Don't do the crime, if you can't pay the $30 million.
Robert Blake likely is in no mood to sing that or any tune after a civil jury in Burbank, California, ruled Friday that he intentionally caused the death of wife Bonny Lee Bakley, and that he should pay a whopping $30 million in damages to the slain woman's children.
The matter of Blake's liability was decided by a 10-2 vote; the damage amount by a 9-3 vote. (Jury decisions need not be unanimous in civil court.)
Earle Caldwell, Blake's codefendant and former bodyguard, is off the hook--by a 10-2 vote, jurors found that Caldwell did not conspire to kill Bakley.
The verdicts came on the eighth day of deliberations.
Blake left the courthouse through a back entrance without talking to reporters.
Victorious Bakley family attorney Eric Dubin did not similarly shy away from the cameras. "It's a good day for justice," Dubin said. "These kids lost their mom."
The 72-year-old Blake now finds himself in O.J. Simpson straits--a man acquitted of murder charges in criminal court, but all but branded a killer in civil court and theoretically wiped out by an eight-figure damages bill.
The similarities were not lost on Simpson, who stood up for Blake in an interview Friday with the Associated Press. The ex-football star, sportscaster and actor told the wire service he didn't understand "how anyone can be found not guilty of a murder, and then be found responsible for it in any way shape or form." He claimed he and Blake were victims of "double jeopardy," a misuse of the legal term that says a defendant, having been cleared or convicted, cannot be tried twice for the same misdeed in criminal court.
Simpson's real expertise is in civil court judgments--specifically, how to avoid them. Though ordered in 1997 to pay $33.5 million to the families of waiter Ron Goldman and ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, the disgraced gridiron hero has boasted of not having coughed up a dime. Simpson's professed strategy is to maintain minimal productivity. Instead of pursuing a paycheck, he pursues his ex-wife's real killers, and lives off his untouchable NFL pension.
Blake, who insists he did not kill or plot to kill Bakley, has not similarly vowed to solve the woman's murder, but he seemingly has laid the groundwork for avoiding his damages bill: He says he's broke.
Dubin, at least, was confident his clients would see a payday. He told reporters he fully expected Blake to make good on the judgment.
Blake probably won't be paying the bill via acting gigs. His diminishing career all but ended with the May 4, 2001, shooting death of Bakley. The former Little Rascal who came of age on the big screen as a killer in In Cold Blood was under police suspicion from the onset. An arrest followed in 2002. His case marched to trial at an exceedingly slow pace, in part because of Blake's penchant for hiring and firing lawyers. He was acquitted of all charges in March.
Like the criminal trial, a conclusion to the civil trial was a long time coming. The lawsuit was filed back in 2002. Attempts to settle--Blake reportedly offered the Bakley camp $250,000--failed. Opening arguments were heard on Aug. 31.
The script for the civil trial followed the same one as the criminal trial, with Bakley's family arguing that Blake wanted his wife dead in order to gain control of their then-infant daughter. Blake's side also stuck to a familiar refrain: No, he didn't.
During the criminal trial, Blake passed at the opportunity to take the stand. At the criminal trial, he didn't have a choice. And according to Dubin, Blake's performance in the courtroom--not the lowered burden of proof--was the civil trial's difference-maker.
"They hated him on the stand," Dubin said after talking to jurors. "They thought that Robert Blake on the stand was very detrimental...He was out of control."
While under oath, Blake sparred with Dubin ("Don't put words in my mouth, junior"), added new details to his account of the night of Bakley's murder, and fondly remembered his late wife as someone who slept with him on their first date. He denied shooting Bakley, and he denied hiring a hitman to shoot Bakley.
Blake and Bakley met in 1999 at a jazz club. He was 20 years past his Emmy-winning success as Detective Tony Baretta on the 1975-78 TV cop show Baretta; she was a wannabe starlet whose true talent lie in attaching herself to fallen stars (Jerry Lee Lewis) and never-shone ones (Christian Brando, son of Marlon). The couple consummated their relationship--then, of the one-night stand variety--at a Los Angeles hotel.
Bakley announced she was pregnant in 2000. Blake married her after DNA tests determined that he, not Christian Brando, was the father of a baby girl born in June of that year.
Blake and Bakley's child, Rosie, now 5, is being raised by Blake's adult daughter Delinah. Rosie was included by her Bakley kin as a plaintiff in the civil suit.
Bakley was 44 when she was shot in the head as she sat in Blake's parked car near the actor's favorite Italian restaurant in Studio City, California. The couple had shared their last supper together at the eatery, Vitello's.
Per Blake's version of events, he left his alive wife in the car in order to return to the restaurant and retrieve the gun he'd accidentally left behind in a booth. When he returned to the car with the gun--not the murder weapon--he found Bakley dead.
Depending on the source, Blake was the enterprising Bakley's 10th or maybe even 100th husband. As suspicion centered on Blake, the actor's camp seized on her checkered past, and suggested that many others wanted her dead. To Dubin, Friday's verdicts were a validation that Bakley and hers deserved better.
Said Dubin: "This was a real family. This was a real person."