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When California enacted landmark criminal justice reforms several years ago, inmates and their families saw a chance at freedom.

Aaron Spolin saw a business opportunity.

After the laws went into effect in 2019, the then-33-year-old attorney incorporated a law firm in West Los Angeles and began marketing legal services to the incarcerated and their loved ones.

Spolin, a Princeton-educated former McKinsey consultant, bought up online search terms so that people googling the laws saw ads touting the firms expertise. He mailed pitch letters directly to some of the states 100,000 prisoners introducing himself as a former prosecutor now in the top 1% among California criminal lawyers and informing them they might be eligible for sentence shortening under various new laws.

Nearly 2,000 individuals signed on with Spolin, according to the online resume of a former office manager. He became a celebrity inside prisons, his name passed around in exercise yards from Folsom to Calipatria, and in Facebook support groups for wives and children. Families of limited means borrowed against their homes, took out high-interest loans, dipped into 401(k)s, worked double shifts, ran public fundraisers and amassed credit card debt to pay Spolin fees that could run north of $40,000.

A Times investigation found that Spolin built a booming enterprise by fanning false hopes in some families desperate to get their loved ones home. He encouraged people to spring for pricey legal services that he knew or should have known had little or no chance of success, the newspaper found.

He told families of men incarcerated for murder and other violent crimes that progressive L.A. Dist. Atty. George Gascn could move to free them in less than a year under one new resentencing law. None of Spolins attempts, for which families paid about $10,000 each, appear to have been successful, and Gascns office told The Times it generally does not consider such offenders to be good candidates for resentencing.

Attorney Aaron Spolin has denied exploiting inmates and their families.

(Aaron Spolin)

In another example, Spolin presented a commutation from the governor, which experts say is a long shot for even the most rehabilitated of candidates, as a very real possibility for all types of inmates. Hundreds paid up to $14,000 for him to submit applications. None has been granted, The Times found, and some were patently unsuitable. One inmate he proposed for commutation this year had pleaded guilty in May 2022 to running a drug ring from his cell at Corcoran State Prison.

The Times found that Spolins firm relied on the work of some low-paid contract lawyers who were not licensed in California and had little or no experience in criminal appeals. Among those helping draft legal memos and court filings were lawyers from the Philippines and other developing countries making about $10 an hour.

Spolin denied exploiting inmates and their families and blamed district attorneys offices and others who he says have taken too narrow a view of which individuals should be freed.

Stephanie Charles, an actor whose brother, Wesner, has been behind bars since 2002 for robbery and attempted carjacking, said she now worries the $19,000 she and other loved ones scraped together to pay Spolin for a commutation and other services was wasted. A lot of us dont know the law, a lot of us are vulnerable, she said. We just want someone to help us solve the problem and not take advantage of us.

Stephanie Charles, whose brother, Wesner, was incarcerated in 2002, questioned Spolin Laws efforts to help her brother after relatives scraped together $19,000 to pay the L.A. law firm, with no results to show for it. We just want someone to help us solve the problem and not take advantage of us, she said.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Supporters of the states criminal justice reforms are among Spolins biggest critics.

This guy is getting rich off the most vulnerable people and [giving] them false hope that could really hurt them. It needs to stop now, Karen Nash, a deputy L.A. public defender who represents prisoners seeking resentencing under the reforms, wrote in a January email to the State Bar of California.

The new laws are designed so that prisoners who qualify get free legal representation.

It wasnt contemplated that this would become ambulance chasers who would see this as a way to make money off the backs of people who are in prison, said Hillary Blout, a former San Francisco prosecutor who helped write one of the reform measures.

Spolin acknowledged to The Times that he had given some people assessments that turned out to be overly optimistic.

We are different than other lawyers in that we fight for the way the law should be, Spolin said. During a three-hour interview, he predicted that courts and law enforcement would step up their use of resentencing laws in coming years, leading to the eventual release of many of the inmates he represents.

I am so confident that history will prove me right. All these clients who feel like theyve been hoodwinked, and then theyre gonna win. And theyre gonna say, Oh, wow. You know, Mr. Spolin was right.

Since at least 2009, when a panel of three federal judges ordered California to reduce its dangerously overcrowded prisons, the Golden State has been trying to reform its criminal justice system. Those efforts have picked up speed in recent years as mass incarceration has come to be viewed increasingly as a moral wrong that disproportionately hurts Black and Latino communities, the poor and the mentally ill.

Some reforms that the state passed concerned future prosecutions and did not apply to people already incarcerated. A pair of 2019 laws, however, did affect prisoners by allowing judges to consider inmates for resentencing and release, either on the recommendation of county district attorneys or because of changes to the murder statute that invalidated the convictions of some homicide defendants who had not carried out the actual killing. The statutes could be difficult to understand and did not apply to most people, so advocates visited prisons early on to explain the laws to groups of inmates.

A point they emphasized was that inmates didnt need to hire attorneys.

We were concerned because incarcerated people and their families will pay whatever is asked of them for just some hope at freedom, said Blout, who drafted the law that allowed prosecutors to recommend resentencing.

We are different than other lawyers in that we fight for the way the law should be. I am so confident that history will prove me right.

Aaron Spolin

Not everyone attended the prison briefings on the reforms, and when an inmate was released through the laws or there was even a rumor that someone might word raced through the prisons. Inmates wondering whether they too had a chance shared those hopes with relatives, and before long, many ended up phoning Spolins firm.

The attorney provided The Times with lists of clients and relatives he suggested would tell a reporter they were happy with the job he did. Some did not return calls or messages. Two said they felt a public defender would have done a better job, and they were confused about why Spolin would have provided their names to The Times.

Others enthusiastically endorsed the firm.

Its been a magical experience, said Darrell Tittle Jr., who was released in March after two decades in prison. He was convicted of manslaughter for participating in a deadly 2003 fight in which a rival San Diego gang member was shot to death. Tittle did not fire a weapon and was eligible for resentencing under the homicide reform law.

Though the law provides free legal representation for qualified inmates seeking resentencing, Tittle said he wanted a private lawyer and believed Spolin and his colleagues took his case more seriously. I felt the public defender had already let me down through my initial trial.

A smattering of other firms, including one started by a former Spolin attorney, have advertised similar services to inmates and families. Spolins firm was the first and appears to be by far the largest in California, according to interviews with government officials and advocates.

Spolin has expanded his firm to represent inmates in appeals and other proceedings in Texas, New York and Michigan, and said he plans to add clients in Pennsylvania shortly.

I want to be known throughout the country, he told The Times.

Ramon Valencia Pineda contacted Spolins firm last year desperate to find something good for his brother, Luis, a convicted murderer serving a sentence of life without parole.

In a phone call, Spolin recommended the family seek his release through the new law that allows prosecutors to recommend resentencing and said that for $18,500 his firm would pursue that route and a governors commutation, according to Valencia and a firm memo prepared for the family.

The money was daunting for Valencia, who works at a Home Depot in Stockton, and his sister, a department manager at Target. But their dealings with the law firm had filled them with hope. Spolin was bright and spoke authoritatively about their brothers prospects. In a conference call, he said, the attorney assured the family, You have a good case.

Hearing about the smart lawyer ready to fight for their incarcerated relative, cousins, aunts and uncles pitched in, $500 here and $1,000 there.

It was only recently, more than a year after they had paid Spolin, that they learned Luis Valencia never had a chance of being resentenced. In a terse Feb. 1 letter to Spolin, a Merced County deputy district attorney said anyone sentenced to life without parole was disqualified under the offices guidelines.

I did not know that was the policy of the D.A.s office, Spolin acknowledged to The Times after being asked about the letter. He said Luis Valencia struck him as a good candidate and defended his ignorance of the criteria, saying of prosecutors offices in general, It is very, very, very hard to get a call back.

Reached on her office line one recent afternoon, the Merced prosecutor who oversees resentencing, Misty Compton, said she was available to provide information about the offices resentencing policies to anyone seeking it but did not recall ever getting a call from Spolins firm.

The Valencia case was not the only time that Spolin urged families to hire his firm to pursue resentencing in a county where the incarcerated person did not meet the offices criteria. His firm charged the family of Alex Ivey, also serving life without parole for murder, last year to pursue resentencing through the Alameda County D.A. A prosecutor wrote back that Ivey would not be considered because the law currently does not permit resentencing on special circumstances cases like his.

Spolin said a prosecutor in the office had previously told his firm inmates like Ivey were eligible.

In Santa Clara County, Spolin charged the families of at least two men convicted of murder to seek resentencing through the D.A.s office there, according to interviews and firm memos. David Angel, the assistant district attorney overseeing resentencing, said the office is focused on inmates convicted of robbery, burglary and other less serious crimes and has never used the new law to recommend someone convicted of murder be released.

I did not know that information, Spolin acknowledged to The Times.

Ramon Valencia said he feels humiliated in front of relatives who gave from their meager savings and wronged by Spolin and his firm.

Isnt that their job to look into it? he said recently. It doesnt make any sense to me that he didnt know.

By the time the Valencias paid, Spolin Law was a high-volume operation.

At Solano State Prison in Vacaville, one firm client, who is serving 80 years to life for murder, said that when he goes to collect his legal mail, the registry shows inmate after inmate receiving letters from Spolin Law.

Another client at the same facility offered a reporter the names and prison numbers of nine other inmates in a phone call, saying they were lined up nearby and wanted a chance to describe their own problems with the attorney.

Asked how many clients he had, Spolin said, I dont know the exact number. Like a lot. He later estimated he had a couple hundred clients with active cases. He declined to provide the total number his firm has represented.

Questioned about different cases, Spolin was not familiar with the details or even the names of clients. Families interviewed by The Times said they had never met him in person, and most said they spoke to him just once at the start of his representation. Some inmates said they had never talked to Spolin. Nearly all inmates reported difficulties in reaching him or his four staff attorneys, saying that calls with lawyers took weeks or months to schedule and that they were forced to relay information through assistants, paralegals or case managers.

If you call in, you will never get the same person, said Emma Alford, who helped pay $30,000 to Spolin to represent her husband, Justin. Its a little disheartening.

Spolin said the firm is upfront about the fact that many people will work on cases: We tell clients its a team effort in terms of doing their work.

Case managers dealt frequently with families on the cost of various services and the options for paying in installments. Some relatives strapped for cash said they felt pressured to come up with money for Spolins fees.

Case managers do have a financial incentive to convince families to sign up for legal services, Spolin confirmed, saying their pay is related to the fees they deliver.

They get bonuses based on how hard they work, he said. He said the arrangement did not amount to a commission system, which State Bar rules prohibit.

Spolin denied that he pushed relatives to spend beyond their means.

There have been circumstances where people have said, This is all I have. And Ive said, You probably dont want to do this if this is all you have, he said.

Spolin grew up in Palo Alto, went to UC Berkeley Law, and took a job as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx. There, he worked fraud and other financial crimes cases and, according to Spolin, sat second chair on a murder prosecution.

Aaron Spolin attends the arraignment of a client in Los Angeles in 2017. Spolin has since focused on criminal justice reform cases and built a high-volume business by marketing legal services to the incarcerated and their loved ones.

(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

When he moved to L.A. in 2016, he switched to the defense side.

He didnt have an office when we hired him. It was just him, recalled one of his first clients, a then-17-year-old who asked to be identified by her initials, A.B. At the time, she was accused of double murder in the killing of a pregnant woman.

His rates were very reasonable, her mother, Mary Medina, recalled.

Spolin fought off a prosecution attempt to move the case to adult court, where the charges carried the possibility of decades in prison. Medinas daughter ultimately served six years in a juvenile facility and was released last year.

He did an amazing job, and there was a lot going against me, A.B. said.

In 2018, as Sacramento legislators were passing the new criminal justice reforms, Spolin started remaking himself as an appeals specialist. He said the timing was kind of a coincidence and that he found post-conviction work a better fit for his personality than trials.

Im a very introverted person. I dont like conflict, he said.

To prepare, he said, he read a textbook about California appellate law and attended a training conducted by judges. He registered Spolin Law as a business in March 2019 using the address of a co-working space on Olympic Boulevard. Employees work remotely from locations all over the country and world.

That decision and others about how to run the firm were influenced by a year and a half Spolin worked at McKinsey after getting an undergraduate degree from Princeton, he said. His time analyzing how different companies could expand to be successful led him to embrace new techniques at his firm.

I want to take what works and discard what doesnt, he said.

Aggressive internet advertising was one of the things that seemed to have worked. Spolin hired a digital marketing specialist from Ohio with expertise in Google ads and a goal, stated on his website, to make my clients phone ring and help them scale their service business. His other clients included carpet cleaning franchises in suburban Columbus.

Inmates searching for options under the reform laws were presented with paid posts about Spolin. His website featured long articles about the new reform laws, photos of Spolin smiling confidently, and big claims about his reputation and skills.

Though few in L.A.s legal establishment had ever heard of him, Spolin marketed himself as a widely regarded expert with a firm in the top 0.4% of criminal firms nationally. Multiple independent rating agencies ranked his firm at the top of its field, he told inmates in letters.

The designation actually came from for-profit outfits that offered Spolin and other lawyers the chance to buy a package, currently priced at $395, that included a wall plaque and permission to advertise their rankings. Spolin said the companies approached him and that he no longer pursues such rankings, which he called the poor mans Super Lawyers, a reference to the glossy legal magazines in which many high-end lawyers advertise.

Amanda Allen, whose then-husband, Johnte, was serving life without parole for murder, was impressed by Spolin Laws promotional material. It was just the whole headline, she recalled. He said he was the top attorney.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Whatever its basis, Spolins promotional material impressed people like Amanda Allen, whose then-husband, Johnte, was serving life without parole for a 2006 murder in Bakersfield.

It was just the whole headline, she recalled. He said he was the top attorney.

When she called the firm, she learned of what Spolin described as another McKinsey-inspired innovation: the $3,000 case review.

Before inmates or families talked to Spolin, they had to pony up a retainer that they were told would be used to research their case and evaluate their options. If they wanted to pursue one of those options, the $3,000 would be applied to the bill. If they didnt, the firm kept it.

Veteran appellate attorneys in California said free or low-cost initial consultations were the norm in the field.

$3,000? To just look at the case, which probably takes five minutes, said Paul J. Cohen, a Van Nuys appellate attorney who represents both paying and indigent clients. I dont charge more than $500 for a consultation where I actually go to the jail, and usually I dont charge anything.

Spolin defended the practice, saying his firms approach was more rigorous and valuable. Other lawyers, he said, might give an off-the-cuff remark, but theyre not getting records, and looking at records and then giving a detailed analysis and a detailed report.

Coming up with $3,000 was a challenge for Amanda Allen, an administrator at a group home who said she lives paycheck to paycheck, but the hope of getting her husbands sentence reduced was a strong motivation to scrimp and save.

After she paid, she received a memo outlining the options. Spolin reiterated them in a telephone conference. Johnte Allen, listening from prison, was not impressed.

He was supposed to look over my transcripts, but he didnt know anything at all, he said in an interview from Kern Valley State Prison.

Spolin recommended a $20,000 package that included seeking resentencing through the local D.A.s office. The suggestion struck Allen as absurd. His crime was notorious in extremely conservative Kern County. Just two years earlier, a D.A. candidate had bragged about convicting Allen. Now, Spolin wanted to charge his family to ask the same office for a break?

There was no way possible. I wasnt even incarcerated long enough or rehabilitated enough at that time to even be thought of for that specific deal, he said.

The memos Spolins firm prepares for families who pay $3,000 normally run about 14 to 20 pages and are based on a template. A Times review of more than a dozen prepared for families across the state showed that though they do include specific details from inmates cases, most of the memo is boilerplate explanations of the various legal avenues available to inmates. Even some of the information that appears to be specific to an inmate is canned.

We were pleased to learn that Mr. [inmate] has strong family support to help him integrate into society upon his release from prison, read portions of memos prepared for a half-dozen different families. This will ensure that Mr. [inmate] will not be destitute on the street and will have a place to stay and facilitate the resumption of a normal life.

Spolin said the memos had value to families who need a primer on the law and an understanding of what opportunities there were for their loved one: We are not saying we are giving them anything else.

Drafting these memos was sometimes delegated to contract lawyers hired through sites like Indeed. One attorney from a developing country said he was paid about $10 an hour to fill out the templates using records and questionnaires answered by inmates. The recommendations he made in the memo were passed up to a licensed California lawyer working at the firm, and he had no direct dealings with families.

There was nothing to lose. That was the justification. These were already incarcerated people.

Attorney from a developing world country who stopped working at the firm last year

The developing world attorney, who stopped working at the firm last year and spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his job prospects, said he met Spolin over a videoconference once during the job interview. Spolin, he said, remarked that the pay was at least twice as much as the average Philippine legal salary.

Spolin said in an interview that the firm had used foreign lawyers to carry out paralegal duties in the past, but stopped because the international attorneys English level was not good enough in terms of research and looking at cases and that kind of thing.

Read more from the original source:
A California lawyer cashed in on criminal justice reform by fanning ... - Los Angeles Times