(Bloomberg) -- In a newspaper photo on his law office wall in Houston, Dick DeGuerin stands with Robert Durst, a New York real estate heir who admitted shooting a man and using a paring knife and a hacksaw to cut up the body.
A jury in nearby Galveston voted for acquittal after DeGuerin followed his favorite trial strategy: “Embrace the ugly baby,” he said. “You don’t shrink from the problems in the case, but find a way to turn them to your advantage.”
Now the 68-year-old lawyer is representing fellow Texan R. Allen Stanford, accused of orchestrating an $8 billion Ponzi scheme. The case was brought by “storm troopers” at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who “cremated” his client’s business, DeGuerin said in an interview.
“He’s out of the ‘ride ‘em hard and show no mercy’ school of defense,” said William P. Allison, a criminal law professor at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin. “It’s a reputation he’s worked hard to earn, and what people pay for.”
DeGuerin is a member of an elite group of U.S. criminal lawyers who take high-profile cases and can “charge whatever the market will bear,” Allison said.
Among the attorney’s peers, according to the professor, are Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, who won acquittals for Texas oilman T. Cullen Davis, accused of murdering his 12-year-old stepdaughter and his wife’s boyfriend and of hiring a hit man to kill her and a judge; and the late Johnnie Cochran Jr., who helped defend former Buffalo Bills football star O.J. Simpson when he was tried on charges he killed his wife and her friend.
‘Effective’ Defense
So far, DeGuerin hasn’t been paid for his work for Stanford, the lawyer said. U.S. District Judge David Godbey in Dallas is considering Stanford’s bid to unfreeze at least $10 million in assets, locked up when the SEC sued, to pay his legal bills, which the Stanford Group Co. chief executive officer said in a court filing may exceed $20 million.
The SEC and Stanford Group investors told Godbey on May 4 that they oppose giving the financier access to the money. Stanford responded today in a filing that said he needs it to “effectively defend himself.”
His civil lawyers, with the Houston firm of Nickens Keeton Lawless Farrell & Flack LLP, said in court papers that the financier’s insurance company agreed to pay for his criminal defense if he is charged with a crime.
‘Cheap’ Fees
“I’m not doing this for free,” DeGuerin said in the interview, as he leaned back in a cane-seated desk chair, exposing well-worn elephant hide boots. “This case is a huge undertaking that no lawyer in his right mind would take on. It’s going to be a hard job, but not an impossible one.”
Declining to reveal his typical fee, he called his services “cheap at any price.”
The SEC sued Stanford, 59, and two employees, Laura Pendergest-Holt and James M. Davis, on Feb. 17, saying their sale of certificates of deposit through Stanford International Bank in Antigua was a “massive” fraud.
Pendergest-Holt, 35, Stanford’s chief investment officer, was charged with obstruction of justice on Feb. 26 and released on $300,000 bail. She is innocent, said her lawyer, Dan Cogdell of Houston. Davis, 60, the chief financial officer, is in plea negotiations, according to his attorney, David Finn of Dallas.
Stanford denied wrongdoing in an April 21 interview. “I’m not a damn swindler,” he said.
TV News Cameras
He tried to surrender to U.S. marshals in the federal courthouse in Houston on April 30 and was turned away because he hasn’t been criminally charged. DeGuerin escorted him, saying he wanted to prove his client isn’t a flight risk.
Justice Department spokesman Ian McCaleb declined to comment.
DeGuerin said he doesn’t shy away from difficult or notorious clients. He doesn’t run from publicity either, said his friend Tommy Fibich, a Houston plaintiffs lawyer.
“I’d rather be in front of the bulls of Pamplona than between Dick and the TV news cameras,” Fibich said.
One of DeGuerin’s clients was David Koresh, whose mother hired the Houstonian when her son and his followers holed up in Branch Davidian headquarters near Waco, Texas, in 1993.
Federal agents had surrounded the compound, where they said the leader of the religious sect had illegal weapons. Refusing body armor, DeGuerin walked past snipers to talk to his client.
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Sunday, May 10, 2009
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