Word: bulow
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...their summations, the attorneys in the Von Bulow case seemed to have exchanged roles. Defense Counsel Thomas Puccio once again seemed to be the aggressive prosecutor of his Abscam days, assertively addressing the facts of the case, while Prosecutor Marc DeSisto offered a histrionic and impassioned plea, long on emotion, short on detail...
Puccio, standing stiffly behind a wooden lectern ten feet from the jury, relentlessly disputed the central tenet of the prosecution's case: that insulin had been used to cause Mrs. Von Bulow's two comas. With increasing vehemence, he punctuated his argument with the phrase "No insulin injection!" as he recapitulated testimony by the defense's medical experts...
Puccio then set out to discredit the prosecution's witnesses. He insisted that the sparrowlike Maria Schrallhammer, Mrs. Von Bulow's maid of 23 years, viewed Von Bulow as a shadowy interloper who broke up the "fairy tale" romance of Sunny's first marriage, which ended in divorce. About onetime Soap Opera Actress Alexandra Isles, Claus' former lover, Puccio turned sarcastic: "She appeared before you in one of her most dramatic performances." In the end, Puccio asked not for sympathy but justice. "It's not a pretty picture," he said. "Mr. Von Bulow was cheating on his wife...
...Instead of reviewing his case, he painted an emotional and highly colored tableau of the alleged murder attempts. With his hands resting on the front of the jury box, DeSisto pleaded with the jurors to try to relive the crime, to put themselves in the room where Sunny von Bulow went into her two comas. As if holding a syringe in his hand, DeSisto asked, "Can you see it? As he was pushing the plunger down, can you see it? The defendant then sat down and read a book . . . Think about that room and stay there all afternoon while...
DeSisto's showmanship was one of the few tactics left to him. Earlier in the week, a businesslike Judge Corinne Grande rejected all but one of the prosecution's rebuttal witnesses and dashed the state's last hope that it could offer testimony about the $14 million that Von Bulow stood to inherit upon his wife's death. Her rulings spurred accusations of partiality from Claus' stepchildren. Said Alexander von Auersperg: "We can't understand why $14 million isn't considered a motive to murder someone, especially when Mr. Von Bulow doesn't have any money...