State bar prosecutor dismisses grievance against Attorney General Ken Paxton

Yeah, I know. I really shouldn’t be surprised that the state bar’s Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel dismissed my February 6, 2016 grievance against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Ken PaxtonAs I explained in my February 11, 2016 blog post, my grievance against Mr. Paxton had far less to do with Mr. Paxton than the state bar itself.  Time and again, I’ve watched the state bar protect politically-connected attorneys, some of whom have committed serious crimes. And now the practice continues.

According to a March 9, 2016 letter from OCDC, my grievance was dismissed because the allegations are “the subject of a pending criminal case against [Mr. Paxton].”  But as I noted in the appeal that I filed this morning, nothing in the disciplinary rules prevents OCDC from prosecuting attorney misconduct charges concurrently with criminal charges.

On the contrary, “[t]he processing of a Grievance, Complaint, Disciplinary Proceeding, or Disciplinary Action is not, except for good cause, to be delayed or abated because of substantial similarity to the material allegations in pending civil or criminal litigation.” Texas Rule of Disciplinary Procedure 15.02. Granted, a delay or abatement differs from an outright dismissal, but the spirit of the rule certainly implies that OCDC should not dismiss a case simply because a related criminal case is pending. In fact, the OCDC prosecuted my grievance against former Robertson County District Attorney John Paschall concurrently with the overlapping criminal charge.

Under normal circumstances, however, the OCDC will not prosecute a politically-prominent attorney. In this case, the OCDC dismissed a grievance filed by Erica Gammill against Mr. Paxton in 2014 because that grievance supposedly failed to state a disciplinary violation (even though Mr. Paxton had already admitted his guilt in writing and under oath).  After Mr. Paxton got indicted for the very same allegation, I re-filed Ms. Gammill’s grievance along with a copy of the indictment.

And now the OCDC refuses to investigate because a criminal case is pending, which makes this a classic Catch 22.  If you file a grievance against a politician lawyer before he gets indicted, the state bar will dismiss the grievance — no matter how damning the evidence — on the grounds that you failed to state a violation. But if you file the grievance after he gets indicted, then the state bar will dismiss your grievance because a criminal case is pending.  Is it any wonder that my profession has such a miserable reputation?

There are good reasons for prosecuting the cases concurrently. First, the burden of proof differs between a disciplinary charge and a criminal charge. If the special prosecutors fail to prove Mr. Paxton’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the OCDC might nonetheless prove him culpable on the preponderance of the evidence. Second, the four-year limitations period for a disciplinary charge will expire this summer, i.e., before Mr. Paxton’s criminal case goes to trial.  Maybe the Board of Disciplinary Appeals will do the right thing and reverse the OCDC, but the board sided with the OCDC the first time it buried this case.

Meanwhile, the state bar needs to be gutted and reorganized from top to bottom, but  I won’t be holding my breath. Angela Morris at Texas Lawyer has reported other cases where facially valid grievances were dismissed for no apparent reason, but thus far no one outside the bar seems to be paying any attention. Maybe that’s because there are a lot of lawyers in the Texas Legislature, and they all stand to benefit from a disciplinary system that affords them special protection.

2 thoughts on “State bar prosecutor dismisses grievance against Attorney General Ken Paxton

Leave a Reply