Chapter 10
…had installed in his courtroom, which was on the same floor as Ito’s.
The system
created an instant electronic transcript that trial participants could
read
on computer screens as the trial progressed. The equipment was similar
to
the system Ito’s court reporters planned to use in the Simpson trial. When
Ito
turned down the media’s requests for a demonstration of the system in his
courtroom, Trammell gladly agreed to show them his. Ito’s loss, so far
as
endearing himself to the media was concerned, was Trammell’s gain. They
flocked to Trammell’s courtroom and quoted him extensively as he held
forth about the wonders of his new system.7
One December morning, a local
ABC-affiliate cameraman contacted me
about getting additional video footage of Trammell’s system that day during
the noon break. No problem, Trammell’s bailiff said when I checked with
him. He was already planning to be there with a friend of his—a professional
photographer who ran a celebrity look-alike business. The friend was bringing
an Ito look-alike so he could take pictures of him sitting on Trammell’s
bench.
I was stunned. Generally, any commercial use of court facilities
went
through the county’s film office. Curious about this favor the bailiff
was
doing for his friend, I trolled for details.
“What’s he doing for a robe?” I asked.
“Judge Trammell’s going to let him use his,” the bailiff, whom
I knew only
as Deputy Peal, replied, sounding pleased.
“Does Judge Ito know about it?”
Peal said he didn’t think so, then, to
my surprise, asked if I thought Ito
might like to come and watch.
“I don’t think he can,” I replied, wondering about the deputy’s judgment. “He has to attend a meeting.”
Although Peal obviously saw nothing problematic
about what he was up
to, what about Trammell? I decided to let Ito know. It was nearly noon
when
he took a break and I could talk to him.
“What?” he exclaimed. “Absolutely
not! Does Judge Trammell know about
this?”
I had assumed he did since Peal had indicated that his bench and
robe
were primary props, but I realized I needed to find out for sure. I scooted
down the back hall to Trammell’s courtroom but found it empty, and the
judge didn’t answer when I knocked on his closed chambers door or called
his private phone line.
“I have no authority to say what can or can’t happen
in another courtroom,”
Ito said when I reported back to him, but he thought criminal division
supervising judge Cecil Mills might.
I found Mills eating lunch three floors
down in the sixth-floor judges’
lounge. “You find Sergeant Smith,” he ordered, referring to the sheriff
’s sergeant
in charge of CCB security. “You tell him that if he doesn’t put a stop
to
it, I’m going to have his ass.”
Given that the photographer and look-alike
were due any minute, if, in
fact, they hadn’t already arrived, I raced back up to the ninth-floor security
screen in hopes of intercepting them and finding Smith.
Standing next to
the screen when I hustled up was a man wearing a shiny
gray suit and carrying a camera bag. Standing with him was a short, heavy,
profusely sweating Asian man in a dark suit. He looked more like a pudgy
Charlie Chan than he did Ito. One of the deputies on duty there was asking
a fellow deputy where Peal was.
“Wait!” I said. “Don’t let Deputy Peal take
them to the courtroom until I
talk to Sergeant Smith.”
At that moment, Smith emerged from his nearby office.
After filling him
in and getting assurance that the photo shoot wouldn’t happen, I hurried
off
to let Ito know, then told the TV cameraman I would arrange for him to
get
additional footage a little later. As I went down to the first floor to
go to my
county courthouse office, I was relieved to see Peal’s photographer friend
and the Asian man on their way out, too.8
Trammell still lurked on the Simpson
fringes, however. He wrote an article
that appeared while the trial was still in progress for a publication called
Court Technology Bulletin. In it, he referred to the trial as “Cirque du
O. J.” He
also took Ito to task for shunning his advice to use the kind of courtreporting
system he had in his courtroom, instead allowing the attorneys to
use an electronic system of their choice. That, he predicted, would cause
trouble.9 To my knowledge, it never did.
Trammell’s name ended up in print
again barely a year later, although not
in connection with the Simpson case. The fifty-nine-year-old judge, who
had
been on the bench for more than twenty-five years, began a sexual liaison
in
February of 1996 with a female defendant in a case before him. That ultimately
cost him his job, although he hastily retired before he could be forced
from the bench. He also lost his pension and eventually was convicted on
two
counts of criminal fraud for which he served two years in federal prison.10