Joe Bosco, Blogger

Joseph Bosco has "the courtliness of a son of the Old South," wrote Los Angeles Times reporter Bill Boyarsky in a 1998 column. He's "a slow-talking man who, without warning, can be carried away by his emotions, including his temper."

Boyarsky became "fascinated" with Bosco during the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, which Bosco spent two years attending as part of the press corps.

"I've never known anyone with troubles quite like those that have afflicted Bosco," wrote Boyarsky. "There were the physical afflictions — a dislocated shoulder suffered in an after-hours bar fight over the Simpson case and the broken neck he suffered when he dove into the shallow end of a swimming pool during a Fourth of July party. Added to these were Bosco's legal troubles...."

Bosco nearly had to do time in the Los Angeles County Jail. "I was as scared as I've ever been in my life," he told a TV interviewer. Questioned in the OJ trial, Bosco had refused to name the member of the Los Angeles Police Department who'd given him information for a story he'd written for Penthouse magazine. Luckily for him, Judge Lance A. Ito ruled that the information in the story was wrong, so Bosco would not have to reveal his source because it was immaterial. On his website, Bosco lauds his own contribution to the defense of First Amendment freedoms in America.

Boyarsky reports how in a later court case Bosco was also involved in, "a bailiff grabbed Bosco's arm and evicted him from a courtroom after a display of the Bosco temper that included shouting at a deputy district attorney."

Bosco had had a meeting with the prosecutor, deputy District Attorney Alan Yochelson, because Bosco wanted to give him information Bosco felt would harm the prosecution's case. But Bosco claimed that in the course of their private meeting, information had also flowed in the opposite direction. According to Bosco, Yochelson had, for some reason, told Bosco some things that would damage Yochelson's entire case.

And Bosco presented his strangely obtained information to the court.

Yochelson testified that he had never told Bosco such things.

As Boyarsky recounts the story:

Bosco met in private with the prosecutor ... and, [Bosco] said, passed on the information, friend to friend. Bosco said Yochelson made statements that called into question the prosecution's entire case.

Bosco told me he regarded Yochelson as an old buddy from the Simpson trial [where Yochelson had been part of the prosecution team]. Obviously Yochelson did not reciprocate the feeling. "I did not make the statements attributed to me," he said in court. After court was adjourned, Bosco pointed a finger at Yochelson. "Alan," he said, "You know you said that to me." That's when the bailiff grabbed Bosco's elbow and ejected him. I followed ... Bosco to the courthouse cafeteria, where I heard Bosco's side of the story. Bosco angrily asked how Yochelson could, in effect, call him a liar when he, Bosco, was working with the D.A.'s office on "a reinvestigation of certain aspects of the O.J. Simpson case."

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Article Author: Uriel Wittenberg

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