I was 11 when Marvin Singleton began stealing from the dead.
I was 27 and had a full head of hair when the law caught up with him.
I didn’t anticipate I would be bald by the time a judge finally sentenced him in Nelson Supreme Court last week.
Singleton’s seemingly interminable legal saga finally concluded with a three year jail term and restitution order — although given the way this case has gone, I wouldn’t be surprised if he appeals.
During the time it took to bring the former Nelson university professor and lawyer to justice, Canada went through five prime ministers and BC had eight premiers. The Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Wars began and ended. Glaciers receded.
But at last Singleton has received his richly deserved rebuke.
The path to his downfall was paved with much promise: born in a country farmhouse in Kansas, he showed great scholastic aptitude, winning a national writing contest that helped him pay for college.
He studied languages at Yale, published poetry, and obtained a doctorate with a dissertation on H.L. Mencken, later published as an award-winning book. He taught at several American universities before obtaining a law degree.
In the 1970s, he was a professor at Notre Dame in Nelson until it closed, and then set up a law practice. But he wasn’t much of a lawyer. He wasn’t much of a criminal mastermind either.
From 1988 to 1990, he robbed the John Alexander George estate, for which he was executor, of nearly half a million dollars earmarked for charity and squandered it on his pet projects, including a mountainside rice plantation.
(Singleton was originally accused of defrauding a second estate, but the Crown dropped those charges for reasons we will never know.)
Just as the BC Law Society was about to hold a competence hearing, he voluntarily gave up his practice and departed for the US. There he was arrested years later while teaching at a community college.
At his sentencing hearing, the defence presented an old story I wrote for the Weekender, arguing it inaccurately characterized Singleton as a fugitive.
True, he was not wanted when he moved to the US and lived there under his own name, but by 1998 he knew there was an arrest warrant out for him, which he ignored. He then spent two years in prison fighting extradition. He absolutely was a fugitive.
Since returning to Canada in 2006, he’s been on bail, and caused no problems. Following a lengthy trial, he was convicted this year of fraud and theft.
While the Crown conceded Singleton’s age and health should be mitigating factors — he is 78 and deteriorating mentally — it’s a bit hard to swallow, considering he was the one who dragged things out, first by refusing to return to face the music, and then through endless procedural delays.
He shouldn’t be rewarded for successfully working the system, costing taxpayers untold amounts, and turning the case into one of the longest-running Nelson has ever seen.
Furthermore, contrition is foreign to him. His statement to the court, presented through his lawyer, would have been hilarious had it not been so pathetic, facile, and self-serving.
Singleton said he took full responsibility for his actions. And how did he demonstrate this? By showing up for sentencing — i.e. doing what he was obliged to do.
“He regrets this whole thing and the many decisions and roads not taken,” his lawyer Brock Martland told Judge Elizabeth Arnold-Bailey. He said Singleton regretted staying in Nelson after the university closed instead of seeking a teaching position elsewhere. (I feel his pain. I wish he had left town too.)
Fortunately, the judge saw through these dubious arguments and sent him back to jail rather than let him live out his days tending to his garden under house arrest.
Doubtless because of his age, Singleton will receive full parole at the earliest instance, despite his lack of sincere remorse.
But it’s some consolation that probably no punishment the courts can hand out can match Singleton’s loss of professional status. His academic accomplishments have been rendered null by his greed, vanity, and hubris.
His reprehensible conduct erased his reputation and earned him his own chapter in Phillip Slayton’s book Lawyers Gone Bad.
Whatever he achieved, Singleton’s crimes will be his legacy.
He will forever be known as the crooked lawyer who stole from his clients.
Greg Nesteroff is a reporter for the Nelson Star. He can be reached at reporter2@nelsonstar.com