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Lawyer Couple Who Wielded Weapons in Front of Marchers Appeal Law License Curbs to Supreme Court
The Supreme Court case is McCloskey v. Missouri Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, court file 21-1440. The petition for certiorari, or review, was docketed on May 13. The petition was scheduled to be considered by the justices at their June 2 conference. The disciplinary body waived (pdf) its right to file a response to the petition.
For defending their home on June 28, 2020, during nationwide organized protests, some of which turned into riots, by Black Lives Matter and Antifa, Mark and Patricia McCloskey were honored speakers at the 2020 Republican National Convention. Mark McCloskey is currently running for a U.S. Senate seat as a Republican. The primary election will take place in Missouri on Aug. 2.
The case, which involved prosecutorial misconduct, received national media attention. Kimberly Gardner, a Democrat and St. Louis’s first black chief prosecutor, who has accused local police of racism, was removed from the case in December 2020 by Circuit Judge Thomas Clark II for using the incident in inflammatory campaign fundraising emails. Clark ruled that Gardner’s behavior raised “the appearance of impropriety” and “jeopardized the defendants’ right to a fair trial.”
The McCloskeys state in their petition to the Supreme Court that after the incident at their home, they “received hundreds of letters of support from across the United States, including letters from President Donald J. Trump and a letter signed by 14 sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives asking then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr to investigate the City of St. Louis Circuit Attorney for violating the McCloskeys’ civil rights in threatening criminal charges against the McCloskeys.”
The McCloskeys said they were justified in holding firearms outside of their home to dissuade the crowd, which they said meant them harm. However, Mark McCloskey entered a guilty plea to a class C misdemeanor of assault in the fourth degree and agreed to a $750 fine. His wife entered a guilty plea to a Class A misdemeanor of harassment in the second degree and accepted a $2,000 fine. The couple had originally been charged with felony-level unlawful use of a weapon, but prosecutors reached a plea deal with them to reduce the severity of the charges.
The McCloskeys were pardoned in July 2021 by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican.
Former President Donald Trump praised Parson and the couple after the pardon.
“Congratulations to Governor Mike Parson of Missouri for having the courage to give Mr. and Mrs. Mark McCloskey a full pardon. They were defending their property and if they had not done what they did, their property would have been completely destroyed and they would have been badly beaten, or dead—great going Mike!” Trump said in a statement to the Missouri Times.
Despite the pardons, on Feb. 8, the Missouri Supreme Court indefinitely suspended the law licenses of the McCloskeys after their misdemeanor convictions. The court found that by showing their weapons, the McCloskeys had engaged in unlawyerly conduct involving “moral turpitude.” At the same time, the court stayed the suspension, subject to a year of probation during which the two attorneys must “not engage in conduct that violates the Rules of Professional Conduct,” as The Epoch Times reported.
Moral turpitude is a legal term describing “wicked, deviant behavior constituting an immoral, unethical, or unjust departure from ordinary social standards such that it would shock a community,” according to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School.
In their petition (pdf) to the U.S. Supreme Court, the couple said the disciplinary action taken against them violates the Second and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The court should rule that “as a matter of constitutional law … a lawyer does not engage in conduct involving ‘moral turpitude’ when undertaking actions protected by the United States Constitution, in particular the Second Amendment.”
The disciplinary body is claiming that an attorney must be punished for using “a firearm to defend the lawyer’s self, family, and home with the use of a firearm, even when the President of the United States commends the lawyers’ actions, the Governor of the applicable state pardons the lawyers, and the public broadly praises the lawyers for their conduct,” the petition reads.
The Epoch Times reached out to Leawood, Kansas-based lawyer Edward D. Robertson Jr., who is the counsel of record for the Missouri Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, but didn’t receive a reply as of press time.
