Crime & Safety

Drew Peterson Lawyer Fighting to Keep Financial Records Secret

The lawyer blamed for losing Drew Peterson's murder trial is resisting attempts to get at his financial records.

The lawyer representing Drew Peterson the longest before his unceremonious departure from the case is trying to keep his financial records out of the public eye.

Attorney Joel Brodsky filed court papers to head off a subpoena for records of his financial dealings with Peterson.

The lawyers still representing Peterson claim Brodsky blew what would have been a successful defense against charges Peterson murdered his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Brodsky did such a bad job, Peterson's attorneys contend, that the convicted wife-killer should get a new trial.

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Peterson's attorneys are trying to get their hands on Brodsky's financial records in hopes of showing Brodsky put his interest in making money in the media and entertainment industries ahead of his client's welfare.

According to court papers filed Friday morning, Peterson was "paraded around as a meal ticket" by Brodsky, "not as part of any intelligent, reasonable, well thought out competent legal strategy. He was a prop in support of (Brodsky's) efforts to enhance his own profile."

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Judge Edward Burmila gave Brodsky one more week to comply with the subpoena. One of the attorneys still representing Peterson, David Peilet, was optimistic that Brodsky would cough up the records.

"I'm hopeful that he will," Peilet said. "We're giving him the opportunity to do it voluntarily."

Brodsky did not attend the hearing Friday morning. He failed to respond to a phone message left at his Chicago office.

Peilet said the money trail will show Brodsky let his greed get in the way of trying to represent Peterson, a former Bolingbrook cop also identified as a suspect in the mysterious October 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.

"The purpose of us trying to receive this information is the outcome of the case was influenced by money," Peilet said.

Besides putting Peterson's interests behind his own attempts to cash in on celebrity, the wife-killer's lawyers say Brodsky blundered when he called Savio's divorce lawyer as a witness during the murder trial. Peterson lawyer Steve Greenberg said the move was a death blow to Peterson's defense, and after the trial, jurors said the testimony from divorce lawyer Harry Smith clinched their decision to vote guilty.

While on the witness stand, Smith repeatedly hammered home to the jury that Stacy told him Peterson killed Savio.

"There is not a competent attorney, or jurist, who could look at this testimony and come to any conclusion other than it was one of the worst things to ever happen in a courtroom," Friday's filing said.

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