Attorney Stephen Yagman trial underway

[Demosthenes]

From the Los Angeles Times

Tax, fraud trial of combative litigator opens
By Joe Mozingo
Times Staff Writer

May 24, 2007

When he was arraigned last July, civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman wore shoes adorned with the skull and crossbones and turned the traditional "not guilty" plea upside down by pleading "presumed innocent."

But Wednesday, a more subdued Yagman, in a gray suit and tie, showed deference to the federal justice system he so often criticized as his trial for tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud began.

The combative litigator, famed for his police abuse cases, sat quietly as Assistant U.S. Atty. Beong-Soo Kim told jurors that Yagman hid his assets — including his 2,800-square-foot Venice home — from tax collectors.

"He gave his house to his girlfriend for nothing," Kim said. "Not even a penny."

Yagman is accused in a 19-count indictment of money laundering and committing bankruptcy fraud to avoid paying more than $200,000 in state and federal taxes.

He has alleged in court filings that the case is a "vindictive prosecution" based on his "contentious history with federal law enforcement agencies."

Yagman has relentlessly criticized federal law enforcement, prosecutors and judges for allegedly failing to uphold civil rights laws, particularly in matters of police abuse. Recently, he has sought writs of habeas corpus on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

In court documents, Yagman's lawyer Barry Tarlow noted that his client previously tangled with the two law enforcement agencies investigating him. As a special prosecutor, Yagman investigated the FBI in the Ruby Ridge shootings. And he sued the IRS in 1994 over violent conduct by an agent and won a $650,000 settlement.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson refused to dismiss the case based on the allegations but has allowed the defense to question the motives of the federal agents who launched the inquiry.

If the pretrial motions and opening statements are an indicator, Yagman's team, led by Tarlow, plans to challenge nearly every aspect of the investigation.

Generally, prosecutors' opening statements are longer than the defense's. On Wednesday, Kim's opening statement ran about 45 minutes, while Tarlow's went well beyond three hours.

As is common in financial prosecutions, the facts of the case are not so much in dispute as what they mean.

For every piece of evidence Kim used in an effort to show that Yagman had purposely concealed his assets, Tarlow raised an alternative explanation for the transaction.

He said Yagman transferred the deed of his home to his girlfriend, K.D. Mattox, to give her a sense of security in their relationship, after she moved from Orange County to be with him.

"When she got to L.A., she had no career, no full-time job; his friends became her friends," Tarlow said. "It was a tangible demonstration by him: 'I love you, I will take care of you.' "

Tarlow added that Yagman had only $100,000 in equity in the home at the time.

The prosecution alleges an elaborate conspiracy that includes: Yagman depositing all of his income into Mattox's account and signing checks in her name, placing $600,000 in money he received from elderly relatives into an investment account he opened in her name, and filing for bankruptcy in New York so the trustees would not find his assets in California.

"Hours after he filed for bankruptcy, he spent $2,000 in shoes and clothing … on Madison Avenue," Kim said. And he went out to a $260 dinner.

As Yagman was trying to get the IRS to allow him to pay his debt on an installment plan, Kim said, he took a $3,000 trip to Aspen, Colo., and then traveled to Europe, where he spent about $22,000 on two credit cards that he maxed out — debt that would be canceled with his bankruptcy.

Tarlow countered that one doesn't have to be poor to file for bankruptcy and that Yagman had for years done things differently from other people: He hadn't had his own checking account since the 1970s and had deeded a previous house in Mar Vista to his then-wife, Marion, in 1980.

"Stephen Yagman is a child of the '60s," Tarlow said. "Things don't mean that much to him."

Tarlow also said Yagman receives so many death threats that he often tries to conceal his address. "When he was married to Marion Yagman, the utility bills were in the name of her grandmother," he said.

And he has long "domiciled" in New York, Tarlow said. He has an apartment there, his driver's license is from there, and he votes there.

If convicted, Yagman could face up to five years in prison on each of the tax evasion and bankruptcy charges, and 10 years on each of the money laundering counts.

[grixit]

Seems to me the first requirement for a civil rights attorney is to believe that everyone is entitled to the same rights, not that some have special rights to avoid taxes.

[Demosthenes]

Best Served Cold
Obnoxious, brilliant litigator Yagman will make his prosecutors’ lives miserable

By PATRICK RANGE MCDONALD
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 - 7:00 pm

So far, Stephen Yagman has been behaving himself. The successful and controversial Venice Beach civil rights lawyer hasn’t called anyone a “drunk,” an “anti-Semite” or “corrupt.” Then again, the prospect of spending 180 years in prison can quickly silence a man, even one who has created a rebel reputation with his big mouth.

Last week, Yagman, the defendant, attended the first day of a trial against him by the United States government at the Federal Courthouse downtown. He is charged with one count of attempting to evade payment of taxes, one of bankruptcy fraud and 17 of money laundering. If Yagman loses on all 19 counts, he could grow old and die in jail.

These are big stakes for anyone, but especially for a public provocateur. This is a man who has often successfully taken on — in the press and in courts — the Los Angeles Police Department, the FBI, the IRS and the federal court system. He could become a righteous martyr for those who hail him as an important civil rights attorney, but Yagman is a certain breed of lawyer who craves the limelight. If he loses, Yagman won’t be the center of anyone’s attention and will never practice law again, particularly against his favorite target: the LAPD, which he has often described as a “criminal enterprise.”

Yagman undoubtedly understands the import of his current legal predicament. The civil rights attorney is not defending himself, instead opting for the services of criminal-defense lawyer Barry Tarlow, who represented Mel Gibson during his infamous drunken, anti-Semitic episode and who has represented other celebrity clients, such as Courtney Love.

According to Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School and a prominent legal observer, Tarlow is a “hard-charging lawyer.”

“He is loyal to one person only,” says Levenson, “and that’s his client.”

Tarlow has already presented the core of his defense: that every count against Yagman can be reasonably explained and reinterpreted. The lawyer also insists Yagman is the target of the U.S. government because of his client’s widely reported battles with various federal agencies. While the presiding judge, Stephen V. Wilson, refused to dismiss the case on those grounds, it is telling that the judge has already allowed Tarlow to question the motives of the federal agents who started the Yagman investigation.

“I have no doubt Yagman and his lawyer are going to make a circus out of this trial,” says Patrick Frey, a Los Angeles ?County deputy district attorney who operates the influential legal-community Web site Patterico.com — and who dis-trusts Yagman. “They’re going to make it a David-versus-Goliath thing.”

The federal prosecution team, led by assistant U.S. attorneys Beong-Soo Kim and Alka Sagar, says it will present a winnable case over a two-week period expected to end in about mid-June. “We believe we have the evidence,” says Public Affairs Officer Thom Mrozek of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

But that depends on how far Team Yagman will go to defeat them.

For the opening statements last Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim wrapped up in 45 minutes. Yet Tarlow spoke to the jury for three hours — longer than most feature-length movies, and without the popcorn and soda. It was a clear-cut signal that the defense plans to engage in a contentious trial, questioning every minute detail of the government’s case. It’s not at all clear if Kim and Sagar can match that trademark Yagman relentlessness.

“They have to do a full-court press” against the federal prosecutors, says Mark Geragos, a Los Angeles–based criminal-defense lawyer who clashed with the feds when he successfully represented Clinton-family insider Susan MacDougal during the President Bill Clinton–Whitewater fiasco. “His career is at stake.”

Geragos, who believes the bombastic and yet erudite Yagman fills an important niche in the legal world as a “defender of the downtrodden,” also says the civil rights lawyer must be true to himself during the trial.

“The most effective travelers in this life are the ones who are most comfortable in their own skin,” Geragos notes. In other words, Yagman shouldn’t suddenly become St. Francis of Assisi on the witness stand.

Laurie Levenson isn’t so sure. “He can’t change his personality,” says the professor, who knows Yagman and says she gets along with him. “He has to be himself in front of the jurors, or else he comes off as fake. But his outspokenness may hurt him.”

Marshall Hennington, a Beverly Hills–based jury consultant and clinical psychologist, concurs: “People do not always appreciate wild cards. They like people who are calm and rational. When they run into someone who doesn’t fit into the box of mainstream society, they have a problem with that person.”

Hennington, though, believes Yagman, with his dramatic and even mesmerizing stage presence, will endear himself to the jury. “He will be credible and likable on the stand. He just needs to be himself, and all that entails. He’s not the type of person you can coach, anyway, which is not a bad thing.”

Still, Levenson can see Yagman’s full-throttle ways causing him problems. “It hasn’t always worked for him in the past. It has gotten him into trouble, and this time if he gets into trouble, he’ll be sitting in prison waiting for an appeal.”

The professor is referring to Yagman’s singular habit of insulting federal judges — deemed extremely unwise in the legal world, yet almost a hobby for Yagman.

In 1994, Yagman grabbed headlines when he publicly derided U.S. District Judge William Keller as a “drunk” and an “anti-Semite.” As a result, he was suspended from practicing law by a federal Standing Committee on Discipline. In typical Yagman style, he fought back vociferously. The committee’s decision was reversed a year later — on the grounds of free speech.

At the time, now–Assistant D.A. Frey, a.k.a. “Patterico,” worked for Keller as a law clerk. “Yagman clearly said untrue things,” says Frey. “It was part of a pattern that he would say outrageous things about conservative judges so he could get them to recuse themselves for his civil rights cases — and then get liberal judges” to oversee his cases, often against police.

Yagman was once a guest on the cable talk show Full Disclosure. On the show, he claimed, “I think there’s intellectual corruption [among judges]. I don’t think there’s corruption in the sense of judges taking bribes, at least in the federal court system. I think there are people who are intellectually corrupt, who are not intelligent enough to realize and interpret the law correctly.”

Apparently, the jurist overseeing Yagman’s criminal trial, Stephen V. Wilson, is not intellectually corrupt or stupid. Although he was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, and might be a natural enemy of Yagman’s due to his conservative credentials, Yagman and Tarlow have wisely said exactly nothing against him.

One has to wonder if Wilson is feeling a special kind of glee seeing Yagman sitting, sweating, in his courtroom as a defendant.

“Wilson is a no-nonsense judge,” says Levenson. “I don’t think he will hold anything against [Yagman]. He won’t give him any leeway either. But he isn’t going to be rooting for his conviction.”

Geragos agrees that Wilson “runs a tight ship,” and Frey, who interviewed with the judge for a law-clerk position in 1994, describes Wilson as “great.”

“He will absolutely give him a fair trial,” Frey says. “He’s definitely one of the top judges. He’s really smart, and he’s really fair.”

Yagman is smart too, and almost endlessly resourceful. He will work every angle with Tarlow to nail down his acquittal. In fact, according to one employee at Tarlow’s law offices, the high-powered attorney has been regularly staying up until 1 a.m. prepping for the case.

“If [Yagman] prevails,” says jury consultant Hennington, “he’s going to be larger than life.”

Maybe so. But if Yagman fails, it will be a very, very hard fall. There are no courtrooms in federal prison in which he can pursue his calling of challenging the legal system and its judges. There are no quote-starved journalists waiting at his elbow for another verbal bomb. There are only men with names like Cornfed and Bonecrusher — and a lot of them can’t stand lawyers.

[wserra]

the defense plans to engage in a contentious trial, questioning every minute detail of the government’s case.

Generally speaking, if one has a real defense, that's not the most effective strategy.

I know nothing of the evidence in the case. Draw your own conclusions.

[LPC]

the defense plans to engage in a contentious trial, questioning every minute detail of the government’s case.

Generally speaking, if one has a real defense, that's not the most effective strategy.

I was also not impressed by the idea of a three-hour opening statement, which seemed more likely to alienate (or bore) the jury than inform them.

[grixit]

Fond as i am of "LA Law", "The Practice", "Matlock", etc, i have always recognized that those are fantasy. Perhaps Yagman is unclear on that isue. Otoh, i have seen tp spiels in which criminal trials are described as predefined set pecies in which the outcome depends on either adopting the proper role, or conversely forcing all the puppets to go off script.

[wserra]

I was also not impressed by the idea of a three-hour opening statement, which seemed more likely to alienate (or bore) the jury than inform them.

Certainly right. In close to 200 jury trials, of which two lasted over six months and four more over three months, my longest opening has been about 20 minutes. And that felt long.

The jury simply doesn't have sufficient facts at that stage to follow (or care to follow) a three-hour opening.

[LDE]

Ad nauseam, please. Feminine, first declension. Nauseum implies that the nominative singular would be nauseus or nauseum but it's obviously nausea.

Sorry to pick on you, but lots of other posters make the same error.

[The Observer]

Ad nauseam, please. Feminine, first declension. Nauseum implies that the nominative singular would be nauseus or nauseum but it's obviously nausea.

Sorry to pick on you, but lots of other posters make the same error.

No apology necessary - the Captain is the desginated person to be picked on.

[Demosthenes]

Civil rights lawyer Yagman found guilty of tax evasion
By Joe Mozingo, Times Staff Writer
3:29 PM PDT, June 22, 2007


Stephen Yagman, the combative civil rights attorney who has loomed like a self-appointed avenging angel over the city's power establishment for more than a quarter of a century, was convicted today of tax evasion, money laundering and bankruptcy fraud.

A federal jury found him guilty on all 19 counts of what the government claimed was a scheme to avoid paying more than $200,000 in state and federal taxes. Yagman, who was impassive as the verdict was read, could face more than 80 months in federal prison, prosecutors said.

Yagman alleged in court filings that the case was a "vindictive prosecution" based on his "contentious history with federal law enforcement agencies."

The lawyer, a pioneer in police brutality cases, brought hundreds of suits against the Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement agencies. He pioneered the tactic of calling the city's top elected officials to the witness stand to answer for the actions of rank-and-file police officers.

Yagman also broke legal ground by holding City Council members personally liable for damages stemming from the actions of bad cops.

Among his many high-profile cases were those against the LAPD's secretive SIS unit. The unit, formed in 1965 by then-Chief William Parker to coordinate surveillance against criminal suspects, has been involved in more than 50 gun battles and the deaths of at least 37 suspects. Yagman has frequently referred to the unit as a death squad, one of the many verbal fusillades that helped shape his reputation.

He once referred to Mayor Tom Bradley as an "Uncle Tom" and called former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates "the personification of evil."

Some of Yagman's personal attacks have gotten him into serious trouble, although he had never before faced criminal charges. In 1994, a special disciplinary committee suspended him from practicing in the federal courts for two years for accusing U.S. District Judge William D. Keller of being anti-Semitic. Yagman also called Keller "dishonest … a bully and one of the worst judges in the United States."

Some 100 local lawyers rallied to Yagman's support, and a year later, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the suspension, saying it violated the attorney's 1st Amendment rights.

Yagman also was suspended by the California State Bar twice for charging clients "unconscionable" fees.

In 2002, Yagman filed one of the first federal suits challenging the Bush administration's policy of imprisoning terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to keep them beyond the reach of U.S. legal protections.

A complaint from Yagman resulted in a rare public rebuke for U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real, one of the most veteran jurists on the Los Angeles federal bench.

In court documents, Yagman's lawyer Barry Tarlow noted that his client previously tangled with the two law enforcement agencies that investigated the tax case. As a special prosecutor, Yagman investigated the FBI in the Ruby Ridge shootings. And he sued the IRS in 1994 over violent conduct by an agent and won a $650,000 settlement.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson refused to dismiss the case but allowed the defense to question the motives of the federal agents who launched the inquiry.

[Nikki]

What an a**hole.

A brilliant and ground-breaking legal career terminated because he got greedy.

[Demosthenes]

Judge Demands Answers About Lawyer's Juror Contact in Civil Rights Attorney's Trial

Amanda Bronstad
The National Law Journal
07-02-2007

A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered an attorney for civil rights lawyer Stephen Yagman to respond to claims made Thursday by a "concerned" juror in his criminal trial.

Yagman, a partner at Venice Beach, Calif.-based Yagman & Yagman & Reichmann, was convicted on June 22 of tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and money laundering.

In court papers filed on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson, for the Central District of California, said a third alternate juror in Yagman's case called the court the day before about a phone conversation placed to her home by Mi Kim, one of Yagman's attorneys. When asked how she got the juror's personal information, Kim told the juror that the juror questionnaire or another court document included such details.

"The juror questionnaire, which was edited by the court from defendant's proposal, did not ask for any personal contact information," the court order states. "Additionally, the court is unaware of any other documents that have been disclosed by the court to the parties that would contain such information." The judge acknowledged that jurors were told they could talk, or not talk, to parties in the case.

Kim, a lawyer at Los Angeles-based Tarlow & Berk, declined to comment. She was ordered to file briefs by today.