Renegade Rehnquist goes to bat for convicted
rapist By J.M. Lawrence Sunday, June 19, 2005
Boston attorney James Rehnquist, the only son of Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, was once a long-haired Amherst College hippie more interested
in hoops than habeas corpus.
He was a basketball
star, first-team All-America in 1977, and spent the years after graduation playing pro ball in Europe. ``Those were good days,''
he said.
The law came
later with a career at Goodwin Procter focusing on white-collar crime. He represented Microsoft and real estate developers
and defended a steel company exec accused of an insurance fraud. The jury acquitted.
So what's the
white-shoe off-spring of a right-wing chief justice doing representing Benjamin LaGuer, a convicted Leominister rapist whose
own defense-funded DNA tests wound up linking him to the crime?
``When I reviewed
the record, I became convinced he didn't get a fair trial,'' Rehnquist said. ``Ben LaGuer should be freed.''
Rehnquist is
the latest pro bono lawyer for LaGuer, who is serving a life sentence for a 1983 attack on a 59-year-old woman. She survived,
but has since died in a nursing home.
Laguer, 42,
was a cause celebre in Massachusetts until the 2002 DNA results decimated his camp of backers. Had he confessed, he likely
would have been paroled years ago, but he has maintained his innocence for almost 22 years.
Acquaintances
describe Rehnquist, who got his law degree from Boston University in 1987, as a hard-working pro who's not flashy and doesn't
trade on his name in the courtroom. His publications carry titles such as ``How to Neutralize the Abstention Doctrine.''
A federal prosecutor
from 1994 to 1998, he took LaGuer's case in 2003 on a recommendation from his firm's pro bono committee. Rehnquist went to
meet LaGuer and decided he'd make a good citizen.
``I thought
this one had promise,'' he said. ``If you're going to make a substantial pro bono investment, it's nice, if you're successful,
that he'll be a guy who will make a contribution to society.''
Rehnquist has
a motion before the state appeals court arguing police withheld key fingerprints for 18 years that might have exonerated LaGuer.
The rapist
yanked the cord off the victim's wall-mounted telephone to bind her hands. Prints from the base of the phone are not LaGuer's.
Rehnquist declined
to talk about the DNA tests, which LaGuer's supporters claim were tainted by poorly handled evidence. ``It really wasn't part
of my analysis of whether Ben had received a fair trial,'' he said.
Rehnquist sees
no irony in the privileged son of a famous conservative jurist going to bat for a black Hispanic who says he's the victim
of a civil liberties meltdown.
``Like most
Americans, I believe in fair trials,'' Rehnquist said and declined to reveal his own politics. ``We have all kinds of diversity
of political views in our family.''
