Legal Aid

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has opened a legal defense fund to fight a political scandal involving himself and various associates. Unlike other campaign funds, Shelley's account can raise money from donors in unlimited amounts, as long as the money is used exclusively for legal costs involving problems arising from his government duties. Shelley's legal troubles began in the summer, when the FBI and state Atty. Gen.

For Tom Mesereau, there hasn't been much middle ground lately: It's been either glitz or grits. Mesereau, a big man whose crown of white, shoulder-length hair is about as commonplace in Alabama courts as a powdered wig, is the lead attorney for pop star Michael Jackson. He usually practices in Century City, roughly a million miles from Bessemer's courthouse and the seafood gumbo at the Bright Star restaurant nearby.

The rise in human smuggling across Southern California is creating a cottage industry of lawyers who represent immigrants captured in police raids, legal help that federal authorities said has ultimately allowed some illegal immigrants to avoid deportation.

A local attorney has created a legal aid group to represent Middle Easterners and Muslims who have been targeted by law enforcement and immigration officials because of their backgrounds. Representatives of the National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement plan to lobby lawmakers, defend individual clients, argue legal cases that could set broad public policy and educate the public.

Four decades after the Supreme Court's landmark decision mandating that poor defendants in criminal cases are entitled to legal representation, a group of prominent American lawyers says the promise of that ruling remains unfulfilled. "There are still defendants who have not been provided competent counsel -- or they have no real representation at all," the Constitution Project and the National Legal Aid and Defender Assn.

On a day that makes many people shudder, one spot in Santa Ana was producing smiles as wide as a 1040 form is long. That's because at the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, volunteers were offering last-minute tax help for low-income working families. And the more than 50 procrastinators who showed up Thursday -- W-2 forms and filing folders in hand -- were grateful for the services.

SAN FRANCISCO The Bush administration has slashed San Francisco's federal AIDS budget by more than $4 million -- a 12% cut. The cuts appeared this week after U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson announced the new Ryan White CARE grants, which are doled out to the 51 metropolitan areas in the United States hit hardest by AIDS and HIV.

Jose Padilla, the American arrested in an alleged Al Qaeda plot to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb," was allowed to meet with lawyers Wednesday for the first time in nearly two years. The U.S. government has designated Padilla an "enemy combatant," meaning he can be held indefinitely without access to lawyers. But the government relented last month, just days before the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear his case. Donna R.

An American citizen held incommunicado by the military for more than a year as an alleged Al Qaeda supporter will be allowed to see a lawyer, the Pentagon said Wednesday. But one of Jose Padilla's lawyers says the government plans to monitor any meetings at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. That arrangement "would make it impossible to have an attorney-client conversation," said lawyer Andrew Patel.

A mission for the homeless, a legal aid group and the Los Angeles Police Department have each received a portion of the $250,000 that owners of a troubled skid row hotel paid to settle the city's lawsuit against it. The money was paid by the Frontier Hotel, a single-room-occupancy hotel that, according to police, had long been the site of drug activity. In 2002, the city filed a lawsuit against the owners, attempting to encourage them to curb drug-related activity at the hotel.