NEW YORK: William Kunstler, he raspy voiced lawyer who proudly spoke out for the politically unpopular in a controversial career defending clients, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Chicago Seven, Leonard Peltier and John Gotti, died Sept. 4th, of a heart attack. He was 76. he had been admitted August 28. He had a pacemaker installed August 7.

Kunstler saw himself as a legal paladin, pariahs, Critics often depicted him as a showboat and publicity seeker. “To some extent that has the ring of truth,” he once said. “I enjoy the spotlight, as most humans do, but it’s not my whole raison deter, My purpose is 10 keep the state from becoming all domineering, all-powerful.” a Kunstler is well known in the Sikh Community as the defender of Bhai Sukhmandir Singh Sandhu and Bhat Ranjit Singh Gill Sikh political prisoners who have been fighting ‘extradition attempts for the last eight years. The highlight of his career came when he defended the Chicago Seven against charges of conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The jury acquitted the seven defendants of conspiracy and found five guilty of incitement. Kunstler himself would be sentenced by the judge to four years and 13 days in jail for contempt. But 168 of the 181 counts were dismissed on appeal, and he did not serve any time.

The son of middleclass Jewish parents, William Moses Kunstler was born July 7,1919, and grew up in Manhatian where his father was a doctor, At Yale, he majored in French, was a varsity swimmer and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He received a Bronze Star for his service as a signal intelligence officer in the Pacific in World War IT, then went to Columbia Law School. Work on civil rights cases in the South in the early 1960s transformed his view of American society and the courts and he began representing “the poor, the persecuted, the radicals and the militant, the black people, the pacifists and the political pariahs.” World Sikh News of (USA & Canada) extends its condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Kunstler.

Article extracted from this publication >>September 8, 1995