COLUMBUS, Ohio — Five Franklin County attorneys are facing professional discipline — including two indefinite-suspension matters — in reports the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct filed Friday with the Supreme Court of Ohio, according to CourtNewsOhio, the official news service of the Ohio courts.
The Board’s November 6 filings recommend an indefinite suspension for Stephen Michael Chinn, a two-year suspension with 18 months stayed for Adam Oliver Johnson, a six-month stayed suspension for Stacey Lynn Beck under a consent agreement, and a two-year stayed suspension for Michael William DeWitt. In a fifth matter, the Board recommends that the Court deny Richard Francis Chambers II’s petition to be reinstated to practice, CourtNewsOhio reported.
The most serious case is Chinn’s. The 42-year-old former Franklin County public defender pleaded guilty to receiving and possessing child pornography and was sentenced in June 2025 to eight years in federal prison, The Columbus Dispatch reported in its coverage of the filings. The Board’s recommendation of an indefinite suspension, in Supreme Court case No. 2026-1384, would keep him from returning to practice even after his release unless the Court later orders otherwise.
Johnson’s case, No. 2026-1363, centers on the hours he claimed for court-appointed work. According to The Columbus Dispatch’s reporting on the Board’s findings, Johnson claimed 3,852 hours in 2021 and 4,143 hours in 2022 on court-appointed fee applications — totals the Board called “mathematical impossibilities,” in wording The Columbus Dispatch drew from the filings. The Board found dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation, the Dispatch reported, and recommended a two-year suspension with 18 months stayed.
DeWitt’s case, No. 2026-1375, involves the money clients entrust to their lawyers. The Board found that DeWitt neglected client matters, misrepresented matters to clients, and improperly withdrew funds from his IOLTA client trust account to pay personal expenses, including mortgage and water bills, according to court records reported by The Columbus Dispatch. The recommended sanction is a two-year suspension, stayed in full.
Trust accounts are the tripwire in many Ohio discipline cases, and DeWitt’s shows why. An IOLTA account is not a lawyer’s money: it holds client funds — settlements, retainers, escrow — in a pooled, interest-bearing account whose interest supports legal aid, and Ohio’s rules require every dollar to remain the client’s until it is earned. Using that account for personal bills, as the Board found DeWitt did, is treated as among the most serious breaches of a lawyer’s duty, because clients often have no way to see the loss until long after it happens.
Beck agreed to her discipline. Her six-month suspension, stayed, comes through a consent-to-discipline agreement in case No. 2026-1357, CourtNewsOhio reported. The Columbus Dispatch reported the underlying accusations involved courtroom photographs and lying to a judge. Chambers’ matter, case No. 2022-0534, is older: the Court imposed his indefinite suspension in October 2022 after he violated conditions of an earlier stayed suspension and continued practicing, and the Board’s recommendation against his reinstatement was filed October 8, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What is settled: the Board has investigated, heard and voted on these five cases, and its recommendations are now formally before the Supreme Court of Ohio, as CourtNewsOhio’s listing of the November 6 filings confirms. What is not settled is the punishment itself. Every sanction listed above is a recommendation, not a final order — only the justices can suspend an Ohio lawyer, and Chambers’ 2022 indefinite suspension is the only penalty in this group already in force.
Ohio’s disciplinary system is built in two stages for exactly this reason. The Board of Professional Conduct — lawyers, judges and public members appointed by the Supreme Court — prosecutes and hears grievances, then recommends. The Court, sitting in the Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center on South Front Street, decides. For the clients involved, the distinction matters: a stayed suspension means a lawyer keeps practicing under conditions, while an indefinite suspension ends a career unless the Court someday says otherwise.
What happens next runs through the Court’s calendar. Under the process CourtNewsOhio describes, any party who has not consented to the recommended discipline may file objections with the Supreme Court; if objections are filed, the Court will schedule oral argument before ruling. Beck’s consent agreement makes her case the likeliest to close quickly, while the contested matters could take months to resolve. NewsForce247 will update this story when the Court issues its orders.
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