Christine M. Flowers: The strange case of Jennifer M.

LIKE MOST people, I once dated a person I shouldn't have.

He was a perfectly nice fellow in some respects, but the episode can safely be filed under the category of "What Was Christine Thinking?" That's why, on a personal level, I can empathize with Jennifer Mitrick, the Philadelphia assistant district attorney who fell for an alleged drug dealer after she prosecuted the guy charged with shooting him through the head.

We all make mistakes, sometimes including colossal errors in romantic judgment. (So what were YOU thinking, Jen?)

But Counselor Mitrick isn't just a naive 30-something with an audition for the next installment of "The Bachelorette." She is a credentialed and by all accounts well-educated lawyer with the city's chief legal enforcement agency charged with prosecuting criminal violations. At the very least, those who pay her salary have a right to assume that her off-the-clock activities don't include cavorting with a fellow who thinks that compliance with the Pennsylvania Penal Code, the same one that Mittrick enforces, is optional.

Okay, enough sarcasm. This is a serious matter, and while off-color comments about the ADA and her eccentric taste in men makes for spicier copy, it obscures the central, disturbing fact: An officer of the court dated a known drug dealer who only a short time before had been the prosecution's witness-in-chief, not to mention the victim, in a case that she was handling.

While there's no specific rule telling lawyers who they can date and punishing them for their love lives, there is a specific prohibition on dating your client unless you were intimate with him before he actually became your client. According to Rule of Professional Conduct 1.8(j), "a lawyer shall not have sexual relations with a client unless a consensual relationship existed between them when the client-lawyer relationship commenced."

Of course, as I noted in my blog a few weeks ago, the victim of a crime is not exactly the "client" of the DA's office. But a strong case can be made that if the district attorney represents "the people." that includes victims, and therefore Jennifer Mitrick violated her professional obligations.

Some might say that since she revealed the relationship voluntarily after a mistrial was declared in the case, she at least tried to do the right thing. But it's too little, too late in my estimation.