He Studies for the Bar Behind Bars

For many attorneys, it would be a career dream to test their legal theory before the U.S. Supreme Court in a high-profile case. But for Michael L. Montalvo, a law student at Kensington University in Glendale, that goal has already become a reality.

Last week, the nation’s highest court heard arguments in a case inspired by Montalvo that for now has slowed the federal governments’s war on drugs and spawned hundreds of appeals in federal drug prosecutions involving property seizures.

Yet Montalvo, who credits his training at Kensington, won’t be there to savor the experience. That’s because the man who is arguably Kensington’s star law student is also a convicted drug trafficker serving a life sentence in federal prison, where he has done all of his schoolwork.

To California regulators, the small Glendale correspondence school is an academic sham, and they have been trying to close it for two years. But to Montalvo, a former West Los Angeles businessman, Kensington is a legitimate alternative to traditional schools.

“This is a very rigorous program,” said Montalvo, 47, during an interview at the federal penitentiary here. “They don’t just send you a diploma.”

Although Montalvo has yet to win his own freedom, his legal work made national headlines in 1994, when a federal appeals court in San Francisco, responding to his arguments on behalf of two fellow prisoners, handed the government a major setback in a case known as U.S. vs. $405,089.23.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that the government’s practice of criminally prosecuting drug dealers and then seizing their property in civil forfeitures violates the U.S. Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy, or double punishments (or prosecutions) for the same offense.

The immediate impact of the ruling was to void the forfeiture of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, a helicopter, an airplane, two boats and 11 automobiles seized from Charles W. Arlt and James Wren, who are serving life sentences for running an Inland Empire methamphetamine supplies ring.

But the fallout of the ruling, which the government appealed to the Supreme Court, has been much wider, with a chilling effect on forfeiture actions already noticeable.

William J. Genego, a former USC law professor now representing Arlt, credited Montalvo with contributing significantly to what he called a “watershed event” in criminal law by pursuing a case that not a single licensed attorney would take. Genego said Montalvo’s double-jeopardy argument may not have been entirely original, but it seized upon a growing legal debate about the government’s tactics.

Attorney Jeffry K. Finer, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, lauded Montalvo’s work for prompting the first ruling of its kind from a federal appeals court. Without Montalvo, Finer said, a similar victory “could have been years down the road.”

Federal prosecutors’ view of Montalvo’s contribution to society is less flattering. They contend that his chief business between 1982 and his 1987 arrest was running a Northern California drug ring that bought and distributed nearly $14 million worth of cocaine in one year--often delivered in gift-wrapped boxes.

Already a convicted drug dealer, Montalvo was convicted again in 1989 and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1990. But he maintains his innocence and insists he only ran companies involved in film distribution and real estate.

Montalvo’s reentry into the court system, and his unhappiness with his attorneys, prompted him to seek legal training. He settled on Kensington in 1992 as the most promising of several correspondence schools he had researched.

“I found Perry Mason didn’t exist,” he said. “I wasn’t listened to. I felt I had to learn it myself.”

Thin, clean shaven and quick to point out that he has no elaborate tattoos, Montalvo looks and talks as though he could indeed be an attorney. And like any conscientious student, he spends most of his waking hours pouring over his law books, except when called away each night to perform his prison clerical duties.

Like other Kensington students, Montalvo obtains his law books through the mail and sends back assignments and tests, paying $2,500 a year in tuition. His courses are part of a standard Kensington package to prepare for the state bar exam. Much of the work involves reading hundreds of legal rulings in the book and pecking out summaries on an old typewriter in the prison library.

Montalvo is now working on an appeal of his criminal sentence and has invoked the double-jeopardy argument, among others, because he also forfeited about $127,000 in a civil case. Both Montalvo’s appeal and Arlt’s bid for a new trial are pending before the 9th Circuit.

Meanwhile, Montalvo has nearly finished his law program. He wants to take the state bar exam--but that will depend on whether he is ever released from prison, since he cannot take it there.