Howard Kieffer, an ex-con with only jailhouse legal training, bamboozled federal court officials in Denver and throughout the country into allowing him to represent clients as a licensed attorney.
Now, a committee at the Administrative Office of the United States Courts — citing the Kieffer case — has issued a recommendation encouraging all federal courts to verify law licenses before allowing anyone to practice.
Kieffer, who ran a practice in California and Minnesota, gained admission into the federal system by lying on applications to practice law in several jurisdictions. He then persuaded local lawyers to vouch for him.
A simple check of Kieffer’s claims on the admission forms would have alerted clerks to his deception, but most courts acted on good faith.
“There would be a minimal burden on court staff to require such a verification procedure as many state bars have websites which contain the admission status of their licensed attorneys,” says the report issued by the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management. “The small amount of time and effort that would be required for the court to perform this function clearly outweighs the need to retry cases or re-sentence defendants, as well as the damage done to the integrity of the judicial process when it is undermined in this manner.”
Doug Cressler, chief deputy clerk of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, says his office has begun an attorney-verification procedure.
“Obviously, we are concerned about this Kieffer thing,” he said. “This is such an oddball thing; it was totally out of the blue.”
Cressler says clerks now call the states where a lawyer claims he is licensed to verify his status.
Kieffer gained admission to the 10th Circuit by getting a lawyer in the district to vouch for him and by writing that he was already admitted in another federal circuit.
The lawyers who vouched for Kieffer had met him at legal seminars and said they were duped because Kieffer seemed to have legal knowledge.
Last year, a Denver Post investigation found that Kieffer had not attended the Antioch School of Law and was not licensed to practice in any state or U.S. territory.
But by the time Kieffer was exposed, he had already represented Gwen Bergman during her murder- for-hire trial last May in U.S. District Court in Denver.
On the admission application to the district court, Kieffer listed Washington, D.C., as the jurisdiction where he was licensed to practice. A phone call to the Washington bar would have shown that no lawyer with Kieffer’s name was licensed there.
Denver U.S. District Court clerk Gregory Langham says his staff is reviewing the administrative office’s recommendation and that he does not anticipate that changing the attorney admission process would be burdensome.
“We are looking at our procedures,” he said. “We like to comply with the Judicial Conference’s recommendation, and we are determining how best we can do that.”
Bergman was convicted of trying to hire a hit man to kill her son’s father and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Her family paid Kieffer more than $50,000 to represent her.
On Thursday, Kieffer was convicted by a U.S. District Court jury in Bismarck, N.D., of mail fraud and making a false statement to a governmental agency after getting admitted to practice there in another case.
Kieffer faces up to 25 years in prison and a $250,000 fine at his sentencing June 30.
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
