Mark and Patricia McCloskey did not foresee that their law licenses could be suspended if they pleaded guilty to misdemeanor gun charges related to an incident the summer of 2020 involving a Black Lives Matter rally. But, in fact, chief disciplinary counsel Alan D. Pratzel asked the Missouri Supreme Court to do just that.
“It would set a precedent that the bar association can punish you for essentially political reasons as opposed to anything that would have to do with our actual fitness to practice law,” Mark McCloskey told the St. Louis Record. “It’s outrageous that you should risk losing your license on a political issue where you have to have the correct political position in order to maintain your law license.”
The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel stated in documents on Sept. 16 that the McCloskeys should be suspended for six months from practicing law because they committed crimes of moral turpitude, according to media reports.
"Our lawyers on this case said pleading guilty to these misdemeanors couldn't possibly affect our law license but then there it is," Patricia McCloskey told the St. Louis Record.
The McCloskeys work as personal injury lawyers at McCloskey Law Center on Lindell Boulevard in St. Louis.
“We anticipated, as political as the bar association is, that they would have to do something in response but I never anticipated that they would propose suspending our licenses indefinitely and calling what we did an act of moral turpitude when we were just defending ourselves,” Mark McCloskey said. “That aspect of it is shocking to me.”
A crime of moral turpitude is widely defined as an illegal act committed with evil intent and recklessness that shocks the public conscience.
“There are dozens of people sitting in solitary confinement cells in D.C. right now for doing no more than trespassing on Jan. 6 when not a single one of the 350 to 500 people that broke down my gate, stood in front of me, threatened to kill me, threatened to rape my wife, burn my house and office and even kill my dog has done a single day in jail,” McCloskey said.
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, Mark McCloskey, 64, and Patricia McCloskey, 62, gained national attention a year ago in the wake of the George Floyd controversy for brandishing firearms in front of their Central West End home while Black Lives Matter demonstrators marched towards former Mayor Lyda Krewson’s nearby home.
“If after six months we apply to have our licenses restored and we take the bar exam in the appropriate sequence so they can consider it, it can still be 18 months to two years if they get around to looking at it and I will be 65 years old on December 1st,” McCloskey added. “If we get our license suspended for six months, it's really the end of my career before I would ever get a license back. So, it’s really onerous.”