(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.
.
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

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