The Case You Go to Law School For

Posted on Oct 18, 2011

By Bill Blum

Looking for the latest outrage from the American justice system after the execution of Troy Davis? Meet Bobby Joe Maxwell and get to know his lawyer, Pasadena attorney Verna Wefald.

Now 63 and in his 32nd year behind bars, serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, Maxwell is an accused serial killer once known as the Skid Row Stabber of Los Angeles. Arrested in 1979, Maxwell’s trial was delayed until late 1983 by legal motions and wrangling over the publicity rights to his life story. When it finally commenced, the trial lasted nine months and was the stuff of L.A. noir, orchestrated against a media frenzy that portrayed Maxwell as a shadowy Satanist responsible for the deaths of at least 10 homeless men. The problem is, in all likelihood, he’s innocent.

Wefald, 58, runs a solo law practice specializing in criminal appeals. She operates on a shoestring budget primarily drawn from meagerly paid court appointments. I’ve known her since we were colleagues briefly at the Los Angeles branch of the State Public Defender’s office before the branch was closed down for budget reasons in the early ’90s, and I’ve often wondered how and why she does what she does. For the past 22 years, Wefald has represented Maxwell before state and federal courts, often for free, insisting to anyone who would listen that her client wasn’t guilty, that he’d been framed by perjured testimony and prosecutorial misconduct committed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.

It’s never been easy. Wefald recently told me that when she first signed on to defend Maxwell on appeal in 1989, “I was young and thought this was the kind of case you went to law school for. About 10 years into it, I wished I had never gone.”

Read more: Truthdig

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:banghead:

I've been unemployed for more than a year since my law firm let me go for austerity reasons.

With a colleague, we are trying to return the five children to their mother (pro bono/for free). Our client was a victim of domestic violence, her husband choked her, she called the police, and Child Protection was called in. Their children were removed b/c they were poor. They lived in a log cabin with plastic over the windows to keep the cold out. They homeschooled their children (inadequately). The children weren't immunized and didn't visit the pediatrician regularly.

It's been 2-1/2 years since the children were removed. The foster family wants to adopt all five children. They live in a nice upper middle class home and go to school. Our client has filed for divorce from her abusive husband and lives in another state, in hiding, 8+ hours away from him. She's gone to DV counseling, parenting classes, and is working for the first time in more than a decade. She's also in the process of completing a medical certification program. She travels by bus 9 hours each way to visit her children biweekly for only two hours. Everything she says and does is closely monitored (and used against her if possible).

It's not enough according to the court and Child Protection and we are using everything to fight to return the children to their mother. We are appealing a prior decision and preparing for a new hearing that will definitively determine whether the children are adopted. That means all visits with their mother will be cut off and the children will not be given the means to find her again as adoption records are sealed in our state.

Believe it or not, all this is aggravating, comes at the wrong time in my career, but it's the most rewarding case I've ever handled.

I don't know how this will play out, but I honestly think we have a good shot at stopping the adoption and to return the children to their mother.

and the DA and cops have all the cards. It is not about justice. It's about winning. And never reversing, even when the evidence of a false conviction is irrefutable.

Couple that with testilying, mandatory minimums, pro-prosecution juries, and plea deals that force defendants to say they're guilty or be subject to harsher sentences and charges, the playing field is not even close to level for anyone accused of a crime in this country. If you're poor, non-white, not physically attractive, or unrelated to anyone in the police department/DA's office and/or politically connected, you haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of getting out a courtroom without a jail sentence.

Finally, forget the military/industrial complex, check out the penal/political complex - how many politicians are funneling corporate contributions from the privatization of prison and prison services? A whole lot of 'em.