Objection! (35 page)

R O B E R T B L A K E :

I N C O L D B L O O D

The public’s access to jury selection was short-circuited when it started a month earlier than originally announced. Jurors’ identities were kept secret; they were identified only by number. Live coverage of testimony was disallowed. In my view, this is an incredibly important trial, in that it goes to the core of the matter of just how much we as a people punish victims for their lifestyles. I want to know. I want to see how Bonny Lee Bakley is treated in that courtroom. I want to know and see for myself whether a star can buy his way out of murder in an American courtroom.

A N D R E A Y A T E S :

A M A T T E R O F L I F E A N D D E A T H

I was dismayed when the judge in Andrea Yates’s 2002 trial disallowed live trial coverage. This case centered on two bedrock concerns of our justice system: the abuse of children and issues surrounding the insanity defense. At the heart of the case was what role an alleged mental illness played in the murders of an entire family of children—the O B J E C T I O N !

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true victims in the case. We were left no real answers. Instead the public heard a lot of secondhand speculation in a case that will set precedent from now on. Not only did the issues of helpless child victims and the insanity defense come into play, but this was a death-penalty case.

Because of the potential that the most serious punishment existed here, I believe it was even more important that the public have access to the trial, to ensure that the proceedings were fair and to uncover any wrongdoing that might have taken place.

In an unusual turn of events that stunned child advocates and em-boldened Yates’s supporters, it was announced in December 2004 that the Texas appeals court had reversed her conviction based on a comment made by the state’s expert, renowned psychiatrist Park Deitz.

When asked on cross-examination by the defense if a
Law and Order
episode prior to the tragic drownings dealt with a mother accused of killing her children and pleading insanity, Deitz recalled such an episode on the stand. It was implied that Yates had seen the episode, murdered her children, and used the insanity defense as a ruse. Yates’s conviction was reversed and a retrial is now necessary.

L I S A M O N T G O M E R Y

Then, just before the
2004 holidays, more violence toward children surfaced, and in a gruesome manner. An expectant mother, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, twenty-three, was found murdered in her Skidmore, Missouri, home. Her unborn baby girl had been cut from Stinnett’s body and taken. Police promptly searched her computer and discovered e-mail messages leading them to Lisa Montgomery, thirty-six, of Melvern, Kansas. An anonymous tip from North Carolina bolstered the e-mails as well. Sworn affidavits reveal a web of deceit and premeditation on the part of Montgomery, who contacted Stinnett through a chat room, asking to take a look at some puppies that she had raised. The two met at Stinnett’s home. Ironically, Montgomery’s Internet computer name 2 3 8

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was “fisher for kids.” Adding insult to injury, the suspect dressed the baby she had cut from her mother’s womb in pale pink and proceeded to show it off around her hometown. The baby, Victoria Jo Stinnett, now re-united with her grieving dad, has a heavy burden to bear the rest of her life, a life destined to be lived without her mother.

S C O T T P E T E R S O N :

T H E N O T - S O - P E R F E C T H U S B A N D

In the Peterson trial, the public’s access to court was blocked at every turn. The judge banned cameras in the courtroom; witness lists and names of jurors were kept secret. And, as I mentioned in a previous chapter, city officials’ failed moneymaking scheme to charge the media $51,000 for each tent pitched outside the Redwood City courthouse and $7,500 for each truck certainly had the potential to keep out those that couldn’t ante up the larcenous fee. Gag orders were handed down so parties involved couldn’t speak openly about the case. Multiple search warrants and their returns were kept confidential and sealed, and the same went for a myriad of legal arguments held behind closed doors. Why? There’s no reasonable answer.

Why are high-profile defendants granted exclusive
trials? Of course jurors must be protected. No one wants a tainted jury pool that has already formed an opinion, but there are alternatives to avoid that problem, other than excluding the public from key evidence and hearings, much less the trial itself. Making the trial exclusive is not the answer. And when the public forms an opinion, what bearing does that have on the verdict? None. All that matters is the true verdict. It is essential that the jury be fair and impartial, but keeping the rest of us in the dark does not serve a purpose toward fairness.

The rulings in these and other high-profile trials are chiseling away at the public’s constitutional guarantee to observe the legal process.

Leaks will continue regardless, and without full access they may likely O B J E C T I O N !

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be incorrect. The truth of what actually happens in court in many celebrity trials is simply not made available to the public. In fact, celebrity trials should be even
more
accessible, so the taxpaying citizens of this country can be reassured that the select and privileged few—our celebrities—are not bestowed special treatment because of their status. Celebrity seems to guarantee that trial is by invitation only.

T H E H I G H - H U R D L E

S T A N D A R D O F P R O O F

Possibly the biggest difference
between celebrity cases and lower-profile cases is the incredibly high standard of proof that juries require before convicting a household name. There is no doubt about it: Jurors tend to favor a well-known person. I’ve considered the problem of two-tiered justice for a long time. There is one standard for us regular folks and another, lower standard for celebrities. I think I know why. It’s really pretty simple: Jurors think they know the star. Whether it’s the professional athlete, the television personality, the singer, the pop-culture icon—they’ve all been invited into our homes on many occasions.

We’ve watched them over dinner, spent our Friday and Saturday nights with them, and even had our morning coffee together. It doesn’t seem to matter that this is all happening over the airwaves. When someone is literally invited into our home on many occasions, even if it is on a small TV screen, we know that person—or at least we think we do.

I’m guilty of it myself. I find myself shocked at various charges. I nearly fell over when Rosie O’Donnell became embroiled in a lawsuit against the publisher of her now-defunct magazine—I wanted her to win.

I’d always believed that Paula Poundstone was a loving and caring mother, and before she was charged with lewd acts against her foster children in 2001, I had laughed right along with the comedienne many a time. I cried with Winona Ryder during
Girl, Interrupted
because she was so poignant, sad, and brave all at the same time. It seemed impossible 2 4 0

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that this Academy Award–nominated actress could be involved in a scandalous shoplifting incident. I’ve sung out loud to “Galveston” and

“Wichita Lineman” along with Glen Campbell as I whizzed down the in-terstate, and I had a hard time reconciling the singing cowboy to the di-sheveled man in the book-in photo when he was picked up for drunk driving. I’d be the worst juror! I know what it’s like to hear bad things about stars you have really loved. You just don’t want to believe any of it.

It’s normal, but that is not what Lady Justice demands. Jurors must be deprogrammed from what they held to be true and must be forced to look at facts they may not like. It results in an additional burden for the prosecution—a burden it may not be able to surmount with only the simple truth.

Then there are those jurors who think they are somehow befriend-ing the celebrity after the trial by rendering a not-guilty verdict. It’s as if they think they’ll be invited over to the mansion after the trial.

Hello—that is not happening! Then there are the other jurors, the ones who are chasing a free trip to New York City and appearances on the
Today
show or
Good Morning America.
Are the odds of their getting the trip, the dinner, and the Broadway show greater if there’s an acquittal—

not a conviction?

There is, no question, a higher burden of proof on the state when trying a celebrity. Here are a couple of cases to prove my point.

S E A N “ P . D I D D Y ” C O M B S

Known as “Puff Daddy” at the time, Combs was charged in 1999

with criminal possession of a firearm after a shoot-out at a packed Manhattan nightclub. Several people suffered injuries as a result of the shooting. At the time of the incident, police said the shots were fired by nineteen-year-old Jamal Barrow, a rapper known as “Shyne” who was a Combs protégé. Combs and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, fled the club after the incident with two other men in Combs’s Lincoln Naviga-tor. When officers stopped the car after it ran a red light, they found a pistol on the front seat—but no one in the car would claim ownership.

O B J E C T I O N !

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All were arrested for possession of a weapon and possession of stolen property. After several hours of questioning, Lopez was let go and no charges were filed against her.

As Combs headed to trial, his spokesman said that the rapper and his girlfriend were “victims of circumstance.” But this was not the first time that year Combs had had a brush with the law. Months before the nightclub incident, the music man–turned–clothing designer was accused of beating an executive while arguing about a music video. That time Combs pled guilty to a harassment charge and was ordered to undergo counseling.

Faced with fifteen years in jail if convicted on four counts of weapons possession and one count of bribing a witness, Combs tapped Johnnie Cochran and Ben Brafman to represent him. The two-month trial was filled with theatrical moments. Every day presented enough photo ops to keep the city’s tabloids in headlines. The defendant turned up in his best suits, with his mother and a host of celebrity supporters in tow. In court, Combs took the stand in his own defense, vehemently denying all charges. The day the verdict was announced, he spread snapshots of his two young sons in front of him on the defense table as the jury came back into the courtroom. When the forewoman (who had to wipe away tears from her eyes) announced the not-guilty verdict, Combs fell into Cochran’s arms. Outside, he told reporters, “I feel blessed.” He immediately cleaned up his act, began doing charity events, changed his name to P. Diddy, and thanked his lucky stars—and his defense lawyers!

W O O D Y H A R R E L S O N

Even after watching a video of Harrelson proudly planting marijuana seeds, a Beattyville, Kentucky, jury acquitted the big-screen star for possession of marijuana in August 2000. Prosecutors thought they had a lock on the case, with several state’s witnesses taking the stand, not to mention that video. Instead of facing twelve months behind bars and a $500

fine, Harrelson spent most of the day signing hundreds of autographs.

Harrelson has starred in films like
Natural Born Killers
and
The
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People vs. Larry Flynt.
He is best known by millions of television viewers, very likely including the twelve jurors, for his role as the lovably clueless bartender in the eighties hit television series
Cheers.
I wonder if twelve of those autographs he signed were for jurors at his trial?

W A R R E N M O O N

In 1996, after a full thirty minutes of deliberating, a starstruck jury acquitted Minnesota Vikings quarterback Warren Moon of viciously assaulting his wife, Felicia, in 1995 at the couple’s mansion. Their terri-fied seven-year-old son ran to the phone and called police to save his mother. When they arrived, Felicia Moon had obvious and visible injuries. She told police that her quarterback husband had beaten her.

Prosecutors used a new Texas law to force Felicia to testify against her husband, even though by the time of trial she no longer wanted to. That Texas jury set a heck of an example for the little boy—the seven-year-old son who was brave enough to stand up to an NFL quarterback. Final score: Celebrity Factor: 7, Justice: 0.

J A Y S O N W I L L I A M S

As he lay dying from a shotgun blast to the chest, Gus Christofi carried an item on his person that only a few veteran courthouse watchers in the trial of NBA star Jayson Williams may remember, but in my mind it said it all. Inside the limo driver’s pocket was a camera.

Poor Gus Christofi, just like the jurors, was starstruck. The guy didn’t want much—just to be close to a star he was working for that night. As he drove Williams from place to place, as Williams drank more and more and made fun of his driver for the night over and over in front of his buddies, the evening spiraled to its deadly conclusion. All Christofi wanted was to maybe snap a few pictures with the famous NBA great who’d hired him. Two years later, Williams was acquitted of the top count by a starstruck jury. Christofi’s sister ran from the courtroom crying. The rest of Christofi’s family had little to say. Perhaps that’s because they received $2.75 million as a result of a civil suit they’d O B J E C T I O N !

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filed against Williams before the criminal trial had even empaneled a jury.

What did the Jayson Williams trial teach me? I learned a lesson when Williams bought his own version of a high-priced Dream Team, paid off Gus Christofi’s family, and cried on cue on ABC’s
20/20
when Barbara Walters asked him questions. I learned that no matter the facts, no matter the law, no matter the pain and suffering of the victims, if the celebrity factor is in the courtroom, get ready for the fight of your life.