A courtroom talker
That’s against the courtroom rules.
A Katz wife expelled.
4/25/95
Courtroom spectators routinely ignored the court order banning them from talking while court was in session. One of two women kicked out for talking on this day was the wife of a former Los Angeles judge, Burton Katz.
Of greater interest to me was that Burton Katz was the judge who presided over the trial of the killer of actress Dominique Dunne, who was in the movie Poltergeist and whose father was author, Vanity Fair magazine correspondent and high-profile trial watcher. Dunne developed a vitriolic hatred of Katz after Katz sentenced his daughter’s killer to what Dunne thought was an outrageously light six years. That trial was the catalyst for Dunne to attend and write about high-profile trials. Dunne had a media seat at the Simpson trial, writing about it for Vanity Fair and for a book he said he was writing. I was concerned some kind of a confrontation might break out when Katz showed up at the trial. I needn’t have worried, though, as the two ignored each other.
Anatomy of a Trial blog 