Prosecutors in Robert Durst’s murder trial filed papers Friday asking that some witnesses be allowed to testify through video conferencing instead of appearing in court before jurors in a case in which the New York real estate scion is charged with killing his longtime friend at her home in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles.
Prosecutors contend that out-of-state non-principal witnesses who are over 60 years old or have existing health issues should be permitted to testify through a contemporaneous, two-way video conference system such as Zoom or Skype to “avoid potential contagion or spread of contagion during air travel” in light of the global coronavirus pandemic.
“It is our position that given the advanced age of nearly all of the out-of-state witnesses in the case, the directives from the local and federal authorities that such individuals avoid any air travel unless absolutely necessary, as well as for the health and welfare of the jurors, court staff, attorneys, spectators, etc., that the only prudent step is to allow for the contemporaneous two-way video testimony from these older out-of-state witnesses,” prosecutors wrote in their motion.
The filing comes three days after Durst’s attorneys asked Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windham to declare a mistrial in the 77-year-old defendant’s case.
Defense attorneys contend in their filing that a lengthy delay caused by the pandemic has “made it impossible” for Durst to get a fair trial. They wrote that there has been a “prejudicial mid-trial delay” and it is “unrealistic” given the length of the break in the trial to expect jurors to remember the evidence they heard about Susan Berman’s December 2000 shooting death.
The panel last heard evidence on March 12 and has been excused until at least May 26, but the next court date has now been pushed back to June 23.
In their court filing Tuesday, Durst’s attorneys wrote that “convening a new trial when it is safe to do so” may result in the prosecution’s witnesses being able to travel to Los Angeles to testify in court.
“More specifically, the People’s repeated suggestion that the court resume trial via Zoom video conferencing should be rejected as violative of defendant’s Constitutional rights and utterly impractical,” the defense attorneys wrote in their motion.
The prosecution’s latest motion involves witnesses who have not given videotaped testimony.
Earlier this week, prosecutors filed a motion asking the judge to jurors to hear videotaped testimony of the government’s star witness, Nathan “Nick” Chavin, and three other people who live outside of California after the trial resumes.
In their court papers, prosecutors wrote that the four are all over 65 years old and are “at higher risk of severe illness or death due to COVID-19” and asked the judge to find that they are unavailable to travel to Southern California to appear before the jury in Durst’s trial.
Chavin, now 75 and a New York state resident, was videotaped while testifying at a February 2017 hearing that he asked Durst about their mutual friend, Berman, and that Durst responded that he “had no choice.”
“Bob said, `I had to. It was her or me. I had no choice,” Chavin said of the conversation that he said took place with his longtime friend after a dinner in December 2014.
Asked then if he still felt a bond with Durst, Chavin said, “It sounds ridiculous, but yes.”
“This was a best friend who admitted to killing my other best friend,” he said then.
Prosecutors are also asking the judge to allow jurors to hear the videotaped testimony of Charles Lachman, Steven Silverman and retired New York Police Department detective Michael Struk, who each testified in court earlier.
Prosecutors allege that Durst killed Berman after she told him she was going to talk to investigators looking into the still-unsolved 1982 disappearance of Durst’s first wife, Kathie.
Durst was acquitted of murder in Texas after testifying that he killed his neighbor, Morris Black, in self-defense in September 2001. Los Angeles County prosecutors alleged that Durst was in Galveston, Texas, while posing as a mute woman after authorities launched a new investigation into what had happened to Kathie Durst.
In his opening statement in Durst’s Los Angeles murder trial, the defendant’s lead attorney told jurors that Durst panicked after finding the woman’s body inside her home while coming to visit her for the holidays. Durst wrote an anonymous “cadaver note” that was subsequently mailed to Beverly Hills police so her body would be found, DeGuerin said.
“Bob Durst did not kill Susan Berman and he does not know who did. He did find her body shortly after someone had shot her in the head,” DeGuerin said, noting that jurors would hear Durst testify in his own defense during the trial.
Durst was profiled in a six-part HBO television series “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” in which the defendant was later recorded saying “There it is, you’re caught” and “killed them all, of course.”
DeGuerin told the panel that the series was “heavily edited” and “not a documentary.”
Durst has been behind bars since March 14, 2015, when he was taken into custody in a New Orleans hotel room hours before the airing of the final episode of the HBO series, which examined Kathie’s disappearance and the killings of Berman and Black.
Durst has been long estranged from his real estate-rich family, which is known for ownership of a series of New York City skyscrapers — including an investment in the World Trade Center. He split with the family when his younger brother was placed in charge of the family business, leading to a drawn-out legal battle.
According to various media reports, Durst ultimately reached a settlement under which the family paid him $60 million to $65 million.
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