This week, Sarah walks Mike through Nancy Grace’s prosecution of American juries. Cameos include Mark Geragos (again), O.J. Simpson (inevitably) and Jessica Hahn (thank God). Gus Van Sant’s masterpiece "To Die For" is discussed at length.
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This week, Sarah walks Mike through Nancy Grace’s prosecution of American juries. Cameos include Mark Geragos (again), O.J. Simpson (inevitably) and Jessica Hahn (thank God). Gus Van Sant’s masterpiece "To Die For" is discussed at length.
Support us:
Subscribe on Patreon
Donate on Paypal
Buy cute merch
Where else to find us:
Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads
Mike's other show, Maintenance Phase
Mike: I thought you were going to say we've replaced the theme song, like Katie Holmes for Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Sarah: Ooh. We’ve replaced it with something that's like better, and yet at the same time kind of unsavory for the way it makes you feel that none of your memories are real.
We should put all of this in.
Mike: Just long pauses as I think of a shitty tagline.
Sarah: As you think of a great tagline.
Mike: Welcome to You're Wrong About, where prosecutors are problematic, and the satanic panic might be real.
Sarah: Ahhhh. I'm going to be hearing about the satanic cults of California for the rest of my life, aren’t I?
Mike: I am Michael Hobbes, I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post.
Sarah: I'm Sarah Marshall, and I'm working on a book about the Satanic Panic. And Mike thinks I should call it the Satanic Realness, because Nancy Grace has so blown our minds with her difficult truths or whatever. Is that what you are saying, Mike?
Mike: We are on Patreon at patreon.com/yourewrongabout, and lots of other places to find the show. And we have been getting a lot of questions for our first, “Ask Us Anything”, and we're going to record it this week. We are really excited. And today we are talking about Nancy Grace, part three, the trilogy. So, yeah. Where are we diving in this week?
Sarah: What have we learned so far, Mike? I would love to hear you sum up what we've done.
Mike: We have learned, first of all, that Nancy Grace rose from a sort of random lady into law school and into becoming a prosecutor after the murder of her fiancé, which it appears you've been sort of twisted into this simpler and more convenient origin story that confirms her beliefs. And then last week we talked about how she hates the Constitution and defense lawyers.
Sarah: Okay. Here is a good comparison. I was reading this book about the art and science of homemaking and there is a moment when the author is talking about rags versus sponges and she go, and the sentence is, “I am no fan of sponges,” but you know from her kind of authorial voice that it's like, “I am no fan of sponges.” And I feel like that's how Nancy Grace feels about the Constitution.
Mike: Where she is saying she's no fan, but she's saying it in its italics. Yes.
Sarah: I mean another to me that is really interesting about this book is that Nancy Grace, and you know, this is what it's going to be going forward - Spoiler alert - is that yeah, this is Nancy Grace's argument. And then each chapter is going to be like fairly anecdotal examples of ways that different aspects of the legal system are either corrupt or not to her liking. In the end it is the book is a collection of anecdotes, it is like the Trader Joe's bacon ends in pieces. It's a lot of little bacon ends and pieces.
Mike: I was actually thinking about this in terms of kind of the relationship between anecdotes and actual data, because as a writer, if you're writing about, you know, income inequality, for example, you want to have like anecdotes in there that make it real for people, right? You would have all these statistics about like the top 1% has gained 40% of the income gains, blah, blah, blah, whatever the number is.
But then because numbers are kind of boring and people don't remember them. You would then include a bunch of indicative anecdotes of like Jeff Bezos owned 75 yachts and Bill Gates has 51 houses or whatever. Anecdotes are there as kind of like color.
Sarah: Yes.
Mike: But it seems like there is also this turn with, first of all, it's kind of like bad journalism generally, but especially with people that want to confirm something that really doesn't show up in the data, it's like they just strike all of the quantitative parts of that. They skip to the anecdotes, but they have not actually established that the underlying facts are true.
Sarah: Well, yeah. And I feel like if you're telling a story and this is something that you do very well in your writing, I think, if you're telling a story with anecdote and data, then it's kind of like knitting with two fibers and one is very colorful and beautiful. And really makes the piece, you know, shimmer, but it has no tensile strength, and it just comes apart with the least bit of tension. And then you blend it with something that is like very strong and is never going to like wear or fall apart. But just isn't interesting to look at all.
Mike: Right.
Sarah: And you put those two things together and then you have a great sweater. What I find most interesting about this book in the anecdotes she chooses to be in it is that they aren't even good anecdotes. Like this to me is maybe the most amazing thing about this entire book. Because she, we talked about this last episode. She starts with the stories of the trials of two men who were each tried and convicted for murdering a little girl.
They were each horrible story. But the interesting thing about that too, is that you are left with no sense of injustice because these men both were convicted and are never going to walk free. You don't have the sense of justice worded in the way that Nancy Grace would want you to understand justice.
Mike: So even her cherry-picked anecdotes or like withered little old cherries. Like they are not even like plump, red, sweet, cherries.
Sarah: That is so mean, she is little old cherries. You said it man. What I find most interesting about that is just like the sheer laziness of it. Because there are plenty of defense lawyers who have done terrible things. There's so many of them it's like trying to find dentists doing unethical things. Of course they’re there, I'm sure you can find people. Post-conviction lawyers who never filed exculpatory evidence. You know, people who were overwhelmed and did a bad job, people engaging in various forms of corruption. You know, there is so many possible stories out there and not even stuff that has to be reported, but just stuff that's, you know, that you could find looking at newspapers or that a professional writer who you hire to write a memoir for you.
Mike: Right. It just hanging off the cherry tree, it is just right there.
Sarah: Right. Listen, yeah, it is a cherry filled world out there. And what, instead we get is sort of this list of like things, Nancy Grace kind of remembers, and that she talked about on TV at one time.
Mike: Right, right. But let us crack on. I like it when you tell me anecdotes and then we debunk them from sources outside of Nancy's book.
Sarah: All right. Let's do it. Chapter two, We the Jury, “On elevators and in restaurants at bus stops and airports, I am constantly asked, what's the secret to winning cases? My response is always the same, you win or losing jury selection. Once the jury is struck, 12 jurors who hear the case selected from a pool of people, it's all over.”
Mike: That's a massive indictment of the criminal justice system. The fact that it doesn't come down to the facts of the case. It comes out to the randomness of jury selection, but fine, Nancy let's keep going.
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, there a million ways that jury selection can skew in a weird and non-representative direction. And that is something that you could write a really interesting chapter about. But that's not what this chapter is.
Mike: Shock horror.
Sarah: Oh, this is great too. “This country’s jury system is under attack as never before, largely because the jury mind set has been left, mostly unexplored and unchallenged.”
Mike: Awesome.
Sarah: “Many recent cases have resulted in downright shocking verdicts that have left veteran trial watchers and legal analysts shaking their heads in disbelief.” So, we have as titles, “Jurors who Load the Oath,” “Exhibit A, It is All about Me.” And then she talks about a Martha Stewart juror.
Mike: Celebrity trials, okay, proceed.
Sarah: Yes. And basically, this juror lied about a past arrest on the juror questionnaire, and she is like, he should not have lied. Why did he want to be on Martha Stewart's jury badly enough to lie? This is bad.
Mike: Okay. I agree.
Sarah: And then she says, “No one knows what the jurors’ motives were, but evidence suggests he had an issue with Martha Stewart and her millionaire lifestyle. It is not clear if his agenda involved getting Stewart convicted out of his own pecuniary interest. And if he had some other more personal reason, like exacting revenge against the rich, that was fulfilled by sitting on this jury.” Or he just wasn't thinking it through when he filled out the questionnaire. Or just wanted to be on the jury because it was an exciting celebrity case.
Mike: Also, Nancy, quick follow up question. Um, do you just have the data on how many millionaires go to jail every year? Because it seems like if there's widespread bias against millionaires and that is affecting the justice system, we would see large numbers of millionaires going to jail. Do you just have those numbers for me, Nancy? You just want to grab those.
Sarah: I want to see Hobbes and Grace. I want the woke truth crime machine to pivot to that.
Mike: She would destroy me. If we ever got into like a debate, I would be so scared.
Sarah: Would you just cry? You did great just now.
Mike: That's because she is not here.
Sarah: We can just make a large scarecrow and you can pretend it's her for six months and get in fetal.
Mike: No way. I have gotten invites to appear on like Fox news and stuff, and I would get absolutely fucking owned if I ever showed up on any channels or anywhere near Nancy Grace, she would destroy me. I'm much more comfortable with writing spicy things on the internet.
Sarah: Yeah. That's how Tucker Carlson, you know, breaks your back over his knee and then sends you into dungeon prison and then unnamed country.
Mike: I am not going anywhere fucking near that.
Sarah: Okay. So, an exhibit B, “Can't we all just get along,” Nancy Grace talks about a case where CEO, Dennis Kozlowski and co-defendant Mark Swartz are leaving the courtroom when a juror makes the AOK sign at them.
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: And after this becomes news and obviously suggest that the jury is impartial. The juror whose name is Ruth Jordan goes public and appears on 60 minutes, says that she didn't do it. And the judge declared a mistrial. So again, you are like, okay well that there was a mistrial. So it seems like that all worked out pretty well.
Mike: This is like me telling you what really bugs me, is people not having their dogs on leashes in the park. And then I tell you a story of like people walking through the park with their dog on a leash. And then this woman with brown hair came and her dog was on a leash. And you are like, Mike, when, what are you going to get to the part where something bad happens?
Sarah: Right. And then it is, do you really just dislike dogs? Do you dislike people? Help me out here, buddy. And so, in exhibit C, “We Get a Juror,” in the Scott Peterson trial. “Juror number 29308 was polite during questioning by the state, insisting she could definitely be fair and impartial. But then defense attorney, Mark Geragos, who is like as close as we have to a protagonist, but then defense attorney, Mark Geragos abandoned his usually charming demeanor, and went on the attack, grilling her over a senior citizen bus trip she took to Reno, Nevada.” Which sounds like a Raymond Carver story. “Did you tell people on that trip that you passed the test to get on the jury and Scott Peterson is quote going to get what is due to him, Geragos asked? The juror, a volunteer at a senior citizens center acknowledged the bus trip but denied talking about the Peterson case. The trial judge ultimately booted her off the jury.”
Mike: Again, it seems like it worked out but okay.
Sarah: Nancy says, “The more Geragos could trump up the motives of allegedly dishonest jurors, the more likely his accusations become the basis for a venue change or an appeal. A new trial could conservatively cost the state millions as it took months to get through the 1600 jurors vetted for the trial. The bottom line is that these particular stealth jurors may be gone, but the damage has been done.”
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: And so, what I think she is saying actually is that the defense is allowed to be too liberal in its claims of juror impartiality and that this is bad, and it is too expensive. Which is the closest she comes to making an argument, so you have to give her that.
Mike: But then what actually happened with the Scott Peterson case? Did he, is she mad that he got off or mad that he did not get off?
Sarah: No, Scott, none of these. I mean, I can't think of anyone she talks about who was acquitted. Scott Peterson was convicted.
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: He's in prison.
Mike: But so, the jury, was there a million appeals and a change of venue?
Sarah: But it could have gone differently. I think she is saying, Geragos got an inch and what if he had taken a mile and it's like, well, yeah, that didn't happen. It is interesting, right? She is very fixated on these things where everything she wanted to happen happened, but like not exactly the way that she wanted to get there. That is really interesting as a focus.
If she had wanted to fill this book with stories that would actually make the reader feel like America was full of criminals who weren't serving enough or any time for their terrible crimes. Like she could cherry pick those anecdotes, but she is not doing that, which is really interesting.
Mike: It's also interesting because of course, if you wanted to look at the problems with the jury system, you would look at things like black defendants getting convicted by all white juries, or the fact that juries have ideas that have been implanted in their brains by people like Nancy Grace, and a bunch of true crime media. There are actually like real critiques of the jury system to me.
Sarah: Yeah. I guess I feel like this really highlights how, what she does is can't be communicated in a book.
Mike: Right?
Sarah: Okay. This is a nice section intro greed by the book. When Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales, he put greed on the list of the seven deadly sins. Use that degree, Nancy. Greed has been around since time began, and now it has wormed its way into the jury deliberation room. Centuries ago, there was no National Enquirer offering big bucks for first person accounts from jurors and no competition craze TV, and movie producers, wooing jurors to trade information for national notoriety. There was no Dateline, no local news that could make instant celebrities out of jurors addicted to the limelight.
Mike: I can just imagine you reading this and being like, there was no Nancy Grace, Nancy.
Sarah: In the not-so-distant past, jurors may have gotten some semblance of notoriety within their communities, but they couldn't make any real money out of it, now they can, and they pose a serious threat to our justice system.
Mike: Yeah, but again in celebrity trials, there is like five celebrity trials a year. What is she talking about?
Sarah: That is a really good point. Yeah. She is not addressing the fact that most jurors in the United States serve on juries for cases that no one talks about or wants to pay the money to talk about.
Mike: Yeah. My mom was on a jury about a dude stole another dude’s bike. It took like half a day. And no one, she's not getting a book deal.
Sarah: No one wants to publish her memoir. So, and I want you to try and think of what she might use as an example for why juries are corrupt and being bought out.
Mike: Oh, is it OJ Simpson?
Sarah: Yes.
Mike: Because some of those people wrote books, right?
Sarah: Yes. To be fair a lot of them did, yeah. And so, Nancy says, “A decade ago, the trial of the sanctuary ignited the juror term, literary cash cow phenomenon, the Simpson trial spawns scores of books, including I Want to Tell You: My Response to Your Letters, Your Messages, Your Questions written by the defendant before the trial even started. Jurors quickly followed suit.” And then she talks about a couple of different books published by jurors on the OJ Simpson trial. As far as I know, there are three of them. And I don't know what do you think of that Mike?
Mike: I mean I actually agree that it does seem distorting. But it's distorting to celebrity trials. I mean, the fact that she is calling it, the trial of the century is maybe a tell that, this is not a typical trial.
Sarah: That this is not significant from a data perspective.
Mike: Yeah, I mean.
Sarah: That's a much more objective argument than I have come up with, so I appreciate that.
Mike: I know. What do you think about, I mean, you've probably read these books. What do you think about them?
Sarah: I haven't read all of them yet, but I what I find really interesting is that in the same breath, she is leaping from O'J’s book to the jurors’ books. This one, I want to tell you, this is him responding to letters he receives from his fans. You know, he worked with a ghost writer on this while he was in jail, awaiting trial. This was a calculated PR move.
Mike: And Nancy doesn't like that.
Sarah: I mean, I don't like it either, right? Again, this is like a point where I'm like, yeah, Nancy, I agree. Once again, like if Nancy and I were having a pajama party, which would be the scariest thing I can imagine, but if we did that, that is where we would like clink our glasses. And be like, yeah, fuck that, fuck that guy. So yeah, that book was a calculator PR move. I think it was something that his defense team churned out for him. It was a very cynically produced object. Like I can understand from a prosecutorial or human perspective, being very bothered by that, and bothered by the implications of that.
And I can even see being bothered by the celebrity trial as a phenomenon because even if there aren't that many of them, they do serve as these very significant markers, which both inform and engage public sentiment about various themes in our legal system.
Mike: But yeah, that has nothing to do with juries though.
Sarah: Well, that is the thing. And then she leaps straight from OJ to these jurors. And to me you know, the thing that's worth remembering about the OJ jurors is that none of these people were making very much money.
Mike: Yeah, they were trapped in hotels for like nine months. I mean, according to the Ryan Murphy Show anyway.
Sarah: And aside from that, like they didn't have lucrative jobs beforehand. I mean, many of them were government workers, which is why they were able to be on a jury at all. And nobody thought that the trial would last this long, but they knew that it would last at least, you know, at least a couple months. And then after this trial is over, I mean, everyone hates them.
Mike: Oh, right? Yeah.
Sarah: You know, I mean, the discourse at the time is about how these jurors they must be so stupid. You know, they must have been duped by Johnny Cochran and the tone of kind of mainstream. White American media is just, frustrated does not begin to describe it. I think there's real anger and hostility and fury at these people.
Mike: So they have a right to basically write something saying this is why I did it. This the information I had. This is the calculation that I made.
Sarah: I'm extremely happy these books exist. I mean, that is my perspective on it. Take that as significant as you want to, like, maybe that doesn't matter at all. But to me as someone who is trying to understand this trial and what it was like for the jurors and the alternate on it, hearing them, it was really interesting. And all of these books are out of print because they were kind of quickie properties that were lucrative for a hot second. And then this kind of OJ fatigue set in.
Mike: Not to be like super, let the free market work its magic guy, but like these are people who had a unique experience that people want to hear that unique experience described in detail. I don't know that seems fine to me. Also have there been, does she establish that there have been other trials since 19 fucking 94? Where jurors have cashed in and gotten book deals. I mean, maybe there's a couple, but like.
Sarah: No, this is not a trend. The OJ Simpson trial is interesting too. Can you believe I think it's interesting? But one of the ways that is interesting is that we like to use it, you know, certainly at the time to use it as indicative of all these issues in the system and it's like, the whole reason that trial was what it was because it was exceptional in every way.
Mike: I keep thinking about someone like trying to write a hot take about the publishing industry and like all the structural factors that make the publishing industry problematic. But the only example they use is Stephen King. Yeah, the problem is that authors are like writing prequels and sequels to their work and like no one edits the text anymore.
Sarah: And there are not enough girl characters in the stand. It is also Nancy Grace revealing how out of touch she has become with the very part of the world that she is trying to describe to us, right?
Mike: Yeah. That is true.
Sarah: Because she had her prosecutor days when she was seeing the kinds of cases that were sort of churning through an American city. And she just is seeing a completely different part of the legal system from her perch on TV. And she really doesn't know what she's talking about anymore.
Mike: In a way that is invisible to her.
Sarah: Yeah. She gets cross examines a camera all day, you know, she is used to go after real witnesses and stuff. And now she's like, cross-examining how. Okay, here is another OJ thing. Tracy Hampton, the 26-year-old flight attendant who quit the jury early in the case, claiming stress. Posed for layout in the March 1995 issue of Playboy. In keeping with the decorum of the trial, the spread was shot in a courtroom setting. My verdict and the words of OJ Simpson himself, Hampton is definitely 100% not guilty of having too much class. Oh, Nancy.
Mike: Zing Nancy.
Sarah: What do you think about that though, seriously? because that really bothers me.
Mike: Who fucking cares, Nancy, like Playboy did a thing like your beef there surely is with Playboy, not the actual person.
Sarah: That's a good point, Mike. I do not think Tracy Hampton like decided the layout for her whole photo shoot.
Mike: If Playboy offered me a million dollars to pose nude, I would fucking do it. Who cares?
Sarah: I'm picturing you're like at a library and there's these books in sort of strategic places. And then you are like teehee, okay. I'm going to jump ahead in this book to the part where Nancy Grace slanders, one of my past loves on this show. The beautiful and irreplaceable Jessica Hahn.
Mike: Oh God. Oh no.
Sarah: Can you remind us who Jessica Hahn is?
Mike: This is a woman who, according to her was brutally raped by Jim Baker, the famous Televangelist. And she described this in great detail and the entire country was just da ta da seems like some sexy, weird stuff happened. And just like didn’t care.
Sarah: It’s an astounding episode in American history to me because Jessica Hahn. She did this layout with Playboy where she is, you know, topless she's in the ocean, she's got a golden retriever. And then in the interview she described in great detail, the way that Jim Baker raped her.
And I think that this happened over and over again, that sort of mainstream media. There's you know, AP is like Jessica Hahn was naked and Playboy isn't that in incongruous with her accusations. And she described a tryst in a hotel room and it's like, okay, if I say the phrase, sexual assault to you and you hear sex, I'm like, I don't know what to tell you.
And, uh, anyway, here is what Nancy Grace says, “Speaking of pseudo celebrities, fleecing the courthouse. Remember Jessica Hahn, she is the former church secretary who shot to fame after her affair with PTL Televangelists, Jim Baker was exposed in 1987. She received $265,000 in hush money taken from the preacher's ministry to keep quiet about their tryst.”
Mike: Oh, my God.
Sarah: “Baker was booted from his TV ministry and indicted on charges of fraud and conspiracy. For her part Hahn sees the media moment and capitalized on her infamy. People Magazine inexplicably named her as one of the 25 most intriguing people of 1987. The following year, she bared all in Playboy. The Long Island native went on to launch her own 900 number, phone line and popped up on television programs like the Howard Stern Show, which I think is a radio show and Married with Children. While Baker’s sexual shenanigans and tearful apology failed to ignite a tinderbox of television deals, Hahn milked her pop culture curiosity status, as long as she could.”
Mike: Oh, it is just so dark, dude.
Sarah: I just want you to get this Ginza knife system.
Mike: Well, what's funny also is she's completely downplaying. She is totally downplaying the rape. She is also downplaying all of the other fraud and financial shenanigans quote unquote, that Baker was doing as if like, this woman brought him down on these trumped-up charges. When he was never actually charged, he never actually faced any justice for the sexual assault. He faced justice for the like blatant financial scams that he was doing.
Sarah: Yeah.
Mike: Yeah. So like those two things are not actually related. I mean, she is doing exactly what you have said on the show so many times. Where she's giving Jessica Hahn all of the power, like she orchestrated this entire thing. She was part of this tryst. She like concocted this story so that she could get a book deal so that she could get in Playboy, etcetera. Even though all of the evidence is that she was kind of like riding a wave as well as she could.
Sarah: Yes. I feel like this is, this really explains my very mixed feelings about To Die For, by noted Portland director, Gus Van Sant. Do you know that movie?
Mike: I have seen that movie roughly 400 times. I have read the book that is based on. I fucking love that movie.
Sarah: Thank God.
Mike: That movie is iconic.
Sarah: Yeah. It is perfect, I love it. It is my favorite Nicole Kidman roll, it is my favorite Joaquin Phoenix. It's beautiful. And it is this wonderful, I think almost Stepford wives like horror story. Because it does this weird thing where the details of the case are very recognizably pulled, ripped from the headlines of the Pam Smart case. And so, the novel version of that gives us this wonderful character named Suzanne Stone, who is sort of like Faye Dunaway away in network.
Like she's always wanted to be on TV. I feel like the, To Die For model really kind of solidified the ways that Americans already tended to think about these women who the media suddenly, couldn't stop hounding for like a period of weeks. So, like Pam Smart, Lorena Bobbitt, Amy Fisher, and Jessica Hahn. These really very vulnerable young women, basically girls who had been through some amount of abuse, some kind of traumatic experience. And now we're being chased around by the media.
And who, if we watched them come to the conclusion of like, well, my life has been pulled out from under me and I need to make some money. And I'm being offered a lot of money for the first time in my life, and I guess I'm going to make some. Is then going to be accused of wanting all of this to happen so that she could be on Married with Children.
Mike: Right, right.
Sarah: We are so afraid of manufacturing the kind of human who liked the Nicole Kidman and To Die For character, only feels anything when she is on TV.
Mike: Right.
Sarah: That we may replace that anxiety in the wrong part of the story. Like Nancy Grace is accusing Jessica Hahn of being Nicole Kidman. And it's like I think that you're a Nicole Kidman.
Mike: It is interesting. I mean, of course all of this subtext was lost on me when I was obsessed with that movie. Because I was like a 13-year-old boy in the nineties. And so, I was just like, this movie is dark and cool.
Sarah: If someone were to make a, you know, little split-screen story of our adolescents it would be like you and me watching To Die For before we met. But in the same moment, it was so nice.
Mike: But it really is the creation of an archetype or I guess the sort of definition of an archetype, this idea of like the fame hungry, not very special person.
Sarah: Like Eve and All About Eve.
Mike: Yeah. I don't know if in recent American history, if there is a confirmed case of that happening of somebody sort of setting out to become famous and then debasing themselves only for the fame. It is just a matter of twisting all of these anecdotes that meet that like halfway.
Sarah: There are stories where someone did become famous and then the media and in attempt to wash the blood off its hands, is like you wanted us to do this to you. And it's like I don't think anyone would ask for this you fucking idiots.
Mike: Right.
Sarah: All right. And now she is bringing in some other books that are examples of jurors publishing books. So, she has her first example is one of the jurors in the trial of Jack Ruby publishes a book.
Mike: What? That's like 50 years ago.
Sarah: To be fair it was only 39 years earlier when Nancy Grace’s own book came out. So I don't know if you feel, you know, shut down by that rebuttal.
Mike: I think cars go too fast, and here is a Studebaker that illustrates my point.
Sarah: And then his nephew published a book in 2001 called, The Jack Ruby Trial Revisited. So I guess think that this Jack Ruby industrial complex that we have here is pretty outrageous, honestly.
Mike: Yes.
Sarah: Okay. “What is most disturbing is not the books about high profile murder cases are being written, but that the plan to write them maybe born before or during voir dire. This concept is critical because if true, it bears on the motives, not only for jury service, but for a particular verdict, the outcome of the trial itself. Most often a conviction sells the best, followed by an acquittal, with a hung jury, placing a very distant third place.
Mike: What is she talking about?
Sarah: That is a really weird argument. She doesn't bring in any proof of that. So, Nancy tells a story about finding out a potential juror is a stripper. And then she tells us a story about this juror. This is an aggravated assault and armed robbery case called State v. Wilson. He says, “During jury selection, I noticed the behavior of one woman when the pool took the general juror oath. She stood stiffly with her hands by her sides and refuse to raise her right one to swear on anything. She was the only person out of nearly 100 who wouldn't raise her hand and solemn promise to uphold her duty.”
Mike: Okay.
Sarah: And she questions her and finds out that, I will just read this to you. She says, “What do you do in your spare time? What do you mean by that? Well, do you like to read, do you like to dance? She stiffed at the mere suggestion she’d liked to dance. I don't dance. That struck me as odd. Being the Macon Cotillion swing champion for my age category.”
Mike: The only word in that sentence that I know is champion.
Sarah: “I had a woman who refused to dance, who wouldn't raise her hand and take the oath. And I put her on the jury. It turned out her relation, disallowed her from passing judgment in any way on another person. Under any circumstance, even at a jury trial, it's a miracle I got a guilty verdict at all. And I thought the stripper was my problem, no way it was the church lady.”
Mike: But then aren’t jury trials in all, but two states unanimous. So if she got the guilty verdict that indicates that this juror eventually voted with the rest of the jurors, so.
Sarah: It's interesting that most of Nancy Grace's stories are like, phew that could have gotten bad. But it didn’t.
Mike: Yeah, close one.
Sarah: And then we have why sequestration does not work.
Mike: But again, this is only for fucking celebrity trials.
Sarah: Yes.
Mike: I want numbers of how many fucking sequestered journeys there are.
Sarah: You're not going to get any numbers at any time in this book. Like that is not, what is going to happen for you. And her argument is basically that embitters the jury and then it doesn't protect them from media that if they decide they want to find out what's in the news from family members, they're going to anyway.
Mike: I can’t take this; I am Googling how many juries are sequestered? Hang on.
Sarah: Go for it.
Mike: Okay. This is an article from JRank. Jury sequestration is rare, typically ordered in sensational high profile criminal cases. It sounds like it was done for the George Zimmerman trial, it was done for Bill Cosby. This is not something that happens very often, Nancy. This is not a problem with the criminal justice system.
Sarah: Yeah. You are not really thinking about the goals of this book.
Mike: True, true.
Sarah: The goal here is to inflame and upset the reader. And it is like having a bucket of ice water dumped on you to be told that this is an issue and like a fraction of a fraction of her legal proceedings that work their way through our system every day.
Mike: But she's very deliberately like picking all of the cherries around the big fat plump cherries.
Sarah: Just Nancy little ole tiny cherries grace.
Mike: I'm just belaboring this metaphor as much as I can.
Sarah: I really like it's kind of, its mean, but it's like so silly of an image, that's the kind of meanness I can get behind. Um, okay. So, here is a nicely boring point that she makes that I really like. “In many jurisdictions, jurors are not allowed to take notes, some judges favorites, some don't. It is all a function of the local rules. Lawyers aren't expected to keep track of everything without notes. So why should a jury? It's very hard to take in all the evidence without them.” This might be the best part of the book actually.
Mike: She’s got me.
Sarah: Right.
Mike: That's the one thing I will unreservedly agree with Nancy Grace.
Sarah: Yeah.
Mike: People should be able to take notes.
Sarah: So, people ask you what the book is about, which I'm sure happens all the time. You had to be like, it is a book where Nancy Grace bravely argues that jurors should be allowed to take notes.
Mike: Yes.
Sarah: Here's a good one. “Another nonsensical courtroom practice with holding a written copy of the law from the jury.” I mean she is two for two Mike, they're the sole judge of the facts and the law of the case. I say, give juries all the tools they need to do their job properly. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? No pen, no paper, no way. Yay.
Mike: This book is good, actually. I'm sorry. You're wrong about this book being bad. We are back to a slumber party again. This is we're clinking glasses with Nancy.
Sarah: Okay. So Nancy thinks in conclusion that jurors should only be able to talk about the case well, quote well after the trial. She thinks that jurors should be screened based on media consumption and that there should be detailed questions about juror’s television viewing habits.
Mike: That is an interesting one because if you screen for that, you will end up screening for like education and just general media literacy as well.
Sarah: Right? Like any category of question can provide a backdoor for like other questions. Oh she thinks that judges are too easily swayed by celebrity, which again is an argument we are getting, because it happened with Lance Ito.
Although there is an interesting Pam Smart connection here where, what she does not bring up, which I’m going to bring up, where the judge in that case, God bless him was asked, who would play him in the movie version of this and he said, Clint Eastwood. It is funny because this book is counter to everything that I want to argue about the system. And also, I'm like, I could have done a better job, it's almost painful.
Mike: But also imagine looking about the structures of judicial discrimination and picking out like they are too nice to celebrities. You know what I mean? Like judicial bias is a real issue and again, Nancy, let's spend some time on Google scholar.
Sarah: So this is probably her most contentious idea. She says, “I also foresee the looming possibility of credit checks run on jurors to discover any civil suits pending against them that would bear on the case.” Which is like, that seems specific and invasive to me.
Mike: Yeah. That is super distorting because again, then you get mostly people with high credit scores, which is not a remotely representative jury.
Sarah: Yeah. Because if you are going to say someone with bad credit should be considered a less reliable juror, cause they're like, you know, vulnerable to being approached with a bribe or something like that, I mean, I don't have very good credit because I'm a millennial.
Mike: It is this thing of like, you want to strike people who read the newspaper a lot, then you also want to strike people with low credit scores. She clearly has not thought this through like so many solutions sections to long magazine articles. It's very clear that they thought of it like the last 15 minutes.
Sarah: Yeah. Nothing in the chapter proceeding this has prepared us for this idea. It just like comes in out of nowhere. And then she is like, well bye, Grace out, and you're like, wait, what credit checks. She says, “But here's the problem, if this becomes common practice, it would almost certainly dissuade people from sitting on juries. Would you want to sit on a jury if it was going to be made public that you were sued for non-payment on a bounced check in 1991??”
Mike: Oh my God.
Sarah: “How about if your credit card problems or brush with bankruptcy were uncovered? I wouldn't.” So do you want us to do this or not?
Mike: Yeah. The last thing we want Nancy is for people not to want to serve on juries. As opposed to now when we get a super representative sample of Americans every time, we call a jury.
Sarah: Okay. “The bottom-line penalties for cure misconduct must be instituted and enforced. Those who violate the oath and taint the jury should find themselves back in court again, seated behind the defense table facing charges of their own. That is how valuable the jury system is. We must be prepared to deal harshly with those who abuse it, for those who slip through the crack for whatever reason, justice needs to come down hard and fast. People who lie to get to get on juries or lied during the trial must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I have a firm belief in the jury system and to the people who violate the integrity of the court, I say, hang um high.”
Mike: I think she is like pointing her bat at the bleachers and just like swinging for like the fences.
Sarah: Exactly. And it's like how do we get justice Nancy Grace? She is like, I don't know, but it's going to be hard and it's going to be fast. And your like okay. Yeah, it's beautiful. It is such a marked difference, like the parts where she’s talking about cases and stuff, they're hard to follow. You don't really know where he's going. And then as soon as she is out of specifics, she is back again.
Mike: She fired the word Uzi, flames coming out of her fingertips. Yeah.
Sarah: Yes. So, for our next episode, I would like to get a little bit Meta now, now that we've gotten a sense of Nancy Grace's book. And I would like to kind of do my own attempt, my own objection, where I make my own arguments about some things that I do not like and just mush together a bunch of stories. Because I think that even with that really silly way of making an argument, I can make something more compelling.
Mike: I think we should do that thing from horror movies. Like when you're being chased through the library by the monster. And you are pulling books off the shelves behind you to block its path. That is what we're going to do with her arguments for the rest of this book.
Sarah: Yeah.
Mike: Just dashing through yanking them off the shelves.
Sarah: And also here's my real goal, I think. Here is what we're going to try and do together.
Mike: Your agenda.
Sarah: We're going to try and make soft on crimes, sexy. It's going to be soft and it’s going to be slow.
Mike: This got so sensual at the end. This got so awkward.
Sarah: I had to wake you up.