Biography

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.

Education

• Undergraduate: Stanford
• Graduate: Georgetown

Biography

Education

• Graduate: Board Certified - Criminal Law, Texas Board of Legal Specialization
• Law School: South Texas College of Law, JD, 1994

Bar Information

• U.S District Courts; Texas: Southern, Western, Eastern; Michigan: Eastern District

Biography

Former Member Judicial Nominating Commission, Iowa District 3B, Former member Northern District of Iowa Judicial Magistrate Nominating Commission,  NACDL Board of Directors (2000-06) Former Chair, Criminal Law Section and Indigent Defense Subcommittee, Iowa State Bar Assn.Former Member, Iowa Sentencing CommissionFormer Co-Chair, NACDL Indigent Defense Committee

Education

• Undergraduate: University of Iowa, BA Economics, 1983
• Law School: University of Iowa College of Law, JD, 1986

Bar Information

• Iowa. No. and So. Dist. of IA, 8th Cir.

Biography

Education

• Undergraduate: University of Memphis, , 1986
• Law School: University of Memphis, , 1990

Bar Information

• 5th, 6th, 9th, 11th Cirs., US Dist. Cts., Middle and E. Dists. of TN, US Supreme Ct.