Court Opinion

ID: 9543801
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:49:21.949335+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:11:13.303516
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
dissenting from today’s sanction of suspension.
The court holds today that a lawyer who blatantly disregards its earlier order (barring him from practicing law for one year) should be suspended for two years and one day. A legal practitioner who flagrantly disobeys this court’s imposition of professional discipline deserves nothing less than disbarment.1
The lenient sanction visited on this offender today borders on a total loss of touch with reality. By merely suspending Holden for his defiance of an earlier suspension order, one mistake is piled upon another. Holden doubtlessly mistook the mild discipline given him for the earlier offense for weakness in the disciplinary regime’s enforcement and for this court’s lack of resolve to carry out its nondelegable constitutional responsibility to police the profession. There is no assurance he will find this suspension any more daunting than he did previously.2
*39I would direct that this repeat offender3 be disbarred.

. Unauthorized (pre-reinstatement) practice of law has been employed as a legitimate ground for prolonging the offender's status of ineligibility for readmission. State ex rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass’n v. Samara, Okl., 725 P.2d 306 (1986). My counsel today, if accepted by the court, would make this offender ineligible for reinstatement for at least three years longer than the court’s adopted solution. State ex rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Wolfe, Okl., 919 P.2d 427 (1996) (Opala, J., dissenting).

. Holden was given a one-year suspension on March 21, 1995 for advising a client to remove his child from OHahoma in violation of a court order. See State ex rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass’n v. Holden, Okl., 895 P.2d 707 (1995). Less than a month later (in the first week of April 1995) he gave legal advice to Fran Lisenberry in violation of that disciplinary order. Tr. transcript p. 5.

. For a fuller explanation of my views about dealing with repeat bar offenders, see Wolfe, supra note 1 at 437-439.