By Ellen Gerst
A decision on disbarment for a Teton County prosecutor who violated seven rules of professional conduct is still pending in the Wyoming Supreme Court, more than seven months later.
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| Hinckley |
A three-person Board of Professional Responsibility panel found in the hearing that Hinckley had knowingly lied in court, failed to secure certain records in the case, disobeyed direct orders from a judge, made inappropriate comments during the trial and failed to follow up on warrants and preservation letters with law enforcement.
Bar counsel Mark Gifford said at the conclusion of the hearing that the state’s highest court typically rules on disbarment decisions (though they are relatively rare) within three months of a recommendation. The process may be drawn out longer if Hinckley appeals the decision, but that can’t happen until the Supreme Court rules.
Gifford said that only once in roughly the last 10 years has the court disagreed with a recommendation for disbarment.
Chief Justice Kate Fox said she can’t comment on the decision since it’s still under the court’s advisement.
“As with every other case before us, the Supreme Court takes the time necessary to review the record, research the law, and issue a well-reasoned opinion,” Fox said in an email to the Casper Star-Tribune last week.
The May hearing, held in Casper, was the first in the state to be open to the public following a September 2019 rule change that made the practice standard.
Black was convicted of assault after his then-girlfriend was badly injured while living with him in Jackson, sustaining a fractured cheek bone and nasal passage, a cut that needed stitches near her eye, and bruising and bleeding in her brain. Blood found on Black’s shirt matched hers, but blood in the victim’s car and skin under her fingernails did not match his. He has maintained his innocence since the beginning.
During the bar tribunal, Hinckley admitted he had been “sloppy and negligent” when he failed to produce evidence repeatedly ordered by a judge in Black’s case. Court records show that records from Facebook and Verizon, which Black said would have proved he wasn’t with the victim at the time of the attack, were not obtained despite Hinckley telling the judge at least eight times that he was trying to track them down.
A Teton County jury found Black guilty of the assault, and two prior violent felony convictions from California meant he was sentenced to life as a “habitual criminal.”
Black’s conviction was reversed by the Wyoming Supreme Court in 2017. The court wrote in its decision that there was “no question” of prosecutorial misconduct in his trial.
Black’s case was sent back for a new trial in Teton County, where Hinckley again represented the state. He was taken off the case eight months later, after again failing to produce the evidence. Black took a deal, pleading no contest to the charges to drop the habitual criminal designation. He was sentenced to six and a half to 10 years in prison, and had already served four. After finishing his sentence and fighting for good time on his reversed life sentence, he was released to the Casper Reentry Center in January 2020 for a two-month stint before getting out.
Hinckley, who comes from a long line of Wyoming lawyers and judges, resigned as a prosecutor in Jackson in 2019. Jeffrey Donnell, a retired judge who sat on the three-person tribunal to determine his misconduct, said in delivering their decision that he had known Hinckley since he was 6 years old.
“I’m proud of my
career, but I’m not proud of this,” Hinckley said at the time of the
tribunal’s decision. “I failed the people of Wyoming, the people of
Teton County, I failed myself, and most importantly failed [the victim]
and her family.”
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