If you had the money and fit the profile, then you may have been one of the infamous clients of the late Jacques Vergès, attorney to the despised. The French criminal lawyer represented some of the most uniformly-loathed people of the 20th century: Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, (a.k.a. the “Butcher of Lyon”); Khmer Rouge genocidaire Pol Pot; the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, (“Carlos the Jackal”); and offered his services to Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, the dictator of Serbia.
The devil’s advocate, as Vergès was nicknamed, died in August in his Parisian house where the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire once lived.
“It was the ideal place for the last theatrical act that was the death of this born actor who, like Voltaire, cultivated the art of permanent revolt and volte-face,” his publisher said in a statement, according to France 24.
But for a man whose cause was providing legal defense to those society had already condemned, Vergès had his own kind of philosophy.
“I can’t stand a man being humiliated, even an enemy,” he told an interviewer in a documentary called “Terror’s Advocate,” released in 2007. “I was asked, ‘Would you defend Hitler?’ I said, ‘I would even defend Bush. But only if he agrees to plead guilty.’”
Ever hear the phrase, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter?”
Vergès may not have coined it, but he put it into action, testing the comparison in his early legal years during the 1950s when he defended Algerians accused of terrorist bombings in a war for independence that was ravaging the North African country, a former colony of France.
“Instead of contesting the evidence of French prosecutors in court, he insisted that the defendants were resistance fighters in a just war of liberation and challenged the legal and moral legitimacy of the trials,” according to a New York Times obituary of him.
After Algeria gained independence in 1962, he took a position in many cases that portrayed Western colonialism as racist, exploitative, aggressive and unjust. And when various uprisings developed, or underground movements fought bloody campaigns for freedom and liberty, Vergès was there to defend the accused.
In the late 1960s, “Vergès broadened his horizons, defending Palestinians charged with attacks on (Israeli-owned) El Al aircraft in Athens and Zurich. He later represented members of the Red Army Faction in Germany, whose bombings he called the work of ‘soldiers in a noble cause,’ the Times obit noted.
His motivation could have been derived from his circumstances of being born in 1925 Thailand, then Siam, some of which was under French rule at the time. His father was a French diplomat and his mother was Vietnamese, though she died when he was only three. In spite of being afforded a privileged upbringing, his favor of the underdog client could have come from his roots.
Being half Vietnamese and half French, he had the look of an “oriental” man, and he faced injustices and discrimination daily by the French, as he grew up mixed-race in the French colony of Réunion.
Vergès lost his mother when he was just 3 years old. He may have harbored deep pain at the loss of his mother and could have identified with the Vietnamese struggle for independence from France, and the subsequent war with the U.S. That dislike for Western colonialism and imperialism could account for why he chose the clients he did, too — the underdogs, the ones who fought for justice, as in the cases he took up on behalf of Algerians and Palestinians.
But none of that justifies the defense cases he later took up, many of which were revolting and earned him a notoriety often reserved for the very clients he represented.
But are there others like him today?
Not really, but there are some that are of the same ilk. Take Alan Dershowitz, for example.
Dershowitz’s clientele includes Mike Tyson, abductee-turned-terrorist bank robber Patty Hearst and televangelist Jim Bakker. His most noted case was probably in 1984 when he got the murder conviction of Claus von Bülow overturned. He also served as the appellate adviser for the defense in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995.
Another example could be José Baez, who represented Casey Anthony in what Time magazine dubbed the “Social Media Trial of the Century.” Anthony was acquitted of the murder of her daughter under Baez’s defense. Baez was then hired to represent millionaire businessman Gary Giordano in Aruba. Giordano was jailed for months in connection with the disappearance of Robyn Gardner.
Baez was able to get all of the charges dropped against Giordano, who was immediately released from prison in Aruba and then returned to the U.S. Before these sensational cases, Baez tried five murder cases and has never had a client convicted of first degree murder. There’s a reason Anthony hired him.
The differences between a Dershowitz and Baez, as compared to that of Vergès are real. Although none of them seem to care about how disliked their clients are in the court of public opinion, Dershowitz and Baez have not represented war criminals or terrorists. And there are quite a few differences between the American and French judicial systems.
There are some similarities between the three attorneys as well. All three come from minority backgrounds. Dershowitz is Jewish and Baez, though born in New York, has Puerto Rican roots.
As long as there are criminals, there will be lawyers like Dershowitz, Baez and Vergès to represent them.