In
the fall of 1969, Dad drove me to college in Richmond, Virginia, to begin my
freshman year. After moving me into the
dorm, he sat down for a father-daughter talk.
Although I was excited to be in college, I was nervous as I didn’t know any one
at the school.
As
always, Dad sensed how I felt. He said,
“Now Trice, there’s absolutely nothin’ for you to be worried about here. If anything comes up that you can’t handle,
you just pick up the phone and I’ll be here within two shakes of a
rattlesnake’s tail.”
“But, Dad”, I asked, “how will I know whether I can
handle the problem on my own?”
He answered, “Well, you think about the problem a bit
and if you can’t find anything funny about it, you call me.”
The past few weeks, I’ve thought about that
afternoon. I’m hiding out at my home office
from a highly contagious virus that’s killing thousands of people
worldwide. If that weren’t bad enough,
the stock market has tanked. I wonder if
my meager life savings will be in the bank next week. Will there even be a bank next week? I have
thought and thought but I can’t find anything funny about this.
At a time like
this, I believe Dad would have told me to see if I could find anything else that
was funny. After all, any laugh would
help. Luckily a 2019 State Bar Ethics
opinion flashed across my news feed. Thinking that you folks could also use a
laugh, I’m passing it on.
It seems that a district attorney and a criminal
defense lawyer decided to have an affair.
You might think that they would have a few worries – jealous spouses,
rashes, or pregnancy. But these two were
most worried about the State Bar finding out.
Now I don’t think the State Bar has a sex investigations unit, but just
to be careful, these lawyers asked the Bar for an opinion.
First, the Bar thoroughly researched the issue, citing
cases from around the country. (I didn’t
know that this type of behavior was a nationwide epidemic, but apparently it is
a big problem.) Then, after due
consideration, the Bar ruled that in order to avoid the appearance of a
conflict of interest, the lawyers should FIRST obtain their clients’ informed,
written consent to the affair.
I’m not sure what information you have to give your
client to be sure that the consent is informed.
I leave that to your imagination.
As far as getting consent, I guess the district attorney will have to
request a special election so he can get written consent from his clients – the
local voters. Imagine the campaign
promises!!! It would surely get out the
vote. Is a majority vote
sufficient? Or does the DA need 100%
approval?
But my chief worry is that when these two lovebirds told
the Bar that their affair had gone on for “one to three months,” they had unknowingly
confessed to the crime of lewd and lascivious cohabitation. (N.C. Gen. Stat. 14-184).
Now you might think that the “carrying on” could not
have been too “lewd and lascivious” as the lawyers couldn’t remember how long
it went on. Of course, that depends on
the legal meaning of “lewd and lascivious cohabitation.” As a law student, I was clueless – but
couldn’t wait to find out. To my
surprise, it doesn’t matter which sex acts took place. The only issue is how
long the sex continued. In the landmark Robinson
case, the Court noted that the defendants had been shacked up in a trailer park
for three or four weeks. That was entirely too long.
Years ago, a local high school asked me to teach a law
class. As I was explaining the dangers
of lewd and lascivious conduct, one young fellow asked, “Does that mean that on
day 14, I need to break up with my girlfriend and hang out with someone else
for a day or so and then I can go back?”
Before I could answer, an angry young lady in the back of the class
yelled, “No!!!! You MAY NOT!” The
lecture kind of disintegrated from there and, to my surprise, I was never asked
to return.
Dad was one of the wisest people I ever knew. He’s right.
You can always find something funny.
And when you can laugh, you can handle anything. We’ll get through this. We’ve seen worse.
Patrice Walker
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