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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Actor Robert Blake Arrested for Murder of Wife
Aired April 18, 2002 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Sometimes it turns out the news is like an NBA basketball game. It all happens in the last two minutes. In our case, the program we planned to do, the one we've been planning for awhile is going to wait for another day, because we're going to spend a fair amount of our time with you tonight on the arrest this evening of Robert Blake. For those of you just joining us, Blake arrested a short time ago for the murder of his wife.
We are not going to ignore everything else. There is news to report on the Middle East. There's been an awful train derailment in Florida, but the Blake case is breaking and it is news.
Now some of you, perhaps even most of you are whispering to yourselves, O.J. Yes, I hear that too. How this plays out over time, how media crazy we all go on this, what lessons we learned or didn't are for another day.
This is a well-known person and a case with lots of little twists and turns. It absolutely deserves our attention right now, right now as in tonight. So that's what we're going to do, and the program we planned, which deals with a number of important environmental issues, as I wrote to many of you in our e-mail today, is going to wait for another day.
A lot of what we're going to do is going to be on the fly. As you know, if you've been with our coverage, things are breaking, but we'll try and get through the first couple of minutes as planned. Thelma Gutierrez, first up in the whip tonight. She is in Los Angeles. She has been outside the area of Blake's home, so Thelma a headline from you please.
THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, just about an hour ago, Robert Blake, the actor, was led out of his home by Los Angeles police in handcuffs. It all unfolded here, right outside the secluded estate that he shares with his daughter -- Aaron.
BROWN: Thelma, thank you, back to you. Parker Center, the principal police station headquarters in Los Angeles. Frank Buckley has the watch there. He is waiting. Frank a headline from you.
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the wait is underway here at Parker Center for the arrival of Robert Blake. He will be here, we believe shortly, for booking and processing. Later this evening, we are expecting a news conference by senior police officials, including the police chief, Bernard Parks -- Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you, Frank. And, Charles Feldman is living a reporter's worse nightmare. He's 3,000 miles away from a story he's been reporting for a year. He's with us here in New York. Charles a headline from you please.
CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, in post Hollywood, post O.J. Hollywood, Aaron, it's deja vu all over again, and this is going to be a very interesting case, because you've got Robert Blake and his bodyguard arrested in connection with the murder, and how this plays out is going to be very interesting indeed -- Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you. One other thing of note here in the whip, some soothing words for Ariel Sharon today out of the White House, and we want to get this in too. Major Garrett has the watch. Major the headline from you tonight please.
MAJOR GARRETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Aaron. CNN has learned that the Bush White House is giving serious thought to rethinking its entire Middle East policy. No decisions have been made, but there are some big issues on the table, chief among them, whether or not to break the deadlock with a brand new U.S. backed peace plan for the Israelis and the Palestinians, and also whether or not to roll out millions in U.S. aid to help rebuild shattered Palestinian refugee camps -- Aaron.
BROWN: Major, thank you, we'll get to you. That sounds like it might have been a lead story on another day, back with all of you shortly. Also tonight, a story that happened earlier in the day that made all of us, I think, when we heard about it catch our breath some. A small plane crashed into a skyscraper in Milan, Italy. It looked terrible, and worse, it looked terribly familiar, but as far as we can tell tonight, it does appear to have been but an accident.
In Afghanistan, an accident of war, a U.S. pilot dropped a 500- pound bomb on some Canadian soldiers. These were the first combat deaths for the Canadians since the Korean War. That they should come like this seems especially cruel. All of that will get coverage tonight, but the Blake case, as we said, will get much of it and that's where we begin.
The crime happened nearly a year ago, on May the 4th of 2001. It's fair to say if you went by the tabloids and the gossip pages and the writers who make celebrity crime their specialty, Mr. Blake was always the principal suspect. It is also worth pointing out that in any murder, the surviving spouse is always a key suspect until proven otherwise, celebrity or not.
We have a number of reports tonight as we've indicated. Let's do this in some kind of logical order, if we try. Thelma Gutierrez is outside the gated community, where Robert Blake was arrested, all of this a short time ago. Thelma, as you begin, just give us a time line of how this played out from your location.
GUTIERREZ: Well, Aaron, as you have said, we've been out here for about an hour now. It was about an hour ago that Mr. Blake was actually led away and taken to Parker Center. But all of the drama began about four o'clock Los Angeles time. CNN had learned that actor Robert Blake would be arrested for the murder of his 44-year-old wife, and mother of his child. The little girl's name is Rose Sophia Lenore, the woman, of course, Bonnie Bakley.
A caravan of Los Angeles police and detectives in unmarked vehicles, also a sheriff's vehicle, had pulled up the gates of the actor's Hidden Hills home that he shares with his adult daughter. The detectives had blocked the entrance so that residents of this quiet community could not enter during the time that they were there making contact with the actor.
There was also another arrest this afternoon in connection to the murder of Bonnie Bakley. Robert Blake's bodyguard, Earl Caldwell, was also arrested a short distance away from this area. We are not exactly sure what he will be charged with. The actor is expected to be charged with Murder.
Now police spent about 45 minutes inside of Blake's home. Then, he was seen actually led away in handcuffs. He was put into a four- door sedan, white sedan, taken out a back entrance, Aaron. There are three entrances to this very quiet community.
He was taken out a back entrance, put on the 101 right in the midst of rush hour traffic here, and taken to Parker Center, where his attorney Harlan Braun is waiting for him. And we understand that Robert Blake is expected to be arraigned in Van Nuys on Monday. Aaron, back to you.
BROWN: Thelma, one quick question. We obviously, and by we in this case I mean much of the media including the Los Angeles media, were aware that this was probably going down. We can only assume Mr. Blake and his lawyer knew it was going down too, can't we?
GUTIERREZ: Well, one would assume so. There has been so much speculation for so long that this was about to happen. In fact, that was a question that was posed to Harlan Braun a short time ago by Larry King, and he has indicated that he was surprised. But it's hard to imagine that when all along, for the past year or so, police have been saying that this was about to happen.
BROWN: Thelma, thank you. Thelma Gutierrez outside the gated community where Mr. Blake was arrested. I don't know if we still have the live shot, the helicopter shot of the car going downtown. If we do, maybe we can put that up in a moment.
Anyway, a lot is going to happen. It is hard - my point here is, I don't want to stretch this too much. This is some tape. It's hard to look at this thing, right, with the white car moving down the highway. Granted it is moving fairly quickly and there's not a caravan behind it.
But it's hard to look at this and not think of the Simpson chase, the famous slow speed chase. As I say, I don't want to stretch this point beyond it, but when I first saw this about an hour ago, it sure flashed into my mind. Anyway, Mr. Parker - Mr. Blake is headed for Parker Center. He'll be processed there, fingerprints, photos, the whole thing, and then we presume that he'll end up in a jail cell tonight as he awaits his formal arraignment.
Frank Buckley is at Parker Center now. Frank, tell us what you can, what you expect to play out in the next several hours.
BUCKLEY: Aaron, we're at Parker Center, simply awaiting the arrival of Robert Blake. When he gets here, of course, he'll be as you say processed, fingerprinted, mug shot, all of the things that you expect as part of the processing procedure.
People have been talking about this parallel with the O.J. Simpson case, and one person who people may recall or remember from the O.J. Simpson case was then Commander Dave Gascon, now a Deputy Chief. Dave Gascon the second highest-ranking member of the LAPD.
You've told us already, I've snagged you here, but you've told us you can't speak to specifics about this case. But, what can you tell us about what will be happening throughout this evening.
DAVE GASCON, DEPUTY CHIEF, LAPD: Well, I can tell you that we'll go through the basic activities that you would do with a booking of any individual. It's pretty obvious now, walking through the back of the building that we have the press assembled at the back gate. We have press in front of Parker Center, and it sure gave me that feeling of deja vu, even though it wasn't the same volume.
BUCKLEY: Chief, you were the one, as I recall, during the O.J. Simpson pursuit that essentially said he was a fugitive at that point. This is a different scenario clearly. Blake has surrendered to detectives, but there are some parallels, one being as you mentioned the media coverage.
How much has that played into how the police have investigated the Blake case?
GASCON: Well, I think the media was always present and the media is going to be present in any major case in Los Angeles, as it will in New York, obviously. LA has also become a city that never sleeps, and I think you always have to be careful with the media in performing their responsibilities doesn't actually have an adverse impact on the actual case.
In this case, I'm not suggesting that, but it's obvious that the detectives have been rather meticulous in how they've approached this.
BUCKLEY: And in terms of the media being critical in the number of pundits that will come out in a case like this, how much does that play a role, if any, in how police decide to act quickly, make an arrest? There are criticisms obviously of the LAPD during O.J. Simpson or a "rush to judgment." Were police careful to avoid that with that as a backdrop?
GASCON: Well if you recall, Frank, during that press conference of June 17, 1994, there were two comments that you heard consistently. One is this an example of preferential treatment? And, it took too long, et cetera. And then the other that you heard later on in court was the rush to judgment.
The detectives have to approach the case professionally, do everything they should be doing, always cautious. Yes, there were some lessons that we learned in the Simpson case. I can't tell you what specifically what went on in this case, but the expectation, of course, is that they conducted a professional investigation.
We, of course, have to be sensitive to the needs of the media. The public does have a right to know what's going on with this police department, how we conduct business. So, I can assure you the media will be all over this case from here on.
BUCKLEY: Having said that, we can say that there are helicopters that have all arrived over our heads right now, suggesting that he is, in fact, arriving now at Parker Center. Take us through, if you will, this process. Blake will alight from the car. He'll head into the area here, and if you can for a moment, take us step-by-step through the process that Blake will encounter.
GASCON: Actually, I can't tell you that, because each case of notoriety requires the detectives to do some specific things. So I don't know what other activities are going to be occurring, and the activities will probably occur at Robbery/Homicide.
BUCKLEY: With the attorney present, Harlan Braun, there is a special area, as I understand it, where he can meet with his client. Would that take place after the processing generally? After the fingerprints? After the photos? Then he's interviewed by Robbery/Homicide, then handed over to his attorney, or is there isn't any set way that it works?
GASCON: No, he has a right to counsel, and I imagine Mr. Braun is here to meet with him as quickly as possible.
BUCKLEY: Chief, thanks very much. WE appreciate your insight here tonight. Deputy Chief Dave Gascon of the LAPD, giving us some sense of what's going on. We were lucky enough to grab him as he was walking by, and Aaron, there you go.
BROWN: Well, not quite there we go yet. Don't go away yet. While you were talking to the chief, we were in what we call big/little, where we had the two shots up. It did appear that Mr. Blake, I believe it was Mr. Blake, OK, has now arrived at Parker Center, and we did see that shot. Maybe we'll take a look at it again in a moment.
Just an observation that you noted, it was, in fact, the chief who walked out on that Friday afternoon and said, "O.J. Simpson is a fugitive tonight." And what's so odd about all of this, of course, is you start to see so many of the same characters, the same players who were in that.
These are very different cases, with very different issues. There was in the Simpson case a race issue that was always present, not the case here of course. But in LA these things take on a life of their own. They do in other places, and we participate in that as well.
Give me a sense of how much media is out there? Is it just swarming tonight?
BUCKLEY: Well, it's - you know, I'll tell you. I'm going to have Tim pan over and show you. We released the chief, and here is what happened. As soon as the chief stepped away from us, he stepped into this gaggle. Some of the same players, you see Phil Schuman (ph) on the left side there. He and I sat in the courtroom right next to each other during the verdict for O.J. Simpson. I believe he's working for one of the local stations now.
Tim, show the other side here, and we can swing it around and to give you a sense of this town, one of the reporters here is from the E-channel. The E-channel here out in front of Parker Center, covering this case.
So there are some parallels to the extent that there is media, but I think that you're correct to point out that it is a very different case. Another aspect of this is that the level of celebrity that Robert Blake enjoys wasn't, in my belief, the same as O.J. Simpson's level of celebrity. Simpson continues to be relevant in film and in commercials and was still a sports hero to many people.
Robert Blake, as was noted earlier, sort of dropped off the radar in terms of being a Hollywood film person, or a television personality. He continued to be a figure in this town, but he wasn't necessarily one of those faces that people saw on television.
I wonder if a generation behind the people like me who watched "Beretta," if those people even know who Robert Blake is.
BROWN: I think that's a very interesting point. I would just throw out a couple of other things that make it different in how it might be approached. At the time of Simpson, as I remember it, I covered the trial, there wasn't a lot going on in the world. Simpson was the story/
As we sit here tonight, there's a ton and a half going on in the world, and all of it is in the larger scheme of things, really important. This is interesting and this is breaking and this is news, but at some point there are these other things that need to be dealt with too and that's one of the things that, I hope, we'll see, will make it different from our end, from the media's end in how we approach this thing.
But look, I mean I'm not making any bets on that either tonight. We'll just see what happens. Frank, don't go away. A lot still going to go on down there. Barry Tarlow is with us, a lawyer. Barry, I assume you can hear me. Are you there?
BARRY TARLOW, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: I can hear you fine. BROWN: Frank, when he was talking, the chief said that Blake would come in. He'd talk to Robbery/Homicide. I wonder about that. Clearly, he's been given, read his Miranda rights. His lawyer is there. He doesn't have to say a word to detectives tonight, does he?
TARLOW: Well, he doesn't have to say a word, and he ought not to. That is the police have made up their mind that he's the one that they're charging with this serious crime, and he's not going to help himself by talking.
BROWN: And so, just as you would guess the process plays out here, what police can do and clearly will do is process him, fingerprint him, take his picture, take his personal effects, all of that, and is he entitled by law to meet with his lawyer tonight?
TARLOW: Yes, a) he's entitled to meet with his lawyer and the police ought not to be questioning him since they know he's represented by a lawyer; and Harlan Braun is somebody who is - well Harlan Braun is his lawyer and Harlan is certainly someone who's smart enough to know that Robert Blake has nothing to gain by talking to the police.
BROWN: Yes, no my guess is they're done talking to police. They've done all the talking to the police they're going to do. Cynthia Alksne is with us too. Cynthia, what do you know about Harlan Braun?
CYNTHIA ALKSNE, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: I know he has a fine reputation, and I know he's smart enough to tell Mr. Baretta - Mr. Blake, not to talk to a lawyer, and not to talk to the police and I'm sure Mr. Blake will not do so.
BROWN: And just he has been in some ways, Mr. Braun has, been defending this case since May the 5th, 2001, in the sense that he has been putting out consistently alternative theories, that is to say, there is reasonable doubt. That's what defense lawyers do.
ALKSNE: Right. Well there's alternative theories and there's blame the victim, and it's a very dangerous line to be walking, and he has been walking that line, and we'll see if he continues to do so.
One of the interesting things about this case, one of the many, is that the bodyguard was also arrested, and apparently will be charged with this murder as well, and that is a situation that creates all kinds of new and interesting possibilities for prosecutors.
One is that the bodyguard, whoever is the major player, presumably you would think the husband would be the major player, but that the bodyguard would testify against the husband.
Another might be that neither one of them get a deal and they say he did it and the other one says he did it. So there's all kinds of things that can happen in the course of this trial.
BROWN: All right. On that tantalizing suggestion that maybe police will try and turn the other defendant here, the bodyguard. If everybody will stay in place, we've got a number of things now on the table that we should try and fill out a bit. We need to take a break, catch up on some business here. This is, I think fair to say, a special edition of NEWSNIGHT from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The actor Robert Blake has been arrested and is now at Parker Center in Los Angeles. He faces charges of murdering his wife, a murder that took place in Los Angeles almost exactly a year ago, May the 4th of last year.
After a long drive through the freeways of Los Angeles, Blake was brought in the back door of Parker Center in downtown LA. WE have some pictures of that. His lawyer, Harlan Braun, was called by police shortly before the police arrived at the home where Blake was, and told that they were coming.
There's Blake in the baseball cap, handcuffed. Now, I believe, 68 years old, which in and of itself is a little hard to believe, taken in to Parker Center where he is as we speak now being processed, fingerprinted and the rest.
Those two men walking him in, if pattern holds, are two of the - and Charles Feldman is with me. You may actually know those two guys. I presume two of the lead detectives on the case. These are names as we know from that other life we led, not that long ago.
It will become familiar to us in the days ahead, as police, and we expect to hear from Los Angeles police tonight. We're not exactly sure what time, where they'll talk about the case in whatever detail, and I wouldn't expect a whole lot, but in whatever detail they choose to.
We note it is interesting, at least to us, that while all of this is going on in LA, LA is in the middle of a furor over who, in fact, is going to run the police department. The police chief there, Bernard Parks, has essentially lost his job. The police commission has said, "see you later" and he's fighting to keep it, and all of this makes it that much more complicated.
Charles Feldman literally, who's based in our LA Bureau, has worked this story since it began, and finds himself in New York tonight, and I'm sure at some level is dying. For a reporter, there's nothing quite worse honestly than having a story break and you're not there.
I want to go over a couple things. I know we talked about it a couple of times tonight, for people who may have joined us a little bit late. You've been working sources on this for a while, and the essential elements of the case appear to be in place for a while because you and I talked about this a bit. What do we know - what can we report about the case that they will lay out?
FELDMAN: Well, my understand, Aaron, is that the police believe that at some point Robert Blake was so upset with this sort of shotgun marriage, because he never wanted to marry her, that he tried to hire hit men, and I'm told that there are at least two people that have come forward and have told the police that Mr. Blake tried to hire them.
We know that Mr. Blake took some $100,000 out of his bank account in cash in the weeks prior to his wife's death. His lawyer told me, Harland Braun, that he gave her the money because she just needed spending money. Well, $100,000 is as you can well imagine is an awful lot of spending money.
BROWN: I assume even for you guys in LA, that's a lot of money.
FELDMAN: Even for people in LA, that's a lot of bucks to spend. But it is the police theory that it was actually Mr. Blake who committed the murder. The bodyguard who was arrested tonight, who had by the way been variously been described as Mr. Blake's bodyguard.
I think it's actually, probably more accurate to describe him as a handyman. He sort of was a jack-of-all-trades, took care of a lot of odds and ends for Mr. Blake. It is my understanding that he wasn't even in town on the night of the murder, but in some way had something to do with this conspiracy.
BROWN: And we'll wait on that. Let me - a couple of quick questions. I think people who followed the early reporting on this will recall that the story that Mr. Blake told police went about like this.
They walked out of the restaurant. They dined in a neighborhood Italian restaurant, Ditalo's (ph) is the name that sticks in my mind for some reason. They walked out. She got in the car. He went back in the restaurant, in Mr. Blake's story, to retrieve his handgun, which he said had fallen out of his waistband in his pants.
Have police ever found - let me do this in different order. Obviously, they tested, they did ballistic tests on that gun? It's not it, right? Not the murder weapon?
FELDMAN: Well, you know, there has only been one report that was ever out there that the police, in fact, found the murder weapon. The police have since that one report consistently denied it.
BROWN: That they found the murder weapon?
FELDMAN: That they found the murder weapon. But, they never denied it very strenuously, and as you know from years of covering police stories, you sometimes have to gauge how strongly the denial is. You know, there are denials and then there are denials.
BROWN: Well, we'll find out, but back to my question. They take the gun that he leaves in the restaurant, and I presume they do a ballistics test on it and at least it's not that gun?
FELDMAN: As far as we know.
BROWN: They go to the house, as I recall on a Saturday, and they search the house and they come out with some stuff, including a couple of more guns.
FELDMAN: Well, Mr. Blake is an avid gun collector, and it was my understanding months ago that when they did some testing on them, they did find some traces of gun powder, but his lawyer has always said, "hey look, the guy collects guns. He plays with ammunition, with bullets. Of course he's going to have gun powder residue on his hands."
BROWN: OK. I'm sorry, I didn't get the first name. Is it Lorenzo Venay (ph)? Okay, Lorenzo Venay is with "People" magazine. He's in LA tonight. He's been working the story from the beginning as well. We're talking about guns and stuff. Tell me what you're thinking about tonight, and we'll pick up the conversation from there.
LORENZO VENAY, "PEOPLE" MAGAZINE: Well, it's the end of a long investigation, and we're kind of waiting for something to happen. Today --
BROWN: OK. Lorenzo, hang with us for a second. We got an audio problem that we need to solve. As I said at the beginning, a lot of this program's going to be on the fly tonight, and when you do these things on the fly, sometimes that happens.
VENAY: Can you hear me now, Aaron.
BROWN: Yes, I hear you fine now. Why don't you start at the beginning.
VENAY: OK. I got a microphone.
BROWN: I see that. Go get them.
VENAY: OK. All right. Well, we've been waiting a long time for something to happen on this case. It's been close to a year, and out of the blue this afternoon, there were rumors that Blake was going to be arrested, and that's exactly what happened.
It seemed to be a slow developing arrest, because the first rumors that the police were coming in, happened early this afternoon, but then nothing happened.
Mr. Braun was denying that his client was going to be arrested, and then finally at about 6:30 or so, we saw sheriff's patrol cars go in, followed by a number of unmarked cars, and they picked Mr. Blake up and they've now brought him down here to Parker Center to be booked, along with Earl Caldwell, his friend and bodyguard.
BROWN: Lorenzo, talk to me a second about how you think this is going to play in the media. Obviously, "People" magazine does not cover every murder case in Los Angeles. Is this going to be a huge story to you?
VENAY: It was a cover the first time. I can't really discuss how we're going to play it next week, but I imagine it's going to be very, very big. This is not quite O.J. Simpson, though. I mean O.J. you had a different level of celebrity. He was a little more current -- a kind of bigger media figure because of his football prowess and he'd done a lot of movies in recent years, while Mr. Blake had been kind of out of the picture, career-wise, although, you know, an accomplished actor. I mean, his last big hit series was in the 1970s. And so, in that sense it will be less.
Plus you don't have the racial component. Yet, you know, this is a big story in the United States. There's a lot going on internationally now with Arab-Israeli conflict, but I think in the U.S., you're going to see some coverage here, and there's obviously going to be a trial, unless he pleas out. If he pleas out, and if he's, in fact, you know, guilty.
BROWN: So you're busy reporting and you will have a piece in "People" magazine and all the competitors of "People" magazine and all the TV entertainment shows, "Entertainment Tonight" and the rest, they will be on the story, correct?
BENET: Right. That's it. I mean, this is going to be big for the next several days. They were all here today. You had, I would say, about two dozen media here, at least, and there's four or five trucks out back with cameras fixed onto Parker Center booking center where Mr. Blake is now. And you know, you had about two dozen police back there just to keep everyone away. They put up the yellow tape.
It's not quite the O.J. scene yet, but I think within 24 hours, it will be.
BROWN: I don't know. You're probably right. Lorenzo, thanks. And we'll come back to you if time allows.
Look, I mean, I don't know how this is going to play out. We'll see how it is going to play out, how the media is going to handle this. There are a lot of differences in the O.J. case.
Cynthia, if you're still with us, from both sides, celebrity cases create -- well, I'm not sure I want to say a set of problems, but a set of circumstance that make them different from. From the prosecutors' side, is it more difficult to prosecute someone who is well-known?
ALKSNE: Well, it's difficult in L.A. in this case, because they're constantly going to be comparing to how they did in O.J., and have they crossed all their T's and dotted all their I's.
The first thing sort of thing that we're going to get through here, besides the arraignment, which is really a matter of form, is the preliminary hearing. Now, Mr. Blake has 10 days, 10 court days, and he can demand a preliminary hearing, if there's no grand jury indictment, which we understand there's no indictment.
His lawyers are going to have to make a decision, do they want to have a preliminary hearing within that 10-day period and get all this information that's been collected over the last year, figure out how to understand it and how to counter it, and have a very open process in the preliminary hearing, either with cameras or without.
But because this is a celebrity client, there's going to be, you know, dozens and dozens of reporters there. So they have to make a decision that they might not ordinarily have to make -- might not ordinarily make easily; it's going to be more difficult, for one. Usually in the cases, defense attorneys waive the 10-day period and go ahead and wait and digest the information. They may decide, no, we have got to try to get this done in the hurry because of a high- profile nature of it. And so we'll just have to see. The strategy is going to be different than it might be in an everyday case.
BROWN: And just for everybody who put their O.J. notebooks away some years ago, Cynthia, the defense gets all -- is supposed to get all the information that police have developed. That's discovery. That's what they get. So who -- to whose advantage is the preliminary hearing? Either side advantaged by that?
ALKSNE: You could look at it in different ways. It's an advantage to the defense, because they get to find out who the prosecution's witnesses are and cross-examine them before the trial. And that's a huge advantage that you don't get in a grand jury proceeding, because you know if a grand jury proceeding happens, the witnesses are put into evidence in secret in the grand jury, and the defense doesn't get a chance to really feel them out, and cross- examine them, and have a sense for them, and have the transcript of them then being cross-examined to investigate off of and then use later at trial.
So many people think that the defense has the advantage. On the other hand, it may be in this case the prosecution wants to push it more, because the defense won't have time to prepare because there is so much information that's been gathered over the last year. And they're going to dump it all on the defense attorneys Monday morning.
So it's, you know, six to one, half dozen on the other on who the advantage is for this preliminary hearing, which could happen in the next 10 days and be open, but more likely will be put off for a longer period.
BROWN: Let me just throw a crazy one at you. Probably not the last crazy one I'll throw at you either, I might say. Based on the Simpson case and all of that, do you believe that a judge in Los Angeles is going to think real hard about whether he wants to put this thing in television, and does a judge in Los Angeles have an option not to?
ALKSNE: I believe the judge has the option not to put it on television, but there's going to be intense pressure to put it on, not only from the media but from the people of Los Angeles. I mean, after all, the O.J. case -- in California, there are a lot of cases that have been, as you know, televised, and there's certain amount of precedent for that.
BROWN: So some judge is going to find himself famous in this deal, for better or for worse, as Lance Ito found out -- doesn't necessarily work in your favor. Mr. Blake, for those of you who are joining us -- we're going to go to about 11:30 Eastern time tonight, by the way. We'll kind of play this by ear as we go. Just to update those who might be joining us, Mr. Blake is in Parker Center, Robert Blake the actor, arrested for the murder of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.
Bakley, thank you. These pictures shot a short time ago of Mr. Blake being brought into Parker Center. For those of you not terribly familiar with his career, and it's been pointed here a couple of times, I think it's fair to say Mr. Blake's career peaked some time ago. He was a well-known TV actor in the series "Baretta." He did a couple of movies after that, but really hasn't had a whole lot of a career since "Baretta" went off the air. Prior to that, going back to the time he was a kid, though he was born in New Jersey, he has been an actor.
This is the arrest of Mr. Blake -- OK, as he was taken into custody earlier. He was a child actor. He was in "Our Gang," comedies, "Little Rascals," and then his breakthrough role -- and it was a breakthrough role -- he played one of the two killers, young killers in the movie version of that great Truman Capote book, "In Cold Blood," the Kansas murder case, and he was absolutely spellbinding on that. And that led to a lot of other roles that followed, but in recent years there hasn't been much work his way. He is in that group of Los Angeles actors and actresses who are one-time stars.
And as has been pointed a couple of times here, that's one of the things, and it's only one of the things, there are a lot of other things, that make it different from the Simpson case.
This is the police car bringing Robert Blake downtown to Parker Center. And again, the white car just kind of jumps out of you for all the reasons that take you back to that June day a long time ago. Mr. Blake's bodyguard, for lack of a better word, friend, whoever, Earl Caldwell, being taken into custody there. That was in Burbank, California. You see him with his hands behind, him being handcuffed, surrounded by police.
When I first looked at this shot, I thought I saw one police officer holding a weapon straight out, I think the one by the door. I'm not sure now that's in fact what I saw. But in any case, his -- Caldwell's precise role in this, we don't know. We don't know what the allegation will be, and we may clear not simply for the record, but because it matters. These are allegations. Mr. Blake and Mr. Caldwell, like every other criminal defendant in the United States, is entitled for the presumption of innocence.
This is not a case that broke quickly by any means. Police took a long time to make it. It is not just an axiom of paperback murder stories that murder cases that take a long time to develop are generally speaking more complicated. You need to solve these things early or you struggle some. And so, Mr. Blake is absolutely entitled to his presumption of innocence, and so is Mr. Caldwell. And we ought not lose sight of that. Barry Tarlow, we were talking about -- with Cynthia a moment ago how celebrity plays in all of this, whether it works to anyone's advantage or disadvantage. From the defense side, you've got a well- known, pretty well-known actor out there, a guy whose roles had been tough guys -- and in one case, his best role is murderer. Celebrity a complication from the defense side, or does it help?
TARLOW: No, it's a complication. But there's something else, Aaron, that I think we ought to keep in mind that you just touched on briefly. The fact that a citizen accused is presumed to be innocent is far more than just words. We have to keep in mind that this is the same LAPD that brought us the Rampart scandal and that lost probably every major high-profile case they've filed in the last 25 years. So just because a citizen happens to be arrested, that we ought not to assume that that person committed the crime.
But getting back to the direct question you asked me, it actually is a great hindrance when you're representing somebody who happens to be a celebrity. I've represented any number of people, and who are very good actors. And, I mean actors in a sense of being a film actor. And the jury watches them, and they don't quite know what to make of it. They can't tell is the person is somehow acting or are they really telling the truth.
But rather than it being a benefit, ordinarily, people who are celebrities are treated harsher by the criminal justice system now because no prosecutor, no cop in this city after O.J. Simpson and probably long before wants to be seen as doing anything which is favorable to someone who is famous.
BROWN: That's to say, they don't want to be accused of favoritism?
TARLOW: Not only do they not want to be accused of favoritism, but they want to, in effect, bend over backwards to be as harsh as possible. Things that normally happen in cases often may not happen when a celebrity is involved just simply because no one wants to be criticized. You remember that the judge in the O.J. Simpson case who gave O.J. Simpson probation when he had a dispute with his wife, was recalled or at least in the election, there was a move to throw him out of office.
And another kind of interesting thing that you mentioned was about whether this case is going to be televised. And I can tell you this, not on your life or mine, unless it happens to be some judge who's just in love of seeing himself on TV. There hasn't been one case in California, one criminal case, televised after the O.J. Simpson case. The reason for that is that most judges thought that this may have been hardly something that was helpful for Lance Ito's judicial career.
BROWN: Yes. I think that's a fair point there.
TARLOW: And in spite of the press running in wanting to cover this, which actually in spite of my being foolish enough to be talked into coming down here, this is hardly the case of the century. And hardly, as you pointed out correctly, one of the important things that are going on in the world today. But nevertheless, maybe the kind of thing that perhaps titillates people's interest.
BROWN: You know, there's a couple of things there that I think are interesting. Don't leave me on this yet. Let me wander through them in the way that I sometimes do. It is in California the judge's option whether to open that trial, is that correct?
TARLOW: Absolutely and in his -- whatever he or she wants to do.
BROWN: It's not appealable. It's nothing -- we the media can't go in and petition some higher authority to say no, this has enormous public interest and let's put it on.
TARLOW: Oh, my dear friend, Kelly Segal (ph) will be there representing all the TV stations and newspapers wanting to open up the trial. But there's absolutely no way to review it. It's absolutely up to the judge. And as I say, unless the judge happens to be some kind of publicity nut, it is never going to happen. It hasn't happened since the O.J. Simpson case.
BROWN: Is the feeling out there that the Simpson case itself was impacted, that is, I mean, this is the argument that's always made about opening cases up for television is that judges perform, lawyers perform, witnesses perform, everybody performs. Is the feeling out there that, not that the case was badly prosecuted, but that the case was impacted by the presence of the camera?
TARLOW: Well, the case was badly prosecuted. But it certainly was impacted by the presence of the camera. And that's one of the very troubling things that happens in high-profile cases. The Menendez case being one, where people were coming out of the woodwork claiming to be witnesses. And to the DA's credit, they never used some of these people who come forward claiming that they know about the case.
And in every high-profile case, these people just appear as if they've gotten the message someplace that they want to show up on TV. And so, it's very troubling.
BROWN: Imagine that. Cynthia, having heard all of this conversation, do you have any second thoughts about whether you think the case will ultimately find its way to television?
ALKSNE: Well, you know, there are a lot of judges that like to see their picture in television.
BROWN: They are elected officials.
ALKSNE: Yes, they are. The van Dam case in San Diego is probably going to be -- cameras in the courtroom and certainly the preliminary hearing had cameras in the courtroom.
BROWN: Yes. Just for people who don't know, this is the child who was taken from her home and found murdered in the neighbor -- who's name now escapes me, so I won't guess, is charged in the case. Go on. That case is going to be televised?
ALKSNE: That case, I believe, will be televised in the fall. The preliminary hearing just was over with in the last month. And that will go forward in San Diego. We'll see. I do agree that it's the judge's decision and the judge will make whatever decision he or she makes and there will be appeals and yelling and screaming from the media outlets if, per chance, the judge decides they do not want cameras in the courtroom. But the court of appeals will not overturn the judge's decision.
BROWN: I have another...
TARLOW: The other troubling thing, Aaron, is that...
BROWN: Go ahead, Barry.
TARLOW: The other troubling thing, of course, the cameras change the behavior of everybody's that's being watched, lawyers included.
BROWN: You think so, huh?
TARLOW: Without any question. Unfortunately -- and it's not a good thing. It changes -- witnesses -- the way witnesses behave, the way jurors behave. What you have is the jurors's neighbors, if they're not sequestered or tied up or kept in a hotel, see the -- and they're almost never sequestered in California -- they see the case on television and they want to stop in and talk to their neighbors about what they think about the witnesses.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Go ahead, Cynthia.
ALKSNE: And, of course, we're also going to have to deal inevitably with the change of venue motion. There's been too much coverage in the Los Angeles area. It's been saturated. We need to move this to a different location, and maybe they'll do that. So there are so many issues down the road that the truth of the matter is in the scheme of things are not that important to this murder case, but that inevitably will be discussed quite a bit.
TARLOW: Aaron, I'll give you another tip: The venue is never going to be changed out of Los Angeles.
BROWN: That's very -- changes of venue are pretty rare, though...
ALKSNE: But they're always fought.
BROWN: Barry, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm reasonably sure I'm right on this, in the dog mauling case, they moved the case from San Francisco down to L.A. So it is not unheard of certainly in this day and age to move these cases out.
TARLOW: Yes. But you have a totally reverse kind of situation in that case. That is, the defense lawyers were faced with a jury that was terribly prejudiced against their client. That's not the situation here in the Blake case. And they wanted a change of venue. I think in Los Angeles, we have only had one change of venue that was granted in maybe 20 years, and that was this really idiotic thing that happened in the Rodney King case.
BROWN: Right, where it went up to Simi Valley.
(CROSSTALK)
TARLOW: But from a downtown Los Angeles jury, which is a minority jury, it went up to the Simi Valley, where all of the white police officers happened to live. And all of those police officers, if you remember, in the Rodney King case, were all acquitted in the Simi Valley, in the state prosecution. They were later convicted in the federal case.
But I don't believe that the lawyers in this case will move for change of venue. And I think it will be impossible to get it granted in Los Angeles. The dog case was a different kind of situation where probably everybody, 90 percent of the people in San Francisco thought these people were guilty as did the jurors when the case was tried here in Los Angeles.
BROWN: Yes. In Los Angeles, what's interesting to me, to both of you, is that sometimes a change of venue doesn't have to leave the city at all, that there is a perception whether it's fair or not that if the Simpson case had been tried, for example, in Santa Monica, the outcome might have been different than the outcome of a case that was tried in downtown L.A., or in this case, a case that may be tried in a courthouse in Van Nuys.
Does, Cynthia or Barry, whoever wants to jump in on this, does the defense have any control and the way you see this, does it even matter which of those courthouses this case ultimately is heard in?
TARLOW: A simple answer is no.
ALKSNE: I understand it will be heard in the Van Nuys...
BROWN: I'm sorry. All right.
ALKSNE: Go ahead.
BROWN: My mistake. Cynthia, go first.
TARLOW: Go ahead, Cynthia.
ALKSNE: It's my understanding that it's going to go forward in the Van Nuys courthouse because that's the area where the crime occurred and that's where it should go.
BROWN: OK. But that was not case in Simpson. The Simpson case took place essentially in west L.A., the closest courthouse would have been in west L.A., and they tried the case downtown.
ALKSNE: Right, and that they're sorry. BROWN: Well, they're real sorry, I'm sure.
ALKSNE: It's fair to say they're sorry.
BROWN: And Barry, is that prosecutor's discretion, or does defense have any say in where this case is heard?
TARLOW: The defendants or the accused, in this case, since none of us even know what the evidence is, don't have any say. O.J. Simpson probably couldn't have been tried in the west side of Los Angeles because there's no holding facilities in Santa Monica. We have a fancy courthouse in the Independent Republic of Santa Monica and they really don't have the facilities to try a high-profile case there whereas the defendant is in custody.
I'm not so sure that Robert Blake would like to be tried downtown. Van Nuys is not a bad place for him to be tried. Interestingly, Van Nuys was the place where the first Mendez case was tried. Mendez case was tried twice. First one was hung jury I believe in favor of the defendants for acquittal, so Van nuys is not a bad place, and for Robert Blake it may be a better place than downtown.
For O.J. Simpson, downtown was a much better place for him to be tried. And the district attorney very strangely enough, Gill Garcetti, didn't want to be seen as not being fair to the minority community and therefore, deliberately chose to take the case downtown when there was some slight possibility it might have been able to be tried somewhere in the west side of Los Angeles, maybe in Torrance, which would have been a wonderful place for the D.A. to try it.
BROWN: You are on fire today, by the way. The Independent Republic of Santa Monica?
TARLOW: It used to be called that. Like all of us it has gotten older and probably has -- isn't like that anymore.
BROWN: I'm sure it's not. Don't go away. David, I believe we have, I believe a statement now from the family. Do we?
Yes. This is a statement from the victims' family. "Can't talk now. We are pleased with the L.A.P.D. and saddened just the same. We still lost Bonny, and we have not seen Rose."
Rose is the child of this union and she is, I think I said three earlier tonight. I think she's closer to two than three. In any case, imagine -- I don't think anyone could imagine what a 2-year-old is thinking about anything or what she knows in all of this. Her mother is dead, and her father now is in police custody. We have more to do here. As I said earlier we'll stay with you, NEWSNIGHT will stay with you until at least 11:30 Eastern time.
We expect to hear from Los Angeles Police Department at some time. We don't know if we'll hear from Mr. Blake's attorney although that is a possibility. We'll just keep the lines open and see what happens. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN. We will be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: OK, here's where we are. Coming up towards 11:00 Eastern time. The actor Robert Blake has been taken into custody. He was taken into custody by Los Angeles Police and he'll be formally arraigned we suspect on Monday in the death of the murder of his wife.
Also taken into custody today in Burbank, Earl Caldwell. Yes. I want to make sure I get the names right. Mr. Caldwell is a friend and acquaintance, sometimes described as bodyguard of Mr. Blake. Not clear at this point. We wait for Los Angeles Police to detail their theory of the case. But we know the basic facts of the case, which is to say that on May the 4, 2001, almost a year ago, Mr. And Mrs. Blake, Bonny Lee Bakley, her name, had dined in a restaurant, they walked out of the restaurant, she got in the car, Blake went back into the restaurant to retrieve his gun, which he said had fallen out of his waistband and she was shot through the passenger side of an open window of the car.
As we said earlier, there is a child by the union, the whole marriage itself will be the subject of considerable discussion as will Ms. Bakley's background. It is a theory of the defense that there were plenty of people other people out there who might have wanted her dead. They described her as somewhat of a con-woman and a scamster. Here's these pictures, CNN exclusive picture of Robert Blake, now 69- year-old, being taken into Parker Center, which is the central police station in Los Angeles named after William Parker, a long time police chief in Los Angeles.
This is a while back now. I guess 40 minutes or so ago. He was taken in the back door. He will be -- probably has been already fingerprinted, photographed, his lawyer, prominent criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles, Harland Braun, also showed up down there. Braun told Larry King a little bit earlier tonight that he was surprised that this arrest went down today.
I must tell you when I heard that I smiled because he might have been the only person in town who was surprised and that's the truth. Charles Feldman, who is with us in New York and been reporting the story, he and I exchange e-mails on this question that this thing was coming down at least two days ago, which means Charlie knew well ahead of everybody else, and I assume other reporters learned it sometime later. It's a nice piece of work. Anyway, we have more on that. There are couple of things we need to take care of that are also important.
In Florida there's been an awful train accident in central Florida. These are live pictures of the scene. They're still trying to get people out of the trains. The train is one of the trains that carries cars too, vacationers going to and from Florida want to bring their car down and back, load themselves and car in part of the train, that's what derailed in an area north of Disney World.
Susan Candiotti has been racing to report on this and has been doing some reporting. I have given but the most basic facts of this. Why don't you tell us what you can. SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure Aaron. There are a lot of ways to describe what happened here. One of them is spectacular. The train cars of what you've described as Amtrak famous auto train flying off the tracks, careening off the tracks for an unknown reason. This train that regularly carries as you said, both passengers and vehicles from a city near Orlando to the suburbs outside Washington, D.C. tonight something went dreadfully wrong. We don't know exactly what.
However, nearly all of the cars, 35 of 41 of them slid off the tracks. One witness reports hearing the brakes screeching for about 30 seconds before the train derailed. Four hundred twenty-five passengers aboard these cars, 28 crew members, we can report at least six people dead this night and not long ago we saw one victim being removed from the scene. We don't know if that was an additional victim to the six already reported dead.
More than 153 people injured, at least 20 critically. Many of those have been air lifted to area hospitals. And others were who were uninjured or slightly injured are taken to other hospitals, as well as to a local high school around here, where I stopped and spent a little bit of time and ran into a man by the name of Ken Clark, an elderly gentleman from Wayne, Pennsylvania who was here vacationing with his wife. He was wrapped up in a blanket. And he described what happened to me this way.
He said, "I felt like the world was coming to an end." He told me this as he was being loaded onto a school bus, to be taken to an area hotel. The Red Cross is helping out here. And let me set the scene for what apparently happened. About one hour after this train left the station near the Orlando, Florida, people were settling in for that nice overnight trip to Washington, D.C., when they don't know what went wrong.
The NTSB is assembling and has assembled what they call the go team that goes out to these accident sites, that will arrive either late tonight or early tomorrow. They'll begin investigating what happened here.
(on camera): And from what we understand, the engineer reported no trouble before this accident happened. So of course, Aaron, they'll be out here for quite some time to come, as they try to piece through this wreckage and find out any other people that they could get out.
75 people who were trapped inside one of the cars earlier were free without injury. If we can swing, let's see, is there something happening here now? No, but over my shoulder this way, you can see that white car. That contained one of the passenger vehicles, one of the many passenger cars that was part of this train. So that's how close we are to the wreck.
But this is as close as we can get to it from where the staging area is for the news media -- Aaron.
BROWN: OK, Susan. I want to run down a few who, what, when, where and why here, just to make sure I got them all in. Locate yourself for me again? You're about an hour to the north of Orlando?
CANDIOTTI: Yes. I think the easiest way to describe is that we're about 25 miles west of Daytona Beach. And yes, we're roughly about that drive time from Orlando, about an hour, hour and a half or so.
BROWN: And how far are you from a city? How long did it take people to get -- rescue crews to get there is really what I'm asking?
CANDIOTTI: Sure. There is a very small city just about five miles down the road from here called Crescent City. And they're not far away, but they were able to -- they're about 20 miles to the next biggest town, actually, where the closest hospital, anyway, is located.
But the problem is it isn't a trauma center. So those who were critically injured had to be air lifted to Gainesville, Florida, which is a little farther away from here, as well as Jacksonville, Florida, which is oh, a couple hours, at least, away from the Orlando area.
BROWN: And just to make sure I jotted this down right, as best we know now, and as we always say in moments like this, these preliminary towns have a way of changing as investigators and rescue crews and the like get better information. We believe 153 injured, is that correct?
CANDIOTTI: At the very least, those are the numbers we're getting from authorities out here. Of course, those numbers could fluctuate.
BROWN: Let me tell you one of those things I would actually send you in an e-mail. We're going to be on the air for a while. You might do some -- go ahead and go back and do some reporting here, see what you can learn. And we'll check back with you, as we stay with this for a while.
Thank you. Susan Candiotti, who is in central Florida tonight. That is a truly awful accident down there. And there's much more to be learned, not the least of which, of course, is why it happened.
About an hour from, at 12:00 Eastern time, we expect now that the Los Angeles Police Department, we don't know who in the police department, will hold a news conference to discuss whatever it is they are willing to discuss in the Robert Blake arrest. And that is scheduled, I think these schedules are pretty loose, OK, for 12:00 midnight Eastern time. And we'll obviously be covering that.
We'll take a break. And we'll continue our coverage of a number now of major stories that are in play on this night. This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT. And this is CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: I want to go through the whole thing again. And it's seven minutes past 11:00 here in the East. I know at the top of the hour a number of people probably joined us expecting CROSSFIRE. Not tonight. We'll continue our coverage of Robert Blake. We have a number of other news stories we want to get to also.
But if you have just joined us and you don't know where we are, Robert Blake, the actor is in custody. He will be formally charged with murdering his wife. He's at Parker Center. We'll have more on the legal issues here as we go.
Blake has had an interesting professional life, full of ups and downs. He's had stardom. He has had what I think in Hollywood terms has been virtual oblivion. I mean, if you don't get work for six, eight months, or a year in Hollywood, you pretty much can't get into the good restaurants anymore.
Among the things that Charles Feldman, who is with us here in New York, but has been working this case in Los Angeles has been doing in between the time of covering the story and waiting for something to happen is looking at Blake's career. And why don't you set this up, since it's your work?
CHARLES FELDMAN: Well, Aaron, you know, Robert Blake is somebody who has always been around Hollywood. He is somebody who you can call a child of Hollywood. He is -- he came from the East coast. It brought him. His family brought him to the West coast. And from his very earliest time, his parents pushed him into show business. And he is somebody who is permanently part of the fabric of Hollywood.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FELDMAN (voice-over): Bet you haven't heard many actors say something like this before.
ROBERT BLAKE: I ain't dopin', I ain't juicin'. God is kind of checking me out to see how much I can take.
FELDMAN: That's actor Robert Blake during a 1985 interview, but typical Blake. Blake played tough talking, shoot from the hip characters in the movies and on TV, and played his real life much the same way.
Blake was, is a Hollywood institution, something he talked about during a ballet workout back in 1992.
BLAKE: I started in 1936. 1938 I was in "The Rascals." And I've been in front of the box all my life. And all I ever did was get in front of the box, hit the marks, and say the jokes.
You and mom have been mighty good to me. Every since I was a kid.
FELDMAN: Blake was just a boy when he got the part of Mickey in the "Our Gang" comedy film, but he claims his real life was no laughing matter.
BLAKE: I had had a real snake pit horror childhood that my father was an insane man, who should've been locked up. He locked me in closets. He threw me against the wall. He made me eat on the floor like a dog. He kept me on a leash. He was insane. And my mother was worse.
FELDMAN: By the time Blake reached his 20s, movie roles proved hard to find, but TV beckoned. The tube provided Blake with roles, some money and a respite, but the small screen was not the best place to show off Blake's obvious talent.
In 1967, Blake got the role of a lifetime, playing a killer in the movie "In Cold Blood."
BLAKE: We just live there all alone in that big, empty failure.
FELDMAN: Despite the wide acclaim Blake got for this star turn, his past demons apparently caught up with him. Salvation of sorts once again came from the small screen. In 1974, Blake took on the role of TV cop "Baretta."
BLAKE: The next cop you need ain't going to be a chump like me.
FELDMAN (on camera): The very first episode dealt with Baretta trying to solve the murder of his fiance outside of a restaurant. But Blake's personal demons again started to run amuck. Battles erupted on the set. Barretta was dropped from the ABC lineup in 1978 and it took years before Blake returned to TV.
But he did in 1985 in "Helltown." He played a tough priest.
BLAKE: Are you ready to kill me? Are you ready to kill a priest, huh?
FELDMAN (voice-over): "Helltown" proved no match for the glitzy "Dynasty" series and was quickly dropped.
BLAKE: It all came to a head when I was doing "Helltown" and I fell apart. I mean, without getting real dramatic, I just -- it was the end of the road. And I came as close to really just sticking a 357 in my mouth, as anybody could come. And I quit. I quit everything. I quit life.
FELDMAN: Blake has made a few films since, including a TV movie based on the life of John Liest (ph), who killed his family, but nothing put his name back in headlines like his current real life situation.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FELDMAN: You know, Aaron, I'm sure one of the things that's going to come up at this trial, and I mentioned this in the report, is this eerie parallel, if you will, between real life and his fictional life, the very first episode of his TV series, "Baretta," he's playing a cop who is trying to solve the murder of his girlfriend in front of an Italian restaurant. So you know...
BROWN: And I know it's weird. I mean, do we want to know what's weird, like there's one weird thing in all of this. Remember in the Simpson case, I don't want to make this parallel nuts here tonight, but in the Simpson case, there was a moment early on where one of the issues was he had just done a move where he had played a commando, an Navy seal or some crazy thing.
FELDMAN: That's right. Yes, commandos.
BROWN: And somehow the notion was that there again, art imitated or life, it was imitating art, I guess. I'm tripping over my parallels, but that's sort of it. The other thing about Blake that I always wondered, I have always wondered, is how much the sort of tough guy, I don't mean in the roles he played, I mean in life, how much of the tough guy was who he is, and how much of a tough guy, tough talking -- remember you see him on the old Johnny Carson show, was real? I never knew.
FELDMAN: You know, I once saw an interview with his -- he's got a grown son, who was I think "LARRY KING" a while ago. And he said, you know, he never saw that that sort of rough side, tough side at home. That at home, he was, you know, dad. And if you see pictures of him with the three-year old or almost three-year-old child, Rosie, he looks like any loving father. So it's hard to reconcile these two images.
BROWN: Everything. Just to remind viewers, he's not a young man. He's 69-years old. I don't try to get him in that interview the ballet interview was done?
FELDMAN: As I recall, I think it was around 1993.
BROWN: Well, so seven, eight years ago, whatever. He's in terrific shape. And -- but he is anything but a young man to be kind of people that normally find themselves in this sort of fix, facing a murder case. Anyway, here is Mr. Blake today, though you don't -- or tonight at least in Los Angeles. You don't get a very good look at him, at least his front. You get a terrific look at his back. And wearing the blue baseball cap, being taken in by a detective of the Los Angeles Police Department.
And I guarantee you that tomorrow morning, you will wake up and you will know that detective's name. One of the things that happens, as you will the fellow on the other side, one of the things that happens in these sorts of cases is everybody becomes known. And everyone will be known as the lead detectives, the judge, the defense attornies, the whole group. We'll hear from the Los Angeles police we expect about midnight tonight. We expect shortly thereafter, we will hear from Harlan Braughn, who is Mr. Blake's defense attorney, has been on retainer since -- virtually since this happened back in May a year ago.
Charley, I hear you chomping at the bit.
FELDMAN: Yes, because you want to know one more weird thing, Aaron, in terms of parallels?
BROWN: Yes, I can't resist them.
FELDMAN: OK, well that one detective that you saw holding Mr. Blake, he's the lead detective in the case. And his name is Robert Ito. And yes, that's right, the judge, no relation, but the judge in the O.J. Simpson case, as he's pointed out already of course, was Judge Lance Ito. So...
BROWN: Well, I feel bad enough we can get, you know, his lawyer to be like Steve Cochran or something. And then we could have a clean sweep tonight.
The fact is, I mean, without again making us crazy, there are going to be parallels to the Simpson case, but it is to me, to my thinking entirely different. The only thing they have in common is they are both celebrities. That is it. And I guess they're accused of killing their wife in one case, and their ex-wife in another.
But the atmospherics of the times are very different. The background, the news background of the times is very, very different. The country's at war. And on both sides of this television camera tonight, my side and yours, we need to keep that in mind. There are other things going on in the world. And that's one of the things, I think, that makes it markedly different for all of us as we approach this.
Things are happening today. It's important or certainly relevant to talk about it today. But I will be hard-pressed to believe that this is the only story in town for the next year of our lives. And I think they're important and meaningful things going on. And in due course. And I don't think due course would be too terribly long. We'll get to all of those things.
Everybody's still in play, David. OK.
Cynthia, let me come back to you for a second. I guess I'm little fixated on this notion that here is this guy who has played tough guys all his professional life, has lived on the edge, has sort of bragged about living on the edge. Can you, as a lawyer, inoculate him in the eyes of a jury, or maybe it works the other way around, to the difference between what he is and what he's portrayed?
ALKSNE: Right. Well, they'll begin that process in the press conference following the announcement of the charges. I mean, that will be the defense attorney's job is to begin to let the jury pool know that Barretta and the bird and the whole program is different from Robert Blake, the man who married a woman who tricked him into a pregnancy because he thought it was in the best interest of the child. And you'll begin to see that picture.
While we've been sitting here, I've been reviewing some of the transcripts that Mr. Brown's interviews on CNN. And one of the things that sort of jumps out at me is that Mr. Blake gave a four hour interview to the police. And on some level, has cooperated with the police and has given a lot of information and statements.
So one thing that will happen in this trial, which didn't happen in the O.J. trial, is that we're going to hear a lot about in the courtroom about his statements and how every single word he said has been checked out, and what is true, and what is not true. And that will be something -- yet another thing that will be different than the O.J. case. You're remember in the O.J. case, there was a statement he was never introduced. It was considered a rather large mistake. My guess is that will not happen again.
BROWN: Just say that last part again? The -- I'm sorry. I just didn't hear quite...
ALKSNE: The lawyer, Mr. Braun...
BROWN: Right.
ALKSNE: ...took Mr. Blake in to meet with the police.
BROWN: Right, I got that part.
ALKSNE: And they talked for four hours. That's an important thing for a prosecutor. That jumps at me as somebody who's tried a lot of cases.
BROWN: Got it.
ALKSNE: Because now the police in this course of this year, they have spent every minute they could allocate to figuring out what is the truth and what is the lie? And they can introduce it. And it becomes a very interesting piece of evidence, when you mix it with, you know, if these other witnesses, Mr. Feldman was talking about, the hit men he tried to hire and those types of things, come in. It's an interesting aspect of the case.
BROWN: And you compared that to the Simpson case. And just, that's the part I think I lost, Cynthia. Run that by me again.
ALKSNE: Oh, well remember in the Simpson case, O.J. had made statements. And they were not introduced.
BROWN: Right.
ALKSNE: And it was something that the prosecutors were criticized about quite a bit. My guess is that's -- and not only by the sort of pundit types, but by regular street level prosecutors who said you missed a big opportunity here to show what he said, and show what he said was not true. And I'm sure it's -- been a lesson learned, not only for the prosecutors in L.A. in how to try a case, but it's an example held up to young prosecutors all over the country on how not to do it.
BROWN: Is that right?
ALKSNE: Oh, yes.
BROWN: That's really interesting. Just a time table or a time line issue on this. These interviews that Robert Blake gave to the police, he gave shortly after the murder itself. And the position of Mr. Blake and his attorney was that they were indeed in the position, the public position of the police, is that Mr. Blake was a witness, was being treated as a witness. And he went in. And as Cynthia said, spent four hours talking to the police. Now Cynthia, well Cynthia, since you brought this up, you get to deal with it. The fact that he was interviewed as a witness, that he wasn't a - he wasn't under arrest. He wasn't -- his rights weren't read, all that.
ALKSNE: He wasn't in custody.
BROWN: Does that in any way affect the admissibility of anything he said?
ALKSNE: Well, it means that he didn't have to receive his Miranda warnings, because he wasn't in custody and because he went there with his lawyer, it means there won't be a big hearing about whether or not the statement is admissible. No, the statements will be admissible.
BROWN: All right, so he has no -- the fact that he was a cooperative witness doesn't help him at all?
ALKSNE: No, a statement of a defendant, because of course, once he's charged, he's a defendant, it doesn't assume that we're saying he's guilty, but just to call the defendant as this proper name beginning Monday. A statement of the defendant is always admissible, whatever he makes, whether or not, you know, it occurred when he was being called a witness or if he made it after the judge finds that it was -- he was properly given his warnings while he was in custody.
BROWN: He's not technically a defendant until he's formally arraigned. Is that...
ALKSNE: I would -- the slang would be in the courthouse he would be either a perp or a defendant to the prosecutors. And to the defense attorneys, he wouldn't be a defendant until Monday.
BROWN: OK. And Barry, I guess we can put on now our hindsight glasses here, but mistake to have him talk to police at all? I mean, he is the surviving spouse in a murder case. You don't have to be a TV detective to know that you're likely to be under some suspicion here. Is that a mistake that very experienced trial lawyer, Mr. Braun, made?
TARLOW: Well, we don't really know if it's a mistake or not. What Cynthia had to say was interesting because she's right about the statements of an accused being admissible, but interestingly, the accused can't offer his own statements in a trial. So this statement may be admissible, if the police want to use it, but since we don't know what the facts are, since we don't know what he said, we don't know if the statement helps or hurts him.
I've had people who are absolutely innocent of what they were accused of. And I did not let them go in and talk to the police. You can sort of argue anyway you want about many of these things. There's no right or wrong. Two and two isn't always four in defending a criminal case.
BROWN: And just so -- I'm sorry. Just...
TARLOW: Go ahead, Aaron.
BROWN: For those of us who aren't lawyers, which is presumably everyone but you two, if the defendant wants to introduce a statement, he has to get up on the witness stand and make it, and subject himself to cross-examination. Anything he has said otherwise, and I think this is the point you were making, does not come into the record in the defense side of the case. Do I got that right?
TARLOW: Yes, that's right. That's exactly right, Aaron. And what's interesting, that's what was going on in O.J. Simpson. O.J. Simpson's lawyers were at least saying to the district attorney, please put on that statement because if you put on that statement, my client doesn't have to testify. His defense will come out through the statement.
So the question is what is in that statement? We don't know. If you can generalize, I would ordinarily not want someone that I was representing to go down and talk to the police for four hours, and have them have a year to investigate it. And every even innocent mistake you made is going to come back to haunt you, as they'll say you tried to hide something because you were guilty.
Harlan Braun's a pretty smart guy. And if he did it, he may have had a good reason. So I think neither Cynthia nor I can really tell you whether it was good or bad, until we see what's in it. And...
ALKSNE: Right. And he may not have really -- right, but he doesn't really have a choice.
BROWN: Cynthia, we got about a minute and a half here. Go ahead.
ALKSNE: He doesn't really have a choice at that point, given what's going on around him. And he's trying to keep this guy from being indicted. But the other thing this all brings up is, you know, if the case continues and does go to trial, how do celebrity play into the decision on whether or not he takes the stand?
BROWN: Yes.
ALKSNE: You know, I'm sure we're chew about that.
BROWN: Well, we're a long way from there. Just familiarize me with L.A. or with California law here. How soon would we expect this to go to trial? Anybody want to take a guess at that?
ALKSNE: Well, I can tell you that the first issue will be the preliminary hearing.
BROWN: Right.
ALKSNE: Which he's entitled to the attend court case.
BROWN: Well, let's assume... ALKSNE: ...and I would defer...
BROWN: ...for a second that the judge at the preliminary hearing binds it over trial in the Superior Court. Is there a clock running, Barry, on how quickly they have bring the case?
TARLOW: Not really. And I don't think we've touched on, and I'm not sure anybody has, but may have been in some other show, what may be one of the most important things about this case. And that is, is the prosecution going to decide to charge this as a death penalty?
BROWN: As a capital case? I -- that is on my list. And is there anything about -- I've got about a minute here, honestly, is there anything about California law that says it couldn't be charged as a capital case here?
TARLOW: No, it absolutely can, assuming it were for example their contention was it was a murder for hire. Or lying in wait. But certainly, if it was a murder for hire, it could easily be done. And that would really change the whole calculus of what goes on the pressure, the tension, how complicated the case becomes.
I have a feeling -- the Simpson lawyers did something almost unprecedented in a criminal case. Prosecutors of Cynthia remembers when she was a prosecutor, and I remember when I was an assistant U.S. attorney, have unlimited resources to prepare a case. They work on it. They have police officers to help, FBI agents. And the defense usually needs time to prepare.
In the Simpson case, the defense stood up and said we're ready to go. We don't want to waive time. Put him in the box. Let's do it. Something that we lawyers talk about, but rarely do. It's so hard.
BROWN: Barry, time does tick for us. Thank you very much. Cynthia, as well. You guys were terrific tonight, by the way. Briefly now in the 20 seconds or less, the actor Robert Blake, for those of you just joining us, is in custody in Los Angeles, California. He has been arrested and will eventually, we believe Monday, be arraigned on charges of murdering his wife. We don't yet know the theory of the case on the prosecution side precisely. Los Angeles police will be holding a news conference at midnight Eastern time. And we expect defense attorneys to have their say after that.
We will cover both here on CNN. This has been a special edition of NEWSNIGHT. Good night.
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