This morning's testimony included the testimony of Steve Shuman, an attorney in a civil case arising out of a criminal case involving Mr. Pellicano. Mr. Shuman was called out of order (it was Tarita's morning) to introduce some documents and then, he was subject to rigorous cross-examination by Mr. Pellicano. It seems that Mr. Pellicano, who dragged out his cross for what seemed like days, is sending a message to the prosecutors. His trial defense strategy is to slowly torture the prosecution to death with his prolonged cross of even the most insignificant witnesses. And right now, there doesn't seem to be a thing they can do about it.
Meanwhile, Tarita Virtue is busy being grilled by the other defense lawyers. Mona Soo Hoo, who represents former telephone employee Ray Turner, pointed out that Ms. Virtue seemed to like to blog a lot on her MySpace page and repeatedly pointed out for the jury that Ms. Virtue's nickname on MySpace was "boobs and brains." Ms. Soo Hoo probably set a world record for the most times a person can use the phrase "boobs and brains" in a single paragraph. Ms. Virtue finally put an end to the "boobs and brains" chant, irritably correcting Ms. Soo Hoo with the admonishment, "the name of my blog isn't boobs and brains, that's just my nickname." Ms. Soo Hoo then questioned Ms. Virtue about the year (2003) when she claimed to have been been in hiding because she feared for her life. Ms. Soo Hoo got Ms. Virtue to admit that during this allegedly year in hiding, Ms. Virtue surfaced to do her Maxim photo shoot in New York and to blog on her MySpace page. She also got Ms. Virtue to admit that she was on a few drugs -- anti-depressants, birth control and Ritalin. Ms. Soo Hoo didn't leave it there -- she wanted to know if Ms. Virtue referred to those anti-depressant pills as "happy pills." Ms. Virtue reluctantly admitted that yes, she did, because if "I go off of them, I get really depressed." Ms. Soo Hoo then established that since Ms. Virtue returned to L.A. in 2004, she's been hanging with her boyfriend, living at her old house, blogging on MySpace, not working and "partying." Ms. Virtue took exception to the "partying" description, saying "if you mean attending birthday parties, yes."
And then, there was the portion of Ms. Soo Hoo's cross-examination where she asked Ms. Virtue about her courtroom attire, wondering if the ex-Pellicano employee had been instructed to dress conservatively for the trial. Ms. Virtue, who was wearing the same all black ensemble as yesterday, replied that she's just a fan of black. (Plus, she can segue easily from daytime to evening in this ensemble.)
Mr. Semenza, the attorney for Abner Nicherie, used his cross-examination to smoothly point out that there are some significant differences between Ms. Virtue's testimony in front of the grand jury and her testimony here before this Pellicano jury. He also pointed out during his cross, that despite Ms. Virtue's testimony that she was Mr. Pellicano's right hand gal for wiretapping transcription and other important duties, she often didn't know the names of Mr. Pellicano's actual clients. And then, there was Mr. Semenza's attempt to point out that Ms. Virtue never really heard the alleged wiretapped conversations that she claims Mr. Nicherie and his brother were listening to in the Pellicano office. Ms. Virtue, who failed to identify the language in the tapes during her grand jury testimony, told the courtroom that she now knows that Mr. Pellicano wanted Mr. Nicherie to translate recordings that were in Hebrew. Ms. Virtue explained that since her conversion to Judaism, "the lingo is more understandable now."
And now, back to more cross-examination of Ms. Virtue.
UPDATE, 3:20pm: Tarita Virtue just testified that after serving Monica Zibrita of the Chris Rock case, she and another investigator of Pellicano's stopped to write down the license plates of the cars parked outside of Tom Cruise's home.
Read all of Allison's reports from the courtroom here
UPDATE, 5:25pm: Garry Shandling is expected to testify tomorrow morning. The government will interrupt Mr. Pellicano's cross examination of Tarita Virtue to accommodate the schedule of Mr. Shandling's attorney.
Ms. Virtue burst into tears during the cross by Mr. Pellicano, accusing him of threatening her life.