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Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and the disciplinary commission that has accused him of violating Indiana’s professional conduct rules for lawyers have requested a delay in the proceedings, noting that the two parties have been “engaged in productive dialogue.”
The joint motion for a stay, filed on Tuesday, comes a couple of days before the parties were required to submit preliminary exhibit and witness lists. The parties also requested that the three-person panel appointed to hear the case vacate the scheduled first pre-hearing on Sept. 30.
Earlier this month, at the strong encouragement of the hearing panel, the parties agreed on a mediator to try to help them settle the case and avoid a public hearing.
The mediator selected from the three options provided was James Riley Jr., of counsel for Indianapolis-based firm Riley Bennett Egloff LLP, who is described in a bio on his firm’s website as an “experienced neutral,” previously serving as a mediator for a variety of cases and matters.
The parties were given until Oct. 6 to reach an agreement or else head to a public hearing set for December.
The commission has accused Rokita of misleading the Indiana Supreme Court when he signed a conditional agreement accepting responsibility for his actions in an earlier disciplinary case and then making what the commission considered to be contradictory public statements.
In the initial case, Rokita received a public reprimand for comments he made in 2022 about Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an OB-GYN who had told The Indianapolis Star about a medical abortion she performed for a 10-year-old rape victim, who was forced to come to Indiana for the treatment because her home state of Ohio prohibited it at that time.
Rokita, a staunch Republican supporter of the near-total abortion ban that Indiana would later impose, responded on Fox News by calling Bernard an “abortion activist acting as a doctor.”
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