Alpha Dog Movie

When a Santa Barbara County prosecutor decided to give a filmmaker his files on fugitive Jesse James Hollywood, he figured that the publicity might help catch the accused killer. Instead, the prosecutor's work on the film "Alpha Dog" spurred an appellate court to remove him from the case on the grounds that he participated in "the public vilification" of a man who was to stand trial for an alleged murder that could bring the death penalty.

THE elements of the murder case seemed tailor-made for Hollywood's "true-crime" treatment: As the summer of 2000 waned, a band of affluent friends in the San Fernando Valley, bored, unsupervised and stoned, kidnapped a teenager over his half brother's drug debt, partied with him for two days, then shot him to death in cold blood so he couldn't turn them in, leaving him in a shallow grave near a hiking area called Lizards Mouth.

Siding with murder defendant Jesse James Hollywood, the state Supreme Court has ordered a hearing to determine whether a prosecutor improperly cooperated with the producers of "Alpha Dog," an upcoming movie based on the case. A ruling in Hollywood's favor could mean that the state attorney general would prosecute the first-degree murder case instead of the Santa Barbara County district attorney's office. "Alpha Dog" likely will be released this fall, said a spokeswoman for New Line Cinema.

A state appeals court has booted a Santa Barbara County prosecutor from the case of accused killer Jesse James Hollywood because the attorney shared his investigative files with a movie director. According to the ruling, Santa Barbara County Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Zonen overstepped his bounds in cooperating with Nick Cassavetes, writer and director of "Alpha Dog," a film starring Sharon Stone, Bruce Willis and Justin Timberlake.

An appeals court Thursday ordered the removal of a deputy district attorney from a death penalty case against Jesse James Hollywood, saying the prosecutor overstepped his authority when he served as a consultant for an upcoming movie based on the murder plot. The 2nd District Court of Appeal in Ventura said that Santa Barbara County Senior Deputy Dist. Atty.

Santa Barbara County Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald Zonen had several concerns in 2003 when he turned over a treasure trove of confidential materials to producers of a film based on the Nicholas Markowitz kidnapping-murder case. One was tracking down accused mastermind Jesse James Hollywood, who had been on the lam for three years. Another was that the actor who played Zonen be "really handsome," according to court papers.

A federal judge has refused to block next month's release of the movie "Alpha Dog," despite a defendant's argument that the film would bias jurors in his upcoming murder trial. On Thursday, an attorney for Jesse James Hollywood, 26, asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review the opinion by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner before the movie's scheduled Jan. 12 release.