Zaki Zehawi

When I was a boy, our family left everything in Ghaddafi’s Libya for a brighter future in a foreign country we never knew. My extended family remained in Libya. I was one of the lucky ones. I was loved.  I was given opportunity.  Freedoms were always a topic of discussion around our kitchen table. I can think of no higher calling than to represent real people against a government that is determined to cage them and destroy their families. I felt that way over 20 years ago when I became a state and federal public defender, and I still feel that way now as I partner up with Murali and Dailey. If there were words to describe my approach to criminal defense, I would choose Eugene V. Debs’, “[w]hile there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. All my clients have an untold story. A story that is ignored, unheard, and forgotten. My job is dedicated to listening to my clients’ stories, breathing life into them and speaking their truth so everyone will remember who my clients really are. My clients are not defendants. My clients are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, neighbors, community members, sons and daughters. My clients are not prosecution case numbers, they are real human beings, and they will be treated as such. My parents and brothers left an authoritative regime in search of freedom in this country. I know how a government can uproot lives. I have felt it. If the prosecution is coming for you, know that you’ll never walk alone. They will have to come through me first. I pride myself on fighting for my clients in jury trials. I have handled everything from OWI’s to death penalty cases and even represented alleged enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I have tried over eighty state and federal jury trials and consulted on hundreds of homicides.