Legal News

In wiretap trial wrap, feds say tapes prove lawyer guilty

By Jason Siegel

A federal prosecutor in the wiretapping conspiracy trial of lawyer Terry Christensen told a jury on Tuesday that the evidence, particularly 34 recorded conversations between him and celebrity sleuth Anthony Pellicano, proves that he knew that the private investigator was illegally wiretapping his opponent in a 2002 high-profile child support case.

In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Saunders said that "these 34 recordings prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these two defendants," referring to Christensen and Pellicano, each of whom faces a decade in prison, "conspired to illegally wiretap Lisa Bonder Kerkorian on the phone."

Saunders said several of the 34 recorded conversations featured "conspiratorial language" and that Christensen, when presented on the phone with information that he should have known was protected by attorney-client privilege, never questioned how Pellicano had obtained it.

Saunders said that the specifics of how Pellicano conducted the wiretapping and the motive behind Christensen's desire to wiretap Bonder Kerkorian are irrelevant to the charges.

Christensen's lawyer, Patricia Glaser, a partner at his firm, Los Angeles-based Christensen, Glaser, Fink, Jacobs, Weil & Shapiro, said the government's case does not meet the burden of proof, most notably because the alleged wiretapped conversations of Bonder Kerkorian, who did not testify, don't exist.

"Lisa Bonder was not wiretapped," she said. "Does the so-called victim, Ms. Bonder, come here and tell you she was wiretapped? She was a no-show."

(Read the full story on NLJ.com.)

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on August 28, 2008 (boomark / email).