Former Prosecutor Who Provided Alcohol To Teen, Rented Hotel Room Faces Suspended License

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The mother of that minor, who was 17 when she first met Buckley but had turned 18 about two weeks prior to going to the hotel with him, testified that, after the encounter with him, her daughter was “very depressed, and very angry because she didn’t know what’s going on; what happened to her during that night.”

Buckley, 36, of Chicago, and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, a $500 fine and a year of conditional discharge after pleading guilty in July 2022. McHenry County prosecutors agreed to drop a battery charge as part of the deal but asked McHenry Circuit County Judge Tiffany Davis to sentence him to a six months in jail.

At his sentencing, Davis told Buckley that he had abused his power as an attorney because of his suit and briefcase, Buckley said in a phone interview.

“I didn’t deserve that. You could have given me court supervision, but you didn’t. You tried to make this into a little precious white angel, which is not what she was,” he said of Davis’s decision. “It was race-related, nobody else would have done that.”

Buckley is Black, while the judge, teenager and her mother are white.

The Waukegan-based defense attorney said he was able to pick up many new clients while he was held at McHenry County Jail. During that time he was also forced to appear in court as an attorney on another case by a judge in Boone County.

“It really hasn’t impacted my business,” he told Patch. “I use it to my advantage. It humanizes me to my clients. I tell them, ‘Look, I’ve been on that side, I know what two weeks in jail can do to your life so I’m going to be the one that really takes your case seriously.'”

After passing the bar, Buckley worked for the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office from January 2018 to September 2019. He then joined a McHenry County firm as a criminal defense attorney. After the incident that led to his conviction — but before he was charged for it — he opened his own firm in Waukegan.

The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, or ARDC, began considering the status of Buckley’s law license following a December 2020 report from Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart, who had just taken office.

In the wake of criminal conviction, the commission’s administrator filed a complaint in June 2023 alleging serious misconduct in violation of professional rules that prohibit attorneys from engaging in criminal acts that reflect adversely on their honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as lawyers.

Buckley, the woman he supplied with alcohol and her mother all testified in January before an ARDC hearing board, and that board released its report in July.

According to testimony from the hearing, Buckley met the teenager at the McHenry County Courthouse in December 2019 and gave her his card. He denied knowing her age, although the teen and her mother provided contradictory testimony, according to hearing board report.

A few weeks later, after the Woodstock teen had turned 18, she contacted Buckley and asked to hang out. She testified that she provided her address, and they met together — outside the house.

Buckley testified that he went over during his lunch hour and was allowed inside by the teenager’s mother, who began asking him about various legal issues. He said he then went up to talk with the teenager in her room, where she was drinking Hennessy, for about 15 minutes. The attorney testified he “made an assumption that she was of age to drink” because she had alcohol, according to the report.

Buckley told Patch the teen and her mother were drinking and smoking cigarettes when he first went over to her house.

They agreed to meet again within a day or two at the courthouse.

Buckley testified that the teen had stashed another bottle of Hennessy outside in a bush. But the teen testified that she had no access to alcohol and had not brought any to the courthouse.

“She waited for [Buckley] while he finished matters in court, and when he was done, they left the courthouse and went to a bank and then to a liquor store. [He] went into the liquor store while [she] waited in the car, and [he] came out of the liquor store with a bottle of Hennessy liquor, a bottle of Coca-Cola, and condoms,” according to her testimony.

They both testified that it was his idea to go to a nearby motel.

Buckley testified that he went to a convenience store to buy more Hennessy, cigarettes and condoms, but only after the teen had finished the cigarettes and cognac that she had already brought.

“We didn’t go to the hotel room to practice law, let’s be honest,” Buckley said.

“He noticed [she] was intoxicated and told her that she did not have to drink so fast because they had ‘all day.’ She then raised her pants leg and told him she was on probation and had to be home at 6 p.m., which was soon,” he testified at the disciplinary hearing. “Until that moment, he did not know she was on house arrest.”

The woman testified that she has no memory of leaving the hotel. She said she remembered using the bathroom and taking a few more sips of alcohol before waking up in a hospital with a broken ankle and bruised arm.

“She has no idea what happened between passing out at the hotel and waking up in the hospital room,” the report said.

According to the complaint against him, Buckley and the teen were video-recorded and witnessed by hotel staff.

“[The woman] was incoherent and unable to walk without assistance. [Buckley] pulled [her] out of a hotel lobby chair. As [Buckley] and [the woman] left the hotel, [she] fell to the ground,” the complaint said, noting that the attorney was also recorded holding her upright as he opened the door to her house.

“[He] then dragged [her] through the home and struggled to get her up the stairs,” according to the complaint. “[Buckley] told [the woman] to ‘get up’ as she moaned and groaned.”

Buckley testified that he drove the woman home and carried her inside her house.

“He took her upstairs to her room, sat her down on the bed, and asked if she was okay. She said she was fine,” the report said, citing a transcript of his testimony. “After retrieving her phone and pocketbook from his car, he left.”

Buckley told Patch that the woman fell and injured himself after he left, that he tried to get someone else to pick her up first and his attorney had failed to share all of the video evidence with him before he agreed to plead guilty.

The ARDC administrator urged the hearing board to recommend that Buckley be disbarred, while Buckley suggested a 60-day suspension is sufficient. He has never faced any criminal convictions or previous ARDC discipline.

The hearing board compared Buckley’s case to several other cases where lawyers were allowed to get their licenses back after criminal convictions.

They include a six-month suspension for an attorney who admitted to prostitution in 1997, a nine-month suspension for a lawyer who injured two people in a DUI crash, one who was suspended six months in 2017 for pushing someone during a deposition, an attorney who veered a car toward people on a sidewalk due to untreated mental health issues and got a one-year suspension and the headline-making case of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who pointed a gun at a group of Black Lives Matter protesters in front of their St. Louis home and were each handed six-month suspensions.

While the board recognized the seriousness of Buckley’s misconduct, it also took into account several mitigating factors that weighed against disbarment. Chief among these was his extensive community service and pro bono work, which the board described as “significantly mitigating.”

The board also considered testimony from character witnesses, including other attorneys who had worked with Buckley and clients he had represented. One former client testified that he had represented him pro bono in a DUI case, helping him avoid jail time in addition to offering personal assistance, like buying him a suit for a job interview and helping cover his family’s expenses. Another witness, a fellow attorney, testified that Buckley has been remorseful for his actions and knows what he did was wrong.

His pro bono work included representing people arrested during Black Lives Matter protests and providing free legal help to people who are facing DUI, gun or domestic battery charges or who need to expunge their records.
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“Respondent has provided hundreds of hours of pro bono legal services, primarily to an underserved community,” the hearing board wrote. “We accept as credible the testimony of witnesses regarding the pro bono legal services he provided and the positive impact he has had on their lives.”

The ARDC hearing board’s report serves as a recommendation to the Illinois Supreme Court, which is ultimately responsible for making decisions regarding the suspended or revocation of attorney licenses in the state.

Both the woman Buckley took to the hotel and her mother testified it is hard for them to trust attorneys now.

Had Buckley checked into the teenager’s identity before meeting up with her, he would have found that she had previously been reported having gone missing with older men.

After she finished the sentence of home detention she faced for battering her mother, the woman ran away from home and spent about a hear homeless and using drugs, according to the hearing board report, which noted that she also had run away from home and used drugs and alcohol before she met Buckley.

“It’s a system that only works if people give up,” Buckley told Patch. “What happened to me shouldn’t have happened. It should have gone to another county. They were very adamant, ‘We’re not going to treat me special,’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t have a background, you gave me conditional discharge, that is treating me special. I shouldn’t have gotten that.'”

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