Yesterday morning at a little after 11 AM, a Los Angeles jury returned verdict of guilty on two counts of homicide with special circumstances and one count of attempted homicide against Michael Gargiulo.
The trial which, has lasted several months, now moves to “the sanity phase“ during which Gargiulo‘s lawyers will argue that he suffers from dissociative personality disorder, and presumably that he should be sent to a psychiatric facility rather than to state prison.
Crime Story reporter Chris Tarricone has been observing the trial, and has written these two pieces here and here about the experiences of witnesses during the trial. Chris has a couple more compelling stories in the works on this trial.
Also, this week we put up a bonus podcast of Amanda Knox reading the article that she wrote with Christopher Robinson called The Injustice of Nancy Grace.
We followed that yesterday with a brand new podcast: my interview with the creators of the Serial podcast, Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder.
Also yesterday, I published a story about two trials that I observed, one of which was a homicide case. Neither of these were “media cases” and both amply demonstrated how the gears of justice grind as the public has its attention focused elsewhere.
We also followed up this week with a second story about the jockeying attorneys at hearings leading up to the murder trial of Robert Durst.
And we end the week with this powerful and poignant story from Andrew Block about the institutional response to the suicide of a young inmate during Block’s first days as Director of the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice.
Finally, I’d like to call your attention to a piece that may have eluded your attention amid some of the more prominent and noisy subjects that we’ve covered in our first full week at Crime Story. In Talk Foreal, Shawn Boursiquot writes about his experience as a volunteer at a one-day program aimed at assisting currently and formerly incarcerated men to become members of the workforce and/or entrepreneurs.
Thank you for staying tuned to Crime Story. We have another set of compelling and thought-provoking stories coming up next week.
Kary Antholis
Publisher/Editor, Crime Story
editor@crimestory.com
