Mahoning County Bar Association v. Rauzan And Wagner

150 N.E.3d 888 (2020)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

D, and Wagner were admitted to the practice of law in Ohio in 2013 and 1988. D also served as the chief of police for Campbell, Ohio. In 2016, an investigator discovered that D, while serving as police chief, had conducted searches on the OHLEG system that were not connected to any legitimate law enforcement purpose. Although unauthorized access to OHLEG is a fifth-degree felony, R.C. 2913.04(I), the prosecutor decided to resolve the matter through a plea agreement in which D agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges, resign as police chief, surrender his Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy (OPOTA) certificate, and self-report his convictions to P. In July 2018, P charged D with violating the Rules of Professional Conduct based on his misdemeanor convictions for improperly accessing the Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway (OHLEG) system during his service as police chief. P also charged D with commingling personal and client funds in his client trust account. The parties stipulated and P found that D violated Prof.Cond.R. 8.4(b) (prohibiting a lawyer from committing an illegal act that reflects adversely on the lawyer's honesty or trustworthiness). P discovered that D had been commingling personal funds with client funds in the account and that he had been using his trust account as an operating account for his law firm. D also admitted that he had failed to maintain the necessary records for his client trust account. D has since corrected the deficiencies. The parties stipulated and P found that D violated Prof.Cond.R. 1.15(a) (requiring a lawyer to hold property of clients in an interest-bearing client trust account, separate from the lawyer's own property, and to maintain certain records for the account and perform and retain a monthly reconciliation of the funds in the account).