Sex Crime Involved Moral Turpitude

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has disbarred an attorney convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude

In analyzing whether an offense constitutes a crime of moral turpitude per se we look at the elements of the crime, not the specific facts of the individual case, and consider whether the least culpable offender engaged in a crime of moral turpitude. See, e.g., In re Shorter, 570 A.2d 760, 765 (D.C. 1990); accord In re Rohde, 191 A.3d 1124, 111 (D.C. 2018) (explaining that to amount to a crime of moral turpitude per se, “the statute, in all applications, [must] criminalize[] conduct that “offends the generally accepted moral code of mankind,” “involve[] baseness, vileness or depravity,” or offend[] universal notions of “justice, honesty, or morality.”).

Here, similar to the statute in In re Sharp, 672 A.2d 899 (D.C. 1996) (imposing strict liability where the adult perpetrator was in a custodial or supervisory relationship with the child victim), the Ohio statute criminalizes sexual contact with a child at least four years younger than the age of consent. We agree with the Board that this age gap forecloses any claims that the offender could reasonably but mistakenly believe the child was old enough to give legal consent. We further determine that this criminal sexual contact meets our criterion of “offending the generally moral code” of our society. In re Colson, 412 A.2d 1160, 1168 (D.C.1979) (en banc). We thus see no reason to reject the Board’s categorization of the Ohio offense. Because respondent has been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude per se, the appropriate sanction is to disbar him from the practice of law.

(Mike Frisch)