CenLAw
Kellye, the true crime enthusiast, and Kyler, her willing partner, delve into intriguing cases from Central & Northeastern Louisiana.
From small-town cases to nationally known crimes, they bring you stories that hit close to home, always with that Louisiana connection.
Tune in bi-weekly for your true crime fix and support their show for a shout-out in the next episode.
Stay safe out there!
CenLAw
Bonus Episode #2 - Marvin Watson (Ep.7) Appeal Update!!
We appreciate your ratings, reviews, and feedback on our platforms, so don't hesitate to join the conversation!
In this bonus episode, we discuss the recent appeal of Marvin Watson's case from our Episode 7 - Two Times a Killer.
Watson was found guilty of first-degree murder for the killings of Megan McCoy and her son Lafrederick McCoy.
We also touch on various updates and news, urging our listeners to engage with our content on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms.
Stay tuned for our upcoming regular episode on Monday. Take care and see you next time!
This has been an elfaudio production.
Thanks for listening & Take care out there!
All🎶created by: Uncle Sawyer
Hey, Send Lawson Fam. Welcome to bonus episode number two. I'm Kelly.
Speaker 2:And I'm Kyler.
Speaker 1:And he's finally on an episode with me. It seems like it's been forever, alright, and you guys have no way of knowing this, but we had to literally stop after we recorded the first 11 seconds and we're back now. Okay, so episode seven came out. I don't remember exactly when that was. I think it was in September, very end of August, so August 28th Almost an hour long. Probably could have made two episodes out of that one, just because of how much we had and all of the different rabbit holes that I wanted to go down.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:Go ahead.
Speaker 2:What did we end up deciding that we thought was going to be the reasoning for the appeal? Was it a timing issue?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's what we kind of. We said something about that did not enough time or something like that, and kind of jokingly because there's not. I couldn't really see a whole lot of grounds, but I mean they're always going to appeal some part or whatever. But having already read through the appeal and knowing what he based it on, I don't think we had any mention of any of it. So in that regard we were off.
Speaker 1:But we were correct absolutely in the fact that he did not use an effective assistance of counsel. Well, he could not have. Nope, not even a little bit, and his appeal appellate attorneys knew as much and knew that that would be kind of a waste of time to try to say that that was a thing. So, and I think that's honestly, I think just by reading all of these appeals, I think more often than not, if they do argue in effective assistance of counsel, it's a public defender and that's generally. I mean, there's nothing against it. It's just, you know, it's a well-known fact that public defenders have way more cases than they have time. Even with the specific attorneys that they use for murder cases and such, they're still spread pretty thin. So, because in Louisiana public defenders can also be private attorneys, so they have their private clients and their public defender clients.
Speaker 2:So you know, and I knew that just from seeing it, but I hadn't actually put that together, I did not realize that. Cognitively, I guess I would say Right.
Speaker 1:So before we get to the appeal, though, I do want to go over a quick rundown of the stats and things. Like I said, first bonus episode, I gave you guys stats and within the three or four days it took for that episode to actually come out, they changed crazy change. And if you are Wondering how to keep up with us on more of a regular basis, we have also Started a tick top. I have nine o'clock a tick tock.
Speaker 1:It's sin law podcast, the YouTube same thing sin law podcast, which should be getting better by the end of the year because Google podcast is Transmortifying into YouTube podcast. They're getting rid of Google podcast completely and they're doing it. Hopefully they'll get it to where we can rss be straight into the YouTube's nice and just kind of melt those things together.
Speaker 1:So I think it would be pretty awesome, because that's one of my biggest issues right now is, you know, being able to transfer the Audio file to a video file just to be able to upload it to the YouTube. I'm still posting shorts, but the one that I'm mostly and mainly active on is tick tock, because those ones are just easy and they go through quick. And I Actually got that idea from another podcast that I came across called Tell me a tell me a true crime story, and she does a lot of video posting on On tick tock and not even specifically about her cases, just things that she finds interesting. So I thought that was pretty cool. And I think I also have a Twitter account, which I'm not calling it X, not because I don't like Elon or whatever. She's your twit, and then I just I don't, I don't, it just doesn't feel right. I've known Twitters, twitter, since before they were born, so I feel like we're a little bit more intimate than X.
Speaker 2:I mean, you can't get very much more intimate. The next right right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anyway, that's that's what I'm doing. So we've got at Sunlaw podcast. For all of those, I didn't have to do any crazy kind of spellings or anything. So you can find us on any of those varying platforms. If you have any questions or anything, you can comment them on. The tick tock that YouTube. You can shoot us, shoot us, shoot us a tweet, or you know anything like that. And of course, there's always the email. But one thing I would like for you guys to do please, please, please. If you're listening to us on a regular basis, please stop for half a second. I know you guys are busy, I know you got a lot going on, but take the half a second. Give us a rating and a review. If you can write the full review out, even if it's just a couple words, or to tell us how bad we are, to tell us what we can fix, or To tell us to you know, stick to our J jobs, anything like that is fine. Just stop.
Speaker 2:I give us a rate and a review and then that'll actually help if your advice is stick to our J Jobs, we're not gonna listen to it. Mm-hmm, this is too much, oh read it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I read it and I'll talk about it. I'll make another bonus episode. If you guys, if you leave me a fun review, like Whatever you can come up with, I'll read it out on the next bonus episode. So, and I'm trying to get it timed out to where we have one on our off-week, no telling what actual day they will fall on. I try to keep to a Monday schedule but yeah, because we're still only putting out episodes every two weeks right now.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right, we're talking about this.
Speaker 1:Yes, because we don't have off weeks in real life. We've had birthdays, we've had Halloween's, we've had oh and happy Halloween, happy couple days late Halloween our son's birthday was on just this past Friday, so we've had a lot of a lot going on, which, thankfully, we had a couple of episodes that we had already recorded from earlier. Whoo-hoo, go stockpile, yeah, but now we're out. We're completely out now, though, so I'm getting back to it. The Statistics that I get. Oh, I said it right. Look at me. There's only a couple words on this planet and in the English language that I struggled with, and that last one stats that that is the full word, the full word. I have a very hard time getting it out of my mouth properly, and that was one of the lucky few, so I'm probably just gonna copy and paste that. Everywhere else I try to say that word, so, anyway, you hear that exact sound bite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, it did work. Okay. So you guys did amazing in October. So we did. Either way, you guys loved us in October. How about that? He had a hundred and ninety two downloads in just October. Our all-time total is 486 as of today. So if we don't get at least 195 ish in November, we're gonna be under the bar. And just to put that into perspective, our top month before that, in September, the closest one, was 113. So it went from 113 to almost 113 to 192. So a good jump there.
Speaker 1:I also wanted to talk about the fact that we have listeners from around the globe at this point, not just Mexico and the Philippines, and I think we had France and India and maybe Ireland on the last one as well. We've also got people listening in Australia, from Down Under and in the UK. So keep listening, guys. Thanks. Our top cities are still Dallas, and Louisiana comes in with a top two, three and four, and then Mississippi, georgia, florida, more Louisiana, louisiana, all the way down till we get into the low numbers, single digits, but mostly in Louisiana. So represent thank you guys. Keep telling your friends about us and remember that one.
Speaker 1:No, remember Evanston, wyoming, remember I told you, because that's the one that listened to every single episode except for the bonus, except for the bonus episode.
Speaker 2:Oh, so then that would be all nine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we have 11 now, so they need to do some catching up. Shout out to Evanston Wyoming whoever you are, anyway. So almost at 500 listens or 500 downloads from our host site. The Apple podcast is about 474, if I remember correctly, and almost half of those have been in the last 30 to 60 days. So thank you guys so much. I like to think it has something to do with this being a little bit more present on TikTok and YouTube. Hold that in mind.
Speaker 1:Rating review on Apple Spotify. Wherever I can't see the ones on Spotify, I can't see who posted the rating, unless they write a review. So if you only click the stars on Spotify, I won't be able to see who left those stars and tell them thank you. But we will still appreciate it. We will still talk about it. Yes, absolutely so. Let's go ahead and get to what you guys came here for.
Speaker 1:So I'm just gonna go ahead and read the facts and procedural history as per the appeal document. It's gonna just be easier than me trying to recollect off the top of my head and it'll be a little bit more accurate. So, according to court records and to this court document, specifically at 12 33 AM on July 30th 2019, officers from Concordia Parasher's office were dispatched to a home in Clayton, louisiana, to respond to a 911 call made by I'm good Demarcus McCoy, who was the son of Megan McCoy. Demarcus told the 911 operator that he arrived to find his mother, megan McCoy now Watson, and his 12 year old brother, lafrederick McCoy, unresponsive. He further advised that Ms Watson or, I'm sorry, mr Watson, megan's husband was not home. Upon their arrival, officers found the victim's line dead on the kitchen floor. Based on the amount of blood and apparent gunshot wounds, it appeared the victims had been shot to death.
Speaker 1:Officers were informed that at approximately 12 55, mr Watson had surrendered himself to the Adams County Sheriff's Office and natched straight across the bridge from Vardalia, where he also surrendered two firearms a tactical rifle or an AR-15, which we now know is Armolite rifle, it has nothing to do with assault rifle and a Ruger-22 pistol. Mr Watson was later charged with one count of first degree murder of Lafrederick under trial court dockets such and such, and additional count of first degree murder of Megan under a different docket number. On February 12, 2020, defense Council filed a motion to recuse the District Attorney's office, arguing that the District Attorney could not be fair and impartial because an investigator in their office was related to the victim, the victims. The trial court denied the motion on March 10th 2020. And I don't think we touched on that at all in our episode. I must have just completely missed that or it got lost in the shuffle of continuances due to COVID and everything else.
Speaker 2:And there was a. There was just a lot going on with that case as well.
Speaker 1:Now, mr Watson filed a pro se motion to recuse the district attorney's office on September 28th and a pro se motion to recuse the trial judge on October 9th of 2020, but both of those motions were also denied. Now, on April 12th of 2021, the state consolidated the charges for trial and a jury selection began. They had a four day trial. The jury unanimously found him guilty on both counts and on April 19th he filed a pro se motion for a new trial. He alleged that there was purposeful discrimination in the selection of the jury. On April 28th, about nine days later, the trial court held a hearing on that motion and after they denied that, watson waived the sentencing delays and was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
Speaker 2:Now, in what way? In what way were they trying to uh to? How? How are they trying to say that there was purposeful discrimination? Uh, why, uh, why.
Speaker 1:But in the selection of the jury.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we're, I think we're going to get to that Cause I think that's one of his um assignments of error. So, um, let me just get through here, okay. So so he waived his sentencing delays, which we talked about. That I believe it was in the last episode of the not not the last one, but the last one. We actually recorded most recently that they have to wait like 24 hours for a, uh, cooling off period or what have you. Even if it is a high, even if it is a mandatory sentence, like they know, they're going to get live without parole, but they still have that amount of time.
Speaker 2:I know that we had talked about thinking, thinking that the timing issue, uh, maybe one of the reasons for uh for the appeal.
Speaker 1:He waived his sentencing delays and was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment at a hard labor without benefit. So he is now asserting two assignments of error after. Okay, this was. This was very interesting. I've never seen this before in any of the appeals that I've gone through. Um, they always do just kind of like a blanket appeal. Do you remember in the Dyson's or the Dias Sant case he basically just appealed um in general, saying that they must have messed up somewhere. Check it out for me, which is something you can do, just to you know the general um errors patent on the face of the record.
Speaker 2:I just don't like it Right.
Speaker 1:Right, so see if you can find anything wrong with it.
Speaker 2:I don't like the cut of you, Jim Right.
Speaker 1:So they did that for this case as well, as they do for all of the cases, as well as the errors that they're um claiming in the appeal. So in this one, after they did their face of the record look over, they found that there were no errors patent, but the minutes of the sentencing needed to be corrected. Although the transcript indicates that the trial court ordered the two life sentences to be served consecutively, the minutes actually said concurrently. So that was an addendum that they ended up making as part of this appeal decision, which I thought was pretty cool. So what did they say was wrong? First and foremost, Watson alleges that the evidence was insufficient to support first degree murder and that it was also insufficient in so much as to say that they couldn't prove that it wasn't self-defense.
Speaker 2:Doesn't the mere fact that the One murder was carried out in conjunction with the other give it enough to be first def first?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, absolutely. But if he was going to say it was self-defense, then you could technically write it off completely or you could give him a lesser sentence based on the mitigating factors. So if he said that he killed them both in, you know, in fear of his life, and that was actually proven to be, you know, accurate enough, then they could reduce the sentence saying and not make it a manslaughter or whatever, or for you know, hunting somebody down and dragging and rearranging and cleaning.
Speaker 2:Wait, what did we talk about? Sorry?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, not, none of that. First error, like I said, was that they didn't present sufficient evidence to establish that they were not in self-defense and basically said that you know they didn't prove their case by preponderance of the evidence, or you know that's not yeah anyway. So the second error or issue was whether or not the trial court aired in denying the change of venue which would have also created a different jury pool. Yada, yada, yada, so on and so forth. So basically, going into it, he says they didn't have enough evidence to prove that what I was arguing was not right, and then they also didn't give me a change of venue and that effed up my jury pool and you know, she's just well known and the ruling that came back from the appellate court.
Speaker 1:The judges said well, no, you're wrong.
Speaker 1:Well, because, like I told you guys back when we released the episode in August, at the end of August, as recent as March of this year, they had requested more detailed information from this file of Marvin Watson's case because they wanted to be able to go over everything in detail.
Speaker 1:Now, that included going through every single line of the Vaudyre, which is when they question all of the potential jurors and when I want to tell you that the worst part of reading any kind of transcript from court because I love reading court transcripts, but the most boring everything is reading when they're talking to however many potential jurors and going through the same questions and the same information and all of the things.
Speaker 1:So doing that you know that in and of itself makes the appellate judges absolute rock stars, blanket.
Speaker 1:So to go through that and look through every single answer and to double check and make sure that you said blanket, yeah, make sure that none of the answers that were given by any of the jurors that eventually made it into the jury pool or into the box, as it were, to hear the trial. They said that you know the majority of the people that were there had never heard of the case, that they didn't actually know anything about the specifics or, if they did know of the person or one of the victims or the defendant, that you know they had no bias one way or the other, that they could be unbiased and make a sound judgment or whatever. So basically the judges came back and said no, everything's good, you're gonna stay in jail, we affirm your sentencing, we affirm your judgments and the only thing that we're gonna change is. We want to make sure that it reflects that your minutes say the appropriate sentence, that it's not to be concurrent, that it will be served consecutively.
Speaker 2:So so basically, no, you're not getting any less time. Actually, you're gonna give more the same amount you're supposed to get yeah. As the documents show, you will be getting more time, but, as as it stands, you will be getting the same amount you've always been supposed to get yeah, basically what happened was, if he hadn't us kick the hornet's nest, he could have quote because he can't, he's not gonna change it, fucking thing he could have, maybe possibly convince somebody eventually, like 60 years from now, when he's dead, that he could He'd get out because it was a concurrent instead of a consecutive, but probably not mm-hmm, because, uh, mm-hmm, he wouldn't have known.
Speaker 1:All right, because it was like they said it was stated in. It was stated completely accurately in all of the trial transcripts. What happened was a literal wrong word by the clerk when she was put in putting her minutes which Damn auto type Well, and sometimes they copy and paste shit, but I mean like it's not not for that kind of case, though, but that that's literally all they did was say huh, you're gonna stay in jail, all your shit stays the same, but we're gonna make sure that it is absolutely reflected properly that you are not getting concurrent. These are consecutive, so even if you manage to live a second time, you still gonna be in jail. So, having said all of that, he can still make another appeal for the Supreme Court. They only hear about I think it's 8% at this point of all cases that get submitted to them. So I mean like 8% chance it's still a higher chance than I was actually expecting.
Speaker 1:I think it's 8, it might be 4. I get those numbers confused and you know like 98% of all percentages are made up on the spot, so yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna start carrying around a foam finger or something to laugh you with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you love me, all right, so that's pretty much it for that. It kind of shuts the door completely on him, did not the best appeal arguments. But again, like this was a pretty rock solid case, like he turned himself in, he had the murder weapon. He admitted to killing them. The only thing he wanted to try to say was how it happened, and there is just no evidence of that whatsoever.
Speaker 1:So he is still, I believe, in Angola. Let me fact check that. That's real quick. Yep, yep, he is still in Angola. He is 58 years old at the time of this recording and he will be residing there until such a time comes to pass that he is no longer breathing the same air as all those other fine people in Angola which, as of right now, I know there's. I think they're still having issues with the juvenile thing, but we'll talk more about that maybe on the next bonus episode, because they got a lot of weird stuff going on. I mean, like everything's just been crazy, I think oh my god. And Matthew Perry just passed away literally yesterday. So it's been a lot, you know.
Speaker 1:There's been a lot going on in the world and Louisiana and all over the place gesting relevance just in general, like just topic of conversation for most people that are alive and and so in so much as to say that the world is crazy. So be extra safe and take extra care. I hope you guys had a wonderful, happy Halloween. I am trying to cash in on some of these discounted Halloween decorations, trying to get volunteers.
Speaker 2:This can't. Halloween decorations discount, halloween candy.
Speaker 1:Decorations for next year, so we can win win what?
Speaker 1:they have a competition every year. I'll show you in a minute. They don't have to worry about it right now. But thank you guys for listening. Come back. We will have a new episode coming out on Monday. As long as I can get Kyler to sit his ass down long enough and maybe have somebody watch the baby long enough for us to actually get it done a lot that one Just a couple days from now. Hope you guys like this bonus episode. Go check out our tick tock, our YouTube, leave us a rating and a review, let us know what you think and we will see you guys again on Monday. I'll take care out there.
Speaker 2:Love y'all. See you next time.
