00:06:22.060Then you get on the inside. And did you change your mind about his almost certain guilt?
00:06:30.020Yeah, I changed it first from almost certain guilt to I'm not sure to finally there was no crime here.
00:06:37.820There was just no crime. She did it to herself.0.64
00:06:41.220We found all the evidence that she was self-destructive and she was drinking and eating things she wasn't supposed to drink and eat.
00:06:49.080And then we were able to prove scientifically that there was never any insulin and the government's entire theory collapsed.
00:06:56.680And at that point, I was fairly confident that we'd win the appeal.
00:07:00.700So you decide to assemble a dream team of lawyers and lawyers in training from Harvard Law School, where you have been a professor at that point for years and ultimately for 50 years.
00:07:15.420Am I right that some of the people helping you have household names today?
00:07:20.500Oh, yeah. You know, it was a real dream team, unlike the O.J. case, which was a nightmare team.
00:07:26.280Everybody fought with each other in the O.J. case because they were trying to become the one who got credit for the result.
00:07:33.760In the Bambulo case, we all worked together very, very nicely.
00:07:37.400I worked with Susan Estridge. I worked with some other professors.
00:07:41.560And then, of course, I assembled a group of great students, not only from the law school, but from the medical school as well, because this was very much a scientific case, a medical case.
00:07:50.780I had been teaching for years the issue of law and science, how students, if they want to become really great criminal lawyers, have to really immerse themselves in science and technology and medicine.
00:08:02.220And this was the perfect case to illustrate that.
00:08:04.880All right. So you've got your dream team assembled.
00:08:07.960What was the room actually like as you broke them out into teams?
00:08:11.000Well, I had a very large Harvard house back in the day with a basketball court in the backyard and a big yard and about, I don't know, 10 rooms.
00:08:21.140And I would divide the team into rooms. This was the insulin room. This was the room for search and seizure.
00:08:29.220This was the case where they found the case. So everybody was divided into a team.
00:08:35.520And I was kind of the general and I would go from room to room asking them about their progress.
00:08:42.840But the principle Dershowitz says pulled him in was bigger than one wealthy man's freedom.
00:08:47.860In his telling years ago, it was about how this case had been built in the first place.
00:08:52.880Here's Alan talking with journalist Bill Curtis in 1997.
00:08:56.600They had paid for private prosecutors and private investigators and had circumvented the strictures of the Constitution,
00:09:04.520Constitution and had done things that private people could do, but that public police and
00:09:10.020prosecutors could never do, withheld evidence, possibly planted evidence. And it sounded
00:09:17.300intriguing to me. But there is an obvious contradiction. Dershowitz says a wealthy
00:09:22.520family had effectively built a private prosecution. Klaus von Bulow was also wealthy and now buying
00:09:29.480the best defense money could buy. Harvard students, expert witnesses, and one of the
00:09:34.100country's top appellate lawyers. Dershowitz said years ago, that's not a defense of the system.
00:09:40.040It is an indictment of it. If Klaus von Bülow had been a poor butler charged with putting his wife
00:09:47.260into two comas, he would be in jail today. There is no question in my mind that it took a lot of
00:09:54.020money paid to scientific experts, particularly to be able to get justice in this case. This is a
00:10:01.240terrible commentary on the American system of justice. You knew early on that this case could
00:10:07.500turn on the notes of a man named Richard Q. Who is Richard Q and why were you so sure that his
00:10:15.660notes were going to be so important? Because I knew Dick Q. He was a friend of mine. I actually
00:10:20.020supported him when he ran for district attorney against Bob Morgan, who ultimately became a close
00:10:24.580friend of mine years later. But at the time I supported Richard Q. I liked him and I knew he
00:10:29.940was a good lawyer. So I knew he was going to take very, very careful notes of what was said to him
00:10:35.820by the children and by others. And I had a strong suspicion that these notes would show that
00:10:43.540there was no insult. He didn't want to turn those notes over to you. So as a lawyer,
00:10:49.220did your spidey sense go up as soon as he refused? Oh, of course. I mean, if there was nothing in
00:10:54.800the notes, he would have, of course, turned them over. And once he said, I'm not turning over those
00:10:59.000notes that are lawyer-client privilege, but they weren't lawyer-client privilege. And we were
00:11:03.160entitled to those notes. And under the Sixth Amendment, we're entitled to all exculpatory
00:11:08.440evidence. And the court so ruled when we got the notes, we said, Eureka, you know, we now have
00:11:13.900the proof we needed. And so, you know, it was a combination of using law and using science
00:11:22.560together. And, you know, one reason why I was a successful teacher is because I brought the
00:11:29.420courtroom into the classroom. And one reason I was a successful litigator is I brought the
00:11:34.060classroom into the courtroom. And the von Bülow case was a perfect example of both.
00:11:39.520I taught the case in class. I got student input from brilliant, brilliant Harvard students who
00:11:44.600gave me advice about how to handle it and do things. And I take the advice of students and
00:11:49.780we were able to use the classroom and bring it into the courtroom.
00:11:54.200But Q had told you that there wasn't a scrap of paper in his possession that was exculpatory,
00:12:00.640so he didn't have to turn these notes over. Then finally, he was ordered to turn them over to you.
00:12:06.460And did your jaw drop when you read them? Explain what was so explosive about what was in those
00:12:12.040notes. Well, the notes proved that there was no insulin and that there never was insulin.
00:13:41.080What things I put in my notes of the original interview really have nothing to do with it.
00:13:47.040If Alex and Ella had told me, as I'm sure they did, when preliminarily I interviewed them that this insulin was found,
00:13:55.960the fact that in my notes of the first interview with Marianne, there were several, I didn't put down.
00:14:01.840Maria says she saw insulin. No need to put it down. I'd already heard that.
00:14:06.620Alan has said that looking at the state's evidence, the blood, the needle, the bag, he too would have voted to convict.
00:14:14.280So we asked him to explain how he got from there to ultimately believing Klaus may have been innocent.
00:14:20.780He started with the needle, whose tip the prosecution said was encrusted with insulin.
00:14:26.580They had a needle, which they said had insulin on it.
00:14:31.040And we were able to show that if that needle had been injected into a human body, the body would act as a swab and the insulin would not be encrusted on the bottom, but it would be encrusted near the top.
00:14:44.740And we were able to prove that the insulin was at the very bottom, showing that that needle had never been injected into any human being, but that it had been dipped into insulin in order to create the impression that this was an insulin coated needle that Klaus von Bülow had injected his wife with.
00:15:01.040The jury was very impressed with that demonstration.
00:15:04.180Alan, what was the 216 insulin reading?
00:15:07.540Do you remember that? It sent a man to prison.
00:15:09.940What was actually wrong with that number 216 insulin?
00:15:12.680Well, there were three readings and they suppressed
00:15:15.880the most exculpatory reading and just allowed the two readings,
00:15:20.000both of which were consistent with guilt.
00:15:22.860Once we were able to get at all the readings, we were able to show
00:16:24.400Not Sonny the victim, but Sonny the patient.
00:16:27.200In the film that was based on Dershowitz's book, Reversal of Fortune, that other Sonny narrates the whole case from inside her coma.
00:16:36.820On December 27th, 1979, I lay in bed all day.
00:16:43.260Whether I was asleep or in a coma, later became a subject of dispute.
00:16:50.660Do you believe that she injected herself with insulin or that there was no insulin in Sonny at all?
00:16:56.060There was no insulin, but I have to tell you, Truman Capote told me that he gave her insulin and told her how to inject it as a kind of weight loss or something.
00:17:07.740I don't know, but I never knew whether to believe Truman Capote.
00:19:41.340Absolutely believed that Klaus von Bülow was guilty, but that he was too smart to be convicted.
00:19:47.040So they tampered with the evidence and they allowed evidence to be submitted to the jury, which was not authentic.
00:19:58.200And we were able to disprove that scientifically.
00:20:01.640There is a catch, he concedes. You can frame a guilty man.
00:20:06.240A frame-up would not mean Klaus von Bülow was innocent, which is why the blunt question still has to be asked.
00:20:14.820But sitting here today, thinking back to your comment at the top of the interview, you don't believe that Klaus von Bülow committed this crime.
00:20:23.560I don't. Is it possible? It is. I don't believe it. The evidence points away from it.
00:20:29.000The evidence points very strongly to a self-inflicted coma.
00:22:14.380Third meeting, well, I did a lot of bad things, but I didn't do this.
00:22:17.900The fourth meeting is I did this, but they can't prove it.
00:22:21.060So, you know, you have to know when you're dealing with these people and when you're a criminal defense lawyer, you're dealing 90 percent with guilty people.
00:22:30.120That's why the conviction rate is so high.
00:23:49.140And people told me that we would never win in front of that court.
00:23:53.220Years after the trial, Dershowitz says he and his team realized
00:23:56.520the legal violation alone would not be enough to get a reversal.
00:24:01.220We had to persuade them there had really been a miscarriage of justice,
00:24:04.520not merely a violation of the Constitution.
00:24:07.460In April of 1984, the court gave its answer. Both counts reversed. On two grounds. First, those Q notes. The family's lawyer could not hand pieces of his file to the state police and attorney general and then hide the rest from Klaus's defense team behind assertions of privilege.