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Joint Letter to Assistant
Attorney General Keisler
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March 24, 2005 Peter D. Keisler To the Honorable Assistant Attorney General Keisler: As a licensed attorney yourself, you surely appreciate the gravity of the problem that arises when two employees working in the same DOJ division on the same case come under investigation for illegally posing as licensed lawyers. A 30-second Internet search would have revealed the status of these individuals’ licenses and could have prevented this sort of wrongdoing from affecting civil rights. After facing decades of systemic discrimination at the hands of the federal agency charged with providing assistance to all American family farmers, black family farmers have faced continued obstruction in an out-of-court settlement supposedly devised to address the Department of Agriculture's (USDA’s) wrongdoing. What comes as the greatest tragedy, though, is that six years after the case was settled and some 81,000 black farmers have been denied access to justice in the course of the settlement, black farmers have now learned that DOJ’s quality-control system was so inadequate that at least two DOJ attorneys involved in the Pigford case are being investigated for fraudulently practicing law without a license. As you know, one of these attorneys, Margaret O'Shea, reportedly never held a license to practice law, though she represented DOJ for six months in the settlement as a "general attorney." O'Shea has been indicted for illegally posing as an attorney in a criminal case that is currently before a judge in Monterey County, California. The judge has ensured that all individuals who were defrauded by Ms. O'Shea have been given the opportunity to have their cases reconsidered in light of Ms. O'Shea's illegal practice. On December 16, 2004, I wrote you a letter requesting that black farmers in the Pigford settlement be given the same opportunity. We have not yet received a reply to that request. We have now learned that another attorney, Michael Sitcov, the Assistant Director in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division, may have illegally played an instrumental role in DOJ's participation in the settlement. According to DOJ timesheets, he logged at least 389 hours on the case while unlicensed, and he is currently under investigation by the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility for unauthorized practice of law from 2002-2004. Once the investigation is complete, DOJ must notify all of the courts before which Mr. Sitcov illegally practiced of his status. Overall, DOJ lawyers or people claiming to be lawyers spent at least 56,000 hours challenging black farmers’ claims in the Pigford settlement. DOJ represented USDA in court and in settlement proceedings, obtaining denials in 40% of the cases, and filing over 600 challenges to payments awarded to the farmers in the settlement. The farmers in the settlement negotiated in good faith with people they believed were licensed DOJ attorneys. The black farmers involved in the Pigford settlement have had to fight for decades against illegal racist practices carried out by USDA, and in the context of what should have been a straightforward claims processing program, have faced an outright battle with DOJ attorneys. Now, after learning that the DOJ attorneys who vigorously challenged their claims might not have even held valid licenses to practice law, they face yet another setback in their case that profoundly betrays the public trust. DOJ’s negligence in performing the simplest and most essential of background checks on its employees creates the impression of a departmental culture of carelessness and casts doubt on the credibility of its other employees’ credentials. DOJ’s hypocrisy in employing unlicensed attorneys to take such aggressive action in blocking “virtually automatic” settlements to farmers who have already faced discrimination is shocking. This case was supposed to rectify USDA’s discrimination against black farmers, not add to it. We await your response. |
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