The Kentucky Supreme Court has agreed with a trial commissioner’s recommendation to suspend the legal license of former Christian County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rick Boling due to misconduct regarding the letter he sent to former Governor Matt Bevin on behalf of convicted sex offender Dayton Jones and for his prosecutorial misconduct that led to a guilty verdict being overturned for attempted murder suspect Karen Brafman.
Commissioner Roderick Messner wrote in December that he believed Boling to be guilty of five rule violations regarding both incidents.
He asserted Boling made a statement he knew to be false when he wrote to Bevin that Jones’ biggest problem was that “the Democratic party controlled the prosecutor, the judge he stood before and Jones’ own attorney.”
The report says Boling also broke the rules when he engaged in “fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation” by writing the letter that contained multiple false statements.
The Supreme Court ruling upholding the suspension Thursday agrees, stating “Boling misused his current position of trust, attacked the prosecutorial discretion of the predecessor Commonwealth’s Attorney and cast doubt on the integrity of the former prosecutor, the Christian Circuit Court and Jones’s defense counsel.”
While Boling previously said he never expected anything to come from the letter, the Supreme Court states “It is immaterial that Boling believed, given the eleventh-hour submission of the letter, that then-Governor Bevin would not see the letter, or that the pardon would not be granted. In addition, although Boling now attributes the political and subjective statements to the Joneses, even time constraints seem an unlikely reason for his failure to distinguish those from his own legal analysis in a relatively brief letter.”
Regarding the Brafman case the court says, “We are likewise troubled by Boling’s actions that led this Court to conclude the trial was ‘fundamentally unfair’ and characterize Boling’s conduct as ‘unnecessarily exploitative and dishonest.’”
Brafman set fire to a mobile home with two adults and four children inside in May of 2018. A jury found Brafman guilty of first-degree arson, second-degree arson and six counts of attempted murder and gave her a life sentence.
The Supreme Court overturned the verdict after a courtroom audio recording surfaced of Boling and a Kentucky State Police arson investigator acknowledging Brafman had been under the influence when she set the fire, despite him opposing a voluntary intoxication defense at trial.
Brafman later pled guilty to two counts of arson and six counts of attempted murder as part of a deal that came with a 20-year sentence.
Boling, who resigned as the county’s chief prosecutor at the end of February, does not oppose the trial commissioner’s recommended five-year suspension, according to the opinion.