Anna Nicole Smith’s Autopsy Results in Public Outcry Hollywood Today
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

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