My name is Sidney Butcher, and I am honored to serve as chair of the Criminal Justice Section for the 2024-2025 bar year. I grew up as a lawyer in this section and have had the opportunity to learn from many wonderful and talented people. I will talk more about our plans and work for the upcoming year later, but I want to dedicate this column to a fantastic individual, former CJS Chair and Delegate, and a great leader for our section, Neal Sonnett. Neal was a tremendous representative of our Section, the American Bar Association, and the legal profession. He passed away on July 11, 2024.
For years, as a prosecutor, a defense lawyer, and a law professor, Neal embodied the aspirational best practices of the Criminal Justice Standards. Year after year, he demonstrated that he was one of our community’s treasures and among America’s finest and most respected lawyers devoted to protecting the Rule of Law and improving the criminal justice system. The length and breadth of his service to the ABA and CJS were extraordinary.
Neal was honored by the National Law Journal as one of the “Nation’s Top Litigators” and one of the “Nation’s Top White Collar Criminal Defense Lawyers.” He was again honored as one of the “Best Lawyers in America” for 2021, recognized among the best practicing attorneys in the nation for general White-Collar Criminal Defense. He is one of a small number of lawyers who have been included in every edition since the First Edition was published in 1983.
Despite his active trial practice, or more likely because of it, Neal devoted an enormous amount of his time to public service in professional, pro bono, civic, and charitable endeavors. He uniformly fought to preserve the Rule of Law, improve the criminal justice system, and protect the future of the adversary system. His contributions began shortly after his graduation from law school and continued throughout his life.
Neal began his legal career in 1967 as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and became Chief of the Criminal Division, one of the youngest chief federal prosecutors in the country at the time. When he left government service in May 1972, he was honored as the “Federal Employee of the Year” by more than 12,500 federal employees in South Florida.
Less than 60 days after he left government service and began his private practice, Neal assumed pro bono representation of the first boatload of Haitian refugees to arrive on our shores. For over four years, Neal spent thousands of hours representing hundreds of refugees in individual exclusion and asylum hearings, administrative appeals, and federal habeas corpus and class actions at the trial and appellate levels. Neal later created and organized the Dade County Bar Association’s Haitian Refugee Volunteer Lawyer Task Force, a model for what grew into a national program, and earned a special award from the ABA.
Neal’s extraordinary contributions to civil rights and equal protection through the Haitian Refugee Volunteer Lawyer Task Force were lauded by the late United States District Judge Eugene P. Spellman, who oversaw the Haitian refugee litigation. In his May 1, 1984, letter nominating Neal for an ABA Pro Bono Publico Award, Judge Spellman noted that:
Neal was the first lawyer to provide pro bono legal services to Haitian refugees almost twelve years ago. Between 1973 and 1977, Neal and his partner donated thousands of hours of legal work, serving as lead counsel in most of the Haitian litigation; he had continued to remain active in the legal campaign seeking equal treatment for Haitian refugees.
Judge Spellman wrote that it was “difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the number of volunteer hours that Neal Sonnett gave to the project in its first few months of infancy, but his total devotion to its success was a remarkable achievement.” Judge Spellman called Neal “the driving force behind these monumental efforts” and concluded:
I have watched closely as a local pro bono project grew into a national effort and became one of the most cherished public service programs I have ever seen. I know first-hand that Neal Sonnett’s leadership, dedication, and willingness to devote his time and efforts in service to others have been primarily, indeed almost exclusively, responsible for the ultimate success of this program.
During Neal’s tenure as President of the Dade County Bar Association in 1983-84, he continued to work to improve the Dade County community and its criminal justice system. When controversy flared over possible racial prejudice in jury selection and the use of peremptory challenges after the trial of a police officer accused of killing a black man, Neal organized and chaired a Community Task Force on Jury Selection, which made more than a dozen specific recommendations for improvement of the jury selection system, all of which were adopted as priority Criminal Justice programs by the Miami-Metro Action Plan, a coalition of government and community leaders which Dade County Ordinance had established.
Most of Neal’s efforts to improve the criminal justice system, protect the adversary system, guarantee the right to counsel, and promote the independence of the judiciary have been channeled through his work in bar associations at all levels. In addition to serving as President of the Dade County Bar Association, Neal served as President of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Florida Bar Foundation, the American Judicature Society, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In each organization, he worked tirelessly for the improvement of the criminal justice system, the preservation of the Bill of Rights, and the guarantee of the independence of the judiciary.
His meaningful contributions during his more than 40 years as an active ABA member included serving as the Chair of the Criminal Justice Section and the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section (now known as the ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice). He was also a member of the ABA House of Delegates for more than 30 years.
As a Delegate from the ABA Criminal Justice Section for 25 of those 30 years, Neal deservedly became one of the ABA’s most respected voices on criminal justice and Rule of Law issues. He was instrumental in the ABA’s adoption of a wide variety of important criminal justice policies and positions.
In all these positions and others, Neal fought for civil rights, due process, equal protection, and criminal justice system improvement. He was consulted on and active in almost every major criminal justice initiative in the ABA for over two decades. He was a member of the ABA Presidential Task Force on Attorney-Client Privilege and served on the ABA Task Force on Gatekeeper Regulation in the Legal Profession. He served in a leadership capacity with the “Justice Kennedy Commission” to study reforms in the criminal justice system. He became a liaison to its successor, the Commission for Effective Criminal Sanctions. He was instrumental in furthering the work of the ABA Task Force on Reform of Federal Sentencing for Economic Crimes and the ABA Cybersecurity Legal Task Force.
Neal is recognized as one of the country’s leading advocates and spokespersons on post-9/11 civil, constitutional, and human rights issues. His service as Chair of the ABA Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants, the ABA Task Force on Domestic Surveillance in the Fight Against Terrorism, and the ABA Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine led to widely accepted reforms geared to protecting national security while advancing the constitutional protections of the public.
Neal provided noteworthy guidance as the ABA’s Observer for the Military Commission trials in Guantanamo. He also wrote and spoke extensively on terrorism and Rule of Law issues. The ABA Journal E-Report described him as “the ABA’s go-to person . . . to help the bar navigate weighty legal policies involving war powers, executive authority, and civil rights.”
In recent years, Neal’s extraordinary contributions to equal justice, civil rights, and due process were recognized with significant honors. In 2007, the University of Miami School of Law presented Neal with its Alumnus of Distinction Award. In 2008, Neal was honored with the John H. Pickering Award of Achievement by the ABA Senior Lawyers Division, a testament to his exceptional service and commitment to the legal field. In June 2015, he received a special Presidential Citation from the ABA for “his longstanding advocacy and representation of the ABA on criminal justice, national security, and civil rights issues; for his public interest service and leadership in ABA affiliated organizations; and his enduring service as a member of the ABA House of Delegates.” In April 2016, he received the ABA’s prestigious “Grassroots Advocacy Award” for “his Demonstrated Commitment to Equal Justice for All.” In 2020, he was the inaugural recipient of the CJS Albert Krieger Champion of Liberty Award, given to lawyers who have devoted a substantial portion of their legal careers to public or private criminal defense practice, who have distinguished themselves as criminal trial lawyers, embodied the principles enunciated in the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice, Defense Function, and made substantial contributions to improvement of the criminal justice system through the organized bar or non-governmental entities.
It is a truism that Neal was widely recognized at the state and national levels for his enormous and unparalleled contributions to improving the criminal justice system, the independence of the judiciary, and the rule of law. His contributions favorably impacted the criminal justice system throughout the United States, the American Bar Association, and the Criminal Justice Section.
