Court Opinion

ID: 9772841
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:31:13.459807+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:48.767642
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I disagree.
Suspension or disbarment should not be an additional criminal penalty imposed because the guilty person happens to be a lawyer.
The Board of Governors of the Kentucky Bar Association recommended by unanimous vote that this complaint be dismissed because this incident was not “unprofessional and unethical conduct which is calculated to bring the bench and bar into disrepute.” This lawyer’s misconduct reflected on him as an individual and he has been punished for it. It did not reflect separately on this lawyer’s ability to practice law, or on the profession as a whole. We are being stampeded by the public’s outrage against drunk drivers, an outrage which I share, into imposing an additional criminal penalty when the issue before us is professional misconduct, which is something entirely different.
Jones was convicted of reckless homicide based on a motor vehicle accident. Recklessness is defined as failing to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk. KRS 501.020(3). If he had been “aware of and consciously disregard[ed]” the risk, he would have been convicted of manslaughter in the second degree, or, if there was extreme indifference to human life, of wanton murder. KRS 501.020(3); 507.020(l)(b); 507.040.
This is a question of “mens rea.” Was there a state of mind that discredits a lawyer’s ability to represent clients in the practice of law? A state of mind that is merely “reckless” does not. To state this fact in no way diminishes the seriousness of drinking and driving; or the fact that two people were killed because of this recklessness. The law has properly imposed a criminal penalty for this. We should not impose an additional punishment for a criminal offense that is not professional misconduct because this offender happens to be a lawyer.
If the Majority Opinion is right, every lawyer (and judge) who has ever gotten behind the wheel after drinking an intoxicating liquor, thinking he was fit to drive when he wasn’t, should feel duty bound to suspend his professional career for two years for having done so. The bench and bar would be decimated and the public would be poorly served. This will not appear an overstatement unless you believe that the only sin is in getting caught. We would not in any way depreciate the criminality of reckless homicide or its proper punishment if we restrain the impulse to punish this offender by suspension or disbarment.
If the proof here were that the offender was a chronic alcoholic, or if the evidence showed that on. this occasion he was so drunk that getting behind the wheel of a car amounted to wanton indifference to human life, I would reach a different result. Having lawyers who are habitually drunk, or wantonly indifferent to human life, does not serve the public interest. But recklessness consists only of failing to perceive an unreasonable risk of harm. This act of recklessness was not grounds for suspension or disbarment.