Affidavit Alleges Lawyer Had Affair with Client’s Wife During Murder Trial
A lawyer who defended an Ohio man convicted of murder is accused in an affidavit of having an affair with his client’s wife during the 1997 trial.
The affidavit accuses Columbus lawyer James Owen of having sex with the wife of his client at a local hotel only hours after the defendant was convicted of murdering his parents, the Columbus Dispatch reports. In the affidavit by the woman, Celeste Caulley Bowman, she says the affair began shortly after the arrest of her husband, Robert Caulley, and continued until late 1998, about a year after his conviction.
The affidavit was submitted in a bid to win a new trial for Caulley, a former aeronautical engineer. Caulley has maintained his confession to the murders was coerced and he is innocent. DNA tests were inconclusive and no physical evidence ties him to the murders, the Dispatch says.
Bowman said she had sex with Owen at his office and conference room, local hotels, his lake cottage, and other places, the story says. Bowman and Caulley divorced in 2000, but she visited him in jail last June.
Bowman told the Dispatch she waited 15 years to reveal the affair because of fear that she would harm Owen’s career and family life. She said she finally told of the relationship because she felt guilty after the jail visit and because her mother had been urging her to do so.
The Dispatch was unable to reach Owen for comment. His lawyer, Geoffrey Stern, told the ABA Journal that lawyer discipline confidentiality rules limit what he can say about the matter. “What I can tell you,” he said, “is that article obviously raises significant issues that we’re looking into very carefully.”
Story updated at 10:34 a.m. to include comment from Stern.
