Sometimes, big brother is listening

Terrance Tate must have never watched Goodfellas, especially the part where Robert DeNiro tells Ray Liotta, ``All my life I've been telling you never talk on the telephone.'

Tate got an appeals court to throw out his confession for the brutal murder of 1-year-old Javonte Covington in April of 2006 and a judge to reduce his bond to $75,000, almost unheard of in a capital murder case. Tate does face the death penalty if he is convicted. He is still in jail, where word on the street says he is safer than if he posts the bond.

But now prosecutors are asking for that bond to be revoked thanks once again to his own words. And this time, those words were on a telephone in the Mahoning County Jail.

They provide a transcript of that call in a motion for a hearing, where Tate tells his mother he only confessed because he thought it was an assault case. He says he has no idea the baby died until after he was jailed.

Inmates and those they talk to on the phone are warned that calls are monitored and recorded. Tate apparently forgot about that when he spoke to his mother.

This is not to say, even if this motion is approved Friday, that this case is over. If this new evidence is allowed into court -- and prosecutors have to prove that they would have discovered it anyway -- then I'm sure Tate's legal team will fire off more motions asking for that evidence to be thrown out.

If it makes it through the entire chain of appeals, it could take another two years before Tate is tried.

At that point, one could almost see little Javonte getting ready for his first day of kindergarten, because he would be five years old by then. But he has no way of appealing his fate.