"It's pointless to have someone talk to the public where it looks like the lawyer's got a ventriloquist's dummy there," Ramsey said in a recent interview. "The guy's innocent. If the truth is told, there is no exposure."

Ramsey, 64, has built a career on straight talk and legal savvy, and has represented his share of big cases. Last year he helped cross-dressing New York millionaire Robert Durst win an acquittal for murder.

Dick DeGuerin, a lawyer who teamed up with Ramsey and partner Chip Lewis to defend Durst, said Ramsey has a way of getting through to juries. "He talks the way common folks think, and he can speak to jurors," DeGuerin said. "They like him."

The legal victory in the Durst case came despite what seemed like strong evidence and gruesome circumstances: Durst dismembered the victim, an elderly neighbor, and dumped the body parts in Galveston Bay. He said that the shooting death was an accident and that he panicked afterward. Durst remains jailed on charges of bond jumping and evidence tampering.

In another high-profile case, Ramsey is representing Robert Angleton, a former millionaire bookie in Houston who jumped bail on the eve of a June 2003 trial for allegedly ordering his socialite wife's killing in 1997. He fled to the Netherlands and is awaiting extradition. Ramsey and Lewis want off the case because they say they can't trust Angleton, but a federal judge has so far refused.

White-collar cases are much more common for Ramsey than murder cases, he says.

Three years ago, Ramsey and Houston attorney Kent Schaffer failed to persuade jurors to acquit a Canadian businessman accused of bribing a former Texas prisons chief to push through a lucrative contract to feed a meat substitute,VitaPro, to inmates and market it to other prison systems.

Schaffer said Ramsey "has as good instincts as any trial lawyer can possibly have."

Ramsey grew up in East Texas and graduated from Southern Methodist University Law School. He doesn't mince words — he's known to dismiss prosecutorial arguments as "just silly."

Among his mentors was Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, his boss after law school. Haynes gained national prominence for helping Texas industrialist T. Cullen Davis beat a murder charge nearly 30 years ago. Ramsey said Haynes taught him to be a trial lawyer first, a plea deal negotiator second.

"You're probably more likely to have a defense lawyer in Houston saying, 'Bring me a jury,' than elsewhere," Ramsey said. "We owe that probably to the legacy of Percy Foreman and Richard Haynes. They set the bar high."

Foreman, who died in 1988, represented James Earl Ray, the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Haynes says Ramsey's public relations strategy with Lay is smart.

"It's bold, but if you're innocent, and he's satisfied that Ken is, why not just come right out and let him have his day?" Haynes said. "The prosecution has an army of investigators and assistant U.S. attorneys and people with whom they've cut bargains with to give testimony to try to make a case."

At news conferences and in interviews, Lay has declared himself as the victim of skullduggery by underlings and of a prosecution that he says is motivated by politics.

Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor, called the tactic "highly unorthodox" as it tips prosecutors to Lay's defense strategy. It also increases pressure for Lay to testify at trial.

While presenting himself as someone with nothing to hide, Lay has attacked the character of former finance chief Andrew Fastow, a key government witness. Fastow pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy for masterminding schemes to prop up Enron's wobbly finances while pocketing millions on the side.