Big HooHoo Trials

So Scott Peterson gets death and Robert Blake has been found not guilty on the most serious of charges (first degree murder and solicitation of murder) in the death of his wife Bonnie Lee Bakley, the charming lady who did a lot of scurrilous things in her life but probably didn't deserve to get popped in a dark parking area on that May night in 2001.

I'm sort of a court-a-phile from graduate school days and the feeling I come away with from both trials (but much more in Peterson) is that we're down to treating criminal trials like it's another "American Idol" show where the public gets to vote and there are a million Simons ready to opine ad nauseum about the horrible nature of those who had least try to have some talent (what the hell is Simon talented at besides nastiness? I ask because I'd rather eat tar than watch a show like that).

Last night, the media was going on non-stop with two stories: the poor hostage from the Atlanta case who might not get all the reward money for saving her own life and the fact that Laci Peterson's mother was having a shit fit because every seat in the court room for the sentencing wasn't going to "friends of both Laci and Connor".

Connor was the unborn child and California pulled a nice one for promoting the "fetus as person" Bush initiative by charging Peterson with both. I don't think until a creature is actually deemed alive (i.e. with documented birth) can it be considered a full fledged person. That's not intended as a hateful distinction but one based on how you look at a government's distinction of a person. Go try to apply for a social security number or a birth certificate or life insurance on a fetus and you'll find you can't get them on someone not yet alive.

With this in mind, I don't think Connor had hundreds of friends yet that needed seats. Let's not take this "life begins at the moment of ejaculation of sperm" effort too far. That's not to say the child isn't greatly anticipated, planned for, first thought of as an impending son or daughter. The life at that stage is valuable. But elevating Connor to a life equal to that of his mother negates the mother. It's a political distinction so let's not lose sight of that.

But do we really want to have trials whose results can be decided like a popularity contest? In both of these cases, there was circumstantial evidence but almost no forensic evidence. Both juries listened to a lot of "these are bad men" media attention before the trials began. I suspect that the only thing to save Robert Blake the same verdict was two-fold: (sadly) the reputation of the deceased (not the exalted, always grinning Madonna we saw with Laci Peterson) and the fact that Blake's trial got a lot less attention.

From what I heard of the evidence presented at the Peterson trial, I do not believe I could have voted guilty. The prosecution did not prove their case forensically or legally; they proved it by making Peterson look so damned bad as a human being (and I'm not making excuses for him or what he did - however, I do recognize that you can be a very rotten person and still not be guilty of a specific crime).

Yet this is how so many criminal cases get decided. It's not just.

And those loud-mouth jurors from the Peterson trial who keep grabbing press attention to spew hatred at Peterson. I really think the male juror we keep seeing is going to appear in appeal documents filed later. Enough with elevating jurors to celebrity status.