Welcome to our weekly review of the events at crimestory.com.

During the first few days of Thanksgiving week, the Crime Story Podcast took a look back at some of the themes that have emerged in the posts at crimestory.com.  

On Monday our focus was “wobblers.” 

According to the Nolo online legal dictionary:

“A “wobbler” isn’t a misdemeanor, nor is it a felony. It’s both. Prosecutors have the choice of whether to charge a wobbler as a felony or a misdemeanor. But even when prosecutors choose one over the other, judges typically have the final say.”

Molly Miller wrote four pieces for Crime Story that shared the exploration of one facet of this power dynamic: the way that so-called “wobblers” are handled. Those four pieces that involved wobblers were The Law of Unintended Consequences, $7.99 Half-Rotisserie Chicken, Graffiti and The Wobbler.

For a special “Crime Story Reprise Podcast” where we present all four of those stories in one episode, click here.

On Tuesday, we offered a special reprise presentation of the two interviews that kicked off crimestory.com and The Crime Story Podcast. In one podcast episode, we presented my interviews with Attorney General William Barr and Georgetown Law Professor Paul Butler.

In light of recent events, it is particularly interesting to hear the Attorney General discuss how his thinking about mass incarceration and the criminal legal process has changed since he first served as Attorney General in the early 90s. He also discusses the theme of justice in film and television narrative.

Professor Butler, who has since become a Consulting Editor at Crime Story, offered his thoughts on AG Barr’s responses to my questions. You can listen to that both of these conversations by clicking here.

On Wednesday, we offered a compilation of origin stories for the three “Greatest TV Shows of All Time” as told to us by their Creators.

We began with David Chase, who first offered a bit of background on how he learned to write bad guys or “heavies” when he worked for Stephen J. Cannell on The Rockford Files, and then provided fascinating context to the birth of The Sopranos.

Then David Simon told how he envisioned the first season of The Wire and then how he conceived moving forward beyond the initial season, inspired by the work of a leading American Sociologist.

And finally Vince Gilligan told us how a conversation between him and a fellow writer provoked the seed of thought that sprouted into Breaking Bad.

You can listen to that special compilation presentation by clicking here.

For those of you wondering how you can catch up on previous Crime Story newsletters, just click here and your question shall be answered.

We close this week, as is our habit, with Hannah Teich’s curated selection of some of the more interesting stories from Crime Story Daily over the past week.

Hannah, who edits this Daily section, groups the aggregation into four general topic areas: criminal justice policy reporting; muckraking/watchdog reporting; complex crime storytelling; and stories that examine the impact of criminal justice and true-crime in the culture.

Click here to go to Hannah’s weekly essay.

Thanks for reading and listening.

Kary Antholis
Publisher/Editor, Crime Story

editor@crimestory.com

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