Michael George Re-Trial Closing Testimony Today

Closing arguments are set to begin today -- and expected to finish this week, certainly, with the case then going to deliberations -- in the retrial of prominent Pennsylvania retailer and convention organizer Michael George. George is being re-tried for the 1990 murder of his then-wife Barbara in their Michigan comic book store. He was convicted in 2008, but that decision was set aside by a judge who saw malfeasance from the prosecutor's office in terms of information not being released to the defendant and his legal representatives. The trial received national attention for its general seedy nature and for the cold-case aspect of the original prosecution.

Neither George nor his current wife and then-employee Renee George will testify. According to this piece in the Detroit News, this was the defendant's personal choice. Here's a report on this week's alibi testimony, which included the defendant's mother (through entry of her 2008 testimony), her neighbor, and one of the defendant's daughters. To my memory, the daughter did not testify in the 2008 trial, although both of the former retailer's children were in attendance in support of their father.

My largely unearned impression is that this trial did not go as well for the prosecutor's side as the first one did, and that there was a lot more introduced in terms of alternate story lines. Again, that's a very rough impression with no legal basis beyond staying home from school a lot and watching Perry Mason re-runs 30 years ago or so. Another rough impression that hits me is that the general distrust of George that pervaded the last trial and which may have had a large role in his since-overturned conviction was not as big a deal this time around, or not reported in the same manner. Although I have to imagine neither the defendant nor his wife deciding to testify could potentially contribute to a similar distrust, whether it should or not, and that this testimony may have been specifically damaging in that sense. I thought it was a minor miracle George was convicted once, honestly, and still lean towards eventual acquittal here. We'll see.
 
posted 4:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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