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One thing's for sure about John Henry Browne.

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John Henry Browne

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Humble he's not.

He's the Seattle lawyer defending former state Rep. Vic Kohring on federal corruption charges, and he is on a roll.

"If you can find an attorney with a better record, hire them," says a half-page ad that Browne took out in the October issue of the Washington state Bar News. There's a brooding portrait of Browne and mentions of his high ratings in a lawyer directory.

Down in Washington state, by his reckoning, he's won five criminal cases at trial since September 2006. A teenager accused of murder: not guilty. A foster father charged with child rape: not guilty. A teacher accused of messing around with kids: case dismissed by the judge after the state put on its evidence.

Now he's trying to keep Kohring out of prison, and he's up against two federal prosecutors on a team that's 2-0 against public corruption in Alaska. Kohring is accused of conspiring with two former Veco Corp. executives to push their favored version of a new oil tax in the 2006 legislative session.

What prosecutors call bribes, Browne calls gifts from friends.

WELL-KNOWN IN WASHINGTON STATE

Joe Bottini, an assistant U.S. attorney based in Anchorage, and Edward Sullivan, with the U.S. Justice Department's Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C., are in the midst of putting on their case and didn't want to talk about themselves. They were reluctant to have their pictures made. And they certainly didn't want to talk about Browne.

In Courtroom 3, where Kohring is being tried, Browne is theatrical, funny, at ease behind the podium where lawyers ask their questions. During breaks, he pops outside for a Camel Light.

He's 61 years old, 6 foot 6 and trim, tan with highlights in his hair. He wears what look like expensive Italian suits, charcoal gray with a silver tie, a light one with a pale pink shirt. They're not so expensive, he says. He shops at the Men's Wearhouse.

"He's probably the most well-known criminal defense lawyer in the state," said Steve Berman, himself a nationally known plaintiff's lawyer based in Seattle whose cases include the tobacco class-action litigation.

Browne's reputation in court is "rather flamboyant, but effective," said Berman. "When you're a trial lawyer, you want to command the courtroom. John Henry commands the courtroom."

And, Berman said, he's irreverent and "not afraid to take on judges if he has to."

While Browne is rated as a "most pre-eminent lawyer" by the established Martindale-Hubbell peer review service, a new Web directory, Avvo, gave him low marks. Berman now is challenging Avvo with Browne and another lawyer as his lead plaintiffs.

"I was rated below dead and disbarred lawyers, which I thought was funny," Browne said.

'HE GENERALLY DELIVERS'

So how did a state legislator from Wasilla who lived in a trailer and slept on the couch in his Juneau legislative office hook up with a lawyer like Browne? Kohring, a Republican who resigned his House seat in July, said he was referred to him by his legislative aide.

Kohring said he cashed in his state retirement account, sold his little ranch house in Wasilla and is getting help from friends and family. He wouldn't say what his defense has cost him, other than it's in the "six figures."

At any rate, "it's paid," Browne said.

In a hearing less than a week before Kohring's trial started, prosecutors complained that Browne was taking his case to the media and making outrageous claims in court filings that he couldn't back up. U.S. District Judge John Sedwick called Browne's tactics unusual and worrisome.

Browne shot back that he was concerned about all the publicity given to the prosecution's side and even by something the judge said two days earlier in sentencing another legislator that he took to mean "this kind of corruption is going to stop here."

Sedwick, who is presiding over all the corruption cases so far, assured Browne that Kohring is presumed innocent in his court. The judge said he thought the news coverage had been fair but also warned Browne to watch himself.

In a 1998 profile that ran in the Seattle Times' Sunday Magazine, the writer said Browne was "as known for his style -- a blend of charm and arrogance, spirituality and bravado -- as for the results he generally delivers."

So far in Kohring's trial, Browne has forced prosecutors to call as witnesses FBI agents from all over the country in order to authenticate, one by one, the secretly made recordings involving Kohring before they could play them for jurors. He could have agreed to let one FBI agent talk about all the recordings.

"I am not going to sit there like some lapdog and help the government put my guy in jail," Browne said a couple of weeks before the trial.

In the end, the tactic showed jurors the size of the government's efforts in the corruption investigation, with agents from Atlanta; Chicago; Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; Miami; Anchorage and a retired agent from New York City rotating in and out of the witness stand.

The prosecution's main witness, former Veco chief executive Bill Allen, is 70 years old and struggles on the stand to come up with the right word or name as a result of a head injury he suffered in a motorcycle wreck. Browne alerted prosecutors that he was going to object if they tried to help Allen with leading questions. But on Friday, as Allen faltered time and again, Browne eased up.

ROCK-AND-ROLLER

Browne was born in Tennessee. The family moved around a lot. His father was a nuclear engineer for the Atomic Energy Commission. They ended up in Palo Alto, Calif.

He went to the University of Colorado in the '60s, studied philosophy and political science. He played bass in a rock band that he says opened for all the big names that came to town, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix among them.

During law school at American University in Washington, D.C., he worked as a gofer and then an associate producer on the old ABC television news program "Issues and Answers."

"Within a year of being this rock and roll person, I now had White House press credentials," Browne said.

He says the guest who most impressed him was former Alaska Gov. Wally Hickel. Hickel, as interior secretary in the Nixon administration, was getting worldwide attention after publicly criticizing the administration's handling of the Vietnam War. He later was forced out.

Browne has been married a number of times. Just how many, he didn't want to say: "It's an embarrassing number." He said he's a slow learner but is now happily married.

As a defense lawyer, he's had his share of infamous clients. He represented serial killer Ted Bundy, who was suspected of murders in Washington state and was later executed in Florida. Browne said he helped negotiate a plea deal in Florida to spare Bundy's life, but when the killer rejected it, Browne quit the case. He saved from the death penalty mass murderer Benjamin Ng, a shooter in a 1983 massacre that killed 13 in a Seattle gambling house.

In the Wenatchee child sex ring case, his successful defense of a housekeeper was credited by others with changing the tenor of an investigation since discredited as a witch hunt.

The toughest cases, he says, are when he really believes his client is innocent. If he loses then, it hits hard. "I'd much rather represent someone I think is guilty."

Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.

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