Or, more likely, a TV screen.
The accused is a former stripper at the Great Alaskan Bush Company who the state says is a seductress who conspired with one smitten man in the 1996 murder of another smitten man.
The defense says she might be alluring, but she's no murderer, and she should go home to her husband and young daughter in Olympia.
But instead of becoming next month's Lifetime original movie, the Linehan trial will be the subject of lengthy stories on two network newsmagazines - NBC's "Dateline" and CBS's "48 Hours." Crews from both shows have been in the courtroom for every day of the four-week trial, which went to the jury Wednesday.
That the trial is getting the news treatment instead of the movie treatment is a sign of the times, television critic Brian Lowry of Variety magazine said.
"What would have happened 10 years ago is you would have had producers running up there trying to get the rights to do a movie," he said. "Now it's quicker and cheaper to do a news program on it."
Serving as the stage is Room 501 of the Nesbett Courthouse in downtown Anchorage.
Everyone's watching
Three cameras, perched near the ceiling, swivel silently as they follow the action.
Taped to the floor is a bundle of electrical cords that snakes through the courtroom's double doors and down the hall to a small, dark room filled with television screens and control boards. Technicians inside use remote controls to manipulate the courtroom cameras, while tape after tape is filled with sometimes dramatic, sometimes mundane, trial proceedings.
"48 Hours" also was here last winter and spring for the three-week trial of John Carlin, who was convicted of killing Kent Leppink.
The Linehan jury is deliberating now whether Linehan aided and abetted that crime.
Producers, cameramen and technicians have been daily fixtures on the fifth floor of the courthouse. A number of them chat with Linehan and members of her family during breaks. Most have rooms at the same downtown hotel where Linehan and her husband, Colin, are staying.
Network newsmagazines have been getting up-close and personal with true crime for several years now.
The popularity and profusion of reality TV pushed network newsmagazines to reinvent themselves, and many did so by replacing hard news - or what Lowry calls serious journalism - with crime stories.
"We don't make any apologies for it," said Susan Zirinsky, executive producer of "48 Hours" - which embraces crime so willingly it adds the word "Mystery" to the end of its name. "Reality TV was sexy and sparkling, and we were predictable, even though we weren't predictable. So what had been successful was no longer successful."
"48 Hours" still takes on breaking news such as the Virginia Tech shootings, Zirinsky said. But it found its niche in telling stories of crime and punishment.
"For a journalist, crime has a fascination and an accessibility, and if you can get access and interviews, you can peel back the layer of the onion and learn about other people, humanity and the justice system," she said.
"Would I like to be curing cancer on a weekly basis? Yeah. But right now the proliferation of news has created a saturation. Gone are the days when I could just do (a long story) on an interesting character or issue and have somebody watch."
Neither "Dateline" nor "48 Hours" would say when they plan to air their stories, though Zirinsky said the subject is likely to get at least a full hour, given all the time the show's crew has spent in Anchorage.
Zirinsky said "48 Hours" staffers read newspapers from all over the country every day, looking for riveting stories. The stripper-turned-PTA-mom at the heart of the Linehan and Carlin trials grabbed their interest.
"The double-life aspect, that was interesting," Zirinsky said.
