Case Title: In re Application of Tynes

Citation: 2020-Ohio-631

Docket Number: 2019-1097

State: ohio

Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Date: 2020-02-26T00:00:00Z

Document:
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as In 
re Application of Tynes, Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-631.] 
 
 
 
NOTICE 
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an 
advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports.  Readers are requested to 
promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 
South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other 
formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before 
the opinion is published. 
 
 
SLIP OPINION NO. 2020-OHIO-631 
IN RE APPLICATION OF TYNES. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 
may be cited as In re Application of Tynes, Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-631.] 
 Attorneys—Character and fitness—Applications to take bar exam and to register 
as candidate for admission to practice of law—Past criminal conduct—
Lack of candor—Applicant permanently barred from reapplying for 
admission to practice of law. 
(No. 2019-1097—Submitted October 2, 2019—Decided February 26, 2020.) 
ON REPORT by the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness of the 
Supreme Court, No. 740. 
__________________ 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Applicant, John David Tynes, of New Richmond, Ohio, is a 2013 
graduate of Northern Kentucky University’s Salmon P. Chase College of Law.  In 
June 2016, we found that Tynes failed to carry his burden of proving that he 
possessed the requisite character, fitness, and moral qualifications to practice law 
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in Ohio.  This finding was based on his efforts to minimize his culpability for nearly 
18-year-old criminal convictions arising from his attempts to persuade girls under 
the age of 15 to engage in sex acts and on his delay in seeking mental-health 
treatment that was recommended at the time of his convictions.  We therefore 
disapproved his application to register as a candidate for admission to the practice 
of law.  Although the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness 
recommended that we prohibit Tynes from seeking admission to the Ohio bar in 
the future, we authorized him to apply for the July 2018 bar exam or a later bar 
exam.  In re Application of Tynes, 146 Ohio St.3d 243, 2016-Ohio-3307, 54 N.E.3d 
1237, ¶ 19-20, 24. 
{¶ 2} Tynes submitted a new registration application in January 2018 and 
later applied to take the February 2019 bar exam. 
{¶ 3} Two members of the Cincinnati Bar Association Admissions 
Committee interviewed Tynes in November 2018 and recommended that his 
application be disapproved.  At Tynes’s request, a seven-member investigatory 
subcommittee conducted a second interview, and the admissions committee 
subsequently recommended that his application be approved. However, the board 
invoked its authority to investigate his character, fitness, and moral qualifications 
sua sponte.  See Gov.Bar R. I(10)(B)(2)(e). 
{¶ 4} After a hearing, the board issued a report finding that Tynes had done 
little to alleviate the concerns that we raised more than three years ago and that the 
mere passage of time cannot cure those deficiencies. Therefore, the board 
recommends that Tynes’s pending applications be disapproved and that he be 
permanently denied the privilege of reapplying for admission to the practice of law 
in Ohio.  No objections have been filed. 
{¶ 5} For the reasons that follow, we agree that Tynes has failed to carry his 
burden of proving that he possesses the requisite character, fitness, and moral 
January Term, 2020 
 
3
qualifications to practice law in Ohio, disapprove his pending applications, and 
forever bar him from reapplying for the privilege to practice law in Ohio. 
Findings and Analysis 
{¶ 6} As we have previously found, Tynes was approximately 50 years old 
and serving in the military in 1998 when he began frequenting sexually oriented 
chat rooms on the Internet.  In those chat rooms, he introduced himself to at least 
four females whom he believed to be under the age of 15.  He later communicated 
with them privately through e-mail and instant messaging and eventually sought to 
meet three of them in person.  Tynes, 146 Ohio St.3d 243, 2016-Ohio-3307, 54 
N.E.3d 1237, at ¶ 5-6. 
{¶ 7} In Tynes’s first attempt to arrange an in-person meeting, he told a 13-
year-old girl from Kentucky that he wanted to meet her and that he “desperately 
wanted to make love” to her.  Id.  at ¶ 6.  But she discouraged Tynes from traveling 
to meet her by telling him that her parents had grounded her. 
{¶ 8} In his second attempt, Tynes was going home from a temporary 
military assignment when he traveled 300 miles out of his way, rented a hotel room, 
and e-mailed another girl to encourage her to sneak out of her home to have sex 
with him.  After considerable discussion, the girl declined to meet him. 
{¶ 9} Several months later, Tynes attempted to meet a third girl as he 
traveled from Virginia to Las Vegas on business.  He scheduled a layover in 
Chicago and rented a hotel room with the intent to make a video recording of their 
sexual activities.  He telephoned her and arranged to meet her outside his hotel, but 
he was arrested by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he arrived.  
Tynes, 146 Ohio St.3d 243, 2016-Ohio-3307, 54 N.E.3d 1237, at ¶ 8. 
{¶ 10} Tynes was charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with 
four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer, four counts of attempting to 
persuade a minor to engage in sex, two counts of traveling interstate with the intent 
to have sex with a minor, one count of knowingly possessing child pornography, 
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and one count of knowingly receiving child pornography.  Id. at ¶ 9.  He was 
convicted of the charges in a court-martial proceeding and sentenced to 30 months 
of confinement in the United States Disciplinary Barracks—though the child-
pornography charges were later dismissed on appeal.  See United States v. Tynes, 
60 M.J. 331 (2004).  He served 19 months of that sentence.  Tynes at ¶ 9. 
{¶ 11} When we disapproved Tynes’s first registration application, we 
expressed significant concerns regarding his honesty and integrity during the 
admissions process and his delay in seeking the mental-health treatment that had 
been recommended at the time of his criminal convictions.  Id. at ¶ 19.  The board 
found that those concerns remain relevant in this proceeding. 
{¶ 12} In his first character-and-fitness proceeding, Tynes attempted to 
minimize his culpability for his criminal conduct by claiming that he never intended 
to follow through with his first attempt to meet a girl in person and suggesting that 
the second girl he attempted to meet was actually a civilian vigilante.  Id., 146 Ohio 
St.3d 243, 2016-Ohio-3307, 54 N.E.3d 1237, at ¶ 19.  At Tynes’s May 2019 
character-and-fitness hearing, his counsel asked him to talk about his attempts to 
minimize his conduct during his first character-and-fitness hearing.  Tynes testified 
that he originally made the statements at his 1999 criminal trial because he was 
“basically terrified” of losing his military retirement and his career.  He stated, “I 
was looking at incarceration, and it’s very difficult to face squarely the worst thing 
you ever did in your life.  So to any extent that I said anything that would minimize 
my culpability, I was in error, that was wrong, but I did it because I was terrified.”  
He also testified that his civilian-vigilante claim “was quite irrelevant because that 
wasn’t what I believed when I was communicating with her.” 
{¶ 13} Tynes testified that since his trial, he had had “20 years to think back 
on what I did and why I did it and the consequences of it, and I fully acknowledge 
that the culpability was mine and mine alone.  Any statements made previously to 
the contrary.  I was the one who walked myself off that cliff.  Nobody else was 
January Term, 2020 
 
5
responsible.”  But he never acknowledged that he had made the same civilian-
vigilante statements and continued to minimize his criminal conduct at his first 
character-and-fitness hearing—and more recently in the narrative statement he filed 
with his application to take the February 2019 bar exam. 
{¶ 14} We note that at the beginning of his most recent character-and-
fitness hearing, Tynes did not relay the facts underlying his criminal convictions to 
the panel in his own words but instead affirmed the facts as they were posited by 
his counsel during his counsel’s questioning of him.  The board found that the 
words Tynes chose later in that hearing to describe his criminal conduct and 
resulting convictions demonstrated his lack of candor and failure to accept 
responsibility for his actions.  For example, Tynes stated that counseling helped 
him to examine how he went “from being a military officer to being some guy that 
was being arrested for talking to kids” (emphasis added.) as though he had done 
nothing more than talk to children over the Internet.  He also spoke of the treatment 
options available during his military confinement for “convictions like mine” and 
suggested that he did not seek assistance from the Ohio Lawyers Assistance 
Program (“OLAP”) when he was in law school because he did not think it applied 
to his situation.  Contrary to Tynes’s claims that he has accepted full responsibility 
for his misconduct, this testimony demonstrates that more than 20 years after his 
convictions, he is still unable to speak candidly about—and has not convincingly 
come to terms with—his attempts to have sex with minors.  “A record manifesting 
a significant deficiency in the honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, or reliability of 
an applicant may constitute a basis for disapproval of the applicant.”  Gov.Bar R. 
I(11)(D)(3). 
{¶ 15} More than three years ago, we found that although a course of 
mental-health treatment had been recommended at the time of Tynes’s convictions, 
he had not pursued that treatment in earnest until the fall of 2013—and that he had 
only done so in response to recommendations that arose in the course of the 
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admissions process.  Tynes, 146 Ohio St.3d 243, 2016-Ohio-3307, 54 N.E.2d 1237, 
at ¶ 19. 
{¶ 16} The forensic psychologist who evaluated Tynes in 2013 suggested 
that although Tynes was “not a particularly psychologically-minded individual,” he 
could benefit from short-term counseling with a mental-health professional 
experienced in counseling convicted sex offenders.  Approximately four months 
later,  Tynes entered into a five-year mental-health-recovery contract with OLAP 
and commenced regular psychotherapy sessions with a licensed, independent social 
worker.  Id. at ¶ 14, 23.  His ongoing mental-health treatment and continuing 
participation in OLAP weighed heavily in our decision to permit him to reapply for 
admission to the bar.  Id. at ¶ 23. 
{¶ 17} At his most recent character-and-fitness hearing, Tynes submitted 
just two exhibits and his own testimony.  The first exhibit was a cursory letter from 
Scott R. Mote, the executive director of OLAP, stating that Tynes had successfully 
complied with his five-year OLAP contract. 
{¶ 18} The second exhibit was a letter from Daniel Watson, the licensed, 
independent social worker who had conducted counseling sessions with Tynes 
about once or twice a month since November 2013.  The board found that Watson’s 
letter offered little assistance in evaluating the current status of Tynes’s character, 
fitness, and moral qualifications to practice law in Ohio.  Watson failed to provide 
any information regarding his own education and training—stating only that he had 
been a therapist for 15 years and had spent three of those years cofacilitating court-
ordered forensic sex-offender-treatment groups. Although Watson acknowledged 
that part of his job was to ensure that Tynes had a thorough understanding of the 
dynamics that led him to attempt to engage in relationships with underaged females 
and of the harm that that misconduct caused, he offered no insight into what those 
dynamics were or how Tynes had come to understand them.  Instead, Watson 
declared that Tynes already had a good working knowledge of the dynamics that 
January Term, 2020 
 
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had led him to behave inappropriately and that those dynamics no longer existed in 
his life.  Watson stated that he had helped Tynes cope with the damage he had 
caused to himself and his family, and after quoting a newspaper article about sex-
offender-recidivism rates, he opined that Tynes is not likely to reoffend. 
{¶ 19} In his testimony, Tynes offered at least two explanations for his 
criminal conduct.  First, he claimed that it was “a really lousy way of relieving 
stress,” the source of which was “[m]ostly probably the normal things any family 
with four kids would have.  A lot of fighting, a lot of disagreements, a lot of 
argument, a lot of discipline issues.”  He also suggested that a midlife crisis may 
have been a component of that stress, stating, “I was hitting 50 and at 50 one starts 
to feel the decline.  I can’t put it better than that.  So I wound up in the sexually 
oriented chat rooms and what I found, the one I wound up getting in trouble in, all 
these people were saying really nice things about me and they never asked me to 
take out the trash.” 
{¶ 20} Tynes testified that he is now 20 years older, has learned from his 
mistakes, and has found more appropriate outlets to relieve his stress—including 
his relationship with his wife and normal daily activities such as working around 
the house, reading, writing, studying, martial arts, and exercising.  To the extent 
that everyday stress contributed to Tynes’s criminal conduct, however, the board 
questioned the efficacy of his chosen stress relievers—particularly in light of the 
fact that Tynes has identified his relationship with his wife as a source of stress that 
drove him to engage in his criminal conduct and also as one of his most important 
stress relievers. 
{¶ 21} Tynes’s second explanation for his criminal conduct was that he 
suffered from an Internet or sex addiction and that he often spent at least two hours 
a day in adult chat rooms—overriding his own thoughts that he should not be 
engaging in that behavior.  Although Tynes testified that his addiction had led to 
his criminal convictions, caused him to neglect his family responsibilities, and 
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frequently made him late for work, he offered no evidence that he has ever received 
treatment for his addiction.  Tynes also denied that he ever visited sexually oriented 
chat rooms on the Internet following his release from confinement—though he 
previously testified that he had entered a sexually oriented online chat room for 
adults sometime after his incarceration.  Tynes, 146 Ohio St.3d 243, 2016-Ohio-
3307, 54 N.E.3d 1237, at ¶ 12.  Although Tynes has continued to participate in 
psychological treatment, it is not clear that the treatment is geared toward his sex 
offenses or his addiction.  An untreated addiction raises significant concerns about 
an applicant’s character, fitness, and moral qualifications if the disorder could affect 
the applicant’s ability to practice law in a competent and professional manner.  See 
Gov.Bar R. I(11)(D)(3)(e). 
{¶ 22} Tynes’s own testimony regarding his untreated addiction and his 
continuing lack of candor throughout these admissions proceedings raise grave 
concerns about his ability to (1) exercise good judgment in conducting his 
professional business, (2) conduct himself with a high degree of honesty, integrity, 
and trustworthiness in all professional relationships and with respect to all legal 
obligations, (3) conduct himself diligently and reliably in fulfilling all obligations 
to clients, attorneys, courts, and others, and (4) conduct himself professionally and 
in a manner that engenders respect for the law and the profession.  See Supreme 
Court of Ohio, Definitions of Essential Eligibility Requirements for the Practice of 
Law, 
Requirement 
Nos. 
3, 
4, 
7, 
and 
10, 
https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/AttySvcs/admissions/pdf/ESSENTIAL_ELI
GIBILITY_REQUIREMENTS.pdf 
(accessed 
Feb. 
13, 
2020) 
[https://perma.cc/LZA2-N4NC].  However, Tynes has not sought employment or 
taken other actions to demonstrate that he is capable of satisfying these 
requirements.  And although he testified that since we denied his last application, 
he has volunteered with a nonprofit organization that provides legal assistance to 
immigrants and worked on complaints for wage theft, he offered little evidence 
January Term, 2020 
 
9
regarding the extent of his involvement or the quality of his performance in those 
activities that might help to alleviate our concerns. 
{¶ 23} While the board acknowledged Tynes’s statements that his criminal 
conduct was wrong, it found that his words, manner, and demeanor indicated that 
his remorse was not genuine.  Indeed, the board concluded that “Tynes projects an 
air of arrogance, making it evident that he is sorry only that he did something that 
stands in the way of his becoming a lawyer.”  Finding that Tynes’s lack of honesty 
and integrity have persisted through two character-and-fitness proceedings, the 
board found that Tynes has failed to carry his burden of proving that he currently 
possesses the requisite character, fitness, and moral qualifications to practice law 
and recommends that his pending applications be disapproved. See Gov.Bar R. 
I(11)(D)(1). 
{¶ 24} Recognizing the enduring nature of Tynes’s lack of candor and his 
unwillingness to accept responsibility for his past criminal conduct and convinced 
that the passage of additional time is not likely to cure that deficiency, the board 
also recommends that we permanently deny Tynes the privilege of reapplying for 
admission to the practice of law in Ohio.  See, e.g., In re Application of Cvammen, 
102 Ohio St.3d 13, 2004-Ohio-1584, 806 N.E.2d 498 (permanently denying an 
application to register as a candidate for admission to the Ohio bar because ethical 
infractions so permeated the admissions process that the applicant’s honesty and 
integrity were shown to be intrinsically suspect); In re Application of Keita, 74 Ohio 
St.3d 46, 656 N.E.2d 620 (1995) (permanently denying registration and bar-exam 
applications of an applicant who was unwilling to accept responsibility for 
questionable past behaviors and lapses in judgment). 
{¶ 25} Based upon the foregoing, we agree that Tynes has failed to carry 
his burden of proving that he currently possesses the requisite character, fitness, 
and moral qualifications to practice law in Ohio.  We further find that Tynes’s 
inability or unwillingness to accept responsibility for his past criminal conduct and 
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Tynes’s enduring lack of candor justify the board’s recommendations that his 
pending applications be denied and that he be precluded from reapplying for 
admission to the Ohio bar. 
{¶ 26} Accordingly, we disapprove Tynes’s pending applications and 
forever bar him from reapplying for the privilege to practice law in Ohio. 
Judgment accordingly. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and KENNEDY, FRENCH, FISCHER, DEWINE, DONNELLY, 
and STEWART, JJ., concur. 
_________________ 
Montgomery Jonson, L.L.P., George D. Jonson, and Lisa M. Zaring, for 
applicant. 
Dinsmore & Shohl, L.L.P., and Eric K. Combs, for the Cincinnati Bar 
Association. 
_________________