Áine & Kevin from Murder Sheet Podcast Calls-In!

Jason Hammer (0:04)

That's right, broadcasting live at Coaches Tavern downtown Indianapolis. The Hammer and Nigel Road Show. My name is Nigel Jason Hammer right over there with a pair of special guests on the hotline.

Nigel (0:18)

Man, a lot going on today, so we bring in the folks that cover it better than anybody. Áine and Kevin from the Murder Sheet Podcast join us. They have been friends of this program for a number of years, covering the high-profile criminal cases here in the state of Indiana.

Áine, we'll start with you. Today, I believe you two were at the Johnson County Courthouse for that initial hearing from Michael Jerome James. He is the guy accused of the 2006 double homicide of China and young Blake Dickus. You guys have been following this for a long time. What did we learn today? What happened?

Áine Cain (1:02)

You guys, thank you so much for having us. So yes, today we actually got to see Michael Jerome James. They brought him in. He was able to get out there and say his piece a little bit, kind of going back and forth with the judge saying that he's being kept in voluntary confinement and wanting to know, hey, when am I going to get the probable cause affidavit in my own case? So we actually got to hear from him directly. We also got to see the show of force from the Dickens family. They arrived wearing little buttons with Chyna and Blake's face on it. And that was a poignant, I think, reminder of the human cost of this whole tragic situation.

Nigel (1:41)

And did we get any sort of feel of how this whole thing came to be? I know you guys have been following this for a long time, along with some other cases, but this is one of the more high-profile, we thought was a cold case for a long time until this recent grand jury. Any update, any feel on how we got here?

Áine Cain (2:04)

No, and it's a bit of deja vu, honestly, because we all know that the Delphi case was quite secretive at first, and we certainly complained a lot about that on our show, and a lot of the media did understandably. This is even more secretive. They had a grand jury, as you mentioned, so there's no probable cause, and therefore, it's a little bit unclear what information we're even going to get, aside from maybe just going to the pretrial hearings. So we're working on trying to figure out what is going on, how did this come together, and why do they think that this individual did this crime?

Jason Hammer (2:38)

Kevin, I know you have a law background, maybe you can answer this. I've been scratching my head, and I've heard people talking about this on TV. The perpetrator, the alleged suspect committed this crime when he was in his teens, 14, 15 years old. How in the world are they going to prosecute this?

If you could look into your crystal ball and just maybe talk about that for a second. When the guy now, 20 years later, is in his 30s.

Kevin Greenlee (3:13)

That's an excellent question. So a few years ago, a law was passed which allows prosecutors in Indiana to prosecute people as adults for crimes they committed when they were juveniles. But the complication there is, you mentioned earlier, is this crime was committed in 2006 Does a law passed in the last few years apply to something that occurred in 2006?

I'm not sure it does. So I think that's going to be a real issue of contention. And that even if the prosecutors can convince the trial judge that yes, this law does let us prosecute him, if there was a conviction, I imagine that would be an issue that would be argued hardly at appeals.

Nigel (4:02)

Kevin, let's go into this grand jury because I don't think a lot of people are fully aware of the process that went on. Because this went through a grand jury in the last couple of weeks, the suspect here, Michael James, knew that the authorities were onto him, correct?

Kevin Greenlee (4:22)

Correct.

So when you are a target of a grand jury investigation, they have to inform you of that. But the complication there is the grand jury investigations are secret. They are sealed. So we, the public, do not know what evidence was presented to the grand jury to convince them to issue this indictment against this man. And I'm not very comfortable with that because I think we in the state have the right to examine the evidence the state uses when it takes away our liberties.