Anatomy of a Trial blog

Anatomy Wins Award

workn2gether — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:23:54 +0000

What an honor! The Valley Community Legal Foundation awarded me the Justice Armand Arabian Law and Media Award for Anatomy! And it was presented at the Foundation and the San Fernando Valley Bar Association’s annual summer gala by retired California Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian himself.

The event, moderated by singer-actress Shirley Jones and her husband comedian Marty Ingels, was held on the CBS Studios backlot in Studio City.

Anatomy Goes to Europe

workn2gether — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:41:55 +0000

Anatomy of a Trial has been available from Eurospanbooks.com for some time. Now, thanks to a U.S. State Department program that will take me to three eastern European countries in a couple of months, Anatomy will debut there with its author, aka me. Some judges and Embassy personnel in Slovenia, which is on the itenerary, knew from remarks I made at an international conference I spoke at a little more than two years ago in Ljubljana that I was working on the book and they wanted to know when it got published. I notified them early last year that it was out and again earlier this year that it was available from Eurospanbooks, but don’t know if any of them bought it. Now I can talk to them directly about the book and hopefully copies will be made availabe. Other countries I’m to visit are Romania and Albania. Romania is familiar territory. I conducted media-relations and media-training programs there in 2004 and 2006. But Albania is new, so I’ve got a lot to learn in the next few weeks.

www.anatomyofatrial.com

Anatomy gets into more university libraries

workn2gether — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:21:39 +0000

Just learned UVA (University of Virginia) has two copies of “Anatomy of a Trial” (www.anatomyofatrial.com) – one in its Law Library, one in Alderman Library Stacks. http://virgobeta.lib.virginia.edu/?f%5Bcall_number_facet%5D%5B%5D=KF+-+Law+%3A+United+States&f%5Blibrary_facet%5D%5B%5D=Alderman&f%5Bregion_facet%5D%5B%5D=California&sort=date_received_facet+desc

“Anatomy” listed on new site

workn2gether — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:49:03 +0000

My book, “Anatomy of a Trial” is listed on another site. Only thing is, it’s listed as paperback. Wonder if publisher University of Missouri Press knows. http://landmark.rediff.com/bookshop/buyersearch.jsp?pvvrnbr=4261&MT=Gerry%20J%20Simpson,&next=23

Slovenia conference video clip

workn2gether — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:22:54 +0000

This videoclip of a Q&A that followed my presentation at an International conference in Slovenia found its way onto the Internet. Wish my presentation were there too. Conference attendees gave me high marks. Here’s the link, in case you’d like to take a look. (First several seconds are of me listening to the translation of a question, so please be patient. Thanks!

Transparent Courts, Responsible Media, Society Served: Finding a Workable Way
Jerrianne Hayslett

“Anatomy” Now in Europe

workn2gether — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:05:56 +0000

It pays to have a Google News Alert. I set one up for “Anatomy of a Trial” shortly after my book was published. A recent alert contains a link to the website www.eurospanbookstore.com where “Anatomy” is listed 105th out of 905 titles in the criminology category. So all my friends, colleagues and acquaintances, not to mention all the journalists, lawyers, judges and legal and journalism scholars, in Europe can get it! Good news.

www.anatomyofatrial.com

Another Public Radio Interview

workn2gether — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:57:22 +0000

Hurray! It finally aired. Interview I did about “Anatomy of a Trial” with Southern California Public Radio’s Washington, D.C., correspondent Kitty Felde a month ago aired today. Station folks decided to coincide it with Simpson’s arraignment not-guilty plea. URL to read or listen is http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/07/01/lessons-of-trial/

A Face(book) Out of the Past

workn2gether — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:57:46 +0000

Facebook is great!

Among those I’ve connected with on it is a former Los Angeles TV staffer who, like me, has become a Midwesterner. He won a huge spot in my heart during the 1995 Simpson trial with his humor, affibility and grace. Although it didn’t make it into Anatomy, this guy filed and ‘appeal’ to prizes Judge Lance Ito awarded the graffitied comments members of the media wrote on the L.A. Times ad posted in the Criminal Courts Building ‘listening room’ of the KCBS interview Ito did months before opening statements in the trial. Identifying himself in his appeal as Alex Epstein, aka Jackal, aka Vermin, Epstein asked Ito to reconsider his decision. It’s a funny ‘appeal’ and Ito responded with an equal good humor.

Ito denied Epstein’s appeal, but since he found the appeal ”mildly amusing,” he wrote, the Court “on its own motion, issues an alternative writ granting Epstein the title of Epstein the Mild winner of an Honorable Mention.” Ito’s writ was to be served to Epstein along with “one bottle of Clos Du Bois Chardonnay, which the Court finds to be potable.”

This is but one more example of Ito’s sense of humor and personality and of him as a human being.

I don’t think I would violate Alex’s privacy by posting his Facebook reply to my invitation to friend me. So here it is:

Hi Jerrianne -

How nice to hear from you! Your “invitation” brought back a flood of memories – not the least of which was the appeal. How nutty was that? Harvey Levin, of TMZ fame, helped me draft it (he was/is a lawyer after all) – and that you agreed to give it to Judge Ito was a minor miracle. Thanks for your sense of humor. What stresses there must have been on you – you never let it show, and you were such a wonderful, human face to that crazy bureaucracy you worked for.

I’ll never forget however wacky our requests were, you would seriously consider them, usually take a deep breath, and say you would try to get an answer for us!

I will look for your book, because I would be interested in your perspective.

I took my personal videocamera to work (at Criminal Courts during OJ) one day – and after all these years, looked at it – it kind of captured a bit of the atmosphere — but — do you remember when the USC Marching Band came by to play (outside) when the OJ Lawyers made their morning entrance one day?

What ever happened to Diane Arbus’ photos?

Unbelieveably small world. Who would have thought I would wind up in the midwest – raising kids and trying to stay employed in the media world out here. I miss LA, because I have these rose colored memories about so many wonderful, primary experiences (and thank God I was not injured in any of the lunatic stories I covered) – thankful for the good schools and the bubble of normalcy that passes for the northern suburbs of chicago.

What brought you to the midwest? A job took me out here!

Again, thanks for getting in touch – I look forward to connecting one of these days – maybe at a cubs brewers game!

All the best,

Alex

One-degree of separation: Iran, Jackson, Brown, the Red Line

workn2gether — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:58:54 +0000

Six degrees of separation to recent news events seems closer to 1 for me.

Riding on the Metro Red Line in D.C. just a couple of weeks ago.

Living in Tehran 30 years ago, walking and driving on some of the streets filled with post June 2009-election demonstrators.

Working for Los Angeles Court on celebrity-domestic violence case a la Chris Brown. Only the most explosive domestic-violence-related case was Simpson 15 years ago.

And Michael Jackson. I consulted on his child-molestation trial in Santa Barbara and was media liaison for L.A. Superior Court during the 1993 child-molestation lawsuit filed against him that ended in a settlement for the plaintiff.

The 1993 lawsuit filed against him on behalf of a young teen who claimed Jackson had molested him was settled after a hearing in Santa Monica for a reported $20 million. The crowd that gathered at the Santa Monica courthouse for the 1993 proceeding dwarfed those that swarmed the Simi Valley courthouse for the Rodney King-beating trial little over a year earlier and presaged those that descended on the northern Santa Barbara County courthouse in Santa Maria 12 years later.

A year or so after Simpson’s ’95 trial, a Santa Barbara County judge asked me to help him prepare for a civil trial he was presiding over in which Jackson had been sued. Little to no public interest in that case, primarily because Jackson wasn’t required to be present like he was his 2005 criminal trial.

By the time the criminal charges were filed, I had left the Los Angeles court and was living here in South Milwaukee. My consulting on that trial involved a couple of trips to the Santa Maria courthouse. I discussed the pros and cons of courtroom camera coverage and other media-related issues with the judge, was in the courthouse entrance as Jackson arrived for a pretrial hearing, sat in the courtroom a few feet away from him during that and other proceedings, watched the estimated 2,000 fans scream in adulation at him and press against a chainlink fence security had put up to hold them back as Jackson entered and left. I watched him walk out to the street in front of the courthouse, jump up on top of his SUV parked out there where he waved to and danced for his fans.

An Associated Press-reporter friend who covered the Jackson, Simpson and countless other celebrity and high-profile trials emailed me about being in shock over Jackson’s death. I think she was one of the few reporters, if not the only one to be invited into Jackson’s Neverland ranch in northern Santa Barbara County while Jackson still lived there. I heard her interviewed Saturday on NPR about Jackson. She included information about his three children I’d never heard before.

His fame is certainly transcends generations. Seven- and 8-year-old boys at a parks-and-recreaction department track and field day near my house on Friday excitedly related the news about Michael Jackson’s death as if they had just heard it. Then they got into a debate about the exact time he died. Then it was time for their next event — the soccer-ball kick.

Sometimes I think I should write a book.

www.anatomyofatrial.com

Iranians just like us

workn2gether — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:47:21 +0000

Opened the Milwaukee Jounal Sentinel “Crossroads” section today to see a piece I had submitted to the opinion editor on Wednesday. Given the events of Friday and Saturday in Iran, I was thinking that perhaps my column had lost some of its timeliness, so was glad the JS editors decided to run it. Even though the demonstrations had met violence in the past couple of days, to me the underlying premise that the majority of Iranians are decent people who, like most people everywhere, want only the best for their families and their country remains true. Here’s the link to the “Crossroads” piece:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/48634857.html

Different time, different Iran

By Jerrianne Hayslett

Posted: Jun. 20, 2009

You might expect it to be déjà vu. But about the only similarities between the demonstrations and protests that marked the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and those of today is the location. Tehran, Iran.

(Link to “Tehran Diary” is http://www.anatomyofatrial.com/pages/documents/TehranDiary0001_000.pdf)

www.anatomyofatrial.com