Nina Marino, founding partner of white collar boutique Kaplan Marino PC, secured a full acquittal for engineering firm founder Dennis Mitsunaga in a 12-week jury trial in Hawaii, and ensured that charges were dismissed against a lawyer accused by the district attorney's office in Orange County, California, of running an illegal referral and kickbacks scheme before the case ever went to trial, earning her a spot as one of the 2024 Law360 White Collar MVPs. 

Her biggest accomplishment:
For Marino, the biggest through line of her time spent in Honolulu defending Mitsunaga amid what she said often felt like "insurmountable challenges" was "ohana," or family. The case — which alleged that Mitsunaga funneled $45,000 in contributions to former Honolulu prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro's election campaign in exchange for the prosecutor's office filing theft charges against one of Mitsunaga's former architects — involved six defendants in total, and their ability to present a unified front during the months long trial was key to the victory, Marino said. 

In addition to the prosecution's attempt to coerce the defendants to testify against one another, the government called over 40 witnesses to the stand, many of whom were close friends and family to the defendants. Although this might have been an attempt to sow discord, Marino said she was able to use it to her advantage.

"We took a considerable amount of time understanding our clients, their familial relationships, their life history, their friendships, and really developed a very strong working knowledge base such that, when the government started utilizing these people that had known each other for the better part of their lives against our clients, we had plenty of ammunition to neutralize the negative testimony that the government had elicited on cross-examination," she said. 

The cornerstone of Marino's closing argument was "love and fear," she said. Through crossexamination, Marino was able to demonstrate that any negative testimony coming from the government's witnesses was "the result of fear," she added. "There were no witnesses for which I took a harsh tone," she said. "Because of the history of the relationship, it was far more effective for me to befriend the witness and establish a rapport and a comfort level with that witness." Marino's familial approach extended beyond the witness stand. She said solidarity among both the defendants and their counsel was essential to the case, which also presented "a tremendous opportunity to bring everybody together to work as a cohesive team." "I like to think of myself as the kind of person that can bring people together," Marino said. "One thing I mandated during the trial was that we all got together for drinks after court on Thursday. It's the little things like that that create a team. You need the confidence to encourage people to embrace each other as much as they're embracing the work they're doing." Ultimately, she said, she made "friendships for life" with the local Hawaiian lawyers who worked on the case. And in May, when all the defendants were fully acquitted, it felt like a "tremendous victory." "It was one of the most, if not the most, exhilarating and rewarding experiences I have had in my legal career," she said. "I've had cases in dozens of districts throughout the country, and the Hawaiian culture lended a unique aspect to this case, because the Hawaiian culture is so inherently based on the concept of ohana, of family, and that is the concept that's easy for me to embrace."

Her biggest challenge: 
In the middle of the Honolulu trial, Marino faced a peculiar roadblock: Mitsunaga was arrested again. Prosecutors had produced a pair of witnesses who confirmed that Mitsunaga had violated two court orders — a "stay away" order barring him from contacting witnesses and another demand not to disseminate grand jury material. It was a "very challenging situation," Marino said. 

"I've never had that happen," she said. "It required that, midtrial, I brief and advocate in two detention hearings, all while the government was calling 41 witnesses [in the main trial]. There were nine closed-door hearings that I had to attend, many of which it was just my client and my team, with no other counsel on it. I handled it all." Cross-examining the witnesses, Marino said, she was able to beat back the prosecution's assertion that her client violated the court orders because he was guilty. "My client, an 80-year-old who had essentially spent the greater part of his life in Honolulu, the people that they had put on that no-contact list were really his inner circle, so he was rather isolated," she said. "I was able to establish on cross-examination that he violated those court orders out of love for a particular person and not for any nefarious reason; really quite the opposite. And it was effective."

Other notable cases she's worked on: 
Marino was also able to repel several charges against other clients before they ever went to trial this year. In one case, she represented a lawyer who had been charged in what she said was dubbed "the largest workers' comp fraud matter the Orange County District Attorney's Office had ever brought." "And I approached that case as I approach most cases, which is, 'Where are the problems with the case? Where does the government have weakness? And what can I, on the front end, get rid of? What can I carve out of the case?'" she said. Marino said she found problems in the way the government had charged the case, which concerned an alleged illegal referral and kickback scheme. It took more than six years of challenging the initial charging document in court and having the case dismissed and then recharged several times before she finally secured a dismissal with prejudice for the client in January of this year. 

She said she approached another case — representing a technology consultant for startups who was charged by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office with defrauding four executives — with the same skepticism. Her client was facing a 39-count felony complaint that would have mandated a prison sentence, but she filed a demurrer to the complaint, holding off one of the four alleged victims' claims. "And that really set the stage for us," she said. "Once we got rid of one, we had three left, we were able to establish that two of them weren't really victims at all, and that was through meticulous review of emails and respondents and everything available to us, which is a big part of what we do. We thoroughly review all available data in every case, which goes towards constructing a persuasive and compelling narrative." Once there was only one purported victim attached to the case, Marino said she and her client were able to prove that the victim had a "litigation interest separate from the criminal case." Once they resolved that underlying civil matter, the felony was reduced to a misdemeanor and dismissed simultaneously. 

Why she's a white-collar lawyer: 
When Marino started representing clients charged in "business crimes," there wasn't really a practice for "white collar" criminal defense, she said. But in getting to work on these cases within her criminal defense practice, she loved that with each matter, she "could learn about a new business in depth" and also familiarize herself with the client's personal history, particularly "how the life and business interact together and ultimately resulted in a criminal investigation or criminal filing." "Dialing that back and drilling down as to where everything started, I can usually figure out a way forward for the client," she said. "And I just think that there's so much more creativity for me in the white-collar practice than I had when I was doing more traditional criminal defenses. I believe that curiosity makes life exciting and learning makes life exciting, and that's why I love white collar defense. The challenges are so significant, and the stakes are so high, and the rewards are equally significant."

--As told to Rachel Rippetoe. Editing by Melissa Treolo. 

Law360's MVPs are attorneys who have distinguished themselves from their peers over the past year through high-stakes litigation, record-breaking deals and complex global matters. A team of Law360 editors selected the 2024 MVP winners after reviewing nearly 900 submissions