The government got what it wanted Thursday with the conviction of Anthony Pellicano. A jury found the so-called “private eye to the stars” guilty on charges including wiretapping and racketeering.
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But the nine-week trial that led to the 64-year-old Pellicano’s losing in court is getting disappointed reviews.
“Like a script with third-act problems, the verdict provided an anticlimactic ending to a case that once sent shivers through Hollywood and led to a list of grand jury witnesses as star-studded as a red carpet,” writes David M. Halbfinger in today’s New York Times.
Writing in the L.A. Times today, Carla Hall and Tami Abdollah suggest that the trial was a little like a story without a moral.
It was supposed to show the rich and powerful that they can’t go around hiring someone to tap their enemies’ phones and play other dirty tricks.
“But that didn’t happen,” the reporters write. “Pellicano’s Hollywood clients were questioned but never charged.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Saunders took on this criticism in his closing argument.
“This case is not about Hollywood,” he told the jury. “It’s not about Sylvester Stallone … or Mike Ovitz or Brad Grey. This is a case about corruption, about cheating, about greed and arrogance and the subversion of the justice system. It just happened to take place in Hollywood.”
And in defense of Saunders and his colleagues, the jury did find Pellicano guilty on 76 or 77 charges.
The government showed that Pellicano illegally wiretapped actors Sylvester Stallone and Keith Carradine, among several others. He paid for police information on comedian Garry Shandling.
And he did tainted investigative work for comedian Chris Rock, studio head Brad Grey and agent Michael Ovitz, though those men said they weren’t aware of Pellicano’s methods.
In addition, Pellicano was a long-time contract employee of Bert Fields, the extraordinarily well-connected Hollywood lawyer who wasn’t called to testify at the trial.
Already in prison on other charges, Pellicano faces up to 20 years of prison on the racketeering conviction alone. He also has another trial coming up.
Pellicano, a non-lawyer, was his own lawyer in the most recent trial, a mistake according to the jury forewoman.
“He should have someone representing him,” Terri Winbush said after the trial.
Allison Hope Weiner, a lawyer who blogged about the trial for The Huffington Post, called Pellicano’s cross examinations “mind-numbingly dull.”
And throughout the trial Pellicano had difficulty meeting the judge’s requirement that as his lawyer he refer to himself in the third person.
“Mr. Pellicano refuses to insult your intelligence,” he said of himself to the jury in his closing argument. “Mr. Pellicano told you the evidence will show what the evidence shows and it clearly does.”
Pellicano didn’t take the stand and reveal any information about his clients, some of who had revealed information about him.
The jury also convicted his four co-defendants: Mark Arneson, a former Los Angeles police officer; Ray Turner, a former telephone company employee; Kevin Kachikian, a software designer; and Abner Nicherie, a businessman and Pellicano client.
Two other people charged in the original indictment, Daniel Nicherie, Abner’s brother, and Robert Pfeifer, pleaded guilty earlier.
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3 Comments
#1. Itamar Labouz 05.16.2008
Burn in hell Nicheries!
#2. Ian Cohen 06.02.2008
ABNER MUST DIE!
#3. David Nicherie 06.02.2008
Dude guys, STFU! Oh btw Ian, don’t feel badly because I steal personal and valuable stuff from everyone I come across. You aren’t the only victim. Sometimes Geneva jacks me off.
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