Back in 2021, an outrageous legal ethics scandal in Texas so disturbed me that I wrote virtually the same post about it twice, once in May and again in September, without realizing it until one of you reminded me. This time, however, I’m not repeating myself.
Former Texas attorney Weldon Ralph Petty Jr prosecuted defendants before Midland County judges as an assistant district attorney, while simultaneously working as a law clerk for some of the same judges, on occasion advising them regarding the criminal cases he was prosecuting. He did this for more than a decade, with the complicity of the judges and his colleagues. Finally another prosecutor blew the whistle on this unethical conduct, which even Fani Willis would recognize as a conflict of interest. Maybe.
Last month Petty, who was disbarred, appeared in the news again.
