Dershowitz Involved in Case of Mistaken Identity

Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz often takes on controversial cases. But earlier this week he was declared defense attorney in one high-profile case he had not even signed up for.

On Monday, the Daily News wrote a story saying Dershowitz had joined the defense team for a New York liquor store owner who was convicted last fall of hiring men to firebomb two rival stores. After his conviction, the owner claimed his lawyer was incompetent and hired a new attorney, one named Dershowitz.

But this Dershowitz was Nathan Z. Dershowitz, a partner in the Manhattan firm of Dershowitz and Eiger and the younger brother of the Harvard Law School professor.

When the news hit the press, Dershowitz became the victim of mistaken identity.

“A liquor store owner has hired Harvard Law School Prof. Alan Dershowitz to get his conviction overturned,” the New York tabloid wrote in a Feb. 18 story.

But yesterday the professor denied that account.

“The Daily News is mistaken,” he said. “I would be proud to get involved in the case, but I am an appellate lawyer, not a defense lawyer.”

He said he does plan to join the case with his brother sometime this summer if and when Peterson files an appeal, but so far he has not been retained and said he has only been briefed on the case for a couple of hours.

As for being wrongly connected with prominent legal cases, Dershowitz said this situation has happened before. In the past, he said, he has been identified as Larry Flynt’s attorney in cases where he was not, in fact, representing the Hustler magazine publisher. And after Sept. 11, he said, reporters called eagerly wanting to know whether he would be defending Osama bin Laden if a suit were ever filed against bin Laden. But Dershowitz said he had nothing of the sort in mind.

The latest case involves William Peterson, proprietor of Crazy Billy’s Park Liquors in Long Island. In 1995, Peterson hired two men to firebomb two of his rivals, Bottles & Cases and Bottle Bargains. Last fall a jury found Peterson guilty but a judge has yet to hand down sentence in the case.

After his conviction, Peterson claimed his trial attorney, David Clayton, had failed to reveal a conflict of interest, since Clayton had once been prosecuted on tax charges by the same district attorney’s office that handled Peterson’s case.

In addition to challenging the effectiveness of the original lawyer, Nathan Dershowitz said Peterson’s appeal will claim prosecutors did not offer enough evidence to earn a conviction. According to Peterson’s defense, prosecutors relied on the uncorroborated testimony of the men who actually carried out the firebombing.

Under New York state law, accomplice testimony must be bolstered by physical evidence. His defense team maintains that prosecutors got around this requirement by trying Peterson not under state law but under a federal law passed after Sept. 11 to target terrorists and drug dealers.

“Without physical evidence against Mr. Peterson, they charged under a sloppy Congressional statute,” Nathan Dershowitz said.

“The fact of the matter is,” Alan Dershowitz said, “That somebody else threw the [explosives] in the middle of the night, no one was hurt—this is clearly a crime against property not against a person.”

So charging Peterson under the anti-terrorist statute was inappropriate, he said.

For the time being, the case against Peterson remains unsettled. After a legal brief challenging the competence of his original lawyer, a sentencing hearing was postponed indefinitely.