Kevin Herrick Wrongful Conviction, Kevin is Next

Ed Leinster was retained to represent Kevin as his defense attorney in the criminal jury trial case. He failed to conduct a pre-trial investigation, review the evidence, perform witness interviews, and obtain key alibi witness depositions.  He took no action to discover who owned the vehicle that Scott Barfield reported the perpetrator used to flee the scene. He did not discuss defense strategy, nor did he get details for Kevin’s side of the story. In fact, he only had one brief meeting with Kevin before the trial.

In 1996, Patrick Doherty, a prominent criminal defense expert, issued his report which states that from his review of the records, “Kevin’s attorney was absolutely unprepared for this case”.  Mr. Doherty further explained that in his expert opinion “this was one of the flakiest cases” he has ever encountered. Doherty states that while Lienster is talented and not bad on his feet, “he just didn’t do the groundwork that he needed to do” and “was seeing things for the very first time, right there and then in front of the jury and that should never ever happen”.

Mr. Lienster also failed to properly file the appellate motion for new trial which essentially denied Kevin from obtaining constitutional due process.

Ed Lienster had problems of his own. He was arrested numerous times. He was suspended from practicing law multiple times by the Florida Bar Association due to his drug and alcohol addiction and ultimately had his license to practice law revoked in January 2000 at which time he was sentenced to five (5) years in prison after his 7th DUI conviction.  

Leinster tells his story of alcohol’s insidious grip on his life with a frankness and perspective that comes from having a lot of time to think, sitting in a prison cell. He hopes his “riches to rags story” can serve as a wake-up call to others. 

Speeding 100 mph in a Cadillac, he got popped for his first DUI in 1979. “I was completely smashed,” but the arrest, he admits, “didn’t really catch my attention one way or another.”

By the early ’80s, Leinster was snorting cocaine, “the in-thing at the time,” a casual sideshow to the main act of drinking. It cost him an arrest for holding a $10 vial of cocaine — fallout, Leinster insists, from being set up by police who didn’t like his “massage parlor clients.” In 1985, the state agreed to spare him a felony record for possession of cocaine and resisting arrest without violence and battery, the Bar suspended him for 91 days, and he agreed to go to an alcohol rehabilitation center. “I went through all the mea culpas,” he says. Then he went back to drinking.

Another DUI landed him two months in the Orange County Jail, enduring the humiliation once reserved for his clients: mug shot, fingerprints, orange jumpsuit, huddled in a cramped cell. It took him a year to get reinstated at the Bar. 

When he got another DUI in 1995, the Bar was back in his life, with a 21-day suspension, two years probation, and help to quit drinking. More psychological evaluations and rehab centers. 

The grand finale hit in 1998 when he ran a red light and hit a woman broadside. Connie Vernon, visiting Orlando with her teenage daughter from Alabama for a softball tournament. She was unconscious for days, suffered facial injuries and brain damage, and was hospitalized for weeks. Within four days, he was arrested in Vegas and flown to Orlando, where he pleaded no contest to DUI with great bodily injury, and was sent to prison for five years, followed by five years probation. The victim recovered, and Leinster has paid thousands toward the court-ordered $135,000 restitution.  

For many years, Ed found a way to practice while addicted. Don’t know how he did it. Actually, he was arrested 20 times. The interesting thing was, his performance in court did not seem to suffer as a result of his alcohol problems. In other words, he was so good that he could win a case drunk. A circuit court judge here in Orange County was questioned about Ed’s sobriety while in the courtroom, yet she shrugged off these concerns, explaining that “a drunk Ed Leinster is a better attorney than most of the sober attorneys that appear in my courtroom.” Yes, he was that good. Imagine that. A judge knows you’re drunk but you’re just so damn good that no claim of “impairment” will bear out of the transcripts.