WHAT A HEEL: Lawyer Claims She “Channeled” Spirit Of Client’s Dead Wife
AZ attorney Charna Johnson originally met her client, Chad Lakridis, when she took lessons in ballroom dancing from him, and began representing him during his divorce proceedings in January 2000. When his wife, Jan, committed suicide the following year, Johnson became involved in planning the funeral arrangements, and later in probate proceedings. Shortly thereafter, Johnson told her client that she was “channeling” the dead woman’s spirit and that she - meaning Jan - wanted to have sex with him.
Displeased with how Johnson handled the settlement Johnson worked out between him and Jan’s parents over her estate, Lakridis eventually filed a complaint with the AZ Supreme Court, and here’s where things got really weird, reports ABA Journal:
The hearing on the channeling allegations pitted two experts who disagreed on whether Johnson must have been delusional. A state expert said that’s the inevitable conclusion, since there is no scientific evidence to support channeling, while Johnson’s expert said that’s an inappropriate value judgment that may contravene the religious beliefs of millions of people. …
Johnson and the client both testified that they genuinely believed the client’s wife was within Johnson. Two witnesses agreed. The client felt his wife had come back to heal some of the damage from her prescription drug use.
“It would be easy in this case to get bogged down in a discussion of whether in fact a living person can communicate thoughts of a deceased person,” the hearing officer’s report says. But the case is not about that dispute, the report said. There was insufficient evidence of a sexual relationship, and the channeling had no adverse effect on Johnson’s representation, the hearing officer concluded.
Unable to determine beyond a metaphysical doubt whether Johnson could, in fact, communicate with people beyond the grave the hearing officer nonetheless recommended a six-month suspension, because she conflated “channeling” Jan’s spirit with “being possessed” by it in another unrelated disciplinary matter and the hearing officer thought the distinction important enough to determine her testimony had not been truthful.
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