MIAMI — Criminal defense attorneys were grieving Roy Black, a prominent Downtown Miami-based trial lawyer who taught at the University of Miami for decades.
Black, who started his career at the Miami-Dade County Public Defender’s Office, headed the Black Srebnick law firm from a 13th-floor office on Biscayne Bay.
Black’s clients included Jeffrey Epstein, William Kennedy Smith, Rush Limbaugh, Helio Castroneves, Kelsey Grammer, Fred De la Mata, BuzzFeed, and Rolls-Royce.
“He really was the GOAT of criminal defense lawyers,” David Oscar Markus wrote in his The Southern District of Florida blog. “The most determined. And always so positive about winning.”
The Miami Herald reported Black, a father of two, died on Monday at his home in Coral Gables after dealing with an illness while continuing to work at the law firm at 201 South Biscayne Boulevard.
Black was born on Feb. 17, 1945, in New York, and grew up in Connecticut, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. His passion for oceanography drew him to enroll at the University of Miami.
Black earned his bachelor’s degree at UM in 1967, his juris doctorate at UM School of Law in 1970 and he was admitted to the Florida Bar that same year.
“As a young criminal defense lawyer in Miami, I wanted to be Roy Black. Many did,” Attorney Brian Tannebaum wrote on a Facebook post linked to The Southern District of Florida blog.
Black started teaching federal evidentiary rules at his alma mater in 1973 and worked at the Miami-Dade County Public Defender’s Office until 1976.
Black published “Black’s Law: A Criminal Lawyer Reveals His Defense Strategies in Four Cliffhanger Cases” in 1999.
Through the years, Black also wrote commentary for publications such as Salon, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and shared analysis on NBC and ABC.
“He will be remembered by all lawyers, and by all people who care about justice as a truly great man. The law will miss him, Florida will miss him, and ... I will miss him,” Attorney Alan Dershowitz told WFLA.
Attorney Todd J. Michaels, of Coral Gables, also a former public defender, reacted to the news of Black’s death on The Southern District of Florida blog.
“I think for every single one of us who came through the Public Defender’s Office, Roy was who we wanted to be,” Michaels wrote. “He was a legend in his time, and he was one of the few people whose talents lived up to the myth. Then you got to meet him and he was just a nice, funny, charming, approachable man.
“What a huge loss.”
After Black divorced his first and second wives, he married Lea Black, a juror in the Kennedy Smith trial, in 1994. She later became known as a cast member on “The Real Housewives of Miami.”
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