November 12, 2003 6:46 AM

Time for the circus to leave town

It was all or nothing: Durst's defense team pushed jurors beyond the gore

We gave them what we had and we did what we could with Durst when he was on the stand. I don't think there's anything we would change about the presentation of the case or the arguments.

- Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk

WTF? You kill your roommate, fillet him into bite-size morsels, dump him into Galveston Bay, and the verdict is...NOT GUILTY!!?!?!? Can you say "miscarriage of justice"??

Of course, if you or I had been in this situation, we'd already be halfway to becoming someone's girlfriend in Huntsville. Clearly, Durst had the best defense money could buy- which is no problem when money is no object.

In the court of public opinion, Robert Durst was a goner. People don't chop up bodies and flee the state without good reason.

But in the court that mattered, the murder case against Durst was far from overwhelming. Only two men were present in his apartment on Sept. 28, 2001. One is Durst, who claims self-defense. The other is dead.

As jurors wrestled with evidence from perhaps the strangest murder trial Galveston has seen, there was no easy way out. The only question was whether the state had met its burden of proof for the maximum charge, and nothing less.

Durst's attorneys decided not to give jurors a potential for compromise.

"You've got to have the courage to go for the whole banana when you think you're ahead," said Mike Ramsey, who joined Dick DeGuerin and Chip Lewis to form a potent, and expensive, defense team. "In a good and reasoned way, we thought about how the trial was going and we decided we were ahead."

It is not uncommon for one side to hedge its bets and ask that a jury be allowed to consider a lesser offense than the one on which the defendant was brought to trial. Durst's lawyers hardly gave it a thought.

"Lesser (charges) give jurors a fallback," DeGuerin said. "I have felt that way for many years about murder cases. People not convinced of guilt might vote for a lesser charge just to reach a verdict, and that's not a just verdict. This might be looked on by some as a risky decision, but we put it to Bob (Durst) and he agreed with us."

Durst's age made it easier to gamble. At 60, even a short sentence could keep him in prison for the rest of his life. But his lawyers said their decision was based on the obvious shortcomings of the case against him.

This case represents everything that is wrong with our legal system. Durst got a vigorous and thorough defense, in part because money was no object. Anything his defense team wanted, it got, because of the Durst family fortune. If you or I had been in the same situation, would we have been so fortunate? I know I wouldn't have been- of course, I'm not planning to shoot and fillet anyone, either.

While this clearly could under should be filed under "travesty of justice", my hat goes off to the Durst defense team- clearly the best legal minds that money could buy. They mapped out a brilliant, if twisted, strategy- but then their job was to get their client off. They succeeded brilliantly.

So what lessons have we learned here? That they rich really ARE different- they can afford better lawyers? That guilt and justice really ARE unrelated? That enough money will get you through the rough spots in life? That our legal system really DOES have a price tag attached? Udamnbetcha....

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on November 12, 2003 6:46 AM.

Sometimes, you have to remember what is truly important- and it's not politics was the previous entry in this blog.

It's easy to warehouse people if you don't view them as human beings is the next entry in this blog.

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