Anyone expecting a speedy trial in the case of Bernie Kerik is bound to disappointed. The Government today turned over 20 cartons of discovery and the results of a 2005 wiretap on Kerik's cell phone that yielded 2,500 calls.

The defense will challenge the the wiretap and that alone will take many months to resolve. Details of Bernie's phone calls were reported by Newsweek in April, prompting me to ask, who leaked them? Now I'm wondering when in 2005 they got the wiretap, and what was the probable cause for it?

The defense may also need time to conduct an investigation of international scope:

Among the new allegations in the indictment are charges that Mr. Kerik failed to disclose the $250,000 loan from an unnamed Brooklyn businessman in June 2003; Mr. Kerik was in Iraq helping to train a new police force at the time. The indictment alleges he knew that the money had come from “a wealthy Israeli industrialist whose companies did business with the federal government.” The loan was repaid in June 2005.

I don't see this case going to trial for a year -- which would put it after the 2008 elections. That may lessen Rudy's Bernie curse.

Update: Another good read from the past: Bernie in his own words in New York Magazine, Tears of a Cop.

Update: Wiretap mystery solved below.

Reuters is reporting Bernie Kerik was indicted this afternoon. He'll be arraigned tomorrow in federal court in White Plains New York.

O.J. Simpson will be in court in Las Vegas today for the start of his two day preliminary hearing.

The case is likely to pivot on Simpson's contention that he didn't ask anyone to bring guns, that he didn't know anyone had guns and that no guns were displayed. Three of Simpson's co-defendants have pleaded guilty or agreed to do so and are expected to testify against him.

A preliminary hearing is a hearing at which the Judge decides whether there is probable cause to believe that a crime was committed and that it was committed by the charged defendant.

The rules of evidence are relaxed at a prelim, which means hearsay is allowed. Most cases are bound over for trial following a prelim.

But don't equate a preliminary hearing with proof of guilt. The standard of "probable cause" is far less than that of "reasonable doubt."

In other words, with three defendants cutting deals to testify against O.J., and their credibility not being a big issue at the prelim, you can expect him to be bound over for trial.

But, that doesn't mean the prosecution can prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. I hope everyone will keep an open mind.

ABC News reports Bernie Kerik is telling friends and his legal team he expects to be indicted on tax and bribery charges by November 15, at the latest.

The statute of limitations expires on Nov. 15. Months ago, his lawyers and DOJ agreed to extend the statute until then.

I thought there might be another extension, but it looks now like there won't be.

Rather than rehash what I've already written, here are some good Village Voice artices from 2005 and 2006 summing up Rudy's Bernie troubles and explaining Bernie' s state guilty pleas last year.

Russ Buettner for the Daily News has been following the case from the beginning. Here's his article on Bernie's 9/11 "Love Nest" (woven into a great post by the late Steve Gilliard, and a compilation of articles at Citizens for Judicial Accountability.

My 48 posts (to date) on Kerik are accessible at this link.

All options are now exhausted. Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, age 73, will report to federal prison in rural Wisconsin by sundown tomorrow to begin serving his 6 1/2 year sentence. Supreme Court Justice John Stevens today denied his appeal for a stay.

Gov. Ryan did a great thing while in office.

He .... suspended all executions in Illinois and emptied out death row by commuting the sentences of all 167 inmates to life in prison. He cited the risk of the criminal justice system making a grave and irreversible error.

Update: More on juvenile Tate in the news today here and more thoughts below the fold.

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At 4:00 am this morning, hours before he was to face U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch for sentencing in a fraud case, banker Edward P. Mattar, III took a sledge hammer and knocked out a window in his 27th floor apartment, two blocks from Denver’s federal courthouse, and jumped to his death.

A few hours later, 20 miles away in Golden, Colorado, 19-year-old Nathan Quinn Tate faced a state court judge for sentencing following a jury verdict of guilty of first degree murder. His defense to the killing of his friends’ father, who had surprised the pair during a burglary of the father’s residence, was insanity, but the jury didn’t accept that. Nathan Tate was 16 at the time of the murder. The Judge imposed the sentence required by law in Colorado for first degree murder: Life without the possibility of parole.

Two lives lost to the criminal justice system, one to suicide, one to a sentence of life in prison. Surely there must be a better way.

(cross-posted at 5280.com)

MTV actor Vincent Margera (known as Don Vito to viewers of "Viva La Bam" )is on a suicide watch in a Denver area jail after being convicted at trial yesterday of sexual assault on a child for fondling the breasts and buttocks of two teens at an autograph signing event at a skate park.

The charges carry a possible life sentence. If he gets any prison time, it will be the Sex Offender Treatment Board (a parole board)that decides how much time he does, not the Judge.

According to a 2006 Colorado Department of Corrections report, since 1998, 976 sex offenders have received indeterminate sentences. Only three have been granted parole, according to the report.

Margera collapsed when the verdict came in.

When the verdict was announced, Margera, 51, fell on the floor, saying: “Just kill me now. I can’t spend my (expletive) life in prison. I didn’t do anything.”

If he gets probation, it will be for at least ten years and up to life. If he goes to prison and somehow gets paroled, his parole will last for life.

Our sexual assault laws are over the top. Groping should not carry a possible sentence of life in prison. The nation’s hysteria over child sex offenders needs to be ratcheted down a few notches.

No one supports child sex abuse. But the punishment should fit the crime. This one doesn’t.

Thanks to talking "sources," details of a Seattle grand jury investigation into alleged rape allegations against magician David Copperfield are available for the world to see.

The story: A 21 year old woman attends a Copperfield show with her family. Almost as soon as they enter, they are ushered to the front. Copperfield has her come onstage to be a part of the show.

He invites her to his private island in the Bahamas, assuring her there will be other guests. There were no other guests, she says.

When the woman, 21, made the trip in late July -- after exchanging e-mails with Copperfield, 51 -- she found herself the only guest on the island with him, she told investigators. She has told Seattle police, and later the FBI, that Copperfield raped and struck her during her two days on the island, said sources familiar with her allegations.

She said that, afterward, Copperfield threatened her, telling her she'd better keep quiet, and then escorted her onto a plane, sources said.

More...

A state court trial judge has has refused to grant Michael Skakel a new trial based on new evidence presented at a hearing last summer showing he did not kill Martha Moxley.

Karazin found that the 2003 interview of Skakel's Brunswick School classmate, Gitano "Tony" Bryant, in which Bryant told a private investigator that his friends Adolph Hasbrouck and Burt Tinsley confessed to killing Moxley, was not believable. Bryant is a cousin of NBA star Kobe Bryant.

The judge said no other witnesses at the 2002 trial or the hearing placed Bryant or the other two youths in Belle Haven on the night of the murder and physical evidence did not bear out Bryant's claim that the two boys had described dragging her by the hair.

"The testimony of Bryant is absent any genuine corroboration," Karazin wrote. "It lacks credibility and therefore would not produce a different result at a new trial."

The defense will appeal the decision. And file another suit challenging the conviction based on ineffective assistance of counsel.

More...

How do news agencies get things so wrong? Every media outlet reporting on the search warrants executed at David Copperfield's warehouse and the theater he performs in said that the feds had seized $2 million in cash from a safe at the warehouse.

The F.B.I. says it never happened. No currency was seized.

Since TalkLeft repeated the media report (and speculated as to why the feds might seize so much money from him) I'm giving equal space to the F.B.I.'s denial.

Apologies to David Copperfield, and shame on the Las Vegas television station (KLAS, a CNN affiliate)that first falsely reported the seizure. In their hurry to get a scoop, someone got very sloppy. As of this writing, they still haven't made the correction.

Update Oct. 21: The FBI denies seizing currency during the search. Follow-up post here.

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Original Post 10/19

The David Copperfield rape allegation story isn't adding up for me on so many levels.

A Seattle woman has made a rape claim against magician David Copperfield, law enforcement sources tell FOX News. The woman told Seattle police the magician raped her while she was in the Bahamas, sources said. Because the alleged incident happened abroad and the woman did not report it until she returned to the United States, Seattle authorities turned over the case to the FBI.

The F.B.I. raided Copperfield's Las Vegas warehouse, which is more like a museum of his stuff, and seized a camera and $2 million in cash.

What federal crime is being investigated? A rape in the Bahamas is outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. For a rape to go federally, it usually has to occur on an Indian reservation, in a prison or have to do with transporting an underage woman across state lines to commit a sex offense or use of a date rape drug.

Did Copperfield take the woman to the Bahamas? Did he fly her from Seattle to Vegas first and then to the Bahamas? Is that enough to constitute interstate coercion or transporting a woman across state lines for the purpose of committing a sexual offense?

More....

A lawyer reader at TPM writes in to criticize Mark Geragos as counsel for Brent Wilkes.

When is the last time he has been successful in one of these high profile cases? Think Michael Jackson. Wynonna Ryder. Yet people seem to be drawn to his "celebrity" status.

Uh...Geragos didn't try the Michael Jackson case, Tom Mesereau did, and Jackson was acquitted on all counts.

As for Winona, she was acquitted of burglary and convicted on lesser charges for which Geragos got her probation.

He also did a great job for Susan MacDougal. He was no slouch for Gary Condit either.