Bar dismisses Bradley complaint in Morton case

Bar dismisses Bradley complaint in Morton case


By Chuck Lindell
Tuesday, January 3, 2012, 11:39 AM
UPDATED at 4:30 p.m.

Julie Oliver, executive director of the coalition, said she will appeal the dismissal with the state bar’s Board of Disciplinary Appeals in the “next day or two.”

“We’ll be asking them to revisit the question, and hopefully they will make a better decision on appeal,” Oliver said.

The coalition also filed complaints alleging that former district attorney Ken Anderson, now a Georgetown district judge, and former assistant district attorney Mike Davis, now a Round Rock lawyer, violated their duty as prosecutors by failing to provide Morton’s trial lawyers with evidence that pointed to his innocence.

The state bar has directed Anderson and Davis to respond to the allegations, after which the disciplinary office will investigate whether misconduct occurred, according to a Dec. 27 letter from the bar to Oliver.

Anderson and Davis have said they do not remember many details from Morton’s 1987 trial but adamantly denied wrongdoing in the case.

Separately, the state bar announced in October that it had begun its own investigation into the actions of Morton’s trial prosecutors. Bar officials, however, declined to further discuss that investigation.

The State Bar of Texas has dismissed a complaint alleging that Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley engaged in misconduct and violated ethics rules in his handling of the Michael Morton case.

Morton was freed in October after serving almost 25 years in prison when DNA tests implicated another man in the 1986 murder of his wife, Christine Morton, in their southwest Williamson County home.

According to the grievance filed by the Texas Coalition on Lawyer Accountability, which focuses on attorney responsibility, Bradley improperly fought to prevent the DNA testing that led to Morton’s exoneration, extending his prison stay by six years until an appeals court ordered the testing to take place.

But in a Dec. 28 letter, released today by Bradley, the state bar’s Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel said an examination determined that “the information alleged does not demonstrate professional misconduct.”

The grievance has been dismissed, the letter added, though the coalition could file an appeal with the Board of Disciplinary Appeals.
“As the report from (Morton’s lawyers with) the Innocence Project indicated,” Bradley said via email, “the DA’s office acted professionally and ethically in handling the Morton claim of innocence, arising from a 25-year-old conviction through a different prosecutor.”

Please read complete article at link below:


http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/courts/entries/2012/01/03/bar_dismisses_bradley_complain.html

Editor's note:  Sure sounds like the Illinois ARDC...Attorneys fear a sanction from the ARDC as they would being drummed out of the "Book of the Month Club"  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com