Browne - The devils defender: my odyssey through American criminal justice from Ted Bundy to the Kandahar massacre

O n an unusually clear morning in May 2012 I took the ferry from Bainbridge Island, where I had lived for the past twenty-three years, to Seattle, where Ive had a private law practice since the 1970s. From the ferry terminal I drove to the studio of Q13, the local Fox TV affiliate. Over the years reporters from all over the world had interviewed me on camera, but this was going to be different. Host C. R. Douglas would be asking me questions I had declined to answer for three decades. The subject would be my most notorious client, the sociopath and mass murderer Theodore Robert Bundy.

The decision to break my silence did not come easily. My counsel of Bundy has always been a complicated matter in my career and personal life. When I was twenty-nine years old I sat with Ted in a jail cell in Florida and he confessed things to me he said hed never told anyone else. Finally, as I was about to leave his cell, he stopped me. He had one more confession to add: the reason hed consulted me as a lawyer for so longnearly five yearswas because we were so much alike. I remember returning to my cheap motel room, lighting a cigarette, and looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I felt sick to my stomach.

Bundys assertion, which of course Ive never agreed with or even understood, nonetheless grinded at me for years. So much so that I avoided even thinking about the conversation. My memory of it, I hoped, would never be tapped again.

Recently, though, as Ive thought and wrote about other events in my life, Ted and his words kept bubbling up. I made the mistake of digging out from storage the Ted box, which contained Bundys case files as well as numerous letters he had sent me. Many of the old feelings of disgust and resentment came rushing back.

At the same time two new cases had thrown me back into the international spotlight. First, I took on, pro bono, the case of Colton Harris-Moore, the teenager known as the Barefoot Bandit, whod been accused of breaking into countless homes, stealing airplanes, and leading authorities on a two-year manhunt that extended from western Washington State to the Caribbean.

Second, and also pro bono, I had accepted as a client Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of performing a solo raid on two Afghan villages on March 11, 2012. Bales allegedly shot, knifed, and in some cases burned innocent men, women, and children. Military prosecutors charged him with sixteen counts of first-degree murder, but the governments case seemed shaky to me from the start, largely because Bales was on his fourth deployment in almost as many years and was clearly suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. He was also under the influence of steroids, which his superiors had provided. If Sergeant Bales did it, I told anyone who would listen, and I do mean if, we as a nation are to blame. We created this situation.

Despite the weight and obvious intrigue of these two cases, reporters would invariably bring up Ted Bundy, a topic I didnt want to discuss. But slowly I came to suspect that maybe, finally, it was time, that perhaps the public deserved to understand not only who Ted Bundy was but also why I and other criminal defense lawyers feel so duty bound to protect the rights of those accused of the most heinous crimes.

I decided to put pen to paper and open up about a life and career that included a leading role in the antiVietnam War movement, bringing awareness to the plight of battered women, and fighting for civil rights for prisoners, as well as my brushes with (as a fellow musician) the likes of the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix and (as a member of the media) the Nixon administration. I would also talk about my work in some of the biggest criminal cases of the past forty years, including that of murder suspect David Kunzewhen I put the forensic science of ear prints on trialthe Wah Mee massacre, and others, each seemingly more bizarre than the last.

Id resolved to begin the process at this television studio on the shore of Seattles Lake Union, answering C. R. Douglass questions about Ted. I knew Douglas and I would only touch the surface. The biggest thing to come out would be that Bundy, whom history remembers as killing about thirty women, confessed to me that he had killed more than one hundred people, and not just women. I would describe a phone conversation I had with Ted shortly after his second escape from custody. And I would reveal that my former girlfriend had been murdered in a manner similar to a Ted Bundy victim.

That would be it. The rest is too big to fit into a twenty-five-minute conversationpartly because Ted told me so much more, but mostly because the story is larger and more complex than just Ted Bundy.

I have been thrown in jail myself. I have been a drug addict. I have been married more times than I care to tell you. But I have also followed a passion for justice and freedom since I was a child. I have won cases everyone else thought were impossible to win. I have defended innocent people. And I have defended monsters who nonetheless still deserved the fair trial our Constitution promises.

I stepped onto the set. A studio tech stuck a microphone in my left breast pocket. I sat across from C. R. Douglas, who looked out from a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, the glare of a klieg light bouncing off his impressive domelike head. The set behind us, seemingly lit with every conceivable shade of blue, convulsed in the manner known to anyone who watches cable news. Douglas looked at his notes. Then back at me. He asked the first question and waited for me to speak. I said what I could.

Im going to tell you the rest here. While much of it, I hope, will be fun to read, we need to understand each other right now, from the top. A lot of this isnt going to be pretty.

I wont flinch if you wont.