Vincent Bugliosi

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Vincent Bugliosi (pronounced boo-lee-OH-see, 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.

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[edit] Education

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

[edit] Manson prosecution

As a Los Angeles County Deputy 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. He later wrote a book about the Manson trial called Helter Skelter.

[edit] Legal author and commentator

Bugliosi has been an outspoken critic in the media of the performance of lawyers and judges in major trials. Bugliosi, a Democrat, also is known for his history of Democratic/liberal talking points in several of his books. He currently believes that President George W. Bush should be prosecuted for murder for going to war with Iraq.

[edit] Outrage

Bugliosi wrote a bestselling book, Outrage, on the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, in which he detailed the work of the district attorney, prosecutors, the defense lawyers, and presiding judge; 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 many glaring mistakes that they had 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.

Simpson had made a very incriminating statement to police about cutting his finger the night of the murders. Bugliosi once again took Clark and Darden to task for not allowing the jury to hear the tape of this statement.

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 obviously understood 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 also has stated that, if he were prosecuting this 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 also spoke 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 pull this off, there would have had to have been a broad-reaching conspiracy between Fuhrman and the other officers who worked the case. Indeed, while the defense made much of Fuhrman's racial slurs, it never proved that anyone planted evidence in the case.

Bugliosi also 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.

[edit] Presidents of the United States

He also condemned the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Clinton v. Jones and in the Bush v. Gore decision that decided the 2000 presidential election. He wrote a lengthy criticism of the latter case in an article for The Nation titled "None Dare Call It Treason," which was later expanded into a book titled The Betrayal of America. Some of his criticisms are portrayed in the 2004 documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave. Regarding the former case, he wrote a book, No Island of Sanity, in which he argued that the American people's right to have a president unburdened by a private lawsuit outweighed Paula Jones' interest in having her case brought to trial immediately.

He also believes that George W. Bush should be charged with the murders of over 4,000 American soldiers who have died in Iraq since the American-led invasion of that country because of what he calls evidence that Bush launched that invasion under false pretenses. He has recently released a book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, laying out this evidence and outlining what questions he would ask Bush at a potential murder trial.

Bugliosi is also a serious student of the John F. Kennedy assassination. In 1986, he played the part of prosecutor in an unscripted 21-hour television trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. 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 examines the JFK assassination in detail and draws on a variety of sources; his findings are in line with those of the Warren Report which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of the president.

[edit] Personal

Bugliosi, who is of Italian ancestry, is married with two children, Wendy and Vince Jr. He has also stated that he is an agnostic, although open to the ideas of deism.

[edit] Works

[edit] Books

[edit] In film

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

[edit] Articles

[edit] External links

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