Criminal
Jun. 18, 2002
Media in Westerfield Trial Prepare for Long Haul
SAN DIEGO - With up to 10 more weeks to come in David Westerfield's trial on charges of kidnapping and murdering 7-year-old Danielle Van Dam, everyone seems to be setting in for the long hot summer.
In just its second week, the remarkable has become the norm for everyone from jurors to television reporters.
Stay tuned: The trial is being broadcast live from the courtroom by Court TV, but many other television stations also are broadcasting at least portions of the proceedings. Things can get crowded.
So, when Superior Court Judge William D. Mudd allotted only one courtroom seat for notoriously competitive San Diego TV stations, other news media anticipated brawls among the hordes of TV reporters.
But the TV stations agreed on a rotation system, and it works.
Even in front of the next-door Hall of Justice - the only place Mudd allows interviews and newscasts - everything has been peaceful as stations look for space to park their white vans, erect canopies and even spread camera tripods.
But the valuable spaces, marked off by yellow and black tape on the sidewalk, hint at hidden conflict. The stations apply their call letters with white adhesive tape or black friction tape to show possession, and some spaces bear two or three sets of letters.
Life in the suburbs: Sabre Springs, where the van Dam family and Westerfield were neighbors, seems to be filled with engineers involved with Little League and who are married to blonde women who spend their days driving children to school and sports activities, if the many witnesses from that community are any measure.
But despite the veneer of wholesome suburban life, there has been much testimony about marijuana use.
Defense attorney Steven Feldman zeroed in Monday on Denise Kemal, 28, a friend of Danielle's mother who told about smoking the forbidden weed several times with Brenda van Dam, 39.
Leaning over the counsel table, Feldman - who serves on the legal committee of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws - asked intensely whether she hadn't been smoking to feel different, to get high?
Kemal, smiling innocently, said, "That's usually what you do."
The world is watching: Gavel to gavel TV coverage has its drawbacks, as Mudd is discovering. On Tuesday, he told the jurors that he had received a memo written by a county employee, who wrote, "Judge Mudd is really making a foul impression on the country."
The writer's gripe: Mudd had mentioned a courtroom clock that didn't work and air conditioning that provided vastly different temperatures for the jurors. His comments about those matters reflected poorly on county maintenance workers, the writer believed, and made light of a serious trial.
Mudd told the jurors that he praised the county workers who fixed the problems. And his remarks at the beginning of each day were intended to relax jurors who are "asked to make difficult calls in highly emotional cases, and this is one of them."
Mudd said his concern was with the 12 jurors and their six alternates "so you can go home at night without being a basket case."
More who watch: Mudd, in warning the jurors to stay away from any trial accounts on television and in newspapers, frequently suggests that jurors become baseball fans and root for the struggling San Diego Padres.
On Thursday, he announced to jurors that he had received a note from the Padres thanking him for his mentions of the team.
The judge closed his announcement by wishing that certain county employees would "get in the same mood."
Pay to play: The final prosecution witness Thursday was Daniel Conklin, a Glamis resident who has a repair and towing business in that remote desert area of Imperial County.
Westerfield told police how he got stuck in the sand there and promised to pay someone $150 to pull him out but had only $80 with him.
Conklin, who never got the remaining $70, gave jurors his account of the events, and he mentioned that he had been contacted by an investigator working for Westerfield's defense team.
The conversation didn't get far.
"I told her, if she wanted to talk to me, to get the money he promised me and didn't pay," Conklin said.
Claude Walbert
For reprint rights or to order a copy of your photo:
Email
Jeremy_Ellis@dailyjournal.com
for prices.
Direct dial: 213-229-5424
Send a letter to the editor:
Email: letters@dailyjournal.com