This article looks at the crime committed by Mazoltuv Borukhova and Mikhail Mallayev who were both sentenced to life in prison without parole on Tuesday. The victim’s wife was convicted of ordering Mr. Mallayev to kill her husband. As the article begins readers are informed that Mr. Malakov (thirty four) was murdered in front of the couple’s four year old daughter at a playground in Forest Hills. This is a reflection of the news scripts from Gillian and Iyengar from our class notes on February 2nd; the media first announces that a crime has occurred, then transports to the scene and gives a description of the setting, and then identifies the suspects and the efforts of the law enforcement (court sentencing). Other notes from that day discuss those patterns of reporting which occur in criminal acts; first involving crime and criminals Gilliam and Iyengar also found that our media mainly portrays violent criminal acts and disregards other crime such as white-collar crime. They found that 83% of these new stories are dedicated to violent crime and that people of color are dangerous with data showing that whites account for 41% of all perpetrators while people of color are 59% of perpetrators. In this particular case we see patterns of reporting in relations to victims; they say that anyone can be a victim at any time and that the ideal victim is a respectable person engaged in an innocent activity. Mr. Malakov did nothing harmful to justify his murder and his wife was only mad after a judge awarded him temporary custody of their daughter. Since this involved a case of homicide the courts have to look at the definitions which vary by state; in the traditional definition first degree would be with malice, intentional, and premeditated. Specifically in New York first degree murder is only involving special circumstances which could be murder of a police officer, judge, fireman, etc and second degree murder is with malice, intentional, and premeditated (class notes, March 16th). From class notes on March 4th we looked at the role that weapons play in crime and it was reported that in 21% of all violent crime weapons are used, and one-third of those weapons are firearms mainly handguns, strangers are also more likely to use weapons than non- strangers. On that same day we found out that men are much more likely to be involved in violent crimes (except for rape) as women only account for 15% of violent crime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/nyregion/22dentist.html?_r=1