Small Law Firms

There's So Much Between The Lines In This 'Disbarred Lawyer Arrested For Shoplifting And Drugs' Story

This might have deserved more than 150 words.

By  
on

Imagine this, but on fire, and then imagine basically ignoring that.

Local television news outlets are suckers for hard luck crime stories to pad out their metanarrative that whatever wonderful town you live in has puppies and cute kids and remains ever teetering on the brink of a crime fueled hellscape. If one approaches local news through the lens that it’s mostly sensationalism, it’s pretty entertaining.

But this story out of Florida — obviously — about disbarred local attorney Joshua Stewart is a true artifact in the local media oeuvre because somehow the fewer than 150-word writeup manages to tell a tale that seems to be glossing over a lot.

A disbarred lawyer found himself in trouble with the law again after shoplifting while carrying drugs, according to Pasco County deputies.

So far so good.

In March, 41-year-old Joshua Stewart was accused of setting fire to a 47-foot yacht. He was a lawyer in New Port Richey, but was disbarred in December 2017 for an unrelated felony charge.

For those keeping track, it took until sentence TWO before this went wildly off the rails. “Setting fire to a 47-foot yacht”? That’s not a nugget that you get to throw in there and just waltz past. And, yes, there was a hyperlink to prior coverage, but this is the sort of thing that demands a thumbnail summary. I went ahead and checked up on this story and, well, here’s the headline:

Sponsored

Disbarred lawyer accused of burning yacht fitted for family’s wheelchair-bound son.

What? Apparently, Stewart is accused of burning a yacht specially fitted for a quadriplegic kid because he was feuding with the father on social media. Buried in that story is the a lone subordinate clause explaining why the police suspect Stewart: “Though Lissow says he never knew Stewart, he wasn’t surprised; Stewart pleaded guilty to stealing Lissow’s yacht’s motor back in 2012.” OH? What’s that all about? We’re left hanging. And neither story bothers to explain the unrelated felony that got Stewart disbarred.

UPDATE: Oh and another thing! A point left unanswered is that the police seem to have accused Stewart of the yacht fire as a total afterthought. There’s a lag between the event and when the story says they finally got around to saying, “huh… well maybe this guy?” Frankly, it seems like a wild outlier in an otherwise straightforward narrative of occasional shoplifting. And “social media feud” seems a little tenuous, right?

Anyway, back then the police worried that Stewart had fled to Costa Rica. It seems he was just down at the Home Depot. Back to the current story:

On Friday, Pasco County detectives said Stewart walked into a Home Depot in Port Richey, grabbed several items and placed them in his pockets. He was seen by a lost prevention officer walking past the cash registers without paying for those items, officials said.

The lost prevention officer detained him and the responding deputy said Stewart admitted to trying to steal those items.

Sponsored

Did this lawyer never learn about Miranda? Why make this admission? Did they not cover basic criminal law at Stetson? Actually… maybe not.

Oh and while we’re here, here’s some more on that unrelated crime that got him disbarred, he was, “charged with grand theft of merchandise from Best Buy.” He also had morphine with him at that time, just like he allegedly had drugs with him this time.

During a search, deputies said they found controlled substances on Stewart. He was arrested for retail theft and possession drugs.

Despite glossing over a lot of the wild stuff that actually makes this story interesting, the most important factor getting skipped between the lines here is the dearth of mental health services available to attorneys and how depression can manifest itself in dependency issues without intervention. At his 2015 suspension, Stewart noted:

“Depression caused some significant problems for me that I did not handle in an appropriate manner,” he said. “Trying to deal with depression with a medication called morphine that you don’t even have a scrip for is absolutely insane.”

How the justice system chooses to deal with Stewart at this point is anyone’s guess, but it’s clear from Stewart himself that whatever penalty gets meted out, some kind of mental health counseling must be a critical component.

Disbarred lawyer caught shoplifting at Port Richey Home Depot, deputies say [Fox 13 News]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

, , , , ,