Court docket document particulars allegations versus commonwealth’s legal professional
(LEX 18) — A recently-filed court docket document has specified more particulars on alleged moral issues encompassing a central Kentucky commonwealth’s attorney.
Scrutiny of commonwealth’s lawyer Sharon Muse Johnson started with a letter by former Circuit Courtroom Choose Brian Privett to the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office environment. In it, Privett asked for an investigation into allegations that Muse Johnson experienced allowed way too numerous grand jurors to be current for a variety of indictment hearings because she took office environment, and accused her of letting a actuality television display pilot to be filmed in her place of work.
At the time, Muse Johnson said that “all allegations of illegal and/ or unethical perform contained in the letter are both blatantly fake or grossly deceptive.”
Muse Johnson serves Scott, Woodford and Bourbon counties, wherever the grand jury difficulties have now called into issue a selection of prison cases. Some indictments are predicted to be dismissed, and Muse Johnson has reported her workplace would re-current every case for indictment.
Now, a letter that was incorporated as an exhibit to assistance a motion in a Bourbon County felony circumstance is displaying that 1 of Muse Johnson’s former assistant commonwealth’s attorneys also experienced moral problems.
Muse Johnson claimed in a statement Thursday that the allegations in the much more new letter mirror people in Privett’s letter, and said that the Kentucky Legal professional General’s Business office experienced concluded an investigation of the promises and ended up “clearing” her.
The a few-page letter was written in December by Kate Bennett, who labored in Muse Johnson’s place of work for two decades as the initial assistant commonwealth’s legal professional. In the letter, which was despatched to the Kentucky Bar Association’s Ethics Hotline, in-depth some of Bennett’s fears about alleged goings-on in the place of work.
A person of the allegations surrounded the described filming of the television pilot in the business. Bennett wrote that while filming, Muse Johnson staged a discussion about a felony situation pending grand jury presentation that was “still in the energetic stages of investigations.”
Bennett also wrote that when she lifted worries about currently being recorded for the alleged pilot, Muse Johnson instructed her that “only the production corporations that are vying for the show will see it.”
The letter also alleges that Muse Johnson would generally report meetings with witnesses in conditions remaining well prepared for trial and instructed her staff members to do the exact. Bennett writes that the recordings integrated possible evidence and were not turned around to defense counsel.
Muse Johnson’s total statement Thursday in reaction to the allegations in the letter is as follows:
“The Kentucky Attorney General’s Place of work concluded its investigation on May perhaps 6 clearing Sharon Muse Johnson of the allegations and closing their file. The Attorney General’s Business office has also conducted its investigation into the grand jury make a difference and to day has left all circumstances to Ms. Muse Johnson for even more proceedings. Ms. Bennett’s allegations are a outcome of her misunderstanding of law and fact, and mirror preceding statements by previous Decide Privett that have now been reviewed and closed by the Attorney General’s Office. Ms. Muse Johnson will continue to get the job done for the group and not be distracted by politically enthusiastic and wrong allegations.”
Bennett introduced the pursuing assertion about her letter to the Kentucky Bar Association’s ethical hotline:
“SCR 3.130 (8.3) mandates lawyers to report qualified and unethical misconduct of other attorneys. As a vocation prosecutor, I have a obligation to stick to the law and report this kind of carry out. I stand by just about every term of my letter.”