Menu

Felon

Reuters: Jeff Grant ‘Let Go of the Outcome’: How this Felon Beat Addiction and Won Back his Law License

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Jenna Greene, Reprinted from Reuters.com, May 21, 2021

When lawyers through greed or hubris or desperation become white-collar criminals – sent to prison and disbarred – their stories often feel like car crashes. We gape at the wreckage of their lives and move on.

But what happens afterwards, once they’ve done their time? How do they pick up the pieces?

Jeffrey Grant found a path to redemption. Seventeen years after he pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $247,000 through a 9/11 disaster relief loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York earlier this month reinstated his law license.

“I’m beyond excited, but I also take the responsibility very seriously,” he told me. “I’m really grateful for a second chance.”

His journey is extraordinary, from opioid-addicted real estate lawyer to federal prison inmate to seminary student to head of a criminal justice nonprofit. And now, at age 64, he has come full circle to practice law again.

But this time around, he intends to do it very differently.

A 1981 New York Law School grad, Grant, before everything fell apart, headed his own 20-employee firm, Jeffrey D. Grant & Associates, in Mamaroneck, New York, serving as outside general counsel to large real estate companies.

“I viewed life as a competition,” he said, describing himself as akin to “a paid assassin.”

“It was me against everyone else, or me and my client against everyone else.”

After a sports injury, he was prescribed the painkiller Demerol and over the course of a decade, he became addicted to prescription opioids.

When he couldn’t meet payroll for his firm, he borrowed money from client escrow accounts. With a New York state attorney grievance committee investigation pending, he surrendered his law license on July 28, 2002. That night, he attempted suicide by overdose, he told me.

He wound up in rehab, embracing recovery with three meetings a day. He’s been clean and sober ever since.

But his past caught up with him in 2004, when he learned there was a warrant for his arrest. “No one was more surprised than me,” Grant said. Once informed of the charges, though, it “all came rushing back.”

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, he had applied for federal financial aid and falsely claimed that his firm had an office in New York City. In reality, he merely had an arrangement to use a conference room on occasion in the city.

Did he somehow convince himself this qualified? I asked. “I was a lawyer who represented sophisticated businesspeople,” he said. “I knew better.”

“There’s no question drugs had a lot to do with it, but I can’t blame the drugs,” he continued. “I was desperate, clutching at anything I could.”

Grant served 14 months at a low security prison in White Deer, Pennsylvania – but it was a “real prison with bars,” he said, not one of the so-called Club Fed camps where white-collar offenders typically do their time.

As a “privileged kid from the suburbs,” he said, “I had to learn hard lessons there. But it was exactly what I needed to wipe the last smirk off my face.”

Released in 2007, he knew he wanted to use his experiences to help others. He’s Jewish, but a pastor he knew suggested he consider attending a seminary.

“I didn’t know what that meant,” Grant recalled. (His first reaction: Is that where you train to be a monk?) But he discovered that seminaries, at least the progressive ones, “are basically places where you learn about social justice and faith.”

In 2012, he earned a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He’s been baptized, but he’s also still a Jew. “I’m a double-belonger,” he said.

Grant and his wife Lynn Springer went on to co-found Progressive Prison Ministries. Based in Greenwich, Connecticut, they say it’s the world’s first ministry focused on serving the white-collar justice community.

It includes a weekly white-collar online support group for people “who have a desire to take responsibility for our actions and the wreckage we caused, make amends, and move forward in new way of life centered on hope, care, compassion, tolerance and empathy.” More than 310 people around the country have participated, according to the group’s website.

From 2016 to 2019, Grant also served as the executive director of Family ReEntry, a criminal justice nonprofit with offices and programs in eight Connecticut cities.

Three years ago, he began the process of getting his law license back. The first step was taking the multi-state professional responsibility exam and completing CLE. He also submitted “about 12 inches of paperwork,” he said, including his personal story.

He wrote 14,000 words. “I wanted to tell them everything, the whole story, warts and all,” he said. “It didn’t make a difference to me if strategically it was the right thing to do.” He added, “I let go of the outcome.”

He had a hearing via videoconference last May. “I was scared,” Grant said, but he was surprised to find that the panel members questioning him were “kind.”

“They were thorough and probing, but they were not out to tank me. They were supportive,” he said. “It helped me remember the best parts of being a lawyer.”

On May 5, his license was officially reinstated, and he promptly launched GrantLaw PLLC. With an office on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, he’s offering his services as a private general counsel specializing in white-collar crisis management.

That might include helping a white-collar defendant interview defense lawyers and other specialized counsel, reviewing the lawyers’ work product and billing, and acting as a sounding board, all with the goal of achieving a better and more-cost-efficient outcome.

“Most white-collar defendants are very bright, who have a lot of professional experience and are highly educated,” Grant said. “They don’t realize they’re in trauma – and are making generally very bad decisions while in trauma.”

They need “someone who understands trauma,” he said, “and somebody to trust.”

Given his life experiences, it’s hard for me to imagine a lawyer more uniquely qualified.

 

Jenna Greene writes about legal business and culture, taking a broad look at trends in the profession, faces behind the cases, and quirky courtroom dramas. A longtime chronicler of the legal industry and high-profile litigation, she lives in Northern California. Reach Greene at jenna.greene@thomsonreuters.com.

Reuters: Jeff Grant 'Let Go of the Outcome’: How this Felon Beat Addiction and Won Back his Law License

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Jenna Greene, Reprinted from Reuters.com, May 21, 2021

When lawyers through greed or hubris or desperation become white-collar criminals – sent to prison and disbarred – their stories often feel like car crashes. We gape at the wreckage of their lives and move on.

But what happens afterwards, once they’ve done their time? How do they pick up the pieces?

Jeffrey Grant found a path to redemption. Seventeen years after he pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $247,000 through a 9/11 disaster relief loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York earlier this month reinstated his law license.

“I’m beyond excited, but I also take the responsibility very seriously,” he told me. “I’m really grateful for a second chance.”

His journey is extraordinary, from opioid-addicted real estate lawyer to federal prison inmate to seminary student to head of a criminal justice nonprofit. And now, at age 64, he has come full circle to practice law again.

But this time around, he intends to do it very differently.

A 1981 New York Law School grad, Grant, before everything fell apart, headed his own 20-employee firm, Jeffrey D. Grant & Associates, in Mamaroneck, New York, serving as outside general counsel to large real estate companies.

“I viewed life as a competition,” he said, describing himself as akin to “a paid assassin.”

“It was me against everyone else, or me and my client against everyone else.”

After a sports injury, he was prescribed the painkiller Demerol and over the course of a decade, he became addicted to prescription opioids.

When he couldn’t meet payroll for his firm, he borrowed money from client escrow accounts. With a New York state attorney grievance committee investigation pending, he surrendered his law license on July 28, 2002. That night, he attempted suicide by overdose, he told me.

He wound up in rehab, embracing recovery with three meetings a day. He’s been clean and sober ever since.

But his past caught up with him in 2004, when he learned there was a warrant for his arrest. “No one was more surprised than me,” Grant said. Once informed of the charges, though, it “all came rushing back.”

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, he had applied for federal financial aid and falsely claimed that his firm had an office in New York City. In reality, he merely had an arrangement to use a conference room on occasion in the city.

Did he somehow convince himself this qualified? I asked. “I was a lawyer who represented sophisticated businesspeople,” he said. “I knew better.”

“There’s no question drugs had a lot to do with it, but I can’t blame the drugs,” he continued. “I was desperate, clutching at anything I could.”

Grant served 14 months at a low security prison in White Deer, Pennsylvania – but it was a “real prison with bars,” he said, not one of the so-called Club Fed camps where white-collar offenders typically do their time.

As a “privileged kid from the suburbs,” he said, “I had to learn hard lessons there. But it was exactly what I needed to wipe the last smirk off my face.”

Released in 2007, he knew he wanted to use his experiences to help others. He’s Jewish, but a pastor he knew suggested he consider attending a seminary.

“I didn’t know what that meant,” Grant recalled. (His first reaction: Is that where you train to be a monk?) But he discovered that seminaries, at least the progressive ones, “are basically places where you learn about social justice and faith.”

In 2012, he earned a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He’s been baptized, but he’s also still a Jew. “I’m a double-belonger,” he said.

Grant and his wife Lynn Springer went on to co-found Progressive Prison Ministries. Based in Greenwich, Connecticut, they say it’s the world’s first ministry focused on serving the white-collar justice community.

It includes a weekly white-collar online support group for people “who have a desire to take responsibility for our actions and the wreckage we caused, make amends, and move forward in new way of life centered on hope, care, compassion, tolerance and empathy.” More than 310 people around the country have participated, according to the group’s website.

From 2016 to 2019, Grant also served as the executive director of Family ReEntry, a criminal justice nonprofit with offices and programs in eight Connecticut cities.

Three years ago, he began the process of getting his law license back. The first step was taking the multi-state professional responsibility exam and completing CLE. He also submitted “about 12 inches of paperwork,” he said, including his personal story.

He wrote 14,000 words. “I wanted to tell them everything, the whole story, warts and all,” he said. “It didn’t make a difference to me if strategically it was the right thing to do.” He added, “I let go of the outcome.”

He had a hearing via videoconference last May. “I was scared,” Grant said, but he was surprised to find that the panel members questioning him were “kind.”

“They were thorough and probing, but they were not out to tank me. They were supportive,” he said. “It helped me remember the best parts of being a lawyer.”

On May 5, his license was officially reinstated, and he promptly launched GrantLaw PLLC. With an office on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, he’s offering his services as a private general counsel specializing in white-collar crisis management.

That might include helping a white-collar defendant interview defense lawyers and other specialized counsel, reviewing the lawyers’ work product and billing, and acting as a sounding board, all with the goal of achieving a better and more-cost-efficient outcome.

“Most white-collar defendants are very bright, who have a lot of professional experience and are highly educated,” Grant said. “They don’t realize they’re in trauma – and are making generally very bad decisions while in trauma.”

They need “someone who understands trauma,” he said, “and somebody to trust.”

Given his life experiences, it’s hard for me to imagine a lawyer more uniquely qualified.

 

Jenna Greene writes about legal business and culture, taking a broad look at trends in the profession, faces behind the cases, and quirky courtroom dramas. A longtime chronicler of the legal industry and high-profile litigation, she lives in Northern California. Reach Greene at jenna.greene@thomsonreuters.com.

New Haven Independent: Dwayne Betts’s Path From Prison To Poetry

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Thomas Breen, Reprinted from New Haven Independent, Jan. 6, 2020

Reginald Dwayne Betts was 17 years old and locked up in solitary confinement in an adult prison when he found his calling to become a poet.

The nationally renowned poet and lawyer told the story of his literary coming of age during an interview on the most recent episode of WNHH Radio’s “Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls-Ivy and Jeff Grant.”

Thef Prince George’s County, Maryland native earned a degree from Yale Law School, lives in New Haven, serves on the state’s Criminal Justice Commission, and is the author of the new book Felon. Betts said his career as a poet dates back to 1998.

He was still a teenager at the time. Betts had pleaded guilty to felony armed carjacking charges as a 16-year-old in 1996, was tried and convicted as an adult, and was at the beginning of what would turn out to be nine years bouncing between a handful of adult prisons throughout his late teens and early 20s.

The fateful literary encounter that propelled him on his journey to become a poet took place in the midst of a six-month stint in solitary confinement, he said, his third such isolation during his time behind bars thus far.

Someone slipped under his door a copy of The Black Poets, an anthology of African American poetry edited by the Detroit publisher and poet Dudley Randall.

Included in that collection were several poems by Etheridge Knight, an African American man and Korea War veteran who wrote poetry from behind bars in Indiana in the 1960s.

“I’m like, ‘Wait,’” Betts recalled upon first reading the anthology. “Etheridge Knight did time in prison. Then he became a poet. And he’s in this book. And I just told myself, I’m gonna be a poet. And that’s when I started writing poetry really seriously. That was 1998. And from that point on, I’ve been a poet.”

Thomas Breen photo

Thomas Breen photo, Betts (center) with WNHH hosts Jeff Grant and Babz Rawls-Ivy.

Betts said he was a big reader even before he went to prison.

A college-bound honors student who studied computer science and wanted to become an engineer, Betts said he had read and connected with Things Fall Apart, Makes Me Want To Holler, Giovanni’s Room and Go Tell It on the Mountain as a high school sophomore and junior.

After he was sent to prison, he devoured more short stories and essays by James Baldwin and read cover-to-cover Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying.

“I told myself I would be a writer,” he remembered, “and that’s the thing that saved me. I was young enough and fool enough to not even know what that meant.”

“My life was changed by a book,” he continued. The Black Poets proved to him that being black and having a criminal record were not disqualifiers for becoming an accomplished writer, even if they did present roadblock after roadblock in his parallel, equally accomplished career path of becoming a lawyer.

The books he read before and during prison inspired in him a confidence in his literary talent and in his ability to succeed in the world that many teachers in high school missed, he said. He remembered one AP History teacher giving him the nickname “Smoky” after Betts was caught smoking a blunt before class one day. A better teacher would have asked why he was resorting to smoking so much weed as a teenager, he said, and what he was trying to hide from or suppress. This teacher only reinforced that negative sense of self, he said, if even in a small and seemingly trivial way.

Betts said he aspires through his own poetry to encourage readers to reflect critically upon the African American experience, the American criminal justice system, and the challenges formerly incarcerated people have in reintegrating into a society that often denies them work, housing, and rehabilitation.

He said his poetry also helps him come to terms with the very real trauma he likely inflicted on the victim of his crime, who was not injured during the carjacking but nevertheless had a gun waved in his face by a stranger.

“Prison and incarceration so saturate my understanding of the black experience that I haven’t figured out a way to write outside of that,” Betts said.

“You need stories to survive. You need stories that are able to inform where your steps might be, and where your steps shouldn’t be.” These stories, he said, should help point towards a better life.

See below for an excerpt from Felon. Click on the Facebook Live video at the bottom of this article to watch the full interview on “Criminal Justice Insider.”

ESSAY ON REENTRY

At two a.m., without enough spirits
spilling into my liver to know
to keep my mouth shut, my youngest
learned of years I spent inside a box: a spell,
a kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,
but History: I robbed a man. This, months
before he would drop bucket after bucket
on opposing players, the entire bedraggled
bunch fine & six & he leaping as if
every lay-up erases something. That’s how
I saw it, my screaming-coaching-sweating
presence recompense for the pen. My father
has never seen me play ball is part of this.
My oldest knew, told of my crimes by
a stranger. Tell me we aren’t running
towards failure is what I want to ask my sons,
but it is two in the a.m. The oldest has gone off
to dream in the comfort of his room, the youngest
despite him seeming more lucid than me,
just reflects cartoons back from his eyes.
So when he tells me, Daddy it’s okay, I know
what’s happening is some straggling angel,
lost from his pack finding a way to fulfill his
duty, lending words to this kid who crawls
into my arms, wanting, more than stories
of my prison, the sleep that he fought while
I held court at a bar with men who knew
that when the drinking was done,
the drinking wouldn’t make the stories
we brought home any easier to tell.

“Criminal Justice Insider” is sponsored by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

Previous articles based on the program:
• New Play Follows Women’s Post-Prison Lives
• Prison To School Pipeline
• A Second Chance In Washington State
• From Community Health Patient To CEO
• The Problem With Punishment
• Rowland: Criminal Justice Reform “Sands Have Shifted”
• Ex-Inmate Seeks To Raise The Bar
• New Corrections Chief Vows Prison Reform
• 1,000 Books Laid Path For Reentry
• 16 Years For A Crime He Didn’t Commit
• Insider Trader Cases Sexier To Prosecute
• Next Goal: Ban The Box For Housing, Too
• Criminal Justice Crusader Reflects On Mass Incarceration, #MeToo
• Society Needs A “Second Chance,” Too
• Imagining A Less Incarcerated World
• Criminal Justice Reformer Refuses To Give Up
• Criminal Record Controversy Propels Legislative Candidate
• ‘If’ Injects Humanity Into Incarceration
• Carbone Fans The Youth Justice Flame
• Forman: We’re Expelling Our Own, Too
• Lawlor Sees Progress On Reform
• From Mortgage Fraud To Criminal Justice Reform
• Teen Encounter With Cops Spurred Reform Advocate
• From Second Chance To No Chance Connecticut?
• Project Longevity Coordinator Works Off A Debt
• Ex-CEO Serves Justice Reform “Life Sentence”
• Ganim Describes Path Back From Prison
• Transition Time For Teens In Trouble
• Parole Holds A Key To Reentry Puzzle
• Organizer Takes “Sawdust-On-Floor” Tack
• Female Ex-Offenders Band Together
• German-Inspired Reform Calms Prison
• Son’s Arrest Helped Shape Porter’s Politics

The Criminal Justice Insider Podcast with Babz Rawls Ivy & Jeff Grant: Guest Reginald Dwayne Betts, Lawyer, Poet, Lecturer on Criminal Justice, Fri., Jan. 3, 2020

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, 9 am ET, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Poet, Essayist, Lecturer on Mass Incarceration, was our guest on Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls Ivy & Jeff Grant – The Voice of CT Criminal Justice. Live on WNHH 103.5 FM New Haven, rebroadcast at 5 pm. Live-streamed and podcast everywhere, see below. Sponsored by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven – Now More Than Ever.

A poet, essayist and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice, Reginald Dwayne Betts writes and lectures about the impact of mass incarceration on American society. He is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Bastards of the Reagan Era and Shahid Reads His Own Palm, as well as a memoir, A Question of Freedom. A graduate of Yale Law School, he lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife and their two sons.

Listen on SoundCloud:

Watch on Facebook Live:

https://www.facebook.com/wnhhradio/videos/561073741410178/UzpfSTQyMzkwOTEwODAxMDc4Nzo5MDc3MjczODI5NjIyODg/?eid=ARCvgGqnNU-sQ3qxxbf31-cG4xy0KRvM0kea0nBdH_I2yHw0c4GyTWKi1Ka3f2qR_pvbp__dJJa7REhZ

Apple Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/criminal-justice-insider-babz-jeff-reginald-dwayne/id1027927746?i=1000461465874

ABOUT “FELON”:

With the groundbreaking FELON [W. W. Norton & Company; October 15, 2019; $26.95 hardcover], celebrated poet Reginald Dwayne Betts tells the story of a man confronting post-incarceration life, struggling to reenter a society that doesn’t offer open arms. The reader follows Betts’s speaker through the pains of reentry, homelessness, underemployment, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and finally redemptive love. As Betts makes clear, the trappings of life on the outside don’t make prison simply go away: “You come home & become a parade / of confessions that leave you drowning, / lost recounting the disappeared years” (49).

These stories are extraordinarily personal to Betts. As he wrote about last fall in a National Magazine Award–winning New York Times Magazine essay, “Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out,” Betts himself served nine years in adult prison, and came out the other end; he went back to school, started a family, and ultimately was accepted to and graduated from Yale Law School.

In this powerful collection, Betts swings between traditional and newfound forms, from the crown of sonnets that serves as the volume’s conclusion to revolutionary erasure poems. Redacting legal documents that challenged the continued incarceration of individuals simply because they did not have the money to make bail, Betts illustrates the injustice of a legal system that exploits and erases the poor and imprisoned from public consciousness. Traditionally, redaction expunges what is top secret; in FELON, Betts redacts what is superfluous, bringing into focus the profound failures of the criminal justice system and the inadequacy of the labels it generates. From “In Alabama” (20):

With astonishing skill, formal inventiveness, and rare insight, Betts brings us a book that is not only a must-read for poetry lovers but a necessary contribution to the effort to understand what it means to be a “felon.”

For more information and to order “Felon”: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393652147

____________________

The Criminal Justice Insider Podcast with Babz Rawls Ivy and Jeff Grant is broadcast live at 9 am ET on the first and third Friday of each month Sept. through June, from the WNHH 103.5 FM studios in New Haven. It is rebroadcast on WNHH at 5 pm ET the same day. Podcast and Archive available all the time, everywhere.

Our Facebook Page (best place for information, news, articles, events):
https://www.facebook.com/criminaljusticeinsider

Our website: prisonist.org/criminal-justice-insider
Our Twitter handle: @insidercj
Our Instagram handle: @criminaljusticeinsider

The show is live-streamed & podcast everywhere at:

New Haven Independent: newhavenindependent.org
Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/wnhhradio
YouTube: https://youtube
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wnhhlp
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/wnhhradio
Periscope: https://www.pscp.tv/search?q=wnhh

The show is also archived at:

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/new-haven…/…/criminal-justice-insider
Community Foundation of Greater New Haven website: https://www.cfgnh.org/…/CriminalJusticeInsiderRadioArchives…

An article about each show is published a few days later in the New Haven Independent (newhavenindependent.org).

Please “like” us on Facebook!
Contact us: jgrant@prisonist.org

Season Three Guests:

Fri., Sept. 6, 2019: Khalil Cumberbatch, Chief Strategist at New Yorkers United for Justice
Fri., Sept. 20, 2019: Aaron T. Kinzel, Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Michigan-Dearborn
Fri., Oct. 4, 2019: Charlie Grady, Outreach Specialist for the FBI CT Community Outreach Program
Fri., Oct. 18, 2019: Michael Kimelman, Former Hedge Funder and Author of Confessions of a Wall Street Insider: A Cautionary Tale of Rats, Feds, and Banksters
Fri., Nov. 1, 2019: Corey Brinson, Former Attorney Convicted for a White Collar Crime who is running for Hartford City Council
Fri., Nov. 15, 2019: Cathryn Lavery, Ph.D., Asst. Chair & Graduate Coordinator for the Iona College Criminal Justice Department
Fri., Dec. 6, 2019: “Free Prison Phone Calls” Show, Guests to be Announced.
Fri. Dec. 20, 2019: John Hamilton, CEO, Liberation Programs
Fri., Jan. 3, 2020: Reginald Dwayne Betts, Lawyer, Poet, Lecturer on Mass Incarceration
Fri., Jan. 17, 2019: Serena Ligouri, Executive Director, New Hour for Women & Children – L.I.
Fri., Feb. 7, 2020: David Garlock, Program Director, New Person Ministries, Lancaster, PA
Fri., Mar. 20, 2020: Tiheba Bain, Women’s Incarceration Advocate

Sponsored by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven – Now More Than Ever.