Scrappy Lawyer Inspires Awe, Ire

Scrappy Lawyer Inspires Awe, Ire
Maureen Kallins' combative courtroom style has made her beloved by defendants and disdained by prosecutors and judges. Contempt citations and financial woes take a toll.

By MAURA DOLAN © 4/21/01 Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
SAN FRANCISCO -- Judges shudder at her name, prosecutors sneer at her, and even some of her colleagues in the criminal defense bar shun her. But the jail population loves Maureen Kallins.
Kallins, a former New York City public defender, has represented some of the most notorious defendants in Northern California and earned big money doing it. She has also been slapped with contempt sanctions repeatedly, fined at least six times and jailed three times by angry judges.
Two years ago, Kallins, 52, so incensed an Oakland judge during a rape trial that he sentenced her to 20 days in jail and fined her $4,300.
The judge accused Kallins of sticking her tongue out at a prosecutor and emitting "a loud, unrestrained and somewhat prolonged belch" after the judge sanctioned her. Kallins denies sticking out her tongue and is appealing the contempt citation in federal court.
Although many attorneys were sanctioned for contempt in the political trials of the 1960s, it is a rare punishment today.
Judges are supposed to control the courtroom, and strong lawyers frequently test their authority. Kallins may be their ultimate nightmare.
She has hosted weekend seminars for defense attorneys in "How to Take Charge of the Courtroom" and has a Web site titled "KILL"--Kallins Intensive Litigation Lab--that offers instruction in aggressive courtroom tactics for a fee.
In court, she is verbal, funny, vivid and dramatic. She communicates an animal energy to the jury.
"Maureen is representative of a dying breed--that is, a lawyer who is just an unbelievably hellcat fighter for her clients," said Golden Gate Law School Dean Peter Keane. "She proceeds from a background of dedication. Sometimes she may overdo it, and unfortunately when that happens, she can get herself into problems."
Kallins said she has lost business as a result of the sanctions and went into debt. She is even considering a new career, perhaps as an actress, she said.
"She goes into every court now with a black cloud of alleged past misconduct hanging over her," said Roger Lowenstein, her Los Angeles lawyer. "She is a marked woman, and it is not fair."
Because of her hard-charging style and victories in tough cases, Kallins has been called Northern California's version of Leslie Abramson, the high-powered Los Angeles criminal defender who became nationally known during the Menendez brothers' murder trial.
"We get the same type of reaction: that people want to stop us because we are winning," Kallins said. But she added: "I don't think I am as great as Leslie."
Kallins' courtroom antics are making lore and law in California. In 1999, a state appellate court devoted nearly an entire opinion to her in a case in which a former Kallins client unsuccessfully appealed a criminal conviction.
"In our collective 97 years in the legal profession," the 3rd District Court of Appeal wrote in 1999, "we have seldom seen such unprofessional, offensive and contemptuous conduct by an attorney in a court of law."
Kallins contends that the contempt sanctions stem from sexism, and some of her colleagues agree that judges might be more offended by a combative female attorney than a male.
"The way I feel is this is how women are treated," said Kallins, who practices law with her husband in MarinCounty. "The truth of the matter is it is sexist."
Lowenstein, who has known Kallins for 30 years, said a careful review of the allegations in the pending contempt case will show that her remarks in the courtroom were appropriate and that the jail sentence is unwarranted.
Repertoire of Tactics in Desperate Cases
She was sentenced to jail not for sticking out her tongue--she said she merely glared in a bug-eyed way--and not for belching, but for other remarks that the judge said were improper.
Courtroom foes and judges contend that Kallins' courtroom behavior is staged. They say she repeats the same tactics over and over again--accusing others of prejudice, fighting with the judge, calling in sick to court--to gain advantage for desperate defendants accused of rape, murder, fraud, smuggling, robbery and drug dealing.
By baiting witnesses, judges and prosecutors to snap at her, she attempts "to create an impression that 'the system' [is] against the defendant," the appeals court wrote in November 1999.
According to one prosecutor who has faced her, her obstreperous behavior often works to her clients' advantage. Her asides and facial expressions can influence jurors and provoke a prosecutor or judge into making a mistake, he said. She has an unusually high success rate for a criminal defense lawyer, this prosecutor said, and she is a formidable opponent in the courtroom.
The following 1997 exchange, outside the presence of a jury and reported in a court transcript, illustrates the dynamics between Kallins and one of the judges who has held her in contempt, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Joseph Hurley.
Judge: Counsel . . .
Kallins: Don't cut me off. Look, I'm not going to be cut off.
Judge: Counsel, I will control this.
Kallins: You're not going to cut me off. It's sexist and disgusting. You are . . .
Judge: You are acting inappropriately. You are in contempt when you do this.
Kallins: I am not acting inappropriately.
Judge: I will not just keep . . .
Kallins: You're to not interrupt me. I just want you to know.
Judge: You are in contempt. I am finding you in contempt.
Shortly thereafter, Kallins announced: "Sorry, I can't proceed. I have to leave."
After she walked out of the courtroom, the judge remarked: "I am at a loss as to what is possessing her at this point. . . ."
Weeks later during the same trial, in which her client was acquitted of drug charges, the two tangled again. She told the judge he was subjecting her to "the most sexist treatment that I have ever received in my entire life."
Kallins also has enraged federal judges, and two of them jailed her briefly. Deputy Assistant U.S. Public Defender Lawrence B. Kupers recalls visiting her in a holding cell a few years ago.
Even though she was locked up, "she was a trouper," Kupers said. "She said, 'This is wrong, but I have to fight for my client, and if this is what it takes, I will do this.' "
Noting that she has had some "amazing results," Kupers said Kallins does things that "make the jury take more note of the case, perhaps think more critically of the case. . . . What she is good at is courtroom tactics in cases that are hard if not impossible to win," he said.
Other colleagues say she takes some cases to trial that she should negotiate instead. "But the clients love the show," said one of her critics. "The criminally accused are not necessarily those who are going to make the smartest judgments."
Former San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Brown summed up "the two schools" of thought about Kallins: She is admired by "people who just love that forward, over-the-top style of representation" and criticized by "other attorneys who say she doesn't deal with evidence surgically."
Detained in Holding Cell
Even criminal defense lawyers who are critical of Kallins say that some prosecutors and judges lie in wait for her, hoping she will trip up so she can be punished. They complain that law enforcement is dying to see Kallins humiliated.
In October, Kallins spent three hours in a closet-sized holding cell in Oakland to begin serving the 20-day state sentence before she was released on appeal by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Prosecutors and their investigators were on hand as she was led to her cell in the AlamedaCounty courthouse. It was a kind of public caning, one defense attorney said.
The so-called caning was of a small, attractive woman whose blistering words belie an almost frail appearance. She has short blond hair, brown eyes and pale skin.
Being locked up "was scary," Kallins said. "It still is scary."
State bar records show that Kallins has never been publicly disciplined, although the bar has listed her contempt sanctions for public viewing.
Kallins was born in Brooklyn and worked in the New York public defender's office that has produced several big-name attorneys, including Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, whose Innocence Project has used DNA evidence to free dozens of people from prison.
When Kallins arrived in the Bay Area more than 20 years ago, few women practiced criminal defense. Kallins stood out, not only because she was a woman but her style was unusually aggressive.
Arthur Wachtel was a public defender in MarinCounty at the time and would stop in at court occasionally to watch Kallins. She was tough as nails, "everything a criminal defense lawyer should be," the defense lawyer said.
During one trial that Wachtel remembers, Kallins attempted to remind a jury of a witness' testimony. She jumped into the witness box and began to mimic the witness during final arguments.
The trial judge, who was highly experienced and usually calm, interjected. That may be the way lawyers in New York do it, the judge said, but out here we have rules.
Kallins' reply was rapid and effective, Wachtel recalled, paraphrasing it as: I don't know what you mean about lawyers in New York. I hope it wasn't intended to be anti-Semitic. The judge backed down. "She got much better treatment from him," Wachtel said. "It was beautiful."
In another case, Kallins represented an accused rapist. She had a theory that the prosecution's explanation for how the attack occurred was not possible.
To demonstrate, she and another female attorney reenacted the alleged struggle before a jury. Kallins tipped her hands in blood-red rouge and wrapped them around the other lawyer's neck. The defendant could not have grabbed the woman the way she claimed, Kallins argued. The jury acquitted her client.
Kallins became highly sought after, the "go-to" lawyer for defendants awaiting federal trials in San Francisco. She won a few major cases that other lawyers had considered sure losers, and inmates passed her name around in the jails. They thought she could perform miracles.
She tooled around town in a purple and yellow Corvette convertible, with KALLINS on the license plate. She said a former client gave her the car as payment for her work.
Many defendants dumped their attorneys and replaced them with Kallins. Her practice soared, and some of her colleagues believe she took on too many cases at once.
Mounting Debts, More Competition
Those heady years have given way more recently to a string of troubles for Kallins, including debt.
Criminal defense law is highly competitive, particularly for the few clients who can pay tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a private lawyer.
Kallins said she and her husband got into financial trouble in part because the federal government was slow to reimburse her for work she did on several cases as an appointed lawyer.
She blames herself for not managing her finances well. "I thought it was a war," she said. "I didn't think it was a business."
Kallins said her run-ins with judges have cost her money and energy and diverted her from her work. She has challenged judges only to protect her clients from erroneous or unfair rulings, she said. In fact, she added, she enjoys good relations with many jurists.
Nonetheless, her previous clashes with judges sometimes precede her into court. That was the case two years ago in the rape trial that would end with her receiving the 20-day jail sentence for contempt.
Alameda County Deputy Dist. Atty. Morris Jacobson reviewed her previous cases and filed a brief about her record with Superior Court Judge Jeffrey W. Horner. Jacobson's 33 pages of arguments said that Kallins had a routine she used to cheat the prosecutor out of a fair trial.
Among the litany of examples cited by Jacobson was Kallins' handling of a bloody shirt, an exhibit, when she was representing a man accused of attempting to kill a CHP officer.
She dropped the victim's shirt on the floor during the court proceeding and walked on it, Jacobson said. When the judge ordered her to pick it up, she draped it over the prosecution's table. Kallins said she may have accidentally dropped the shirt.
After reading the brief, Horner granted an order listing 33 rules of conduct for the trial.
Rule No. 1: "Neither attorney shall yell, scream or shout at witnesses, jurors, opposing counsel, the judge or court staff."
Despite the rules, the trial did not go smoothly. In court records, Horner said Kallins used an "unrelentingly sarcastic, insolent and arrogant tone" in addressing the prosecutor and the judge and deliberately mispronounced the prosecutor's name.
At one point, Kallins wanted previous testimony read to a witness, and the prosecutor said the reading should include comments further back in the transcript.
The judge said he would review the transcript. While he was reading it in the courtroom, Kallins remarked: "I'm waiting."
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" the judge asked.
"I'm waiting," Kallins said.
Horner told her to sit down. Her client was later convicted.
California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, the defenders' association, has filed arguments on behalf of Kallins in the pending sanctions case, saying that she may have been punished for actions "that not only are, but should be, permitted to criminal defense lawyers."
But the defense bar has not otherwise warmly embraced Kallins.
"I had every big case in town," Kallins said. "I think that economically, people were really threatened by me. It's hard to support your competition."
'I Think My Enemies Have Won'
Kallins said she has not taken a new client in a year and that her troubles have diminished her popularity in the jails. She wants to leave her law practice altogether.
"I think my enemies have won," she said.
The judge's contempt order would require her to serve her time alone in a cell, which horrifies her. "If you fight for the Constitution, they are going to get you," Kallins said.
During a recent court appearance in Oakland, Kallins looked tired as she argued to suppress evidence in a drug case. She was aggressive in her questioning of the witnesses, but she did not argue with the judge. In fact, she was extremely polite.
When the session was recessed for lunch, Kallins said she had to work while she ate. Wearing a loose chartreuse raincoat, she pushed a luggage cart containing a cardboard box of files around a court plaza. She looked more vulnerable than Vesuvian.
People make mistakes, she said, standing in line at a bagel shop. Criminal law is highly competitive, and women are discriminated against, she went on. She took her lunch and moved to a table, where she ate alone.