draft 2
September ___, 2006
Dear ________,
I am writing this letter, not as a lawyer but like you, I am one of Jeffrey’s close friends. In fact, Jeffrey has not approved the contents of this letter, though he is aware that I am writing it.
.
I have had a very unique role in this saga as I have been a participant in many of the discussions about which you have read. First let me answer the paramount question . NO, there was never any underage sex. Absolutely none. Indeed, Jeffrey volunteered for and passed a grueling lie detector test on this very issue. AS you are aware Jeffrey has always been very disciplined , and rule oriented, and tries to stay far from any prohibited lines in all aspects of his life.
The true facts are these: The father that made the the first contact ,is a convicted felon (serving 21 months in federal prison for past money fraud); his daughter, the subject of the suspicious claim, wrote to her friends that she would make 250k this year. She has a long history of lying, drug use , and run-ins with the police. Even her own father had previously reported to the police that she was out of control. That being said, she told the police that Jeffrey had only one contact with her – never even having seen her before he entered his own darkened massage room, where she was waiting – and that she had lied to both Jeffrey and Sarah about her age and schooling. These facts have been conveniently ignored by the press.
I myself have been criticized for even attempting to disprove these false and financially motivated sex charges by an admitted liar.
In fact, it appears that today, sex claims themselves are so highly charged that to some, even innocence is no longer a valid defense.
And so Jeffrey find himself in the position of being tried in the media for crimes he did not commit – these very same crimes that a Florida grand jury determined there was not even probable cause to charge.
In addition, as you've probably gleaned from the articles, he finds himself in the middle of a highly unusual battle between a police chief and the state prosecutor. This situation is not something that I have witnessed in all my years of practicing and teaching law. Some background: with respect to criminal investigations; It is clear that the proper role of the police is to thoroughly investigate the facts. The prosecutor then must evaluate those facts and consider them against the background of the prosecuting office’s policies and precedents. Further, they consider information uncovered by their own investigators and the defense, and then exercise discretion in making the ultimate decision as to whether to file charges or turn the decision over to a grand jury.
In this case the prosecutors decided that they could not themselves believe the testimony of the key witnesses, who had long records of lying, theft, drug addiction, etc. Accordingly, they decided to subpoena the witnesses to see whether they would repeat their allegations under oath in the solemn context of a grand jury (rather than in often suggestive conversations with the police), and if so, whether the grand jury would believe them. After hearing the witnesses that were willing to testify, and recognizing that the women who made the most outrageous charges failed even to show up to testify , the grand jury decided to charge a no more than a single serious offense than the solicitation of prostitution. Keep in mind, that when the grand jury made this decision, it had not even been made aware of the fact that Jeffrey had already passed a lie detector test. SOme newspapers have erroneously reported that Jeffrey received preferential treatment. Believe me, I was there, in face-to-face meetings with the prosecutors – and the last characterization that I would use to describe the way he was treated would be “preferential.” These were difficult and contentious negotiations, and though
the grand jury ultimately charged him with soliciting prostitutes, we strongly disagreed with its decision, believing that there should be no charge whatsoever.
Another commonly reported claim was that I merely showed the prosecutors only MySpace.com accounts of a girl allegedly using drugs and alcohol. What they did not print was that I had presented to the prosecutors irrefutable documentary evidence that her fabrications could not have happened as described. I proved that the girl had misrepresented to the police that on a certain date she was sixteen, when we proved by documentary evidence that she was over eighteen. And produced to the prosecutor her arrest record , from Palm Beach police department records , which oddly they had been withheld from them.
We all know Jeffrey is extremely smart, and in fact a little “complex.” However, he is not self-destructive. He would not knowingly break the law. Unfortunately it appears that the appealing target of a good looking, wealthy bachelor is too easy for some to pass up. My wife a committed proponent of women’s rights, immediately summed it up when she said, “Something is clearly not right with this story.” Even though the grand jury, also determined that the “story” was not right, the Palm Beach police chief apparently believed otherwise. It appears he became frustrated during his thirteen month investigation, as more and more evidence was being uncovered, that his case was clearly becoming weaker and weaker .
In July, as previously stated, both the grand jury, comprised of twenty-one randomly chosen citizens, and the state prosecutor, along with the State Attorney’s Sex Crimes Chief, separately determined that there was insufficient evidence to support more than a single charge of solicitation of prostitution. (Again, to be clear, Jeffrey was only charged with one count of solicitation of prostitutes, not underage sex.) Jeffrey has pleaded not guilty to that charge.
What then transpired, , was that the chief defiantly refused to accept the grand jury’s determination. Pursuing his own personal agenda, he improperly released to the public what a former secret service agent termed "the raw sewage of his investigation.” This “sewage” consisted of only statements—including blatant lies—that the police believe pointed to guilt, and it unfairly excluded (suppressed) all the hard evidence that proved Jeffrey's innocence. This type of “raw sewage” selectively disclosed by the police is not even turned over to the Senate ,by the FBI, when performing its constitutional function of confirming presidential nominees, because it is considered too unreliable by professional law enforcement. Yet the police, in what I believe to be an unethical act, disclosed this sewage to the press in an improper effort to embarrass Jeffrey.
This sewage is what has been released on the internet. T This clearly unfair act, however, seems to have accomplished the chief's thinly disguised purpose to simply embarrass Jeffrey while at the same time purposefully denying the public access to all the exculpatory evidence. (With respect the embarrassment,I must admit,that I think he accomplished his goal to some degree, as I know this has been a very trying time for Jeffrey.)
This latest improper act of the police chief however was in keeping with his previous behavior. Only weeks before, he had been so determined not to hear Jeffrey’s side of the story that he refused to attend a scheduled meeting convened at the state prosecutors request for the stated purpose of personally reviewing exculpatory evidence. Again, I personally have never before seen this type of behavior.
In contrast, the grand jury and the prosecutor do not have the option to bury their collective heads in the sand. They are both required by law to carefully consider both sides of the story. The prosecutor acts as legal and ethical “gatekeeper”; and the grand jury is the check against potentially overzealous law enforcement. To the Chief's obvious dismay, each institution, in its own separate capacity, considered the totality of the evidence and decided on only a single charge of solicitation. In making its decision, I'm certain that the prosecutors—the elected state attorney and the career sex prosecutor – recognized the significance of the fact that Mr. Epstein passed an extensive lie detector test, given by one the State’s most renowned and toughest practitioners, who is often used by this very States Attorney’s office in similar cases.
Until reading this letter almost none of you have had the opportunity to even hear the other side. The only “reports” that you have seen were comprised of a detective’s version of edited questions and answers, and amplified allegations that were clearly outrageous and false. These same reports were reviewed by the prosecutor and grand jury, but they also had the opportunity to examine third-party hard documentary evidence, including pertinent federal criminal records, prior misrepresentations of age and other clearly dated evidence showing proof of actual versus fabricated age, law enforcement reports, and taped confessions and e-mails. Such exculpatory evidence, which destroys the neat narrative that sells newspapers, never made it into the media.
Here are just a few examples of what was deliberately withheld from public release:
The missing piece of a “broken device,” salaciously described in the report as a sex toy, found during the sifting of Jeffrey's garbage and then officially referred to in the report (pg 26) as “commonly used for vaginal or anal stimulation,” was the only, single, corroborative, item found during a thorough and warrant-directed search of Jeffrey’s house. This highly-relevant purported “device” turned out to be nothing more than an ordinary plastic salad spoon. (You couldn’t make that up!).The same video cameras that the police excitedly point to in their report were actually set up with the help of their very own SWAT team, in order to apprehend an armed burglar whom they deemed potentially dangerous. The burglar was eventually caught. Because the videos produced were of poor quality, Jeffrey, in recognition of the professional work done, generously donated $36,000 to enable the police department to purchase advanced digital video enhancement equipment, to help the police with other investigations. The video cameras were not in the massage room. .
Detective Recarey wrote willfully misleading reports stating he had unexpectedly “found covert cameras hidden within clocks,” when in fact he knew that he and his police colleagues had helped to install these very same cameras and were fully aware of their existence—and their innocent explanation..The police decided not to include the fact that the woman fabricating virtually all the serious allegations, when required to repeat those same fabrications under oath and penalty of perjury, refused to do so.
This same witness described a sexual incident she claimed took place when she was under eighteen, but hard documentary evidence proved that she was over eighteen and that the encounter, as she described it, could not have taken place.
How do I know that the police knew of this misleading omission? Because I revealed the exculpatory information during a two-hour meeting with prosecutors and the police officer in charge of the case, The meeting itself was a fact that the police officer remarkably left out of the report. I showed beyond all doubt that the single instance of alleged underage sex could not have happened.
And how do I know it didn’t happen? As I wrote above, I know because that incident, which we keep reading about in the media, involved a sex toy that was purchased by the the accuser , yes by the accuser, when she was over 18. We had the credit card receipt to prove it When the prosecutors saw the receipt and the documented history of her theft and lies, they decided that they could not charge Jeffrey with any crime based on her “credibility.”In addition, the police withheld from the public release, and in fact from the state prosecutors themselves (I know this, because, as previously mentioned it was I, in fact, was the one who brought it to their attention), that this very same witness had been arrested for drug possession during the relevant time in question, in Palm Beach, only blocks from the police station. Only shortly thereafter she was terminated from her job for grand theft. Her taped confession, and her employer’s statement that she was virtually incapable of telling the truth, were facts carefully considered by the prosecutor and grad jury in their decision to charge only one count of solicitation.
This effort by the police chief to embarrass Jeffrey by selectively disclosing the “sewage” while suppressing the truth has been monumentally unfair to Jeffrey and hurtful to some of the people close to him.
Jeffrey is a very charitable, and caring person As you know he would never do what the police chief and some in the media have falsely accused him of doing. An important question to be asked is: why has so much law enforcement energy and so many resources been devoted to a case in which clearly there are no real “victims”,
If you have any questions, I will be happy to try to answer them.
Cordially,
Alan Dershowitz
September ___, 2006
Dear ________,
I am writing this letter, not as a lawyer but like
you, I am one of Jeffrey’s close friends. In fact,
Jeffrey has not approved the contents of this letter,
though he is aware that I am writing it.
.
I have had a very unique role in this saga as I have
been a participant in many of the discussions about
which you have read. First let me answer the paramount
question . NO, there was never any underage sex.
Absolutely none. Indeed, Jeffrey volunteered for and
passed a grueling lie detector test on this very
issue. AS you are aware Jeffrey has always been very
disciplined , and rule oriented, and tries to stay
far from any prohibited lines in all aspects of his
life.
The true facts are these: The father that made the
the first contact ,is a convicted felon (serving 21
months in federal prison for past money fraud); his
daughter, the subject of the suspicious claim, wrote
to her friends that she would make 250k this year. She
has a long history of lying, drug use , and run-ins
with the police. Even her own father had previously
reported to the police that she was out of control.
That being said, she told the police that Jeffrey had
only one contact with her – never even having seen her
before he entered his own darkened massage room, where
she was waiting – and that she had lied to both
Jeffrey and Sarah about her age and schooling. These
facts have been conveniently ignored by the press.
I myself have been criticized for even attempting to
disprove these false and financially motivated sex
charges by an admitted liar.
In fact, it appears that today, sex claims themselves
are so highly charged that to some, even innocence is
no longer a valid defense.
And so Jeffrey find himself in the position of being
tried in the media for crimes he did not commit –
these very same crimes that a Florida grand jury
determined there was not even probable cause to
charge.
In addition, as you've probably gleaned from the
articles, he finds himself in the middle of a highly
unusual battle between a police chief and the state
prosecutor. This situation is not something that I
have witnessed in all my years of practicing and
teaching law. Some background: with respect to
criminal investigations; It is clear that the proper
role of the police is to thoroughly investigate the
facts. The prosecutor then must evaluate those facts
and consider them against the background of the
prosecuting office’s policies and precedents.
Further, they consider information uncovered by their
own investigators and the defense, and then exercise
discretion in making the ultimate decision as to
whether to file charges or turn the decision over to a
grand jury.
In this case the prosecutors decided that they could
not themselves believe the testimony of the key
witnesses, who had long records of lying, theft, drug
addiction, etc. Accordingly, they decided to subpoena
the witnesses to see whether they would repeat their
allegations under oath in the solemn context of a
grand jury (rather than in often suggestive
conversations with the police), and if so, whether the
grand jury would believe them. After hearing the
witnesses that were willing to testify, and
recognizing that the women who made the most
outrageous charges failed even to show up to testify ,
the grand jury decided to charge a no more than a
single serious offense than the solicitation of
prostitution. Keep in mind, that when the grand jury
made this decision, it had not even been made aware of
the fact that Jeffrey had already passed a lie
detector test. SOme newspapers have erroneously
reported that Jeffrey received preferential treatment.
Believe me, I was there, in face-to-face meetings
with the prosecutors – and the last characterization
that I would use to describe the way he was treated
would be “preferential.” These were difficult and
contentious negotiations, and though
the grand jury ultimately charged him with soliciting
prostitutes, we strongly disagreed with its decision,
believing that there should be no charge whatsoever.
Another commonly reported claim was that I merely
showed the prosecutors only MySpace.com accounts of a
girl allegedly using drugs and alcohol. What they did
not print was that I had presented to the prosecutors
irrefutable documentary evidence that her fabrications
could not have happened as described. I proved that
the girl had misrepresented to the police that on a
certain date she was sixteen, when we proved by
documentary evidence that she was over eighteen. And
produced to the prosecutor her arrest record , from
Palm Beach police department records , which oddly
they had been withheld from them.
We all know Jeffrey is extremely smart, and in fact a
little “complex.” However, he is not self-destructive.
He would not knowingly break the law. Unfortunately
it appears that the appealing target of a good
looking, wealthy bachelor is too easy for some to pass
up. My wife a committed proponent of women’s rights,
immediately summed it up when she said, “Something is
clearly not right with this story.” Even though the
grand jury, also determined that the “story” was not
right, the Palm Beach police chief apparently believed
otherwise. It appears he became frustrated during his
thirteen month investigation, as more and more
evidence was being uncovered, that his case was
clearly becoming weaker and weaker .
In July, as previously stated, both the grand jury,
comprised of twenty-one randomly chosen citizens, and
the state prosecutor, along with the State Attorney’s
Sex Crimes Chief, separately determined that there was
insufficient evidence to support more than a single
charge of solicitation of prostitution. (Again, to be
clear, Jeffrey was only charged with one count of
solicitation of prostitutes, not underage sex.)
Jeffrey has pleaded not guilty to that charge.
What then transpired, , was that the chief defiantly
refused to accept the grand jury’s determination.
Pursuing his own personal agenda, he improperly
released to the public what a former secret service
agent termed "the raw sewage of his investigation.”
This “sewage” consisted of only statements—including
blatant lies—that the police believe pointed to guilt,
and it unfairly excluded (suppressed) all the hard
evidence that proved Jeffrey's innocence. This type
of “raw sewage” selectively disclosed by the police is
not even turned over to the Senate ,by the FBI, when
performing its constitutional function of confirming
presidential nominees, because it is considered too
unreliable by professional law enforcement. Yet the
police, in what I believe to be an unethical act,
disclosed this sewage to the press in an improper
effort to embarrass Jeffrey.
This sewage is what has been released on the internet.
T This clearly unfair act, however, seems to have
accomplished the chief's thinly disguised purpose to
simply embarrass Jeffrey while at the same time
purposefully denying the public access to all the
exculpatory evidence. (With respect the
embarrassment,I must admit,that I think he
accomplished his goal to some degree, as I know this
has been a very trying time for Jeffrey.)
This latest improper act of the police chief however
was in keeping with his previous behavior. Only weeks
before, he had been so determined not to hear
Jeffrey’s side of the story that he refused to attend
a scheduled meeting convened at the state prosecutors
request for the stated purpose of personally reviewing
exculpatory evidence. Again, I personally have never
before seen this type of behavior.
In contrast, the grand jury and the prosecutor do
not have the option to bury their collective heads in
the sand. They are both required by law to carefully
consider both sides of the story. The prosecutor acts
as legal and ethical “gatekeeper”; and the grand jury
is the check against potentially overzealous law
enforcement. To the Chief's obvious dismay, each
institution, in its own separate capacity, considered
the totality of the evidence and decided on only a
single charge of solicitation. In making its
decision, I'm certain that the prosecutors—the elected
state attorney and the career sex prosecutor –
recognized the significance of the fact that Mr.
Epstein passed an extensive lie detector test, given
by one the State’s most renowned and toughest
practitioners, who is often used by this very States
Attorney’s office in similar cases.
Until reading this letter almost none of you have had
the opportunity to even hear the other side. The
only “reports” that you have seen were comprised of a
detective’s version of edited questions and answers,
and amplified allegations that were clearly outrageous
and false. These same reports were reviewed by the
prosecutor and grand jury, but they also had the
opportunity to examine third-party hard documentary
evidence, including pertinent federal criminal
records, prior misrepresentations of age and other
clearly dated evidence showing proof of actual versus
fabricated age, law enforcement reports, and taped
confessions and e-mails. Such exculpatory evidence,
which destroys the neat narrative that sells
newspapers, never made it into the media.
Here are just a few examples of what was deliberately
withheld from public release:
The missing piece of a “broken device,”
salaciously described in the report as a sex toy,
found during the sifting of Jeffrey's garbage and then
officially referred to in the report (pg 26) as
“commonly used for vaginal or anal stimulation,” was
the only, single, corroborative, item found during a
thorough and warrant-directed search of Jeffrey’s
house. This highly-relevant purported “device” turned
out to be nothing more than an ordinary plastic salad
spoon. (You couldn’t make that up!).
The same video cameras that the police excitedly
point to in their report were actually set up with the
help of their very own SWAT team, in order to
apprehend an armed burglar whom they deemed
potentially dangerous. The burglar was eventually
caught. Because the videos produced were of poor
quality, Jeffrey, in recognition of the professional
work done, generously donated $36,000 to enable the
police department to purchase advanced digital video
enhancement equipment, to help the police with other
investigations. The video cameras were not in the
massage room. .
Detective Recarey wrote willfully misleading reports
stating he had unexpectedly “found covert cameras
hidden within clocks,” when in fact he knew that he
and his police colleagues had helped to install these
very same cameras and were fully aware of their
existence—and their innocent explanation..The police decided not to include the fact that
the woman fabricating virtually all the serious
allegations, when required to repeat those same
fabrications under oath and penalty of perjury,
refused to do so.This same witness described a sexual incident she
claimed took place when she was under eighteen, but
hard documentary evidence proved that she was over
eighteen and that the encounter, as she described it,
could not have taken place.
How do I know that the police knew of this misleading
omission? Because I revealed the exculpatory
information during a two-hour meeting with prosecutors
and the police officer in charge of the case, The
meeting itself was a fact that the police officer
remarkably left out of the report. I showed beyond
all doubt that the single instance of alleged underage
sex could not have happened.
And how do I know it didn’t happen? As I wrote above,
I know because that incident, which we keep reading
about in the media, involved a sex toy that was
purchased by the the accuser , yes by the accuser,
when she was over 18. We had the credit card receipt
to prove it When the prosecutors saw the receipt and
the documented history of her theft and lies, they
decided that they could not charge Jeffrey with any
crime based on her “credibility.”In addition, the police withheld from the public
release, and in fact from the state prosecutors
themselves (I know this, because, as previously
mentioned it was I, in fact, was the one who brought
it to their attention), that this very same witness
had been arrested for drug possession during the
relevant time in question, in Palm Beach, only blocks
from the police station. Only shortly thereafter she
was terminated from her job for grand theft. Her
taped confession, and her employer’s statement that
she was virtually incapable of telling the truth, were
facts carefully considered by the prosecutor and grad
jury in their decision to charge only one count of
solicitation.This effort by the police chief to embarrass Jeffrey
by selectively disclosing the “sewage” while
suppressing the truth has been monumentally unfair to
Jeffrey and hurtful to some of the people close to
him.
Jeffrey is a very charitable, and caring person As
you know he would never do what the police chief and
some in the media have falsely accused him of doing.
An important question to be asked is: why has so much
law enforcement energy and so many resources been
devoted to a case in which clearly there are no real
“victims”,
If you have any questions, I will be happy to try to
answer them.
Cordially,
Alan Dershowitz
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