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162 Chapter Fourteen DNA Takes to Television  Thesearchforinnocentinmateswasn’t restricted to the in-house work of the district attorney’s office or that of the Innocence Project at Cardozo University. One day my telephone rang, and one of the most interesting conversations I had ever taken part in ensued. The caller was a man named John Bunnell, who explained to me that he was a close friend of a professional acquaintance of mine, Rod Englert. I had known Englert for years, our paths having crossed both in the prosecution of our San Diego criminal cases and at training seminars sponsored by the National College of District Attorneys. A detective, then a lieutenant, in the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department in Portland, Oregon, Englert was one of the most experienced investigators in the field of crime-scene reconstruction and was an internationally known expert on interpreting bloodstain patterns to determine how offenses had occurred. Bunnell explained that he had formerly been in the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department with Englert. Now, he was host of the television series World’s Wildest Police Videos. Why in the world was he calling me, I thought to myself. The producer of his show, Paul Stojanovich, wanted to do a program on DNA, Bunnell said. My curiosity got the better of me. I told Bunnell I had spent quite a bit of time on the subject. He wanted to get together for dinner the next night with me and David Simons, an executive producer from Hollywood. I agreed to meet them at their suggested location: the Top of the Cove restaurant in La Jolla, a well-known eatery. Getting some background information on Simons was irresistible. Thanks to the Internet, I learned that he had been producer and executive producer of several television programs. He had even been nominated for an Emmy award for a children’s program broadcast by the Showtime and R4400.indb 162 R4400.indb 162 8/24/07 11:46:49 AM 8/24/07 11:46:49 AM 163 DNA Takes to Television Hallmark networks. What could he have in mind for a program on DNA? Dinner with the two revealed the answer. Simons envisioned a live, reality television program focusing on cases of prison inmates who claimed that they were innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. The kicker: the program would include revealing the results of DNA testing to the convict live on the air; an immediate interview would be broadcast with the inmate’s reaction to the news. Bunnell and Simons could sense my disbelief at their idea. It might have been my blank stare. Simons asked whether I had doubts. I tried to explain that it wasn’t particularly easy to interview an inmate in a state prison. But they were undeterred. Then I tossed out my opinion that no warden would be excited about the prospect of having a live television crew in a prison facility, particularly if an inmate might be surprised by information that could affect his status as a convicted felon. Simons was still unmoved. If a live broadcast wasn’t possible, why couldn’t the inmates still agree to DNA testing and be interviewed in prison about the results? That was a little harder to take apart. “How would the cases be identified?” I asked him, given that there must be nearly a million prisoners in state and federal penitentiaries across the country. After thinking about the proposal, however, I told Simons and Bunnell that there might be a way to identify potential cases. The Innocence Project, run by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, would be the place to start. Scheck and Neufeld had many cases that they thought deserved testing but no money to pay for the analysis. Simons interjected that they could pay for the testing. It was getting harder to make fun of Simons’s idea. I still couldn’t get past what I knew would be roadblocks placed in the path Simons envisioned for the program. Prison authorities didn’t answer to television producers. But he was insistent. What’s more, he wanted my help in putting the program together. They already had a partner in the program: the Fox television network . I complained that I was a lawyer, not a TV consultant. They persisted. No one knew more about the field than I did, Bunnell insisted. They both asked that I think about the idea. At least I had a great dinner at one...

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