Sex and Nerds Invade Pellicano Trial

'Tis pity she was a whore

Comments (0) By Steven Mikulan Friday, Mar 28 2008

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Pellicano's been acting as his own attorney, and, while he's no Johnnie Cochran, he hasn’t done as badly as some had predicted. Now that the novelty of watching him fumble about has worn off, Pellicano seems a little steadier at the lectern and draws fewer prosecution objections and rebukes from Judge Dale Fischer.

Fischer, a petite 56-year-old who sports a stylish flip of gray hair over her forehead, has a voice like that of "Mother," the spaceship computer in the movie Alien. She cuts attorneys off with an imperious I-have-spoken tone and once dismissed Pellicano’s complaint that he wasn’t allowed a cardboard box to haul his legal papers around with "Bad things are done with cardboard boxes." These days she seems pleased with Pellicano, even smiling indulgently when she silences him for making observations during cross-examinations.

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Still, Pellicano often doesn’t cross-examine prosecution witnesses. Nor does he raise objections during testimony. This is probably the most serious shortcoming of his lack of legal expertise, because it puts his interests at the charitable whims of his codefendants' lawyers, who may at some point determine that it’s best for their clients to not help Pellicano. Perhaps objections are not Pellicano's style anyway, or rather, not suited to his courtly self-image: Objections are for whiners, for prosecutors and the lawyers of the former employees and clients who are now snitching on him.

Pellicano sees himself as above that — instead, he is the maligned, misunderstood hero of his own novel, or maybe of some Mario Puzo potboiler. He believes he is a gentleman of his word, “a Sicilian,” full of honor and chivalry.

He wasn’t exactly chivalrous, though, toward the woman whose life and privacy he allegedly infiltrated like a virus. ("She won’t be able to use a roll of toilet paper without me knowing," Pfeifer claims Pellicano told him.) He only appeared solicitous of Erin Finn during his cross-examination of her, noting that she appeared tense.

"Maybe," he said, "it would help you relax if you could play in the back of your mind 'Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone.'?" Seven minutes later, when he finished questioning her, he turned his back on Finn and mumbled, "Have a nice trip home."

IF PELLICANO’S PARTING DIG was intended as a verbal Indian burn, he saved the real torture – in the court gallery, anyway — for the next day, when he began a marathon inquisition of ex-FBI computer geek Jeffrey Edwards. (“I left the FBI because I missed software programming more than I realized.”)

His preceding lengthy examination and cross-examination had been tedious enough — so much so that Judge Fischer allowed it to be interrupted so the prosecution could bring out Creative Artists Agency honchos Kevin Huvane and Bryan Lourd, who’d been cooling their heels for three hours.

The two were barely there half an hour total, and mostly just verified the projection screen of personal data that had found its way into Pellicano's hard drives. Eyebrows were raised only when Huvane explained that his driver’s license bore the address of CAA instead of his home because, "We have security problems with clients looking up where their agents live."

Huvane and Lourd allegedly appeared on Pellicano's radar during a bitter business dispute with the latter’s client, CAA cofounder Michael Ovitz, whose name will soon figure more prominently, as the trial moves deeper into that part of town where actors, agents and prostitutes make a living.

More Pellicano Briefs:

Pellicano Briefs: The Garry Shandling Show Fri, Mar 14, 2008

Anthony Pellicano's Gang of Five Stand Trial Fri, Mar 7, 2008

And updates at LA Daily here: blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/pellicano-briefs/