At The Top

A three-year suspension has been imposed by the Iowa Supreme Court

The Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board filed a complaint charging attorney Scott A. Johnson with nineteen violations of the Iowa Rules of Professional Conduct involving six different clients. The majority stemmed from neglect of cases and clients, but the most serious involved forgery and deception related to Johnson’s representation of criminal defendants where he lied to the courts in furtherance of his own self-interests. The Board asks that this court find all the alleged violations established and suspend Johnson’s license to practice law for three years. Upon our de novo review of the record, we are persuaded by the Board’s position and suspend Johnson’s law license.

The attorney was admitted in 2015 and had failed to participate in the proceedings after an initial response.

A short but rocky tenure at the Bar

Johnson’s current violations and his suspension related to the audit of his trust fund are not the only instances of discipline in his relatively short tenure as an Iowa attorney. In 2019, Johnson received a public reprimand for failing to act diligently in representing a client pursuing a PCR appeal, causing the client’s appeal to be dismissed. And even that was “not [his] first time neglecting an appeal,” as shown by the private reprimand he received earlier that same year. This prior history of discipline—particularly Johnson’s prior history of failing to act diligently in representing appointed clients—is a significant aggravating factor.

Most significantly

It is particularly troubling that Johnson forged a plea of guilty—even after his client told him he would not sign. The client is the master of his own fate, and an attorney who cannot be troubled to seek or follow the client’s direction should not be practicing law. Attorneys are granted substantial latitude in deciding how to best prosecute or defend a case on their client’s behalf, see 16 Gregory C. Sisk & Mark S. Cady, Iowa Practice Series: Lawyer and Judicial Ethics § 5:2(b) author’s cmt., at 164–65 (2022 ed., 2022), but certain decisions are always retained by the client. In criminal cases that list is fairly short, and whether to plead guilty is right at the top.

(Mike Frisch)