Ronald Richards

Ronald Richards began his career in litigation by breaking Beverly Hills High School's record for debate wins. He then went on to UCLA to join the debate team in CIDA. At UCLA, he won the national championship two years in a row. He also won numerous individual event titles and honors. In law school, he was elected to Student Faculty Representative where he was an advocate for students facing discipline. He won the American Jurisprudence Award in Bankruptcy. As a lawyer, he is the only published attorney in the country on Proposition 215, the medical marijuana statute. His article is cited by West Publishing and is found in the annotations to 11362.5 of the Health and Safety Code. He has been qualified as an expert witness on marijuana in the Los Angeles Superior Court. In 1999, Mr. Richards was counsel in two of the biggest date rape sex crimes cases in Los Angeles County. He successfully had one case dismissed prior to trial while the other case is still pending. In addition, he has successfully represented many other single incident sex crime clients and obtained satisfactory results. In 2000 and part of 2001, Mr. Richards defended more MDMA or Ecstasy cases then any attorney in the United States. His office has handled more Ecstasy cases than any other in America and has represented defendants in each of the three largest seizures in U.S. history. Mr. Richards also guest lectures at UCLA for a sex crimes course. Mr. Richards has also recently lectured at Cal. State Los Angeles on poverty and the law. Mr. Richards submits new articles on different topics to various publications like Los Angeles Lawyer. Mr. Richards has litigation all across America. In the last two years, he has won a 39 count Federal Court Jury Trial in the Eastern District of Tennessee and suppressed a large amount of MDMA in the La Paz County Superior Court in Arizona. In addition, he represents persons in the South East for slavery charges and has matters in Illinois relating to pseudoephedrine. In the last three years, he has had a 29 count indictment where his client was facing 30 years dismissed pre trial. A copy of the order is available on this website. In the later part of 2000, Mr. Richards represented a major former CEO of a publicly traded company who was indicted for bank fraud and related counts. Mr. Richards was successful in obtaining a dismissal pre trial of two counts and the government moved to dismiss the third count on April 9, 2001. The case was published on appeal in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. During 2001, Mr. Richards successfully defended an entire family charged with marijuana for sale, over 151 lbs. Due to successful negotiations and the potential for a winning suppression issue, Richards was able to negotiate non-sales related dispositions with no custody time for all three defendants. This litigation took two years to complete with Richards fighting the entire way. Richards has litigated cases in the Southern District of Illinois, New York, Ohio, Mississippi, Colorado, Michigan, Kansas and the District of Nevada. Mr. Richards is a good asset to any defense team and enjoys working with attorneys across the country. Richards maintains a central file system on a high speed DSL line which allows nationwide access to his library and archives. Furthermore, his computerized research is second to none spanning ten different premium services to receive up to date case information and changes in the law that only inure to the benefit of the client. In late 2001 and early 2002, Mr. Richards, who was appointed as counsel in a murder case, successfully dismissed for the second time murder charges against an impoverished defendant. During 2002, Mr. Richards obtained an acquittal in the first ecstasy state prosecution in March of 2002. In 2003, Mr. Richards also obtained a dismissal in Los Angeles County's largest MDMA case in state court. He then settled the case for a second defendant for time served thanks to a very thoughtful and reasonable Assistant Deputy District Attorney. Mr. Richards has also had three federal indictments dismissed on legal grounds in the last three years which is rare and very difficult. (Mr. Richards concedes that he was mostly lucky and he simply asserted what he thought were important issues to raise on behalf of his clients.) In addition, Mr. Richards is known locally as someone who specializes in defending Arab Americans charged with pseudoephedrine crimes. Mr. Richards has never lost a pseudoephedrine case at trial. He is very familiar with the prosecution and defense of those cases which is a very highly specialized area. In 2003, Mr. Richards has numerous national cases which have not been set for trial but are large pseudoephedrine conspiracy cases with record amounts seized. They also involve other controlled substances as well. Mr. Richards strives to maintain a positive working relationship with government prosecutors and due to their reasonable and fair treatment of his current clients, he has been able to obtain responsible and fair dispositions for his clients. This means single digit sentences instead of double digit sentences. This Mr. Richards feels is a reasonable goal for serious offenses that normally and routinely see 15 to 20 year sentences. Mr. Richards is grateful and appreciative for the treatment he and his clients has received from the Department of Justice and the District Attorney's Office in 2003 and hopes to continue to resolve cases when it is in the client's best interest to do so. Mr. Richards emphasizes a careful and thorough review of the facts of each case but also discourages unrealistic assessments of client cases and believes in earnest negotiation in lieu of wasting client and government resources on groundless and frivolous motions or risky trials. Mr. Richards has been able to obtain excellent settlements of cases in 2003 and will gladly share those results in a confidential setting. Mr. Richards has also continued to take pro bono or low fee matters where the facts of the case and income of the client warrants it and encourages other attorneys to do the same.