Thursday, June 14, 2007

A showdown, and possible resolution?

I wasn't in court today, (still recovering with my back injury) but I did watch this morning's proceedings on Court TV and on KTLA's live stream coverage of the trial on the Internet.

Sara Caplan was wiping away the tears in her eyes with a Kleenex as she sat listening to Judge Fidler give his ruling. Judge Fidler said he did not want to be in the position he was in, and he admired Ms. Caplan for her principles, but the law was the law. She's being compelled to testify. She refuses, so Judge Fidler has no choice but to hold her in contempt. Lucky for Ms. Caplan that she's an attorney. Because of that, Judge Fidler is staying his contempt order until June 22nd, (that Fidler likened to contempt on "principle") and until all appellate issues have been exhausted. Fidler stated that Ms. Caplan wasn't going to jail today. Looks like this one might go all the way to the California Supreme Court, unless, there is some dramatic change in the direction of this case.

At the very last minute, Ms. Caplan's appellate attorney, Weberman, raised the question, "What if Dr. Lee doesn't testify?" And then a scramble took place where both sides agreed to try to work something out.

Did all of this drama really revolve around missing evidence, or does it really revolve around the prosecution getting leverage to prevent Dr. Henry Lee from testi-lying ~oops, I mean "testifying" in this case? Only time will tell which way this case unfolds.

Testimony in front of the jury will resume this afternoon at 1:30 pm PT.

Court TV's blog by Harriet Ryan

Los Angeles Times blog by Joe Spano and Peter Y. Hong

My trial notes for 5-22-07 are almost complete. Just need a little last minute editing.