Justice Works Slowly, and Sometimes Not At All, But in Kansas It Has Worked With Respect to Disbarred and Disgraced Former Attorney General Phil Kline

No Your False Moral Superiority is Not Grounds for Unethical Behavior

Kansas for some reason has become a hotbed of the anti-abortion rights movement.  It is a state where politicians want to use government to decide how a woman may control her own body.  The advocates of denying a woman a right to choose believe they have the moral high ground.  And for a long time former Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline led the charge.

In 2007, Mr. Kline filed 107 criminal charges against a Planned Parenthood clinic in the Kansas City suburbs, accusing it of performing illegal abortions and falsifying records. The last of those charges were dropped in August 2012. He also pursued misdemeanor criminal charges against Dr. George Tiller because of late-term abortions performed at his Wichita clinic. 

But it turns out Mr. Kline was a charlatan, an unethical attorney and a prosecutor who thought he didn’t have to follow the rule of law.  And now that has caught up with him.

The state Supreme Court indefinitely suspended the law license of former Attorney General Phill Kline on Friday after allegations of ethical misconduct during his investigation of abortion providers. The court unanimously agreed with a state disciplinary panel that Mr. Kline, a Republican, repeatedly misled or allowed subordinates to mislead others, including a Kansas City-area grand jury, to further his investigations. 

Justice, sometimes it does work, and sometimes the bad guys do lose.