Robert Blake Can't Keep Quiet

An attorney for actor Robert Blake says she wants to leave the case because of his insistence on setting up a jailhouse interview with Barbara Walters.

Jennifer Keller would be the second Blake attorney to leave the case because the actor tried to set up an interview.

She said in a phone interview Tuesday that Blake had been visited by Walters last week and was in the process of arranging an on-camera interview when Keller and co-counsel Thomas Mesereau Jr. found out about it from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

The 69-year-old actor is accused of shooting his 44-year-old wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, to death in his car near a restaurant where they had dined May 4, 2001.

The first defense lawyer to quit did so after learning that the star of the old "Baretta" TV show had tried to arrange an interview with Diane Sawyer.

"When I came into the case it was on the assurance that no interviews would be given without my knowledge," Keller said. "But Mr. Blake insists on setting up interviews and he has an entertainment lawyer, Barry Felsen, who is facilitating these things for him."

Felsen did not respond to a message left at his office after business hours Tuesday.

Keller said the situation is almost identical to the one that led attorney Harland Braun to withdraw.

The Sheriff's Department, which is in charge of the jail where Blake is being held without bail pending his murder trial, refused to allow the Sawyer interview, but Braun would not return to the case.

"Mr. Blake feels frustrated," Keller said Tuesday night. "He feels he's kept silent and feels he has been pilloried by the police and in the press. He feels if he could get his side of things out he could get a level playing field."

Keller said Judge Lloyd Nash has scheduled a hearing for Friday on her motion to withdraw.

Meanwhile, Blake was due to be questioned by lawyers in his civil case on Wednesday. Mesereau appeared at a court hearing earlier Tuesday and tried unsuccessfully to get the civil case delayed.

Judge David Schacter rejected the lawyer's request to delay the deposition and all discovery in the civil case until the criminal case is concluded. He said discovery had already begun and it was only fair to allow lawyers for Bakley's family to go forward.

Mesereau said before the hearing he will instruct Blake not to answer any questions.

"It should be obvious to everyone that Mr. Blake wants to speak. But I'm not going to allow him to speak when things could be distorted and taken out of context. He will not speak until after he is acquitted, and he will be acquitted."

Blake's preliminary hearing in his criminal case is scheduled for Feb. 26.

By Linda Deutsch