Court Opinion

ID: 9730361
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:10:07.446097+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:00.917000
License: Public Domain

Digges, J.,

dissenting:

Since the time of Moses, if not before, “Thou shalt not steal” has been understood as one of our basic legal and moral tenets. The majority nevertheless apparently believes that there is no great harm in having “a thief or two” 1 admitted to the Maryland Bar. Ignoring the findings and recommendation of its own Board of Law Examiners, the Court today approves the admission of a man who, at the age of 24 and after the completion of his legal education, stole a carpenter’s measuring tape from a local department store. With its action, I believe, the Court takes a giant leap backward, abdicating its high responsibility to assure the public that nothing in the background of an applicant for bar membership has been discovered to reasonably indicate that the prospective attorney might not be possessed of “the basic qualities of honor traditionally associated with members of the bar of this State.” Bar Ass’n v. Marshall, 269 Md. 510, 520, 307 A. 2d 677, 682 (1973). I respectfully decline to add my approval to the Court’s action for two reasons, either of which in my view compels a refusal to admit this applicant to the practice of law in Maryland: (1) I believe that theft, however petty, committed after three years of exposure to and study of the legal system — out of which should have emerged some appreciation for the fact that lawyers cannot be thieves — *694indicates a lack of the fitness we are entitled to demand of those whose duties require “moral standards that are more stringent than those applicable to others,” id. at 518 [682]; and (2) the Court’s decision, rejecting as it does a factual finding of the Board of Law Examiners as to the applicant’s credibility, and substituting its own assessment without the benefit of the personal appearance before it of any witness, completely vitiates the Board’s fact-finding role in determining the moral fitness of an applicant for membership in the Bar.
The first of the propositions upon which I base my dissent from the action the Court takes today is fundamental if our assurances to the public of the trustworthiness of persons practicing law in this State are to be given any credence at all. I frankly think that petty thievery, particularly when of a repetitive nature, is usually indicative of a character flaw so serious that I am unwilling to represent to the public that a person who has engaged in it is deserving of a client’s unreserved reliance. I cannot say that a person who has committed larceny is more likely to steal a client’s funds than one who has not; I can and do say that I am not willing to take the responsibility for asserting to the public that a petty thief is as worthy of trust as anyone else, so that a client should freely entrust him with his monies and affairs.
As a general proposition, I do not suggest that it is impossible for a person to prove his full and complete rehabilitation such as would justify this Court’s placing its imprimatur on his admission to the Bar, even though he has committed acts of petty thievery in the past. It would indeed be harsh to allow a mere teenage indiscretion — normally regretted and never to be repeated in adult life — to preclude a person from pursuing any particular career. If such an indiscretion were the only misconduct impeding an applicant’s admission to the Bar, I would likely agree that he should be accepted. However, this applicant’s first shoplifting experience in California was a good deal more culpable than would appear from its cursory portrayal by the majority as a juvenile prank done “on a dare” to impress his female friends. I feel constrained to point out that, by the applicant’s *695own admission, the four young people traveling together, though they had enough money to pay for what they wanted, chose not to use it, and instead conspired and agreed in advance that they would enter a supermarket for the specific purpose of stealing the makings for their evening meal, with each person being assigned to take a particular item or items. This, I think, is substantially different from the incident’s characterization as a spur-of-the-moment act to impress the young women in the group, and I have grave reservations about the character of a person who, at nineteen and after three years of university education, would engage in such an unlawful scheme.
I emphasize, however, that it is the second shoplifting incident which I find the more egregious of this applicant’s two thefts; whatever had been the circumstances surrounding the first, the commission of the second, following as it did completion of a legal education, would in my view be disqualifying. More than five years after the California occurrence — after having the experience of being arrested and charged with theft and of obtaining counsel to represent him; after three years of exposure to the law, to lawyers and to their role in and responsibility to the legal system; and well beyond his teenage years — this applicant committed yet another act of thievery. I would hold that under those circumstances the applicant simply cannot at this time show that he has been rehabilitated to the extent that this Court can endorse his integrity without reservation. If the trauma of being arrested, the lapse of five years, and a legal education could not insure that the applicant would not steal again, I fail to see how the lapse of another five years from a second theft — now six and one half years — plus a number of letters expressing a favorable opinion of the applicant’s present moral character, can possibly do so.2
Factually this case is quite similar to another before us only two years ago in which we refused to admit the candidate to *696the Bar. That applicant had been convicted of petty theft at the age of 18, and of shoplifting at the age of 24; a little more than a year after the shoplifting offense he applied for admission to law school, failing to disclose his two convictions on his application. Both the character committee and the Board had unanimously recommended his acceptance — the Board being “impressed... by his demeanor and candid admissions, as well as his remorse” — and strong letters of endorsement were received from the law school dean and high officials in the United States Attorney’s office, where the applicant had worked as a law clerk for more than a year. Though no opinion was filed, it seems clear that this Court decided, as a matter of law, that not enough time had elapsed since the last transgression to enable us to conclude that the applicant had been rehabilitated. If our determination there was justifiable — and I have no doubt that it was — I think it compels a similar result here. In the former case, four years elapsed between the last transgression — failure to reveal the convictions on his law school application — and the Board’s favorable recommendation. Here, six years elapsed between the last transgression and the Board’s unfavorable recommendation. Except for the additional two-year lapse, there is literally nothing to suggest that the present applicant is more worthy of admission than was the other — and there is the Board’s unfavorable recommendation and the applicant’s law school education prior to his last offense to suggest otherwise. Curiously, the majority makes no attempt whatever to articulate any distinction justifying the opposite dispositions of these two admission applications.
It does not do to forget that the quality of honesty is fundamental to the legal profession.
The relationship existing between an attorney and his client is one that of necessity requires mutual trust and confidence. It is of prime importance not only to the parties themselves, but also to lawyers as a group as well as to society in general, that there be no lessening of the degree of confidence that the public has in the fidelity, honesty and integrity of members of the profession. It has been im*697memorially acknowledged that at the very heart of the attorney-client relationship is the trust concept with the attorney acting as a trustee for his client in all of his undertakings for him. [Bar Ass’n v. Marshall, 269 Md. 510, 518-19, 307 A. 2d 677, 682 (1973).]
Nor does it do to overlook this Court’s ultimate responsibility to assure the public of the integrity of all persons practicing law in this State, since “[g]iven that each individual member of society does not have sufficient personal knowledge of an attorney to determine trustworthiness, the bar must guarantee that all of its members merit the client’s undiscerning reliance.” Comment, Discipline of Attorneys in Maryland, 35 Md. L. Rev. 236, 252 (1975). I am simply unwilling, absent compelling circumstances, to offer such a guarantee with regard to a person who steals, be it on a grand or small scale, after the completion of a legal education.
For those who may disagree with my conclusion that the applicant’s thievery precludes him from joining the legal profession, I offer a second reason: the determination by the Board of Law Examiners that the applicant’s explanations to the Board of his second theft were lacking in candor. Total frankness throughout the application procedures is, so far as I am concerned, a sine qua non for admission to the Bar. And unless we are to usurp one of the primary functions the Board was created to perform, a determination of fact by it — particularly one depending so greatly upon the demeanor of a witness — should not be set aside unless clearly erroneous. See Bar Ass’n v. Marshall, supra at 515-16 [680].3
*698The Board of Law Examiners in this case was “not persuaded of the sincerity of [the] applicant in describing the [theft of the tape measure] as being a symbolic act,” and concluded that “in his testimony ... [the] applicant was less than candid.” The majority recognizes that the Board “simply did not believe that the act of theft was a symbolic one____” Ante at 691. To say this is simply to say that the Board did not believe that the applicant, who was under oath, was speaking the truth then and there. However, while recognizing that “no moral character qualification [for bar membership] is more important than truthfulness and candor,” ante at 692, the majority inexplicably concludes that the Board “afforded controlling weight to that part of the applicant’s testimony” — the portion of his testimony the Board did not believe — and gave “insufficient consideration to his present moral character and the evidence of his rehabilitation” since the 1971 theft. Ante at 691 (emphasis added). Well might the Board have “afforded controlling weight” to testimony from an applicant before it when the Board does not believe that the prospective lawyer is telling the truth. The day upon which the Board recommends to this Court the admission to the Bar of a person in whose candor and truthfulness the Board itself does not believe — the day the Board affirms the present moral character of a person while at the same time doubting the sincerity of the very . statements that person makes to it — will indeed be a day upon which the Board stands the law upon its head. However many letters there may be attesting to the applicant’s present *699good moral character, and however unblemished his record may be since his Montgomery County theft — all this is not worth one whit, and should not be, when the Board weighs it against its present perception that the candidate is not, even as he testifies before them, speaking the truth.
The Court here concludes from a cold record that the applicant “is deeply distressed that he participated in such conduct,” ante at 691, and that he “genuinely entertain[ed] the beliefs which he then espoused,” ante at 692, i.e., that stealing the tape was an act symbolic of his disrespect for American institutions, false American ideals, and the like. The majority asserts that the Board’s conclusion — that the applicant lied about his reasons for the 1971 shoplifting — was based on the “flimsy foundation” of its inability to understand the applicant’s shoplifting in the social and historic context urged by the applicant. Ante at 692. To this remarkable statement there are two responses: The first is to inquire of the majority as to its foundation, flimsy or otherwise, for reaching the contrary conclusion, on only an inanimate record, that the applicant did in fact genuinely entertain those beliefs and was thus speaking the truth to the Board of Law Examiners. The majority apparently concludes that, since the applicant has not been shown to have stolen anything since 1971, has freely admitted his previous thefts and that they were morally wrong and indefensible, and has produced the testimony of reputable witnesses as to his present good moral character, he simply cannot have been lying about the reasons for the 1971 theft. I fail to perceive how this foundation for believing the applicant is any less “flimsy” than the Board’s bases for not believing him.
The second response is simply to point out that in fact the Board’s conclusion that the applicant was dissembling about his reasons for the 1971 theft no more rests on a “flimsy foundation” than does any fact finder’s conclusion as to a witness’ credibility. The Board had the benefit of the applicant’s personal appearance and testimony before it. In addition, it would certainly not have been unreasonable for the Board to find the justification offered by the applicant, particularly when coupled with its opportunity to observe his *700demeanor while testifying, inherently unworthy of belief — not because illegal acts are never performed to symbolize disaffection for the system, but simply because “symbolic acts” are not, as here, performed in secrecy for the benefit of the actor only, nor are they disavowed when brought to public attention. Indeed even the applicant’s own very able counsel observed that it would be difficult to credit his client’s statements in this regard.4 It appears to me from merely reading the written record of the applicant’s testimony that the Board could properly conclude that he stole the tape measure for no other reason than that he wanted it, and his protestation that his theft was a symbolic act was simply a post hoc rationalization for an incident for which there exists no legal or moral justification.
Be all that as it may, the majority is quite correct when it says that the mere fact that the Board and this Court do not understand the applicant’s motives does not mean that he did not genuinely entertain the beliefs he expressed. The point, however, is that it is only the Board, and not this Court, which is in any position to determine whether he genuinely entertained those beliefs. The Board concluded that he did not. For the majority to reach a contrary conclusion without an examination of the applicant being conducted in its presence is simply unconscionable for a Court whose obligation it is to assure the public, following a proper investigation, that it has no reason to doubt the honesty and integrity of each person it admits to the Bar. It hardly need be added that the Board’s role — if, after this decision, it has a role — in determining the moral fitness of a prospective attorney to practice law cries out for immediate clarification.
I am authorized to add that Judge Smith and Judge Orth concur in the views I have just expressed.

. W. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act II, scene i, line 19 (1604=05).

. And for what reason do we carefully refrain from naming the applicant? If the Court is willing to assure the public that his honesty and integrity are not open to doubt, what possible harm can come from associating his name with the shoplifting incidents he has admitted?

. The majority apparently believes that, because Rule 4 c of the Rules Governing Admission to the Bar of Maryland provides that proceedings in this Court shall be heard upon the records made by the character committee and the Board, the Court, where those two bodies have made opposing determinations as to the credibility of a witness, may accept either determination. This is hardly the intent of the rule, which I do not thmk alters in any way our conclusion in Character Committee v. Mandras, 233 Md. 285, 288, 196 A. 2d 630, 631 (1964), that it is the Board’s findings, and not the character committee’s, which are “presumptively correct or at least entitled to weight where based upon the testimony of witnesses whose credibility may be in issue.” It simply makes no sense to provide that the Board may conduct a de novo hearing on an application for admission, subsequent to that held by the character committee and even in a case where the committee *698recommends admission, and then to suggest that credibility determinations of these two bodies are entitled to equal weight.
Some entity must have the last word on the question of the credibility of witnesses, including the applicant, since that is a matter — so greatly dependent as it is on demeanor — which simply cannot be decided by this Court on only the written records. On such a question, this Court should not arbitrarily accept whichever determination supports the result it chooses to reach. There is no question, of course, that the conclusions drawn from the evidence as to the applicant’s present moral character, either by the Board or by the committee, are not presumptively correct, and that this Court is to make an independent evaluation of the applicant’s present moral character based on the records made by both the Board ana the committee. That, however, is a far cry from suggesting, as the majority seems to do, that our conclusion in Mandras — that a specific finding of fact by the Board based on credibility is entitled to weight — is no longer viable.'

. I quote from the attorney’s remarks as recorded in the transcript of the applicant’s hearing before the character committee: “If, of course, you do not credit his present statements, and I know no reason why you should, although I certainly do, then, of course, you will disagree with me in what I am suggesting to you.” (Emphasis added.)