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| Screenshot from a YouTube video uploaded to her campaign website, July 21, 2021. |
By Hannah Black
CHEYENNE – A hearing panel convened by the Wyoming State Bar will recommend disbarment of Laramie County District Attorney Leigh Anne Manlove to the Wyoming Supreme Court.
The decision was read early Friday afternoon by hearing panel Chairman Christopher Hawks about two hours after he and the panel broke to deliberate.
Hawks, an attorney based in Jackson, was one of three panel members chosen from the Bar’s full Board of Professional Responsibility, the hearing body for attorney discipline in Wyoming.
“This panel finds the injury caused by (Manlove’s) conduct is serious,” Hawks said.
Following a seven-day hearing, the panel on Thursday found Manlove in violation of multiple rules of professional conduct that govern attorneys in the state. The violations included exaggerating the impact of budget restraints, failing to take prompt action to fill vacancies in her office, directing staff not to report overtime and filing improper motions to dismiss after judges warned her to stop.
Failure to file documents in a timely fashion in the Andrew Weaver case, which led to his release, and a “misleading” news release following the incident contributed to the panel’s findings. Within a few days of him leaving jail, Weaver had shot and killed two people, injuring two others.
Also noted was a repeated failure to access crime lab data in the case of an alleged child sex abuse victim, which was referred to the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office in January, and a failure to provide evidence in a 2019 case, resulting in the dismissal of a case against a man charged with multiple violent felonies.
The state Supreme Court will have the final say in any discipline.
Formal charges filed by the Office of Bar Counsel last year with the State Bar allege that Manlove mishandled the prosecution of cases in Laramie County and inappropriately dismissed certain cases, and that she created a hostile work environment for employees of the district attorney’s office.
“Until the Wyoming Supreme Court acts, Leigh Anne Manlove will continue to serve as the Laramie County district attorney, and she’s committed to serving the citizens of Laramie County as long as she remains in office,” said Stephen Melchior, Manlove’s attorney, following the announcement of the disbarment recommendation. “We live in a nation, fortunately, that is governed by the rule of law. She respects and honors that very foundational important principle and trusts the process.”
Manlove’s term will be up in January 2023, unless she is re-elected in November.
Special Bar Counsel Weston W. Reeves, who represented the Bar in the hearing, declined to comment.
Process could take months
If the Supreme Court decides to disbar or suspend Manlove from practicing law while she still holds the office of district attorney, “she would not be able to appear in court, argue cases, do anything that a lawyer does,” Bar Counsel Mark Gifford said in a Friday interview with the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
The panel will now be responsible for writing a report and recommendation with its specific findings. This will likely be filed with the state Supreme Court within a couple of weeks, Gifford explained.
Manlove will have 30 days to respond with an objection. Reeves will then have 30 days from that filing to enter his response. The court may grant extensions to either party.
A decision by the state Supreme Court may take several months. The court could decide to set the case for oral arguments, Gifford said, which likely wouldn’t happen until fall.
The court took close to nine months to decide on a punishment for Becket Hinckley, a former Teton County prosecutor who was suspended from practicing law in Wyoming for three years. A State Bar hearing panel had recommended Hinckley be disbarred after it found he violated seven rules of professional conduct in a 2015 aggravated assault trial, according to reporting by the Casper Star-Tribune.
The Manlove hearing was just the second of its kind, following a rule change in September 2019 that required documents and information related to Bar disciplinary proceedings be available to the public. Hinckley’s May 2021 disciplinary hearing was the first conducted in public.
Gifford declined to comment on the outcome of the hearing or the hearing itself.
‘My remorse and my regret’
Manlove made a statement to the panel Friday before it broke to deliberate sanction recommendations. She thanked the panel for giving her the opportunity “to express my contrition and my remorse and my regret.”
When she was sworn into the Bar, she said, she took an oath that included the promise to “demean myself uprightly.”
“I think I’ve fallen short of that,” Manlove said.
She said she was “profoundly sorry” for words she used that were hurtful to others, and said she plans to apologize in person to the appropriate people.
Manlove said she appreciated that the panel “deliberated thoughtfully,” and expressed that she does not take her job or the cases she handles lightly.
Friday morning, Reeves and Melchior each had an hour to argue aggravated and mitigating factors before the panel broke to deliberate.
Before he announced the panel’s disbarment recommendation, Hawks listed the aggravating factors it found in the case, or things that increased the severity of the violations. These included Manlove having a “dishonest motive,” a pattern of misconduct, refusing to acknowledge the wrongfulness of her actions, having substantial experience in the practice of law, and the vulnerability of the victim, which Hawks said are the people of Laramie County.
Mitigating
factors found by the panel included personal or emotional problems, the
COVID-19 pandemic and the state budget crisis.
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