Word: puccio
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Dershowitz said he and Tom Puccio, von Bulow's courtroom attorney in the second trial, arrived at their decision at a Providence, R.I. "summit meeting" with the socialite just before the second trial began. They concluded that chances for acquittal would be best if the defense's case focused on medical testimony that Sunny's comas were not clearly induced by insulin...
...While Puccio is being showered with public accolades, however, some of his legal colleagues in New York City have private reservations. Says one old Puccio foe: "There is no limit to which he wouldn't go to get an advantage." A former courtroom opponent who on the record calls Puccio "a very aggressive, very able lawyer," adds confidentially, "I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw a grand piano." Puccio, the former chief prosecutor of Abscam, knows he rubs many in the legal Establishment the wrong way. "I'm very noninstitutional," he acknowledges. "I'm uncontrollable...
Also "indefatigable," says Lawyer Stephen Kaufman, who once lost to Puccio. "There is a saying that 'litigation is more perspiration than inspiration.' He excels at perspiration." Puccio and his four-member defense team began sweating over the Von Bulow case in late 1984. Earlier that year the Rhode Island Supreme Court had reversed the Danish-born aristocrat's 1982 conviction on charges that he twice tried to kill his socialite wife Martha ("Sunny") von Bulow with insulin injections; since 1980 she has lain in a coma from which she is expected not to recover. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz...
...could inherit the millions he was promised in her will and marry his then mistress, former Soap Opera Actress Alexandra Isles. But some of the promised proof was never introduced. With carefully crafted motions, raising such issues as relevance and prosecutorial failure to lay necessary legal groundwork, Puccio persuaded Judge Corinne Grande to exclude Sunny von Bulow's will, testimony from her financial adviser and evidence that Von Bulow knew how to use hypodermics...
After performing those feats of damage control, Puccio narrowed his own case to one clear, pointed counterpunch. No crime had been committed, he declared, because Mrs. Von Bulow had never been given any insulin. A series of medical experts backed his contention that there was no firm proof of insulin injection. With much of the circumstantial evidence against Von Bulow in tatters, most lawyers agree that the jury had little choice. But some disparaged Puccio's performance. "What victory?" snorted one former colleague. "Against a prosecutor with little experience and a judge who leaned his way?" Others were more impressed...