A Little Rock attorney accused of violating a court order by leaking secret materials derived from a lawsuit against Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey quit the case Wednesday to avoid formal sanctions by a judge.
Attorney Chris Burks was allowed to withdraw representing Assistant Chief Hayward Finks after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza announced that he was going to find Burks in contempt of court and remove him as Finks’ lawyer.
Burks volunteered to quit the case instead, telling the judge that he had considered the possibility that Piazza would disqualify him as Finks’ attorney. Burks said Finks is close to bringing in new legal representation to take over the 7-month-old litigation. Piazza said he would withhold the contempt finding as long as Burks completely separated himself from Finks’ lawsuit.
With Burks and Humphrey each accusing the other of disclosing secret materials to newspaper reporters, Piazza said the sides had created a “public display … that demeans the court system” by delving into matters beyond the grievances that Finks has made in his lawsuit.
Without going into specifics, Piazza noted there are “ongoing political problems” affecting the Police Department and its chief. The judge said he wanted the sides to refocus on dealing solely with the issues raised in Finks’ lawsuit, so he wanted Burks off the case because Burks had exceeded his role as an advocate for Finks’ interests.
“You’ve got to let the system work,” the judge said. “I don’t think this is healthy for this lawsuit.”
Unspoken by the judge is that the Little Rock Board of Directors is preparing to consider a no-confidence vote in Humphrey, who was hired by Mayor Frank Scott Jr. in March 2019.
Also, Humphrey is currently suing his detractors within the police force and city government in federal court, saying they are conspiring to thwart his efforts to reform the department. City officials are now studying the litigation over concerns it might have the effect of making the city a defendant. Finks is one of those defendants.
Finks and three other officers, one of them his brother, sued Humphrey in April, accusing the chief of retaliating against them because Finks gave testimony about the internal investigation into a fatal police shooting and embarrassed Humphrey by contradicting the chief’s version of events.
The judge’s decision capped an hourlong hearing called by lawyers for Humphrey and the city of Little Rock who had accused Burks of providing text messages from the chief to some of his subordinate officers to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter, which formed the basis of a Nov. 28 news article.
Those texts had been disclosed to Burks on Nov. 17, the same day the sides reached an agreement about keeping evidence involving personnel matters away from the public. The secrecy agreement was ratified in a protective order from the judge.
Humphrey’s lawyers accused Burks of violating that order in his communications with reporters. Humphrey and the city said they wanted the judge to force Burks to answer detailed questions under oath about which reporters he’d talked to and to whom he had provided materials collected from the lawsuit. The lawyers said they were afraid to turn over any more evidence to Burks out of concern about what he’d do with it.
The lawyers said those text messages reported in the newspaper should not have been made public because they were instances of the chief critiquing the job performance of the officers, material that the law allows be kept secret, except in certain circumstances. Those texts had been provided to Burks in the context of a deposition of the city’s personnel director.
Burks responded by denying wrongdoing, stating in court pleadings that his communications with reporters were nothing that Humphrey had not done himself.
Burks cited a conversation with an unnamed Washington Post columnist who Burks said had told him about communicating with Humphrey and receiving materials from him. Burks said Humphrey’s lawyers had further exposed secret materials by alluding to them in court filings, both in the Finks case and Humphrey’s federal lawsuit.
The stakes were raised Friday when Washington Post opinion writer Radley Balko published a column accusing Burks of lying to the court about the communications between them to gain the upper hand in the Finks lawsuit and press for more of the evidence to be made public.
Balko wrote that he had been in communication with Humphrey, who had given him text messages and emails, but that it had all occurred months before the protective order was in place.
On Wednesday, the Balko accusations, raised by Humphrey and the city’s lawyer, did not appear to impress the judge, who described the addition of Balko’s column to the court record as “kind of ridiculous” since Balko wasn’t present.
Burks disputed Balko’s accusations, describing the columnist as “not credible.” Burks said he had provided texts messages to the columnist but only because Balko had demonstrated such a deep knowledge of the litigation and the evidence, showing that Balko had access to the evidence.
Burks denied any deliberate wrongdoing on his own part, although he acknowledged that he might have misunderstood the limits of the protective order.
“Never in a million years would I violate a court order,” Burks told the judge. “I did not get documents from them and then leak them.”
The materials he showed to the newspaper writers were information they already had, Burks said. He only included the texts to clarify the context and meaning of those messages, he told the judge.
Rather than punish him, Burks said, the judge could just seal the case and impose a gag order on the parties.
Both Khayyam Eddings, Humphrey’s attorney, and Justin Eichmann, a lawyer for the city, denounced Burks’ accusation that Humphrey had done anything wrong as “false allegations.”
Eddings told the judge that the release of the texts was “calculated … to publicly humiliate” Humphrey, while Eichmann said Burks claims to have proof of Humphrey’s disclosures but has not provided it to the lawyers.