Show Trials and the Media

Home is close to the site of the Casey Anthony trial. If you have not heard of that trial, you have not turned on the telly, opened a news­pa­per, lis­tened to a radio talk show, logged on to Twit­ter, had a water cooler con­ver­sa­tion, or in my com­mu­nity sat in a wait­ing room for the last cou­ple of months. Per­son­ally, I find it oppressive.

I am will­ing to accept the peo­ple (for exam­ple @kellyoxford and @TheRealRoseanne) who have already decided guilt or inno­cence from what they have heard in the media and express their opin­ions pub­licly. After all that is a core prin­ci­ple of the social web and the insti­tu­tions that my home coun­try hold very dear. I believe strongly in both.

But things have gone too far when I must sit in a med­ical office wait­ing room and be sub­jected to a con­tin­u­ing live broad­cast of the trial with talk­ing heads offer­ing their opin­ion of which lawyers scored or lost points with the jury when­ever there is a break in the live action. And they have gone way too far when I must be sub­jected to the very loudly spo­ken com­men­tary and opin­ions about Ms. Anthony’s guilt or inno­cence and just what the State of Florida should do with her from the other peo­ple in the wait­ing room.

It is not that I do not care about the out­come of our jus­tice sys­tem. It is just that hav­ing served as fore­man on a jury, I know that even for a much sim­pler case, it is a very dif­fi­cult job to decide the issues a jury must decide. With­out being present for every minute of the pro­ceed­ings, it is impos­si­ble to prop­erly weigh the deci­sions the mem­bers of the jury must make. Fur­ther, given the num­ber of cases in the State of Florida where we have learned the evi­dence was improp­erly treated or pre­sented, a level of skep­ti­cism towards the state’s case is prob­a­bly always warranted.

FWIW, I per­son­ally do not believe in the death penalty. I do not believe in it even for cases like Charles Man­son, Ted Bundy, and Danny Rolling. I do believe is a strong pub­lic defense. But once a threat has been removed from soci­ety, then soci­ety has done its ser­vice. I also do not have the absolute faith in the system’s abil­ity to always “get it right” that the major­ity of pros­e­cu­tor seem to have. Final jus­tice can­not be undone.

I will be greatly relieved when I can sit in a doctor’s wait­ing room and the telly is telling me that I really should have brought my umbrella in with me. That may be dis­turb­ing but not so much and at least every­one in the wait­ing room will all agree on the sit­u­a­tion. Maybe some­one will help me get out to the car with­out get­ting soaked.

Is Still Here