Scott Rosenblum on The Art of Criminal Defense

The Making of a Trial Lawyer

Scott Rosenblum didn’t come from legal royalty. His parents ran a handbag business on Washington Avenue in St. Louis, and by the time he was ready for college, they’d lost everything when the business went bad. He bartended his way through the University of Missouri, Columbia, where tuition was $300 a semester. That’s not a typo. Three hundred dollars.

“$300 a semester,” Scott told me when we talked about his early days. “It was like $25 a credit hour.”

After law school, Scott started in the D.A.’s office, then came home to work for his uncle Howard. His first cases were bankruptcy court trials, which gave him a taste for the courtroom. Then former high school friends started getting into trouble, and they called him. The rest was history.

The Case That Changed Everything

In 1987, a family walked into Scott’s office with a case that would define his career. John White was accused of killing a Jennings police officer. Scott was thirty years old and had tried maybe one other murder case. It started as a death penalty case.

“To this day, I have no idea why this family walked in and hired me,” Scott said. “No idea.”

The evidence looked overwhelming: video confession, audio confession, written confession. But Scott and his team uncovered something else. The Jennings police were stopping every African American who came through the city, bringing them into the department, roughing them up, and forcing confessions. They established a pattern of horrific interrogations.

John White was found not guilty.

“I remember walking into the courthouse that day for its first appearance,” Scott recalled. “And you can sort of hear all the whispering behind you. Sort of like, what the hell is this guy doing? Who does he think he is, right?”

After that verdict, every phone call Scott got was criminal defense work. Forty-two years and 450 trials later, he’s earned comparisons to Michael Jordan from NFL great Marshall Faulk, who said watching Scott in court defending your life is different than watching greatness on TV.

The Ritual of Winning

Scott has carried the same pen case to every one of those 450 trials. He eats the exact same turkey sandwich for lunch every day during trial: mustard on both sides, no cheese. He’s burned the same Catholic votive candle in his house for 43 years. He’ll never wear red to court. If he loses while wearing a tie during closing argument, he cuts it off and throws it away, even if it’s expensive.

“I just tried a murder case in Jefferson County about three weeks ago, a cold case,” he explained. “And because when I sent some scouts, I couldn’t really find a good turkey sandwich. So I had to make sure that I brought my own turkey sandwich.”

A few years ago, he walked into a courthouse, set up his materials, and realized he’d forgotten his pen case. He told the judge they couldn’t start. The judge looked at him like he was crazy, but Scott went and got his pen case. That’s just how he operates.

The Federal System’s Stacked Deck

We talked about the numbers everyone throws around: 96% or 97% federal conviction rate. Scott pointed out that’s misleading because the Department of Justice includes guilty pleas in their conviction statistics.

“If you take strictly trials, the rate will go down,” he said.

But the federal system has penalties baked into the guidelines for going to trial. You don’t get three points for acceptance of responsibility if you fight the case. If you testify, there’s another two-point penalty. That’s a five-level swing in the guidelines, which could mean six, seven, or eight additional years.

The grand jury system, Scott believes, offers almost no protection. It’s 16 to 23 people, 12 have to vote for a true bill, and it’s just prosecutors presenting their side with no defense lawyer and no judge present. “99% of times can do whatever it brought you,” he said about grand juries.

Jencks material (witness statements) doesn’t get turned over until three days before trial in most federal cases, compared to state cases where you get all witness statements in the first discovery batch. This creates an uneven playing field where prosecutors have months or years to prepare while defense attorneys get crucial information days before trial.

The Human Cost of White Collar Cases

I asked Scott about what makes a good client. He emphasized that lawyers need to remember they’re dealing with people at their worst possible moment. White collar defendants especially struggle because they’re used to business controversies being resolved through negotiation and settlement.

“A lot of especially white collar clients can’t wrap their brain around why this isn’t a civil case,” Scott explained. “Especially when they’ve been in business the whole life. And I used to dealing with business controversies and everything is resolved by negotiation or by settlement or by finances.”

The victim impact statements in white collar cases can be particularly devastating. When a money manager steals from long-time clients, especially elderly people, the allocution at sentencing hits hard. These victims talk about trusted relationships going back decades, about having to work at Walmart in their seventies after losing everything to someone who’d been to their house, their parties, who’d helped plan their children’s college education.

Scott never pushes clients toward plea deals or trials. He provides all the information and lets them decide. “I don’t ever want to push them one way or the other,” he said. “Basically, I just try to be a supporter.” He’s found that clients who feel forced into guilty pleas are typically more dissatisfied than clients who go to trial and lose, as long as they had effective representation and fought hard.

Leveling an Uneven Field

After four decades in this system, Scott has clear ideas about what needs fixing. The power to decide who gets prosecuted, how, and where they get prosecuted has too much randomness. Prosecutors sometimes pick cases by reading newspapers rather than starting with actual victims. The grand jury system needs oversight. The Jencks Act should be eliminated so defense attorneys get witness statements early enough to properly prepare.

Most importantly, there needs to be more accountability in charging decisions. Scott suggested panels of former U.S. attorneys providing oversight, creating standards for who gets prosecuted instead of leaving it to the subjective judgment of individual prosecutors.

The federal system has stacked the deck through decades of legislation designed to make things difficult for criminal defendants. But Scott keeps fighting, one turkey sandwich and one pen case at a time.