Mohammed Riaz (aka John Washington)

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

The Respondent, a solicitor also known as John Washington, was convicted on 1 September 2016 of committing an act/series of acts with intent to pervert the course of public justice (attempting to persuade a witness to withdraw her statement in a case against his brother) and sentenced to 8 months imprisonment. The Tribunal proceeded in his absence, satisfied he had been served. Relying on the certified Certificate of Conviction under Rule 15(2) SDPR, the Tribunal found allegations of breach of Principles 1, 2 and 6 proved beyond reasonable doubt. Culpability was assessed as high and harm as significant. No express finding of dishonesty was made (lack of integrity was found). The Tribunal struck the Respondent off the Roll and ordered him to pay costs of £2,368.50."dishonesty_found": false, "sanction_type": "strike_off", "sanction_detail": "Struck off the Roll of Solicitors"}

Duties found breached:

• Prosecutorial fairness and impartiality
• No taking unfair advantage
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank

Aggravating factors:

• Conduct represented serious criminal misconduct
• Respondent sought to take advantage of the authority he had over an employee
• Significant potential impact on the original complainant
• As a qualified solicitor he must have known his actions were thoroughly inappropriate
• Conduct was to some extent planned and not spontaneous

Mitigating factors:

• Notified his regulator of his arrest and subsequent conviction
• Misconduct was of brief duration
• Described by the sentencing judge as entirely out of character in an otherwise hardworking, industrious life