Does Legal System Do Enough To Protect Clients From Their Attorneys?

Some of the following material is of a sensitive nature and should not be read by those under the age of 18. Please be aware these documents are of a sexual nature.

Larry Harley did not mince words in his May 2006 letter to the Virginia State Bar: He was concerned one of his Legal Aid attorneys was preying on vulnerable clients, and attached statements from three women accusing the attorney of unwanted sexual advances.

But it wasn’t until March 2007 – 10 months after the Bar received Harley’s complaint – that a Virginia State Bar investigator interviewed the first witness.

In December, the Bar suspended Wade Compton’s license for five years – the most severe sanction short of disbarment – but it came up short on answers as to why the investigation languished for 10 months.

The most serious allegations were absent from the initial complaint, but were significantly foreshadowed by one client who in May 2006 submitted a “partial statement.”

Still, it wasn’t until March 14, 2007, that a Bar investigator would ask Charissa Sturgill to tell the rest of her story – and she would say that Compton raped her.

The Bar referred the criminal allegations to the Virginia State Police, though it was not immediately clear when. A criminal investigation was opened in March 2008, a state police spokesman confirmed, and remains active. The special prosecutor appointed to the criminal investigation did not return phone calls seeking comment.

From the filing of the complaint, it was 2½ years before the Bar suspended Compton’s license, during which time he continued to practice at his family’s firm in Lebanon, Va.
In terms of urgency, the complaint against Compton would have ranked as a high priority, just below cases in which an attorney poses an imminent risk to client property, a senior Bar official said.

“In a case of high priority, I would certainly prefer to see it done sooner,” Edward Davis, counsel for the Virginia State Bar, said in an interview last week.

The 10-month lag, Davis said, “is a serious matter.” He had no explanation.

“What happened between then, I don’t know, I can’t explain,” he said.

Though he defended the disposition of the case, Davis said he would consider reviewing policy on investigating cases with witnesses known to frequently change residences.

“Do we put priority on locating witnesses knowing that they may be transient?” he mused. “I have never considered that. That may be something we would need to consider in
the future.”

The case lurches forward

Around the time the Bar received the complaint, in May 2006, the investigator who covered Southwest Virginia left the Bar’s employment. The Bar did not hire a replacement until January 2007, Davis said.

Three months after he arrived, Jim Whitener interviewed the first witnesses.

From the outset, Whitener faced a Sisyphean task – tracking down highly mobile witnesses who had been victimized by the legal process they had turned to for help. He needed them to revisit memories that were in some cases several years old or that they had tried to blot out.

Within six months, Whitener had interviewed three Legal Aid clients who accused Compton of a range of abuses, from fondling them in courthouse witness rooms to rape. By Jan. 7, 2008 – the day he met with Compton to get his version – Whitener knew of two additional clients he believed to be victims.

Up to this point, Compton had admitted to sexual contact with only two clients.

But in the interview with Whitener, Compton admitted to sexual relationships with three Legal Aid clients, and with one other client while he was not employed by Legal Aid – a woman he refused to name.

Representing Compton during the interview and in an apparent violation of the Bar’s guidelines was his father, Eugene Compton, a member of the Bar’s governing body. Eugene Compton was elected to a three-year term on the Bar Council in July 2007. An attorney who is a member of the Bar Council “shall not represent a respondent at any time with respect to a complaint or charge,” the Bar’s guidelines state.

Asked about this, Davis said that in that scenario Eugene Compton “should have been disqualified under the rule” from representing his son. Davis would not say whether the Bar sanctioned Eugene Compton, citing the Bar’s confidential disciplinary process.

Eugene Compton, reached at his law office last week, said, “I do not discuss cases with reporters. I never have.”

As to his son’s disciplinary case, “The only thing that I would say is that any contact was consensual on both parties,” Eugene Compton said, and would not comment further.

At the end of the January 2008 interview, Whitener asked Wade Compton if there were other clients with whom he had sexual contact. He and his father refused to say whether
there were other clients.

Six months later, Whitener received word that there was another.

“There was an investigation going on?”

Emily Crabtree, 29, was being held at the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail in Abingdon when Shirley Forrester, a Tazewell County, Va., victims advocate, visited her last June 4. Forrester had heard through the grapevine that Compton had been Crabtree’s attorney, and went to ask her about his representation.

Crabtree was serving a sentence for petit larceny and was at first reluctant to talk, Forrester said. But Crabtree then dropped a bombshell, which she later repeated to Whitener and under oath: In 2005, while Compton was representing her in a child custody case in Russell County, Crabtree said she performed oral sex on him just before a hearing, believing he would represent her better.

Crabtree did not recall seeing Compton again after that encounter, but when Whitener interviewed her June 13, 2008, she offered a surprising revelation: She had received correspondence that Compton had been appointed to represent her in a child custody hearing Aug. 8.

This came about, Crabtree said, because Nick Compton, Wade Compton’s brother, had been appointed to represent her, but left private practice to become an assistant prosecutor in Buchanan County. At this point, Wade Compton took over her case, she testified.

Nick Compton left the practice and joined the Buchanan County Commonwealth’s Attorney Office sometime between August 2007 and January 2008, court records show.

When a juvenile and domestic relations court judge learned of the Bar investigation, he appointed a different attorney for Crabtree, according to a source familiar with her case.

Crabtree confirmed that Wade Compton did not represent her at the Aug. 8 hearing.

In a telephone interview earlier this month, Crabtree said she never discussed the sexual encounter with Wade Compton with anyone but her mother because she didn’t think anything would come of it. She was startled when Nick Compton, then her lawyer, approached her in 2007 and asked her if she’d been “saying things” – she assumed about the two of them, though he did not go into detail.

She told him she didn’t know what he was talking about, she recalled.

“He was really upset about it. He said he shouldn’t be my lawyer any more,” Crabtree said in the interview. She said she never had any sexual contact with Nick Compton, adding he was “strictly business” and a “great lawyer.”

Nick Compton, reached by phone last week, said he recalled the encounter but could not respond because of the attorney-client privilege.

Crabtree did not learn of the Bar investigation until she spoke with Forrester in June, and did not realize it began in 2006 until contacted by the Herald Courier.

“You mean, at the time Nick asked me that, there was an investigation going on?” she said. “He could have been pumping me for information, then. I thought he was just concerned.”

By June 23, 2008, the Bar had received Whitener’s report on Crabtree. On July 14, the investigator submitted the report of another client – the second to accuse Compton of raping her.

One week later, a three-member disciplinary subcommittee met and heard the Bar’s case presented by Renu Mago – who had joined the Bar as an assistant counsel just the previous month.

On Aug. 1, the subcommittee certified the charges against Wade Compton, setting up a public disciplinary hearing. The subcommittee members determined Compton had engaged in sexual contact with five of his Legal Aid clients, violating rules relating to conflict of interest and representing a client with an impaired decision-making ability.

It was, the subcommittee concluded, the kind of misconduct that “reflects adversely on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness” to practice law.

A contentious deposition

With the subcommittee’s certification, more than two years into the investigation, the proceeding moved quickly.

Compton had by this point retained Michael Rigsby, a specialist in legal ethics who commonly defends attorneys in disciplinary cases, and is himself a former Bar counsel.

Rather than appear before the disciplinary board, Compton moved to transfer the disciplinary action to a panel of circuit court judges, and his case entered the public record in September.

On Oct. 15, the parties traveled to the Southampton Correctional Facility in Capron, Va., to depose Crabtree.

Both Wade Compton and his father, Eugene, made the 370-mile trip from Lebanon.

The deposition began with fireworks.

Rigsby, at the outset, suggested that Crabtree be represented by an attorney of her own.

“I do think there is some concern that questions might be put to Ms. Crabtree that would raise an issue, an admission to a criminal act,” Rigsby said, according to a transcript of the deposition.

Rigsby did not return phone messages seeking comment. Though Rigsby did not name the criminal act, Crabtree had earlier stated she performed oral sex on Compton – an act that remains a Class 6 felony in Virginia, punishable by between one and five years in jail. She has not been charged. It is unclear whether the statute is even enforced.
Mago, for her part, objected vigorously to the presence of Eugene Compton, who stated he was there as an “observer.”

The combination of Rigsby’s suggestion and Eugene Compton’s presence, Mago said, “is an attempt to impede the administration of justice and the Bar’s proceedings.”

Asked about the Bar’s objection to Eugene Compton’s presence, Davis, the bar counsel, said: “I don’t know what angle [Mago] was pursuing.”

The parties at the deposition recessed for 23 minutes to see if the jail’s in-house counsel could represent Crabtree. He could not. The deposition went forward.

On Oct. 28, a panel of three circuit court judges convened in Pulaski County, Va., and admitted Crabtree’s deposition as evidence. Soon after, the parties began to deal.

“The strongest result we’ve gotten”

Revoking Compton’s license would have been an “ideal disposition,” Davis said. But the Bar wasn’t sure they could get it.

As an assistant bar counsel 12 years ago, Davis prosecuted a lawyer originally accused of raping a client but whose criminal charges ultimately were dropped. There were some strong similarities to the Compton case, Davis recalled. There was a divorce pending and children subject to custody – the kind of case where a client’s custody is jeopardized if the client engages in intimate relations with someone other than their spouse, Davis said.

He took the case before a panel of judges and sought disbarment. The attorney left with a public reprimand – second on the scale of the least severe sanctions an attorney can receive.

In the Compton case, five of his clients agreed to testify against him, but several of them had, at times, gone incommunicado.

“The persuasiveness of your case is going to depend on the quality of testimony,” Davis said. Several of the witnesses “were very uncomfortable with appearing in court,” he noted.

Sturgill, who claims Compton raped her, was uncomfortable. Over two years, she had told her story twice to Whitener and once to Mago, in October 2008. Still, when Mago told her they were going to call her to testify on Dec. 22, she got cold feet.

When Whitener came to her home in November, Sturgill hid from him, hoping her unresponsiveness might make the Bar postpone the case, she said.

“A few days before Christmas?” she recalled thinking. “And then go home and put on a smile for your kids? I can’t do that,” she said in an interview.

Compton, meanwhile, had filed a motion seeking a continuance, announcing that he had petitioned the Bar to suspend his license for a mental health-related impairment, and had voluntarily ceased practicing law. The Bar opposed this motion to continue, and the three-judge panel denied it.

Davis, asked why the Bar did not hold out for a better court date if a witness was more likely to appear, said: “We have to be careful to make sure the lawyers we’re pursuing don’t control the docket.”

A delay, he said, “can emotionally wear witnesses down, too.”

The Bar also assessed the risks of arguing their case before the three-judge panel. If the judges did something less than revoke Compton’s license, the Bar could not control whether additional terms added to the penalty.

Even if his license were to be revoked, Compton would be able to petition the Virginia Supreme Court to reinstate him in five years – a 50-50 shot, Davis said.

The deal they hashed out, proffered by Rigsby on Dec. 10 and accepted by the three-judge panel Dec. 15, suspended Compton’s license for five years, mandated he continue mental health counseling, and ordered him to undergo a risk assessment and mental health evaluation before he can be reinstated.

If the disciplinary board does reinstate him, he will have to enter a monitoring agreement with Lawyers Helping Lawyers – a nonprofit program that offers mental health and substance abuse services – for two years.

Davis called it “by far the strongest result we’ve gotten in any case of this nature.”

But that result was not satisfactory to three of the five Legal Aid clients who had agreed to testify against Compton, they told the Herald Courier.

Davis instituted a policy last fall that in cases in which a crime arguably had been committed, the Bar would contact all witnesses before finalizing a settlement. He was surprised and bothered by what the three women told the Herald Courier.

“My understanding is that every last one of them was very happy with the outcome, and happy with the Bar for working this case out rather than making them appear,” he said.
At least two of the victims told the Herald Courier that the Bar did not solicit their feedback in settling the case.

A Richlands woman said she learned through Forrester, the victims advocate, that the case would be settled out of court.

Sturgill, who hid from Whitener in November, had resolved to testify when the day approached. She said she called Mago on Dec. 19, the Friday before they were to go to trial Monday, asking for logistics. That’s when she learned that there would be no court date.

Sturgill, the Richlands woman and Crabtree – who was contacted – all disapproved of the disposition and believe Compton’s license should have been revoked.

The Richlands woman said: “I was relieved there wasn’t court, but I don’t think his punishment was fair. He shouldn’t be working with anybody as a lawyer again.”
Crabtree said: “I didn’t really think that’s much punishment, especially if he done as many women like this as they said he did.”

Sturgill said: “I think it sucks. Because after five years, how many other women? You’re going to be doing the same old paper story. He’s not going to quit. My honest opinion? He needs to be castrated, and he needs to be thrown off the bar, completely.”

dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558