Leftist Attorney Dies At 76 His Clients Included Dr. King, Chicago Seven, Bomb Suspects

William M. Kunstler, the gravel-voiced radical lawyer whose wild hair seemed to symbolize his distrust of government and his kinship with unpopular people and causes, died Monday. He was 76.

Kunstler died of heart failure at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City after a short illness, said his law partner, Ron Kuby.

Kunstler’s championing of left-of-center causes dated from the early days of the civil rights movement and spanned the Vietnam War.

One of his early clients was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At the time of Kunstler’s death, he had a role in the defense of the suspects in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.

Kunstler made not just a career but also a life out of representing people and movements that were disliked, even despised. His clients’ unpopularity seemed to inspire Kunstler, who was recognized by admirers and detractors alike as a lawyer who embraced outcasts and pariahs.

He seemed to seek out the most loathed of persons and causes. For a time, for example, he represented Colin Ferguson, who shot six people to death on a Long Island Rail Road train in December 1993 and was convicted in February.

Admirers saw him as a brilliant lawyer and a skillful and courageous litigator, while his critics saw him as a showoff and publicity seeker.

Nor did he entirely disagree with his detractors. “To some extent, that has the ring of truth,” he once said. “I enjoy the spotlight, as most humans do, but it’s not my whole raison d’etre. My purpose is to keep the state from becoming all-domineering, all powerful.”

Perhaps his best-known case was that of the Chicago Seven, who were tried on charges that they had conspired to incite riots that made a tumult of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

His clients in the trial before Judge Julius J. Hoffman were people whose names constantly were linked to the turbulence of that era: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John R. Froines and Lee Weiner.

Kunstler complained constantly that Hoffman favored the prosecution in his rulings. At one point, Kunstler boasted that his own entry in Who’s Who was three lines longer than the judge’s. And his many sharp exchanges with Hoffman brought Kunstler a contempt-of-court sentence of four years and 13 days.

The defendants were acquitted of conspiracy, although five were found guilty of crossing state lines with intent to riot.

But all convictions, including Kunstler’s, were overturned on appeal, and he spent no time in jail.

In his career, Kunstler represented King as he battled segregation in Georgia; Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., D-N.Y., who contended that his skin color, not his high living and eyebrow-raising ethics, made him unpopular with congressional colleagues; and Stokely Carmichael, who popularized the “black power” rallying cry.