Court Opinion

ID: 9498642
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:23:45.992575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:58.470414
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
In proceedings brought by the State Bar of California that began in August 1995, and concluded in June 1997, a state bar judge made these findings about the lawyer who in June 1997 represented Young in his state trial for armed robbery:
1. The lawyer had falsely charged opposing counsel in a civil suit with being a “champion of the Emeryville pedophile ring,” an enterprise which the lawyer described as “operated by organized crime.”
2. The lawyer spoke to another opposing counsel representing a government agency, “yelling and talking about a child pornography ring” and told her, “You need to be careful — you better *1045remember what happened to Damien Gaines.” The reference was to a murdered analyst for that counsel’s agency.
3. The lawyer called her own former paralegal “a thief and a liar” and said that she would “get [her]” or “Mil [her].” The lawyer kept calling the paralegal until the latter unplugged her phone.
4. The lawyer falsely accused a former client of terrorism and of staltóng her. She accused both him and his new counsel of being “supremacist militia members.”
5. During the proceedings before the state bar court, the lawyer “repeatedly screamed at the Court, refused to follow rulings and directions, and made direct threats toward the Court and Trial Counsel.... [Her conduct] “caused the Court the gravest concern that [she] is not capable of conducting herself properly in any court of law.” (emphasis in original).
6. The state bar judge added:
“While the Court appreciates the difficulty of representing oneself, it does not justify an attorney’s abandoning the most basic elements of appropriate courtroom behavior and engaging in disruptive and offensive conduct. Again,[she] seems to have no insight that such actions are inappropriate and must be curtailed.”
7. The state bar judge concluded:
“Respondent’s complete lack of insight into the wrongfulness of her actions is reprehensible. In vigorously defending her position, Respondent demonstrates that she does not fully appreciate the distinctions between right and wrong. Her erratic outbursts and lack of discernment during court proceedings constitute a danger to the public and to the legal profession.”
Despite these findings, the lawyer — as the state court of appeals remarked in Young’s case — remained “a fully licensed member of the bar” until she was formally disbarred on July 9,1997.
Subsequent to these proceedings, the disbarred lawyer spoke about this case to Young’s new counsel, a public defender, who filed this declaration in this case:
“The reference to the ‘pedophile ring’ is nothing new to persons familiar with [the lawyer’s] conspiracy theories. For the past couple of years, she has been known to make accusations that various officials, including the Alameda County District Attorney, have conspired to protect a ‘pedophile ring’ operating in Emeryville. In the one phone conversation I was able to have with [her] after being assigned to represent the defendant in this case, she declared that the State Bar proceedings were engineered by Tom Orloff because she had exposed his role in the ‘Emeryville pedophile ring’ and that ‘Orloff sent his pansy Dave Hollister to testify against me’.”
It is conceded by all that if Darris Young had been represented by a college student or a cobbler or counsel not admitted to the California bar he would have been denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. But his case is different because he was represented by a fully licensed member of the California bar whom the courts of California took nearly two years to remove from a position yvhere she could harm the public, the courts,., and her clients! A fully licensed lawyer with her head full of fantasies and “with complete lack of insight into the wrongfulness of her actions” was counsel enough to satisfy the Sixth Amendment! As Judge Ferguson’s opinion indicates, precedent apparently requires this bizarre conclusion. Only the Supreme Court of the United States can *1046eliminate this cruel parody of the right to counsel.