Why I’m a sucker for live courtroom TV

My quirky obsession with criminal justice has me watching on live TV a high-profile murder trial with such keen interest that you’d think my own wattled neck, and not just the fate of the accused, lies on the line.

Like my shameful lust for candy corn or kitschy Mardi Gras beads, this legal drama fixation seems, well, unseemly for a 62-year-old grandmother. At my age, the nightstand should hold loftier works than slash-and-gash fiction, say the “Koran,” as one of my son’s 30-something friends recently told me he was reading. I ought to be enjoying more edifying television than “Law & Order” reruns.

But I eat up forensic evidence with a spoon, relish lawyers’ courtroom jousting far more than sports contests and rank expert- witness opinions right up there with such solar-system truths as the Earth’s regular rotation.

My husband, Fred, is responsible for taping old “Cold Case” shows on weekdays for my later viewing pleasure while I iron clothes. He views about 10 seconds of the televised trial that currently engrosses me and declares the young defendant to be toast.

Ever seeing dollar signs, he says, “You read enough whodunits and watch enough of these crime-and-punishment programs to write your own novels or screenplays. The real mystery you should solve is how to make money out of being a justice junkie.”

In fact, I did mentally rough out a suspense novel a decade or so ago when I was a member of a weekly league bowling team. I set my imaginary story in the smoky confines of a blue-collar bowling alley where the hapless victim succumbs to a hard-to-detect poison that the killer cleverly embedded in a bowling ball’s finger holes; toxic osmosis is the cause of death.

My list of suspects included a disgruntled barmaid, a jilted tournament sponsor, an aging pro-bowler-turned-has-been and a former pin boy whose dashed dreams left him eking out a living as a deaf-mute janitor. My working titles ranged from “Murder Strikes” to “Death Rolls” to “Lethal Lanes.”

Years back, I had a lingering influenza bout that happily coincided with the minute-by-minute broadcast of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. I forced fluids while I watched a steady parade of engaging witnesses and staged my bathroom breaks around commercial interruptions in courtroom proceedings.

Yet, I actually enjoyed the trial’s timeouts in testimony almost as much as the actual judicial activities because the live program’s legal analysts fielded inquiries from viewers, whose questions were spelled out on the TV screen much like movie subtitles.

Once a query from my hometown appeared, except that the typesetters spelled it wrong. They had it emanating from “Saudi Daisy, Tenn.”

That particular case was disappointing for a judge-and-jury addict like me, not because its celebrity defendant was acquitted but because the matter of its double murder remains unresolved.

My sense of fair play demands accountability, and I personally favor a neat tie-up of loose ends where penalizing wrong doers is concerned. I subscribe to the philosophy voiced by singer Stonewall Jackson when he warbled, “Every puppy has its day, everybody has to pay” in his classic “Waterloo.”

At this writing, the trial I’ve been following (and maybe you are, too) hasn’t concluded. But regardless of the outcome, I’m happy as a clam, because doubtlessly, there will be true-crime books, made-for-TV movies, unauthorized biographies and docudramas for me to deliriously devour.

Email Jan Galletta at jangalletta@yahoo.com.