William Kunstler, Fervent Defender of Radicals, Dies : Law: Combative, theatrical lawyer to pariahs and political extremists defended the Chicago Seven. He was 76.

William Kunstler, the lawyer whose passionate defense of radical causes and political pariahs catapulted him to fame and controversy within the American legal system, died Monday at the age of 76 at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan.

His death from cardiac arrest was tearfully announced by his law partner, Ron Kuby. Kunstler had been hospitalized since Aug. 28 and had received a pacemaker in hopes of stabilizing his heart.

In a recent interview, Kunstler, whose clients over a long and often stormy career ranged from the Chicago Seven to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to comedian Lenny Bruce, discussed how he wished to die. He said he hoped to be delivering an impassioned summation to a jury when he passed away, slipping from the lectern to the courtroom floor.

“I don’t want to lead a life of quiet desperation,” he said of his life and legal practice.

“Bill was America’s authentic radical lawyer,” said Norman Siegel, director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, who knew him as a friend and attorney.

Throughout most of his career, the deep-spoken lawyer battled the system with theatrical flair.

“I enjoy the spotlight as most humans do,” he explained, “but it’s not my whole raison d’etre. My purpose is to keep the state from becoming all-domineering, all powerful.”

He scored some notable successes. He defended the Chicago Seven anti-war activists against charges of conspiring to incite riots at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Jurors acquitted the seven defendants of conspiracy charges. Five were found guilty of incitement.

Kunstler persuaded a jury in 1991 to acquit El Sayyid A. Nosair on charges of killing Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the militant Jewish Defense League, even though Nosair, holding a gun, was seen fleeing the Manhattan hotel where Kahane was assassinated. Nosair was convicted on lesser charges of weapon possession and assaulting the U.S. postal inspector who captured him.

“I don’t think I ever felt as detested as when I joined the defense team of El Sayyid Nosair,” Kunstler wrote in his 1994 autobiography, “My Life as a Radical Lawyer.”

“Because I am Jewish, the criticism against me for defending Nosair was particularly vehement,” he said.

In another unpopular case, Kunstler helped defend Colin Ferguson, a Jamaican immigrant who killed six and wounded 19 others on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train. Kunstler had tried to argue that Ferguson suffered from “black rage” that made him not responsible for his actions.

He opened his successful defense of Larry Davis, who was accused of trying to kill nine New York City police officers, by declaring the case really was about “how the police treat young Third World people in the depressed communities of our city.”

Before a judge barred him from continuing the case because he was a potential witness, Kunstler recently defended Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who is being tried on charges of leading a conspiracy to blow up the United Nations, two commuter tunnels and the Manhattan headquarters of the FBI.

If Kunstler was a thorn in the side of many prosecutors, he also was a radical icon.

With his long flyaway hair and bifocals perched above his forehead, he was one of the best-known and most-combative defense lawyers in the nation. He came to epitomize a generation of white, middle-class attorneys who worked for civil rights, fought police brutality and protested the Vietnam War.

Luke McKissack, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who has known Kunstler since the 1960s, said Kunstler should be remembered for having the courage to take on unpopular causes.

“He’s sort of one of a kind,” McKissack said. “He’s one of a handful of progressive, radical lawyers who would take any case no matter how unpopular they may be. He always identified with the underdog.”

McKissack, who was chief counsel for the Black Panthers of Southern California, said he admired Kunstler for “his great courage” as well as his sense of humor in and out of the courtroom.

“He felt he was defending the people who were relatively powerless,” he said. “He was one of the mavericks. Interestingly enough, he was a very conservative corporate lawyer until he was in his 40s.”

McKissack said he defended Kunstler in 1970 during the Chicago Seven case when Kunstler was almost thrown in jail for contempt.

“He risked contempt by a tyrannical judge. He was sentenced to over four years in jail,” McKissack said. “He was willing to go to jail for four years for the various times he indicated to the judge that he couldn’t stomach what was being done.”

He was born in New York City in 1919 and was an honor student at Yale University and Columbia Law School. He once said he studied law “because it offered status, prestige and the promise of a reasonably high income--all the wrong reasons.”

Admitted to the bar in 1948, he worked in the more conventional fields of law until 1961, when he represented a group of Freedom Riders trying to break the lock on segregation in the South.

Through the 1970s, his client list included Native Americans, members of the radical Black Panther Party, revolutionaries and Yippies. He defended King as well as Abbie Hoffman and the Berrigan Brothers. His more recent cases included organized-crime figure John Gotti and Qubilah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter, who was accused of hiring someone to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Over the years, Kunstler was accused by his critics of being ill-prepared for court and branded a shameless self-promoter for selecting cases based on their potential for publicity. Vanity Fair magazine once called him “the most hated lawyer in America.”

Yet he remained an icon to the aging legions of ‘60s radicals for being in the trenches when it counted, often entering the fight before anyone else. And repeatedly over the years, he managed to win difficult cases.

While his cases brought him publicity, they never made him rich. He made about $100,000 a year working out of an office in his Greenwich Village home. Along with Kuby, his ponytailed associate, he handled many cases pro bono and rarely had wealthy clients.

In his 70s--an age when most people look to retirement--Kunstler appeared to be everywhere, taking on new clients and becoming a regular on television talk shows. He had roles in such films as Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” and Oliver Stone’s “The Doors.”

Last month, Kunstler appeared at Caroline’s, a comedy club in mid-town Manhattan. He stood at the microphone and delivered reminiscences, one-liners, a few jabs at his legal compatriots and some poems about the O.J. Simpson trial, called “The Simpson Sonnets.” He said he thought Simpson was “unconvictable.”

His final poem concluded this way:

“If I am wrong and O.J. takes the fall, I’ll eat my Persian rug from wall to wall.”

Kunstler is survived by his second wife, Margaret Ratner, whom he met while working on a case in 1977, and four children. Kuby said a memorial service is being planned.