Petaluma Criminal Defense Attorney
R. Scott Guite
Attorney at Law
Richard Scott Guite is the sole proprietor of the Law Offices of R. Scott Guite located in Petaluma, California. A native of North Carolina, he graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in History in 1983. He then served a stint in the U.S. Army, during which time he attended a number of special operations and leadership training courses including Airborne and Ranger Schools.
In the Fall of 1987 he entered law school at the University of Georgia. The following year he transferred to the University of San Francisco where he obtained his Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1990.
After law school, he went to work at the San Rafael law firm of Ragghianti, Lusse and Thomas–a general purpose civil litigation and criminal defense firm. He opened his own office in 1995, concentrating solely on criminal defense and related areas of law such as litigating license suspensions with the California Department of Motor Vehicles and defending temporary restraining orders. He has represented criminal defendants in most of the Northern California counties as well as the U.S. District Court in San Francisco; but the bulk of his practice is in the Bay Area counties of Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Solano, Lake, Contra Costa, San Francisco and Alameda.
In addition to private clients, Mr. Guite represented indigent clients in Marin County throughout the 1990s–initially through the county run indigent criminal defense panel and then through Alternative Defender’s Incorporated (“ADI”), a non-profit corporation which took over for the county. He later served on ADI’s Board of Directors.
In 2005, Mr. Guite moved his law office from San Rafael to Petaluma, where he currently lives with his wife and daughter.