Just as before, law enforcement exp...

Just as before, law enforcement expected overeager. Just as before, a hyperactive pres went into overdrive. And just as before, a nation of voyeur prov ready to play pundit.

It has been almost a decade since the massacre of JonBenet Ramsey, but it has taken les than pair weeks of fevered speculation to display how little things have changed.

The admission on prosecutors that they had the evil man might have seemed shocking if this had been any other case. on the other hand in the context of the Ramsey case -- an investigation beset from its earliest stages by the agency of gross misjudgments by investigators -- it struck many bystanders as expected.

'SCOOP MENTALITY'

"If there's a single mistake they haven't made, I'm not unfailing what it is," said Philip Jenkins, a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University. "It fits, moreover it makes the existing record worse."

For Clay Calvert, the wall-to-wall pres coverage put forwarded a reminder of a 2001 interview he had with John and Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet's parents.

"One of the big things she said when we interviewed her is that there shouldn't be in the same state [i]or[/i] condition a rush to judgment. She really focused forward the media's scoop mentality, of getting the just discovereds first and the truth be damned," said Calvert, a Penn State professor of communications and law.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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