A Lawyer's Fall

It ain’t every day that a fellow who once took an oath to uphold the law finds himself tangled up like a fly in a spider’s web, but here we are. Christopher Six, a former Dayton, Ohio attorney, has made quite the spectacle of himself having pled guilty to over three dozen charges involving the grooming of a Nevada teenager—a situation that, one imagines, was covered in his law school ethics class.

Six, a 25-year-old legal eagle confessed in a Montgomery County Common Pleas Court to several offenses. His tally included 20 counts of pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor, 10 counts of pandering obscenity involving a minor, seven counts of disseminating material harmful to juveniles, and two counts of importuning.

For his trouble, Six has agreed to an indefinite prison sentence ranging from two to six years, followed by five years of parole, during which he will presumably have ample time to contemplate why the law frowns upon preying on children. He will also get the distinction of becoming a Tier II sex offender, a title which, while less prestigious than Esquire, does ensure he must register his whereabouts every 180 days for the next quarter-century.

As is the custom in legal horse-trading, some 34 charges got dismissed in exchange for his plea—an arrangement that might make the average citizen wonder how many crimes a man must commit before they stop bargaining with him. His sentencing is April 9th, when the judge will figure out how long Mr. Six will be somewhere less fancy than a law office.

Six’s downfall began in March 2023, when the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force discovered that his Snapchat account contained child pornography, an allegation that, in any self-respecting society, tends to bring one’s social standing down several notches. Upon further investigation, authorities determined he had been in contact with an underage girl in Nevada, exchanging explicit images and indulging in conversations so vile that even a saloon drunkard might blush. His little house of cards collapsed entirely when Snapchat itself, a company not known for excessive moral policing, decided that his account was a little too repugnant even for their liking and shut it down.

The misdeeds of Mr. Six stretch back to April 2021, when the victim was just 15 years old. As Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. so succinctly put it, “Sexual predators who do these types of things need to be locked up in prison where they cannot victimize any other children.”

One can hardly disagree with the sentiment.

Six, a West Virginia University College of Law graduate, was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 2021. That career was short-lived, however, as his license got suspended in October 2023, not just for his criminal antics but also for failing to meet continuing legal education requirements—though one suspects that staying out of jail might have been the more pressing matter.

And so ends the legal career of Christopher Six, a man who, by all appearances, would have done well to spend less time on Snapchat and more time studying the difference between right and wrong. But as the saying goes, the law is a jealous mistress.