30-day suspension for sex with client isn't too lenient, lawyer argues
Seeking to persuade Tennessee’s top court to impose a 30-day license suspension on an attorney who admittedly had sex with a client, the respondent’s counsel on Wednesday argued that the client consented.
But counsel’s arguments did not seem to be well-received by at least some members of the Tennessee Supreme Court, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports.
Counsel Julie Rice described attorney Robert Vogel as suffering from a sex addiction and called his relationship with the client, a drug-addicted woman that he was appointed to represent in federal court, an unthinking act.
Justice Cornelia Clark apparently was not persuaded.
“If you are a lawyer thinking about having sex with your client, you better think first,” she said.
Vogel’s client, who was at one point the girlfriend of a man accused of operating a $6.5 million pill operation in West Knoxville, faced a hefty sentence if convicted and told investigators she felt Vogel “held her future in his hands.”
The state’s top court took over the determination of an appropriate sanction for Vogel after deciding that a 30-day suspension recommended by a disciplinary panel was too lenient.
