Pellicano a 'thug,' attorney tells jury
Government wraps up its case against the private eye, saying his agency was a just 'a criminal organization.'
After all the testimony about Anthony Pellicano -- the industry titans who said he loyally helped them during troubled times, the harassed men and women who recalled being targeted at their most vulnerable times -- a federal prosecutor, in arguments Tuesday, reduced him from a powerful private detective to a "very well-connected and very well-paid thug."
Masquerading as a legitimate private investigation agency, Pellicano's business "was nothing more than a criminal organization," Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel Saunders said in closing arguments of the private investigator's nine-week wiretapping and racketeering trial.
When Pellicano gets hired, Saunders said, "witnesses start receiving threatening phone calls . . . and dead fish appear on reporters' cars."
The trial of Pellicano and four co-defendants entered its final stretch Tuesday with Saunders' five-hour-long marathon summation. (That's not including the coffee breaks.)
If Saunders had any doubts the jury was hanging on his every word, that was dispelled when Judge Dale S. Fischer gave the jurors the option of staying half an hour longer to hear him finish rather than continue Saunders' summation today. They chose to stay. The defendants are expected to begin their closing remarks today.
Saunders had the daunting task of reviewing 78 counts against five defendants. "That's a lot," Saunders said, in the understatement of the day.
But Saunders said the case was fairly simple: "It is about a group of people who got together to gather information, and who did it in ways that broke the law," he said. "And the reason there are so many counts is because they did it over and over and over again."
Saunders spent most of his time arguing that Pellicano and two co-defendants -- former Police Sgt. Mark Arneson and former telephone technician Ray Turner -- were part of a criminal, moneymaking enterprise and "participated in the activities of the enterprise," the legal definition of racketeering. Arneson provided confidential information on people by illegally accessing law enforcement databases, the government lawyer said. Turner supplied Pellicano with confidential phone company information on people and, Saunders indicated, helped implement the wiretapping. Both were on Pellicano's payroll.
- Pellicano may not represent himself at trial Jan 17, 2007
- Anthony Pellicano presents closing arguments in self-defense May 01, 2008
- Judge Delays Start of Pellicano Trial Apr 19, 2006
