Sam Perroni Is 'Man to See When FBI Comes Calling'.

LAST SUMMER, TWO CHINESE women wilted under Sam Perroni's cross-examination and admitted that some of their accusations in businessman David Jewell Jones' "sex slave" trial had been lies.

The jury deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial.

Perroni had tried the high-profile case shortly after having surgery to remove a tumor lodged next to his brain. He told Jones that he needed rest and couldn't go through another trial.

Without Perroni, Jones was retried last month and convicted.

Whether Perroni could have won an acquittal in the retrial will never be known, of course. But stranger things have happened. The walls of his law office at 801 W. Third St. in Little Rock are covered with framed "not guilty" verdicts from cases he's tried -- tangible evidence of the skills that have made Perroni one of the most sought-after trial attorneys in Arkansas.

"He is probably the preeminent white-collar criminal defense attorney in Arkansas," said Batesville personal injury attorney Phil Farris, who went to law school with Perroni.

"At trial he's also very tenacious and always acting in his client's best interest.... He's the man to see when the FBI comes calling."

Perroni takes both criminal and civil cases, but his practice at Perroni &James is primarily white-collar crime defense and business law. Clients have ranged from State Supreme Court Justice John I. Purtle to developer John W. "Jay" DeHaven, both of whom were acquitted.

Perroni declined to be quoted on his fee, saying he doesn't bill by the hour but charges a flat rate depending on the amount of time involved defending the case.

For their money, clients receive a 6-foot, 7-inch ferocious advocate, who will spend 10-12 hours a day preparing for battle in the courtroom.

"You've got to know your case better than the prosecutor," Perroni said. "You can't be successful unless you do ... That's why I think I've been successful, because I've put in the time preparing."

Perroni's bulldog attitude may endear him to clients but is not always appreciated by prosecutors. In the Jones case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Angela Jegley asked Judge George Howard to sanction Perroni for filing what she called a frivolous motion.

"The district court has, for good reason, denied a plethora of last-minute defense motions which have been interposed to delay and obstruct trial," Jegley said in her motion. "Now, the defendants have filed a flagrantly shameless and meritless motion for recusal ... The motion is not only intellectually dishonest, it is dishonest in fact."

Perroni was not sanctioned, but the motion itself was satisfying. "It lets me know I've struck a nerve," he said.

"The prosecutor that was filing those motions needs to grow up," Perroni said. "She and others like her think that, somehow or the other, it's OK to attack defense attorneys when defense attorneys are doing their job. They take it personally."

Washington County Prosecuting Attorney Terry Jones once called Perroni "a lying, low-life, miserable scumbag," according to a 1997 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article. Perroni's offense? He had asked a judge to recuse himself because he discussed a case with Terry Jones without Perroni being present, which is prohibited.

When contacted last week, Jones wouldn't comment on Perroni, but said the statement he made in 1997 was intended to be a joke.

Perroni said Jones' comments were unprofessional.

'Too Nice'

Those who know Perroni outside the courtroom describe a different man, one who is affable and decent.

Attorney Pat James, who joined Perroni's firm in December 1994, said, "He is one of those guys that really is too nice."

After learning that there was a need for a Ronald McDonald House in Little Rock so parents could afford to stay nearby while their children were in the hospital, Perroni decided to help establish one.

He formed a nonprofit organization called Parents and Friends of Children and started raising money. In 1980, the Ronald McDonald House opened a block and a half from Arkansas Children's Hospital and has since served more than 10,000 families.

On July 18, a groundbreaking will be held for another guest house for cancer patients and parents of premature babies near the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Perroni is still raising money for the project.

Perroni is passionate about the house because when he was young, his mother took his brother to Chicago's Children's Hospital for a week and had to travel on a bus to get to a friend's house where she was staying. But she got lost.

"She was afraid, and my brother was afraid," Perroni said. "It left a lasting impression with me."

Born July 19, 1948, in Colorado Springs, Colo., Perroni was the oldest of three boys.

His mother was a waitress and father was a maitre d'.

"My relationship with my father wasn't very good, really," he said. "It wasn't like we disliked each other. He just couldn't accept too much responsibility, so he was out of my life most of my life."

After his parents divorced when he was 10, Perroni was reared by his mother and rarely saw his father. To supplement her income, his mother applied for Aid to Dependent Children and sold Avon products.

"I have several memories of me and my two brothers going with my mother door-to-door where she would sell her customers Avon," he said.

When people asked Perroni what he wanted to be when he grew up, he told them he wanted to be a lawyer, but he doesn't know why.

"I didn't know any lawyers," he said. "There weren't any lawyers in my family, but I always wanted to be a lawyer."

Just before he started Normal Community High School in Normal, Ill., an older neighbor told him high school would go by faster than he thought and he should enjoy himself.

"Well, I took that man to heart, and I didn't study," he said.

Perroni played basketball and ran cross-country. He was class vice president and worked after school mowing lawns or busing tables.

It was in high school that he met his future wife, Pat. They have been married since 1969 and have two children, Beth, 24 and Brian, 26.

Land of Opportunity

After high school, he attended Illinois Wesleyan University and was looking forward to playing basketball for the school.

"Playing around in high school caught up with me in college," Perroni said. "I had to work so hard to keep a 'C' average to keep my grant and aid that I couldn't play basketball."

He graduated with a "B" average and applied to law school at the University of Illinois in 1970. He wasn't accepted.

"I had a lot of self-doubt," he said. "I was very depressed about it."

To make matters worse, the school didn't notify him that he wasn't accepted until it was too late to apply to other schools. Fortunately, he excelled at accounting and got a job working for a small corporation outside of St. Louis.

"I hated every day of that job," he said.

He hated it so much that he started applying to law schools all over the country -- including the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, which accepted him.

Perroni planned to attend UALR's law school for a year and then transfer back to the University of Illinois.

"I fell in love with Arkansas; so did my wife," he said. "When I moved to Arkansas, it was called 'The Land of Opportunity.' And for me and my wife that's exactly what it was."

One of his professors, William R. Wilson, now a federal judge, was a practicing attorney, and Perroni offered to do legal research for him.

Months later, Wilson called Perroni and said he had some work for him to do.

"In addition to doing legal research, I went to court with him a lot and watched him in a lot of cases," he said.

Perroni also did research for Henry Woods, now a Senior U.S. District Judge, and Jack Holt Jr., who was chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He went to court with them as well and watched them sway juries.

"[I] thought, this is what I want to do," he said.

"What really intrigued me, and what watching them helped me do, was see what trial skills are most effective in the courtroom," he said.

"It's not just talking; there's a lot of ingredients to be a persuasive trial lawyer."

One of them is timing, he said. "Trying a lawsuit and putting on a play are pretty close to being the same thing."

From Prosecutor to Defender

With his law degree in hand, Perroni went to the U.S. Attorney's Office and said he would work for free if he was allowed to work there as a law clerk while he studied for the bar exam.

U.S. Attorney W. H. "Sonny" Dillahunty gave Perroni a paying job. While studying for the bar, Perroni went to court with the attorneys and helped try cases.

"By the time I passed the bar examination, I had some really great experience at the U.S. Attorney's Office," he said.

After passing the bar, Dillahunty hired him as a deputy assistant attorney, which made him the first assistant U.S. attorney in Arkansas to be hired straight out of law school.

He started prosecuting moonshine cases and drug cases, and eventually he worked his way up to white-collar crimes, including income-tax evasion and bank fraud.

In 1979, Perroni left the U.S. Attorney's Office and started his own practice. Because of his experience prosecuting white-collar crimes, other attorneys referred clients to him.

But the case that solidified his reputation was that of state Supreme Court Judge John I. Purtle. Purtle was the only sitting state supreme court judge to be indicted for a crime, which was conspiracy to commit arson for profit in 1985.

Perroni and his old mentor, William Wilson, represented Purtle and won an acquittal.

"From that point forward I think I was recognized as somebody that had some skills in the area of white-collar crime work," Perroni said.

"I have always had the philosophy that whatever job you take on, you do it the very best that you can, and you be the very best that you can at it," he said. "My clients are entitled to a good representation. They're going up against a foe that has unlimited resources."

Perroni relaxes by going fishing or heading to the ocean to watch the waves.

He owns a house in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where he spends severalweeks a year, including last week.

He was forced to slow down after doctors found the benign tumor near his brain in April 2000. He is still recovering from the surgery.

"It has, by necessity, caused me to slow down on my work load. I just couldn't do it, but I'm making a comeback now," he said.

In his next big case, Perroni will undoubtedly make headlines by representing Independence County Prosecutor T.J. Hively, who faces racketeering, mail fraud, extortion and money laundering charges.

"I've got [Hively] scheduled for Jan. 22," Perroni said. "And I've got a couple of trials in between, and I'm going to be back to 100 percent pretty quickly."