Wednesday, March 1, 2006 - 7:00 pm
What would you call a well-meaning employee at a law firm handling Diebold’s legal strategies who leaks key documents outlining problems with voting machines to the secretary of state and a newspaper reporter?
If you’re Steve Cooley, L.A. County’s district attorney, you’d call him a thief and charge him with three felonies. If you’re an expert in a state law that protects employees who rat out potentially dangerous and illegal conduct, you’d call him a whistleblower.
“The issue is that he shouldn’t have been charged at all,” said Louis Clark, president of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistleblower protection organization in Washington, D.C. “It really is against public policy to bring felony charges against a whistleblower who is alleged to have brought forward information about election misconduct.”
But Cooley did just that on February 21 when his office charged Stephen Heller, 44, with felony access to computer data, commercial burglary and receiving stolen property. The New York native could face up to three years in prison if convicted.
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http://www.laweekly.com/news/12809/diebolds-revenge/