Officer.com Police Blogs & Podcasts

Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

About a week ago, one might have expected to hear police officers everywhere, and especially those in Southern California, singing the Hallelujah Chorus, Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead, or something similarly joyous. The occasion was that on June 23, Stephen Yagman was found guilty of 19 felony counts of tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and money laundering. Okay, cops are happy to see someone held to account for their crimes. What makes this conviction so wonderful?

While not especially well-known in other parts of the world, Yagman has been the scourge of cops in California. For the past 25 years or so, he has been the plaintiffs’ attorney in hundreds of lawsuits against police officers and their agencies. He lost more lawsuits than he won, but he still obtained some memorable verdicts, and some really substantial cash. Some might say that the cash was too substantial. The California Bar Court did–twice–when he was suspended from the practice of law for charging an “unconscionable fee.”

The more recent suspension occurred when he sued the City of Los Angeles and several of its police officers after four suspects were shot following a robbery of a McDonald’s. Yagman got a judgment of $44,489 plus $8,000 in costs. Actual costs were over $29,000, but the court awarded Yagman $378,175 in attorney’s fees. Only in America. But the kicker is that Yagman took the case on a 45% contingency, so he deducted $19,800 (actual costs minus the $8,000 the court had awarded) from the plaintiff’s award, which left…wait for it…$810 per plaintiff.

Yagman’s methods made life as miserable as possible for the cops involved in his lawsuits. He appeared to believe that any penalty imposed by the court would be insufficient to punish the defendants properly, so he got in as many shots as he could during the pre-trial and trial phases. The capstone of his career could have been when he was appointed a special prosecutor in Boundary County, Idaho, for the purpose of trying FBI Special Agent Lon Horiuchi for manslaughter. Horiuchi was the sharpshooter in the “Ruby Ridge” incident in 1992. But by the time the 9th Circuit had ruled that Horiuchi could be tried on the charge, the county prosecutor who appointed Yagman had been voted out of office, and the new prosecutor declined to go forward. Tough break, Steve.

Yagman will be sentenced in September, but he’s not through yet. LAPD detective Jerry Le Frois wrote Yagman a letter expressing his delight at Yagman’s indictment, including “May you rot in hell, you despicable excuse for a human being.” (Don’t sugar-coat this, Jerry–tell us how you really feel.) Yagman is now suing Le Frois for “extreme emotional distress.” This is ironic in that Yagman once claimed a First Amendment protection after falsely accusing a federal judge of various transgressions, including being drunk on the bench.

Lawyers who make their livings by suing cops aren’t likely to win any Mr. Congeniality awards from most of Officer.com’s readers, but I don’t think that makes the lawyers evil by itself. Much as I hate to acknowledge it, there are cops that get past the filters and do bad things, and sometimes they do them with full knowledge that their actions are wrong. They do them anyway, because they think they are above judgment or penalty. We mostly get rid of them quick, and shed no tears for them when they’re held accountable. But Yagman acted in the best interests of Yagman, and any benefit to his clients was secondary and optional. People put their trust in him, he shafted them, and he tried to make himself look like a crusading hero in the process. He also ruined the lives of many well-intentioned cops who did the right thing and still got slammed for it.

Schadenfreude is a German word that doesn’t have a direct translation into English. One interpretation is “pleasure at the misforune of others.” It isn’t the same as sadism, where the sadist causes the suffering. Many people would say that Schadenfreude is wrong. The people that raised me would have called it un-Christian, as we are supposed to be capable of forgiveness without limit, to always turn the other cheek.

I admire people that can do that, but I’m not one of them. For me, there are people that have acted so wrongly, and with such consistent and continuing amoral intent that they are beyond redemption. They may be able to procure forgiveness from whatever deity they worship, but I lack that unlimited capacity for absolution. Maybe the police experience sucked that out of me, because cops see so much evil in their fellow man. I know cops that maintain that forgiving outlook, and they just might be better men than I am.

Your personal beliefs, religious and otherwise, control whether you think there is some cosmic system of justice. Maybe we all get what’s coming to us, and maybe it’s free will and nothing more. After September, you can write to Mr. Yagman in care of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and get his views. He’ll have up to six years to consider it.