Celebrity Legal Issues

Charles Pearson, the man who allegedly stalked Dr. Drew Pinksy, was charged with a total of six felonies – one count of stalking and five other counts of making criminal threats. Pearson plead “not guilty” to all six charges.

Pearson was arrested on Wednesday after he sent Dr. Drew threatening messages on the web, including one that said he would kill Dr. Drew’s children and make the doctor’s wife “eat them.”

Police took Pearson into custody and was being held on $150,000 bail.

During his arraignment – which took place this afternoon – prosecutors set his bail up to $400,000 and a restraining order was issued which states that Pearson must stay at least 500 yards away from Dr. Drew and his family.

Pearson is due back in court on March 18.

In a 20-minute hearing yesterday, a judge ordered Levi Johnston to pay child support and some back payments for the care of Tripp, the 1-year-old son of him and Bristol Palin.

Back in November, Bristol, the daughter of former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, filed a petition in accordance with Alaska law seeking sole custody of Tripp with visitation rights for

Johnston. The 19-year-old (then 17 years old) also requested $1, 7000 of child support a month from Johnston.

The judge eventually ruled that Johnston must pay $1, 688.42 a month in support, extending back to when the child was born in December 2008.

Bristol’s lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, told TMZ, “Bristol is pleased with the court rulings today and looks forward to resolving the remaining issues with Levi.”

Everyone’s sick of hearing about these two already. Johnston needs to take responsibility and pay his support and Bristol needs to move on. Enough is enough!

Author John Grisham remains an Innocent Man -  Oklahoma Insurance Lawyer, Jody Nathan

The 10th Circuit has affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against John Grisham and others for the book, The Innocent Man. The book details the wrongful conviction of Williamson and Fritz for the rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter. Both men were later exonerated after spending over a decade in jail.

(OK, “this isn’t an insurance case, but I found it interesting”)

The plaintiffs were Oklahoma District Attorney William Peterson; former Shawnee police officer Gary Rogers; and former Oklahoma state criminologist Melvin Hett each of whom played a role in the investigation or prosecution and conviction of Williamson and Fritz. The book did not portray these folks in a positive light, so they sued Grisham and others, claiming defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and false light invasion of privacy. The district court dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim and the Tenth Circuit affirmed, finding that since the plaintiffs were public officials, any statements critical of them were privileged, so long as there was no accusation of criminal activity.

Because no special damages were claimed, the plaintiffs had to allege libel per se; but 12 OS § 1443.1 applied because the plaintiffs were public officers and states that “[a]ny and all criticisms upon the official acts of any and all public officers” are privileged and cannot be considered libelous, unless a defendant makes a false allegation that the official engaged in criminal behavior. To fall into this category, “the words alleged to have been spoken of the plaintiff, when taken in their plainest and most natural sense, and as they would be ordinarily understood, [must] obviously import the commission of crime punishable by indictment.”

The court states:

Plaintiffs point to no statement in which defendants directly accuse any plaintiff of a crime.

Plaintiffs expect us to scale a mountain of inferences in order to reach the conclusion that defendants’ statements impute criminal acts to plaintiffs and render the statutory privilege of § 1443.1 inapplicable. We decline to engage in such inferential analysis, or to take a myriad of other analytical leaps plaintiffs ask us to make. Any connection between defendants’ statements and an accusation of criminal activity is far too tenuous for us to declare them as unprivileged for purposes of § 1443.1.

Since the statements were privileged for defamation purposes, the court found them privileged for claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress and for false light invasion of privacy.

See, Peterson v. Grisham

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Tulsa insurance lawyer, Jody R. Nathan received a Juris Doctor degree with honors from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where she was also a member of the Oklahoma Law Review. During law school, she clerked for the Oklahoma Supreme Court.   Jody has extensive experience in both federal and state appeals, has an active motion practice and is AV rated. Attorney Nathan is admitted to practice in all federal and state courts in Oklahoma, as well as the Eighth and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeal and the United States Supreme Court. She has served as a judge on the Oklahoma Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals.

The infamous Chris Brown – or “Chris Beat Her Down” as he’s been called in a number of blogs – made an appearance at the Criminal Courts in Los Angeles yesterday after attending 17 out of his required 52 domestic violence classes and performing 32  out of 108 required days of community service in Virginia.

LA Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg went over all of the papers sent from authorities in Virginia and since Brown complied with what she originally ordered him to do, the singer was granted an order that permits him to travel out of town between May 18 and June 27 for his concert performances, only if he gets permission from her in advance.

Brown has to show up back in court on May 11 for the next progress hearing.

For those of you who don’t know – Brown plead guilty on June 22, 2009 to attacking and assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna after a pre-Grammy Awards ceremony in LA. The singer was sentenced on August 25 to five years probation and 180 days of community labor, which is currently fulfilling.

We all hope he learned his lesson.

So many artists have made songs up about the infamous couple Bonnie and Clyde like as Beyonce & Jay Z.  These has even been films on this couple.  But what really happened?  An Austin criminal attorney would find some of these old school high profile criminal cases interesting.  Take a trip into the past and learn about criminal cases that took place in Texas like the notorious love affair of Bonnie and Clyde and the Texas Cadet Murder Case.

Beyonce (Bonnie) & Jay Z(Clyde)

Notorious Bonnie and Clyde
Did you know that one of the most notorious criminal couples met in Texas?  Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow met in 1930.  The star-crossed criminals, ages 19 and 21 respectively, went on a three year crime spree until their death at the hands of FBI agents in 1934.  Between the both of them, Bonnie and Clyde murdered at least 13 people, and were involved in numerous robberies, burglaries, car thefts, and kidnapping.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

The Texas Cadet Murder Case
Two bright Texas students, Diane Zamora and David Graham, were arrested for the murder of 16 year old sophomore Adrianne Jones of Manfield High School in Tarrant County.

In 1995, Zamora was jealous of a sexual encounter she thought Graham had with Jones.  She ordered Graham to kill Jones.  Although the body was found soon after the murder, the couple’s involvement was not discovered until Zamora boasted to fellow students at the Naval Academy in Annapolis that she was responsible for someone’s death.  The students reported the murder to their superiors and that started the ball rolling and the couple was arrested shortly thereafter.  At the time, Graham was a cadet at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and both had very promising futures.  Both Zamora and Graham were charged with capital murder and in need of a criminal defense lawyer.