Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Disgraced Boardman Atty. Edward F. Sturgeon should be suspended indefinitely from the practice of law, the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline says in a report to the Ohio Supreme Court. The justices have the final say on what should be done to members of the profession who have fallen from legal grace.
If only it were Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul Gains or any of the other lawyers who had learned of Sturgeon's abusive behavior calling for his banishment from the practice of law. As the grievances and discipline board correctly put it, the local lawyer indulged in "reprehensible and egregious misbehavior."
What did the former assistant Mahoning County prosecutor do? He had sex with one client in March 2003 and exposed himself to another client in June 2003. Both acts occurred in his downtown Youngstown private law office. Sturgeon has denied an allegation that he wanted a third woman to trade sex for legal fees in March 2004 at her townhouse in Liberty Township.
It was the Mahoning County Bar Association and the State Disciplinary Counsel that filed the misconduct case against Sturgeon. It is proper to single out Atty. Ronald E. Slipski, one of the two members of the county bar's grievance committee, for praise. Slipski prosecuted Sturgeon for three professional misconduct charges, but more than that, he went public with his criticism of those lawyers who became aware of the misconduct and failed to live up to the code of professional conduct.
"In general terms, any lawyer who has reason to believe that there has been violation of the judicial code of professional responsibility by either a lawyer or a judge is obligated to inform the appropriate authority," Slipski said last December. "That could be either a local certified grievance committee or disciplinary counsel."
Formal investigation
However, when the allegation about Sturgeon surfaced in March 2003, lawyers who were aware of it failed to do what the code of professional conduct requires of them. As we contended in an editorial in December, had the bar's grievance committee known about the allegation and launched an investigation, there is every reason to believe Sturgeon would have been dissuaded from continuing his illicit conduct. We called for a formal investigation into the failure of the lawyers to alert the bar of the then assistant county prosecutor's sexually abusive behavior.
Who knew? Dionne Almasy, the Youngstown prosecutor at the time, John A. McNally IV, the city's law director at the time and now a county commissioner, Sturgeon's lawyer, and last, but certainly not least, county Prosecutor Gains.
Almasy, McNally and the lawyer knew in March 2003 that a female client had filed a police report in which she described a sex act in Sturgeon's office. Gains ultimately found out that an employee of his was the subject of a police report.
We don't know whether a formal investigation into this violation of the professional code of conduct was ever launched, but in light of the recommendation from the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline, Gains and the others can make amends by urging -- in writing, so there is a record -- the Ohio Supreme Court justices to suspend Sturgeon indefinitely from the practice of law.
A letter from Gains would be noteworthy because he not only is Mahoning County's lawyer, but because Sturgeon was on his payroll. It would send a strong message to the Supreme Court and to the residents of the Mahoning Valley that no one is above the law -- especially not those who have sworn to uphold the law.
Gains' letter would also let it be known that the old standard in effect in this area for so long -- the one that said a lawyer does not speak ill of a fellow lawyer -- no longer governs.
The prosecutor, in particular, must speak up.