Docs: Staunton lawyer disbarred for filing motions that'd already been rejected by courts

STAUNTON — The Virginia State Bar has taken action against a Staunton attorney by revoking his license to practice law after he charged clients exorbitant fees for filing motions based on legal arguments that had already been rejected by numerous courts, according to filings in Staunton Circuit Court.

The ruling was handed down Oct. 26 against attorney Dale Jensen, 65, following four days of hearings.

Court documents said Jensen and his staff advised incarcerated clients and their families that the court filings — motions to vacate their previous convictions — were likely to succeed, convincing them to dole out "thousands upon thousands of dollars" to argue their indictments were defective.

Some of the clients liquidated their entire savings while others used high-interest bearing credit cards to pay Jensen.

The Staunton attorney said he is preparing to appeal the ruling. "I certainly dispute the allegations that were made," Jensen said.

The work delivered by Jensen for the high fees often consisted of nothing more than arguments that were copied and pasted from previous motions from the cases of other clients, and he sometimes reused arguments that didn't apply to a current client's case, court documents said. Identical typos appear to show Jensen didn't proofread the copies.

"There are multiple instances where identical typographical errors carried forward from motion to motion, never being spotted, or corrected over the course of several years, strongly suggesting that (Jensen) did not even spend enough time on these motions to proofread the copied text, much less perform novel billable work," court records show.

Ads in Prison Legal Times led to tens of thousands of dollars in fees from clients

Jensen would advertise his services in the Prison Legal Times. Once he landed a prison client, he'd advise the inmate to challenge their conviction usually by arguing their 5th Amendment rights had been violated based on "defects and errors" in their original indictments, a theory Jensen unsuccessfully used in the case of Phillip Ostrander several years ago.

He would use the unsuccessful arguments over and over again to collect fees from the inmates and their relatives, according to court records, and did not advise them of a Virginia Supreme Court decision in an unrelated case, Epps v. Commonwealth, that would have significantly undercut his defective argument, the Virginia State Bar said.

His argument in the Ostrander case was rejected by the Chesapeake Circuit Court. The Virginia Supreme Court, along with the United States Supreme Court, refused to hear appeals in the case. But Jensen never told any of the inmates that his legal argument had been rejected by the courts. He also mishandled his fees after being paid, court documents said, commingling funds by putting cash in the wrong accounts and withdrawing money before he was eligible to do so in almost every case.

The allegations against Jenson show that once he got a client's interest in seeking post-conviction relief, he would charge a flat fee, usually $3,000, to review the case. After taking the case, Jensen would then ask for about $25,000 to $45,000 to file a motion to vacate, court records show.

Ostrander, sentenced in 2006 to 30 years in prison on charges that included solicitation for murder and attempted murder, saw an advertisement in 2015 by Jensen for post-conviction relief. With the help of family members, Ostrander came up with $15,000 to retain Jensen, who did not deposit the money into a trust account as required. He also failed to keep proper records of the manner in which Ostrander's advance fee was earned, court records said.

Ostrander was told that his case would test Jensen's initial theory.

In 2016, a judge rejected the theory and denied Jensen's motion to vacate in the Ostrander case. In June of that same year, Jensen filed a motion to reconsider "in which he advanced his theory that the Indictment Clause of the Fifth Amendment applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment," court documents state.

Jensen also filed a motion to recuse after he claimed the judge penned a dismissal that parroted "the erroneous response of the Commonwealth without giving (Jensen) sufficient time to reply." In a second opinion letter, the judge denied the motion to recuse, describing Jensen's language as "borderline contemptuous." The judge also cited the published opinion in the Epps case.

As the case dragged on, Jensen stopped communicating with Ostrander, court records state.

Despite his unsuccessful legal theory in the Ostrander case, Jensen persisted with his arguments.

Reached by phone last week, Jensen contends that defendants accused of felonies are entitled to a proper grand jury indictment, and said the Virginia Courts failed by violating the constitutional rights of his clients. "The United States Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land," he said.

Jensen also rejected the implication he did little work by simply copying and pasting documents. "There was a lot of work, a lot of thought that went into them," he said. Jensen said most attorneys copy and past previous arguments. "I can tell you, though, on these cases I spent thousands of hours developing the arguments" and doing basic legal research, he said.

In its complaint, the Virginia State Bar highlighted several inmates who forked over tens of thousands of dollars for Jensen's services.

Michael Robinson, convicted in Richmond of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2013, contacted Jensen's office in 2019 and was quoted a flat fee of $3,000 to review his case. In 2020, Robinson was told that for $25,000, Jensen would file a motion to vacate because his due process rights and Eighth Amendment rights were violated.

Robinson emailed a staffer at Jensen's office asking if he had a chance to win the motion. "Because for my family $25k is a substantial amount," he wrote.

The staffer replied, "We would not suggest filing a motion that did not have a chance of going somewhere, and we do not want people to waste their money." Neither Jensen nor anyone on his staff told Robinson or his family about the previous rejections by the courts.

After collecting money from family and friends for the fee, another $16,000 of the payment to Jensen was made with a credit card. Jensen again used failed arguments from the Ostrander case "copied for the most part verbatim," court documents said. In its opposition, the commonwealth cited the Virginia Supreme Court's decision in the Epps case.

Robinson and his family also lost contact with Jensen, according to court records, and filed a bar complaint. It's not clear how much Jensen was paid, but court filings state the family is owed more than $6,000.

False promises, blocked number, 'post-conviction remedies' that cured nothing

In 2020, Christopher Albert, who is pulling a life sentence for first-degree murder and robbery following convictions in Charles City County, reached out to Jensen with the help of his fiancé. Charged $3,500 to review the case, "(Jensen) and his staff assured them that a motion to vacate was the best chance of success in Mr. Albert's case," court documents state.

Jenson informed Albert that once the case got to the Virginia Supreme Court, he would be released, according to court records. A staffer told Albert he would be home in 48 to 72 hours. Albert and his fiancé gave Jensen more than $21,000.

Once Jensen filed the motion to vacate, communications all but ceased, court files said. Albert's fiancé made numerous calls to Jensen's office, but her phone number was eventually blocked. She too filed a complaint with the bar.

Sentenced to life in 1999 for murder, Antonio Townsend, along with his fiancé and a relative, contacted Jensen's office in 2020, paying $3,000 for a review of his case and another $25,000 for a possible post-conviction remedy. They were told they were getting a $20,000 discount based on the firm's regular fee, court records indicate.

After Townsend's sister reached out for an update on the case, a Jensen employee who was previously imprisoned on molestation and child porn convictions two years earlier responded via email and represented himself as Jensen's chief law clerk, court records show. It's not clear if the former employee was in prison at the time, but court records show Jensen's office continued to use the imprisoned man's email. He also called the office over 1,500 times during a seven-month period between 2021 and 2022.

Jensen said the former employee had an email that was used by others in the office, and said the former staff member had no access to the email while behind bars. Jensen said the employee, whom he referred to as a friend, did make a number of calls to his office while imprisoned but said not all of them were answered.

A motion to vacate that was eventually filed on Townsend's behalf — when compared to legal arguments in the Robinson case — show the documents were directly copied from an earlier memorandum and contained identical typographical errors, according to court records. The motion to vacate falsely argued that Townsend's indictments were further defective because a multi-jurisdictional grand jury's proceedings were never transcribed, in violation of a Virginia Statute. However, Townsend was never indicted by a multi-jurisdictional grand jury, but Robinson was.

Townsend and his family paid Jensen $28,000. His work on the case would have generated fees of less than $17,000 "at best," court documents said. "At no time during the representation did (Jensen) or anyone at his firm advise Mr. Townsend or his family that the case law was not in Mr. Townsend's favor," the court filing said. The motion is still pending.

'He was preying on us': phantom witnesses, unfiled pardon applications

In 2012, Eugene Fredo was sentenced to 26 years on sexual assault charges and is slated for release in 2034, according to the Virginia Department of Corrections. The 72-year-old Chesapeake man contacted Jensen's office in 2019, and his family paid $38,000 for his services, according to court records. Part of the payment included an additional $5,000 for an expert witness, but a Virginia State Bar investigator was unable to find any documentation pertaining to such a witness. Jensen again argued in a motion to vacate that a multi-jurisdictional grand jury erred but, just like Townsend's case, Fredo's case was never presented to such a jury.

"I did all the homework on my case," Fredo said in a phone call from Saint Brides Correctional Center in Chesapeake. "He was preying on us."

Yet another inmate, Thomas Purcell, convicted out of Prince William County Circuit Court, paid Jensen more than $45,000 to file a motion to vacate, along with a pardon application. Court records show the motion to vacate was "identical in nearly every respect" to motions filed for Jensen's other clients. Purcell has sued him for $47,500.

Convicted of murder in Newport News, Nahfis Nichols, whose release date is in December 2071, contacted Jensen in 2017. His mother paid $6,999 for work on a pardon application and a writ of innocence, court files show. Jensen failed to deposit the money into a trust account as required, and did not keep proper records on how some of his advance fees were earned.

Eventually, the inmate's mother asked for a refund after the process stalled. Court records show she was told by a Jensen employee in an affidavit, after she filed a bar complaint, that it had been confirmed with the Secretary of the Commonwealth that her son's pardon was still under review in 2021, and was also told by another employee that a pardon application was filed with the governor's office.

But court files show a pardon application was never filed with the governor's office. The writ of actual innocence was never filed as well.

Jensen, who had offices in Charlottesville, Nelson County and Staunton, said the anger stemming from the inmates and their families is missing the mark. "Quite frankly, I think their anger should have been directed at the Virginia courts rather than me," he said.

When asked if he'd be willing to consider refunds, he paused for a moment before saying he would have to do an examination on a case-by-case basis.

"I guess we're just at a different place in terms of the amount that I'm willing to refund versus the amount that they're willing to accept as a refund," he said.

Brad Zinn is the cops, courts and breaking news reporter at The News Leader. Have a news tip? Or something that needs investigating? You can email reporter Brad Zinn (he/him) at bzinn@newsleader.com. You can also follow him on X (formerly Twitter).

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Staunton lawyer disbarred, says he will appeal