S9, The State v. Dylan Adams - Addendum 1

Rabia Chaudry (0:19)

Hi, and welcome back to Undisclosed Toward Justice. This is the first addendum for the new series of the state versus Dylan Adams. I'm Rabia Chaudry. As always, I'm joined by my colleague, Colin Miller. Hey Colin, how you doing?

Colin Miller (0:31)

Doing great, how about yourself?

Rabia Chaudry (0:33)

I'm good. The first episode has caused a lot of waves and a lot of questions and a lot of interest. Excellent episode. And I'm excited that we're gonna be discussing it with somebody who knows this case very well, a guest who's joined us today, Dr. Katie Spirko.

Colin Miller (0:47)

Hi, Katie.

Katie Spirko (0:47)

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Rabia Chaudry (0:49)

I just wanna introduce you to our audience. Dr. Katie Spirko is a forensic neuropsychologist based in Nashville, and she's the host of the Trial and Error podcast. Dr. Spirko earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from the Florida School of Professional Psychology and completed clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship training in neuropsychology at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. In private practice, she conducts forensic psychological evaluations and court-appointed parenting fitness assessments in criminal and family court cases throughout Tennessee.

Welcome again, Katie.

Katie Spirko (1:22)

Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here.

Rabia Chaudry (1:24)

So you are also the host of a podcast. Can you first tell us about the Trial and Error Podcast? What is it about?

Katie Spirko (1:29)

The Trial and Error Podcast was really started over my work in this case and my then criminal defense attorney, Dana McClendon, who co-hosted it with me. He has since left to join Zach Adams' defense team. We started this podcast when the extent of prosecutorial and law enforcement misconduct became evident to us.

Rabia Chaudry (1:53)

In this particular case?

Katie Spirko (1:54)

In this particular case. Really, we had no intention of starting a podcast. It was an avenue that we felt was the ethical and morally right thing to do to seek out public awareness and scrutiny for a situation that seemed wrong.

Rabia Chaudry (2:11)

Yeah. That's how we started Undisclosed and 10 years later, here we are. Well, can you tell us a little bit about how the Holly Bobo case first came on your radar?

Katie Spirko (2:21)

I first got involved when Doug Bates, who represented Zach Adams in his post-conviction relief hearing, reached out right after he had gotten appointed on the case and asked if I could help him come on the case and provide essentially some pro bono, non-testifying consulting expert assistance. It was a massive case file and so I came on to help him go through records in the case and interview witnesses.

Rabia Chaudry (2:50)

I'm sorry, he was representing who?

Katie Spirko (2:52)

Zach Adams in the post-conviction relief.

Rabia Chaudry (2:54)

Okay.

Katie Spirko (2:54)

Dylan's brother.

Rabia Chaudry (2:55)

Okay. So as you went through this, and what point in the procedural history was this happening?

Katie Spirko (3:02)

This was Zach had just filed his pro se PCR petition and had been appointed an attorney. So Doug had just been appointed by Judge Bradbury onto the case.

Doug had called me and he said, this is a messy case. It's possibly career suicide. I can't pay you anything. But I really think my client is actually innocent. And would you please just read this book? A TVI agent wrote about it. And I had a good friend of mine was a prosecutor at the time. I had other friends just I've been in the court world. So I have other friends that are attorneys and court insiders and asked advice. And they all told me to turn around and run, which gave me more curiosity.

Methil (3:48)

Like I think I'll start a podcast.

Katie Spirko (3:50)

Yeah, here, this seems chaotic and unnecessary, but it was necessary. So here I am.

Rabia Chaudry (3:55)

And that actually led to the podcast. And so the podcast came about so you could kind of raise awareness and help further impact the case. Is that right?

Katie Spirko (4:04)

Yeah, it really came about from a conversation between Dana, McClendon and I. And we were seeking protection of the press in exposing this information. And we were sitting there. I think it was kind of received by the state a bit as a joke, like I'm representing myself as a journalist now. But it was a very genuine and thoughtful choice.

I mean, I'm sitting there reading the First Amendment, and it's meant to be for any citizen, whether part of any established media or not, who wishes to expose government misconduct that is of public interest. And that's really where we were at, is this is wrong, and we didn't think it would be made right without public scrutiny.