Another One. And Another One. And...

By Rick Horowitz

Like you don't have enough to worry about? The roof is leaking all over the carpet. You still haven't bought that wedding gift for Cousin Winnie and Rollo the Mudcaked Man. And you've got no idea anymore whether it's butter or margarine that'll kill you first. Do you really need something else to keep you twitching all night?

Absolutely.

I wouldn't even mention it if it weren't important -- you know that. It's just that when we're facing a crisis, we should be facing it with our eyes open and our brains on high alert.

I'm talking, of course, about Case Glut. Case Glut turns parent against child, and wife against husband. Case Glut threatens our way of life, our very existence as remote-control-punching, trial-consuming Americans.

Too many trials -- that's what Case Glut is all about. Too many trials in too little time.

It snuck up on us, Case Glut did. That's the way it is with some crises. Back when Marv Albert went on trial a couple of months ago, it all seemed pretty routine: famous sportscaster with bad hairpiece wears women's underwear, leaves bite marks. Let's get on with it.

And then, when the evidence against Ol' Marv started overwhelming the denials, he cut his losses and copped his plea. The trial had only been going on for a few days, and titillation-wise, it didn't titil half as much as it could have titilled. But that was OK, because: Here comes the au pair case!

Which let the entire country spend weeks glued to the set, trying to decide if the nanny did it, and if she did it, did she really mean to do it, and even if she did mean to do it, isn't it really the parents' fault anyway, and --

It kept everyone busy. Excited. And that was before that controversial verdict from the jury, and that even-more-controversial adjustment from the judge. The phone lines were jammed, the talk shows were in heaven. We could have batted that one around forever -- but the Terry Nichols trial was starting.

Not as big a deal as the Timothy McVeigh trial, true -- sequels always have that problem, even Oklahoma City sequels -- but a big deal nonetheless. But with all the hubbub over Louise Woodward and the baby, the Terry Nichols thing didn't receive nearly the pre-trial buildup it would have gotten otherwise. And then, once the Terry Nichols trial began, it was the Louise Woodward stuff that kind of got shoved out of the limelight.

The cases were getting in one another's way.

But that wasn't the end of it either. Because just as the Terry Nichols trial started gaining a little momentum, what do you think happened? Exactly -- jury selection in the Unabomber trial! Suddenly there's Ted Kaczynski, out of his cabin and into a courtroom, and what are we supposed to do now?

I won't even mention the latest World Trade Center bombing case, or the guy who gunned down those people near CIA headquarters a few years ago; those trials were going on at the very same time, too. With the proper exposure, either one of them could have held an audience spellbound. As it was, they reached their verdicts with hardly anyone even noticing. If a defendant falls in a forest...

Case Glut.

So what's the problem? This is a democracy, isn't it? People like having choices; the only thing better than having one big trial to obsess over is having two or three big trials going on simultaneously.

But you're forgetting the dark side of Case Glut: Case Gap. Bunch all those trials in the same couple of primo spots on the calendar, and sooner or later, there'll be days, entire weeks, with no big cases at all!

Right now, if I've got it straight, we've got Nichols and Kaczynski, and once they're done, nothing -- nothing until the Bill Clinton-Paula Jones thing next May, which is months away.

In the meantime, what are we supposed to do for entertainment? What are people supposed to talk about around the water cooler? Did anybody think of our needs when they scheduled these things? This is lousy planning, plain and simple.

Somebody'd better do something.

11/28/97