Georeactor Blog

I was going to make a ranking of TV shows that I've watched this year, but I discovered that I wanted to blog more about two trials which I watched. For TV, I'll limit it to a shout out for newer shows The Studio, North of North, and Common Side Effects.

In a world with so much content, it is odd to watch an unedited, repetitive, and frequently dull narrative of a trial. At a family event I had to deny that I was a 'true crime' person, because I associate that with listening to stories about uncaught serial killers, right? CourtTV has been around for a long time, there are channels and subreddits which just post police bodycams and fights, but the ecosystem around trials feels more recent. A few months ago Taylor Lorenz accepted the going term for this as 'LawTubers'. Basically you will hear about a case through someone's video, and then stay tuned into daily updates or even commentary during a broadcast trial. Content creators are trying to hook viewers, keep monetized, and nurture some kind of chat (both for monetization and a kind of community identity).

On a base level I'll compare following a trial to following a celebrity or watching a fish tank. You can have it around in the background while you're working, or catch a few minutes during your downtime. There's probably a power law about what % of people are engaging at that level, and then 1-10% sign up for alerts and engage more. There is a sense that because the content is in court, the audience is neurodivergent, particularly attentive, and learning something, and a content creator should cater to those information needs.

Arizona v. Lori Vallow Daybell

After Lori Vallow met Chad Daybell in a Mormon-adjacent cult, they shared disturbing content about demons/zombies, got married, murdered her two minor kids in late 2019, and flew to Hawaii. Vallow was found guilty of those murders, and Daybell was found guilty of the same plus murdering his previous wife.
One Netflix series later, Arizona asked for a chance at charging Vallow with conspiracy, over her brother's shooting of her previous husband there in 2019. If you're super-engaged in this story you would expand this network out further, but that's the trial that I watched.

This trial felt oddly 'safe' because Lori is already in prison for life, and we know that she's capable of murder. She represented herself in this trial, making it something of a spectacle and insight into her mind. As an example, after a witness gave basic details about her calls and meetings with her Social Security office, Lori used her time to complain about the advice and answers that she received about benefits.

The jury was selected to avoid people who had heard of Lori's previous trials. This feeds into a meta layer of LawTube, where the viewers always are enlightened with information which the jury does not have, leading to many discussions about strategy and what the jury might be thinking. Often the audience is so deep in truecrime, they cannot believe that anyone is hearing about the case for the first time.
This was particularly tragic in Lori's trial - her children were at the house on the day of the murder and are seen in police videos, but in the jury's eyes they were conspicuously absent from the courtroom.

I've watched other trials where the defendant is obviously guilty and drawing out the trial to make a point. I approached this differently, questioning whether it could be a real argument that escalated to Alex (the brother) acting in self-defense. A competent defense might have argued that Lori was traumatized, and the police only charged her with conspiracy because the shooter (Alex) has died. The main evidence against Lori were romantic text messages between her and Daybell, the animus and spiritual claims against her previous husband (who was on a dating app), and then barely communicating anything about the death to relatives and school administration.
Jury interviews afterward seemed fixated on a store security video and one text message, which seemed very weak sauce. One juror said they made up their mind in closing statements, which I'm sure sounds 'fair and balanced' but was nuts in context. LawTube is always astonished when the jury comes out with these stories. I would love a romcom where two truecrime people get on juries and become obsessed with the other's trials.

Lori and the people around her were devout Mormons who were interested and then confused or scared by her spiritual fervor. Things seem to get particularly heated after the main LDS Church questioned her temple status and excommunicated people in the group. Ultimately discussion of these murders gets mixed in with curiosity about Mormons, anti-Mormon sentiment, or possibly a deeper turmoil in modern religious life. Lori did not shy away from this - she asked one witness about the Three Nephites, and questioned a non-Mormon witness about his interpretation of a "be like Nephi" text.
If I could place a long bet / investment, I would say that 'Mormon' true crime, or possibly the Utah/Arizona area, has a future for popular true crime stories. Include next year's Kouri Richins trial in this grouping. All of my theories about this are half-baked, so I will not elaborate.

Massachusetts v. Karen Read

This week, Read was acquitted of murder after a mistrial last year. Back in 2022, Read allegedly backed into her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, while dropping him off at a house party with other officers. The next morning, Read and friends discovered O'Keefe in a snowbank and called local police and EMTs. Read was reportedly on track for a plea agreement, until a rumor suggested that something happened with O'Keefe later, inside the house.

The police did a poor job of collecting evidence, but while watching the trial the reasons became clear. Typically the State Police and their CSI team step in to investigate a police officer's death. When local police found O'Keefe their focus was hypothermia, so they didn't follow a higher standard for photos, searches, and evidence from a murder scene. Every expert witness in the trial is then troubled by not having a precise location for O'Keefe's body and clean chain of custody for other evidence.
The lead investigator, Michael Proctor, sent several gross texts about Read. The defense and judge made him read the texts aloud in court in the first trial. Shortly after, he was fired by the State Police. In the retrial Proctor was not called by either side but was mentioned several times to embarass the prosecution.

A lot of people continued going into a deeper police corruption story. When I first heard about the case, I understood the theories that O'Keefe fell down stairs, had a fight, or got attacked by a dog. But ultimately the vehicle and cell phone data show that O'Keefe was immobile on the lawn a few minutes after arriving, followed by calls and texts from a party guest asking if he'd arrived.
Supporters online mutated the story accordingly, some saying that the party was planned to ambush O'Keefe, and the calls were to find his phone outside. This is where the story loses all credibility to me - everyone and their kids and acquaintances would need to be onboard with a murder and cover-up within minutes, and then moving the body onto their own lawn.

If I were going to concede points to the defense, I can see a jury having doubts about the investigators' integrity. Then some of the most important evidence for the prosecution, such as taillight shards, or accounts of Karen Read shouting "I hit him!" instead of asking "did I hit him?", did not show up until days later. It seems like that quote, and Julie Nagel's testimony about seeing 'a black blob' on the lawn, could be false memories. I could see a situation where the party guests feel guilt for not hearing or seeing anything, and question themselves. Some of them did not speak to police until a year later - I found it unrealistic for witnesses to recall when they left, where they sat, or where others' cars were parked. That doesn't make them the murderers.

A lot of ink has been spilled comparing the first and second trials; here's my take:

• Massachusetts rebooted their case with a special prosecutor. Looking back, I'd say that the first prosecutor asked witnesses for much more background (friendships, texts, sitting at their kid's basketball game) to establish that they are the jurors' neighbors and not in a conspiracy. This bored LawTuber viewers and presumably the jury. The new guy was more to-the-point, such as displaying data from the vehicle and phone records side-by-side.
• The defense is being praised for moving from 'conspiracy' themes to 'reasonable doubt'. I don't know how accurate this is, considering that the defense's closing claimed the prosecution "tried mightily to bury the truth", their witnesses argued that O'Keefe's injuries came from a dog bite, and they questioned witnesses about coordinating before interviews.
• A crash reconstruction video in the second trial was ridiculed for the expert wearing similar clothes, painting his arm, and suggesting how the car contacted O'Keefe solely taillight-to-arm. My guess is that feedback from the first trial must have been that the jury couldn't visualize the collision. This video (a bit unethically) puts that image in their heads.
• There was an expert witness in this trial without a bachelors degree. As a fellow dropout, I was interested in how this would play out. He is already working in digital forensics, but every few years moves his projected graduation date into the future. This put him in an awkward position where his LinkedIn and company bio suggested he had graduated. The defense also challenged him on a report where he misread specs over megabits/megabytes and kilobits/kilobytes. I can see how that 8x error looks bad to the jury. Unfortunately this turned out to be a significant problem for the expert, because he offered to read more data off of the vehicle's chip when he really couldn't.

This was an interesting trial to watch on Emily Baker's channel because she and her audience overwhelmingly supported Karen Read. That came up in nicknames for witnesses, negativity about the prosecutor's voice and tactics, complaints about the judge, and virtually every chat comment. I do wish they could do more to quash comments who hate on witnesses for their appearance, voice, or body language. Some viewers think that the federal government has been waiting to charge the witnesses, which is a bit nuts.
The sides on the Karen Read trial are refreshingly nonpartisan, but there's a funny trend where people assume a MAGA/lib divide.

Finally let's talk verdict forms.
In the first trial, the defense anticipated a situation where the jury did not understand how to mark 'not guilty' on some charges' forms. The judge rejected this because the form is standard for Massachusetts. That jury reportedly ruled out murder charges, but could not agree on the other charges. The judge failed to poll the jury and get that info out in open court while declaring a mistrial, so after some legal debate the prosecution was allowed to retry the murder charge.
In this trial, the jury came back with questions about whether they could find someone guilty of the OUI/DUI (line 5 below) without the more significant charges. There was also a delay just before the verdict was read, which was not fully explained, but may have been a problem with the form.

I had government form UI/UX takeaways from this:

• As a basic human without jury experience, I have a picture in my mind for how the form should look. I think each charge will have a line or even a separate page, ending with guilty/not guilty checkboxes, period. In reality, there are legal situations where you can only be considered for additional charges or penalties dependent on others. That affects the form template/design, even though this is not happening here.
• I respect the choice to have a full Not Guilty right up on line 1, but most forms might say 'if you check this, you are done' after. Without that, I may feel an expectation to answer line 2.
• Possibly the form was understood by most of the jurors, but some people needed clarification or to double-check their understanding. Being on a jury is weird! If this were happening at the DMV or your first work project, it'd be normal to ask a question.