In the Matter of William Taylor Payne

William Taylor Payne, a Georgia attorney since 1977, pleaded guilty in DeKalb County to a felony count under Georgia's racketeering law. The charge stemmed from a scheme in which Payne and others used stolen data from a county police accident-reporting system to find personal injury clients and collect settlement money. Payne entered his plea under a legal arrangement that let him accept the conviction without admitting guilt, and he also failed to tell the State Bar about the conviction within the required time. The State Bar charged him with violating professional conduct rules against committing a felony and against failing to report a conviction. A Special Master held a hearing, found Payne violated both rules, and recommended disbarment after weighing aggravating factors like dishonest motive against limited mitigating factors like no prior discipline. The Supreme Court of Georgia reviewed the record, agreed disbarment was appropriate, and ordered Payne removed from the rolls of attorneys licensed to practice in Georgia.

The court held that Payne's felony guilty plea and his failure to timely report that conviction to the State Bar violated professional conduct rules, and that disbarment, not a lesser sanction, was the appropriate punishment given the aggravating factors outweighing limited mitigation.

The decision removes a lawyer from practice for felony misconduct tied directly to client solicitation and misuse of stolen government data, reinforcing that Georgia attorneys convicted of felonies connected to their practice face the most severe professional sanction, regardless of how the conviction is obtained.

Disbarred

1. The court applied the ABA Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions, a framework that weighs the duty violated, the lawyer's mental state, the harm caused, and aggravating or mitigating factors to decide the right punishment.
2. It found Payne's felony conviction and failure to report it violated his professional duties, that his conduct was intentional or knowing, and that it caused serious harm to the police department, the public, and the legal profession.
3. The court considered Payne's Alford plea, a type of guilty plea that lets a defendant accept a conviction's consequences while maintaining innocence, and cautioned against automatically treating a refusal to admit guilt as an aggravating factor.
4. It weighed aggravating factors, including a dishonest and selfish motive in paying co-conspirators to obtain stolen client leads, against limited mitigation such as no prior disciplinary history, and found the aggravating factors substantially outweighed the mitigating ones.
5. Comparing the case to prior disciplinary rulings involving similar felony convictions and failures to report, the court concluded disbarment was consistent with how it has handled comparable misconduct in the past.

• attorney disbarment
• felony conviction
• racketeering charge
• State Bar discipline
• stolen police data