Case Title: In re Dabney

Citation: 2005-Ohio-5834

Docket Number: 20050866

State: ohio

Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Date: 2005-11-16T00:00:00Z

Document:
[Cite as In re Dabney, 107 Ohio St.3d 40, 2005-Ohio-5834.] 
 
 
IN RE DABNEY. 
[Cite as In re Dabney, 107 Ohio St.3d 40, 2005-Ohio-5834.] 
Failure to disclose criminal record on application to register as candidate for 
admission to practice law in Ohio and on Ohio bar application reflects 
poorly on character, fitness, and moral qualifications — License to 
practice law revoked. 
(No. 2005-0866 — Submitted June 28, 2005 — Decided November 16, 2005.) 
ON REPORT by the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness of the 
Supreme Court, No. 281. 
__________________ 
 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Tami Antoinette Dabney of Akron, Ohio, Attorney Registration 
No. 0076509, was admitted to the Ohio bar in 2003.  She is currently registered as 
inactive in Ohio. 
{¶ 2} Dabney graduated from the University of Akron School of Law in 
May 2003.  She applied for, took, and passed the Ohio bar examination in July 
2003. 
{¶ 3} In October 2003, Dabney applied for admission to the Nevada bar.  
While investigating her character and fitness in connection with that application, 
an admissions investigator with the State Bar of Nevada discovered that Dabney 
had not disclosed on her Nevada bar application that she had been arrested five 
times in 1995 for prostitution-related offenses in New York. 
{¶ 4} In a December 2003 letter to the State Bar of Nevada, and in an 
August 2004 amendment to her Ohio bar application, Dabney acknowledged that 
she had indeed been arrested and convicted on five separate charges of “loitering 
for prostitution” between August 1995 and December 1995 in New York.  She 
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also disclosed in those documents that each time she had been arrested, she gave a 
false name to the authorities. 
{¶ 5} Dabney had disclosed none of this information in her November 
2001 application to register as a candidate for admission to the Ohio bar or in her 
April 2003 application to sit for the Ohio bar examination.  Gov.Bar R. 
I(10)(B)(6) directs the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness to 
investigate “any matter brought to the attention of the Board after an applicant has 
been admitted to the practice of law and alleging that the applicant made a 
materially false statement in, or deliberately failed to disclose any material fact in 
connection with, the applicant’s application for admission to the practice of law.”  
In accordance with that provision, the board initiated an investigation in 2004 into 
Dabney’s failure to disclose her New York arrests and convictions on her Ohio 
bar application.  A three-member panel of the board held a hearing in January 
2005.  Dabney testified at the hearing, as did several other witnesses. 
{¶ 6} The hearing testimony and the record presented to the board 
indicated that Dabney was 23 years old at the time of her 1995 arrests in New 
York.  She testified that in 1994, while living in Akron, she met and fell in love 
with a man named Bryan Kirkland, who was from New York.  When Kirkland 
was charged with a drug-possession offense in 1995, he asked Dabney to come to 
New York for a few days and engage in prostitution there.  She agreed and 
traveled by train to New York in August 1995. 
{¶ 7} Dabney was arrested the first time she walked on a New York 
street as a prostitute in August 1995, and her four subsequent arrests occurred in 
August (three days after her first arrest), October, November, and December 
1995.  During that time, she continued to live in Akron and traveled to New York 
a few days at a time to engage in prostitution.  When she was arrested the first 
time, she was carrying a false identification card in her purse. 
January Term, 2005 
3 
{¶ 8} Dabney testified at the hearing that her actions were motivated by 
her desire to please Kirkland and win his approval.  She corresponded with him 
occasionally while he was incarcerated for two years beginning in 1996, and she 
met him when he was released from custody in 1998.  She stayed with Kirkland 
for several weeks after that, until the relationship soured and she returned to Ohio.  
Dabney continued to travel to New York to visit Kirkland, and she became 
pregnant in November 1998.  She entered law school in 2000 and graduated three 
years later. 
{¶ 9} Once Nevada bar officials discovered the arrests in 2003, Dabney 
was forthcoming about her criminal record with bar officials in that state and in 
Ohio.  Also, in June 2004, she contacted Stephanie Krznarich, a licensed 
independent social worker at the Ohio Lawyers Assistance Program (“OLAP”).  
Krznarich performed chemical-dependency and mental-health assessments and 
concluded that Dabney suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder and dependent-
personality disorder.  Dabney signed a four-year mental-health recovery contract 
with OLAP in July 2003 and began attending individual counseling sessions, 
twice-weekly Al-Anon meetings, and meetings of a domestic-violence-victims 
support group.  Krznarich testified that Dabney has done an “excellent job” of 
complying with her OLAP contract and has accepted all of OLAP’s 
recommendations for addressing problems related to the mental and emotional 
abuse that she experienced during her relationship with Kirkland, as well as the 
domestic violence and drug abuse that she had observed in her home while 
growing up.  Dabney possesses the skills, coping techniques, and education to 
“make different and better choices for herself” in the future, according to 
Krznarich. 
{¶ 10} Two of Dabney’s friends testified as well.  Dawn Haynes, an 
attorney in Cleveland who first met Dabney in college, stated that OLAP and the 
counseling sessions have helped Dabney realize that she had been in an abusive 
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relationship with Kirkland, and Haynes expressed her belief that Dabney is a 
“great person” who is “capable of being a great attorney.”  Kim Simpson, a 
pediatrician in Cleveland who has known Dabney since 1990, testified that she 
would not hesitate to trust Dabney with confidences or with money, despite her 
failure to disclose her criminal history on her bar applications. 
{¶ 11} The panel was clearly troubled by Dabney’s dishonesty on her 
applications.  She testified at the hearing that she did not provide truthful answers 
about her criminal record on the applications because she was embarrassed by it 
and remembered few details about her convictions and could not even recall the 
false names that she had provided to the authorities at the time of her arrests.  She 
stated that providing any information about the convictions would have opened a 
“can of worms” that she “just wasn’t equipped to deal with” at that time.  At the 
hearing before the panel in January 2005, Dabney testified that she has come to 
terms with her past, acknowledges her dishonesty on the bar applications, and 
fully understands the importance of honesty and candor in the legal profession. 
{¶ 12} The panel concluded that Dabney had not established her character 
and fitness for admission to the Ohio bar by clear and convincing evidence.  The 
board adopted the panel’s findings of fact and recommended that Dabney’s 
license to practice law in Ohio be revoked.  The board further recommended that 
Dabney be permitted to reapply for admission in February 2006 and that her 
character and fitness be reviewed and approved before she is readmitted to the 
Ohio bar. 
{¶ 13} We adopt the findings, conclusions, and recommendation of the 
board.  Under Gov.Bar R. I(11)(D)(1), “[t]he applicant has the burden to prove by 
clear and convincing evidence that the applicant possesses the requisite character, 
fitness, and moral qualifications for admission to the practice of law.”  We find 
Dabney’s compliance with her OLAP contract commendable, and we recognize – 
as did the panel and the board – that Dabney’s dishonesty did not extend beyond 
January Term, 2005 
5 
her answers to questions about her criminal history.  Even so, we are troubled by 
her criminal conduct in New York – including her use of a false identification 
card and her repeated use of aliases when she was arrested – as well as her 
dishonesty on her law school application, her application to register as a candidate 
for admission to practice law in Ohio, her Ohio bar application, her Nevada bar 
application, and her application to take the patent bar.  That history of dishonesty 
extended from her first arrest in 1995 until 2003, when Nevada bar officials first 
discovered her criminal past, and that history rightly prompted the board to 
question whether Dabney had met her burden of proving her character and fitness 
to practice law. 
{¶ 14} “Evidence of false statements, including material omissions, and 
lack of candor in the admissions process reflect poorly on an applicant’s 
character, fitness, and moral qualifications.”  In re Application of Cvammen, 102 
Ohio St.3d 13, 2004-Ohio-1584, 806 N.E.2d 498, ¶ 22.  We have in other cases 
disapproved bar applications in which applicants failed to disclose requested 
information in a forthright and complete manner.  See, e.g., In re Application of 
Williams (2002), 95 Ohio St.3d 107, 766 N.E.2d 143; In re Application of 
Ireland-Phillips (1995), 71 Ohio St.3d 609, 646 N.E.2d 453. 
{¶ 15} For these reasons, we revoke Dabney’s license to practice law in 
Ohio.  She may, however, reapply for admission in February 2006 or later by 
filing a Supplemental Character Questionnaire.  Upon reapplication, she must 
undergo a complete character-and-fitness investigation, including the preparation 
of a report by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, in order to allow the 
board to determine whether she possesses the necessary qualifications for 
readmission to the practice of law in Ohio.  If her character and fitness are 
approved upon her reapplication, she may be readmitted without retaking the 
Ohio bar examination. 
Judgment accordingly. 
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MOYER, C.J., RESNICK, PFEIFER, LUNDBERG STRATTON, O’CONNOR, 
O’DONNELL and LANZINGER, JJ., concur. 
__________________ 
 
Michael E. Murman, for applicant. 
 
Clair E. Dickinson, for Akron Bar Association. 
______________________