Celebrity is the modern aristocracy, with a reach that rivals the old kings. The courthouse is built on the opposite premise: a blindfolded figure who does not know who is standing before her. When the two meet — a pop star at arraignment, a Super Bowl hero facing a mandatory minimum, the head of the International Monetary Fund led out in handcuffs — what actually happens?
In this TalksOnLaw interview, Joel Cohen sits down with Benjamin Brafman, founder of Brafman & Associates and the defense lawyer of choice for a generation of famous defendants, from Sean Combs and Jay-Z to Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Plaxico Burress. Brafman is a bit of a celebrity himself, and he brings decades of experience in front of the cameras to a candid account of what high-profile defense really involves.
The Myth of Special Treatment
Brafman's first move is to reverse the public assumption. Celebrities, he argues, are not treated too well by the criminal justice system; they are often singled out for harsher treatment, charged in minor matters that would be resolved at the precinct for anyone else, and subjected to what he calls media justice rather than court justice. His case in point is Burress, who shot himself in the leg with an unregistered gun days after New York adopted a mandatory prison term for illegal possession. Brafman describes eight months of negotiation to reach a two-year plea when comparable cases with anonymous defendants ended in six months or no jail at all — and notes, with some irony, that the National Football League was the only institution that treated his client fairly, running his suspension concurrently with his sentence.
Cameras, Discipline, and the Bad Press Day
Brafman has opposed cameras in the courtroom since before the O.J. Simpson trial, and he explains why: lawyers who have never handled a high-profile case begin to posture, judges are not immune, and a four-week murder trial becomes a nine-month spectacle that convinces the public that all trials look like that. Outside the courthouse the cameras are unavoidable, and his rule is that they must never be allowed to shape a decision in the case. He offers the maxim he gives frightened clients: you may have a bad press day by saying nothing, but if you win, no one remembers it; if you buy a good press day at the expense of the case, no one will remember that either once you are convicted. The Strauss-Kahn matter is his illustration — three months on the front page of every newspaper in the world, one sentence of public comment, and a dismissal when the complainant's account fell apart while her lawyer was still holding press conferences.
Cardiologists, Entourages, and Privilege
Superstar clients arrive with handlers, publicists, and business managers, and Brafman describes how he establishes who is in charge: the client is having a heart attack, and he is the cardiologist. He explains the mechanics of keeping the loop small, including retaining public relations consultants under a Kovel arrangement so that their work falls within the privilege, and the ground rules for a relationship that may last a year with someone who is used to getting his way. Most celebrities, he finds, are smart and street-smart, and they are frightened, which he considers healthy. He speaks with evident pride about clients who took a second chance and matured — Jay-Z after a stabbing charge resolved as a misdemeanor, Combs after an eight-week gun trial and acquittal — and with sympathy about young stars whose ordinary teenage mistakes carry extraordinary consequences.
Morals Clauses, Leagues, and the Michael Jackson Circus
The conversation turns to the collateral consequences unique to fame: endorsement deals that can be lost even after an acquittal, morals clauses that let a studio or label look past the verdict to the underlying facts, and leagues that impose their own discipline. Brafman describes lecturing the New York Giants on the predators who circle young athletes with money and little experience. He recounts his brief involvement in the Michael Jackson case — the crazed fans, the girl from abroad who touched his shoulder and fainted — and gives the untold version of Jackson's famous dance on top of the car outside the Santa Barbara courthouse, which he says was not a stunt but a way to pull a surging crowd back from collapsing fences. Based on the evidence he saw, he says, acquittal was guaranteed; he left anyway, because the chaos was not something he needed in his life.
Trial as Entertainment
Brafman closes with a distinction between celebrity defendants and defendants whom trials make into celebrities — Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman — and a lament that the public consumes trials as a saga, with cable news ratings rising and falling on scandal. His parting plea is for the presumption of innocence to extend to the famous: many celebrity cases begin with great fanfare and fizzle, and when they do, it is usually because they should never have been brought.
What to Know Now
Time has mostly confirmed Brafman's account. Michael Jackson was acquitted on all counts in 2005, as Brafman predicted. Plaxico Burress served roughly twenty months and, as Brafman describes, was eligible to play upon release; he signed with the New York Jets. Brafman went on to represent Harvey Weinstein at the outset of his New York prosecution before withdrawing in 2019 over differences on strategy; Weinstein's 2020 conviction was reversed by the New York Court of Appeals in 2024, and he was convicted on one count at a 2025 retrial. Sean Combs, whose 2001 acquittal Brafman recounts, was tried in federal court in Manhattan in 2025 with other counsel, acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, convicted on two counts of transportation for prostitution, and sentenced to four years and two months — a case that played out under the same intense coverage Brafman describes and on which his distinction between media justice and court justice remains a useful lens. His position on cameras has held in New York, where Civil Rights Law § 52 still bars broadcast of trial proceedings; the highest-profile Manhattan criminal trials of recent years have been covered by sketch artists and pool reporters, though a bill to repeal the ban is pending in Albany. And the Kovel arrangement he mentions for public relations consultants remains the standard tool, its limits tested in several recent cases where courts have declined to extend privilege to publicists whose work was found to be reputational rather than legal.
