JAIL WILL KILL HIM, BLAKE TELLS '20/20'.Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer ROBERT BLAKE Robert Blake may be:
Against his attorney's wishes, Blake granted a jail house interview to Barbara Walters Barbara Jill Walters[1] (born September 25, 1929[2]) is an American journalist, writer and media personality who has been a regular fixture on morning television shows (Today and The View), an evening news magazine (20/20 on Feb. 17, and it airs at 10 tonight on ABC's newsmagazine ``20/20.'' According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. transcript excerpts released Tuesday by ABC ABC in full American Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. television network. It began when the expanding national radio network NBC split into the separate Red and Blue networks in 1928. , Blake maintained his innocence and used the interview in part to communicate with his toddler daughter, Rose, hoping she will see a tape of it when she is old enough to understand her mother's death and her father's arrest. Blake, a former child actor best-known for his role in the movie ``In Cold Blood'' and the title character of the detective series ``Baretta,'' maintained as he did in a recent deposition that he expects to die behind bars if he is convicted of the May 4, 2001, shooting death of Bonny Lee Bakley. He has been held without bail since April 18, 2002, and his preliminary hearing has been delayed because of changes in his defense team. The trial is expected to be long, as prosecutors outline their motive theory and defense attorneys attack the reputation of the victim, who they say cheated men out of thousands of dollars in online schemes. Selecting the jury alone could take weeks. ``I'm not going to live for another year in jail,'' said the actor, whose untinted hair is white and whose face appears gaunt. ``I'm 70 years old. Things happen to old people. They get aneurysms, they get strokes, they get heart attacks.'' He blamed the police and prosecutors for his circumstance. ``What do I care (if I'm convicted)?'' he said. ``How do you kill a dead man? They took away my entire past. They took away my entire future. What's left for them to take?'' Blake, who has been in solitary confinement solitary confinement n. the placement of a prisoner in a Federal or state prison in a cell away from other prisoners, usually as a form of internal penal discipline, but occasionally to protect the convict from other prisoners or to prevent the prisoner from causing at Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. County Jail, said he has never thought of killing himself. On the other hand, he expressed confidence that his attorney, Thomas Mesereau Thomas Arthur Mesereau, Jr. is an American trial attorney and former amateur boxer best known for successfully defending Michael Jackson in the 2005 child molestation trial. , will win his freedom. ``No, I'm not going to be found guilty,'' Blake said. ``Why? It's real simple: 'Cause God has never, ever deserted me. Can't say I haven't deserted him from time to time. ...'' At one point in the two-hour interview, Blake addressed his young daughter through the lens: ``Rosie, I'm your daddy, I'm your daddy from way, way back when you were 2 weeks old, and I held you in my hands, and I said, 'God, please take care of Rosie.'... This might be 10 years from now. And if I'm sitting next to you, that's great. But if you're sitting at my grave, I don't want you saying, 'Daddy, why were you a bad man?' See? I don't want that. And that's what I want to clear up here.'' Walters' ABC colleague Diane Sawyer  This article or section is written like an .Please help [ rewrite this article] from a neutral point of view. Mark blatant advertising for , using . tried months ago to interview Blake, who had been anxious all along for the opportunity to speak about the case outside of testimony. Blake's first defense attorney, Harland Braun, quit the case because his client was so insistent about speaking up. But Sawyer's request was denied by Sheriff Lee Baca Leroy David Baca (b. May 27 1942, East Los Angeles, California) is the Sheriff of Los Angeles County, California. After graduating from Benjamin Franklin High School (Los Angeles) in 1960, Baca worked his way through East Los Angeles College before starting with the L.A. . Walters, reported to be in an intense professional rivalry with Sawyer, made her own request to the Sheriff's Department, which prompted another defense attorney, Jennifer Keller Jennifer Keller is a fictional character in the science fiction television series Stargate Atlantis, played by Canadian actress Jewel Staite. She first appeared in the episode "First Strike". , to quit as well. The New York Daily News New York Daily News Morning daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson and his cousin Robert McCormick as a subsidiary of the Tribune Co. of Chicago. The first successful tabloid-format newspaper in the U.S. reports that Walters pointed out to Baca that his predecessor, Sheriff Sherman Block, allowed her to talk with accused killers Erik and Lyle Menendez in 1996 in the same jail. When ABC programmers learned the Blake interview would be ready, they pre-empted Sawyer's ``Primetime'' to make room for it under the ``20/20'' brand associated with Walters. 20/20 What: Barbara Walters' exclusive interview with actor and accused murderer Robert Blake. Where: ABC (Channel 7). When: 10 tonight. |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion