My Last Porco Post.

As of today, I will no longer be posting about the Porco case, even though doing so brought this blog up to number 16 on Wordpress’s Blog of the Day list and brought more readers to this blog than publishing the Muslim cartoons did. For those of you who came to this blog and found other posts worth reading besides the ones on the Porcos, I hope you stick around. The rest of you can go find another fire hydrant to raise your leg up on.

A couple of righteous dudes have complained about “the desperate housewives” who are following this trial too closely, jumping from blog to blog, to read and comment. To you I ask, how do you know this if you haven’t been doing the same?

I will confess that I have been following the trial too closely. I have found that doing so, and writing about various aspects of the family and trial, have been stressful. I guess I don’t have the stomach for this kind of stuff. Journeying into myspace, photobucket and the like was like swimming in a septic tank. The image of Mrs. Porco’s face on the front of the newspaper is one I wish I had never seen. And the hatred expressed by anonymous posters toward each other on various blogs--well I’m just glad they are not in the same room with an ax handy.

Frankly, the trial itself has begun to bore me. It has followed the script that was set out in the opening statements, with little deviation. I have become more and more interested in Christopher Porco’s psychological make-up and the whole tragedy of a divided family than I have the trial itself.

Here is a summary of most of what I have said in the many posts I have written.

1. I believe that Chris Porco killed his father and maimed his mother. As someone not on the jury, I can say that. However, if I were on the jury, I would not be so quick to judge. Too many people have been wrongly convicted in this country, and Christopher Porco deserves his day in court with a fair trial and an impartial jury that will deliberate carefully, neither of which he would have gotten in Albany County.

2. I believe that both the prosecution and defense are doing their jobs well and doing what they are supposed to do.

3. I may be wrong, but I do think Christopher is going to be found guilty.

4. If acquitted, I believe he will be arrested on burglary, sale of stolen merchandise, wire fraud and other charges based on evidence turned up during the murder investigation.

5. If found guilty, steps should be taken to insure that none of his victim’s money be used to pay for Christopher's defense.

6. I also asked several questions in some of my posts. The one question that has not been answered to my satisfaction and probably can’t be is why did the attacker spend nearly three hours in the house? The question may not be very important as far as either the prosecution or defense is concerned, but it’s one that keeps bugging me. (To all of you who suggested that the attacker was showering off the blood, the prosecution has contended from the beginning that the attacker likely did not get any blood on himself, and they produced a blood spatter expert to testify to that effect.)

7. Most of my other posts had to do with information and photos found on other web sites. A couple of people have commented that this material is irrelevant to the trial. That may be true, but if you look at the top of this blog, you will notice that its name is Upstream not The Porco Trial Blog.

The fact that Christopher Porco has been boozing, hanging out with various and sundry women or driving his yellow jeep around has nothing to do with whether or not he attacked his parents. Indeed, Judge Berry chastised the prosecution for trying to bring up Christopher’s drinking and said the prosecution was dangerously close to causing a mistrial.

But the photos of Christopher do serve as character witnesses. The fact that they were taken less than two weeks prior to the first anniversary of his father’s death says something as well. My father died unexpectedly when I was 27 years old, just a little older than Chris. I began anticipating the first anniversary several weeks in advance and was in no mood for partying.

The photos are at least as important as The Daily Gazette’s description of what Mrs. Porco was wearing while she was on the witness stand, or WNYT’s report of running into Christopher at a restaurant.

In an e-mail, another reader asked the more important question: “Why are you posting so much about the trial? It’s just another murder.”

While I don’t think that this is just another murder, I do think the question is a fair one. There are obviously more important things to blog about. On the other hand, if we get beyond the question of whether or not Christopher Porco is guilty, then the attack on the Porcos, the devastation of the family, Christopher’s personality and lifestyle, coverage of the case and even our fascination with it raise psychological, sociological, philosophical and even religious questions that are worthy of discussion.

In any event, I will not be blogging tomorrow or Sunday. So stop back Monday, if you are interested in other things besides the Porco case.