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n Jan. 6, a young woman was murdered in front of a crowd at a high-end café in a very trendy mall. Cause of death: cyanide poisoning. The perpetrator is still unknown, but the police suspect a friend who was at the scene.

It has all the makings of a murder mystery: a sexy establishment in the heart of the city. An upper-middle class female victim. Cyanide poisoning, right in the middle of a bustling crowd. And, finally, a suspect who is '€œhiding right here among us'€.

No wonder, then, that the case quickly became a media darling. How could it not? It was the one chance to jump on the '€œtrue crime'€ bandwagon that is so much on the rise today, with the skyrocketing successes of HBO'€™s The Jinx and WBEZ'€™s Serial.

The media practically had a field day. It knows just how much this will sell and seems determined to milk it dry.

An obvious step was to play CSI, bringing in a host of '€œexperts'€ to try and motivate the public to point fingers at Jessica. I write that in quotes, because some, honestly, seemed no more than some dude using flimsy science to try and make a name for themselves ('€œhuman lie detector'€, etc.).

Not that this needs much analysis. The unashamedly sensationalistic headlines and loaded questions from hosts clearly show signs that the media really, really want Jessica, the current prime suspect, to just get arrested already. A sexy ending to a sexy case.

The audience, in true amateur sleuth fashion, play their part in concocting theories, with some flying as far as lesbian relationships or other outlandish (and often highly prejudiced) gossip. Jessica'€™s slightest actions '€” expressions, usage of words, failure to show up here or there '€” become fodder for wilder and wilder theories.

But here'€™s the thing: People forget that this is not a Hollywood movie. This is not CSI. It'€™s not even Serial or The Jinx, some true crime that investigate unsolved cases from the past. It'€™s not about sexy conclusions, and it should never be.

In the current atmosphere, it'€™s easy to blur the line between criminal investigation and entertainment. But such a blurring of lines is detrimental to everyone '€” and everything.

First, the principle of '€œinnocent until proven guilty'€ is already way compromised. The evidence against Jessica has so far been no more than circumstantial, but the media portrayal always seems to claim otherwise.

Unlike in detective stories, a lack of evidence is not a call to solve an elaborate murder trick. Maybe it just means the person simply didn'€™t do it, despite how sexy the story would be if she did.

Second, the police is never neutral. Consider this: This is a force that dressed their best-looking guys in Rp 8 million shoes before sending them off to fight terrorirsts, because they know the media is going to cover it. A force that selects only the prettiest ladies for regular TV appearances, because they just need to look good like that. How well do you think a force like this would handle media pressure?

Catching the bad guy is never only about justice '€” it is also, and more so, about the image of justice. The image that the police has sharp teeth, that it can still crack cases as fast as possible.

Unlike in detective stories, a lack of evidence is not a call to solve an elaborate murder trick.

Society, for its part, seems too scared to admit not knowing. As if not knowing was a flaw and everything had to be interpreted as soon as possible despite a lack of incriminating evidence, which is why people seem content with circumstantial evidence and prejudiced theories to point fingers and concoct their own conclusions.

But it'€™s a person'€™s entire future we are talking about here. Blackstone'€™s formulation should be immortal by now: It is better that 10 guilty people escape than one innocent suffer. It'€™s such a tragedy that nobody seems to remember this.

Imagine, now, if Jessica did not commit the crime, but became wrongfully accused for it. The police panics, thanks to media pressure '€” thanks to us for continuously feeding the frenzy '€” and catches Jessica anyway to get things over and done with.

The perpetrator would go free, and the number of victims would have doubled. We would have destroyed a person'€™s life, and for what? Entertainment? A passing chance at a flimsy amateur sleuth fantasy?

Is it not bad enough that the media is pressuring a possibly innocent person so much, while we all cheer on without restraint? And for what? What does all this media frenzy really contribute, if not shallow sensationalism at the expense of a person, and possibly the whole legal system?

So here'€™s my advice to those who truly care about justice: Stop feeding the media frenzy. Resist prejudiced interpretation and bad science. Start your own social media awareness campaign on how we should treat suspects as innocent before proven guilty. Resist. Speak up. We don'€™t want this.

Do I think Jessica is innocent? I don'€™t know '€” and I think not knowing is the right answer for now. But I do believe that she has the right to be treated as innocent until we can truly prove otherwise. And I do believe that it'€™s better we never arrest anyone at all than we arrest a person without incriminating
evidence.

The enemy of truth isn'€™t not knowing. The enemy of truth is pretending to know. Sadly, that'€™s the life-destroying game that most of us seem to be playing right now.