Ethics
Lawyer is accused of charging inmates for resentencing petitions despite little chance of success
A Los Angeles lawyer is accused in an ethics complaint of charging inmates to submit requests for resentencing to prosecutors who were unlikely to take action. (Image from Shutterstock)
A Los Angeles lawyer is accused in an ethics complaint of charging inmates to submit requests for resentencing to prosecutors who were unlikely to take action.
Lawyer Aaron Spolin charged inmates to submit petitions to prosecutors when they were not accepting outside submissions and when the cases did not fit resentencing criteria, according to an Aug. 26 notice of disciplinary charges.
Defendants who hired Spolin were unlikely to obtain “meaningful relief” despite paying thousands of dollars in legal fees, the notice said.
Law360, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times and the Metropolitan News-Enterprise have coverage.
The impetus for Spolin’s resentencing work was a 2018 law that allowed courts to recall and resentence defendants upon the recommendation of the district attorney.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Spolin marketed his resentencing services in mass mailings to prisons and through purchased online search terms that directed people to his website.
Spolin “eventually accumulated nearly 2,000 incarcerated clients, becoming a virtual celebrity on California prison yards,” the newspaper reported. “Families, many of limited resources, forked over fees starting at $3,000 and ranging upward of $30,000.”
The ethics complaint did not include most of those details. But it did say family members of one inmate paid Spolin as much as $28,500 for a package deal that included a case review, a resentencing request and a commutation application. Others paid less.
Spolin represented inmates despite receiving nine letters from the Los Angeles district attorney’s office informing him that it would not act on resentencing requests under the new law because it was creating a new unit to evaluate cases and because it was prioritizing cases for review.
He also received at least eight letters from the Orange County district attorney’s office disclosing that it would only consider resentencing requests from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The criteria eventually adopted by the Los Angeles district attorney said cases would be prioritized if the defendant was age 50 or older, had served at least 10 years of a 20-year or longer sentence, and had committed a nonviolent or a nonserious crime.
Among Spolin’s clients were inmates in prison for murder, second-degree murder and kidnapping.
The ethics charges allege that Spolin failed to communicate in a way that allowed clients to make informed decisions, failed to give candid advice, misled clients about his services, charged unconscionable fees, and committed acts of moral turpitude.
Spolin told the Los Angeles Times last year that some clients would eventually have success when the justice system embraced additional reforms.
“All these clients who feel like they’ve been hoodwinked, and then they’re gonna win. And they’re gonna say, ‘Oh, wow. You know, Mr. Spolin was right,’” he said.
Erin Joyce, a lawyer for Spolin, told the Los Angeles Times that Spolin “has been fully cooperative with the state bar and will continue to cooperate. He looks forward to resolving this matter in the near future.”
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