Post by Marc LeVine on Jul 6, 2007 14:04:04 GMT -5
Commander of the Courtroom
Instead of going to college classes one week 37 years ago, Robert Katzberg, JD '71, headed for Freehold, N.J., to watch the murder trial of anesthesiologist Carl Coppolino. F. Lee Bailey was Copollino's attorney, and Katzberg watched raptly as the famous man plied his trade.
Katzberg's interest in law had been piqued by television's “The Defenders.” Observing the real-life courtroom drama, he was hooked.
Today a noted criminal defense attorney, Katzberg won a landmark wrongful prosecution suit against a government informer in April 2002. It was a victory over a sentencing system that too often encourages government witnesses to lie, he says.
When he wasn't skipping school to watch trials, Katzberg attended Brooklyn College for $32 a semester. After graduating cum laude, he landed a scholarship from GW Law. That first year Katzberg donned a jacket and tie each day. After class, he worked for the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy and also served on Law Review. Later, JD in hand, he cut his legal teeth clerking for Judge Oliver Gasch, LLB' 32, of the federal district court in Washington. From Gasch, he received his first lessons in the nuanced legal system. “In law school, you think things are going to be clear-cut,” Katzberg says. They rarely are.
When his clerkship ended, Katzberg returned to New York and worked for five years as an assistant U.S. attorney, receiving the Justice Department's Special Achievement Award for prosecuting white-collar cases. Then, like many former prosecutors, he switched sides, making a name in defense. Alexander H. Shapiro, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, once prosecuted a case against Katzberg; Katzberg's client was acquitted. Shapiro calls Katzberg “the best cross-examiner I've ever seen, a formidable adversary. He commands the courtroom.”
Katzberg has defended a wide range of personalities and firms, “some wonderful, some unsavory” and relishes the challenge of defending clients against the government, with its vast resources. “You are always the underdog,” he says. “Beating the odds, getting an acquittal, or convincing a prosecutor not to indict—it's enormously satisfying.”
He also is inspired by his love of language and the drama of the courtroom. A man who speaks with gusto and sprinkles his stories with apt metaphors, Katzberg views each case from the “artistic and technical point of view.” Colleagues describe his courtroom manner as dignified, strong, and aggressive. “He's the go-to guy in New York,” says Reid Weingarten, a Washington attorney who sometimes teams up with Katzberg.
The problems of Katzberg's client, Teddy Rothstein, had all the elements of drama. By his own admission, Rothstein made a living selling adult material, generally staying inside the law. Now, however, another entrepreneur had falsely accused him as a central figure in an adult video ring. Later the charges against Rothstein were dropped. Rothstein credited Katzberg—who successfully defended another individual in the case—for the surprise dismissal, and approached him to sue his wrongful accuser for defamation of character. Instead, Katzberg came up with an idea that had never been tried in this context—suing for malicious prosecution.
For Katzberg, the lawsuit was nearly a crusade. Mandatory federal sentencing guidelines encourage convicted criminals to provide prosecutors with incriminating information in return for leniency. In theory, the guidelines are meant to clean up the streets. In practice, Katzberg and other defense attorneys believe, they “provide enormous incentive for people to lie.”
It took more than four years for the case to come to trial. Among the obstacles Katzberg overcame were legal barriers to deposing the FBI agents and the government attorney who prose-cuted Rothstein.
The jury awarded Rothstein $1.25 million in damages, including $1 million in punitive damages, a record for malicious prosecution in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree Jr. noted in a New York Times article that the verdict demonstrates that there is a “civil remedy for false testi-mony” and that “lying witnesses have to pay.”
Katzberg, whose current assignment is serving as co-counsel for Mark Belnick, a high-profile attorney recently indicted for fraud in the prosecutions against the Tyco Corp., relishes the intensity of his work. “When you are defending somebody, it is flesh and blood,” he says. “My clients usually have the legal equivalent of cancer. I'm supposed to be someone who can cure the cancer. It's a great challenge.”
Instead of going to college classes one week 37 years ago, Robert Katzberg, JD '71, headed for Freehold, N.J., to watch the murder trial of anesthesiologist Carl Coppolino. F. Lee Bailey was Copollino's attorney, and Katzberg watched raptly as the famous man plied his trade.
Katzberg's interest in law had been piqued by television's “The Defenders.” Observing the real-life courtroom drama, he was hooked.
Today a noted criminal defense attorney, Katzberg won a landmark wrongful prosecution suit against a government informer in April 2002. It was a victory over a sentencing system that too often encourages government witnesses to lie, he says.
When he wasn't skipping school to watch trials, Katzberg attended Brooklyn College for $32 a semester. After graduating cum laude, he landed a scholarship from GW Law. That first year Katzberg donned a jacket and tie each day. After class, he worked for the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy and also served on Law Review. Later, JD in hand, he cut his legal teeth clerking for Judge Oliver Gasch, LLB' 32, of the federal district court in Washington. From Gasch, he received his first lessons in the nuanced legal system. “In law school, you think things are going to be clear-cut,” Katzberg says. They rarely are.
When his clerkship ended, Katzberg returned to New York and worked for five years as an assistant U.S. attorney, receiving the Justice Department's Special Achievement Award for prosecuting white-collar cases. Then, like many former prosecutors, he switched sides, making a name in defense. Alexander H. Shapiro, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, once prosecuted a case against Katzberg; Katzberg's client was acquitted. Shapiro calls Katzberg “the best cross-examiner I've ever seen, a formidable adversary. He commands the courtroom.”
Katzberg has defended a wide range of personalities and firms, “some wonderful, some unsavory” and relishes the challenge of defending clients against the government, with its vast resources. “You are always the underdog,” he says. “Beating the odds, getting an acquittal, or convincing a prosecutor not to indict—it's enormously satisfying.”
He also is inspired by his love of language and the drama of the courtroom. A man who speaks with gusto and sprinkles his stories with apt metaphors, Katzberg views each case from the “artistic and technical point of view.” Colleagues describe his courtroom manner as dignified, strong, and aggressive. “He's the go-to guy in New York,” says Reid Weingarten, a Washington attorney who sometimes teams up with Katzberg.
The problems of Katzberg's client, Teddy Rothstein, had all the elements of drama. By his own admission, Rothstein made a living selling adult material, generally staying inside the law. Now, however, another entrepreneur had falsely accused him as a central figure in an adult video ring. Later the charges against Rothstein were dropped. Rothstein credited Katzberg—who successfully defended another individual in the case—for the surprise dismissal, and approached him to sue his wrongful accuser for defamation of character. Instead, Katzberg came up with an idea that had never been tried in this context—suing for malicious prosecution.
For Katzberg, the lawsuit was nearly a crusade. Mandatory federal sentencing guidelines encourage convicted criminals to provide prosecutors with incriminating information in return for leniency. In theory, the guidelines are meant to clean up the streets. In practice, Katzberg and other defense attorneys believe, they “provide enormous incentive for people to lie.”
It took more than four years for the case to come to trial. Among the obstacles Katzberg overcame were legal barriers to deposing the FBI agents and the government attorney who prose-cuted Rothstein.
The jury awarded Rothstein $1.25 million in damages, including $1 million in punitive damages, a record for malicious prosecution in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree Jr. noted in a New York Times article that the verdict demonstrates that there is a “civil remedy for false testi-mony” and that “lying witnesses have to pay.”
Katzberg, whose current assignment is serving as co-counsel for Mark Belnick, a high-profile attorney recently indicted for fraud in the prosecutions against the Tyco Corp., relishes the intensity of his work. “When you are defending somebody, it is flesh and blood,” he says. “My clients usually have the legal equivalent of cancer. I'm supposed to be someone who can cure the cancer. It's a great challenge.”