It could happen, if U.S. forces manage to locate him and bring him back alive for criminal prosecution. But would anyone represent bin Laden? “It might be a career-breaker,” says attorney Jack Litman. “A lawyer who took that case–even the mob would shun him,” says Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University.
Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who’s made a career of taking on unpopular clients like O. J. Simpson, says he might defend bin Laden if a court appointed him. “It would be emotionally wrenching–I hate everything he stands for,” Dershowitz says. But Dershowitz says the U.S. system demands every defendant get a fair trial, and “how could I say no in principle?” Dershowitz likens a defense of bin Laden to an ER doctor’s treating one of the hijackers. “Whoever represents him would be performing an act of high patriotism,” he says, “but I hope I’m not the one who gets the call.”
