The parents allegedly lied to the police and were uncooperative. There could be an obstruction of justice charge?
The parents were represented by an attorney the entire time. I don’t know if they crossed a line or not. People aren’t always truthful with their attorneys and that limits how effectively they can represent them.
I’ve seen reports there is a FBI Investigation. Let’s see what develops from that investigation.
I’d prefer they get punished in the civil court. There was a hearing about the civil lawsuit June 22. A trial hasn’t been decided.
At the moment I can’t think of “proof” that many in our culture think ‘well, it’s bad he killed her, but he paid for it, so…he’s not that bad a guy’—other than to point to posting along that lines all over the Internet.
I still think it’s largely true that many tend to process murder-suicides that way. If I come across research that supports this viewpoint, I’ll post it.
Notice also that I did not post “Our culture endorses murder-suicide.” What I did post was “there’s a strong strain of [acceptance of m-s] in our culture.”
Not the same thing. (Your post straw-manned my argument to a degree.)
What, in general, is required if a lawyer has been told, by the client, that the client has done something awful, or is planning to do so?
I gather that “has done” would be covered under confidentiality. But don’t lawyers have a right or responsibility to report if the client states he is planning on committing a crime?
There are “may report” and “shall report” circumstances.
Here’s the rule in Washington (pretty typical, but not universal.
RPC 1.6
CONFIDENTIALITY OF INFORMATION
(a) A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the
client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the
representation or the disclosure is permitted by paragraph (b).
(b) A lawyer to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary:
(1) shall reveal information relating to the representation of a client to prevent reasonably
certain death or substantial bodily harm;
(2) may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to prevent the client
from committing a crime;
(3) may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to prevent, mitigate or
rectify substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another that is reasonably certain
to result or has resulted from the client’s commission of a crime or fraud in furtherance of which
the client has used the lawyer’s services;
(4) may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to secure legal advice
about the lawyer’s compliance with these Rules;
(5) may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to establish a claim or
defense on behalf of the lawyer in a controversy between the lawyer and the client, to establish a
defense to a criminal charge or civil claim against the lawyer based upon conduct in which the
client was involved, or to respond to allegations in any proceeding concerning the lawyer’s
representation of the client;
(6) may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to comply with a court
order;
(7) may reveal information relating to the representation to detect and resolve conflicts of
interest arising from the lawyer’s change of employment or from changes in the composition or
ownership of a firm, but only if the revealed information would not compromise the attorney-
client privilege or otherwise prejudice the client; or
(8) may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to inform a tribunal
about any client’s breach of fiduciary responsibility when the client is serving as a court
appointed fiduciary such as a guardian, personal representative, or receiver.
It varies by state, but broadly trends strongly pro-confidentiality. In California, there is no “shall reveal” circumstance. A lawyer is never ethically obliged to reveal a client disclosure. Under the Rules of Professional Conduct, rule 1.6, a lawyer may reveal a confidential client communication if the lawyer reasonably believes the disclosure is necessary to prevent a criminal act that the lawyer reasonably believes is likely to result in the death of, or substantial bodily harm to, an individual. However, the lawyer must first make a good-faith effort to persuade the client not to commit the criminal act, and inform the client of the lawyer’s ability or decision to reveal the relevant info. And the lawyer’s disclosure must be no more than is necessary to prevent the criminal act, given the information known to the lawyer at the time of disclosure.
So, hypothetically, under the California rules, if Laundrie had told his lawyer that he was planning to strangle Petito, the lawyer would not be obligated to reveal this information to anyone. If the lawyer believed he meant it, and she wanted to try to stop it from happening, she would first have to try to talk him out if it, and at some point, she would have to warn him that this was the sort of secret she was allowed to reveal. If she failed to talk him out of it, she would probably be OK if she reached out only to Petito directly to warn her. If the lawyer were unable to contact Petito, she might be OK informing the police of a threat made against Petito’s life, though whether she could ethically reveal that it was Laundrie who made the threat is debatable. Calling a press conference to share all the juicy details with us internet looky-loos would be right out. And once Petito is dead, and especially once Laundrie is dead, it’s really hard to make that argument of reasonable belief in the necessity of disclosure to prevent someone being hurt or killed. And of course, in reality, I doubt Laundrie formulated his intent to kill her very far in advance of doing so, or that he consulted a lawyer in the meantime.
(I used female pronouns for Laundrie’s hypothetical California lawyer just for ease of keeping track of who’s who; I don’t remember or care about the gender of the lawyer he eventually did hire.)
Great question. I don’t know, so I looked into it. The tricky thing with the California rule is it requires that the act likely to result in death etc be a criminal act, which attempted suicide is not, here. This is a departure from the ABA model rules, which don’t require that the intended harmful act be criminal. So I don’t believe Laundrie’s hypothetical California attorney could disclose if he threatened suicide in California. If he told his California attorney that he intended to commit suicide in Florida, where it’s (maybe; I’m actually not sure you’re right about this) illegal? Gawd, I dunno. A cursory search doesn’t turn up anything on point as far as whether it has to be a crime in California, or if it can just be a crime in the jurisdiction where it’s intended to be carried out. Maybe it’s never come up in court.
In other jurisdictions without the requirement for a criminal act, there have been opinions in favor of disclosure. (Some links are broken but can be found by Googling.)
I also found this article indicating disclosure is kosher under Florida’s ethical rules:
I’m not seeing a way to link to posts in this thread without the account name showing (and it’s not my goal to single out anyone posting here). So I’ll quote and also give the post number. Anyway, here are a couple of posts that offer that flavor of ‘he’s not such a bad guy after all’:
#1248:
#1326
For the real hardcore ‘Brian did what he had to do and then redeemed himself’ style of response, admittedly, you’d probably have to go to the Chans or other sites that attract “men’s rights” enthusiasts. I’m not going to link to those sites.
Overall: it’s subjective. My best piece of evidence is probably the measurable drop-off in interest in the case once the authorities said “yeah, the remains are of Brian Laundrie.” Media coverage as well as internet talk both dropped–even though Petito was just as dead and almost certainly just as murdered as she had been before that announcement. But, you know…it’s all over and settled. Why would anyone think the topic of someone killing his romantic partner worthy of anyone’s time?
All I can say is that I see absolutely nothing in those posts that you quoted that resembles anything like what you claimed:
How do you get that from a discussion of where he committed suicide in post #1248?
And I’ve read post #1326 in full, and there is no indication that “even bad people make good decisions sometimes” meant anything like that either.
You are seeing something incredibly sinister where there is just no evidence for it. I mean, I believe people say shit like this on places like 4chan, but that’s just a reason to stay away from those places.
I think this is crazy. Remember “The responding officer wrote that Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito, 22, slapped Brian Laundrie after an argument”–thus she was the aggressor according to the information the police department had.
I’m surprised they could even file a claim for negligence on this basis. I thought, normally, there was no recognized legal duty (such as would give rise to a cause of action for its breach) for the police to investigate crimes or make arrests. Perhaps Utah allows for such a claim? Or maybe this lawsuit won’t make it very far…
ETA: But while we’re on the subject, it’s just possible that a more nuanced view of intimate partner violence could be appropriate. It’s not uncommon for the primary abuser to provoke their partner into a response–perhaps even a physical response–and then have that turn out to be the first police interaction (whether because the primary abuser makes the call, or because they do it in a public enough place that others call). The abuser can then use that police interaction–in which the abuser is the supposed victim–as additional leverage to hold over their partner.
It’s the “I’m not touching you!” scenario taken to the extreme. Particularly as there might actually be touching (even violence) but done in such a way or under such circumstances that the police never get involved. Until of course the partner–the victim of the primary abuser–snaps and hits back. Literally. Then all of the sudden it’s “I’m being repressed! Come and see the violence inherent in the [relationship]!”
And I am absolutely satisfied that the murderer in this case was the primary abuser even before he turned to murder. He was a piece of shit, and should get no credit whatsoever for killing himself or for his half-assed suicide note.
It’s not so much qualified immunity as lack of “duty.” The more common case is the police don’t arrest a drunk who then kills someone. Or you call 911 and no one shows up. Perhaps they can establish something here, but it’s a tough one.