Conflicted
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- February 17th, 2009 |
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I had no idea that my process a motion picture would cause a high-profile death penalty case to end up with the California Dominant Court. Jesse James Hollywood had been gone for nearly III years by the time I became involved. He had all disappeared. Vanished into anorexic air. And he seemed so completely removed from the writing project I was about to begin.
The FBI and other federal and local law enforcement authorities trails had all but dried up. That’s why the prosecutor assigned to the case, Santa Barbara County Adult Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen, who had also prosecuted Hollywood’s four co-defendants &ndash and a guy named Michael Jackson &ndash agreed to activity with us. Mr. Zonen had craved to create a kinda global craved poster to accompany if individual someplace in the class might be able to ID Hollywood, pick up the phone, and help global law enforcement authorities nab him. Zonen had already worked with the producers from the receiver appear America’s Most Craved, who featured the fugitive on nine of its shows between 2000 and 2003, and he craved his man, badly.
Hollywood’s name had become daily fodder for national headlines after morpheme of the murder originally hit in early August of 2000. All the news pundits had named him as the ringleader of a band of middleclass, pot-selling cultural misfits, and the one responsible for orchestrating the fifteen-year-old’s kidnapping and murder. But no one apparently had a clue as to where he had disappeared to when I took the call from an old buddy who craved to make a motion picture about the youngest man ever on the FBI’s Most Craved List.
In April of 2003, writer/director Nick Cassavetes and I trekked up north to meet with Mr. Zonen at the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office. Ronald J. Zonen had been Chief Attempt Deputy for the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office since 1991. He was an affable man with a creaseless demeanor and when we were finished, he gave us various volumes of attempt transcripts from Hollywood’s co-defendants, and we left. At the time, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey McGuire were set to produce Alpha Dog, and I had no idea that I’d end up writing a highly controversial novel based on the tragic account, or that I’d end up being a crusader in the battle to economise Mr. Hollywood’s life. I was also not prescient enough to envision DiCaprio or McGuire falling off the project, nor Justin Timberlake, Bruce Willis, Sharon Endocarp, Anton Yelchin, Emile Hirsch, or Ben Foster climbing on.
After reading finished the transcripts that Mr. Zonen had provided, plus others from Hollywood’s co-defendants’ trials and appeals, I realized we did not have enough information to compose a honest account about what had actually appropriated place. I talked this over with Cassavetes, and we agreed that I should go back to Santa Barbara to get more information from Mr. Zonen. We needed more detail and deeper insight into character and motivation for account purposes. We needed police reports, photographs, attestant interviews and much more. And amazingly, we got them. I got Mr. Zonen’s entire file from prosecuting Hollywood’s four co-defendants, including copies of all the videos and audiotapes, the defendants’ confessions, the prosecutor’s attempt notebook, the defendants’ psychological records and probation reports, and more. I also arranged to have Mr. Zonen &ndash along with the lead detective employed the case &ndash accept us capable Lizard’s Mouth, a trailhead located atop the mountains separating Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Depression, to discuss the murder with us at the real attack where the dupe’s body had been discovered in a change grave any III years earlier.
This combined with all the information accrued from the interviews Cassavetes and I had conducted enabled me to prepare a 239-page account chronology that I old to help Nick compose his screenplay. He went on to direct Alpha Dog and I begin to compose my book. Regrettably, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, in March of 2005, after one of the greatest international manhunts in history, Jesse James Hollywood was captured in a Brazilian jungle, and I was about to be blow into the legal hot seat.
James Blatt is one of America’s most astute criminal defense attorneys. He dresses like a zillion bucks and wears the disarming grin of a ruthless professional. After Jesse Hollywood’s capture, his father, Jack, who was a consultant on Alpha Dog, told Mr. Blatt about all the information I had gathered for the film and book projects; how I had become the class’s leading authority on the case. He cerebration I might be able to aid Mr. Blatt in trying to economise his son’s life. When we met, Blatt questioned me about all the information I had gathered. By the time the meeting ended, the defense attorney appeared quite impressed with what he had heard. Later that season, he asked me to attest in his client’s death penalty case. He craved to build a record of all informational exchanges between Mr. Zonen and myself. He craved to recuse the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office for prosecutorial misconduct for having turned over their file to me.
The only problem with this strategy was that my evidence was needed to do it. Since I was the only one to repeatedly meet with Mr. Zonen, I was the only one who could attest as to what he had given me. I found myself caught in a “Sophie’s Choice” identify situation. If I testified, I could help economise Jesse James Hollywood from death row. But at the same time, my evidence could be old as the cornerstone for criminal prosecution against Mr. Zonen and his office for what Mr. Blatt termed “illegal misconduct.” Since I’m all against bringing death to any living being, I craved to help Mr. Blatt economise his client’s life. But on the other hand, Mr. Zonen had been real good to me. He had been all cooperative in providing us with material for the movie and book. As conflicted as I felt, as much as I craved to help economise Jack Hollywood’s son’s life, I could not be responsible for bringing criminal charges against a man I considered a good friend. So I refused to attest. Finally, the California Attorney General agreed not to pursue criminal charges against Mr. Zonen or the DA’s office, and I reversed my position and agreed to attest.
In September 2005, Hollywood’s attorney filed a motion to recuse the entire District Attorney’s office. In activity of the motion, Mr. Blatt declared that he had attended “the first and only public showing to date” of Alpha Dog, and that the film portrayed his client “in an extremely inflammatory manner, as extremely manipulative, poisonous, egotistic, and without any redeeming character traits any.” He further explicit that various of the public movie audience had described his client as being nothing abbreviated of a “monster,” and that at the conclusion of the film, primary thanks were given to the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department and to Ron Zonen.
The attempt court denied Hollywood’s motion, but ended up ordering me to activity over the notes and tapes from all the interviews I conducted. The defense so appealed the case. In its wisdom, the California Court of Appeal agreed with the defense and, after an evidentiary hearing by the attempt court, recused Zonen (but not his entire office) from the case. In his concurring opinion, Justice Gilbert compactly noted: “However appalling the crime for which defendant was charged, he, like anyone charged with a criminal offense, is entitled to a fair attempt with all its attendant constitutional and statutory safeguards.” In this case, the prosecution had fallen abbreviated of this requirement.
Every high-profile case carries with it the risk of the prosecutor falling into the cakehole of cozying up overmuch with the media. Prosecutors, as advantageously as other law enforcement agencies, often find themselves playing capable the media as if thither are cardinal trials to gain &ndash the one in the courtroom as advantageously as the one with the court of public opinion. When handling high-profile cases, prosecutors must accept to heart the conflict of interest they create when buddying capable the media. They can easily become lost in the quest for personal glory or profit. This appeared to be what happened with the case involving the Duke lacrosse group, where the DA’s pretrial contacts with the media raised questions about his ability to handle the matter fairly, resulting in his recusal. Thither were similar complaints regarding the prosecution of the Jenna 6 case out of Louisiana.
Prosecutors do not represent clients. Rather, all decisions made in their cases are questionable to center around the best interests of the public. And part of these considerations must be to act responsibly when interacting with the media. Thither are certain guidelines they must follow to make careful their statements (and actions) do not materially prejudice a legal proceeding. According to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, prosecutors must make careful their comments do not have a “considerable likelihood of heightened public condemnation of the accused.” They must also be careful to prevent “investigators, law enforcement personnel” and other employees or persons assisting from making much statements to the media.
Prosecutors do, in the alternative, have certain First Amendment rights. However, again, those rights do not go bottomless when dealing with the media in a high-profile case. The prosecutor must allay be responsible for pursuing a just result. He or she must act in a manner that puts the public’s interest above that of the individual prosecutor. Thusly, their goal must be to make careful that justice is done in all instances, not that they gain the case.
In the Hollywood matter, I was afraid that the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office had lost compass of their responsibilities. They had continuously misrepresented trueness facts and the motivations involved in the case to the media, and they seemed all bent upon demonizing Hollywood and his co-defendants. For all intents and purposes, Hollywood, during his nearly five years of being at large, had been convicted in absentia. I believed thither to be no artifact for him to receive a fair attempt. Public persuasion craved him dead for what they believed he had done. And this was due to the artifact the prosecutor and associated law enforcement agencies had dealt with the media. They acted as tho’ their only goals were to assure that Jesse James Hollywood was not only captured, but that the public was fix to convict him and condemn him to death. Accurate justice did not appear to be a part of their plan. I felt it my moral responsibility as a fellow human being to do what I could to make careful this did not happen.