Victim’s Family Confronts Lawyer Over Courtroom Remarks

An emotional, racially tinged confrontation between a murder victim’s family and a prominent defense attorney erupted at the Criminal Courts Building on Friday after the lawyer assured a judge that he would like hearing the case against the accused killer because it might be fun.

The comment, made in open court by Leslie H. Abramson, was heard by the family of Adrian Thames, who along with another man was shot to death last November in front of a Hollywood nightclub.

Outside the courtroom, Thames’ angry, weeping relatives confronted Abramson and accused her of being insensitive and taking the case lightly because the victims were black and the Abramson’s client is white--an accusation Abramson denied.

During the confrontation, a woman who identified herself as Thames’ wife hurled an anti-Jewish slur at the lawyer. Abramson, who is Jewish, seemed stunned.

“The judge was making a joke and I made a joke back,” she told the family.

She apologized several times to Thames’ mother and sister, but to no avail.

One of the relatives asked Abramson if she had ever read “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a book by a young Jewish girl who was killed in a Nazi concentration camp. Abramson said she had.

The woman asked: “Was that fun?”

The family vowed to file a complaint against Abramson with the State Bar Assn. They said they would also file a complaint against Judge Carol Fieldhouse.

The family, who had been sitting in the rear of the courtroom, also accused Fieldhouse of making inappropriately light banter about the case.

The judge, however, denied that. He also denied that he heard Abramson’s remark. Thalene Manahan, his court reporter, could not find it in her transcript. She said that lawyers’ off-the-cuff remarks are sometimes drowned out by other courtroom sounds.

Abramson, however, acknowledged that she made the comment and agreed that it was insensitive.

Presiding Judge Robert M. Mallano, Fieldhouse’s boss, said he would not comment on the incident until he receives a formal complaint and investigates it.

But Fieldhouse deplored Abramson’s words.

“If she was assuring me the case was going to be fun, I’m glad I didn’t hear it,” he said.

Abramson made the remark as she and Fieldhouse tried to settle on a date for the next pretrial court appearance of her client, Roman Paul Luisi.

He is charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of Thames and Eric Pierce, 25, who were killed as they walked unarmed toward the Blak and Bloo, a now defunct Sunset Boulevard dance spot.

Luisi, a security man at the club, may have been in a dispute with Pierce earlier in the evening, investigators have said.

As Abramson and Fieldhouse were deciding on Luisi’s hearing date, Fieldhouse noted that he might have to schedule the case before another judge.

Abramson told him she wanted to set the hearing for a day he was available.

“You should be in the pool like everybody else,” she said. “You’ll like this case. You might find it fun.”