Prosecutor Peeved By Plan to Jail Wiretap Case Lawyer in His Beverly Hills Home

White-Collar Crime

Prosecutor Peeved By Plan to Jail Wiretap Case Lawyer in His Beverly Hills Home

Posted Nov 12, 2008, 03:55 pm CST
By Martha Neil

A high-profile lawyer convicted of conspiring with a private investigator to wiretap their clients' opponents in celebrity litigation should be sentenced to spend 10 months in his Beverly Hills home, a probation officer has recommended.

But a federal prosecutor has blasted the recommendation in the presentence investigation report, calling the probation officer "somewhat starstruck" and contending that Los Angeles attorney Terry Christensen should be sentenced to at least three years in federal prison and a $500,000 fine, reports the Daily Journal (sub. req.).

"The government submits that the probation officer's recommendation is reckless, uninformed and completely inappropriate to the facts of this case," writes Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Saunders in a responding memorandum prior to Christensen's scheduled Nov. 24 sentencing.

Christensen, 68, formerly served as managing partner of Christensen, Glaser, Weil, Fink, Jacobs & Shapiro, and is likely to lose his law license over the conviction, having already been publicly humiliated by his trial and criminal conviction, the presentence report by the unidentified probation officer points out.

Attorney Terree Bowers of Howrey is representing Christensen. She characterizes the Saunders memo as "unusually vitriolic and personalized."

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