WICHITA, Kansas – A Kansas Republican lawmaker who dropped his re-election campaign last month after being arrested in a traffic stop has now been barred from practicing law for at least a year for mishandling conflicts of interest in a murder case.
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that state Rep. Carl Maughan of Colwich violated professional standards when he represented 57-year-old Bret Blevins in a 2016 crash that killed two men, according to the Kansas City Star.
Maughan did not immediately respond to an email from the Associated Press on Sunday, nor did he respond to a phone call from the newspaper on Friday. He has previously defended his handling of the Blevins case, although Blevins is now suing Maughan over it.
Conflicts of interest in the case arose because Maughan had previously represented Blevins’ girlfriend, Tammy Akers, in DUI cases and accepted $30,000 from Akers and her husband to defend Blevins.
Akers and Blevins were the only occupants of the vehicle that struck and killed the two men in a van. Akers served as a key witness at the trial where Maughan blamed Akers for the accident and suggested she was the driver.
The Supreme Court ruled that the conflict of interest waivers that Maughan had Blevins and Akers sign did not adequately address the situation nor fully inform them of the consequences.
Ultimately, Blevins was sentenced to more than 60 years in prison in 2017 after he was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder. But the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled four years later that he deserved a new trial due to Maughan’s conflicts of interest. He then pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.
Maughan announced last month that he would drop out of the race for his House seat, but his name will still be on the primary ballot alongside three other Republicans because he missed the deadline to withdraw it.
He faces two misdemeanors and two traffic violations following a traffic stop in Topeka in March. He was charged with possession of a firearm while under the influence, DUI, failure to signal a lane change and failure to maintain safe passage in a single lane. His attorney in the Topeka case did not immediately respond to an email Sunday.
