If you have been convicted of a felony offense in federal court or by court martial, you are subject to a host of “civil disabilities” that restrict the exercise of your rights, even after you have served your sentence.
With more than 65 million Americans possessing a criminal record, the consequences of conviction – specific legal barriers, generalized discrimination, and social stigma – have become more numerous and severe, more public, and more permanent. These restrictions affect jobs and licenses, housing, public benefits, judicial rights, parental rights, interstate travel, and even volunteer opportunities. The result is that a significant percentage of the American public is permanently consigned to second class citizenship.
Under current law, the only two mechanisms to fully restore your civil rights are to (1) have your conviction overturned through a Motion for Writ of Error Coram Nobis and (2) a Presidential Pardon.
Motions for Writ of Error Coram Nobis are costly to litigate and reversals of conviction are difficult to obtain.
Obtaining a pardon from the President may be easier and less expensive.
When people ask for our help in connection with filing a pardon application, our procedure is to first review, investigate, and research their case to determine whether we can be of assistance. For this we charge a fee. The amount of the fee depends upon the amount of paperwork to be reviewed and research and investigation to be done. We bill for the review, investigation, research and evaluation on an hourly basis for which we require a deposit.
This deposit is refundable. A refundable deposit means to the extent the entire deposit is not used up in reviewing your case, the unexpended balance will be refunded to you at the conclusion of the review unless we both agree that it is worthwhile going forward in which case we will quote you a case for further representation and apply any balance toward it.
The preparation of a pardon application is an exacting process, which requires a careful review not only of the offense for which pardon is being sought, but also the applicant’s personal background and post-conviction activities. As part of the initial evaluation of your case, we will therefore ask you to provide us with a variety of biographical, employment and financial information that is taken into consideration by pardon officials.
After reviewing, researching and investigating the case, we will prepare a preliminary evaluation which we will send to you. Afterwards we will schedule a call to go over the evaluation and trade questions. We will do whatever additional work is necessary; prepare a final evaluation and send it to you. We will then schedule another call to discuss the evaluation and decide where we go from there.
While we cannot guarantee or predict a favorable outcome for any case, we only take those we believe have a reasonable shot at success. Once the review phase is complete and we believe your case has merit, we will quote you a fee for further representation.
Of course, if you are interested in going the first route, i.e., seeking to have your conviction overturned, our procedure, again, is to first review, investigate, and research their case to determine whether we can be of assistance. For this we also charge a fee. Again, the amount of the fee depends upon the amount of paperwork to be reviewed and research and investigation to be done. We bill for this work, too, on an hourly basis for which we require a deposit. This deposit too is refundable.
As with the pardon review, after reviewing, researching and investigating the case, we will prepare a preliminary evaluation which we will send to you. We then set up a telephone conference call among you, me and the attorney in the firm who has worked on the case with me to go over the evaluation with you and get answers to any questions we might have and answer any questions you might have. After that we will do whatever additional research and investigation is necessary, prepare a final evaluation and send it to you. We will then reschedule another call to discuss the final evaluation and decide where to go from there.
Again, as with pardons, while we cannot guarantee or predict a favorable outcome for any case, we only take those we believe have a reasonable shot at success. Once the review phase is complete and we believe your case has merit, we will quote you a fee for further representation.
If you are interested and would like us to quote you a fee to review, research and investigate your case for the purpose of determining whether there are good grounds for filing of a Motion for a Writ of Error Coram Nobis and/or a Pardon Application, please contact me.
For either of these remedies, my fee for initial consultation is $750 for up to an hour’s worth of my time in reviewing any relevant documents in preparation for a meaningful call with you.