Legal News

Florida Legal Community to Ante up for Indicted Lawyer

By Dan Slater

The last time we wrote about Ben Kuehne, the prominent Miami lawyer who was indicted on money laundering charges in February, we were down in Miami, attending the annual gathering of the Florida Association of Criminal Lawyers (or FACDL, as its members call it). There, just a few months after the indictment, the group honored Kuehne with an award for his “commitment to preserve the constitutional rights of all citizens.” (Kuehne was indicted for alleged money laundering in connection with his vetting of legal fees for Roy Black, the attorney who repped convicted Colombian drug kingpin Fabio Ochoa. Here’s past LB coverage of the case.)

In his acceptance speech at the FACDL event, Kuehne said, “I have experienced firsthand the willingness of our profession to rally around and provide support and assistance in my own time of strife . . .This is a time of challenge and controversy, and I intend to be measured as I prevail in this challenge.”

On Thursday, South Florida’s legal community will again come out for Kuehne, attending a dinner at Christabelle’s Quarter, a Miami restaurant, where the suggested donation is $200 for Kuehne’s legal defense fund. Here’s the invite, and here’s an NLJ story.

Co-chairing the event are former Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan and Miami criminal defense lawyer Robert Josefsberg. The committee includes Florida Bar President Frank Angones and former Florida Bar President Hank Coxe, former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey and Miami-Dade Public Defender Bennett Brummer.

“It’s apparent that defending yourself in a federal criminal trial is quite expensive,” Coffey told the NLJ. “We think the charges are baseless and appear to signal possible trouble for any number of ethical attorneys in town. Ben is one of the most exemplary attorneys in Florida and if he can be prosecuted, anyone can.”

Meanwhile, White Collar Crime Prof blog’s Ellen Podgor hopes the incoming Obama administration re-examines the Kuehne case. “It is hard to imagine that a re-examination with fresh eyes would come to the same result,” she writes.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 17, 2008 (boomark / email).