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Anna Nicole Smith’s Autopsy Results in Public Outcry

Thursday, March 29th, 2007 | By Jeffrey Jolson for Hollywood Today

HOLLYWOOD, CA (rushprnews) 2/29/07 – Slings and arrows from outrageous courtrooms moved to TV and the internet yesterday when stalled inquest action in the Anna Nicole Smith saga saw attorneys and public trade barbs and frustration online and on air.

The Bahamian court holding the inquest over how Smith’s son Daniel died proved to be as unpredictable as weepy Florida Judge Larry Seidlin’s courtroom when the former hotel ballroom was suddenly cleared of media and potential jurors so an influential local attorney for inquest witness Howard K. Smith could convince the magistrate he should be allowed to screen the jury despite pertinent laws.

Instant TV trials were the venue of choice for millions over the last 48 hours, many angry over the perceived failure of the Florida Anna Nicole autopsy finding to place blame on anyone they could flame. That didn’t stop them as the move to legal landscape in Nassau allowed CNN to let the lawyers go at it and Court TV to go All Anna All the Time once again, and this time it was personal.

TV host Nancy Grace was especially incensed that Stern’s Bahamas attorney could halt proceedings even though Stern is just one of 40 witnesses and is not allowed to screen a jury or have a courtroom cleared under local laws.

When informed that the attorney Wayne was also Smith’s attorney when she was alive, and furthermore, the well-connected president of the bar association there, Grace replied “We’re talking about lawyers here. That’s like saying he’s not just a regular idiot but King of the Idiots.” You could even hear the cameramen laughing.

Even the serene medical examiner Dr. Joshua Perper was put on trial of sorts for two days running by Grace to defend his report of no criminal fault in Anna’s death. “Dr. Perper, you’ve got to see the similarities between the two deaths,” Grace said.

“But you also have to see the differences,” he responded and went on to details what sure sounded like similarities. “Methadone was the cause of death in one case, it wasn’t in the other (it was just present in her system). Anna had chronic depression, the son had occasional depression.” He did note Anna had an infection and fever.

Upon further questioning, Perper asked “Do you think any court would return a verdict of guilty based on the evidence that was available?” Grace had to confess he was right.

She called on the assembled players on both her Court TV and Headline News shows to look at the similarities in the two deaths: both died during the day in vicinity of nurses with a mix of anti-depressants, sleep aids and methadone in their systems. “The M.O. is the same,” pounded Grace. “Add one more circumstance,” said John O’Quinn, attorney for Smith’s mother Virgie Arthur. “Howard Stern was there when both women got deadly sick and died.”

Stern concerns gave private investigator Jack Harding a way to edge himself in the coverage. He said he was visited by Daniel a month before he left for the Bahamas and that the 20-year-old was worried about his mother and wanted to retain him. ‘He was worried Stern was giving his mother a mind-bending drug. He said he was frightened to death of Stern.”

The question of liability of an (substance) enabler in the judicial system was brought up, as Florida testimony indicated Stern brought a duffel bag of drugs to the Bahamian hospital after Anna Nicole gave birth and was being weaned off narcotics. There is no Good Samaritan law in effect, noted one of Stern’s lawyers, so the question was moot.

Not so, said defense attorney Midwin Charles. “If he is found to be an enabler, he can face charges of manslaughter or murder. If he knowingly and with intent supplied the drugs, he could still face criminal charges.”

Emails read by Larry King the previous night asked how (Perper) can believe Stern’s testimony he did not give her the fateful drugs, or how no one could have tried to save her. “His statement was not contradicted by anyone. And we learned she drank choral hydrate straight from the bottle.”

“He may not have wanted the outcome to be death, but I think may have been someone closed that facilitated the drug use in a particularly dangerous way,” said Dr. Joshua Deltito. “While it may not have been the methadone that killed her, the methadone withdrawal probably led to some of the other drugs she was using,”

Stern’s attorney Lilly Ann Sanchez said “There is outrageous speculation that no one took her to the hospital but Howard pleaded with her, but she specifically refused as always because she did not want the media frenzy that always followed her to a hospital. Anna called the shots in Anna’s life and everyone around her knew that.”

Apparently so. One person who had dealings with Smith and various celeb PR clients, Edward Lozzi said “Everyone gave her what she wanted. No one wanted to handle her when she went through withdrawals. Everyone knows that’s when she became the raging bitch from hell. You could even see it on her TV show.”

Sanchez said “Howard is very angry at the media. I think that he’s extremely upset about how the media has treated him. I think he believes that it was — a lot of it was very malicious. He doesn’t think that anybody should have to go through what he has gone through in the past six weeks.”
“In terms of enabling, where is Stern taking any responsibility for getting Anna of Daniel off drugs? That’s abuse, that’s neglect.”

“Virgie Arthur and her lawyer have made all kinds of accusations, particularly against Howard Stern,” one attorney said. “They’re accusing him of murder. Even last night, her lawyer was on television accusing him of murder, even in the face of this report. If I was them, I’d be worried about being sued for slander, myself.”

Nor are the bloggers here, and all over the internet, who believe Stern should be held in some way accountable. And those that defend him.

Anna Nicole Smith “accidentally” overdosed on at least nine prescription painkillers - including the sleeping syrup chloral hydrate favored by Marilyn Monroe. She’d gulp from the bottle to dull immense pain from a 105-degree fever and the horribly infected abscess on her butt caused by multiple drug injections, officials revealed yesterday. Smith, who died in her sleep Feb. 8, lived a wretched, final few days at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla., as her feverish sweat produced “a ‘pungent’ odor” and she often lay crumpled in a dry bathtub with half-empty pill bottles on the floor. The stunning autopsy report, by Perper, details how Smith’s downward spiral appears to have occurred over just three days - and ended in her finally dying just like her idol, Marilyn: in her sleep from a toxic drug cocktail that included chloral hydrate.

news source: Hollywood Today, a newsmagazine with an Attitude at www.hollywoodtoday.net

http://www.rushprnews.com/press/archives/123271

Stern Works Double Stall in Smith Inquest, Paternity Suit

Thursday, March 29th, 2007

Court of World Opinion Waits on Bahamas to Catch Up

By Jeffrey Jolson

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 3/29/07 — Day 3 dawns in the inquest into how Anna Nicole Smith’s son died in her hospital room as Howard K. Stern works a double stall in both inquest and paternity suit.

After his influential Bahamas attorney pulled off an unprecedented motion that halted witness testimony in the inquest into the death of Smith’s son Daniel, Stern has filed an appeal in his ongoing paternity battle over Smith’s daughter Dannielynn that will delay the DNA results, likely past the April 3 hearing.

Why he wants to appeal the results before they are revealed may indicate he knows who the father is, and it’s not him. “Entertainment Tonight” notes that Stern followed court orders and drove Dannielynn to a lab for a DNA swab. Larry Birkhead also gave a sample.

His inquest stall tactic will likely run out today, as 40 witnesses are waiting to testify in a court case that also has election-year political implications in the Bahamas. Stern’s attorney managed to have the courtroom cleared for two days while he argued to buck 300 years of Common Law Tradition and have the case heard without a jury – or at least one without bias against Stern.

That may be hard to find. Inquiring minds want to know if the inquest will finally shed light into Stern’s perceived complicity as a poll shows 9 out of 10 people do not agree with the recent Florida finding that her death was accidental.

“The court of public opinion is just as important, or more important, than the court of law for the long term in high profile cases like this. In my expert opinion, Howard K. Stern is the next O.J.,” said “Reputation Doctor” Mike Paul. “However, I personally think Stern may get away with murder- twice. The evidence may not be there to actually prove it in the court of law, but many believe he is already guilty in the court of public opinion.”

From courtroom to living rooms, from water coolers to our pages here, people are saying the same thing. They basically relate enabling and complicity to criminal activity in the eerily similar double deaths, even if the letter of the law doesn’t. No wonder, with comments from the media circus Peanut Gallery appearing all over TV, such as the ones from private dick Jack Harding, who says Daniel came to him before going on his fateful trip to the Bahamas.

Hammering home on Showbiz Tonight what he did earlier on Nancy Grace, Harding P.I. said “In my opinion it is foul play. The police from the Bahamas came to visit me and said they found my business card on his body. Danny may have said (when he went to the Bahamas hospital to meet his mother and Stern) ‘I’m having a private investigator look into this’ and that may have sparked a bit of a problem for (Stern). He hated Stern and said that Stern hated him. (Stern) tried to get him out of the picture. He wanted complete control over Anna Nicole.”

Forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden reviewing a witness list for the inquest pointed out some hotly-anticipated testimony. “The two nannies are interesting because they talk about Anna accusing Howard Stern of causing the death of Daniel, that they heard Anna say these things, according to this list,” he told Fox News. The list indicates there will also be testimony that puts methadone in the room, important as a big question will be how exactly did Daniel get the methadone that helped overdose him when he had just been picked up by Stern at an international airport?

Stern also released a press statement to help turn world opinion in his favor, or at least stop accusing him of doing nothing when she was deathly ill. Stern insists she would still be alive today if she hadn’t refused medical help before her death. In a statement released late on Monday, Stern revealed he and other friends and aides had urged Smith to check into a Florida hospital after her temperature spiked, but, fearing a “media frenzy,” she insisted on sleeping off her fever.

Stern attorney Lilly Ann Sanchez said “Howard will always wish that he had not left when he did that morning to go get the boat that he was picking up and they were going to sail back to the Bahamas later that day. You always, in any kind of situation, are going to think about what you could have done, should have done, maybe might have done.”

But Howard, on that morning, he — he was up with Anna, he helped Anna to the bathroom. She came back into the bed. She was feeling much better than she was before. She was alert. They conversed. She decided to go back to sleep,” she told Larry King recently.

He checked on her before he left at about noon. He wasn’t the only one that was with her. (Bodyguard) King Eric and his wife were with him. They decided not to wake her at that point. And he went on to do exactly what she had requested — to go get the boat ready so that they could go back to the Bahamas.”

Add Ron Rale, another attorney acquaintance of Stern’s “Howard’s just trying to get to a space where he can grieve. And I’ll give you an example. Just like, you know, before Anna had passed away, with this inquest stuff pending, Howard was never concerned about himself. He was always worried about Anna. And as an example, when I was there in the Bahamas talking to Howard, with all of this — the funeral preparations and all of the bad press out there and all of the witch-hunt type stuff I’m talking about, Howard’s concern was for his parents — always putting somebody else first.”

If Stern were in my family, I’d be concerned too.