The 2006 trial of Hope Schreiner was broadcast on CNN shortly after I served (stressfully) on a criminal jury. The trial helped take my mind off my jury experience, as well as other problems I was obsessing over. I was surprised to find how it paralleled my own jury experience. Today CNN is replaying highlights of the trial. I recommend it. It’s quite fascinating—as well as shocking. The forensic evidence presented against Ms. Schreiner, for example, is highly flawed, IMHO.

So many odd things happened in the Schreiner trial. If I had been on the Schreiner jury I would have been pulling out my hair at the stupid things the lawyers and the witnesses said. At least this trial helped me give up the idea of writing an article about jury duty and instead begin writing a courtroom drama—something I’m better suited to.

Because of Hope Schreiner I started mulling over the issue of middle-aged and elderly women as murderers—or at least as defendants in murder trials. The media treats such women as “Black Widows” and worse. It’s as if any woman accused of a crime is infinitely more wicked than any man accused of worse.

“Wicked” is the operative word. Throughout history, some women have been “witches” in the popular imagination. (And poison—which plays a bizarre part in the Schreiner trial—is a woman’s weapon, so they say, even when it’s prescription medication. Remind you of Raynella Dossett-Leath?)

I will dissect the Schreiner trial in coming posts. In particular, I’d like to analyze the issues that rattled around in my brain until I came up with the fictitious 1952 murder trial in my forthcoming novel, VERDICT DEJA VU.