South Alabama Law, Politics and Redneck Wisdom
This is your guy: Mark Welton.
I have known Mark for 15 years and he is the real deal. He walks the walk. Whenever my clients have a problem, be it civil or criminal in Crestview or in the panhandle of Florida, I send them to Mark. No complaints, ever.
Here is his law firm site. If you have time, check out the rest of his stuff. Cute kids, great family.
I lost $200 dollars betting my partners six months ago Judge Phillips was not this stupid. I was wrong. Sherrie is a good person, she has helped thousands over the years, but she turns out to be extremely dumb. Other than maybe John Edwards, nobody in public life has disappointed me more. The worst part is Greg White (Covington County’s recently deposed County Commission Chairman) has been obsessed with “getting” Sherrie for years. And she helped him do it. Dumb, dumb. dumb. From the Andalusia Star News:
A jury of eight men and four women deliberated less than 40 minutes before finding former Covington County Probate Judge Sherrie Phillips guilty of theft by deception and ethics charges Wednesday afternoon.
Specifically, the jury found her guilty of:
• First-degree theft by deception, by knowingly obtaining unauthorized control of a check for $1.8 million or any proceeds of the check, which was the property of the estate of Cary Douglas Piper and/or the State of Alabama;
• As a public official — the probate judge of Covington County — intentionally using her official position for unlawful personal gain for herself or a family member, of a check for $1.8 million or any proceeds of the check.
Phillips faces a maximum penalty of two to 20 years of imprisonment and fines of up to $30,000 for each count, all of which are class B felonies. Judge Charles Price has set sentencing for Wed., Nov. 12.
The verdict came at the end of a long day in court that began with the defense’s presentation Wednesday morning and included Phillips’ testimony. Closing arguments were heard after lunch, and the jury left the courtroom to deliberate at 3:48 p.m.
In closing arguments, attorneys for the state said that despite Phillips’ argument in her own defense that she had repaid $516,000 taken from an account established with funds from the estate of Cary Douglas Piper, “you can’t unsteal money.”
Phillips’ attorney, Riley Powell, told the jury in closing arguments that his client was guilty of making “bad choices” but that “she has already been punished.”
“She has lost her job, and her reputation will never be brought back,” Powell said.
Earlier in the day, Phillips testified that she resigned as probate judge because County Commission Chairman Greg White filed a complaint against her to the Judicial Inquiry Commission.
“I decided in was in the best interest of the people of Covington County to resign,” she said.
As the defense presented its case, Powell called attorney Deb Smith, who has practiced probate law in Phillips’ court; Darwin Pippen, who has served as a conservator in a large estate in Phillips’ court; and Phillips’ brother and son before putting the former judge on the stand in her own defense.
Phillips testified the account she set up at Edward Jones with a $1.8 million check from the Piper estate should have been set up as a public funds account rather than a personal account in her name. She said she provided her home address and Social Security number to personnel at the investment firm “because they asked” for it.
Phillips testified the checks totaling $516,917.50 that she wrote from the account were actually loans made to her family members and the amounts were repaid with interest when she deposited checks totaling $516,000 into the account on the morning of May 1, 2008, one day after investigators with the attorney general’s office appeared in her office with a subpoena for records in the case file.
Phillips was pushed by the state on cross-examination about her testimony that the funds were earning interest when used by her family when fewer funds were repaid than were taken out of the account.
“If you paid back $917 less than was taken out, if it’s not all put back, you did not pay it back with interest,” questioned assistant attorney general William Lisenby.
Phillips testified that “It was all put back,” and said the remaining money in the account earned interest.
She said the money “did not belong to anyone” while in the account at Edward Jones because it “was not ripened to the escheat process and there were no heirs.”
Six first cousins have since come forward and petitioned to have the estate reopened.
When asked if she or her family members benefited from the $516,917.50 spent from the Edward Jones account, Phillips testified that they did not. Pushed by Lisenby that portions of the money were used to pay off her mortgage, Phillips said she didn’t consider that a benefit because she still owed the money to the Edward Jones account.
It was a point to which the prosecution returned in closing arguments.
“Phillips said she put back $516,000 and her intent was to invest the money to make more money,” Baxley aid. “Here’s her mistake: She didn’t put back all of the principal (of $516,917).”
Throughout the case, Phillips’ attorney laid the groundwork for a defense that the state must show that Phillips intended to deprive someone of the money she is accused of stealing.
He specifically asked his client on the stand if it was her intent to steal the money.
Phillips, who wore a white turtleneck, dark tailored jacket and black beads, and exhibited a calm, almost sweet demeanor on the stand, said, “Not permanently and I intended to put it back.”
In one of the few light moments of the trial, Powell asked Phillips if she had “behaved like she won the lottery,” adding “like it said on the front page of the newspaper.”
Phillips replied that if she had won the lottery she would have probably “gone somewhere like the Cayman Islands.”
On Tuesday, a headline in The Star-News quoted a prosecuting attorney’s statement in opening arguments to the jury that Phillips “spent money like she had just won the lottery.” The prosecutor used the comment several times in the course of the three-day trial.
Phillips’ trial drew a crowd that at some points filled the courtroom. Over the course of the three days, the spectators included a retired probate judge from a neighboring county, a current circuit judge, a former bank president, numerous attorneys, elected officials, former and current employees of the probate office, and Phillips’ family members.
From the NYT:
“Forty-four percent of employees live paycheck to paycheck, according to a survey conducted by MetLife in late 2007, and 48 percent of American households have less than $5,000 in liquid assets according to Edward Wolff, an economist specializing in the study of poverty and income distribution at New York University. ” (Emphasis added.)
My question is why do so many of that 44% vote Republican?
Now I am indeed confused:
From an article about Sarah Palin, soccer mom:
“Palin’s choice of language—or that of the McCain-Palin campaign staff—was fascinating. In unambiguous code, she explicitly addressed the country’s suburban majority that has employed youth soccer as a means, according to sociologists influenced by the late Pierre Bourdieu
, of assisting the “symbolic construction of whiteness.” These parents, now angst-ridden by rapidly deteriorating investment portfolios, selected soccer over American football or basketball for their children in order to fit with the suburban habitus, a deliberately engineered zone of isolation in which soccer has also come to express the ennui of soul-consuming sameness. These are ghettos of privilege. At weekend soccer tournaments, replicated from Katahdin, Maine, to Hilo, Hawaii, parents have been known to wear T-shirts reading, “I don’t have a life. My kid plays soccer” (Julia Feldmeier, “Sidelined No More, Soccer Moms Lace Up,” Washington Post, 29 Sept 05).”
I play soccer becasue my childhood friend Eddie, the coolest kid in the neighborhood, spent summers in Spain and made us play. My kids play because they love the game. I’m not “angst-ridden by rapidly deteriorating investment portfolios,” I earn my money.
And the “whiteness” thing is bull too.
This kind of stuff makes Senators Shelby and Sessions look smarter every day. From the New York Times:
“Chase recently received $25 billion in federal funding. What effect will that have on the business side and will it change our strategic lending policy?”
It was Oct. 17, just four days after JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, agreed to take a $25 billion capital injection courtesy of the United States government, when a JPMorgan employee asked that question. It came toward the end of an employee-only conference call that had been largely devoted to meshing certain divisions of JPMorgan with its new acquisition, Washington Mutual.
Which, of course, it also got thanks to the federal government. Christmas came early at JPMorgan Chase.
The JPMorgan executive who was moderating the employee conference call didn’t hesitate to answer a question that was pretty politically sensitive given the events of the previous few weeks.
Given the way, that is, that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had decided to use the first installment of the $700 billion bailout money to recapitalize banks instead of buying up their toxic securities, which he had then sold to Congress and the American people as the best and fastest way to get the banks to start making loans again, and help prevent this recession from getting much, much worse.
In point of fact, the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who’s been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist.
(He didn’t mean to, of course, but I obtained the call-in number and listened to a recording.)
“Twenty-five billion dollars is obviously going to help the folks who are struggling more than Chase,” he began. “What we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop.”
Read that answer as many times as you want — you are not going to find a single word in there about making loans to help the American economy. On the contrary: at another point in the conference call, the same executive (who I’m not naming because he didn’t know I would be listening in) explained that “loan dollars are down significantly.” He added, “We would think that loan volume will continue to go down as we continue to tighten credit to fully reflect the high cost of pricing on the loan side.” In other words JPMorgan has no intention of turning on the lending spigot.
It is starting to appear as if one of Treasury’s key rationales for the recapitalization program — namely, that it will cause banks to start lending again — is a fig leaf, Treasury’s version of the weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, Treasury wants banks to acquire each other and is using its power to inject capital to force a new and wrenching round of bank consolidation. As Mark Landler reported in The New York Times earlier this week, “the government wants not only to stabilize the industry, but also to reshape it.” Now they tell us.
Indeed, Mr. Landler’s story noted that Treasury would even funnel some of the bailout money to help banks buy other banks. And, in an almost unnoticed move, it recently put in place a new tax break, worth billions to the banking industry, that has only one purpose: to encourage bank mergers. As a tax expert, Robert Willens, put it: “It couldn’t be clearer if they had taken out an ad.”
Friday delivered the first piece of evidence that this is, indeed, the plan. PNC announced that it was purchasing National City, an acquisition that will be greatly aided by the new tax break, which will allow it to immediately deduct any losses on National City’s books.
As part of the deal, it is also tapping the bailout fund for $7.7 billion, giving the government preferred stock in return. At least some of that $7.7 billion would have gone to NatCity if the government had deemed it worth saving. In other words, the government is giving PNC money that might otherwise have gone to NatCity as a reward for taking over NatCity.
I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to feel as if we’ve been sold a bill of goods.
•
The markets had another brutal day Friday. The Asian markets got crushed. Germany and England were down more than 5 percent. In the hours before the United States markets opened, all the signals suggested it was going to be the worst day yet in the crisis. The Dow dropped more than 400 points at the opening, but thankfully it never got any worse.
There are lots of reasons the markets remain unstable — fears of a global recession, companies offering poor profit projections for the rest of the year, and the continuing uncertainties brought on by the credit crisis. But another reason, I now believe, is that investors no longer trust Treasury. First it says it has to have $700 billion to buy back toxic mortgage-backed securities. Then, as Mr. Paulson divulged to The Times this week, it turns out that even before the bill passed the House, he told his staff to start drawing up a plan for capital injections. Fearing Congress’s reaction, he didn’t tell the Hill about his change of heart.
Now, he’s shifted gears again, and is directing Treasury to use the money to force bank acquisitions. Sneaking in the tax break isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring, either. (And let’s not even get into the less-than-credible, after-the-fact rationalizations for letting Lehman default, which stands as the single worst mistake the government has made in the crisis.)
On Thursday, at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee, the chairman, Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, pushed Neel Kashkari, the young Treasury official who is Mr. Paulson’s point man on the bailout plan, on the subject of banks’ continuing reluctance to make loans. How, Senator Dodd asked, was Treasury going to ensure that banks used their new government capital to make loans — “besides rhetorically begging them?”
“We share your view,” Mr. Kashkari replied. “We want our banks to be lending in our communities.”
Senator Dodd: “Are you insisting upon it?”
Mr. Kashkari: “We are insisting upon it in all our actions.”
But they are doing no such thing. Unlike the British government, which is mandating lending requirements in return for capital injections, our government seems afraid to do anything except plead. And those pleas, in this environment, are falling on deaf ears.
Yes, there are times when a troubled bank needs to be acquired by a stronger bank. Given that the federal government insures deposits, it has an abiding interest in seeing that such mergers take place as smoothly as possible. Nobody is saying those kinds of deals shouldn’t take place.
But Citigroup, at this point, probably falls into the category of troubled bank, and nobody seems to be arguing that it should be taken over. It is in the “too big to fail” category, and the government will ensure that it gets back on its feet, no matter how much money it takes. One reason Mr. Paulson forced all of the nine biggest banks to take government money was to mask the fact that some of them are much weaker than others.
We have long been a country that has treasured its diversity of banks; up until the 1980s, in fact, there were no national banks at all. If Treasury is using the bailout bill to turn the banking system into the oligopoly of giant national institutions, it is hard to see how that will help anybody. Except, of course, the giant banks that are declared the winners by Treasury.
JPMorgan is going to be one of the winners — and deservedly so.
Mr. Dimon managed the company so well during the housing bubble that it is saddled with very few of the problems that have crippled competitors like Citi. The government handed it Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual because it was strong enough to swallow both institutions without so much as a burp.
Of all the banking executives in that room with Mr. Paulson a few weeks ago, none needed the government’s money less than Mr. Dimon. A company spokesman told me, “We accepted the money for the good of the entire financial system.” He added that JP Morgan would use the money “to do good for customers and shareholders. We are disciplined to try to make loans that people can repay.”
Nobody is saying it should make loans that people can’t repay. What I am saying is that Mr. Dimon took the $25 billion on the condition that his institution would start making loans. There are plenty of small and medium-size businesses that are choking because they have no access to capital — and are perfectly capable of repaying the money. How about a loan program for them, Mr. Dimon?
Late Thursday afternoon, I caught up with Senator Dodd, and asked him what he was going to do if the loan situation didn’t improve. “All I can tell you is that we are going to have the bankers up here, probably in another couple of weeks and we are going to have a very blunt conversation,” he replied.
He continued: “If it turns out that they are hoarding, you’ll have a revolution on your hands. People will be so livid and furious that their tax money is going to line their pockets instead of doing the right thing. There will be hell to pay.”
Let’s hope so.
Again, hat tip to Simple Justice for the link to Miami criminal defense lawyer Brian Tannebaum’s e-book, The Truth About Hiring a Criminal Defense Lawyer.
If you are looking for a criminal defense lawyer in Alabama, this is an excellent place to start. Be warned, however, truth is not always a pleasant thing to receive. Attorney Tannebaum is not sugarcoating his truth. His chapter on connections is especially true:
“You are not going to win your case because your lawyer drinks with the prosecutor, or knows the officer, or gave money to the judge’s campaign. All of those things give you one thing, credibility, not a victory.”
True in Miami, true in South Alabama.
Was reading the Simple Justice Blog about United States v Herring when this quote made me snort coffee through my nose:
“MS. KARLAN: But there’s not a Barney Fife defense to the violation of the Fourth Amendment either.”
Read the article, you’ll get it.
This hit home with me for a couple of reasons. First, I am one county over from Coffee County and a couple over from Dale and second, I had a similar situation a few months ago.
My client called the police to his home (for a really dumb reason) and when they got there, they told him there was an arrest warrant out for him and to the station he must go. Somehow he got the officer to allow him to call me at home (on a Saturday night at 9:00) because the client knew, as I did, there was no warrant and that unpleasant mess had been resolved months ago. I told the officer he was making a mistake and the officer hung up on me. I was so angry I went to the office, pulled the court file, including the dismissal, and went to the jail. When I got there, the officer’s supervisor kept me waiting 20 minutes while they looked it up and yes, the warrant was out in error and the Department had messed up. My guy walks out and I chew him out for calling the cops to begin with.
No apologies from the rude officer, no fee from the client (but thats okay). Then I remembered. This is why I don’t do criminal law.
But the Herring case along with my saga has me thinking. Since there have been numerous instances of warrants “hanging out there” in Covington County and as there is apparently a similar issue in other counties, does this give rise to a 1983 action for injunctive relief in Federal Court to order these counties to keep up with their warrants in a more “non-Barney” fashion?
Just wondering.
last updated: October 14, 2008 07:51:41 PM
WASHINGTON — A growing al Qaida-backed insurgency, combined with the Pakistani army’s reluctance to launch an all-out crackdown, political infighting and energy and food shortages are plunging America’s key ally in the war on terror deeper into turmoil and violence, says a soon-to-be completed U.S. intelligence assessment.
A U.S. official who participated in drafting the top secret National Intelligence Estimate said it portrays the situation in Pakistan as “very bad.” Another official called the draft “very bleak,” and said it describes Pakistan as being “on the edge.”
The first official summarized the estimate’s conclusions about the state of Pakistan as: “no money, no energy, no government.”
Six U.S. officials who helped draft or are aware of the document’s findings confirmed them to McClatchy on the condition of anonymity because NIEs are top secret and are restricted to the president, senior officials and members of Congress. An NIE’s conclusions reflect the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.
The NIE on Pakistan, along with others being prepared on Afghanistan and Iraq, will underpin a “strategic assessment” of the situation that Army Gen. David Petraeus, who’s about to take command of all U.S. forces in the region, has requested. The aim of the assessment — seven years after the U.S. sent troops into Afghanistan — is to determine whether a U.S. presence in the region can be effective and if so what U.S. strategy should be.
The findings also are intended to support the Bush administration’s effort to recommend the resources the next president will need for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan at a time the economic crisis is straining the Treasury and inflating the federal budget deficit.
The Afghanistan estimate warns that additional American troops are urgently needed there and that Islamic extremists who enjoy safe haven in Pakistan pose a growing threat to the U.S.-backed government of Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai.
The Iraq NIE is more cautious about the prospects for stability there than the Bush administration and either John McCain or Barack Obama have been, and it raises serious questions about whether the U.S. will be able to redeploy a significant number of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan anytime soon.
Together, the three NIEs suggest that without significant and swift progress on all three fronts — which they suggest is uncertain at best — the U.S. could find itself facing a growing threat from al Qaida and other Islamic extremist groups, said one of the officials.
About the only good news in the Pakistan NIE is that it’s “relatively sanguine” about the prospects of a Pakistani nuclear weapon, materials or knowledge falling into the hands of terrorists, said one official.
However, the draft NIE paints a grim picture of the situation in the impoverished, nuclear-armed country of 160 million, according to the U.S. officials who spoke to McClatchy.
The estimate says that the Islamist insurgency based in the Federally Administered Tribal Area bordering Afghanistan, the suspected safe haven of Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, is intensifying.
However, according to the officials, the draft also finds that the Pakistani military is reluctant to launch an all-out campaign against the Islamists in part because of popular opposition to continuing the cooperation with the U.S. that began under Pervez Musharraf, the U.S.-backed former president, after the 9/11 attacks.
Anti-U.S. and anti-government sentiments have grown recently, stoked by stepped-up cross-border U.S. missile strikes and at least one commando raid on suspected terrorist targets in the FATA that reportedly have resulted in civilian deaths.
The Pakistani military, which has lost hundreds of troops to battles and suicide bombings, is waging offensives against Islamist guerrillas in the Bajaur tribal agency and Swat, a picturesque region of the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan. U.S. officials said insurgent attacks on Pakistani security forces provoked the Pakistani army operations.
The Pakistan general staff also remains concerned about what it considers an ongoing threat to its eastern border from its traditional foe, India, the draft NIE finds, according to the U.S. officials.
For these reasons, they said, the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, wants the new civilian coalition government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to provide the military with political cover by blessing a major anti-insurgency crackdown.
However, the ruling coalition, in which President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the late prime minister Benazir Bhutto, holds the real authority, has been preoccupied by other matters, according to the draft NIE.
These include efforts to consolidate its power after winning a struggle that prompted its main rival, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, to leave the ruling coalition.
Moreover, widespread anti-U.S. anger has left the coalition deeply divided over whether to unleash a major military assault on the Islamists, the U.S. officials said.
The government is also facing an accelerating economic crisis that includes food and energy shortages, escalating fuel costs, a sinking currency and a massive flight of foreign capital accelerated by the escalating insurgency, the NIE warns.
The Pakistani public is clamoring for relief as the crisis pushes millions more into poverty, giving insurgent groups more opportunities to recruit young Pakistanis.
(Warren P. Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.)
This kind of thing happens to me all the time. From the Mobile Press Register:
MONROEVILLE — Residents of a home in the 400 block of Dennis Street awoke early Wednesday to find a dead man in their house, police said.
The man appeared to be the victim of a homicide, investigators said.
Monroeville Police Chief Rudolph Munnerlyn said officers responding to a 911 call found a man unresponsive, and the county coroner later pronounced him dead.
Munnerlyn said the name of the man is being withheld until officer can locate his next of kin. The police chief also declined to identify the people who live at the house where the body was found.
“We are questioning some witnesses today, people who were there on the evening prior,” Munnerlyn said. “We have received word from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences that this is a homicide, and the man died of blunt force trauma.”
Munnerlyn said alcohol could be a factor in the case, as officers found several empty liquor bottles at the scene. So far, investigators have focused on two persons of interest, but no arrest had been made late Wednesday, Munnerlyn said.
I was terribly saddened to see J.L. Chestnut pass. His book, “Black in Selma” is in my library and a great read. My favorite recollection of Mr. J.L. is from a docket call in Lowndes County years back when the courtroom’s roof was being fixed and docket call was being held in the law library. When Judge McFerrin came in, Mr. J.L. was with him, apparently they had been in conversation on the way to the library. As the Judge walked in, everybody jumped to their feet and it startled Judge McFerrin. After all we were not in the courtroom. Mr. J.L. called out, “Sit down, sit down,” as if he was the Judge’s bailiff. (And some of the young Birmingham and Mobile guys thought that was the case.) Judge McFerrin thought this was hilarious and tripped, almost falling flat on his face. This got even more laughs from the assembled lawyers and made Judge McFerrin laugh even more. The judge tried to glare at Mr. J.L., but couldn’t keep a straight face. The rest of docket call went smoothly and I am sure Mr. J.L. won all his motions that day. Wonderful humility and humor. A great lawyer and a great man.
A good obit from the Selma Times Journal, and this from Fresh Air. (Scroll about a third down)
Here is the Selma Times Journal:
J.L. Chestnut funeral at 1 p.m. Wednesday
Published Tuesday, October 7, 2008
J.L. Chestnut, Jr. was born in Selma, Alabama to Geraldine Phillip Chestnut and J.L. Chestnut, Sr. on December 16, 1930. He departed this life on September 30, 2008. He graduated from Knox Academy in 1948, Dillard University in 1953, and Howard University Law School in 1958. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and served from 1954-1956.
J.L. Chestnut, Jr. opened his law office in 1959, the first African American to do so in Selma. At the time, he was one of only nine black lawyers practicing in the State of Alabama. In 1972, he, Rose M. Sanders and Hank Sanders formed the law firm of Chestnut, Sanders, and Sanders which grew into the largest Black law firm in Alabama and one of the ten largest in the country at one time. J.L. Chestnut, Jr. was senior partner.
In 1963, J.L. Chestnut Jr. helped Bernard Lafayette, the first full time civil rights worker in Selma, to persuade black Selmians to attend the first mass meetings which was a very dangerous undertaking at the time. That was the beginning of the “Selma Movement” which, along with other voting rights struggles, led to Bloody Sunday, the Selma to Montgomery March and passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. When Dr. Martin Luther King set up shop in Selma in 1964, J.L. Chestnut represented Dr. King and hundreds of demonstrators, including James Foreman, Dick Gregory, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, Joseph Lowery and many others. His voice was a key on in the historic Selma Civil Rights battle.
The national spotlight moved from Selma in the 1960’s, but J. L. Chestnut stayed. He settled in for the longer and more difficult march of turning civil rights victories into lasting “ grass roots” gains. In 1968, he initiated the case that won black people the right to sit on juries in Dallas County, Alabama for the first time in 100 years. He filed racial discrimination suits that won jobs for black people in city hall and the county courthouse. He filed the lawsuit that resulted in the first black person being named principal of integrated Selma High School in 1976.
J.L. Chestnut, Jr. defended more capital cases than any lawyer in Alabama and never lost a client to the electric chair. He was a NAACP lead counsel in implementing the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision in Alabama. He was a lead class counsel in the polybuthelene pipe case, which resulted in the largest class action settlement in Alabama history at the time.
J. L. Chestnut, Jr. was class counsel in the Black farmers case. This national class action on behalf of more than 20,000 poor farmers against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) resulted in more than $1 billion being paid to poor black farmers. United States District Court Judge Paul Friedman, who presides over the case in Washington, D.C., quoted him seven times in the 67 page court decree approving the settlement with the government.
As a spinoff of the Black farmer’s case, J. L. Chestnut, Jr. Helped organize a similar litigation against USDA on behalf of Native Americans, Latinos and Women. He was also involved in class action litigation against major manufacturers of tobacco products.
Over the past five (5) decades, Mr. Chestnut has remained what he calls “A lawyer for the little and forgotten people of this world.” His clients are often ordinary people up against something much larger and more powerful than they are. He always stood with the least of these. J. L. Chestnut, Jr. was very proud of the many young lawyers he helped train and develop. Many have followed in his footsteps of service and standing with the least of these. From the ranks of his law firm have come two (2) circuit court judges, one (1) city judge, a state senator, a county commissioner and a city councilman.
The widely read autobiography of J.L. Chestnut, Jr., Black in Selma, was published in 1990 and republished in 1992. He also co-authored a novel, “The Downing Round” which has not yet been published. J. L. Chestnut, Jr. is the recipient of numerous awards including an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from St. Michael College in Vermont. J.L. Chestnut served as the first board chair of the powerful Alabama New South Coalition, the second board chair of the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, and President of the Alabama Black Lawyers Association. He served on many other boards including the Board of Trustees of the University of South Alabama and the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science. Of the many positions he held, he most enjoyed being chairman of the Board of Deacons at his beloved First Baptist Church.
J. L. Chestnut, Jr. was a great communicator, speaking publicly across the country, writing a weekly column entitled “The Hard Cold Truth,” and hosting the widely popular Selma talk radio program, “Public Conversation.” He spoke at a variety of forums across the country including the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning, America,” BET’s “Lead Story,” CBS’s “Nightlife,” and numerous other television and radio programs.
J. L. Chestnut, Jr. leaves to cherish his memories his beloved wife Vivian; six children – J. L., III, Inetta Geraldine (Louis), Vivian, Terrance (Sandra), Gregory (Angie), and Kim; eight grandchildren, Shawn, Shequitta, Danielle, Jay, J. L. IV, Deaven, Phallen and Chase; three great grandchildren – Kirabo, Sehn-Rah, and Mea; one sister, Johnnie Mae Chestnut; his paralegal/executive assistant of 37 years Barnette R. Hayes and a host of relatives and friends.
Funeral will be Wednesday, October 8 at 1:00 p.m. at First Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Street. Viewing will be at J.H. Williams Funeral Home on Tuesday, October 7 from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
