Court Opinion

ID: 9718191
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:18:31.332602+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:57.781852
License: Public Domain

Morse, J.,
concurring. Because I believe that “moral turpitude” is so vague that it invites arbitrary interpretation and *534application and inadequately warns what crimes are sanction-able as professional misconduct, I do not join section III of the Court’s opinion. I concur with the remainder of the opinion.
The term is rooted in common law and was developed at a time when concepts of religion and law were more closely interwoven and sin and crime were virtually synonymous. Jordan v. De George, 341 U.S. 223, 237 (1951) (Jackson, J., dissenting). Consequently, the term “assumes the presence of [a] common conscience ... of the community,” Bradway, Moral Turpitude as the Criterion of Offenses that Justify Disbarment, 24 Calif. L. Rev. 9, 21 (1935), based on fixed legal and moral concepts. But, as society has increasingly become both more secular and pluralistic, there is less consensus about what is immoral, especially in areas of “vice” — sexual relations, gambling, and drug and alcohol use. Without social consensus on what is “moral,” the term conveys little guidance to fathom what we mean by it.
Today, moral turpitude is a compass with the directional needle removed. We are left only the temptation to label behavior we find personally repugnant “immoral,” or, as in this case, simply to follow without analysis the popularly held opinion vilifying drug use. See id. (judge “may unconsciously mistake his own bias for an intuitive perception of the common conscience”). The resulting decisions on moral turpitude are unprincipled and contradictory, and exacerbate rather than cure the vagueness of the term. See Jordan, 341 U.S. at 239 (examining fifty lower court opinions applying “moral turpitude” and finding the “chief impression from the cases is the caprice of the judgments”; “[irrationality is inherent in the task of translating the religious and ethical connotations of the phrase into legal decisions”). Crimes involving moral turpitude might as well be all serious crimes committed by a lawyer.
Recognizing problems in defining moral turpitude, we have already eliminated its primary use as the gauge for determining which crimes may be used to attack a witness’s credibility; See Reporter’s Notes to the 1989 Amendment to V.R.E. 609(a) (labeling “moral turpitude” as “troublesome” and “vague” and replacing it with “more precise and relevant standards for determining the admissibility of prior convictions for impeachment”); see also Reporter’s Notes to now superseded V.R.E. 609(a) (questioning the utility of categorizing crimes as mala in *535se and mala prohibita and describing the apparently inconsistent case law on Rule 609 moral turpitude). In our pre-1989 cases, we attempted to mitigate the vagueness problem by tying moral turpitude to “testimonial reliability — whether the convicted person would regard lightly the obligation to tell the truth.” Id.
DR 1-102(A)(3) provides no such functional saving grace. Appellant should not be sanctioned for departing from such an arcane and ill-defined standard, although his conduct is sanctionable as conduct adversely reflecting on his fitness to practice law and should be treated as such. See ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(b) (eliminating moral turpitude standard and defining misconduct as “a criminal act that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects”) and ABA Annotated Model Rules of Professional Conduct 353-54 (1984) (moral turpitude standard was rejected because it had proved “manifestly ambiguous [as] evidenced by the wide ranging interpretations given it by the courts” and had been criticized by commentators “as inviting subjective judgments of diverse lifestyles instead of focusing on the lawyer’s ability and fitness to practice law”).
Criminal conduct “adversely reflecting on fitness to practice law” is also vague, but the phrase invites less value-laden interpretation. I appreciate the gravity of a lawyer’s conduct when he travels out-of-state, where he is less likely to be recognized, to purchase cocaine to satisfy his and a colleague’s appetite. A lawyer — sworn to uphold the law and expected to be a good example to society — who does such a thing demeans the practice of law and causes others to disrespect the law. On the other hand, I have difficulty contemplating that the act of purchasing drugs for a lawyer’s use is so depraved that it rises to the level of moral turpitude.