Supreme Court disbars attorney for bribing teen witness

OLYMPIA — The state Supreme Court disbarred a Seattle attorney today for bribing a 14-year-old boy with the promise of $6,000 and a plane ticket to not testify against his client on rape charges.

The Washington State Bar Association had said that Donald B. Kronenberg was unfit to continue to practice law because he bribed and tampered with the witness, known as J.D., by drafting up a "civil settlement" and deceiving prosecutors about the witness' whereabouts. The bar recommended disbarment and the bar's disciplinary board agreed.

In affirming the board's decision, the high court unanimously ruled to disbar Kronenberg.

"Kronenberg's sole motivation in securing the civil settlement was to buy J.D.'s silence in the criminal prosecution," said the opinion, written by Justice Tom Chambers.

A message left at Kronenberg's office was not returned today Kronenberg's attorney, Gregory Mann Miller, refused comment because he said he had not yet seen the ruling.

Kronenberg was not criminally charged for his actions.

Kronenberg was hired by Harold Cotton in 1996 after Cotton was charged with three counts of felony rape of a child. J.D., the victim in the case, was the prosecution's main witness and was to testify at Cotton's trial.

Before trial, Kronenberg met with J.D. and offered him money to not appear in court. Kronenberg told J.D. that to be part of a civil settlement, he would have to leave the state and not testify.

Under the agreement, J.D. would receive $6,000, including a one-way plane ticket to Tulsa, Okla. J.D. signed the agreement that released Cotton from any liability and which also contained a confidentiality and nondisclosure provision in which he agreed to "neither discuss nor disclose to anyone at anytime the existence of this agreement or of the alleged facts which form the basis of this agreement."

The $6,000 would be paid in two $3,000 installments, with the second installment conditioned upon not appearing for trial. The second installment was never paid.

At a court hearing, Kronenberg failed to tell the court that he knew where J.D. was, but later met with prosecutors and told them that they had to dismiss the case because they did not have a victim.

Kronenberg failed to tell prosecutors that he had met with J.D. in Seattle the previous week or that he had hand-delivered to J.D. a one-way ticket to Tulsa. Kronenberg was removed from the case after he was heard on a wiretapped call encouraging J.D. to get out of town.

Kronenberg initially claimed that he was entitled to pay J.D. for not testifying against Cotton but later claimed that he did not intend to preclude J.D. from speaking to prosecutors.

The high court wrote that Kronenberg admitted to prosecutors that he had paid J.D. to get out of town and that his only error in judgment had been purchasing the plane ticket himself.

Cotton later pleaded guilty and received a special sentence for sex offenders under which he received less than a year in prison followed by sexual offender treatment, said attorney Mark Mestel, who represented Cotton after Kronenberg was removed from the case.