Kobie Flowers
Flowers Keller LLP
Recognized since 2020
Washington, District of Columbia
Criminal Defense: General Practice
Kobie is, first and foremost, a trial lawyer, with over twenty-five years of courtroom experience. Kobie has litigated cases in federal and state courts throughout the United States and in the military commissions in Guantanamo Bay. He represents clients in high-stakes criminal investigations, civil litigation, internal investigations, and trials. Recognized by his peers for his trial acumen, Kobie teaches the art and science of trial lawyering to other lawyers around the country.
Kobie began his career as a member of the Attorney General’s Honors Program, where he was as a civil rights prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Criminal Section. There, he specialized in the prosecution of police brutality cases. Kobie never lost a case at the Department of Justice. That is notable because police brutality cases are arguably the hardest to prosecute in the federal criminal law.
Following his time as a federal civil rights prosecutor, Kobie pursued the challenge of defending people against federal prosecutions as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Maryland. In that role, he adeptly represented people accused of federal felonies. He won two-thirds of his trials. That is unusual. When trial was not his client’s expressed interest, Kobie skillfully secured several advantageous pre-verdict results, including case dismissals.
Founding Flowers Keller LLP is the capstone of Kobie’s decades-long commitment to ending Mass Incarceration. From helping people warehoused in California’s prisons in his teens to writing his college honors thesis on ending Mass Incarceration in his twenties to holding law enforcement criminally accountable in his thirties to holding these same people civilly accountable in his forties, Kobie’s commitment to ending Mass Incarceration spans a lifetime.
In the words of another former federal public defender and now Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, “History speaks.” In 2003, Kobie was one of the prosecutors who successfully tried the largest prosecution of federal correctional officers in the history of the Civil Rights Division. By 2023, he spearheaded the settlement of the largest wrongful conviction case in American history. That history of fighting to end Mass Incarceration is what Kobie brings to his advocacy for the wrongly accused and the wrongly convicted.
- Lawyer Page: https://flowerskeller.com/teams/
- 1601 Connecticut Avenue, 8th Floor, NW
Washington, DC 20009
- French
- Georgetown University, J.D., graduated 2000
- Stanford University, B.A., graduated 1994
- New Jersey, New Jersey State Bar Association
- Maryland, Maryland State Bar Association
- District of Columbia, The District of Columbia Bar
1 The Best Lawyers in America® award
- Criminal Defense: General Practice
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, NACDL Stalwart Award, 2022
Best Lawyers in America, Criminal Defense: General Practice, Washington, DC, 2020 – present
“Super Lawyer” for White-Collar Criminal Defense, Washington, DC, Super Lawyers magazine, 2013 – present
Lawdragon, 500 Leading Lawyers in America, Plaintiffs: Civil Rights, 2022
Lawdragon, 500 Leading Lawyers in America, Litigation: Civil Rights and White-Collar Criminal Defense, Washington, DC, 2021 – present
“Top Lawyer” for Criminal Defense, Washingtonian magazine, 2017 – 2022
“AV Preeminent” highest peer review rating by Martindale-Hubbell, 2014 – present
Commendation for Service at Federal Public Defender’s Office, D. Md., 2007
U.S. Justice Department, Civil Rights Division, Special Commendation for Outstanding Service, 2003
U.S. Justice Department, Civil Rights Division, Performance Award, 2003
- Criminal Defense: White-Collar
- National Criminal Defense College, Faculty
- Federal Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel, District of Maryland, Member (Appointed by the Chief Judge)
- Bronx Defenders Trial Academy, Faculty
- Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop, Faculty
- Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, Board Member, 2016–2022
- National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Parliamentarian, 2021–2022
- National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Board Member, 2017–2021
- Assistant Federal Public Defender, Maryland, 2004-2007
- Federal Prosecutor, U.S. Justice Department, Civil Rights Division, Criminal Section, 2000-2004
- U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, Ivory Coast, 1995-1997
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