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Vincent Bugliosi

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Vincent Bugliosi (Template:Pron-en, with a silent g) (born August 18, 1934, in Hibbing, Minnesota) is an American attorney and author, best known for prosecuting Charles Manson and other defendants accused of the Tate-LaBianca murders. His most recent books are Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (2007), and The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (2008).

Education

Bugliosi is a graduate of the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, which he attended on a tennis scholarship. In 1964, he received his law degree from UCLA, where he was president of his graduating class.

Style of writing

Bugliosi does not own a computer and at one time did all his research through library microfilm archives.[1] More recently, he has relied on his virtual secretary, Rosemary Newton, to help with these tasks.[1] He also writes his books entirely by hand; Newton later transcribes his long-hand texts.[1]

Bugliosi, who is of Italian ancestry, is married with two children: Wendy and Vince Jr. He often refers to his wife, Gail, in his books, referencing her understanding and patience with him. He has also stated that he is an agnostic, although open to the ideas of deism.

Manson prosecution

As a Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney, he successfully prosecuted Charles Manson and several other members of his "family" for the 1969 murders of Sharon Tate and six others. He lost only one of the 106 felony cases he tried as a prosecutor, which included winning 21 out of 21 murder cases.[2] He later wrote, jointly with Curt Gentry, a book about the Manson trial called Helter Skelter. The book went on to become the biggest selling true crime book in publishing history with over 7 million copies sold.[3]

Political candidate

In 1972, Bugliosi ran for Los Angeles County District Attorney against longtime incumbent Joseph Busch. Bugliosi narrowly lost in a bitter, sometimes nasty campaign. Bugliosi ran again in 1976, after Busch resigned, but lost to interim District Attorney John Van de Kamp after waging a campaign that was criticized as sensationalistic [1].

Bugliosi subsequently became an outspoken critic of the media and lawyers and judges in major trials. In his most recent book, titled The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, he made the case that President George W. Bush ought to be prosecuted for murder based on evidence showing that he had lied to the American people into waging a war of aggression.

O. J. Simpson case

Bugliosi wrote a bestselling book, Outrage, on the acquittal of O.J. Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, in which Bugliosi asserted Simpson's guilt, and criticized the work of the district attorney, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and Judge Lance Ito; he used these profiles to illustrate broader problems in American criminal justice, the media, and the political appointment of judges.

Bugliosi was very critical of prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden and pointed out what he regarded as glaring mistakes that they made during the trial. He faulted them, for example, for not introducing the note that Simpson had written before trying to flee. Bugliosi said that the note "reeked" of guilt and that the jury should have been allowed to see it. He also pointed out that there was a change of clothing, a large amount of cash, a passport and a disguise kit found in the Bronco, of which the jury was never informed.

Bugliosi took Clark and Darden to task for not allowing the jury to hear the tape of Simpson's statement to police about cutting his finger the night of the murders.

Bugliosi also said the prosecutors should have gone into more detail about Simpson's abuse of his wife. He said it should have been made clear to the mostly African-American jury that Simpson had little impact in the black community and had done nothing to help blacks less fortunate than him. Bugliosi pointed out that, although the prosecutors knew that Simpson's race had nothing to do with the murders, once the defense "opened the door" by trying to paint Simpson falsely as a "leader" in the black community, the evidence to the contrary should have been presented, to prevent the jury from allowing it to bias their verdict.

He stated that, if he had been prosecuting the case, he would have put at least 500 hours of preparation into his final summation, and that it was obvious that Clark and Darden had waited until the night before to prepare for it.

Bugliosi wrote at length about the allegations that LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman had planted a bloody glove in order to frame Simpson. He argued that in order for Fuhrman to do this, there would have had to have been a broad-reaching conspiracy between Fuhrman and the other officers who worked the case. Bugliosi pointed out that it was highly improbable that Fuhrman and anyone else involved in the case would have tried to frame Simpson, as California law of the time provided that anyone who planted evidence in a death penalty case could have faced the death penalty themselves.

Bill Clinton

Bugliosi criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Clinton v. Jones. He wrote the book, No Island of Sanity, in which he argued that the right of a president to be unburdened by a private lawsuit outweighed Paula Jones's interest in having her case brought to trial immediately.

George W. Bush

Bugliosi also condemned the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Bush v. Gore decision that decided the 2000 presidential election. He wrote a lengthy criticism of the case for The Nation titled "None Dare Call It Treason," which he later expanded into a book titled The Betrayal of America. Some of his criticisms were depicted in the 2004 documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave.

He also believes that George W. Bush should be charged with the murders of more than 4,000 American soldiers as well as more than 100,000 Iraqis who have died in Iraq since the American-led invasion of that country, because of his belief that Bush launched the invasion under false pretenses. In his book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, he laid out that evidence and outlined what questions he would ask Bush at a potential murder trial. Bugliosi testified at a House Judiciary Committee meeting on 25 July 2008, at which he urged impeachment proceedings for Bush.

Kennedy Assassination

In 1986, Bugliosi played the part of prosecutor in an unscripted 21-hour mock television trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. His legal opponent, representing Oswald, was the well-known attorney, Gerry Spence. The program, sponsored by London Weekend Television, required extensive preparations by Bugliosi and inspired him to later write a comprehensive book on the subject of the assassination. His 1612-page book (with a CD-ROM containing an additional 958 pages of endnotes and 170 pages of source notes), Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was published in May 2007. His book examined the JFK assassination in detail and drew on a variety of sources; his findings were in line with those of the Warren Report, which had concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in the assassination of the 35th President. He called Reclaiming History his "magnum opus."[1]

The title of Reclaiming History derived from Bugliosi's belief that the history of the Kennedy assassination has been hijacked by conspiracy theories, the popularity of which, he asserts, has a pernicious and ongoing effect on American thought:

"Unless this fraud is finally exposed, the word believe will be forgotten by future generations and John F. Kennedy will have unquestionably become the victim of a conspiracy. Belief will have become unchallenged fact, and the faith of the American people in their institutions further eroded. If that is allowed to happen, Lee Harvey Oswald, a man who hated his country and everything for which it stands, will have triumphed even beyong his intent on that fateful day in November."
- Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p.1011.

Works

Books

In film

Bugliosi has had many of his books adapted to the screen, and appears as a character in several of them.

Articles

References

  1. ^ a b c d The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder ISBN 978-1-59315-481-3(2008) Acknowledgments
  2. ^ The Nation: Vince Bugliosi bio
  3. ^ Helter Skelter Back Cover ""biggest selling true crime book in publishing history"
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