Ex-lawyer still faces law society probe

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This article was published 02/09/2017 (2968 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An investigation into the professional conduct of a former Crown lawyer is still ongoing after prostitution-related charges against him were dropped.

Criminal charges against Richard H. Smith were stayed earlier this summer after he gave presentations to other johns as part of his “diligent” efforts at rehabilitation.

He had been charged with obtaining sexual services for consideration and abetting a sex worker’s breach of her court order, but an out-of-province Crown lawyer stayed the charges in July after the court heard details of Smith’s community service work and his willingness to not only participate in, but lead prostitution offender programs.

Although he’s no longer facing criminal charges, Smith is still the subject of a Law Society of Manitoba investigation that was prompted by those charges, confirmed Leah Kosokowsky, director of regulation for the law society.

“It’s still an open investigation,” she said, noting the outcome of the investigation won’t be made public unless professional misconduct charges are laid against Smith. He voluntarily stopped practising law last July, when the regulatory body for lawyers in the province became aware criminal charges had been laid against him.

A Crown prosecutor and judge from out of province were called in to deal with Smith’s criminal case to avoid a conflict of interest because Smith had worked for provincial and federal prosecution services in Manitoba before he was fired in June 2016.

Smith was working as a federal prosecutor in Winnipeg when, as a “frequent customer” at a Broadway massage parlour, he met a 26-year-old woman and paid her for sex on several occasions between July 2015 and January 2016.

She had been charged with drug possession and was bound by a court-ordered curfew that meant she had to stay at her home between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. She wasn’t allowed to have a cellphone, according to the court order, but that’s how she and Smith arranged to meet.

Their “interactions” happened at his home and in his car at night, in violation of the 26-year-old’s court-ordered curfew, Nova Scotia Crown prosecutor Jennifer MacLellan said.

“Mr. Smith was aware that this breached the conditions of her court order,” MacLellan told Saskatchewan provincial court Judge Bruce Henning during a brief court hearing in Winnipeg in July.

But Smith has already completed more community service work — a total of 252 hours — than the Crown was going to ask for in this case, MacLellan said, and he’s begun giving a year’s worth of presentations to others charged with prostitution-related offences in a program known as john school, which has been a “great success,” MacLellan said.

She said the Crown would have asked for 200 hours of community service work.

“In the circumstances, given the diligent efforts of Mr. Smith to rehabilitate himself, the Crown is prepared to enter a stay to the charges before the court,” she said, adding the charges could be brought back to court if Smith doesn’t finish the john school presentations he’s agreed to.

“It’s not been an easy road that Mr. Smith has travelled,” his defence lawyer, Danny Gunn, told court during the hearing. “But indeed, I submit that it is a just and appropriate result in the circumstances.”

Henning agreed, remarking that he’s seen similar cases where charges are stayed after the accused enrols in a program, “but with sometimes considerably less than this gentleman has done, so it’s obviously entirely proper that a stay be entered.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay