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4.2.12
WC: 191694

The killing of John Lennon

Another death for which I have long felt some responsibility was the murder of John Lennon by Mark Chapman in 1980. Lennon was in the United States on that fateful day because I helped him avoid deportation back to England in 197_. Had our legal team not been successful in stopping the Nixon Administration’s efforts to deport Lennon on trumped up allegations relating to his use of marijuana in England, Lennon would have been deported and banned from the United States. It is highly unlikely (though not impossible) that Chapman would have stalked and shot him on the streets of London or Liverpool, as he did on Central Park West in New York.

I was retained by an excellent deportation lawyer named Len Wildes to write a legal memorandum on the impropriety of the deportation request. (My fee was to be a record album signed by John Lennon: Lennon signed it; Wildes lost it; and my children nearly killed me!) We won the case and Lennon continued to live in Dakoda for the ___ years before he was killed.

His killer, Mark Chapman, had no money to hire a lawyer and so the court appointed a former student of mine and friend Jonathan Marks, to represent him. Marks is a brilliant and innovative lawyer who wanted to raise a defense based on Chapman’s mental state. He asked me to consult with him on the case, but I didn’t feel comfortable helping a defendant who had killed my former client. So I declined.

Several years after Chapman was convicted, I happened to run into Yoko Ono at an art auction. I told her how sad I was that we had won the deportation case, because if we had lost, John would still be alive. She became angry at what I had said: “Don’t ever think that,” she admonished. “Those ___ years were the happiest in his life and mine. He gave me John Ono. You did a good thing.” She reached over, kissed me and thanked me. I still feel somewhat responsible for what happened on that awful day in front of the Dakoda.

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