Court disbars ex-prosecutor convicted for secret recordings, says he created impression 'justice is for sale'
A former part-time prosecutor convicted for secretly recording intimate images of two lovers, including a woman he prosecuted, has been disbarred.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court revoked the law license of Daniel P. Steffen, a former assistant district attorney, in a July 1 opinion noted by the Legal Profession Blog. The state supreme court rejected as insufficient a referee’s recommendation for an 18-month suspension.
Steffen can petition for reinstatement under Wisconsin law after five years. He license revocation was retroactive to June 2023, the date of a summary suspension.
Steffen was convicted in April 2023 for violating a Wisconsin law barring the capture of intimate representations of a person without the victim’s knowledge or consent. He spent 10 months in jail before being freed under an earned release program.
Ethics regulators alleged that Steffen violated a professional conduct rule providing that lawyers should not commit criminal conduct that adversely affects their honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer. The Wisconsin Supreme Court said it is wrong to focus only on the criminal violation, however, in assessing the ethics violation.
The referee had found that the two women voluntarily entered into relationships with Steffen, and there was no quid pro quo. But Steffen’s conduct with the woman he prosecuted “creates the impression that justice is for sale, and that public officials can be bought off with sexual acts,” the Wisconsin Supreme Court said.
The state supreme court also noted that the second woman had sought advice on how to avoid prosecution for an alleged act of property damage after the sexual encounter, creating a “subtext” about forbearing prosecution despite no explicit conversation to that effect.
“In short,” the state supreme court said, “the overall nature of attorney Steffen’s misconduct does not simply involve recording sexual acts without the consent of his victims; it involves an assistant district attorney abusing his position of power and authority.”
The referee had indicated that the record is not very clear on “who was being used and who was the user,” an assertion rejected by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
“Both victims were vulnerable by the very fact that attorney Steffen was an assistant district attorney and held the power of the justice system over their head like the proverbial Sword of Damocles,” the state supreme court said.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court summarized the alleged wrongdoing based on the referee’s findings and stipulated facts.
The woman Steffen prosecuted had been charged in Burnett County, Wisconsin, with violating a harassment restraining order protecting the father of their child. The underlying criminal complaint alleged that Steffen gave the woman his personal cellphone number at the initial pretrial conference in June 2018. They exchanged flirty text messages and discussed going out for a drink, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said.
A week later, Steffen mailed a proposed judgment of conviction to the woman that would allow her to wipe her record clean if she pleaded guilty, committed no further criminal acts, and did not contact the father outside of visitation for a specified time period. The initial proposal requiring a clean record for one year was reduced to six months at the plea hearing.
The woman pleaded guilty, and the same day, Steffen and the victim began exchanging sexual text messages. In July 2018, the district attorney’s office received a referral alleging that the woman violated the harassment injunction against her child’s father. Steffen allegedly told a paralegal that the violation would not be prosecuted. Steffen and the woman began a sexual relationship the same month.
The district attorney’s office received a second harassment referral at the end of July 2018. There was no prosecution. Steffen had maintained that he did not make the prosecution decision on either referral. He also testified at his disciplinary hearing that he thought that the matter against the woman was closed at the time of the initial agreement.
The case against the woman was ultimately dismissed based on a January 2019 motion by the district attorney’s office.
Steffen was accused in the criminal complaint of recording secret videos of sexual acts with the woman on an iPad on his dresser pointed at the bed. Although the criminal charges said there was no consent to two recordings of the woman, there was testimony at trial that she had consented to some recordings of other sexual encounters.
The woman disclosed her relationship with Steffen to a special agent while jailed on another matter. She asserted that she had sex with an assistant dsitrict attorney in Burnett County in exchange for leniency on a criminal case.
The second woman began a sexual relationship with Steffen in 2017 after they began exchanging sexual text messages. The secret recording was made in August of that year. After the sexual encounter, Steffen spoke to the victim about her concerns about possible criminal charges for damaging the mailbox of her daughter’s father.
Steffen later told the woman that he recorded the encounter but deleted it from his cellphone after she became angry and asked him to remove it. The video remained on his iPad, however. The woman later tried to “blackmail” Steffen during an investigation of the recordings by offering to withhold her cellphone number from investigators if the lawyer forgave a bill owed by one of her friends, the referee found.
The referee noted that both women had exchanged intimate images with Steffen in text messages and said that complicated the seriousness of the offense. He also found that both women voluntarily entered into sexual relationships with Steffen without coercion or threats.
Steffen had said he was at “an emotional low point” at the time of the offenses. He cooperated in the disciplinary investigation.
Steffen was admitted to law practice in Wisconsin in September 1998 and has no prior disciplinary history.
He did not immediately reply to an ABA Journal email request for comment sent to an email address listed by the State Bar of Wisconsin. Nor did he immediately reply to the Journal’s voicemail.
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