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Judge Upholds an Indictment in Letterman Extortion Case

A Manhattan judge on Tuesday upheld the indictment of an Emmy Award-winning television producer accused of trying to extort $2 million from David Letterman.

The judge, Justice Charles Solomon of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, issued an eight-page decision stating that the producer, Robert Halderman, could not claim to have had a right to the money he was seeking to keep information about Mr. Letterman’s affairs quiet.

Mr. Halderman’s lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, had argued that his client intended only to write a book or a screenplay about Mr. Letterman’s affairs. But before going forward with the project, Mr. Halderman simply was offering to sell Mr. Letterman the rights to the story for $2 million, Mr. Shargel wrote in a brief filed with the court.

By charging Mr. Halderman, prosecutors were impeding on his constitutional right to write a book or screenplay about a public figure, Mr. Shargel argued.

But Justice Solomon saw it differently.

“Since the defendant is not being prosecuted for authoring either a book or screenplay, his constitutional right to free speech has not been impacted,” the judge wrote.

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