Michael J. Gonring quoted in article “Dee Farmer Won a Landmark Supreme Court Case on Inmate Rights. But that’s Not the Half of It”
The Village Voice 01/29/14Following is an excerpt:
"She's a character," says Wisconsin attorney Michael Gonring, who represented Farmer after her case was remanded and denied again by the lower court. "A classic."
Though Farmer has racked up more than a dozen convictions related to fraud, theft, and sundry other dishonest acts, the career criminal likely could have been a career lawyer.
For decades, Farmer has operated a de facto legal practice behind bars. When Gonring met her in the mid-1990s, she had 13 lawsuits going simultaneously. A recent search of her name as a party in a federal court database yielded 122 results, including 88 civil cases and 27 appeals. She also kept state courts busy. A former clerk for the Maryland Attorney General's Office remembers crates upon crates of files devoted to her.
Originally published in The Village Voice, January 29, 2014