The Ending of AG Rokita's Attorney Discipline Case by "Mooting" it, Leaves Many Unanswered Questions About Legal Regulation, Fairness, and The SCOIN's Past Abuses

ROKITA JOHNSON WITTE

INDIANAPOLIS — The sudden conclusion of the Indiana Supreme Court's high-profile disciplinary case against Attorney General Todd Rokita has left the state’s legal community parsing more than just the final signatures on the settlement papers. By officially closing Case No. 25S-DI-29 on October 9, 2025, through a published order dismissing the matter as "moot," the state's highest court successfully defused a politically charged showdown.

However, the procedural maneuver effectively shut the door on explosive allegations of systemic corruption, weaponized enforcement, and past due process violations that continue to shadow the Indiana Attorney Disciplinary Commission.

BERNACCHI

https://www.youtube.com/live/V2fWv_EmWOw?si=n6q5tm5K5BYpSW73

AG Rokita and his state-funded defense lawyers should thank Doug Bernacchi. In fact, the taxpayers of the state should thank him as well.

At the center of this unresolved fallout is Doug A. Bernacchi, a former Indiana trial attorney who attempted to force these uncomfortable truths into the public record through a formal "Motion to Intervene." Bernacchi’s file-stamped petition argued that the Indiana attorney discipline process is fundamentally "unstable, too emotional, reactive and retaliatory, bitter, [and] obsessed." https://indianacitizen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/motion-to-intervene.pdf

Yet, because the primary litigation was swept away -- under the rug again -- under the guise of mootness, the justices left Bernacchi’s motion completely unaddressed -- no order, no reply, leaving serious allegations of structural abuse on the record and the double standards he exposed unanswered. HE promised many times to continue to follow the Indiana Supreme Court of Indiana (SCOIN) and its handling of several rigged disciplinary cases, including Bernacchi's which seemed to center more around his hiring a paralegal who was not an employee of his office on a 1099 contract to do file his appearance in a newer electronic filing system unique to the Juvinile Justice Center in South Bend and which was clearly tampered with later in Bernacchi's case to change dates and events. This should have been a matter for the FBI or DOJ investigators. With new US Attorneys assigned to Indiana, it still could be.

A Tale of Two Standards

Bernacchi’s intervention was built upon a stark premise: high-profile elected officials with deep political clout receive a standard of grace, procedural accommodation, and due process that is routinely denied to everyday sole practitioners.

In the Rokita matter, the Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of appointing a three-person panel of appellate judges to evaluate the case. Bernacchi argued this was a profound deviation from standard Admission and Discipline Rule 23, which typically subjects ordinary lawyers to a single hearing officer.

For Bernacchi, this selective enforcement revived the ghosts of his own disciplinary battle in 2017 (Case No. 46S00-1512-DI-00694), a proceeding he maintains was a choreographed "hit job" fueled by personal vendettas rather than an objective pursuit of ethics.

Fabricated Damages and a Rigged Sanction Hearing

The underlying narrative Bernacchi sought to expose reveals how the disciplinary system can be manipulated to achieve a predetermined outcome. Central to the state's 2017 case against Bernacchi was the testimony of a single client, Sharon Brown Perry of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The record reveals a glaring double standard in Perry's conduct. While Perry repeatedly claimed she could not find the time to attend her own critical child support hearings—hearings where she eventually recovered several thousand dollars of past support from the mother of her son's child—she miraculously found the time to attend Bernacchi's disciplinary proceedings.

When Perry took the stand at the sanction hearing, she lied under oath, claiming that Bernacchi's alleged incompetence caused the loss of her home. In reality, certified real estate records conclusively proved that the home had been lost years prior to Perry ever retaining Bernacchi's services. Bernacchi had absolutely zero involvement with the property.

Despite this being Perry's only stated measure of substantive damages against him, the weaponized system functioned as a rigged forum. The hearing officer denied Bernacchi the right to introduce these certified records, completely blocking him from rebutting Perry's manufactured, non-credible claims of financial ruin.

The Ghost of a "Perjury Trap"

Bernacchi maintains that the state's reliance on Perry's un-rebutted perjury was part of a larger, coordinated effort. His filings allege the financial payments of Perry’s living arrangements and coordinated with state commission investigators to ensure her ongoing compliance in a false claim. Once investigated and dismissed as frivolous, but reopened when he sought to become a judge in St. Joseph County on a number occasions by appointment and then by election after winning the May 2016 Republican nomination for the Circuit Court. See https://youtu.be/ZqGWSn7qKc0?si=9wAx2FFOUMSoZnmo

When Bernacchi attempted to defend his practice and the false allogations he was offered a plea, but he was met not with an open hearing on that plea or ever on the merits, but with what was then tricked into a "General Flynn-style perjury trap." Prosecutorial misconduct was evident and supported by an affidavit of another black female client, Aaron Johnson used race to attempt subborn her perjury in seeking another complaint against Bernacchi, calling a "racist." Instead of helping him attack Bernacchi, Barbara Major as ISP guard and hearing officer told the truth. Shortly, thereafter she lost her job with the State and SCOIN ignored her sworn statements and truthful allegations against Johnson. (Johnson was appointed a Magistrate Judge in Hamilton County, was a candidate for superior court judge, but he in 2025-26, resigned from both and his contact informaiton required on the Rol of Attorney website required by the Rules of Addmission is not there?). Again, rules for thee, but not for me. Director G. Michael Witte actively engaged in obstruction of justice and then he was appointed an Indiana Senior Judge by Chief Justice Loretta Rush.

On the web, there are many Aaron Johnsons. The one with his Attorney Number #26854-53 is supposed to be working for Mattingly Burke Cohen & Biederman LLP, but there is no email address or phone listed for him as required on the Supreme Court's roll of attorney website https://courtapps.in.gov/rollofattorneys/attorney/d5be1ab2-14b7-e011-9d34-02215e942453?LastName=johnson&OrderBy=0&Page=1

Attorney Brian Robison Weir-Harden is a partner at Mattingly Burke Cohen & Biederman LLP. Does Aaron "AJ" Johnson work for your firm, or not?

Aaron Johnson does not appear on that Indianapolis Law Firm's website either. https://www.mbcblaw.com/who-we-are Worth noting is that Attorney Brian Robison Weir-Harden is a partner at Mattingly Burke Cohen & Biederman LLP, who like Johnson graduated from IU Law School a year following Johnson, or at least they passed the Indiana bar exam at different years, 2006 and 2007, with May admission dates during that time.

Based on published bios, both received their J.D. degrees from the Indiana University Mauer School of Law and were active members of the Black Law Student Association. HE's inquiries into Johnson's employment remain unanswered.

During an August 2016 deposition orchestrated by SCOIN investigator Aaron Johnson, a badge-presenting Indiana State Police Officer was physically introduced into the room. Bernacchi maintains he was subjected to duresse and intense coercion—threatened with immediate arrest on felony perjury charges just before he and his wife were scheduled to host a wedding.

Faced with the imminent destruction of his family's milestone, Bernacchi was forced and told to the he had signed a purported plea agreement, making him liable and used to schedule a sanction hearing. His lawyer himself had turned against him being himself afraid of the states power to take his license, which he too had faced in the past when representing anti-abortion protesters at the University of Notre Dame during President Obama's Commencement Address. (You can't make this up.)

The Indiana Supreme Court later weaponized that forced admission to double his recommended punishment by Bernacchi's hearing officer, suspending his license while cementing Perry's unconstitutional testimony into the permanent record, punishing him in part because of a 1099 paralegal, which they later had to clearify was okay--but never corrected Bernacchi's ethics conviction--making the Rokita case dismissal the second time the SCOIN has failed to correct itself in his case.

Accountability Evaded Through "Mootness"

By allowing the Disciplinary Commission and the Attorney General to enter into a joint dismissal agreement, the Supreme Court insulated the regulatory system from a transparent reckoning. Had Bernacchi’s Motion to Intervene been heard, the state would have been forced to confront the dark reality of its enforcement methods: the use of armed state police to extract administrative confessions, the suppression of exculpatory real estate records, and the targeted prosecution of sole practitioners using discredited witnesses.

Instead, the court's reliance on the "mootness" doctrine functioned as a legal eraser. Because the underlying case was dismissed, the panel could simply bypass Bernacchi’s filing without ruling on its substantive, constitutional merits.

While the court has closed its administrative files, Bernacchi’s Motion to Intervene remains an indelible part of the permanent public record.

It stands as a chilling testament to a SCOIN regulatory framework that possesses exclusive, unchecked power—a system that can destroy legal careers through forced confessions, prosecutorial misconduct, perjury, ignoring sworn testimoney, denying witnesses -- even in rubutal, ignorning recorded real estate records (that showed Bernacchi could not have lost Ms. Perry's home lost before she claims to have contacted him), and the seriously flawed selective enforcement, only to retreat into procedural silence when challenged to provide equal protection under the law.

RUSH

FAILED DEI CHIEF JUSTICE LORETTA RUSH

For everyday Hoosier lawyers watching from the sidelines, the message is clear: fairness in Indiana's legal system is a luxury reserved for the powerful--rules for thee, but not for me (CJ Loretta Rush who lied on her own financial disclosures) while the abuses of the past under her failed tenure leading Indiana high court and legal professession remain safely hidden behind a curtain of administrative convenience.

Shame on her.

(HE continues to call for Indiana Chief Justice Loretta Rush to resign in disgrace.)