The Arkansas Supreme Court agreed Thursday to accept former Judge Michael Maggio's proposed surrender of his law license.
In its decision, the court noted that Maggio, 53, had acknowledged that he pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge in January.
"Mr. Maggio also states that he wishes to avoid the expense, stress, and publicity of further addressing his conviction," said the high-court order removing Maggio's name from the registry of attorneys licensed to practice law in Arkansas.
The Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct received Maggio's licensing request, dated Jan. 20 and forwarded by his attorney, shortly after he entered his guilty plea on Jan. 9 in U.S. District Court in Little Rock. On March 20, that committee told the Supreme Court that it was recommending acceptance of Maggio's surrender, court records show.
In his petition, Maggio cited his own conduct in presiding over a negligence-lawsuit case involving the 2008 nursing-home death of Martha Bull of Perryville.
In that case, Maggio reduced a Faulkner County jury's $5.2 million judgment for the Bull family to $1 million, three days after nursing-home owner Michael Morton donated thousands of dollars to eight political action committees. Seven of those PACs later contributed to Maggio's since-halted campaign for the Arkansas Court of Appeals. Morton has said it was his understanding the PAC donations were intended for Maggio's campaign.
"I acknowledge that my conduct is 'serious misconduct' as defined in ... the Court's Procedures Regulating Professional Conduct of Attorneys at Law, and the presumptive sanction for my conduct is disbarment," Maggio wrote in the petition.
In addition to avoiding "the expense, stress, and publicity of addressing" that conduct in a disbarment proceeding, Maggio said, "I believe there is a substantial risk that a disbarment case against me will go badly for me."
Maggio noted that he had been licensed to practice law in Arkansas since 1990 and was a judge in the 20th Judicial Circuit from 2000 to Sept. 11, 2014 -- the day the Supreme Court ordered him removed from office for "misconduct" in unrelated matters.
Supreme Court Justice Rhonda Wood did not participate in the court's decision Thursday. Wood formerly was a judge in the same circuit as Maggio.
State Desk on 04/17/2015