Ellis Rubin

Ellis S. Rubin (June 20, 1925 – December 12, 2006) was an American attorney 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 Joseph Richardson, who had been wrongly 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 [... who] capitalized on the flamboyant characters and outrageous crimes endemic to South Florida to present innovative and often unprecedented legal defenses." His tactics were often controversial. 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". Throughout his career he took on over 5,000 civil and criminal cases. Early life and education Rubin was born in Syracuse, New York, and was raised in Binghamton, New York. He served as an officer in the Navy in World War II, graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, and then received a law degree in 1951 from the University of Miami School of Law. He was admitted to the bar to practice law in Florida and before the United States Supreme Court. Rubin was the namesake of his law firm, Rubin & Rubin, which started in 1951 and continues today. Career During the 1950s, he worked for the state attorney general's office as a special Assistant Attorney General investigating communism, and was asked to establish a policy for dealing with "subversive activities" in Florida. In 1955, he published a "red book" on the communist movement in Florida, which provoked a bill in the Florida Legislature giving investigators of subversive activities wide subpoena powers, the right to hold secret hearings, and to offer witnesses immunity. In the 1960s he argued against racial discrimination in religious schools before the United States Supreme Court. In the 1970s he led protests against the use of school busing as a solution for desegregation.