A prominent lawyer and former Osgoode Hall law professor pleaded guilty to bigamy and forgery Friday in the same Newmarket courthouse where his first and only legal wife sits as a justice of the peace — and where his deception was originally discovered last year.James Morton, 58, stood briefly in court to acknowledge that he was taking responsibility for forging a judge’s name on a fraudulent divorce order and, later, forging the signature of a court clerk on a bogus divorce certificate he used to apply for a marriage licence at Hamilton City Hall.Within days of that application, York Regional Police were trying to untangle the messy marital web — and had advised Morton of this fact. Despite this, Morton married Jennifer Packwood on May 12, 2018, even though he had never divorced Rhonda Shousterman, whom he married in 1990, Crown attorney Robert Scott said reading from a complicated agreed statement of facts on Friday.Packwood, Morton’s former law clerk and the woman he conned into believing he was divorced, read from her lengthy victim impact statement Friday. In it, Packwood outlined the devastating impact of “the most traumatic event of my life,” the result of a marriage to a “man I dearly loved.” She said she first learned of his deceit in an interview room at a police station in Hamilton, where Morton practised law. “Everything I believed was fabricated. Everything was a lie. It was a lie after lie after lie,” she said from the witness stand as Morton sat hunched over the defence table. Nevertheless, she said she has forgiven the man she thought she had married. “I forgave him for me, so I can move forward with my life,” she said.Morton’s licence to practise law is currently under suspension.According to the agreed statement of facts, Packwood had worked for Morton for about 10 years and the two began an intimate relationship a few years ago. In 2016, they moved in together, leasi ...
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