Jaime Lapidus

Partner • Chief of Appeals

When the government has spent years building a case, the question is not whether your lawyer sounds confident. It is whether he can find the hole in it — and make the jury see it.

Jaime Lapidus is a partner at Piotrowski Law and the firm’s Chief of Appeals. He tries cases and he writes the appeals, which means the record he builds in front of a jury is built by someone who already knows how it will read to a court of review two years later. Most trial lawyers never learn that discipline. It is the difference between an objection made and an objection preserved.

He Has Done This Where the Stakes Were Highest

Ohio • 2022: A physician charged with 25 counts of murder. Acquitted on every count tried.

Jaime was part of the defense team in State v. Husel, the prosecution of an intensive-care doctor accused in the deaths of his patients — one of the largest murder cases in Ohio history. He argued the challenge to what the State had presented to the grand jury, and delivered the Rule 29 motion at the close of the prosecution’s case, after fifty-three government witnesses.

“He saved their lives repeatedly before he was arbitrarily now accused of deciding to end their lives in the absence of a motive. No financial gain, no personal gain, nothing that would suggest any animosity towards a single one of these patients.”

Quoted by the Associated Press. The trial was covered by AP, CNN, The New York Times and The Columbus Dispatch. After a seven-week trial and more than a week of deliberation, the jury returned not guilty verdicts on all counts tried.

Northern District of Ohio • 2018–2022: An 87-count federal indictment. Not one guilty verdict.

Two cardiologists were accused of billing Medicare and Medicaid for cardiac testing the government said was medically unnecessary, and of prescribing controlled substances outside the course of practice — the kind of case where the paper record runs to hundreds of thousands of pages and the government’s theory is built entirely on inference. The government put on its case over roughly ten weeks and more than forty-five witnesses, including four confidential informants and an undercover agent.

After nearly two weeks of deliberation the jury returned not guilty verdicts and could not reach a verdict on the balance of the counts. It did not convict on a single count. The government never retried them: in April 2022 the court dismissed the remaining charges with prejudice, ending the case for good.

Jaime was one of the defense attorneys of record in United States v. Rakhit, No. 1:18-cr-00033 (N.D. Ohio), before Judge Pamela Barker. Order of dismissal with prejudice entered April 29, 2022. Verdict reported by Cleveland.com, October 2021.

Where the Habits Came From

Jaime began as an assistant public defender in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade — the training ground where a lawyer either learns to try cases or gets out. He carried the caseload, he took the cases nobody wanted, and he built a reputation for aggressive motion practice and for testing whether the police conduct in a case was lawful in the first place. That question, asked early and asked properly, ends more cases than any closing argument.

From there he went to two of Florida’s most prominent criminal defense firms — including one of the best-known trial practices in the state, the kind whose cases you have watched unfold on national television. That is where the Ohio trials came from. It is also where he learned what a case looks like when the whole country is watching it, which is a different job than trying the same case in an empty courtroom.

He has tried cases to verdict ranging from DUI to murder, and has defended clients at the federal and appellate levels. He is a graduate of the Gerald T. Bennett Prosecutor and Public Defender Trial Training Program.

Credentials

Jaime graduated summa cum laude from St. Thomas University School of Law, where he was an articles editor of the St. Thomas Law Review, a member of the Moot Court team, and president of the Criminal Law Society. On the strength of his score on the Florida Bar examination, he was chosen to speak at the Florida Supreme Court’s ceremony inducting new members of The Florida Bar.

He was born in Miami and raised between New York and New Jersey, and came back to Miami for Florida International University, where he studied anthropology with a minor in world religions and a certificate in Latin American studies — a background in how people explain themselves that turns out to be useful in front of a jury.

Featured Speaker for Top Bar Exam Score, Florida Supreme Court induction ceremony, October 2016
Gerald T. Bennett Prosecutor and Public Defender Trial Training Program, August 2017
CALI Book Awards in Legal Research and Writing, Advanced Legal Research and Writing, Appellate Advocacy, Evidence, Criminal Procedure, Criminal Procedure II, Wills and Trusts, Internet Governance Law and Policy, and National Security and the Fourth Amendment

In the Media

Trial Coverage

Associated Press — Judge weighs whether to dismiss Ohio doctor’s 25 murder charges
ABC 6 / WSYX — Prosecution rests in the Husel murder trial
The Columbus Dispatch — Why the defense team rested its case
Cleveland.com — Federal jury acquits doctors of more than 40 charges of medical fraud

Legal Analysis on Air

NBC 6 South Florida brought Jaime on through the George Pino boat crash trial to explain what the jury was actually being asked to decide.

NBC 6 South Florida — Verdict reached in trial of man charged in 2022 deadly boat crash near Boca Chita Key
NBC 6 (video) — Inside Day 2 of the George Pino boat crash trial

In the Appellate Courtroom

Oral argument video — the only place a client can watch him work.

Fourth District Court of Appeal — oral argument, case no. 17-3842 (full argument, on the court’s own channel)

Trial Video

Law&Crime Network — Husel trial, day 22: arguments outside the presence of the jury
Law&Crime Network — Husel trial, day 10: examination of a Mount Carmel physician
CNN — verdict coverage, Husel trial

Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any future matter. Every case depends on its own facts.