Daniel Precht, a defense lawyer for one of the defendants in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial, has written a book about the experience, to be published in September. Precht spares no one in the book, including himself, in his portrayal of the trial as one filled with error and prejudice. Precht is now an Assistant Dean at the University of Michigan Law School. He says that had he stayed practicing in New York, he could never have written this book.

One example of Precht's criticism of the trial, the Judge and himself:

Mr. Precht, then with the Federal Defender Division of the Legal Aid Society, accuses the judge, Kevin T. Duffy of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, of lacking impartiality and of essentially convicting his client before the trial ended.

Mr. Precht describes one incident in which Judge Duffy summoned him and his co-counsel, John J. Byrnes, into his chambers and told them that two of Mr. Salameh's co-defendants had met privately with the prosecution before trial in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate guilty pleas. One defendant implicated Mr. Precht's client, the judge said. "I think your client will be convicted," Mr. Precht quotes the judge as saying. "I'm fairly certain he did it."

He considered asking Judge Duffy to disqualify himself, but did not out of fear that the request would only antagonize the judge further. "This was a terrible mistake," Mr. Precht writes. "My handling of this episode is my biggest regret."

Mr. Precht said yesterday that although the jury ultimately convicted his client, he believes the judge was biased throughout the trial, as evidenced by rulings and jury instructions that favored the government, and, in Mr. Precht's view, influenced the verdict.

Here's one more allegation of prejudice described in the book:

Mr. Precht also describes the judge and smiling prosecutors entering the courtroom together before the verdict was announced, leading him to believe that the judge had privately shared the verdict with them, and congratulated them. "Duffy was treating the prosecutors as conquering heroes," Mr. Precht writes. Prosecutors deny the met with the Judge, saying they only shared a hallway with his chambers.