Journal

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Tuesday, January 25, 2005
So what do you do, Jessica Su?

I've stolen this post title from Media Bistro, an online journalists' community. Every week or so, someone really big, like Anderson Cooper, gives readers an inside look at his/her job. For the mildly curious, here's what I do as a trial tracker at Court TV.

A Dec. 2 New York Times article pretty much sums up Court TV's mission:

"The remaking of Court TV has put the network into 83 million homes, up from 23 million in just five years. To attract younger viewers, Court TV plans to add a handful of new reality series to its prime time lineup next year, including 'Take Down,' which looks at the lives of professional con artists; 'Parco P.I.,' about a family of private investigators; and 'Impossible Heists.' Think 'Ocean's Eleven' meets 'Survivor.'
...
But real-life courtroom spectacle still remains the network's bread and butter. In addition to the network's 13 on-air reporters, Mr. Schleiff said, Court TV employs 10 professional 'trial trackers' and stringers around the country whose sole duty is to find cases that make compelling television. 'The type of trials that have all of the melodrama of a soap opera,' Mr. Schleiff said. Trackers interview lawyers and court clerks and scour newspapers..."

Never mind that there's actually six trackers...If you do the math, each tracker scours about 10 states for interesting trials. Here's how it breaks down exactly:

(more on the number system later)

Court TV likes to air trials with a twist. It's sad to say, but if two drug dealers get in a deadly fight, that's not news. As you can see from the trials I wrote for Courttv.com, we're always looking for a quirk, like two brothers are battling for the paternity of a child, but the brothers are identical twins; or a husband is accused of tossing a live wire into his wife's bath, but the husband says he tried to kill her for her own good.

If I find an interesting trial, I'll call up the prosecutor and defense lawyer and get the basic gist of the story. Sometimes I'll call up the court clerk if I have a really quick question about scheduling (like "When is John Doe scheduled to go to trial?").

Some courts have online records, which is so much more convenient. Here we have the record of William Dahlby, the guy who electrocuted his wife. Whoa, he's been in trouble before.

I can pull up his attempted murder case by clicking on the correct case number. In every trial I report, I have to get the lawyers' names, the judge's name, the charge and the trial date. Of course I also have to spell the defendant's name correctly and get his age (I never understood why all news stories list people's ages, but I guess it adds color).

If I snoop around Dahlby's other cases, I can also see that he's been convicted of driving on a sidewalk. What a strange crime.

Once I get all this info, I'll write an article on the upcoming trial. Besides getting the prosecution and defense claims, I also get the trial length and list of potential witnesses. If the trial is more than a couple weeks long, Court TV probably won't be interested, because they could show lots more interesting trials in the same amount of time. Likewise, if there's lots of technical testimony (like "The bullet hit .5 mm away from the clavicle. It was a medium-impact wound with a blood spatter of..."), the viewers will be bored, and Court TV will shy away from it.

Every week, the trial trackers present the cases to the executives. If they executives like it, the trackers apply for camera access. If you look at the list of states I cover, I shouldn't devote too much time to researching trials in Louisiana or Indiana. Since cameras are only allowed in appeals, we automatically cannot televise the original criminal trial. (Appeals occur if parties are unsatisfied with a prior ruling.)

If you look even more carefully at the list, you'll notice that one state is missing. Which one is it? (Need some time to look again?)

Florida. Since Florida is a big state, there's lots of quirky crimes there. They're also very generous with camera access, so some of our best trials come from Florida. For that reason, we have one tracker in Florida who devotes all his time covering one state.

It is kind of hard keeping track of every trial, which is why I need all this office gear. I make lots of phone calls to check on court dates and case statuses. When I hear about an interesting crime, I track it all the way to trial. First, someone has to be formally charged, then there's an investigation, then a judge decides whether there's enough evidence to warrant a trial (if someone is accused of ramming a car and 10 people saw it, a trial is unnecessary), then a person pleads guilty or not guilty (a guilty plea automatically means no trial), then a trial date is set, then more evidence is gathered, then lawyers might file motions (requests) to suppress evidence or change the venue, and finally the trial comes! If one of these steps fall through, there will be no trial, or the case could be delayed for years.

Luckily, I have stringers (local newspaper reporters) in a couple states who pass info to me. For the states without stringers...I just read the local papers and clip out interesting news.

In the continuation of "So what do you do, Jessica Su?" I'll share all the perks and struggles of this job.

posted by Jessica at 8:56 PM | 1 comments

1 Comments:

Interesting job, Jessica. I'll be looking out for the perks and struggles part.

By Lynn, at 9:04 PM