Lawyer Accused of Beating Client with a Baseball Bat Accepts Plea Deal
A suspended West Virginia lawyer set to go to trial on Monday for beating a client with a baseball bat has accepted a plea agreement.
Joshua Robinson pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding after prosecutors had trouble locating the alleged victim for the trial, the Charleston Daily Mail reports. Robinson entered a “Kennedy plea” in which a defendant doesn’t admit guilt but acknowledges there is no genuine defense to the charge, the Charleston Gazette reports. The client has been arrested on drug charges since the incident.
Robinson initially told police that he was defending himself against a client who had broken into his Charleston home. Police later said the client, who had hired Robinson to help with his grandfather’s estate, had gone to Robinson’s home to find out why the lawyer had cashed a check for $1,100 made out to the grandfather.
A neighbor who called 911 had said Robinson was chasing the client around the street with a baseball bat and was “swinging wild, like a madman.”
Robinson, whose law license was suspended after the incident, was released to home confinement after he was attacked in jail, WCHS Radio 58 reports. He faces a sentence of up to five years in prison.
