Reply #199: I am Steve Heller

[steveheller]

I am tired, damn sick and tired, of the Bev Bashers who continue to use my case to attack her. I neither know nor care what their ulterior motives are, but these people like Kelvin (David) are deliberately lying and distorting the facts of my case in order to attack Bev.

As I have said on DU on at least 3 previous occasions, Bev Harris never did anything to harm me or my legal defense. In fact, Bev Harris went out of her way to help me and my lawyers defend me, and she never did ANYTHING to harm me in any way. This is MY CASE, I know the details, and I am telling you the facts. If you believe "Kelvin" over me, you're a fool. Again, this is MY CASE and I KNOW THE FACTS of my own case!!! Bev Harris never did anything to harm me. To me personally, Bev Harris is a hero. To me as a voter and taxpayer in California, she is a hero. I can only form an opinion about a person by my own experience with them, and all of my experiences and interactions with Bev Harris lead me to believe she is a person of great integrity and loyalty.

Regarding me joining the qui tam lawsuit. Bev asked me, during a phone call in fall of 2004 (shortly after I found out I was under criminal investigation), if I would join the suit as a co-plaintiff with her and Jim March. I asked my lawyer about it, thinking it might be a way to pay my legal bills. My lawyer told me that I could not under any circumstances join that lawsuit. My lawyer said one of the strongest legal defenses I had was that I was a "defendant with clean hands" (my lawyer's phrase). I had not done anything for my own profit, and had not done anything to try to make a profit off the situation. My lawyer told me that joining a civil suit with a potential for a cash payoff for me would greatly damage my defense. She told me that I must not do ANYTHING to give the appearance of trying to profit from my case. As some of you may know, I am an actor, and a number of friends from the entertainment industry approached me with ideas for book and movie deals, but I had to steer clear of such things in order to remain a defendant with clean hands (although I don't need to steer clear of such offers any more, and in fact serious interest has been expressed by legitimate players in Hollywood, and I have a meeting with one of the said legit Hollywood players this coming Friday morning. Hopefully something will come of that soon, but that's another story). But let me make this clear: Bev Harris DID invite me to join the qui tam suit, and on the advice of my attorney I did not join it. But Bev DID give $10,000 to my legal defense fund, by far the largest single donation the fund received. And she gave it immediately after my wife started the defense fund, when we were most in need of immediate cash. That $10,000 of seed money, so to speak, allowed me to continue my criminal defense at a very critical time. In addition, Bev made several pleas on my behalf to her contact list, and those pleas generated thousands more dollars in donations.

Regarding what the D.A.'s office has said since my case was resolved: First of all, Ms. Gibbons, the spokesperson for the D.A.'s office, is spinning faster than a plate spinner at a Russian circus. The DA's office received a lot of criticism for prosecuting me, and their spin is that "if he'd only come to us first." Bullshit. Let's examine the possible scenarios, shall we?

If I'd walked into the DA's office and said, "Hey, I'm temping at a law firm, and here's what I saw in confidential, attorney-client privileged documents," they would have arrested me on the spot for breaking attorney-client privilege.

If I'd walked in and said, "I have reason to believe the integrity our elections, and thus of our democracy, is being undermined, but I can't tell you why I know this or where I saw the information about it," they'd have just laughed at me.

If I'd gone in and arranged some kind of immunity and then told them what I saw, they wouldn't have been able to do a damn thing about it because the information I would have given them was attorney-client privileged information and they would have been prevented by law from acting on it. What would you expect the DA to do, get a search warrant on Jones Day's offices? No judge would grant them a warrant for attorney-client privileged documents, especially on the hear-say evidence of a temp word processor. Plus, the "necessity defense" law in California says that attorney-client privilege can only be broken in the case of "imminent bodily harm." At a hearing on October 20, 2006, my lawyers argued that in my case the imminent bodily harm was not to a person but to the entire nation, because Diebold was using crooked, illegal software in their voting machines, and with a presidential election only months away (from the time of my theft of the documents) the potential for harm to the very underpinnings of our democracy was real and imminent, that such harm was of a much more serious nature than bodily harm to any one individual, and thus the necessity defense should be allowed. The judge ruled that a trial court at his level (technically, his court is called an Inferior Court, as opposed to a Superior Court) cannot expand the definition and limitations of the necessity defense and that only an appellate court could decide whether or not the necessity defense should be expanded to include "imminent bodily harm" to the nation. And so, the judge did not allow my attorneys to use the necessity defense, and this same interpretation of the law would have prevented the DA from acting on the attorney-client privileged information that I might have given them while under a grant of immunity.

A piece of advice: don't listen to the DA spin on my case, or any case. They will spin it in their favor every time. When they say that I could have been protected if I'd come to them first, they are saying something that is not true. It's irritating, because what they say makes me look stupid, and also because the last thing the judge said at the hearing where we reached the plea agreement was "I hope the parties involved with not spin this case on the blogs or in the press." The DA's office has decided to ignore the judge's request. Shame on them.

Also, here is another point I have made, yet this point is ignored by the Bev Bashers because it is in their own interest to ignore it. Read this slowly and carefully, because it is the truth. The DA knew long before they had even heard of Bev Harris that I was the one who stole the documents. One truthful thing the DA's office said is that I left behind the "perfect electronic trail." I did indeed. Let me explain. Jones Day, along with most large law offices, uses a program called iManage to manage documents on a large system. The only way to open documents on the system is to go through iManage. I'm sure there is a way to hack into the system without using iManage, but while I am an expert with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, I don't know the first thing about networks or hacking. So to open and print the documents I stole I used iManage to search for and find docs on the system using the client-matter number Jones Day assigned to Diebold, then opened them, read them, printed them out and took them home. And every time I used iManage to open, print, download, email, save, create, revise, etc. a document, I left an electronic trail. The law firm did their own internal investigation and found that someone using the temp login I was given when I came to work there, during the hours I worked there, at the computer to which I was assigned, opened and printed in one night every document with the Diebold client matter number. They gave their report to the DA who conducted their own investigation, and the DA confirmed everything Jones Day had found. The DA even had security photos of me coming into and going out of the building on the night in question, the electronic records of the key card I was given to get into and out of the parking garage and access to the elevator and the locked doors of the Jones Day office, and the time sheets from my temp agency to prove I was working on the night the docs were taken.

So as I've posted on DU and elsewhere, Bev Harris DID NOT GIVE ME UP TO THE COPS. The cops already knew I was the one who stole the documents!!! I'll say it again, please remember this and pass the word around. Bev Harris DID NOT GIVE ME UP TO THE COPS. The cops already knew I was the one who stole the documents!!!

The only reason Bev Harris met with the DA was because my lawyer asked her to. She made a special trip to Los Angeles to do so, at her own expense, on her own time. At my lawyer's request Bev went over the docs I stole with the DA to show them what was important in the docs, and why I was thus a whistleblower and not a criminal. Again, my lawyer asked Bev to meet with the DA and tell them what she knew about the docs, because the DA already knew I was the one who stole the docs. At that point we weren't trying to convince the DA they had the wrong man, or didn't have enough proof to charge me. We knew they had the proof, and they knew they had the right man. What we were trying to do was convince them that in the interests of justice they should not charge me, and at my lawyer's request Bev tried to help us do that. It is my belief that Jones Day exerted a lot of pressure on the DA to charge me with felonies rather than misdemeanors, and to come down on me as hard as possible. Jones Day is a very powerful, very rich law firm with political connections to the highest levels of power in Los Angeles, and indeed in Washington. Their power over the DA far outweighed mine, and thus I was charged with 3 felonies.

Just please remember, whatever else you may hear, Bev Harris did not harm me or my legal defense in any way. And since I'm the horse, you're hearing it from the horse's mouth.

Also, please remember whatever "Kelvin" (David) says about Bev Harris in relation to my case is a lie. I don't know who he is or what his affiliations are, but he is desperately trying to smear Bev Harris. I don't know why, and I don't care why. Just please don't believe him, at least in regards to my case. I know what happened in my case, "Kelvin" does not, and please take my word for it on any matters that relate to my case.

In general, I would like to thank the DU community for all the support, donations, encouragement and kind words you-all have thrown my way.

Steve Heller