Weekend Wrap Up! (Crime Con Day Two!)

What a weekend!

I spent Fri-Sun at CRIMECON in Indianapolis!

Here's Day Two of my crime filled weekend....

Day One is here.

I woke up at 6:00 on Saturday morning and off I went for a run on the White River Trail in downtown Indianapolis. It was gorgeous and HOT!

I stopped after 3 miles because I didn't want my hip to hurt. Then I hit up the gym to lift back and do my PT exercises. When Claire came down, she headed right to the treadmill and turned on HLN. Her hubby is a correspondent on there. It was so cute! Hey, that's what I would do first thing in the morning if my hubby was on TV too!

Bed head!

Despite the shitty cable machine and crappy assisted pull up machine, it was a nice gym. They had free apples and free headphones!

Then I went upstairs to shower and get ready for the day. What does one wear when preparing to meet Nancy Grace!?

The first session I went to on Saturday was a meet and greet with the members of the XG Productions team. The only reason I waited in line to meet them was so I could talk to Derrick Levasseur, the winner of Big Brother 16! He used to be an undercover cop, but now I guess he is working with the XG guys and gals!

I was in Reality TV heaven!

Next, it was time to get in line to meet Nancy Grace!

I waited in line for a little over an hour for my chance to meet Nancy. But while she was talking and interacting with each person, she was also putting on a show for the crowd. She was very energetic, funny, and game for anything. You could tell she really loved her fans and knew they wanted to see her "character".

At one point the twins showed up. "Oh look, the twins are here!" Nancy exclaimed and ran over to them. We all took pictures.

When it was my turn, Nancy hugged me! This picture was taken right after the hug when I was fan girling!

This is what she wrote in my book:

BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!

This was my conversation with Nancy:

Me: It's an honor to meet you. I'm going to cry!

Nancy: Don't cry or I'll cry too! (Then she signed my book.)

Me: My Aunt Betty wanted me to tell you, "Goodnight, friend."

Nancy: Well let's call Aunt Betty!

Me: Really!? How about a video?

Nancy: Okay!

AND THEN THIS HAPPENED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I immediately uploaded this video to Facebook and Aunt Betty was SOOOOO HAPPY!

What does one do after meeting Nancy Grace? I wandered around aimlessly for a few minutes. Then I ran into the hosts of one of my favorite True Crime podcasts- Generation Why!

I don't know why Claire didn't want to meet Nancy Grace, but she attended other sessions that morning. We met up in the Grand Ballroom to listen to Jon Ronson talk about his book called The Psychopath Test. We all took the test, and some people in the audience scored pretty high! I scored a 2. The highest score was 40. Apparently I am not a psychopath. Claire scored a 1, so I'm more of a psychopath than her!

There was time for questions, so I asked Jon Ronson whether more men were psychopaths or more women. The answer: MEN, of COURSE!

Not a psychopath.

The next session was one I was really looking forward to. It was called The Jury Experience and it was longer than most sessions. For about the first hour, actors portrayed a trial in a mock courtroom in front of us. Beth Karas, one of my favorite legal analysts and trial correspondents, was the judge in the "trial".

The trial we heard was a condensed version of an actual case that happened in Milwaukee in 1985. This is the only article I could find on the matter.

The short story is that Eric Peterson was accused of hacking a supermarket owner to death and shooting him four times. The owner's younger brother (Wally) saw it happen and through his eyewitness testimony accused Eric of being the perpetrator. Eric even confessed to the police...

... but there was so much wrong with the investigation! First of all, Wally initially said the perp had on a ski mask but he knew it was Peterson. As time went on, Wally's story changed and eventually morphed into Peterson not even wearing a ski mask.

Other problems: 

1. None of the blood in the store was tested. What if the perp's blood was there? Wouldn't that be nice to know to help identify the person?

2. The crime scene was closed and given back to the family within 3 hours of the crime.

3. Peterson had an alibi and was clear across town at the time of the crime. Also, there was NO blood on him.

4. Peterson testified that the police didn't give him a lawyer even though he asked for one. He was interrogated all night by 30 different officers. He was not read his rights. He was pushed up against a wall. NONE of his interrogation/interview or confession was on videotape.

BIG PROBLEMS, right!?

After we heard all of the evidence and closing arguments, we split into about 10 different juries of 12 people. We had our own little room. It was like I actually got to be on a jury!

The first thing we did was take a vote- guilty or not guilty. We all voted not guilty right away, pretty much for all the reasons I listed above.

We only had 20 minutes to deliberate, so we took a little more time discussing but were ultimately set on our not guilty verdict.

Then all of the juries reconvened and Beth Karas came out without her judges robe on. She was leading the rest of the session just as herself. She had all the jury forepersons stand up and read their verdicts...

EVERY SINGLE JURY came back with NOT GUILTY!

 

Now here is the sad part: The "real" jury from 1985 convincted Eric Peterson and he has been in jail ever since! There was a collective gasp from the audience. We couldn't believe it. That made me sick to the stomach. As much as I love learning about trials and true crime, I can't watch or read about an innocent person being wrongly convicted and spending time in jail. I am convinced Eric Peterson was wrongly convicted.

The good news is that The Innocence Project is taking up Peterson's case. But even if he gets out, it's sick because he's been in jail for 32 years for something he hasn't done!

After the intense session, I got a picture with my girl, Beth! She is so beautiful on TV and in person. I told her I've been watching her ever since Court TV. "You must have been very young then!" she told me. "Nah, college," I said. She was very nice.

Next, it was off to see Kirk Nurmi, Jodi Arias' former defense attorney, speak about how social media can negatively affect trials...

I've only watched the Jodi Arias trial 3 times on Youtube! I was excited!

His speech was actually slow and boring... exactly the way he was during the trial!

Afterwards, I met him, and thanked him for his contribution to the criminal justice system. As evil as Jodi Arias is, everyone deserves a defense.

Next, it was Ken Kratz, the former prosecutor in the Steven Avery/Brendan Dassey case. Now, I could never get into that Making A Murderer thing, but I know a little bit about it. Kratz was talking about false confessions, and I thought he was going to get into how false confessions happen, how to question in a proper way to prevent false confessions, etc. No. Instead he talked about how the Brendan Dassey interrogation and confession were all on the up and up. That didn't sit well with me.

After Kratz, it was time for the headliner... NANCY GRACE! She spoke for 30 minutes and then took questions from the audience. Her speech was about how she went from an English Lit major to a prosecutor. Claire and I made a bet on how many times Nancy would cry or pretend cry during her speech. I said two, Claire said four. She cried five times, so Claire won!

The question and answer part was hilarious. Nancy was in FULL NANCY MODE!

On our way to the last session of the night, Claire and I happened to walk by the room with the search and rescue dogs. We both missed our cats, so we just had to go in and say hello and get some furry cuddles!

The last session was blood spatter analysis with Dr. Laura Pettler. We got a small introduction on how blood spatter analysis works, but nothing too deep. However, my interest is piqued and I want to learn more about it!

After a long day of CrimeCon, Claire and I basically did the exact same thing we did the night before. We had tons of girl talk and went out for dinner. This time, it was a Mexican place called Nada.

Just another great day in Indianapolis!

Day three will be posted next week! I have some other things to talk about in the next couple days!

I don't know what to ask, but at this point this post was so long that you are probably tired of reading! Check out my last post about CrimeCon next week!