The Speed Is Not in Dispute. What Caused Two Deaths Is.

Cedric Hayden Jr. was 34. DeJuan Pettis was 33. Two friends who had known each other most of their lives. Two autoworkers, one building for Chrysler and one for General Motors. Two fathers, four kids between them. Just before 5 in the morning on September 30, 2024, they were in a white Dodge Durango trying to get home, and a Warren police SUV came down Schoenherr Road at a speed almost none of us will ever drive in our lives. No lights. No siren. Both men died at the scene.

Day one of James Burke's manslaughter trial came down to one question, and the whole rest of this case is going to circle the same one. Who killed them. The state says it was the officer behind the wheel and the speed he chose. The defense says it was the man driving the Durango, who was drunk and suspended and turned across the cruiser's path. By the time the day ended, both stories were standing, and the state had started turning its half from a promise into something the jury could see for itself.

The speed was never going to be the fight

The state went first, and Assistant Prosecutor Cory Newman built his opening on two things. Speed, and silence.

He told the jury Burke pushed that patrol SUV past 100 miles an hour on city streets posted for 40, and reached as high as 114 in the seconds before the crash. He told them Burke never turned on his emergency lights and never turned on his siren. Nothing to warn the two men in the Durango that a marked police vehicle was bearing down on them at highway speed in the dark. Even after Burke hit the brakes at the last second, the state put the impact at around 93. The force threw the Durango into the air and rolled it onto its side. Officers pulled both men out through the sunroof and did CPR in the road. Newman's frame, the line he is going to return to in closing, was as plain as it gets. A badge is not a license to drive like that. A badge does not put anyone above the law.

Then Marc Curtis stood up for the defense and did something you do not see every day. He did not argue about the speed. He gave it away.

There is no question Burke was driving fast, the defense told the jury. No fight about the numbers the state put on the board. What the defense is contesting is the one word that decides this case. Causation. And Curtis built that fight on two legs.

The first leg is training. Burke was an eight-year officer, academy trained to handle a pursuit-rated police vehicle, and by his own partner's account the best driver on the shift. Curtis set the night up not as a routine plate reader hit but as a hunt for an armed crew that had been tearing through ATMs in that exact area, in those exact early morning hours, using stolen Chrysler SUVs. He told the jury officers are trained not to light up their emergency equipment while closing on a suspect, because the second you do, the suspect knows you are coming and runs. In that telling, the dark and silent approach was not recklessness. It was technique.

The second leg is the dead driver, and this is where the defense got pointed. As Burke came down Schoenherr with nothing between him and the oncoming headlights, the defense said, a Durango with no turn signal, driven by a man whose license was suspended and whose blood alcohol level was .198, turned across his path without warning. Curtis called the turn illegal. He told the jury that even the state's own crash reconstruction expert will agree it was illegal. And he handed the jury the off-ramp the defense wants them to take. If the man driving the Durango was grossly negligent, or even just a contributor to the crash, then Burke is not guilty.

So that was the board after the first hour. The state says the speed is the crime. The defense says a drunk driver caused the wreck and the speed is a tragedy, not a crime. One thing does not move no matter where this story goes. Burke is presumed innocent, and the burden of proving these charges belongs to the state, all of it, and never shifts to him.

WATCH PART 1 ON YOUTUBE Reckless Officer or Drunk Driver? James Burke Stands Trial for Manslaughter in Two Deaths | Pt 1

Then the state started proving it

Openings are a promise. The witnesses are where you find out whether the promise gets kept. The state spent day one making its half of the case concrete through the people who were actually there.

Officer Rami Anees answered the same call. Same stolen Jeep, same area, same minutes. He drove it casually, by his own account, because he was already close and did not need to speed, and he never turned on his lights. He told the jury the Warren policy treats a flock hit like that one as a moderate-speed response unless there is more confirmed information. Same call. A normal speed. And he still got there in time to climb into the wreckage, cut a seatbelt, and start CPR on the man in the passenger seat. He is the officer who pronounced DeJuan Pettis dead in the road.

Then Anees handed the state something it is going to hold onto. Watching his own body camera footage, he agreed the wrecked Durango had a yellow blinking light on the front. The kind you see when a driver is signaling a left turn. Remember, the defense told the jury in its opening that Hayden turned with no signal at all. The state just put a blinking left signal into the record, on its very first witness, before the defense has called a soul. That fight is not finished. But the state planted its flag early.

WATCH PART 2 ON YOUTUBE Warren Officer Testifies the Victims' Turn Signal Was On When the Defense Said It Wasn't | Pt 2

Officer Devon Birrell came next, and he is the closest thing the defense got to a gift from a state witness. Birrell was the field training officer riding with Anees, and he gave the jury the fullest version of the threat anyone has heard. An armed ATM crew that had hit across the tri-county area and multiple times in Warren. Surveillance of the suspects holding guns at gas stations. An armed robbery. Intelligence that very shift placing the crew in north Warren and Sterling Heights, the same place this Jeep was stolen from. That is the spine of the defense's entire story, and it came out of the prosecution's own witness.

But Birrell boxed in the speed in the same breath. Asked straight out whether he was doing 100 or more, he said no, he was not. He put his own speed a little over the limit. He told the jury his car only sped up after Burke radioed that he had crashed. And pressed on how fast he would push it to close on a suspect with no lights, Birrell topped out around 90. So the same officer who explained why cops go dark and fast also drew a ceiling, and that ceiling sits well under what Burke's own camera would show the jury a couple of witnesses later.

WATCH PART 3 ON YOUTUBE Warren Training Officer Testifies His Patrol Car Wasn't Going 100 on the Same Call as Burke | Pt 3

The body camera goes quiet

Officer Anthony Napoli is where day one got uncomfortable.

Napoli has known Burke about 15 years, going back to high school. He reached the scene, helped pull a victim out of the Durango, and walked Burke to the curb to get him away from the wreck. Then the state spent most of his time on the stand on his body camera, and it laid three things side by side and let the jury sit with them. Burke's hand reaching up around the center of Napoli's chest, right where the camera sits. The audio going dead, because Napoli muted it. And Napoli, on that same footage, telling Burke to stay quiet and not to talk to anybody.

Put those three things together and you can hear exactly what the state wants the jury to hear. A fellow officer coaching the defendant and shutting the recording off.

The defense met it head-on, and the answer is going to matter. Napoli described Burke as in shock, swaying on his feet, mumbling, maybe concussed, not the man he had known for 15 years. Muting a camera while you talk to a friend who just lived through a horrific crash, the defense argued, is routine, not sinister. And telling him to stay quiet is not a cover-up. It is critical-incident protocol, the same thing officers are trained to do after a shooting, no statement until a union representative or a lawyer is in the room. Asked directly whether he was hiding something, Napoli said no.

Then the state landed a quieter blow on its way out. In the moment, Napoli had no confirmed information that this specific stolen Jeep was tied to the armed ATM crew. All he actually knew was that it was stolen with two guns inside. The link to the crew was, in his own word, an assumption. That matters, because the danger every officer keeps describing was inferred in the moment, not confirmed.

Whether the jury sees that body camera moment as a brother protecting a brother or as something darker is exactly the kind of thing that decides a case.

WATCH PART 4 ON YOUTUBE Officer Who Knew Burke 15 Years Testifies He Told Him to Stay Quiet at the Scene | Pt 4

The cruiser's own camera

The state saved its most powerful witness for last, and he is powerful precisely because he is on Burke's side.

Officer Michael Rodolfo was Burke's partner for about two years in the David area, the highest-crime part of the city. He chose Burke. He let Burke drive, because in his telling Burke was the better driver, one of the best on the shift, and he never once worried about it. That loyalty is real, and the state let it stand, because the rest of his testimony did the work.

Rodolfo was running the computer that morning while Burke drove. He confirmed the Jeep was stolen, pulled its photo, and saw it was a dark, almost purple SUV. He says he spotted tail lights he believed were the Jeep about half a mile ahead, and that the car accelerated hard after that. His eyesight is 20/110. He never looked at the speedometer. He trusted Burke. And then, by his own account, he does not remember much. The crash was a few streets later.

What he woke up to is the part the jury carries home. A broken ankle. A broken femur. A broken femoral neck. Ten broken ribs. A broken arm. Fifteen days in the hospital and about a year and a half off the job. He is the officer the third charge is built around, and he is also Burke's friend. Asked how he is doing now, he said he feels wonderful.

Then the speed stopped being a number in a prosecutor's opening and became a number on a screen. It came in through the defense's own exhibit, a video that overlays the cruiser's GPS speed on a map, and then through the raw in-car video. On that video, the cruiser hits 109 miles an hour. The limit on that stretch of Schoenherr is about 35.

Watch the white vehicle. Rodolfo testified he believed he saw the dark Jeep's tail lights half a mile back. But the vehicle the cruiser is closing on at 109, on its own camera, is white. The Jeep they were hunting was dark. The Durango that Hayden and Pettis died in was white. Asked whether he remembered seeing the Durango at all, Rodolfo could only say he saw something white. Whether that cruiser was running down the dark Jeep it wanted or the white Durango it hit is the dead center of this case, and it is the question the reconstruction expert is going to have to answer.

WATCH PART 5 ON YOUTUBE Burke's Partner Walks the Jury Through the Moments Leading Up to the Deadly Crash | Pt 5

What day one did not settle

The fight this whole case turns on did not happen yet.

The .198. The suspended license. The unsignaled turn. The question of whether anything the men in that Durango did could have changed the outcome at that speed. None of it got resolved on day one, because the witnesses who carry it have not taken the stand. The crash reconstruction expert is coming. So is the medical examiner or the toxicologist. The white vehicle on the cruiser's camera is the hinge the whole thing swings on, and it is the defense's strongest ground.

For now, the state has the speed and it has the human cost. Two officers answered the same call and drove nothing like Burke. The cruiser's own camera says 109 on a 35. A partner who trusted Burke completely woke up shattered, and an officer doing CPR in the road pronounced a father dead at the scene. The defense has the threat and it has the training, and it is holding its causation case in reserve for the witnesses who can actually carry it.

I will say the thing I always say here, because it is the whole reason this channel exists. None of what the state showed on day one is a verdict. My father spent his life on the idea that the protections in the Constitution are not favors we hand out to people we happen to like. They are the rules, and they cover the unpopular defendant exactly the way they would cover you. James Burke is about as unpopular as a defendant gets right now. So this is the case where we find out whether those rules mean anything.

If you would rather watch the whole day for yourself instead of taking my read on it, both full-day versions are right here.

WATCH THE FULL DAY Michigan v. James Burke, Day 1, Live Broadcast WATCH THE FULL DAY, NO BREAKS Michigan v. James Burke, Day 1, No Breaks Edition

We are just getting started on this one. The reconstruction expert and the toxicologist are where the causation fight finally lands, and that is the testimony I will be watching closest.