Paperback: "This case has everything," declared the prosecutor. "It has money, sex, drugs; it has Newport, New York and Europe; it has nobility; it has maids, butlers, a gardener. Clarendon Court (the mansion where the critical events took place) has a big gate. Most people can't see inside. This case is where the little man has a chance to glimpse inside and see how the rich live."
The is the true story of Claus von Bülow - the handsome Danish aristocrat who was accused of twice trying to kill his beautiful American heiress wife, Martha "Sunny" von Bülow, née Crawford. Everybody seemed to agree that Sunny was a lovely, giving and sensitive person but whatever the reason, Sunny and Claus grew apart over the years.
The prosecution contended that it began just three years before the jury rendered its judgment - guilty - in Newport, when Claus fell out of love with his wealthy wife, Sunny, and in love with a television soap-opera actress with a Danish aristocratic background named Alexandra Isles. By mid-1979, Alexandra was insisting that they marry. At Christmastime 1979, Sunny von Bülow suffered her first coma. At Christmastime 1980, she suffered her final coma, lived in a permanent vegetative state for almost twenty-eight years until her passing in a New York nursing home in 2008.
The prosecution's basic theory was as simple as it was corny. Claus was trapped in an unhappy marriage. He did not love his incredibly wealthy wife but he did love her money and the lifestyle to which she gave him entrée. He also loved Alexandra Isles but if he divorced Sunny and married Alexandra, he would have to cut back on his lifestyle and give up Sunny's money. If he remained with Sunny (and her money), he would have to give up Alexandra, who had given him several ultimatums about divorce.
According to the prosecution, Claus chose not to choose. He wanted both Sunny's money and Alexandra's hand. The only way this could be achieved was for Sunny to die a natural death and so Claus arranged for Sunny to die a "natural death" by surreptitiously injecting her with insulin, a substance that is naturally in the body and that is difficult to distinguish from an externally administered overdose.
The diabolical plot remained uncompleted when Sunny recovered quickly from the first coma she suffered during the Christmas holiday in 1979. It succeeded in part when Sunny fell into an irreversible coma during the following Christmas season. But, it failed completely when Claus was indicted for attempted murder, when Alexandra left him and when he was denied access to Sunny's fortune.
Claus von Bülow claimed that the story had begun decades earlier - even before he met his wife - when Sunny started her decline into the netherworld of pills, drink and depression. It was the defense's contention that Sunny had caused her own coma, either deliberately or inadvertently, either by injecting herself or by swallowing either insulin or barbiturates.
In the von Bülow case, the truth may never be learned to the satisfaction of all. Sunny von Bülow will never speak. Indeed, even she may not know precisely what occurred. Between her two comas she was conscious and communicative for nearly a year, yet she provided no clue that she had any idea what had caused her first coma. Claus von Bülow says he knows only that he never did his wife any harm. They were no witnesses to any criminal acts.
This book will present the facts, first as the prosecution successfully presented them at the initial trial. Then it will introduce the dramatic new evidence that came to light only after the verdict - new facts that cast an entirely different light both on the prosecution's version and on the dramatis personae of the case. Finally, it will tell the story as it came out during the second trial. It will recount these different stories through the mouths of the important witnesses, none of whom knows the whole story, but each of whom contributes an important part to the mosaic.
The von Bülow case is more than a simple "who done it?" Besides Sunny von Bülow's comas being one of the most highly publicized medical and legal mysteries in the annals of American jurisprudence, it also presents the most perplexing question of whether anything criminal was done at all. No eyewitness saw anything criminal. The prosecutor acknowledged that the circumstantial evidence "leaves a number of questions which will forever go unanswered."
Reversal of Fortune (1986) will also tell a controversial story about how our legal system often serves to promote truth. We hear so much these days about the courts freeing guilty defendants on legal technicalities. That does sometimes happen but courts also reverse convictions in order to provide defendants with the tools necessary to establish their innocence. That is what happened here and it is a fascinating story about civil liberties at work in the interest of enhancing truth almost forty years ago and undoubtedly is still happening today.
About the author: Professor Alan M Dershowitz is Brooklyn native who has been called “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer” and one of its “most distinguished defenders of individual rights,” “the best-known criminal lawyer in the world,” “the top lawyer of last resort,” “America’s most public Jewish defender” and “Israel’s single most visible defender - the Jewish state’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion.” He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Dershowitz, a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale Law School, joined the Harvard Law School faculty at age 25 after clerking for Judge David Bazelon and Justice Arthur Goldberg.
He has also published more than 1000 articles in magazines, newspapers, journals and blogs such as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, Huffington Post, Newsmax, Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz. Professor Dershowitz is the author of 30 fiction and non-fiction works with a worldwide audience, including The New York Times #1 bestseller Chutzpah and five other national bestsellers. His autobiography, Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law, was published in October 2013 by Crown, a division of Random House. Earlier titles include “an exceptional, action packed book,” The Trials of Zion, a novel which has been called “a thought-provoking page turner;” Rights From Wrong, The Case For Israel, The Case For Peace, Blasphemy, Preemption, Finding Jefferson and Shouting Fire.
In addition to his numerous law review articles and books about criminal and constitutional law, he has written, taught and lectured about history, philosophy, psychology, literature, mathematics, theology, music, sports - and even delicatessens.
His writing has been praised by Truman Capote, Saul Bellow, William Styron, David Mamet, Aharon Appelfeld, A.B. Yehoshua, Elie Wiesel, Richard North Patterson, and Henry Louis Gate, Jr. More than a million of his books - translated in many languages - have been sold worldwide.
In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith presented him with the William O Douglas First Amendment Award for his "compassionate eloquent leadership and persistent advocacy in the struggle for civil and human rights." In presenting the award, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel said: "If there had been a few people like Alan Dershowitz during the 1930s and 1940s, the history of European Jewry might have been different." Professor Dershowitz has been awarded the honorary doctor of laws degree by Yeshiva University, Brooklyn College, Syracuse University, Tel Aviv University, New York City College, Haifa University and several other institutions of learning. He has also been the recipient of numerous academic awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on human rights, a fellowship at The Center for The Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences and several Dean’s Awards for his books.
He has been the subject of two New Yorker cartoons, a New York Times crossword puzzle, and a Trivial Pursuit question. A sandwich at Fenway Park has been named after him - pastrami, of course.
He is married to Carolyn Cohen, a PhD psychologist. He has three children, one a film producer, one a lawyer for the Women’s National Basketball Association and one a professional actor. He also has two grandchildren, one a college junior and the other a college freshman.
Dershowitz's areas of interest are 1) civil rights and civil liberties 2) comparative and foreign law: Jewish Law and 3) trial practice.
No comments:
Post a Comment