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Jeffrey Toobin has a great local item this week in The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" department. After police arrested Juan Catalan for the murder last May 12 of a witness in a Los Angeles gang case, he swore he had an alibi. Catalan said he had been at Dodger Stadium with his daughter, watching Eric Gagne blow a lead and the Dodgers lose 11-4 to the Braves. He produced ticket stubs, but the police had a witness placing him at the murder scene. Defense lawyer Todd Melnik even subpoenaed the Fox TV broadcast and the tape of every fan shown during the game on the Dodger Vision video screen, but he couldn't prove his client was there. Then Melnik (and Catalan) got lucky.
Melnik...learned that on the evening of May 12th the HBO comedy series “Curb Your Enthusiasm” had been shooting scenes in the ballpark. In that episode, which aired earlier this year, Larry David, the star of the show, attends a Dodgers game with a prostitute. (David doesn’t hire her for sex but, rather, to sit with him in his car so that he can travel in the car-pool lane on his way to the game.) Melnik asked if he could examine the HBO footage, too."It sounded very cool because my life is so lacking in anything interesting," David said last week. "It did seem like kind of a lame story, but I told the lawyer, ‘Go ahead, go crazy. Look at anything you want.’ And we hooked him up with everything from the stadium, all the footage we shot that night." On the day that Melnik came in to see the tapes, David at first left him to watch on his own, but later he stuck his head in the editing room, where the lawyer was examining the footage.
“I’m there for maybe five minutes, and the lawyer screams out, ‘There he is!’” David recalled. “We couldn’t believe it. We rewound the tape, and just as I’m walking up the aisle in one shot, this guy is sitting right there. And then there was another shot where he was standing up.” Melnik said, “Jesus Christ, if I didn’t jump three feet in the air! It was totally a eureka moment.”
The tape's time codes and cell phone records cinched it. A judge dismissed the charges after Catalan spent 5½ months in jail. AP moved a story today. The L.A. Times has yet to pick up on the tale (or to have ever reported on Catalan, based on a search of LATimes.com). Hat tip to Jon at Dodger Thoughts, who comments on the story.
** Further hat tips!: The Daily News covered Catalan's release in January, mentioning an HBO video but not David or "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Harvey Levin had it on "Celebrity Justice" back in April, with footage of Catalan, and talked about it on MSNBC's "Abrams Report." A kind reader sent along the Lexis-Nexis transcript. An excerpt follows.
*** Drawing the short straw: J. Michael Kennedy gets the duty to follow up in Thursday's L.A. Times. Catalan is off to do morning talk shows in New York, though the story sort of implies it all began with the New Yorker item.
That excerpt from MSNBC in April:
HARVEY LEVIN: Honest to God, Dan, it's one of the most amazing stories that I've seen since we launched the show. I mean it is so beyond what you would believe in a movie, and it happened.ABRAMS: And so he -- at what point does he realize, wait a second, I remember Larry David being there. Does he say this to his lawyer and his lawyer says well maybe they have outtakes?
LEVIN: It was his girlfriend. He didn't really remember. But when the lawyer finally got the date from the police, his girlfriend is the one who remembered you were at Dodgers Stadium with your daughter. He told his lawyer that and his lawyer contacted Larry David. And you know he -- Juan had remembered that, yes, they were shooting this thing. He didn't even know who Larry David was. He certainly does now.
ABRAMS: Wow and this tape was shown in court. I mean did they actually have to go to court to get him freed?
LEVIN: A judge actually dismissed it. You know Dan, I've got to tell you, this guy spent five and a half months in jail. And the reason that this all went down is because there was one eyewitness at the murder scene who looked at Juan's picture in a lineup and said that's the guy. But Juan didn't really match the height, the weight or the skin color of the man that everybody else had identified there. So it was rather thin to begin with.
Eric Gagne does not blow leads. Last May 12, he gave up four runs in the 10th inning, with the game already tied, but his save streak remains intact.
Posted by: Steve Smith at June 2, 2004 08:30 AMThe CBS Evening News (at least in the Eastern Time Zone) is doing a piece on this story, tonight.
Posted by: Craig6z at June 2, 2004 03:33 PMAn interesting side note for those who care, when presented with this evidence, the District Attorney's office refused to dismiss the case, contending there was a few minute window in which the defendant could have rushed out of Dodger stadium, driven to the scene, and done murder (meaning he would have had to leave in the middle of the game moments after being fortuitously filmed at the stadium).
When the judge found out that they wouldn't dismiss, she did it herself. But, the District Attorney's office still wanted to either execute or imprison this person for the rest of his life despite proof of his innocence.
Posted by: PD Dude at June 2, 2004 06:01 PMWow. Hadn't heard about that. Good story.
Posted by: Patterico at June 2, 2004 10:19 PM
Hey,
I read the New Yorker piece and remembered hearing about it months ago. The memory of it stuck with me, not only because of the amazing story but also because my girfriend was an extra on that episode of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm.
I showed her the New Yorker story, and we both thought for sure we read it in the LA Times months ago (I even remember a photo of the just-freed Catalan fixing up a beat-up car at home with his dad).
But after searching Factiva, all I came up with was an excerpt from a tv news show more than a month before the New Yorker piece ran. Still, I'm sure I read this somewhere...
(excerpt from Factiva)
News; International
THE ABRAMS REPORT For April 16, 2004, MSNBC
Dan Abrams, Jeannie Ohm
9,038 words
16 April 2004
MSNBC: ABRAMS REPORT
English
(c) 2004 FDCH / eMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ABRAMS: Larry David, the creator of "Seinfeld" and star of the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is often seen as the frustrated man`s hero, the one who highlights all the quirks of our sometimes puzzling society, known for taking seemingly benign situations and creating outrageous or hilarious circumstances from them. Well, an amazing story that sounds more like an episode of his sitcom than reality, Larry David, believe it or not, turned out to be the one person able to save an apparently innocent man from death row by showing one of his tapes.
"Celebrity Justice`s" Omar Lagonis (ph) has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get in the car. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER, "CELEBRITY JUSTICE" (voice-over): It`s arguably one of the funniest episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm`s" fourth season, the one where Larry David picks up a prostitute just so he can use the carpool lane in a mad dash to make a Dodger game before the first pitch. David and his enthusiasm crew shot scenes from the episode on location at L.A.`s Dodger Stadium in May of 2003.
That same night far from the roar of the ballpark, tragedy, a 16-year- old pregnant girl shot and killed as she walked along an L.A. sidewalk. Three months later police arrested this man, Juan Catalan. He was charged with murder. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My whole world turned upside down. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Why Juan? The victim was killed one week after testifying in a separate murder case involving Juan`s brother. Police accused Juan of killing her as retribution for her testimony.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is not me and I did not do this (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: "CJ" has obtained an audiotape from Juan`s LAPD interrogation, in which he repeatedly maintains his innocence. But cops had a witness who placed him at the scene. Juan`s attorney Todd Melnik.
TODD L. MELNIK, ATTORNEY: When they interrogated him, they didn`t tell him the date that this murder happened. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And even when Juan realized the murder happened May 12, he couldn`t remember exactly what he was doing that day. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So I called my girlfriend and she told me that -- she was the one that reminded me that I was at the Dodgers` game that day with my daughter. So then that`s when it all came back to me. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Juan remembered that was the day Larry David was filming "Curb Your Enthusiasm" at Dodger Stadium. The cameras were close to where Juan was sitting. His attorney immediately contacted Larry David`s production company. MELNIK: And they invited me to come down to their offices and I viewed the tape with Larry David. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: With David by his side, Todd Melnik tells "CJ" he will never forget the moment he found the proof he needed. MELNIK: It was unbelievable that my client would be caught in the corner of an outtake that could spare him the death penalty. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Melnik says this outtake tape shown in court, along with cell phone records, cleared his client`s name. Even Larry David couldn`t have devised a better ending. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank God for Larry David.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ABRAMS: That was Omar Lagonis (ph) from "Celebrity Justice". Joining me now is "Celebrity Justice" creator and executive producer, Harvey Levin. Harv, what a story (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
HARVEY LEVIN, "CELEBRITY JUSTICE": Honest to God, Dan, it`s one of the most amazing stories that I`ve seen since we launched the show. I mean it is so beyond what you would believe in a movie, and it happened. ABRAMS: And so he -- at what point does he realize, wait a second, I remember Larry David being there. Does he say this to his lawyer and his lawyer says well maybe they have outtakes? LEVIN: It was his girlfriend. He didn`t really remember. But when the lawyer finally got the date from the police, his girlfriend is the one who remembered you were at Dodgers Stadium with your daughter. He told his lawyer that and his lawyer contacted Larry David. And you know he -- Juan had remembered that, yes, they were shooting this thing. He didn`t even know who Larry David was. He certainly does now. ABRAMS: Wow and this tape was shown in court. I mean did they actually have to go to court to get him freed? LEVIN: A judge actually dismissed it. You know Dan, I`ve got to tell you, this guy spent five and a half months in jail. And the reason that this all went down is because there was one eyewitness at the murder scene who looked at Juan`s picture in a lineup and said that`s the guy. But Juan didn`t really match the height, the weight or the skin color of the man that everybody else had identified there. So it was rather thin to begin with. ABRAMS: And very quickly, Larry David apparently cheered when he found out about it? LEVIN: Yes, I mean can you imagine? I mean you`re innocently shooting a movie and then the scales of justice tip the right way because of what you did. It`s really incredible. ABRAMS: Harvey Levin, "Celebrity Justice", thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.
LEVIN: My pleasure Dan.
Yes, Andy, that's the MSNBC appearance I excerpted in the post. Thanks for adding the full text.
Posted by: Kevin Roderick at June 5, 2004 03:01 PM
of LA Observed
This is a great story, both with and without the Dodgers/Hollywood alibi.
A 16-year-old girl, a witness to a murder in the SFV, gets gunned down, apparently to silence her in yet another murder case, and the suspect is the brother of the suspect in the first case?
Come on, this is damn near Shakespearean...
I fully understand the realities of crime in the Valley (much less the city) but it strikes me that these cases do not come along on a daily or even weekly basis...certainly not with a 16-year-old girl as the victim.
It's bad enough that the Times missed this, but did the Daily News have it either?
The LADA's office probably has the most obliging media relations staff in the country, at least in terms of simply keeping cases and reporters up to date, so the initial case should have been on some daily reporter's calendar/tracker/tickler file ... and if no one but the AP had this, that is pretty damn sad.
Full disclosure: I once worked in what used to be the CCB...and in the two years I worked there, the LAT probably had at least four or five reporters on the beat.
One of them actually worked out of the press room during her term; the others dropped in, but they all worked out of Spring Street.
Posted by: Brad Smith at June 1, 2004 10:50 PM