The Search for Justice by Robert L Shapiro

Author:Robert L Shapiro [SHAPIRO, ROBERT L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446570077
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

In the wake of the KNBC report about blood tests on the socks, the court ’s concern about news leaks became increasingly apparent. Ito showed us an article from Newsday that reported that blood on the floorboard of the Bronco had been DNA tested and identified as Nicole ’s. Neither Scheck nor Neufeld knew anything about this. Ito reacted angrily to The Daily Journal (a law newspaper) for publishing the jury questionnaire before he had released it, and temporarily took away the paper ’s seat in the courtroom. I was convinced that reporters weren ’t pulling their information out of thin air. Someone was feeding it to them.

Ito told the attorneys he was seriously considering keeping television cameras out of the courtroom. At any rate, he wasn ’t going to decide one way or the other until the last possible moment, hoping that it would put some kind of pressure on the media to moderate themselves and to take his threats seriously. We filed a motion for the judge to take some kind of action to find the source of the news leaks, since their cumulative effects seriously threatened the defendant ’s right to a fair trial. Johnnie argued very passionately that these problems in the press began on day one, with the leak of the 911 tapes and Gil Garcetti talking about a Menendez defense.

The morning we were to file the motion on the news leaks, Clark was late to court. In chambers, I kidded Judge Ito: “I ’ve got bad news. Marcia won ’t be here today, she ’s sick.” He looked at me with some surprise. I said, “She ’s recovering from her personality transplant.”

In addition to following up on the news leaks, I queried Ito and Hodgman about the discovery order we ’d filed weeks before for the logs and communications tapes from the L.A.P.D. The judge had signed that order, but the material still wasn ’t forthcoming, and Bill Pavelic kept reminding me how important it was to see the detectives ’ reconstruction of their actions on that first critical day.

“I don ’t want anything more or less than what we asked for and what you signed,” I told the judge.

Hodgman interrupted, saying that producing all that material would be difficult. I stopped him. “Your Honor,” I said to Ito, “haven ’t you already ruled on this?”

He nodded. “Yes, I have, and we ’ll put this back into the record.”

I mentioned that we kept going back and forth on these issues of discovery. “I thought the procedure was that the proponent argues, the respondent argues, and the proponent gets the last argument,” I said. “But on this case, we have surrebuttal, sur-surrebuttal, sur-sur-surrebuttal, and super-surrebuttal. Then the judge rules. Then, if the ruling goes against the prosecution, they present a motion for a new ruling.”

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