Convicted Felon Sells "Get Out of Jail Free" Scam

[Dr. Caligari]

Ex-convict appeals to inmates' hopes for freedom
Company says cases can be won on a legal technicality
By Chuck Lindell

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


Sunday, October 28, 2007

A small Austin company, International Legal Services, advertises that it can free just about any federal prison inmate on appeal, even those who pleaded guilty or confessed — a dubious claim that even the most prestigious law firms would never make.

The key is supposed to be a legal argument, developed by employee Tony Davis, that claims the federal criminal code is invalid because Congress botched key legislation during the Truman administration.

As a result, most criminal convictions obtained in the past 59 years should be tossed out, Davis argues.

Davis, however, is not a lawyer. He's a former accountant who served almost 51/2 years in prison for fraud and money laundering — details International Legal Services fails to disclose to its clients, including about 160 inmates who paid up to $17,500 each for the company's services, potentially generating fees topping $1 million.

Nor does the company, which Davis said is owned by his wife, disclose that its ballyhooed legal argument has yet to free one inmate since Davis first used it to challenge his own 1998 conviction.

In fact,two courts have sanctioned Davis for filing frivolous lawsuits by repeatedly submitting the argument as part of an avalanche of appeals, briefs and motions attacking his conviction — including a lawsuit naming President Bush.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also scoffed at the argument, which was used by an International Legal Services client serving time in Illinois.

"This case is unbelievably frivolous," reads the one-sentence Sept. 24 ruling.

In addition, the Austin Police Department is investigating complaints that Davis has been practicing law without a license, a Class A misdemeanor. Such complaints also can be handled as a civil matter. The Texas Supreme Court defines the practice of law to include drafting legal documents and accepting clients for legal work, activities Davis admitted performing for International Legal Services in interviews with the Austin American-Statesman.

Despite the setbacks, Davis remains optimistic about eventual success, this time in the grandest legal arena of all. Petitions making the argument, filed in the past four weeks, are pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We expect to win," said Davis, 58.

International Legal Services has told potential clients that its Supreme Court challenge is their ticket out of prison — "Petitioners should be home in about 3-4 months after the petition is filed," a December newsletter stated — but legal experts warn against predicting success, especially at the Supreme Court, which accepts fewer than 1 percent of cases submitted for its review.

"Any promise of success in a criminal case is highly dubious," said Jordan Steiker, a University of Texas law professor who has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. "It's just a wild misrepresentation of the prospects for relief, and it's an obvious play on the desperate circumstances of people incarcerated in federal prison, and their families."

Justices could announce as early as Monday whether they will accept the International Legal Services petition.

Opting not to wait, at least three of the company's clients have demanded their money back.

Nazanzo Hill, an inmate in the U.S. prison in Beaumont, sued Davis in August to recover $3,300 in payments, plus $96,700 in punitive damages. Davis, the lawsuit states, "is a con artist with a prior record" who engaged in legal malpractice by guaranteeing Hill would be freed from prison.

Davis countersued, alleging that Hill breached his $15,000 contract.

Two other clients, Mississippi women who hired International Legal Services on behalf of incarcerated sons, demanded refunds last summer after belatedly learning that Davis is a convicted felon and not, as they believed, a lawyer. Davis responded by suing both women, Ruby Sanders and Lucy Dotson, alleging defamation and breach of contract.

"He promised me that my child would not die in prison," said Dotson, who paid $11,600 to International Legal Services and still owes $900. "These are the words Tony told me: 'Your son will be out in a couple weeks.' If someone told me I had won a million dollars, I don't think I could be that happy."

Davis denied making verbal guarantees.

"I told them that according to the legal people involved in the team, we expected to win or should win," he said. "I told them it was probably the best bet they had, for a lot of these people, in terms of getting them out of prison."

But legal experts see little likelihood that the Supreme Court will be won over by International Legal Services' argument, which is based on a highly technical but rarely successful "jurisdictional" challenge to a court's authority.

The court has declined to overturn convictions based on jurisdictional mistakes unless the error affects the fairness and integrity of the trial — and that's a high bar to meet, said Terrence Kirk, a 25-year lawyer and one of Austin's leading criminal appeals attorneys.

Fraud conviction

In the booming economy of the early 1990s, 15 companies eager for quick loans turned to Davis' Austin firm, Forum Financial. Despite collecting advance fees of $25,000 to $400,000, however, Davis never made the loans, according to an opinion from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

During his 1998 trial, Davis insisted that his financing dried up when a certificate of deposit, backed by 3,500 metric tons of gold from the estate of former Philippines ruler Ferdinand Marcos, was removed from his account at a London bank. (In court appeals, he would later accuse the CIA and U.S. government of taking the certificate of deposit to fund illegal covert operations around the globe.)

Found guilty of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and the travel and transportation of securities for fraudulent purposes, Davis was sent to the Seagoville federal prison near Dallas and ordered to pay $3.6 million in restitution. He is paying $600 a month, according to court records.

While in prison, Davis said, he received training as a paralegal and came across indications that Title 18, the section of the U.S. Code detailing every federal crime, was improperly enacted by Congress in 1948.

Davis returned to Austin in 2004 and began working as a paralegal for Austin lawyer Engin Derkunt, a business relationship that continues today. Derkunt said he also helped Davis research the Title 18 arguments, and he argued their merits before the 7th Circuit Court, which later delivered the "unbelievably frivolous" ruling.

After his release, Davis said, he also received a job offer from James Taylor, a prison acquaintance who is stillserving time for counterfeiting. Taylor had incorporated International Legal Resources in Nevada and asked Davis to sign on to develop his Title 18 argument and similar claims.

"I told him I'd start working on it if he could provide the arguments, help with the research," Davis said.

Taylor and Davis would eventually part ways, but Davis continued with the company, joining with his wife, Gaylan Davis, to incorporate in Texas as ILS Services in 2005 while continuing to use the International Legal Services name.

A year later, the couple took out a $629,900 loan on a house in Pemberton Heights, county records show. In August, they bought another home, in Lost Creek, with a $512,050 loan and an undisclosed down payment, the records show.

Today, Davis said, he is merely an employee of the company, which is run by his wife, Gaylan Davis.

Still, Tony Davis said he takes an active role — dealing with clients, researching potential cases, negotiating fees and writing briefs. He said he has help from another paralegal and a former lawyer who served time in prison.

To date, International Legal Services has based its business on the Title 18 argument, which Tony Davis has registered with the U.S. Copyright Office to discourage inmates from sharing his work for free. The company advertises by mailing newsletters to inmates who were identified using the U.S. Bureau of Prisons Web site, Tony Davis said.

Newsletters typically discuss aspects of the Title 18 argument and urge inmates or their families to call for more information or to sign up as clients. Several newsletters included optimistic assessments of the company's chances:

"We will get you into court and get you relief," the April 2006 newsletters says.

The March 2007 newsletter mentions that a "smoking gun" has been unearthed proving that the law creating Title 18 was never enacted. "Now, without doubt, no set of facts exists which makes the statute constitutional," the issue says.

"The courts have given us a direct path into the Supreme Court for relief, not just for one client, but for all clients. We can continue to add people for a limited window of time. Relief should come within a very short period of time," the July 2007 issue says.

In U.S. district courts, Title 18 challenges are filed in the inmate's name, and clients are given several options. They can file the brief themselves, or International Legal Services will file it for them. "And sometimes they need an attorney, and we bring Engin (Derkunt) in on it, or one from their area," Tony Davis said.

International Legal Services' name does not appear on the briefs. The scope of the company's business, however, became apparent when it listed 178 clients in its brief filed with the Supreme Court in mid-October.

Davis said that about 20 names were "freebies," people who had contacted the company but declined to hire it. One name on the list was Davis himself. The rest, he said, are clients.

At the Supreme Court

For Davis, the Supreme Court brief is the crowning achievement of five years of often tedious research — and proof that International Legal Services has followed through on its commitment to clients.

"Related to whether it got into (the Supreme) Court like we said it would? Yes, it did. Whether it was docketed or not? Yes, it was. Whether we put together the legal team to argue it for these people? Yes, we did," Davis said.

That legal team includes two lawyers whose names appear on the Supreme Court brief — James Parkman of Alabama and Barry Bachrach of Massachusetts — but Davis said the document was largely written by an inmate in an Indiana federal prison, Yorie Von Kahl.

Von Kahl is serving a life sentence in the 1983 shooting deaths of two U.S. marshals during a traffic stop targeting his tax-protester father in North Dakota. Von Kahl learned about the Title 18 argument from a 2006 International Legal Services newsletter and directed his lawyer, Bachrach, to contact ILS, Davis said.

"(Bachrach) said Yorie is probably one of top legal writers in the country, which he is, and he said, 'we would like to work with you to perfect the research,' " Davis said.

Davis agreed. The collaboration resulted in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed Sept. 23 and naming Von Kahl and 23 of his friends and acquaintances, plus two International Legal Services clients, Davis said. International Legal Services followed two weeks later with a duplicate filing that included its clients.

Bachrach said Friday that he is withdrawing from the case and will be replaced by an Ohio lawyer, but he stands behind the argument. Parkman did not return a phone call Friday.

The petition argues that Public Law 80-772, which established Title 18 of the U.S. Code, is invalid because Congress violated procedures established by Article I of the Constitution when:

The House voted to approve amendments added to the bill but not the bill "as amended."

The Senate did not resubmit the bill to the House for its required approval after a 1947 adjournment.

The House speaker and Senate president signed the bill and sent it to President Truman during an adjournment, violating requirements that business be conducted only when Congress is in session and a quorum is present.

If the Supreme Court voids the 1948 law, DerKunt said, it could lead to freedom for the roughly 200,200 inmates held in federal prison, plus clean records for many thousands more who have completed their sentences.

Von Kahl, however, estimates that 60,000 prisoners could be affected because the pre-1948 laws would be in force, Davis said.

If the Supreme Court petition falls through, Davis said, he's ready to go another round.

"Then we go back to court with our clients with some of the other arguments we've developed," he said. "We've got six more jurisdictional arguments. And we have a couple arguments that should win in the state (courts)."

clindell@statesman.com, 912-2569


Courts react to Tony Davis

Two courts have sanctioned Tony Davis for filing repeated motions, lawsuits and briefs challenging his 1998 conviction for fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.


1.U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, Austin: After Davis files a lawsuit against President Bush and others in his administration, Sparks issues a $500 fine, noting that Davis once again submitted arguments that had already been denied. 'Clearly, his conduct constitutes a misuse and abuse of the legal system,' Sparks' Aug. 24 order states. Five weeks later, Davis appeals the sanction to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — again including the previously denied arguments criticized by Sparks.


2.5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, New Orleans: The appeals court bans Davis from filing legal documents without advance permission from an appellate judge. All U.S. district courts in the district — Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — are barred from accepting Davis' appeals or complaints without permission. 'Davis's abuse of the judicial system warrants the imposition of a sanction,' the court's Oct. 15 order states.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/n ... 8tony.html

[Dr. Caligari]

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/n ... 0tony.html

U.S. Supreme Court rejects ex-convict's legal argument
Austin company argued most inmates must be freed on technicality
By Chuck Lindell

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to accept arguments alleging that the federal criminal code is invalid — dealing a blow to International Legal Services, an Austin company that advertised that the argument could win freedom for federal inmates nationwide.

Justices gave no reason for denying the petition.

In Sunday's editions, the Austin American-Statesman examined dubious claims by International Legal Services that the argument, developed by ex-convict Tony Davis, could free just about any federal inmate, even those who had pleaded guilty or confessed.

About 160 inmates and their families hired the Austin company — paying up to $17,500 each for the right to use Davis' argument, which claims that Congress botched legislation creating the criminal code in 1948, invalidating most criminal convictions obtained over the past six decades.

Other courts have already dismissed the argument, including the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Chicago, which recently dubbed it "unbelievably frivolous."

Despite the latest setback, Davis remained optimistic that the Supreme Court would address his argument because he said the petition denied Monday was flawed. That petition for a writ of habeas corpus, developed by federal inmate Yorie Von Kahl using research provided by Davis, included exhibits in violation of court rules, Davis said.

After consulting with Supreme Court clerks, International Legal Services on Monday filed an identical petition on behalf of its clients, but with the exhibits removed, he said.

"We think we will be given a docket number this week and we'll be taken to conference" for consideration by justices, said Davis, who in 1998 was convicted of fraud and money laundering for collecting advance fees for loans he did not make, court records show.

If the court rejects the argument again — a strong likelihood, given Monday's denial and the court's extreme reluctance to grant such claims — Davis said he is prepared to flood U.S. district courts with copies of the argument on behalf of International Legal Services' clients.

"Either way, we plan on getting the issue heard," he said.

[Dezcad]

If the court rejects the argument again — a strong likelihood, given Monday's denial and the court's extreme reluctance to grant such claims — Davis said he is prepared to flood U.S. district courts with copies of the argument on behalf of International Legal Services' clients.

"Either way, we plan on getting the issue heard," he said.

Maybe this court can help.

[Dr. Caligari]

Maybe this court can help.

The U.S. Supreme Court certainly hasn't helped him any.

[grixit]

If he ends up back in prison, he might end up facing a court of another kind, along with a jury of his peers.

[Dr. Caligari]

If he ends up back in prison, he might end up facing a court of another kind, along with a jury of his peers.

I am reminded of the scene in the 1931 film The Criminal Code where the stool pigeon who got Borris Karloff sent to prison gets placed in the same cell with Karloff.