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Article Excerpt
A FEW WEEKS AFTER HE MASTERMINDED the acquittal of Galveston's alleged killer-butcher Robert Durst, Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin lectured his second- and third-year students at the University of Texas law school on, you guessed it, the art of self-defense. Self-defense was the textbook strategy DeGuerin had used to win a not-guilty verdict for Durst, the heir to a New York real estate fortune. Durst confessed in open court that alter his neighbor Morris Black was shot accidentally during a struggle over a gun, he cut Black into pieces and dumped his body parts into Galveston Bay. Open-and-shut case for the state, right? Everyone thought so--except DeGuerin and the jury.
The case that DeGuerin's class was studying in late November was similar to the one involving Durst: The prosecution had a 911 tape in which a Thai teenager admitted to shooting four gang members outside his Houston home.
"What's my rule when things look bad for your guy?" DeGuerin asked the class.
"Embrace the ugly baby!" they called back in unison.
"That's right," DeGuerin beamed, pleased that his message had stuck. "Make chicken salad out of chicken feathers."
Sitting in the top row in the theaterlike lecture hall, I watched the students as they watched the famous trial lawyer. At 62, DeGuerin looked fit, trim, and relaxed, as much at home in the classroom as he is in file courtroom. In his tweed jacket, with a handsome head of graying hair, he was perfectly professorial...
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