In an examination of famous cases, some of the law’s most popular myths and legends frequently emerge. For example, when defendants like Michael Jackson claimed an alleged vendetta by a hostile prosecutor, their ammunition might miss the mark for courtroom purposes, but these are shots that can resonate like cannon fire in the press. On the other hand, while Scott Peterson’s defense repeatedly dissed “circumstantial evidence” for public consumption, the courtroom reality is that homicides are often “circumstantial” cases, and jurors routinely convict when informed by judges that such evidence is as valid as so-called direct evidence. With Martha Stewart, her strategies did not secure an acquittal but did save a career. And both the Peterson and Stewart cases raise the widely misunderstood issue of why high profile defendants rarely testify.

Kobe Bryant’s defenders had better results marketing “he said, she said” as the linchpin of a weak case, even though such defendants usually are at a serious disadvantage in attempting to overcome what might seem like unsubstantiated accusations. In the end, Bryant’s prosecutors were forced into some serious spinning of their own to try to rationalize a prosecution collapse that was actually a result of their own early failures in DNA testing of the alleged victim. And an examination of the tragic story of Andrea Yates – who drowned her own five children – would reveal why the defense of insanity is so commonly exploited in the courtroom of the public’s mind, yet is so rarely validated by a jury’s verdict. Ultimately, it took an appeals court and a second trial before a jury would find this mentally ill woman to be legally insane.

Celebrity Cases in Courts of Law and the Court of Public Opinion