Kary Antholis

I am at the Criminal Court Building to watch arraignments and pretrial hearings. As Sean Smith wrote in Slouching to Babel, these hearings can offer a good deal of drama and detail about the dynamics of the LA justice system in a relatively short period of time. But on this day, the pace in arraignments is slow, so I wander up to the legendary ninth floor. This area requires additional security clearance to enter, as it is home to the most serious and high profile criminal trials. OJ Simpson was tried on this same floor. So was Richard Ramirez. So...

I would like to call your attention to some of the stories that are in our Crime Story LA section. These stories exemplify the tone and approach of our reporting here at Crime Story. We want our pieces to be both accessible and illuminating; thoughtful and emotional; unexpected and satisfying. Sean Smith's Slouching towards Babel introduces the world of the Criminal Courts Building in downtown Los Angeles, and his Two Hearings piece juxtaposes the massive defense posse representing multi-millionaire Robert Durst in a pretrial hearing with the valiant efforts of an Alternate Public Defender representing a young indigent...

Hello everyone,Thank you again for subscribing to Crime Story.As you know, on Thursday we launched crimestory.com with two separate interviews in two simultaneously-released podcasts. The first is an exclusive interview with United States Attorney General William Barr where we discuss the legacy of the push for increased incarceration, criminal justice reform and the justice narrative in certain film and television programs. The second is a conversation with Georgetown law professor and former US Justice Department prosecutor Paul Butler, where we discuss my interview with Attorney General Barr. Here’s a recap of the response to our launch over the course of Thursday and Friday. The...

To me justice is the right outcome... I believe a sense of justice is hardwired into human beings. Don't ask me why, but it is there… There's that scene in Dirty Harry where… Dirty Harry asks, "Where is she?" And the… guy smirks at him and he shoots him in the leg or something and the guy tells him where it is. I say, now was that an unjust or morally repellent act? Is the reason the audience applauds when that happens because the audience is morally bankrupt? Or is there something else going on there? United States Attorney General William...

In the days following the 2016 election I had an epiphany of sorts.  The immediate cause of this epiphany was not the unexpected election results, but a November 9 event hosted by Georgetown University Law Center, on whose Board of Visitors I serve. The Dean of Georgetown Law, Dean Treanor, brought together screenwriters Steve Zaillian and Richard Price and a group of legal scholars from the Law School. The panelists focused their discussion on the thematic insights that an HBO miniseries (that I oversaw) called The Night Of offered into our criminal justice system.  The capacity audience and the dialogue that...

As you may have seen in this piece on Deadline, today we launched crimestory.com.  You can read about the genesis of this endeavor here, and you can read more about me and my background here. Our aim at Crime Story, simply put, is to appeal to those who are engaged by a well-told crime story, to those who want to know more about how and why stories of crime and justice are told AND to those who care about the fairness and humanity of our justice system.   As a key part of our launch, Crime Story is partnering with Talking Points Memo (TPM), one of the...