Jodi Arias in court last week. Photo credit: Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic/Reuters
The program’s style was ”shameful,” Al Tompkins, an instructor at the Poynter Institute, told me in April 2011. “We have a system in the United States that works pretty well. It’s a system of discovery, of hearings, of cross examinations, and it’s worked pretty darn well for a long time. We have no business trying this case.”
Now HLN is in the jury business night after night with its “After Dark” program at 10 o’clock during the Jodi Arias trial.
It’s a small world after all: Jose Baez, Anthony’s former attorney, took part in Monday’s episode, and HLN teased that he will be back Tuesday.
“After Dark” makes for tortured viewing with its self-important style and gruesome theatrics. The show stages re-enactments of Arias’ version of how she killed former boyfriend Travis Alexander.
But the jury issue is most galling. On Tuesday’s show, the TV jury will decide whether Arias has faked post-traumatic stress disorder. But that’s a minor issue when Arias is facing the death penalty.
The Arias saga doesn’t need theatrics from TV journalists. Arias and prosecutor Juan Martinez have supplied sufficient drama in the protracted trial.
Martinez is doing a remarkable job of questioning Dr. Richard Samuels, a psychologist for the defense. Samuels theorized that Arias had created an alternative reality “to reduce the level of stress” and even forget killing Alexander. But Martinez skewered Samuels and dismissed the psychologist’s methods in testing the lying Arias.
ABC’s Ryan Owens said Martinez “portrayed the psychologist as gullible” and forced Samuels to acknowledge the testing was faulty.
On CNN, Jean Casarez of In Session said that Samuels had been “invalidated.” Legal analyst Lisa Bloom added that she doesn’t believe anything Arias is saying and that the prosecution was doing “a magnificent job.”
It would be best to leave the trial to the lawyers and stop with the TV juries. They’re just so cheesy and unnecessary. Leave the TV drama to the movie people; Lifetime has an Arias movie in the works.