There’s a reason Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita keeps getting into disciplinary trouble.
The Indiana Supreme Court, the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission and most members of the legal profession operate under a false assumption. They expect the state’s attorney general to act like, well, an attorney.
Therein lies the misunderstanding.
Rokita never had any intention of operating within the legal or ethical constraints imposed on attorneys. He never aspired to be Clarence Darrow or Abraham Lincoln.
No, to paraphrase Rokita himself, he is a hack political opportunist acting like a lawyer with a history of bending and breaking both the law and truth.
That much was made apparent by his lawyers’ attempt to extricate the attorney general from the latest disciplinary mess he created for himself. Rokita’s attorneys tried to explain away actions that reveal both overwhelming self-indulgence and a complete lack of personal and professional self-discipline on their client’s part.
This latest self-inflicted wound may be Rokita’s dumbest one yet.
It springs from his last disciplinary action. The Supreme Court reprimanded the attorney general for a statement he made in his Javert-like persecution of Dr. Caitlin Bernard.
After Bernard performed a legal abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had been raped, Rokita rushed before the cameras at Fox News to castigate the doctor. Almost nothing Rokita said in that appearance was true.
In fact, his charges were so scurrilous that even Fox backed away from them.
But it was one statement in that interview that earned him his reprimand. He said of Bernard, “We have this abortion activist acting as a doctor — with a history of failing to report.”
In November, by a 3-2 vote, with Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Christopher Goff dissenting because they thought the punishment wasn’t enough, the Supreme Court reprimanded the attorney general. The court said Rokita’s statement had no purpose “other than to embarrass or burden the physician.”
Rokita admitted as much in an affidavit under penalty of perjury.
Given the level of his misconduct, most observers considered Rokita’s punishment a sweetheart deal. All the attorney general had to do was realize that Christmas came early for him and say a silent thank you.
Instead, he issued a public statement saying he didn’t mean it.
That prompted a fresh round of complaints — including one from an attorney who had long worked for the disciplinary commission. Those complaints argued — convincingly — that Rokita couldn’t be telling the truth in both the affidavit and the press release and that, at the very least, his repudiation of the reprimand demonstrated a lack of contrition, which was a condition of the painless punishment he received.
Rokita reacted with fury. The commission then asked the Supreme Court to release the affidavit and conditional agreement. The attorney general’s response to that acidly noted that the commission was an unelected body that did not make public its own proceedings.
He argued his critics were rabid political partisans — pot, the kettle is calling — who were out to get him.
Rokita “speaks in manner that the ‘Establishment’ abhors,” the attorney general’s response said. “The content of his conservative message offends the Left, if not Liberals.”
So, now we have another easily avoidable donnybrook in the offing. More good money after bad. The Supreme Court has an impasse to resolve.
Lawyers fight hard, but they do so within a set of Marquis-of-Queensbury-like rules aimed at preventing low blows and maintaining standards of dignity, decorum and fairness.
Rokita doesn’t operate in that world.
Like most Donald Trump-style politicians, he sees himself as a street fighter who will use any broken beer bottle in the alley if he thinks it will give him an edge. And, like Trump, he whines like a motherless puppy when anyone hits back.
Our system of law and the rules that accompany it are what they are. Todd Rokita is who he is.
We can support and uphold one or the other,not both.
So, the Indiana Supreme Court needs to choose.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students, where this commentary originally appeared. The opinions expressed by the author do not reflect the views of Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].
