Throughout the trial, the Daily News has invited a panel of experts to comment on what is happening in the courtroom. The panel members are: Wendy Murphy, a former Middlesex assistant district attorney and current victim/witness advocate; John LaChance, a former federal prosecutor and current defense lawyer based in Framingham, and Steve Huff, a professional crime blogger who runs two Web sites. Check back often for our experts' opinions. And if you want to share your opinion, visit our blog.

 Expert Panel - 6/3/08

 Individual voir dire is highly discouraged and certainly not constitutionally required except on very few issues, e.g., in a child sex abuse case, jurors MUST be asked whether they had been victimized as children. And issues around race and ethnic prejudice are required -- but as for specifically asking people other questions, mass law doesn't allow it.

He (defense attorney Elliot Weinstein) is clearly laying the groundwork for an appeal based on the claim that he is somehow entitled to special questions but the current state of the law is not on his side. Yet -- the idea that jurors should be screened around issues related to the media coverage IS being handled -- albeit in group style. The jurors are being asked, as a group, questions that will generally unveil whether they have already formed an opinion - and that's all that really matters. And it makes sense -- nobody wants a jury full of people who have never heard of the case -- such a jury would be comprised of idiots. The thing that matters is -- assuming jurors have heard of the case, are they capable of keeping an open mind and holding the prosecution to its burden, etc.

Weinstein is surely going to use all this stuff to bolster his claim on appeal that the judge should have changed the venue -- and he will no doubt argue that he was at a disadvantage in terms of persuading the judge to move the venue in part because he wasn't allowed to ask the jurors the very questions that might have proved why the venue had to be changed. It was almost laughable that he suggested the trial be moved to Martha’s Vineyard. The point of moving a case is to protect against UNFAIR prejudice -- and there's no reason to believe MV jurors would be more fair than non-MV jurors.

There really hasn't been a good reason to move a high profile case in a long time - though the court did move the Laci Peterson case to another county because the emotions were so high in the town where she was living - and she was a teacher and people had a deep connection to her. But here -- Rachel only moved to Hopkinton ten days prior to the murder - so the issue really isn't even on the table.

ONE MORE THING! Weinstein has been SO silent over the past few months -- but isn't it interesting that he has the urge to speak NOW -- when it just so happens that screaming and yelling about his client not being able to get a fair trial in Middlesex County just might whip the crowds into a Brit v. U.S. frenzy -- the very theme that forced the Louise Woodward judge to let her go home on the day she was convicted of murder.

I resent the forced fight strategy -- especially given that Massachusetts is just about the fairest damn place in the country -- we give defendants MORE rights than any other state in the nation. Under the state constitution we give more than the minimum due process required under the federal constitution

Don't the Brits recall that our own second president DEFENDED the Redcoats!! -- in Massachusetts!

Wendy Murphy is an ex-prosecutor who specialized in child abuse and sex crimes cases. The first lawyer in the country to run a program to provide free legal services to crime victims, Murphy has been fighting for victims' rights for 20 years. Having served as a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, Murphy now represents crime victims in civil and criminal cases and teaches an advanced seminar on sexual violence at the New England School of Law in Boston. As an adjunct professor, she also manages the Sexual Violence Legal News and Judicial Language projects at her law school and consults with crime victims across the country to help them achieve justice. Murphy, who lives outside of Boston, writes scholarly and pop culture articles, and lectures widely on victims' rights, sex crimes, violence against women and children, media coverage of crime and the criminal justice system.    

I'm interested, as I have been since 2006, in the international aspect of this story -- the differences in the way the British and American press approach covering the case, and how attorney Weinstein has already tried to use this in court, noting that the British press seems to think their boy can't get a fair shake here. I see a few parallels between this case and a more recent crime, the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Italy, in 2007. One of the main suspects in that case is a pretty American college student, Amanda Knox. She's currently at the mercy of the Italian justice system, but the British tabloids jumped all over the story because Knox was pretty, young, and American. They dug into all her online accounts and generally painted a portrait of Knox that was anything but neutral.

Here we have the tall, good-looking Neil Entwistle, who is depicted in some publications as appearing "impassive" in his first courtroom appearance. The implication seems clear even in that word choice -- that he may be at the mercy of a heartless, unfair system. I suppose what I'm talking about is a larger issue -- how normally minor or vague cultural differences may affect perception in this case. The British press is happy to sell papers and gain web traffic with salacious profiles of American "Foxy Knoxy" -- Amanda Knox's MySpace screen name was ready-made for that approach -- but a presentable young British suspect in an American court is somehow much more sympathetic, to the degree that his lawyer might even use seemingly sober British coverage to make his point for getting a change of venue.  

Last year, blogger Steve Huff was featured in MyCase.com, a half-hour special about "cyber-sleuthing" produced for Court TV by Optomen Television. As a freelance journalist Huff contributed groundbreaking investigative articles -- including pieces about the Entwistle case -- to Court TV's CrimeLibrary.com. He currently writes about politics, crime and pop culture for Radar Magazine. Huff's active blogs are The True Crime Weblog and Random Lunatic News. Huff, who lives in Roswell, Ga., is also a classically-trained vocalist and has performed secondary tenor roles with the Atlanta and Knoxville Opera Companies. 

John LaChance will weigh in beginning next week as he has a case of his own in court this week.

Attorney John H. LaChance has more than 35 years of criminal trial experience in Massachusetts. He focuses his criminal defense practice on state and federal criminal charges, including drug, white collar, violent and sex crimes. LaChance spent four years as an assistant United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts. This experience helps him to understand the prosecution's way of handling both state and federal cases. He is board certified in criminal trial advocacy. In 1991, the Committee for Public Counsel Services presented him with the Edward G. Duggan Award for zealous advocacy and outstanding legal services.