Increased Courtroom Antics Draw Attention as Blake Case Nears Trial
By AMANDA BRONSTAD
Staff Reporter
Nearly a decade after “If it does not fit, you must acquit,” a new celebrity trial awaits and with it, the possibility of new courtroom histrionics.
The arrest of actor Robert Blake in the murder of his wife Bonny Lee Bakley is drawing obvious comparisons with the O.J. Simpson trial, including whether Blake’s defense team, led by Harland Braun, will engage in the same sort of theatrics as that of Johnnie Cochran.
“(Harland) can spin it better than anyone,” said Laurie Levenson, professor of law at Loyola Law School. “His drama doesn’t come with the acting. He doesn’t put on fancy clothes or strut around, but he has a well thought-out message, and he knows how to talk to the press.”
Legal histrionics, both in and out of the courtroom, have been ratcheted higher in recent years. Encouraged by televised trials, reality-based crime programming, and perhaps the lure of celebrity, attorneys have embraced the public’s need for drama. Many have tested the limits set by judges, and others have gone out of their way to shock jurors.
Consider Bill Lerach, the San Diego attorney at Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP, who carried a box of shredded documents into a Houston courtroom as part of a shareholder suit against Enron Corp.’s officers and directors. Or Nedra Ruiz, defense attorney for Marjorie Knoller in the recent dog mauling case, who got down on her hands and knees demonstrating her client’s actions during the attack.
“Lawyers are looking for more ways to push the envelope,” said Levenson.
Courtroom theatrics are not new Melvin Belli, the famed San Francisco attorney, once left a fake leg wrapped in newspaper on the counsel’s table through an entire personal injury trial. The jury was led to believe the package contained the actual leg lost by the plaintiff.
Relying on flair
These days, the tactics range from the subtle to the ridiculous.
Garo Mardirossian, an L.A. personal injury attorney, recently boasted of welding metal in the courtroom. The jurors had to wear clear shields to avoid sparks, he said, but the point was effectively made.
“An experiment or a three-dimensional model is 10 times more effective than just a picture,” Mardirossian said. “If you can show it to a jury and let the jurors feel it, it does have a powerful impact. But make sure it’s something that’s going to work.”
In this case, against the manufacturer of a water heater that exploded through the roof of a town home, it did. His client prevailed.
“If (lawyers) are being more dramatic now, it may simply be that our attention span has decreased,” said Stan Goldman, also a law professor at Loyola. “The MTV generation gets bored very quickly.”
But extreme drama can backfire.
Knoller was convicted March 21 of all of the counts, including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Brian Panish, a plaintiff’s attorney at Greene Broillett Panish & Wheeler in Santa Monica who handles many personal injury cases, said Ruiz may have lost the case anyway, but her eccentricities could have appeared unprofessional to the jury.
“An attorney has to be himself when presenting the case,” Panish said. “When you go out of character and try flair that isn’t yourself, jurors will know that.”
The latitude lawyers have in courtroom demonstrations is often decided by the judge.
“One of the things that was most helpful in life in being a judge was babysitting as a teenager,” said L.A. Superior Court Judge Judith C. Chirlin. “The kids try to push and push, and you have to set the limits so they learn to exist within the limits.”
Chirlin said she had to put her foot down once in a medical malpractice case when the plaintiff’s attorney wanted her client to take her blouse off in order to demonstrate her allegedly fouled-up breast reduction surgery.
In a ruling involving a copyright case against Mattel Inc., U.S. District Judge Nora Manella cited plaintiff’s attorney James Hicks of Ervin Cohen & Jessup LLP for “boorish” behavior that included throwing dolls across a conference room.
Theatrical nature
Most attorneys don’t crawl on all fours or weld metal, but they nevertheless find subtle ways to be dramatic.
“Lawyers are hams in many ways,” said Rick Kraemer, president of L.A.-based Executive Presentations, which makes visual documents and other props for attorneys. “They’re actors. They’re sales people, and they’re delivering a message.”
Many who aren’t naturally inclined to act in the courtroom seek consultants to coach them in handling the media and presenting themselves before a jury.
Carole Hemingway, founder and president of Hemingway Media Group in Beverly Hills, said she instructs lawyers to be clear, concise and colorful as if they were on TV. “Television has far greater impact on how attorneys come across than just in a televised trial,” she said. “It permeates the whole vision.”
More attorneys are using props get their point home to the jury, Kraemer said. Visual stimulation, from props to animation, can be very effective to help jurors remember a point. Witness the glove in the Simpson case.
Then there are the times theatricality is decidedly non-theatrical.
Panish often asks questions of a witness from behind the jury box so that jurors can focus on the vocal inflections and facial expressions of the witness, rather than watch him.
Timing and choreography make a difference, as well. In representing a woman who was quadriplegic as the result of a car accident resulting from a tire tread separation, Panish didn’t have the victim appear in court until the day she testified. The jury, he said, may have believed he was playing up sympathy if she was in court every day.
But jurors are smart, Levenson said, and evidence usually takes precedent over any theatrical act. “Jurors stop trusting you when you’re all about the show,” she said. “They know a show when they see it.”
