We spent the last few episodes delving into the Grand Jury proceedings of 1974-75, which terminated in the indictment of Jeffrey MacDonald for the murders of his wife and two daughters five years earlier. More than any other, Joe McGinniss’s account of the Grand Jury, in his 1983 book Fatal Vision, shaped the popular perception of it. But in re-examining MacDonald’s testimony before the Grand Jury, we found reasons to doubt McGinniss’s version of events.
Setting aside, for the moment, the evidence against MacDonald, the Grand Jury documents show us a man at the mercy of a motley parade of dubious psychiatric and forensic experts, all marching to the erratic beat of an unscrupulous government prosecutor named Victor Woerheide. In McGinniss’s telling, MacDonald’s angry declaration that the entire proceeding was “bullshit” was just one more sign of his overweening arrogance and sense of entitlement. In the real world, that one-word description was apt.
But it didn’t matter. In January 1975, the Grand Jury indicted MacDonald. He spent the next few years pursuing his flourishing medical career back in Southern California while his lawyers advanced his appeals in the courts. MacDonald thus breathed a sigh of relief when, in January 1976, while vacationing in Maui with his girlfriend, he learned from his lawyer, Bernie Segal, that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had vacated the Grand Jury’s indictment. The indictment had, the court found, violated MacDonald’s right to a speedy trial.
The Justice Department appealed this decision, and the case ultimately landed in the lap of the Supreme Court, which, in May 1978, unanimously overturned the speedy trial finding. Two months earlier, the Court had refused to review MacDonald’s contention that, since a military court had already cleared him back in 1970, putting him before a civilian court would amount to double jeopardy.
His appeals having run out of road, MacDonald was back on the hook. His case was going to trial.
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Episode 6 Cast
Brian Covalt as Joe McGinniss – https://www.instagram.com/covalt/
Steven Klein as Judge Franklin T. Dupree, Jr. – https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1635832/
Score and Sound Design – Dustin Morgan - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4082792/
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Artwork – Jason 71
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Host – Matthew Kraig Kelly
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Mar 22 20237 mins