38 Facts About Ron Kuby

Ronald L Kuby was born on July 31,1956 and is an American criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, radio talk show host, and television commentator.

Ron Kuby has hosted radio programs on WABC in New York City and Air America radio.

Ron Kuby was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Ruth Miller, a secretary, and Donald Ron Kuby, a salesman.

Ron Kuby's mother was from a Jewish family and his father, who died in 1990, was a Franciscan friar who converted to Judaism and became a militant Zionist before becoming Christian again.

Ron Kuby's parents divorced when he was five years old, after which he lived with his mother and grandparents.

Ron Kuby returned to Cleveland and lived in a commune for the next several years.

Ron Kuby dropped out of college in 1974 and moved to St Croix, in the US Virgin Islands, where he worked on a tugboat and developed an interest in West Indian ethnobotany and medicinal plants.

Ron Kuby moved briefly to Maine, then to Kansas in 1975, where he completed his degrees in cultural anthropology and history at the University of Kansas.

Ron Kuby was a free-speech and anti-apartheid activist while at KU, where he graduated with highest distinction, had a 4.0 average, and conducted and published original fieldwork, including the 1979 "Folk medicine on St Croix: an ethnobotanical study", after returning to St Croix several times.

Ron Kuby alleged the University of Kansas police intentionally broke his arm when they responded to an anti-apartheid protest during a commencement ceremony.

Ron Kuby earned his Juris Doctor from Cornell Law School in 1983.

On January 23,2006, Ron Kuby married Marilyn Vasta, a psychotherapist and climate activist, on the 20th anniversary of their first date.

From 1983 until Kunstler's death in 1995, Ron Kuby worked as an unofficial partner in Kunstler's law firm, with both men taking up "the fight for the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden".

Kunstler and Ron Kuby never formalized a partnership with a contract or tax filings.

On this basis, Ron Kuby was denied ownership rights to the firm's case files, accounts, and name after Kunstler died, and Kunstler's widow, Margaret Ratner, put her late husband's archives under lock and key.

Ron Kuby filed a complaint against her with the attorney disciplinary committee; the committee dismissed the complaint in August 1996.

Ron Kuby secured a reversal of a murder conviction for a mentally ill homeless man whose candle accidentally caused the death of a firefighter.

Ron Kuby represented the appeal of Yusef Salaam, whose conviction in the 1989 Central Park jogger case was overturned in 2002, and who went on to be elected to the New York City Council.

In 2005, Kuby won close to a million dollars for another wrongfully convicted man who spent eight years in prison.

In 2006, Kuby was subpoenaed by the defense to testify at the second trial of John A Gotti, the son of Gambino crime family leader John Gotti, which included charges for the kidnapping and attempted murder of Curtis Sliwa, Kuby's talk radio co-host at the time.

Ron Kuby testified that in a 1998 conversation, Gotti said he had wanted to leave organized crime.

Ron Kuby said he was discussing organizing a team to defend Muse, suggesting he was invalidly captured while immunized by a flag of truce.

In September 2009, Ron Kuby appeared on behalf of Ahmad Wais Afzali, an imam facing multiple charges in a terrorism-related case.

Ron Kuby won Afzali's release on bail and negotiated a plea bargain to a reduced charge of lying to agents, with deportation in lieu of imprisonment.

In 2010, Ron Kuby defended Raphael Golb, the son of a biblical scholar.

Ron Kuby won the 2001 release for Anthony Faison and Charles Shepherd, who served close to 14 years for a murder they did not commit.

In 2008, Kuby exonerated Michael Clancy, an elevator mechanic wrongfully convicted of murder in the Bronx.

In 2013, Kuby took on the case of Johnny Hincapie, wrongfully convicted in the infamous Brian Watkins subway murder case.

In 2015, Ron Kuby secured the exoneration of Shabaka Shakur, who served 27 years of a 40 to life sentence for two murders that he did not commit.

Shakur began his case pro se in 2012, and Ron Kuby agreed to represent him pro bono later that year.

Ron Kuby had faced Scarcella in 1996 in the high-profile "Money Train" case.

Scarcella's testimony in that case led Ron Kuby to believe that the much-decorated detective perjured himself and suborned perjury through witness manipulation.

In May 2009 Air America moved Ron Kuby's show to a new time slot, which took him off of the schedule for many affiliates.

Ron Kuby was released from WABC in late May 2017 for budgetary reasons.

Ron Kuby is a frequent pundit and substitute anchor on Court TV and has appeared several times on the Discovery Channel program Oddities, offering legal advice.

Ron Kuby discussed how the media sometimes convicts criminal suspects in the court of public opinion.

Unlike defense lawyers who usually suppress specifics about their residence, family, and habits, Ron Kuby agreed in 2012 to be featured in the weekly New York Times "Sunday Routine" photo report on prominent or colorful New Yorkers.

Ron Kuby was featured in the 2019 podcast The Ballad of Billy Balls, which dealt with the murder of William Heitzman at the hands of the NYPD in June 1982.