National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area- Pursuing Ethics Complaint Against Torture Lawyer

[kpete]

Source: National Lawyers Guild

NLGSF Pursuing Ethics Complaint Against Torture Lawyer to Cal Supreme Court
September 16, 2009

State Bar Refused to Investigate Former Pentagon Lawyer Haynes

San Francisco - The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (NLGSF) filed a petition with the California Supreme Court this week asking it to review the decision by the State Bar not to investigate William J. Haynes II. Haynes, now an attorney with the Chevron Corporation in San Ramon, used his position as a lawyer in the Department of Defense to advocate for torture and illegal treatment of detainees in military custody during the Bush presidency. Despite voluminous evidence that Haynes has violated California’s rules of professional conduct that all attorneys must follow, the State Bar has maintained that the NLGSF complaint is closed without prejudice to reopening.

“The Bar seems to be punting this one,” said Carlos Villarreal, Executive Director of the NLGSF. “They forwarded our complaint to bar associations in other states and indicated that investigations elsewhere might yield evidence they can act upon; but Haynes is practicing law in California and the State Bar needs to protect the people of California from lawyers like him.”

The petition alleges that Haynes, while at the Defense Department, advised violation of the law, breached the duty of candor and good faith required of attorneys, and lacks the moral character needed for the privilege of practicing law in California. The facts, revealed primarily in a report from the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), demonstrate that Haynes’ office sought out techniques normally used to train military personnel how to resist those techniques if captured by rogue nations. He then recommended adoption of a number of these techniques by the military in a brief memo to then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He did this without citing relevant law and over the objections of a number of other military lawyers. Haynes’ memo was called “grossly deficient” by the SASC.

“Haynes was one of the key officials who pushed radical legal fictions that led to the abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Baghram, Abu Graib and elsewhere,” said NLGSF Board Member Sharon Adams. “He is now in another powerful legal position with Chevron, a corporation that is also linked to torture in Nigeria and elsewhere. It is disgraceful that the State Bar refuses to even open an investigation.”



Read more: http://www.nlgsf.org/news/view.php?id=118

[aquart]

1. Cool.

[Big_Mike]

2. I think the decision to use those methods is flat assed wrong

But he "...lacks the moral character needed for the privilege of practicing law in California."

Give me a break - these schmucks talk about moral character? People like Orly Taitz (sp?), or politician lawyers who recommend blatantly illegal acts (outlawing firearm ownership in city limits, sending parolees to other counties rather than keep them in their own, let alone the personal infidelities and such?

Pot calling the kettle black, just a bit here?

[earcandle]

3. And Yoo and Bybee too right? What is happening to these guys who wrote new incorrect laws that allow

such behavior be sanctioned in American Law?