U.S. v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 01 March 2010
• Docket Number: No. 08-6229.,08-6229.
• Citation: 597 F.3d 353
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robert WILSON, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

597 F.3d 353 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Robert WILSON, Defendant-Appellant. No. 08-6229. United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit. Argued: January 14, 2010. Decided and Filed: March 1, 2010.

[597 F.3d 354]

ARGUED: R. Gregg Hovious, Fultz Maddox Hovious & Dickens, PLC, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellant. Elizabeth H. Parks, Assistant United States Attorney, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: R. Gregg Hovious, Fultz Maddox Hovious & Dickens, PLC, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellant. Elizabeth H. Parks, Terry M. Cushing, Monica Wheatley, Assistant United States Attorneys, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellee.

Before: SUHRHEINRICH, SUTTON and COOK, Circuit Judges.

[597 F.3d 355]

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

The Criminal Justice Act authorizes district courts to appoint counsel for criminal defendants if they are "financially unable" to hire counsel of their own. 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(b). The Act also permits a court to terminate the appointment, and order repayment for the services provided, if "at any time after the appointment" the court learns that the defendant is "financially able" to obtain counsel or pay for the representation already provided. Id. § 3006A(c), (f).

In this case, because Robert Wilson had not obtained counsel by his arraignment in August 2006 and because he was incarcerated at the time, the district court appointed the public defender's office to represent him. Toward the end of his six-week trial, which began in late 2007 and ended in January 2008, the court learned that Wilson had been staying at the "historic Brown hotel" in downtown Louisville throughout the trial, at a cost of roughly $10,000, after turning down the government's offer of free accommodations. R.229 at 5. Further inquiry revealed that, by early 2007, Wilson was not a traditional candidate for free legal services: His income in 2007 totaled roughly $134,000; he lived in an exclusive section of San Francisco, where he paid $2,300 per month in rent; he has no dependents; his discretionary income in 2007 allowed him to spend at least $18,000 on the kinds of restaurants and wineries not known for catering to indigents; and Wilson's friends had created a $44,000 fund to pay for his legal services in the case.

Recognizing that this was not the type of person Congress had in mind when it authorized the government to provide legal services to indigent criminal defendants, the district court was not pleased. After further factual investigation, it ordered Wilson to pay $52,305 in "reasonable monthly payments" for the costs of the public defender's services. Id. at 26. Happily for Wilson, the fee was worth it, as he was acquitted on all charges. Unhappily for Wilson, the district court did not abuse its discretion in ordering him to pay for the representation.

I.

On July 10, 2006, a grand jury indicted Wilson for conspiring to commit wire fraud and for aiding and abetting false statements on another individual's tax returns. At his arraignment in August 2006, Wilson, then serving a prison sentence on a separate conviction, arrived without a lawyer but said he wanted to hire one. He claimed that he did not have the resources to hire a lawyer at the moment, but he explained that would change soon (presumably when his sentence ended at the end of 2006). The court quizzed Wilson on his finances and learned that: on the one hand, he was currently in bankruptcy, was earning 18 cents an hour in prison and had no substantial assets; but, on the other hand, he does consulting (outside of prison) at $150 an hour, has "no problem making money" because he is "the world's foremost expert in [his] field" (antique weapons) and, once he is released from prison in December 2006, he will "be making money again." Id. at 22. The magistrate judge appointed the public defender's office to handle the case until Wilson could raise the funds for private counsel, which Wilson continued to express an interest in obtaining. At a detention hearing the next day, the magistrate judge instructed Wilson that, "if you do retain private counsel, just let [the federal public defender] know that, all right? Then the Court will relieve the federal defender of your representation." R.299 at 3.

For the next fifteen months, nothing happened — at least so far as Wilson's interest

597 F.3d 356

in hiring a private attorney was concerned. The public defender's office continued to represent Wilson, even after he finished serving his prison term in December 2006 and after he began consulting again.

At a pre-trial hearing on November 13, 2007, only weeks before the December 3 trial date, Wilson moved to substitute Philadelphia attorney Robert Goldman as his counsel. In support of his motion, Wilson reiterated his earning potential and added that his friends had started a collection for his legal costs, though he acknowledged he had not yet hired Goldman and did not yet have the funds to do so. In view of these circumstances and the reality that Wilson's request came too close to the December 3 commencement of the multi-defendant trial, the magistrate judge denied the motion.

Toward the end of the six-week trial, in the midst of jury deliberations, the district court learned that Wilson "resided in an exclusive area of San Francisco" and had turned down free lodgings to stay at the "historic Brown Hotel" during the trial, raising concerns about his eligibility for free representation. R.229 at 6. The court asked the magistrate judge to hold a hearing about Wilson's eligibility for free legal services.

In the course of investigating Wilson's finances, the magistrate judge learned that his income in 2007 included $99,000 from cataloguing and book-writing for an auction house, $18,000 in social security, $16,000 in royalties on his books and roughly $1,000 from direct book sales. All told, his income for 2007 was in the neighborhood of $134,000. His expenses for 2007 included $27,600 in rent ($2,300 per month), $3,500 in business-related travel expenses, $6,000 in medical expenses, $1,500 in clothes and over $18,000 in restaurant and wine tabs. He claimed to have few assets beyond his considerable library, which he used for his scholarship and consulting business. He also reported the following liabilities: $375,000 in restitution from his previous criminal case, which he was paying at roughly $1,000 per month from his $16,000 a year in book royalties; legal bills of $28,414; and state and federal tax debts totaling $99,049, though he was not yet paying back the tax debts. In contrast to his statements to the court in August 2006, when Wilson claimed he would have steady income once out of prison, he testified that in retrospect he had been too optimistic about his work prospects at the initial hearing, noting that he had been dropped from one book project and had failed to publish another. At the hearing, the magistrate judge also learned the details of a $44,000 trust fund that Wilson's friends had set up to pay for an attorney for him, and that Wilson had used $10,000 from the fund to stay at the Brown Hotel during the trial.

In August 2008, the magistrate judge issued a 26-page report recommending that Wilson reimburse the government $52,305 in "reasonable monthly payments." R.229 at 26. The Criminal Justice Act, he reasoned, provides that a court may order payment whenever it "finds that funds are available for payment from or on behalf of a person furnished representation," 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(f), and that the "availability" of funds requires that "an order of reimbursement will not result in the Defendant suffering extreme hardship," R.229 at...