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What you missed on the Tom tape
By SCOTT STEEPLETON
NEWS-PRESS ASSISTANT METRO EDITOR
It's been a week, and still no sign of the Tom tape on the Internet.
There's a link to the Paris tape, the Pamela tape and even the Cameron
tape, but nowhere is there a link to the Tom tape.
What exactly is the Tom tape? I hear it shows District Attorney
Tom Sneddon subjecting himself to something most prosecutors would
never dream of: humiliation on the witness stand.
Before you get any weird ideas, I'm talking about the questioning
he took a week ago today at the hands of Michael Jackson's defense
attorney, Thomas Mesereau Jr.
Legal experts can't recall a DA taking the witness stand to explain
his actions in an ongoing case, but that's what happened in Santa
Maria — and I was so hoping that a bootleg copy would turn
up somewhere.
Journalists such as my colleagues Dawn Hobbs and Scott Hadly know
what happened because they were in the courtroom, while others,
including myself, watched on closed-circuit TV. And some members
of the public won seats in the courtroom through a lottery.
None of this replaces a recording of the event, but given Judge
Rodney Melville's repeated banning of cameras in the courtroom,
I fear the Tom tape will forever be a figment of my imagination.
If ever a hearing warranted a video record, this was it because
here was the people's advocate on the witness stand being grilled
by the defendant's attorney while the defendant looked on from across
the room.
The ban means the public will never see or hear Sneddon explain
how, after deciding Halloween 2003 was too rough on Sheriff's Department
investigators involved in the case, he did some Jackson-related
snooping on his own while on a day-trip to the J. Paul Getty Museum
— apparently with his wife in tow.
First on Sneddon's agenda the morning of Nov. 8, 2003, was tracking
down and photographing private investigator Bradley Miller's office
in Beverly Hills. Then it was off to a parking lot behind the Federal
Building in nearby Westwood to meet the alleged victim's mom.
Sneddon took issue with Mesereau implying the work amounted to
an "investigation," stating he sees it as merely saving
the county some money while contributing to the "team effort."
"I figured I was there, I'll pick it up," Sneddon told
the court.
When pressed on how much time he spent on the Jackson matter that
day, the district attorney said, minus drive time, it was all of
20 minutes.
"We wanted to get to the museum," he said.
You can't blame him, really. Four days earlier an exhibit of pieces
by Jean-Antoine Houdon, sculptor of the Enlightenment opened and,
according to a museum spokesman, a collection of prints by 19th-century
British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron was also packing people
in.
Nor will the public get to see their district attorney admonished
several times by the judge to simply answer the questions. Among
Melville's Memorables are, "I'm going to ask you not to spar
with the attorney," "Just answer the questions that the
attorney asks," and "When you're a witness, you're a fact-giver,
Mr. Sneddon. You have to vacate your role as advocate."
They won't see Sneddon respond to one of those admonishments by
throwing up his hands and proclaiming, "Just trying to be helpful,"
or hear him explain how angry he got when his underlings nearly
botched filing a document on time.
Not that the Tom tape would be all serious. At one point during
the Aug. 16 hearing, Mesereau asked Sneddon when he first heard
of Jackson's former defense counsel, Mark Geragos. Sneddon replied
it was summer 2003, when Geragos signed on as accused double-murderer
Scott Peterson's lawyer.
"Did you follow the Winona Ryder trial?" Mesereau replied,
apparently dumbfounded by the district attorney's not knowing that
Geragos represented the famous shoplifter a year earlier.
"I know she got convicted," replied Sneddon, his voice
verging on glee. "That's all I know."
Scott Steepleton is a News-Press assistant metro editor. His
column runs Monday. The opinions in this column are his and not
necessarily those of the newspaper. You can reach him by e-mail
at ssteepleton@newspress.com.
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