Catspaw: The Famed Trial Attorney's Heroic Defense of a Man Unjustly Accused - Hardcover

Nizer, Louis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556112769 ISBN 13: 9781556112768

Publisher: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1992

Synopsis

A defense lawyer recalls the brilliant and persistent legal maneuverings he used to correct an instance when the justice system backfired and convicted an innocent man.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

In an effective though overwritten account, the distinguished trial attorney (My Life in Court, etc.) tells the tragic story of Murray Gold, a former client who, according to Nizer, was twice wrongfully convicted of a horrific double murder. Gold was indicted for the grisly 1974 multiple-stabbing deaths of Connecticut attorney Irving Pasternak and his wife, Rhoda. A troubled man with psychiatric problems, the accused was Pasternak's ex-son-in-law and quickly became the favorite suspect of the police. According to Nizer, the case against Gold was entirely circumstantial (for instance, the killer, like Gold, wore shoes with the words ``Cats Paw'' on the heel--but Nizer explains that such shoes were widely distributed in the local area), while authorities ignored a much stronger case against Bruce Sanborn, an anti-Semitic Satanist who hated Pasternak and repeatedly threatened to kill him. Gold endured four trials, two of which ended in mistrials and two in convictions. Nizer never represented Gold at any of the trials; instead, he conducted a successful appeal to the Supreme Court of Connecticut after the first conviction (the Court held that testimony on Sanborn's alleged admission of guilt was improperly suppressed as hearsay) and a successful habeas corpus proceeding subsequent to the second conviction. Nizer argues persuasively that Gold was an innocent victim of prosecutorial misjudgment and his own paranoiac personality (Gold angrily fired Nizer after the appeal, fired his trial attorney later on, and rejected a proposed plea bargain, all because he suspected conspiracies against him). Although Nizer praises the American legal system, at the core of his narrative lies a monstrous proposition--that an innocent man spent nearly 17 years on trial and in prison even though there was never any direct evidence of his guilt. Nizer's style can be melodramatic and his account self- serving, but, overall, he tells an engrossing and powerful story of a tragic miscarriage of justice. (Photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Despite the self-serving subtitle, this astounding story of a case that spanned 18 years and four trials is a remarkable account of the criminal justice process and a defendant who was probably wrongly accused. In 1974 a prominent Waterbury, Conn., lawyer and his wife, Irving and Rhoda Pasternak, were hacked to death by an intruder. Their ex-son-in-law Murray Gold, a concentration camp survivor and former stockbroker, was accused of the crime, although he had no discernable motive and there was no forensic evidence tying him to the killings. His first trial ended in a hung jury; the second brought a guilty verdict, largely because testimony strongly suggesting another murderer was disallowed. Nizer, his defense attorney, secured a reversal from the Connecticut Supreme Court, but Gold, becoming increasingly neurotic, fired him. The third trip to court ended in a mistrial; the fourth resulted in another guilty verdict. Bordering on psychosis, Gold received a hearing at the state prison, largely as a result of Nizer's efforts, and was freed again, with motions against a reinstatement of the guilty verdict being filed as this review goes to press. Nizer, who expresses great compassion for Gold because of his Holocaust experience, probes the psychology of the concentration camp survivor to explain the combination of paranoia and guilt that afflicted his client. Doubleday Book Club and Reader's Digest Condensed Books selections.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Donald I. Fine, Inc.
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 1556112769
• ISBN 13: 9781556112768
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 299