‘We’re Going to Jail’ Comment in ‘Twilight Zone’ Trial Disputed

A key prosecution witness and a former prosecutor in the Twilight Zone movie set deaths case contradicted each other Monday concerning testimony potentially damaging to director John Landis and his co-defendants.

In an unusual appearance on the stand, Deputy Dist. Atty. Gary Kesselman testified that he did not recall that the witness, production secretary Donna Schuman, ever told him that several days before film star Vic Morrow and two child actors were killed in a 1982 movie set helicopter accident, Landis said, “We’re all going to go to jail,” for illegally hiring the children.

Kesselman had been subpoenaed by the defense to testify without the jury present concerning the truthfulness of Schuman’s statements. Schuman had claimed in court last week that she had given the information to Kesselman almost four years ago, but she did not relate it during her pretrial court appearances.

After Kesselman departed, Schuman took the witness stand again, this time in the jury’s presence, and reiterated that she had told Kesselman about Landis’ remarks, which she said she had taken as being light-hearted.

Schuman said she had also told Kesselman about similar remarks by associate producer George Folsey Jr. that state officials would “put my butt in jail” if they learned there were special-effects explosives on the set.

Furthermore, Schuman asserted that Kesselman told her he would deliberately withhold such statements from the defense team during the pretrial stages to avoid “tipping his hand.”

“Some of it wasn’t very good,” she said Kesselman also informed her, “and they (the defense) could kick the crap out of me (on the witness stand).”

After the surprising testimony, defense attorneys demanded a mistrial, asserting that if Schuman were to be believed, the district attorney’s office obstructed justice by withholding vital pretrial discovery information.

“We have an extraordinary situation here,” emphasized Landis’ attorney, James F. Neal. “We have a witness who is absolutely lying, or we have a prosecutor who is deliberately withholding information from us.”

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Roger Boren denied the mistrial request and also tentatively rejected a defense request that Kesselman be ordered to testify in front of the jury immediately after Schuman--the prosecution’s first witness in the trial--leaves the witness stand.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino, who took over as prosecutor in late 1985, argued that Kesselman should not be called before the jury until after she finishes presenting her own witnesses, probably in about two months. D’Agostino also said that she backed Schuman on the credibility issue between the witness and her fellow prosecutor.

“I have to believe Mr. Kesselman’s recollections are not as good,” D’Agostino said. “I believe the witness . . . 100-million percent, because I can’t count any higher.”

D’Agostino indicated that Schuman’s husband, Harold, who introduced Folsey to the child actors several days before the fatal filming, will support his wife’s testimony on the witness stand.

Neal termed it “bizarre” that D’Agostino plans to call further witnesses to testify that her own office participated in obstruction of justice.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert Garcetti did not return a call seeking his comment.

Landis and four film-making associates are accused of involuntary manslaughter in the July, 1982, deaths of Morrow, 53, Renee Chen, 6, and Myca Dinh Lee, 7, during the filming of the “Twilight Zone” movie.