Legal News

In New Book, Manson Prosecutor Lays Out Murder Case Against Bush

By Dan Slater

In recent weeks, the LB has passed on writing about a couple new lawyer-written novels — Stephen Carter’s “Palace Council,” and Paul Goldstein’s “Patent Lie,” his second IP thriller.

But today, the NYT reports on a book written by a prolific author and ex-prosecutor that’s tough to ignore. Yet, that’s how some mainstream media outlets have treated Vincent Bugliosi’s “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” which reportedly lays out a legal case for holding President Bush criminally responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. (It was pubbed by Vanguard Press, a division of the Perseus Books Group — which also owns PublicAffairs Books, the publisher of the recent memoir by a former White House spokesman, Scott McClellan.)

L.A.-based Bugliosi (pictured, in earlier days), who as a prosecutor won 21 convictions in 21 trials, including that of Charles Manson, has written three No. 1 best sellers and won three Edgar Allan Poe awards, the top honor for crime writers. His latest effort has also shot to the top of the charts — it’s No. 14 on the Times best-seller list and has sold 130,000 copies — but without the help of news outlets such as ABC Radio, MSNBC and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

“They are not responding at all,” Bugliosi told the Times. “I think it all goes back to fear. If the liberal media would put me on national television, I think they’d fear that they would be savaged by the right wing. The left wing fears the right, but the right does not fear the left.”

Photo: Getty Images

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 07, 2008 (boomark / email).