Randy Barnett: A Latin King confessed to a grisly triple murder, then told him he’d kill one of the victims again if it was a "sure thing."
That exchange helped put the man on death row.
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center and faculty director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. He has authored more than a dozen books and argued Gonzales v. Raich before the Supreme Court in 2004. Before any of that, he spent four years as a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in the late 1970s and early 1980s Chicago.
On Counterweight he walks through those years: Harvard Law to the arraignment court where he watched the John Wayne Gacy closing; Judge John Crowley teaching him what “bullsh*t” meant in a misdemeanor call; the bond-slip racket and crooked jury courts; the chop-shop case that exposed “Dollars” Devine and fixer Eddie Jensen; night shifts on Felony Review deciding, in police stations at three in the morning, which cases became felonies; the one-stab domestic that never became a charge; and the Juan Caballero confession that helped bring a death verdict. He closes with his take on the Lindsay Clancy mistrial and why the insanity defense gets criminal justice theory backwards.
His latest book, Felony Review, is the record of that education. The stories are true crime from the inside, and they still explain how charging, corruption, and courtroom power actually work.
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Randy Barnett: Georgetown University Law Center · Felony Review
Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain
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CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open — Caballero: “I’d a killed Michael for sure”
0:58 Host intro
2:04 Randy Barnett
3:09 Harvard Law to Cook County prosecutor
8:13 Judge Crowley and learning what “bullsh*t” means
13:05 Bond slips and corruption in the misdemeanor courts
17:47 The chop shop — Dollars Devine and Eddie Jensen
28:07 Felony Review — 24/7 charging calls in the police stations
33:17 One stab wound — charge or let go
38:12 Juan Caballero — the confession that brought a death sentence 46:40 Lindsay Clancy and the insanity defense
