In the fall of 2014 I began attending hearings, some of them banal and procedural, others more emotional, for a Los Angeles murder trial that was cranking its way through the system. The case went on for five years and involved long hours on the ninth floor of the downtown criminal courts, where high-profile murder cases are heard. When I could not make a trial date, I hired a researcher to go in my stead. By early 2015, even as I knew I would see this case all the way to the end—and I did—I had decided that while…