Blake Hearing Is Dress Rehearsal for Trial

Just three days into the testimony, each side in actor Robert Blake’s preliminary hearing has revealed its grand strategy.

The prosecution has relied heavily on witnesses who testified that Blake asked them to “snuff,” “whack,” or “pop” his wife.

The defense is “taking a page from the O.J. Simpson case,” as one expert put it, using every opening to probe for weaknesses and possible irregularities in the police investigation.

While Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lloyd M. Nash will decide whether there is enough evidence to send the case to trial, both sides have shown they are looking beyond the hearing, expected to last another seven days, to potential jurors.

Both sides are taking time to test the strength of the other’s case. Prosecutors have two dozen witnesses ready and plan to introduce more than 70 exhibits at the hearing, scheduled to continue today.

“The prosecution wants to present as complete a case as possible to see how their witnesses hold up and to get a glimpse of the defense’s strategy,” said Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson.

The former “Baretta” star is charged with the May 4, 2001, fatal shooting of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, near a Studio City restaurant where they had dined. He also is charged with soliciting two stuntmen to kill Bakley and conspiring with co-defendant Earle S. Caldwell to commit murder. Blake and Caldwell each face life in prison if convicted.

Unlike a typical preliminary hearing that lasts a few hours, the Blake proceedings were predicted to last two weeks, as lawyers spent the first days questioning prosecution witnesses with all the intensity and emotion of a full-blown capital murder trial.

The nationally televised proceedings are taking more time because defense lawyers refused to stipulate to any of the prosecution’s evidence and have engaged in lengthy cross-examination of the witnesses. Both sides also have devoted much time to two ailing stuntmen whose testimony they must preserve in case either of them should die before trial.

The burden of proof at a preliminary hearing is minimal. Blake and Caldwell are expected to be ordered to stand trial, but the hearing has greater significance for the defense. The 69-year-old actor is trying to persuade Nash to free him on bail after 10 months in custody.

From the start of the preliminary hearing last Wednesday, defense attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. tried to poke holes in the prosecution’s theory that Blake crouched down next to the car and ambushed Bakley as she sat in his car, waiting for him to return from the restaurant. He challenged the medical examiner’s method for determining that the fatal shots traveled “slightly upward” after they entered Bakley’s body.

If Mesereau can persuade Nash to dismiss the ambush allegation, Blake may be eligible for bail at the end of the hearing. He has been held without bail at Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles since his April 18 arrest.

The presence of the media presents a rare opportunity for lawyers to try to influence jurors. “Both sides are playing to a potential jury pool,” Levenson said. “Most jurors never hear what happened in the preliminary hearings of their cases.”

Because the case is largely circumstantial, Deputy Dist. Attys. Patrick R. Dixon and Gregory A. Dohi have a difficult task of linking Blake to the slaying. “There are no witnesses, no weapon,” said Peter G. Keane, dean of the Golden Gate Law School in San Francisco.

“So what the prosecution has to do is spend a lot of time on evidentiary issues like motive. Developing the background of the [case] is a big factor.”

Prosecutors are relying on a 1990 voter initiative that permits them to use hearsay evidence to speed up the processing of criminal cases. They plan to call 10 more Los Angeles Police Department detectives to testify about statements they received from nearly two dozen witnesses, ranging from the neighbor who placed the 911 call on the night Bakley was killed, to the victim’s 23-year-old daughter.

But they could not risk using hearsay evidence, which has been presented mostly by police officers and is generally not admissible at trial, to introduce the statements of two stuntmen who say Blake solicited them to kill Bakley two months before she was killed. The men were called to the witness stand and their testimony videotaped for possible use in other proceedings.

Occasional “Baretta” stunt double Gary “Whiz Kid” McLarty, 69, said Thursday that Blake asked him to “pop” his wife. Ronald “Duffy” Hambleton, 66, testified Friday that Blake repeatedly asked him to “snuff” Bakley.

Also preserved was the testimony of William Welch, a former LAPD homicide detective turned private investigator, who testified Blake talked of “whacking” Bakley.

For his part, Mesereau has attacked the credibility of prosecution witnesses, keeping some of them on the stand for hours. “Mesereau is obligated to try to test all the evidence the prosecution is going to present,” said Howard Weitzman, who briefly represented O.J. Simpson and is now a partner at Proskauer Rose law firm.

Mesereau also refused to stipulate to any of the evidence, forcing prosecutors to call peripheral witnesses to verify bank and phone records. Prosecutors say those records will document phone calls between Blake and the stuntmen and Blake’s withdrawal of $40,000 from his personal bank accounts in the three months before Bakley’s death.

“Generally, the prosecution puts on as little evidence as it needs, but the public relations aspect has them overtrying this,” said Keane, who was chief assistant public defender in San Francisco for 20 years. “They are indeed going overboard.”