Advised to pass off murder as self-defense: US lawyer fired for commenting on Facebook

An American lawyer advised a woman how to pass off the murder of her ex as self-defense. He was suspended from work, writes Hromadske.

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A Tennessee resident posted a message in which she admitted that she was afraid to meet her ex-boyfriend. In the comments to the post, the lawyer advised her how to pass off his murder as self-defense. And when he was fired for violating ethics, he said that it was a joke.

The website of the Tennessee Supreme Court reported.

So, in 2017, a woman asked on Facebook if she should carry a weapon with her after breaking up with her partner. Her message was responded to by lawyer Winston Bradshaw Sitton, who wrote that if she wanted to kill her ex-boyfriend, she should "lure" him to her house, claim that he broke in with the intention of harming her, and say that she was afraid for her life and killed him in self-defense.

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Sitton emphasized that he gives advice as a lawyer, and advised the woman to delete the post so that it would not later be used as evidence against her. Subsequently, the woman nevertheless deleted this publication, but her former partner took screenshots and brought them to the prosecutor.

Following this, the Board of Professional Ethics decided to suspend Sitton's attorney's license for 60 days. However, the Tennessee Supreme Court decided that such a punishment would be too lenient. In the end, Sitton was suspended from the practice of law for 4 years with a probationary period of one year.

Sitton himself said that the comments for which he was suspended from work were pulled out of context and did not violate any rules of professional ethics.

"I strongly deny the conclusion that my free comment, offered to a battered woman who was threatened and harassed by her son's father, was legal advice to commit a crime or in any way violated my legal duties as a citizen or as a lawyer," Sitton wrote.

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The man admitted that his messages were unreasonable, but claims that he created them in an openly sarcastic manner in order to convince the woman not to discuss lethal weapons in an open post on social networks.

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