Jailhouse lawyer under investigation

Jailhouse lawyer under investigation

The saga of jailhouse lawyer Michael Ray, the feel-good movie legal story of the year, has run up against a new antagonist: South Carolina’s Attorney General Henry McMaster. According to this AP story, the authorities are investigating Ray, who helped a fellow inmate win Supreme Court review of his drug possession case, for practicing law without a license.

Here’s what happened: Ray, 42, who’s nearing the end of a six-year sentence for real-estate fraud, has no college or law school education. Yet he drafted an appeal for pro-se litigant Keith Lavon Burgess, who is in prison for crack posession. Ray argued that a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence was inappropriate for Burgess because his prior drug conviction was a misdemeanor, not a felony. Against all odds, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, which will be argued by Stanford Law School Professor Jeff Fisher, the man who, in about an hour from now, will argue the Supreme Court case of Exxon v. Baker.

I set up the first Prison Law Advice Centre within our penal system. There was a need for the service and the authorities failed to provide it. Under English law anybody can provide legal advice, I know because I was challenged on this point by the Prison Service and they lost, it is the quality of legal advice which matters and not whether anybody has got a licence or legal qualification.