The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
The law license of Kent Mawhinney, who is charged in Jennifer Dulos homicide, has been suspended.
HARTFORD — A judge has temporarily suspended the law license of the attorney charged for his alleged role in the Jennifer Dulos homicide, a court ruling Tuesday indicated.
Brian Staines, the state’s Chief Disciplinary Counsel, filed a motion this month for the law license of Kent Mawhinney to be temporarily suspended and another attorney appointed as a trustee for his clients while the criminal case is pending.
“Due to his incarceration and any conditions that may be imposed upon his release from custody cannot attend to the legal needs of his clients and there exists a substantial threat of irreparable harm to his clients or to prospective clients,” Staines said.
Since the law firm he ran with attorney David Markowitz closed in October, Mawhinney is considered a “solo practitioner” operating out of Bloomfield and does not have a trust account with his clients’ money pooled with a financial institution, according to Staines, whose agency oversees grievances filed against attorneys.
A judge heard arguments Tuesday on Staines’ motion in state Superior Court in Hartford.
The judge appointed attorneys Anthony Collins and Nancy Martin as “cotrustees” — giving them the power to take necessary steps to protect the interests of Mawhinney’s clients.
The ruling said Collins and Martin may also “inventory the client files, receive the business mail and take control of respondent’s (Mawhinney) clients’ funds, IOLTA (Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts) and all fiduciary accounts.”
The attorneys, the ruling said, cannot make any disbursements from any accounts without authorization from the court.
Collins and Martin must notify “all active clients” of Mawhinney’s suspension and tell them of “the need to arrange for their selfrepresentation or successor counsel,” the ruling said.
Mawhinney is being held on $2 million bond after being charged Jan. 7 with conspiracy to commit murder in the disappearance and death of Jennifer Dulos.
The New Canaan 50year-old was last seen on her neighbor’s security camera returning home after dropping off her five children at a nearby school around 8 a.m. May 24.
Police believe her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, was “lying in wait” and attacked her in the garage of her Welles Lane home, according to arrest warrants.
Fotis Dulos is considered a close friend and former client of Mawhinney, who represented him in a $2.5 million lawsuit filed by Jennifer Dulos’ mother, Gloria Farber.
Mawhinney is accused in arrest warrants of attempting to provide an alibi for Fotis Dulos on the morning his estranged wife disappeared and was also linked to what a witness described as a “human grave” at an East Granby gun club.
According to the warrant, Mawhinney’s cellphone pinged off a tower near the Windsor Rod & Gun Club around 11 p.m. on May 31 — hours after police visited Fotis Dulos’ Farmington home and conducted an intense search in Hartford where they say clothing and other items were found in the trash containing Jennifer Dulos’ blood. The next day, Fotis Dulos and his former girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, were arrested on tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution charges.
Fotis Dulos, 52, was additionally charged Jan. 7 with felony murder, murder and kidnapping in his estranged wife’s homicide. Troconis, 45, and Mawhinney, 54, were charged the same day with conspiracy to commit murder.
Fotis Dulos and Troconis are each on house arrest after posting bond, while Mawhinney remains incarcerated, unable to post bond. State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo said he considered Mawhinney a flight risk after he tried to avoid being arrested and was eventually taken into custody at gunpoint in Tolland.
Staines pointed out in court papers seeking a hearing on the suspension of Mawhinney’s law license that even if the attorney makes bond, he would like be on house arrest, preventing him from adequately representing his clients.
Staines is seeking to have the court appoint a trustee to inventory Mawhinney’s files, secure his clients’ funds and “to take such action necessary to protect the interests” of them.
Mawhinney, who lost custody of his children last week, is also facing charges stemming from his own contentious divorce. Last January, Mawhinney was charged with spousal sexual assault, disorderly conduct and unlawful restraint . Mawhinney was then charged in June with violating a protective order after Fotis Dulos reached out to his estranged wife on his behalf in an apparent effort to mend his friend’s marriage.
In Mawhinney’s June arrest warrant, police said the woman believed Fotis Dulos was working with her husband “to get rid of her.”
“She stated that she believed that Mawhinney wanted her dead,” police said in the arrest warrant.
According to the woman’s affidavit in a court filing for a restraining order against Mawhinney, Fotis Dulos first contacted her on May 16 and then reached out several more times before arranging to meet at a bar on May 19.
The woman refused Fotis Dulos’ offer to come back to his Farmington home, where he said she and Mawhinney could use a room to be “intimate,” the affidavit said.
The woman said her last conversation with Fotis Dulos, whom she had only met once before in her husband’s office in 2014, occurred on May 22 — two days before Jennifer Dulos vanished, according to court documents.
Around the same time, two members of the Windsor Rod & Gun Club discovered a large hole near the woods on the 25-acre property that Mawhinney helped acquire more than a decade ago, according to his arrest warrant in Jennifer Dulos’ homicide.
In early June, one of the men noticed the hole was gone, covered “as neat as a pin” with leaves and sticks, the warrant said. When state police searched the property in August, no human remains were found.