Fieger Trial: He Was In Shock?

Sometimes you simply have to take your hits at trial. There is generally not an answer for every accusation. As Freud once famously said: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

There was brief testimony yesterday that Geoffrey Fieger, on trial for using strawmen to contribute to the campain of presidential candidate John Edwards in apparent violation of federal campaign law, denied reimbursing employees, their families and vendors. Where did he make that denial? Why on the radio, of course; he was being interviewed on WJR's Frank Beckmann show. Feiger simply flat out asserted he did not make the reimbursements.

Now, of course, the defense admits making the reimbursements, and simply contends that the reimbursements were legal.

Then why lie about it? Prosecutors love evidence of lies. A guilty mind lies, they say. This so-called evidence of consciousness of guilt can sink a defendant. This is the most damning evidence to date in the week of evidence thus far mustered against the Michigan lawyer.

What was Gerry Spence's, Fieger's lawyer, response to this evidence? Well, the trial master sugguested to the jury that Fieger must have been in shock when he told this whopper. The feds had just jumped on him and scores of his employees and their families, sending 80 plus agents out to bang everyone's doors in a simultaneous raid.

In shock? That is simply lame. Did the jury giggle, I wonder. Small misteps like this can squander credibility with jurors. Why make such an assertion? The better course would have been to endure the hit and move on. I understand that the defense strategy is to put the Government on trial. But explaining a lie as something akin to post traumatic shock syndrome is ridiculous.

Spence will recover from this whopper. Fieger had better hope this sort of nonsense isn't repeated. He said what!?

Comments

[hardball]

"Fieger lawyers have noted Fieger was not under oath during the radio interview..." That's from the detnews.com article provided by hyperlink at the end of your blog entry.

This sounds like the defense objected to the admission of the radio show statement on hearsay grounds. Assuming the government argued for its admissibility as a prior inconsistent statement, then a defense rejoinder that the radio statement was not within that hearsay exclusion, because defendant was not under oath, seems on point.

Even assuming the court allowed this as a prior inconsistent statement, those grounds are harmless error. This is so because the statement itself is not within the definition of hearsay at all. Along with the other elements, hearsay is offered for the truth of the assertion. Here, the statement made by defendant on the radio is not being offered for the truth of the assertion. It is being offered to prove the falsity of the assertion.

Lies, damned lies, and . . . I'll let you fill in the blank.

[curveball]

I buy the shock gambit. At the same instant, more than 70 FBI and a few IRS agents hit the offices and homes of everyone having to do with the Fieger firm. The investigators peppered them with odd questions, such as whom did you vote for in various elections.
Fieger knew they were looking at him, but he could not have known they would come with such Shock & Awe. One FBI agent questioning a Fieger employee said he'd just been flown in from Iraq for the raid.
Where Fieger's reaction gets really sticky is the obstruction charge, especially with what he subsequently advised/coached the vendors outside the firm that he got to make campaign contributions and then reimbursed them.

[Elliot]

it's a statement of a party opponenet, so it's not hearsay.

[Daniel Quackenbush]

I too don't discount the "shock gambit" argument. No matter how well even an attorney might think she knows the law, and when it seems "everybody" is out to get her, it could easily place doubts in her own mind whether she committed an illegal act, or whether she was being set up although innocent.

I don't know if it is still accurate, but I once read that some of the easiest people to "break" in an interrogation and get a confession is a police officer. And police officers should know not to "talk to the police."