Selling a Client's Story

Selling a Client's Story Bill Boyd is a Texas lawyer who recently acquired an infamous client: Charles Watson, a local boy from Boyd's home town of McKinney who is a star suspect in the bizarre Sharon Tate murder case. Soon after Watson was arrested in McKinney, where he is now fighting extradition to California, the country lawyer revealed some big-city traits. As swarms of reporters begged for jailhouse interviews with his client, Boyd began dropping ten-gallon hints that Watson's family might go along --"if the offer is substantial."

One photographer offered $1,800. "We need lots and lots of money," retorted Boyd. How much? "About $50,000," said the lawyer. Though the press balked, Boyd still has not lowered his client's price--and he is quite sure that eventually he will get it.

Boyd's fund-raising effort is a prime example of a growing phenomenon in notorious criminal cases: more and more lawyers try to make sure of collecting their fees and legal expenses by selling press interviews and book and movie rights to their clients' stories. Unfortunately, the roles of legal defender and literary agent may be in conflict.

Special lnvestigator. A defense lawyer commonly has his client's permission to keep any journalist he chooses from, visiting the client in jail. Making those who do get in pay for the privilege is a handy way to finance heavy trial costs. In a case like Charles Watson's, for example, it may cost more than $50,000 to muster witnesses, print appeals and the like. Some legal realists argue that the practice thus serves justice--in a way. But it also can create the spectacle of overly ambitious lawyers attempting to serve themselves.

Lawyers for Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy's assassin, negotiated a contract with Writer Robert Kaiser. To help Kaiser cover the court proceeding, they agreed to assign him to the case as a "special investigator." This allowed him not only to interview Sirhan in his cell, but also to examine evidence before the trial and talk with court officers who were barred from discussing the case with other reporters. Given such access, Kaiser has produced a vividly detailed book--and Sirhan's 50% share of the royalties may well pay his legal costs.

Moral Issues. Lawyer-agents may be cannily attempting to tout their talents without actually violating the rule against lawyers advertising their services. A more difficult question is whether a lawyer's stake in such contracts affects his conduct of the defense. Consider the case of James Earl Ray, who now claims that he was denied effective counsel because of his lawyers' interests in a book about him. His first lawyer, Arthur Hanes, made a deal with Ray and Author William Bradford Huie that provided for articles and a book about Ray by Huie. To cover mounting legal bills, Ray later turned his share over to Hanes. The lawyer thus earned at least $25,000 from Huie's magazine articles before Ray fired him. Hanes then assigned his rights in the contract to Ray's second lawyer, Percy Foreman, who anticipated that they would eventually be worth $400,000. When it appeared that there would be no trial, Foreman agreed to take a maximum of $165,000.

Ray pleaded guilty to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. Later, however, he claimed that Foreman had advised him to plead that way to avoid a trial, thereby preserving the details of his story for Author Huie. In a motion for a new trial last April, Ray's third defense counsel argued that both his predecessors had represented not Ray but their own financial interests. Both Hanes and Foreman have denied that they put any pressure on Ray.

Ray lost his appeal,* and a federal court has refused to block publication of Huie's book, He Slew the Dreamer. Nevertheless, cases like Ray's involve moral issues that are firmly dealt with by the American Bar Association's new code of professional responsibility, which became effective this month. An attorney should avoid publication deals before or during a trial, says the code, lest he be "influenced consciously or unconsciously to a course of conduct that will enhance the value of his publication rights to the prejudice of his client."

Vanilla Ice Cream. In the Tate murder case, Susan Atkins, one of the defendants, is already making profits from her chilling account of the slayings, which was peddled by a Los Angeles photographer named Larry Schiller, already has been published in the U.S. and Europe, and soon will be the core of a book. Susan's lawyer, Richard Caballero, permitted the interview because he figured that it would rouse sympathy for the girl by showing that she is emotionally disturbed, a touch that some trial lawyers consider shrewd. As a court-appointed attorney, Caballero may not lawfully receive a fee from his client. Indeed, Schiller went out of his way to suggest that Caballero was not present during the interview.

But Schiller got to Susan through a law partner of Caballero's, and Caballero was not far away. "I can't tell about it any more," said Miss Atkins at one point. "My lawyer is coming soon, and he's bringing a dish of vanilla ice cream. Vanilla ice cream really blows my mind." Now the Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that the publicity of Miss Atkins' account makes it more difficult for the other defendants to get a trial before an unbiased jury. P:harles Manson, the alleged twisted mind behind the Tate murders (see BEHAVIOR) is trying his own version of the publication gambit. Though more than a dozen prominent lawyers have offered to take his case, Manson distrusts their motives. So far, he has insisted on representing himself. And as his own lawyer, he plans to peddle his own story. A competent guitarist, he is determined to pay his trial costs by recording his songs on "The Family Jam Inc." label.

* His next challenge cited a state law that re quires a new trial if the original trial judge dies (as did Judge W. Preston Battle) while an appeal is pending. The Tennessee Supreme Court, however, has just rejected Ray's ar gument on the ground that by pleading guilty he fendant," waived said his the right to unanimous appeal. court, "The de "upon the advice of his well-qualified and nationally known counsel, pleaded guilty to murder in the first degree, the offense with which he was charged, a cold-blooded murder without an explained motive. He made a bargain, swap ping a guilty plea for a 99-year prison sen tence rather than face a jury and a possibly harsher sentence. And now he must live with that bargain."

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