Interview With Mark Geragos
CNN LARRY KING LIVE
Aired June 6, 2005 – 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND
MAY BE UPDATED.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, exclusive. Scott Peterson’s defense attorney,
Mark Geragos, finally breaks his long silence. It’s his first live,
in-depth interview since Peterson was sent to death row, and since he
testified for his former client, Michael Jackson. Mark Geragos for the
hour with your phone calls exclusive, next on LARRY KING LIVE.
Continuing our 20th anniversary extravaganza of great guests, Mark
Geragos joins us tonight. This is not the LARRY KING LIVE setting. We
are in Costa Mesa, California. Why are we here?
MARK GERAGOS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Because I’m in trial here, and I said if
you want me to interview — and I wanted to be on your 20th anniversary
week — so we agreed to come down here to the Marriott.
KING: Because you couldn’t have made it up the 405.
GERAGOS: We were just discussing it. To try and get from here to there
by 6:00 o’clock, we never would have made it.
KING: Is this a murder trial here?
GERAGOS: No, this is a fraud case, a 57-count fraud case. We’ve been
down here for three months; we’re going to be down there a couple more
months.
KING: Talk some about Jackson later, but let’s — first things first.
How did you take — how did you get the Peterson case?
GERAGOS: I originally got a call from Lee Peterson. And Lee wanted to
talk. Came up to the office. Talked to Lee and Jackie, and after talking
for a while, it kind of evolved, I suppose. And talking to Jackie,
you’ve spoken to her before, she’s an amazing woman. And I agreed after
talking with them, and my first instincts were, look, I’m probably not
the right guy for you, but after talking to her for a while, decided
that I’d go up and I’d talk to Scott.
KING: True, they had seen you on this show?
GERAGOS: Probably had seen me on this show or some others, yeah.
KING: What were your impressions upon meeting Scott?
GERAGOS: I was very favorably impressed upon meeting Scott. I thought he
was a highly intelligent guy. I thought he was a — you know, somebody
who I thought had a lot more emotion than the way he had been portrayed.
I mean, that was my first — I think, I, like everybody else, when you
saw him and you see kind of that B-roll of him, and that there’s always
this idea that he’s arrogant or that he’s cocky or this or that. In
knowing him, I didn’t see any of that.
KING: What is your rule? Do you have to believe in your client, or do
you — or is your role to see he gets a fair trial?
GERAGOS: My role, as a criminal defense lawyer, as all criminal defense
lawyers, is to see that a client gets a fair trial. And tat’s — and
what goes into that is that you must test the government’s case or the
people’s case or whatever it is, at every possible turn. And I suppose
sometimes it’s an added bonus and sometimes it’s a detriment, depending
on whether or not you believe in the client’s innocence.
I mean, a lot of lawyers have said, and I think Edward Bennett Williams,
who is somebody that you knew well…
KING: Very well.
GERAGOS: … is quoted as saying a lot of times, God save me from the
innocent client. Because there is no greater pressure for a defense
lawyer than somebody that you truly believe is innocent who you’re
defending.
KING: Was that the case here?
GERAGOS: Well, it became the case here.
KING: You began to truly believe?
GERAGOS: Right. I, like a lot of the pundits I think and a lot of the
public, had initially thought that, you know, it looked bad and it was
not a case. And I had made statements, I think even on your show.
KING: Here’s what you said on this show.
GERAGOS: I figured you would have that.
KING: On January 24th, you said: “At the end of the day, they may find
some evidence this guy might be a sociopath that everybody is painting
him out to be.” On the day of his arrest, on this program, you said:
“The most damning piece of circumstantial evidence, the marina receipt,
comes out of his own mouth and his own hands. This is just a devastating
thing. A damning circumstantial case. The man is a sociopath if he did
this crime. This is a guy who has from day one not helped himself in any
way.” So you had a radical change?
GERAGOS: Well, you know, I don’t know that it was so much a radical
change. I still think that the — at the end of the day, you go through
that case, we spent, I don’t know, maybe a year and a half on that case.
And in trial, when you are there for nine or 10 months, the same — and
you hear some of the jurors talk when it came down to it at the end of
the day — all they said was, if the bodies had not floated up where
they did, some of them said, we could not have convicted. At the end of
the day, that was the most devastating piece of evidence.
There isn’t — I think if you go through everything else that was
produced in that trial, there was either an answer for it or an
explanation for it, or it was not what it appeared to be. That was the
only thing. That was the only thing that I think ultimately was the
ultimate piece of circumstantial evidence.
KING: Was there a con to taking it? We know the pros of taking it.
GERAGOS: Oh, well, I also told you this. I don’t know if you’ve got it
in your quotes, but I also said at the time, there would be a mutiny in
my office, which there was to some degree. Most people said, why take
it? Because what happens in high-profile cases, every time I have taken
one of these cases where it becomes a media frenzy, is generally, your
clients think you don’t have time for — your other clients think you
don’t have time for them. A criminal lawyer exists on a kind of a
30/60/90. You’ve got cases that come in; you either dispose of them or
you try them, on a fairly quick basis. It’s not like a civil case that
may take years to get to trial.
So clients tend to not want to be with you, because they figure you’re
concentrating all of your time on the other case. No matter how much
somebody pays you, it can’t make up for the amount of time, effort, and
anxiety that goes with it.
KING: Did you lose money on this?
GERAGOS: Well, yeah. I mean, ultimately at the end of the day, it’s not
a money-maker, no, in any sense of the word. I mean, at a certain point,
whether you’re fighting for funds between the various counties, which we
were, San Mateo didn’t want to pay for experts. And Stanislaus didn’t
want to pay. We had to go back and forth. I had go to the administrative
office of the courts and — I don’t want to get into the particulars of
that, but that was a problem. A lot of my fees, I ended putting back in
to pay for experts, and still trying to clean up those things as well.
So at the end of the day, there — it’s infinitely easier to just not
take a case like this, to have stayed on TV, I suppose, or become a
consultant.
KING: You would have been on this show forever.
GERAGOS: Oh, I could have done — I could have done 90 shows. Every
night, doing that, you could have, as you know, lawyers are paid, if
they want, to be consultants. Could have made more money.
KING: You never got paid from CNN.
GERAGOS: No, because CNN said the only way they would pay is if you
don’t do anything else.
KING: Oh, and you did other things?
GERAGOS: I did. KING: But we were your primary.
GERAGOS: Yes, that’s why I’m here on your 20th anniversary.
KING: If you look back, what went — is there anything where you say,
should have, would have, could have? You’re a (INAUDIBLE).
GERAGOS: Always. I mean, always. Look, there isn’t a single case, and as
you know, when you have any kind of adversity, you always look back and
try to figure out what it was that may have gone wrong. I think one of
the things that if I had to do it over again, is I was against having
cameras in the courtroom. I thought, given — I mean, this was a case
where everybody, it seemed, coming into it, had a presumption of his
guilt. I mean, we used it laugh. We’d go through 1,600 jurors, and you
would — even the guy who was completely illiterate, on the 23-page
form, he could find the one spot that said, “Scott Peterson guty,”
g-u-t-y. You had even the Buddhists, who were against taking a life,
said they would make an exception for Scott Peterson. So I mean, there
was a presumption of guilt in this case.
KING: Should have had cameras?
GERAGOS: It was overwhelming. I think we should have had cameras. And
the reason was, I thought at the time that maybe we could damp down the
interests, but it had the opposite effect. It kind of increased it. And
people were — you know, it was kind of a — it would be a public
lottery every morning, which was mind- boggling. People would travel
from all over the country. And then as you walk into the courtroom, down
the hallway, there would be people lined up on both sides, begging you,
give me a defense pass, give me a prosecution pass, wanting to get in.
It created more of a circus-like atmosphere. I think that would have
been relieved as a safety valve.
KING: Would you have changed your opening statement?
GERAGOS: No. Not for…
KING: Stone-cold innocent?
GERAGOS: Not for a minute. Because I don’t think that for a second that
had anything to do with the jurors’ decision. I don’t think that the
opening statement — a lot of the things that had been attributed to
being in the opening statement were not in the opening statement. So
that’s part of the reason that I think, if there had been cameras in the
courtroom, that would have been something that would have been…
KING: So you’re saying the reason you lost that case was where the body
came up?
GERAGOS: I think that that was the — and it’s not just my opinion on
that; the jurors have said that. Because if you listen to what the
jurors say, they really can’t articulate when this happened or how this
happened. And the prosecution couldn’t. I mean, the prosecution got up
in the closing argument and just also for the first time, speculated as
to what transpired, and that was belied by what the evidence was. I
mean, we tried this case on the basis of a prosecution theory that Laci
had died the night before on the 23rd or in the wee morning hours.
Midway through this case, on cross- examination of the computer expert,
all a sudden, lo and behold, what do we find, the computer expert says
at 8:45, somebody is on that computer, looking at umbrella stands with
sunflowers on them. Laci has got a sunflower tattooed on her. Somebody’s
looking at the weather, somebody is going to these various locations for
other kinds of scarves and things like that, which clearly wasn’t Scott,
and if it had been Scott at 8:45, why didn’t he tell somebody so that he
had that as an alibi?
KING: When we come back, we’ll ask Mark, what is it like to be the
lawyer for a man condemned to death? How do you react emotionally? We’ll
be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: We’re back on LARRY KING LIVE with Mark Geragos. What is it like
emotionally? You believe in your client?
GERAGOS: I believe in all my clients. I mean, I go to trial. And it’s —
there’s no…
KING: You think Scott Peterson didn’t do this, right?
GERAGOS: I went in there, and I took that case, and I became convinced.
And it is — and I told the jury during the penalty phase. I talked from
the heart to the jury. And said, look, there’s no harder thing for me to
do than have to sit here and beg you to spare his life, when I believe
this, and that I felt, you know, as a — as a lawyer, you cannot feel
any lower than in a death penalty case to have somebody that you truly
believe is innocent, to be convicted and then be sentenced to death. I
mean, there is bar none, at least for me professionally, nothing worse
than you can experience than that.
KING: You ever lost one before?
GERAGOS: I’ve never — I’ve never lost a death penalty case. In fact, I
have probably handled 50-some-odd murder case. I’ve never had a client
convicted of first-degree murder before. Closest I have ever come before
was about 10 years ago, I had a client where a jury came back on a
first-degree, but I’d convinced the judge to throw it out, and we tried
it twice more after that, and then came back with the second. I’ve never
had a client convicted of anything higher than a second.
KING: So what was it like for your gut when they announced the verdict?
GERAGOS: Well, the biggest problem, and one of the things that I regret,
is that I wasn’t there. I had…
KING: Ah-huh! GERAGOS: Yeah, I had asked the judge the week before,
because I had another case in L.A., and I said, the following Friday,
that judge wanted me down — the L.A. judge — wanted me down there to
do a case. And Thursday before the verdict came out was a holiday, a
court holiday. So the jury was not going to deliberate. I was up there
on Wednesday. And on Wednesday, we had one of the brouhahas with the
jurors, and we replaced it and put in a new juror. And we did that in
the afternoon.
So I talked to the judge, and he said, go down there, there’s not going
to be a verdict. And Judge Delucchi and I agreed, there’s no way that
just putting somebody in, the jury getting the instructions, you have
got to start anew, not deliberating on Thursday. And then Friday, what
most people don’t know, is that he had already told one of the —
promised one of the other jurors that they were going to get off, and it
was only going to be a half-day. Plus, in addition to that, the jury had
asked that a priest be sent in, because they were sequestered. So all
indication were they were going to deliberate through until the
following week.
I went down there. Then out of nowhere, we get the verdict.
KING: You were shocked?
GERAGOS: Yeah, we were as shocked as you can believe. But one of the
things that the judge had indicated, I said, look, I can try and get a
private jet up there or scramble some way to get up there. And he had
indicated, look, the sheriff does not want to hold on to this, because
as you probably saw, the courthouse had become encircled with people.
They were afraid from the public safety standpoint there was going to be
a problem, and I wasn’t going to create a public safety problem by
saying, hey, hold it for me, I got to get up there.
KING: How did you hear the verdict?
GERAGOS: Turned on — I think CNN. And did it in the office. Pat Harris,
who tried the case with me, was there. One of the other lawyers from the
office was there as well.
KING: What was your feeling?
GERAGOS: I mean, it was a kick in the gut. I mean, I did not expect it.
KING: You thought he would get not guilty?
GERAGOS: I — well, I thought it would hang. All indications were that
this case was going to hang going into it. I think prior to all of the
problems inside of that jury room, this case would have hung.
The — one of the — and I, you know, we have attempted to interview the
jurors, but did not, but when you read what the jurors have said
afterwards — one juror in particular says that if the foreman, the
first foreman had not been removed, there never would have been a
verdict in the case. That was my read on it, based upon the kinds of
questions they were asking and the exhibits that they were asking for.
KING: You think they’re going to write books or try to?
GERAGOS: Well, apparently — see, and I only know what I read in this
particular instance and what I’ve heard. Apparently, collectively as a
group, they’ve been shopping a book with ironically one of the pundits
who was up there second-guessing me most of the time outside of the
courthouse. So he’s been trying to sell it. I don’t know if it’s sold.
KING: You know who it is, or…?
GERAGOS: I don’t know who they — no, they were — collected and gathered…
KING: Who’s the pundit?
GERAGOS: Oh, the pundit was one of the local yokels who was up there,
who was commenting.
KING: Have you — have you talked to Scott?
GERAGOS: Yeah, oh, frequently. We talked to Scott frequently. Pat sees
him and has visited him in San Quentin…
KING: How is he living with it?
GERAGOS: I mean, he has been throughout all of this, I think, enormously
resilient. And — and one of the things, you know, without breaching
confidentiality, because he’s said it to others and not just to me, but
he has said, look, after my family was killed, the fact that they’re
blaming me for it, it pales in comparison with losing Laci and Connor.
So, as I’d indicated before, either the guy’s the greatest sociopath of
all time, or he’s innocent.
KING: And he’s handling death row OK?
GERAGOS: Well, you know, as well as anybody…
KING: Some people emotionally could?
GERAGOS: You know, I don’t know that anybody handles death row, and I
don’t know how anybody gets through that. I don’t know how anybody, when
they’ve suffered a loss and if they are innocent and if they are on
death row — and you know, we’ve had somewhere in the neighborhood of
about 100 some-odd convictions that have been overturned in people who
were on death row, exonerated. I don’t know how any of them handle it. I
have read things that they have written. I’ve listened to people who
have been exonerated later on talk, and nobody ever says, boy, that was
a great experience, I’d do it again if I could.
KING: We’ll be right back with Mark Geragos on this edition of LARRY
KING LIVE. Don’t go away. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The state of California versus Scott Peterson. We
the jury in the above-entitled cause find the defendant, Scott Lee
Peterson, guilty of the crime of murder of Laci Denise Peterson, in
violation of Penal Code Section 187A.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: We’re back with Mark Geragos. Why didn’t you call Dr. Henry Lee, a
renowned expert, defense witness?
GERAGOS: Henry there was. We talked for — all night, practically. And
finally made the decision not to. I think at that point, we figured that
what he was going to bring was not anymore than we’d already proven.
Made a decision. I don’t think it would have mattered if we had called
him or if we hadn’t called him, ultimately. I mean, the feeling was at
that point, jointly, that it wouldn’t have made any difference, that the
case had not been proven, and that we felt that we could stand on where
we were at that point.
KING: Even though his reputation proceeds him?
GERAGOS: Well, Henry, look, Henry is one of the greatest, and Henry’s
got a fantastic ability to be able to communicate and to communicate in
simple form, things that are generally more complex and make it
understandable.
But at that point, we had jurors that were tired and had been there for
a long time, and we didn’t know that putting on for another three or
four days at that point stuff that would have — that I thought we had
gotten out all throughout the cross-examination. I mean, during the
cross-examination, I thought we had used their experts to prove that
there was no forensic evidence. And if there was no forensic evidence,
that you would expect that there would be in this case, and since there
wasn’t, that you couldn’t make that leap to say, well, I’ll just
speculate as to what happened. I’ll just fantasize as to what happened.
KING: Are you handling the appeal?
GERAGOS: Well, right now, we’ve interviewed a number of appellate lawyers.
KING: That’s a specialty, right?
GERAGOS: It is a specialty. And especially, because it’s a death penalty
case, I always want to leave open the option for whoever the appellate
lawyer is if they want to take a shot at me for ineffective assistance
of counsel, I’d be more than happy.
KING: You would go with that?
GERAGOS: Absolutely. KING: If they argued ineffectively assistance, you
would have said…?
GERAGOS: Absolutely. I don’t have — I don’t have ego when it comes to
that. I mean, one of the things — if I was worried about that, I never
would have taken this case in the first place. I mean, there are lawyers
who are more worried about their reputation than the case. And this
case, when this case came in, I was counseled by virtually everyone not
to take the case. Maybe with the exception of you. And one of the
reasons was that you had somebody who was literally one of the most
reviled guys in the country. I mean, he was hated, overwhelmingly. And
that tends to — people tend to associate the client with the lawyer.
And virtually everybody said, why did you do it?
KING: Why do they do it? They don’t associate the doctor with the patient.
GERAGOS: No, and you have that often, that’s kind of the fall- back
position as well. You don’t tell the doctor in the operating room, look,
you are not going to operate on that guy because he’s a bad guy or this
or that, but that tends to be the case with a lawyer.
You know, there has been kind of a transformation in the last 25 years,
at least since I started practicing law, as to what a criminal defense
lawyer is, and how they’re portrayed. When I first started, I mean, I
followed my father around who was a county prosecutor. And then he left
the office and became a defense lawyer. And to my mind, that was the
most glorious thing in the world, to be a criminal defense lawyer. And I
grew up reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” and to watch the movie, and
identifying with Atticus Finch, and watching “Parry Mason,” the TV
series, and thinking that was the greatest thing in the world.
That’s kind of morphed at this point, for a variety of reasons, into
this caricature of what a defense lawyer is. It’s Bobby Donnell on “The
Practice,” it’s the James Spader character on “Boston Legal,” where it’s
people who are shaving the corners and rounding edges, as opposed to
what I have always thought being a criminal defense lawyer is, which is
being the last kind of bulwark against an attack on the Constitution.
KING: What about the whole system of pundits, lawyers on television?
Conviction before the case is over? Innocence before the case…
GERAGOS: Well, what’s happened is, you’ve taken what started off as the
ESPN model as I call it. You’ve got the ex-jocks, and now you’ve got
either the lawyers who are not practicing or whatever, and they get up
there. And that model has morphed into what I call the FOX-ification of
the legal system. And what has happened is, you notice that, as cable TV
started to expand, one of the first stories that came out was the
impeachment story, and that kind of drove ratings, and that really drove
ratings and the various competitions amongst the channels. And so you
had the prosecutors versus the defense during impeachment, and that was
also a Republican versus Democrat, and that kind of morphed into now
this idea of prosecutors being the right or the good guys, and defense
lawyers being the bad guys. And that’s kind of where you have it now,
and that’s what’s happened. And it’s really a shame.
KING: Is it bad?
GERAGOS: Yes.
KING: To go into television, forecasting a case or having an opinion on
a case without having heard every minute of the trial?
GERAGOS: Well, no, I don’t think that’s bad. What I think is bad is when
you go out and you deliberately either don’t know anything about the
case, or you have abandoned the presumption of innocence, or you mislead
the public. When you mislead the public about what actually occurs in
the courtroom or what happened in the courtroom, or what the standard of
proof is or what a defense lawyer’s supposed to do, and you start
talking about oh, defense lawyer’s job is to lie — the defense lawyer’s
job is not to lie. Or you talk about the prosecution during this, that,
or the other thing, and that somehow that’s more noble — it isn’t.
There is a role. It’s an adversary system, it’s the system — the best
system in the world. And historically, the best system that’s ever been
devised.
KING: Right back with more of Mark Geragos. We’ll include some of your
phone calls too. We’re in Costa Mesa, where he’s in trial. Don’t go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHARON ROCHA, MOTHER: Soon after Laci went missing, I made a promise to
her, that if she’s been harmed, we will seek justice for her and Connor
and make sure that that person, responsible for their deaths, will be
punished. I can only hope that the sound of Laci’s voice begging for her
life and begging for the life of her unborn child is heard over and over
and over again in the mind of that person every day for the rest of his
life.
RON GRANTSKI, STEPFATHER: Our friends, family, country searched for Laci
everywhere. There wasn’t one place that wasn’t searched. They had no
reason to doubt that it was Scott who did what he did, and he got what
he deserved.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: We’re back. The anti-Scott sentiment, did you ever see anything
like that?
GERAGOS: No, nothing even close. I mean, when I represented Gary Condit,
I thought that I had seen probably the most virulent reaction against
somebody. But the — Scott, it just pales in comparison with anything I
have ever seen.
KING: How did you react to Amber Frey?
GERAGOS: Well, I didn’t have a real problem with her as a witness,
because I didn’t think that she brought anything to the case for the
prosecution. I did have a problem, obviously, with what I considered to
be kind of a violation of the restraining — or the gag order by proxy,
by her lawyer.
KING: Gloria Allred?
GERAGOS: Yeah, and I thought that that was something that one of the
judges should have reigned in. And I always thought that based upon what
I heard, the only way that her book or her movie would have sold is if
there was a conviction. I thought that there was something that was just
fundamentally wrong with the idea of somebody who’s a lawyer for a
witness — and I didn’t understand why a witness needed a lawyer — if
the witness is gagged, why isn’t the lawyer gagged? You know, one or the
other, when you asked before, what is one of the things you might do
differently? At some point, some lawyer, I don’t know if it’s me or
somebody else in one of these cases, when they’re gagged, I think at a
certain point may have to weigh whether or not the order of the court
trumps their obligation to represent their client.
KING: And so they ungag it and face contempt.
GERAGOS: Yeah, you’re going to face the contempt in the face of what
they think is an onslaught of misinformation, especially if you believe
that that information seeps back to the jury.
KING: Would you agree if Scott is the culprit, he is a sociopath?
GERAGOS: Look, if Scott did it, there is no question. The problem is
every piece of evidence that they put on there I think was effectively
the — dealt with.
KING: You said where the body turns up is key?
GERAGOS: I said that, that’s a key, and if you’ve got…
KING: That’s an extraordinary coincidence.
GERAGOS: Except the problem was, you know, we spent day after day after
day with witnesses who searched that place and didn’t find anything, and
they searched it repeatedly, and they had the most sophisticated
equipment in the world, and they mapped the bottom of the bay. And they
didn’t find anything. They found Snapple bottles, and found six-inch
sticks, and they found tires, and they found every conceivable thing in
the world except anchors.
KING: If he didn’t do it, there’s a killer loose?
GERAGOS: That’s, you know, usually the case. Anytime you have got
somebody who’s exonerated off of death row for a horrible crime, and the
only way you make it to death row is on a horrible crime, means that
there is somebody else walking around.
KING: Let’s take a call. Phoenix, Arizona. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. I had two questions for Mark Geragos.
KING: Sure.
CALLER: Other than…
KING: Go ahead.
CALLER: Hello? Other than the jury foreman, did the change in jury
composition change the outcome?
GERAGOS: Well, I would — it’s been my read on what happened is that
there were three different jurors who were removed in this case. The
first one was Justin Falconer, who was juror number five. Justin
Falconer, I believe, was removed — and that was — and at the time, I
made a record of it, and I think it’ll be something that’s dealt with on
appeal — was because of the media insinuating themselves into that jury
box, and there were some commentators in particular that were
mischaracterizing what happened with Justin and Brent Rocha at the front
of the courthouse, and saying that there was some kind of, “you’re going
to lose today,” when in fact that’s not what was said. Brent testified
to that. Justin testified to that. Justin was later removed.
I thought that that was frankly outrageous, that he was removed, and I
didn’t think there was good cause. I think the record shows that there
was not good cause. And Judge Delucchi and I probably — a man who I
have the enormous respect for, and actually have a great deal of
affection for as well, that — we disagreed most strongly on that.
Second, to answer to her question, was, during deliberations, another
juror was removed, prior to the foreman. And that juror was juror number
seven. She has a Web site, and if you go to her Web site, she will
describe that she was one of the people who supported the jury foreman,
the man who became known as Dr. Lawyer.
Well, the same juror who complained about Justin Falconer complained
about juror number seven. And juror number seven, who’s then removed,
and that changed, when they substituted somebody else in, apparently is
how they removed juror number five as a foreperson, and juror number six
became the new foreperson.
KING: And it’s appealable?
GERAGOS: All of that stuff is on the record. All of that stuff was
subject to the motion for a new trial, and all of that stuff will be
part of the appeal.
KING: Why did you take the Jackson thing in the middle of all of this?
GERAGOS: Actually, the Jackson case I was on well before I ever had
Scott. I just…
KING: It was not publicized?
GERAGOS: It was not publicized. In fact, my feeling at the time was that
I didn’t want it to be publicized. I didn’t think it would make any
sense. But I’m still under the gag order on that case, not only as a
lawyer but now as a witness. So I have got a double whammy…
KING: Well, what do you make of the prosecution including you in his
final statement to the jury, lambasting you?
GERAGOS: I would love to respond to that, and I will wait until after a
verdict comes down and the gag order is lifted. And I will have, I
suppose, something to say about that.
KING: (INAUDIBLE). Will they be out a long time, that jury, just as a
reportorial guess, that’s not something to do with the gag order?
GERAGOS: I think the jury will be back this week.
KING: You do?
GERAGOS: Yeah.
KING: Chico, California, hello.
CALLER: Thank you for taking my call, Mark.
KING: Sure.
CALLER: You said it was where the body came up that convicted Scott. How
about Scott didn’t know what he was fishing for, and what bait he was
using. Then he said…
GERAGOS: Scott did…
CALLER: Wait a minute. My husband, when he goes out fishing, he knows
what he’s fishing for and you only catch sturgeon at night.
GERAGOS: Well, that’s not what — they put on a gentleman by the name of
Angelo Kong (ph), who was a sturgeon fisherman, who said the opposite.
He did not say — he testified, that was their witness.
Number two, he did say, the reason he didn’t know what bait, they asked
him what bait — is he wasn’t using bait. He had he was using a silver
lure, approximately that large. And the idea that somehow he wouldn’t go
there — he said he wanted to put his boat in the water. That’s what he
told the detective that night in the taped interview. That’s what was there.
Once again, if there had been a camera in the courtroom, some of these
urban myths, so to speak, wouldn’t be out there.
KING: Did you ever consider putting Scott on? GERAGOS: Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely, I considered putting Scott on.
KING: And?
GERAGOS: Ultimately at the end of the day, I didn’t think they proved
the case.
KING: Did Scott want to go on?
GERAGOS: I think Scott would have welcomed going on. I think he wanted
to talk to this jury. I think he wanted to express…
KING: He could have overruled you then.
GERAGOS: Absolutely. Ultimately, it was my advice that he not take the
stand, that we stand pat.
KING: We’ll be back with more of Mark Geragos. Don’t go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: We’re back with Mark Geragos. What about the controversy over the
boat? The judge permitted the jury to see the boat. One juror got into
the boat. You wanted to show it…
GERAGOS: Actually, two — what actually happened is I think on the third
day of deliberations, they asked to see the boat. We had previously done
a demonstration, because the whole idea was, the theory of the
prosecution was, Scott had taken Laci into the boat and then dumped her
overboard. It was this 14-foot aluminum game fisher. I actually had
somebody get into a — we bought a 14-foot game fisher, put somebody in
it, had him be the approximate size, had a demonstration done, shown —
showed that when that was done, if you pushed somebody over the side,
the boat would capsize. Tried to get that introduced. The judge wouldn’t
do it. He wouldn’t allow it in.
KING: Reason?
GERAGOS: Then — well, he said that — he gave us an explanation that it
wasn’t the identical boat. I said, well, the boat that’s there is in
evidence.
So then during deliberations, he comes down, and the jurors say we want
to see the boat. Which is fine and dandy. We go down into the garage.
The boat’s on a trailer. Two of the jurors get in. And after they get
in, they start rocking around and they start doing their own
demonstration on the trailer. I kind of come unglued, run over to where
Delucchi is, Judge Delucchi is, and tell him, you can’t do this. This is
a demonstration. This is prohibited. And he said, I didn’t know they
were going to do this, basically. I’ll give them an admonition. I said,
an admonition is not good enough, they’re conducting an experiment.
We then renewed our motion to have our demonstration shown to the jury,
because we felt — because it’s clear in the jury instructions in
California, caljic (ph) instruction says you shall not conduct any
experiments, visit the scene, do anything like that. He denied it. And I
would expect that that would be further grounds of appeal.
KING: So, you think there are a lot of appealable grounds?
GERAGOS: Well, not just me. Judge Delucchi was quoted as saying in open
court on the record, “this case is an appellate lawyer’s Petri dish.” So
if he thinks it’s an appellate lawyer’s Petri dish, and he’s the trial
judge, that tells you all you need to know.
KING: And you would go so far as to say — I want to reiterate this —
if the appellate lawyer wants to say you did a bad — malfeasance…
GERAGOS: Look, if they…
KING: … you’d accept that?
GERAGOS: Look, I don’t have a problem if they find something that they
think they want to challenge, I mean, what am I going to do? I’m going
to stand on ceremony? If it’s a legitimate criticism? You know, I’m a
big boy. I’ll take it.
KING: What was the motive?
GERAGOS: Gee, you got me. That was one of the questions we had all along.
KING: I mean, as everyone kept saying, what about divorce?
GERAGOS: It morphed — it morphed, I think. The prosecution’s original
theory I think was for Amber, that he was in love with Amber. When it
became apparent that that wasn’t going to fly, then it became, well, he
wanted to be footloose and fancy-free. I don’t think for a second that
either of those make any sense, but like I say, we’ll have to wait and
see how it plays out on appeal.
KING: What’s your read of the crime? Like who do you think did it?
GERAGOS: I have got — I have got various theories. I don’t know yet.
It’s still under investigation, and I certainly wouldn’t at this point
speculate on it, but it’s still under investigation. There’s tips coming
in all the time. There’s people who are investigating it, and rightfully
so. So I’m not going to get in the way of that.
KING: How has it affected your business?
GERAGOS: I don’t think that it’s affected business at all.
KING: Still clients coming in?
GERAGOS: Clients — I’ve got more clients than I know what to do with,
and I have hired a couple of lawyers recently. So it hasn’t killed
business, so to speak. It has a — I mean, there are people, who, as I
indicated before, can’t get past the fact that you could represent
somebody who is that reviled, and that is troublesome to me. I mean,
there is — there is a — every lawyer who is sworn in in this state, in
California, takes an oath that says, you’re not going to let your
personal opinion or reputation get in the way of who you’re going to
represent.
KING: A rogue is in trouble in a court then, right? Scott was a rogue?
GERAGOS: Well, you have a situation where we have reached the point
where the media has, in what I call these supersize cases, they decide
or they champion the idea of the conviction. They want to kind of try
and convict the person prior to there actually being a trial.
That’s a problem. You know, part of what’s happened is this kind of —
the Internet, where you don’t have to source, and it jumps over to
cable, and once it’s on cable, it goes to broadcast media, and then
certain things become fact that are not fact. You may get to a point in
America where we have to do what they do in England, which is shut it
down as soon as the case — as somebody gets filed on, so that you don’t
get to a point where the media convicts the person.
KING: They can’t cover the trial, right?
GERAGOS: Right. They can’t cover it, and you wait and you see later on.
It’s not a blanket elimination of the media, but it delays what it is,
and it’s only in — you know, the criticism, at least from my
standpoint, is not across the board. You can go into the courthouse in
any courthouse in this country, and 99.999 percent of the cases are
never covered by the media, have no affect whatsoever. Or if they are
covered, it’s on a one-day or a two-day blip. It’s only in these kind of
super size cases, where you have jurors who — where it affects jurors.
You get what I call stealth jurors.
KING: You think if this were not supersized, Scott would be not guilty?
GERAGOS: I think that if this case were tried and it was a reasonable
doubt standard, yes, I think he would have been found not guilty.
KING: And reasonable doubt (INAUDIBLE). And by the way, we have standing
invitations out to the prosecutors of the Peterson case, and to Laci’s
family as well, the Rochas. That invitation stands. We’ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GREG BERATLIS, JUROR, PETERSON CASE: If those bodies had never been
found, or had been found in the desert, or let’s say in Yosemite
National Park, we wouldn’t be here. But those bodies were found in the
one place he went prior to her being missing by anybody else — or
knowing when she was missing. That was the one place. And I played in my
mind over and over, conspiracy, was somebody trying to set up Scott? Was
somebody after Laci? It didn’t add up for me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: How are Scott’s parents doing?
GERAGOS: It’s tough on them. I mean, Jackie is incredibly strong, as is
Lee, but it’s tough. I mean, there’s — when they see him, and they
visited him…
KING: How often can they see him?
GERAGOS: Well, they can set up appointments and get up there, and they
have done it on a number of occasions, and they do it as often as they
can. And I think they — the family tries to see him at least once a week.
KING: Is he isolated?
GERAGOS: Well, everybody on death row is isolated in a certain sense.
He’s in a kind of a preliminary stage, and then he gets reevaluated at a
certain point, and then he gets certain other kinds of freedoms, in
terms of associating — or having a larger area in which to go into. But
it’s a fairly isolated lifestyle.
KING: Everyone in his area is on death watch, right?
GERAGOS: Yeah. This — well, you say death watch; they’re all on death
row. There’s very little — especially the situation he’s in right now,
very little human contact and human interaction other than the visits.
KING: And he can go out and exercise?
GERAGOS: Well, occasionally, and that gradually happens the longer you
are there.
KING: Define reasonable doubt.
GERAGOS: Well, that’s a good question. The jury instruction says it’s an
abiding conviction. Something I often talk to jurors about it, is it’s
that state of mind where you can wake up every morning of every day for
the rest of your life and say, yeah, I’m sure I don’t have any doubts
about this.
KING: That juror typified that, right?
GERAGOS: Well, that’s — they nicknamed — we nicknamed him Coach. And
he looked torn, as you could see. There was somebody who’d struggled.
I’ve seen other interviews with Coach, and he legitimately looked to me
to be torn up by the process. I don’t think anybody who could go through
this on any side or be affiliated with this wasn’t affected. I mean,
there was kind of a siege mentality.
The first couple of months, the prosecution was rocked unmercifully by
the media in this case. The last couple of months, it was the defense
who was rocked by the media in this case. It was constantly a state of
siege.
But that, you know, notwithstanding, there was a couple of families that
were in there. I mean, there was the Rocha family in there, dealing with
the death of their loved ones. There was the Peterson family in there,
dealing with — you know, they considered Laci a daughter and Connor
their grandson as well. I mean, the raw emotion that was in that
courtroom was palpable, and it wore on people.
You take that and combine it with the fact that it’s a death penalty
case, where they’re trying to take somebody’s life, the state is trying
to take somebody’s life, and the fact that the families at one point
were so close and so united, you don’t get — at least from my
standpoint — more of an emotional cauldron than what we had in that
courtroom. And it was tough, it was wearing.
KING: Do high-profile people, Simpson, Michael Jackson, have an edge?
GERAGOS: Without a doubt. Without a doubt. You have a constituency. No
matter who you are, there are people out there who want to be
predisposed to give you a presumption of innocence because of your
celebrity. That is not the case with most people who go through the
criminal justice system. Most people who go through the criminal justice
system suffer from what I always say, the presumption of guilt, which
is, you ask jurors, when we do jury voir dire here, in cases where
there’s not this kind of coverage, do you believe where there is smoke
there is fire? Most jurors will tell you, you know what, I actually do.
He wouldn’t be sitting here, you know, the police wouldn’t have arrested
him, they wouldn’t go through this much trouble unless he did something.
So if he did something, yeah, I’m kind of predisposed to that, and
that’s the way that most people think, and it’s not that it’s a wrong
way to think. I suppose in some ways, that’s a common sense way to think
about life and how you approach life. But when you get into a courtroom,
the presumption of innocence is the one thing that separates us from
other civilized societies, or uncivilized societies.
KING: Take a break, and when we come back in our remaining moments, I’ll
ask Mark about his plans. Don’t go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BERATLIS: For me, Mr. G. would be a person I would want to represent me
in any situation. I thought that he was very thorough. I think that
there was no stone unturned, that he didn’t — I mean, I think he did a
very good job of presenting his side.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: A plus for Mr. Geragos, another plus. Earlier this year, a judge
approved a landmark $20 million settlement in a class action lawsuit
against New York Life, for unpaid life insurance benefits to the
descendants of Armenians killed 90 years ago in the Turkish — Ottoman
Empire.
GERAGOS: Yeah, in the span of one year, I had probably the low in my
career and the high in my career. I mean, I’m Armenian 100 percent,
Armenian. This case was a class action that we filed, and New York Life
stepped up to the plate and settled this case for $20 million, and it’s
the oldest case from inception to resolution. 1915 is when the Armenian
genocide was.
KING: But did they have the policies?
GERAGOS: And they had the policies. We were able to show that, through
discovery, we got the policies. We’ve showed it. We’ve actually set up a
Web site. People have made claims; over 3,000 claims have been made. And
we’ve now moved on to another company, AXA, which used to be the Old
Equitable (ph), and we filed suit against them. They have, based on our
research, almost 5,000 policies during the same time of the Ottoman Empire.
KING: Death of Johnnie Cochran?
GERAGOS: Oh, I have known Johnnie — Johnnie was in the DA’s office with
my father. They were — all three of us are what’s called Old Bailey
members, and I’ve known him since I was a kid. And I saw him three days
before he went into the hospital with Ben Brafman and Michael Jackson up
in the Beverly Hills house.
KING: And what are you going to do? You’re going to come back regularly
on this show now? You’re going to write a book? What are you going to do?
GERAGOS: Well, I was thinking maybe you and I would write a book. What
do you think about that?
KING: Let’s write a book.
GERAGOS: I want to write a book…
KING: What else you want to do?
GERAGOS: I probably want to try — I have got a couple more cases I need
to try. I got a backlog. When you’re out of commission for a year…
KING: Do you want to return to media?
GERAGOS: I probably do. I think that there is — I think that the pundit
world is overrepresented by the prosecutorial side, and so I think there
needs to be some kind of balance.
KING: So what are you saying is you want to come on as Geragos for the
defense?
GERAGOS: I don’t — you know, I could never be a DA. Could you? Could
you be a prosecutor?
KING: It would be hard. GERAGOS: It would be hard, wouldn’t it?
KING: Thank you, Mark.
GERAGOS: OK, Larry, good to see you.
KING: Mark Geragos, we thank him very much. We’ve had quite a week, and
into tonight, celebrating our 20th anniversary at CNN.
Old friend of yours, Nancy Grace, will be here tomorrow night. She’s got
a book coming out called “Objection!” — with an exclamation point.
We always have an exclamation point when we turn things over to Aaron
Brown, do we not? In fact, it should be “NEWSNIGHT” with an exclamation
point. What do you think of that, Aaron?
AARON BROWN, HOST, “NEWSNIGHT”: I think that’s a fine idea, but you know
what? I hope you get 20 more good ones.
KING: Thank you, Aaron.
BROWN: Twenty more good years. I do.
KING: Thank you, baby. Go get’em.
BROWN: Thank you. I shall.
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