Robert J. DeCurtins

Robert DeCurtins has lived in Charlotte since 1984 where he and his wife have raised their three children and he began his legal career.  Over the past 25 years he has successfully represented many thousands of clients in state criminal court in Charlotte, Mecklenburg County and nearby counties.  He enjoys his relationships with his clients, past and present, and looks forward to getting to know his future clients.

Robert was born in Miami Beach, Florida on March 20, 1954, and grew up in Dayton, Ohio .  He attended college at Eastern Kentucky University where he graduated in 1976 with a Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice and a minor in Psychology.

His first job out of college was with Montgomery Ward as a security director for a new location.  Responsibilities included hiring and training a staff of store detectives to apprehend shoplifters and all internal investigations of employee theft and embezzlement.

While working in that capacity Robert was introduced to the field of polygraph (or lie detector) and later graduated from the Lincoln Zonn Institute of Polygraph in Miami, Florida where he graduated 2nd in his class, which consisted mostly of police officers from around the country.  He was hired by the Zonn Security Corporation upon graduation and trained in New York city for a period of time under a nationally renowned polygraph examiner and interrogator who had conducted polygraph testing on witnesses surrounding the President Kennedy assassination.

Eventually, Robert accepted a position in Dayton, Ohio with Takkon Polygraph Firm which was owned and operated by Dayton Police Department homicide investigators and was the largest private firm in the Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana area.  While there he testified in criminal court as a polygraph expert.  Robert believes his polygraph and interrogation experience has been invaluable in his career as a criminal defense lawyer, having personally conducted approximately 8,000 polygraph examinations.  He also was eventually granted a state license to administer polygraphs in North Carolina .  Robert is possibly the only lawyer in North Carolina to have held such a license.

With an educational and job background in the criminal justice area, Robert began law school at the University of Dayton School of Law in 1980, obtaining his law degree in 1983.  Mr. DeCurtins then moved his family to Charlotte, North Carolina and began his legal career as an Assistant Public Defender.  In 1985 he left that office and went into private law practice.  At that time, Mr. DeCurtins helped prosecute child support arrearage cases in Charlotte .  In addition, he also represented the City’s interest in front of the Civil Service Board where his job was to have the board uphold punishments, i.e. suspensions or termination, handed down by the Charlotte Police Department for officer misconduct.

Throughout his career Robert has probably defended clients charged with almost every type or category of criminal case in North Carolina .  Of his most memorable cases to date were two separate instances where he defended Charlotte teachers who were accused of having sex with a student.  In one of the cases his client was a male teacher and in the other a female teacher.  The case involving the female teacher generated significant media interest on a national level because of the rarity of a female teacher being charged and several television shows, i.e. 20/20, sought interviews and or appearances.

Mr. DeCurtins also represented a NFL Carolina Panthers player during the Rae Carruth murder investigation and prosecution in Charlotte, North Carolina .  At that trial, approximately one year after the investigation started, both Robert and his client were called to testify.

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