Will Dominique Strauss-Kahn end up walking?

It's looking that way, according to Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who was part of the O.J. defense team and knows a thing or two about high-profile criminal cases. He tells Newsweek that Strauss-Kahn will likely want to settle with the maid who accused him of attempted rape for about $3 million.

Why does she want to make a deal now? Why not wait until the conviction, and then sue? [Because] the defendant doesn't have much money. All the money is his wife's money. And if you win a suit--let's assume she wins a $10 million judgment against him. She's not going to collect it. He'll go bankrupt. Whereas if she settles the case, the wife pays up. So the difference is between getting, say, a million right now from the wife, or $10 million from the husband which the lawyer has to spend the rest of his life chasing.

[CUT]

Nobody can say: "I will give you a million dollars, $2 million, $3 million, and you have to not testify." That's obstruction of justice, that's a crime. So the request essentially has to come from the victim. Did you ever hear of the concept of the Shabbos goy? The Shabbos goy is when an Orthodox Jew wants the light to be on, on a Saturday, and he sees a Gentile. He can't ask the Gentile to turn on the light, because that would be a sin. But he can say to the Gentile, "Boy, it's really dark here." And then the Gentile has to come up with the idea, "Hmmm, it would be nice if I turned on the light." [The defense lawyer], because he's an Orthodox Jew, understands that he needs a Shabbos goy here. He needs somebody who will understand that he can't ask for something that he wants. And what he wants is for this witness to go away.

In an interview with Le Figaro, Dershowitz says it's notoriously difficult to recover money after winning a civil suit. "In the case of OJ Simpson, his wife's family has not received a penny," he said.

By the way, the DSK saga has found its way to Greek advertising. Here's a commercial for chips with a Strauss-Kahn wannabee. Don't think it needs any translation.