About Us
Toni M. Blake has served on the faculty of the Monterey Death Penalty College, the Defense Investigators Training Academy, and has spoken more than 50 times for private and public defender organizations and civil law groups.
Toni has served as a TV commentator for Court TV, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and numerous local TV and radio shows. Appearances include Nancy Grace, Kathleen Crier, and Wolf Blitzer.
Toni’s cases, research and verdicts have been featured on Dateline, 48 Hours, Forensic Files, ABC Prime Time, Larry King and in various other news magazines articles and programs.
Toni has done tactical consulting, selected the jury and advised counsel for some of the largest civil cases in the country. Clients include Alcatel-Lucent Technologies, Discover Card Services and British Petroleum. In 2007 Toni selected the jury in Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft over the MP3 patent. The case resulted in the largest patent law jury verdict in US history, $1.52 billion. Later that year she worked on the second Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft trial which resulted in a verdict of $367.4 million.
Toni has made television, radio and newspaper appearances discussing multiple high profile cases including the Westerfield trial (2002), the Kobe Bryant trial (2004), the Martha Stewart trial (2004), the Scott Peterson trial (2005), the Michael Jackson trial (2005), and many others.
Criminal Trials
Toni has served on the faculty of the Defense Investigators Training Academy, the Monterey Death Penalty college and has spoken more than 50 times for public defender organizations and civil law groups. Her work on false allegations of child abuse has been featured in Discover Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, American Bar Journal and on TV documentaries. She has also served as a technical advisor on criminal pathology for books and movies.
Extensive Criminal Trial Experience in:
- Capital Cases (more than 25 Death Penalty Trials)
- Battered Women Syndrome Cases
- Murder Trials (40+)
- “Shaken Baby Syndrome” Cases (500+)
- Sexually Violent Predator Cases (30+)
- Diminished Actuality
- Insanity Defense Cases
Some of our more notable criminal cases:
- Palillos jury deadlocks on death penalty – Kidnapping, murder trial has lasted more than a Year (San Diego Union Tribune, March 2014)
- How U.S. Became Stage for Mexican Drug Feud (New York Times, March 2009)
- DA Drops Execution Phase of Child Murder Case (The Coast News, July 2009)
- March With Us To Free The California Twelve! (CSWL.edu, March 2013)
- SDPD officer found not guilty in road-rage case (San Diego Union Tribune, June 2009)
- Jury hands down life sentence; another deadlocks (San Diego Union Tribune, March 2009)
- Jury rules out death penalty for man who killed girlfriend (San Diego Union Tribune, August 2008)
- Man hired by boss to kill fiancée gets life (San Diego Union Tribune, April 2004)
Civil Trials
Toni has been involved in cases resulting in million dollar awards for personal injury, medical malpractice, and patent law. Additionally she has consulted on cases involving sexual harassment and discrimination, wrongful termination as well as civil rights, contract, antitrust, and construction defect.
Some of our more notable civil cases:
- Microsoft hit with $1.5 billion patent verdict (CNET News, February 2007)
- Discover settles lawsuit against Visa, MasterCard (Update6) (Bloomberg, October 2008)
- Jury rules for Alcatel in Microsoft patent case (Reuters, April 2008)
- Las Vegas man awarded $1.8M for 57-inch wire left in body after surgery (Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 2019)