Stephen Yagman

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Stephen Yagman, (born December 19, 1944) is a former federal civil rights lawyer.

Over his legal career, Stephen Yagman developed a reputation for being a civil rights advocate, a crusader against police brutality,[1] and a "pugnacious civil rights lawyer."[2] In County of Los Angeles v. U.S. Dist. Ct. (Forsyth v. Block), 223 F.3d 990 (9th Cir. 2000), federal Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski said, "[C]ounsel, Stephen Yagman, has a formidable reputation as a plaintiff's advocate in police misconduct cases; defendants in such cases may find it advantageous to remove him as an opponent."

Yagman, known as "a prominent and controversial civil rights lawyer," relentlessly pursued "legendary" civil rights cases against police, and made his name suing the LAPD,[3]

Yagman launched national reform of the complaint and disciplinary system for federal judges, and his complaints of judicial misconduct against U.S. Dist. Judge Manuel L. Real "were at the center of the controversy over the effectiveness of the federal judicial disciplinary system and exerted a uniquely powerful influence on subsequent attempts at reform." [4][5] The United States Judicial Conference cited Yagman in adopting its 2008 nationawide procedures for handling complaints of misconduct against federal judges.[1]

In his 2011 book, Lawyers on Trial, UCLA School of Law Professor of Law Emeritus Richard L. Abel listed Yagman in the chapter "Championing the 'Defenseless' and 'Oppressed,'" rated him a "highly competent, dedicated lawyer who is a champion of unpopular causes," and likened him to Clarence Darrow and William M. Kunstler.[6]

In 1986, Yagman successfully challenged a proposed nationwide suspension of federal jury trials due to budget shortfalls, in Armster v. U.S. Dist. Ct., 792 F.2d 1423 (9th Cir. 1986). In a unanimous opinion in a related proceeding, Armster v. U.S. Dist. Ct., 817 F.2d 480 (9th Cir. 1987), Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt said, "Yagman's vigilance in the protection of his clients' constitutional rights served all citizens. His fortitude and tenacity in the service of his civil rights clients exemplifies the highest traditions of the bar. As Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis noted, "the great opportunity of the American bar is and will be to stand . . . to protect the interests of the people." Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark (1966–69) seconded Judge Reinhardt's accolade: "Only the valiant have dared to sue the police for lawless violence and excessive force against the people. Foremost among the valiant is Stephen Yagman, who has bearded the lion in his den time and time again."[7] University of California Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky held Yagman to be "a very important civil rights lawyer for a long period of time," said Yagman was "particularly important to bringing challenges to police abuse," and "helped to develop the law in this area in a very positive way and represented a lot of people who needed counsel."[1] In 1994, Yagman prevented the implementation of the anti-immigrant, California Proposition 187, by obtaining a preliminary injunction barring public schools from excluding undocumented students, and then converting the preliminary injunction into a permanent injunction, after the Proposition was declared unconstitutional.[8]

On November 22, 2010, Yagman was disbarred, based on June 22, 2007 federal convictions for one count each of tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud, and 11 counts of money laundering.[9] Yagman contended that the IRS selectively and vindictively prosecuted him, ignoring the difference between tax avoidance, that is legal, and tax evasion, that is not,[9] because, as Idaho Special Prosecutor (1997–2001), he prosecuted homicide charges against FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi for allegedly murdering Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992[10] and because on January 19, 2002 he brought the first Guantanamo Bay detainee case and won it on December 18, 2003.[11] At his November 27, 2007 sentencing, U.S. Dist. Judge Stephen V. Wilson said of Yagman: "he has entered a field of law that's difficult. He is always the underdog, and he is facing the establishment at its fiercest. So anyone who gets into that arena is brave and has a mission. He tried cases in my court ... very competently."[12] The convictions were upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009,[13] and remain under habeas corpus review on the ground that they were a legal impossibility.[14]

Youth, education and early career

Stephen Yagman was born on December 19, 1944 in Brooklyn, New York into a working-class family. His father, Abraham Yagman, was a dental technician and his mother, Lillyan, was a secretary.[15] He did not learn to read until he was 12 years old[16] and attended Lincoln High School, in Brighton Beach. From 1962-66, Yagman was a lifeguard in Coney Island.[17] After attending the State University of New York at Buffalo, he then graduated from Long Island University in Brooklyn. He received a B.A. in American History, with minors in philosophy and political science. He then received an M.A. in philosophy from New York University, where he studied under former Trotskyite Sidney Hook, who supervised his master’s thesis on the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Hook encouraged Yagman to drop out of the Ph.D. program and begin law school. Yagman then attended Fordham University's School of Law from which he received a Juris Doctor in 1974.

During graduate school and law school, Yagman taught (English, remedial reading, social studies, economics, and Spanish) in the New York City public school system in Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant from 1967 to 1974. In 1967, Yagman married Marion R. Yagman (from whom he was divorced in 1994) with whom he continues to practice law, along with his other partner, retired United States magistrate judge (1980–96) Joseph Reichmann.[18]

Legal career

Stephen Yagman's legal career began before he graduated from Fordham Law School, as an attorney-intern with the New York City Legal Aid Society. Yagman was mentored by former N.Y. City Legal Aid Society director Martin Erdmann, attorney Charles Garry, house counsel to the Black Panther Party, and former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark. Following graduation, Yagman was appointed to the office of New York State's Attorney General as an Assistant Special Prosecutor for Nursing Homes (the Special Prosecutor post then was held by now-Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney Charles J. Hynes). Following his practice in New York, Yagman opened a law practice in Los Angeles where he specializes in cases of police misconduct, civil rights in federal courts, including over 200 federal police misconduct trials, and has briefed and argued over 150 federal appeals.

After the February 28, 1997 North Hollywood shootout, Yagman represented, pro bono, the orphaned children of Emil Matasareanu, Jr., one of the robbers who was killed in the incident. In the federal civil rights action filed against the LAPD and its officers, it was alleged that the officers intentionally kept on-scene paramedics away from Matasareanu so that he would bleed to death and die on the street, instead of providing him with necessary medical attention that could have saved his life.[19] The jury hung 9-3 in favor of the Matasareanu family, a mistrial was declared, and the case never was retried.[20]

On November 12, 1997, Yagman was sworn in by U.S. Dist. Judge Robert M. Takasugi as Special Prosecutor for the State of Idaho to prosecute FBI sniper Lon T. Horiuchi in the August 22, 1992 Ruby Ridge killing of Vicki Weaver (where he also served pro bono). In 2001, Yagman won a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declaring that federal law enforcement agents did not enjoy sovereign immunity and could be prosecuted criminally for state law homicide. Idaho v. Horiuchi, 253 F.3d 359 (9th Cir. 2001)(en banc). In January 2002, Yagman brought, pro bono, the first case seeking habeas corpus relief for Guantanamo Bay detainees, and in December, 2003, won the first case in which it was declared that Guantanamo detainees were entitled to seek habeas corpus relief in United States courts. Gherebi v. Bush & Rumsfeld, 374 F.3d 727 (9th Cir. 2004).[21]

In 2003 and 2006, Yagman, pro bono, defended in two, three-month-long trials Amy Prien, a mother charged with the murder of her three-month-old son. It was alleged that Prien breast fed her infant son methamphetamine-laced breast milk. The first trial was lost and Prien was sentenced to life in prison. After a successful appeal, in the second trial the jury hung 9-3 in favor of acquittal, and the district attorney declined to proceed to a third trial, thus saving Prien from serving life in prison.

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