Things are looking up for a former Florida inmate who was cheated by his own lawyers and abandoned in prison, the Raw Story Reports.
Patrick Coulton claims he was forced to accept a 15-year plea deal for drug conspiracy charges in 2008, his attorneys, Peter Mayas and Emmanuel Roy, promising that they could get the sentence reduced. But instead, the man was ripped off and abandoned in prison.
According to Raw Story, the duo took Coulton’s last $275,000 in cash and even picked up some of the belongings he owned.
Another lawyer, Paul Petruzzi, says he took it personally to find out that lawyers were treating their client this way.
“Guys like them are the reason people hate lawyers,” Petruzzi told the Sun-Sentinel, according to the news site. “They took everything from him and his family … I took it personally because this is what I do for a living. Lawyers are supposed to help people.”
Petruzzi, a Miami lawyer, got Coulton out of prison and helped him to regain his footing in life. In addition to successfully halving Coulton's sentence, he also found out that Coulton should have never paid more than $50,000 for the original “services” that he was provided by cunning lawyers.
But now, Coulton is not only rebuilding his life but witnessing the punishment of the two men who almost ruined it. After years of hearings, a U.S. magistrate judge ruled that the two attorneys can never work the South Florida Federal Court again, calling their conduct the “most outrageous” he had ever seen in his 25 years as a judge.
Another judge made Roy and Mayas fully reimburse Coulton the stolen money plus another $100,000 to cover Petruzzi's legal fees. Coulton also got a new cushy start in Mayas’ three-bedroom house.
“Even though they threw me under the bus, there’s a certain sense of unease about acquiring a house in this fashion,” Coulton noted. “I almost feel sorry for them.”
Read more at Raw Story.
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