PHOTO: Attorney General Tim Griffin (center) at a Sept. 5, 2025 press conference with Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (far left), Department of Corrections Secretary Lindsay Wallace (right) and U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (center right). | Ainsley Platt/Arkansas Advocate
By AINSLEY PLATT | Arkansas Advocate
Attorney General Tim Griffin and the Board of Corrections’ former attorney are clashing once again — this time over whether Griffin’s office agreed to delay a court hearing in 2023 to allow the attorney to attend the unexpected birth of his child.
But one of the board’s members took issue with Griffin communicating directly with the panel, saying it was unethical and violated attorneys’ conduct rules.
The dueling communications obtained by the Arkansas Advocate Monday show the two-year-old fight over who runs Arkansas’ prison system hasn’t cooled off two weeks after the Board of Corrections’ new majority fired Abtin Mehdizadegan as its attorney.
Ongoing litigation has involved several attempts by Griffin to disqualify Mehdizadegan as the board’s attorney and to prevent him from being paid over allegations that he was illegally hired — which Mehdizadegan and certain members of the board dispute.
In a letter to board members last week, Mehdizadegan said Griffin’s office “refused to consent to an emergency motion (to delay a court hearing) so I could attend my daughter’s birth.”
The hearing, originally scheduled at the end of 2023, was ultimately delayed by seven days after the judge in the case granted the request.
But in a letter to the board dated Monday, Griffin pushed back against Mehdizadegan’s assertion.
“When Mr. Mehdizadegan notified the circuit court and my attorneys of his family’s medical emergency, my attorneys promptly notified the parties and the court that my office did not object to resetting the hearing,” Griffin wrote.
Griffin’s letter included screenshots of communications between Mehdizadegan and Trey Cooper, an assistant attorney general working on the lawsuits. In them, Mehdizadegan thanks attorneys and the court “for the extension.”
Another screenshot of a text message dated one year after the 2023 hearing, which does not identify the sender but that Griffin said was sent by Mehdizadegan, reads in part: “I remain ever-grateful that you accommodate my family circumstances.”
When contacted by the Advocate Monday Mehdizadegan stood by his original letter and asserted that Griffin’s office not objecting to the emergency request was different from agreeing to it.
He said the lack of an agreement on the delay meant he didn’t know whether he would have to appear in court that morning for a scheduled hearing while his wife was in labor. A Pulaski County Circuit judge granted the motion to delay the hearing two and a half hours after it was filed on Dec. 28, 2023.
“Mr. Mehdizadegan’s repeated personal attacks are unbecoming of an attorney and cannot continue to go unanswered,” Griffin wrote in his letter. “My office treated Mr. Mehdizadegan’s family emergency with seriousness and respect. Sadly, he has not chosen to do the same but rather seeks to rewrite history and exploit his family emergency in an effort to get paid for illegally provided services.”
Lee Watson, a member of the board reappointed by Sanders’ Republican predecessor Asa Hutchinson, expressed concerns that the letter from Griffin was unethical and violated the state’s rules of professional conduct for attorneys. Griffin is currently suing the board and represents Sanders in a separate but related lawsuit.
“This should be reported to the Arkansas Committee on Professional Conduct,” Watson wrote in an email to his fellow board members Monday afternoon, referring to the state ethics panel for attorneys. He said that Mehdizadegan is the board’s attorney until courts say he isn’t.
Mehdizadegan filed motions with both the Arkansas Supreme Court and Pulaski County Circuit Court last week requesting to be removed as the board’s counsel in two related legal cases. Mehdizadegan remained the board’s attorney before the state’s highest court as of Monday.
Board of Corrections Chair Jamie Barker replied to Watson’s email and said that while he was unfamiliar with the ethics rules attorneys must follow in Arkansas, he agreed they should be taken “very seriously.”
“In reading what you sent, and I will emphasize I am not an attorney as Boyce mentioned, it seems to only prohibit communications providing legal advice- not any and all communications,” Barker wrote. “I personally do not see that any action is necessary.”
Boyce Hamlet was appointed to the corrections board by Sanders and was elected its secretary in January.
Jeff LeMaster, a spokesperson for Griffin, said in a statement that the letter corrects “misrepresentations” made by Mehdizadegan.
“Lee Watson’s claims are baseless and appear to be an attempt to distract from how egregious Mr. Mehdizadegan’s conduct is, and Mr. Watson’s unserious attack on the AG is more of the same: trying to provide cover for the lawyer he was instrumental in attempting to illegally retain,” LeMaster said.
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