Update: 5/21/05. Mary Kay and Vili married today.

Original Post:

Mary Kay Letourneau and her former student, Vili Fualaau, who is also the father of their two children, are still in love. According to Fualaau, they are planning to get married when they get their financial situation straightened out. Last month, after she was released from jail after serving a 7 1/2 year sentence for raping Fualaau, who was 12 at the time they began their sexual relationship, a Judge lifted the no contact order between them.

She did her time. They have two kids together. Let them decide if it's really love and they want to be together, or whether their relationship belongs in the past.

Doubtless some will be offended by this. TalkLeft is not one of them.

Leslie Van Houten, convicted of participating in the Charles Manson-La Bianca killings, has been refused parole for the 15th time. She's been a model prisoner for the past 30 years.

It's time for the State of California to set her free. As TalkLeft commented when she was coming up for hearing the 14th time:

Grant Leslie Van Houten parole. She was 19 at the time of the crime, has paid for it with 30 years of her life, and if you have ever listened to her (and we have, since some of her prior hearings have been televised) you can't help but feel she's genuine and hardly a threat to anyone now.

How coincidental. Two weeks after the accuser in the Kobe Bryant case sues the athlete for damages in civil court from an alleged sexual assault, a former personal assistant to William Kennedy Smith does the same--for an incident that allegedly occurred in 1999.

In the lawsuit, the 28-year-old woman alleges that after a night of drinking in 1999, Kennedy Smith forced her out of a cab and into his Chicago home where he raped her. The woman is Kennedy Smith's former personal assistant.

The allegations are "outrageous, untrue and without merit," William Kennedy Smith said in a statement. "Unfortunately, my family and my personal history have made me unusually vulnerable to these kinds of allegations," Kennedy Smith, 43, said in the statement.

Kennedy Smith is a medical doctor in Chicago.

Mark Geragos began his cross-examination of Amber Frey today. Half the legal analysts predicted he'd leave her alone. The other half, including me, predicted he'd go after her. He went after her, portraying her as desperate to find a man to take care of her and her child, obsessive in the number of times she called Scott and eager to work as a police informant to get back at Scott after she found out he lied to her. Expect more of the same tomorrow.

[Note: For readers who don't care about Scott Peterson, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson, don't bother telling us that in the comments. We'll continue to cover it anyway. Just scroll on by the posts which are clearly designated in the title. This is a site about politics, crime and injustice. That includes high-profile crimes in the news.]

Public Defender Dude has one of the best blogs around on being in the courtroom trenches. He's also in Northern California, somewhere near where the Scott Peterson trial is going on. He says in no uncertain terms that he believes Scott Peterson is going down, and explains why -- despite the lack of evidence against him, the piss-poor job the prosecution is doing and the great job Mark Geragos is doing. And his reason is not Amber Frey.

I don't share his pessimism yet--but if he turns out to be right, it may be that Scott Peterson becomes the latest victim of the media. The media focuses on guilt because guilt sells. What a sad statement of affairs for a country whose criminal justice system is grounded in the presumption of innocence.

If Public Defender Dude is right, it's Michael Skakel Redux. Once again we have the victim's family grieving on the news night after night. A prevalence of prosecution-oriented pundits proclaiming the defendant's guilt. A camera fest outside the courtroom. Witnesses with spinmeisters masquerading as legal counsel, continually grabbing the media spotlight. Well-known former cops and journalists siding with the victim's family. People Magazine and tabloids trumpeting a pretty picture of the victim week after week. And for the final touch there is always a Dorothy Moxley and Sharon Rocha, wholly good and tragic figures, just separated at birth.

Update: A reporter on Greta's show Thursday night has as good a guess on the delay as I've heard: Geragos wanted to play more of the Amber tapes, the prosecution objected, and the Judge said he has to listen to all the tapes Geragos wants to introduce before ruling. Hence, a three day delay.

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Update: The delay may be related to recorded conversations from police wiretaps rather than those Amber recorded. It may be that when the prosecution learned Geragos sought to play them in court during his cross, the prosecution objected and said it needed more time to investigate. Geragos was seen meeting with DA investigators at the courthouse today.

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Original Post: 8/18, 9:20 pm

Instead of listening to a cross-examination of Amber Frey, the jury in the Scott Peterson trial today was told by the Judge there was a "potential new development" and Amber would not be back on the stand until Monday. He initially said other witnesses would testify Thursday, and then canceled all proceeding until Monday.

Mark Geragos had his projector and powerpoint ready to go this morning. His brother had flown in to hear his cross. Gloria Allred, Amber's lawyer, expressed total surprise at the delay.

So what happened? Hard to say. My best guess:

The murder jury that included Oprah Winfrey took only two hours today to convict a defendant of first-degree murder. Oprah has never been an advocate for the rights of the criminally accused. As a talk show host, American success story and role model, she's terrific. As a juror....

The crux of Mark Geragos' defense of Scott Peterson is that the police rushed to judgment and decided early on Scott killed his wife and unborn child--ignoring leads that pointed elsewhere. Catherine Crier of Court TV scored an exclusive today of police reports and a transcript of a telephone conversation between Sharon Rocha, Laci's mother, and Scott, right after the police told Rocha about Scott and Amber Frey. This was on January 13, 2003, less than one month after Laci disappeared and months before her remains were recovered. Rocha, who up until that point, had supported Scott's innocence, screams at Scott and accuses him of murdering Laci--over and over. And over and over, Scott denies it.

That's same-old, same-old. I think the real "exclusive" is this:

Modesto Police decided to inform Scott and Laci Peterson's families of the fertilizer salesman's relationship with the massage therapist when they learned that the National Enquirer was going to break the news, according to a police report made available exclusively to Crier. Police informed the couple's parents on the same day, but separately. The report noted that up to that point, both families had "remained united in their confidence" that Scott Peterson was uninvolved in her disappearance.

"Not wanting the family to be caught without this knowledge, it was agreed that it would not impact negatively on the case and the potential prosecution of this case to inform them of this information," Detective Jon Buehler wrote in a police report dated Jan. 16, 2003. News of the affair triggered an emotional breakdown in Rocha, who sobbed in front of police and said, "Why did he have to kill her?" (my emphasis.)

"The potential prosecution of this case".... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the police confirm in this report that they had decided Scott was the killer and were building a case against him.

Geragos should have a field day with this. Of course, he's had the report all along, it's only the public who is receiving notice of it today.

The prosecution has spent the past five days in the Scott Peterson trial playing tapes of conversations between Scott Peterson and his mistress Amber Frey that Frey secretly recorded at the behest of the police. Smoking condom? Hardly. Scott denied at every turn that he had anything to do with Laci's disappearance or murder. Amber presented not a scintilla of evidence to link Scott to the crime--only evidence that he was a cheating husband and a liar. Mark Geragos told the jury in opening statements that Scott Peterson had cheated on Laci with Amber and that he had lied to Amber. So, no bombshell or suprises there.

Geragos has implied that Frey was more interested in a relationship than Peterson. She initiated many calls, he said. "In fact, everything in those tapes is consistent with someone who was just trying to keep her at emotional bay," he said during his opening statement.

Now it's Mark Geragos turn to cross-examine Amber. What to expect?

The grandmother of Amber Frey's toddler said Amber lied in her court testimony--about the child's father not being interested in being with the child and about whether she ever left the child alone with Scott Peterson. Fodder for cross-examination? Grounds for widening the allowed scope of Geragos's cross-examination of Amber? Or is it too tangential to the issues?

Here's some stuff we think won't come into evidence:

Frey, 29, posed nude a few years ago, had a second baby out of wedlock 14 weeks ago.

The transcripts of Amber's and Scott's phone conversations are available here.

Update: What's in store for next week? From On the Record (guest host Claudia Cowan, Defense Attorney Mickey Sherman):

The prosecution is wringing every last drop of crud out of the Amber Frey-Scott Peterson tapes--playing them to the jury in their entirety. Some have strange coincidences--like Scott Peterson saying his favorite movie was The Shining (in which a man unsuccessfully tries to kill his wife and son). Most show a guy who was more interested in some side action than worrying about his missing pregnant wife. He was so intent on preserving the liasion with Amber that he lied to her about everything under the sun. But he also hesitated a nanosecond at times when discussing their future together.

They met in a bar on a blind date. Two dates later she gives him keys to her house and lets him pick up her toddler at day care. Three dates later, they're discussing plans to be together permanently. Something is wrong with this picture, and it's not just Scott Peterson's duplicity.

The tapes are titillating, nothing more. Everyone knew before the trial began that Scott Peterson was a lying philanderer. Does that make him a murderer? Hardly. Nonetheless, he will be one of the most vilified men in America when this trial is over, even if he is acquitted

Don't forget that you are hearing only the prosecution's evidence. The defense likely will have some pretty big aces up its sleeve when it gets its turn. In the meantime, all Geragos and team can do is maintain composure and act like this is all old hat and nothing new. The defense acknowledged that Scott lied to Amber during opening statement. While hearing the words will leave an emotional impact on some of the jurors, others are bound to question Amber's lack of judgment and wonder about this single mother who jumped into a relationship with a virtual stranger so fast and so obsessively. The tapes may be a wash in the end.

More details of Amber's testimony and the tapes here.

The Judge in the criminal case pending against former Illinois Governor George Ryan today issued an opinion denying Ryan and a co-defendant's motion to dismiss the charges.

The charges against Ryan are part of a federal investigation that began by focusing on bribes paid for commercial driver's licenses and branched into political corruption. Charges have been filed against more than 70 state employees or others, and more than 60 have been convicted or have pleaded guilty. Ryan, a Republican, was secretary of state - the official whose office handles motor vehicle licenses - from 1991 to 1999 and governor from 1999 to 2003. He gained nationwide attention as governor for his actions against the death penalty.

Ryan is charged with " racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud, tax fraud, filing false tax returns and making false statements. " The Judge also denied Ryan's request for a separate trial.