Legal Newswire Blog

Archive for the ‘Criminal Lawyers’ Category

Gloria Allred

According to TMZ, Gloria Allred plans to starve herself for the next 30 days in order to support women everywhere, even ones she doesn’t represent.

Alred says she is going on a solid food fast, skipping a total of 90 meals in order to draw attention to the need to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

Allred’s strike will end on August 26 which is the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

Allred told TMZ her last supper before the strike was hors d’oeuvres.

Joran van der Sloot, the suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba, is now wanted for the killing of a woman in Peru, Peruvian police officials said Wednesday.

The father of the murder girl told Peruvian reporters Wednesday he is certain Dutch national Joran van der Sloot killed his daughter, 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez. Ricardo Flores, a race car driver and well-known businessman in Peru, told reporters, “This is my daughter’s assassin.”… Read Full Story

Ben Roethlisberger’s accuser has dropped all sexual assault charges stemming from an incident that occurred at Capital City nightclub in Milledgeville, Georgia on March 5, 2010.

According to TMZ the prosecutor Fred Bright said the alleged victim wrote a letter on March 17, in which she stated that she no longer wanted to pursue the case… Read Full Story

LOS ANGELES, CA -  Dr Conrad Murray’s criminal defense lawyers will argue that due to Michael Jackson’s long-time Propofol addiction, Michael Jackson grabbed the bottle from the nightstand, injected himself and then dropped the bottle, according to reports by TMZ. One source told TMZ that Jackson liked the sensation of Propofol being administered by IV, adding, “Michael liked to push it.”

Defense lawyers will argue that Michael Jackson's Propofol addiction caused him to inject himself

L.A. County Coroner’s investigators took a picture in the room, showing an empty Propofol bottle on the floor, underneath the nightstand by Jackson’s bed. The defense will argue Jackson grabbed the bottle from the nightstand, injected himself and then dropped the bottle… Read Full Story

PERUGIA, Italy – American student Amanda Knox, 22, was found guilty by an Italian court on Friday of murdering her British roommate and was sentenced 26 years in prison.

Knox’s Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 25, also was convicted of the murder charges. He was sentenced to 25 years. Read full story

Robert Halderman’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, in an interview on CBS “The Early Show” yesterday, said David Letterman was offered a $2 million deal for first rights to a “screenplay” by his client, Robert Halderman. Shargel said it was a business transaction, the way Hollywood works, not extortion.

Gerald Shargel, attorney for Robert Joe Halderman. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Documents filed by Halderman’s lawyer claim David Letterman was having an affair with his former personal assistant, Stephanie Birkitt, much more recently than Letterman’s rep said.

The legal papers filed by the defense state that Robert Halderman confronted Stephanie Birkitt in December 2008 with evidence of the affair and she promised to end it. But Gerald Shargel, Halderman’s lawyer, claims the relationship continued “unabated” into this past summer.

Letterman’s rep has said the affair ended before Letterman’s marriage in March. Letterman came forward with the alleged extortion plot in early September.

Letterman’s attorney refused to say when the talk show host broke off his affair with Birkitt. Halderman’s lawyer did not elaborate about the sexual relationship and said he was looking forward to cross examining Letterman.

Shargel asked the judge to dismiss the extortion case, on grounds authorities were swept up in “the sensationalism surrounding the indictment” and the grand jury didn’t have enough evidence to target Halderman.

The lawyer claims the $2 million demand was “a pure commercial transaction” over a screenplay.

Related searches:
Find a lawyer
Criminal defense lawyers

DULUTH, Minn. — A 62 year old Minnesota man was arrested for DUI while driving drunk on his motorized La-Z Boy chair. Dennis LeRoy Anderson says he wrecked his ride because he was trying to pop a wheelie and blamed the girl he was carrying for throwing off his balance.

Dennis Leroy Anderson arrested for DUI while drunk driving motorized La-Z-Boy

The added weight of the passenger coupled with the wheelie, tossed the girl from the chair causing Anderson to slam into a parked car.

According to a report from “The Age”, the man told “police he left a bar in the northern Minnesota town of Proctor on his chair after drinking eight or nine beers.”

A criminal complaint says 62-year-old Anderson told police he left a bar in the northern Minnesota town of Proctor on his chair after drinking eight or nine beers.

Police said the chair was powered by a converted lawnmower and had a stereo and cup holders.

Sixth Judicial District Judge Heather Sweetland stayed 180 days of jail time Monday and ordered two years of probation for Anderson. Anderson’s attorney is David Keegan.

According to Kate Gosselin’s lawyer, Marty Singer, Jon Gosselin secretly withdrew $200,000 from Kate’s bank account without her knowledge. According to TMZ,  Singer, wrote a letter this past Friday accusing Jon Gosselin and his lawyer of fraud and contempt.

Jon Gosselin empties Kate's bank account of $200K

TMZ obtained a copy of the letter in which Singer expresses outrage that Jon secretly raided Jon and Kate’s money market account “of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” leaving only about $1,000. Singer says the withdrawal is not only “outrageous,” it directly violates the Arbitration Award in the divorce which requires both parties to agree before any money is withdrawn. Read the letter.

Kate blasts Jon on “Today” this morning, for clearing $230,000 out of the couple’s joint bank account: “You’ve left your children and their mother unable to pay for the roof over their head. It’s unacceptable.”

Singer says the withdrawal of funds is fraudulent and contemptible and claims both Jon and his lawyer, Mark Heller, are hypocrites, after they went on Larry King’s show and claimed family values (not money) was the important thing.

Singer says Heller has done this before, citing a New York Supreme Court decision which says Heller directed one of his clients in a divorce to “withdraw everything that’s in the bank” so the money could be used to pay his fee.

Singer also goes after Heller, stating the New York Supreme Court which “addressed charges that you violated ‘thirty-eight counts alleging multiple violations of the disciplinary rules,’ and charges that you ‘had engaged in a pattern of misconduct involving misrepresentations, deceit, abusive treatment of clients, fee gouging, neglect and willful failure to return unearned retainers to his clients’ in matters which involved your ‘mishandling of the matters of twelve separate clients.’” The letter goes on to claim Heller admitted to engaging in “professional misconduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”

Kate Gosselin has filed legal papers in a Pennsylvania court this morning to force her estranged hubby Jon Gosselin to return the $230,000 he took out of their joint bank account and to have him cited for contempt for good measure.

Kate claims Jon raided their joint account, leaving her with only $1,000.

Kate’s lawyer, Mark Momjian, tells TMZ he filed the papers this morning and noted to the judge that Jon allegedly violated an order prohibiting him from taking anything out of the account without Kate’s sign-off.

Momjian claims Jon and his lawyer, Mark Heller, have harassed Kate with frivolous legal maneuvers and wants the judge to nail her estranged hubby with financial sanctions.

Heller, who is not a member of the Pennsylvania bar, is asking the judge for special permission to rep Jon in this case. Momjian says he filed papers opposing that move, on grounds Heller effectively lied to the court by failing to mention as he’s required to do that he was suspended by the New York bar for a variety of misdeeds.

Read more: http://www.tmz.com/#ixzz0T57oTFU5

48-year-old Michael David Barrett was arrested at Chicago O’Hare International Airport last night in the connection with the Erin Andrews Peeping Tom case. Annrews, a reporter for ESPN, was secretly videotaped several months ago walking around naked in several hotel rooms. The suspect has now been charged with the federal crime of felony stalking.

According to the FBI, Barrett allegedly stalked Erin “with the intent to harass, to place under surveillance with intent to harass and intimidate, and to cause substantial emotional distress to a person in another state.”

The videotapes surfaced in July. At least six clips showed Erin walking around two different hotel rooms in the nude.

Andrews’ lawyer, Marshall Grossman from the law firm Bingham & McCutchen, told TMZ that Barrett allegedly contacted hotels in the various venues “where Andrews was working in order to locate her and her room number, and some of the hotels revealed that information, permitting him to target her.” Grossman says Barrett would remove the peepholes from the doors or as the complaint states, “hacked off” and inserted tiny camera devices to secretly film her.

Someone tried to sell the clips to TMZ, but they refused to buy or air them because they were an obvious invasion of Erin’s privacy. The federal complaint notes that the videos were offered for sale to TMZ.com through his email account.

The complaint says Andrews was so upset when the tapes began to circulate elsewhere she was “having trouble breathing and felt sick all of the time.” The complaint adds, “She was concerned there might be more video and wanted to vomit just thinking about it.”

TMZ contributed to this story.

David Letterman Extorted for $2 Million

Robert “Joe” Halderman, a well known CBS producer for “48 Hours”, was arrested outside CBS headquarters in NYC for attempted grand larceny after trying to deposit a $2 million check (the amount he tried to extort from Letterman).

Until recently Halderman was living with Stephanie Birkitt, Letterman’s former assistant.

TMZ reports that Halderman had a relationship with Stephanie Birkitt and lived with her, but says they had broken up “recently.”

“We do not know who ended the relationship, but Halderman allegedly was in possession of Birkitt’s diary, correspondence and photos which he says incriminated Letterman.”

“People connected with the network tell us Letterman did have a relationship with Birkitt, but the word is that it ended before Letterman had his baby in 2003,” TMZ said.

According to TMZ Manhattan D.A. played the investigation close to the vest and people inside the building were baffled when the highly-respected producer was cuffed and hauled off in the David Letterman extortion case.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said three meetings were held between Halderman and Letterman’s lawyers at the Essex House. Letterman was not at any of the meetings. During the 3rd meeting, the check for $ 2 million was turned over to Halderman.

Morgenthau says Letterman’s lawyer wore a wire and the last two meetings were audio taped.

Halderman deposited the check which was designed to bounce the next morning and was then arrested.