BAR ADMISSION – GA high court affirms denial of applicant’s application for certification of fitness to practice based on omissions re. criminal history
The Georgia Supreme Court (In the Matter of Roy W. Yunker, Jr., 289 Ga. 636 S10Z1203, 2011) affirmed the board’s decision not to certify Yunker fit to practice as a result of his apparent failure in his application to disclose his criminal history, military discharge after an alcohol related incident, and his law school’s withdrawal of its recommendation of trust to the Board following Yunker’s post-graduation amendment of inaccuracies on his law school application. The court agreed that Yunker’s misconduct constituted “a pattern of conduct that demonstrates a lack of judgment, integrity, character, professionalism and the requisite moral fitness required of a prospective member of the State Bar of Georgia.”
Yunker applied to John Marshall Law School in July 2005. The law school application asked whether the applicant had ever been charged or convicted of a crime other than a minor traffic offense, and Yunker answered “no” even though he had been convicted of misdemeanor offenses in three separate incidents. In 1988, he pled guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol (“DUI”) in North Carolina, in 1989, he pled nolo contendere to disorderly conduct and damage to property in Pennsylvania, and in 2000 he pled nolo contendere to family violence battery in DeKalb County, stemming from an incident in which he choked his then wife. According to Yunker, these incidents were influenced by his consumption of alcohol. Yunker was admitted to the law school, and started taking classes in August 2005.
Beginning in May 2007, Yunker served as an unpaid intern with the Atlanta Metro Conflict Defender’s Office. In June 2007, after a disagreement with a senior staff attorney in that office, whom he was assigned to assist, he refused to sit next to the attorney in court and left the courtroom without asking permission. Later that day, and the day after, Yunker sent the attorney e-mails in which he used veiled and actual profanity. Yunker was directed to disconnect his laptop computer from the office network. An argument ensued between Yunker and the attorney, and Yunker’s internship was terminated.
In his amended law school application he addressed his prior inaccurate responses by stating, “I can only believe that at the time, when I read the word ‘crime[,]’ I wasn’t thinking of the sorts of arrests I experienced, but was thinking of crimes like robbery, murder, or other actions that I know now as felonies.”
When Yunker was questioned about the battery against his now former wife, and was asked how he could be trusted not to similarly exploit a client’s vulnerability, his response was, “Probably because I am not going to marry them.”
The hearing officer concluded that Yunker’s failure to adequately and fully disclose his previous charges or convictions evidenced a present lack of candor and honesty; that his various explanations to account for his inaccurate responses strained credibility; and that the events and circumstances surrounding his abrupt separation from his internship with the Atlanta Metro Conflict Defender revealed Yunker’s lack of maturity, poor judgment, and his failure to take appropriate responsibility for his actions.