Word: von
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mornings after a Providence jury acquitted Claus von Bulow, his defense lawyer, Thomas Puccio, arrived at his brand-new office in the Wall Street firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. He was just in time to settle a dispute between his secretary and a decorator over where to put the black leather sofa and chair in relation to his black lacquer desk and bookcase. The firm's partner of two months should be greeting many a new client from behind that desk. For in the wake of his Von Bulow victory last week, commentators across the country are suddenly ranking...
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...
...Lincoln. 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...
...Grande seemed to give the prosecution's case more leeway in her instructions to the jury. Having reviewed medical testimony on Saturday, the jury broke off work at 4:30 p.m. After church and brunch on Sunday, they planned to re-examine the testimony of Maria Schrallhammer and Alexander von Auersperg on the whereabouts of a black bag containing a used syringe, as well as that of an expert defense witness concerning the presence of insulin on the needle. While they continued to deliberate, Von Bulow, chain-smoking and chatting with reporters, roamed the mostly deserted hallways of the Providence...