Product Description

In Black's Law, one of America's toughest and shrewdest criminal defense lawyers shows us the life-and-death struggles that occur every day in our criminal courts. This book takes us behind the scenes of four difficult and dangerous cases to reveal the legal strategies, no-holds-barred tactics, and courtroom psychology Roy Black used to make sure his clients received every protection promised by the law.

Black demonstrates in riveting detail how a defense attorney must investigate criminal cases by sifting through evidence and preparing for trial. (It's like preparing for war.) He shows us how the principles of law, cross-examination, and evidence -- as well as careful jury selection and skillful use of expert witnesses -- can level the playing field to counter the enormous resources that state and federal prosecutors have at their disposal.

Black's Law makes resoundingly clear the crucial role that criminal defense lawyers play in safeguarding the basic right to a fair trial for all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #535483 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-06
• Released on: 2000-04-06
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .91 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Amazon.com
The title of criminal defense lawyer Roy Black's first book alludes to the renowned legal dictionary, and the reference is appropriate: Black is beyond a reasonable doubt the definitive defense attorney. Considered among the best advocates for the accused in the United States, he has had clients that included William Kennedy Smith and Marv Albert. But in Black's Law, the former public defender and law professor recounts the strategies and tactics he employed to safeguard the freedom of four lesser-known clients: Luis Alvarez, Thomas Knight, Steve Hicks, and Fred De La Mata.

In "Alvarez" (Black refers to each of his four examples by case name), a Miami cop is put on trial for shooting an African American suspect with no previous criminal record, pitting Black against the office of Dade County state attorney Janet Reno, who desperately needed a conviction to avert widespread race riots. In "Knight," Black must convince a federal appeals court that an insane multiple killer was condemned to death row by the bad lawyering of his first four attorneys. In "Hicks," a young bartender finds himself charged with murder after his girlfriend dies of an accidental gunshot wound; Black defends him against incriminating circumstantial evidence and the cluster-bungling efforts of police investigators. And in "De La Mata," Black takes a break from the murder trials to work on a money-laundering case.

The aforementioned Black's Law Dictionary defines a defense attorney as "a [l]awyer who files appearance in behalf of defendant and represents such in civil or criminal case," but Roy Black's account underscores how such technical definitions fail to convey the essential role defense attorneys play in our adversarial system of justice. Black's Law is not just about four individual defendants, it's about the rights to which all defendants are entitled--and for which people like Roy Black fight--in a court of law. --Tim Hogan

From Publishers Weekly
Best known for representing headline-grabbers such as Marv Albert and William Kennedy Smith, defense attorney Black has spent 28 "raw, bizarre" years in the criminal courts. Here he recounts his successful defense strategies in four apparently hopeless cases, only one of which made the national news: the 1982 murder trial of Luis Alvarez, a young police officer whose shooting of a black teenager set off three days of rioting in Miami. Black shows how he selected, and then seduced, the Alvarez jury, how he designed his client's appearance ("single-breasted suits, in muted hues, with non-designer ties") and how he showed up the prosecution's big-bucks case with low-tech tactics ("Never underestimate the power of a piece of chalk"). But for Black the most lethal weapon is cross-examination, the fascinating transcripts of which he quotes at length. Black tends to downplay his own rare mistakes even as he exudes contempt for prosecutorial, and sometimes judicial, incompetence. He's very good, and he knows it. On the other hand, he justifies his law-is-hell cockiness with convincing reminders of the high stakes involved: in the case of Thomas Knight, for example, all that saved the insane, indigent murderer from Florida's electric chair was Black's deft exposure of the previous attorneys' gross ineptitude. Practitioners may find many of Black's revelations unsurprising, but no one will dispute Black's in-court performance, which this book powerfully captures. BOMC alternate; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Defense counsel to the celebrities, Black offers a surprise: his four clients whose plights are profiled here are not celebrities. Out of their ordinariness grows Black's belief in his role as a last-ditch bulwark against the prosecution's greater resources. All four cases hail from south Florida; the first concerns a cop who became a lightning rod for urban grievances. Officer Alvarez shot and killed a man who the policeman said was going for a gun. Miami's Overtown riot of 1982 ensued. The anxiety of a further acquittal riot seeped into the courtroom, which Black tried to inoculate into the jury selection. After voir dire, his cross-examination strategems become Black's main weapons, and his description (however self-flattering) briskly propels the prose toward the verdict. Ditto another case, a murder charge in which Black outsmarts the maladroit prosecutor, though his telling borders on gloating. A death-penalty appeal and a drug-money laundering case complete Black's docket, to which lawyers aspirant and actual will be attracted. Gilbert Taylor