Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening to AFR. Today is Tuesday, September 29, 2026.
Tim Wildmon: Wesley, well, good morning, Wesley.
Wesley: Good morning.
Tim Wildmon: In the studio with me also is Chris Woodward.
Chris Woodward: Hello.
Tim Wildmon: And Ray Pritchard. Ray Pritchard is in Florida. How are you doing, Ray?
Ray Pritchard: Hey, rocking and rolling here in Florida. I want things in Tupelo.
Tim Wildmon: Well, it would be better if I didn't have to sprint down the stairs to be here on the show. I guess our listeners can tell you're a little bit out of breath.
Ray Pritchard: Just a little bit.
Tim Wildmon: Well, let me help you out here, then, because I'm looking here on our screen and I'm really observing. I've got a nice camo shirt on.
Ray Pritchard: You do?
Tim Wildmon: You know, we've got hunting seasons around the corner.
Ray Pritchard: Yeah, well, it's around like winter.
Tim Wildmon: We've got about a month before archery starts, and then you've got rifle season close to Thanksgiving.
Ray Pritchard: That's when I'm talking about getting some venison for the grill.
Tim Wildmon: Oh, okay. That's what I'm talking about. That's almost here. Deer hunters everywhere are getting excited.
Ray Pritchard: Yeah, we often leave those out on this program.
Tim Wildmon: Deer hunters?
Ray Pritchard: Yeah, we've got a lot of them. I meet them. Deer hunters, turkey hunters. We've got a lot of outdoor enthusiasts.
Tim Wildmon: Yes, sir. Ray always teases Ray and Chris and listeners. We want to welcome all of the listeners.
Ray Pritchard: Yeah, it was one of those once-a-year things. Brent Creeley, our producer, has to call me to tell me I'm supposed to be on the right live or national radio show, and I'm sitting in my office doing stuff that only happens once a year, though, right, Brent?
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, so I'm not bad about that.
Ray Pritchard: That would be a bad habit to fall into if you were doing that once a week or so.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, so I sprinted down the steps. That's my reminder to be on the program.
Ray Pritchard: Well, that reminds me. I was three minutes late. I snoozed it.
Tim Wildmon: You snoozed it?
Ray Pritchard: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: How do you snooze?
Ray Pritchard: Well, I like your phone.
Tim Wildmon: I know how to snooze on the phone.
Ray Pritchard: Oh, how do you snooze it?
Tim Wildmon: Here's my question today. If that alarm we just heard was meant to remind you that you had to be on the radio today at 10:05 Central Time, and you snooze it so that it rings at 10:08, what value is that? That's my question.
Ray Pritchard: It was an accident. Nature called.
Tim Wildmon: Oh, it was an accident?
Ray Pritchard: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, it was an accident that got you here. All right. Anyway, moving right along, we've got a lot to talk about. We're not going to explore Wesley's answer at all here.
Ray Pritchard: We've all been there.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, we're going to move on. Chris, good morning to you, brother.
Chris Woodward: Good morning.
Tim Wildmon: What do you have going on over there?
Chris Woodward: Various people across much of the United States need to keep tabs on their local weather today because over 150 million people face a dangerous weeklong flood threat across more than 30 states. This is fueled by what's described as a powerful Pacific tropical system. Looking at Fox Weather here, it says a dangerous weeklong flash flood threat will spread from the Southwest into the Plains and Midwest, eventually stretching from Texas to Minnesota and putting millions of Americans at risk from what is called Hurricane Pali, which is called Storm Rachel.
Tim Wildmon: What is it called, Hurricane Pali and Tropical Storm Rachel?
Ray Pritchard: We need to get more threatening, scarier-sounding names for storms.
Tim Wildmon: Did you know, I've been paying attention to this, I don't know if this is related to the El Niño phenomenon, but normally we see hurricanes affecting the United States coming from the Atlantic.
Ray Pritchard: Right.
Tim Wildmon: We've had nothing, nothing, nothing, and now we have this weather system creating, I saw, about three or four powerful hurricanes out in the Pacific Ocean, which is not known for that because the water there is typically colder than it is in the Atlantic, or at least in the Gulf of Mexico, when the hurricanes intensify because of the warmth of the water. But in this case, this hurricane is going to come across Mexico and up. Is it going across the Baja Peninsula, do you know that? Anyway, it's going to cause major flooding, right?
Ray Pritchard: Did you hear that? That's a far reach, to think that a hurricane impacting the West Coast could actually impact a major part of the country. It has already crossed Baja, just looking at the map, and is coming into Mexico.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, I'm going to give you the total extent of my weather knowledge here. You asked about El Niño. I read recently that this year has been a quote, super El Niño. I don't know what that means, but here in Florida, Tim, where we get hurricanes all the time, every year, or at least the warnings. They may miss us and go up the East Coast. Florida is always in the path.
Ray Pritchard: It's always in the path.
Tim Wildmon: It's been a quiet season.
Ray Pritchard: It still is. If you look at it, there's nothing on the horizon.
Tim Wildmon: Which is good news.
Ray Pritchard: Oh, yeah, absolutely good news.
Tim Wildmon: I didn't realize, Chris, that you mentioned they're anticipating major flooding across 34 states.
Chris Woodward: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: Is this going to impact the story we've covered a couple of times in the last few months about there being a drought in the Arizona area? There are a couple of water reservoirs. Is that going to help this?
Ray Pritchard: I would think so. You mean where they've had it? They've been very dry, and the lakes or reservoirs are depleted. Same thing in Texas. I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in Dallas, and about two weeks ago, or ten days ago, he said it hadn't rained in 50 days.
Tim Wildmon: So again, those are looking for some good news here.
Ray Pritchard: Those reservoirs are massive, the ones around the DFW Metroplex. That's supporting water for that area, but we've covered that twice in the last couple of months, about how Arizona and that part of the country, like Powell and all those places, this may be an answer to prayer there.
Tim Wildmon: Are we through with our weather desk information here? We've said everything we know.
Chris Woodward: I think we've said everything we know, other than that people should just look at their own weather outside.
Tim Wildmon: I do want to brag on our afternoon anchor at AFN. Robert Thornton is actually Dr. Robert Thornton and is a meteorologist by profession.
Ray Pritchard: Oh, wow.
Tim Wildmon: And he lives in the Dallas area.
Chris Woodward: He does, yes.
Tim Wildmon: So he's going to be able to give us the best of the best there.
Chris Woodward: One in three on-air people talking about the weather on broadcast television are Mississippi State graduates.
Tim Wildmon: I thought they lived in Tyler.
Chris Woodward: It's in that vicinity, yes.
Ray Pritchard: The way Dallas is growing, you're going to live in southern Oklahoma.
Tim Wildmon: Right.
Ray Pritchard: And we're going to be saying the same thing. Dallas is about to cross the Red River there and enter into Oklahoma.
Chris Woodward: They do have that rivalry game coming up between the Longhorns and the Sooners this weekend.
Tim Wildmon: I think so. Oklahoma and Oklahoma?
Chris Woodward: They may really have a Red River rivalry. It may be a river running through the field as well, as it sounds like.
Ray Pritchard: It is Saturday, October 10th, at 2:30 p.m., so not this weekend. It is coming up.
Tim Wildmon: All right.
Chris Woodward: Sadly for Oklahoma.
Ray Pritchard: It's coming up. John Mateer has quickly become John Mid-tier.
Chris Woodward: I feel Texas has an upset coming, too.
Ray Pritchard: Sure.
Chris Woodward: They escaped Tennessee. They tried to lose that game like they tried to lose the Ohio State game, but they just couldn't do it. Eventually, it'll catch up to them.
Tim Wildmon: You keep disparaging yourselves to Longhorn fans, and we have a lot of them. They support our ministry.
Chris Woodward: Well, I can reset our dissing them. Way to go, Arch. I predict them to win the whole thing.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, well, you did redeem yourself there a little bit. It's double talk, but now you said one upset, right?
Chris Woodward: One upset.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Jenna Ellis will be with us at the bottom of the hour, so we look forward to visiting with Jenna. Next story, Chris.
Chris Woodward: We've had some history made in these United States of America today because today is the launch of a website called America.gov. I will share the link for it on the Today's Issues Facebook page. What is special about America.gov is that it is a federal government website launched today by the Trump administration, and it is made by artificial intelligence.
Chris Woodward: It also comes at a time when tech executives are meeting with President Trump to discuss the future of AI. As we have discussed on the show, there's this fear that AI is going to take over the world, get out of control, do things to humans, that kind of stuff. Most of the chips powering this AI boom are made by a company called NVIDIA. I have some sound here from its chief executive officer, Jensen Huang, who says tech companies will solve these problems and concerns. Here's the clip.
Jensen Huang: We all need to hope that it's not an engineering problem that's not solvable. The fact that all of these companies are still advancing the state of the art is because they also believe it's solvable. These are some of the brightest engineers in the world. I work with all of them, and this is a technically solvable problem.
Chris Woodward: I have no doubt that companies probably know ways to ease concerns or whatever, but I would caution anybody from just taking somebody's word for, “We've got this,” because oftentimes what companies promise, they don't deliver on.
Tim Wildmon: What is America.gov?
Chris Woodward: America.gov is a website that the Trump administration launched today. It has all kinds of information on things that you might use or want more information on if you're an American. It's basically an aggregate website. For example, the first thing is, “How do I replace my Social Security card?” The idea behind this is that it's a one-stop shop for you.
Tim Wildmon: Also, I can tell you that you're ready to be on hold for about two hours.
Chris Woodward: That's a great point, and you could do that. But a lot of younger people are starting to do things purely online instead of calling people.
Tim Wildmon: What else have you got besides Social Security stuff? Is that supposed to be highly intelligent stuff?
Chris Woodward: Yes. It's made by AI.
Tim Wildmon: Instead of a human being paid by taxpayers.
Chris Woodward: Right.
Tim Wildmon: Are you impressed so far?
Chris Woodward: I mean, not yet.
Tim Wildmon: Me either. You're going to have to give me something else that America.gov does.
Chris Woodward: I will say that in its infancy, the launch of America.gov has been far better than Healthcare.gov, which was a taxpayer-funded boondoggle of a website under Obama.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, so this is big news today, this launching of America.gov?
Chris Woodward: It is. Fox already did a big cutaway where they talked to Trump about it.
Tim Wildmon: How about Trump.gov? It'll be renamed that this afternoon.
Chris Woodward: Yeah. So what else does it do here?
Chris Woodward: I just typed in, “Tell me about George Washington.” It gave me a summary and hit some highlights.
Tim Wildmon: Why George Washington?
Chris Woodward: Because it's a government, or it's an AI.
Tim Wildmon: What does America.gov have to do with my question about what is there, and then you said George Washington? I don't understand. I don't follow.
Chris Woodward: Because everything's there. For example, I said, “Show me the Gettysburg Address.”
Tim Wildmon: The reason I'm going to skip this story is that I do care about it, but this is very, very confusing.
Chris Woodward: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: I'm not impressed either. It's just another search engine.
Chris Woodward: Okay, so America is the new Google.
Tim Wildmon: Yes.
Chris Woodward: In harder news, we're going to continue to hear about the Lindsey Clancy case for weeks to come. I say that based on the fact that this morning they had a hearing on what to do now. They had the mistrial, and we've talked about that. They got back in court today to determine the next steps. If the county prosecutor is going to try to retry the case, they have all these issues. They wrapped it up moments ago and determined that they're going to meet again for another hearing on November 2nd, weeks from now, which is why I say we're going to continue to talk about this for weeks.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Ray, any thoughts on this? That's the case with the mother who killed the three kids, and they found her. There was a hung jury, right?
Ray Pritchard: My literal only thought, or maybe two, but mostly just one, is that they should retry her. Look, get a jury of 12 fair-minded, reasonable people. It is alarming to think that the vote was 11 to 1 to find her not guilty, or to let her walk, not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. It's terrifying to think there were 11 people who actually would agree to that. God bless that one fellow who has been outed by the media. God bless him for having the courage of his convictions.
Tim Wildmon: I was thinking about this the other day, and maybe we can ask Jenna Ellis. Jenna's covered this. She's a lawyer and has covered this story extensively. Of course, nobody denies that postpartum psychosis exists, but there are all kinds of mental illnesses out there that might lead someone to commit acts of violence or even murder, and you wouldn't say they need to be off the hook because of it. I'm thinking, how many soldiers returned from Afghanistan and Iraq with PTSD? What if they just decide to kill because they slip into PTSD?
Ray Pritchard: That is the correct pronunciation, right? Post-traumatic stress disorder.
Tim Wildmon: Who's to say a jury couldn't say, “I know he killed four people at the mall, but he couldn't help himself because he had slipped into PTSD, so we're going to acquit”? You see where this goes?
Ray Pritchard: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Tim Wildmon: If you have thoughts on what I've just described, let us know.
Ray Pritchard: Here we have a mother, whatever her mental pressures or whatever the disorder was, who clearly, clearly, clearly intentionally planned and killed her own children. She strangled them to death. It was the most horrific thing you can imagine. How anybody could say that because of psychosis or whatever, she did not know what she was doing, I don't understand. She planned to do what she was doing. Irrespective of what the mental state was, she planned it. She knew what she was going to do, and she did it.
Ray Pritchard: If that's what we conclude, that she went through that for 18 minutes, it was only 18 minutes. She told her husband to leave. If that's not more of a reason you don't want someone like that out in the street because she could have another 18 minutes, that just makes the case that she needs to be locked up in prison.
Tim Wildmon: I know. I don't understand. Maybe you can ask Jenna. I thought if the jury in her case was hung, it would be 11 to convict and one to acquit, not the other way around.
Chris Woodward: We had Jenna on, and she talked about this for 30 minutes the week that you were in D.C.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, okay.
Tim Wildmon: It just occurred to me that there are all kinds of mental disorders that people have that could cause them to commit acts of violence against others. They could come back and say, “I have this particular mental disorder. Thus, I'm not responsible for my actions.” You see what I'm saying?
Chris Woodward: Yes, there's a history of people doing that, and it never ends well. We covered a story on Today's Issues about two months ago about a gentleman in Kentucky who broke into a home, stabbed a young child, eight or nine years old, to death, then stabbed the parents. The police were called, he was arrested, tried, pled insanity, and after ten years he was released. Now he's 45 years old and walking the streets of Kentucky after stabbing an eight or nine-year-old boy to death. How far does this go?
Tim Wildmon: Could you say, “I drank four beers and had a car accident and killed somebody,” and then say, “I wasn't in my right mind. I was drunk”?
Chris Woodward: Jenna did a good job of explaining that the law, there was a particular law in Massachusetts. She explained that there was a loophole in the law that she said was a problem.
Tim Wildmon: Yes, in Massachusetts. She covered and explained that when she was on Today's Issues on American Family Radio.
Tim Wildmon: Tim, Wesley, Chris, and Ray. Next story, Chris.
Chris Woodward: As we speak, Fox claims there is another caravan of migrants wanting to come into the United States of America. This is a caravan that was organized, about 600 people, coming from Honduras.
Tim Wildmon: They know who's president?
Chris Woodward: The scuttlebutt is that they are banking on there being a change in Congress this November that might force the president to camp out at the border waiting on the election.
Ray Pritchard: Very well could happen.
Chris Woodward: So, 600 migrants on the way from Honduras through Mexico to the United States. That's a long walk, my friend.
Tim Wildmon: A long walk. I'm sure they're on a nice, air-conditioned bus funded by some liberal billionaire. They're currently using America.gov: “How do I get to the U.S.?”
Tim Wildmon: I feel sorry for these people. I truly do. I feel sorry for people who are in bad living conditions, poverty, and hopelessness. But there are millions of people in that condition around the world, and the United States can't just open the borders like Biden did and say, “Everybody's welcome. Come on in. No borders here.” No country in the world does that, but we're supposed to?
Tim Wildmon: I sympathize with the plight of people who are desperate. But you can't just open the borders. You have to have law and order. You have to have borders, or you don't have a country. We need to dissuade them, not incentivize them. What Biden did was incentivize them to come, and they came by the millions. President Trump basically shut the border down and has had control of it for the most part.
Tim Wildmon: I wish these people wouldn't do this, but if they come, they're going to have to be turned away. If you want to come to the United States of America, we have a legal process for immigration. We let about a million people a year in annually already, legally.
Ray Pritchard: Think about that. We let a million people into our country legally every year.
Tim Wildmon: So we are a very hospitable country, and we are a very compassionate country when it comes to that as well.
Tim Wildmon: All right, we're going to take a short timeout right here. We'll be back with more of Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. I'm here with Wesley, Chris, and Ray. As always, we thank you for listening to American Family Radio and to this show, Today's Issues.
Tim Wildmon: Joining us right now is Jenna Ellis. Jenna is host of Jenna Ellis in the Morning here on American Family Radio, heard from 7:00 to 8:00 Central Time, where she brings you the news of the day and current events and analyzes those topics through a Christian worldview lens. She joins us now from probably an hour away from where Ray is there in Florida. How are you doing, Jenna?
Jenna Ellis: I'm great, and Florida is finally cooling off just a little bit. This is when summer is over and Florida is the best.
Tim Wildmon: The people come to Florida for the winter, not the summer, although they do come in the summer for vacation. Those are the snowbirds. Is that going to be you one day?
Jenna Ellis: I might reverse snowbird. I might fly north for the summer.
Chris Woodward: I highly recommend Door County, Wisconsin.
Jenna Ellis: Why is that, Chris?
Chris Woodward: It's nice up there, and the weather is fantastic. The winter, not so much, but Wisconsin, Indiana, and the northern states are nice.
Jenna Ellis: I've got a friend who lives in Wisconsin whom I check on in the winter, and they are hibernating.
Chris Woodward: They also developed a very bad attitude toward life.
Jenna Ellis: Seasonal depression is real.
Tim Wildmon: You lived in Colorado. You've seen enough snow.
Jenna Ellis: In March, in April even.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Jenna, before we move on, let's talk about this case involving Lindsey Clancy. Is that going to be retried, or do we not know yet?
Jenna Ellis: That's what all of these motions are arguing. Today was a status conference to determine the next steps. The district attorney has filed a motion for a gag order against the defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, basically claiming that he doxxed the lone holdout juror, meaning he provided the juror's personal information, name, and other identifying information publicly when he shouldn't have. The district attorney also claims that the disparaging remarks amount to intimidation and harassment, so they are asking for a gag order against the attorney.
Jenna Ellis: The defense team, meanwhile, is filing motions requesting a judgment of acquittal and dismissal based on double-jeopardy grounds, along with an investigation into the holdout juror. This is a wild and remarkable situation where one juror who simply showed up because he was summoned as part of his civic duty is now at the center of a huge public controversy. He is basically being forced to defend himself and his rationale for looking at the evidence, rendering a verdict based on his own calculations, and doing exactly what he was supposed to do as a juror.
Jenna Ellis: I don't think all of this sets a very good precedent for our legal system. It will be interesting to see where the trial judge goes, and whether appellate courts get involved.
Tim Wildmon: I want to ask you your thoughts on this question. Have you served in the capacity of a defense attorney or prosecutor, or both?
Jenna Ellis: Both. In all of the many hats I've worn over the years, yes. Back in Colorado, I was a prosecutor and then a defense attorney.
Tim Wildmon: Do you believe in the use of insanity as a reason to get a lesser penalty for crimes or to get off the hook altogether?
Jenna Ellis: I think any sort of insanity defense should only be relevant in negotiating a plea agreement between the district attorney and the defense, or potentially in mitigation at sentencing. But in terms of the actual conduct and a conviction, being guilty or not guilty, there should be no such thing as an absolute defense. That is what we saw in this case and what happens under statutes where the defense can say someone is not guilty by reason of insanity. Basically, that's a full justification for their conduct. I don't think we should allow that at all.
Jenna Ellis: If someone is truly insane and we have a legal, objective definition of that, which I don't think we really do in Massachusetts right now, that still doesn't excuse the conduct. It doesn't justify it. It doesn't allow for a not-guilty verdict. It should only come into consideration during sentencing, where perhaps a judge could say, “This person needs mental-health treatment. Go to a facility until you are mentally stable enough to serve out the rest of your sentence in prison.”
Ray Pritchard: Have you ever heard of a case where a person confesses to murdering three children but at the same time says, “I'm not responsible for those murders”? In other words, “I did it, but I'm not responsible for what I did.” Have you ever heard of anything like this?
Jenna Ellis: This is a shocking kind of case.
Ray Pritchard: Which leads me to ask you this question. At this point, the prosecutor has some discretion about whether or not to retry the case, given the immense amount of publicity and the fact that it was 11 to 1 to acquit on the basis of temporary insanity. How does the prosecutor and his office make that decision?
Jenna Ellis: A lot goes into that contemplation. I've been in prosecutors' offices where there are mistrials in very serious cases. What goes into this is not just the use of resources and the fact that they have to mount the prosecution again. The question is, what does justice require?
Jenna Ellis: In every state, there is a special statute that governs prosecutors. Their sole job, because they do not represent a client, is to represent the state, the government, and the power of the state. They are obligated to pursue the interests of justice. What does justice require in this case? I would say, and I think any person looking at this case morally and objectively would say, that justice requires going back to trial.
Jenna Ellis: They may shape their prosecution a little differently based on what they learned and based on some of the public sentiment. Obviously, with the 11 to 1 vote, they should shape their jury selection differently as well. But absolutely, go back to trial and fight for justice as much as you can. If, at the end of the day, a second jury says not guilty or not criminally responsible, the prosecutor can at least sleep at night knowing that he did everything he could for justice in this case and for those three precious children.
Tim Wildmon: This is just my opinion, and nobody may share it. I don't think the prosecutor has a dog's chance to get a conviction if it was 11 to 1.
Jenna Ellis: It depends on jury selection. I was always taught that you win or lose your case in jury selection.
Tim Wildmon: You've got to go 12 for 12, Jenna.
Jenna Ellis: You do. If they had found 11 people like Michael Desraville, I think we would be in a much different situation. It will be harder in a blue state like Massachusetts, but this is where I was always taught as a prosecutor that you win or lose your case in jury selection. You have to try to get into the minds of potential jurors and ask how they view the evidence in the case.
Jenna Ellis: Are they looking at women who see this as a bigger social issue? At least four of the women who have now come forward and done interviews were not concerned about the facts of the case. They were concerned about being activists. You don't want people like that on the jury.
Tim Wildmon: I agree with you, but I don't know where, in a state like Massachusetts, you are going to escape the activists and get 12 for 12.
Chris Woodward: Jenna, when you and I were in college, we didn't have all the social media that we have now. That has exploded. Because of television and social media, everybody everywhere is aware of everything, and everybody has an opinion. Hypothetically, if you were helping pick the jury pool, how do you deal with that when you're trying to find 12 impartial people who have no opinion on something?
Jenna Ellis: It's not that people cannot have heard about it or have no opinion at all. That isn't the legal standard, which thankfully is good, because I think everybody at this point has heard about it unless they are living under a rock. Because this case is so clear-cut, unless you're an activist or a person of morality, you're clearly going to be on one side or the other.
Jenna Ellis: The legal standard is whether someone can put aside their bias and what they have heard and say, “We will render a verdict just on the facts of this case.” It would be difficult, for example, for someone who watched every moment of the first trial, which was livestreamed on Court TV, to say, “I'm going to forget everything I heard from the first trial and only listen to what comes in during the second trial.” That will be very difficult, but the objective is to find people who can say, and you have to believe them, “I can set aside my bias, and I will render my verdict just on the facts of what comes in during this second trial.”
Tim Wildmon: Let me ask you this from a spiritual or biblical perspective. Ray, you can answer this, too. Spiritually and biblically, looking at this situation and mental illness in particular, there are all kinds of mental illnesses out there. How do you distinguish, Ray, between a mental illness and somebody who's acting demonically? The world doesn't acknowledge demons. You don't get that brought up in court. They will acknowledge mental illness.
Ray Pritchard: It would take a long time to answer that, and in the end the answer would be a little subjective. If we take the New Testament, we can say that there are demons, that they are in the world today, and that they are at work. They were at work during the time when Jesus was on earth.
Ray Pritchard: I was reading today about Jesus talking to the Gerasene demoniac in Mark chapter 5. Jesus asked, “What is your name?” The demon knew exactly who Jesus was and said, “My name is Legion, because we are many.” This man was infested by hundreds and hundreds, even thousands, of demons.
Ray Pritchard: It would take someone beyond me to answer the question completely. But if you go down the road of certain kinds of psychosis or schizophrenia and some really bizarre behavior, some people would say it is almost indistinguishable from demon possession. At least we can say this much: There is an evil involved with demon possession. There is a rejection of God and a hatred of Jesus that comes out because the demons are unclean spirits. Everything they produce is completely unclean, not just bizarre, but evil through and through.
Jenna Ellis: I completely agree with that. From a biblical perspective, we know that our fight is not just against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of evil in the spiritual realms. When it comes to the law, I don't think there should be any distinction, at least in terms of guilty versus not guilty, on the basis of demonic possession versus mental illness versus some physical problem in the brain.
Jenna Ellis: Ultimately, none of that should matter to the guilt of someone's conduct. We have seen people use defenses like Lindsey Clancy saying, “A voice told me to.” Whether she believed that was God, which we know it clearly was not, whether it was a demon, or whether she did not hear a voice at all, that does not matter. Her conduct is still at issue.
Jenna Ellis: As Christians, we need to be careful not to reject the spiritual component that matters. But when we are talking about society, legislation, and what the law requires, we should not bring so much into it about spirituality that we cannot prove when ultimately we believe in personal responsibility. That is certainly a biblical concept of justice as well.
Wesley: Jenna, Michael Desraville was the gentleman who was the one holdout juror. What do we know about him? Has he made any public comments? What do we know about his reasoning?
Jenna Ellis: He has made comments. He was on Hannity last night, and that was his first public interview. His attorney has also made statements. He has said that he is a Christian and a Catholic, which I think is probably where he gets his sense of justice, worldview, and morality.
Jenna Ellis: I have not listened to the entire interview, but he has consistently said, at least through statements available from his attorney, that he did not have a reasonable doubt and thought she was guilty because her attorneys were not even arguing that she killed her three children. They were arguing that she should not be held responsible.
Jenna Ellis: It is absolutely wild that he is even having to defend his position because jurors are allowed to disagree. They are allowed to look at the facts, look at the evidence, and form their conclusions. That is what we bring them in as jurors to do. Everyone is attacking him, but nobody is calling out the activists for not following the law. I hope we will hear more from him. The interview with Hannity has been published widely online.
Chris Woodward: I have 31 seconds of Michael Desraville, the juror we are talking about.
Michael Desraville: The case is about three innocent children who were brutally murdered by their mother. I know the whole focus has been on me, but we want to reel everything back and put the focus on the three angels at hand, the ones who cannot speak for themselves, defend themselves, or fight the battles. Those are Cora, Dawson, and Callan. I want to thank God for my Catholic faith foremost. I would like to thank everyone who has supported me throughout this difficult situation.
Tim Wildmon: That was the one juror who voted to convict out of the 12, and he has been vilified for some reason by many in the liberal mainstream media.
Tim Wildmon: One other thought I had on this. This is just me, and you all may not share this opinion, but I think a lot of mental illness is phony. I think a lot of what passes for mental illness is really just choices that people make to do bad things and act foolishly.
Tim Wildmon: I'm speaking in generalities, but this woman strangled her three children to death. She sent her husband away so she could do it. These were not babies. These were children. She strangled them with her bare hands.
Wesley: I don't know if she strangled them with her bare hands.
Tim Wildmon: She exercised.
Wesley: Okay.
Tim Wildmon: She knew enough to do that. I don't buy it. Maybe it is insane to kill three children.
Chris Woodward: It's insane.
Tim Wildmon: That's insane in a professional way. A psychiatrist would say that's insane. It's also insane in the ordinary sense. That's crazy to do something like that. But those things were planned. That's what I think that juror is saying. Those things were planned. How can you just let her go? That is mind-boggling to a lot of the country.
Tim Wildmon: I also think that what passes as mental illness a lot of times, like with her, is questionable. Did she show signs of this before or after? If mental illness causes you to do evil things, why doesn't mental illness cause you to go out and moonlight instead of killing people? Why don't we see people with mental illnesses being the most philanthropic, loving, wonderful people? It is always used as a justification for evil.
Jenna Ellis: Without this defense, what would her attorney be arguing? She had the means, the motive, everything, and she admitted it. She would not have any defense whatsoever without this fallback of some vague psychosis that lasted precisely 18 minutes when she committed the murders.
Jenna Ellis: Society needs to say no. You cannot have this vague, unprovable psychosis that somehow justifies and alleviates criminal responsibility for this kind of heinous conduct.
Tim Wildmon: Whatever it is, I don't care. That's where I'm at. I can listen to you explain it, but if you kill three children by strangling them to death, you're going to jail. I don't care what kind of psychosis you say you had or did not have.
Tim Wildmon: I'm sorry that you say that, but that sounds to me like straight-up demon possession. I'll say you were possessed by a demon for 15 minutes, and it caused you to do this. I don't have a lot of sympathy. I understand that mental illness exists. People have mental illnesses, and many people take medication for different kinds of mental problems. I understand that. But to commit murder against children and try to say, “I'm not responsible. I slipped into psychosis,” no, that's not going to work.
Tim Wildmon: I admire this one juror for standing up for the children, as he said. Jenna, thanks so much. What do you have coming up tomorrow morning?
Jenna Ellis: I think we should have more boomer influencers.
Tim Wildmon: He's got a golf influencer in general.
Jenna Ellis: How to play bad golf by Tim Wildmon.
Tim Wildmon: Along with my HGTV influence.
Jenna Ellis: How not to paint by Jenna Ellis.
Tim Wildmon: Jenna, I appreciate you.
Jenna Ellis: Thank you all.
Tim Wildmon: You sent me pictures. You did a great job.
Jenna Ellis: Thanks. I've been having fun with that.
Tim Wildmon: I still prefer Bob Ross.
Jenna Ellis: Happy trees.
Tim Wildmon: Happy trees. We'll be back momentarily with more of Today's Issues on American Family Radio.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening to AFR. Today is Tuesday, September 29, 2026.
Tim Wildmon: Wesley, well, good morning, Wesley.
Wesley: Good morning.
Tim Wildmon: In the studio with me also is Chris Woodward.
Chris Woodward: Hello.
Tim Wildmon: And Ray Pritchard. Ray Pritchard is in Florida. How are you doing, Ray?
Ray Pritchard: Hey, rocking and rolling here in Florida. I want things in Tupelo.
Tim Wildmon: Well, it would be better if I didn't have to sprint down the stairs to be here on the show. I guess our listeners can tell you're a little bit out of breath.
Ray Pritchard: Just a little bit.
Tim Wildmon: Well, let me help you out here, then, because I'm looking here on our screen and I'm really observing. I've got a nice camo shirt on.
Ray Pritchard: You do?
Tim Wildmon: You know, we've got hunting seasons around the corner.
Ray Pritchard: Yeah, well, it's around like winter.
Tim Wildmon: We've got about a month before archery starts, and then you've got rifle season close to Thanksgiving.
Ray Pritchard: That's when I'm talking about getting some venison for the grill.
Tim Wildmon: Oh, okay. That's what I'm talking about. That's almost here. Deer hunters everywhere are getting excited.
Ray Pritchard: Yeah, we often leave those out on this program.
Tim Wildmon: Deer hunters?
Ray Pritchard: Yeah, we've got a lot of them. I meet them. Deer hunters, turkey hunters. We've got a lot of outdoor enthusiasts.
Tim Wildmon: Yes, sir. Ray always teases Ray and Chris and listeners. We want to welcome all of the listeners.
Ray Pritchard: Yeah, it was one of those once-a-year things. Brent Creeley, our producer, has to call me to tell me I'm supposed to be on the right live or national radio show, and I'm sitting in my office doing stuff that only happens once a year, though, right, Brent?
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, so I'm not bad about that.
Ray Pritchard: That would be a bad habit to fall into if you were doing that once a week or so.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, so I sprinted down the steps. That's my reminder to be on the program.
Ray Pritchard: Well, that reminds me. I was three minutes late. I snoozed it.
Tim Wildmon: You snoozed it?
Ray Pritchard: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: How do you snooze?
Ray Pritchard: Well, I like your phone.
Tim Wildmon: I know how to snooze on the phone.
Ray Pritchard: Oh, how do you snooze it?
Tim Wildmon: Here's my question today. If that alarm we just heard was meant to remind you that you had to be on the radio today at 10:05 Central Time, and you snooze it so that it rings at 10:08, what value is that? That's my question.
Ray Pritchard: It was an accident. Nature called.
Tim Wildmon: Oh, it was an accident?
Ray Pritchard: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, it was an accident that got you here. All right. Anyway, moving right along, we've got a lot to talk about. We're not going to explore Wesley's answer at all here.
Ray Pritchard: We've all been there.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, we're going to move on. Chris, good morning to you, brother.
Chris Woodward: Good morning.
Tim Wildmon: What do you have going on over there?
Chris Woodward: Various people across much of the United States need to keep tabs on their local weather today because over 150 million people face a dangerous weeklong flood threat across more than 30 states. This is fueled by what's described as a powerful Pacific tropical system. Looking at Fox Weather here, it says a dangerous weeklong flash flood threat will spread from the Southwest into the Plains and Midwest, eventually stretching from Texas to Minnesota and putting millions of Americans at risk from what is called Hurricane Pali, which is called Storm Rachel.
Tim Wildmon: What is it called, Hurricane Pali and Tropical Storm Rachel?
Ray Pritchard: We need to get more threatening, scarier-sounding names for storms.
Tim Wildmon: Did you know, I've been paying attention to this, I don't know if this is related to the El Niño phenomenon, but normally we see hurricanes affecting the United States coming from the Atlantic.
Ray Pritchard: Right.
Tim Wildmon: We've had nothing, nothing, nothing, and now we have this weather system creating, I saw, about three or four powerful hurricanes out in the Pacific Ocean, which is not known for that because the water there is typically colder than it is in the Atlantic, or at least in the Gulf of Mexico, when the hurricanes intensify because of the warmth of the water. But in this case, this hurricane is going to come across Mexico and up. Is it going across the Baja Peninsula, do you know that? Anyway, it's going to cause major flooding, right?
Ray Pritchard: Did you hear that? That's a far reach, to think that a hurricane impacting the West Coast could actually impact a major part of the country. It has already crossed Baja, just looking at the map, and is coming into Mexico.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, I'm going to give you the total extent of my weather knowledge here. You asked about El Niño. I read recently that this year has been a quote, super El Niño. I don't know what that means, but here in Florida, Tim, where we get hurricanes all the time, every year, or at least the warnings. They may miss us and go up the East Coast. Florida is always in the path.
Ray Pritchard: It's always in the path.
Tim Wildmon: It's been a quiet season.
Ray Pritchard: It still is. If you look at it, there's nothing on the horizon.
Tim Wildmon: Which is good news.
Ray Pritchard: Oh, yeah, absolutely good news.
Tim Wildmon: I didn't realize, Chris, that you mentioned they're anticipating major flooding across 34 states.
Chris Woodward: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: Is this going to impact the story we've covered a couple of times in the last few months about there being a drought in the Arizona area? There are a couple of water reservoirs. Is that going to help this?
Ray Pritchard: I would think so. You mean where they've had it? They've been very dry, and the lakes or reservoirs are depleted. Same thing in Texas. I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in Dallas, and about two weeks ago, or ten days ago, he said it hadn't rained in 50 days.
Tim Wildmon: So again, those are looking for some good news here.
Ray Pritchard: Those reservoirs are massive, the ones around the DFW Metroplex. That's supporting water for that area, but we've covered that twice in the last couple of months, about how Arizona and that part of the country, like Powell and all those places, this may be an answer to prayer there.
Tim Wildmon: Are we through with our weather desk information here? We've said everything we know.
Chris Woodward: I think we've said everything we know, other than that people should just look at their own weather outside.
Tim Wildmon: I do want to brag on our afternoon anchor at AFN. Robert Thornton is actually Dr. Robert Thornton and is a meteorologist by profession.
Ray Pritchard: Oh, wow.
Tim Wildmon: And he lives in the Dallas area.
Chris Woodward: He does, yes.
Tim Wildmon: So he's going to be able to give us the best of the best there.
Chris Woodward: One in three on-air people talking about the weather on broadcast television are Mississippi State graduates.
Tim Wildmon: I thought they lived in Tyler.
Chris Woodward: It's in that vicinity, yes.
Ray Pritchard: The way Dallas is growing, you're going to live in southern Oklahoma.
Tim Wildmon: Right.
Ray Pritchard: And we're going to be saying the same thing. Dallas is about to cross the Red River there and enter into Oklahoma.
Chris Woodward: They do have that rivalry game coming up between the Longhorns and the Sooners this weekend.
Tim Wildmon: I think so. Oklahoma and Oklahoma?
Chris Woodward: They may really have a Red River rivalry. It may be a river running through the field as well, as it sounds like.
Ray Pritchard: It is Saturday, October 10th, at 2:30 p.m., so not this weekend. It is coming up.
Tim Wildmon: All right.
Chris Woodward: Sadly for Oklahoma.
Ray Pritchard: It's coming up. John Mateer has quickly become John Mid-tier.
Chris Woodward: I feel Texas has an upset coming, too.
Ray Pritchard: Sure.
Chris Woodward: They escaped Tennessee. They tried to lose that game like they tried to lose the Ohio State game, but they just couldn't do it. Eventually, it'll catch up to them.
Tim Wildmon: You keep disparaging yourselves to Longhorn fans, and we have a lot of them. They support our ministry.
Chris Woodward: Well, I can reset our dissing them. Way to go, Arch. I predict them to win the whole thing.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, well, you did redeem yourself there a little bit. It's double talk, but now you said one upset, right?
Chris Woodward: One upset.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Jenna Ellis will be with us at the bottom of the hour, so we look forward to visiting with Jenna. Next story, Chris.
Chris Woodward: We've had some history made in these United States of America today because today is the launch of a website called America.gov. I will share the link for it on the Today's Issues Facebook page. What is special about America.gov is that it is a federal government website launched today by the Trump administration, and it is made by artificial intelligence.
Chris Woodward: It also comes at a time when tech executives are meeting with President Trump to discuss the future of AI. As we have discussed on the show, there's this fear that AI is going to take over the world, get out of control, do things to humans, that kind of stuff. Most of the chips powering this AI boom are made by a company called NVIDIA. I have some sound here from its chief executive officer, Jensen Huang, who says tech companies will solve these problems and concerns. Here's the clip.
Jensen Huang: We all need to hope that it's not an engineering problem that's not solvable. The fact that all of these companies are still advancing the state of the art is because they also believe it's solvable. These are some of the brightest engineers in the world. I work with all of them, and this is a technically solvable problem.
Chris Woodward: I have no doubt that companies probably know ways to ease concerns or whatever, but I would caution anybody from just taking somebody's word for, “We've got this,” because oftentimes what companies promise, they don't deliver on.
Tim Wildmon: What is America.gov?
Chris Woodward: America.gov is a website that the Trump administration launched today. It has all kinds of information on things that you might use or want more information on if you're an American. It's basically an aggregate website. For example, the first thing is, “How do I replace my Social Security card?” The idea behind this is that it's a one-stop shop for you.
Tim Wildmon: Also, I can tell you that you're ready to be on hold for about two hours.
Chris Woodward: That's a great point, and you could do that. But a lot of younger people are starting to do things purely online instead of calling people.
Tim Wildmon: What else have you got besides Social Security stuff? Is that supposed to be highly intelligent stuff?
Chris Woodward: Yes. It's made by AI.
Tim Wildmon: Instead of a human being paid by taxpayers.
Chris Woodward: Right.
Tim Wildmon: Are you impressed so far?
Chris Woodward: I mean, not yet.
Tim Wildmon: Me either. You're going to have to give me something else that America.gov does.
Chris Woodward: I will say that in its infancy, the launch of America.gov has been far better than Healthcare.gov, which was a taxpayer-funded boondoggle of a website under Obama.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, so this is big news today, this launching of America.gov?
Chris Woodward: It is. Fox already did a big cutaway where they talked to Trump about it.
Tim Wildmon: How about Trump.gov? It'll be renamed that this afternoon.
Chris Woodward: Yeah. So what else does it do here?
Chris Woodward: I just typed in, “Tell me about George Washington.” It gave me a summary and hit some highlights.
Tim Wildmon: Why George Washington?
Chris Woodward: Because it's a government, or it's an AI.
Tim Wildmon: What does America.gov have to do with my question about what is there, and then you said George Washington? I don't understand. I don't follow.
Chris Woodward: Because everything's there. For example, I said, “Show me the Gettysburg Address.”
Tim Wildmon: The reason I'm going to skip this story is that I do care about it, but this is very, very confusing.
Chris Woodward: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: I'm not impressed either. It's just another search engine.
Chris Woodward: Okay, so America is the new Google.
Tim Wildmon: Yes.
Chris Woodward: In harder news, we're going to continue to hear about the Lindsey Clancy case for weeks to come. I say that based on the fact that this morning they had a hearing on what to do now. They had the mistrial, and we've talked about that. They got back in court today to determine the next steps. If the county prosecutor is going to try to retry the case, they have all these issues. They wrapped it up moments ago and determined that they're going to meet again for another hearing on November 2nd, weeks from now, which is why I say we're going to continue to talk about this for weeks.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Ray, any thoughts on this? That's the case with the mother who killed the three kids, and they found her. There was a hung jury, right?
Ray Pritchard: My literal only thought, or maybe two, but mostly just one, is that they should retry her. Look, get a jury of 12 fair-minded, reasonable people. It is alarming to think that the vote was 11 to 1 to find her not guilty, or to let her walk, not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. It's terrifying to think there were 11 people who actually would agree to that. God bless that one fellow who has been outed by the media. God bless him for having the courage of his convictions.
Tim Wildmon: I was thinking about this the other day, and maybe we can ask Jenna Ellis. Jenna's covered this. She's a lawyer and has covered this story extensively. Of course, nobody denies that postpartum psychosis exists, but there are all kinds of mental illnesses out there that might lead someone to commit acts of violence or even murder, and you wouldn't say they need to be off the hook because of it. I'm thinking, how many soldiers returned from Afghanistan and Iraq with PTSD? What if they just decide to kill because they slip into PTSD?
Ray Pritchard: That is the correct pronunciation, right? Post-traumatic stress disorder.
Tim Wildmon: Who's to say a jury couldn't say, “I know he killed four people at the mall, but he couldn't help himself because he had slipped into PTSD, so we're going to acquit”? You see where this goes?
Ray Pritchard: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Tim Wildmon: If you have thoughts on what I've just described, let us know.
Ray Pritchard: Here we have a mother, whatever her mental pressures or whatever the disorder was, who clearly, clearly, clearly intentionally planned and killed her own children. She strangled them to death. It was the most horrific thing you can imagine. How anybody could say that because of psychosis or whatever, she did not know what she was doing, I don't understand. She planned to do what she was doing. Irrespective of what the mental state was, she planned it. She knew what she was going to do, and she did it.
Ray Pritchard: If that's what we conclude, that she went through that for 18 minutes, it was only 18 minutes. She told her husband to leave. If that's not more of a reason you don't want someone like that out in the street because she could have another 18 minutes, that just makes the case that she needs to be locked up in prison.
Tim Wildmon: I know. I don't understand. Maybe you can ask Jenna. I thought if the jury in her case was hung, it would be 11 to convict and one to acquit, not the other way around.
Chris Woodward: We had Jenna on, and she talked about this for 30 minutes the week that you were in D.C.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, okay.
Tim Wildmon: It just occurred to me that there are all kinds of mental disorders that people have that could cause them to commit acts of violence against others. They could come back and say, “I have this particular mental disorder. Thus, I'm not responsible for my actions.” You see what I'm saying?
Chris Woodward: Yes, there's a history of people doing that, and it never ends well. We covered a story on Today's Issues about two months ago about a gentleman in Kentucky who broke into a home, stabbed a young child, eight or nine years old, to death, then stabbed the parents. The police were called, he was arrested, tried, pled insanity, and after ten years he was released. Now he's 45 years old and walking the streets of Kentucky after stabbing an eight or nine-year-old boy to death. How far does this go?
Tim Wildmon: Could you say, “I drank four beers and had a car accident and killed somebody,” and then say, “I wasn't in my right mind. I was drunk”?
Chris Woodward: Jenna did a good job of explaining that the law, there was a particular law in Massachusetts. She explained that there was a loophole in the law that she said was a problem.
Tim Wildmon: Yes, in Massachusetts. She covered and explained that when she was on Today's Issues on American Family Radio.
Tim Wildmon: Tim, Wesley, Chris, and Ray. Next story, Chris.
Chris Woodward: As we speak, Fox claims there is another caravan of migrants wanting to come into the United States of America. This is a caravan that was organized, about 600 people, coming from Honduras.
Tim Wildmon: They know who's president?
Chris Woodward: The scuttlebutt is that they are banking on there being a change in Congress this November that might force the president to camp out at the border waiting on the election.
Ray Pritchard: Very well could happen.
Chris Woodward: So, 600 migrants on the way from Honduras through Mexico to the United States. That's a long walk, my friend.
Tim Wildmon: A long walk. I'm sure they're on a nice, air-conditioned bus funded by some liberal billionaire. They're currently using America.gov: “How do I get to the U.S.?”
Tim Wildmon: I feel sorry for these people. I truly do. I feel sorry for people who are in bad living conditions, poverty, and hopelessness. But there are millions of people in that condition around the world, and the United States can't just open the borders like Biden did and say, “Everybody's welcome. Come on in. No borders here.” No country in the world does that, but we're supposed to?
Tim Wildmon: I sympathize with the plight of people who are desperate. But you can't just open the borders. You have to have law and order. You have to have borders, or you don't have a country. We need to dissuade them, not incentivize them. What Biden did was incentivize them to come, and they came by the millions. President Trump basically shut the border down and has had control of it for the most part.
Tim Wildmon: I wish these people wouldn't do this, but if they come, they're going to have to be turned away. If you want to come to the United States of America, we have a legal process for immigration. We let about a million people a year in annually already, legally.
Ray Pritchard: Think about that. We let a million people into our country legally every year.
Tim Wildmon: So we are a very hospitable country, and we are a very compassionate country when it comes to that as well.
Tim Wildmon: All right, we're going to take a short timeout right here. We'll be back with more of Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. I'm here with Wesley, Chris, and Ray. As always, we thank you for listening to American Family Radio and to this show, Today's Issues.
Tim Wildmon: Joining us right now is Jenna Ellis. Jenna is host of Jenna Ellis in the Morning here on American Family Radio, heard from 7:00 to 8:00 Central Time, where she brings you the news of the day and current events and analyzes those topics through a Christian worldview lens. She joins us now from probably an hour away from where Ray is there in Florida. How are you doing, Jenna?
Jenna Ellis: I'm great, and Florida is finally cooling off just a little bit. This is when summer is over and Florida is the best.
Tim Wildmon: The people come to Florida for the winter, not the summer, although they do come in the summer for vacation. Those are the snowbirds. Is that going to be you one day?
Jenna Ellis: I might reverse snowbird. I might fly north for the summer.
Chris Woodward: I highly recommend Door County, Wisconsin.
Jenna Ellis: Why is that, Chris?
Chris Woodward: It's nice up there, and the weather is fantastic. The winter, not so much, but Wisconsin, Indiana, and the northern states are nice.
Jenna Ellis: I've got a friend who lives in Wisconsin whom I check on in the winter, and they are hibernating.
Chris Woodward: They also developed a very bad attitude toward life.
Jenna Ellis: Seasonal depression is real.
Tim Wildmon: You lived in Colorado. You've seen enough snow.
Jenna Ellis: In March, in April even.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Jenna, before we move on, let's talk about this case involving Lindsey Clancy. Is that going to be retried, or do we not know yet?
Jenna Ellis: That's what all of these motions are arguing. Today was a status conference to determine the next steps. The district attorney has filed a motion for a gag order against the defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, basically claiming that he doxxed the lone holdout juror, meaning he provided the juror's personal information, name, and other identifying information publicly when he shouldn't have. The district attorney also claims that the disparaging remarks amount to intimidation and harassment, so they are asking for a gag order against the attorney.
Jenna Ellis: The defense team, meanwhile, is filing motions requesting a judgment of acquittal and dismissal based on double-jeopardy grounds, along with an investigation into the holdout juror. This is a wild and remarkable situation where one juror who simply showed up because he was summoned as part of his civic duty is now at the center of a huge public controversy. He is basically being forced to defend himself and his rationale for looking at the evidence, rendering a verdict based on his own calculations, and doing exactly what he was supposed to do as a juror.
Jenna Ellis: I don't think all of this sets a very good precedent for our legal system. It will be interesting to see where the trial judge goes, and whether appellate courts get involved.
Tim Wildmon: I want to ask you your thoughts on this question. Have you served in the capacity of a defense attorney or prosecutor, or both?
Jenna Ellis: Both. In all of the many hats I've worn over the years, yes. Back in Colorado, I was a prosecutor and then a defense attorney.
Tim Wildmon: Do you believe in the use of insanity as a reason to get a lesser penalty for crimes or to get off the hook altogether?
Jenna Ellis: I think any sort of insanity defense should only be relevant in negotiating a plea agreement between the district attorney and the defense, or potentially in mitigation at sentencing. But in terms of the actual conduct and a conviction, being guilty or not guilty, there should be no such thing as an absolute defense. That is what we saw in this case and what happens under statutes where the defense can say someone is not guilty by reason of insanity. Basically, that's a full justification for their conduct. I don't think we should allow that at all.
Jenna Ellis: If someone is truly insane and we have a legal, objective definition of that, which I don't think we really do in Massachusetts right now, that still doesn't excuse the conduct. It doesn't justify it. It doesn't allow for a not-guilty verdict. It should only come into consideration during sentencing, where perhaps a judge could say, “This person needs mental-health treatment. Go to a facility until you are mentally stable enough to serve out the rest of your sentence in prison.”
Ray Pritchard: Have you ever heard of a case where a person confesses to murdering three children but at the same time says, “I'm not responsible for those murders”? In other words, “I did it, but I'm not responsible for what I did.” Have you ever heard of anything like this?
Jenna Ellis: This is a shocking kind of case.
Ray Pritchard: Which leads me to ask you this question. At this point, the prosecutor has some discretion about whether or not to retry the case, given the immense amount of publicity and the fact that it was 11 to 1 to acquit on the basis of temporary insanity. How does the prosecutor and his office make that decision?
Jenna Ellis: A lot goes into that contemplation. I've been in prosecutors' offices where there are mistrials in very serious cases. What goes into this is not just the use of resources and the fact that they have to mount the prosecution again. The question is, what does justice require?
Jenna Ellis: In every state, there is a special statute that governs prosecutors. Their sole job, because they do not represent a client, is to represent the state, the government, and the power of the state. They are obligated to pursue the interests of justice. What does justice require in this case? I would say, and I think any person looking at this case morally and objectively would say, that justice requires going back to trial.
Jenna Ellis: They may shape their prosecution a little differently based on what they learned and based on some of the public sentiment. Obviously, with the 11 to 1 vote, they should shape their jury selection differently as well. But absolutely, go back to trial and fight for justice as much as you can. If, at the end of the day, a second jury says not guilty or not criminally responsible, the prosecutor can at least sleep at night knowing that he did everything he could for justice in this case and for those three precious children.
Tim Wildmon: This is just my opinion, and nobody may share it. I don't think the prosecutor has a dog's chance to get a conviction if it was 11 to 1.
Jenna Ellis: It depends on jury selection. I was always taught that you win or lose your case in jury selection.
Tim Wildmon: You've got to go 12 for 12, Jenna.
Jenna Ellis: You do. If they had found 11 people like Michael Desraville, I think we would be in a much different situation. It will be harder in a blue state like Massachusetts, but this is where I was always taught as a prosecutor that you win or lose your case in jury selection. You have to try to get into the minds of potential jurors and ask how they view the evidence in the case.
Jenna Ellis: Are they looking at women who see this as a bigger social issue? At least four of the women who have now come forward and done interviews were not concerned about the facts of the case. They were concerned about being activists. You don't want people like that on the jury.
Tim Wildmon: I agree with you, but I don't know where, in a state like Massachusetts, you are going to escape the activists and get 12 for 12.
Chris Woodward: Jenna, when you and I were in college, we didn't have all the social media that we have now. That has exploded. Because of television and social media, everybody everywhere is aware of everything, and everybody has an opinion. Hypothetically, if you were helping pick the jury pool, how do you deal with that when you're trying to find 12 impartial people who have no opinion on something?
Jenna Ellis: It's not that people cannot have heard about it or have no opinion at all. That isn't the legal standard, which thankfully is good, because I think everybody at this point has heard about it unless they are living under a rock. Because this case is so clear-cut, unless you're an activist or a person of morality, you're clearly going to be on one side or the other.
Jenna Ellis: The legal standard is whether someone can put aside their bias and what they have heard and say, “We will render a verdict just on the facts of this case.” It would be difficult, for example, for someone who watched every moment of the first trial, which was livestreamed on Court TV, to say, “I'm going to forget everything I heard from the first trial and only listen to what comes in during the second trial.” That will be very difficult, but the objective is to find people who can say, and you have to believe them, “I can set aside my bias, and I will render my verdict just on the facts of what comes in during this second trial.”
Tim Wildmon: Let me ask you this from a spiritual or biblical perspective. Ray, you can answer this, too. Spiritually and biblically, looking at this situation and mental illness in particular, there are all kinds of mental illnesses out there. How do you distinguish, Ray, between a mental illness and somebody who's acting demonically? The world doesn't acknowledge demons. You don't get that brought up in court. They will acknowledge mental illness.
Ray Pritchard: It would take a long time to answer that, and in the end the answer would be a little subjective. If we take the New Testament, we can say that there are demons, that they are in the world today, and that they are at work. They were at work during the time when Jesus was on earth.
Ray Pritchard: I was reading today about Jesus talking to the Gerasene demoniac in Mark chapter 5. Jesus asked, “What is your name?” The demon knew exactly who Jesus was and said, “My name is Legion, because we are many.” This man was infested by hundreds and hundreds, even thousands, of demons.
Ray Pritchard: It would take someone beyond me to answer the question completely. But if you go down the road of certain kinds of psychosis or schizophrenia and some really bizarre behavior, some people would say it is almost indistinguishable from demon possession. At least we can say this much: There is an evil involved with demon possession. There is a rejection of God and a hatred of Jesus that comes out because the demons are unclean spirits. Everything they produce is completely unclean, not just bizarre, but evil through and through.
Jenna Ellis: I completely agree with that. From a biblical perspective, we know that our fight is not just against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of evil in the spiritual realms. When it comes to the law, I don't think there should be any distinction, at least in terms of guilty versus not guilty, on the basis of demonic possession versus mental illness versus some physical problem in the brain.
Jenna Ellis: Ultimately, none of that should matter to the guilt of someone's conduct. We have seen people use defenses like Lindsey Clancy saying, “A voice told me to.” Whether she believed that was God, which we know it clearly was not, whether it was a demon, or whether she did not hear a voice at all, that does not matter. Her conduct is still at issue.
Jenna Ellis: As Christians, we need to be careful not to reject the spiritual component that matters. But when we are talking about society, legislation, and what the law requires, we should not bring so much into it about spirituality that we cannot prove when ultimately we believe in personal responsibility. That is certainly a biblical concept of justice as well.
Wesley: Jenna, Michael Desraville was the gentleman who was the one holdout juror. What do we know about him? Has he made any public comments? What do we know about his reasoning?
Jenna Ellis: He has made comments. He was on Hannity last night, and that was his first public interview. His attorney has also made statements. He has said that he is a Christian and a Catholic, which I think is probably where he gets his sense of justice, worldview, and morality.
Jenna Ellis: I have not listened to the entire interview, but he has consistently said, at least through statements available from his attorney, that he did not have a reasonable doubt and thought she was guilty because her attorneys were not even arguing that she killed her three children. They were arguing that she should not be held responsible.
Jenna Ellis: It is absolutely wild that he is even having to defend his position because jurors are allowed to disagree. They are allowed to look at the facts, look at the evidence, and form their conclusions. That is what we bring them in as jurors to do. Everyone is attacking him, but nobody is calling out the activists for not following the law. I hope we will hear more from him. The interview with Hannity has been published widely online.
Chris Woodward: I have 31 seconds of Michael Desraville, the juror we are talking about.
Michael Desraville: The case is about three innocent children who were brutally murdered by their mother. I know the whole focus has been on me, but we want to reel everything back and put the focus on the three angels at hand, the ones who cannot speak for themselves, defend themselves, or fight the battles. Those are Cora, Dawson, and Callan. I want to thank God for my Catholic faith foremost. I would like to thank everyone who has supported me throughout this difficult situation.
Tim Wildmon: That was the one juror who voted to convict out of the 12, and he has been vilified for some reason by many in the liberal mainstream media.
Tim Wildmon: One other thought I had on this. This is just me, and you all may not share this opinion, but I think a lot of mental illness is phony. I think a lot of what passes for mental illness is really just choices that people make to do bad things and act foolishly.
Tim Wildmon: I'm speaking in generalities, but this woman strangled her three children to death. She sent her husband away so she could do it. These were not babies. These were children. She strangled them with her bare hands.
Wesley: I don't know if she strangled them with her bare hands.
Tim Wildmon: She exercised.
Wesley: Okay.
Tim Wildmon: She knew enough to do that. I don't buy it. Maybe it is insane to kill three children.
Chris Woodward: It's insane.
Tim Wildmon: That's insane in a professional way. A psychiatrist would say that's insane. It's also insane in the ordinary sense. That's crazy to do something like that. But those things were planned. That's what I think that juror is saying. Those things were planned. How can you just let her go? That is mind-boggling to a lot of the country.
Tim Wildmon: I also think that what passes as mental illness a lot of times, like with her, is questionable. Did she show signs of this before or after? If mental illness causes you to do evil things, why doesn't mental illness cause you to go out and moonlight instead of killing people? Why don't we see people with mental illnesses being the most philanthropic, loving, wonderful people? It is always used as a justification for evil.
Jenna Ellis: Without this defense, what would her attorney be arguing? She had the means, the motive, everything, and she admitted it. She would not have any defense whatsoever without this fallback of some vague psychosis that lasted precisely 18 minutes when she committed the murders.
Jenna Ellis: Society needs to say no. You cannot have this vague, unprovable psychosis that somehow justifies and alleviates criminal responsibility for this kind of heinous conduct.
Tim Wildmon: Whatever it is, I don't care. That's where I'm at. I can listen to you explain it, but if you kill three children by strangling them to death, you're going to jail. I don't care what kind of psychosis you say you had or did not have.
Tim Wildmon: I'm sorry that you say that, but that sounds to me like straight-up demon possession. I'll say you were possessed by a demon for 15 minutes, and it caused you to do this. I don't have a lot of sympathy. I understand that mental illness exists. People have mental illnesses, and many people take medication for different kinds of mental problems. I understand that. But to commit murder against children and try to say, “I'm not responsible. I slipped into psychosis,” no, that's not going to work.
Tim Wildmon: I admire this one juror for standing up for the children, as he said. Jenna, thanks so much. What do you have coming up tomorrow morning?
Jenna Ellis: I think we should have more boomer influencers.
Tim Wildmon: He's got a golf influencer in general.
Jenna Ellis: How to play bad golf by Tim Wildmon.
Tim Wildmon: Along with my HGTV influence.
Jenna Ellis: How not to paint by Jenna Ellis.
Tim Wildmon: Jenna, I appreciate you.
Jenna Ellis: Thank you all.
Tim Wildmon: You sent me pictures. You did a great job.
Jenna Ellis: Thanks. I've been having fun with that.
Tim Wildmon: I still prefer Bob Ross.
Jenna Ellis: Happy trees.
Tim Wildmon: Happy trees. We'll be back momentarily with more of Today's Issues on American Family Radio.
Tim Wildmon, Wesley Wildmon, Chris Woodward and Ray Pritchard discuss a dangerous flood threat across multiple states, the launch of the AI-powered America.gov website and a migrant caravan traveling from Honduras through Mexico toward the United States. Jenna Ellis joins the program to analyze the Lindsey Clancy case in Massachusetts following a mistrial. The discussion covers possible retrial proceedings, a defense request for acquittal, a proposed gag order, the insanity defense and criticism directed at juror Michael Desraville, who voted to convict. The hosts and Ellis also discuss jury selection, personal responsibility and the legal treatment of mental illness. Ray Pritchard addresses the biblical distinction between mental illness and demonic influence, while the program emphasizes justice, moral responsibility and the protection of children.
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