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Rebecca Grossman at Van Nuys Court. Acorn file photo
A decade-old speeding ticket that, according to the prosecution, proves Rebecca Grossman knew the dangers of reckless driving, will be allowed as evidence next week when the 58-year-old appears before a judge deciding whether she’ll stand trial over the deaths of brothers Mark and Jacob Iskander.
After a hearing on several defense motions at the Van Nuys Courthouse, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shellie Samuels ruled against Grossman’s request to bar the media and public from her preliminary hearing, which starts Monday. Cameras and audio recordings will not be allowed.
Grossman was driving her Mercedes-Benz at high speed when she struck the boys in a Westlake Village crosswalk in September 2020. She’s charged with two counts of second-degree murder and vehicular manslaughter. Grossman is free on bond and was not in court for the motions hearing, but she’s expected to appear on Monday.
Taking the stand first for the prosecution will be the boys’ mother, Nancy Iskander.
The April 21-22 motions hearing was requested by defense attorneys Alan Eisner and Robert Hill to ask, among other things, that certain pieces of evidence be excluded from the preliminary hearing and that the session be closed over concerns that pretrial publicity would harm their client’s right to a fair proceeding.
On day one, Eisner highlighted two stories he objected to from the Daily Mail newspaper regarding the Grossman case. On day two, he added to his motion a report from the Acorn that included a headline that, while factual, he took issue with.
Samuels did not agree that allowing news reporting from the hearing, where witnesses and law enforcement will make their first appearance, would harm Grossman’s case.
“I haven’t witnessed an excess of pretrial publicity,” Samuels said, adding that in her 38 years on the bench she’s never closed a preliminary hearing.
Eisner persisted, saying if the press wanted to know what happened at the preliminary hearing they could read the transcript. The judge questioned how this would accomplish Eisner’s goal of reducing pretrial publicity. “You’re adding fuel to the fire if you think closing wouldn’t make it worse,” Samuels said.
For his part, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Ryan Gould hopes to show Grossman’s subjective knowledge of driving dangers helps prove implied malice, a requirement for a second-degree murder conviction.
Three pieces of evidence Gould wanted the judge to consider—the speeding ticket (in which she was clocked at 92 mph on the freeway), a magazine article Grossman wrote in 2019 about a friend who was paralyzed in a car crash when the two were in high school, and a 2018 Mercedes-AMG academy attended by Grossman, billed as “an intense, high-speed, high-adrenaline experience (providing) thrill seekers the chance to push themselves and Mercedes-AMG vehicles to the limit”—were challenged by the defense.
Samuels said she would exclude the magazine article and the AMG academy from the courtroom.
Gould argued that by attending and signing off on the driver’s academy for high-end Mercedes vehicles, Grossman knew that driving fast could put herself and others in danger, yet she still chose to drive recklessly the day she ran down the brothers.
Gould said data gathered from Grossman’s Mercedes-Benz AMG, the car she was driving when she struck both boys in the Triunfo Canyon Road intersection, clocked her speed at 81 mph just 1.5 seconds before she hit the boys and 73 at impact. The speed limit on the Westlake Village street is 40 mph.
“She was ostensibly living out her AMG dream,” Gould said.
Over objections by Eisner, the judge ruled prosecution witnesses can refer to Grossman’s driving that fateful day as “racing.”
Eisner characterized that description as prejudicial to his client.
“Racing implies the witness knew the intent of the driver,” he said. Instead, he wanted Gould to tell witnesses to limit describing what they saw to terms of location, driving maneuvers and an estimate of speed. Since the prosecution does not intend to use evidence of racing in its case against Grossman, the record, said Eisner, should not be “polluted” by use of the word.
Gould said the word is common when the average person sees cars speeding and doing other race-like maneuvers. Samuels agreed, saying everyone who drives local freeways and streets probably, on a daily basis, sees someone engaging in “racing,” swerving in and out of lanes, aggressively moving through intersections and the like.
“I don’t think the proper way to deal with this is to tell Mr. Gould to have a sit down with his witnesses and tell them not to say racing,” the judge told Eisner.
The issue of racing, however, could be revisited as a strategy in the trial, if one is held.
Follow Scott Steepleton on Twitter @scottsteepleton.