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Lynn Crosbie, in her critique of my work as a criminal defence lawyer entitled “Pawns of Dershowitz's Ideals,” issues a challenge to me. She “wonders what the distinguished lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is thinking,” following the news of Sunny Von Bulow's death and O.J. Simpson's conviction. Well, let me tell her. I am proud of the fact that I devote half of my legal time to pro bono work on behalf of women and men who cannot afford paid representation.

I am proud of the fact that I challenge the government's evidence at every turn in order to keep prosecutors and police honest. I am particularly proud of the fact that I represent unpopular, even despised, defendants and that I will never let criticism, such as that directed against me by Crosbie, deter me, as so many lawyers have been deterred over the years by similar attacks on the constitutional right to counsel in all criminal cases.

The critique Crosbie directs against me transcends any individual and is directed at the role of zealous defence counsel in general, but since she focuses her attack on me in ad hominem fashion, it is essential that I set the record straight. Let's begin with the Tison case which she describes as follows: “Ricky and Raymond Tison … broke their convict father out of prison, and he then promptly committed murder. …” What she fails to mention is that their convict father sent his sons away to get water for the family whose car he had hijacked. Only after they had been sent on their errand did he kill them. (A film was made of the case, entitled A Killer in the Family, starring Robert Mitchum and James Spader). The boys, who were in their teens, were sentenced to death for the crimes of their father. As a lifelong opponent of the death penalty, I agreed to try to save their lives. In doing so, I represented the American Civil Liberties Union.

I charged no fee and paid the expenses out of my own pocket. Their death sentences were reversed but they remain in prison for the breakout.

Quite a different story Crosbie has the right to make up her opinions, but she has to present all the facts. Crosbie does me an injustice when she says that I am being paid to “manufacture happy endings” for my clients. In many of the dozen or so murder and attempted murder convictions that I have had reversed over the years, I proved that it was the government that had manufactured the evidence. Consider for example, the “insulin-soaked needle” to which she refers in describing the Von Bulow case. We proved conclusively that that needle had never been injected into a human body, but rather had been dipped in insulin to simulate injection. We also proved that the positive insulin readings in Sunny Von Bulow's blood were false positives.

Crosbie also suggests that I use “women as pawns,” suggesting that I only represent men charged with killing women. In fact several of my cases involve women who were accused of killing their abusive husbands. Most recently, I secured a reversal in the conviction of Sandy Murphy by proving that her husband, Ted Binion (of Las Vegas World Series of Poker fame) had died by self-ingestion of massive doses of heroin.

Most grotesque is Crosbie's analogy between the artist Guillermo Vargas “who let a dog starve to death in an exhibit about larger crimes against animals” and me. She analogizes the dead dog to “the now dead Sunny Von Bulow and the virtually decapitated Nicole Simpson as exhibits also in Dershowitz's show about justice.” This implies that I must have had something to do with their deaths. This approach – blaming the lawyer for his client's alleged crimes – is McCarthyism, reminiscent of a dark age in America when lawyers who represented Communists were accused of being Communists or Communist sympathizers. As if to underline this McCarthyistic attack, she calls me “a close ally of the self-styled ‘radical' William Kunstler.” While it is true that I represented Kunstler in an appeal from a contempt of court conviction in the Chicago Seven case, I was never his close “ally.” Indeed, we were antagonistic to each other throughout his lifetime, precisely because we fundamentally disagreed about political matters.

Her characterization of my views on terrorism and torture are also false. I favour complete due process in the handling of alleged terrorists. Indeed, among the accused murderers whose freedom I helped secure were several accused terrorists. I oppose the use of torture, but argue that since it is occurring, it must be subjected to legal constraints. I am anything but conservative when it comes to the rights of those accused of terrorism.

I will continue to defend the most unpopular defendants accused of the most heinous of crimes. I know I will be criticized by those who don't understand, or won't accept, the role of defence counsel in an adversary system of justice. For those who rail against defence lawyers who zealously represent all persons accused of crime, just imagine a world without such lawyers. Wait, you don't have to imagine Just look at China, Iran and much of the rest of the world.