Criminal Justice
Dershowitz: Spitzer’s Sexual Peccadilloes Are Not the Feds’ Business
Posted Mar 13, 2008, 09:14 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Updated: Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz contends that federal money laundering and sex-crime laws have been unfairly used to trap Eliot Spitzer in an unfortunate episode that shows the danger of these open-ended statutes.
These laws “lie around like loaded guns waiting to be used against the enemies of politically motivated investigators, prosecutors and politicians,” Dershowitz writes in an op-ed column for the Wall Street Journal.
If the federal government wanted to shut down Emporers Club VIP, all it had to do was send an undercover agent to pose as a customer, Dershowitz writes. Instead the feds “wiretapped 5,000 phone conversations, intercepted 6,000 emails, used surveillance and undercover tactics that are more appropriate for trapping terrorists than entrapping johns,” he writes. Apparently the aim was “to catch and embarrass Mr. Spitzer with his own recorded words, which could be, and were, leaked to the media.”
“It's simply none of the federal government's business that a man may have been moving his own money around in order to keep his wife in the dark about his private sexual peccadilloes,” Dershowitz concludes.
In a separate op-ed published yesterday in the Jewish Daily Forward, Dershowitz takes aim at prostitution statutes. "The laws criminalizing adult consensual prostitution—especially with $5,000-an-hour call girls—are as anachronistic as the old laws that used to criminalize adultery, fornication, homosexuality and even masturbation. These may be sins, but there are no real victims, except for family members," he writes.
Updated at 12:12 p.m. to include second Dershowitz article.
Related Stories
- Ginsburg: War Crimes Charges Against Bush Officials Unlikely
Jul 4, 2008, 03:48 pm CDT - ‘Profile’ Investigations By FBI Being Considered at DOJ
Jul 3, 2008, 02:04 pm CDT - Judge Nixes Execution Date for Longest-Serving Texas Inmate
Jul 3, 2008, 12:35 pm CDT - New ‘Rule of Law Index’ Will Measure World Justice
Jul 3, 2008, 10:56 am CDT
Related Topics
Commenting has expired on this post.
Comments
Posted by Andrew - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 14 hours, 30 minutes ago
Way to take the moral high ground AD.
Posted by msg - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 11 hours, 58 minutes ago
Another Clinton defender here!
Posted by That Lawyer Dude - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 9 hours, 9 minutes ago
The prosecution was a witch hunt. That aside, Prostitution is a ridiculous law. No one can say a high price call girl is being taken advantage of (in fact one could argue is the customer who is being taken) More over it is a ridiculous argument that says a women have rights over their own bodies but they can’t use them to make money with.
To argue that prostitution is dangerous misses the boat. Men participate in dangerous activities for entertainment all of the time. Football can cause paralysis and death. No one argues it should be illegal to play. Boxing is another dangerous sport. The participants at least at the upper levels of the sport are poor and probably could earn money a different way. They also probably couldn’t earn as much. But hey we call it a sport because we can make money on it. Hence it is ok for a man to allow his body to be beaten on in order to earn a living.
There are probably more than a few women who would take the Governor of NY to bed willingly without 4k passing hands. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to earn that money if he is willing to pay it for whatever sexual service they will provide? One cannot argue that sex is unsafe in and of itself, moreover, it doesn’t become any more or less safe because a price is paid for it.
Other than a divorce lawyer, who would argue that had the Gov. given the girl a braclet worth 2k that it was more than just a date. So cash is prostitution and a braclet is a date.
It is time we get less paternalistic and more realistic
Posted by Eric van Ginkel - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 6 hours, 35 minutes ago
I agree with Dershowitz’s Op-Ed piece, but it fails to recognize an element of this case that has been generally overlooked.
It has been reported that this visit was not an isolated incident, and that Spitzer’s visits to high-priced prostitutes have been going on for some time. And of course, we don’t know about the lower priced ladies of the night he may have visited.
The point I am making is that Spitzer suffers from a compulsive sex disorder. This is a disease that makes the people who suffer from it do things that will hurt their family, their relationships and their career, to the gates of insanity and, sometimes, death. In that respect this disease is just like alcoholism or drug addiction. Instead of prosecuting Spitzer, he should be encouraged to seek help in a 12-step program.
Posted by PK - 3 months, 3 weeks, 13 hours, 18 minutes ago
Live by the sword, die by the sword. I have no sympathy for Mr. Spitzer.