a plea agreement
04:06that effectively barred him from sharing information with Leung's legal team. The judge ruled that
04:10prosecutors had interfered with Leung's access to a witness necessary for her defense. The result was
04:15extraordinary. The espionage case was dismissed because the government had undermined the defendant's
04:21Sixth Amendment rights. Racially discriminatory jury strikes. Curtis Flowers murder trial.
04:27Few prosecutions have stretched across as many courtrooms as the case against Curtis Flowers.
04:32Flowers was tried six times for the 1996 murders of four people at Tardy Furniture in Winona, Mississippi.
04:38It was a store that Curtis had worked at for a few days earlier that summer, and it didn't take
04:42long
04:42for law enforcement to narrow in on Curtis as its top suspect. Even though Curtis didn't have a criminal
04:47record, even though nobody witnessed the murders, there was no DNA, no slam dunk evidence.
04:52Four of his trials ended in convictions, and each conviction was eventually overturned. The recurring
04:57issue was the conduct of prosecutor Doug Evans during jury selection. Across multiple trials,
05:03evidence repeatedly struck black prospective jurors at strikingly disproportionate rates.
05:08You can strike people for a whole bunch of reasons. Exactly. You can strike them for almost
05:11any reason at all. You cannot strike them, however, because of their race. That's against the 14th
05:15amendment. And so that's what Curtis' lawyers were at the court today trying to say. That is exactly what
05:20happened in this case. When the case reached the Supreme Court for a second time, Justice Brett Kavanaugh
05:25wrote that the state's relentless determined effort to remove black jurors could not be ignored. The court
05:31overturned the conviction, which led to the case being dropped after Flowers had spent over 22 years
05:36on death row. I'm still hurting for not only 23 years he served as an innocent man, but for the
05:4123
05:42years that the family has to continue to go through this and relive this tragedy also. Showing banned
05:47evidence. Roger Clemens pre-jury trial. Roger Clemens was already facing an uphill battle. Named in the
05:53Mitchell Report for allegedly using performance-enhancing drugs, Clemens denied everything under oath before
05:58Congress. I'm not saying Senator Mitchell's report is entirely wrong. I am saying Brian
06:04McNamee's statements about me are wrong. Let me be clear, I have never taken steroids or HGH.
06:10This led to a federal indictment in August 2010 on six felony counts, including perjury and obstruction.
06:16His first trial began in July 2011 and prosecutors almost immediately made a catastrophic error. On just
06:22the second day of testimony, they showed the jury evidence that Judge Reggie Walton had explicitly ruled
06:28inadmissible. The judge said the jury's not allowed to hear this evidence. Prosecution went ahead and
06:33let the jury know about it anyway, so it's a big deal. A big deal because the judge all but
06:38accused the
06:39prosecution of cheating. The material involved testimony from the wife of Clemens' former teammate,
06:44Andy Pettit. Judge Walton declared a mistrial on the spot. The government's recklessness essentially
06:49handed Clemens a reset button, and in his second trial, he was found not guilty.
06:53Prosecutors suggested the judge could simply instruct the jury to disregard the evidence,
06:58but the judge decided the damage had already been done, and he had no other choice but to throw out
07:04the case. Representing himself, Daryl Brooks' murder trial. There's a well-worn legal saying,
07:10a person who represents themselves has a fool for a client. Daryl Brooks apparently never got that memo.
07:15Every time, this is what I don't get, every time I'm presenting something that needs to be made for
07:19the record and placed in the evidence, it's a problem. But the state can do it, no problem.
07:23It's not, sir, there are proper procedures, and I want you to make a record. If you don't make a
07:29record, I can't make a ruling. Charged with killing six people and injuring dozens more at the 2021
07:34Waukesha Christmas Parade, Brooks fired his attorneys and chose to represent himself. What followed was
07:40extraordinary and not in a good way. Brooks repeatedly interrupted proceedings, argued with
07:46Judge Jennifer Doro, and frequently appeared more focused on challenging the court's legitimacy than
07:51defending himself. But if I say something under my breath, everybody seems to hear it. Everybody
07:57seems to hear that just fine. In a quiet courtroom, yes, we can hear it very clearly. And everybody assumes
08:01that it has to be disparaging. Once again, you're doing this tactic. Because it's not a tactic,
08:08expense, expense. He was removed from the courtroom multiple times. Any chance of presenting a coherent
08:14defense evaporated under the chaos. The jury ultimately convicted Brooks on all 76 charges,
08:20and he received six consecutive life sentences, plus hundreds of additional years behind bars.
08:25Toward the vehicle that his nephew was in, the vehicle was occupied by one other person,
08:31and therefore he was charged two counts. Prior non-prosecution promise. Bill Cosby's sexual assault case.
08:37After years of allegations, Bill Cosby's 2018 conviction for sexually assaulting Andrea
08:42Constance seemed like the final chapter in one of Hollywood's most significant criminal cases.
08:47Mr. Bill Cosby, the man once known as America's dad, has been sentenced three to ten years in a state
08:53prison. This comes after not just one trial, but a retrial after a hung jury. The judge saying that no
09:01one
09:01is above the law. Instead, the case unraveled because of a decision made long before the trial
09:06ever happened. Years earlier, former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor assured Cosby
09:12he would not face criminal charges related to the case if he testified in a civil disposition.
09:17Justice is ruling he should not have been prosecuted because of a deal with former DA Bruce Castor,
09:22that he would not be charged if he agreed to testify in a 2005 civil suit brought by accuser Andrea
09:29Constance. Cosby later gave potentially incriminating testimony, believing he no longer
09:33faced prosecution. When a later DA used the testimony to prosecute him criminally,
09:38Cosby was convicted. But in 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned that conviction,
09:44finding the prior assurance from Castor had been violated. Cosby eventually walked out of prison.
09:49Yeah, Andrea Constance and her legal team have called this decision disappointing and say it's of
09:54concern because it could discourage future victims of sexual assault from coming forward
09:58and seeking justice. Hiding exculpatory DNA evidence, Duke La Crosse case. In 2006, Durham County
10:05District Attorney Mike Nifong charged three Duke University lacrosse players with sexually assaulting
10:10a woman at an off-campus party. The case quickly became national news. The college athletes, all grown
10:16men today, had hired her to dance for them at a beer party in a fraternity house. She was a
10:20college
10:21student herself at a nearby historically black university and worked as a dancer part-time. Her story
10:27eventually fell apart. But behind the headlines, something deeply troubling was unfolding. DNA testing had been
10:33conducted. And the results didn't just fail to implicate the defendants, they excluded them
10:37entirely, while revealing DNA from multiple unidentified men. Nifong hid this from the defense,
10:43a Brady violation of stunning proportions. I think it's come out, it's pretty clear,
10:47that he's a complete liar. He lied about this DNA evidence. Yes, he's entitled to his hearing,
10:53but I think in the end, he will have his license taken away. Once the concealment was exposed,
10:59all charges were dropped. The North Carolina attorney general declared the players actually
11:03innocent. Nifong was disbarred, held in contempt of court, and briefly jailed. The case remains a
11:09defined warning about unchecked prosecutorial ambition. I really don't want to make any
11:14statements until after I testify. I probably won't make any then, but there's no point in my making
11:19any statements at all today because I haven't testified and I won't testify before. Withholding
11:25ammunition evidence, Alec Baldwin's Rust shooting case. The involuntary manslaughter case against
11:31Alec Baldwin centered on the fatal shooting of cinematographer Helena Hutchins during production
11:35of the film Rust. Helena and I had something profound in common, and that is we both assumed
11:41the gun was empty. Other than those, you know, dummy rounds, I let go of the hammer, bang, the gun
11:46goes off. Everyone is horrified. Prosecutors argued Baldwin bore criminal responsibility for handling
11:52the revolver that discharged. During trial, Baldwin's attorneys uncovered a major discovery
11:57issue involving live ammunition that had been submitted to investigators by a witness.
12:01The defense argued that authorities failed to disclose the evidence and even filed it under a
12:05separate case number. The lead detective on the case is the one who said that it was her,
12:10her sheriff supervisor and prosecutor Carrie Morrissey that decided to put this evidence under a
12:17different case number which ultimately let it sort of disappear. Judge Mary Marlowe Summer agreed that
12:24prosecutors had violated their disclosure obligations. Her criticism was blistering, describing the
12:29withholding as intentional and highly prejudicial. The result was devastating for the state. The case was
12:34dismissed with prejudice and could not be refiled. Sometimes Brady violations are by mistake and so the
12:41case can come back down. But the judge said the case cannot even be retrialed. She cannot do a mistrial.
12:47Jeopardy is already attached and that's why she had to dismiss it with prejudice so they cannot retry.
12:53The glove demonstration. OJ Simpson murder trial. Some courtroom mistakes become so famous they
12:59overshadow the entire case. At this time, the people would ask that Mr. Simpson step forward and try on
13:06the glove recovered at Bundy as well as the glove recovered at Rockingham. All right, do you want to do
13:12that?
13:12During OJ Simpson's murder trial, prosecutors asked Simpson to try on a pair of gloves connected
13:17to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. It seemed like a dramatic way to connect
13:21the defendant directly to crucial evidence. Instead, it became one of the prosecution's biggest headaches.
13:27All right, he appears to have pulled the gloves on, counsel.
13:33All right, would you show that to the jury, Mr. Simpson, in that manner? Thank you. Other hand, please.
13:38Wearing latex gloves underneath, Simpson struggled to fit his hands into the leather gloves in front of the jury.
13:43Defense attorney Johnny Cochran immediately seized on the moment and transformed it into one of the
13:48most famous phrases in legal history. It makes no sense. It doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
13:56That image, in quote, remained lodged in the jury's minds and Simpson was acquitted. It remains the most
14:01iconic own goal in courtroom history. Are there any other legal disasters we missed? Let us know in the
14:19comments below.