Amanda Knox, Casey Anthony & Jodi Arias

As I write this, a Phoenix, Arizona, jury is considering whether Jodi Arias should be sentenced to death or life in prison for the murder of her former boyfriend Travis Alexander. So this is as good a time as any to review what went right in this trial and what went wrong in two others.

Over the past year and more, the media have been in nirvana with three criminal defendants of the type that make their ratings and circulation-driven hearts go all aflutter. All three are attractive white women, and each was accused of the grisly murder of someone very close to her: a roommate, a child, a lover. In each case, press, public and a large part of the investigative force had a preconceived idea – what we in the law enforcement community call a confirmation bias – firmly in place long before each trial began.

But in the murder trials of Amanda Knox in Perugia, Italy; Casey Anthony in Orlando, Florida; and Jodi Arias in Phoenix, we see both similarities and differences that provide a virtual user’s manual on how to, and now not to, prosecute high profile crimes.

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