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Judge denies Conrad Murray's request to sequester jury
Los Angeles (CNN) -- A Los Angeles County judge on Thursday denied the defense's request to sequester the jury for the upcoming trial of Dr. Conrad Murray, the physician accused in Michael Jackson's death.
In addition, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael E. Pastor rejected a defense request that television cameras be removed from the courtroom during certain parts of the trial.
Citing massive media coverage in the unrelated Casey Anthony murder trial this summer in Florida, attorneys for Murray had contended that his case could draw even bigger publicity. For that reason, they reasoned, the jury should be kept in isolation in order to best ensure their impartiality.
"There is reasonable expectation that Dr. Murray's trial will be the most publicized in history," his attorneys, Nareg Gourjian and Edward Chernoff, said in court papers.
The defense attorneys further argued -- unsuccessfully -- that the jury should be kept in isolation to ensure that Murray receives a fair trial under the Sixth Amendment.
"This is an unusual trial," the attorneys said. "Without question, Michael Jackson is one of the most well-known figures in the world. His death, memorial service and every court appearance thereafter involving Dr. Murray has attracted unprecedented media coverage."
Prosecutors didn't file court papers in response to Murray's motion, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles district attorney's office. Rather, Deputy District Attorneys David Walgren and Deborah Brazil were expected to present their arguments in open court Thursday, Gibbons told CNN Wednesday.
Murray is charged with involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's death, which occurred June 25, 2009, and was caused by an overdose of the surgical anesthetic propofol, combined with other drugs, the Los Angeles coroner has ruled.
During an unsuccessful attempt at jury selection earlier this year, only one potential juror out of several hundred questioned claimed to have heard nothing about the Murray case, and that potential juror, a woman, couldn't speak English, Murray's lawyers said.
At the time, attorneys didn't consider sequestering the jury. "Then along came Casey Anthony," Murray's attorneys said, citing the murder case as the impetus for their motion. Anthony was acquitted of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, but was convicted of four misdemeanor counts of lying to law enforcement.
The case, and the sensationalized media coverage, "demonstrated the danger that is created to a fair trial when basic information is managed for the purpose of entertainment and television ratings," Murray's attorneys said.
The attorneys singled out HLN television host Nancy Grace for "character assassination" against Anthony and "virtually nonstop on-air abuse of not only the defendant but of the jurors and defense attorneys involved."
All news organizations, including ABC News, Fox and InSession, benefited from the Anthony trial, Murray's attorneys said in court records. But some, such as HLN, "cleaned up": That network "drew its biggest total audience in its 29-year history with more than 5 million viewers," Murray's attorneys said.
Turner Broadcasting -- a division of Time Warner -- operates HLN, InSession and CNN, the attorneys pointed out in court papers.
"It is important to note that neither Ms. Anthony nor her daughter were public figures before her case," Murray's attorneys wrote.
The defense claimed that it believed the media would likely air footage of admissible evidence in the Murray case, fearing that jurors -- if they aren't sequestered, as the judge decided Thursday -- could also be contaminated by access to the "ubiquitous" Internet, including Facebook, Twitter and Google, the Murray attorneys said.
Partial sequestration, suggested earlier by the court, would be insufficient, the attorneys said.
While the court has said it will instruct jurors not to access television shows, the Internet or newspapers, "it is Pollyanna to expect the jury members to go home each workday and weekend for six weeks and entirely avoid the mass of exposure this trial will engender," Murray's attorneys wrote.
The cost of sequestration would be "comparatively minimal" to the cost of a retrial because of jury contamination, the defense attorneys said.
Legal experts and defense attorneys not related to the Murray case offered differing opinions to CNN on the efficacy of sequestering a jury.
"The defense wants to sequester the jury because it has seen that sequestered juries vote not guilty," said Marcia Clark, the former prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial, another heavily publicized case in which the jury was sequestered. "I don't really think there's any need to sequester the jury. To the extent that people know about this case, know about Michael Jackson or Conrad Murray, it's over. It's already been done. It'd be like closing the barn doors after the horse is out."
Ellyn Garofalo, the attorney who represented Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, who was acquitted on charges of conspiring to keep Anna Nicole Smith addicted to prescription drugs, said that the usefulness of sequestering a jury "is a really tough question."
"I think there is good reason to sequester a jury," Garofalo said. "I also tend to think -- and this is more of a personal opinion -- that a sequestered jury is not a happy jury and may be more anxious to get through the testimony than a jury that is not sequestered."
Richard Gabriel, a jury consultant on the Simpson and Casey Anthony cases, said sequestering a jury is stressful and expensive.
"The difficulty is, I don't think a judge has ever gone as far to say during this trial, please do not use the Internet, period. Just like they say, don't watch television during the trial, they say if you see something about the case, please ignore that news item," Gabriel said.
"As a practical matter I think it will be difficult, partly because the county of Los Angeles has no money to do that. It is very, very expensive," Gabriel said. "It puts a pretty big strain on a jury because you are taking them out of a familiar setting and you are putting them into obviously a highly pressurized setting that basically says you are in this trial 24-7 for the length of the trial."
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/25/california.murray.case/
gewesen ...man man man....
