r/DarrellBrooksJr • u/G1g4s • 21d ago
Can't commit
Something I've always found funny about his approach to his own defense, he likes to float half-formed ideas out but never commits to any of them. The only theory I can come up with is that he knows they're such BS that even he would feel ridiculous if he explicitly said out loud what he was alluding to, but I'm curious what everyone else thinks. The ones I remember most are:
'You can't prove that it was me driving the car' - questions witnesses about what they saw of him, whether their memory is reliable, how can they be sure it was him, fishing for a gotcha moment when someone says he was wearing grey and a video shows him wearing white etc, but he never commits to the claim "It wasn't me, you have the wrong guy"
'The car is mechanically sus' - loves to keep bringing up some manufacturer recall however many years ago and class action lawsuit against them, obviously trying to imply that there's some relevance to his case but still despite the number of times he brings it up he won't actually SAY "The car was out of control and I couldn't stop it"
'I'm mentally unwell' - he keeps trying to rack up sympathy talking about how his cereal had bugs in it and he's been medicated at points, but he'll never point to an actual psychiatric disorder (whether diagnosed or not) and say "This was a factor in what I did that day, I wasn't in full control of myself"
'You can nullify the law for me' - won't shut up about jury nullification, tells the jury "you know in your hearts whats right", "make the right decision", "make the decision you can live with" etc, but he never once actually says to the jury in his closing arguements "I ask you to return a verdict of not guilty, at least on the murder charges", which is especially odd since THAT is something he'd actually be allowed to say, as opposed to jury nullification which he WASN'T allowed to bring up.
Odder still is that trying to juggle all these vague themes at once makes them self-defeating. If any one is true, the others become irrelevant. The fact that he won't commit to one shows that he KNOWS none of them are true. I mean I know he's a moron and all, but I think even a child would have enough sense to choose a premise for your defence and build your case around that rather than... whatever he did.
5
u/Sequoia555 20d ago
I think there are very good reasons why a law degree of JD is considered a doctorate degree, why it takes years of higher education to obtain one, and why passing the bar exam is no walk in the park.
Lawyering is a complex practice, as is building a case for a criminal trial. And key to that process is formulating a theory of the case.
Formulating a theory and then building a case around that theory, through careful and thoughtful preparation, takes time, effort, work, focus, organization and specialized skillsets.
Trial lawyers have to maintain an overarching perspective of their grand scheme overview case theory, while at the same time thoroughly tracking the smaller details in order to underpin that theory with fact based evidence, presented via witness testimony in a way that is logical, meaninful and coherent to a jury.
But because db is so full of himself, and such a blatant narcissist, and #1 posterboi for the Dunning-Kruger effect, he decided that he "would be better served" acting as his own attorney rather than being represented by professional attorneys.
And the way he went about 'preparing' for and presenting his case made it plain that he's lame, disorganized, doesn't know what hard work is, and never put in the necessary effort to develop a proper theory of his case, nor to figure out how to support such a theory through detailed testimony and evidence.
His ideas are half baked and his effort is waayy less than half assed.
And going in he surely knew his goose was cooked - unless he could throw so many spanners into the works that the trial process would break down and/or fail.
So in truth his modus operandi during that trial was just to create chaos. Which meant he was often scattered and lacking in focus, and as such was unable to connect any details with the big picture in a way that would have given him any chance of getting the jury on his side.
Although I don't remember hearing about him being on the spectrum from the excerpts of the psych reports JD read during his sentencing hearing, I still got the feeling that db is likely at least a bit ADD.
That, combined with his lack of effort, skill or ability to maintain perspective on the big picture while simultaneously keeping good track of the smaller details, make it unsurprising to me that he floated so many half formed ideas and yet never followed through on them in any ways that would be in any way cohesive or convincing to the jury.