Rehabilitation Establishes Fitness To Practice

The Ohio Supreme Court has issued an opinion allowing an applicant to sit for the bar examination.

The applicant’s criminal history

Notestine testified that she started using marijuana in high school to self-medicate debilitating migraines that sometimes resulted in hospitalization. She explained that the medications prescribed to her were ineffective and that marijuana was the one thing that relieved her pain. While she currently holds a medical marijuana card, the drug was not approved for medical use when she started using it. She stated that in order to obtain the drug, she was “going to places where other things [were] being sold” and exposing herself to people and experiences that lowered her moral compass.

Notestine was first convicted of marijuana possession, a minor misdemeanor, in July 2004, when she was 20 years old. She testified that, unbeknownst to her, a friend who was riding in her car lit a marijuana cigarette. The police pulled Notestine over, searched the vehicle, and ticketed her after finding her own unsmoked marijuana cigarette. Notestine stated that she considered the offense to be like receiving a traffic ticket; she paid the fine but did not take it seriously or change her behavior.

Notestine testified that while she was using marijuana illegally, she spent time around drug dealers and that after seeing them sell “bad drugs,” including heroin, to other people, she thought selling drugs would not be hard to do. She stated that she purchased less than a gram of heroin with the intent to sell it. Approximately one week later, two of her associates suggested that they go out to eat. As she drove into the restaurant parking lot, her vehicle was rushed by law enforcement officers. The officers found the heroin on Notestine’s person and arrested her.

Notestine testified that she never sold any of the heroin she purchased but that she had taken it with her that day with the intent to sell it. In August 2005, she pleaded no contest in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas to a fifthdegree felony count of heroin possession. The court sentenced her to two years of community control, suspended her driver’s license, and ordered her to submit to random drug testing for six months. With her NCBE questionnaire, Notestine submitted a copy of an August 28, 2007 entry of the common pleas court terminating her community control and closing the case.

In July 2006, after finishing the drug-testing portion of her sentence, Notestine decided to smoke marijuana again. Hours later, federal agents came to her home to investigate a conspiracy case involving the two associates with whom Notestine had previously been arrested. Agents found the marijuana, which resulted in a second minor-misdemeanor conviction for possession of marijuana.

In October 2006, an indictment was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division, naming Notestine and eight others who were associates in an illegal-drug network—two being those who were with Notestine during her heroin-possession arrest. The indictment alleged that Notestine and her associates had engaged in a conspiracy and racketeering to possess and distribute large quantities of heroin and cocaine and that in furtherance of that conspiracy, her associates possessed numerous firearms and body armor, threatened a witness at gunpoint to prevent his testimony in another case, and participated in robbery and murder.

On May 17, 2007, Notestine pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute, attempt to distribute, and possess with intent to distribute in excess of one kilogram of heroin and an amount of cocaine. In April 2008, she was sentenced to ten years in prison and was ordered to serve six years of supervised release.

Legal education

Notestine testified that she enrolled in an online undergraduate program through Ohio University in 2019, but because of the lack of desired course offerings, she transferred to Sinclair Community College and then to the University of Cincinnati. She worked about 70 hours a week while carrying a full course load and graduated in 2022. Notestine began studying law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law in August 2022. She stated that she continued to run her business, which included two salons, full time during her first year of law school “to ensure that [she] had something to stand on, just because [she] understood it’s very difficult to get a job with [criminal] convictions.”

The opinion details her rehabilitative efforts with one setback

Notestine testified about the one setback she has experienced since being released from prison in 2014—her arrest, guilty plea, and conviction on a single minor-misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct in 2017.

Notestine claimed that her bipolar ex-boyfriend, a retired NFL player—who had previously hit her—drugged her and took her to a club, where the mother of his child and her friends jumped her. Notestine testified that she fought back and was arrested. She believed that the incident was a setup to exact revenge for her breaking up with the ex-boyfriend and that the responding police officer was a party to the setup because the other women knew him and called him “uncle.” Notestine claimed that after the officer arrested her, he gave her ex-boyfriend her keys, purse, and cellphone. And although she found her vehicle a few days later, she never recovered her cellphone or purse.

Favorable recommendation of the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness

The board found that at the time of her character-and-fitness hearing, Notestine was a 41-year-old woman who “now surrounds herself with really good people who support her, including her family.” The board noted that she has mentors on whom she may rely, and that she has developed healthy habits and ways to deal with stress. It also acknowledged Notestine’s desire to use her experiences to help people who are in bad situations to understand that they can change the trajectory of their lives.

Finding that Notestine has fully accepted responsibility for her conduct and the consequences of her actions, and that sufficient time has elapsed since her criminal convictions, the board concluded that Notestine had proved by clear and convincing evidence that she has the present character, fitness, and moral qualifications for admission to the practice law in Ohio.

The court

Notestine testified candidly about her criminal history and acknowledged the wrongfulness of her conduct. She has reflected on her past decisions, resolved to learn from them, and worked tirelessly to better herself. She obtained her medical-massage license and several certifications from the cosmetology board, and she operated her own business while she earned her undergraduate and law degrees. She has completed a fellowship with the Ohio Innocence Project helping those who may have been wrongfully convicted and has worked for the public defender’s office, where she has not only encouraged her clients to change the course of their lives but has served as a positive example of how it can be done.

Conclusion

Upon consideration of the record and the applicable rules, we find that Notestine has carried her burden of proving that she currently possesses the requisite character, fitness, and moral qualifications for admission to the practice of law in Ohio.

Accordingly, we approve Notestine’s character, fitness, and moral qualifications for admission to the practice of law in Ohio and permit her to sit for the July 2025 bar exam provided that all other application requirements, including but not limited to the requirements of Gov.Bar R. I(3)(E), have been satisfied.

HAWKINS, J., joined by FISCHER, J., dissenting.

Today this court concludes that Bethany Joy Notestine is morally fit to practice law in Ohio and approves her application to sit for the July 2025 bar examination. Majority opinion, ¶ 37. An applicant for admission to the Ohio bar bears the burden of showing that she possesses the requisite character, fitness, and moral qualifications for admission. Gov.Bar R. I(13)(D)(1). And when, as here, the applicant’s background includes a felony conviction, she must also show her full and complete rehabilitation. See In re Application of Davis, 38 Ohio St.2d 273, 275 (1974). Because I don’t believe that Notestine has met that burden, I respectfully dissent from this court’s decision to approve her application. I write to explain why I believe the court’s judgment falls short.

The character-and-fitness-review process asks a simple question: Does an applicant to the bar have the “morality, attention to duty, forthrightness and self-restraint . . . associated with the accepted definition of ‘good moral character’ ”? Id. at 274. Though the process is nonadversarial, id., it is not without significance. Admission to the bar is a promise to members of the public—both from this court and from the legal profession—that they can trust the applicant with their affairs. See Clemens, Facing the Klieg Lights: Understanding the “Good Moral Character” Examination for Bar Applicants, 40 Akron L.Rev. 255, 268 (2007). Similarly, admission to the bar makes lawyers officers of the court, and with that privilege comes the duty and responsibility to maintain high ethical standards. Dayton Bar Assn. v. O’Brien, 2004-Ohio-3939, ¶ 13; see also Prof.Cond. R., Preamble [1] (“As an officer of the court, a lawyer not only represents clients but has a special responsibility for the quality of justice.”). These are demanding expectations, and we owe it to the profession—and to the public— to admit only those who meet them.

Whether an applicant meets those high standards of trust turns on her past conduct. And that brings us to Notestine. Notestine was charged with and pleaded guilty to a federal felony drug charge: conspiracy to distribute, attempt to distribute, and possess with the intent to distribute heroin and cocaine. In 2008, the federal court sentenced her to a ten-year prison term for this offense. She was released from prison in January 2014 and remained on supervised release until June 2017. But just six months after her supervised release was terminated, Notestine again appeared in court, this time to plead guilty to disorderly conduct. This bears a resemblance to her conduct after pleading guilty to possession of heroin in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas in 2005. Following that conviction, Notestine was subject to probation and drug testing. Yet, as soon as she had completed her probation and was no longer subject to the court’s testing requirements, she began illegally using marijuana again. In both situations, Notestine violated the law again almost immediately after completing her courtimposed sanctions.

Together these incidents show a pattern that this court shouldn’t overlook. Notestine’s application does not present just a one-time mistake. It’s a story that keeps repeating. To be sure, under this court’s precedent, a felony conviction does not, in itself, prohibit an applicant from showing she has the moral fitness necessary to practice law in Ohio or prevent her from entering the legal profession. See In re Application of Poignon, 2012-Ohio-2915, ¶ 16, citing In re Application of Keita, 1995-Ohio-33, ¶ 7, citing In re Application of Davis, 38 Ohio St.2d at 275. But the problem isn’t only Notestine’s convictions—it’s what she kept doing afterwards. She finished her sentence and then promptly broke the law again. Indeed, in the case of the disorderly-conduct conviction, Notestine acquired a new misdemeanor conviction less than a year after her release from federal supervision. The record reveals a pattern: a failure of self-restraint, a disregard for the law, and a troubling absence of integrity—the kind that the public must be able to expect from members of the bar. This leaves me with one conclusion: Notestine lacks the moral character the law demands, and we should not approve her application.

Our profession does not demand perfection, but it does require integrity. When we approve an applicant as morally fit to join the profession, we give the public our word that the applicant can be trusted to follow the law. Because I cannot extend that promise in good conscience here, I respectfully dissent.

Applicant’s journey was chronicled in a story in the University of Cincinnati News. (Mike Frisch)