Does government have Kelly's blood on its hands?

ANALYSIS | Feds played hardball, but sources differ on who's to blame

It's a method as old as the U.S. attorney's office itself.

Pressure the little guy to flip, and eventually you'll get to your target.

But how much is too much pressure?

It's a highly charged question of late, after former gubernatorial adviser and fund-raiser Christopher Kelly -- who long battled alcohol and gambling addictions -- took his own life just days after he pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges.

There's little doubt, legal experts say, that in its probe of ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the government played hardball with Kelly, 51 of Burr Ridge. How much the pressure factored into his suicide is not known.

Kelly was charged three times in two years. Each time he refused to cooperate. On the eve of the trial for his second case, the feds moved to revoke his bond. Kelly pleaded guilty and agreed to turn himself in for prison a week later. He killed himself in the interim.

"The government has some responsibility, some blood on its hands for what happened to Chris Kelly," said Scott Fawell, a prominent figure in the investigation of ex-Gov. George Ryan. "I'm not saying they killed him, but it would be a little disingenuous for the government to say they're not involved."

Some defense lawyers say the feds engage in "psychological warfare." They arrest white-collar criminals at home. They move to revoke bond right before trial, pushing a defendant to fight a case from jail. If it's a high-profile defendant -- like convicted businessman Tony Rezko -- any jailing means solitary confinement "for his own safety."

But it only takes another step in mentally breaking someone. Clinical psychologist Diana Goldstein said the thought of prison for white-collar criminals can be unbearable.

"It can lead to an incredible amount of fear or despair," she said.

Fawell, Ryan's former chief of staff, said he has felt government pressures firsthand. He was serving time for a corruption conviction when he was indicted again.

Then they charged his girlfriend. That's when he folded.

"The government just does not take no for an answer. That's the scary part. They do it strictly on anger. It's the anger of: 'How dare you. We will ultimately win, and we will bring you to your knees,' " Fawell said.

"Who stops the U.S. government from doing what it wants? Nobody."

But former prosecutor Ronald Safer, an outspoken critic of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, said that in this case, reasoning like Fawell's is backward.

"The pressure comes not from the U.S. attorney. The pressure comes from Kelly having committed the crimes and there being a way to reduce his sentence by cooperating," Safer said. "Patrick Fitzgerald doesn't create that pressure. Chris Kelly creates that pressure. Fitzgerald gives him an opportunity that he can exercise or not."

Kelly had faced eight years in prison at the time of his death. A cooperation deal could have easily cut that in half, lawyers say.

A day after Kelly's death, Blagojevich was on TV declaring Kelly killed himself because he refused to "lie" about Blagojevich.

Former federal prosecutor Patrick Collins called those remarks "reckless."

Collins, lead prosecutor in Ryan's case, said it's a prosecutor's duty to pursue key figures in a corruption case to avoid an "empty chair" argument at trial.

"You want to bring to the jury the best possible case -- to the extent there are leads, you do that aggressively and vigorously," he said. "At all times, that has to be done within the rules."

Laurie Levenson, a professor and national legal expert based at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said there are checks on prosecutors' powers. For instance, they don't revoke bond -- a judge decides that.

"Even if prosecutors had the worst motives in the world, they're not the only players," Levenson said. "Prosecutors I know . . . are not completely devoid of humanity. They'll play hardball, but the goal is not to kill the defendant."