‘Tiger Defense’ Fails for Letterman Suspect

This might allow Jay Leno to change the topic: The man accused of blackmailing David Letterman, Robert Halderman, failed to have his case thrown out on Tuesday. The judge wasn’t buying his “Tiger defense”—the argument that, in a situation similar to Tiger paying hush money to his mistresses, Halderman was really offering to sell Letterman first dibs on the story about the talk show host’s philandering with interns. If you think that doesn’t really sound similar to Tiger’s situation at all, well, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon agrees. "Since the defendant is not being prosecuted for authoring either a book or a screenplay, his constitutional right to free speech has not been impacted," Solomon wrote. Halderman will be back in court on March 9 to learn his trial date.