NEWS ARTICLE

Defending Maurice

In some ways, the lawyers defending a certain ex-OSU football star are the stars of the Maurice Clarett Show, including one who wants to be a real-life Atticus Finch.

By Dave Ghose
December 2003 issue of Columbus Monthly © CM Media Inc.

The two attorneys, both dressed in blue power suits, squeeze through the throng of reporters in the tiny basement studio. All the big media outlets in town are covering the unusual impromptu press conference/radio show; some TV stations even send multiple reporters. Earlier, some were buzzing about the possibility that Maurice Clarett might break his silence this early fall day. But his attorneys enter the room alone.

Percy Squire and his law partner, Lloyd Pierre-Louis, settle into chairs on either side of Larry Williams, the host of the "Sports Page" program on WVKO. The lawyers put on earphones and wait for the commercial break to end. The room is silent.

Williams briefly introduces his guests, mentions his sponsor (Master Craft Heating and Air Conditioning) and lets Squire take over. The attorney spends the next hour briefing the media on Maurice Clarett's latest legal maneuver, as well as taking calls from radio listeners. "I want to start by saying that Maurice Clarett has not sued Ohio State University," Squire says into the microphone in front of him as television cameras focus on his face.

Squire speaks passionately in a powerful courtroom voice that echoes through the studio. He doesn't use notes, although reading glasses hang on the edge of his nose and a stack of legal documents sits in front of him. He wears a conservative tie and an American-flag pin on a jacket lapel. "Excuse me for being so mouthy here, but we've got limited time, and we want to get a lot of information out here," he says at one point.

At first, Squire didn't want to talk to the press. He tried to avoid publicizing the legal action to keep his client out of the headlines. But that was a mistake, he now acknowledges. His silence didn't stop publicity; rather, it resulted in reports he disliked.

So on this Monday morning, Squire called the media to the offices of WVKO, a radio station he owns, to clear up what he believes were inaccurate stories published in the aftermath of his Oct. 10 filing in U.S. District Court in Columbus. "We probably should have issued a press release, in retrospect," Squire admits. "We probably should have been a little more careful in explaining what our intent was, so it would not have been regarded by the folks in this room as a lawsuit, because we have not sued the university."

The next morning, Squire must not have been pleased when he picked up the Dispatch. The paper's coverage of the press conference began by saying, "Suspended Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett did indeed sue the university for $2.5 million." A month into his new job, Squire had learned the first lesson in representing the most famous athlete in Columbus: It's no fun starring in the Maurice Clarett Show.

The Clarett soap opera has played out on talk radio, Internet chat rooms, sport pages and cable TV over the past six months. It has included cameos from two Hall of Fame running backs (Jim Brown and Marcus Allen), the savior of the NBA (LeBron James), a congressman from Michigan (John Conyers Jr.) and a friend of MLK (Jesse Jackson). During the summer, you half expected President Bush to give up his search for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction for a few minutes to weigh in on whether Clarett should have been driving that 2001 Chevy Monte Carlo. "This was just the most bizarre thing that I've ever dealt with," says Scott Schiff, a Columbus lawyer hired by Clarett's family.

At the center of the circus, standing right next to the one-time Heisman Trophy hopeful, have been his attorneys. In some ways, they've been the stars of the show, as ongoing police, Ohio State and NCAA investigations defanged the once outspoken Clarett, and the sophomore running back's legal battle spread into four courts in Ohio and New York. Squire, a Youngstown power broker, is fighting the misdemeanor criminal charge filed against Clarett; Schiff, a local guy with experience representing both professional and collegiate athletes, represented Clarett during the NCAA investigation and the initial media onslaught, and Alan Milstein, a high-profile New Jersey attorney, is trying to get Clarett declared eligible for the NFL draft.

On a Monday morning in August, Milstein made his first appearance during what was the weirdest moment to date in the Maurice Clarett Show. Jim Brown, wearing his trademark multicolored cap, emerged from an SUV alongside Clarett and his mother, accompanying them during a meeting with OSU officials. Suddenly, Brown, a guy with his own history of personal problems and no deep connection to the Clarett family, was jumping into the middle of an already strange situation.

The scene topped the previous weird moment from a few days earlier: Clarett's high school football coach, Thom McDaniels, had said that his former player stood up new Hall of Fame inductee Marcus Allen at a face-to-face meeting McDaniels had arranged at a Canton hotel. (Other weird moments would continue in the following days, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson and U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, made public pronouncements in support of Clarett.)

On this August day, the star power of Jim Brown, the greatest running back in football history, riveted the media, pushing the Clarett saga to new heights. His presence overshadowed a fourth person in the SUV—a slim man sporting longish, salt and pepper hair and a well-tailored dark blue suit: Alan Milstein, a newcomer to Maurice's team.

In legal circles, however, Milstein has plenty of star power in his own right. Such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the American Lawyer magazine have written articles about him in recent years. "I saw one in German once; I couldn't read it," says Kendra Dimond, a colleague of Milstein's, with a laugh.

Milstein gained fame after winning a multimillion-dollar settlement for the family of Jesse Gelsinger, a teenager who died in a University of Pennsylvania gene therapy experiment gone awry in 1999. He's since filed similar lawsuits alleging inadequate protection for human test subjects against UCLA, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, even Ohio State University Medical Center in 2002. Milstein laughs when a reporter says Ohio State officials must have known him before the Clarett scandal. "They probably haven't made the connection," Milstein says. (A medical center spokeswoman declined to talk about Milstein.)

Milstein says he got involved in the Clarett case through "a network of people," declining to elaborate. "I've represented athletes before," he says. "I've represented players against agents, agents against players, that kind of thing. I represented players in nonsports-related cases." In 2000, he defended Cleveland Cavaliers basketball player Dajuan Wagner, then a promising high school guard in Camden, New Jersey, in an aggravated assault case.

In September, Milstein filed a lawsuit in New York on Clarett's behalf, asking a federal judge to strike down a rule that forbids teams from drafting players who have been out of high school for less than three years. A ruling on the suit is expected by February. Milstein, who calls himself the Clarett family attorney, says he's directly involved in only the NFL suit, but, "I'm counseling the family on options available to them in other areas as well."

Despite his long involvement in controversial, often life-and-death legal battles, Milstein says the Clarett case is the nastiest one he's ever been a part of. He received an anti-Semitic e-mail from a football fan, as well as a slew of ugly e-mails from Buckeye fans. "I guess I'm not the favorite person out in Buckeye Land," he says.

Still, he has at least one backer in Central Ohio. "I don't think he looks at people and potential cases with a monetary value on them," says Pam Lett, an Upper Arlington resident. "He looks at individuals with worth and dignity." Milstein is representing Lett in a lawsuit she filed against an OSU Medical Center doctor who she claims failed to inform her about the risks involved in participating in nerve regeneration research. "Alan is more concerned about doing the right thing and getting the truth out than he is about a quick win," Lett says.

In previous media reports, much has been made of Milstein's admiration for O.J. Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran. But Milstein says a better model for his career is Atticus Finch, the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird. "I'm a firm believer that the law is a noble profession," says the self-described '60s liberal. "It's a tremendous vehicle for positive change in this country. It was a natural thing for me to fall into given my ideological beliefs."

And Milstein sees a similar independent streak in his latest high-profile client. "What got Maurice in trouble in the first place was that he had the chutzpah—out in Columbus, they might better understand the word 'temerity'—to say there were more important things in life than football," Milstein says, referring to Clarett's comments about the homeless in Columbus and the funeral of a close friend before the Fiesta Bowl in January. Milstein pauses a few seconds for dramatic effect. "There are, by the way."

When Clarett was charged with filing a false police report in September, Maurice's mother, Michelle Clarett, turned to Columbus attorney Percy Squire, a fellow Youngstown native who is well known in legal, business and political circles in the northeast Ohio city. He replaced Schiff, who was dealing with the matter when it was part of the NCAA probe. "Michelle just felt that we needed to go in a different direction—nothing against Scott," says Vince Marrow, Maurice's cousin. "As the case was getting bigger, she wanted somebody who she was more familiar with."

The decision was no surprise to many people in Youngstown. A successful attorney, Democratic power broker and radio entrepreneur, Squire is something of a legend in his hometown of Youngstown. "He's like an icon," says Mike McNair, the publisher of the Buckeye Review, a weekly black newspaper in Youngstown. Both Squire and Michelle Clarett also share an interest in Democratic politics; Michelle Clarett, the chief deputy clerk at the Youngstown Municipal Court, serves in the largely ceremonial position of vice-chairwoman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party.

In 2001, Squire ran for mayor of Youngstown even though he lives in German Village with his wife, Carole, a Franklin County domestic relations judge. Still, Squire, who owns property in Youngstown, is so popular there he might have won if he hadn't dropped out of the race after his opponent, incumbent George McKelvey, filed a complaint with the Mahoning County Board of Elections. "Are you kidding me? He had a great chance," McNair says.

Robert Douglas, a Youngstown municipal judge and a former business partner of Squire, calls his friend a powerful litigator. The two attorneys won a key redistricting case in federal court during the early '90s. The victory forced Ohio to carve out a new district in Youngstown that eventually led to the election of Sylvester Patton, the first black to represent Youngstown in the Statehouse. "Youngstown is a tough place," Douglas says. "That's why Percy's tough. That's why I'm tough. It makes you tough."

Indeed, Squire has zealously defended Clarett. He tried to remove Municipal Court Judge Steven Hayes from the case, arguing that Woody's son might be biased given the "the unique nature of Judge Hayes's relationship to Ohio State University." After initially fighting Squire's motion, Hayes voluntarily removed himself from the case in early November, saying, "I can no longer be fair and impartial."

But Squire's most unusual—and complicated—move has been the "motion to intervene as a plaintiff" he filed in federal court in Columbus. Virginia Trethewey, Ohio State's general counsel, labeled the filing "procedurally irregular, at best, and misguided." G. Gary Tyack, a former Franklin County Court of Appeals judge who's now in private practice, says the maneuver is a novel approach. "Mr. Squire is being very creative," he says. "We'll see how it works."

During his October appearance on the "Sports Page" radio show, Squire said Clarett is seeking to join an existing lawsuit (unrelated to Clarett) in which the federal government accused Ohio State of violating student privacy laws. Squire said the university gave Clarett's taped statement about the burglary police report to city prosecutors in violation of the Family Educational and Rights Privacy Act, commonly known as FERPA. "Maurice was not subject to a criminal investigation," Squire said, his voice rising. "Maurice was questioned in an environment that was an eligibility proceeding. It was supposed to be confidential. And he was compelled and required to give certain information."

Squire said Clarett is seeking no less than $2.5 million in damages. "Mr. Clarett has been subjected to innuendo, allegations, rumors for the last six months. And the time has come now for his rights to be taken into account. . . . The first of January this year, Maurice Clarett in the minds of most people was a candidate for the Heisman Trophy. Now, every time you pick up the newspaper, he's being maligned. He's being referred to in very unflattering terms." (Three weeks later, Squire dropped the federal complaint, opting instead to take up the issue with the U.S. Department of Education.)

Squire feels a special connection to Clarett because of their shared Youngstown background. "The host of the show here [Larry Williams] and I are from Maurice's hometown," Squire said. "We know his family. We've known them for a long time. We feel a special duty to him, being a young man from our town, to make sure that he's not down here in Columbus, in a hostile environment, isolated and maligned, made the object of all kinds of hate."

Later, Squire politely declines to be interviewed for this story. "I'm not trying to be difficult and a prima donna," he says. "It's just in the case of Maurice, he's really up against some difficult circumstances, and I am just not interested in any way of detracting from his plight."

A veteran attorney who's been practicing in Columbus since the early '80s, Scott Schiff has represented high-profile clients over the years, including former OSU quarterback Steve Bellisari in a drunken-driving case in 2001 and Oteil Burbridge, the Allman Brothers Band bass player who was charged with sexual assault during a 1997 Columbus tour stop. Schiff also has managed the careers of several boxers, including former Olympic gold medalist Tyrell Biggs. "Scott did some work for me in 1996 when I played for the [New York] Jets," says Marrow, Clarett's cousin and a former professional football player. "That was when I first met Scott."

Marrow, who lives in Gahanna, brought Schiff into the case before the scandal exploded. "We had no idea that it would call for bigger things to come when the NCAA came in," Marrow says.

Schiff jumped into the spotlight at the end of July, when he and Ohio State issued a statement just before midnight on a Wednesday night that raised the curtain on the second act of the Maurice Clarett Show. The first act began a couple weeks earlier when the New York Times revealed that an OSU African-American-studies professor allowed Clarett to take an oral exam after he walked out in the middle of a written test. The same day as the New York Times story, the Dispatch reported that the NCAA was investigating Clarett's financial ties to Akron basketball sensation LeBron James.

The July statement was about the burglary of a car that Clarett was driving. According to a police report, more than $6,000 worth of electronics, cash, clothing and compact discs were stolen from the 2001 Monte Carlo parked at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center in April. In the statement, coach Jim Tressel and athletic director Andy Geiger said Clarett would sit out preseason workouts because the NCAA was investigating the circumstances surrounding the break-in for possible rule violations.

In the statement, Schiff said, "Many of the expensive items identified in the report did not belong to Maurice but belonged to the vehicle owner [the Car Store on Morse Road]. Maurice did exaggerate and inflate the values he placed upon the reported items." Clarett was quoted as saying, "I genuinely and sincerely apologize to my teammates and to Ohio State University for any embarrassment this incident may have caused."

Soon, Schiff was fielding calls around the clock from the sports media, which in the dog days of summer—before the baseball playoffs and the professional and college football seasons had begun—had little else to cover. "I definitely learned that the momentum of the media is pretty awesome," he says. "You've got sports shows on every medium—print, TV, satellite—seven days a week, 24 hours a day, always hungry for stories. And they'll create stories that don't exist, just to give themselves something to talk about."

At first, he cooperated with the media. But that didn't last. "There was some inaccurate reporting that occurred early on in this case, and that's why I didn't say anything the past couple of months," Schiff says now.

In September, OSU suspended Clarett for the entire 2003 football season, accusing him of receiving "improper benefits" and misleading investigators. The university hasn't released details about the violations, but media reports have focused on Clarett's relationship with a longtime Youngstown-area athletic booster named Bobby Dellimuti, who has been described as a father figure to Clarett. Marrow says everyone in the Clarett camp is disappointed in the outcome of the NCAA investigation, that Clarett won't play in any football games this year. "I don't think it mattered who was the attorney," Marrow says. "I actually thought Scott worked pretty hard for the family."

Although Schiff has represented other college athletes in NCAA administrative hearings, he says the Clarett affair was an eye-opening experience. He calls the NCAA's Clarett investigation "exhaustive and often overly ambitious" and accused the organization of failing to provide athletes with due process and appellate rights. "The NCAA can be extremely oppressive to student athletes," he says. (NCAA spokeswoman Kay Hawes declined to respond to Schiff's comments.)

In October, Schiff was reluctant to talk about his experiences in the Clarett case. "Who likes to talk about a case where you didn't come out on top?" he asks. Still, he says, "I know I tried really hard as an advocate, and I did what I could." He says he's unhappy that he failed to keep Clarett eligible this year, but "I have no regrets about the representation."

A week after Squire's press conference, the Maurice Clarett Show moved to the 12th floor of the Franklin County courthouse. Clarett himself is in the courtroom on this Monday morning, sitting next to his mother in the back row. He wears a black suit accessorized with a black baseball cap resting on his knee. He silently stares straight ahead. The reporters in the room chitchat and relax as they wait for the pretrial hearing to begin.

Squire, Pierre-Louis and Stephen McIntosh, the city of Columbus's chief criminal prosecutor, emerge from Judge Hayes's private chambers—where it later will be learned that Hayes agreed to consider Squire's motion to suppress Clarett's statement. They talk briefly with the bailiff, and then Squire and Pierre-Louis walk toward Clarett and his mother. Squire says, "OK," and his clients suddenly leave the courtroom.

Their exit surprises the reporters in the room, who give each other puzzled looks. Veteran television reporter Carol Luper rises from her seat, waves to a cameraman and chases after the Claretts. The other reporters, photographers and camerapeople follow her.

The mob catches the Claretts and their attorneys as they enter an elevator at the other end of the hall. "Is there a hearing?" a reporter yells. "Percy, did you get everything taken care of today?" another reporter asks. Then the elevator door closes, keeping the media at bay.

It was the best block Clarett got all year.