Nothing like a little moral panic to bolster your murder case -- remember Scott Dyleski, the trenchcoat-wearing teenager implicated in the bizarre murder of California resident Pam Vitale last October? He'll be standing trial this week, and apparently so will his alleged subculture, according to the
SF Chronicle:
Acquaintances have described Dyleski as a typical suburban kid who later began to embrace the Goth culture, dying his brown hair black and wearing a trench coat.
Jewett, a 24-year veteran of the Contra Costa County district attorney's office, is expected to introduce witnesses who will discuss elements of Goth culture and music as it pertained to Dyleski.
So what, exactly, does his taste in clothes and music have to do with his alleged criminal activity? Perhaps the prosecuter missed out on a recent study published in New Scientist under the succint title "Goth subculture may protect vulnerable children." Without getting into a long discussion of what constitues a subculture in the first place, it troubles me to have the prosecution buy into the same flavor of moral panic that seems to spur the news media so often when it comes to young people.
I'm just surprised they haven't tried to work MySpace into this somehow -- but maybe that's because this case involves a white youth with a predilection for trenchcoats and possibly violence, rather than a teen girl at risk from imagined predators.
What do you think?