One of the benefits of being kicked out of your office for a week (the contractors showed up the first day of Spring Break to find the Ladies' Room ripped out and workmen applying power saws to the walls outside our cubes) is getting to watch a LOT of CourtTV. So far this week, I've caught the Maury-style reveal of Baby Dannielynn's father, the North Carolina AG throwing Mike Nifong under a bus, and this crazy-ass case out of New Jersey where this woman is accused of shooting her husband, chopping him up, and tossing the pieces in *matching luggage* into the Chesapeake Bay. No, don't put him in the crappy bags from your college days, put him in the easily tracable matching set. Sure, that's smart.

Of the three, it's the New Jersey case that has both fascinated and disturbed me most. Sure, Anna Nicole is good entertainment, and Nifong deserved to be disbarred the moment he started running his mouth and hiding evidence, but that case out of New Jersey is just really really strange. First off, she's adorable. No prison blues and oranges for her, she's always in these innocent little dresses and sweater sets. And you know, nothing says "innocent" like a sweater set. Actually, wasn't there an entire sitcom episode (possibly Murphy Brown) based on the innocence of sweater sets?

Ok, moving on. The second point is that she's got plenty of people lined up as character witnesses. The weird thing (which, of course, I've learned from CourtTV) is that the character witnesses comprise pretty much her entire defense. Instead of relying on alibis and evidence that distinctly say that the defendant DIDN'T do it, they're using these character witnesses to claim that the defendant COULDN'T have done it because, as they put it, "She's just not that kind of person." According to CourtTV, these are the types of people who are usually pulled out during the penalty phase, after conviction, when the court is trying to decide between ten years and life. Not good.

The third problem with the case is the fact that, despite her innocent attire and the parade of character witnesses extolling her virtues to the American public, she looks like a psycho!! Now, my poker face isn't that great, and my old boss used to send me notes to "smile" during meetings when our client started berating us for meeting old requirements when we were supposed to have read his mind and adjusted our deliverables to meet the psychic requirements, but this woman is out of control. Any prosecution witness that wasn't there thanks to a supeona was given a look that could freeze the Dead Sea. Seriously, if she was trying to convince the jury that she was sweet and innocent, it simply wasn't working. I haven't seen a face that evil since I ran screaming out of a Sunday school viewing of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (the cartoon version, not the live-action one that came out a few years ago).

They're in the middle of the defense right now, and I believe that they'll be wrapping up next week sometime. If I had to make a call, I'd say she was going up river. Oh wait, that was her husband....