A little bit of good news for our embattled AG, but not much.
The State Bar of Texas has dismissed one of two pending complaints against Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The dismissed complaint, filed in February by attorney and blogger Ty Clevenger, requested that the bar investigate and penalize Paxton for his failure to register as a financial adviser while steering business to a friend’s investment firm.
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In a letter explaining the move, Assistant Disciplinary Counsel Rita Uribe said the bar dismissed the complaint because “it is the subject of a pending criminal complaint.” If Paxton is convicted, she added, he will be “subject to compulsory discipline.”
Here’s Clevenger explaining why that is unsatisfactory to him.
Best mugshot ever
As 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.
I’d be very curious to hear what the attorneys who read my blog think about this. In the meantime, there is another complaint pending against Paxton, having to do with his bogus “advice” to County Clerks on how to evade the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage. That one isn’t tied to an indictment, and the Board of Disciplinary Appeals reinstated it after an initial dismissal. So maybe one way or another the State Bar will have to take action.