The Computer Wore Menace Shoes

Gerald Shargel, attorney for alleged David Letterman extortionist Robert “Joe” Halderman, turned to an unlikely source for a defense argument in papers filed Tuesday: Tiger Woods.

It's kind of like this, except with the American legal system.

Shargel cited published reports that Woods gave an alleged mistress millions in hush money. “Evidence of celebrity misdeeds has a significant fair market value,” he wrote. “… Evidence of such misdeeds is routinely suppressed through private business arrangement.”

Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I hope Shargel’s plan for this defense is to either distract everyone else involved long enough to come up with a real defense or make everyone else involved laugh so hard they can’t possibly make it through trial.

In case you aren’t up to speed on the details of the case, Halderman approached Letterman in October offering to sell him, for $2 million, a “very marketable story” in the form of a screenplay about Letterman’s life unraveling after his affairs with “Late Show” staffers became public knowledge.

After some recorded meetings with Letterman’s attorney and an attempt to cash a fake check, Halderman was arrested and charged with grand larceny. Letterman went on to admit to his affairs during a monologue, offering a poignant example of just how poor a screenwriter and alleged extortionist Halderman was.

Going back to Shargel’s proposed “Tiger Woods” defense, the lawyer apparently doesn’t understand the fine legal differences between hush money voluntarily paid to someone and money extorted from someone. Perhaps I can clear it up for him.

Say Letterman brags to Halderman about his affairs with employees. If he realizes this was a stupid thing to have done and offers Halderman a sum of money – maybe $2 million – to keep his mouth shut, then he would be voluntarily paying Halderman hush money.

On the other hand, say Woods’ caddy was dating one of the golfer’s alleged mistresses and learned of their trysts by going through her text messages. Realizing what this information means, the caddy tells Woods he wrote a sitcom pilot in which Woods crashes his SUV into a tree while his supermodel wife chases him with a golf club, enraged after learning of his infidelities. This bizarre occurrence leads to Woods losing millions of dollars in endorsement deals.

But, the caddy adds, he won’t try to sell his TV show if Woods buys it first for $20 million. Not only does that qualify as extortion, but it also demonstrates that a golf caddy would make a much better writer than Halderman.

More alarming than an attorney not understanding the differences between a legal and an illegal deed, however, is said attorney trying to pass off the illegal deed as legal because the information at the heart of the matter has “fair market value.”

Perhaps Shargel hasn’t noticed, but there are several things that have “fair market value” the average person would get a decent prison sentence for peddling: enriched uranium, human organs, narcotics, national defense secrets, insider trading information. But I’m sure he could find a way to make all those copacetic, too.

Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers, was murdered in his church May 31. The killer, Scott Roeder, is facing a first-degree murder charge after a Kansas judge rejected his attorneys' "necessity defense."

A Kansas judge ruled Tuesday that attorneys for 51-year-old confessed killer Scott Roeder cannot use a “necessity defense” in his first-degree murder trial. Roeder shot and killed Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few late-term abortion providers, in the back of Tiller’s church May 31.

Roeder confessed to the crime Nov. 9 but has pleaded not guilty, arguing the murder was necessary to save “unborn children.”

Legally, Judge Warren Wilbert made the correct decision in this case. A 1993 precedent from the Kansas supreme court said using personal beliefs to justify criminal activity to stop a law-abiding citizen from exercising his or her rights “would be tantamount to sanctioning anarchy.”

Regardless of your moral viewpoint on abortion, it is legal in the United States, which means doctors are allowed to perform it and women shouldn’t be hassled if they try to procure one. (In fact, nearly all medical school students in this survey find it an appropriate part of their curriculum.)

Besides, if you’re going to green light the killing of abortion providers, there are some other moral limits you’ve brushed aside in the process. “Thou shalt not kill” didn’t come with exceptions for people who don’t agree with you.

If Roeder’s attorneys can’t use the necessity defense, maybe they should try the insanity one. Roeder is so convinced he has done something righteous that he told the Associated Press he had no regrets for killing Tiller and wouldn’t say if he would do it again if acquitted. You would hope a normal person would at least show the slightest hint of remorse, but the complete absence of it in Roeder makes it seem likely he would do it again if given the chance.

And if you still think that Tiller was the monster in this story, read what his friend Dr. LeRoy Carhart had to say just weeks later in Newsweek. Carhart obviously isn’t the deranged mad scientist pro-life activists would paint him and his colleagues as. That doesn’t leave many options as to who’s working on questionable morality.

"Hey, I know you! I almost shot you that one time. But we're cool, right?"

A grand jury indicted former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress on weapons charges stemming from a Nov. 29 incident in which he accidentally shot himself in the leg inside a crowded Manhattan nightclub.

The facts of the case are these. Burress carried a loaded, unlicensed, concealed weapon into the Latin Quarter nightclub. Burress’ concealed weapon permit, which was issued in Florida, expired six months earlier. When the gun slipped from his waistband and fired, the bullet went through Burress’ right thigh and stuck in the floor inches from a security guard.

The charges Burress was indicted on – two felony counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment – carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 3 1/2 years in prison. Plea bargain negotiations, during which Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau called for Burress to serve two years, broke down, leading to the grand jury indictment.

According to the Associated Press report, Benjamin Brafman, Burress’ attorney, was disappointed but not surprised by the indictment.

“When you have the mayor and the district attorney both publicly demanding a maximum prison sentence, it was perhaps too much to hope for the grand jury to conduct a sympathetic review of the unique facts of this sad case,” Brafman said in a statement.

Was the grand jury supposed to have more sympathy toward Burress because he caught the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl? Which facts are unique? That his weapon was unlicensed? Loaded? Concealed? That he had no concealed weapon permit? That he nearly shot someone else? And what’s so sad about it? That he shot himself in the leg?

Listen, Brafman. You want sympathy? Call Sonia Sotomayor. What he’s asking for is tantamount to a free pass from the criminal justice system.

Burress may be a football star, but he committed serious crimes and endangered the safety of many other people. There may be some cases in which mandatory minimum sentences don’t make sense, but 3 1/2 years for a misdemeanor and two felonies is hardly outrageous.

Just because Burress is a professional athlete, he isn’t entitled to leniency. The grand jury was right on indicting him, and maybe he and Brafman will realize they should have jumped at the plea deal being offered.

Not pictured: someone named Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell or Walter. But imagine if he had been.

Give your son an unconventional or feminine first name, and you may be condemning him to a life of crime, according to a report by David Kalist and Daniel Lee of Shippensburg University.

Well, it’s not exactly fair to attribute that finding to the report. That finding is actually according to Todayshow.com contributor Michael Inbar. Ah, the “Today” show, hub of things that aren’t really news.

I’m guessing the folks over at “Today” just skimmed Kalist and Lee’s report, what with all the big words, math and all. They were able to pick out the top 10 “bad boy” names and place them in alphebetical order – Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell and Walter – which is pretty good considering the show’s track record.

Inbar’s article, however, missed a big assertion in the paper.

“We show that unpopular names are associated with juveniles who live in nontraditional households, such as female-headed households or households without two parents,” Kalist and Lee wrote. “In addition, juvenile delinquents with unpopular names are more likely to reside in counties with lower socioeconomic status.”

Hey, that sounds like an important aspect of the study. It’s probably something that deserved more attention from the article, perhaps even more attention than efforts to think up famous persons who defied their cursed names.

But, in honor of the journalistic standard of ignoring the elephant in the room set before me by “Today,” I’d like to point out that not one person on the FBI’s Most Wanted list – Edward Eugene Harper; Usama Bin Laden; Jason Derek Brown; James J. Bulger; Emigdio Preciado, Jr.; Robert William Fisher; Victor Manuel Gerena; Glen Steward Godwin; Jorge Alberto Lopez-Orozco; or Alexis Flores – has one of the top 10 “bad boy” names.

Hey, that almost made me forget that this study didn’t even come out recently. It was published in the March 2009 issue of Social Sciences Quarterly. Way to be current on your academic research developments, “Today.”