AUBURN — Former Auburn attorney and one-time candidate for district attorney Seth Carey has reached agreement with prosecutors on a misdemeanor criminal charge of unauthorized practice of law.
Seth Carey was charged with unauthorized practice of law after his law license was suspended in 2018. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal file photo
Carey, 45, who lives in Rumford, signed off on papers in Androscoggin County Superior Court on Monday that promises over the next year he will not engage in new criminal conduct and will comply with the conditions of the three-year suspension of his law license imposed in December 2018 by a Maine judge.
If successful, the charge is expected to be dismissed; if not, the charge will continue through the judicial process.
Carey’s case was slated to go to trial this month with jury selection scheduled Tuesday.
The Attorney General’s Office filed the charge against Carey shortly before Maine Superior Court Justice Thomas Warren ordered Carey’s suspension, ruling he had committed sexual assault, tampered with a witness and failed to comply with a previous interim suspension order, among other violations.
Carey was barred from practicing law in Maine in April 2018, months before his unsuccessful bid for district attorney of Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties. He had been successful in securing the Republican nomination for the seat in that party’s June primary.
In the state’s complaint, filed Dec. 21, 2018, it alleges Carey practiced or professed to practice law from April 30 to Nov. 6, 2018, when he “was not admitted to the bar” in Maine because his license had been under temporary suspension.
The Class E misdemeanor is punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
Under the terms of the agreement, Carey admits to no wrongdoing and agrees he won’t run afoul of the law for a year and will comply with Warren’s suspension order. Among a list of 10 conditions included in the order is the requirement that Carey undergo treatment, including individual or group psychotherapy, and provide treatment records to bar counsel.
Carey appealed his suspension to the full Supreme Court, which upheld Warren’s ruling last year.
After a hearing on a complaint filed against Carey by the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar, Warren ruled in an 18-page order in September 2018 that Carey had violated several bar rules, including unlawful conduct stemming from his unwanted sexual advances involving a woman who lived at his Rumford home and his effort to pay for her silence about the matter. Carey also had engaged in law practice and had written checks on his professional account after his April suspension, which prohibited those actions.
Three months later, Warren ordered Carey’s suspension, roughly the same time prosecutors lodged the misdemeanor charge against him.
Since Carey was admitted to the Maine Bar in 2006, his license to practice law in Maine has been suspended three times — not including the most recent suspension — for violations of the rules of ethics governing attorney conduct.
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