I went to the University of Nebraska Student Union and found a white male student lounging and watching television. I told him that I was doing a research project and asked if he would be willing to be a tester for me. He agreed. I wrote down the name and number of the CJS book I wanted and asked him to go to the state law library and check it out and bring it to my office. The student proceeded to the state law library and picked out the book and took it to the front counter. The librarian wrote down the student’s name, address and telephone number on a 3x5 index card and checked out the book to him for five days.
Not wanting it to be deemed an isolated incident, I waited two days and returned the book. I then went back to the UNL Student Union and found a second white student and asked him to do the same thing. That student also was given the book for five days by the librarian. Later that afternoon, the book was returned to the library and I attempted to check out the same book the following day, and was advised by the librarian that only state senators and members of the state bar could checkout library materials. At this point it was clear the policy was based on race and ethnicity and not senator or lawyer status.
I went to the Clerk of the Legislature and inquired about the library policy that I had been given and asked why did it seemed so bias. The clerk of the legislature told me there had never been a library policy written for the state law library. He stated that only the Nebraska Supreme Court could draft a policy for the state law library and it would have to be done en banc by the Supreme Court per state statute. I gave him a copy of the policy that I had been given and he was stupefied to see it.
I then filed a complaint to the state about disparate treatment at the state law library. Two weeks later, I received a letter in the mail inviting me to an informal claims hearing at the State Capital building in Lincoln. Upon arrival, there were dozens of other citizens that had filed various state claims. James and I were the only black faces in the room. Scott Moore, who was also Secretary of State at that time, was officiating the hearing. James and I were the very last case that was called. Up until then, there had been no security officers in the room. Before we were called up, Scott Moore announced they were going to take a fifteen-minute break and reconvene. I thought that was strange because he had already heard over two dozen cases and ours was the last one of the day.
Upon our return to the hearing room after the break, a security officer came into the room and sat directly behind James and myself. When the hearing committee returned, Scott Moore called our claim. I approached the podium, announced my name and reason I was before the committee. Scott Moore stopped me after my initial introduction and said, “STOP!!! We know why you are here and do not want to hear what you have to say. If you think you have been discriminated against, then sue us, but we are not going to sit here and listen to any of this crap that you are about to tell us. This is not the forum to rant about how you think you were treated.” He then demanded that James and I leave the property immediately. I refused and told him that I was lawfully in the building, it was public property, and I had been invited by letter to attend the hearing. Scott Moore then told us that we could voluntarily leave or be escorted out by security, at which time the security guard stood up.
James and I left the building. Two weeks later, a fax was intercepted by the Clerk of the Legislature, which had been written by Nick Caporale who was one of the justices of the Nebraska Supreme Court, to Rita Wiechman at the State Law Library. The memo read in part…”Up until now, the Law Library had been run on an ad hoc basis. However, we have had more ethnically diverse people moving into our community. The ones coming in now seem to be able to reason inductively and deductively and can even read and write. Therefore, you need to ensure that any policies you implement should be uniformly applied.”
I advised Senator Ernie Chambers of the incident. Chambers called the Clerk of the Legislature and went to talk with the Chief Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court. I filed a lawsuit alleging discrimination and disparate treatment against the State of Nebraska, Rita Wiechman and Joe Steele. Joe Steele was the administrator of the State Law Library and responsible for its policies and procedures.
I filed the lawsuit in pro se because no attorneys would take the case in Lincoln. Two months after the case was filed, I found a female lawyer, that I will call “Paula.” Paula read the complaint I had filed and said it was very disturbing that such a chain of events could happen and agreed to help with the case. Paula entered her appearance in the case, and started discovery in the case. Two weeks later, Paula called me on a Saturday morning crying and apologizing. She told me that she and her husband had been receiving threating telephone calls warning that “If you represent those niggers and they win, you and your husband will never work in this state again.” Paula explained that her husband was an architect and could not afford to be blacklisted from work opportunities in Nebraska because there were already so few of them and those kind of jobs were hard to find. I thanked her for her willingness to help and again took on the case in pro se.
After several months working on the case in pro se, I contacted Roy Landers who was a civil rights attorney in San Diego and explained to him the situation. I sent for a copy of the complaint, he read it and agreed to file an appearance in the case since it was filed a federal court. Roy filed a motion to be admitted to the federal court in Lincoln for the purpose of representing myself and James on case. His motion was granted.
After a few months of working on the case, a hearing was convened of all parties involved. The federal judge in the case came into the court room and advised that he had read the complaint. The judge went on to explain that if this case went to trial the state of Nebraska could get a black eye. The justice stated, that he wanted all parties to meet and confer and see if there was anything that can be done to settle the case rather than having to go to trial. The judge announced that he was going to leave the room 30 minutes to allow all parties to talk.
When James and I met with Roy in another room, he advised that we needed to decide whether the case was for money or principle. At the time I was running for state legislature as a senator. Roy stated that if it was about money my political career was probably going to be over. However, if it was about principle, I could stay and continue my campaign for public office. James and I decided that it was about principle and agreed that if the law library would simply draft a credible non-discriminatory policy, and give us a letter of apology, we would agree to dismiss case.
After meeting with the other parties in the case it was decided that the case would be dismissed upon the agreement that the Supreme Court would in fact sit en banc and actually draft a state law library policy. And that the expenses for Mr. Landers coming from San Diego to handle the case be paid by the state. After all the dust had settled from the incident, I eventually went to law school at Creighton University and graduated in December 2006.
I never could have imagined that the consequences of having been discriminated against by filing a lawsuit against certain personalities and state of Nebraska would have led to the push for my disbarment in the state of Nebraska as an attorney. At the time, I did not connect the dots of Joe Steele, who was the head administrator of the Nebraska State law library, and John Steele who was assistant director for the Counsel for Discipline for the State of Nebraska.
Hindsight being what it is, I didn’t realize that the reason that the committee for bar admissions was so adamant about being so reserved to admit me to the bar probably had a lot to do with Scott Moore, who since leaving his office as Secretary of State, went back to practicing law again with one of the largest law firms in Nebraska, and may have talked to several other attorneys in the community and convinced them that I was too black and too smart for my own good to work with.
In any case, after becoming a member of the Nebraska bar, approximately two years in my tenure as a Nebraska attorney, I took on a case for a woman who was about to lose home after her mother had become home bound in a nursing home. The court had already ordered that the house be bifurcated and sold to pay for nursing home expenses. When the woman came to me whose last name was Nolan, she did not even have the $500 retainer that I requested, and could only pay $150 dollars as a retainer. I had compassion for Nolan and her sister after listening to their story and I agreed to start on the case anyway. I worked on the case for 9 months and attended approximately 8 hearings on her behalf. She never paid me anything above the $150 initial fee.
During the course of the representation, Nolan’s mother passed away. Ms. Nolan decided that she was going to act as the executor of her mother’s estate, and to my understanding all of the rest of the family members did not want anything to do with it. After collecting the assets and liquidating them for her own use, Ms. Nolan was faced with claims coming in from creditors against for mother’s estate. By this time my representation of her for saving her home was completed. Not only was their home saved, but she was able to keep the house free and clear of any debt. She brought me a check for $6,600 and suggested if I could negotiate the claims successfully, any monies above and beyond the claims that were paid out could be retained as my fee for assisting with saving their home. Nolan Asked if I would accept that as my fee in full for the services rendered because she didn’t really have any more money. I agree to do so to my detriment.
I began to contact creditors that filed claims in the mother’s estate on Nolan’s behalf for the purpose of settling the claims. I was able to have most of the claims terminated because of the death of her mother. I took the balance of the money that was left from payment of some the claims and transferred the money to my office account per Ms. Nolan’s instruction and used it as my fee. At that time Ms. Nolan’s fee for services rendered was over $10,000. However, because of her financial situation I was willing to accept what was left over from settling the claims on mother’s estate as payment in full.
A short time later, I was contacted by Judge Caniglia from the Douglas County, NebraskaProbate Court who asked if I would do him a favor and help Nolan close her probate case because she did not know what she was doing. Judge Caniglia assured me that I would get paid for my time if I would help close the case by simply filing a schedule A in the case. The Judge explained that Ms. Nolan did not understand what a schedule A was or how to file it. In keeping with what the judge had asked me to do as a favor, I obtained a schedule A and contacted Ms. Nolan and got the information from her to complete the schedule A and I filed with court. That effectively closed the probate case.
A few months later, Ms. Nolan came to my office with her sister and requested the return of the $6600 that she had given me to ”hold for her.” I told Nolan that it was my understanding that I wasn’t holding any money for her because all that her cases were completed and had been terminated. I reminded her that she told me that I was entitled to keep the money as a fee after settling any claims. Ms. Nolan disagreed with my assessment, gathered her things along with the sister left my office. A week later Nolan filed a bar complaint with John Steel and with the Nebraska Counsel for Discipline.
After receiving the complaint, I worked with the Council for discipline and hired Tim Ashford and James Crampton as my attorneys to assist me with the complaint process because it was very obvious that it Counsel for Discipline was on a quest to disbar me notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary that I had not done anything wrong or that I was entitled to the monies that Ms. Nolan had paid. The complaint Nolan filed wasn’t very legible. However, the complaint that was submitted to the bar after the initial complaint had been filed against me was an updated, neatly typed document several pages long. Obviously, someone had helped her in drafting this elaborate complaint which, was full of misstatements and misrepresentations of what really happened.
After going through the bar hearing and putting on all my evidence, the referee did not find any of my evidence to be credible. Ms. Nolan and her sister were not required to submit any physical evidence of any of the allegations they made. I brought this fact up to James Crampton who was meeting regularly with John Steele in his office. I asked Crampton why had the bar had not offered me a “deal” to avoid disbarment as they do other attorneys who are going through a disciplinary proceeding, rather than go through a lengthy and expensive trial process. James Crampton told me that he had asked the counsel for discipline the same question and he was advised that they did not want to offer me any “deals” at all they simply wanted me disbarred and that it is what was going to happen no matter what evidence that I put on. The bottom line was the powers that be no longer wanted me as a member of the Nebraska the bar or able to practice law in Nebraska or anywhere else.
After learning that information, I set out to be as cooperative with the bar as I could and put on enough evidence that the committee and the Supreme Court would see and I had not been malicious in dealing with Ms. Nolan as I had been painted to be. The information that I submitted was deemed not credible and completely fabricated by the referee conducting the hearing. There were also statements from the referee to the Supreme Court that I had not been cooperative that I had been evasive. However, that statement could not have been further from the truth because I had been extremely cooperative with everything that I had submitted to the Bar, and I was very consistent and what I had told them. In fact, when I first learned of the discrepancy at the bank when I made the deposit of the $6,600 along with some other funds and the bank sent an overdraft notice days later, I immediately contacted John Steele at the counsel for discipline and advised him of the situation, and asked him what I needed to do to get it rectified. At no time did I try to hide, conceal or evade anything. However, all those facts were completely ignored when it came to my disbarment hearing.
On the day of my hearing before the Nebraska Supreme Court, John Steel approached the Court and candidly made an opening statement that it was a tough day for him because he was there to request the disbarment of a very dear friend and someone that he has served as a mentor to in law school. That also was a great misstatement fact. John Steele had never mentored me when I was in law school, and we had never been friends or acquaintances at any time. I didn’t know his family, I couldn’t tell you his address, I couldn’t tell you where he resided, or what type of beer he drank, or if he even if he drank at all. I did not know anything about him or his family, had never had a personal conversation with him at any time about anything, ever.
However, He used his position and influence as a member of the Counsel for Discipline to express to the court that he knew me well and had served as my mentor and now had to recommend me as a friend for this disbarment. My attorney James Crampton, who was there with me, said absolutely nothing. I had leaned over and told Crampton that those things were not true.
When Crampton finally got up on my behalf, he threw me under the bus. He did not dispute anything that Steele had stated in support of my disbarment. Crampton simply told the court that everything that was said about me was true, and that I had accepted full responsibility for my actions and have regretted that things had turned out the way that they had. However, none of that mattered. I had never really had a conversation with James Cranston either. I came to realize that it was very clear that this was simply a kangaroo court dispensing with the procedural process, and that I was not going to win no matter what I did or said. My fate had already been decided and sealed long before that hearing before the Nebraska Supreme Court. I was too smart for my own good and was no longer welcome to practice law among the dominate culture in Nebraska to deserve any real justice in an unjust system.
Upon having me disbarred in Nebraska, the Counsel for Discipline went to great steps to also have me disbarred in the state of Iowa where I had actually sat for the state bar exam. During my hearing before the Supreme Court of Iowa, one of the Justices stated that they had read the transcript from Nebraska which said that I had been disbarred on clear and convincing evidence. The presiding Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court made a statement on the record that he had read the Nebraska transcript four times and said that it wasn’t clear and he was certainly not convinced that I should’ve been disbarred at all and that he thought that the punishment was excessive, and he felt that I may have had a colorable claim to the funds that those women claim that I wrongfully took from them.
The Iowa Supreme Court was also puzzled about the fact that prior to being disbarred, I had voluntarily paid the $6,600 back to Ms. Nolan. Basically, I had represented those women had worked on a case for more than nine months and not been paid more than $150 for all the work and courtappearances that I had done in the case. The Iowa Supreme Court decided that it would not suspend or disbarment me under those circumstances, and told the prosecutor that if they want to disbar me in Iowa they would have to find other evidence to support such the harsh punishment. In the state of Iowa, once you lose your bar license you can never get it back. In Nebraska if you get disbarred you can make an application to be reinstated after five years, however, there is no guarantee.
The likelihood of being reinstated after disbarment in Nebraska for a black person is very slim to none. Many white and Latino attorneys have been disbarred and suspended and have been returned to the practice of law for doing much more malicious things than what I had been accused of. Yet, when I made my initial application, after five years of this barman, it was denied by the Council for Discipline and the Bar Committee. The denial was not due to anything that had to do with character for fitness to practice, but for not paying the fee to John Steele for his time in making a case against me to have me disbarred; for not turning in my bar card within 30 days, which it already expired much earlier, when in fact it was sent back to the Nebraska Bar office; and for allegedly failing to close the trust account for the law office, which I did in fact close 30 days after I had learned that I had been disbarred.
For nearly 2 years, the Nebraska State Bar stayed on the State of Iowa to also take my license. They found a woman that was in Washington D.C. I had done some foreclosure defense work for. She too was persuaded to write a false statement about the services that I provided to her as well and the Iowa Bar used that as a basis to have me disbarred Iowa. However, when I got the evidence from the bankers that I had in fact performed the work for her, it did not matter. The also raised some controversy about the check she sent stating that it was a co-mingling of funds due to the way it was taken in and disbursed. Yet again, the allegations did not substantiate a rise to the level of being disbarred. At best, it should have been a suspension for a short period of time if not a reprimand. White attorneys who had been accused of worse things had always been suspended for a short period of time and then reinstated. That did not happen in my case.
In fact, the folks in Nebraska went through great lengths to ensure that the entire community knew that I had been disbarred. A reported from Channel Six News showed up at my house and did a story while standing in front of my house showing my address. (I wasn’t home, nor was I contacted by the reported about doing an interview.) This had not happened when white attorneys were disbarred or suspended. The story of my disbarment was published on the AP wire and broadcast nationwide. I discovered that when acquaintances in Atlanta, Georgia called and asked me about what was going on I Nebraska after reading about my disbarment in Nebraska in their newspaper.
Once I was disbarred in both Nebraska and Iowa, it was very tough for me to find employment anywhere especially as a black man. No employer would touch me. The tragic part of it all is that many of the professions that one would normally not have to have a legal education nor be an attorney to do, such as having a real estate license to work as an agent or broker; being a bankruptcy petition preparer, or being an advocate for tax cases for people that were going before the Internal Revenue Service, or sell life or health insurance. All those things are prohibited for a person to do if they had been disbarred as an attorney. That’s an odd stance for them to take when no legal education nor law license is required to do any of those professions in the first place.
I wanted to express these facts from my point of view just because there’s so much information out there regarding these incidents surrounding my disbarment. Many people believe, without question, what they read about other folks or companies on the Internet, Even though anyone can post anything on the Internet without verifying anything at all. The companies that disseminate false or inaccurate information on the internet can do so with no legal recourse against them.
I eventually went back to law enforcement as a way of sustaining myself until I could get this stigma behind me. I have since reapplied to be reinstated to the Nebraska bar, Which, if it happens I will then apply to sit for the bar in another jurisdiction and not practice in the state of Nebraska at all. I will however, need to file a motion to be reinstated in Iowa, but I will have to my initial revocation was unjust because there is no reinstatement process in Iowa once a law license is revoked.
I called John Steele in 2017 and inquired about what it would take to be reinstated as an attorney in Nebraska. John still told me that he would send me a sample other petition that was filed and eventually approved by the state Supreme Court. He advised that I should follow the example is closely as possible, and to include the evidence that I had to attach. He also advised that the Council for discipline routinely objected to any initial applications for reinstatement. He told me that it was not personal, but just the way at the committee did business in these matters.
However, after carefully following his instructions I mailed the petition along with the attached evidence to both the committee and the Nebraska Supreme Court. As John Steele had indicated, the committee did oppose the petition, and the Supreme Court endorsed, or rubber stamped the recommendation for the denial.
I noticed however, that the denial did not have anything to do with my character and fitness but had to do with trivial matters as not turning in my bar card immediately after I was disbarred, which had already expired. Another issue that the Counsel for Discipline Addressed was failing to pay over $3000 for the prosecution of the disbarment case that was due to John Steele. However, I made the Court aware that I have filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy several years back, and that obligation was listed in the chapter 7 bankruptcy. The last issue the Counsel brought up was that was no indication that I had complied with the rules and notified all of my clients and other “members” that I had been disbarred.
It did not matter that in my case, the Counsel for Discipline went to great lengths to make my disbarment very public by putting it on the Associated Press news wire, in the Omaha World Herald Newspaper and blasted it on every local new outlet within 100 miles of Omaha. That had never been done against an attorney not charged with a crime, and never had been done against any white attorneys.
Of course, I oppose these objections from the Counsel for Discipline, because I had done all those things. Once I challenged their response the second time, the counsel responded again, but his time brought up issues that had never been brought before the Nebraska Supreme Court, or given to me as a complaint.
Basically, I was told that the State Bar of Nebraska, through its counsel for discipline was going to do everything in its power to keep me out of their ranks as an attorney. During my research in of the reinstatement process, I found dozens of other Nebraska cases where white and Hispanic attorneys had been accused of much worse. Some had even gone to jail and had been charged and convicted, but applied for reinstatement as an attorney five years (some even less) and were reinstated.
It is noteworthy that after seven years of being disbarred in the state of Nebraska, when you Google my name it is the VERY FIRST HIT on the web crawler and Google search, even after more than seven years. With millions of internet subscribers, many who pay premium fees to have that type of internet presence, all it takes is for a racist company like FindLaw to conspire with a white supremacy group to continually attempt to defame and dishonor an honorable person of color to stay in the top ten hit on Google for FREE. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ne-supreme-court/1583421.html
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