By Jennifer Nitson
Gazette-Times reporter | Posted: Saturday, March 5, 2005 12:00 am
The Oregon State Bar has launched a formal disciplinary proceeding against a prominent Corvallis defense attorney.
Steven Black is accused of violating several standards of the State Bar's Code of Professional Responsibility, including failing to provide competent representation and ignoring client conflicts of interest. The State Bar disciplinary council also contends that Black lied during investigations into the complaints against him.
Black has practiced law in Corvallis for about 27 years. He is on the defense team representing Amy Stack, a former Oregon State University student accused in the hit-and-run crash that killed 18-year-old Robin Jensen last August.
Black, who ran unsuccessfully for Benton County district attorney in 2002, resigned from Benton County's consortium of court-appointed defense attorneys in June.
Black declined to comment on specific complaints against him, but denied any wrongdoing.
"I'm denying the allegations," he said. "My position is that these matters are not true."
Black will appear before a panel of two lawyers and one non-attorney, appointed by the Oregon Supreme Court, said Kateri Walsh, spokeswoman for the Oregon State Bar.
The panel has several options, Walsh said, including dismissing all charges, issuing a public reprimand, suspending Black's license to practice law in Oregon or permanently disbarring the attorney.
Black has received public reprimands by the State Bar in the past. In 1992 he was reprimanded for improperly withdrawing from a case and failing to respond to disciplinary council inquiries.
In 1996 he was reprimanded for conduct involving dishonesty and other violations. A reprimand consists primarily of a brief description of violations printed in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin and does not prevent the attorney from practicing law.
In addition to his law practice, Black co-founded the Jackson Street Youth Shelter, which operates out of a house he owns. In the early 1990s he made national headlines as an attorney for Katherine Power, a local woman who lived as a fugitive from justice for 23 years after a 1970 Boston bank robbery that resulted in the death of a police officer.
Two of the current complaints against Black were submitted by defendants who were unhappy with the representation Black provided as a court-appointed attorney.
Jeremy Cobb, a former OSU student who now lives in Portland, filed a complaint with the State Bar in May. Black was appointed to represent Cobb, who faced charges of assault and criminal mischief for his involvement in a June 2003 bar fight. Cobb was found guilty on both charges in Benton County Circuit Court in December 2003.
In his complaint, Cobb stated that Black repeatedly failed to provide him with timely notice of sentencing hearings. On two different dates Cobb, who lived in Portland at the time, was called and told of hearings by Black an hour or two before he was to appear, he stated. In both cases the court rescheduled the hearings.
When the sentencing finally took place, Black failed to subpoena any witnesses, Cobb said, though he'd provided Black with the names of three people who could have testified for him.
Cobb also complained that because of Black's negligence, he was ordered to pay about $28,000 in restitution to the victim of the bar fight. This figure was much more than Cobb had expected, as the original restitution amount requested by the victim had been about $2,300.
In addition, Cobb said Black called him the day before a restitution hearing, telling him the hearing had been set over for another date. However, the hearing took place as scheduled, and neither Cobb nor Black appeared.
Chief Deputy District Attorney John Haroldson said he informed the court that Black had come by his office the day before, asking if it was OK with him if the hearing was postponed, as Black wanted to go on a vacation. Haroldson said he told Black that he had no problem with it, and that if he was successful in getting the date changed to let him know. Hearing nothing more, Haroldson told the Bar during its investigation, he appeared in court as scheduled.
When Black returned from his vacation he found that the hearing had gone on without him, and he filed a motion with the court to reconsider or set aside the restitution order. In an affidavit filed with the court, Black stated that attorneys present in the courtroom at the restitution hearing told him that Haroldson had not informed Circuit Court Judge Locke Williams of their conversation about rescheduling.
In statements made to the Bar, Black wrote that he realized after talking to Haroldson that the first affidavit was "in error." He then filed another affidavit stating that a third party, unnamed, had given him misinformation about the hearing.
When the disciplinary council inquired who the third person was, Black stated that he did not remember, adding, "My thinking was that the judge wouldn't have entered a default order if Mr. Haroldson had told him we had agreed on a reset so I could visit my son and that Mr. Haroldson must have been playing some kind of game with me, to appear at a reset hearing and ask for such a large amount of restitution. I actually thought that it might all be a practical joke that Mr. Haroldson and the judge were doing together."
Haroldson declined to comment on the matter until it is resolved by the State Bar.
In an interview for this article, Cobb said that considering the way his case was handled, it was absurd to him that he was ordered to reimburse Black for defense services, though he is relieved that the court has since set aside the large restitution order.
"It just blew my mind that someone like that could practice law in the state of Oregon," Cobb said.
The disciplinary council asserts that Black's conduct in Cobb's case constituted dishonesty or misrepresentation, incompetence and neglect, and that it was prejudicial to the administration of justice. It also accuses Black of knowingly making false representations of fact.
Other complaints
Another person Black represented, Kimball Craig of Corvallis, filed a complaint against him in February 2004. Black had been appointed to defend Craig on charges of possession and delivery of a controlled substance.
Craig wrote that he saw Black speaking with a woman from whom Craig had once received a stolen bicycle, and when he realized Black was also representing her, Craig asked the attorney to withdraw from his case.
Black refused, Craig wrote in his complaint.
The disciplinary council indicated in a summary of the complaint that Black should have known from police reports in Craig's court files that the woman had allegedly traded the bicycle to Craig for drugs and that representing both people constituted a likely conflict of interest.
Responding to the Bar's inquiries, Black maintained that the defendants in the two cases agreed that it was OK for him to continue to represent both of them, that the woman's name was not on any of the police reports he had reviewed in Craig's file, and that Craig had dismissed several attorneys before Black was appointed to him. Through its investigation, the Bar concluded that each of these statements was deliberately false or misleading.
A third complaint against Black came through Benton County District Attorney Scott Heiser. As the State Bar was investigating Black, Heiser forwarded to the agency a letter from a legal malpractice attorney alleging that a Korean national who had immigrated to the United States as an infant was almost deported due to what the disciplinary council has described as a failure to provide competent representation.
Jaemyong Chang, facing felony charges of possession and delivery of a controlled substance, pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement. According to the disciplinary council, Black failed to provide his client with important documents in his case, advised him that he would not be deported if he pleaded guilty, and failed to adequately research the laws to back up that advice.
At a post-conviction trial, Black made several comments under oath about the case that the disciplinary council believes were knowingly false or misleading.
Again, the disciplinary council accused Black of violations involving dishonesty and incompetent representation. He is also accused of soliciting Chang as a client at his arraignment on the drug charges, when Black allegedly approached Chang and offered to represent him for about $2,000, though Chang had been offered a court-appointed attorney.