Ian Wallach | |
---|---|
Born | Ian Michael Wallach |
Education | Juris Doctor |
Alma mater | U.C. Hastings College of Law |
Occupation | Attorney-At-Law |
Employer(s) | The Law Offices of Ian Wallach, PC, owner Feldman & Wallach, LLP, founding partner [1] |
Website | www www |
Ian Wallach is an American lawyer and founding partner of the Law Offices of Ian Wallach, P.C. [2] He is a legal news commentator who has appeared on regional, national, and international television and radio shows speaking on current legal issues. [1] [3]
Wallach earned his J.D. from U.C. Hastings in 1999. [4] During his time at U.C. Hastings, he was enrolled in an International Law concentration which led him to clerk with the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Tribunal for Yugoslavia. [5] He also participated in drafting the indictment of Slobodan Milošević which contributed to his overthrow in 2000. [5]
Wallach previously worked as an associate at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in their New York office. [1] He left the firm in 2005 and moved to California to join the Office of the Public Defender. [6] He co-founded Feldman & Wallach, LLP in 2010 with Jason Feldman, an attorney he previously met while transitioning to the public defender's office in 2005. [1] In 2015 he founded his own firm, The Law Offices of Ian Wallach, PC, with offices in Los Angeles and New York.
In 2018, Wallach was nominated to serve on the board of directors for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), a professional bar association founded in 1958 advancing the mission of the nation's criminal defense lawyers to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or other misconduct. [7] [8]
Wallach represented Alpha L. Walker who was accused along with his girlfriend in 2012 of extorting Stevie Wonder. [9] Walker was accused of threatening to sell a video with him talking about Wonder's treatment of his family if Wonder did not pay him $5 million. Walker later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor under a plea deal and was sentenced to time served. [10] The plea included the charge to be expunged if Walker complies with the terms of his release. [11]
During the Stevie Wonder trial, microphones were discovered hidden at counsel table by the tabloid magazine/show enterprise TMZ. Ian Wallach brought an action in federal court against TMZ alleging a violation of his client's right to privacy and counsel. TMZ has a record of never settling actions and not losing Anti-Slapp suits, but this matter was settled shortly after it was filed. [12]
Wallach performed pro bono work for the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing Guantanamo Bay detainees. [1] He most notably represented Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, a 23-year-old Yemeni citizen arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay detention camp. [13] Wallach obtained a court order for the Bush administration to turn over information regarding Ahmed, the first time the government had been ordered to do so after the passage of the Detainee Treatment Act. [13] [14] Ahmed was later ordered to be released from Guantanamo. [15] Wallach also received a special thanks for his habeas corpus work in Guantanomo in the book Poems From Guantánamo. [16]
In March 2006, Ian Wallach authored an article for "The Jurist", the legal newspaper for the University of Pittsburgh, titled "No Habeas at Guantanamo? The Executive and the Dubious Tale of the DTA" [17] asserting that the US Executive Branch likely engaged in questionable acts, and disseminated inaccurate information, to encourage Senate passage of provisions in the Detainee Treatment Act, in an effort to prevent federal judges from seeing that the evidence allegedly supporting indefinite pre-trial detention was problematic and, sometimes, nonexistent. [17]
Wallach and his partner Jason Feldman were the lead attorneys representing Arjang Panah, a former inmate in the federal prison system who sued the United States federal government over contracting Valley fever in 2006 while incarcerated at Taft Correctional Institution in Kern County, California. [1] [18] [19] Prior to Panah's case, eleven inmates had filed claims with the California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board related to Valley Fever, all of which were denied. [18] U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess refused to dismiss the lawsuit at the request of the government, allowing the case to move forward to trial. [20]
The lawsuit was settled out of court, with Panah receiving $425,000 from the government. [18] [21] In May 2013, the CDC began an investigation into deaths at 2 California state prisons related to Valley Fever. [22] This was after medical receiver J. Clark Kelso ordered the move of over 3,000 inmates susceptible to the illness from the federal prison system in California. [23] U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson later ordered the state of California to move 2,600 inmates from certain California state prisons that were susceptible to the illness. [24] Since the Panah action, hundreds of other inmates have brought similar claims against the United States related to Valley Fever at Taft Correctional Institution. [25] [26]
Feldman & Wallach, LLP, along with the Raymond Boucher and the class action law firm Arias Ozello & Gignac, LLP, brought a class action against the State of California, Governor Jerry Brown, and other California State officials arising out of exposing hyper-susceptible inmates to Valley Fever at the Pleasant Valley State Prison. [27] [28] Other similar actions have since been filed. [29] [30]
Ian Wallach argued the 9th Circuit consolidated cases of Edison v. USA, et al. & Nuwintore v. USA, et al., presently available at 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 9250 (May 20, 2016), reinstating the rights of present and former inmates of African descent to sue the US for claims arising out of Valley Fever infections at Taft Correctional Facility. The decision details the limits of sovereign immunity under the "Independent Contractor Exception" to the Federal Tort Claims Act: the consolidated cases of Edison v. USA, et al., No. 14-15472 and Nuwintore v. USA, et al., No. 14-17546 (9th Cir. 2016) - the decision is available here.
Ian Wallach was counsel to the family of Dontre Hamilton who was shot 14 times by police officer Christopher Manney who woke Hamilton from a nap in Red Arrow Park Milwaukee. [31] [32] No charges were brought against Christopher Manney for killing Dontre Hamilton. [33] But Christopher Manney was fired for engaging in an unlawful pat-town of Hamilton. [34] Manney appealed that decision to the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, who upheld the decision to terminate him. [35] Christopher Manney sought judicial review of the Fire and Police Commission's review. On June 26, 2016, Judge Richard Sankovitz of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in Wisconsin upheld the decision of the Fire and Police Commission that the termination was appropriate. [36] Ultimately, in April 2017, in the civil action brought by the estate of Dontre Hamilton, the Court granted summary judgment to Plaintiffs and United States District Court Judge Stadtmueller held that these proceedings precluded Manney from again litigating whether or not the search was unreasonable, and held that, as a matter of law, the search was unreasonable. [37] [38] Ian Wallach contributed to the brief [Motion for Summary Judgment by All Plaintiffs, J.M. et al v. City of Milwaukee et al, 2:16-cv-00507-JPS, ECF No. 45, 2/01/2017]. As of May 9, 2017, the parties had reached a tentative settlement of 2.3 million dollars — which may have constituted the largest settlement in the history of Milwaukee for a civil rights case. [39]
Wallach represented Barry Montgomery in the case Barry John Montgomery v. County of Los Angeles, et al., Los Angeles Superior Court Case No. BC692204. [40] In July 2014, Barry Montgomery was confronted by deputies at the Enterprise Park for alleged possession or marijuana. Montgomery punched one of the deputies on the shoulder. [40] The deputies then punched him several times in what they termed as getting him under control while fearing he was reaching for a weapon. At the time, Montgomery was on medication as he had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic with Tourette syndrome. [41]
Montgomery suffered facial fractures, fractured eye socket, seven broken ribs among other injuries. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to a $2.75 million settlement for the case. [41] [42]
In the case of Martinez v. City of Los Angeles, Anthony Razo, Salvador Lizarraga, William Eagleson, Gilbert Silva, Jesus Linn and Marilyn Droz, Wallach was one of Martinez's attorney in subsequent accusations along with Nick Brustin and others. In the case, Martinez was alleged to have been at the workplace between 2005 and 2007 when the armed robbery was said to have happened. Ruben Martinez spent 12 years in prison and in 2019, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Ryan found him to be innocent of the alleged crimes and dismissed his case with prejudice. [43] Martinez was released in 2019 after two of the victims testified at that trial that Martinez was not the robber. The review unit determined that Martinez was not the robber. [44]
To avoid facing the jury, the city of the City of Los Angeles agreed to pay Martinez $8 million. [45]
In 2023, Wallach and Katherine McBroom represented Pedro Martinez, a school janitor who was accused of sexually abusing multiple students. Pedro Martinez was arrested in January 2019 by San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deputies. [46] He worked as a janitor at Maple Elementary School and was alleged to have molested several 6-year-old boys from the same school and one six-year-old girl. Martinez was charged with 10 counts of child sex abuse and one count of lewd conduct. [47] The trial began in August 2023 at the Superior Court of California, San Bernardino County Joshua Tree Courthouse. [47] The lewd conduct count was dismissed mid-trial. On December 11, 2023, Martinez was acquitted of all remaining counts by the jury, having spent over five years incarcerated awaiting trial. [48]
Wallach, Martinez’s attorney, accused the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deputy for not following appropriate protocols while conducting the investigations. He accused the deputy for interviewing a 6 year old child with leading and suggestive questions. [49]
Wallach has provided legal commentary for regional, national, and international media outlets and has been quoted in the press on current legal issues. [50] He has appeared on Entertainment Tonight, [51] America Now with Andy Dean, KTLA, [5] Valley Public Radio [52] and CCTV America [53] discussing legal topics such as the Amanda Knox murder trial in Italy, [54] the Boston Marathon bombings, [53] and Chelsea Manning. [5]
Wallach is the host of "Wallach-On-Law", a talk show dedicated to issues of criminal justice reform. [55]
Wallach maintains a blog titled "Renovate Justice" discussing issues on criminal justice reform. [56] He also maintains a blog of trial commentaries. [57]
Wallach writes on issues of fertility and loss and is the author of “A Father's Story: Mourning the Baby We Never Had”, [58] reprinted in “The Longest Date, Life as a Wife” by Cindy Chupack.
San Quentin Rehabilitation Center (SQ), formerly known as San Quentin State Prison, is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
Pleasant Valley State Prison (PVSP) is a 640-acre (260 ha) minimum-to-maximum security state prison in Coalinga, Fresno County, California. The facility has housed convicted murderers Sirhan Sirhan, Erik Menendez, X-Raided, Paul Flores and Hans Reiser, among others.
The Mexican Mafia, also known as La eMe, is a predominantly Mexican American prison gang and criminal organization in the United States. Despite its name, the Mexican Mafia has no origins in Mexico and is entirely a U.S. organization. Law enforcement officials report that the Mexican Mafia is the deadliest and most powerful gang within the California prison system.
The 2005 Quran desecration controversy began when Newsweek's April 30, 2005, issue contained a report asserting that United States prison guards or interrogators had deliberately damaged a copy of the Quran. A week later, The New Yorker reported the words of Pakistani politician Imran Khan: "This is what the U.S. is doing—desecrating the Quran." This incident caused violent unrest in some parts of the Muslim world.
Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, also referred to as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam Mohammed or Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, is an Ethiopian national and United Kingdom resident, who was detained as a suspected enemy combatant by the US Government in Guantanamo Bay prison between 2004 and 2009 without charges. He was arrested in Pakistan and transported first to Morocco under the US's extraordinary rendition program, where he claimed to have been interrogated under torture.
Chester Dewayne Turner is an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death for sexually assaulting and murdering fourteen women and an unborn baby in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998.
Clarence Ray Allen was an American criminal and proxy killer who was executed in 2006 at the age of 76 by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison in California for the murders of three people. Allen was the second-oldest inmate at the time to be executed in the United States since 1976.
Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) is an American women's California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison located in Chowchilla, California. It is across the road from Valley State Prison. CCWF is the second largest female correctional facility in the United States, and houses the only State of California death row for women.
Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani is a citizen of Yemen formerly held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. The Department of Defense estimate that he was born in 1979, in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
Leroy David Baca is a former American law enforcement officer and convicted felon who served as the 30th Sheriff of Los Angeles County, California from 1998 to 2014. In 2017, he was convicted of felony obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI.
The United States Department of Defense (DOD) had stopped reporting Guantanamo suicide attempts in 2002. In mid-2002 the DoD changed the way they classified suicide attempts, and enumerated them under other acts of "self-injurious behavior".
The Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York is a temporarily closed United States federal administrative detention facility in the Civic Center of Lower Manhattan, New York City, located on Park Row behind the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse at Foley Square. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice.
Salem Abdul Salem Ghereby was a citizen of Libya who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba, from 5 May 2002, until 4 April 2016. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts reports that he was born on 1 March 1961, in Zliten, Libya.
The Milwaukee Police Department is the police department organized under the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The department has a contingent of about 1,800 sworn officers when at full strength and is divided into seven districts. Jeffrey B. Norman is the current chief of police, serving since December 2020.
California Correctional Institution (CCI) is a supermax state prison in the city of Tehachapi in Southern California. CCI is sometimes referred to as "Tehachapi prison" or "Tehachapi". As stated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, its overall mission is "to incarcerate and control felons, while providing the opportunity for meaningful work, training and other programs. The prison provides programs for those inmates who are willing to work and participate fully in available programs."
California State Prison, Los Angeles County (LAC) is a male-only state prison located in the city of Lancaster, in Los Angeles County, California. The only state prison located in the county, it is also referenced as Los Angeles County State Prison, CSP-Los Angeles County, and CSP-LAC. Only occasionally is the prison referred to as Lancaster State Prison, which was particularly avoided in 1992 partly to ease the stigma for Lancaster.
Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (RJD) is a California state prison in unincorporated southern San Diego County, California, near San Diego. It is operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The facility sits on 780 acres (320 ha). It is the only state prison in San Diego County. It is named after Richard J. Donovan.
The Metropolitan Detention Center, Los Angeles is a United States federal prison in downtown Los Angeles, California which holds male and female inmates prior to and during court proceedings, as well as inmates serving short sentences. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice.
On April 30, 2014, Dontre Hamilton was shot and killed by police officer Christopher Manney, at Red Arrow Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. No charges were brought, but Manney was fired from the force. As a result of the shooting and subsequent protests, Milwaukee police officers were equipped with body cameras.