Professor Alan Dershowitz – No Lawyer Can Save Harvard Bomb Hoaxer
Harvard undergraduate Eldo Kim is responsible for the recent bomb threats at the school and legal experts agree he’s in deep trouble.
The Harvard Crimson reports.
Eldo Kim ’16 Will Face Uphill Battle in Court, Dershowitz, Experts Say
Eldo Kim, the Harvard College sophomore who was charged Tuesday with sending emailed bomb threats to University officials on Monday morning, faces an uphill battle as he prepares his defense in federal court, attorneys said in interviews Tuesday night.
“I don’t think any lawyer in the world could save him at this point,” said Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz, who predicted Kim will plead guilty.
According to Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson, Kim has not hired an attorney and is currently being advised by a public defender. Sterling said in a press release on Tuesday that Kim will appear Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith G. Dein, and that, if convicted, he faces a maximum of five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000.
“Based on the affidavit that I read, it seems like a pretty open and shut case,” said Dershowitz. “If he was given his Miranda warnings and he confessed, and the forensic evidence supports the use of his computer and the use of the website, he doesn’t seem to have a defense and there will probably be some kind of plea bargain. He will be prosecuted and convicted and sentenced.”
Dershowitz, a criminal lawyer who has worked for five decades on high-profile cases including those of O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson, said that Kim’s only reasonable option for a defense would be a psychiatric one, “that he kind of just cracked.”
“I can’t imagine any kind of other defense,” Dershowitz said. “It seems that what he did was really quite calculated.”
Eldo Kim ’16 Will Face Uphill Battle in Court, Dershowitz, Experts Say (The Harvard Crimson)