Court Opinion

ID: 9547097
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:41:44.28807+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:19.513551
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
with whom HODGES and SIMMS, Justices, join, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I recede from that part of today’s decision which makes respondent’s resignation effective from October 24, 1983 — the date of his interim (post-conviction) suspension ordered by this court while the judgment- and-sentence in the criminal case was undergoing appellate review in the federal judicial system. I would hold that by force of applicable rules respondent’s resignation must take effect September 11, 1987 — the day the respondent’s second appeal came to be concluded in the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
An act may not be made effective from a day earlier than when it actually occurs if it could not lawfully have taken place at the anterior point of time from which it is to operate with legal force. No discipline could lawfully be imposed on respondent in this proceeding under the provisions of Rule 7, Rules Governing Disciplinary Proceedings, 5 O.S.1981, Ch. 1, App. 1-A, so long as his appeal from criminal conviction remained unterminated. While respondent’s conviction stood in the process of appellate review, his status as a lawyer could not be affected and the present case was not a fit subject for any termination— whether by exercise of our disciplinary cognizance or by the court’s acceptance of the respondent’s attempted exit from the Bar. Today’s approval of his resignation cannot hence be made to operate with effect from any point anterior to the conclusion of the criminal conviction’s review process. State ex rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass’n v. Cantrell, Okl., 734 P.2d 1292, 1293-1294 [1987] (Opala, J., dissenting in part).
By today’s order respondent will become eligible to seek bar reinstatement on October 24, 1988 —scarcely more than six months after the court’s present action. If the effective date of today’s order were to be made coincidental with the day respondent’s criminal appeals came to an end — the legal norm I counsel for application to this case — his eligibility to seek reinstatement would be postponed until September 11, 1992. A difference of almost five years must not be shrugged off as but de minimis non curat lex.
I would approve the respondent’s resignation and order that it take effect from September 11, 1987.