Kim Peek, the original Rain Man, dies

Kim Peek, the autistic savant who inspired the Oscar-winning film Rain Man, has died, aged 58.

Mr Peek's father Fran said that his son had suffered a major heart attack on Saturday and was pronounced dead at a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, the town where he had spent his life.

Mr Peek was probably the world's most famous savant. Described as a confounding mixture of disability and genius, his astonishing ability to retain knowledge inspired the writer Barry Morrow to write Rain Man, the 1988 movie starring Dustin Hoffman that won four Academy Awards.

Born in 1951 in Salt Lake city, Mr Peek was diagnosed as severely mentally retarded and his parents were advised to place him in an institution and forget about him. Thirty years later, he was classified as a "mega-savant," a genius in about 15 different subjects, from history and literature and geography to numbers, sports, music and dates.

By the time of his death he had committed more than 9,000 books to memory and Nasa made him the subject of MRI-based research, hoping that technology used to study the effects of space travel on the brain would help explain his mental capabilities.



He would read eight books a day, taking just ten seconds to read a page. He could read two pages simultaneously, his left eye reading the left page and his right eye reading the right page.

But throughout his life he still needed 24-hour care. Despite his great mental agility, his motor skills remained limited; he could not perform simple tasks such as dressing himself or combing his hair.

His father Fran became his sole carer after Mr Peek's parent divorced in 1975. Fran Peek said that care of his son was a 30-hour-day, 10-day-a-week job but he did it devotedly, encouraging Kim to make the most of his abilities. But Mr Peek remained deeply introverted. It was not until he met Dustin Hoffman, when the Hollywood star was researching his role in Rain Man, that he could look into another person's face. He was 37 at the time.

Dustin Hoffman advised Fran Peek not to hide his son away. Mr Peek said of that meeting: "Dustin Hoffman said to me, you have to promise me one thing about this guy, share him with the world. And pretty soon it got so that nobody was a stranger to him, they were people, and so was he".

He took Hoffman's advice, putting his son on stage in front of thousands of people for whom he answered, almost always correctly, the most obscure questions they could test him with.

He thrived on his new found fame. Mr Morrow said of him: "I love the way he's flowered, it belies the myth that people don't change, especially people with developmental disabilities."

Four years before his death, Mr Peek said: "I wasn't supposed to make it past about 14, and yet here I am at 54, a celebrity!"

LeAnn Rimes Reaches Divorce Settlement

That was fast.

On the same day Deane Sheremet filed for divorce last week from LeAnn Rimes, they agreed to a confidential divorce settlement, Los Angeles court records show.

"The [settlement] shall not be filed in this proceeding due to the parties mutual desire to maintain their respective rights to privacy," the document reads. The settlement presumably divides their cash, property and other valuables.

Both Rimes, 27, and Sheremet, 29, will be legally single after their marital status officially ends on June 19, 2010.

Their nearly eight-year marriage crumbled as Rimes began a relationship with actor Eddie Cibrian, who was married at the time to Brandi Glanville. Cibrian and Glanville are also divorcing.

Brittany Murphy's husband mourns

A "devastated" Simon Monjack told PEOPLE his wife Brittany Murphy did not overdose on drugs and did not suffer from an eating disorder.

"These rumors that she was anorexic? It's crazy -- she was slim, but that was her natural physique," Monjack told PEOPLE. "This is what's killing all of us? How did it happen? Her mum, myself and her family -- we want to know why we lost our baby."
During a sometimes tear-filled interview, an exhausted Monjack, 39, who hasn't slept since his mother-in-law found his wife collapsed in the bathroom early Sunday, said all he knows is what doctors told him at the hospital: She died of cardiac arrest, but they won't know details until after an autopsy. (A coroner's spokesperson said the results could take up to six weeks, for toxicology reports to be final.)

"My initial reaction to the autopsy was -- they're going to cut her open -- I couldn't bear it," Monjack said, weeping. "That would break her mother, but we realized we needed to know. I look forward to getting the results."
He added that his wife of three years did suffer from a heart murmur (mitral valve prolapse), which can cause fatigue, dizziness and irregular heartbeats -- but is generally not life threatening. Murphy didn't require medication to treat it, says Monjack.

But on Saturday, he said, his wife was ill, resting in bed all day suffering from laryngitis, which the actress treated with herbal tea, ginger and lemon.

"She was on herbal remedies that wouldn't speed up her heart," Monjack said. "There was nothing here that could endanger her; there was prescription medication in the house for her female time and some cough syrup. That was it."
Asked point-blank if a drug overdose was a possible cause of death, Monjack replied, "I can get rid of that one right now," he said.

Last Saturday, the couple just relaxed in bed, watching three movies as Murphy prepared to cast her vote as a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. They ordered Brittany's favorite takeout -- Thai food -- and ate soup prepared by Murphy's mother, Sharon, who has lived with them for 3½ years.

"She was tired and a little sad because she was sick," Monjack said about Brittany. "She wore her pink Beverly Hills Hotel robe and monkey pajamas. We saw It's Complicated, Public Enemy and The Princess and the Frog.

The couple were joined by Murphy's companion, a pet Maltese named Clara, a Christmas gift last year from Monjack that Murphy named after her favorite silent screen star, Clara Bow. "One of the saddest things is that Clara has looked everywhere for Brittany and can't find her," said Monjack.

Monjack, a photographer, first met Murphy on a photo shoot when she was 13 after she moved to Hollywood with her mother, Sharon. They began dating after being reintroduced at Murphy's 28th birthday party and married a year later.

"So many people have their views of us, but they never met us or sat down with us," he said. "I'm not perfect, but I don't think anyone is ... I am feeling beyond devastated. I was in love with Brittany and Brittany with me."

The couple had plans for 2010: Brittany would continue to work, but she wanted to get pregnant.

"She was an only child," said Monjack. "She wanted a baby. Her big dream next year was to have a child, and we talked about how he or she would look. She'd say, 'They'd better have your eyes and lips and my hair.' "

But Monjack did concede his wife was trying to get heavier. "She tried to gain weight but had one of those metabolisms -- a high metabolism -- but enjoyed food as much as anyone. I wish I could show all the receipts from the take out restaurants," he said.

"We are faced with this ridiculous reality that people out there believe she felt, 'Oh, poor me, I'm fat, I'm thin.' Brittany didn't see beauty as a physical thing, which I'm bloody lucky for," he said with a laugh. "I know there was a disparity in how we looked and I'm no movie star, but she always saw the person."

Monjack said he has been upset by some of the published reports.

"It's horrible -- the death of a beautiful young woman, a Hollywood icon; it has to be explained. It just can't be a tragic accident," he said, trying to explain the headlines. "We don't want to accept that a beautiful young wife and daughter woke up one morning and died a tragic death."

But he's most worried about his mother-in-law. "I don't know if she will ever recover, and I know when she reads all this nonsense about her son-in-law and her deceased daughter, her heart is breaking. She has lived with us and saw the love and support. I hope she stays -- I can't imagine my life without Sharon -- she's my link to Brittany."

Monjack said Brittany's family arrived in town Monday and that funeral plans are pending.

Celebrity deaths had heavy impact in 2009

The recent passing of actress Brittany Murphy adds another high-profile name to the list of those who have died in 2009.
The year seems to have been filled with an inordinate amount of high-profile deaths -- some even on the same day.

Among those who passed: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Natasha Richardson, Bea Arthur, Dom DeLuise, Karl Malden, David Carradine, Patrick Swayze, John Hughes, Ed McMahon, Walter Cronkite and Don Hewitt.

Authors John Updike, Frank McCourt and Dominick Dunne died, as did blues legend Koko Taylor, Ventures guitarist Bob Bogle, Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary, guitar innovator Les Paul and Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein.

In sports, NFL players Steve McNair and Chris Henry died as did veteran basketball coach Chuck Daly.The politcal world mourned the loss of Sen. Edward Kennedy, and former U.S. Housing Secretary Jack Kemp.

Even celebrity pitch personalities weren't immune as 2009 also saw the passing of Oxiclean pitchman Billy Mays and Gidget, the chihuahua best known for hawking Taco Bell.

But was 2009 any more notable for celebrity deaths than other years? Or, in our hyper-caffeinated, overly Twittered culture, is there simply more awareness?

Adam Bernstein, editor for The Washington Post's obituary section, believes the latter. He said he believes the perception of the mass mortality of stars is driven by the overwhelming amount of attention paid to the deaths of even minor celebrities.

"[Brittany Murphy] is far from the most accomplished of actresses, but because she has attracted a following -- mostly from younger people who are probably shocked, of course, at her death at the age of 32 -- it becomes a big deal online," he said. "And that drives a lot of attention from newspapers, including ours, which went nuts with her death."

Social networking sites like Twitter are helping to drive the interest, Bernstein said, as people tweet about it and "the immediacy of the death suddenly becomes hot ratings online."

Bernstein also dismisses the so-called "rule of three," the old guideline that high-profile deaths come in that grouping. That's an urban legend, he said, an idea that arises from humans' determination to seek patterns in randomness.

"The Washington Post writes about nearly everyone who dies in the D.C. area and no one seems to get really alarmed when three Army colonels go in a week," he said. "People like to spot trends in the chaos of life and death is no different."
In the end -- literally, in this case -- all those of us who watch and wait can do is draw a little dark humor from the inevitable. That seemed particularly true in 2009, when levity seemed to be the only response to what, at times, seemed a never-ending stream of obituaries.

As The New York Times' David Carr pointed out on Twitter, noting that Dunne's death was being overshadowed by Ted Kennedy's (which happened the same day), "Dominick Dunne wld be pissed he died on same day as Ted Kennedy and had to share ... a piece of work, but fun as hell."

Is the R-Rated Hit-Girl 'Kick-Ass' Trailer a Little Disturbing?

If you're still not sold on the subversive superhero movie Kick-Ass, even after hearing the "bananas" buzz out of this year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon, maybe a new trailer spotlighting the character Hit-Girl will entice you. You just might not want to admit that you got excited for a movie based on a spot focusing on a little girl who says the f-word and the c-word nonchalantly and shoots bad guys in the cheek and chops off their legs with even less of a thought.

Really, who is this trailer for? People who thought Natalie Portman wasn't young enough, foul-mouthed enough or violent enough in Leon (The Professional)? Guys who went to see Kill Bill Vol. 1 for the meteor hammer-wielding schoolgirl? Nostalgic audiences who will be too busy enjoying the Banana Splitstheme song to realize what they're watching?

Okay, so it's all over-the-top enough to get the simple defense, "dude it's just a comic book movie." At least they didn't have the kid wearing a sex-selling outfit similar to most female superhero costumes, right? Well, like Kill Bill's Gogo, Hit Girl does wear a schoolgirl outfit in the movie, but that's not shown too much in this trailer.
It actually makes a bit of sense that Lionsgate is marketing Kick-Ass with a trailer showcasing Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl. According to John Gholson's review over at SciFi Squad, the 12-year-old actress and her character were the highlight of the film for the BNAT audience. Still, it's easy to see some people being terribly disturbed by this spot.

Cursing kids are funny nowadays because of their rarity, for which we can thank the MPAA (remember all those PG-rated movies with swearing children in the '70s and '80s), and red-band trailers will totally exploit this humor, whether it's a film starring oft-foul-mouthed Bobb'e J. Thompson or the latest deconstruction of the superhero film. And evidenced by countless horror films and the cult popularity of Battle Royale, moviegoers seem to have a thing for violent young'uns.

Is it worse if it's a little girl doing the bad things? Is it creepy that it's Moretz as Hit Girl who is both appealing to and exciting fanboys more than anyone else (Nic Cage as Big Daddy); Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Red Mist; Aaron Johnson as Kick-Ass)? Check out the trailer over at Empire.com (or watch it below, though beware of foul language and violence) and then tell us what you think.

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Why Hollywood security is better than Pentagon's - By P.W. Singer

Editor's note: P.W. Singer is director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution and author of "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century," which is being published in paperback on December 29.

It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster: A group of insurgents hack into American military drones, using software they got off the Internet, according to The Wall Street Journal. But, for the benefit of that screenwriter likely pounding away right now to get his idea in first -- as well as for the general public -- what actually happened?

Essentially, three trends are coming together in war.

First is the growing use of unmanned systems, something I explore in my book "Wired for War." Just a few years ago, the U.S. military had no interest in unmanned systems. Indeed, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, we had only a handful of unmanned systems in the air and zero on the ground in the invasion force, none of them armed.

Today, we have more than 7,000 in the air, ranging from the 48-foot-long Predator to tiny ones that can fit in a backpack, and 12,000 on the ground, such as the Packbot and Talon systems that hunt down roadside bombs. Many of these systems are armed, giving new meaning to the term "killer app."

This 180-degree turn to robotics, however, often came in an ad-hoc manner. The back-end networks didn't perfectly fit with the wide variety of unmanned systems that were being plugged in.

Even more, the pressure was on to push the systems out as rapidly as possible, for very good reason. There was a war on, and these unmanned systems were proving to be far more useful to our troops than what the regular Pentagon acquisitions process had been providing.

One robotics company executive described how he couldn't even get his phone calls returned a few years ago. Now, he was told, "Make them as fast as you can."

Second, though, was a dash of arrogance. In not coming through the regular planning and purchasing system, many of the systems used proprietary software as well as commercial, off-the-shelf hardware. So many of the communications feeds going back and forth were poorly protected, and, in some cases, not even encrypted.

This was the case, for example, for some of the overhead surveillance video feeds that the unmanned systems were collecting and, in turn, beaming back both to command posts as well as to American patrols on the ground, who watch the feed off ROVER. (Akin to Dick Tracy's watch, this is a rugged video monitor a soldier can strap onto his or her arm or gear.)

The problem of the relatively open video feeds has been known for a while. Indeed, back during our operations in the Balkans, it was discovered that just about anyone in Eastern Europe with a satellite dish could watch live overhead footage of U.S. Special Operations forces going out on raids of suspected war criminals. One joker commented that it was harder to tap into the Disney Channel.

But the Pentagon assumed that foes in the Middle East wouldn't be smart enough to figure this out, and underestimated how quickly the technology to tap in to the feeds would advance, becoming cheaper and widely available. The problems were not fixed, and more and more of these relatively open systems were deployed.

Unfortunately, we all know what happens when we "assume" our enemies are dumb (they make something out of "u" and "me."). Using a $26 software package called Skygrabber, originally designed to allow customers to download movies and songs off the Internet (none of them pirated, of course), insurgents were able to tap into the various U.S. military video feeds, The Wall Street Journal reported. U.S. forces became aware of it after they captured a Shiite militia member in Iraq, whose laptop had files of the pirated footage saved on it.

To be clear, these insurgents were not able to take over control of the drones. They really weren't even doing "hacking" by the true meaning of the term. It was more like someone snooping in on a police radio scanner listening to unencrypted transmissions.

Some people used to listen to these scanners for entertainment, but for criminals, it proved useful to know what the police know and where they might be headed, which is why the police now encrypt these scanners.

Here too, it seems more likely the insurgents weren't watching themselves on the pirated video for amusement, but rather because the video feeds let them know what the U.S. military was monitoring. If I see that the U.S. military is watching a house with a station wagon out front, and I am sitting in a house with a station wagon out front, then I might well suspect that they are on to me.

This leads to the third trend -- the shifting domains of warfare. War is not merely about bullets and bombs, it is also becoming about bits and bytes. This was a relatively old security opening that wasn't fixed because we assumed it couldn't be exploited by insurgents or groups in the Middle East. What are our assumptions then about sophisticated, large-scale efforts funded by certain state powers on the Eurasian landmass "that shalt not be named"?

More importantly, not everyone is merely going to want to snoop, merely to learn what we know. Instead, we are entering an era of "battles of persuasion." In these, the goal is not to blow up the enemy's soldiers and weapons, as in traditional warfare, but to jam or disrupt their controls, change critical information they rely on to operate properly or even "persuade" them to do things contrary to the goals.

To use a Hollywood example, if Goose told Maverick in "Top Gun" to "recode all American F-14s fighters as Mig-29s," Tom Cruise would have just laughed his maniacal cackle and ignored him. A robotic Cruise would simply follow the instruction to recode the software and now view IceMan as a legitimate target to shoot down.

The U.S. military has responded to the reports with a mix of public calm and private consternation. Officials have said they are fixing the problem, such as by working to encrypt the video downlinks, and that this is a tempest in a teapot.

The first problem, though, is the scale. There are literally thousands of unmanned systems in the air (as well as the current ROVER models that only receive the unencrypted video feed) that will need to be retooled for encryption. This will be expensive and arduous, and all while the war goes on. There are also worries that layering the encryption on top of the system software will slow down the communications and make them hard for multiple users to access at once.

More important, though, is the ad-hoc, back-end nature of the response. It is far different from having your entire system design of both hardware and software take into account how to protect information efficiently but effectively, throughout the communications and operations chain.

The result could be that our patched systems may end up still less protected than the movies or video games you download at home on your DVR or X-Box.

The best explanation of this comes from arstechnica:

"Operating system vendors have built entire 'protected path' setups to guard audio and video all the way through the device chain. TVs and monitors now routinely use HDCP copy protection to secure their links over HDMI cables.
"Game consoles are packed with encryption schemes to prevent copied games from playing. Microsoft even goes out of its way to add encryption when Windows Media Center records unencrypted over-the-air TV content. Even the humble DVD, with its long-since-breached CSS encryption, offers more in the way of encryption."

In sum, unfortunately for would-be scriptwriters, the overall danger of this incident is certainly not up to the level of a Hollywood blockbuster. But, moving forward, it is also a bit worrisome for the rest of us that Hollywood had put more efforts into protecting the "Terminator" movies from illegal download than our military had in protecting its robotic systems at war today.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of P.W. Singer.

How GM Chooses Vehicle Colors

How are vehicle colors chosen? GM designer Chris Webb explains the process on how colors are developed and chosen for each vehicle.

Brooke Astor's Son Gets 1-3 Years in Prison

The sensational trial that opened the door on how the rich live – and die – has finally reached its fateful conclusion, with Monday's sentencing of Anthony Marshall, the 85-year-old son convicted of looting the $185-milion fortune of his philanthropist mother, Brooke Astor, who died at 103 in 2007.

The frail, white-haired Marshall was sentenced by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley Monday to 1-to-3 years in state prison, reports New York's Daily News. Prosecutors had asked that Marshall be given up to 4½ years.

Marshall is to turn himself over on Jan. 19, which allow him to spend his holidays with his family, as his attorneys had requested.

Before his sentencing, Marshall rose to say, "Thank you, Your Honor. I have nothing to add to what my attorneys have said."

Prosecutors had charged that Marshall siphoned money from his mother's estate to please the tastes of his much-younger wife, Charlene, 64, who was married to the pastor of the Episcopal church near Astor's Maine summer estate when she and Marshall met. Apparently, Astor was no fan of her social-climbing daughter-in-law.

In court on Monday, when she heard the sentence imposed on her husband, Charlene wept.

Simon Monjack, Brittany Murphy's Husband, Had Checkered Past

There is no evidence of foul play in Brittany Murphy's untimely death, but as her life comes under scrutiny so does the man she quietly married two years ago, whose grieving will be complicated by public interest in his troubled past.

Murphy's husband, Simon Monjack, is the one who called 911 at 8 a.m. Sunday after her mother found her stricken in their home. Monjack, understandably, appeared "dazed" as rescue workers tried to revive his wife. He did not want an autopsy to be done, but the LA coroner began the procedure Monday against his wishes.

Monjack is a British screenwriter with just two film credits: the 2006 Edie Sedgwick biopic 'Factory Girl' featuring Sienna Miller and 'Two Days, Nine Lives,' a 2002 British indie drama. His online presence repeatedly suggests he wished to be known first as Brittany Murphy's husband.

He and Murphy had a whirlwind courtship , marrying in a very small and private ceremony in May 2007 just months after they started dating and a month after he was arrested for staying in the US on an expired visa. No engagement had been announced. In 2006, Monjack had split from his wife and Murphy from her fiancee, 'Little Black Book' production assistant Joe Macaluso.

Monjack has been labeled a con artist by the tabloids and he has a long trail of shady dealings: at least two apartment evictions for failure to pay thousands of dollars in back rent, a $470,132 court judgment against him by a British investment bank, a $50,000 lawsuit from his ex-wife. A different ex-fiance claims Monjack gave her an engagement ring that was cubic zirconia, not diamond as he had told her.

He may have also had a hand in his wife's firing from 'Shrinking Charlotte' just two weeks ago, from which she was reportedly let go for her difficulty on set. Director Michael Z. Gordon tells Showbiz411 that it was not Murphy's behavior that was the problem, but her husband's. "Monjack came on the set inebriated," Gordon said. "The producers wanted to keep him away. Brittany of course defended him. And so she was let go."

Just last month Monjack was rushed to the hospital after he became incoherent during a flight to LAX. Murphy told EMTs he was suffering from an asthma attack and did not need to be hospitalized but "EMTs felt it could be more serious than that" and rushed him to the hospital.

Despite their personal struggles, Murphy and Monjack appeared to be happy with their relationship. Just a few weeks ago Murphy told People magazine she wanted to become a mother soon, and in April she had these words for OK! magazine:

"We first met when I was 17 years old. We checked in with each other throughout the years and remained friends. The easiest decision I ever had in my life was getting married...He's flown around the world to make sure we spend every single night together."

The pair was photographed enjoying a messy make out session at LAX last month. Here are some pictures of them over the past couple of years.

Celebrities plead for Brooke Astor's son to be spared prison term

He was a cold, calculating, "morally depraved" man who spent the last years of his socialite and megaphilanthropist mother's life bilking her fortune to line his pockets.

That's one way to see Anthony Marshall -- and it's the only way, according to the prosecutors who secured a conviction against him for grand larceny and scheming to defraud his mother, Brooke Astor.

Now as the 85-year-old son prepares to be sentenced Monday for his crimes, another portrait of him has emerged -- thanks to close friends and celebrity acquaintances (including Al Roker and Whoopi Goldberg) who sent letters to the court in hopes of saving him from a lengthy prison sentence.

The man prosecutors described during the trial is apparently unrecognizable to many of Marshall's friends and acquaintances.
He was a loyal churchgoing man, a Purple Heart recipient wounded in Iwo Jima during World War II and a son who tried mightily but could never live up to the high ideals of his socialite mother, according to letters friends submitted to the court.
And now, they say he is a frail and sickly man who has faced extreme humiliation and would essentially be given a death sentence if a judge hands down the maximum sentence allowed.

It will be up to Judge A. Kirke Bartley Jr. to decide how to reconcile the two portraits of Tony Marshall. He faces a minimum 1 to 3 years, or as much as 8 to 25 years in state prison.

The drastically differing views have only further heightened interest in the case, which during the trial stage was a tabloid feeding frenzy, fostering headlines such as "Bad heir day," "Mrs. Astor's disaster" and "DA's kick in the Astor." The witness list was a virtual "Who's Who" of New York's social elite -- including Henry Kissinger, Graydon Carter, Barbara Walters, Vartan Gregorian and Annette de la Renta.

During the case, prosecutors and witnesses portrayed Marshall as an only son preying on his physically and mentally ill 101-year-old mother.

Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann called the case "disturbing," and said the trial told the story of "how a son, an only son, would stoop so low to steal from his own mother in the sunset years of her life in order to line his own pockets and the pockets of his wife."

His only goal, they said, was to selfishly tap her fortune -- money that prosecutors said Astor intended to donate to ordinary New Yorkers who needed help after she died.

He was convicted of the most serious charges against him -- first-degree grand larceny and scheming to defraud. One of the most serious convictions involved Marshall giving himself a $1 million-a-year raise for handling his mother's affairs, Seidemann said.

During trial testimony, Marshall's lawyers called no character witnesses to come to his defense. So the new letters from friends are the first attempts by those who know him to share what they believe is his true character.

Whoopi Goldberg told a judge in her letter that she met Tony Marshall and his wife Charlene 10 years ago when Goldberg moved into a building on the Upper East Side with Frank Langella. Unlike other residents who turned their nose up at her, Goldberg said she became quick friends with the Marshalls. Her interactions with Tony, she wrote, gave her an insight into his relationship with his mother, and in turn taught her about how fame can affect family dynamics.

"I also understand what it must be like for my own daughter to be around my fame," she wrote. "I am not comparing myself to Mrs. Astor, but I've seen how you can be dismissed as not being good enough, or hip enough, and seeing it happen to Tony made me make sure that it didn't happen to my own daughter."

The humiliation and ugliness of the trial was punishment enough and a prison sentence would be unjust, friends argued in the letters.

Marshall's cardiologist, Kenneth W. Franklin, also wrote to urge the judge to consider his age and health in sentencing.
A prison sentence "will accelerate his deterioration from cardiac and neurologic disease and would result in his premature death due to medical complications," he wrote.

NBC's Today show weatherman Al Roker came to Marshall's defense too, having met him at his church 10 years ago.
He argued Marshall had suffered enough, paying a price greater than any sentence a judge could hand down -- seeing his son turn on him during the trial and being portrayed in a negative light each day.

"Given his advanced age and deteriorating health, justice may be better served by turning a compassionate eye towards this good son, father and patriot and finding it in your heart not to add 'prisoner' to Anthony Marshall's otherwise unblemished resume," Roker wrote in his letter to the court.

Goldberg too, believed "breaking this man" by putting him in prison, was not the right punishment.

"Please don't put him in jail," she writes at the end of her letter. "It would only amount to an unnecessary cruelty that would serve no real purpose. Hasn't Tony been through enough?"