OLR charges Milwaukee attorney for paying witnesses against client

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A Milwaukee attorney may see her license suspended for paying potential witnesses against her client in a homicide case dating to 2016.

The Office of Lawyer Regulation is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to suspend Ann Bowe’s license for 60 days for two trust-account violations.

The charges stem from a 2016 Dodge County homicide case involving Laverne Ware Jr. Ware had been charged with homicide, hiding a corpse and incest after the death of his girlfriend, who was also his first cousin.

Bowe agreed to represent Ware in May 2017. She deposited nearly $150,000 of his money into her trust account, which she had obtained from Ware’s former lawyer. The complaint says Bowe wrote checks from the account to Ware’s family and friends at his request, despite knowing some of them were defendants and possibly state witnesses.

In July, the district attorney filed a motion to disqualify Bowe in Ware’s case, citing a conflict of interest that was likely to result in ineffective assistance of counsel.

“The transfer of large amounts of money to State witnesses is designed to influence their testimony and their cooperation with the State and in its prosecution,” the district attorney wrote.

The complaint says Bowe agreed to withdraw at Ware’s next motion hearing, and the court allowed her to do so.

Bowe did not immediately return a request for comment. Her voicemail said she is no longer taking new cases as she moves toward retirement.

The two alleged trust-account violations related to Ware’s case aren’t the first time Bowe ran into issues with the OLR. The complaint said the high court publicly reprimanded her in 2011 for lying about information on a compliance certificate, having ex parte communications and other issues. She was also privately reprimanded in 1993 for neglecting a client and making a misrepresentation to the Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility.

Bowe was admitted to the State Bar in 1980. She’s a Marquette University Law School graduate. Follow @WLJReporter