Ellis Rubin
Ellis S. Rubin (June 20, 1925 – December 12, 2006) was an American attorney in Miami, Florida who gained national fame for handling a variety of highly publicized cases in a legal career that spanned 53 years. He was famous for his innovative defenses and his propensity for handling lost causes. Rubin won the first case in Florida using the “battered woman” defense. He also worked to free a man, James Richardson, who had been imprisoned for 21 years for fatally poisoning his seven children, and created the nymphomania defense in a case involving prostitution.
The Washington Post characterized Rubin as "a Miami lawyer with an affection for the disenfranchised and an outsized knack for publicity in the tradition of P. T. Barnum capitalized on the flamboyant characters and outrageous crimes endemic to South Florida to present innovative and often unprecedented legal defenses". Some fellow lawyers believed he lowered the image of the profession, and Judge Wayne L. Cobb, who handled the case of a confessed serial killer whom Rubin was defending in 1993, said Rubin was “famous for his psychobabble defenses.” Some thought he defended too many lost causes. Throughout his career he took on over 5,000 civil and criminal cases.
Read more about Ellis Rubin: Biography, Famous Clients
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