Man Strikes Back At Lawyer Who Gave Woman Tips On How To Get Away With Murder

Lawyers have to uphold which includes defending the weak. However, that does not include advising women on how to get away with murder.

Attorney Winston Bradshaw Sitton saw his license getting suspended for four years after giving a troubled woman advice in 2017. At that time, Sitton responded to a woman friend’s Facebook post as she was dealing with a rocky relationship with her former partner. The unnamed woman inquired about the legality of carrying a gun in her car per court documents.

Rather than respond to what the woman was asking, Sitton gave a different kind of advice. He wrote that if the woman wanted to kill her boyfriend, she should lure him into her home and claim that he broke in with the intent to do her harm and that she feared for her life. Further compounding that was the fact that Sitton said that the advice was being given by him “as a lawyer.”

"If you want to kill him, then lure him into your house and claim he broke in with intent to do you bodily harm and that you feared for your life," Sitton wrote. "Even with the new stand your ground law, the castle doctrine is a far safer basis for use of deadly force."

It should be noted that Sitton and the woman had never met in person. However, both were friends on Facebook for roughly a year.

The woman deleted that post later on. However, his former boyfriend was able to read it and took a screenshot of the conversation. He brought it to Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich who would then pass the screenshots to the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility.

The four-year suspension includes one year of active suspension and the rest being on probation. The unusual case was described as a cautionary tale on the ethical problems that can befall lawyers on social media according to the judge’s opinion and written by Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Holly Kirby.

Sitton would later on a post that what he wrote was intemperate and that he regretted how it was phrased. However, he described the comment as intentionally caustic and cynical.

"I adamantly contest the finding that my gratuitous commentary offered to a battered woman, who was being threatened and abused and harassed by her son's father, was legal advice as to how to commit a crime or in any way violated my legal duties as either a citizen or as a lawyer," part of the Facebook post read.