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Ethics

Prosecutor ‘poisoned the morale’ of DA’s office with fake harassment texts, disbarment order says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 10, 2025, 9:32 am CST

A former prosecutor in Colorado should be disbarred for faking four texts that she attributed to a co-worker, including one referring to her as a “sex doll,” according to a Dec. 31 hearing board opinion.

Yujin Choi of Denver fabricated the texts in October 2022 to make it appear that the co-worker was harassing her and then “doubled down on that deceit” by intentionally altering evidence, according to the hearing board, which is part of the Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of the Presiding Disciplinary Judge.

Choi allegedly doctored cellphone records and repeatedly deleted the texts. She claimed that her cellphone stopped working when she accidentally dropped it in the bathtub and asserted that her laptop also broke when she accidentally spilled water on it.

“In our view, this narrative is not plausible,” the opinion said.

Choi “pursued a personal vendetta” against the co-worker, criminal investigator Dan Hines, “by launching an informal smear campaign” for reasons “that remain opaque to us,” the hearing board said.

The New York Times, Law360, the Denver Post and Ars Technica (via the Legal Profession Blog) have coverage.

Choi, who was admitted to practice in May 2019, can appeal the decision. She was a deputy district attorney in the Denver district attorney’s family violence unit before she was fired for the alleged misconduct.

Choi sent the four texts to herself, changing the name in her cellphone to make it appear the co-worker was the sender, the hearing board concluded. It was the second time that she had accused Hines.

The first time, in 2021, Choi claimed that Hines had made an inappropriate remark in June 2021, and that he later sent a text that she considered to be harassing. An investigation was closed as unsubstantiated. Hines was nonetheless transferred within the office and told to avoid contact with Choi.

The texts at issue in the ethics opinion surfaced in October 2022. Choi was at a bar with friends when she showed them a text. It read: “Yujin, please stop talking about what I didn’t do to our colleagues. You are using your looks against innocent people. If you want to act like a sex doll to get a sugar daddy … fine, but that will not be me.”

Choi claimed that there were three more texts, all from Hines. They read, “Don’t be stupid,” “Let’s talk,” and “I’m sorry, hope you have a nice weekend.”

By disseminating the texts to co-workers and supervisors, Choi “perpetrated a false and harmful narrative that Hines had sexually harassed her by sending her these messages,” the opinion said.

Choi said she didn’t want the matter investigated, but her supervisors felt a duty to do so and required cooperation. When Hines was confronted with the texts, he logged in to his Verizon account to provide cellphone records and offered his iPhone for investigation. There was no indication that Hines sent the texts, the hearing board said.

Official records obtained directly from Verizon indicated that Choi sent and received the fourth text message in the Hines text thread at the time that she claimed to have received it, leading the hearing board to conclude that she also sent the first three messages. The first text displayed a time stamp indicating that it was sent more than 40 minutes after Choi texted a supervisor about it.

The damage included harm to Hines’ reputation and betrayal of co-workers who advocated for her during the investigation, the decision said.

Choi “poisoned the morale of the DA’s office, contributing to an environment in which victims feared they might be disbelieved and others feared they might be wrongly accused,” the hearing board said. “Further, her actions called into question whether the evidence in the criminal cases she prosecuted was genuine,” tarnished the reputation of prosecutors, and potentially undermined the credibility of sexual harassment victims.

A counselor had diagnosed Choi with post-traumatic stress disorder and vicarious trauma caused by Choi’s emotionally taxing work in the family violence unit. Her lawyers did not immediately respond to ABA Journal emails seeking comment.

Hines told the Denver Post that he “wouldn’t wish this upon anybody,” and he was “living in hell” after Choi’s first accusation. He has sued the Denver district attorney over the handling of the investigation.

The district attorney’s office later determined that Choi’s casework was in “excellent order” with no evidence of fabrication, a spokesperson told the New York Times. The office also thinks that the investigation was properly handled, the spokesperson said.

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Prosecutors

Apology sanctions for misleading court were ‘mild and fitting,’ 3rd Circuit rules in appeal by DA’s office

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 12, 2024, 3:55 pm CDT

A federal judge did not abuse his discretion when he imposed “mild and fitting” sanctions on lawyers in the Philadelphia district attorney’s office for misleading statements made when they sought to vacate the death penalty in a double murder case.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Philadelphia upheld the sanctions in a March 8 opinion, report Law.com, Law360 and the Volokh Conspiracy. How Appealing noted news coverage and linked to the opinion.

One of the sanctions required Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to write apology letters to four members of the families of the murder victims. The other required the office to be more forthcoming in the future.

U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania had imposed the sanctions in September 2022 for misleading statements by the district attorney’s office when it conceded the defendant’s ineffective counsel claim following a death penalty retrial. The office said it reached the decision after a review of the case and “communication with the victims’ family.”

The convicted man, Robert Wharton, had argued that his lawyer in the death penalty retrial was ineffective for failing to argue that he had adjusted well to prison.

But when conceding the ineffective assistance claim, the district attorney’s office never revealed that Wharton had tried to escape from courtroom custody in an unrelated case, resulting in a conviction, the 3rd Circuit said. Nor did the office reveal six instances of prison misconduct by Wharton, including twice being found with makeshift handcuff keys.

And the district attorney’s office communicated with only one family member—and it wasn’t the daughter of the victims, who was only 7 months old when she was left in freezing temperatures after Wharton killed her parents, Bradley and Ferne Hart, in 1984.

The person who was consulted, a brother of one of the victims, was never clearly told that the office planned to concede the death penalty, the 3rd Circuit said.

“The sanctions imposed were mild and fitting,” the 3rd Circuit said in an opinion by Judge Stephanos Bibas, an appointee of former President Donald Trump.

Goldberg had directed the office to include a “full, balanced” explanation of facts when making future concessions, which serves the goal of deterrence, Bibas said. And the apology letter “may help soothe” the outrage of family members, who were “taken [a]back” when they learned of the concession by the district attorney’s office, according to Bibas.

“Courts rely on lawyers’ honesty; lawyers may not mislead them,” Bibas wrote.

Arguments continue to be made in the disqualification controversy targeting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade as the judge overseeing the matter considers the evidence and relevant legal standards.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is, inevitably, being inundated with post-hearing filings as 15 co-defendants still remain in the racketeering (RICO) and election subversion case against Donald Trump. Most, if not all, of those co-defendants have signed onto the effort to remove Willis and her entire office from the case.

An 11-page brief filed in Fulton County Superior Court on Wednesday by co-defendant Jeffrey Clark, a former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer charged in the fake electors plot, accuses Willis of ratifying perjury, misstating the law, and several “actual” conflicts of interest.