#219 When Fame Enters the Courtroom with James Porfido

Well, it's really not in the court of public opinion.

It's in the courtroom where the cases are decided.

But unfortunately, people come up with verdicts before they've ever heard evidence in the court of public opinion.

So they really don't know the ins and outs of the case.

They don't know what evidence is allowed in or will come in.

And ultimately, they come to their own conclusions based on opinions and based on the way the media presents it to them.

So true.

And why do you think cases involving celebrities and high profile people capture our attention in a way that most other criminal cases don't?

I think it's a dose of humanity is what I think, that even people that are rich and famous can commit these types of crimes and be under the microscope and subject to the same system that we're all subject to in the United States or wherever you may be, the criminal justice system.

And I think it normalizes or equalizes them and takes them off of that pedestal.

And is it also too that in many cases we feel like we know the people? Like, for example, we're going to talk about Michael Jackson a little bit later on, but we've watched him grow up.

Right.

And we feel we've known this person for 30 years.

We've watched his journey with his brothers and now, you know, and then he... completely transformed himself, but we've been along for the ride as the public.

So is that maybe why we're so invested also?

Well, yeah, I think having that knowledge and that awareness and being connected to someone, even though we're really not, you know, seeing them on the big screen or seeing them on the small screen or hearing their music over a period of time or seeing them perform or going to a concert, whatever it may be, you feel like you have a closer connection to that individual person.

Or you may have formulated some opinions about that person.

Like, for instance, Michael Jackson, people had their own opinions about him, you know, whether he was a pedophile, you know, was he acting bizarre and, you know, the way he presented himself in public, the fact that he basically reinvented himself through plastic surgery.

So people kind of like had their own opinions about him before he was ever charged with anything criminally.

And a lot of these cases too, like with Jeffrey Epstein, P Diddy, like they become a cultural phenomena and they seem to be more than just a legal proceeding, they go beyond that.

And in these cases, it seems that as the general public We become more fascinated by famous defendants than what we do with the actual victims.

We seem to forget about the victims.

And like, do we care about them? Do people care about the victims? Or are we just following to see what is happening with the actual defendants in these big cases?

You're absolutely right.

I mean, the victims are often forgotten in these cases where you have these high profile people that are put on trial and charged with these offenses.