Bar Disgraces Itself In Hunter Case

Bar Disgraces Itself In Hunter Case

Hunter, Will

Vermont Legal Aid

While Micheal Mello was a professor of a Law professor. He wrote a commentary pertaining to the disciplinary proceedings of the attorney Will Hunter by the Vermont Bar.

Rutland Daily Herald

HIST 298, University of Mary Washington

1996-08-16

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[Title] Bar Disgraces Itself In Hunter Case [Content] I wish to thank the dozen or so people who called and wrote me responding to commentary on the Will Hunter case. Their feedback was Illuminating. The more I hear from other lawyers, the more I like Will Hunter. The four lawyers who published letters in support of the bar’s prosecution of Will Hunter revealed more about the writer’s own agendas than about L’Affair Hunter. [Title of main content] Commentary By: Michael Mello [Main Content] Stephen Ellis (July 25) missed my main point: that providing effective counsel to poor people is of paramount concern, and that the choice facing Mr. Hunter’s clients was not Mr. Hunter or some other, “better” Vermont lawyer. The choice was between Will Hunter or no lawyer. (The non-lawyer who contacted me didn’t seem to have any trouble under-standing this point.) As a longtime capital public defender in Florida, I think I have a pretty strong appreciation of poor people’s need for legal aid. By citing statistics that seem to me misleading, Leslie Black (July 30) makes the disappointing argument that poor people in Vermont already have sufficient legal aid. Her numbers are misleading because they don’t include the numbers of people who were not able to find a lawyer willing and able to work for free. Any legal aid attorney worth her salt will tell you she can represent only a fraction of people who need such aid. And if Ms. Black thinks the Vermont public defender system is sufficiently resourced, she really should talk to the people who work in those offices. There is one promising bit of news on the horizon. Last week, the Vermont Supreme Court rejected the bar’s recommendation of disbarment for Vincent Illuzzi – on charges far more serious than the niggling technicalities that from the basis of the bar’s persecution of Will Hunter. This suggests that the court does not simply rubber stamp whatever recommendations the court receives from the churls at the Couduct Board. That’s good news for anyone interested in seeing justice done to Will Hunter and his former clients. If Vince Illuzzi shouldn’t be disbarred, then Will Hunter shouldn’t be disbarred. The court ruled that the Conduct Board had over-stepped its authority. The court reiterated the legal test for disbarment: “Disbarment is warranted where the misconduct is done knowingly, the injury is serious or potentially serious, and there is some benefit to the lawyer or another. Moreover, conduct resulting in disbarment is generally criminal as well.” The Hunter panel did not even pretend to demonstrate why the blizzard of petty charges against Mr. Hunter met the test for disbarment. Even accepting the panel’s rendition of the facts, Mr. Hunter’s misconduct was not “done knowingly.” The injury caused by the misconduct was not “serious or potentially serious” – indeed, notably absent was any articulation of harm caused by Mr. Hunter’s peccadillos. Nor did the asserted “misconduct” result in “some benefit to the lawyer or another.” And none of the bar’s storm of petty charges is “criminal.” At most, all but one of the bar’s complaints against Mr. Hunter – the kinds of sins committed by busy and successful, albeit overworked, lawyers at one time or another. The potentially serious charge – the money accusation – does not come close to justifying disbarment under the legal test for disbarment ignored by the panel. Perhaps the bar’s biggest howler is that I am bringing the bar into public disrepute by criticzing the bar’s war on Will Hunter. But is seems to me that any wound to the bar’s public image is a self-inflicted wound. If the bar is worries that its persecution of Will Hunter is bringing the bar into public dishonor, than the solution is to stop the persecution. Find out whether the prosecutor did, in fact, attempt to strong-arm Mr. Hunter’s clients into becoming informants against him. Find out whether the “hearing” panel chair intimidated witnesses favorable to Mr. Hunter. Find out why the panel’s recommendation opinion was so inept. Several letter writers implied that unsolicited client complaints were the genesis of the bar’s investigation of Mr. Hunter. I wonder. Whiffs of possible prosecutorial misconduct filter from the case’s factual record and beyond. For instance, on July 1 the Valley News published a letter from a client of Mr. Hunter: “I am one of his clients who was contacted by a female agent of the board, who was stated she worked for (Hunter’s bar prosecutor), and that if I wanted to make a complaint against Mr. Hunter she would take my complaint over the telephone. Though I told her I had been frustrated with Mr. Hunter’s actions many times in the past, I had no interest in making a formal complaint. She continued to press me until finally I ended the con-versation.” That was not the end of the pressure, however. “The very next day I received a second call from her reminding me that I could make a formal com-plaint if I wanted. Again, I told her no, but she pressed. She told me the complaint didn’t have to come directly from me – that they could act like the police and pursue a complaint on my behalf. I once more declined, and hung up.” These prosecutorial pressure tactics are more serious than allegations made by the bar disciplinary panel against Mr. Hunter. This client described how frustrating and down-right maddening Mr. Hunter could be. But, when push came to shove, she writes that he “has been a stead-fast ally when others have given up … He has been honest and honorable in all our legal dealings.” Anyway, the feedback from my column impelled me to dig a little further into the case of the Vermont Bar against Will Hunter. What I found was that this case is about far more than Mr. Hunter’s fitness to continue practicing law. The real issue here is whether the panel members and bar prosecutor are capable of conforming themselves to these selfsame ethical requirements. The disbarment opinion rendered by the three-per-son panel of the Professional Conduct Board is at best inept and at worst malicious. In either case, the opinion reflects and ethical obtuseness that would be laughable if a person’s career were not at stake. The opinion is a disgrace to the Vermont bar. There are two things wrong with the bar’s opinion recommending disbarment. The first is its slip-shod substance. The second is its malicious style. The opinion is more of a partisan press release thana reasoned articulation of grounds rendered by a neutral and unbiased tribunal. One Good test of the integrity of a legal document – and of its author – do, in fact, stand for the propositions for which they are cited. Again and again, the panel’s opinion in Mr. Hunter’s case fails this test. Key cases do not stand for the propositions for which the panel cites them, and holdings of cases are misrepresented. The panel’s reckless disregard of accuracy is not limited to its citation of case law; the opinion’s treatment of the factual record is equally cavalier. The panel made findings of fact that deviate from the stipulations that were submitted; failed to make findings and law in a manner that suggests a lack of impartiality and per-judgment. The references to the factual record are often misleading. But the panel gives away its game in what its opinion does not say, the evidence its simply ignores. Save for a few desultory and vacuous references, the panel’s opinion essentially ignores the large quantity of directly relevant evidence – evidence given by everyone from judges to lawyers to former clients – favorable to Mr. Hunter. In short, the opinion is a hatchet job. By contrast, one quality of Mr. Hunter’s legal documents is that they are trustworthy – when Mr. Hunter says a case stands for a proposition, then it does. Judge Cheever testified that Mr. Hunter’s “cases were well cited. He didn’t send me off to rely on a case that didn’t stand for the proposition that he was quoting for it. And the facts that he stated also turned out to be true.” Of course, the panel’s smear opinion ignored Judge Cheever’s testimony – as it ignored the testimony of two other judges and one magistrate who testified to Will Hunter’s effective representation of his clients in matters before them. One might think that an ethics panel would scrupulously avoid even the appearance of a lack of impartiality or bias. One would be wrong. In this case, shortly before things got nasty, Mr. Hunter had represented Vincent Illuzzi. In his capacity as counsel for Mr. Illuzzi, Mr. Hunter sued Professional Conduct Board – including the members of the panel – in federal district court. Thus, Mr. Hunter’s disbarment case was com-posed of individuals who were named defendants in a federal lawsuit brought by Mr. Hunter on behalf of Mr. Illuzzi. Given such ineptitude, it should surprise no one that the opinion’s blunderbuss methodology utterly misses the issue that is the heart of the Will Hunter affair; Does the entirety of Mr. Hunter’s practice his-tory command the conclusion that he is unfit to practice law in Vermont? This is a subtle decision requireing an appreciating of nuance – qualitied utterly lacking in the panel’s opinion. It is simply wrong for the panel to look only as Mr. Hunter’s sins in isolation and to conclude blithely that Mr. Hunter’s transgressions exhaust the entire truth of his life as a lawyer. By judging Mr. Hunter solely by his moments of weakness, lapses and limits, the panel was oblivious to the principle upon which the disbarment rule is based: proportionately. Proportionality is both a principle on which the laws of punishment are based and a commonly under-stood aspect of human affairs. Proportionality, for instance, prevents the police from shooting jaywalkers, even though the latter are breaking the law. In short, “proportionality” is the idea that the punishment should fit the crime. To be sure, the big sinners who flagrantly violate certain norms of professional conduct should be dis-barred. From what I know of Mr. Hunter’s case he is not a sinner. The panel's opinion does nothing to persuade me otherwise. William hunter is the kind of lawyer many of us wish we had the courage to be. The line between respect an jealousy can be fine. That, in the end, might explain the bars churlish persecution of one the finest attorneys in this or any other state. The Vermont Supreme Court should entirely disregard the panel's opinion. Further, the court should appoint an independent prosecutor and hearing board to investigate (1) the reasons for the shameful opinion issued by the panel, and (2) whether sanctionable or civilly actionable prosecutorial misconduct occurred in the case. Secrecy is a petri dish for governmental corrupttion, incompetence and misconduct. If any good is to come of the persecution of Will Hunter perhaps it will be this. Michael Mello is a professor of law at the Vermont Law School.

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