‘Twilight Zone’ Tragedy Called ‘Unforeseeable’

The gruesome 1982 “Twilight Zone” film set tragedy that left three actors dead was nothing more than an “unforeseen and unforeseeable” accident that cannot and should not be considered a crime, lawyers for John Landis asserted Monday as they began final arguments in the director’s involuntary manslaughter trial.

Telling an attentive jury that key prosecution witnesses lied and that the prosecutor misled them in her arguments, the attorneys urged that Landis and four co-defendants be acquitted of charges stemming from the deaths of actors Vic Morrow, 53; Renee Chen, 6, and Myca Dinh Lee, 7, who were struck and killed by a helicopter during the filming of a mock Vietnam battle sequence.

“Not one of these defendants attempted to hurt anyone. Not one of these defendants thought the scene as planned and rehearsed was dangerous. Not one of these defendants is guilty of reckless and wanton conduct. Not one of these defendants is a criminal,” said Landis’ lawyer, James Neal.

Neal and his co-counsel, James Sanders, repeatedly acknowledged that Landis, who has directed such box office smashes as “Animal House” and “Trading Places,” committed an illegal act by hiring the child actors without necessary state labor permits.

Such behavior is “regrettable and inexcusable,” Sanders continued, but it cannot be held against Landis, since he was not charged with that crime.

Rather, to find Landis and his co-workers guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the lawyers said, jurors must determine that they acted with criminal negligence, a standard much tougher to meet than that of ordinary negligence.

“Negligence is acting unreasonably, and when you act unreasonably, then you get sued for money damages,” Neal noted. “Criminal negligence is acts that are aggravated, reckless, wanton and gross, amounting to an indifference or disregard for human life.”

Neal, who is expected to conclude his argument today, outlined three key questions in the trial: whether the defendants thought the filming sequence was safe, whether it was adequately rehearsed and whether unforeseen events intervened to cause the accident.

The 16 defense witnesses, including Landis, who testified for four days, answered the questions affirmatively, Neal contended.

What’s more, Sanders charged, a key prosecution witness, production secretary Donna Schuman, lied when she testified last September that Landis joked about possibly going to jail for having illegally hired the two children.

“She was the ‘Twilight Zone’s’ version of Watergate’s Deep Throat,” Sanders said, mocking Schuman’s trial statements, which included several charges that she had not made at two pretrial court hearings.

Sanders also accused the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino, of exhibiting “the blinding clarity of hindsight. . . . She told you last week no movie is worth a life. Well of course not.”

During Sanders’ remarks, D’Agostino repeatedly arched her eyebrows, smiled and grimaced as she glanced toward the jury box. “It’s kind of hard not to. . . . It’s just so predictable what (the defense) is going to say,” she said later outside court.

Jurors will begin deliberations in the trial, which began last September, after attorneys for the other four defendants present their arguments and D’Agostino completes a rebuttal.