The Third Court of Appeals held that a defendant's statement during a jail phone call should not have been admitted because it was unfairly prejudicial. Read the opinion and give us your opinion on whether a defendant's bragging phone call is more probative than prejudicial.

It's a funny phone call either way.

Two questions:

(1) Is there really a "Dew Drop Inn" in Williamson County? Hilarious.

(2) I always thought the appropriate spelling was "'ho," not "'hoe" -- unless he was referring to gardening tools. They must not cover that one in court reporting school.

Yes, Virginia, there really is a Dew Drop Inn. You can see it from the window in the grand jury room.

I'm not sure there really is a proper spelling for the slang for the word "whore". It could be "whoe." Didn't you think it was sweet to change it to "ladies"?

Too bad they couldn't change the guy's name. How unfortunate.

I'm guessing he may have a future as a jury consultant.

I'm glad to get confirmation of the existence of the Dew Drop Inn. I'd wondered about that since I first heard Charlie Daniels' "Uneasy Rider":

I went as far as I could, and when I stopped the car,
it was right in front of this little bar,
a kinda redneck lookin' joint called the Dew Drop Inn.

Oddly enough, CDB didn't refer to "hos", only to the following:

Just when I thought I'd get outta there with my skin
these five big dudes came strollin' in
with one ol' drunk chick and some fella with green teeth.

Just a semantic difference, I'm sure.

Must be another place as there is no drunkeness or nakedness in Williamson Co !

It's going to be gravy!!!!!!

"You all may not know it, but this man's a spy. He's an undercover agent for the FBI, and he's been sent down here to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan."

"...he's gone so far, as tearing Wallace stickers off the bumpers of cars...and I'll bet he's even got a Commie flag tacked up at home in his garage..."

Of course the fellow's response was quite expected: "...now wait a minute Jim...I don't even have a garage, you can call home and ask my wife."

So, just how many Beeyaches and Ho's actually made it onto his jury? And how many "ladies"? Obviously, since he was convicted, it wasn't nine? (And it had nothing to do with your prosecutors.)

Oh, yes! It's a good thing that transcript got into evidence. 'Manys the day' I have tried some drug dealer who would eye up a 'lady' on the jury (smiling, showing just a glint of that gold tooth with a diamond cocktail glass imbedded in it), and melt her like butter. She would respond with equal passion in a not guilty verdict!

Sounds like a transcript from 'The Ladies Man'

If someone is innocent, why do they even talk about the need to pick a certain type of juror (much less nine of them) to be successful at the trial? I think there is no question that the making of the statements tends to prove guilt (or the speaker's view of the truth).

Thank you, Martin. That was our point, exactly. The defendant was not expressing his love of women or his powers as a lover. He was acknowledging his guilt and describing how he could, nonetheless, avoid the consequences by smooth-talking the female members of the jury.

Joan Hess, a mystery writer, uses a venue called the "Dew Drop Inn" quite frequently in a series of mysteries featuring Arly Hanks, the police chief and sole law enforcement in a one horse town town set in (I presume) fictional Maggody, Arkansas. The fictional version of the inn appears to have some of the traits as the real version, at least as JB describes it.

Janette Ansolabehere

While I agree that the most obvious interpretation of the statement is that he knows he's guilty which is why he needed to pick a certain type of jury, that interpretation assumes that the person has faith in the justice system. Someone who has no faith in the system could be innocent and nevertheless feel the need to juke it to get an acquittal. This is, of course, a variation on all those defense voir dires of "can you think of a reason why an innocent person would exercise his right to remain silent." Admittedly, though, "can you think of a reason why an innocent person would try to seduce several female jurors" would probably not elicit a wide variety of answers.