Voted Most Likely

A civil jury found Robert Blake liable for the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley today based on the testimony of liars, drug addicts, dirty cops, and unethical prosecutors. They punished him to the tune of $30 million dollars for a crime he didn’t commit.

I am a jury of one. And this is my tribute to those who contributed to this disgrace of justice. May their crimes remain here if nowhere else.

Detective Ronald Y. Ito, lead detective, stands for law and order as long as it comes with a book deal. He was personal chauffeur to Miles Corwin, who was writing a book on the LAPD at the time of Bakley’s murder. “His partner” Ito told witnesses of Corwin. It must have been his years on the force that gave Ito such insight into Blake’s criminal mind, for Robert Blake’s hands and clothes were devoid of specific GSR particles. But that didn’t matter. Ron Ito saw Robert Blake as his big chance, the chance he missed on the OJ Simpson case. So he took his show on the road, following tabloid stories across the country. Ito admitted in the criminal trial that he and his team had investigated others who may have wanted to harm Bakley – about five or six of them – most of which were dead, he said.

But the worst and most insidious crime that Ito is guilty of surfaced during the civil trial. An audio tape of a conversation between Ron Ito and Brian Allan Fiebelkorn was played to the jury. An audio tape secretly recorded by Ito. On it Fiebelkorn is pleading with the detective to investigate his claims that he could trace the provenance of the murder weapon to a key witness. Ito is heard accusing Fiebelkorn of somehow being involved, because Fiebelkorn insists on a meeting with his attorney present. A spectator at the trial wrote that it was the most compelling evidence of police and prosecutor misconduct presented thus far. There were tears in the courtroom. The judge hid his face in his hands, he was so filled with contempt.

Ron Ito – Guilty of fraud, thinking his badge made him a star, guilty of condemning a man for his own personal gain.

Deputy District Attorney Shellie Samuels -- guilty of wanting to win at all costs. Her perfect record of convictions ended with the acquittal of Robert Blake. It was Samuels who chose to put Brother Frank Minucci on the stand to bolster the testimony of Duffy Hambleton. Brother Frank is a con artist who uses God as a scam. Samuels knew that there were no hours and hours of phone calls between Blake and Minucci as Minucci claimed. But winning is all that counts. When Minucci was asked to testify at the civil trial, he told the court that the last time “wasn’t good for him.”

District Attorney Steve Cooley after the criminal trial, called jurors incredibly stupid. He has now been vindicated by incredibly stupid jurors. Jurors that sat in a courtroom and heard about Cooley’s blantant cover-up of evidence presented to him by credible people. It was Cooley who met with Brian Allan Fiebelkorn and promised Fiebelkorn that his allegations against Duffy Hambleton would be thoroughly investigated by the District Attorney’s office. Instead, a cowardly Cooley repeatedly sent Ron Ito to intimidate Fiebelkorn. Cooley: guilty of cowardice, guilty of abuse of his office.


The stellar right-to-free-speech press:

Miles Corwin, guilty of protecting his own rights while infringing on another man’s.

The National Enquirer and the Star Magazine,which contacted witnesses such as waiter Chris O’Brien and offered them large sums of money to make up lies about Robert Blake. O’Brien was offered $75,000. Earle Caldwell was offered enough money to set himself up for life. There are still some people in this world with integrity. God bless Earle Caldwell and Chris O’Brien.

Margerry Bakley, who sold her sister’s story to the tabloids, to the news magazines, and to the movies. Bonny would have been proud.

The Nancy Graces of the airwaves, who would never grace their butts inside the courtroom, but professed to be experts nonetheless.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.


But the most heinous crime of all was committed by 10 of 12 civil jurors. It was a crime most cruel against our humanism, a crime against our values. For they, with a fraction of evidence presented at the criminal trial, claimed an old man guilty of a murder he didn’t commit. They heard evidence of police misconduct, of people paid thousands by the media to make up stories, of a grifter in her own words using her children in the most distorted ways to make money for herself. They heard about drug dealers and violent acts against others. Suspicious deaths and suspicious comings and goings.

They heard the same liars from the criminal trial, but this time only one of three showed up. For the other two, the court allowed the reading of testimony from the criminal trial. Recited testimony which robbed jurors of the ability to see these men in person.

They heard from a man who said that the baby, Rose Lenora Sophia Blake, was his greatest gift from God, so great that he was willing to make a life for her mother. And all of Bakley’s taped conversations, they never heard a threat from him uttered.

So they tortured Robert Blake, day after day for seven days of deliberations. An old man so exhausted by it all he fell asleep in courtroom chairs. On the third day, they wanted to re-word the verdict form and change the word ‘intentionally’. Perhaps they wanted to find him negligent for leaving her alone in the car. Perhaps they wanted to ease their consciences.

On the sixth day, they came out to take group pictures. It was a sign of total callousness. They had reached their verdict by the sixth day, but stretched to the next morning. An extra day off from work or an assurance to they’d get spots on the weekend talk shows?

What makes those jurors most heinous of all was the reason one gave for finding Blake liable: he said they were annoyed that Blake had expressed anger toward the plaintiff’s attorney. What they failed to acknowledge on the television news conference was that the attorney was attacking Blake with innuendos and lies about his family. There was much abuse toward Blake on the stand. Still, Robert Blake, at the end of hours and hours of testimony, offered that attorney a symbolic olive branch.

As the LAPD and the media had stripped Blake of his life, his family, his home, and his freedom, the civil jury stripped him of his last hope for dignity and recovery. They are guilty of their own vanity, guilty of inhumanity, and of having no shred of compassion or kindness.

I saw Robert Blake at both the criminal trial and civil trial. I saw a man who day after day took a beating, his life dissected by a media that wanted nothing but blood. I saw a man who believed God had been on his shoulder all his life. I saw a man who never, ever complained. A man who had banished his children from the courtroom so they wouldn’t be put through his personal torture.

I have seen great kindness and great cruelty. I have seen a man whose convictions and values are rare today. A man who believed in the goodness of people, even people like Bonny Lee Bakley. Someone on an internet board wrote that Robert Blake was his own worst enemy: that we don’t live in Robert Blake’s world any more. How sad for us all.


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