Showing posts with label Unethical lawyers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unethical lawyers. Show all posts
Monday, April 30, 2012
Probe of Dewey & LeBoeuf Focuses Largely on Law Firm's Chairman
Woes at Law Firm Deepen
Probe of Dewey & LeBoeuf Focuses Largely on Law Firm's Chairman, According to Internal Memo
BY JENNIFER SMITH, ASHBY JONES AND STEVE EDER
Wall Street Journal
April 27, 2012
One of New York's largest law firms, already engulfed in a financial crisis that threatens its survival, is being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney's office.
The firm, Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP, has been wrestling with the effects of big guaranteed pay packages that were handed out to top lawyers even as corporate clients were pushing back on legal fees. Those two factors, along with heavy debt and a wave of departures by partners, are dragging down Dewey, formed four years ago by merging two storied law firms.
The district attorney's investigation is focusing on former Chairman Steven Davis...
Thursday, April 12, 2012
System Must Weed Out Unethical Lawyers Who Damage Profession's Reputation
Attorney Discipline: System Must Weed Out Unethical Lawyers Who Damage Profession's Reputation
Los Angeles Daily Journal
December 16, 2002
By James C. Turner and Suzanne M. Mishkin
This fall, HALT - An Organization of Americans for Legal Reform released its 2002 Lawyer Discipline Report Card, the first comprehensive evaluation of the nation's attorney discipline system in ten years. The Report Card points to persistent problems that have gone largely unremedied for over a quarter of a century.
In 1970, a blue ribbon panel led by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark conducted a groundbreaking review of the attorney discipline system, and found a "scandalous situation" that required "the immediate attention of the profession."
The Clark Committee itemized 36 defects in the disciplinary system, in particular, criticizing the practices of most disciplinary agencies, which "deliberately discourage any publication of information concerning their activities, believing that the public image of the profession is damaged by a disclosure that attorney misconduct exists."
In addition, this review found that a panel of lawyers, rather than judges or lay persons, controlled the disciplinary system, creating an institutional bias that grossly undermines the effectiveness of the entire disciplinary system.
Twenty-two years later, an American Bar Association commission, chaired by Dean Robert McKay of the New York University Law School, found that the public has a "growing mistrust of secret, self-regulated lawyer discipline."
Like the Clark Committee before it, the McKay Commission concluded that the practice of allowing bar officials to control state disciplinary systems creates the appearance of a gross conflict of interest, "regardless of the actual fairness and impartiality of the system."
Summing up the situation in 1992, the Commission criticized the entire country's lawyer discipline system as "too slow, too secret, too soft and too self-regulated."
While there has been some modest progress since these scathing indictments, sadly it has not been nearly enough to fix a badly broken system.
Just last month, Stanford University Legal Ethics Professor Deborah L. Rhode stated, "Bar disciplinary procedures are anything but user-friendly to the consumer, and most are more responsive to the profession's interests than the public's."
Similarly, judges, legal scholars, practicing attorneys and bar officials, who convened the National Conference on Professionalism at the University of South Carolina School of Law, broadly agreed that the current system of lawyer discipline has lost the public's confidence, and urged the profession to lead the way in demanding meaningful reforms.
HALT's Report Card is our effort to bring the deficiencies of the attorney discipline system to the attention of the profession and the public. The Report Card assesses the performance of disciplinary systems in all 50 states and the District of Columbia on six key factors: (1) adequacy of discipline imposed; (2) publicity and responsiveness; (3) openness of the process; (4) fairness of disciplinary procedures; (5) public participation; and (6) promptness.
The results expose an appalling pattern of toothless sanctions, unnecessary secrecy, biased procedures and endless delays.
More than 114,000 complaints were filed against lawyers in 2000, the most recent year for which the American Bar Association provides data. In that same year, the rate of formal discipline was less than 3.5 percent, and the rate of disbarment was less than one percent.
In California, 93 percent of investigated cases led to absolutely no disciplinary action. And this is not surprising given that California bar rules provide that a lawyer will only be disciplined if misconduct is proven by "clear and convincing evidence," a far more demanding standard of proof than the "preponderance of the evidence" test that applies in other civil proceedings.
In state after state, we found that most complaints are not even investigated or are dismissed on technicalities, while only a handful lead to more than a slap on the wrist in the form of a private admonition or a closed-door reprimand. With this tiny trickle of discipline, is it any wonder that a recent Columbia Law School survey found less than one-third of Americans think lawyers are even "somewhat" honest?
In most states, attorney discipline proceedings are secret, non-public hearings where a panel of lawyers sits as both judge and jury. In many states, even the person who filed the complaint does not have a right to attend.
In California, there is not even token layperson representation in disciplinary decisions - instead, only lawyers decide if and when to impose sanctions upon their colleagues.
In every jurisdiction except Oregon and Arizona, disciplinary bodies refuse to release an attorney's full disciplinary history. Officials in California will only inform consumers of whether an attorney has been publicly disciplined; records of all complaints, formal charges and informal discipline are kept under seal.
Consumers in many jurisdictions are forced into silence by gag rules that threaten fines or jail for talking about the complaint or its outcome. Even those without gag rules frequently try to restrain speech, asking complainants to keep their grievances confidential.
Justice delayed may be justice denied, but it is par for the course in attorney discipline cases. Even the state that earned our highest grade (Massachusetts with a B minus) failed to act promptly on complaints - taking an average of 681 days to issue formal charges and well over two years to impose discipline.
In Washington State, it took one victim thirteen years to get an incompetent lawyer suspended. Many states, like California, do not even keep a record of how promptly they respond to grievances.
These are national problems; of the fifty-one jurisdictions we evaluated, thirty-nine earned a C- or lower; and twenty-one of these received Ds or lower (Pennsylvania and North Carolina flunked outright). California earned a mediocre C.
Part of the problem is that lawyer discipline bodies are asked to perform conflicting missions.
For example, the mission statement for the District of Columbia disciplinary body requires it to fulfill "a dual function: to protect the public and the courts from unethical conduct by members of the D.C. Bar and to protect members of the D.C. Bar" (emphasis supplied).
A lawyer discipline system serving two conflicting masters is bound to prove ineffective.
To correct the nationwide pattern of laxity, secrecy, bias and delay that characterize this broken system, we believe four fundamental reforms are needed.
* Lawyer discipline cases should be heard by publicly controlled disciplinary panels where non-lawyers have at least a majority voice. Independent medical boards in many states offer a superior model for ensuring accountability. These medical boards, which are appointed by governors and state legislatures, rely on physicians to help them understand technical issues, but the doctors stay out of the decision-making process. Lawyers should, too.
* The discipline system must come out into the open. Private reprimands should be replaced with meaningful public discipline. Hearings should be open to the public. And complaints against lawyers and sanctions should be a matter of public record, available to every citizen.
* Disciplinary policies should more closely approximate the rules governing the civil justice system. Gag rules should be abolished. If the preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that an attorney has violated the rules of professional conduct, the attorney should be sanctioned.
* The glacial pace of attorney discipline must come to an end. Imposing real deadlines - requiring a preliminary disciplinary hearing within ninety days, for example - would be a giant step toward jettisoning bureaucratic red tape and creating a system that actually brings justice to victims of misconduct.
By adopting these simple reforms, we can replace a system that is an abject failure with one that actually protects consumers and begins to restore public confidence in the legal profession.
After thirty years of ignored calls for reform, responsible lawyers who have a real commitment to professional responsibility need to mobilize and demand action to fix the attorney discipline mess.
All who practice law have a shared interest in creating a system that investigates promptly, deliberates openly, and weeds-out unethical or incompetent attorneys who damage the profession's reputation.
By addressing long-recognized failures in the current disciplinary system, we have an opportunity to create a structure that engenders consumer trust and respect, rather than alienation and resentment. After three decades of marginal reform, can we do less?
-------------
* James C. Turner is Executive Director and Suzanne M. Mishkin is Associate Counsel of HALT, Inc. - An Organization of Americans for Legal Reform.
Los Angeles Daily Journal
December 16, 2002
By James C. Turner and Suzanne M. Mishkin
This fall, HALT - An Organization of Americans for Legal Reform released its 2002 Lawyer Discipline Report Card, the first comprehensive evaluation of the nation's attorney discipline system in ten years. The Report Card points to persistent problems that have gone largely unremedied for over a quarter of a century.
In 1970, a blue ribbon panel led by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark conducted a groundbreaking review of the attorney discipline system, and found a "scandalous situation" that required "the immediate attention of the profession."
The Clark Committee itemized 36 defects in the disciplinary system, in particular, criticizing the practices of most disciplinary agencies, which "deliberately discourage any publication of information concerning their activities, believing that the public image of the profession is damaged by a disclosure that attorney misconduct exists."
In addition, this review found that a panel of lawyers, rather than judges or lay persons, controlled the disciplinary system, creating an institutional bias that grossly undermines the effectiveness of the entire disciplinary system.
Twenty-two years later, an American Bar Association commission, chaired by Dean Robert McKay of the New York University Law School, found that the public has a "growing mistrust of secret, self-regulated lawyer discipline."
Like the Clark Committee before it, the McKay Commission concluded that the practice of allowing bar officials to control state disciplinary systems creates the appearance of a gross conflict of interest, "regardless of the actual fairness and impartiality of the system."
Summing up the situation in 1992, the Commission criticized the entire country's lawyer discipline system as "too slow, too secret, too soft and too self-regulated."
While there has been some modest progress since these scathing indictments, sadly it has not been nearly enough to fix a badly broken system.
Just last month, Stanford University Legal Ethics Professor Deborah L. Rhode stated, "Bar disciplinary procedures are anything but user-friendly to the consumer, and most are more responsive to the profession's interests than the public's."
Similarly, judges, legal scholars, practicing attorneys and bar officials, who convened the National Conference on Professionalism at the University of South Carolina School of Law, broadly agreed that the current system of lawyer discipline has lost the public's confidence, and urged the profession to lead the way in demanding meaningful reforms.
HALT's Report Card is our effort to bring the deficiencies of the attorney discipline system to the attention of the profession and the public. The Report Card assesses the performance of disciplinary systems in all 50 states and the District of Columbia on six key factors: (1) adequacy of discipline imposed; (2) publicity and responsiveness; (3) openness of the process; (4) fairness of disciplinary procedures; (5) public participation; and (6) promptness.
The results expose an appalling pattern of toothless sanctions, unnecessary secrecy, biased procedures and endless delays.
More than 114,000 complaints were filed against lawyers in 2000, the most recent year for which the American Bar Association provides data. In that same year, the rate of formal discipline was less than 3.5 percent, and the rate of disbarment was less than one percent.
In California, 93 percent of investigated cases led to absolutely no disciplinary action. And this is not surprising given that California bar rules provide that a lawyer will only be disciplined if misconduct is proven by "clear and convincing evidence," a far more demanding standard of proof than the "preponderance of the evidence" test that applies in other civil proceedings.
In state after state, we found that most complaints are not even investigated or are dismissed on technicalities, while only a handful lead to more than a slap on the wrist in the form of a private admonition or a closed-door reprimand. With this tiny trickle of discipline, is it any wonder that a recent Columbia Law School survey found less than one-third of Americans think lawyers are even "somewhat" honest?
In most states, attorney discipline proceedings are secret, non-public hearings where a panel of lawyers sits as both judge and jury. In many states, even the person who filed the complaint does not have a right to attend.
In California, there is not even token layperson representation in disciplinary decisions - instead, only lawyers decide if and when to impose sanctions upon their colleagues.
In every jurisdiction except Oregon and Arizona, disciplinary bodies refuse to release an attorney's full disciplinary history. Officials in California will only inform consumers of whether an attorney has been publicly disciplined; records of all complaints, formal charges and informal discipline are kept under seal.
Consumers in many jurisdictions are forced into silence by gag rules that threaten fines or jail for talking about the complaint or its outcome. Even those without gag rules frequently try to restrain speech, asking complainants to keep their grievances confidential.
Justice delayed may be justice denied, but it is par for the course in attorney discipline cases. Even the state that earned our highest grade (Massachusetts with a B minus) failed to act promptly on complaints - taking an average of 681 days to issue formal charges and well over two years to impose discipline.
In Washington State, it took one victim thirteen years to get an incompetent lawyer suspended. Many states, like California, do not even keep a record of how promptly they respond to grievances.
These are national problems; of the fifty-one jurisdictions we evaluated, thirty-nine earned a C- or lower; and twenty-one of these received Ds or lower (Pennsylvania and North Carolina flunked outright). California earned a mediocre C.
Part of the problem is that lawyer discipline bodies are asked to perform conflicting missions.
For example, the mission statement for the District of Columbia disciplinary body requires it to fulfill "a dual function: to protect the public and the courts from unethical conduct by members of the D.C. Bar and to protect members of the D.C. Bar" (emphasis supplied).
A lawyer discipline system serving two conflicting masters is bound to prove ineffective.
To correct the nationwide pattern of laxity, secrecy, bias and delay that characterize this broken system, we believe four fundamental reforms are needed.
* Lawyer discipline cases should be heard by publicly controlled disciplinary panels where non-lawyers have at least a majority voice. Independent medical boards in many states offer a superior model for ensuring accountability. These medical boards, which are appointed by governors and state legislatures, rely on physicians to help them understand technical issues, but the doctors stay out of the decision-making process. Lawyers should, too.
* The discipline system must come out into the open. Private reprimands should be replaced with meaningful public discipline. Hearings should be open to the public. And complaints against lawyers and sanctions should be a matter of public record, available to every citizen.
* Disciplinary policies should more closely approximate the rules governing the civil justice system. Gag rules should be abolished. If the preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that an attorney has violated the rules of professional conduct, the attorney should be sanctioned.
* The glacial pace of attorney discipline must come to an end. Imposing real deadlines - requiring a preliminary disciplinary hearing within ninety days, for example - would be a giant step toward jettisoning bureaucratic red tape and creating a system that actually brings justice to victims of misconduct.
By adopting these simple reforms, we can replace a system that is an abject failure with one that actually protects consumers and begins to restore public confidence in the legal profession.
After thirty years of ignored calls for reform, responsible lawyers who have a real commitment to professional responsibility need to mobilize and demand action to fix the attorney discipline mess.
All who practice law have a shared interest in creating a system that investigates promptly, deliberates openly, and weeds-out unethical or incompetent attorneys who damage the profession's reputation.
By addressing long-recognized failures in the current disciplinary system, we have an opportunity to create a structure that engenders consumer trust and respect, rather than alienation and resentment. After three decades of marginal reform, can we do less?
-------------
* James C. Turner is Executive Director and Suzanne M. Mishkin is Associate Counsel of HALT, Inc. - An Organization of Americans for Legal Reform.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
DC. lawyer charged in multimillion-dollar insider trading scheme
DC. lawyer charged in multimillion-dollar insider trading scheme
By David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post
April 6, 2011
By mid-March, as the government tells it, Matthew H. Kluger knew the FBI was closing in.
As a lawyer for three of the nation’s premier corporate law firms, most recently in the Washington office of Wilson Sonsini, he had allegedly stolen secrets that yielded tens of millions of dollars of insider trading profits. Now he was trying to eliminate the evidence.
Out went his computer, and his iPhone.
“Those are gone. I mean history,” he allegedly told a friend and co-conspirator.
But he was still worried.
“If they start looking at me and look at my bank records and all that other stuff . . . it could get ugly,” he said.
Sure enough. On Wednesday, the government dispatched any notion that law firms are always bastions of probity and discretion, charging that since the mid-1990s Kluger had tapped into his firms’ computer networks to extract and trade on confidential information about deals involving such blue-chip companies as Oracle, Intel and Hewlett-Packard.
Along with the financial crimes, he and a New York trader named Garrett D. Bauer are accused of engaging in a panicked cover-up that they discussed at length in telephone conversations with a third, unnamed conspirator, the alleged middleman.
In a March 17 phone call, according to a transcript of a recording, Kluger implored the middleman to get rid of a mobile phone that linked the two of them.
“I really would like to see this phone go bye-bye ASAP,” he said. “Do you want this to be our undoing?”
Worried that his fingerprints were on $175,000 in cash, Bauer allegedly urged the middleman to burn the money.
The middleman suggested that they launder the money instead — in a washing machine.
Kluger, 50, of Oakton, Va., and Bauer, 43, a New Yorker, were arrested Wednesday.
Kluger appeared in federal court in Alexandria and was being detained until a bail hearing Friday, said Rebekah Carmichael, a Justice Department spokeswoman. Bauer was being held in Newark.
An attorney for Bauer said it was too early to say how Bauer would respond to the charges. William J. Davis of Scheichet & Davis described him as “quite a pleasant fellow, very nice, quite gentle,” adding that Bauer “is in a bit of a difficult situation right now.”
Government officials were unable to identify an attorney for Kluger, and no one returned a message left at his home.
The two face criminal prosecution by the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and civil charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
A spokeswoman for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the law firm where Kluger was until recently employed as a $290,000-a-year senior associate, said the firm was shocked to learn of the charges. The firm is giving its full support to the investigation, spokeswoman Courtney Dorman said in a statement.
The charges were the latest in a federal crackdown on insider trading that has nabbed hedge fund traders, management consultants, a former board member at Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs and, recently, a Food and Drug Administration chemist accused of trading on advance knowledge of drug approvals.
The new case alleges that secrets were pilfered from the high priesthood of corporate law firms, including the New York-based firms Cravath Swaine & Moore and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom...
By David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post
April 6, 2011
By mid-March, as the government tells it, Matthew H. Kluger knew the FBI was closing in.
As a lawyer for three of the nation’s premier corporate law firms, most recently in the Washington office of Wilson Sonsini, he had allegedly stolen secrets that yielded tens of millions of dollars of insider trading profits. Now he was trying to eliminate the evidence.
Out went his computer, and his iPhone.
“Those are gone. I mean history,” he allegedly told a friend and co-conspirator.
But he was still worried.
“If they start looking at me and look at my bank records and all that other stuff . . . it could get ugly,” he said.
Sure enough. On Wednesday, the government dispatched any notion that law firms are always bastions of probity and discretion, charging that since the mid-1990s Kluger had tapped into his firms’ computer networks to extract and trade on confidential information about deals involving such blue-chip companies as Oracle, Intel and Hewlett-Packard.
Along with the financial crimes, he and a New York trader named Garrett D. Bauer are accused of engaging in a panicked cover-up that they discussed at length in telephone conversations with a third, unnamed conspirator, the alleged middleman.
In a March 17 phone call, according to a transcript of a recording, Kluger implored the middleman to get rid of a mobile phone that linked the two of them.
“I really would like to see this phone go bye-bye ASAP,” he said. “Do you want this to be our undoing?”
Worried that his fingerprints were on $175,000 in cash, Bauer allegedly urged the middleman to burn the money.
The middleman suggested that they launder the money instead — in a washing machine.
Kluger, 50, of Oakton, Va., and Bauer, 43, a New Yorker, were arrested Wednesday.
Kluger appeared in federal court in Alexandria and was being detained until a bail hearing Friday, said Rebekah Carmichael, a Justice Department spokeswoman. Bauer was being held in Newark.
An attorney for Bauer said it was too early to say how Bauer would respond to the charges. William J. Davis of Scheichet & Davis described him as “quite a pleasant fellow, very nice, quite gentle,” adding that Bauer “is in a bit of a difficult situation right now.”
Government officials were unable to identify an attorney for Kluger, and no one returned a message left at his home.
The two face criminal prosecution by the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and civil charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
A spokeswoman for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the law firm where Kluger was until recently employed as a $290,000-a-year senior associate, said the firm was shocked to learn of the charges. The firm is giving its full support to the investigation, spokeswoman Courtney Dorman said in a statement.
The charges were the latest in a federal crackdown on insider trading that has nabbed hedge fund traders, management consultants, a former board member at Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs and, recently, a Food and Drug Administration chemist accused of trading on advance knowledge of drug approvals.
The new case alleges that secrets were pilfered from the high priesthood of corporate law firms, including the New York-based firms Cravath Swaine & Moore and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom...
Friday, June 6, 2008
Legal opinions for sale; those who control San Diego schools pay millions of tax dollars for them
At last, someone with a high profile has spoken out about character and integrity among lawyers. I have done this, but the unethical lawyers at Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz that I have written about believe that they can intimidate me into silence.
San Diego County Office of Education has continued to cover up Daniel Shinoff and Stutz law firm's criminal actions on behalf of school district officials. SDCOE-JPA executive director Diane Crosier (above photo), not the board, controls the legal representation of SDCOE and most county schools.
Fortune Magazine has published a great article on the subject:
Fortune Magazine
May 30, 2008
Blowing the whistle on unethical lawyers
By Roger Parloff, senior editor
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/28/news/newsmakers/legal_opinions_for_sale.fortune/
"In August 2001, when in-house accountant Sherron Watkins warned Enron CEO Ken Lay that the company might "implode in a wave of accounting scandals," Lay asked the firm's regular law firm, Vinson & Elkins, to do a "preliminary investigation." Though V&E had worked on the very transactions Watkins was questioning, it took the assignment and reported back on Oct. 15 that there was no cause for concern. About a month and a half later Enron filed for bankruptcy, having, in fact, imploded in a wave of accounting scandals.
"When V&E was summoned before a congressional committee to account for the breathtaking shallowness of its probe, it produced a letter blessing its performance from one of the nation's most highly credentialed experts on legal ethics: Charles Wolfram of Cornell University Law School. Wolfram opined that it is "customary and appropriate" for a company to conduct a "preliminary investigation" before undertaking a "full-scale" one, and that the firm had not violated conflict-of-interest rules because Watkins had raised "business and accounting" issues, not issues regarding V&E's "own legal services."
"In a forthcoming Stanford Law Review article titled "The Market for Bad Legal Advice," Columbia Law School professor William Simon cites Wolfram's opinion as just one example of patently bad advice offered in exchange for lucrative compensation by academics whom he contends are becoming "enablers of pernicious... practices."
"...Simon isn't talking only about V&E and Enron. He cites the example of lawyers at another law firm who "gave hundreds of opinions to taxpayers to the effect that bizarrely complex and economically substanceless transactions... were acceptable ways to reduce taxes. Some of them were virtually copies of transactions that the IRS had specifically condemned."
"Or of Department of Justice luminaries advising that "various statutory and international law constraints on the President in the 'war on terror' were un-constitutional or otherwise not binding" in opinions that "exaggerated the authority for the conclusions and omitted inconsistent arguments and precedent."
"Simon's article seeks not just to diagnose the problem but also to prescribe and administer remedies. The most controversial will surely be the measure he calls "shaming." That process consists of having other academic ethics experts - like Simon - write law review articles brutally critiquing the opinions that their colleagues have offered while under retainer. This, he believes, will help deter the delivery of bad advice.
"Like most ethics experts contacted for this article, New York University School of Law's Stephen Gillers declines to share his thoughts on the ethics disputes that Simon discusses, observing that he socializes with all the experts named, including Simon. But he does venture this: Simon's article is "unique in my 30 years as a law teacher. It's unique for law professors to so aggressively criticize the behavior of other law professors - not their intellectual positions. This is about character and integrity..."
Thursday, June 7, 2007
It takes a lot to get a Bar Association to act against a dishonest lawyer
The D.C. Bar Association is conducting a disciplinary hearing concerning former federal prosecutor G. Paul Howes, but the Bar Association doesn't deserve credit for starting this investigation. The Justice Department investigated four years, then handed the files over to the Bar Association. They could hardly say no, could they?
Lawyers tend to be very tolerant of unethical behavior by other lawyers. As an example, it may be noted that the California Bar Association said Elizabeth Schulman's behavior was acceptable.
On May 7, 2007, Henri E. Cauvin wrote in the Washington Post that Mr. Howes used taxpayer dollars in two drug-and-murder conspiracy cases, "signing off on tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized payments to witnesses and, even more significantly, to their friends and families."
The story continues: "Witnesses routinely are paid stipends when they go to court to testify or when they meet with prosecutors to prepare for the proceedings. But the payments must be disclosed to defense attorneys so informed assessments can be made of the witnesses' credibility... In its charging documents, the D.C. Office of Bar Counsel cites questionable payments totaling more than $75,000 from among the nearly $141,000 in voucher payments issued in the cases.
"In one case, a D.C. police officer [Fonda Moore] was charged with conspiring with a drug gang [specifically, Javier Card] to kill its rivals, and in the other, members of the notorious Newton Street Crew were charged with running a criminal enterprise that was engaged in murder and narcotics distribution.
"In each of the cases, Howes kept the defendants' lawyers in the dark about the unauthorized payments. His motivation remains unclear.
"But the fallout was far-reaching. In the years after the abuses came to light, the U.S. attorney's office had to agree to significant reductions in the sentences of several defendants, including some who had been serving life prison terms. At least three defendants were released within months of the reductions."
Howes once worked as a Washington correspondent for ABC News. Howes is now a partner at Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, LLP in San Diego.
Lawyers tend to be very tolerant of unethical behavior by other lawyers. As an example, it may be noted that the California Bar Association said Elizabeth Schulman's behavior was acceptable.
On May 7, 2007, Henri E. Cauvin wrote in the Washington Post that Mr. Howes used taxpayer dollars in two drug-and-murder conspiracy cases, "signing off on tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized payments to witnesses and, even more significantly, to their friends and families."
The story continues: "Witnesses routinely are paid stipends when they go to court to testify or when they meet with prosecutors to prepare for the proceedings. But the payments must be disclosed to defense attorneys so informed assessments can be made of the witnesses' credibility... In its charging documents, the D.C. Office of Bar Counsel cites questionable payments totaling more than $75,000 from among the nearly $141,000 in voucher payments issued in the cases.
"In one case, a D.C. police officer [Fonda Moore] was charged with conspiring with a drug gang [specifically, Javier Card] to kill its rivals, and in the other, members of the notorious Newton Street Crew were charged with running a criminal enterprise that was engaged in murder and narcotics distribution.
"In each of the cases, Howes kept the defendants' lawyers in the dark about the unauthorized payments. His motivation remains unclear.
"But the fallout was far-reaching. In the years after the abuses came to light, the U.S. attorney's office had to agree to significant reductions in the sentences of several defendants, including some who had been serving life prison terms. At least three defendants were released within months of the reductions."
Howes once worked as a Washington correspondent for ABC News. Howes is now a partner at Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, LLP in San Diego.
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