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No Brando Tape at Blake Trial
Despite his defense team's best efforts, Robert Blake, not Christian Brando, will star in the Robert Blake murder trial.
A judge on Thursday ruled that an audiotape in which the infamous Brando scion can be heard angrily ranting about Blake's slain wife cannot be played during the former TV actor's upcoming trial.
The decision came after a hearing in which Blake attorney M. Gerald Schwartzbach used flow charts to implicate everyone from Brando to a key prosecution witness to a "homeless, toothless person [who was] difficult to understand when intoxicated" in the 2001 shooting death of Bonnie Lee Bakley.
Blake, who wed Bakley just months before the killing, is the only person charged with her murder. The prosecution alleges it was the ex-Baretta star who pulled the trigger after unsuccessfully trying to hire over-the-hill stuntmen to do the job for him.
Though Blake has been the only official suspect, Brando's name long has been evoked by Blake's ever-evolving defense team as an alternative suspect.
Brando, who inherited his legendary surname from his father, the accordingly legendary Marlon Brando, served five years in prison for the 1990 shooting death of his half-sister's boyfriend.
Like Blake, Brando had a fling with Bakley prior to her 2000 pregnancy. The child was Blake's, but Bakley also led Brando to believe he was the father.
Schwartzbach, the latest in Blake's long line of lead attorneys, wanted jurors to hear a tape-recorded, 2000 conversation in which Brando told Bakley she was "lucky somebody ain't out there to put a bullet in your head."
But Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Darlene Schempp ruled that, all things considered, Brando didn't sound unreasonably steamed and that attempts to connect him with the Bakley killing were "too remote."
In a setback for the prosecution, meanwhile, Schempp decided Thursday that an audiotape in which Blake is heard urging Bakley to get an abortion also cannot be playing during trial. The judge ruled that, all things considered, Blake didn't sound unreasonably steamed, either.
Blake, 71, has pleaded innocent to the Bakley slaying. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 1.
In other Blake business Thursday:
Judge Schempp moved to restrict the Blake team's attempt to pin the Bakley homicide on Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton, an ex-stuntman who testified during a preliminary hearing that Blake outlined various scenarios to him in which Bakley could be "snuffed out."
Schwartzbach spoke at length on Thursday as to how it was Hambleton who was at the "center of a conspiracy to murder Ms. Bakley."
Schempp said the defense can call witnesses to try to undermine Hambleton's credibility, but can't actually try him him for the crime.
A journalist who tagged along with police on a 2001 search of Blake's home was ordered to court to offer first-hand testimony of his actions during the sweep.
Blake's defense is arguing that the presence of Miles Corwin, the author of a 2004 true-crime book that touches on the Blake case, violated the actor's constitutional protection against unfair search and seizure.
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