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Tillett motion says N.C. Bar unlawfully obtained files from JSC
By: Russ Lay
Reprinted with permission from
outerbanksvoice.com/commentary/
Did the North Carolina State Bar “unlawfully and improperly” obtain confidential files from the North Carolina
Judicial Standards Commission that were used in disciplinary actions against Judge Jerry R. Tillett?
A “motion to dismiss” filed on May 24 by Tillett’s attorneys before the North Carolina’s Disciplinary Hearing
Commission alleges the State Bar did.
The story first broke in the trade publication North Carolina Lawyer’s Weekly.
The new allegations cast an even longer shadow over the propriety of the State Bar’s actions against the Dare County
Superior Court judge as well as other reported excesses by its Disciplinary Hearing Commission.
The Bar’s pursuit of three defense attorneys have been brought to pubic light by former North Carolina Supreme Court
Justice Robert Orr and Raleigh media and have become a part of a larger review of the Bar by Chief Justice Mark Martin.
Adding significant weight to the charges is a sworn affidavit in the motion from a high-ranking attorney for the Judicial
Standards Commission who worked on Tillett’s case when complaints were filed against the judge before that body
in 2012.
In his affidavit, J. Christopher Heagarty, former commission counsel and executive director of the North Carolina Judicial
Standards Commission, states that Patrick Murphy, an attorney with the State Bar, “came to see me in the JSC office to discuss Judge Tillett.”
Previously, Heagarty described a request from the State Bar for information in the JSC file on Tillett, saying he “copied information from the Tillett investigative
file, mostly taken from the JSC investigative report.”
He then says that at the meeting, “Murphy had in his possession a white loose-leaf notebook. Inside the notebook was a typed timeline of the case I had never
seen before. Behind the timeline was a copy of the JSC investigative report on Judge Tillett.
“The notebook contained information beyond the investigative report, including my hand-written attorney notes, a confidential legal analysis of the disciplinary
case against Judge Tillett that I had prepared for the Commission members, and other correspondence from the investigative file.”
Heagarty concludes: “I was stunned to see that Mr. Murphy’s notebook included original documents, not copies, from the JSC, including my original
handwritten notes.
“These notes and my confidential legal analysis prepared for the Commission were protected by attorney-client privilege and were not included in the
information I had copied for the State Bar.”
Heagarty says he quizzed the Bar attorney about where he received those files and the attorney responded “he did not know.”
On March 8, 2013 the Judicial Standards Commission, which is charged under state law to investigate complaints against judges, issued a public reprimand
against Tillett stemming from his involvement in a personnel dispute between the Town of Kill Devil Hills and four of its police officers.
Two years later, the State Bar, in an unprecedented move, began its own investigation against Tillett, the first ever by the Bar against a sitting judge.
The complaint was filed by then-Kill Devil Hills Town Attorney Steven Michael, who also happened to be a past president of the Bar and chairman of the Bar’s
Disciplinary Hearing Commission, the panel which would hear the complaint against Tillett. Michael retired as town attorney last week, but his firm still
represents Kill Devil Hills.
The Town of Kill Devil Hills has been tussling with Tillett since 2011 and has been extremely aggressive in requesting sanctions against him before the JSC and
the State Bar.
In spite of the unclear jurisdictional authority of the State Bar to discipline a sitting judge and the apparent conflict of interest between Michael’s dual role as
town attorney and the Disciplinary Hearing Commission, the Bar persevered, going as far as to deny Tillett a hearing in front of the panel, instead finding him
“guilty” in a summary judgement.
The Bar was set to issue punishment against Tillett in late June. In another unprecedented move, the
North Carolina Supreme Court reversed a January decision that held Tillett must exhaust his appeals
through the State Bar and the Court of Appeals before appealing to that body.
The reversal stayed any Bar actions against Tillett, and the Supreme Court agreed to take up Tillett’s case
directly, bypassing all lower courts of appeal.
If these allegations prove to be true, it will be another setback to the State Bar and the Town of Kill Devil
Hills in their half-decade-long pursuit of Tillett.
Editors note: We continue to reprint these stories from the outerbanksvoice.com to let our readers
know the details of an attempt to overturn the election of a judge, and the lengths that a small
cadre will go to accomplish their goal. We will keep our readers informed until the conclusion
of this story.
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