Richard A. Portale

Previous Experience

Mr. Portale started his legal career as an Assistant District Attorney for the Honorable Jeanine Pirro at the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office. During his tenure, he rose through the ranks from Motions and Appeals to the Bureau of Investigations, where he prosecuted Narcotics, Firearms, and Gangs.

Following his time as a prosecutor, Mr. Portale transferred the skills he had honed into criminal defense work, spending the next twelve years building a reputation for being aggressive and calculated in the courtroom, helping lessen defendants' exposure to the criminal justice system.

Education & Personal Life

Mr. Portale attended the University of Buffalo as an undergraduate and soon after earned his Juris Doctorate from the John Marshall School of Law. He is originally from Buffalo, NY.

When not fighting for justice in the courtroom, Mr. Portale enjoys hiking, snowboarding, rugby, and spending time with his family.

High Profile Cases

Mr. Portale has been involved in numerous high-profile cases.

• Very recently, in a case that garnered international media coverage, the People of the State of New York v. Angelika Graswald, Mr. Portale and his team masterfully crafted a defense after police claimed his Latvian client admitted she had murdered her fiancé in a kayak on the Hudson River in April, 2015. Undeterred by the murder charge and the evidence against his client, who faced a possible sentence of 25 years to life, Mr. Portale and his team worked tirelessly for over two years and were eventually able to overcome both Murder and Manslaughter, leveraging a plea to Criminal Negligence that allowed Ms. Graswald to be released in December, 2017.
• Mr. Portale was co-counsel for Bill Clinton’s neighbor, Carlos Perez-Olivo (a criminal defense lawyer himself) who was charged with Second Degree Murder in 2008. At the trial, Mr. Portale was responsible for all the forensic evidence, in which he provided scientific proof that Mr. Olivo could not have been the one to shoot his wife.
• In 2009, Mr. Portale was a member of the defense team of former NFL linebacker Eric Naposki, who was arrested and charged with first degree murder in Newport Beach, California.
• In 2010, Mr. Portale was lead counsel for Westchester Police Officer James Pileggi on charges of Reckless Manslaughter for shooting and killing a friend in his car at point blank range – with his own off duty firearm. That trial resulted in a hung jury.
• Immediately following the Pileggi trial, Mr. Portale defended Terry Carver, a longshoreman accused of breaking a screen, climbing in the window of his girlfriend’s apartment and stabbing her lover nine times in the chest and torso. Mr. Carver was acquitted in six hours.

In 2017, he and his partner James A. Randazzo founded the firm Portale Randazzo LLP, which concentrates on both criminal and civil defense.

Interviews

Mr. Portale has been interviewed and/or has contributed as a guest commentator on many news platforms, such as, Fox News, Justice with Jeanine Pirro, Dateline NBC, 20/20, CBS News 48 Hours, Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New York Post, Washington Post, and People Magazine.