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 U.S. history—a case which was made into the critically acclaimed HBO documentary When a Witness Recants. This history of fighting to end Mass Incarceration is what Kobie brings to his advocacy for the wrongly accused and the wrongly convicted.
REPRESENTATIVE CASES
Criminal Defense and Investigations
- Secured release from Guantanamo Bay prison of only child soldier ever prosecuted by the U.S.
government in the modern era.
- Obtained acquittal for tenured microbiology professor charged with two counts of sexual assault.
- Obtained acquittal for client charged with unlawfully possessing a firearm.
- Obtained dismissal of an assault case against a person, who had previously served 30 years for a
wrongful murder conviction.
- Obtained dismissal of a sexual assault charge filed against a world-renowned infectious disease
expert.
- Obtained dismissal of drug trafficking charges against client by obtaining a hung jury and
persuading the government to decline to retry the case.
- Obtained probation for one of the 1,100 plus people charged for conduct at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6,2021—the largest prosecution in DOJ’s over 150-year history.
- Persuaded ethics regulators to dismiss ethics investigation against an elected official.
- Persuaded federal prosecutors not to bring money laundering and wire fraud charges against a
Russian-owned business.
- Persuaded federal prosecutors not to bring fraud charges against a client and litigated novel 4th
Amendment issue, which forced the Office of Inspector General to change its policy.
- Persuaded state prosecutors to dismiss an assault case against an NFL executive.
- Persuaded state prosecutors to dismiss a felony burglary charge against a high-profile lawyer.
- Persuaded an inspector general to terminate investigation of a federal employee allegedly involved
in international government contracting fraud.
- Persuaded federal prosecutors to decline prosecution of a twenty-year veteran of a major law
enforcement agency after multi-year and multi-agency federal fraud investigation.
- Represented client freed by the federal government as part of the historic seven-prisoner swap between Iran and the United States.
Wrongful Convictions & Police Misconduct
- Represented three men known as the “Harlem Park Three.” At 108 combined years of wrongful conviction, the triple exoneration of the men is the largest wrongful conviction case in American history. Case settled for a record $48 million and was made into the critically acclaimed documentary When a Witness Recants.
- Obtained over $13 million from the State of Maryland for five wrongfully convicted men, convincing the Maryland Board of Public Works to make such awards for the first time in 15 years.
- Represented a man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 30 years because the police illegally hid evidence of his innocence.
ACTIVITIES
- National Criminal Defense College, Faculty
- Federal Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel, District of District of Columbia, Member (Appointed by the Chief Judge)
- Federal Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel, District of Maryland, Member (Appointed by the
Chief Judge)
- Bronx Defenders Trial Academy, Faculty
- ABA White-Collar Crime Conference, Moderator of the Trial Skills Panel, 2024-2025
- Forum on Corporate Enforcement, Steering Committee, 2025
- NACDL White-Collar Crime Conference, Steering Committee, 2025
- Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, Board Member, 2016-2022
- NACDL, Parliamentarian, 2021-2022
- NACDL, Board Member, 2017-2021
AWARDS
- Exceptional Service Award, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, 2023
- NACDL Stalwart Award, 2022
- Best Lawyers in America, Criminal Defense, White-Collar Crime, 2026
- Best Lawyers in America, Criminal Defense, General Practice, 2020-present
- “Super Lawyer” for White-Collar Criminal Defense, Super Lawyers, 2013-present
- Maryland Daily Record Criminal Law Powerlist (Inaugural Edition), 2022
- Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America: White-Collar Criminal Defense Investigations, 2025
- Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America: Civil Rights and White-Collar Criminal
Defense, 2021-present
- “Top Lawyer” for Criminal Defense, Washingtonian, 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
