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A victims' right suit has led University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell and Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz to lob strongly-worded accusations of defamation against each other.
In a court document filed Monday, Dershowitz claimed Cassell and Florida attorney Bradley Edwards created a media firestorm by making "categorically false" and" contemptible" allegations that he had engaged in sexual contact with a minor .
On Tuesday, Cassell and Edwards fired back with a defamation suit against Dershowitz, alleging he had initiated a "massive public media assault" on their reputations and characters by falsely accusing them of unethical behavior that warrants disbarment.
Their lawsuit, filed in Florida state court in Broward County, seeks unspecified monetary damages from Dershowitz.
The dispute stems from a 2008 suit filed by two women in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Fla., that alleges violations of the federal Crime Victims' Rights Act (CVRA) in the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire financier.
The two — called Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2 — allege they had been child victims of sex-trafficking crimes committed by Epstein and had the right under the CVRA to confer with prosecutors and to be heard at public proceedings regarding any plea or sentence.
Instead, they allege, the government secretly negotiated an agreement that precluded any federal prosecution in the case. Epstein pleaded guilty in state court in Florida to two counts of solicitation of prostitution involving a minor and served 13 months in prison before being released in 2009. The alleged victims want the plea deal rescinded.
Cassell, a former federal judge in Utah, and Edwards filed a motion Friday seeking to add to the federal suit two more alleged victims who say their rights were violated: Jane Doe #3 and Jane Doe #4 both claim they were repeatedly sexually abused by Epstein.
The motion also alleges Epstein made Jane Doe #3 into a sex slave and trafficked her to powerful people, including Dershowitz and Britain's Prince Andrew, who has denied the allegation. It claims Dershowitz, a close friend of Epstein, later helped negotiate the agreement that provided immunity from federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida to the billionaire and potential co-conspirators — including Dershowitz himself.
In his court filing, Dershowitz asked to intervene in the case so he could request that the allegations against him be stricken from the record, writing that "the docket sheets and courtrooms of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida should not be used as a bulletin board to which irrelevant, baseless, and ill-willed reputational attacks can be tacked up without consequences."
Dershowitz also filed a declaration saying he never had any sexual contact of any kind with Jane Doe # 3 and disputing specific allegations that the two had sex on Epstein's Carribean island, at his New Mexico home and on his plane.
He was on the island and at the New Mexico home only one time each, and his wife and daughter were him, Dershowitz said. He flew on the plane on several occasions, either with his wife and daughter, his nephew or other members of Epstein's legal team.
"There were never any young girls on the plane during any of my trips," Dershowitz said.
Twitter: @PamelaMansonSLC