Robeson County District Attorney Johnson Britt has been reprimanded by the N.C. State Bar for talking too freely with the media about Robeson County deputies accused of corruption in the Tarnished Badge scandal.

The State Bar licenses lawyers in North Carolina and punishes them when it finds they have breached their code of ethics. Britt’s reprimand was issued Nov. 19 by the Bar’s Grievance Committee and announced this month by the Bar in a list of lawyers who have been punished recently.

In the reprimand, Grievance Committee Chairman James Fox told Britt that after the deputies in Tarnished Badge were indicted in 2006, “you made numerous statements and comments containing details about the matters which were not in the public realm at that point, or expressing your opinion regarding guilt of the accused men, to representatives of a least one media outlet and/or to the public.”

These statements violated two rules, Fox said. One rule bars a lawyer who took part in an investigation or lawsuit from making public statements that could prejudice a trial. The other rule says a prosecutor may not make statements publicly that “have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.” The reprimand includes a $50 fine.

Morris' mother agreed, three years before she died at age 96 in 2004, to give legal power of attorney to a grandnephew. It's a step that many advocates for older people say should be considered when people begin to show signs they are having difficulty managing finances, selling property, making acquisitions and buying insurance.

But a caution always accompanies that advice: Be careful whom you trust, and be careful about giving total authority to one person.

"You need to make sure that you either thoroughly trust your agent or you have some kind of controls on the agent's abilities to move assets," said Bob Mason, an Asheboro lawyer and vice chairman of the elder law section of the N.C. Bar Association.

Legal experts project a massive increase in lawsuits and prosecutions involving older Americans in decades to come as baby boomers reach retirement age and beyond. Already, substantiated instances of elder abuse are rising nationally at the rate of 15 percent a year, according to the American Bar Association. ABA members recently adopted a resolution urging that prosecutors be given more resources to fight elder crime.

Last year, North Carolina adult protective services sent county district attorneys written notices of 1,451 cases involving abuse, neglect or exploitation of adults. The numbers represent a 15 percent increase in cases since 2004.

Advocates say civil and criminal legal protections for older people are at the stage where domestic violence and child abuse safeguards were two decades ago -- in need of reform.

"As we have an aging population, there are reasons to say prosecutors should be paying more attention and using more resources to deal with what's going to be an increasing problem," said Stephen Salzburg, a Georgetown University law professor and co-author of the ABA resolution.

With the intentions of the Framers in question and modern social policy at stake, justices considering whether the District of Columbia's ban on handguns violates the Constitution have received an avalanche of advice from professors, doctors, social scientists, district attorneys, historians, religious groups, members of Congress and, of course, Vice President Cheney. They may be nothing more than an ego boost for a client or provide the argument that wins the case, but such amicus curiae briefs have become an essential part of high-stakes Supreme Court cases.

Born and raised in the East Bay, he went on from Castlewood High to Yale, then to Cal Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. Admitted to the California Bar in 1958, he served as attorney for the Franchise Tax Board in Sacramento before private practice in Oakland until January 1975.

That's when Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Walnut Creek-Danville Municipal Court where he became chairman of the County Municipal Court Judges' Association and an officer of the California Judges' Association. In August 1987, Judge Minney was appointed to the Contra Costa Superior Court by Gov. George Deukmejian, where he'd advanced to presiding judge in 1996, and Supervising Criminal Judge from 1998-2005.

He retired in May 2005 (sort of), as he's been working since then as part of the statewide retired judges' program on assignment to courts in need of assistance due to vacations or illness.

"A hundred years ago we had Justice Courts in California: you didn't have to be a lawyer and the court justice's wages were a percent of the fines," the speaker revealed. "When a city reached 40,000 population, you could convert to Municipal Court."