Уильям Кунстлер: Американдық құқық қорғаушы және адвокат

American attorney and civil rights activist (1919–1995)

William Moses Kunstler (July 7, 1919 – September 4, 1995) was an American attorney and civil rights activist, known for defending the Chicago Seven. Kunstler was an active member of the National Lawyers Guild, a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the co founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the "leading gathering place for radical lawyers in the country." He attended DeWitt Clinton High School. After high school, he attended Yale University, where he majored in French and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1941. He rose to the rank of major and received the Bronze Star. While in the army, he was noted for his theatric portrayals in the Fort Monmouth Dramatic Association. After his discharge from the Army, he attended law school, was admitted to the bar in New York in 1948 and began practicing law. Kunstler went through R. H. Macy's executive training program in the late 1940s and practiced family and small business law in the 1950s, before entering civil rights litigation in the 1960s. At WNEW, Kunstler also conducted interviews on controversial topics, such as the Alger Hiss case, on a program called Counterpoint.

Kunstler first made headlines in 1957 when he unsuccessfully defended William Worthy, a correspondent for the Baltimore Afro American, who was one of 42 Americans who had their passports seized after violating the State Department's travel ban on Communist China (after attending a Communist youth conference in Moscow). Kunstler refused a State Department compromise, which would have returned Worthy's passport if he agreed to cease visiting Communist countries, a condition Worthy considered unconstitutional. Kunstler played an important role as a civil rights lawyer in the 1960s, traveling to many of the segregated battlegrounds to work to free those who had been jailed. Working on behalf of the ACLU, Kunstler defended the Freedom Riders in Mississippi in 1961. Kunstler filed for a writ of habeas corpus with Sidney Mize, a federal judge in Biloxi, and appealed to the Fifth Circuit; he also filed similar pleas in state courts. The riders were convicted in a bench trial in Jackson and appealed to a county jury trial, where Kunstler argued that the county systematically discriminated against African American jurors. In 1962, Kunstler took part in efforts to integrate public parks and libraries in Albany, Georgia. Later that year, he published The Case for Courage (modeled on President Kennedy's Profiles in Courage) highlighting the efforts of other lawyers who risked their careers for controversial clients, as well as similar acts by public servants. At the time of the publication, Kunstler was already well known for his work with the Freedom Riders, his book on the Caryl Chessman case, and his radio coverage of trials. In 1963, for the Gandhi Society of New York, Kunstler filed to remove the cases of more than 100 arrested African American demonstrators from the Danville Corporation Court to the Charlottesville District Court, under a Reconstruction Era statute. Although the district judge remanded the cases to city court, he dissolved the city's injunction against demonstrations. In 1964, Kunstler defended a group of four accused of kidnapping a white couple, and succeeded in getting the alleged weapons thrown out as evidence, as they could not be positively identified as those used. That year, he also challenged Mississippi's unpledged elector law and racial segregation in primary elections; he also defended three members of the Blood Brothers, a Harlem gang, charged with murder. Kunstler went to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 during the demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dr. Robert B. Hayling, which put added pressure on Congress to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kunstler brought the first federal case under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which allowed the removal of cases from county court to be appealed; the defendants were protestors at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

He was a director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1964 to 1972, when he became a member of the ACLU National Council. In 1966, he co founded the Center for Constitutional Rights. Kunstler also worked with the National Lawyers Guild. In 1965, Kunstler's firm Kunstler, Kunstler, and Kinoy was asked to defend Jack Ruby by his brother Earl, but dropped the case because they "did not wish to be in a situation where we have to fight to get into the case". Ruby was eventually permitted to replace his original defense team with Kunstler, who got him a new trial. In 1966, he also defended an arsonist who burned down a Jewish Community Center, killing 12, because he was not provided a lawyer before he signed a confession. Kunstler's other notable clients include: Salvador Agron, H. Rap Brown, Lenny Bruce, Angela Davis, Larry Davis, Gregory Lee Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., Filiberto Ojeda Rios, Assata Shakur, Lemuel Smith, Wayne Williams, and Michael X.

Kunstler gained national renown for defending the Chicago Seven (originally Chicago Eight), in a five month trial in 1969–1970, against charges of conspiring to incite riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Under cross examination, Kunstler got a key police witness to contradict his previous testimony and admit that he had not witnessed Jerry Rubin, but had rather been given his name two weeks later by the FBI. Another prosecution witness, photographer Louis Salzberg, admitted under Kunstler's cross examination that he was still on the payroll of the FBI. The trial was marked by frequent clashes between Kunstler and U. S. Attorney Thomas Foran, with Kunstler taking the opportunity to accuse the government of failing to "realize the extent of antiwar sentiment". Kunstler also sparred with Judge Julius Hoffman, on one occasion remarking (with respect to the number of federal marshals): "this courtroom has the appearance of an armed camp. I would note that the Supreme Court has ruled that the appearance of an armed camp is a reversible error". During one heated exchange, Kunstler informed Hoffman that his entry in Who's Who was three times longer than the judge's, to which the judge replied: "I hope you get a better obituary." Kunstler and co defense attorneys Leonard Weinglass, Michael Kennedy, Gerald Lefcourt, Dennis Roberts and Michael Tigar were cited for contempt (the convictions were later overturned unanimously by the Seventh Circuit). The progress of the trial—which had many aspects of guerrilla theater—was covered on the nightly news and made Kunstler the best known lawyer in the country, and something of a folk hero. After much deadlock, the jury acquitted all seven on the conspiracy charge, but convicted five of violating the anti riot provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The Seventh Circuit overturned all the convictions on November 21, 1972, due to Hoffman's refusal to let defense lawyers question the prospective jurors on racial and cultural biases; the Justice Department did not retry the case. Shortly after the 1968 Democratic Convention, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Dave Dellinger, and Robert Greenblatt received subpoenas to appear before the House Un American Activities Committee (HUAC). Kunstler and co counsel, Michael Kennedy, were among the group's six defense attorneys. On the opening day of the HUAC hearings, the subpoenaed men and their lawyers, including Kunstler and Kennedy, staged a “stand in” to protest the investigations. “The Constitution is being raped and we as lawyers are being emasculated in an armed camp,” Kennedy shouted at the hearing.

Kunstler arrived in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, on March 4, 1973, to draw up the demands of the American Indian Movement (AIM) members involved in the Wounded Knee incident. Kunstler, who headed the defense, called the trial "the most important Indian trial of the 20th century", attempting to center the defense on the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868). Kunstler's team represented Russell Means and Dennis Banks, two of the leaders of the occupation. Kunstler objected to the heavy trial security on the grounds that it could prejudice the jury and Judge Fred J. Nichol agreed to ease measures. Two authors and three Sioux were called as defense witnesses, mostly focusing on the historical (and more recent) injustice against the Sioux on the part of the U. S. government, shocking the prosecution. In 1975, Kunstler again defended AIM members in the slaying of two FBI agents at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, not far from the site of the Wounded Knee incident. At the trial in 1976, Kunstler subpoenaed prominent government officials to testify about the existence of a Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) against Native American activists. District Judge Edward J. McManus approved Kunstler's attempt to subpoena FBI director Clarence M. Kelley. Kunstler also defended a Native American woman who refused to send her daughter with muscular dystrophy to school.

In 1974–1975, Kunstler defended a prisoner charged with killing a guard during the Attica Prison riot. Under cross examination, Kunstler forced Correction Officer Donald Melven to retract his sworn identification of John Hill, Kunstler's client, and Charles Pernasilice (defended by Richard Miller), admitting he still retained "slight" doubts that he confessed to investigators at the time of the incident. Kunstler focused on pointing out that all the other prosecution witnesses were testifying under reduced sentencing agreements and called five prison inmates as defense witnesses (Miller called none), who testified that other prisoners hit the guard. Despite Justice King's repeated warnings to Kunstler to "be careful, sir", Kunstler quickly became "the star of the trial, the man the jurors watch most attentively, and the lawyer whose voice carries most forcefully". Although the prosecution was careful to avoid personal confrontation with Kunstler, who frequently charmed the jury with jokes, on one occasion, Kunstler provoked a shouting match with the lead prosecutor, allegedly to wake up a sleeping jury member. In June, Kunstler and Barbara Handshu, representing another inmate at Attica, Mariano Gonzales, asked for a new hearing on the role of FBI informant Mary Jo Cook.

Kunstler joined the defense staff of Assata Shakur in 1977, charged in New Jersey with a variety of felonies in connection with a 1973 shootout with New Jersey State Troopers. Shakur, sentenced to life imprisonment, in early 1979 escaped from prison. In 1984, Shakur was granted asylum in Cuba by Fidel Castro, who called the charges “an infamous lie". William Kunstler told reporters in 1979 that Shakur's health had declined in prison; he said: “I was very happy that she escaped because I thought she was unfairly tried".

From 1983 until Kunstler's death in 1995, Ron Kuby was his partner. The two took on controversial civil rights and criminal cases, including cases where they represented Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, head of the Egyptian based terrorist group Gama'a al Islamiyah, responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Colin Ferguson, the man responsible for the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting, who would later reject Kuby and Kunstler's legal counsel and choose to represent himself at trial; Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, accused of plotting to murder Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam; Glenn Harris, a New York City public school teacher who absconded with a 15 year old girl for two months; Nico Minardos, a flamboyant actor indicted by Rudy Giuliani for conspiracy to ship arms to Iran; Darrell Cabey, one of the persons shot by Bernard Goetz; and associates of the Gambino crime family. Kunstler's defense of the three clerics made him "more visible, more venerated, more vilified than ever". During the first Gulf War, they represented dozens of American soldiers who refused to fight and claimed conscientious objector status. They also won acquittal for El Sayyid Nosair, the accused assassin of extreme Zionist leader Meir Kahane, who later admitted to the killing.

Kunstler represented a number of convicted mafiosi during his career, claiming "they were victims of government persecution", and said to have "never made a nickel on an OC [organized crime] case". The more notorious of Kunstler's mobster clients included Joe Bonanno, Raymond L. S. Patriarca, Nicholas L. Bianco, John Gotti, and Louis Ferrante, who claimed in his memoir, Unlocked: the Life and Crimes of a Mafia Insider, that Kunstler "took a hundred grand off me."

Kunstler represented Larry Layton, one of the accused killers, at the behest of People's Temple (PT) founder Jim Jones, of Congressman Leo Ryan, who in November 1978 had ventured to Jonestown, the PT settlement in Guyana, South America, to investigate the allegations by family members and dissidents that the PT (which had built its reputation on deceptive alliances with populist Christian, anti racist and then left wing and universalist causes) was a cult riven with torture, sexual abuse, corruption and mass suicide drills. Layton disguised himself as a defector and initiated the gunfire on November 18 against Ryan and his secretary and accompanying journalists, following which Jim Jones ordered and then enforced the deaths of more than 900 people, almost one third of them children, as a purported act of revolution. This was the vast majority of followers in Jonestown. Layton was a cult member whose sister, Deborah Layton, was one of those whose fleeing triggered the leader's increasing paranoia, and in her memoir describes the brainwashed and totalist (psychiatrist Robert Lifton) environment of the PT. Kuntsler's defense was premised on the idea that Layton was not personally responsible. In 1979, Kunstler represented Marvin Barnes, an ABA and NBA basketball player, with past legal troubles and league discipline problems. In 1989–1990, Kunstler twice argued successfully in defense of flag burning, before the Supreme Court. In Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman, the Court held the act to be protected speech under the First Amendment, striking down Texas state and Federal statutes on "flag desecration". Kunstler appeared as a lawyer in the movie The Doors in 1991, as a judge in the movie Malcolm X in 1992, and as himself in several television documentaries. In 1993 Kunstler represented Yusuf Saalam of the Central Park 5 during his appeal, a move which alienated several friends. After Kunstler's death Saalam would be proven innocent when Matias Reyes confessed and DNA proved that Reyes was the sole attacker. During the 1994–95 television season, Kunstler starred as himself in an episode of Law & Order titled "White Rabbit", defending a woman charged with complicity in the 1971 murder of a policeman during the robbery of an armored car; the plot was based on the real life story of Katherine Ann Power, who turned herself in to authorities in 1993.

In late 1995, Kunstler died in New York City of heart failure at the age of 76. In his last major public appearance, at the commencement ceremonies for the University at Buffalo's School of Architecture and Planning, Kunstler lambasted the death penalty, saying: "We have become the charnel house of the Western world with reference to executions; the next closest to us is the Republic of South Africa." Ron Kuby, in his eulogy of Kunstler, said: "While defending the Chicago Seven, [Kunstler] put the war in Vietnam on trial, asking Judy Collins to sing 'Where Have All The Flowers Gone?' from the witness stand, placing a Viet Cong flag on the defense table, and wearing a black armband to commemorate the war dead." William Kunstler was survived by his wife Margaret Ratner Kunstler (who was previously married to Kunstler's close friend Michael Ratner) and his four daughters Karin Kunstler Goldman, Jane Drazek, Sarah Kunstler and Emily Kunstler, and several grandchildren. Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler produced a documentary about their father entitled William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, which had a screening as part of the Documentary Competition of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Kunstler was listed as Sister Mary Stigmata's attorney in Blues Brothers: Private in 1980. Robert Loggia portrayed Kunstler in the 1987 film Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8. Kunstler appeared as a lawyer for Jim Morrison in The Doors in 1991. Kunstler appeared as a judge in Malcolm X in 1992. Kunstler appeared as himself in the fifth season of Law & Order episode "White Rabbit" in 1994. Kunstler was portrayed by David Ackroyd in the 1994 television film Against the Wall. In the 1998 film The Big Lebowski, Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski demands representation by Kunstler or Ron Kuby during the Malibu Police Station scene. Kunstler was voiced by Liev Schreiber in the 2007 animated documentary Chicago 10. According to Lionel Shriver, the character of Joel Litvinoff in Zoë Heller's 2008 novel The Believers may be modeled on Kunstler. Gary Cole portrayed Kunstler in the 2010 film The Chicago 8. In Bryce Zabel's alternate history novel Surrounded By Enemies: What If Kennedy Survived Dallas?, Kunstler is initially Lee Harvey Oswald's defense attorney before resigning and being replaced by F. Lee Bailey. Kunstler was portrayed by Sir Mark Rylance in Aaron Sorkin's 2020 film The Trial of the Chicago 7.