A public disciplinary hearing has been ordered for a Seattle attorney who was caught in a jailhouse sexual encounter more than a year ago with her client, a man currently on trial for three killings in Bellevue.
A review committee for the Washington State Bar Association has said it found sufficient evidence to hold the hearing to decide the professional fate of Theresa Olson.
The hearing won't be scheduled until the trial of her former client, Sebastian Burns, is completed this spring. . . .
[O]lson, 44, has acknowledged that she had sexual contact with Burns in August 2002 in a conference room at the King County Jail. She was removed from the case, new attorneys were appointed, and the case was postponed.
Olson and the bar association had agreed to settle the disciplinary case by suspending Olson's law license for a year. But the Washington State Supreme Court rejected that proposed penalty.
Although the court did not comment on or explain its rejection of the penalty, observers generally presumed that it found the one-year suspension too lenient.
Details here from The Seattle Times. (via How Appealing)