JEFFERSON CITY – Longtime St. Clair attorney John Brian Loveless, acquitted in Mexico in 2017 of his girlfriend's death, is on probation following a June 4 Missouri Supreme Court order after he was charged with assault in Stone County last summer.
In its order, the Supreme Court handed down a fully stayed indefinite suspension and placed Loveless on two years of conditional probation.
"Should probation be revoked and the suspension take effect, no petition for reinstatement shall be entertained for a period of two years from the date the suspension becomes effective," the court's order said.
Loveless' stayed suspension and probation followed his convictions for class A misdemeanor of resisting arrest in Stone County Circuit Court and class B misdemeanor of driving while intoxicated in Franklin County Circuit Court, according to the Supreme Court's order.
The Supreme Court also ordered Loveless to pay all costs in the matter.
Loveless was admitted to the bar in Missouri on Sept. 19, 1981, according to his profile at The Missouri Bar's website.
Loveless was arrested in June of last year by Indian Point police, west of Branson near Table Rock Lake, and charged by the Stone County Associate District Court with fourth-degree assault and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors, according to a local news report. He was subsequently released from Stone County Jail on a $2,500 cash-only bond.
In March of the previous year, Loveless was acquitted by a Mexican tribunal in the March 2016 death of his girlfriend, 36-year-old Tamra Turpin, while the couple was on a trip to Playa Del Carmen. Turpin was found dead in the condo where she had been staying. Mexican authorities subsequently determined that Turpin had been strangled to death.
In November 2017, a Franklin County judge approved a $300,000 wrongful death settlement between Loveless and Turpin's mother, Evalena Duncan.