Legal Ethics

Former Kansas AG Phill Kline is suspended from law practice for at least 3 years

Posted Oct 18, 2013 1:39 PM CDT
By Martha Neil

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Rejecting an attorney discipline administrator's call for disbarment of a former Kansas attorney general, the state's supreme court on Friday indefinitely suspended attorney Phill Kline.
Now working as a visiting law professor at Liberty University in Virginia, Kline is expected to be able to continue in his job there even if he does not have a law license, the Kansas City Star reports. He can reapply for bar admission in three years.
Kilne's lawyer, Thomas Condit, called the 154-page ruling by the state's top court "not an acceptable result" and said he and his client are exploring their options for further action. Condit said "there was never any deliberate dishonesty" on Kline's part and said the disciplinary action resulted from "cherry picking" comments that Kline made over a period of more than five years and taking them out of context.
At issue in the case was Kline's conduct both as AG and Johnson County district attorney concerning investigations of abortion clinics operated by the late George Tiller in Wichita and by Planned Parenthood in Overland Park. Kline accused the two clinics of violating state law concerning abortions and shielding pedophiles by not reporting when underage girls sought abortions. Kline sought medical records.
He brought a criminal case against Planned Parenthood in 2007, which a subsequent AG opted not to pursue. It charged the clinic with falsifying records and providing illegal abortions, reports the Associated Press. Tiller was acquitted by a jury in 2009 on all 19 counts in a misdemeanor case alleging that he illegally performed late-term abortions. The physician was murdered later in 2009 while he was attending church in Wichita with his wife.
Tiller's lawyer and the forewoman of a Johnson County grand jury investigating Planned Parenthood accused Kline of misleading the court and mishandling evidence, resulting in the legal ethics case against him. Kline has complained that the case was politically motivated, fueled by those who object to his views on abortion.
Although the supreme court did not agree with all of the conclusions of a three-member disciplinary panel, it found that Kline had violated 11 legal ethics rules and what it called a pattern of misconduct with a selfish motive. The supreme court also expressed concern that Kline has not acknowledged his wrongful actions.
Among other misconduct, Kline failed to properly advise a grand jury about applicable law, gave false and misleading information to courts about the handling of patient medical records from abortion clinics and instructed his staff to attach sealed documents to a public filing, in violation of a court order, the supreme court found.
How Appealing provides a link to today's supreme court opinion (PDF) and a Wichita Eagle article provides further details.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: "Former AG Blasts Kansas Supreme Court During Lunch Break in His Legal Ethics Trial"
ABAJournal.com: "5 Kansas Supreme Court Justices Recuse Themselves From Ex-AG’s Ethics Case"
ABAJournal.com: "Ex-Kansas AG Kline Tells Judges His Office ‘Endeavored Forthright’ in Abortion-Provider Probes"
ABAJournal.com: "Fired over ‘naughty boy’ tweet about ex-AG’s ethics case, court research lawyer is now on hot seat"
Updated at 2:24 p.m. to include and accord with 2009 ABAJournal.com post about Tiller acquittal.

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Attorney Misconduct

• 23 Jul 2013 at 1:56 PM
• Attorney Misconduct, Crime, Drinking, Quote of the Day, Violence

Alleged Adult Store Ankle-Biter Acquitted, But Was Witness Tampering Involved?

By Staci Zaretsky

[L]et’s try to help the person, she obviously had a bad night, and we don’t need to continue to hurt her dignity about this issue. So let the court do what the court’s supposed to do, and please, we don’t need to have theatrics around this issue.

– Alderman Tom Tunney of Chicago’s 44th Ward, in a voicemail message left for the owner of an adult sex shop about assistant state’s attorney Sarah Naughton, the “apparently intoxicated” prosecutrix who allegedly bit the leg of one of the porn purveyor’s employees, while the scandalous case was still pending.

While Naughton was acquitted of all charges in April, Tunney was recently found to have abused his authority by attempting to “tamper with” a potential witness in Naughton’s criminal investigation.

(Read on to hear Tunney’s message, and see footage of Naughton’s arrest.)

Continue reading “Alleged Adult Store Ankle-Biter Acquitted, But Was Witness Tampering Involved?”

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• Tags: Attorney Misconduct, Biting, Crime, Drinking, Mark Thomas, Prosecutors, Prosecutrix, Quote of the Day, Sarah Naughton, Taboo Tabou, Tom Tunney, Violence, Voicemails

16 May 2013 at 1:40 PM

Health Care / Medicine, Law Professors, Law Schools

Sociopath Law Professor Admits To Being A Sociopath

By Elie Mystal

Have you ever thought that your law professor was a sadistic bastard? Have you ever felt like the prosecutor across the table was an emotional black hole? Would it freak you out if you turned out to be clinically right?
We’ve talked a lot about mental health recently, from panic buttons to Asperger’s (or autism spectrum disorder, if you prefer). But today we’ve come across a truly chilling article from a law professor who admits that she’s a sociopath and writes about how law is the perfect field for people like her.
I’m turning the snark meter way down on this post because, well, I don’t want to be murdered…

The sociopathtic attorney is apparently barred somewhere in California. She’s a law professor and has been a prosecutor and an associate of some kind. She also teaches Sunday school at a Mormon Church, because apparently “[t]he Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a sociopath’s dream.”
The woman has decided to keep herself anonymous — for somewhat obvious reasons — and I’m not particularly interested in figuring out where she works. She says that she’s non-violent and has never physically hurt anybody (not that she’s never thought about it), but I don’t exactly want to test her (or him; sometimes anonymous authors mix their gender up).
In fact, I’m only posting about it because she says stuff like this:

I loved getting high marks in school; it meant I could get away with things other students couldn’t. When I was young, what thrilled me was the risk of figuring out just how little I could study and still pull off the A. It was the same for being an attorney. During the California bar exam, people were crying from the stress. The convention center where the exam took place looked like a disaster relief center; people made desperate attempts to recall everything they had memorized over the prior eight weeks—weeks that I spent vacationing in Mexico. Despite being woefully ill-prepared by many standards, I was able to maintain calm and focus enough to maximize the knowledge I did have. I passed while others failed.
Regardless of my laziness and general lack of interest, I was actually a great lawyer when I was trying. At one point, I worked as a prosecutor in the misdemeanor department of the district attorney’s office. My sociopathic traits make me a particularly excellent trial lawyer. I’m cool under pressure. I feel no guilt or compunction, which is handy in such a dirty business. Misdemeanor prosecutors almost always have to walk into a trial with cases they’ve never worked on before. All you can do is bluff and hope that you’ll be able to scramble through it. The thing with sociopaths is that we are largely unaffected by fear. Besides, the nature of the crime is of no moral concern to me; I am interested only in winning the legal game.

Whatever buddy, you don’t have to be crazy to be only interested in winning the legal game. “Needing money” works just as well.
There’s also this lovely story about working at a law firm:

When I was at one law firm, I was assigned to work for a senior associate named Jane. I was based in one of the firm’s satellite offices, so I saw her once every few weeks. In law firms, you are supposed to treat your senior associate as if she is the ultimate authority, and Jane took this hierarchy seriously. You could tell that she never enjoyed such power in any other social sphere. Her pale skin mottled with age, poor diet, and middling hygiene was evidence of a lifetime spent outside the social elite. She wanted to wear her power well, but she was clumsy with it — heavy-handed in certain circumstances and a pushover in others. She was an entertaining blend of power and self-doubt.
I was not her best associate, and Jane believed that I was undeserving of all that I had accomplished. She put much effort into dressing appropriately, while I wore flip-flops and T-shirts at every semi-reasonable opportunity. While she billed as many hours as humanly possible, I exploited the nonexistent vacation policy by taking three-day weekends and weeks-long holidays.

Later, she describes breaking this senior associate down in a way that is almost Cartman-esque.
Mind you, I don’t know if I believe all of these stories. I don’t know if I’ve ever met a sociopath, but I’ve certainly met a lot of people who were “off” in some way who had an outsized belief in their effects on people. Then again, when “not” having an effect on people means that you lose focus before you kill them, maybe the occasional delusion of grandeur is just fine:

In explaining their horrible actions, people often say that they “just snapped.” I know that feeling. I stood there for a moment, letting my rage reach that decision-making part of my brain, and I suddenly became filled with a sense of calm purpose. I blinked my eyes and set my jaw. I started following him. Adrenaline started flowing; my mouth tasted metallic. I fought to keep my peripheral vision in focus, hyperaware of everything around me, trying to predict the movement of the crowd. I was hoping that he would walk into a deserted hallway where I would find him alone. I felt so sure of myself, so focused on this one thing I had to do. An image sprang to mind: my hands wrapped around his neck, my thumbs digging deep into his throat, his life slipping away under my unrelenting grasp. How right that would feel. But I know I had been caught in a megalomaniacal fantasy. And in the end it didn’t matter; I lost sight of him.

She doesn’t tell any stories about teaching law students, but I can’t imagine that she’s the kind of professor you want to go to complaining about a B-minus.
People who don’t feel remorse when their actions cause suffering scare me. Be they “sociopaths,” “the NRA” or “Joakim Noah,” feeling bad when you cause suffering is one of those prerequisites to the social contract.
I would certainly not want a sociopath on my law school faculty or in my firm. But you can’t punish people for what they might do or how they could be feeling. If this lady had outed herself and said what school she teaches at, it’s not like she could or should be fired. People would just have to deal and try not to totally freak out when she gave them what she calls her “predator stare.”
That said, man, wouldn’t law school and the practice of law be better if it was a place where sociopaths don’t thrive? She has a whole section subtitled “Why Trial Law Is a Sociopath’s Fancy.” That’s not good. Does it have to be that way? Couldn’t war be a sociopath’s fancy and trial law be more like an “inefficient use” of a sociopath’s talents?
In any event, don’t murder me. I like living. I hope giving law students C’s is enough like strangling the life out of a man’s body that you don’t get bored or anything.
Confessions of a Sociopath [Psychology Today]
Earlier: Does Your Law School Need A Panic Button?
The Decision: Should A Minority With Asperger’s Even Bother?

33 Comments

• Tags: Health Care, Health Care / Medicine, Law Professors, Law Schools, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Prosecutors, Scary stuff, Sociopaths

Feds Say DA Got $80K, Judge Got $10K As They Conspired to Obtain Part of Murderer’s $500K Bail Bond

Chicago FBI,  DOJ, AG, IRS...Don't let the Western FEDs get all the publicity and glory.  Dig into the Probate Court of Cook County, 18th Floor, Daley Center.  You have another "Greylord" ready for the picking.  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com


White-Collar Crime


Feds Say DA Got $80K, Judge Got $10K As They Conspired to Obtain Part of Murderer’s $500K Bail Bond 

Posted Jul 2, 2012 5:45 PM CDT

By Martha Neil



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 More details are emerging in an ongoing judicial corruption case in federal court in South Texas that federal authorities say involved, in addition to other alleged misconduct by multiple defendants, a conspiracy between a district attorney, a judge and a friendly lawyer representing the children of a murder victim.



The trio are accused in a federal indictment of conspiring together to arrange a criminal conviction of Amit Livingston in the murder case, while simultaneously putting together a settlement in the civil wrongful death case, which was also being overseen by then-District Judge Abel Limas.



Livingston's criminal conviction made it possible to use his $500,000 bond to fund the civil settlement. Meanwhile, the judge allowed him 60 days to get his affairs in order, based simply on his promise that he would return to serve his sentence, according to the San Antonio Express-News.



But Livingston absconded, and five years later has not been found. The indictment contends that a substantial amount of the $200,000 fee from the settlement that went to the friendly attorney representing the victim's children, Eduardo “Eddie” Lucio, was shared with the other two members of the trio: Limas got $10,000, and Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos got $80,000, federal prosecutors say.



Both Lucio and Villalobos have pleaded not guilty, and the DA is arguing that the indictment is too vague to permit him to defend himself against the charges, the Brownsville Herald reports.



Limas earlier took a plea and is awaiting sentencing.



The Associated Press also has a story about the latest allegations.



Earlier coverage:



ABAJournal.com: "DA Gave Me Money, Too, Ex-Judge Testifies at Another Lawyer’s Federal Racketeering Trial"

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http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/feds_say_da_got_80k_judge_got_10k_as_they_conspired_to_obtain_part_of_murde/

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