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<H1>Prosecutors: Kenneth Starr, lawyer sent fake letters </H1>
<H3>Lawyers: Bogus letters sent to governor asking to spare client's life</H3>
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Saturday, February 11, 2006; Posted: 3:18 p.m. EST (20:18
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<P><B style="FONT-SIZE: 14px">SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Lawyers for a
death row inmate, including former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr,
sent fake letters from jurors asking California's governor to spare the man's
life, prosecutors said Friday.</B></P>
<P>The jurors denied they thought Michael Morales deserved clemency because some
of the testimony at his trial may have been fabricated, said Nathan Barankin,
spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.</P>
<P>Kenneth Starr is best known as the special prosecutor in the Monica Lewinsky
affair during President Bill Clinton's administration.</P>
<P>"We showed each person the declaration on their behalf and they all said they
didn't say that," Barankin said.</P>
<P>San Joaquin County prosecutor Charles Schultz also said the letters sent to
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week were "untrue" and "pure fiction."</P>
<P>Starr was not immediately available for comment, said a spokeswoman for the
Pepperdine School of Law, where Starr is the dean.</P>
<P>Morales' other clemency attorney, David Senior from Los Angeles, said he
stood by the validity of the six sworn statements he and Starr sent to the
governor. He suggested that the jurors might have gotten cold feet when they
were contacted by prosecutors in the last two days.</P>
<P>"When the D.A. and A.G. [district attorney and attorney general] show up with
badges and guns and say whatever, they can intimidate a lot of people and that's
their game," Senior said.</P>
<P>On Friday, the San Joaquin District Attorney's office sent Schwarzenegger a
new batch of sworn statements from five of those jurors saying they not only
still supported capital punishment for Morales, but had never spoken with the
defense investigator who claimed to have secured their signatures.</P>
<P>Kathleen Culhane, the San Francisco private investigator who Starr and Senior
said had interviewed the jurors, declined to comment.</P>
<P>None of the five jurors involved in the legal tug-of-war, whose names were
blacked out of the competing clemency documents to protect their privacy, could
immediately be reached for comment.</P>
<P>Morales is scheduled to be executed February 21 for the rape and murder of a
17-year-old girl in San Joaquin County 25 years ago.</P>
<P>Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson declined to address the dispute,
saying only that the governor, when deciding on clemency, will consider "all the
information that is provided to him when making the decision."</P>
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