Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma
Principal attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma is a criminal defense lawyer in New York City. He has experience with criminal matters ranging from high-profile federal trials to simple prosecutions in New York City Criminal Court.
Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma has won significant criminal cases such as the 2014 release of Antonio Yarbough, who was imprisoned for nearly 22 years for a triple homicide he did not commit; the exoneration of Felipe Rodriguez in 2019; the first-ever successful appeal of a N.Y. Sex Offender Registration Act (Megan’s Law) redetermination hearing; and numerous acquittals, dismissals and reversals for clients accused of fraud, larceny, weapons possession, drug trafficking, child pornography, civil rights violations, terrorism, and other crimes.
After graduating from New York University School of Law, Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma worked as a law clerk in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. After that, he worked in the litigation department of the Manhattan office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a large corporate law firm. Starting in 2002, he practiced at the noted white-collar criminal defense boutique firm of Hafetz & Necheles, where he worked with trial attorneys Frederick P. Hafetz and Susan R. Necheles. Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma established his own practice in 2004.
Prior to law school, Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma worked for seven years as a journalist in New York City, New Orleans, California, Mexico and Guatemala. He has written on both legal and non-legal topics in publications such as Wired Magazine, the New York Times, and the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics (see Articles and Decisions). He worked as a reporter for three daily newspapers in New York and Mexico, including the New York Daily News. He attended college at Columbia University in the City of New York.
Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma provides legal services to indigent clients in federal cases as a member of the Criminal Justice Act (“CJA”) panels for both the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma regularly tries cases in the federal courts in New York. He represents doctors, lawyers, musicians, bankers, writers, artists, government officials and others accused of serious crimes.
Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma has defended people before juries in trials for bank fraud, health care fraud, drug trafficking, official misconduct, sex crimes, obstruction of justice, and other crimes. In 2007, Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma won a new trial for an attorney accused of insurance fraud, in a decision that established the principle that the government may not offer opinion testimony of a cooperating witness to prove the defendant’s state of mind. In one high-profile case, he helped persuade the Queens District Attorney to drop a weapons charge against a Northwest Airlines pilot accused of carrying a handgun onto his plane. Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma represented individuals involved in the Martha Stewart trial, the Adelphia investigation, the Enron prosecution, and other significant white-collar criminal cases. His trial victories include a gun possession case in Brooklyn (in which Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma’s client was shot from behind by the police), a subway sex abuse case in Manhattan, and a sex trafficking case in Southern District of New York.
Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma also has experience in civil rights litigation, criminal immigration issues, commercial litigation and criminal appeals. He handles carefully selected cases for victims of serious civil rights abuses, including excessive force by the police, false arrest and malicious prosecution. In 2003, Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma won an argument before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that the United States District Courts have habeas corpus jurisdiction to hear appeals from administrative findings under the Convention Against Torture. In 2007, he represented journalists Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins in connection with the disclosure of tapes leading to the exoneration of FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, who had been accused of murder. In 2009, he won a $1 million jury verdict for a former prisoner injured at Rikers Island. In 2012, after three years of unyielding litigation, he won an extraordinarily lenient sentence for a Malian man falsely accused of having ties to Al Qaeda. Prior outcomes do not guarantee future results.
Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma is fluent in Spanish and licensed as a notary public in the state of New York. He is a life member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, where he was named vice chair of the sentencing committee in 2015. He is a longtime active member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where he organized an annual training seminar for other lawyers on federal sentencing from 2005 through 2008 and a subcommittee of the Criminal Law Committee looking at the issue of false convictions in Brooklyn in 2014. He is a past member of the Criminal Advocacy Committee, the Professional Responsibility Committee and the Criminal Courts Committee. He is also a member of the New York State Defenders Association, the Federal Bar Council and the New York State Bar Association. Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma sits on the Joint Rules Committee of the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, led by U.S. Magistrate Judges Steven Gold and Andrew Peck. He has been named to the Super Lawyers New York Metro list every year since 2013.
Mr. Margulis-Ohnuma has more than 1,800 connections and numerous reviews and endorsements from colleagues and former clients on LinkedIn. Members of LinkedIn can review lengthy testimonials from clients detailing his work, which is distinguished by a strong sense of professionalism, attention to detail, relentless advocacy, courtesy to both clients and adversaries, and a deep understanding of the problems faced by those who are accused of crimes.
