Civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman, whose long career challenging police brutality has occasionally been derailed by run-ins with the State Bar and several federal judges, was indicted Friday on charges of income tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and money laundering.
A 19-count indictment, returned by a federal grand jury on June 1, was unsealed a day after Yagman, 61, finished defending a woman charged with a methamphetamine offense in Riverside County.
The U.S. attorney's office would not say what prompted officials to launch an investigation that spanned five years and centered on a tax liability totaling $158,000.
Asserting that federal charges are rare for the conduct alleged in the 58-page indictment, defense lawyer Barry Tarlow accused the government of retaliating for "successful battles" Yagman had waged against two of the agencies that investigated him. Tarlow said Yagman had won a $650,000 judgment against the Internal Revenue Service.
Tarlow noted that the indictment had been approved by Justice Department officials in Washington.
Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, said prosecutors "vehemently deny that this case is motivated by political retribution or any other improper motive."
"The charges are detailed in the indictment, and we intend to litigate those charges in court."
Yagman, who was admitted to the California Bar in 1976, has loomed like a self-appointed avenging angel over the city's power establishment, particularly in the police and judicial systems, for more than a quarter of a century. He pursued a string of successful abuse cases against the Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement agencies and pioneered the tactic of calling the city's top elected officials to the witness stand to answer for the actions of rank-and-file police officers.
He also broke legal ground by holding City Council members personally liable for damages stemming from the actions of bad cops.
Among his many high-profile cases were those against the LAPD's secretive SIS unit. Formed in 1965 by then-Chief William Parker to coordinate surveillance against criminal suspects, the unit has been involved in more than 50 gun battles and the deaths of at least 37 suspects. Yagman has frequently referred to the unit as a death squad.
He once persuaded a jury to hold former Police Chief Daryl Gates and other officers liable for the deaths of robbers shot by the SIS outside a McDonald's in Sunland.
