Why the Defense Closing Was So Dangerous for the State

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Well, closing arguments were yesterday and they were not what I expected in many respects, but I thought that certainly at the end of it, the defense had the edge.

[00:00:14]I'll tell you more in just a little bit.

[00:00:23]Hi, Tony Dit here. Formerly, I was a Missouri attorney in active practice.

[00:00:28]Then I retired. Then I unretired and started a YouTube channel and I bring you all kinds of stuff about trials and the law. So no legal advice is given.

[00:00:37]But stay tuned. This is what we're talking about today.

[00:00:44]Today we're back in the case of Josie Deman who is accused of intentionally killing six-year-old Alexander Pedran.

[00:00:51]The state says this was no accident, that it was a conscious, deliberate act.

[00:00:55]The defense says, "Oh, hold up there.

[00:00:58]Someone else caused this death, namely the father. This trial is going to come down to a central question. Can the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this was intentional and that Josie Deman actually did the axe? Now, those of us who are male know that when we look across the table and we see a scowl on our wife's face, we say, "Are you okay?" And she says, "I'm fine."

[00:01:24]that she's not fine because her tone conveys an answer that is different from what her words say.

[00:01:34]And we see this all the time in court with witnesses, with the judge, and yes, sometimes with the prosecution.

[00:01:46]Listen to the tone of the prosecutor as he begins his closing argument.

[00:01:54]And I'll tell you what I think that tone means in just a second.

[00:02:00]>> On February 11th of 2023, this defendant forever silenced the voice of Alexavier J. Pedran, or as you've come to know him through this trial, Alex.

[00:02:16]On February 11th of 2023, this defendant extinguished Alex through her brutal assault and her intentional drugging.

[00:02:29]Alex's voice cannot tell you what happened, but Alex's body is screaming out to you that he was abused and he was drugged.

[00:02:40]>> What do I always tell you about emotional arguments?

[00:02:44]Emotional arguments are designed to produce anger.

[00:02:50]And it's an effective strategy because when we get angry, we stop thinking logically.

[00:02:59]We start thinking emotionally.

[00:03:02]We start thinking like something bad happened to Alex. Somebody needs to pay for it. And there's only one person on the menu here.

[00:03:12]It's a strategy, but it's a dishonest one. And the reason it's dishonest is because while there certainly should be outrage over the death of a six-year-old child there, I think what this tone actually conveys isn't so much outrage. You know, this terrible thing happened. It conveys the fact that they are afraid that the jury might reach the right conclusion here and to quit Josie and that's a very real possibility. But the jury may wind up believing everything that they have been spoonfed.

[00:03:50]But he continues pretty much throughout his opening or his closing statement.

[00:03:55]Strike that.

[00:03:57]He continues pretty much through his entire closing argument with emotional arguments that are designed to inflame the passions of the jury. Listen. Twice during that call, she represents that Alex's body was on the ground.

[00:04:16]She says that Alex was unresponsive and that there was an open bag of her medication on the floor.

[00:04:25]The defendant reported that she tried CPR on Alex's body to no avail and that Alex was not breathing.

[00:04:38]As that 911 call is taking place, deputies Jar and Anderson arrive on scene.

[00:04:47]It's perhaps one of the fastest responses one could see to a 911 call.

[00:04:52]The person is still on the call and the deputies are arriving on scene.

[00:04:59]When they arrive and this defendant opens the front door, Alex's body is on the bed, not the floor. Now, keep in mind that during her direct exam, she explained all of that. Can you imagine waking up on the worst day of your life, the day when you find your son dead on the floor?

[00:05:23]Would you have a very clear memory of that? Would it would it not all be jumbled up? Would you maybe get things wrong? Would you maybe say things that weren't necessarily 100% accurate, but thematically all of it was true? I think her direct exam erased a lot of the impact of this. And and you probably have noticed that what he is doing here is just rehashing his opening statement.

[00:05:52]He used some of these same words and same sentence constructions in his opening statement. And that's not accidental. It's lazy, but it's not accidental because he wants to make it appear consistent. But of course, it's inconsistent with her direct testimony and she was the only one there. You know that he had abdominal pain with a laceration to his liver and bleeding into the mezzentary cavity.

[00:06:25]You know that that pl pain would increase over time.

[00:06:29]You know that he had multiple blows to his head and to his body.

[00:06:37]For Alex, movement would have meant more pain, and he couldn't even access a bag that was at a height that only adults could grab it. Again, I'm not sure what he's trying to say here. Clearly, Josie testified that that's where those drugs were, and that makes a great deal of sense, but it it doesn't seem to rule out the possibility that Derek provided the drugs when he was there. And that was more or less the testimony during trial.

[00:07:18]He's saying a lot of things, but I don't think he's got a consistent theme.

[00:07:24]He doesn't have a theme that explains all of the various testimony. And he pretty much never deals with Derek Pedran's credibility here. And so I'm I'm wondering exactly what this is supposed to accomplish. When someone would ask me what happened at that Brewer game, I would talk about the pitching, who hit well, what the final score was, and how the Brewers played overall. The perspective of my daughters were much younger would talk about what they got to eat. Did dad buy licorice?

[00:07:56]Did we have ice cream? Did we go to the PlayStation inside the stadium? We had the exact same experience, but the perspectives that we had as an adult and as children were different.

[00:08:09]There were entire parts of this closing argument that I just didn't understand why they were there. He's making the point that kids see things differently than adults. who doesn't know that. But more importantly, I think what he's trying to explain is how the kids saw it pretty much the same way that Derek Pedran did and they mimicked or copied his description of things that went on. I don't think it's doing him very much good here.

[00:08:42]>> Dr. Andress said in her testimony that this defendant avoids responsibility, that this defendant projects blame on other people.

[00:08:53]You witnessed that through the defense testimony over two days.

[00:09:03]There was something that the defendant said twice during her testimony that all of you should agree with.

[00:09:15]This defendant told you twice that Alex was murdered.

[00:09:22]Alex was murdered.

[00:09:25]Alex was murdered by this defendant.

[00:09:31]This defendant does everything she can to avoid personal responsibility. Give her a lesson in personal responsibility and find her guilty.

[00:09:42]>> I thought that was probably one of the weakest ends to a closing argument that I've heard from a state actor, from a prosecutor.

[00:09:49]It amazed me that that's where he stopped right there.

[00:09:55]But, you know, it's his case. It's his closing argument. Okay, you know, do what you think you have to do. But again, throughout his closing, his tone was almost snarky.

[00:10:10]He basically called Josie a liar. and he defended a seventime convicted felon who was a wife beater and a woman beater and who had threatened to beat his own child and who I think it's inferable did beat his child.

[00:10:37]That's my opinion.

[00:10:39]Now we get to a completely different tone and that's the defense closing.

[00:10:47]And in this he doesn't scream about injustice or pull his hair and say, "Oh, woe is Josie." He just calmly and methodically goes through a bunch of really inconvenient facts for the state.

[00:11:02]>> You just like getting your beat.

[00:11:06]Ladies and gentlemen, is there a more terrifying thing a father could say to a six-year-old child?

[00:11:13]A child who depends on him for protection, child father who cannot defend himself.

[00:11:19]And so he naturally looks to his father and should be able to expect that he won't harm him.

[00:11:27]Pedran's statement tells you something.

[00:11:28]Do you like getting beaten?

[00:11:31]Tells you that it happened before.

[00:11:34]It tells you it was going to happen again.

[00:11:37]Tragically, it was routine.

[00:11:41]And it tells you something else that is critically important in this case.

[00:11:45]Tells you that Derek Pedran was not Alex Xavier's protector.

[00:11:50]He was his abuser.

[00:11:54]And that matters.

[00:11:56]That matters because this case is not just about what happened to Alexavier.

[00:12:01]It is about what law enforcement chose not to see.

[00:12:06]It is about what they refused to investigate.

[00:12:11]It is about how they locked on to Josie Dykeman from the very first hour and never honestly revisited their assumptions even after the medical science, the facts, and their own forensic pathologist proved that major parts of their theory were wrong.

[00:12:27]There's a theory that says you start where you're going to end.

[00:12:32]And he comes out of the box swinging not so much against Derek Pedran, but against the state because it was the state's responsibility to solve this crime.

[00:12:47]And instead of solving this crime, he says, "Look, they found a convenient suspect and that's what they worked with. They didn't try to disprove any other hypothesis. And I think he's right."

[00:13:03]The rest of his closing was very much similar. First, would like to start where the law begins. The burden of proof. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

[00:13:13]And we've all heard that before.

[00:13:16]And what is the burden of proof?

[00:13:19]Well, the burden of proof was built on a hard lesson, which is that when the burden is too low, innocent people do get convicted because human beings, the courts are run by human beings.

[00:13:35]We are all human. We are fallible. We make mistakes. We make assumptions. We have biases.

[00:13:43]And the burden of proof is designed to protect against those human those very human errors. And that is why we have such a high burden. Let me tell you why that's effective. Because a lot of people even though the burden is beyond a reasonable doubt will tend to apply a well if it sounds good it must be true approach and deliberately lower the burden. So you go into it at the beginning and say look this is the burden. This is what they have to meet and if they don't meet it then you have to acquit. And it was really important to him to get that in.

[00:14:25]He could have used examples from history but he didn't. He kept it short and simple and just basically said this is their burden and they didn't meet it >> because society concluded that it is unacceptable to convict innocent people for something they didn't do. So I'll talk briefly about what reasonable doubt is.

[00:14:50]But I'll first start with what it is not.

[00:14:54]What reasonable doubt is not is not that you think something probably happened.

[00:14:59]It is not enough that there is more evidence that you believe of guilt than there is of innocence.

[00:15:06]It is not even enough that you are firmly convinced that you have a strong belief that something bad happened based on the evidence.

[00:15:13]That is not enough.

[00:15:16]The government must eliminate each and every reasonable hypothesis consistent with innocence. any reasonable explanation consistent with Jos's innocence. And we heard some of that in the trial testimony.

[00:15:30]We heard from Dr. Quinton that overdose is a very real possibility. It is squarely supported by the evidence.

[00:15:38]And if this was an accidental overdose, count one must fail.

[00:15:45]This is not an intentional homicide. And if it's an overdose, count three must fail.

[00:15:53]And that's just one example and you'll hear more as we go forward.

[00:16:00]But it is important to know that you do not have to solve every mystery.

[00:16:06]You do not have to pick the explanation that you think is the most uh convincing.

[00:16:13]All you have to do is determine if there is one single reasonable doubt in this case. Just one. And that appeal is designed to go to the juror who is sort of by design a defense witness who may think, you know, the state does overreach and maybe they didn't like Derek Pedran on the stand. And if Derek Pedran's testimony is their one reasonable doubt, well, they're not going to convict. And so again, he's being subtle but very effective in his argumentation here. Now, let's talk about the first truth in this case. That this case was not a search for the truth. It was focused on defending a conclusion from day one.

[00:17:00]A 911 call comes in reporting the tragic death of a child. And even in that first moment, Josie raises the possibility of overdose.

[00:17:09]And so, what do law enforcement do? By sheer happenstance, they arrive within minutes and they immediately judge Josie guilty.

[00:17:20]Immediately they conclude that she must have staged that scene.

[00:17:25]Immediately they thought she must be covering for a horrible crime. Only a murderer would stage the scene.

[00:17:34]And what was their evidence at that point? Hill bottles around on the floor.

[00:17:41]They had no testing on those items. They formed a conclusion based on an assumption from day one and began defending that conclusion rather than trying to find out what actually happened.

[00:17:54]Now, let's talk about the investigation and the incredible failure that we saw because of a breakdown in the chain of command.

[00:18:03]>> This is excellent. Now, you you saw from the testimony that there was no single person in charge of this investigation.

[00:18:11]And Lieutenant Williams, he agreed this is not just an issue about flowcharts and organizational dynamics. This is a critically important factor in any investigation this complex.

[00:18:23]There were hundreds of witnesses to an interview, multiple competing inferences and explanations, medical science, forensic analysis, thousands of hours of video and audio and paper, hundreds of thousands of documents in this very case alone. And so it is critically important that you have one person in charge to assign tasks and to ensure that things do not fall through the cracks, important things.

[00:18:52]But that is not what we had here.

[00:18:56]There was testimony again that no one was truly in charge. And even Sergeant Ammonson when he testified, he testified very reluctantly that he was in the lead. He was the last man standing. Now, there's an analogy that I think captures the concerns with this investigation.

[00:19:15]Imagine putting together a puzzle while throwing away every piece that doesn't immediately fit.

[00:19:24]You probably wouldn't end up with a complete picture.

[00:19:27]>> And this may be one of the best points he makes during the entire closing argument because it illustrates so clearly about how the police were not curious about anything that went against their predetermined narrative. It's a very good pickup on the defense team and these are skilled defense lawyers because they found this and they maximize the benefit of it.

[00:19:56]>> An investigation at the very beginning it should expand. It should look at all the possibilities. It should not immediately narrow. But we saw how this investigation immediately narrowed when instead it should have broadened. And we see that in the DNA evidence, which you didn't hear anything about in the closing argument of the government's attorney.

[00:20:19]And why is that? Because the investigation into the DNA evidence and who touched the pill bottle and the cap was not designed to search for the truth. It was designed to prove that Josie had lied about staging the scene. How do we know that? Because they sent it in, but they only tested for Alexavier's DNA. And guess what? It was on there.

[00:20:42]That supports the idea that he got into something overnight.

[00:20:47]It doesn't support the staging theory.

[00:20:50]And so what did they do? Did they say, you know, that's unexpected. Um, we should look into this. No, they immediately stopped and asked no more questions.

[00:21:00]They didn't test samples from the other adults that could have contributed to those items. They didn't test Derek Pedrin or Josie Dykeman or uh uh Carsten Jar. They simply said, "Oh, no. This doesn't support our theory, so we're going to stop looking."

[00:21:19]>> In this next clip, he makes a great point about the difference between turning over evidence voluntarily and hiding evidence.

[00:21:27]>> The investigators asked Derek, "This was in September, you still have that phone that we were interested in looking into?" He said, "Yes.

[00:21:38]But then a little while later in that same conversation, they asked him again, "Can we see your phone?" He said, "Hone?

[00:21:44]What are you talking about? It's broken.

[00:21:46]I don't have that phone." They never even asked what he meant by that. Not once. They never seized Derek Pedran's phone at all this entire investigation.

[00:21:57]And let's draw the contrast between that behavior and that of Jos's.

[00:22:02]You saw Jos's interview with Lieutenant Williams at the very beginning of this case when this had just happened.

[00:22:09]And Josie handed over the phone willingly. Now, of course, it is true that investigators could have seized that phone without question, and maybe Josie knew that, maybe not.

[00:22:23]But what they couldn't have done is compel her passcode.

[00:22:28]And Josie gave them her passcode without any problem.

[00:22:32]And that unlocked her life for investigators to inspect.

[00:22:38]Guess who didn't do that? Derek Pedran.

[00:22:40]And think about phones just for a moment. A phone is no longer this rotary dial, you know, object that we had in our house that to communicate people across long distances. No, it is now essentially an alter ego. There is no single belonging that any of us possess that gives more insight into what we are doing with our lives, where we physically are located at any given time, what we're searching for, who we're communicating with, what we are communicating about. This gives police a road map into Jos's life. And because she had nothing to hide, she gave it to them. Can we conclude the same thing about Derek Pedran? That is up to you to decide. This segment also reveals a very important truth right at the end.

[00:23:27]>> If Mr. Pedran is willing to lie about some of these most the smallest things that don't matter in a criminal trial, are we really to believe that he wouldn't be willing to lie about what's most important to him, his own responsibility for Alex's death?

[00:23:42]That is a question that you will have to resolve. But the importance of this, the point is that the government's investigation, it created the uncertainty in this case and they own that uncertainty.

[00:23:57]They created it and they took on the highest burden in the law when they filed these charges. And they don't just get to come in here and throw out different possibilities of what might have happened. They have to provide precise proof of what happened in that house and what caused Alex's death.

[00:24:15]And so again, we saw no single investigator reviewing any of the case file, key interviews without police reports. And again, just I must say one more thing about this this meeting that happened in September that was not disclosed in any report.

[00:24:33]In a search for the truth, investigators document important witness context. When they're talking about problems in the case, they're talking about issues in the case.

[00:24:42]They write reports. I mean, they wrote a report about some random person who evidently didn't know Josie and said something about how she wouldn't let her look after her dog, but they didn't write a report with one of their key witnesses who apparently is still a suspect. Why?

[00:25:00]Because if you're searching for the truth, you document these contacts. But if you're defending a conclusion, inconvenient facts have a way of leaving no paper trail.

[00:25:09]>> And then finally, we come to Derek Pedran's credibility as a witness. And I think he does a very good job of not overhyping it. He basically just says, "Look, you have to determine his credibility." And then he points out all the many different things that he did that were contrary to being direct and honest, >> determining their credibility.

[00:25:40]You have Derek, Lauri, Major, Brantley, and children's statements filtered through adults.

[00:25:48]And you heard the statement. Do you like getting your ass beat whether you punched or kicked the children? I don't think so. Derek testified that he couldn't control his violence. So, let's talk about Derek Pedran's credibility.

[00:26:00]We've heard about all of the violence.

[00:26:03]Indisputably, he was deceptive throughout the investigation. He was shown to be manipulative, chronic liar, an alcoholic addict, and there was this sham marriage with Lauri, which we heard about from Misty Craig.

[00:26:23]And he lied about the timeline.

[00:26:26]We'll get to that, the timeline of when he got home that night, the night before Alex died. But let's just take some ba some basic impressions from that testimony because there were so many lies it was very difficult to categorize and catalog them. But here's a figure that I think tells you all you need to know. When he was asked questions on his direct questions that were designed to make Josie look bad, he was very certain.

[00:26:54]He was certain of his answers. When asked questions that would have made Josie look good in any way, he testified, "I don't recall 130 times or more."

[00:27:06]If you're telling the truth, you do not have to remember what you told other people.

[00:27:11]And you experience this having to go in and out while Edin had to constantly be reminded of what he had said on a video recording or an audio recording or something else just to remind him. Yes, that's what you said. You remember that?

[00:27:24]Again, if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember what you said.

[00:27:28]>> And then he brought this all home with a plea basically to acquit Josie.

[00:27:36]>> But does it achieve justice to rely on an investigation that searched only for Jos's evidence of Jos's guilt? Does it achieve justice when the medical science does not support the government's murder theory or its allegations of count three?

[00:27:54]And does it achieve justice when there remain multiple reasonable explanations that are consistent with Jos's innocence?

[00:28:02]It is up to you alone as jurors to determine that.

[00:28:07]Now, your duty is not to the defense, not to the prosecution, not to public opinion, emotion, or sympathy.

[00:28:18]Your duty is to the law and to your own conscience.

[00:28:24]And to be able to walk out of this courtroom without ever having to wonder whether you may have convicted an innocent person.

[00:28:32]And if you have that doubt, then you have your answer. Not guilty on all counts.

[00:28:37]>> I was a little confused when this lawyer did the closing because I really thought Mr. Zacher was going to do it, but for whatever reason, he turfed it off to this fellow who did a lot of the scientific stuff. And I think he may have done it for that reason because I think his closing argument would have been a little bit more emotional.

[00:29:01]And this was calm. It was logical. It was clear.

[00:29:07]And it ended appropriately. He didn't pound the table. He didn't scream about injustice.

[00:29:15]He just asked a very simple question.

[00:29:18]Can you leave here and go home without wondering whether you have convicted an innocent person? And if you can't, then you have to acquitter.

[00:29:32]A great end to a very good closing argument. Probably one of the better ones we've seen this year.

[00:29:39]So, that's what I have for you today.

[00:29:41]Sorry it went a little bit long, but I wanted to get both of them in. And I didn't put nearly as much of the prosecutions in because every time that guy started talking, he just ticked me off. I'm being honest.

[00:29:55]Have a great day. Thanks for watching. I appreciate you being here today. And if you're a new subscriber, a double thank you. That means a lot to me. One of the themes on this channel, in case you didn't know, is kindness. If you have the opportunity today, try to do just one thing to help somebody else. It doesn't have to be a big thing. Any kind thing will do. Buy somebody a Coke. Get them a cup of coffee. Hold a door open for somebody struggling with a package.

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