The summer of trials and true crime coverage is here – and it’s not even Memorial Day yet

By Taylor Romine, CNN

(CNN) — A constant influx of crime drama and trials often floods the national conversation. Some cases grip the public’s attention and leave a lasting mark on society. And we are in for a particularly busy summer of headline-grabbing trials.

And it’s not even Memorial Day yet.

Karen Read is being retried for her alleged involvement in the death of her police officer boyfriend, and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is back in court for the refiled New York case after an upper court struck it down. This week, a jury was seated in the long-awaited trial of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.

These trials have already started, but their complexity ensures they will extend over the next several months – and more cases are making their way through the courts.

The legal proceedings make space for a national discussion of what is right and what is wrong at a time when we’re assessing how we interact with the public figures representing our national morality.

As information becomes more accessible, conversations in online communities like Reddit, TikTok and YouTube have changed how the public experiences law and order, experts say.

“The advent of social media and the 24/7 news cycle has made it very possible for all people to get more involved in current criminal trials, crime content, crime coverage, especially the coverage of ongoing, actual trials,” said Kelli Boling, an assistant professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Audiences can engage “much more easily than they could even 20 years ago,” she added.

No matter how these cases go, one thing is sure: People will be talking about them.

The trials in the months ahead

Karen Read, who prosecutors say drunkenly hit her boyfriend with her car in Canton, Massachusetts, in January 2022, started off the season of trials on April 1.

It’s the second time she’s gone on trial after a jury failed to reach a verdict last year and the judge declared a mistrial. Read, 45, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death.

She is the only female defendant in the series of high-profile cases this year.

The retrial of Harvey Weinstein on sex crime charges began in New York on April 15 after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his conviction last year, saying the testimony of “prior bad acts” witnesses should not have been allowed.

The disgraced former movie producer faces two counts of first-degree criminal sexual act and one count of third-degree rape involving allegations from three women, to which he has pleaded not guilty. He has also repeatedly denied allegations he ever raped or sexually assaulted anyone. This is his third trial in five years, after the one in New York in 2020 that resulted in his conviction, later overturned, and a trial in Los Angeles in 2022 that saw him convicted on three other charges.

Weinstein’s case, one of the first in a larger cultural reckoning with sexual violence, may be an indicator of the climate seven years after he was first charged and amid a new Trump presidency.

The case against Sean “Diddy” Combs is another cultural moment for the high-profile music mogul. Jury selection will resume Monday in his federal trial, where he faces charges of racketeering conspiracy, transportation to engage in prostitution and sex trafficking. Combs has pleaded not guilty and has denied the allegations, though he publicly apologized for assaulting former girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a video made public by CNN. Opening statements are expected to start Monday and the trial is expected to last several weeks.

Lastly, the case against Bryan Kohberger, accused of killing four University of Idaho students in their off-campus home in 2022, is scheduled to start August 11 after several years of complicated litigation. The death penalty case was also subject to intense online interest from early on and is expected to take at least three months.

And while there is no new trial in store right now for Erik and Lyle Menendez, who are serving life in prison for the 1989 murders of their parents in Beverly Hills, their resentencing hearings will take place next week, which could make them immediately eligible for parole. The complex case has been back in the public consciousness for several years after new documentaries and a recommendation last year from the previous Los Angeles County district attorney that the brothers be resentenced. They have a separate petition for a new trial, and the parole board has a hearing with the brothers in June in their bid for clemency from the governor.

Why are Americans interested in these cases?

The facts in these cases vary, but one aspect sticks out: The public cares.

Though some believe true crime obsession is a recent phenomenon, there is a long history of Americans being interested in and talking about crime, said Adam Golub, professor of American studies at California State University, Fullerton.

“Americans have been kind of obsessed with crime and violence for hundreds of years, going back to public executions,” he said. “In colonial New England, you know, people would come from all around to gather and watch a criminal be executed, and to listen to a sermon by a minister explaining everything that was wrong with that criminal, what it said about society.”

Some question whether the interest in crime content is ethical, but Golub said there are a lot of different reasons people are interested.

“A lot of it is social, and especially in this age of digital true crime and online fandom. A lot of this is (because) true crime is creating a community for people to get together and talk about crime in ways that they hadn’t been able to before,” he said.

These conversations can be particularly important to women, who often feel silenced in speaking about their experiences with violence, Boling said. This is especially relevant as research shows that one in four women across the globe have experienced violence from a male intimate partner at least once in their lifetime, she added.

“The women that I’ve spoken to who are victims of violence, that are in these crime content audiences, often say that they’re listening because they don’t see themselves represented in the media, and hearing other women going through what they went through is, you know, cathartic, in a way,” she said.

“I think maybe what we’re seeing that feels like an increase in coverage is probably just an accurate representation of coverage of what’s really happening in our society for the first time, and it feels like a lot of coverage.”

Crime and trial opinions also speak to changing cultural norms

Many of Golub’s students have researched and are engaged in the story of the Menendez brothers and the murder of their parents, despite it happening before they were born. Their opinion of the case is “dramatically different” from how people viewed the case at the time, and his students have a more “sensitive, nuanced understanding of victims,” he said.

“How we view true crime, and how we tell the story of true crime is always informed by like conditions on the ground,” Golub said. “Whatever the cultural climate is, shifting understandings of gender and politics in America is going to inform how we engage with these cases.”

The same principle can apply in the Read case, where her defense team is arguing off-duty police framed her for the death of her boyfriend, who was also in the local police department. At a time when violence perpetrated by the police is part of the national conversation, people are going to be more skeptical of how they use power, Boling said.

“We see a lot of corruption in police departments, in crime content, in true crime coverage, in real trial coverage,” she said. “I think maybe we’re just at a time in our society where people are willing to entertain the idea that she could have been framed by police officers, because we’ve seen that in other trials.”

This can also be seen in other controversial cases making their way through the court system. Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year, has inspired outspoken condemnation by officials, while at the same time having a large contingent of supporters.

“I think a lot of the outrage that we’ve seen in that case is just sort of pent-up anger about our health care situation in this society,” Boling said. “Obviously, we shouldn’t condone murder for any reason, but there’s a lot of rage out there over health care, and so that makes Luigi Mangione a very sympathetic story.”

When cases like Mangione’s go viral, the difficulty is there’s “a lot that can be oversimplified” or lost in the conversation, Golub said.

“There’s a lot that can be kind of reimagined in ways that aren’t quite accurate,” he said. “We currently live in an environment where it’s a little bit of a Wild West in terms of what the truth is … who the victim is and who the perpetrator is. This is all kind of subject to reevaluation.”

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