On Law: Nothing like a good murder case

[Bobbie]

USA:

On Law: Nothing like a good murder case

Pity the poor Supreme Court correspondent.

Reporting from the heights, he or she writes stories about decisions that will affect all of us, our children and our grandchildren for the rest of the 21st century. But the stories that grab the headlines, and keep them for months, belong to the lurid and the tragic.

Want proof?

Last term a majority of the justices decided for the 1st time in our country's history, in Hiibel vs. Sixth Judicial District, that states can require any citizen to give his or her name to police when asked and that the otherwise innocent citizen can be hauled away in handcuffs for refusing to do so.

In a series of cases involving terror suspects held in detention, majorities ruled that the Bush administration could not keep prisoners beyond the reach of the courts, something the president said was essential to the war against terror.

A majority of the justices also ruled in a series of combined cases led by McConnell vs. the FEC that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act's core provisions banning the use of "soft" unregulated money are constitutional, as ineffective as that law has proved in practice.

In other terms, the Supreme Court has told us that leading prayers at high school football games is unconstitutional, while government providing school vouchers to parents who want to use them for the religious education of their children is not.

In the landmark Lawrence vs. Texas, a majority of the justices struck down the Lone Star State's ban against sodomy in an opinion that more or less told government it had no business trying to regulate the sex lives of 2 consenting adults, gay or straight.

All of these decisions had their brief moment in the media sun. But not one received 1/10 of the newspaper ink or broadcast airtime given to the Laci Peterson murder case.

Laci's body and that of her unborn son were found in San Francisco Bay in April 2003 after the pretty, young pregnant wife disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002.

Her image in snapshots has haunted us ever since, as has the bovine, handsome face of her husband Scott, now on trial for her murder.

The national media, and presumably the public, are so obsessed with the case that one resembling it also has received massive attention. In Utah, Lori Hacking disappeared July 19, and thousands of volunteers searched for her. Her picture and a home videotape of the attractive young woman tugged at our collective heart.

It probably came as no surprise to anyone when her husband Mark, after checking himself into a mental institution, allegedly confessed to killing her and throwing her body in a dumpster.

It turns out that Mark had been lying to his wife and extended family about graduating from college and being accepted into medical school in North Carolina. When Lori found out she became upset, and then he became upset and then -- well, naturally he had to kill her. He probably thought he had no other choice.

Haven't these people ever heard of marriage counseling?

It doesn't always have to be the murder of a pretty, young wife to draw hordes of media to a criminal case in this country. Celebrity also plays its part.

Look at the firestorm of attention the media is paying to the Kobe Bryant sexual-assault case. It helps that Bryant, of course, is a star basketball player with the Los Angeles Lakers. It also helps -- though we tend not to admit this to ourselves -- that the accused is a young black man and the alleged victim is an even younger white woman.

Speaking of celebrities, we're due for another round of media frenzy any day as the child-molestation case against Michael Jackson proceeds in California. Neverland will never be the same.

And Martha, dear Martha Stewart? We're leaving her alone for the moment, but watch what happens when she goes behind bars after being convicted of lying to authorities about a securities fraud she was never charged with in the first place. The paparazzi will be thick in the bushes, trying to snap a shot of Martha in a tasteful prison jumpsuit.

So what does it all mean?

Despite the massive attention these cases get, do they really have anything to tell us?

I suppose they are somewhat illuminating to the human condition and the degradation that even the most successful of us can achieve if we try really hard. I know the public's interest in them is intense, and it's been that way since the earliest days of the Republic. These cases are just modern versions of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case, which received more press than the rise of Hitler.

But I find them tiresome -- a fact that my wife chooses to ignore as she regales me each morning with all the lurid details, especially in the Peterson and Hacking cases, as they are revealed with breathless enthusiasm by the national media. I suppose my wife finds my explanations of Supreme Court decisions just as oppressive.

However, there is one tangible effect of the Peterson and Hacking cases. Surely, they reinforce the universal instinct of police to immediately suspect the husband when a wife disappears, no matter how peaceful a fellow he is.

This weighs on my mind, so much so that I only half-jokingly added the following to my bedtime prayers:

"O Lord, please let nothing happen to my wife.

If something has to happen to one of us, some act of violence, please let it happen to me.

But if, in Your infinite wisdom, You decide that my wife is the one who must suffer --

Please, O Lord, make sure that my alibi is airtight.

Amen."

(source: UPI - Mike Kirkland is UPI's senior legal affairs correspondent. He has covered the Supreme Court and other parts of the legal community since 1993.)

[Deleted]

It is unfortunate that many people look on cases like Laci Peterson with such awe, while there are other crimes that people ignore, what about those victims? It is also sad that people don't pay attention to what happens all around them.

I'm not fond of school vouchers, but it is different to allow them to pick a school. When it is a public school, one religion should not be there. There are many religions as well as atheism. To choose one to endorse is a slap in the face to all others.

The Lawrence v. Texas case also invalidated all other state laws that banned oral and anal sex between homosexuals and heterosexuals.

Unfortunately it is very common for a person to be murdered by someone they know. The last number I saw was 64%, but I have heard much higher numbers. That's why police always look at relatives, especially spouses, first.