HLN’s new nightly show, After Dark, aired on Wednesday night for the first time. It is touted as a show dedicated to analyzing the issues of the day from the Jodi Arias trial. Whether this little after-dinner bonbon will continue to delight our taste buds once this epic trial is over has not been made clear. In any case, the first show was surprisingly – at least by HLN standards – balanced in its premise, if such an adjective can be employed to describe any of this channel’s outpourings.
Each night the show homes in on one issue of the trial, and each of the familiar faces of the HLN coterie holds forth on his or her particular angle – the producers appear to have put some effort into persuading the members of the clan to divide opposing viewpoints between them so that the in-studio jury, apparently “ordinary” members of the public, can decide if the defendant, Jodi Arias, or some other trial protagonist is “guilty” or “not guilty” of the issue at hand.
This first night the “issue” is whether or not Arias is guilty of having “lied about the gun”. This refers to the gun, or guns, depending on your perspective, to which Arias “was near” during the week leading up to Travis Alexander’s killing.
[Disclaimer: If I make any mistakes in my descriptions of guns in the next paragraph, please bear with me and correct me in the comments’ section, I make no pretense of being an expert on guns per se.]
The 2 undisputed facts of the case:
1) One week before Arias killed Alexander, her grandparents’ home, where Arias was living at the time, was the apparent target of a burglary during which Arias’ grandfather’s 25 caliber handgun was stolen.
2) Arias shot Alexander in the head with a 25-caliber handgun, a gun that Arias claims she obtained from Alexander’s closet. The bullet entered his right temple and lodged in his left cheek. The bullet casing was found on the bathroom floor but the gun was never found. Arias claims to have disposed of the gun afterwards “in the desert”.
The show is opened by HLN female viewers’ favourite pink-shirt-sporting heart-throb and over-grown adolescent school-boy, Vinnie Politan, who outlines the premise of the night. If anyone was put in any doubt by this anchor’s appearance as to the tone of the coming show, Politan’s cliff-hanger quip at the end of his introductory spiel puts to rest any lingering hopes of good taste. He assures us, with a suggestive raise of eyebrows and a half grin of barely-concealed relish, that if Arias is found “guilty” tonight of “lying about the gun”, then “the road to death row has been paved.” Put to rest, indeed……
Politan goes on to tell us that he can “prove a negative”, that “Travis didn’t own a gun”. This and other “negative” evidence will demonstrate that Jodi stole her grandfather’s gun and took it to Arizona as part of her plan to kill Travis.
Ryan Smith, the apparently designated compere of the show, tries earnestly to establish his ground in the wake of Politan’s overflowing ego, challenging the assembled jury to determine, on the basis of the upcoming “evidence”, whether Arias is guilty or not guilty of lying about “the gun”.
The cynics among us would mean-spiritedly assume that the members of the jury have already been primed to come up with the “correct”, if perhaps not entirely unanimous verdict. Skepticism aside, one has to wonder how these jury members were selected. Did HLN put out a casting call? If so, the jury candidates were self-selecting, one assumes from HLN’s viewership. Oh dear, there’s the rub – a self-selected candidature of jurors from HLN’s audience of justice-as-entertainment fans.
[Disclaimer: Please re-read first paragraph. I did say “balanced” by HLN standards…..]
Joey the-louder-I shout-the-more-assertive-I-am Jackson, New York attorney, now bellows from his bar-stool on the sidelines and asks why anyone would not believe Arias’ story about “the gun” (notice the possible plural suggested above is abandoned from the outset, even by the “defense”….). He is tonight’s “other side of the story” – the defense counsel. Jackson presents his opening argument:
1) There was never an arrest made for the grandparents’ May 28th burglary, and no eyewitness saw Jodi with her grandfather’s gun. 2) No-one says Jodi stole the gun, and Jodi had an alibi – at the time of the burglary she was with her sister visiting a monastery. 3) A 25-caliber handgun is not specific to Jodi, it is a common gun and often used in killings.
Now Politan chimes in again (that ego can’t contain itself for long….) with his “negative” proof:
1) Jodi’s grandparents were not at home between 10am and 3.30pm on the day of the burglary. Jodi did not leave the house till 1pm. 2) Travis’ closet was not disturbed, so Jodi could not have run in frantically and stepped onto a shelf to reach for the gun. 3) Travis went shooting with a friend who says Travis always borrowed his semi-automatic guns because he did not have any of his own. This friend says that if Travis had had “a gun” he would have wanted to try it out on the range, and Travis never mentioned having a gun. 4) This same friend says he was at Travis’ house for 1 week, days before his death, and he said he did not see a gun.
As a viewer, albeit one of those jaded, spoil-sport cynical ones, nagging little questions pop up in one’s mind. Where would Jodi have hidden her grandfather’s gun till she departed on her road trip 4 or 5 days later? Didn’t the police do a thorough search of the grandparents’ house and of the various household cars? Even if Jodi did steal her grandfather’s gun, does it prove that she took it on the trip in order to kill Travis? Couldn’t she just have wanted protection, travelling alone on a long journey? Even if she brought a gun to Travis’ house, does that prove it was the same gun with which she shot him? Mightn’t Jodi have put back fallen sweaters or tidied dislodged shoes in Travis’ closet during her, admittedly, perfunctory clean-up after the killing? Just because Travis borrowed the assault-style weapons seen in the video of him shooting, does that necessarily mean that he also did not own a handgun? Does everyone who owns a handgun tell their friends? Did Travis’ friend go scouting around Travis’ closet the week before his death, rummaging among his magic underpants? If so, why?
Oh, oh, here comes burly ex-cop, Mike I’m-not-buying-it-Vinnie Brooks stepping onto the set, the 6’7” loftily-titled “law-enforcement analyst”, and in an odd and gauche gesture of eagerness-to-impress blurts out his resume: FBI; has worked on major international crimes etc. etc….. He then contrasts his own impressive bearing with Jodi’s miniscule 5’ 5” stature and goes on to discredit her claim that she stepped on shelves to reach “the gun”. Behind him is a life-size photograph of Travis’ scarily neat closet and Brooks points to the spot in the ceiling where his blunted ballistic head would break through the plaster, then to the comparatively low shelf-height that Jodi’s erstwhile blonde head would reach. “The gun” was supposedly on a high above-her-head shelf and Jodi claims to have stepped onto a lower shelf in order to reach it. Brooks, strategically deepening his voice, declares authoritatively that he is not buying it…….Vinnie. Juan Martinez, the prosecutor, has reportedly done his homework and has discovered that the shelves have a 40lb rating. Brooks says that a shelf would have toppled or tipped under Jodi’s weight of 120 lbs. The shelves in the photograph are, evidently, intact.
Joey Jackson then echoes this cynical viewer’s thought about the semi-automatic Travis borrowed from his friend – that it does not prove non-ownership of a handgun. Also, there was no ballistic evidence connecting Jodi to any gun and again, no witness ever saw Jodi with a gun or guns.
Vinnie jumps in again to “prove” Jodi lied about “the gun”: The shelves are all too neat, and twice in the space of a week Jodi is near a 25-caliber handgun: at her grandparents’ house and at Travis’ house. It is too coincidental.
An all-too-familiar nasal drawl snarls across the studio, and Nancy Grace’s disembodied barrette-clipped head, blown up alarmingly on a large screen, looms like the horrifying visage of some Star Trek enemy alien imparting its terrible ultimatum:
She declares ominously that from all her “years of experience as a prosecutor” she has learned that “there are no coincidences….” then, thankfully, she fades away…….no doubt to dispense tainted vodka in another universe.
After a soothing platitude from “Dr.” Drew Pinsky, HLN’s resident purveyor of touchy-feely, presumably to calm our trembling nerves after the warning from the merciless one, Vinnie asks:
“Can someone be a compulsive liar then suddenly tell the truth?” After a pregnant pause, allowing us to reflect on the complexities of this proposal “Dr. Drew” says that they can……… but it’s “not likely”, thus relieving us of any unnecessary further intellectual grappling. He then elaborates, explaining that Jodi “comes up with” convenient tales that “obfuscate” [confuse, bewilder, stupefy] the truth and that she “confabulates”…..[to talk, converse, chat……what’s wrong with that??]. At this point there is a commercial break while everyone nose dives into their smart phone dictionary app and discovers that what Dr. Drew said was that Jodi “replaces the gaps left by a disorder of the memory with imaginary remembered experiences that she consistently believes to be true”. Talking heads, camera crew, producers, jury members and audience all glance warily askance, wondering if anyone else has noticed that this conflicts with the prevailing and acceptable view that Jodi has no memory problem at all and that she brazenly and deliberately lies…… After an uncomfortable suspense-filled silence there is a sudden hurried and simultaneous group “tut”, a rash of knowing smiles and conspiratorial inclinations of heads towards each other: “Of course!”……. A naked emperor is glimpsed sidling into the wings.
Another compulsive shouter strides onto the set, shoulders hunched, gabardine lapels flapping and bouffant hair swinging stiffly in the breeze created by her swift arrival. In a headlong rush of verbal diarrhea, Jane Velez-daughter-of-dancer Mitchell yells that it’s possible Travis had a secret gun, but that Jodi said (on one of those TV interviews that Jane didn’t get to do) that Travis didn’t have a gun, then later, on another TV interview (that Jane didn’t get to elbow in on either), Jodi said he did have a gun but that it was unloaded, then later, to someone else (that Jane didn’t get a chance to speak to personally), that he loaded the gun in the December before his death! Jane is all over it. She now bawls that this is the mark of a “pathological liar”, that “pathological liars’” stories change “incrementally as needed”, then “as a result they forget their lies!” You can’t “pin down” a pathological liar because the truth is a “dead issue”, like “an addict who needs their fix” and she knows this because she was an addict, but thanks to her 17 years of sobriety coming up in April she’s over that and not all over it anymore!
While we gasp for breath during another commercial break, let us ponder the use of this popular epithet, “pathological liar” and how it relates to that gun, or guns:
Velez-Mitchell’s frequent use of the term “pathological liar”, a term with which she is curiously enamoured, is inaccurate in the sense in which the Pitchfork media and public would have us view Arias’ lies. Characteristic of pathological lying is the lack of logic between the lie and an intended outcome. The amount of falsification outweighs, or sometimes bears no relation to any discernible gain, so that the person appears to be lying with no rational motive in sight. Pitchforkers interpret all lying on the part of Arias as intrinsically connected to her having premeditated and tried to cover up the killing, and subsequently to her trying to avoid as many consequences as possible – logical, gain-seeking outcomes connected with her lies. Pathological lying is therefore an inappropriate “evil” to attribute to Arias if you see her as calculating every statement for personal gain. As with many of the psychological and psychiatric terminology glibly thrown out by the anchors on HLN, and ubiquitously on the blogs by an uneducated public, this term is used in an apparent attempt to give professional-sounding weight to statements about Arias’ motivations. Arias might indeed be a pathological liar, but to concede this, one must also concede that her lies cannot necessarily be correlated with premeditation or with attempts to avoid discovery and subsequent punishment. By accusing Arias of pathological lying, the case for premeditation is greatly weakened, and even if she is lying about “the gun” then those lies cannot automatically be associated with her motive for obtaining or for using a gun.
Back to the show: before the break, Vinnie promised us a “game changer”, a ”big reveal” for his “negative” evidence. His teaser is that it relates to the jury’s question about why Jodi didn’t just shoot Alexander a second time if she was so afraid. Now Vinnie uncovers papier-mâché models (that he crafted frantically during the break) of “those things the jury will never see”: a holster and bullets that “don’t exist”. Arias mentioned at some point that Alexander had a holster, but neither this nor refill bullets were found in the closet.
More of Vinnie’s “negative” evidence: The shelves were not dusted for finger prints, but if Jodi’s fingerprints had been found there this would not have proved her story about reaching for the gun as she used to clean there, so her prints would have been there anyway. The police report for the grandparents’ burglary does not say whether their stolen gun was loaded. A few other items were stolen: money, small electronics, but none of the shotguns that were alongside the stolen handgun.
Joey Jackson pipes up, or should I say megaphones up, saying it wouldn’t take much to pull the trigger of a 25-caliber handgun, cocked or not, so accidental firing is highly possible. Funny – we have heard comparatively little from this “defense counsel” during the course of tonight’s “trial”.
[Disclaimer: Please re-read first paragraph. I did say “balanced” by HLN standards…..]
Ryan Smith now commands the jury to deliberate for 5 minutes as to whether Arias lied about the gun. Meanwhile the results of a public poll are given: 97% say “guilty”, 3% “not guilty”.
“The verdict is in!” declares Smith, glad to wrest the announcement of the final denouement from megalomaniacal Politan. The in-studio jury results: Guilty: 100%! Afterwards some of the jurors are interviewed about what swung their decision. One says that Arias’ holster mistakes were crucial, how she told inconsistent stories about whether there was one or not, and how she apparently tried to “fix it” on the witness stand; another says it was the friend asserting that Travis didn’t own a gun; another found it odd that were no bullets in house.
So, there we have it – a somewhat wobbly mock-trial with the scales of justice a tad bottom-heavy on one side; a public jury predisposed from media conditioning to condemn; talking heads calling things what they aren’t; male egos posturing and vying for the floor in the “courtroom”; coiffured ladies who doth protest too much; creativity with crime scene artifacts – real and imagined; participants and viewers pretending not to see what they don’t want to see, even if the naked truth is right before their eyes; a jolly time being had by all……
Remind you of anything?
Protagonists recede, the audience goes home, studio lights dim and are completely spent, and we find ourselves once again, left in the dark…….
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