State pays law firm to help prisoners sue

LANSING — A state administrative panel today is expected to approve a nine-month extension to a $4.1-million contract with a Grand Rapids law firm that helps state prisoners overturn their convictions and sue the state over the conditions of their confinement.

The contract with the law firm Peterson Paletta draws criticism from both ends of the political spectrum.

Some who are hard on criminals or want to cut the prison budget say it's ridiculous for the Corrections Department to use taxpayer money to pay private attorneys to help prisoners sue the state.

Advocates for prisoners' rights say the "legal writer" program — under which the law firm trains and oversees inmates who help less literate prisoners draft legal pleadings and complaints — is useful, but too few inmates receive too little help from it.

Prison officials say the program, which costs about $752,000 a year, was created pursuant to a 1996 federal court order arising from a 1992 prisoner lawsuit.

Peterson Paletta, which is not the first law firm hired to train the inmate legal writers and monitor their work, was hired in 2009 for a three-year contract that has already been extended twice. Today, the State Administrative Board is considering a third contract extension, which is nine months long and worth $564,000, bringing the total contract value to $4.7 million.

Kevin Peterson, a partner in Peterson Paletta, mostly declined comment on the contract, referring questions to the Michigan Department of Corrections.

State officials said in their submission to the State Administrative Board that the latest extension is needed to give time to rebid the contract and provide for a transition period if the contract is won by a different firm. The contract itself is needed "to comply with the prisoners' constitutional right of access to the courts."

Only a minority of the state's 43,000 prisoners are eligible for the program. The others are expected to do their own legal work by making use of the prison law libraries, which the department is in the process of converting from libraries with books to libraries that will be electronic only.

About 29,000 prisoners who have a high school diploma or GED are generally not eligible, leaving fewer than 15,000 who are eligible on that basis. Inmates can also qualify for the program if they can't speak or write English or have a mental or physical disability that prevents them from using the law library, or are in segregation.

Neither Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections, nor Peterson of Peterson Paletta could say Monday how many inmates use the service in a given year. Inmate legal writers receive about 80 hours of training from the law firm over about six weeks. The firm also provides computers to communicate with the inmate legal writers.

Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, said when the state charges citizens with criminal offenses it has an obligation to provide legal defense to those who can't afford one.

But if an inmate has a legitimate complaint about prison conditions, "I would imagine they would be able to find attorneys who would be happy to take their cases (on a contingency basis), because they would be eligible to collect for it," Drolet said. "They should find representation the same way everybody else has to."

But Peter Martel, a program associate for the American Friends Service Committee's criminal justice program in Ann Arbor, said changes to state law, including caps on allowable attorney fees and the ability of the state to waive attorney fees as part of a case settlement, make it highly unlikely attorneys will take prisoner cases on a contingency basis.

Martel, who worked as a prison legal writer in the 2000s when he was incarcerated for armed robbery and now is studying to be an attorney, said the program provides positive training for inmates who do good work for their fellow prisoners.

A weakness of the program, Martel said, is that inmates must complete the administrative complaint process before they are eligible to sue and they aren't allowed to get the help of legal writers to help with the complex administrative hearing process. As a result, he said, many potentially legitimate legal claims get barred because of mistakes.

It would be useful if inmates with some legal training could get involved earlier, even to tell prisoners what not to waste their time on, he said. "There are all kinds of things to complain about in prison; that doesn't necessarily make them good legal complaints," he said.

As for attempts to overturn convictions, court-appointed attorneys help with one appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals, Martel said. After that, inmates are on their own, and the legal writers are needed to help make sure pleadings get to the Michigan Supreme Court or federal courts on a timely basis, Martel said.

The State Administrative Board — which includes representatives of the governor, the attorney general and other top state officials — is normally a rubber stamp for contracts sent by the administration for approval.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.