Court Opinion

ID: 9700912
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:53:14.143197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:11.270772
License: Public Domain

Gilbert, J.,

concurring :

If we were writing on a clean slate, I would have no hesitancy in joining in part in Judge Orth’s dissent. As it is, however, I believe we are bound by this Court’s recent decision in Attorney Grievance Commission v. Reamer, 281 Md. 323, 328 (1977), wherein a unanimous Court said, “We need not decide in this case whether a conviction for mail fraud, in any and all circumstances, will always involve moral turpitude. It is enough that we determine in this case, from a review of the allegations of the indictment and the District Court's charge to the jury, and the jury’s verdict that the *601crimes of which Reamer was convicted plainly involved moral turpitude.” (Emphasis supplied.)
I know of no other way to interpret that language than to construe it to mean exactly what the majority says it means. We are, therefore, in the instant case, bound to look to the jury charge as given by the Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland to the Klauber trial jury:
“The law of the State of Maryland prohibits an attorney from compensating or agreeing to compensate another person for procuring clients. Furthermore, the Code of Professional Responsibility which applies to attorneys practicing in the State of Maryland provides in part as follows:
‘A lawyer shall not compensate or give anything of value to a person or organization to recommend or secure his employment by a client, or as a reward for having made a recommendation resulting in his employment by a client. Likewise, a lawyer shall not accept employment when he knows or it is obvious that the person who seeks his service does so as a result of conduct described herein.’
“If you should find that as a part of a scheme to defraud, the defendant paid certain individuals for the purpose of procuring as clients persons who had been involved in automobile and bus accidents, and if you should further find that the defendant knew or should have known that such payments were violations of Maryland law or violations of the Code of Professional Responsibility applicable to Maryland lawyers, then you may consider such violation as evidence of the intent with which the defendant acted in this case. However, as I have previously informed you, the defendant is not on trial in this case for any act or conduct not alleged *602in one of the counts of this indictment.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Plainly, the hiring of “runners,” while a clear violation of the Canons of Professional Responsibility, Md. Rule 1230, is not a crime involving moral turpitude. Under that charge, if the jury believed the government’s case was weak, they may well have considered the employment of “runners” as evidence of fraudulent intent and thereby bootstrapped the government’s case to a strength it otherwise would not possess. Of course, I do not know that this is what happened, but as the majority makes clear, it could have happened, and that is enough to preclude a finding that “the crimes of which ... [Klauber] was convicted plainly involved moral turpitude.” Attorney Grievance Commission v. Reamer, 281 Md. at 328.
I cannot, with any degree of reasonable certainty, state that the portion of the District Court judge’s charge dealing with the “runners” had no effect on the jury’s verdict.
As I have earlier indicated, this is the conclusion to which I am propelled by Reamer. My basic quarrel is not with the majority’s reasoning in this case but with Reamer, which I would overrule, because in it I think the Court articulated a rule that it was absolutely unnecessary to promulgate, and in which it now finds itself enmeshed. Reamer was convicted of mail fraud, and whether that offense constituted moral turpitude should not have been the deciding factor. Reamer should not have contained the phrase “and the District Court’s charge to the jury.” This Court should only look to the allegations of the indictment and the verdict of the jury thereon. We should not be in the position of evaluating the District Court Judge’s jury charge. That task the Congress wisely placed in the hands of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. We should have left it there.
The Courts regulate the practice of law, Public Service Comm’n v. Hahn, Inc., 253 Md. 571, 253 A. 2d 845 (1969). See also Lukas v. Bar Ass’n of Montgomery County, 35 Md. App. 442, 371 A. 2d 669 (1977). The Court, as the regulator of persons who practice law in this State, owes a duty to the *603public to remove from practice during the appeal process those attorneys who have been convicted of felonies in a trial court. It is true that convictions may be overturned on appeal, but in the meantime, what happens to litigants who employ the services of an attorney whose conviction is pending on appeal? Does the lawyer quickly settle their case for far less than it is worth in order to make as much money as possible before the appellate decision is handed down? Does he “farm out” the case to other lawyers for a “brokerage fee” irrespective of the appellate decision? Does he, having been convicted of a crime and fearing affirmance on appeal, shortcut the Canons of Ethics so as to line his own pockets? Perhaps the lawyer would do all of those things, some of them, or none, but he should not be afforded the opportunity.
The same inherent and fundamental judicial power to act in proceedings involving the discipline of members of the bar employed in Maryland State Bar Ass'n v. Boone, 255 Md. 420, 429-32, 258 A. 2d 438 (1969), and alluded to in In re Diener and Broccalino, 268 Md. 659, 685, 304 A. 2d 587 (1973), cert. denied, 415 U. S. 989 (1974), should have been utilized in Reamer, Rule BV16 notwithstanding.
Bound by the decision in Reamer, I reluctantly concur in the result reached by the majority.