'I Didn't Place Election-Year Comfort Above Duty'

Now it's Bill Lockyer's turn at the defense table. The former California attorney general is firing back at critics who say he unfairly prosecuted cancer victim Patricia C. Dunn, the former chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard Co., in the state's "pretexting case."

Dunn, who suffers from ovarian cancer, was cleared of all charges last week and her three co-defendants each pleaded no contest to a single misdemeanor count of illegal wiretapping.

Roger Parloff on CNNMoney called Lockyer's prosecution "ghoulish." He wrote that, "California had no law specifically aimed at telephone 'pretexting,' as the practice has come to be called, until Sept. 29, 2006, long after the events at issue had occurred. When that law finally was enacted, it was a misdemeanor. Nevertheless, Lockyer charged each defendant with four felonies under preexisting laws that he theorized could be applied to this situation, though none ever previously had been."

Lockyer, now state treasurer, said the case was "not cobbled together. It rested on a solid foundation of evidence and state laws." His full response is after the jump. (Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Lockyer: "The Hewlett-Packard pretexting case certainly has culprits. Neither I nor lawyers at the Department of Justice are among them. The defendants in this case broke the laws of our state and, in the process, violated constitutionally-protected privacy rights. Combined, the prosecutors in this case possessed more than seven decades of experience. They evaluated the evidence and determined they could win a unanimous jury verdict on the charges filed.

"HP officials' legal investigation of the conduct consisted largely of surfing the Web and relying on assurances from the folks doing the pretexting that the practice was OK. That lack of due diligence is matched only by some pundits' lack of credibility. One professor frequently quoted as a critic of the charges didn’t even know phone companies are utilities in California, a key facet of the case.

"This case was not cobbled together. It rested on a solid foundation of evidence and state laws. I had a duty to pursue justice, regardless of the status or special circumstances of any particular defendant. If I had wanted to take the politically correct action, I would have ignored the evidence and dropped the case. I'm proud I didn't place election-year comfort above duty."