Last week, television viewers were treated to a courtroom spectacle that has been derided as a three ring circus presided over by, as MSNBC's Tucker Carlson described him, "the most infamous judge in America." The judge, Larry Seidlin, held a hearing with the sole purpose of determining who would get custody of the decomposing corpse of Anna Nicole Smith who died on Feb. 8. The proceedings, which should have been concluded within half a day, dragged on for six days until its surprise ending on Feb. 22.
Seidlin is a probate judge in Broward County, Florida. He is a former Bronx cab driver who obtained his law degree by attending night school. He has been on the bench for almost 30 yeqrs and is nearing retirement, Those critical of the Anna Nicole hearing accuse him of using the televised proceedings to audition for the next Judge Judy show. Carlson called him a "self promoter" and described his conduct of the hearing as an "outrageous performance." A member of the Florida bar has initiated proceedings to bring Judge Larry up before the State's Judicial Qualifications Committee.
Some have suggested Seidlin may be mentally unstable. Indeed, Judge Larry displayed some bipolar tendencies in that he alternated joking and laughing with spells of sadness and crying. As the proceedings dragged on, his pontifications became more frequent. He asked more questions of the witnesses than did all the attorneys representing the three parties involved in the fight for the remains of Anna Nicole. On occasion, when a witness hesitated answering a question, Judge Larry would even answer it for him.
Judge Larry, playing up to the television cameras, clearly lost control of the hearing, and at times lacked self control. Shades of Judge Lance Ito. You may recall that, in 1995, Ito presided over the Los Angeles Superior Court murder trial of O. J. Simpson. The trial lasted over eight months, but it only took the mostly black jury less than four hours to acquit the former football star. Over the months, it became clear that, like Judge Seidlin, Ito was playing up to the television cameras. Ito helped turn the Simpson trial into a media circus.
In my opinion, Judge Ito, more than anyone else, was responsible for Simpson's acquittal. Inadvertently aided by Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, the inept prosecutors, Ito allowed the defense to play the race card. A since disbarred F. Lee Bailey was allowed to ask Mark Fuhrman, a very experienced L.A. homicide detective, if he had ever used the word "nigger" in the past ten years. That question, and Darden's mistake in getting Simpson to try on the infamous glove, nullified the overwhelming evidence against Simpson in the minds of the black jurors.
Seidlin out-buffooned Ito. The hearing came to an abrupt end when instead of deciding in favor of one of the two claimants, Anna Nicole's mother or her bottom feeding lawyer-lover, a tearful Judge Larry released the decomposing corpse to the court appointed guardian of Anna Nicole's five month old daughter. His decision that the infant daughter was the next of kin with the right to take possession of her mother's body could have been rendered within a couple of hours after the start of the hearing. He took the hearing into Anna Nicole's drug use and into who the birth father of her new daughter might be, neither issue having any relevance whatsoever to the issue of who should get the body. As a result, the proceedings dragged on and on for six days at great expense to Florida taxpayers.
By his bipolar-like grandstanding, Seidlin allowed the hearing to become a theater of the absurd. Very few Americans have ever attended a court trial. Their impressions of court proceedings are formed by television dramas or by televised court proceedings involving celebrities like Simpson and Anna Nicole. The Anna Nicole hearing has garnered world-wide attention. Seidlin's buffoonery has done serious harm to the image and reputation of the American judicial system.
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