Radio Hosts Gleefully Try to Taint Jurors

John Kobylt, left, and Ken Chiampou have made "Taint the Carona Jury Pool" a regular segment. (By Vince Compagnone -- Los Angeles Times)

A ruling is expected this month. Typically, judges hesitate to change trial venues because of media coverage, said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Still, she said, this request has more merit than most.

"What's novel about this is that [John and Ken] are training potential jurors on how to lie," said Levenson, who called the segment "particularly troubling." "It just reminds the court how terribly important it is to take the voir dire seriously," she said.

Kobylt said the show serves a different purpose, aside from assembling a pro-guilty jury. It reminds listeners how unfair the legal system can be, he said, citing the high-profile trials of O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake and Phil Spector.

Said Kobylt: "We don't spend five seconds pretending this system works."

Hence the fervor with which the duo has descended on transcripts of secretly recorded conversations between Carona and Donald Haidl, a wealthy businessman appointed assistant sheriff who later cooperated with federal investigators as part of a plea deal.

The transcripts show the two apparently plotting their stories to conceal from federal prosecutors a trail of cash and gifts. At one point, according to the transcript, Carona says, "Unless there was a pinhole in your ceiling that evening, it never [expletive] happened, because it never [expletive] happened, Don. It never [expletive] happened."

The profanity-peppered dialogue has been transformed into theater on the radio show. Guests have recited it on air in foreign tongues -- German, Hebrew and Arabic -- and performed it with vocal theatrics, in the wiseguy style of "The Sopranos" or "Sesame Street's" gravel-throated Grover.

Should the trial indeed move, the co-hosts say they will take their show on the road and reach new audiences by Internet.

Will their listeners heed their instructions? "That's unknowable," Kobylt said. "If somebody does take it seriously enough, they'll never tell."

But, he added: "I think we've made our point."