Court Opinion

ID: 9752270
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:53:53.816218+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:12.321722
License: Public Domain

KING, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I agree with Judge Schwelb that the disciplinary system could properly consider this matter and there is sufficient support for the Board’s conclusion that respondent committed the charged violations. Judge Schwelb and two other judges, however, would impose a six-month suspension as a sanction. Judge Ruiz would adopt the Board’s recommended sanction of a one-year suspension. For the reasons stated below, I would order a public censure rather than a suspension.
I.
The determining issue before the en bane court is whether the pardon given to respondent by President Bush requires dismissal of the disciplinary proceedings. Ordinarily we would not reach that question under the circumstances presented here because, by expressly and unequivocally conceding before the Board on Professional Responsibility (“Board”) that the pardon did not preclude the bringing of this disciplinary proceeding, respondent waived that claim. See In re Ray, 675 A.2d 1381, 1386 (D.C.1996) (where respondent did not present his contention to the Board, he “cannot be heard to raise it for the first time here”); In re James, 452 A.2d 163, 168-69 (D.C.1982) (same). Although I am of the view that we should resolve this issue against respondent on the ground that he has waived it, the remaining members of the court have decided to address the question whether the pardon bars imposition of disciplinary sanctions.1 Therefore, I will do so as well. On that issue, I am in full agreement with Judge Schwelb. Accordingly, I join the introductory remarks and Parts I, II, III B and IV of his opinion for the court.
II.
I part company with Judge Schwelb, however, on the sanction to be imposed in this case. I do agree with much of what he says in his separate concurring opinion, particularly in section E where he demonstrates the defects in the reasoning underlying the Board’s recommendation, and where he explains how respondent’s conduct was quite unlike the conduct of other attorneys who have been suspended, for similar disciplinary violations, for periods of up to one year. See. e.g., In re Hutchinson, 534 A.2d 919 (D.C.1987) (en banc); In re Wild, 361 A.2d 182 (D.C.1976). I do not agree, however, that a six-month suspension, which Judge Schwelb and his two colleagues would impose, or the longer suspension which Judge Ruiz would impose, is appropriate in this case.
The governing rule provides that we should adopt the Board’s disposition “unless to do so would foster a tendency toward inconsistent dispositions for comparable conduct, ...” D.C. Bar R. XI, Section 9(g). Judge Schwelb’s choice of a six-month suspension is a conscientious attempt on his part, to apply that principle. His concurring opinion persuades me, however, that we have never before been presented with a case involving comparable conduct, together with the surrounding circumstances, that are presented by this case.2 Therefore, we are es*26sentially writing on a clean slate and the precedents relied upon provide little or no guidance.
When there is no precedent pointing to the appropriate sanction, we must look to other factors. In doing so, I conclude that the sanction we should impose is the one Bar Counsel urged upon the Hearing Committee at the end of its proceedings. At that point, when the evidence was fresh in the minds of everyone, Bar Counsel, the prosecuting authority in this disciplinary proceeding, recommended that a public censure be imposed. Later, however, Bar Counsel, for an asserted reason which is not particularly persuasive,3 changed its recommendation from a public censure to a suspension of at least thirty days, a sanction considerably less severe than the one-year suspension recommended by the Hearing Committee and the Board, and the six-month suspension reached by Judge Schwelb and the judges joining him. In my view, Bar Counsel’s sanction recommendation, where the recommended sanction is more lenient than the one proposed by the Board, although certainly not conclusive, should be given great weight.
No doubt Bar Counsel’s initial recommendation was influenced, as I am, by the remarks of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Activities, Mr. Lawrence E. Walsh, who supervised the criminal investigation which resulted in respondent’s guilty plea. In a letter to Bar Counsel before the matter was presented to the Hearing Committee, Mr. Walsh observed:
In view of the sentences imposed upon other participants in Iran/Contra activities, some of them far more directly involved than Mr. Abrams, added disciplinary sanctions by the Bar would single out Mr. Abrams for punishment much more severe than that received by others.
Without minimizing the gravity of the crime, the following factors would seem relevant to the determination of the committee:
1. Mr. Abrams was not acting as a lawyer in the activity he was indicted;
2. He was not acting for personal gain in connection with this activity.
Beyond this, by pleading guilty he saved the government the burden of a lengthy trial and he avoided the possibility of exacerbating his misconduct.
Since pleading guilty he has cooperated with this Office and made himself available as a witness. Although it would be inappropriate for me to give the details of this cooperation, I should like at least to char*27acterize it by saying that we regard it as important. Such help is particularly valuable to a temporary office such as this one. Anything that prolongs our litigation prolongs the necessary existence of an independent office. Mr. Abrams has helped in this regard. If he were to be subjected to additional disciplinary punishment, in spite of his cooperation, this could increase the resistance of others who will have comparable opportunity to cooperate.
Letter of March 5, 1992, from Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh to the Office of Bar Counsel (emphasis added). It is fair to assume that Mr. Walsh was as aware as anyone could be of the nature, effect, and gravity of respondent’s wrongdoing. Yet he recommended that no further discipline be imposed. That recommendation should not be rejected absent compelling grounds for doing so. I find none here.
In this matter, where there is no comparable case to use as a guide, and where the prosecutor in the criminal case recommended that respondent not be subject to any bar disciplinary sanctions at all, and where the prosecutor in the disciplinary proceeding first recommended a public censure and later essentially recommended a thirty-day suspension, it is inappropriate to impose a six-month suspension as Judge Schwelb would do. Therefore, for the reasons stated, I would impose a sanction of public censure and no more.

. Judge Schwelb and the judges joining him have assumed for the sake of argument, without deciding the point, that the issue was preserved. The four dissenting judges, by concluding that the pardon bars imposition of any disciplinary sanction, necessarily have decided that the issue has been preserved.

. The only case at all comparable to respondent’s, as Judge Schwelb correctly observes, is District of Columbia Bar v. Kleindienst, 345 A.2d 146 (D.C. 1975) (en banc). Kleindienst pled guilty to violations of 2 U.S.C. § 192 (willful failure to answer questions pertinent to a Congressional inquiry), the same offense pled to by Abrams, and this court ordered that Kleindienst serve a thirty-day suspension. Id. at 149. We later held, however, that Kleindienst’s thirty-day suspension was too lenient, suggesting, but not explicitly holding, that the length of the suspension in those circumstances could range up to one year. In re Hutchinson, 534 A.2d 919, 927 (D.C.1987) (en banc). Although respondent and Kleindienst both pled guilty to the same offense, the underlying circumstances were very different. First, the self-interest factor applied to Kleindienst, then the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, who was testifying in connection with his own nomination to be Attorney General. That factor does not apply to respondent’s testimony. Nor was respondent’s testimony related to the practice of law as Kleindienst’s *26was. Second, Kleindienst was questioned exhaustively for four days while under oath. The Board found, and this court agreed, that Klein-dienst was "guilty of direct and repeated misrepresentations in answering persistent inquiries about White House involvement in Justice Department litigation...." Kleindienst, supra, at 146-47. No such finding was made, nor would it be warranted, with respect to respondent’s unsworn responses to questioning. It bears emphasizing on this point that Kleindienst's misrepresentations were made under oath while respondent’s were not. Therefore, the real offense, in contrast to the offense pled to, in Kleindienst’s case was a far more serious violation of the law than Abrams’s real offense. Third, unlike respondent’s circumstances, the information withheld by Kleindienst was entirely within his personal knowledge. Moreover, it was the precise information being sought at the hearing and for which the hearing was reconvened. Finally, Kleindienst was not pardoned by the president and the prosecuting attorney in his criminal case did not recommend that no disciplinary sanction be imposed.

. In its post-hearing proposed findings of fact, conclusions of law, and recommendations for sanctions, Bar Counsel, for the first time, recommended a suspension of at least thirty days. Bar Counsel gave no reason for changing its recommendation from one of public censure, other than stating that ”[u]pon considered review of the record and the governing precedent we depart from the tentative recommended sanction suggested at the hearing." The pardon was issued after the conclusion of the hearing, where the public censure recommendation was made, but before Bar Counsel submitted its new recommendation. In response to the new recommendation, respondent “respectfully submitted] that the pardon is responsible for [Bar Counsel’s] change in recommendation.” Respondent also observed: "I am aware that a pardon does not end this disciplinary matter, but I cannot believe it will result in additional punishment of me” (emphasis in original). Later, Bar Counsel insisted that its new recommendation was not made in response to the pardon but was due to "further study of the Kleindienst precedent.” See Hutchinson, supra, 534 A.2d at 927 (overruling Kleindienst to the extent it deals with question of appropriate sanction).