As the national media waited last week for the sensational Jodi Arias trial to end, they ignored the case down the hall of Michael Franklin, who also faced the death penalty for robbing his next door neighbor and beating her to death, says the Arizona Republic. But the reporters were not inside the fifth-floor courtroom for this case, the case of Michael Lee Franklin, accused of robbing his 64-year-old neighbor, then beating her to death inside her Tempe home. He pleaded guilty with no public notice.
HLN, the cable network providing saturation coverage to the Arias case, has seen its ratings jump by 50 percent compared with the same period in 2012. Jane Velez-Mitchell, an HLN host, said, “You have an attractive defendant. You have a very attractive victim. You have this incredible sexual content.” The Republic describes some cases that interested and didn’t interest HLN. Now the network is running promotions for the Orlando case of Caryn Kelley, 48, accused of shooting her boyfriend.