Ramsey County Law Library Blog

It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to see that mental health issues are a contributing factor behind so many reported crime incidents. It stands to reason that any effective judicial-correctional system must address a perpetrator’s mental problems in order to successfully deter their future criminal activity and protect the public. This is the fundamental premise of the Ramsey County Mental Health Court (RHMHC).

The RCMHC came into existence in 2005, “when it became increasingly clear that persons with mental illness and co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse disorders were in need of more specialized and individualized jurisprudential approaches. “ The target population of the RCMHC is adult Ramsey County residents who have been charged with a crime that is related to a serious mental illness. Participation in the program is voluntary, with defendants being offered community mental health alternatives to “purely criminal sanction.” The program has benefited significantly from interns and volunteers, particularly attorneys from the firm of Briggs & Morgan.

As Ramsey County District Judge William Leary III recently told Minnesota Lawyer, “The program is doing extremely well [and] has met our expectations.” According to its website, “RCMHC graduates are less likely to be charged with a new offense, less likely to be convicted of a new offense, and less likely to spend time in jail than those in a comparison group of similarly situated offenders who did not participate in RCMHC.” Their recent press release states that only 15% percent of graduates had new charges after one year, compared with 60% of the comparison group. RCMHC is funded through the end of this year by the Minnesota Department of Human Services, Adult Mental Health Division. Unfortunately, Minnesota Lawyer reports that funding and continuation after that point are currently in jeopardy, unless new funding can be secured before that time. This would be a loss for our community, given RCMHC’s proven effectiveness in rehabilitating offenders and reducing recidivism.

Please see the RCMHC’s website for all this information and so much more.

This article in the ABA Journal warns that it is difficult, indeed unlikely, for disbarred attorneys to gain their licenses back upon reapplication, with some states making this quest so impossible as get them dubbed “death penalty states.” The Law Librarian couldn’t help but wonder how steep the odds are for disbarred Minnesota attorneys seeking professional reinstatement.

Minnesota attorneys are bound by the Minnesota Rules on Lawyers Professional Responsibility, which are administered by the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board. Rule 18 of the Rules particularly deals with reinstatement of disbarred lawyers. The Law Librarian read this and other information regarding reinstatement available at the LPRB website, plus several Minnesota Supreme Court Opinions involving reinstatement applications.

Turns out, Minnesota disbarment is not the professional death sentence for lawyers as it is in other states. Indeed, the Law Librarian was left with the impression that if you are a former lawyer living under the shame of disbarment, the Minnesota Supreme Court wants you to ‘fess up your professional sins and shortcomings. It wants you to show that you have cleaned up your act and got whatever professional help you might have needed. In short, it wants to deliver the climactic scene in the feel-good movie of your professional life that completes your career turnaround. (Of course, none of this is cheap or easy, with the biggest cost possibly being all the humiliating details of your downfall permanently published in the pages of the North Western Reporter…)

Minnesota standards for reinstatement are laid out in the case of In re Anderley 696 N.W.2d 380 (2005). An applicant must have “undergone a moral change,” plus these five criteria are considered: 1) recognition that the previous conduct was wrong, 2) the length of time since the misconduct and disbarment; 3) the seriousness of the original misconduct; 4) the attorney’s physical or mental illness or pressures that are susceptible to correction, and 5) the attorney’s intellectual competency to practice law. Id at 383.

What kinds of lawyerly (and not so lawyerly) sins can the Court grant professional redemption for? Mishandling of funds (In re Lieber 2013 WL 3929112), forging documents (Anderley), theft by swindle (In re Ramirez 719 N.W.2d 920 (2006)), and conspiracy to distribute cocaine (In re Trygstad 472 N.W.2d 137 (1991) and In re Reuter 474 N.W.2d 343 (1991)) or marijuana (In re Wegner 417 N.W.2d 97 (1987)) are all offenses which can be forgiven provided the above criteria are met. The Court even reinstated the license of one attorney after the South Dakota Supreme Court refused to do so (Trygstad at 139), and of his former colleague whose story was in direct contradiction with his (Reutter at 345). In conclusion, the Minnesota Supreme Court would appear to encourage disbarred attorneys to repent of their sins and reassemble their ruined lives, so that the Court can then reinstate their licenses. After all, “if disbarment were permanent in all cases, [Rule 18] would be a cruel hoax.” In re Swanson, 343 N.W.2d 662, 664 (Minn. 1984).

This blog entry isn’t to suggest that the reinstatement to the Minnesota Bar is easily achieved- it’s not. But if you have been disbarred and truly want to return to the practice of law, don’t assume that your professional career is permanently destroyed. Minnesota law recognizes your potential to learn from your mistakes and be better the second time around.

This week marked the passing of former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Wahl. She was appointed to the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1977 by Governor Rudy Perpich and served until 1994 (when she reached the mandatory retirement age of 70).

Her accomplishments are numerable and detailed in this Star Tribune feature. She was the mother of four when she enrolled at the William Mitchell College of Law in 1962 and the mother of five when she graduated in 1965. Her career included work as a public defender, a law professor, and a the pioneers of student-assisted law clinics. See the William Mitchell College of Law Tribute to Justice Wahl, and also read about a documentary film on the life of Justice Rosalie Wahl.

Her earliest history contains a detail of special interest. Wahl was born in 1924 in Gordon, Kansas. Her mother died when she was four years old, and her brother and father were killed before her eyes when she was eight. She was raised by her grandmother through the depths of the Great Depression. Now, according to this map of Butler County, Kansas from the Kansas Department of Transportation, the town of Gordon is less than 10 miles south of Augusta. The town of Augusta is noteworthy, because it became home to 3-year old Madelyn Payne and her family in about 1925. Ms. Payne later married Stanley Dunham, and is best known for being the tough smart grandma that raised President Barack Obama, and a trailblazer in her own right. Given the rural community they grew up in, it is likely that young Rosalie and Madelyn would have crossed paths.

Though this is just an interesting coincidence, Butler County, Kansas can be proud of its historic tradition of tough, smart grandmothers. Of course, grandmothers everywhere can be certain that they have the power to shape young lives for the better.

This has been a blockbuster week for anyone who happened to be watching the U.S. Supreme Court. Some of the most newsworthy decisions from our nation’s highest bench feature the following matters:

Gay Marriage: The Court gave legally married gay couples equal federal footing with all other married Americans, and also cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California by restoring a trial court’s declaration that California’s Proposition 8 ban was unconstitutional. Both decisions hinged on scant 5-4 majorities.

Indian Child Welfare Act: In another 5-4 decision, The Court determined that that ICWA doesn’t require that the child at issue be given back to her Cherokee father but it also doesn’t clear her adoptive parents, to immediately regain custody of her. This was the case that was discussed in this blog entry.

Voting Rights Act Requirements: The Court voted 5-4 to strip the government of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which previously required that all or parts of 15 states with a history of discrimination in voting get Washington’s approval before changing the way they hold elections.

Affirmative Action: In an unusual variation from its rather predictable 5-4 voting dynamic, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion for the Court’s 7-1 ruling that a court should approve the use of race as a factor in admissions only after it concludes “that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity.”

What to conclude from this assortment of decisions? Besides authoring the opinion above, note that Justice Anthony Kennedy voted in the majority of all of these decisions. Can we at least safely conclude that Kennedy is the really our nation’s most powerful person? He certainly was this week.

Some recent news articles have prompted the Law Librarian to think about prisons and incarceration. Recently Sesame Street unveiled its incarceration kit, which is designed to help children deal with the anxiety of having a parent incarcerated. No one would oppose tools to assist children going through this difficult event, but this might be little more than a band-aid tool for a serious problem. Incarceration is extremely detrimental to kids, considering that it deprives them of both a parent’s presence and their income stream. The result is often kids going from two-parent to one-parent homes, or from one-parent homes to foster homes. This leads to an overall effect on communities that is devastating. More can be read here.

There is also the sheer government expense that comes from incarceration, not only for the process itself, but for the fact that one cannot be a taxpayer while being a prisoner. (Despite criminal expungement options, this “lost taxpayer” effect can remain a problem even after the prisoner is released.) Government dollars spent on incarceration leaves less money available for projects like transportation, education, healthcare, etc. It’s no wonder that certain GOP leaders are deciding that their previous “get tough” platform is too expensive to be compatible with their principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism. Of course, government prison contracts are a major industry and revenue source in some communities.

The Law Librarian understands that some people are unfortunately dangerous, and that public safety may require locking them away. Yet this begs the deeper questions of whether such people were simply “born that way” or slipped through cracks of our social fiber somehow. Judges nowadays also have less leeway in sentencing, given the emergence of legislative constraints such sentencing guidelines and statutory sentencing mandates. To what extent are these forces in effect because of some psychological need we have to see “wrongdoers” punished or vilified? (Hint: Go to the Pioneer Press or Star Tribune and pick out a crime news story and then read the comments field entries – the vindictive tone is unmistakable.) Despite any emotional satisfaction it might bring us, incarceration is certainly the most costly and least effective way to address real social problems.

The June issue of Law Technology News contained two articles that particularly caught my attention. The Test Drive section presented a “See Through Billing” review of Viewabill software from No Surprises Software. The company says its product is “designed to bring transparency to legal billing.” It works by allowing firm clients accessible views of all legal costs and entries entered up to date, instead of having to wait anxiously for the monthly bill. The dashboard interface of the product also presents a “pencils down” feature next to each matter, allowing the client to send a message to the billing partner instructing to stop all work on that matter. Viewabill software clearly puts new pressure on a firm and its staff to enter billable time on a frequent (i.e. daily) basis, and even though the task of billing time is certainly a headache for many, such frequency might be worth it to prevent costly and damaging billing “misunderstandings” with the client down the road. A more in-depth look at Viewabill software is available here.

Also presented is the article “How Not to Crash,” which describes the scenario of a trial team that forewent using an experienced trial technician to present their case, and instead conscripted a firm staff member to do it with a popular trial presentation program. The staff person (who probably had a few other jobs to do as part of trial prep) was not experienced in using this program, and was fumbling around early in the trial before she accidentally showed portions of the transcript the judge had excluded. She was soon surrounded by her irritated team who was demanding to know what she had done. Luckily for her, the opposing side recognized that this was a technical mistake and not some sneaky trial tactic, and the heat of the incident soon blew over. LTN uses this wince-inducing story to demonstrate how, in the absence of a true expert, a trial team might be better off using familiar old standbys like Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Windows Media Player. Such basics also have the added benefit of being recognizable to modern jurors.