How do we feel about the Chron guys now?

In response to the post awhile back about the ability of someone to file a civil suit for damages against Ellerman, how about this scenario? Conte files a claim as a victim with the federal court for all legal fees paid by Conte to his attorneys after the the criminal case against him was settled. That would include all monies paid from October 18, 2005 until now. If the judge decided in Conte's favor, then Ellerman would be required to pay restitution to Conte as a part of his plea bargain agreement. Wouldn't that be an interesting development in the case? Like Ragu says, "Anything is possible."

creamora

 

21,

Like I said. I was simply providing some food for thought in that post. However, I do think you have some interesing adds.

creamora

 

Ragu,

You clearly don't get the scenario I described. What I said had nothing to do with a civil suit. A claim would simply be filed with the federal court and the Judge in the Ellerman case would decide if there is restitution due to anyone determined to be a victim in the case. If so, the the government would collect the money from Ellerman as a part of the plea bargain and then pay it to anyone determined to be a victim. In my mind, you have a very closed mind about many of the issues being debated on this board. It seems as though you simply can't see the forest for the trees. Your strong opinions seem to be clouding your judgement a bit. Open up and you might learn a thing or two. Like you said, "Anything is possible."

creamora

 

I think the operative word here is victim...as in victim restitution. Different from malpractice.

Not positive of the rules, but I believe you have to show you were the victim of a crime which caused you to suffer economic loss.

 

The ethicist's piece is lame. It should be tossed back with a margin note reading, "Try again. This time, do some reading. Then, think."

Give the prof a D-. It'd be an F, except he spelled all the words correctly.

His entire line of reasoning is based on a suspect source: Ellerman's plea agreement. Most reasonable people realize that a plea agreement is dictated by the government to suit the government's ends, not the ends of the whole truth. The feds say to the arrested person, "Want a break? Want less jail time than you'll get if convicted at trial? Sign here." Ellerman sang the feds' tune to get a sweeter deal than he faced in a trial. The plea agreement was nothing but an announcement that the feds wanted made, an announcement that served the dual purpose of putting Ellerman in jail and leaving the Chronicle reporters looking like Ellerman's accomplices.

Beyond his use of the plea-agreement facts (though the prof doesn't even tell us that's where they're from), he offers no evidence in support for his argument. That is an astonishing lack of research when there is so much research handily available. He ignores the 281-page motion for dismissal although it was a full-frontal attack on the feds' investigatory methods. The motion included only a fleeting mention of prosecutorial leaks and made so little, if anything at all, of the grand jury leak that not only did the Chronicle not mention it in its reporting, neither did its rival/enemy the Merc News.

Instead, the prof bases his reasoning entirely on the idea that the motion was a trick engineered with the reporters' help. (He even calls them Ellerman's "knowing helpmates." A contemptible remark, that.) To make all this seem uber-important, the prof buys into the idea that dismissal of the case was a real possibility. Had he given one example of where such a motion to dismiss had succeeded, maybe we could accept the possibility. Trouble is, any legal expert can tell you -- if you ask, Prof -- that dismissal on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct is the rarest of judicial outcomes. There was no trick. There was never a chance for dismissal. It was legal sound and fury signifying nothing. Inhabitants of the real world knew that all along.

But what's happened now, with the media's acquiesence, is that the feds have been allowed to shape the argument. The plea agreement has been accepted as the whole truth. It is at best a quarter-truth, at worst such a distortion of reality as to be a lie. With its fun-house version of the truth, the government has succeeded in taking the onus off its investigators and making the reporters the bad guys.

 

Kindred,

I think the Wasserman article has merit. Nobody had previously mentioned that the Chronicle had also published an article including Michael Rains' attack of the prosecution regarding the transcript leaks while knowing full well who was the real culprit. Wonder what happend to the public's right to know the truth during this lapse by the Chronicle? I'd give the article a B+, so I guess we have a C average between us. Seems clear to me that the Chonicle did consciously provide a vehicle for misinformation on more than one occasion.

creamora

 

Again, we have no way to know if Ellerman was the only leak of Bonds' testimony. By then, as the public record shows, Conte had leaked to Fainaru-Wada the knowledge that Bonds in his grand jury appearance did not admit to using performance-enhancing drugs. That is a violation of grand jury secrecy in itself. So who knows how many people were providing information? It's not beyond the scope of imagination that the prosecutors were leakers, too, is it? After all, that's what everyone screamed at the time. In any case, the leak was inconsequential, as the judge quickly showed by denying the defense motion to dismiss.

As for the Rains' complaint being reported by Wasserman, that was even less than inconsequential. He's a hired gun firing at every Bonds critic and was not part of the defense team involved in the Conte/Valente case.

 

LOL