With charges looming, the Kaleys sought an estimate from their lawyers of how much mounting a defense would cost. The answer: $500,000. (That figure may seem high, but sadly the government agreed it was reasonable.) The Kaleys took out a home equity loan and used the $500,000 to purchase a certificate of deposit, which they planned to spend on lawyers.

Then came the grand jury indictment and with it a nasty surprise: an order freezing essentially all their assets, including the CD that was meant to pay their legal bills. The only assets exempt from the order — Kelli’s retirement account and their children’s college funds — weren’t enough to cover the $500,000 estimate. And if the Kaleys liquidated those funds, they’d have owed $183,500 in tax penalties. The bottom line: They could no longer pay for their lawyer of choice even though, as the government agreed, that’s what the Sixth Amendment right to counsel protects. . . .

The Kaleys have tried only to keep the assets they want to use to pay for a lawyer, based on the Sixth Amendment. They initially had some success. A judge questioned why the government sought to freeze the entire CD when only $140,000 could be linked to the proceeds of the Kaleys’ allegedly criminal enterprise. The government’s response came just a few days later in the form of a new grand jury indictment adding a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering. That allowed the government to say the entire $500,000 should be frozen because the funds were “involved in” the underlying theft. The lower courts went along.