Prominent Raleigh lawyer pleads guilty to embezzling client’s settlement money

The rough-and-tumble career of a Raleigh lawyer who represented defendants in some of Wake County’s most high-profile cases has come to a standstill for the second time this decade.

Johnny Sherwood Gaskins, who has represented 20 death penalty defendants during his nearly 40-year practice of law, signed a consent order of disbarment Thursday after he pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $20,000 from a client.

Gaskins, 68, was convicted of two felony counts of embezzlement, according to records filed at the Wake County Clerk of Courts Office. With the signing of the disbarment order, he admitted that he failed to inform his client, Robert Sullivan of Wake Forest, that Gaskins had settled the client’s injury claim.

Sullivan hired Gaskins to represent him in May 2015 after he was involved in an automobile accident. In October of that year, MetLife Auto & Home Insurance agreed to settle Sullivan’s insurance claim for $23,000. The insurance company on Oct. 30 issued a check payable to Sullivan, his late wife and Gaskins. The next month, on Nov. 17, Gaskins deposited the funds with forged endorsements of both Sullivans into his own personal banking account with BB&T, according to the complaint.

Gaskins had told Sullivan that it could take up to two years before he could receive payment for his personal injury claim.

Prior to being admitted to the NC State Bar on Aug. 19, 1979, Gaskins was a former agent with the State Bureau of Investigation. He built a legal career on a reputation for asking the right questions and paying attention to detail. He won his first jury trial as a third-year law student while attending Campbell University Law School.

Gaskins over the years represented death penalty clients, many of whom were too poor to afford their own lawyers. He often represented drug dealers who became targets of robbery and torture because they carried large amounts of cash, court records show.

Gaskins represented Kwame Mays, who was spared the death penalty in 1997 after he was convicted of killing popular Raleigh police detective Paul Hale. In recent years, Gaskins was involved in the defense of Amanda Hayes, a one-time actress who was convicted in 2014 for the second degree-murder of Laura Jean Ackerson, a 27-year-old Kinston woman who was killed and dismembered. And he was the attorney for Israel Vasquez, a Garner teen acquitted of double murder last year.

This is not the first time Gaskins has lost the right to practice law in North Carolina. On Dec. 28, 2010, a disciplinary hearing panel suspended his license for two years after a federal jury the year before convicted him of dividing large sums of money into small amounts so that his bank would not fulfill an Internal Revenue Service requirement to report cash transactions of more than $10,000. The rule is intended to flag large sums of money that might be tied to illegal activity.

U.S. District Couty Judge Earl Britt could have sentenced Gaskins to a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison. He instead ordered the lawyer to spend one day in jail. Gaskins’ law license was reinstated on Jan. 3, 2013, according to the N.C. State Bar.

After his guilty plea last week to the embezzlement charges, Gaskins was sentenced to 48 months probation and ordered to pay Sullivan $20,616.23.

Gaskins can apply for reinstatement of his law license on Nov. 2, 2022, according to the consent order.

This story was originally published November 7, 2017 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Prominent Raleigh lawyer pleads guilty to embezzling client’s settlement money."