Pair of Virginia lawyers will have to take anger management classes
In a bit of reversal from typical court ordered anger management cases, two lawyers in Virginia have been sentenced to participate in anger management classes because of separate offenses.
A Norfolk attorney, Herman Smith III, had taken on the case of four co-defendants being tried for armed robbery. Smith represented one of the four when he discovered that another member of the group had been planning to testify against his client. Upon learning this, Smith yelled into the hall and called the other man a “snitch.”
“Let everybody in Youngs Park know he’s a snitch,” said Smith, according to local publication The Virginian-Pilot.
Charged with felony obstruction of justice, Smith was sentenced by a circuit judge on Tuesday, July 5 to a suspended 90-day jail sentence, a $500 fine, 75 hours of community service and anger management counseling.
The other incident involved former Virginia Beach lawyer, Jason Roper. In 2009, Roper had sued lawyer Brian Dinning for a couple alleging that Dinning swindled them out of investment money. Although Roper had won a $722,000 settlement for his clients, his behavior toward Dinning during a deposition resulted in a three-year suspension from the Virginia State Bar (VSB).
When Dinning was indicted in 2012 on 25 counts of fraud – leading to a sentence of 20 to 30 years in federal prison – a still-embittered Roper sent him an incendiary email, stating that he “would comfort Dinning’s wife during his absence,” among other taunts, according to Virginia Lawyers Weekly.
A VSB disciplinary board ruled that this was unethical behavior and mandated that Roper attend an anger management class.
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