Stephen Yagman is an American federal lawyer and advocate. Among criminal defendants and litigants against police departments, he has a reputation as an effective counsel and advocate, particularly in cases regarding allegations of police brutality, and as a "pugnacious civil rights lawyer." Yagman is a "highly competent, dedicated lawyer who is a champion of unpopular causes," according to UCLA Law School Prof. Richard Abel. In 2007, Yagman was convicted of criminal tax evasion, resulting in both his legal disbarment and in a three-year federal prison sentence. Yagman contended, in his defense, that the IRS had selectively and vindictively prosecuted him, ignoring the difference between tax avoidance, which is legal, and tax evasion, which is not, because, as Idaho Special Prosecutor, he prosecuted homicide charges against FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi for allegedly murdering Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 and because on January 19, 2002 he brought the first Guantanamo Bay detainee case and won it on December 18, 2003.
Youth, education and early career
Stephen Yagman was born in 1944 in Brooklyn, New York to working-class parents. His father was a dental technician and his mother was a secretary. Yagman attended Abraham Lincoln High School. After attending the State University of New York at Buffalo, he then graduated from Long Island University in Brooklyn. Yagman received a B.A. in American History, with co-majors in philosophy and political science, he later earned an M.A. in philosophy from New York University, where his mentor was Professor Sidney Hook, and his master's dissertation was on the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause. He attended Fordham University School of Law, receiving a J.D. in 1974, where he was on the dean's list and received the Jurisprudence Award of the Guild of Catholic Lawyers. During graduate school and law school, he taught in the New York City public school system in Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant, in Title I schools, from 1967-74. From 1967 until their divorce in 1994, he was married to Marion R. Yagman, with whom he practiced law for many years after their divorce.
Legal career
Yagman's legal career began before he graduated, as an attorney-intern with the New York City Legal Aid Society. Yagman was mentored by former N.Y. City Legal Aid Society director Martin Erdmann, attorney Charles Garry, house counsel to the Black Panther Party, and former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark. After graduating law school, he was appointed by New York State Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz to the office of the New York State Attorney General as a Special Assistant Attorney General, assigned as an Assistant Special Prosecutor for Nursing Homes, in the Manhattan office of the Special State Prosecutor for Nursing Homes. In 1986, Yagman successfully challenged a proposed nationwide suspension of federal jury trials due to budget shortfalls, in Armster v. U.S. Dist. Ct., 792 F.2d 1423. In a unanimous opinion in a related proceeding, Armster v. U.S. Dist. Ct, 817 F.2d 480, Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt said, "Yagman's vigilance in the protection of his clients' constitutional rights served all citizens. His fortitude and tenacity in the service of his civil rights clients exemplifies the highest traditions of the bar. As Justice Brandeis noted, 'he great opportunity of the American Bar is and will be to stand... ready to protect the interests of the people.'" University of California at Berkeley Law School, Boalt Hall, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said of Yagman, "His knowledge of the law is encyclopedic... e is one of the most experienced lawyers in the country in dealing with police abuse cases...." In 1994, Yagman successfully represented one of the groups that opposed implementation of California Proposition 187. In a series of cases, Children Who Want an Education v. Wilson, 908 F.Supp. 755, 997 F.Supp. 1244, and 54 F.3d 599, Yagman was granted preliminary and permanent injunctions preventing the denial of public school education to undocumented students. On November 12, 1997, Yagman was sworn in by U.S. Dist. Judge Robert M. Takasugi as Special Prosecutor for the State of Idaho to prosecute FBI sniper Lon T. Horiuchi in the August 22, 1992 Ruby Ridge killing of Vicki Weaver. In 2001, Yagman won a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declaring that federal law enforcement agents did not enjoy sovereign immunity and could be prosecuted criminally for state law homicide. Idaho v. Horiuchi, 253 F.3d 359. At Yagman's swearing in, Judge Takasugi commented that Yagman "never has flown on borrowed wings." In January 2002, Yagman brought the first case seeking habeas corpus relief for Guantanamo Bay detainees, Coalition of Clergy, Lawyers & Professors v. George Walker Bush & Donald Rumsfeld, 310 F.3d 1153, and in December 2003, won the first case in which it was declared that Guantanamo detainees were entitled to seek habeas corpus relief in United States courts. Gherebi v. George Walker Bush & Donald Rumsfeld, 374 F.3d 727. In County of Los Angeles v. U.S. Dist. Ct., 223 F.3d 990, federal Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski noted that Yagman "has a formidable reputation as a plaintiff's advocate in police misconduct cases; defendants in such cases may find it advantageous to remove him as an opponent." Some of his most notorious cases involved the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Yagman lodged complaints of judicial misconduct against U.S. District Judge Manuel Lawrence Real which, according to one commentator, "were at the center of the controversy over the effectiveness of the federal judicial disciplinary system and exerted a uniquely powerful influence on subsequent attempts at reform." The United States Judicial Conference cited the Yagman disciplinary case in adopting its 2008 nationwide procedures for handling complaints of misconduct against federal judges. In his 2011 book, Lawyers on Trial, UCLA School of LawProfessor of Law Emeritus Richard L. Abel rated Yagman as a "highly competent, dedicated lawyer who is a champion of unpopular causes".
UCLA
In 2007, after Yagman's tax evasion conviction, he was invited to co-teach and taught a course at UCLA Law School on law, morality, and social justice with professor Frances Olsen. Yagman continues in 2020 to teach that course at UCLA Law School.
Writings
Yagman has written two national legal practice books, Section 1983 Federal Jury Practice and Instructions, and Police Misconduct and Civil Rights, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions, a play, Guantanamo, Act IV, and hundreds of newspaper columns.
