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

This week on Crime Story we continued our coverage of two stories: the upcoming trial of Robert Durst, and the L. A. District Attorney election and, and dug deep into one of the big issues of that race.

On Monday, we presented a new episode of Jury Duty, our weekly podcast forum for the discussion of crime and justice storytelling news and narrative analysis. This week’s episode ​offered a conversation with Paul Butler about Progressive Prosecutors​. Butler offered insight into the way that conservative forces are trying to rein those prosecutors in.

On Tuesday in a scoop Op-Ed piece, ​recently-retired Los Angeles Criminal Courts Judge Katherine Mader endorsed George Gascón for District Attorney. In her piece, Mader said: “I do not have anything personal against the current District Attorney, Jackie Lacey. I believe she is well-meaning. I do not believe, though, that she is the leader the DA’s office desperately needs.”  

She later added: “George Gascón will make sure that he gives clear directives to his DA’s that rehabilitation is not a dirty word.  He will insist that DA’s in court not be retaliated against for urging compassion in appropriate cases.  Also, George Gascón will identify mentally ill offenders at the beginning of the arrest process, and treat them with compassion, not at the end, after they have been jailed for months.  These directives will begin to change the culture of the DA’s Office.”

On Thursday, in​ ​To Imprison or Divert in LA,​ Molly Miller explored the way that “diversion” works in the Los Angeles criminal legal process.

On Saturday we offered an exclusive in depth profile of the recently impaneled jury in The People vs. Robert Durst. The jury of 8 women and 4 men, is tentatively scheduled to begin to hear the case next week, after 12 alternate jurors are confirmed.

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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