In re Graves

• Decision Date: 04 January 1941
• Docket Number: 37503
• Parties: In re Waller W. Graves
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

146 S.W.2d 555

347 Mo. 49

In re Waller W. Graves

No. 37503

Supreme Court of Missouri

January 4, 1941

Respondent reprimanded.

Leedy C. J. All concur, except Hays, J., not sitting.

OPINION

LEEDY

This matter is an outgrowth of a certain proceeding by quo warranto to oust Graves (hereinafter referred to as respondent) from office as Prosecuting Attorney of Jackson County, lately pending in this court, and reported as State ex inf. McKittrick, Atty Gen., v. Graves, Pros Atty., 346 Mo. 990, 144 S.W.2d 91.

It arises in this way: Three members of the Advisory Committee created under our rule #36 disqualified themselves for cause from participating in an investigation touching respondent's professional conduct, on the charges embraced in the quo warranto proceeding, which was about to be launched, thus leaving the committee without a quorum. However, the General Chairman had filed and there was pending at the time of the overruling of the motion for rehearing in the ouster suit, an application for the appointment and approval of three substitute members. Thereafter, respondent in open court requested that, if, upon the record in said quo warranto proceeding, any disciplinary action against him in his professional capacity were contemplated, he be permitted to waive the issuance of citation, and enter his appearance, and that the matter of his amenability to disciplinary action be submitted on the record in said quo wraranto proceeding. The court entertaining no doubt as to its right, on its own motion, to act to bring into exercise its disciplinary powers by citation (where, as here, its own records, which it may judicially notice, disclose professional misconduct meriting disciplinary action) permitted the course of action requested by respondent. This resulted in the pronouncement, on December 9, last, of an oral reprimand and the entry of a like order and judgment, with the notation that an opinion would follow.

As this action was taken upon the record in the ouster suit, with an additional fact, by way of inquiry to the General Chairman of Bar Committees, presently to be noticed, it would serve no useful purpose to burden this opinion by restating the facts here, but refer the reader to our opinion in the ouster suit. There it will be found that in addition to the judgment of ouster, there was assessed against respondent a fine of $ 1,000.00, together with the costs of the suit, aggregating a sum in excess of $ 5,500.00. Inquiry directed to the General Chairman of Bar Committees disclosed that no complaint of professional misconduct of any kind or character against respondent has been received, or even suggested, other than that necessarily involved in the charges constituting the basis of the ouster suit. Those charges were: "(1) failure to enforce the laws against gambling, prostitution and illegal sale of intoxicating liquor; (2) the wilful and corrupt entering of nolle prosequi in certain criminal cases in which, according to the relator, there was ample evidence to warrant further prosecution; and (3) failure to prosecute persons guilty of violation of election laws." It was upon the first and third...