It is said that everyone either loved or hated radical defense lawyer William Kunstler. A documentary by his daughters asks, “Why choose ‘or’ instead of ‘both’?”
Emily and Sarah Kunstler are surprisingly even-tempered and judicious about their father, who was so infamously neither. Some of his cases, such as his defense of the Chicago defendants charged with disrupting the 1968 Democratic convention, make them proud.
What gives the film its kick, though, is Sarah and Emily’s growing horror as they explain how their dad, just at the age they became independent thinkers, took on clients such as El Sayyid Nosair. In one of the many circus trials of pre-
Giuliani New York, Kunstler won Nosair’s acquittal of murder in the shooting death of a right-wing rabbi. In another, Kunstler won the acquittal of a Bronx drug dealer, Larry Davis, who shot six cops. Later, Kunstler defended terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
“Dad had gotten so used to being in the spotlight, it didn’t seem to matter how he got there anymore,” Emily tells us in a voiceover.
Although the daughters backtrack at the end with a statement about the importance of standing up to injustice, much of the film illustrates how Kunstler, who died in 1995, instead supported any anti-establishment or anti-US stance, even the horrific injustice of terrorists murdering civilians.
Running time: 85 minutes. Not rated (profanity, violent images). At the Cinema Village, 22 E. 12th St.