'Jones' lawsuit trial goes into fourth week

Werner Spitz's account of the final confrontation between Jonathan Schmitz and Scott Amedure was in graphic contrast to the "happy" time that Jenny Jones said they seemed to be having on the set of her show in 1995.

Spitz, the Macomb County medical examiner, is expected to return to the witness stand today as the trial enters its fourth week. Oakland County Circuit Judge Gene Schnelz said testimony could wrap up by the end of next week.

The jury then will have the opportunity to send a message to "The Jenny Jones Show" and others like it that exposing private emotions to public gawking will be costly, said Geoffrey Fieger, the Amedure family's lawyer.

"I'm not promoting censorship but I'm at least promoting self-control," Fieger said during a telephone interview Saturday. "This was clearly done for the vicarious pleasure of an audience, like using the Christians and the lions for the entertainment of the Romans."

Amedure's family is suing the show, its production company and Warner Bros., its distributor, for $50 million. They contend a mentally ill Schmitz was lured onto a show about secret admirers in the belief that he was going to be introduced to a female.

Instead, they say, the secret admirer turned out to be Amedure, a gay acquaintance who described a sexual fantasy involving Schmitz.

Three days after taping the March 6, 1995, segment, Schmitz went to Amedure's mobile home in Oakland County's Orion Township and killed him with a shotgun.

Schmitz was found guilty of second-degree murder in 1996, but his conviction was reversed on a technicality; his retrial is scheduled for this summer.

Jones, who is not a defendant but underwent nearly 12 hours of testimony last week, said she recalled Schmitz and Amedure "smiling at each other, looking very happy" at the conclusion of the taping.

Lawyers for the show say Schmitz was told ahead of time that his secret admirer could be a man or woman. And in her final response to a question while on the witness stand, Jones testified that Amedure's death wasn't her responsibility.

Fieger said, however, that his case is based on the show's alleged failure to find out enough about an unstable guest.

In the future, he said: "Every show will be more cautious. Every show will use more vigilance. There will be pre-screening (of guests), aftercare ... these shows will have to promote protection of the people they use.

"I'm standing up for some kind of values," Fieger said. "Eight-year-olds should not believe it's all right for their mothers to have affairs with the mailman."

A Yale University sociologist said yesterday that Fieger's efforts to clean up daytime television would depend first on his winning the case, then on the amount of the damage award.

Joshua Gamson, author of a 1997 book about daytime talk shows called "Freaks Talk Back," agreed with Fieger that

04-19-99