The judge in the Phil Spector murder trial ruled Tuesday that the defense violated evidence rules by presenting surprise testimony that Lana Clarkson did not immediately die after she was shot at the record producer’s Alhambra mansion four years ago.

"There is a deliberate, knowing violation of discovery," Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler said, citing the law that requires attorneys to preview trial evidence for their opponents, so that the other side has a fair chance at rebuttal.

The defense’s violation involved a dramatic courtroom revelation by forensic pathologist Michael Baden, who said scientific evidence indicated that Clarkson had lived for several minutes after she was shot. Baden testified that Clarkson’s lungs tripled in weight after filling with blood and other body fluids — an indication, he said, that she lived for several minutes after the fatal shot.

The coroner testified that Clarkson died instantly after the bullet severed her spine.

Baden’s assertion could explain the presence of Clarkson’s blood on Spector’s jacket, which prosecutors have argued indicates that he was holding the gun when the actress was wounded. The defense argues that Spector rendered aid to Clarkson after she shot herself and that she could have coughed up blood, staining his jacket.

With jurors cleared from the courtroom, prosecutor Alan Jackson said the defense had "sandbagged and blindsided" him by not giving notice that it would present Baden’s theory. Jackson heatedly questioned Baden, at one point stopping himself to calm down.

The judge said he needed time to think about a sanction to impose on the defense.

Despite its explosive nature, Baden’s testimony did not visibly stir Spector. Moments after Baden said that Clarkson had clung to life after her shooting, the defendant was slumped in his chair with his eyes shut.

Up until last month, there didn’t seem to be a TV camera that attorney Debra Opri wouldn’t embrace.

The brash, self-professed blue-collar gal from New Jersey had secured a costarring role in the Anna Nicole Smith media circus as the attorney waging war to prove that Larry Birkhead was in fact the father of the now-deceased Playboy bombshell’s baby girl.

Her hair long, dark and stick-straight, the 47-year-old hovered perennially at Birkhead’s side, always ready to hit the Larry King-Bill O’Reilly talk-show circuit on his behalf, always filled with snappy quotes for reporters. Before Smith died, Opri routinely chastised the buxom blond from myriad courthouse steps. "Where’s this woman’s decency? Where’s her fairness?" a righteous Opri asked.

Now, her former star client is asking the same question about Opri.

In March the two acrimoniously parted ways, and in June, Birkhead sued her for fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and legal malpractice. He also filed a complaint with the California Bar Assn., which is investigating. Two weeks ago, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles C. Lee gave Birkhead his first victory in what is expected to be a long skirmish — granting his request that $591,250 of Birkhead’s money Opri had sequestered in her attorney-client trust account be transferred into a separate blocked account, that could be touched only by court order.

While it’s unclear how the case will end, Birkhead’s allegations have the potential to seriously dent Opri’s once-promising career as the next Greta Van Susteren or Nancy Grace, one of those tough-talking, camera-ready legal eagles on call to opine about the day’s courthouse skirmish. To journalist and author Diane Dimond, who first noticed Opri at the second Michael Jackson trial, Opri was at the vanguard of a "disturbing trend of attorneys that began to show up at high-profile trials like Scott Peterson, Robert Blake and Michael Jackson." Lawyers, Dimond explains, who essentially show up for the cameras to "get face time." With law and celebrity increasingly intertwined in a tabloid and 24-hour-news-dominated culture, the matter of Birkhead vs. Opri is more than just a nasty spat. It’s also a revealing excursion into a high-stakes world where punditry and legal representation can collide and where six-figure deals between newsmakers and the media are part of the game.

Opri got her start in this rarefied corner of the law by working for the late singer James Brown and then the parents of Michael Jackson. She made a splash giving interviews during Jackson’s molestation trial. Her career, her detractors say, is a vivid case study of how lawyers can push their way into the media circus and sometimes profit from their exertions.

Birkhead’s claims raise questions of whether she ran roughshod over her client’s interest in a quest to rack up airtime and legal bills. His suit isn’t her only problem. Opri represented actress Pamela Bach in her legal faceoff in court against her erstwhile husband, "Baywatch" star David Hasselhoff. Last month, Bach fired Opri after she lost full custody of her two daughters.

Meanwhile, Hasselhoff’s lawyers have filed a motion in Superior Court to get her financial records to determine the exact sum — believed by his lawyers to be hundreds of thousands of dollars — that Bach and/or Opri allegedly received in connection with the sale to the media of the infamous video of a drunken Hasselhoff. Opri denies having anything to do with the video.

She also adamantly disputes Birkhead’s accusations and has brought on Sitrick and Co., the crisis P.R. firm, to help her quell the stirring controversy.

She believes that Birkhead was behind the leaking of her legal bill to him, which totaled $620,492, and included items such as a lobster barbecue, thousand of dollars’ worth of limo rides and $1,500 a month for her publicist. According to her legal bill placed in the court file, she routinely charged Birkhead about $119 per e-mail, not to mention the over $96,000 she billed him for her time on cellphone calls.

"The bill in and of itself is not outrageous," she said. "This is a bill he doesn’t want to pay on any level. I never agreed to work pro bono. I don’t work for free," she said repeatedly, responding to one of Birkhead’s claims. "I just don’t. I can’t afford it."

His side of the story

FOR his part, Birkhead said he’s paid the Florida and Bahamian attorneys who worked on his case. "Their fees were reasonable. I was not supposed to be charged by [Opri], and she took money she wasn’t supposed to take," said the photographer in an interview last week in the Valley, accompanied by his lawyer, M.L. Trope. Birkhead characterizes his relationship with Opri as a bad marriage that he’s had trouble shaking.

Over lunch, Birkhead outlined and detailed many of the allegations made in his court papers, which include three long sworn affidavits from him. Opri disputes almost everything Birkhead claims, but her court affidavit is a one-page document that merely states that he signed a legal retainer with her.

Birkhead said he first heard about Opri when MSNBC reporter Rita Cosby tracked him down in 2006 in a New York hotel room to try to get an interview. Birkhead said he didn’t know Cosby, but as his legal complaint lays out, he claims the reporter told him she knew an attorney — Opri — who wanted his case and would do it for free. In an interview, Cosby, who’s had Opri on her show numerous times, said it was Birkhead who solicited her advice about legal representation, and so she mentioned Opri among several names. She had no idea of the financial arrangement between the duo.

According to Birkhead, he’d been contacted by a number of attorneys offering their services pro bono; he’d interviewed others who’d asked for retainers ranging from $40,000 to $100,000. Yet none played on his emotions the way Opri did. Smith was planning to marry attorney Howard K. Stern, and Birkhead says Opri told him he was in danger of losing his child if he didn’t sign up with her immediately. Opri denies saying any such thing.

That night, he appeared on Van Susteren’s show and off camera asked the anchor her opinion of Opri. "He said that Opri was going to charge him nothing because she was going to get a lot of publicity out of it equal to her fee," Van Susteren recalled. "I said, ‘You can’t beat that.’ "

Birkhead flew back to his home in California the next day; by the time his flight was taxiing to the gate, Birkhead said that Opri had called him multiple times. She offered to send a limo for him, but he declined. When he arrived at her office, "she’s walking around like a maniac. She’s pacing," recalled Birkhead, who asked her if family law was her expertise. She told him she had years of experience.

According to Birkhead, she then proceeded to "take these papers, and like a deck of cards, she flings them on the desk." She rattled off what they were: a paternity action, a suit against Stern, another against Smith for palimony. Birkhead, who’d lived with Smith, didn’t want to file a palimony claim. She threw in a media agreement that entitled her to 10% of any of his earnings if he sold his story. He told her he wouldn’t write a book or do "anything sleazy." According to Birkhead, she told him that he was going to be rich and that she’d already lined up agents for him.

Sometimes winning an election just isn’t worth it. District Attorney Mike Nigong will not only have to resign as District Attorney (which he said he would do regardless), now he can no longer practice law .

While his career as an attorney is over, he certainly has not suffered to the degree of those he wrongly accused.

Closing a painful chapter of public condemnation and racial recriminations in a Southern city with an elite university, North Carolina’s attorney general dropped all charges Wednesday against three white former Duke University athletes accused by a black stripper of raping her at a house party 13 months ago.

Atty. Gen. Roy Cooper, condemning Durham Dist. Atty. Mike Nifong for "a rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations," said there was "no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house that night."

Calling the men victims of "a rush to condemn," Cooper said flatly: "We believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges." Several North Carolina lawyers said they could recall no case in which a sitting district attorney was so harshly and publicly rebuked by a fellow prosecutor.

After a 12-week reexamination of the highly charged case, Cooper said accusations by the stripper, 28, who attended historically black North Carolina Central University in Durham, were inconsistent and contradictory. The woman identified the athletes at what Cooper said were deeply flawed photo lineups approved by Nifong.

"No other witness confirms her story," Cooper said at a crowded news conference. "Other evidence contradicts her story. She contradicts herself."

The case exposed racial and socioeconomic fault lines in Durham, a working-class city that has a black population of 40% and is home to a highly selective university. It also prompted bitter discord within Duke, a school with a national reputation for academic excellence — and one supporters say has been unfairly portrayed as preppy and snobbish.

Inflamed by Nifong’s public charges that the supposed rape was racially motivated, some African Americans — joined by some Duke professors — accused the university of tolerating racists and misogynists. Durham City Council members called the lacrosse team "a ticking time bomb that has not been dismantled."

Details of the purported rape, based solely on the allegations of a party stripper, were amplified by wall-to-wall national news coverage. The woman’s story was shocking: Drunken young white men forced her into a bathroom, choked her and repeatedly penetrated her while screaming racial slurs.

Adding to the graphic and sensational allegations were statements by a second stripper hired for a team party that one man — not one of the accused — threatened to sodomize the women with a broomstick. That stripper also said partygoers shouted racial slurs as she left.

Evans’ lawyer, Joseph B. Cheshire, said Nifong "tore his own city apart in a race-class divide … and his acts hurt the reputation of one of the great universities in this country. What this man reaped is unconscionable."

Cheshire also chastised the news media for fanning both the woman’s accusations and Nifong’s incendiary quotes. He said reporters failed to carry out dogged reporting that could have exposed holes in the case early on.

Cooper called Nifong a "rogue prosecutor" and said the case highlighted "the enormous consequences of overreaching by a prosecutor." He proposed a law that would allow the state Supreme Court to remove a prosecutor from a case in certain circumstances.

"There were many points in the case where caution would have served justice better than bravado," Cooper said.

Asked whether Nifong should apologize to the three men, Cooper replied: "I think a lot of people owe a lot of apologies to other people. I think those people ought to consider doing that."

Nifong, an appointed district attorney then making his first race for elective office, last spring called the defendants "a bunch of hooligans." He said they had shown "a deep racial motivation" and "contempt … for the victim, based on her race."

Nifong faces ethics charges filed by the state bar association for his actions, which included withholding DNA evidence that showed the three defendants were not the sources of genetic material found on the accuser’s underwear and body; the DNA came instead from several unidentified males. Nifong could be disbarred.

Cooper said he had not ruled out filing criminal charges against Nifong after the bar association case is completed. Defense lawyers said they might file civil suits against the district attorney.

The actions of Nifong have smeared the legal community and it is likely more heads will roll as Nifong’s supporters in the DAs office and on the bench have their actions more closely examined.

Many men claim innocence when staring at iron bars. But James Giles knew he was no rapist — and he believed three fellow Texas prisoners who told him they too were wrongly convicted of rape.

They shared their despair over games of chess and dominoes, worked on longshot appeals together in the law library, and dreamed of the day they would win exoneration from a justice system that failed them.

It has taken nearly 25 years, but with the assistance of DNA testing, the men — all African American — are proving they are indeed innocent. Two were freed from prison. A third was cleared last month, years after serving his sentence. Today, Giles is expected to clear his name and become the 13th man from Dallas County to prove with genetic testing that he was wrongly imprisoned.

Giles, who spent 10 years in prison and was paroled in 1993, is seeking to vacate his 1983 conviction. New evidence suggests that another man — also named James Giles — committed the rape. Dallas County prosecutors more than two decades ago knew about the other James Giles, who lived across the street from the victim, but never told Giles’ defense.

Giles struggled to rebuild his life after he got out of prison, branded a rapist. The skilled construction laborer had a hard time finding menial jobs, and his wife, who stuck with him through his prison term, eventually sought a divorce.

The Dallas County district attorney was scheduled to personally apologize to Giles today. The three wrongly convicted men whom Giles befriended in prison will be cheering in the courtroom.

The wrongful convictions of these four men are some of the most dramatic examples of prosecutions in the Lone Star State that have come under increasing scrutiny.

Dallas County has had more people exonerated by DNA than all but three entire states. Texas, which leads the nation in convictions overturned by genetic testing, has had 27, Illinois, 26, and New York, 23. California has had nine exonerations.

Revisiting cases

With countless current and former Texas prisoners clamoring for testing to clear their names — more than 430 in Dallas County — law enforcement officials predict that the number of overturned convictions will grow exponentially.

Texas prosecutors have typically fought activists’ attempts to revisit cases. But Dallas County Dist. Atty. Craig Watkins, the first African American elected to the office, has forged an unusual alliance with the Innocence Project, a New York-based group that uses DNA testing to challenge convictions.

Watkins has proclaimed "a new day in Dallas" and is promising to right past wrongs of his office — particularly the many disputed convictions during the reign of Henry Wade, Dallas County’s top prosecutor from 1951 to 1987.

Watkins’ office helped reinvestigate the Giles case. The exoneration request must ultimately be approved by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, but with Watkins’ support, that is considered a formality.

Nearly all the Dallas DNA exonerations have involved men who were convicted of sex crimes based on dubious witness accounts. Most are African Americans — Giles will be the 10th.

Unlike many other jurisdictions, including Houston, Dallas County preserved blood samples and other evidence collected decades ago, a stroke of luck that is allowing felons to seek a review of their convictions.

Victims face bogus bills and risk injury or death. Privacy laws make such fraud hard to pursue.

After shoulder surgery last year, a hospital patient was stunned when hospital bill collectors demanded that she pay for the amputation of her right foot.

"Either you didn’t do the surgery, or you did a really [shoddy] job of it," the patient told the collection agency, sending along notarized photos of her toes, all still attached. "Either way, I’m not paying."  But the patient quickly discovered she was dealing with something more nefarious than a simple clerical error: An identity thief had obtained medical care under the patient’s name and had the bill sent to the patient’s insurer.

Although the most typical of the millions of identity theft cases in the U.S. each year involve credit cards, a 2003 federal report estimated that at least 200,000 instances involved medical identity fraud. Experts believe that the rising cost of healthcare is driving more identity theft, and that many people are unaware they have become victims unless they receive a hospital bill or query from their insurer.

With medical records compromised, victims of this kind of fraud face a greater risk of injury or even death if doctors make treatment decisions based on bad information. Files might list incorrect prescriptions or the wrong blood type. Or, as in this patient’s case, an erroneous diagnosis of diabetes.

Bad information can also put careers and insurance at risk. Many employers, including more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, demand access to medical records when making hiring, promotion or benefits decisions, according to the nonprofit Patient Privacy Rights Foundation. Health and life insurance companies routinely scan medical files or payout reports before issuing new policies.

Victims, though, often find that clearing their medical records of bad information is much more difficult than fixing credit reports, which are centralized in three major credit bureaus.

Consumers have the right to obtain one free credit report annually, and to demand an investigation of information they believe is fraudulent or incorrect. Unverified reports must be removed promptly.

Medical records, in contrast, can be scattered across dozens of doctors’ offices, hospitals and clinics. And federal privacy rules intended to protect private information can make it difficult for patients to even obtain their own records when identity theft is suspected.

A big reason most people never find out about erroneous records is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The law can make it difficult for patients to see their own medical records, since the penalties for improper disclosure prompt some hospitals to set up roadblocks including demands for multiple forms of identification.

The bitter twist on medical identity theft is that once a person tells a keeper of records that someone else’s data might be intermingled, the file becomes even harder to obtain. Why? Because it includes another person’s medical history, which many hospitals argue can’t be turned over without consent.

Even when patients do see their records, they have no automatic right to fix errors they find.

About The Author:
Attorney Ted Bills can be reached at 719.444.1000 or at http://www.SpringsAttorney.com.

Attorney Ted Bills has one mission – to fight for the rights of victims, the wrong accused, and those who have been devastated by the misconduct of others – he represents clients with an aggressive approach designed to provide SWIFT justice.

Attorney Ted Bills practices Auto Accident (Car, Truck, and Motorcycle crash), DUI, Personal Injury, and Criminal – Traffic Violation law in Colorado Springs, CO and is a member of the American Bar Association, the Colorado Bar Association, the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, and the El Paso County (Colorado Springs) Bar Association. He works in tandem with his clients to provide assertive, business-savvy, legal services that solve problems, reduce delays, and minimize costs.

Nothing on this site constitutes an attorney-client relationship nor does it constitute legal advice. Links are for informational purposes and do not represent endorsement by Attorney Ted Bills.

Nevada’s chief justice announces immediate actions to curb conflicts of interest and other improprieties by Nevada Judges.

The chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court has ordered three steps to heighten scrutiny and supervision of the state’s judges, who have become the target of a reform effort amid allegations of impropriety and cronyism in the courtroom and on the campaign trail.

The changes were disclosed in a four-page statement by Chief Justice Robert E. Rose, Nevada‘s former lieutenant governor and an important figure in the state’s political landscape.

They come in the wake of an investigation into the state’s judiciary, especially the Las Vegas bench. The investigation determined, among other things, that Nevada judges have awarded millions of dollars in judgments in recent years without disclosing that the money was awarded to friends, business partners and former clients — even people to whom the judges owed money.

Rose’s statement outlined three additional steps toward reform that will be set in motion immediately.

First, the Supreme Court will implement a formal process to evaluate the performance of the state’s senior judges — on-call jurists who are paid by the hour, have typically retired from the bench and are farmed out to assist with a growing workload in the court system.

Although many had distinguished careers before their retirement, they are seen as vulnerable to allegations of impropriety because they are not accountable to voters and serve at the pleasure of the Supreme Court indefinitely.

Starting in November, evaluation forms will be sent to lawyers, jurors and parties in cases that are heard by senior judges, and the district courts that request the judges’ services.

Second, Rose said, senior judges will be subjected in some cases to peremptory challenge — the right of a party in a court case to seek a judge’s removal. Currently, senior judges are immune from such challenges, unlike regular judges.

In the past, Rose said, senior judges were not exposed to challenges because they were often pressed into service at the last moment; they are often called to preside over a case when another judge is sick or otherwise absent.

Now, peremptory challenges will be allowed when a senior judge is appointed more than 14 days prior to a scheduled court date, Rose said.

Third, Rose said, the Supreme Court will issue a communique to all of the state’s district court judges reminding them of their ethical obligation to disclose potential conflicts of interest.

According to federal and state judicial canons, judges should withdraw from cases when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. But the state does not require judges to disclose when their campaign contributors appear before them. And court observers say some judges have been reticent in volunteering information that might call their impartiality into question.

Rose said he would remind judges that they should "err on the side of disclosure."

About The Author:
Attorney Ted Bills can be reached at 719.444.1000 or at http://www.SpringsAttorney.com.

Attorney Ted Bills has one mission – to fight for the rights of victims, the wrong accused, and those who have been devastated by the misconduct of others – he represents clients with an aggressive approach designed to provide SWIFT justice.

Attorney Ted Bills practices Auto Accident (Car, Truck, and Motorcycle crash), DUI, Personal Injury, and Criminal – Traffic Violation law in Colorado Springs, CO and is a member of the American Bar Association, the Colorado Bar Association, the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, and the El Paso County (Colorado Springs) Bar Association. He works in tandem with his clients to provide assertive, business-savvy, legal services that solve problems, reduce delays, and minimize costs.

Nothing on this site constitutes an attorney-client relationship nor does it constitute legal advice. Links are for informational purposes and do not represent endorsement by Attorney Ted Bills.

The head of one firm tied to Silicon Valley‘s stock options probe, Larry Sonsini, also serves as Hewlett-Packard’s outside counsel. 

While he is hardly a household name, he is among a handful of people who can take credit for creating the technology powerhouse that is Silicon Valley.

First came the stock options mess. Federal regulators are combing the records of at least 30 Silicon Valley firms to see if they illegally rewarded employees with options to buy company stock at artificially low prices through a process known as backdating.

Sonsini’s firm has done work for about half the local tech firms under investigation, and Sonsini was formerly a director at Brocade Communications Systems Inc., where two former executives have been charged with criminal wrongdoing.

Sonsini’s role as outside counsel to HP is drawing intense scrutiny. Corporate governance experts were stunned by the disclosure — reported by the Wall Street Journal and not denied by the company — that he ran the board’s emergency meeting last week.

About The Author:
Attorney Ted Bills can be reached at 719.444.1000 or at http://www.SpringsAttorney.com.

Attorney Ted Bills has one mission – to fight for the rights of victims, the wrong accused, and those who have been devastated by the misconduct of others – he represents clients with an aggressive approach designed to provide SWIFT justice.

Attorney Ted Bills practices Auto Accident (Car, Truck, and Motorcycle crash), DUI, Personal Injury, and Criminal – Traffic Violation law in Colorado Springs, CO and is a member of the American Bar Association, the Colorado Bar Association, the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, and the El Paso County (Colorado Springs) Bar Association. He works in tandem with his clients to provide assertive, business-savvy, legal services that solve problems, reduce delays, and minimize costs.

Nothing on this site constitutes an attorney-client relationship nor does it constitute legal advice. Links are for informational purposes and do not represent endorsement by Attorney Ted Bills.