Bit late catching your conversation and interesting debate. Sitting at home bored and lonely, so thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. This has my attention because I was a case manager for the IG in the military years ago and have a pretty functional knowledge of this type of judiciary law (a state AG operates much like a military IG), so I'm naturally curious how this will play out.

Based on all the transcripts and news reports, it seems pretty obvious Ezell is going to plead a "duress and coerceion defense," which led to her irrational threat emails. The evidence of aparent bribary by Church looks pretty damning to me. Still, I suspect there's a lot in these investigations not yet disclosed to the public. For one, Ezell mention of "other offices" besides the Pharmacy Board placing pressure on her. I'm curious what other offices. Also interesting to me is the AG asked the DA to investigate the Pharmacy matter, even though OSBI is doing their own investigation. Meanwhile I'm guessing Ezell's lawyers will use some sort of "duress defense" for the email threats to herself. It's a legitimate legal precident if a person can argue their situation caused such emotional or psychological distress or pressure beyond "reasonable forebearance," then the court will enter it as a defense. Oklahoma allows the "duress defense" in most cases except violent crimes and murder. I may be completely wrong, but it sounds like they're doing for the duress defense. A lot depends what else the two investigations uncover, plus any plea barganing. This is going to be an interesting and contriversial story worth following. Maybe the moderator should start a seperate post for this issue. (My 2 cents... sorry for the verbose opine.)