Modern Justice In today’s world of 24-hour trial coverage and media saturation, every week there seems to be a new “trial of the century.” Between cable news shows that analyze major cases, true crime bestsellers, and even entire channels dedicated to some cases, trials are ubiquitous. Yet justice was not always awarded only to those who could afford the most telegenic attorney, nor was every move made by a prosecutor analyzed by another telegenic attorney who had moved out of the world of a high-powered trial attorney and into the realm of the almighty television talking-head. On the contrary, it is an all-too-recent phenomenon.

Certainly there have always been trials that have captured the public’s eye—Leopold and Loeb’s murder trial, the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial, even the Patty Hearst trial—but most legal experts agree that the real culprit for the cottage industry of “trial-tainment” is the OJ Simpson trial. In 1994, former NFL star Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife and her friend. The story was guaranteed to find an audience, as it contained all the issues Americans most salivate over: murder, celebrity, wealth, race, sex, and power. Still, no one could have predicted just how much attention the trial would garner. In the end, the trial was not just a major story: It was the story. All of the major networks led with news of the trial almost every night for the entire nine months the trial lasted, and it similarly dominated the printed press. And while attention naturally faded from Simpson after he was found not guilty more than a year after the murder, the legacy of the trial lives on. Television networks found that the public had developed a taste for the formerly mundane world of law and realized that a certain segment of the populace could believe any trial was important and entertaining. Thus came the elevation of even routine trials into sensational media events, a trend that has only continued to grow.

This is unfortunate. Not every trial has the cultural cache of the Simpson case. Not every trial should be deemed “the trial of the century.” Not every trial should be treated as entertainment. Trials are about ensuring justice, not providing trivial diversions for Americans.

The author is primarily concerned with

A exploring the reasons for a cultural obsession

B tracing the evolution of a current situation

C mocking the current state of affairs in criminal justice

D refuting a current argument about criminal trials

E questioning the attitudes of members of the media