The legal world is in mourning after Roy Black, University of Miami alumni and one of the nation’s top criminal defense lawyers, passed away in Coral Gables. He was 80 years old.
Officials say he had been battling an illness while still continuing to work at his law firm on Biscayne Boulevard.
A New York native, Black moved to South Florida to attend the University of Miami as both an undergrad and a law student. He quickly gained a reputation for taking on and winning challenging and notorious cases.
His decade-long partner, Howard Srebnick, said he “was the greatest criminal lawyer of our generation, perhaps in American history.”
Black, who wrote his own book titled “Black’s Law” in 1999, was known for representing some of South Florida’s most famous criminal defendants, including Kennedy Smith, the nephew of the late former president John F. Kennedy, against rape charges.
He is also known for representing drug kingpin Sal Magluta, who operated one of the most significant cocaine trafficking organizations in South Florida history, and a Miami police officer who shot and killed a Black man in Overtown, sparking the 1982 race riots.
In his Miami DUI case in 2014, pop artist Justin Bieber was also represented by him.
In his book, he chronicled four Miami trials in which all four cases—three murders and a money laundering scheme—appeared to involve “impossibly long odds.”
Monday morning, he passed away in his home in Coral Gables.
He is survived by his wife, Lea; their son, RJ; and his daughter, Nora, as well as his law partners in Black-Srebnick.
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