Welcome to our weekly review of the events at crimestory.com.

This week at Crime Story we presented an exclusive and insightful look into the criminal legal process through the eyes of a long-serving public defender. We also continued our in-depth coverage of two ongoing Los Angeles stories: the pre-trial developments in the People vs. Robert Durst, and a debate of the issues in the upcoming election for LA District Attorney.

There is a stark contrast between the bottomless resources expended on the Durst trial and the quixotic quest by two DA candidates and a public defender for a more equitable and just allocation of resources by prosecutors in the criminal legal process. 

We began the week with the 4th episode of Jury Duty, our lively, up-to-the-moment and free-ranging forum for the discussion of crime and justice storytelling, news and narrative analysis. On this episode, Sean Smith and I explored the many recent twists, turns and surprises in the People v. Robert Durst, in which Durst will be tried beginning this March for the murder of his longtime friend Susan Berman.

On Tuesday we presented  Molly Miller‘s candid, emotional and wide-ranging interview with a long-serving Los Angeles public defender. In the course of the conversation, they explore questions of progress, hope and the difference between rhetoric and true progress in the dispensation of justice here in L.A.

On Thursday, we published and released the podcast for the second installment of a three-part series on The First Los Angeles District Attorney Debate by Molly Miller.

As we previously reported, only two candidates appeared at the event: Former San Francisco DA George Gascón, and former federal and county Public Defender and former US Senate aide, Rachel Rossi. Current District Attorney, Jackie Lacey did not appear.

In this part, Molly presents the candidates responses to questions about the DA’s Conviction Review Unit and immigration.

For those of you wondering how you can catch up on previous Crime Story newsletters, just click here and your question shall be answered.

We close this week, as is our habit, with Hannah Teich’s curated selection of some of the more interesting stories from Crime Story Daily over the past week.

Hannah, who edits this Daily section, groups the aggregation into four general topic areas: criminal justice policy reporting; muckraking/watchdog reporting; complex crime storytelling; and stories that examine the impact of criminal justice and true-crime in the culture.

Click here to go to Hannah’s weekly essay.

Thanks for reading and listening.

Kary Antholis

Publisher/Editor, Crime Story

editor@crimestory.com

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