Friends Raise Funds for Activist Public Defender’s Defense

As one of more than 500 public defenders in Los Angeles County, John Michael Lee represents people who are charged with crimes and do not have the money to pay for a private attorney.

But these days, Lee, 42, is himself accused of a crime and has secured the services of a private attorney. Like many others, he is struggling to meet the high costs of legal counsel.

On Sunday, a group of Lee’s colleagues and friends organized a fund-raiser and barbecue to help Lee pay the legal fees he will incur as he fights the charges filed against him in Glendale Municipal Court.

Lee is charged with unlawful assembly, failure to disperse and resisting and obstructing police officers stemming from his protest of a speech made by a white supremacist last November in Glendale. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and is being represented by well-known civil rights attorney Leonard Weinglass.

Court Appearance

Lee is scheduled to appear in court today for a hearing on discovery motions, but a trial date has not been set. If convicted of the charges, he could receive a sentence of up to one year in County Jail.

But some of his colleagues and friends think that Lee was only exercising his constitutional right of free speech and should never have been arrested. Several of those were among about two dozen people who attended the fund-raiser for Lee at the Burbank home of fellow public defender Timothy M. Murphy.

“I have a feeling that they picked on him,” said Stacey Murphy, Timothy Murphy’s wife. “I don’t feel he should have been arrested for protesting any more than the person who was speaking should have not been allowed to speak.”

Cathy Dreyfuss, a public defender and president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, said Lee was “unjustifiably arrested.”

“He spoke his mind, and the cops in Glendale are notoriously conservative,” Dreyfuss said. “There was no crime committed. I think the prosecutors are foolish to proceed. What’s the big deal?”

Defense Funds

About $1,000 in contributions was collected at Sunday’s party, Stacey Murphy said, bringing the total raised for Lee’s defense by various organizations to about $2,000. Lee estimates that his defense will probably cost $5,000 to $7,000.

Lee, who was one of 300 protesters at the rally, maintains that the police were angry with him for criticizing their actions in front of news reporters. “What really ticked them off is I was critical of them chasing people away,” he said.

A spokesman for the Glendale Police Department could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Also arrested on similar charges were Pasadena City College instructor Roger Marheine, Irv Rubin, leader of the Jewish Defense League, and Jose Hernandez, a member of the Los Angeles-based International Committee Against Racism.

Lee said the white supremacist making the speech, J.B. Stoner, was a “front for the Ku Klux Klan” and was recruiting “skinheads” to the organization. He said he sees his arrest as “a de facto endorsement of the klan, saying you can come to the city and recruit, but you people who don’t want them to recruit can’t protest.”

Strong Feelings

He said he felt strongly about protesting Stoner’s speech because of Stoner’s conviction in a church bombing in which four young girls were killed in Birmingham, Ala., in 1958.

When he heard of that incident several years later, it marked the beginning of his social consciousness and led to his political involvement, Lee said. He said he has espoused liberal causes and has been active in the civil rights movement since 1964.

Clad in a bright yellow T-shirt bearing the words “U.S. Out of Central America,” and a brown fedora bedecked with buttons reading “Vermont,” “Colorado” and “Nicaragua,” Lee said he sees his political activism as a natural extension of his work as a public defender.

“It does no good to try to defend people in court if you don’t try to change the system too,” Lee said. “That’s why I went to the demonstration. . . . I’ve got to be active outside of the job because the legal system itself can’t really change anything; it reflects society.”

Ironically, Lee also has defended white supremacists who cannot afford a private attorney.

“That’s not a contradiction because we represent the person who nobody else will defend,” he said. “By making the system work, we are protecting the integrity of the system for everybody.”

In fact, over the 9 1/2 years he has been a public defender, Lee said, he has defended about 200 white supremacists. Just last week, he defended a member of the Aryan Brotherhood charged with interfering with a police officer. The outcome: “He walked,” Lee said.

His activism is an integral part of his life, Lee said, but it has not interfered with his work as a public defender, assigned to the San Fernando Courthouse.

Lee recently bought a small house in Morro Bay but still maintains the “same old hippie crash pad” in Sherman Oaks, a 1-bedroom apartment that he has lived in since his college days in the ‘60s. Taught to fly at age 12 by his airline pilot father, Lee commutes from his new home to the San Fernando Courthouse in his single-engine Piper airplane.

Mindful of the legal entanglement and the monetary cost of his recent political activism, would he hesitate before attending another protest rally?

He pauses before answering: “I have asked myself that question, but I don’t think so. I’ve got too long of a history of this. I wouldn’t be a public defender if I was afraid to stick my neck out.”