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D.C. Madam Gets New Lawyer

By Jeralyn, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Tue May 08, 2007 at 01:18:00 AM EST
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Deborah Jeane Palfry, the accused D.C. Madam has a new lawyer: Preston Burton, a partner in the Washington office of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Burton was appointed by the Judge after Palfrey complained she and her initial court-appointed lawyer, A.J. Kramer, didn't see eye to eye.

Palfry is eligible for a court-appointed lawyer because the Government seized her assets, leaving her without funds with which to retain counsel.

So what about her civil lawyer Blair Montgomery Sibley, and his less than brilliant strategy to leak her client roster to ABC News and plan on issuing subpoenas to clients in the hope they would say their escorts didn't provide sex?

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said she does not recognize Sibley, a controversial and flamboyant figure in the civil case Palfrey has filed against former escorts, as a legal party in Palfrey's criminal defense. Last week, the judge barred him from entering the well of the court to sit with his client.

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    D.C. Madam Gets New Lawyer | 13 comments (13 topical)

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    brilliant legal strategy (none / 0) (#1)
    by smiley on Tue May 08, 2007 at 10:54:10 AM EST
    You don't like slipping the phone records to ABC?  I think it was about the best thing they could have done, short of publishing the entire list on the internet.  

    They can't possibly think that any of these guys will help her with their testimony.  That's a transparent cover story.  She's trying to force the government to drop the prosecution by embarrasing powerful men in the government by revealing their pay-for-sex habits to the general public.  Whether or not it works, she has already performed a great service to the public.  If it turns out that she's blackmailing the right sort of people, it might even get the charges against her dropped.

    And it's working.  If Palfrey had not given her records to ABC, Randall Tobias would still be using your tax dollars to pay for his hookers.  If Dusty Foggo wasn't already indicted over the Abramoff / Wilkes / Cunningham fiasco, you can be sure that he would be forced to resign over this, becuase I would bet a thousand dollars that one of the numbers on Palfrey's list belongs to Dusty.  And I'm sure there are hundreds of other lickspittle apparatchiks just like Tobias and Foggo who are still working in the Bush administration, dilligently undermining basic human rights, treating women like property, trying to foist their twisted religiousity on an unwilling population.  Palfrey's list gives me some small hope that all of these hypocritical bastards are afraid to answer the phone because it might be ABC news.  

    This is how it should be!  Government should be afraid of the people, not the other way around.  It's too bad that it takes a sex scandal for the proper state of affairs to reassert itself.  Perhaps if the loyal bushies had felt a modicum of fear of punishment for not doing their jobs right in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess.

    Listen: it doesn't matter how these people are brought down.  Everyone who is a Bush appointee deserves to have the remainder of their lives ruined by whatever means possible.  Anyone like Palfrey (and her lawyer) who takes positive steps towards that end deserves commendation.

    you may be reading HER correctly: (none / 0) (#3)
    by Deconstructionist on Tue May 08, 2007 at 11:30:21 AM EST
    "They can't possibly think that any of these guys will help her with their testimony.  That's a transparent cover story.  She's trying to force the government to drop the prosecution by embarrasing powerful men in the government by revealing their pay-for-sex habits to the general public."

     But, that still is an idiotic strategy. Let's start with the obvious. Once you deliver the records to independent 3rd parties you know longer have ability to use the "threat" of disclosure as leverage. The 3rd parties are no more or less likely to disclose and embaraass anyone dependent on the actions of the prosecution.  if the "powerful peole" are going to get revealed anyway then the government has no reason not to prosecute even if we assume it has any interest in protecting these people.

      Secondly, the prosecution CHOSE to seek an indictment. That is an assertion that it believes it has a meritorious case or otherwise a serious ethical violation. Dropping charges after a PUBLIC threat to expose powerful people would reek of wrongdoing. It would be more likely that such tactics would make the government MORE adamant about seeking a bad outcome for her than less.

       While I think it's a dubious tactic no matter how employed, the only conceivable way to do it is