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Attorney Faces Disciplinary Charges for Fruitless Petitions
Notice Alleges L.A. Criminal Defense Lawyer Aaron Spolin Sought Out Inmates to Pay for Unnecessary Resentencing Requests That Were Unlikely to Prevail
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
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AARON SPOLIN attorney |
The State Bar of California has announced that West Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Aaron Spolin faces 18 disciplinary charges for alleged misconduct tied to repeatedly misleading inmates and their families about a resentencing relief program, charging them fees to prepare requests that were unlikely to be granted.
Spolin prepared the petitions based on Assembly Bill 2942, enacted in 2019, which amends Penal Code §1170(d)(1) to allow a court to recall and resentence a defendant upon the recommendation of the district attorney for the county in which the defendant was sentenced.
The Notice of Disciplinary Charges (“NDC”), filed Monday and announced Tuesday afternoon, alleges that between February and April of 2021, Spolin received at least nine letters from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office (“LADA”) advising him that petitions for relief would not be acted upon as the office was establishing an internal unit to evaluate cases for resentencing. The letters advised that “there was no need to take any action to be considered for resentencing.”
The LADA website also published criteria used to consider a case for relief under the bill and indicated that priority would be given to those inmates who are aged 50 and older, sentenced to 20 years or more on a non-serious and non-violent crime, have served a minimum of 10 years in custody, and are not required to register as a sex offender.
According to the NDC, Spolin also received eight letters from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office (“OCDA”) notifying him of its policy that it would only act on resentencing petitions received from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and that his requests would not be considered.
Notice of Charges
The NDC contends that Spolin charged an inmate’s family members an initial “case review” fee of $3,000 and additional fees for preparing the requests, knowing that the petitions would be fruitless.
In one instance, Spolin allegedly charged the sister of Thomas Stringer—who had been sentenced to 160 years to life for convictions on seven counts of kidnapping, six counts of second-degree robbery, and one count of felon in possession of a firearm—a total of $14,700 between October 2021 and January 2022. He is said to have failed to advise the sister or Stringer of the improbability of success due to the convictions failing to meet the LADA criteria.
In another case, he was purportedly hired by Shawnty Wynne, the sister of John Poe, to conduct a case review of Poe’s legal options for post-conviction relief. Poe was serving a sentence of 64 years to life for convictions of murder, attempted murder, and assault with a firearm.
The NDC asserts that Wynne paid Spolin a total of $26,700 in April of 2021 as a package fee to submit a request for resentencing on behalf of her brother to the LADA and to petition Gov. Gavin Newsom for commutation of the sentence. Spolin designated the portion of the bill attributable to the request for resentencing as between $11,700 and $14,700.
Nature of Charges
The attorney faces disciplinary charges for violating rules of professional conduct relating to misleading communications and unconscionable fees, among others.
California State Bar Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said:
“Offering false hope to those in dire straits for one’s own financial gain is contrary to a lawyer’s responsibilities. This principle underlies the Notice of Disciplinary Charges, which alleges that Mr. Spolin misled and withheld information from prisoners and their families to convince them to pay him for services that provided them no relief.”
Spolin is a founding member of the firm Spolin & Dukes P.C. He identifies himself on the firm’s website as a “former prosecutor” with the Office of the Bronx District Attorney and as an “award-winning criminal appeals attorney.” He is the author of the book “Witness Misidentification in Criminal Trials: Reforming Identification Procedures to Protect the Innocent,” published in 2020. Harriet Ryan revealed Spolin’s alleged misdeeds in an April 21, 2023 article in the Los Angeles Times, for which she is a staff writer.
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