Prison-Trained Criminal Lawyers Help Further Inmates’ Court Claims

COLDWATER, Mich. —  People follow Joyce Dixson everywhere--to the bathroom, to the dining hall, to her cell.

Her legal knowledge is in such demand that she feels there are too few hours in the day to get everything done--even as she serves life in prison without a chance of parole. She is paying dearly for her education.

Dixson, 38, has spent the last 14 years behind bars for shooting her pimp. Her own case seems hopeless, so she works to help her fellow inmates. It was the sense of having been wrongly used, she said, that drove her to study law.

She has appealed several times and won decisions in the Michigan Court of Appeals on three issues, but the rulings were overturned by higher courts. The U.S. Supreme Court, she said, has refused to hear her case.

As a child in Saginaw, Mich., she used to watch her future pass.

“I used to sit on my porch when I was a little girl and watch him go by with a Cadillac full of girls. That was the exciting, glamorous life. The heroes of the neighborhood were those people with money and big cars.

“I graduated from high school and I had good jobs. I worked at GMAC, at the bank, at Kroger’s. But as long as I was home in the neighborhood, whatever I got was never enough. My mother was on welfare. I got caught up in his sweet talk, ‘I can show you a better way.’

“I was off and running and I didn’t even know where I was going. It’s so easy to be manipulated when you want to believe what you hear.”

She was a prostitute for three or four years. She didn’t work the streets; the pimp referred her directly to men he knew who “wanted a pretty woman to waste money on.”

Finally, she said, “I could not take it anymore. It got to the point where I said, ‘Joyce, are you going to be a burned-out whore and a dope fiend the rest of your life, or are you going to get out?’ You have to make a decision. At the time, that seemed like the only one to make.

“I had been in his house for three days and I wanted to go home. I was full of cocaine and he just kept feeding me more cocaine. I was paranoid and he wouldn’t let me out. He had another woman there. The cocaine told me I had to get out. He was talking to a friend on the phone and I just shot him and left.”

Looking back on her crime, Dixson said: “I knew somebody was going to shoot him someday. I’m just sorry it was me. People try to make it sound like he was a poor, helpless man and what I did was such a horrendous thing, but I know I’m not that kind of person. For that 20 to 30 seconds, they have completely judged me as a cold-blooded murderer, and I’m not that.”

Dixson is much like other “jailhouse lawyers.” Their interest in law is sparked by a hope of their own vindication, but they derive hope and meaning, and often a few bucks, from helping colleagues get released or have their sentences reduced.

By the time indigent inmates realize that they have lost their right to court-appointed attorneys, they have nobody to turn to on appeal except people who have taken it upon themselves to study the law.

Many women in prison are involved in custody and divorce battles, and male prisoners more and more are seeking the right to visit with their children on the outside.

“A simple letter from the courts is so hard for some of them to read. A lot of them are embarrassed,” said Anita Alcorta, another jailhouse lawyer in the Florence-Crane Women’s Facility in Coldwater. She learned English as a second language, as well as the intricacies of law.

Dixson said: “I’m one of only three prisoners in the state to be accepted at the University of Michigan. All that wouldn’t have happened if I had stayed out there.”

But trust in a jailhouse lawyer can lead to disappointment and retaliation, said James Jourdan, 43, who is serving eight years in the State Prison of Southern Michigan for shoplifting.

Jourdan, who claims to have about 40 cases pending before the courts, said that “95% of the jailhouse lawyers are not by any stretch of the imagination competent to represent someone. A lot of people are pretending to know the law to take from the less fortunate.”

He added: “Some have been stabbed for not representing other prisoners too well. Here, the remedy is quick justice.”

About 59% of the 2,666 cases filed in the Michigan Supreme Court last year were criminal cases, and about half of those were filed without an attorney, said Corbin Davis, clerk of the high court.

The volume of appeals from inmates can get expensive for the state. “I win 97% of all of them,” said Atty. Gen. Frank Kelley. He also said that it takes 7.2% of his office’s $23-million annual budget to defend the state against prisoner claims. His corrections division of 18 lawyers is larger than the criminal or environmental divisions. Some of the suits are just plain nuisances, Kelley said.

Take the case of the crushed Twinkies. When an inmate purchased a package of the cream-filled cakes, it was packed at the bottom of the bag. The inmate sued the state for refusing to replace the smashed Twinkies. The litigation cost the state a few thousand dollars.

Some other court claims that fall into the frivolous category: A refused demand for a haircut, an orange that an inmate was prohibited from taking from the cafeteria (he claimed he was refused medical attention for want of the vitamin C) and a sex offender who demanded to see the personnel files of women prison guards and cited the Freedom of Information Act.

A man undergoing a sex change at the time of his imprisonment is suing the state for refusing to supply him with the hormone therapy to continue his transformation.

Paralegal courses are offered periodically at all community colleges that offer courses to prisoners. Many inmates teach themselves or learn from fellow inmates who study in prison libraries.

But, Dixson said, a prisoner in court without an attorney often is looked down upon.

Inmate paralegals can write briefs and file appeals, but they can’t leave prison to represent people other than themselves in court. They must rely on slow mail in order to do the research necessary to appeal a case.

Regardless of the barriers, some jailhouse lawyers are excellent attorneys, said George Krause, a retired attorney who teaches inmates at two Ionia facilities through Montcalm County Community College.

“Some of them are better than the lawyers they had before they got put in there,” he said.

Dixson claims that her attorney was a longtime friend of the man she shot and a customer as well. She said she didn’t know that until she was in the county jail, but courts ruled that it did not prejudice her case.

“That’s one of the reasons I learned so much about the law when I got in here.”

Some knowledgeable inmates work for Prison Legal Services Inc. of Michigan, a nonprofit corporation required by court order and housed at the Jackson prison. It has a staff of 14 prison paralegals and two civilian attorneys, one of whom is the director, Sandra Girard.

The unit assists prisoners in preparing pleadings, except for cases filed against the department.

William G. Ramsey, regarded by his cohorts as one of the best jailhouse lawyers, specializes in murder cases because it helps him to prepare for his own appeal. He has written arguments in numerous cases that have been reversed.

One involved a motorcycle gang member convicted of killing two women who wandered into the group’s club. Another involved a man accused of beheading another.

He opposes most civil suits filed from prison because, he said, “prison is a cancer and you can’t cure it by suing it.”

Most inmate lawyers deny taking money for their services because it is forbidden, but everything from cigarettes to cash to marijuana may change hands.

Despite frustration in their own cases, the jailhouse lawyers plow forward to help those who need it. There is some altruism.

“It was meant for me to help certain people that can’t help themselves,” said Victoria Hollis, a 40-year-old woman from Illinois who lived in Benton Harbor, Mich., at the time she killed her husband. “I have a gift where I can understand and I can do the legal work. I have to share it and help whoever I can get out of here.”

Joyce Dixson finds a kind of vindication in her work, but she remains haunted by what happened to her and by the man she killed. “He was a big fish in a little pond. He was the biggest drug dealer, he was the biggest pimp. He was very careful about how he did things. Let’s just say he was not a nice man.

“I was out there on those streets and I never should have been. I got caught up out there.

“I’m sorry he’s dead because I’m here and I’ve missed so much of my children’s lives. (Her sons, now 21 and 19, were reared by her mother.) But I’m whole. I’m not a dope fiend. I’m not used up. And I’m getting an education.”