Jurors will likely decide the fate of Wharton undergraduate Irina Malinovskaya sometime today, lawyers say.
Already there have been over seven hours of deliberations, though the jury did not convene yesterday due to the Columbus Day holiday.
Malinovskaya is charged with killing Temple University pharmacology student Irina Zlotnikov in the home of Robert Bondar, who attended Widener University School of Law. Bondar was dating Zlotnikov at the time of the murder and had previously dated Malinovskaya.
Malinovskaya was initially tried last February, but the case ended in a mistrial because the jury could not break an 11-1 deadlock.
And though a potential verdict promises the culmination of months of sporadic hallway debate at Penn, students at the other schools involved in the case do not seem to have joined the conversation.
"I'm not sure if the student body is interested in" the story, said Emily Catalano, news editor at The Temple News, Temple's school newspaper.
Catalano noted that no Temple student reporter went to the trial in Wilmington, Del., but added that a story on the trial will be coming out within two weeks.
Editors at The Dome, the student newspaper at Widener University, could not be reached for comment.
The case has gotten some attention outside of college campuses, however.
"It's a fascinating case," said Kathleen Brady Shea, a staff writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer, who has written several stories about the case.
Shea noted that she has received positive feedback from readers, showing her that there's "quite a bit of interest in the trial."
Interest, however, seems particular to Philadelphia.
Residents of Delaware - where the victim's body was found - are "not following [the trial] so closely," according to Esteban Parra, who has been covering the trial for the Delaware News Journal.
Parra pointed out that this murder case is a standard one and has not been covered by general-interest media organizations from start to finish.
And some legal experts say that's to be expected.
Because neither the victim nor the defendant is a high-profile subject, there is nothing here to grab the media's attention, said Bruce Lehr, a Florida-based criminal lawyer.
"There's no sex appeal here to interest the media," he said. The sex-related evidence presented in the case, he added, did not amount to enough.
