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THE husband of Real Housewives of Miami star Lea Black has died.
Roy Black, a top defense attorney who appeared alongside his wife on the hit Bravo show, died at 80 at his Florida home on Monday.
He died after battling an illness, the Miami Herald reported. His cause of death hasn’t been revealed.
Lea and Roy were married in 1994 and shared their son RJ. Roy also had a daughter named Nora from a previous marriage.
The high-powered lawyer appeared on RHOM while the show featured Lea as a main cast member starting in 2011.
She starred on the hit Bravo show for its first three seasons.
Lea has yet to speak publicly about her husband’s death.
Roy continued to work at his law firm in Miami until he was found dead at his house in Coral Gables, near downtown Miami.
The criminal defense attorney was a New York native who studied law at the University of Miami.
After he graduated, he started teaching law at his alma mater in 1973 and began working at the Miami-Dade County Public Defender’s Office until 1976.
His successful career lasted decades as he gained a reputation for representing celebrities and winning acquittals.
“Roy Black was the greatest criminal lawyer of our generation, perhaps in American history, achieving acquittals over a span of 50 years in some of the most challenging and notorious cases of all time,” his law firm’s partner, Howard Srebnick, told the Herald.
He was best known for winning an acquittal for William Kennedy Smith, President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, on a rape charge in 1991.
The high-profile trial was the first of its kind to be televised nationally.
It’s also where Lea and Roy met, after Lea was a juror at the trial.
“I was shocked that I would ever go with a lawyer—and shocked that he would be interested in me,” Lea told People in 1995.
Roy Black’s clients
Notorious criminal defense attorney Roy Black has died at 80. Below are some of his well-known clients:
- Justin Bieber
- Jeffrey Epstein
- William Kennedy Smith
- Rush Limbaugh
- BuzzFeed
- Rolls-Royce
- Helio Castroneves
- Kelsey Grammer
- Alex Rodriguez
In 2014, Roy represented Justin Bieber after he was charged with driving under the influence, resisting arrest, and driving with an expired license.
The case was settled with a plea bargain in August of that year.
Other clients that Roy represented included Jeffrey Epstein, Kelsey Grammer, Rush Limbaugh, and Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis.
Roy also became known as a TV personality outside of his RHOM appearances.
While working as a founding partner of his legal firm Black Srebnick, Roy provided legal commentary for TV shows like the Today Show and Larry King Live.
He also starred on a short-lived NBC reality show called The Law Firm, where lawyers competed against each other.
Roy published Black’s Law: A Criminal Lawyer Reveals His Defense Strategies in Four Cliffhanger Cases in 1999.
