"A Beverly Hills judge dismissed drug possession charges against actress Winona Ryder today and said her trial on charges of shoplifting about $4,000 worth of goods from Saks Fifth Avenue must start on Oct. 24."

Mark Geragos, Ryder's attorney, "told reporters she was anxious to clear her name and added, "I don't go to trial unless I think I can win."

He has said previously she is the victim of her celebrity and that the district attorneys' office treats the ordinary shoplifter far less harshly. He said he will not accept an offer involving a plea to a felony because it would negatively impact her career.

"Former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson must serve an additional five or more years in state prison for her role in a 1975 conspiracy to blow up Los Angeles police cars, the state's Board of Prison Terms ruled today. The three-member board cited the potential for great violence and harm, multiple intended victims, a sophisticated professionalism and her later flight in its decision following a one-hour hearing."

The prison board changed the amount of time Olson must serve on her sentence from 5 years and 4 months sentence to whatever is appropriate under post-1977 guidelines for a 14 year sentence. Under the best case scenario, Olson could be released after doing somewhere between 7 and 9 years. But she still faces a first degree murder trial along with other ex-SLA members due to the killing of a bank customer during an SLA bank robbery in suburban Sacramento in 1975. The preliminary hearing in the murder case is set for November.

Olson pleaded guilty to helping other SLA members plant bombs beneath police cars at a Los Angeles International House of Pancakes in August 1975. The bombs did not explode. The key witness against her at trial would have been former SLA kidnapee-turned-member Patty Hearst.

In making its ruling, the prison board applied "a little-used section of state law, allowing it to recalculate sentences for old crimes considering new post-1977 sentencing guidelines. The law provides authority to hold "serious offender" hearings and issue new sentences to "protect the public from repetition of extraordinary crimes of violence."

The jury in the Ira Einhorn murder trial deliberated for an hour and a half today before recessing. The will start again in the morning.

Skippy has the latest on Bush's positions on ballistic fingerprinting along with a ballistic fingerprinting for dummies guide and sniper news.

Sam Waksal, the former head of ImClone Systems, pleaded guilty to six charges Tuesday in federal court.

His pleas are unusual in several respects. He has no plea agreement with the Government. He has not cooperated with the Government in exchange for a lesser sentence. There are still seven counts pending against him that the Government may pursue. And the Government has said it may add even more charges.

Why would Waksal plead guilty under such circumstances? We think this analysis in the Washington Post article by John Coffee, a securities-law expert at Columbia University, probably comes closest to the mark:

"John Coffee, a securities-law expert at Columbia University, said that if Waksal had pleaded guilty to the conspiracy counts included in an August indictment he may have been forced to admit passing on material information, implicating his father and daughter in an insider-trading scheme. "I think he can't decently send his parent or his child to prison. I don't think you have to go any further to understand his motivations," Coffee said."

"Coffee said Waksal could get significant jail time based on his guilty pleas. "This is legally not a tactically wise decision, but it is a very human decision," he said."

We also agree with those legal analysts who say it is unlikely Waksal will provide information against Martha Stewart. He may not have any incriminating information about her, or he may not want to give it up. Or the Government may have told him he can't cooperate selectively, giving up some targets but not others. It appears to us that the Government is not offering Waksal anything unless he incriminates his entire family--not even an assurance that his 80 year old father won't go to jail, which is undoubtedly why he wouldn't plead to the count involving his father today.

Waksal's son is likely going to prison, but his daughter, Aliza, may be spared as Waksal said in court today his daughter had no knowledge of his reasons for advising her to sell her stock.

Waksal pleaded guilty to two counts of securities fraud, and one count each of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury and bank fraud. Under the federal sentencing guidlines, he could receive between six and nine years in prison. Waksal and the Government disagree about the facts supporting the bank fraud case which means the Judge will decide that issue at a sentencing hearing.

Both ImClone's and Martha Stewart's stocks rose today.

"Gov. Jeb Bush's daughter cannot have her drug court hearings closed to the public, a judge ruled Tuesday. Circuit Judge Reginald Whitehead said that Florida's drug courts are criminal proceedings and are open to the public. He weighed the patient's right to privacy against the public's right to access to court proceedings."

A hearing will be held Thursday and the Court will decide whether Ms. Bush will be allowed to remain in the drug treatment program or turned over to the criminal justice system.

Update: Governor Jeb Bush had this to say about his daughter's case today.

"In interviews Tuesday, the governor said that his daughter's battle with drugs has strained his family. But he accepted the judge's decision."

"The judge had to make that determination. All I can tell you is it's a lot harder to deal with drug addictions with these big lights, but it's his court," Bush said at a campaign stop. "The sad fact is, and the good news is, that frankly cameras and reporters aren't as interested in the other people in drug court, so they have some degree of privacy to be able to cope with their addictions."

"The governor said his daughter has not received preferential treatment. "In fact, as a father my concern is to make sure that she's treated as she should be treated and people don't go overboard because of who she is to treat her differently," he said. "

"Bush said his daughter's addiction is difficult to handle as a father. "I see pictures of her when she was 3 or 4 four years old and I vividly remember that," Bush said. "But now she's 25 and the laws apply to her as they apply to anyone else. I just hope the laws apply to her like anybody else."

Six members of New York's City Council are recommending that the convictions of the five youths in the Central Park Jogger case be overturned. The council members say the conviction should be overturned because of new evidence casting doubt on the guilty verdicts. They emphasize that their recommendation is not based on a "legal technicality," which is the reason DA Morgantheu has put out in the media as the reason he might agree to the reversal.

Hamster has the latest on the Winona Ryder trial and the absurd amount of resources the DA's office is allocating to it:

"The case is also unprecedented for the sheer amount of resources devoted to a theft charge against a defendant with no criminal history. In the three months before a June court date, the DA's office had one attorney who handled nothing other than preparation for a preliminary hearing on a shoplifting case. To put this in perspective, a typical deputy DA handles 20-30 cases per day, or anywhere from 1,200-1,800 cases in the same time span that that one attorney spent preparing solely for a single pre-trial hearing."

"There are now upwards of eight lawyers working full-time in the frenzied few weeks leading up to next week's trial — a little less than one attorney for every item they allege she stole. It's not like the DA's office doesn't have other important cases to prosecute, either. In fact, the lead deputy DA assigned to Ryder's case is trying to postpone a murder trial so she can fulfill her duties prosecuting a shoplifting charge. "

For us, this answers the question is Ms. Ryder being treated differently because she is a celebrity, with a resounding yes.

As expected, Ira Einhorn testified at his murder trial today and denied killing his girlfriend Holly in 1977. Einhorn testfied for four hours and faces cross-examination tomorrow.

"Former hippie guru Ira Einhorn, who once described himself as a planetary enzyme, took the witness stand at his murder trial on Monday to deny killing his girlfriend Holly Maddux in a fit of rage 25 years ago."

"In a packed Philadelphia courtroom, a smiling but sometimes nervous-looking Einhorn told jurors that his stormy romance with the 30-year-old Bryn Mawr graduate never reached full flower because of his rampant appetite for other women.
"I think we loved each other very much. But we had a very difficult time creating the context in which our love could flower," said the counter-culture leader who helped launch the annual Earth Day observance in 1970."

A not-so-well-known fact: Ira's first defense attorney following his arrest in 1979 was Arlen Specter, who is currently a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania.

According to Newsday, the reinvestigation into the Central Park Jogger case is complete and the paper has seen the confidential report on the inquiry.

"After more than six months re-investigating the Central Park jogger case, authorities have turned up no new evidence to contradict a serial rapist's claim that he alone committed the crime for which five teens served years in prison."

"In fact, a confidential police report obtained by Newsday concludes that "All forensic evidence used at trial ... [to convict the five] has now been determined to be useless."

The report concludes "a hair found on her clothes and originally thought to be from one of the defendants, has been identified as Reyes' hair. The report says a pubic hair from Reyes was found on the jogger's sock."

"Authorities have not found anything linking Reyes to the bands of youths marauding in Central Park that night, interviews indicate. And nothing solid suggests Reyes, then 18, came upon the jogger before or after she was attacked by the five teens, who were convicted largely by their own incriminating statements."

"Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said Saturday he has not made up his mind about whether he will consent to overturn the 1990 guilty verdicts, as defense attorneys have requested."

"But if claims continue to hold up, he would go along with the defense motion to vacate," said Morgenthau spokeswoman Barbara Thompson."

"We've tried to locate every single witness," said Morgenthau, who has devoted two prosecutors and two investigators full-time to the case since May, reviewing 15,000 pages of records, scouring physical evidence and checking everyone who has come to visit Reyes in prison. "Nothing, so far."

The hair and blood evidence that was linked to one of the five convicted youths and the jogger turned out not to have been from either.

We may never know all the details of the jogger's brutal assault and rape that evening, but it's become very clear these five youths did not get fair trials and deserve to have their convictions overturned.

Ira Einhorn will take the witness stand Monday in his murder trial. He is expected to testify "that the CIA killed his girlfriend Holly Maddux and framed him for the murder because of his research into ``psychic warfare.''

His lawyer said, "He has a humongous job; the circumstantial evidence in this case is extremely damaging. It ultimately rises or falls upon Ira's testimony."

Some lesser known facts about Ira: "Even in the years before he fled the United States, Einhorn had an interest in the paranormal, and counted spoon-bending illusionist Uri Geller among his friends."

"He became known in hippie culture by organizing ``be-ins,'' was involved in the city's first Earth Day in 1970 and ran for mayor as a "planetary enzyme -- catalyst for change.''

Wednesday was a particularly bad day to be a defendant in America:

Robert Blake was denied bail

Aileen Wuornos was executed in Florida

Malaysia sent one of the Oregon Six back to the U.S. to face charges

John Lennon's killer was again denied

Moussaoui's jail cell was searched and all his trial preparation notes and records are now in disarray.