ABOUT THIS COMPANY

ABOUT THIS COMPANY

Former television star Robert Blake was arrested on April 18, 2002, and charged with murder in the shooting death of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. Because the charge included special circumstances of lying in wait, a capital offense in California, he was denied a bail hearing prior to his preliminary hearing, scheduled towards the end of the year. Since prosecutors had already announced that they would not seek the death penalty, Blake's defense attorney, who had previously alleged that he had been arrested as a publicity boost for the city's outgoing police chief, pressed the state Supreme Court to order a bail hearing. The hearing took place, and bail was denied. Shortly afterwards, police recovered two guns, ammunition and other objects stored in a gym bag from a barn on Blake's property, identifying the items as potential evidence in the related charges of conspiracy and solicitation to murder.

In the year's other major celebrity case, Winona Ryder's shoplifting charges finally went to trial in October. The actress had been arrested after being accused of stealing over $5,500 worth of clothing and accessories from a Saks Fifth Avenue outlet in Beverly Hills. After a two-week trial, jurors found Ryder guilty of grand theft and vandalism charges, but cleared her on a burglary count.

Busting bad cops

Nino Durden, one of the nine members of the LAPD's Rampart Division to be prosecuted after widespread allegations of widespread misconduct and corruption throughout the department, was sentenced in August 2002 to five years in state prison for conspiring to obstruct justice, perjury, grand theft and filing a false police report. Durden, one of seven officers convicted in the Rampart scandal, admitted to shooting Javier Francisco Ovando and planting a gun on him, then lying about it in court to secure a prison sentence for the unarmed victim. He also confessed to several other crimes committed with the help of his former partner, who had been granted immunity in the Ovando case in exchange for testimony implicating nearly 70 other officers.