Are Books and Movies the Right Venue for Prosecutors

[WSJ_law_blog]

There’s the age-old debate over whether it’s proper for prosecutors to try their cases in the news media. But how about depicting the cases in pop culture, such as movies or crime novels?

That’s the subject of an article today by the NYT’s Adam Liptak, who writes: “Prosecutors who draw on their professional experiences to write novels and assist screenwriters can breathe a little easier after a pair of rulings issued on Monday by the California Supreme Court.” Herewith are the rulings:

“Alpha Dog”: While Jesse James Hollywood, who faces death for his role in the 2000 kidnapping and murder of a 15 year-old boy, was a fugitive in Brazil, Ronald Zonen, a deputy DA in Santa Barbara, gave information and documents about him to Nick Cassavetes, a director and screenwriter (and son of actress Gina Rowlands and John Cassavetes, the grandfather of the indie film movement who also played the possessed husband of Mia Farrow’s character in “Rosemary’s Baby“). Cassavetes used the materials in his film “Alpha Dog,” which the Times’s film critic, Manohla Dargis, said had “much the same entertainment value you get from watching monkeys fling scat at one another in a zoo.”

Zonen said he had hoped the film would lead to Hollywood’s apprehension, though Hollywood was captured in 2005, before the film appeared. Hollywood’s lawyers filed a motion to disqualify Zonen from the case, saying he had acted unethically and hurt Hollywood’s chances of receiving a fair trial. An appeals court agreed. But yesterday, Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar, writing for a unanimous California high court, said Zonen’s actions, while “highly inappropriate and disturbing,” did not amount to a conflict of interest likely to result in an unfair trial.

“Intoxicating Agent”: In 2006, while preparing for the trial of a defendant accused of raping an intoxicated woman, Joyce Dudley — also a Santa Barbara prosecutor — published a novel about the rape of an intoxicated woman, called “Intoxicating Agent.” Dudley said the resemblance between the fictional case and the real one was coincidental.

The same appellate court judge who dinged Zonen disqualified Dudley last year. And again, the Cal. Supreme Court unanimously reversed. Justice Werdegar, calling the novel “essentially self-published” and noting that its Amazon ranking was 1,552,238, wrote that the court’s role “is to examine the record for evidence of a disqualifying conflict, not to act as literary critic.” Werdegar added: “We do not condone actions that place a prosecutor’s literary career ahead of, or at odds with, her fealty to the fair and evenhanded pursuit of justice and the community interest.” But, she said, Dudley had not crossed any lines requiring disqualification.