Media Restrictions Are Upheld in Blake Case

Actor Robert Blake walked out of court Monday, ate a hot dog, then sang “Over the Rainbow” while playing a borrowed guitar for dozens of press photographers present at the Van Nuys courthouse to capture the murder defendant’s every move.

In court earlier, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Darlene E. Schempp had denied a media motion to reconsider her ruling last week barring gavel-to-gavel television coverage of the celebrity trial, which is expected to last four to six months.

The judge said she was concerned that witnesses excluded from the trial would monitor proceedings on television, and in some cases, even review their own testimony, then alter it.

“I have great concern, since the credibility of witnesses is an issue,” she said.

Schempp also granted prosecution motions to allow jurors to visit the quiet, residential Studio City street where Bonny Lee Bakley was fatally shot, and to allow witnesses to testify that Blake allegedly acted “odd” on the night his wife was shot to death.

And she allowed prosecutors to call two witnesses to counter the expected testimony of a psychiatrist for the defense that Blake was in shock that night.

She is expected to rule today on more pretrial motions, including whether defense attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. will be allowed to blame someone other than Blake for the May 4, 2001, murder of Bakley as she sat in Blake’s parked car.

The actor, best known for his role in the 1970s television series “Baretta,” is charged with murder and faces life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors allege that he solicited two former stuntmen to kill Bakley and when they refused, he pulled the trigger himself.

The 70-year-old actor has pleaded not guilty. He was released from County Jail last year on a $1.5-million bond.

During the three-hour hearing, Deputy Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Shellie L. Samuels fired an unusual preemptive strike at Blake’s defense team while arguing to exclude forensic evidence that did not link Blake to the crime.

Such tests, she argued, were the result of the “extraordinary resources” that police and prosecutors had put into the Bakley murder case because they were up against a defense team that she described as “a multimillion-dollar machine.”

Mesereau called the assertion “utterly ridiculous.” He said he had counted 256 local agents, including police, fire and laboratory staff, and 24 federal agents involved in the nearly three-year investigation.

The defense contends that prosecution tests are exculpatory because they concluded that the oil on the murder weapon was unrelated to oil found on Blake’s car. They also argued that tests showing the gun was not hidden in the car’s hood lining would help Blake’s case.

The judge said testimony about the forensic tests would consume too much time at trial, and ordered the lawyers to agree to a statement of facts.

Sean Stanek, a film director who called 911 for Blake the night Bakley was killed, told police he thought Blake acted “odd” when he left his injured wife to return nearly two blocks to Vitello’s restaurant, where the couple had dined, and when he later cried without tears.

Another witness, a former emergency room doctor, also told police he thought Blake acted “odd” because he never approached his dying wife.