JD Journal » district attorney

Myrl Serra Disbarred For A Felony And Misdemenor Harassment Charges

chelsei — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:12:36 +0000

An accusation of sexual harassment arose from a women in the office of former Colorado district attorney, Myrl Serra. Initially, he declined any sexual wrongdoing, and claimed that the woman was lying. However, his word did not have much power at that point, because this accusation came after he was disbarred in December after pleading guilty and receiving conviction for several criminal charges.

He committed a variety of different crimes that encouraged his dis-barrment from position as Colorado District Attorney. He was engaged in a relationship with a married woman. He also had various promiscuous relationships with other women throughout the years. Apparently, not very successful ones either. Serra’s wrongdoings range from sharing case information with his married girlfriend to receiving restraining order requests from a variety of women. Each of these unique in nature, but going back to sexual misconduct.

He pled guilty to all of the charges brought up in court, because he had no evidence to prove his innocence. His various crimes include at least three different victims. The sentencing for his guilty plea that included crimes of unlawful sexual contact and criminal extortion is scheduled for next week. At that time he will have to pay the punishment for the various crimes committed.

Layoffs for Sacramento DA Office

joshua — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:26:47 +0000

Sacramento DA Jan Scully said yesterday that amid a $6.9 million budget cut for the next fiscal year her office will be laying off 50 employees. Those fired include 11 deputy district attorneys whose responsibilities include prosecuting misdemeanors.

One likely consequence, according to Scully, will be a higher number of plea bargains for relatively minor offenses: “What you might see is in the more minor cases,” said Scully, “you might see us early on giving better deals to get that case out of the system. We’re going to need to … focus mostly on the serious and violent felonies”

Ex Manhattan DA Joins Law Firm

sara — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:05:41 +0000

Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has joined the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The 90 year old Morgenthau said he has long admired Wachtell and its impact on the law and legal profession. Morgenthau served as District Attorney in Manhattan for 35 years. Cyrus Vance Jr. was elected to replace Morgenthau and took office on January 1. Morgenthau has also served as United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz was founded in New York City in 1965. It has 217 attorneys and focuses on mergers and acquisitions, strategic investments, takeovers and takeover defense, corporate and securities laws and corporate governance and restructuring.

More Cuts at the San Joaquin DA’s Office

joshua — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:58:03 +0000

A total of eleven District Attorneys were laid off last year in San Joaquin, California, with seven of those happening last month. The department, like most California state and local government offices, is facing steep budget cuts. The DA’s that were cut mainly handled misdemeanor prosecutions, including DUI’s and some domestic abuse cases. The office is concerned they won’t be able to prosecute all of the cases that come to it. According to deputy district attorney Robert Himelblau, “We just can’t say we’re going to refuse to prosecute misdemeanors, on the other hand, we can’t fool anybody by saying we can actually file these cases”.

The County is facing additional layoffs this year, with as many as 600 county jobs in jeopardy if there isn’t significant improvement by June. San Joaquin is struggling under a record high 16.9% unemployment rate, well above the national average of around 10%. No help is likely to be forthcoming from the state, either, where the unemployment rate remains over 12% and the state budget has a $20 billion deficit.

Former D.A. Abraham Joins Archer & Greiner

joshua — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:10:56 +0000

Lynne M. Abraham, the former district attorney of Philadelphia, is set to join Archer & Greiner, P.C., as a partner based in the firm’s Philadelphia office.

Abraham became the first woman to serve as Philadelphia’s district attorney when taking over the position in May 1991.

Her duties at Archer & Greiner will include government relations, mediation, litigation and trial strategy and tactics. She will also work on legislative initiatives to fight Internet sexual predators and gun violence.

Firm President Gary J. Lesneski and Chairman James H. Carll announced the addition Wednesday.

“We are very proud to have Lynne Abraham, an outstanding lawyer and public servant, join Archer & Greiner,” Lesneski said. “She will be an invaluable asset to the development of our Philadelphia office and will help us continue to expand and enhance our full-service capabilities throughout the region.”

San Francisco City Lawyers Extend 2% Pay Cut

Erik Even — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:28:54 +0000

Lawyers for the City of San Francisco have voted to continue a 2% pay cut for another year.

The Municipal Attorney’s Association, the union representing the lawyers, approved the continued salary cut by a members vote of 167-73.

MAA lawyers salaries start at $98,500 a year, but can earn as much as $172,600. Those at the top of the pay scale are giving up $133.00 per paycheck.

The Municipal Attorney’s Association is the recognized collective bargaining unit for about 400 non-management attorneys employed by the City and County of San Francisco. The Association represents attorneys in the office of the District Attorney, the Public Defender, the City Attorney, the Sheriff Department, the Tax Collector, the Rent Board, the Public Guardian/Administrator, the Trial Courts, and the Department of Child Support Services.

Alameda County, California to Cut 29 Attorneys

Erik Even — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:15:41 +0000

Alameda County, California’s new budget calls for layoffs and program cuts to close a $178 million funding deficit, including cutting 14 attorney positions in the District Attorney’s Office and 15 in the Public Defender’s Office.

The cuts will likely force prosecutors to limit prosecutions.

The County will eliminate 285 full-time equivalent positions. It currently has 9,300 such jobs.

The Sheriff’s Office will lose 100 positions, disband its Marine Patrol Unit and close its Fairmont Animal Shelter. Public Protection will lose 180, the DA and PD positions. Probation will cut 49.

Less than half of the reductions will be layoffs of current personnel. Empty positions will be left vacant.

Caifornia’s Alameda County occupies most of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2000 census it had a population of 1.4 million, making it the seventh largest county in the state. The county seat is Oakland.

Boulder County DA Fires 6 Prosecutors

Erik Even — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:05:04 +0000

Colorado’s Boulder County District Attorney’s Office has terminated six prosecutors, including well-known attorneys Colette Cribari and Bryan Quiram.

Deputy district attorneys Lisa Hunt, Phil Davis, Jessica Lasky and Chris Leh have also been shown the door. No official reason has bee given for any of the terminations.

New DA Stanley L. Garnett, who started in January, let go two attorneys at that time. The office now has 21 prosecutors, and four more will start work in the next few months.

Hunt suspects her termination was related to a sexual harassment claim she filed in May.

White & Case Expands New York Litigation Practice

Erik Even — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:08:45 +0000

White & Case, which laid off 200 associates and 200 staffers in March, has added two new partners to its litigation practice in New York.

Gregory Little and Scott Hershman come from Hunton & Williams, where Little was head of the firm’s New York Litigation Group and a former member of the firm’s executive committee.

Hershman was previously an assistant district attorney in New York City.

The firm recently brought on three other partners: Joseph Angland, who has more than 30 years’ trial lawyer experience; former Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul G. Cantero, III; and former US District Judge Jim Lechner, Jr.

White & Case’s Commercial Litigation Practice is comprised of more than 750 lawyers worldwide, and accounts for more than one-third of the firm’s work globally.

White & Case LLP is a leading global law firm with 2,300 lawyers in 38 offices in 25 countries, and a total staff of more than 4,800. It was founded in New York in 1901.

Frisco DA Lays Off Lawyers, Staff

Erik Even — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:27:15 +0000

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris laid off at least five staffers and two attorneys last week.

Harris blamed the City by the Bay’s $500 million budget deficit.

The staff laid off include three paralegals and two investigators.

The office had 253 total employees, including 123 lawyers, before the layoffs.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Public Defender Jeff Adachi have said that they have not had to lay anyone off for budget reasons. But they, like Harris, have cut vacant positions.

Kamala Devi Harris is the first female District Attorney to be elected in San Francisco, the first African American elected as District Attorney in California, and the first Indian American elected to the position in the US. She was cited by the New York Times to be among the seventeen most likely women to become the first female President of the United States.

Manhattan DA Retires After 35 Years Of Service

Erik Even — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:23:48 +0000

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has decided not to run for re-election, thus ending a long era for the prosecutor. A high-ranking person in Morgenthau’s office announced the decision.

Morgenthau, 89, has been a prosecutor in New York City since the Kennedy administration, when he was appointed Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor.

“We owe much of our city’s low crime rate and safe streets to his years of great service. He will be sorely missed,” said City Council member Peter F. Vallone Jr., a former assistant to Morgenthau.

“As both a federal prosecutor and district attorney, his integrity and excellence is shown not just in his longevity and dedication, but in the results he delivered generations of New Yorkers,” Sen. Charles Schumer said in a statement.

Crocker Snyder is seen as a favorite to win the post in the November election. She issued a statement Friday wishing Morgenthau well.
“He has been a great institution for New York, and I hope he is happy in the next phase of his life,” Crocker Snyder said.

Phillie DA: You’re Fired Before You’re Hired!

Erik Even — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:26:19 +0000

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has rescinded offers to 12 incoming attorneys who were set to start in the fall, according to hiring committee head Kathleen McDonnell.

The 300-attorney office typically sees about 10% attrition each year, which enables it to bring in a class of up to 35 people. But in this latest fiscal year, only two people left.

The class set to come in this fall was already smaller, with eight of the office’s interns receiving offers around October 2008, and another four external candidates receiving offers in December.

District Attorney Lynne Abraham did away with the informal three-year commitment policy in which all attorneys are asked to stay for at least three years and would need a valid reason to leave before that time was up. McDonnell said, “Nobody even bit.”

McDonnell said that, given the dire state of the city’s financial outlook, it became clear that the smaller class size, delayed start dates and loosening of the three-year commitment policy were not going to be enough to justify bringing in any new attorneys.

The office contacted the 12 attorneys last week by phone to let them know of the decision, and an official letter was sent out this week.

McDonnell said that she made calls to other district attorney’s offices in the area. While many of them have hiring freezes in place, they can hire if a vacancy opens up, and a few of the offices seemed very interested in taking on some of the candidates.

CA State Bar Shuts Down “Illegal” Law Office

Erik Even — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:14:21 +0000

Prosecutors at the State Bar of California have shut down a satellite office of Walter S. Martinez, a solo practitioner in Upland, California, alleging that two office administrators were illegally practicing law.

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office charged a dozen people, most of them chiropractors, as part of an ongoing sting operation against illegal patient referral and insurance over-billing schemes. Operation K-Fraud, which stands for “Knockout Fraudulent Attorneys and Unscrupulous Doctors,” targets a scheme in which doctors allegedly agreed to pay 30% of their patient billings to law office administrators in exchange for those patients’ referrals.

The defendants include eight chiropractors, one attorney and three administrative staff members. The attorney is David Gonzalez of Placentia. Another defendant, law office administrator Lisa Marie Tran, worked in Martinez’s Orange County office.

Earlier this week, an Orange County Superior Court judge granted the State Bar authority to take over Martinez’s Westminster satellite law office, which also goes by L&M Legal Services. Two office administrators were ordered to cease and desist from practicing law.

The State Bar has taken files from the office and returned them to clients. Martinez has not been charged.

Attorney Cannot Be Prosecuted Over Bad Advice

Erik Even — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:47:48 +0000

Defendants Maria Theresa Ramos, left, Rizza Maulion, center and Felix Vinluan are seated in front of their attorneys James Druker, left and Oscar Michelen .

A lawyer facing criminal charges for advising 10 nurses they could quit their jobs at a Long Island, NY nursing facility gave “objectively reasonable” advice and cannot be prosecuted, a Brooklyn appeals panel has ruled.

In a unanimous decision, the Appellate Division, 2nd Department, ruled that District Attorney Thomas J. Spota of Suffolk County must halt his prosecution of attorney Felix Vinluan and his clients.

“We cannot conclude that an attorney who advises a client to take an action that he or she, in good faith, believes to be legal, loses the protection of the First Amendment if his or her advice is later determined to be incorrect,” wrote Justice Randall T. Eng. “Indeed, it would eviscerate the right to give and receive legal counsel with respect to potential criminal liability if an attorney could be charged with conspiracy and solicitation whenever a District Attorney disagreed with that advice.”

The nurses were recruited as a group from the Philippines by SentosaCare, which operates the Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Smithtown, New York.

In April 2006, they left their posts in protest over job conditions. The district attorney accused the nurses of abandoning their patients by leaving their shifts without giving administrators enough notice to find replacements.

They, along with Vinluan, were indicted in March 2007 on 13 counts, including charges of sixth-degree conspiracy, endangering the welfare of a child, and endangering the welfare of a physically disabled person.

Vinluan, after hearing the nurses’ complaints about substandard pay, poor living conditions, changes in work shifts and other alleged violations of their contracts, “advised them that they could resign if they wanted to as their contracts were already breached.”

Justice Eng pointed out that the nurses “did not abandon their posts in the middle of their shifts.” Rather they resigned “after the completion of their shifts, when the pediatric patients at Avalon Gardens were under the care of other nurses and staff members.”

Eng also noted that the state Education Department ultimately cleared the nurses of professional misconduct after taking into account that “no children were deprived of nursing care.”

Since prosecutors did not dispute that Vinluan acted in good faith, Eng held, the attorney could not be prosecuted for giving legal advice to commit an act, which, under the circumstances, was not a crime.

LA County DA Not Immune to Retaliation Claim

Erik Even — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:03:13 +0000

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley is not entitled to qualified immunity from a retaliation claim filed by a deputy DA who spoke publicly about problems tied to an investigation of a failed $200 million school construction project.

David Eng served on a task force to investigate fraud and environmental crimes associated with construction of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Belmont Learning Complex, which was halted in 1999. He was demoted and falsely charged with a misdemeanor relating to the misuse of office computers after concluding, as part of the task force, that no crimes had been committed. Cooley was elected in 2000 on a campaign to prosecute individuals tied to the Belmont project.

The 9th Circuit found that Eng was within his First Amendment rights when he blew the whistle on a task force colleague who had leaked to the IRS that the school district had committed fraud when purchasing the Belmont facility. The panel also found that a lawyer Eng hired to defend him against the misdemeanor charges, Mark Geragos, was within his First Amendment rights to speak about the retaliation against Eng in a 2003 Los Angeles Times article.

The panel held that “the full range of adverse employment action appears to have been a politically-motivated effort to silence Eng, who stood to embarrass Cooley by undermining a central plank in his campaign platform.”

Hahn & Hessen Announces New Partners

Erik Even — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:14:29 +0000

New York’s Hahn & Hessen LLP has announced that Daniel M. Ford and Edward L. Schnitzer have been made partners in the firm. Both men were formerly senior associates.

Ford represents financial institutions and borrowers in structuring, negotiating and closing a wide variety of domestic and cross-border financing transactions. He came to the firm from White & Case in 2004. A magna cum laude graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Dan was a member of the Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Schnitzer represents creditors, unsecured creditor committees, debtors and trustees, with a concentrated expertise in all levels of bankruptcy-related litigation. He was an Assistant District Attorney in Bronx County, and served as a Staff Attorney with the Division of Enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A 1997 graduate of Columbia University School of Law, and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, he has been with the Firm since 2001.

Founded in 1931, Hahn & Hessen LLP is a full service commercial firm serving primarily financial institutions and creditors holding distressed debt.

Murder Defendant Denied Counsel, Sues Public Defenders

Erik Even — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:00:23 +0000

A murder defendant who has been denied legal representation for eight months is suing the head of the Georgia public defender system.

“This is surely an unprecedented deprivation of counsel in modern times,” said the lawsuit, filed for Jamie Ryan Weis by prominent Atlanta lawyers Stephen Bright, Sarah Geraghty, Ed Garland and Don Samuel.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Weis for the 2006 killing of Catherine King.

Since April, Weis has been sitting in jail awaiting trial without lawyers to represent him. The lawsuit was filed after trial judge Johnnie Caldwell scheduled a January 5th hearing on the case.

“It’s frustrating,” Pike County District Attorney Scott Ballard said. “We’ll be ready to prosecute just as soon as they’re ready.”

The suit was filed in Fulton County Superior Court against Robert “Mack” Crawford, director of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, and Gerry Word, acting head of the capital defender’s office.

Weis’ case has highlights the budgetary problems plaguing the state’s public defender system.

Weis’ two appointed lawyers, Bob Citronberg and Tom West, were removed from the case in November 2007 when the cash-strapped defender system did not have the money to pay them.

Two local public defenders were ordered to take over the case, but they objected, saying they already had crushing caseloads and had neither the time nor the resources to defend a capital case.

At a court hearing in April, an agreement was reached to return Citronberg and West to the case, provided that Crawford sign a contract allowing them to be paid. That has yet to occur.

Crawford should have signed the contract long ago, the suit said. ”He should not have delayed the reinstatement of counsel for eight days; the delay of eight months is unconscionable.”

Weis’ suit seeks a court order reinstating Citronberg and West as his lawyers.

Separately, the lawyers filed a motion Wednesday in Pike County objecting to Monday’s court hearing because Weis has no criminal defense lawyers.

Via AJC.com.

Union Defends Jobs of Deputy District Attorneys

Erik Even — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:13:37 +0000

The American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees is attempting to block a Polk County, Oregon District Attorney from sacking five deputy district attorneys.

District Attorney-elect Stan Butterfield notified the office’s five deputy district attorneys that he would be interviewing and hiring new attorneys once taking office.

In a letter to the current staff, Butterfield wrote:

“This letter shall serve as formal notification to you that upon my taking office as District Attorney for Polk County, your current appointment as deputy district attorney will expire. If you wish to be considered for subsequent appointment by me, please contact my secretary…

The AFSCME insists that Butterfield is overstepping his authority. AFSCME Local 173′s Don Loving:

“The union that represents Polk County employees … will vigorously oppose any effort by Polk County District Attorney-elect Stan Butterfield to replace any of the current five deputy district attorneys.”

Butterfield insists that the deputy DAs are “at will” employees; the union replies that’s a misunderstanding of Oregon labor law.

“These are employees represented by a legal and binding collective bargaining agreement. Mr. Butterfield’s election comes with no magic wand that eliminates that agreement. Moreover, this exact same type of case has been litigated several times all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court, and the courts have been clear in siding with the represented employees.”

Loving said a union attorney has sent Butterfield a letter outlining the legal history of similar cases.

In Oregon, elected district attorneys have the leeway to appoint replacement deputies in the event of a resignation or to terminate with reasonable cause. But the district attorney is not authorized to make a carte blanche change.

Via The Statesman-Journal.