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Monday, April 15, 2024 | Back issues
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Repeated Drunk Charges|Get Lawyer Disbarred

(CN) - An Oklahoma lawyer who has had a half-dozen run-ins with police over his drinking and "outrageous behavior" must be disbarred, the state Supreme Court ruled.

The disbarment decision marks Lewis B. Moon's second appearance before the Oklahoma Supreme Court on alcohol misconduct charges in less than six months.

Last year, the Oklahoma Bar Association charged Moon after his repeated arrests for drunken driving. Moon's first arrest occurred in September 2008 after a Whataburger restaurant in Oklahoma called the cops on him, and the "extremely intoxicated" Moon identified himself as sheriff's deputy then spit in the face of his arresting officer, according to the court ruling.

He was arrested in December of that same year after Wyoming police discovered him sitting in a car that had veered off the road and into a snowbank.

In February 2011, Oklahoma officers cited Moon for wrecking a Ford Mustang that he had borrowed from a captain with the sheriff's department. Moon had abandoned the car after driving it into a guardrail and through a ditch, but the officers agreed not to arrest Moon after he pleaded with them about his law license.

On Sept. 19, 2012, a day after the Oklahoma Supreme Court publicly censured Moon and imposed a deferred suspension for the aforementioned incidents, the court learned that Moon had been charged in a criminal information with impersonating an officer and disturbing the peace.

Neighbors had called the police because Moon had allegedly been firing a machine gun for hours, with no sign of stopping. Moon was allegedly drunk and identified himself as an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Moon was charged again in October 2012 after a fellow attorney reported that Moon had gotten drunk and threatened him at a bar. Moon threatened to kill the other lawyer "and have his daughters raped and killed," according the court's summary of the charges.

He allegedly tried to threaten the lawyer against going to the police, saying he would "run a pen through his neck and his remains through a shredder," the court wrote.

Oklahoma's highest court agreed on Jan. 22, 2013, that Moon should be disbarred.

"Allowing him to further practice law would be damaging to the public perception of the legal profession as a whole. The rule of law requires substantial disciplinary action," Justice Joseph Watt wrote for the court. "Due to his history with alcohol, guns, lying, and outrageous behavior and in order to protect the public and uphold the standards of the legal profession, the respondent, Lewis B. Moon, is ordered disbarred."

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