Will Brent Wilkes beat the rap? Or has he said his last Boom Shaka Laka?
We’ll soon find out. The trial for one of Duke Cunningham’s favorite defense contractors is set to begin Wednesday, when Wilkes will try to convince a jury that the hundreds of thousands of dollars of gifts and payments that he gave Cunningham weren’t bribes.
But Wilkes’ lawyer Mark Geragos had a number of requests today before the trial gets started. Among them was a motion to preclude any evidence that Wilkes had provided Cunningham with prostitutes.
Geragos reasons that prosecutors are just out to dirty his client:
There is little probative value in presenting the testimony of professional call girls, persons admittedly in the business of regularly breaking the law and making a living through illegal vice. The real purpose of presenting that evidence is to sully Mr. Wilkes in the eyes of the jury. Mr. Wilkes was married during the alleged incident, and the government seeks to drag out a dirty story of adultery and vice, not to prove any element of the alleged offenses.
Geragos points to the prosecutors’ dirty habit of regularly dropping references to the prostitutes in their filings (like here and here) to prove that they’re out to sully Wilkes. He argues that any mention of the call girls and especially one prostitutes’ scheduling book should be barred at trial because it would lead the jury to develop a “negative and prejudiced view of Mr. Wilkesâs moral character.”
The issue is expected to be discussed at a hearing later today.