Photo: Cara DeGette
Attorney Michael Dowling posed for this photograph in his Cherry Creek office.
By Cara DeGette, LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER – Attorney and legal blogger Jeralyn Merritt predicted that critiques over Arthur Folsom would not be similarly directed at Michael Dowling, the Denver lawyer who has joined the Folsom team to help defend Najibullah Zazi.
So far she is correct.
Unlike Folsom, Dowling has decades of criminal and federal experiences, though none defending suspected terrorists (which he notes is not exactly a specialty). Following Zazi’s hearing last Tuesday in New York, Dowling was mobbed by hundreds of TV and print hounds from around the globe.
Three days later in his Denver office on East 12th Avenue near Colorado Boulevard, the Bronx-born and raised lawyer cheerfully deemed the media circus as “My 15 minutes of fame.”
His friend Ron Zappolo, the Fox 31 anchor, had informally coached him on how to deal with media hounds, Dowling says. But his plan to approach the microphones after the hearing, deliver a prepared statement and walk away in control of the message got a bit sidetracked when he realized that he had nowhere to go but into the throng of journalists, which he estimated at 250.
“They were peppering me with questions, so I went back to the microphones and answered a few questions,” he said. “New York was so fun.”
Dowling was described by one New York Daily News columnist as a “gray-haired charmball” who had “signed on after Zazi’s Denver lawyer called for reinforcements.”
Dowling hasn’t practiced law in New York for 30 years. He had been practicing in Manhattan, discovered and fell in love with Telluride, and moved there in 1976, eventually making his way to the Mile High City. Over the years he has represented clients in “police blotter” type cases – but nothing close to as high profile as the Zazi case.
His client “comes across as a personable guy.” Dowling says, though he declines to discuss specifics about the case or any of its controversies. The legal team has applied for federal funding to defray what will likely be a costly defense he said.
