Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 5, 1995 TAG: 9509060125
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Kunstler died at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital of a heart attack. He had a pacemaker installed Aug. 7. He had been hospitalized since Aug. 28.
Kunstler saw himself as a legal paladin, a defender of those most lawyers avoided, an advocate for outcasts and pariahs. Critics often depicted him as a showboat and publicity seeker.
``To some extent, that has the ring of truth,'' he once said. ``I enjoy the spotlight, as most humans do, but it's not my whole raison d'etre. My purpose is to keep the state from becoming all-domineering, all powerful.''
He had some remarkable successes. He helped clear Egyptian immigrant El Sayyid Nosair of charges that he assassinated militant Rabbi Meir Kahane, despite prosecution eyewitnesses who testified that he had done it.
The highlight of his career came when he defended the Chicago Seven against charges of conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
``In a political trial such as this one, the court becomes not just a place to grind out a decision but also a place to educate the public and dramatize the contradictions between what the law preaches and what it practices,'' Kunstler said at the time.
The jury acquitted the seven defendants of conspiracy and found five guilty of incitement.
Work on civil rights cases in the South in the early 1960s transformed his view of American society and the courts and he began representing ``the poor, the persecuted, the radicals and the militant, the black people, the pacifists and the political pariahs.''
``I spent over a year in Mississippi representing the Freedom Riders,'' he once recalled. ``That's when I met Martin Luther King Jr., and became what he called his special trial counsel. I represented Martin for seven years, until he was murdered.''
Other clients included Indian activist Leonard Peltier; for a time, subway shooter Colin Ferguson; and Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X.
by CNB