SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A Northern California district attorney claims in court that the state Bar and local officials are trying to disbar him because he is a recovered methamphetamine addict.
Del Norte County District Attorney Jon Michael Alexander claims the defendants are pursuing disbarment against him because they discriminate against former drug addicts.
Alexander sued the State Bar of California, its Office of the Chief Trial Counsel (OCTC), OCTC Deputy Trial Counsel Cydney Tabor Batchelor, Del Norte County's former District Attorney Michael Donald Riese, its former assistant district attorney Karen Diane Olson, and its former deputy district attorney Mordechai David Pelta, in San Francisco Superior Court.
Alexander claims he has been clean and sober since kicking methamphetamine 9 years ago.
He was elected district attorney and took office in January 2011. In May this year the California State Bar charged him with four counts of violating Rules of Professional Conduct and three counts of moral turpitude and/or corruption. Alexander says he believes the Bar is trying to have him disbarred.
According to his complaint, "Defendant Batchelor, on behalf of the State Bar and OCTC, stated she did not believe Alexander should be district attorney because she thought his mental abilities continued to be affected by his prior methamphetamine use, and that the attorney general agreed with her."
Alexander claims "that Batchelor's statement was intentionally leaked to the media by the OCTC". But he says, "Contrary to Batchelor's assertion, the attorney general has honored and cited Alexander for his service as district attorney of Del Norte County."
Alexander claims "that the manner and speed at which the notice is being prosecuted by the OCTC, and the State Bar's attitude throughout, indicate a discriminatory motive and intent."
He claims that "the State Bar and OCTC have, for several years, unreasonably subjected plaintiff to a higher level of scrutiny and to prosecution beyond any steps or procedures that apply to all lawyers in general."
According to the 36-page complaint, in 2006, then-District Attorney Michael Riese and Assistant DA Karen Olson falsely alleged that Alexander, then a deputy district attorney, had made an ex parte communication to a judge.
Alexander says he gave a handwritten letter to a Drug Task Force commander to be read in open court at a hearing, but the commander did not read it in court and Olson got her hands on the letter.
"This letter was never intended to be an ex parte communication to the judge," Alexander says in the complaint.
But Olson and Riese brought disciplinary charges against him anyway, Alexander says.
Alexander says he could not afford legal counsel as he was in the early stages of recovery, and based on representations made by Batchelor that he would not receive discipline if he stipulated to the charges, he did so, "even though plaintiff did not commit any violations as charged."