A murder caught on video, reported in multimedia
I picked this up and realized I hadn’t blogged in almost a
month. Part of it is the intense energy
I bring to work every day. I’m sapped
by the end of the day, running my the work blog on courts, trying to complete
the enterprise projects and keep up with multimedia, which in recent weeks has
meant looking at death.
I see death regularly.
I cover murder trials. But
rarely do I get to see it. Until last
week.
Often, I’ve heard prosecutors explain to jurors about
circumstantial evidence. “I don’t have a video of the crime,” they will say,
“but you can still look at the evidence and tell what happened can’t you?”
In the trial of Cherish McCullough the
jury, and I, saw a killing. And in the era of multimedia, we could share it
online.
McCullough was 19 years old when charged with killing a
27-year-old woman in a Wichita convenience store. The store had 15 security cameras, which caught the crime from
every angle. I plugged my small Canon
into the video pool, and we recorded what the jury saw. Then we posted it online. Well, parts of it. You might want to read until the end before you decide to click on the links below.
First, there was the fistfight
between the women. That was played
on the first day of the trial. After the fight, McCullough left the store. Everyone thought the fight was over, until
she returned and stabbed
LaShonda Callaway.
Not too long ago, only television news would have been able
to replay it. Across our city, editorial discussions were going on in
newsrooms. What do we show, just
because we can? We didn’t show the stabbing.
There was another view that caught it on camera. It was quick. Callaway seemed to be unaware she was stabbed, until she
collapsed. What our audience saw only
hinted at what happened.
I tell myself, we showed what we did, because it showed the
overwhelming evidence against McCullough, and why the jury eventually took only
an hour to convict her. And not just because we can. I hope we did the right thing.
The video we didn’t
show was brutal. I’m still having nightmares about it.