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Blake gets new lawyers
27/11/2002 08:22 - (SA)
Dan Whitcomb
Van Nuys - Actor Robert Blake was given a new defence team on Tuesday for his trial on charges of murdering his wife after telling a judge that he "had no choice" after a falling out with his previous attorney over a television interview.
Superior Court Judge Lloyd Nash reluctantly approved the switch, which will likely result in a month's delay in the case, after the Baretta star and his former attorney, Harland Braun, both said that they could no longer work together.
Blake has been in a Los Angeles jail since April, when he was arrested and charged with shooting his wife, 44-year-old Bonny Lee Bakley, to death on May 4, 2001 outside an Italian restaurant where they had just dined.
"I have no choice, your honour," Blake said during a brief hearing in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys. "It's seven months later and I'm still sitting in a cement box and I have to take some responsibility for that."
"But I think what has to happen, your honour, has to happen," he said.
Braun, a high-profile Los Angeles attorney who had represented Blake since shortly after the murder, quit last month after the 69-year-old actor agreed to an on-camera jailhouse interview with ABC-TV's Diane Sawyer.
Braun stepped down even though jail officials blocked the interview from going forward, in part because Blake arranged the Sawyer interview without his knowledge through a separate set of attorneys.
Judge Nash, who has been annoyed by repeated postponements in the case, told Braun during the hearing that he was "perplexed" over his decision to drop out and called the lawyer's reasons "questionable".
'Gone on for months'
"This has gone on now for months," Nash said. "He has sat in custody for months. What I really want to do is get this preliminary hearing under way."
But after hearing from Blake, Nash agreed to appoint veteran Los Angeles trial attorneys Thomas Mesereau and Jennifer Keller to the case.
A former boxer, Mesereau represented former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson against rape charges and has also represented a series of poor and minority clients who don't always have the funds to pay him.
Keller is a former president of the bar association in neighbouring Orange County.
Outside of court, Mesereau and Keller would not comment when asked if they would allow Blake to grant television interview, but said they understood Nash's concerns over delays and would get prepared as quickly as possible, despite 48 000 pages of evidence in the case.
"We have a lot of work ahead of us," Keller said. "We intend to be spending the next few weeks digesting this and getting up to speed as fast as we can."
Blake, who won an Emmy for his portrayal of tough cop Tony Baretta in the hit 1970s TV series, began his career as a child star in the Our Gang comedies.
He appeared in dozens of movies, including 1967's In Cold Blood, based on the Truman Capote book of the same name, in which he portrayed one of two men who murdered a Kansas family and were ultimately hanged for their crime.
- Reuters
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South Africa
