Blake Defense Requests an Extension

An attorney for Robert Blake said Monday that the actor “would rather sit in jail than have his defense compromised” at a rushed preliminary hearing.

Attorneys for Blake and his co-defendant, Earle S. Caldwell, asked a judge on Monday to delay until November a preliminary hearing in the celebrity murder case.

They say they cannot prepare an adequate defense without more time to read and analyze the 42,000 pages of evidence that the prosecution has produced since their clients were arrested April 18 in the shooting death of Blake’s wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. The defense received the latest installment--more than 7,000 pages--on Aug. 19.

Nonetheless, prosecutors have asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lloyd M. Nash to start the preliminary hearing within 10 days. Nash is expected to set a date today in Van Nuys.

In his motion for a continuance, Blake’s attorney, Harland W. Braun, said the documents produced by prosecutors show that they have “overlooked significant evidence,” including a tape recording of Bakley allegedly encouraging another person to kill the wife of singer Jerry Lee Lewis so that Bakley could marry him.

Prosecutors also ignored a letter Bakley wrote to her parole officer allegedly complaining that she had been “almost killed a half-dozen times,” according to Braun’s motion. (Bakley had been convicted in Arkansas of possessing fake identification.) Bakley also told Blake in a taped conversation that she was being stalked, the motion said.

Braun said he has found no evidence that authorities followed up on any of these allegations in their yearlong murder investigation.

Bakley, 44, was fatally shot May 4, 2001, near a Studio City restaurant where she and Blake had dined.

Almost a year later, Blake was charged with murder, conspiracy and two counts of soliciting Bakley’s murder, with the special circumstance of lying in wait. Prosecutors have said they will not seek the death penalty against Blake, the star of the 1970s television series “Baretta.” He is being held without bail at Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles.

Caldwell, 46, is charged with conspiring with Blake to kill Bakley. He was released from jail eight days after his arrest when Blake posted his $1-million bail.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Patrick R. Dixon and Gregory A. Dohi contend in court papers that the investigative reports, interview transcripts, phone records and documentary evidence they have turned over to defense attorneys in recent months “can be reviewed quickly.”

“We don’t think they need a 90-day delay,” said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. “They don’t need every piece of evidence” to proceed with a preliminary hearing, she said.

But Caldwell’s attorney, Arna H. Zlotnik, said in an interview that it is “totally unreasonable” and “ridiculous” for prosecutors to try to force her to “read and digest” the 7,000 pages of evidence produced last week and be prepared to defend her client within the next two weeks.

She said she blames prosecutors for the needed delay: “They are trying to dictate how the defense runs their case.”

When Blake and Caldwell were arrested, she said, “The investigation of this case was nowhere near complete nor organized in a fashion sufficient to proceed with a timely prosecution.”

In a separate motion filed Monday, Braun opposed Nash’s decision to allow cameras in the courtroom. Nash previously had banned them.

Braun argued that televising courtroom proceedings pressures witnesses either to refuse to testify in court or to exaggerate their testimony. The “circus atmosphere” created by live television also “diminishes the public trust in the judicial system,” he wrote.