(no subject)

September ___, 2006

Dear ________,
I am writing this letter, not as a lawyer but, as are 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.
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I have had a very unique role in this saga as I have been an eye-witness and a participant in many of the discussions about which you have read. First let me answer the paramount question that is on your mind. NO, there was never any underage sex. Absolutely none. Indeed, Jeffrey volunteered for and passed a grueling lie detector test on this very issue. 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 initial allegation 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 has said that no one can believe anything she says. 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. (Keep in mind that Florida bars and movie theatres are both common victims of false- age claims.)
I myself have been criticized for even attempting to disprove these false and financially motivated sex charges by an admitted liar.. And, 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 falsely tried in the media of crimes he did not commit – these 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 also 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.
Again, 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. (This prosecutorial decision is particularly important in cases where the defense has conducted its own extensive investigation and turned everything over to the prosecutor, as we did in this case.)
In this case the prosecutors decided that they could not themselves himself 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 knowing that the women who made the most outrageous charges failed to show up to testify under oath, the grand jury decided to charge a no more than a single serious offense than the solicitation of prostitution. When the grand jury made this decision, it did not even know that Jeffrey had already passed a lie detector test. I also recognize that there have been public claims made that Jeffrey received preferential treatment. But 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 even when 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 the girls allegedly using drugs and alcohol. What they refused to print was that I had presented to the prosecutors irrefutable documentary evidence that their 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 introduced to the prosecutor her arrest record , from Palm Beach, which oddly they hadn’t
seen before.

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 seems 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 was innocent. The type of “raw sewage” selectively disclosed by the police is not even turned over to the Senate by the FBI when the Senate is performing its constitutional function of confirming presidential nominees, because it is considered too unreliable by professional law enforcement. Yet the police, in what we believe to be an unethical act, disclosed this sewage to the press in an improper effort to embarrass Jeffrey.
These one-sided “reports” are what has been released on the internet. They contain only the false allegations, without the accompanying rebuttals or counter-evidence. 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 think he accomplished his goal to some degree, as I know this has been a trying time for Jeffrey.)
This improper act of the police chief was in keeping with his previous behavior. Only weeks before, he had been so determined not to hear Jeffrey’s exculpatory evidence 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 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 carefully constructed narrative, 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:

1.  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!). 
       
   

2. 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..

3. 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.

4. 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.”

5. 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