David Andrew Riddell
Allegation / charges
Rule 4-29 Admission of Misconduct and Undertaking to the Discipline Committee
Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision
David Andrew Riddell, a BC lawyer, was convicted of possessing child pornography (s. 163.1(4) Criminal Code) and sentenced on February 24, 2020 to a nine-month conditional sentence plus 15 months probation, with 20-year sex offender registry. A Hearing Panel found this constituted conduct unbecoming. Under Rule 4-29, the Discipline Committee accepted his admission and 10-year undertaking not to apply for re-admission or to practise law, effectively resolving the citation without a sanction hearing. No express finding of dishonesty was made; the misconduct related to criminal conduct unbecoming the profession.
Duties found breached:
Aggravating factors:
- Serious offence involving young children in explicit sexual acts
- Images viewed over a prolonged period of time, not a single event
- Approximately 152 images and 2 videos constituting child pornography
- Prior professional conduct record consisting of two voluntary undertakings
Mitigating factors:
- No prior criminal record
- Guilty plea
- Genuine remorse and acceptance of responsibility
- Extensive and ongoing counselling
- Mental health issues and work burnout/financial stress
- Significant collateral consequences including loss of career and reputation
- Assessed as low risk for contact and sexual offending