When Literary and Prosecutorial License Collide

[flashl]

Prosecutors who draw on their professional experiences to write novels and assist screenwriters can breathe a little easier after a pair of rulings issued on Monday by the California Supreme Court.

One decision reversed an appeals court ruling disqualifying a prosecutor who had provided filmmakers with his files in a pending case. The other reversed a similar ruling against a prosecutor who had written a novel whose plot bore similarities to a second pending case.

The case asserting a cinematic conflict of interest involved Jesse James Hollywood, who faces the death penalty for his role in the 2000 kidnapping and murder of a 15-year-old boy. While Mr. Hollywood was a fugitive in Brazil in 2003, Ronald Zonen, a deputy district attorney in Santa Barbara, gave information and documents about him to Nick Cassavetes, a director and screenwriter.

Mr. Zonen, who was not paid for his consulting work, said he had hoped the film would lead to Mr. Hollywood’s apprehension. Mr. Hollywood was captured in 2005, before the film appeared. His lawyers filed a motion to disqualify Mr. Zonen from the case, saying he had acted unethically and had hurt Mr. Hollywood’s chances of receiving a fair trial.

An appeals court agreed. “Prosecutors should try their cases in courtrooms,” Justice Kenneth R. Yegan of the California Court of Appeals wrote in 2006, “not in the newspapers, television or the movies.”

America's Most Wanted is not good enough?