Going Courting in Santa Barbara

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Judge for Yourself: “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players,” wrote William Shakespeare. Santa Barbara courtrooms, too, are theaters where justice of sorts is dealt out by a cast of players headed not by poets or playwrights but black-robed judges.

In the Moorish-style County Courthouse, dating to 1929 but looking positively medieval inside, all is dark and somber, redolent of the majesty of the law, at least as applied by mere, fallible humans.

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The lofty ceilings have seen far too much, the acoustics are rotten, the echoing tile corridors shadowy, and the courtroom seats fashioned of leather straps torture the body and soul of all who dare stay long. An ideal venue to try a man for murder most foul, certainly.

Instead, the trial of the eerily named Jesse James Hollywood is being held across Santa Barbara Street in a bright and shiny Superior Court room where the seats are as soft as those at the Granada Theatre. Blond paneling lines the walls. Within this cheery room, Hollywood is on trial for a cold-blooded killing at which he was not even present. But he ordered the murder of unlucky 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz, prosecutors say.

Meanwhile, in a bland, chilly room at the Santa Barbara College of Law, the feds are prosecuting Wendy McCaw’s Santa Barbara News-Press over the latest laundry list of alleged labor law violations. Even if the paper is found in violation, labor law has fewer teeth than a newborn baby. And if McCaw loses, she’ll certainly appeal once more. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is, among other things, accusing the News-Press of failing to bargain in good faith with the newsroom and Teamsters Union for the past 18 months. According to the NLRB, little of substance has been accomplished in hammering out a union contract. At this rate, everyone involved will be on Social Security before one is signed, if in fact that ever happens in view of McCaw’s well-known antipathy toward unions.

In opening statements last Tuesday, News-Press attorney Barry Cappello denied this and all other allegations and charged that what the union really wants is to control news content of the paper, contrary to the First Amendment. The NLRB and the union deny this.

The NLRB is also accusing management of interfering with its investigations regarding employees hired, and in some cases given pink slips, as though no union existed. One is former $75,000 columnist Richard Mineards.

Appeals litter the legal landscape like short stories in the New Yorker that have no discernable endings. Back in November 2007, an NLRB judge ruled that eight News-Press reporters were illegally fired. It should not surprise anyone who has followed the twists and turns of the case that the journalists are still not rehired. That’s on appeal by the News-Press. When the NLRB asked a federal judge to order them back to work pending the appeal, he refused, citing the First Amendment. That’s on appeal by the NLRB.

The mood at the NLRB hearing is by no means as strict as the one at Jesse James Hollywood’s trial. After all, a life is at stake. Judge Brian Hill has posted a “Decorum Order Regarding Jurors.” “No person shall … obstruct, impede, attempt to influence, or otherwise interfere with any juror in this case.” Or for that matter, communicate with, photograph, sketch, identify by name, or publish a previously taken photo of a juror. (The last might be hard to enforce.) Violation of the order constitutes a misdemeanor. Cameras and cell phone cameras are banned.

Nicholas Markowitz was just walking down a San Fernando Valley street one day in August 2000, when Hollywood and his friends drove by looking for Nicholas’s brother Ben, who happened to owe Hollywood a $1,200 drug debt. Officials say the group kidnapped Nicholas, brought him to Santa Barbara, and, well, one thing led to another. Hollywood, now 29, is denying through his lawyer that he ordered his pals to kill the boy. Four alleged accomplices have already been sentenced. Bearing some measure of guilt but uncharged are a number of young Santa Barbarans who saw the boy tied up during his days here but didn’t blow the whistle and save his life. Such is the state of youth in America.

The small courtroom gradually fills every morning and a line tends to form outside. Sample drama: Defense attorney James Blatt grills sullen prosecution witness Chas Saulsbury, who snaps back and has a memory problem. Judge Hill tells the young witness, who’s nattily dressed for the occasion in dark shorts and flip-flops, to stop making rude, uncalled-for remarks to the attorney. When Blatt persists with the intense grilling, Judge Hill warns him, “You’re badgering the witness … move on.”

The senseless killing has been made into a book and a movie, Alpha Dog, which has grossed more than $32 million. (Crime does pay, for some.)

Meanwhile, the young triggerman, Ryan Hoyt, sits on death row and a second youth is serving a life sentence. All this over a $1,200 drug debt. What were they thinking?

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