‘Twilight’ Jury Gets Firsthand Look at Film Death Scene

With frogs croaking and horses neighing in the background, the jury in the “Twilight Zone” trial received a firsthand look Tuesday at the pastoral setting of the gruesome 1982 filming accident in which actor Vic Morrow and two child actors were struck and killed by a disabled helicopter.

Stepping sprightly over the trickling streamlets of the Santa Clara River near Saugus, the 12 jurors and four alternates inspected the Indian Dunes Park crash site for 35 minutes in order to get a clearer picture of the spatial relationships between the aircraft, an adjacent 90-foot cliff and film crew members on the night of the tragedy. The field trip was the grand finale of the prosecution’s case, in which jurors have heard from 71 witnesses and viewed 28 minutes of footage of the accident captured by six film set cameras.

After the jury left the muddy site in a Los Angeles County sheriff’s bus normally used to transport prisoners, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino said the trip would help her case, because the site “appears on film to be much larger than it is when you see it personally.”

However, the jurors, several of whom wore jeans and sported baseball caps and berets, were not permitted to witness a mini-air show that the prosecution had proposed.

Without explanation, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Roger W. Boren forbid D’Agostino from having a county Fire Department helicopter fly, for the benefit of the jurors, 24 feet over the river--the same height at which the aircraft in the fatal scene was struck by the fireballs from special effects explosives and plummeted from the sky during the filming of a mock Vietnam battle scene.

Boren made his decision during a short, makeshift court session on the sandy banks of the river after watching a helicopter visibly kick up dust and water as it flew past before the jury arrived on the scene.

A court reporter recorded Boren’s remarks while seated in a folding chair, the judge’s voice sometimes difficult to hear over the sounds of bullfrogs, ducks and two horses on which sheriff’s deputies--present for security purposes--rode.

Defense attorneys had contended that the demonstration would not have accurately simulated accident conditions and might have left jurors inferring that Boren believed that such a re-creation would prove dangerous.

After Boren made his ruling, film director John Landis, one of five co-defendants, smiled broadly. But Landis, who wore a casual sweater and faded jeans, declined public comment about the unusual court session.

Last week, Boren also ruled out a demonstration of special effects explosives requested by the prosecution to simulate the 100-foot-high flames at the time of the accident.

Landis and four film-making associates, all of whom were in attendance Tuesday, are charged with involuntary manslaughter in the actors’ deaths.

D’Agostino has indicated that she will finally rest her case today, the 70th day of trial testimony.

And following the field trip, the prosecutor had harsh words for the defendants.

If the judge had allowed the helicopter fly-by, D’Agostino said, “I think, frankly, if I had been on the jury, my initial reaction (would be) to take these five people and go out and hang them.”

Defense attorneys, on the other hand, said that the trip actually helped their cause, because jurors could see that there was enough room at the site to shoot the scene safely. The defense has contended that the accident occured because a film crew employee, who was not charged with a crime, mistakenly ignited special effects explosives before the helicopter was safely out of the way of the mock Vietnam village on the shoreline near the cliff.

During the brief riverside court session, attorney Harland Braun, who represents associate producer George Folsey Jr., volunteered to stand under the helicopter if Boren agreed to have it fly past the jury at low altitude.

At one point, with the jurors present, a county Fire Department helicopter did fly by, but high above the looming cliff. D’Agostino called the passage a mistake, but defense attorneys said they would lodge a complaint with Boren today.

Several of the jurors, most of whom took notes as they compared the live scene to diagrams and photos displayed on the river bank by court personnel, gazed intently at the aircraft as it passed.