Lawyer’s ‘Affair’ With Client’s Wife Triggers Email Fight

The incarcerated founder of Indiana’s first hedge fund is fighting to obtain emails that might help him show that his criminal defense was compromised by an affair his lawyer had with his wife.

The email fight raises a question few courts have addressed: whether a lawyer’s sexual relationship with the spouse of a defendant he represented created a conflict that violated the defendant’s constitutional rights.

Petitioner Keenan Hauke got the federal habeas case onto the docket in December through a petition he drafted from a prison where he was sent in 2012 to serve a 10-year sentence for securities fraud. ...