Guilty Of Indifference

Despite being someone who loves a good true crime story, I have never found myself infatuated with any high-profile criminal trials. I will certainly read about the outcome once a verdict is announced, but you will never find me tuning in to see the details of what took place on a day-to-day basis. I assume this disinterest is directly related to my first experience with them being the OJ Simpson trial. That ruling was so unsatisfying that it may have turned me off celebrity trials for good. That is why I barely batted an eyelash when I heard that after four months of back and forth, looking at evidence as well as another week of deliberations the jury had returned a guilty verdict in the trial of murderer Jodi Arias who was convicted of killing her boyfriend in Arizona in 2008. However, from the way the news and social media exploded it appears I was one of the few. Everywhere you turned this afternoon there were people who had an opinion on the case and not only that but they acted as though they were invested in the outcome. Case in point: the fact a verdict was coming in was a trending topic on Twitter and around the time I assume the verdict was being delivered I swear I heard a cheer go up from my neighbor's house. Considering there wasn't a game on at the time I don't know what else it could have been. (And what else is worth yelling about?)

I'm trying to figure out why this particular case was so popular because while it had all the normal elements which make a trial interesting to the general public (violence, sex and a mildly attractive defendant), it certainly didn't have much in the way of drama. Normally what makes these proceeding interesting is you don't know how they will end. And while I will grant you that a jury trial can obviously take an unexpected twist, if you read any details of the case it appears that this girl was as deep as a kiddie pool and far from a criminal mastermind as she changed her story about that day three times while on the stand. Her lawyer wasn't much better, as apparently his entire defense appeared to be, "But she's pretty!" This wasn't exactly the crime of the century here, so what made it so damn interesting to everyone but me? It certainly couldn't be the amazing legalese the lawyers were throwing around because if you have ever been in a courtroom for any period of time the reality shatters the illusion of someone yelling, "This whole courtroom is out of order!" pretty quickly. I will grant you that humans have a primal fascination with determining if people are guilty or innocent, because if that wasn't the case shows like "Law & Order" wouldn't have lasted 20 years. But that can only be a small part of it because if people found that so interesting society wouldn't put so much effort into getting out of jury duty every day of the year.

Reportedly this trial was very popular with people who work from home and the stay-at-home parents. I guess this is what happens when they start cancelling daytime soap operas because people will always find another way to get their mid-day fill of drama. Of course, it probably helped that people like Nancy Grace have been staked out in Arizona since the trial began pumping up its significance. ("Journalists" like Nancy Grace are exactly why I hate media-circus trials because they act like just because they have a law degree they can never be wrong again when the reality is they usually get it just as wrong as your average sports analyst, which is to say all the damn time. Only when she's wrong she has a platform capable of ruining people's lives.) But when you remember that if CNN didn't have this case to fill hours of programming they would probably be filling the airways reading random people's tweets, over-hyping a trial will not impact 99.99% of Americans while ignoring things which do is probably a better use of their time. Besides, I can't totally fault CNN on this one because high-profile court cases have sort of become their thing and every 24-hour cable news network has their niche. Fox News' is trying to make everything the President's fault while MSNBC spend all day whining about how mean Fox News is, which left CNN to cover things like trials and natural disasters.

It's not entirely a bad thing either because at least in this case there was a 95% chance it was going to deliver a satisfying verdict. When there is so much depressing news out there it must be nice to be able to be the one station who gives people news they might actually want to hear (even if there were probably producers at CNN hoping she got off on some sort of technicality because not only could then they spend 2 days complaining about our flawed legal system they would have had a retrial to look forward to). But, those people don't need to worry too much about finding programming because if there is one thing which is guaranteed it is there is always another high-profile case to blow out of proportion coming down the tracks. America will wrap itself up in the details, decide the person's fate well before the jury gets a chance to and then call the jury idiots if they don't reach the same conclusion, ignoring the fact that those jurors heard every piece of evidence and we only got the highlights. Then that one will end and we'll move on to the next one and never think about that trial again. Seriously, in some ways these trials are like any other competition show on television. What's ironic is that even though I think the results of "American Idol" have a lot less riding on them, it feels like Jodi Arias is more famous than any recent "Idol" winners. Talk about a tough way to get famous.