- [Devin] Thanks to Mack Weldon
for keeping LegalEagle in the air
and helping me look fly.
(eagle screeches)
♪ But she caught me on the counter ♪
♪ It wasn't me ♪
♪ Saw me kissin' on the sofa ♪
- Shut up. ♪ It wasn't me ♪
♪ I even had her in the shower ♪
- Shut up.
(gentle chiming music)
Hey legal eagles, it's time to think like a lawyer
because I am on vacation.
I have left the craziness that is Washington, DC
to try and get a respite from that,
but unfortunately the law follows you everywhere.
So today, we're gonna take a deep dive
into one of the early 2000's classics,
Shaggy, "It Wasn't Me."
Because, believe it or not,
this is a wonderful piece of law school
hypothetical waiting to be analyzed
and so we are going to analyze it in excruciating detail
to find out if the it wasn't me defense actually holds up.
If you see an increase in quality today,
that's because I have my friend Patrick Willems,
who is the director of this particular video.
So if things look much better, or much worse,
than they usually do, it's because of Patrick.
In fact, there's Patrick right there.
- Hey.
- Definitely check out Patrick's YouTube channel,
Patrick H Willems, and if not for Patrick
then definitely for his parents.
All right, so without further ado,
let's dig in to Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me."
We're actually doing this.
(knuckles rapping on door)
- Yo, man.
- Yo.
- Open up, man.
- Yeah, what do you want, man?
- My girl just caught me.
- So, already we have some problems here.
It appears that Shaggy and I believe RikRok,
if that's a real person,
are in a situation where one of them has been caught
let's call it red handed and they need some legal advice.
RikRok is the one who has gotten himself in trouble
and Shaggy is the reggaeton rapper
who is providing the counsel here.
Which, in and of itself is a big problem
because you can't give legal advice
if you're not an attorney.
Already, Shaggy here has made some crucial admissions.
If I were to represent him, I think that I would counsel him
not to talk to a random friend, to talk to a lawyer,
and certainly stop making admissions against interest
because if someone got a hold of this evidence,
admission against interest is a hearsay exception.
Shut the (beep) up and talk to an attorney.
- You let her catch you?
- I don't know how I left this happen.
- With who? - Okay, ignorance
is not a defense.
- Nah.
- I don't know what to do.
- Say it wasn't you.
♪ All right. ♪
- Okay, so this may not be a strictly legal thing
that we need to talk about,
but if RikRok is talking about the girl next door,
I feel that in a post-R. Kelly world
we need to question how old this girl is.
Is she past the age of consent?
I'm not sure I actually want to know
the answer to this question
because if I know that there is ongoing criminality
going on, then I may have an obligation
to turn that over to the police here.
And, speaking of R. Kelly,
commentators have referred to R. Kelly's defense
as the Shaggy defense in his multiple court trials.
- That doesn't even make sense.
Why would I hold all these women?
♪ 'Cause I'm a flirt ♪
- So, yeah, that's some terrible stuff
to think about as well.
♪ Honey came in and she caught me red-handed ♪
♪ Creepin' with the girl next door ♪
♪ Picture this ♪
♪ We were both caught makin' love on the bathroom floor ♪
♪ How could I forget that I had ♪
♪ Given her an extra key ♪
- Okay, so what my client here has done
is an admission that's not good.
He has admitted to giving a key
to the woman who he was cheating on.
Now, that being said, obviously that cuts against
any defense of trespass here.
But, just because you have given your girlfriend
a key to your place doesn't necessarily mean
that she has permission to enter at all times.
Did she enter during regular business hours?
Did she come over at a time late at night
when he wouldn't expect her to be there?
Does she have cohabitation rights
with this particular apartment or house?
All of these are potential things
that might make it, let's say, illegal for her
to be trespassing in poor RikRok's house.
She may not have a claim
to be able to legally enter into the premises.
♪ All this time she was standing there ♪
♪ She never took her eyes off me ♪
- Okay, we have a problem here.
RikRok has admitted that the only eyewitness
to this alleged infidelity
never took her eyes off of the situation.
Now, that's not great.
In general, direct eyewitness testimony
is not as reliable as you might necessarily believe.
Often, people forget, often things are dark,
and what has been shown time and time again
is that actual eyewitness identifications can be suspect.
The problem here is that RikRok has identified
that this person knew him beforehand.
When you have someone who knows the person in question,
direct eyewitness testimony can be very, very good.
But, let's roll the tape back
and take a look at this supposed eyewitness testimony.
(tape squeals backwards)
♪ All this time she was standing there ♪
♪ She never took her eyes off me ♪
- It appears that she never
got a direct view of this person.
She only saw the back of RikRok
which means that perhaps this eyewitness testimony
is not quite as damning as it would first appear.
It's entirely plausible that it, in fact, was not him.
♪ It wasn't me ♪
- Except for all the admissions and stuff.
♪ I even had her in the shower ♪
♪ It wasn't me ♪
♪ She even caught me on camera ♪
- So we have a couple of problems here.
Number one, this appears to be security footage
taken from the house itself which could be a violation
of the right to privacy if you were to publicize that.
We've seen all kinds of revenge porn cases
where you can't use this kind of footage
outside of the home itself.
Who knows where this poor woman got this footage from,
but it may not in fact be admissible in court
and it's not clear that everyone has consented
to the photographs and photography themselves.
And it's unclear where this is taking place,
but if this is in fact in California,
California is a two-party consent state
which means that everyone that is being video recorded
would have to consent to that recording
being admissible in court
or to being publicized somewhere else.
♪ To be a true player you've to know how to play ♪
♪ If she say a night convince her say a day ♪
♪ Never admit to a word what she say ♪
♪ And if she claim a yuh, tell her, baby, no way ♪
- So, Shaggy is offering the advice
that you have to convince this woman
that night is day and that never admit--
♪ Admit to a word what she say ♪
- (laughs) We're gonna get to some other verses here
that are even funnier.
The bottom line is you get the legal advice that you pay for
and since RikRok has not paid for this legal advice,
that is exactly the value of the legal advice
that he is getting here.
♪ But she caught me on the counter ♪
♪ It wasn't me ♪
♪ Saw me kissin' on the sofa ♪
- Shut up. ♪ It wasn't me ♪
♪ I even had her in the shower ♪
- Shut up. ♪ It wasn't me ♪
♪ She even caught me on camera ♪
♪ It wasn't me ♪
- Some of the best advice that you can give to a client
as an attorney is really just be quiet, stop talking.
Do not talk to the authorities, don't talk to your friends,
don't admit any particular liability or wrongdoing,
and here RikRok is making the classic mistake
of not only talking to everyone about it,
but admitting it over and over and over again.
But, what a competent lawyer will do
is to review all of the evidence.
And once again, I have to point out
that we have never seen RikRok's face
in any of these potential scenes,
so if we can in fact keep his testimony out of this thing,
then what we have here is just circumstantial evidence.
Let's see, the counter, the sofa, the shower,
and also on camera, so four different potential situations.
When you talk about circumstantial evidence,
or at least you hear on TV or in the movies,
it's always, oh this case is going nowhere
because it's just circumstantial evidence.
This is some really damning circumstantial evidence.
So the fact that we haven't seen his face on camera
probably doesn't matter all that much.
We've seen a person in RikRok's house
appear to act as if this is their house
and they're having sex all over the place
and, you know, just 'cause you can't make a positive ID
doesn't mean that this circumstantial evidence
isn't extremely, extremely strong.
And, frankly, in general circumstantial evidence
tends to be pretty strong.
DNA evidence is a type of circumstantial evidence.
So, yeah, RikRok is digging himself
into a deeper and deeper legal hole here.
Let's see if he can get out of it.
♪ She even caught me on camera ♪
♪ It wasn't me ♪
♪ She saw the marks on my shoulder ♪
♪ It wasn't me ♪ - Oh no.
- This might have been the worst verse of all,
if I were trying to defend RikRok here.
Because he mentioned not only did this woman
see the entire situation, multiple times,
over and over and over again, including on camera,
but she also saw the marks on his shoulder.
Now, why is that legally significant?
Well, at least in California
and in most states that I'm aware of,
part of the discovery process,
which is the pre-trial procedure,
how you get all of the documents
and various pieces of evidence
that go into the trial itself,
part of that process involves
what's called a medical examination.
It's a request for a medical examination.
And so in the same way
that you can request certain documents,
in this case you would obviously request
the video camera footage,
whether that is in fact admissible or not,
but you can also demand that the court
make an order allowing you to get the medical records
or, in fact, make a medical examination of the defendant.
And in this case, if there are marks on his shoulder
from where this other woman scratched him or bit him,
as I'm told consenting adults can do on occasion,
the girlfriend or wife could make a demand of the court
and force RikRok to stand for an examination
to verify that those marks are still there.
All right, let's address the elephant in the room.
Is Shaggy's recommendation to claim that, "It wasn't me,"
over and over and over again good legal advice?
- I don't know what to do.
- Say it wasn't you.
- I'm of two minds about this.
It's obviously not good to go out
and talk about your acts of infidelity at all.
It'd be better just to shut up.
That being said, as a political defense,
it might work better than a legal defense.
What we have seen, at least in this day and age,
15 or 20 years after Shaggy pioneered
the it wasn't me defense is that some politicians,
who I absolutely won't name,
have been able to use this defense,
let's say, over and over and over again
by doing something and then either tweeting out
or having other members
of this particular political administration
go out and claim that it also wasn't them
and that they didn't do the thing
that they admitted to on camera or tweeted out.
But anyway, enough about the (beep) administration.
This is probably not great legal advice
because if, for no other reason,
it cabins you and boxes you in into one particular story.
Maybe there's an affirmative defense
other than, "It wasn't me."
(gentle chiming music)
He tripped and fell into the shower.
Or, he moonlights as a yoga instructor
and was just helping this woman,
a private client, obviously, with her flexibility.
And then, having worked up a sweat in this Bikram yoga
one-on-one session, he offered the shower to wash off.
She, being new to town, didn't know how to use the shower,
it's one of those really complicated,
like three handle things, so he took his shirt off
while he was helping this woman next door.
♪ It wasn't me ♪
- What I'm saying is that there are other defenses.
(stammers) I don't know.
I don't know. (Patrick laughs)
- [Patrick] This is exceeding all of my expectations.
(gentle chiming music)
♪ Time she was standing there ♪
♪ She never took her eyes off me ♪
♪ Wanna tell her that I'm sorry ♪
♪ For the pain that I've caused ♪
- No, no, no.
Don't do that. ♪ Listenin' to your reason ♪
♪ It makes so sense at all ♪
- Absolutely do not do that.
Do not admit liability.
Unless, unless we have already gone through
the liability phase, he has been caught,
he has been found and adjudicated
to have engaged in this adultery, then as a last hail Mary,
perhaps you might be able to get some clemency
from the judge by admitting culpability
and taking responsibility for what you have done.
You know, I think that this particular music video
is a great example of the fact
that sometimes you don't get to choose your clients.
Sure, it would be great to deal
with innocent people all the time,
but the guilty also require representation as well,
that's part of what makes our adversarial system
work in the first place.
But, you know, if it were up to me,
I probably would not choose Shaggy or RikRok
to be my client in this particular situation.
I think my advice to both of them would be settle.
Of course, I'm not in trial and, in fact, I'm on vacation,
which is why I'm wearing this incredibly soft polo
from Mack Weldon,
who I'm thrilled is the sponsor of this video.
And what you can't see,
but out of frame are the Mack Weldon shorts.
In fact, here is a clip of me
just walking along the beach in my Mack Weldon shorts.
(triumphant orchestral music)
Of course, what Mack Weldon
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Well, actually, hold on.
(strains)
In fact, they're so comfortable,
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(waves crashing)
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So, do you agree with my defense of Shaggy and RikRok?
Leave your objections in the comments
and check out my other playlist of other lawyer reactions
and other legal news over here
where I will see you in court.