|
Publisher Kate Dixon's Past Life
Hits Legal Paper's Front Page
9th
Circuit Court of Appeal holds that disbarred attorney
effectively represented 3-strike defendant
by
Virginia McCullough
An article
on the legal newspaper The Recorder's front page caused
Newsmakingnews.com's publisher Kate Dixon to relive her past
life as an attorney. Reporter Justin Scheck's article, which
appeared on
Tuesday,
January 24, 2006 opened with the statement, "If only Kathryn
Dixon had been a cobbler." Scheck went on to detail the 1997
case of Darris Young who had been defended by Kate Dixon, then a
sole practitioner from
Berkeley,
California (Click
to Scheck article)
Kathryn Joanne Dixon bio
Kathryn
Joanne Dixon was born on
February 17, 1952
in Pennsylvania. She was one of two children born to a WWII
soldier and probate attorney Joseph Leon Dixon and a mother
Minnie Boudman Dixon who was elected three times to the
Democratic State Committee. Dixon
had a passion for writing and the theater and worked for two
years as a theater producer in New York City after graduating
from Penn State University in 1972 and obtaining her J.D. from
the Mid-Valley College of Law in 1976. Leaving New York, she
worked as a paralegal in San Francisco from 1978 until 1981
before entering solo practice.
Dixon
practiced civil law until mid-1994 when a federal judge's
sanctions pushed her into criminal defense, according to an
article by Deborah Yaffe published in The Recorder on
February 7, 1996. That article entitled Strange Bedfellows detailed the
race between self-described conservative pro-life Alameda County
Superior Court Judge Joseph Hurley and liberal
Dixon
described by friends, clients and acquaintances as a
hard-working advocate for the poor and underprivileged.
The Jaffe
article contained a quote from Carmen Herrera, the former
director of the lawyer referral service of La Raza Centro Legal
Inc., a Mission District legal services center for Hispanics.
"She's a very caring kind of person," Herrera said, "She was one
of the attorneys that was always very helpful to indigent
people. I think she was sensitive to her clients, especially the
poor ones."
But even as
Dixon took out her candidacy papers she was aware that two
judges had levied $19,000 plus interest in sanctions against
her.
Dixon had filed a class action lawsuit alleging children had
been paddled, beaten and sexually abused and subjected to
experimentation via
University
of California pain surveys while attending the Emeryville
schools. The suit outraged politicians and school officials
alike and ultimately led to the California State Bar filing 44
charges against Dixon in August of 1995. The Bar detailed
instances of dishonesty and incompetence in 10 cases dating back
to 1993. More cautious attorneys would have quietly retreated,
hired an attorney to defend them and mustered their resources
fighting to retain their law license. However, typical of the
confrontational style that made her an effective criminal
defense lawyer, Dixon displayed her chutzpah by choosing to run
against a well-financed, entrenched judge.
There was no
question that the Hurley-Dixon judicial race was the most talked
about contest for an
Alameda
County
judgeship in years. There is also no doubt that the negative
publicity that Dixon generated by running aided and abetted the
State Bar's effort to disbar the irritating Kate Dixon.Finally
in 1999,
Dixon was formally disbarred.
The case
that is the focus of Justin Scheck's article in The Recorder
involved Dixon acting as defense attorney for Darris Young in
1997, the year that the California State Bar recommended
Dixon's disbarment (Click
to Young v. Runnels, No. 03-16859) Young's
appellate attorney A. J. Kutchins argued that the behavior that
cost Dixon her license occurred before Dixon represented Young
and that therefore her counsel was ineffective.
The 9th
Circuit Court of Appeals was not impressed with Kutchins'
argument and instead upheld the 2000 ruling of U.S. District
Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of Oakland. Ninth Circuit Senior
Judge Warren Ferguson wrote that although Dixon was facing
disciplinary proceedings at the time of Young's trial she had
not yet been disbarred, so her counsel was not per se
ineffective.
Ferguson
was joined by Judge Pamela Rymer. Judge John Noonan in a
concurring opinion, elaborated on his decision by stating, "It
is conceded by all that if Darris Young had been represented by
a college student or a cobbler or counsel not admitted to the
California bar, he would have been denied his Sixth Amendment
right to counsel. But his case is different because he was
represented by a fully licensed member of the California bar
whom the courts of California took nearly two years to remove
from a position where she could harm the public, the courts, and
her clients!"
Publisher
Dixon responded to Justin Scheck after his article's deadline
with the following email:
|
E-Mail to Justin Scheck
I
just read your article. It is very good. I am now in the
internet news business as publisher, reporter of
www.newsmakingnews.com.
I
wanted to tell you that there is apparently a cottage
industry going on since July 1997 when I was disbarred.
The industry consists of filing inadequacy of counsel
motions and appeals. I understand that the panel lawyers
are getting paid well for it, and the briefs that are
being churned out look somewhat alike. I am always happy
to enrich my fellow members of the bar.
I was
never contacted on this Young case or any of the other
cases by any appellate lawyer or investigator. If I had
been contacted, perhaps my declaration would have been
helpful. Given that a so-called top trial lawyer of the
Alameda DA's office testified against me at the bar
proceedings and DA Orloff made moves to disbar me over the
Emeryville cases he failed to prosecute, I think I may
have had some helpful information. In addition, the state
bar decisions and other decisions against me read as
though I was mentally incompetent. A mentally incompetent
lawyer cannot give effective representation. That is the
law. This Young decision does not address the issue of
whether the lawyer is mentally competent. It just says
"discipline" was pending or in effect for some material --
fantasies? What? Politics? If a political hit by the
district attorney upon the lawyer is shown to have removed
him/her in the middle of a case or during it, or if a
lawyer is mentally incompetent, the decision in Young
would be quite different. But no one pursues those
avenues. If they did, virtually all of the cases I was
involved in at the time -- approximately 30 pending when
disbarred and approximately 100 cases during the
approximate 4 years it took to disbar me, would all be
reversed and have to be retried. The authorities know
this, so they have carefully danced around these two
central issues - first, the political hit by D.A., the US
Attorney and law enforcement causing bias vs. me and the
client, and second, the issue of mental incompetence. And
the appellate counsel are now providing inadequate
representation, incompetent counsel by not raising these
two issues which are clearly on the record.
Soon
after the cases vs. Emery school district were filed, a
deal was struck -- that the Alameda DA and US Attorney,
FBI, law enforcement and Shellmound State child care
licensing lawyers, would not investigate the cases or
prosecute and instead that I would "removed" from the
cases to "kill" the cases. In other words, disbarred by
fabricated State Bar charges, so the merits of the cases
would not be heard ever. After I was disbarred, no lawyer
wanted to represent the Emeryville children. A siren was
clearly heard.
This
is not the first time this has happened. Other lawyers
have been removed from controversial cases, and the
removals range from sanctioning them off the case, where
they fear a steep debt, all the way to minor and then
heavy discipline and even disbarment.
Since
this state bar proceeding, no case of mine has been
overturned for my ineffective assistance of counsel. I
have not been sued for malpractice. I was never arrested
for anything. The people who beat and molested the Emery
school children were never prosecuted despite clear and
convincing evidence. Now those children are grown. Maybe
they will come forward like the Catholic altar boys did!
Finally, I was not allowed to testify in my own defense in
the state bar case, or bring one witness or document on my
own behalf. It was a fascist hit.
So
again, thanks for writing a fair article.
Kate
Kathryn Joanne Dixon |
The Oakland
Tribune and Tri-Valley Herald also carried articles of a similar
nature written by staff writer John Richman. Tuesday the ghosts
of publisher Dixon's past life came back to haunt her. Her
response indicates that she has learned how to integrate her old
life and her new life leaving the hurt behind her and learning
from her life as a lawyer. It is also clear that she does not
intend to hide in shame in the shadows. She has found a new and
more effective method of getting her message before the public.
As an attorney she was able to help a few people in need; as a
publisher she reaches thousands every day.
Virginia McCullough © 1/24/06
vmccullough@comcast.net or
vmccullough@hotmail.com
|
