The Trial of the Century? In his new book THEODORE ROOSEVELT FOR THE DEFENSE, THE COURTROOM BATTLE TO SAVE HIS LEGACY ABC News anchor Dan Abrams talks Teddy Roosevelt, Donald Trump and Joe Biden and what was then The Trial of the Century, no not the O.J. Simpson trial that made Abrams a household name, but the one starring President Theodore Roosevelt and that’s we’re we begin this week when Abrams joins Halli in conversation and Halli and Halli’s partner in politics veteran White House correspondent Matthew Cooper slice and dice all things politics on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show with Matthew Cooper, the podcast posted at Halli Casser-Jayne dot com.

We begin this week with a conversation with ABC News anchor Dan Abrams, entrepreneur and author of the new book THEODORE ROOSEVELT FOR THE DEFENSE, THE COURTROOM BATTLE TO SAVE HIS LEGACY. It is clear Dan Abrams never sleeps. The chief legal affairs correspondent for ABC News as well as the host of top-rated Live PD on A&E Network and The Dan Abrams Show: Where Politics Meets the Law on SiriusXM in his spare time writes book. On the heels of his New York Times bestselling LINCOLN’S LAST TRIAL: THE MURDER CASE THAT PROPELLED HIM co-authored with his writing partner David Fisher, the new book explores what was considered “the trial of the century” before that other trial that made Abrams a household name, The O.J. Simpson Trial. Roosevelt, always fascinating, takes on a new light in Abrams eminently readable and eye-opening new book.

From there Halli and Matt move on to review the week in politics:  Democratic Party front-runner Joe Biden does what some call a flip-flop on his position on the Hyde Amendment, causing quite a stir on the left, as polls continue to show Biden way out in front in the presidential contest, and Donald Trump a loser against most of the Democratic Party’s possible presidential nominees. Trump goes even more loopy over the purported Mexico deal, than talking to a press gaggle appears more loopy than usual, his loopiness becoming par for the course, even off the links. Is Nancy Pelosi responsible for Trump’s slight gain in the polls as she continues to fight an impeachment inquiry, as Jerry Nadler starts to lose his cool at her resistance to There’s more. What a show! See you there!

Dan Abrams, the trial of the century, Theodore Roosevelt, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, lot’s of fun and always insightful political conversation on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show the podcast posted at Halli Casser-Jayne dot com.

Wednesday, April 1, 3 pm ET, tune in to The Halli Casser-Jayne Show for a conversation you won’t soon forget. Joining Halli at her table is Kim Goldman author of CAN’T FORGIVE!

Don’t tell Kim Goldman she needs to find closure. Don’t ask her to forgive and forget. When Kim Goldman was just 22, her older brother, Ron Goldman was brutally murdered by unconvicted football legend and film star O.J. Simpson. Ron and Kim were very close, and her devastation was compounded by the shocking not guilty verdict in what was to be called The Trial of the Century. Now twenty years later, Kim Goldman shares what she calls her “twenty year battle” with O.J. Simpson in her book CAN’T FORGIVE.

Counseled by friends, strangers and even Oprah to “find that closure,” Kim chose a different route. She chose to fight and that fight would be subject of tabloid fodder now nearing a quarter of a century. Repeatedly, Kim and her family pursued Simpson by every legal means possible. Foiled over and again, they ultimately achieved a small measure of justice.

Closure? Who says? Let’s talk! Kim Goldman’s fight with O.J. Simpson on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, Wednesday, April 1st, 3 pm ET. For more information visit Halli Casser-Jayne dot com.

Paris Carriger, a prisoner’s story to be told.

Today, October 24 on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, Talk Radio for Fine Minds, 3 pm EST we’ll be discussing Proposition 34, titled by election officials as “Death Penalty. Initiative Statute”, on the November 6, 2012 ballot in California as an initiated state statute. If the state’s voters approve it, Proposition 34 will eliminate the death penalty in California and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. Among our guests for the hour, Gil Garcetti, former Los Angeles County District Attorney who prosecuted O.J. Simpson; Jeanne Woodford, former warden of San Quentin Prison; Judy Kerr, whose brother was murdered and whose killer was never found; Marty Foley, lead detective in the notorious Wellesley Case. The subject of  the death penalty is a controversial subject, to be sure, but The Halli Casser-Jayne Show is Talk Radio for Fine Minds and Lovers of Controversy. We hope you’ll tune in for a riveting discussion.

READ THE STORY OF PARIS CARRIGER:

More than three years ago, On Dec. 6, 1995, an innocent man came within hours of being executed for a murder he did not commit. Paris Carriger had been on Arizona’s death row since 1978. The real murderer, whose false testimony had convicted Carriger, confessed to the crime in 1987. But by then Carriger had exhausted his rights to appeal, and the Arizona courts refused to grant him a new trial.

Because there were no technical deficiencies in the state case, the federal courts had declined to intervene even as late as Nov. 30, 1995. But as the last days ticked away, more than a thousand letters supporting Carriger’s plea for a new trial poured into Arizona, many from readers of this column. At the last moment, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a stay of execution.

A just-published Supreme Court ruling had enabled that intervention, but the letters from Globe readers, as Carriger’s lawyer told me, had helped make ”the judges look at this case differently.”

Nearly a year later, Carriger was crushed when the Ninth Circuit panel, despite ”serious doubts,” reinstated the execution order. Recent, ever-more-stringent court decisions had put the burden on defendants like Carriger, the federal court said, ”to show he is unquestionably innocent. This Carriger has not done.” How Carriger could have done so without a new trial at which to reconsider evidence universally acknowledged to be ”tainted” the court did not say. One more time, Carriger’s lawyers appealed.

Yet another year passed. Then, in December 1997, the full nine-judge bench of the Ninth Circuit reversed the panel, ordering a new trial, with the majority saying it was ”certain that no reasonable juror would vote to convict Carriger.” (Click HERE to read the full Ninth Circuit Opinion and Dissent.)  Arizona, which had tried for so long to kill him, appealed the ruling to the US Supreme Court. Last May, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. In 1984, a State Supreme Court justice had written, ”There was no direct evidence of Carriger’s guilt.” There was only the false testimony of the confessed murderer, who had died in 1991. Nevertheless, the State of Arizona, unable to tolerate Carriger’s exoneration or admit its own mistake, charged him again. Then, of course, the state offered a plea-bargain. He could stay in prison for another indeterminate stretch, probably years – or he could plead ”no contest” to the reinstated murder charge in exchange for a sentence of time already served, which he did. Two weeks ago, on Friday, Jan. 15, Paris Carriger walked out of Maricopa County Jail, a free man.

”I was wearing a snow white paper bunny suit,” he told me when we talked on the phone a few days ago. ”No shoes, no socks, no nothing. It’s like this jumpsuit made out of paper so thin you can see through it.”

Carriger was supposed to be released days earlier. ”But they had scheduled the execution of another inmate for Wednesday of that week,” his lawyer, Jay Poltz, told me. In fact, Jess James Giles was executed Jan. 13. ”So they held Paris until Friday. I guess they could see the irony.”

”I had been in prison,” Carriger told me, ”for 20 years and 300 days.” Eight paces in one direction – the length of his cell – then back again: It was all the exercise he’d had in years. ”I can’t walk very far,” he told me. ”My back is atrophied. My last six months in county jail, I needed a wheelchair. But I didn’t have a wheelchair when they let me go. I came out of that place hanging onto the wall.”

Now Carriger is living with his sister and her family in Oklahoma. He has rejoined American society only to find it obsessed with the way politics has hijacked law. The absurd fallibilities of the US legal system are on display in Washington now, but in Arizona they had nearly killed Carriger. The fallibility of our judges and politicians has never been more dramatically exposed, yet Americans continue to treat these officials as infallible in one last thing – the administration of capital punishment. Electrocution, lethal injection, hanging: It has become a slow-motion massacre. In some cases, it is a slaughter of the innocent.

When I asked Carriger what he would do next, he answered that he wanted to work against the death penalty. ”Maybe Amnesty International,” he said. I knew he was thinking of Barbara Sproul, a longtime Amnesty volunteer who had begun as his advocate, then became his friend. Last week Barbara told me of Paris’s jubilant phone call to her, how he had suddenly cut it short to go outside when rain started to fall. He had not felt rain on his face in 20 years.

Finally, I asked Paris if there was anything he wanted to convey to my readers, many of whom have been pulling for him. ”Tell them I am better off than the state wanted me to be,” he said with a certain flippancy. Then he fell silent before adding quietly, ”Thank you is not an easy word for me to say. But tell them I thank them.”