Longtime Prosecutor Faces Ethics Complaint for Sarcastic Closings, Blog Comments
An ethics complaint accuses a longtime Chicago prosecutor of lying to a blogger about a past disciplinary probe and making sarcastic closing arguments.
Laura Morask, a Cook County prosecutor since 1987, faced an earlier ethics complaint over her courtroom arguments, but an inquiry board panel closed the probe in 2006 with a warning that her actions may have been inconsistent with ethics rules, according to the new complaint. The Chicago Tribune has the story.
Morask later ran for a judgeship and objected when Jack Leyhane on his blog For What It’s Worth linked to a bar group’s negative rating based on negative appeals decisions about her courtroom conduct, the ethics complaint says. Morask wrote to the blogger, a local lawyer, saying she had a full and complete hearing on the conduct allegations and had been completely cleared. The blogger posted the comments.
At no time had there been proceedings before a hearing board, let along a full and complete hearing, the ethics complaint says, and at no time was she cleared.
The complaint also accuses Morask of making sarcastic statements in three trials that occurred before the 2006 private admonishment, all of which were highlighted in appellate opinions. Among the allegations:
• In 1999, she sarcastically called a woman accused of killing her daughter “Mother Teresa” and “June Cleaver.”
• In 2001, she used sarcasm to support a rape victim who had difficulty identifying the defendant. “It’s really tough to be a rape victim now,” she said. “Hold on a minute, Mr. Rapist, I know you’re about to plunge your penis in me, but I think I need to take a picture of you so that I won’t get blamed in court later for forgetting anything.”
Updated at 4:59 p.m. to link to Morask’s comments.
