[ad_1]
Seven lawyers in Utah violate the rules of conduct because they are polygamous, according to a new complaint filed with the Utah Bar Association.
The complaint was filed by a woman named Melissa Ellis who belonged to a polygamous group from northern Utah. She thinks that Utah should act against polygamous people who hold a professional or professional license, the Salt Lake Tribune.
Linda F. Smith, a law professor at the University of Utah, said the complaint was unlikely to lead to disciplinary action.
Lawyers have been polygamous in this state for a long time, Smith said. This is not new.
Billy Walker, chief disciplinary attorney at the ethics office responsible for handling lawyers' complaints in Utah, told The Associated Press that the organization was not allowed to talk about complaints.
Paul E. Kingston, one of the lawyers mentioned in the complaint, is also the leader of a polygamous group called the Davis County Cooperative Society. Kingston did not return PA's voicemail to his attorney's office.
The Tribune reports that all the lawyers accused in the complaint refused to comment.
In his complaint, Ellis cites a rule that defines fault as one in which a lawyer commits an indictable offense that offends the honesty, reliability or fitness of the lawyer.
Another section of the Utah Bar Rule defines fault as involving dishonesty, fraud, deception or misrepresentation.
Smith, a law professor who also sits on the Utah Law Society's Advisory Committee on Ethical Advice, said history shows that the bar does not consider consensual relationships between adults constitute a lack of confidence.
She stated that former President Bill Clinton had seen his Arkansas law license suspended for five years because he had been lying in a deposition – not because he had committed adultery.
The focus is on honesty, Smith said.
Ellis, 34, is involved in an ongoing custody dispute with an ex-husband with whom she has four children. Her ex-husband had been represented at different times by two of the complaint's lawyers.
She added that members of the Davis County Cooperative Society, also known as the Kingston Group, provide free legal services to other members or negotiate these services. She thinks this encourages members to sue others.
States taking no action about anything, said Ellis, adding that polygamy was illegal and that they knew it.
The law of Utah makes polygamous relationships a crime punishable by a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment and fifteen years if they are committed at the same time as a crime such as fraud or physical abuse.
Being married to more than one person, or bigamy, is illegal across the United States. The Utah law is considered stricter because of a single provision prohibiting married couples from living with a second spiritual spouse.
Drew Briney, a former Utah lawyer who appeared in a season of TLC's Seeking Sister Wife reality show, said the complaint to the bar shows how many people unfairly associate polygamy with the law. fraud and dishonesty.
I hope this will allow a test-case to finally challenge the status of bigamy in a sustainable manner, said Briney in an email.
Washington lawyer Jonathan Turley, representing the Brown family of the TV show Sister Wives, in a case challenging Utah's bigamy law, said that if lawyers were punished, this could lead to a compelling trial.
Turley said this could be the real harm that the Browns suffered when they challenged Utah's polygamy laws and that they lost them.
The Browns had initially won a major legal victory in 2013 when a federal judge in Utah said the law violated polygamists' right to privacy and freedom of religion. But a Denver appeal court ruled that the Browns could not sue because they were not charged under Utah law. The legal saga ended when the US Supreme Court in 2017 refused to hear the case.
These lawyers should challenge the efforts and the underlying law, Turley wrote in an email to the Salt Lake Tribune. They enjoy the same constitutional protections as their clients. An effort to discard them according to their lifestyle would raise serious constitutional questions.
Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune,
[ad_2]
Source link