Roy Black, one of the nation's premier defense lawyers, dies in Coral Gables at 80

Miami Herald

2 days ago

When he earned it is not an exact science, but Roy Black's reputation as one of America's premier criminal defense attorneys defined him for decades.
Certainly long before Black won an acquittal in 1991 for William Kennedy Smith on a rape charge in Palm Beach, the first trial of its kind to be televised nationally.
Black, a New York native who moved to South Florida for his studies as an undergraduate and law student at the University of Miami, died on Monday at his home in Coral Gables at 80 after battling an illness while still continuing to work at his storied law firm on Biscayne Boulevard.
'Roy Black was the greatest criminal lawyer of our generation, perhaps in American history, achieving acquittals over a span of 50 years in some of the most challenging and notorious cases of all time,' said his partner, Howard Srebnick, who joined Black's law firm 30 years ago.
Srebnick recalled working as a law clerk for federal appeals court Judge Irving Goldberg in New Orleans in the early 1990s when he saw his future law partner for the first time on a black and white television in the judge's chambers. Black was cross-examining the accuser in the Kennedy Smith trial that was being broadcast on Court TV.
'Judge Goldberg knew I was leaning hard in favor of a career in criminal defense and after watching Roy in action, Judge Goldberg said that Roy's were the footsteps I should follow,' Srebnick said on Tuesday, describing Black as his teacher, mentor and friends.
One of Srebnick's peers, David O. Markus, was the first to report early Tuesday on Black's death.
'This one really hurts,' Marcus wrote on his Southern District of Florida blog, which he founded 20 years ago. 'And he really was the GOAT of criminal defense lawyers. There are so many of us that want to be Roy in the courtroom — commanding, persuasive, funny. ... The hardest working. The most determined. And always so positive about winning.'
Marcus said he 'was lucky enough to try a 6 week trial with him out of town when I was a young lawyer. I learned so much. And he often helped me brainstorm my cases and trials after that.'
Black wove a successful career — one that made him a fixture on the 'Today Show' and 'Larry King Live' — by representing some of South Florida's most famous — and infamous — criminal defendants, from Kennedy Smith, the nephew of JFK, to William Lozano, the Miami police officer who shot a motorcyclist that led to the Overtown and Liberty City street riots of 1989.
Black, who was known by his colleagues as the Intellectual Lawyer for his voracious reading, wrote his own book, 'Black's Law,' in 1999, in which he chronicled four Miami trials.
All four cases — three murders and a money laundering — appeared to involve impossibly long odds. But through meticulous preparation, improvisation and long hours at the office, Black found holes in the opposition's cases and proceeded to stretch them open, a Miami Herald reporter wrote in a 1999 profile.
Sometimes he seized on the smallest of details, Rick Jervis wrote.
In the case of Luis Alvarez, the Miami police officer who shot and killed a youth in an Overtown arcade and sparked the 1982 riots, Black suggested that Alvarez shave his mustache to detract from the officer's rough-guy image. He did.
In the trial of Steve Hicks, accused of murdering his girlfriend in her Fort Lauderdale apartment, Black illustrated how police investigators botched the crime scene, from blurry Polaroids of the murder scene to not following evidence through to the lab.
In each case, Black walked the reader through the process — from the defendant's detainment to research to jury selection to verdict.
Tip: He won them all.
'I was trying to give a different viewpoint on what goes in these cases,' Black said at the time. 'Everybody looks at it from one way. But you never really think about what it must be like to be the defendant.'
Black is survived by his wife, Lea, their son RJ, and his daughter, Nora, along with his law partners at Black Srebnick, including Howard Srebnick, Scott Kornspan, Maria Neyra, Jackie Perczek, Mark Shapiro and Jared Lopez.
This obituary will be updated with more information.