The Middle Class Needs Legal Aid, Too

Middle class needs legal aid too

In a sad, terrifying piece titled “Foreclosure’s Final Act,” today’s Washington Post reports a rare glimpse of our courtrooms from the perspective of the ordinary citizen:

“The court clerk calls his name, and Harry Rexrode, not entirely sure what to do, steps to the defendant’s table. He is dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt with dried paint spattered on the sleeves and work boots. He has no attorney.

“In a stern tone,Prince George’s County Circuit Judge Herman Dawson asks Rexrode whether he knows what is happening to him.

Rexrode, 50, nods his head.

“I want to see if I can get a continuance,” he says.

Dawson grins, as if amused by Rexrode’s use of the legal term. “A continuance? For what?”

“To stay,” Rexrode says.

“Rexrode is seeking a miracle really, in a place where there are precious few. He is in the county’s foreclosure court, asking Dawson to let him remain in the Hyattsville home he has owned since 1997 a little longer before the bank takes it and he is put out in the cold.”

This particular report is set in a courtroom in Prince George’s County, Md., where I live. It could have been set in any county in the larger Washington, D.C., region.

More on that below. The point to start with is that the report shows what happens not just to the poor, but to ordinary middle-class people, in this large and wealthy nation of ours, once they land in court.

One of the horrors of our legal system is one that has been too little reported: Judges in our courts are often inclined not to listen to parties who appear without an attorney. This might make sense in many legal cases, especially criminal matters, though it is awfully hard on the parties involved.

But telling Party A, or Party B, that he/she ‘should have gotten a lawyer’ is counter-intuitive to the point of abuse in some kinds of cases—particularly those cases where the party, whether plaintiff or defendant, is in court in the first place for financial reasons—in other words, for being cash-strapped.

From the Post:

“Courtrooms such as this across theWashingtonregion are the forums where banks ask judges to grant a default decree so they can take ownership of a home, and people such as Rexrode try to reverse or delay that decision.

They are almost always too late, and tragically ill-equipped to do so. Seated in Dawson’s nondescript courtroom, most share a look of puzzlement, fearful about their futures and uncertain of how the legal system works. They sound confused when the judge begins to pepper them with questions about dates of missed payments and when the bank began warning them about default. Few offer any evidence to support their claims.

“Have you talked to a lawyer?”Dawsonasks Rexrode.

“I didn’t know I needed one,” Rexrode responds.

Dawson, who often hears criminal and juvenile cases and has a reputation for toughness, shakes his head. Then he says something he will repeat over and over all day.

“You don’t come to court without a lawyer. This is the problem.”

That is a judge’s perspective. From the perspective of the ordinary citizen, one problem is landing in the courtroom of a judge who insists that everyone should get a lawyer.

At this point it is necessary to note that judges are not all alike. Some judges are better than others (demonstrating that the other judges could improve). Some judges, to their eternal credit, understand that people already drowning in a sea of debt are not in good position to pay a lawyer’s bills. Some judges appear to realize that most legal aid organizations—whether public entities or non-profits—provide lawyers only for proven indigents.

The unpalatable truth is that, if you are still in your house, you still have assets on the books—even if you are in arrears, even if you are facing foreclosure. And while you have assets on paper, forget about getting legal aid for free. Free legal aid has to go to the people who need it most urgently, in our system of legal triage—indigents on the street, mentally ill indigents who should never have ended up in the legal system to begin with, indigents facing the death penalty—whether or not their court-appointed defense counsel fell asleep during their capital trial.

Legal aid at reduced cost, at a sliding scale connected to income, is available only to a limited extent. The waiting lists of potential clients in any populous area far exceed the numbers of attorneys available to do pro bono work.

This particular newspaper article concerns people whose houses are being taken away from them by foreclosure. Sad to say, the basic situation is portrayed here with utmost realism: These people get dragged into court because they cannot pay their bills—and the first thing the judge says to them, with a certain obliviousness to the fact that lawyers cost money, is something along the lines of ‘You should have gotten a lawyer’ or ‘Where is your lawyer?’ or ‘Why didn’t you get a lawyer?’ And then the judge treats them like deadbeats for not hiring a lawyer—even while the legal system is punishing these hapless defendants for having run up bills. For having run up debt. For having spent money. For not having money left.

I can understand the impatience of a judge who—having put in years of hard work, first in law school and then in the legal system—has to put up with listening to uninformed people (of all classes/incomes) mangle legal language and degrade legal principles. I sincerely appreciate the occasional irritation of a judge faced with a party who clearly watched too much courtroom television at some point. More broadly, we can always find ways as spectators after the fact to divine what the out-of-money fellow citizen should have done, even if we did not do same ourselves: You should have lived with your parents until you got married, instead of renting an apartment. You should have postponed college until you could pay for it with cash. You should have waited to buy a car until you could pay for it outright, without financing.

Sure.

But even the most hard-nosed among us—that would be you, Mr. Will and Mr. Limbaugh, and by the way it’s not my country I’m blaming; it’s you—do not say, You should have waited to buy a house until you could pay for it outright. Lenders and the real estate agents themselves never, never, never took that line. (I bought my house in the go-go Eighties, and I still remember the puzzlement of the lender when I paid 20 percent of the price in down payment. His attitude was, since no one was forcing me to do so, why was I doing it?)

But back to our courtrooms.

Court

There are ironies in saying ‘You should have hired a lawyer’ to someone in court being foreclosed, or to someone in court declaring bankruptcy. But the Catch-22 problem is not confined to people in court for financial matters. It also faces people with difficulties in family court—not only in Prince George’s County but also in neighboring Montgomery County.

I watched firsthand, in one family court in Montgomery County, a Family Law Master who began every proceeding—child support, visitation, divorce, separation, every proceeding without exception—asking the party whether s/he had hired a lawyer. This in spite of large signs all over the courthouse, conspicuously saying that in Montgomery County, persons appearing pro se are (supposed to be) treated like those appearing with a lawyer.

Sure.

This particular Master took the same line even where the case was a simple matter of enforcing an agreement already settled by the courts, and even in cases so small that the amount of court award would be less than a lawyer’s bill.

In another courtroom devoted for the day to small family law cases, the judge entered—some minutes late—at exactly the same time as the attorney in the upcoming case. The opposing party, waiting in the courtroom, had no attorney, and lost a simple request that a previous court order, compelling the ex-husband to make a will to protect the minor in the case, be enforced.

In no way is this scene unusual. InMaryland, state and local judges are nominally elected by the people, but the judicial candidates are previously selected by—basically—other lawyers. A judge has every incentive to throw jobs to fellow attorneys.

Besides, attorneys are also hurting in the current economic downtown, particularly those in a small firm or in a solo practice who finished law school in debt, and they always need work.

 

Lawyers have to eat, too

However, hiring a lawyer, even if the client goes deeper into the hole to do so, is no guarantee of success:

“Terry Reeley of Bowie has an attorney. He speaks for her in court but is unable to convince Dawson that the bank failed to notify her about the default in a timely manner.

“”The judge didn’t want to hear anything,” Reeley says later. “We could see sitting there that he didn’t want to hear what people had to say. He was just tossing people and their lives out the door. Now I have no idea when the sheriffs will come and say ‘You’re out.’ ”

Reeley and her husband ran into financial problems after they lost their garage door business in October 2007. They fell behind on their mortgage, but she said she was unaware of the foreclosure and the sale of her four-bedroomCape Codhome until a notice was taped to her front door.

Dawson orders Reeley and her husband to pay $60.82 a day to the bank until they leave the property or are evicted. Reeley runs from the courtroom and falls into the arms of her best friend. “This isn’t fair,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “They stole my house.”

As it happens, another Post article ran this morning on how Vice President Biden is going to head a task force on issues facing the middle class. This effort should be supported.

One issue is how inutile our courts too often are for protecting the middle class. There are some good places to start dealing with this broad and widespread problem.

1) Legal task forces. The legal profession could put up some of its money in a team effort, as trial lawyers have done on some other issues, to protect clients from attorneys who do not do the job they were hired to do.

2) Subsidized legal aid. Competent, qualified legal aid—could be subsidized for every individual in foreclosure for financial reasons, with some conditions. Many lawyers, as stated above, need work. Surely the talent could be found.

3) Legal aid for child support. Legal help could be subsidized for custodial parents trying to stay in the middle class with a little help from child support.

4) Better child-support legislation. Legislation might help more in getting the non-custodial parent to pay part of the minor’s educational expenses. (In Maryland, financial support for the minor ends when the minor turns eighteen; thus the non-custodial parent is free to wash his hands of college expenses. This, btw, is an incentive for divorce/family abandonment in hard times.)

5) Better oversight on foreclosures. Legislation could require any bank or other lender attempting to foreclose to meet certain conditions including subjecting itself to careful review of its lending practices, executive compensation, and investment practices.

Et cetera.

Scooter Libby Was Not Arrested

United States of America v. Rod Blagojevich and John Harris

Scooter Libby Was Not Arrested —

 

Fox News Sunday interview with Dick Cheney: Dec 21, 2008, from
transcript:

 

Update on those FitzBlago Subpoenas: Unending Subpoenas, Unending Wiretaps

United States of America v. Rod Blagojevich and John Harris

The Chicago Sun-Times reports
on the results
of a FOIA inquiry that has released 44 subpoenas issued to Illinois Gov. Rod
Blagojevich in the ongoing cluster of investigations about him since he was
first elected in 2002:

“Responding to open-records
requests, the governor’s office released 44 subpoenas it had been swamped with
since 2005. Two have been issued since Blagojevich’s Dec. 9 arrest.

“The most recent
subpoenas went to the state Capital Development Board and the Illinois
Department of Transportation on Dec. 11. They sought records on “bid
proposals submitted by and/or awarded to” 22 contractors, including
several who have contributed large sums to the governor’s campaign fund.”

 

I
previously posted a
blog
on subpoenas issued by the feds, as I was told, the same morning that
Blagojevich and top aide John Harris were arrested. Assuming that the subpoenas
previously referred to are the same as some of the subpoenas just released, it
looks as though my informant was off by a day:

“Two other subpoenas to the
governor’s office came on Dec. 8, the day before the governor was arrested on
corruption charges that accused him of, among other things, trying to sell an
appointment to replace Obama in the U.S. Senate.



“Those
subpoenas asked for records relating to Patti Blagojevich; her business, River
Realty; the governor’s brother, Robert Blagojevich; the governor’s campaign
fund, and 30 other people and companies, including Axelrod and Jarrett. Jarrett
was alluded to in the Dec. 9 criminal complaint against the governor as a
potential Senate candidate Blagojevich was considering. Axelrod did not surface
in the complaint. Neither is charged with any wrongdoing.”

 

The records make clear that the office of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has gone back to court over and
over again–44 times in all, according to this most recent report–to get
authorization for subpoenas about Blagojevich, whom Fitzgerald all but
campaigned against in the 2002 gubernatorial election.

It is also clear from the charging document filed in the
arrest of Blagojevich that the feds went back to court repeatedly to get
authorizations for more and more wiretapping.

Apparently no small number of subpoenas, no small number of
documents, and no small number of wiretapped telephone
conversations–Fitzgerald has acknowledged “thousands” of
“intercepts” so far–was sufficient to build a case against
Blagojevich. Also, no small amount of time, no short extent of years was
required. The investigation has extended from 2003 (at latest) until even beyond
the date of our last presidential election, on
Nov. 4, 2008. The feds just could not find a way, apparently, to put
together a case against Blagojevich until such time as it involved future White
House personnel. And then they had to rush into action just when Blagojevich
was allegedly bloviating against the Chicago
Tribune
,
Chicago

An administration pushed a great nation to an unjust war, conducted widespread illegal surveillance of citizens. Where were our thinkers and guides?

United States of America v. Rod Blagojevich and John Harris

An administration pushed a great nation to an unjust war,
conducted widespread illegal surveillance of citizens, and covered up
misfeasance and malfeasance in matters of life and death. The appropriate
response was impeachment. Where were our thinkers and guides?

 

 

The United States as a nation
has not yet arrived at the point of widespread arbitrary incarcerations and widespread
executions of ordinary citizens for overtly political reasons. But we have
arrived at a point where our Department of Justice was politicized, where media
image-crafting, politics, and

Is Fitzgerald’s Office Leaking to the Chicago Tribune?

After leaking to the Wall Street Journal–which promptly ran an item that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s people were “livid” about a Chicago Tribune story on the investigation of various politicos in Illinois–are Fitzgerald’s people now ‘leaking’ to the Chicago Tribune?

The Trib, Chicago’s Republican newspaper, which declared itself bankrupt just hours before the feds’ pre-dawn arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has gone from adulatory of Fitzgerald to sycophantic since the Dec. 9 press conference in which the prosecutor praised the paper and stated that he was being kept awake nights by fear of what might happen to a member of its editorial board.

Now the Tribune is running an item saying that Rahm Emanuel, Representative from Illinois and President-Elect Obama’s choice as chief of staff, has been caught on wiretap. The Tribune article does not name a source or sources for the item. In fact, the careful wording of this short piece does not say how many sources there are:

[first graf] “Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama’s
pick to be White House chief of staff, had conversations with Gov. Rod
Blagojevich

Keith Olbermann Delivers an Excellent Commentary on Illegal ‘Renditions’

Keith Olbermann Delivers an Excellent Commentary on ‘Illegal Renditions’ –Just a few short minutes of air time, but Countdown’s Keith Olbermann just gave a very good comment on some consequences of those illegal spook-authorized ‘rendition’ flights delivering unknown prisoners to unknown destinations at the behest of unnamed foreign powers.

One immediate consequence: An American lawyer has been snatched, apparently partly under the auspices of Russian Federation countries, accused of industrial espionage against  Belarus, and flown out of the country.

Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department, with private assistance, are trying to get him out. His name is Seltzer.

As Olbermann points out, the administration–behind the State Department–might need to think about whether this rendition of a U.S. citizen comes about because of past rendition flights involving other persons, under who-knows-what authorization.

Yet another mess for the new Obama administration to clean up, as far as it can.

Illinois Supreme Court Says Burris Does Not Need a Writ of Mandamus

Illinois Supreme Court Says Burris Does Not Need a Writ of Mandamus –Following up the post from earlier this week, on rules versus law: According to the unanimous Supreme Court of Illinois, Roland Burris does not need the signature of Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, in order to be certified for the U.S. Senate.

Here is the pertinent graf from the IL Supreme Court ruling: “We note … that nothing in the published rules of the Senate,
including Rule II, appears to require that Senate appointments made by
state executives pursuant to the 17th Amendment must be signed and
sealed by the state’s secretary of state. Moreover, no explanation has
been given as to how any rule of the Senate, whether it be formal or
merely a matter of tradition, could supersede the authority to fill
vacancies conferred on the states by the federal constitution. Under
these circumstances, the Senate’s actions cannot serve as the predicate
for a mandamus action against the secretary of state. The only issue
before us is whether the secretary of state, an official of this state,
failed to perform an act required of him by the law of Illinois. He did
not.”


An interesting reflection of our federal system, here: The U.S. Senate cannot tell the state of Illinois what to do, because under the U.S. Constitution the authority to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat belongs to the state.

Since the signature of the Illinois Secretary of State is not required, the IL SoS is not required to sign.

Seating Mr. Burris is thus up to the Senate, and Chair of the Rules Committee Sen. Dianne Feinstein, to her credit, has already astutely said that she doesn’t think the rules keep Burris out.

Some of the women in this Illinois-Senate picture, btw, are looking & sounding better than the men, if that’s a yardstick. Jesse White was represented in court by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, whose statement about the ruling says that clearly White “is not the roadblock to Mr. Burris’s appointment to the U.S. Senate.”

Madigan’s conclusion: “It
remains within the power of the U.S. Senate to seat Mr. Burris.  They
should do so immediately.”


I still wonder about those “thousands” of phone calls “intercepted” by the U.S. Attorney’s office. Office spokesman Randall Samborn courteously declines comment on questions about whether any of the recorded conversations include or involve judges–federal, state, local. But without any joking or inappropriate conjecture whatsoever, I wonder whether ‘thousands’ of phone calls involving the governor of Illinois could, as a matter of mathematical probability, fail to include or involve judges. The question then becomes what potential conflicts of interest could arise.

Now, of course, on top of everything else, we have those counts of impeachment from the Illinois House–several of them political/policy disagreements betw governor and legislator, and the rest apparently based on the allegations in the federal charging document. Blagojevich himself, judging from his press appearance a little while ago, is discussing the policy counts in the impeachment and the federal charges separately–or rather, is not discussing the federal charges at all, which looks wise.

But in any case it wd surely have been wiser for the newly elected U.S. Senate to treat Burris–who once ran against Blagojevich–separately from the governor.

Some Further FitzBlago History, from the Chicago Sun-Times

More FitzBlago History, from the Chicago Sun-Times —The past is past, but not completely. A check through some
newly relevant old newspaper articles reveals that
U.S. Attorney Patrick
Fitzgerald in
Chicago weighed in publicly
against Blagojevich during the political race
that made Rod Blagojevich governor.

 

The federal office in the Northern District of Illinois
(NDIL) has had a reputation for tight lip and close vest, but recent leaks and
other recent problems show a different and disturbing pattern: First came the exaggeratedly
publicized splashy arrest, rather than indictment, of a sitting governor; the charging document as vehicle for verbatim/edited quotation
from embarrassing conversations caught by wiretap; the oddly polemical press
conference in which both prosecutor and FBI inveighed against the defendant; then
leaks to the Wall Street Journal from sources close to the investigation, blaming or faulting
the Chicago Tribune for the timing of
the arrest. (Yesterday, in an incident unrelated to the Blagojevich matter, a
lengthy email sent to a mailing list of reporters by the NDIL included the
names of witnesses in another case; the names were redacted in the complaint to
which the list was

Back to New Orleans

I loved New Orleans–and I loved Frank