In a unanimous decision released today,
the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled the so-called “Brown County Five”
did, in fact, see their rights regarding self-incrimination violated.
As a result, Brown County prosecutor
Jessica A. Little said late this afternoon (May 29) that she intends
to dismiss felony charges against the five former Ohio Division of
Wildlife officials, each of whom were indicted in Brown County Common
Pleas court more than three years ago.
These five Wildlife Division officials
had been defendants a lengthy legal battle, claiming they were
protected by the federal Garrity Rule.
This U.S. Supreme Court-baked legal
claim protects civil servants from offering incriminating testimony
during investigations by a political entity.
In this case the five defendants –
former Wildlife Division chief David Graham, former assistant chief
Randy Miller, former Wildlife Division law enforcement supervisor
James Lehman, former agency human resources manager Michelle
Ward-Tackett, and former supervisor for the Wildlife Division's
District Five (Southwest Ohio) office Todd Haines – contended their
Garrity Rule rights were violated by the Ohio Inspector General's
office.
Siding with the Brown County Five today
were all seven of the state Supreme Court justices.
Their 13-page ruling is listed as Case
Number 12-0338 and is provisionally posted as “State v. Graham,”
with “Slip Opinion No. 2013-Ohio-2114.”
The justices' opening comments
summarizes their collective legal opinion. It says:
“Statements
made by employees of state agency during an investigation conducted
by
the Ohio inspector general were coerced and are therefore
inadmissible in subsequent criminal proceedings—Garrity
v. New Jersey applied.”
Consequently, thus ends a
three-year-old ordeal that began as an investigation into alleged
illegal activities by former state wildlife officer assigned to Brown
County, Allan Wright.
This alleged activity went back to 2006
and centered around Wright allowing a South Carolina wildlife officer
to use his Brown County address in order to obtain a much-less
expensive Ohio resident hunting license rather than a much-more
expensive Ohio non-resident hunting license.
Wright later pleaded guilty to other,
federal charges, after it was determined he was covered by the
Garrity Rule as the matter related to Ohio law.
Disputing that the upper chain of
command was exempt from Garrity was Little.
She doggedly claimed the five Wildlife
Division officials were not protected by Garrity when they offered
potentially and allegedly incriminating testimony to the Ohio
Inspector General.
It was the Ohio Inspector General's
office which opined how the five Wildlife Division officials erred by
treating Wright's alleged activity administratively rather than
criminally.
The matter rose through the court
system with each side having claimed victory at one point or another.
When the Brown County Five's attorneys
appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, the matter climbed to its legal
pinnacle.
Today's Ohio Supreme Court ruling goes
into a detailed summary of the events leading up to its members'
decision.
And that decision was a long time in
coming and also involved the hiring of separate attorneys by each of
the defendants.
Among them was Miller who retained the
services of Batavia, Ohio-based attorney John Woliver.
In a telephone interview with Woliver
this afternoon (May 29) the attorney was grateful for the supreme's
7-0 decision though he did express frustration over the matter having
traveled all the way up the state's legal food chain.
In short, said Woliver, the felony
charges Little filed “would have failed” on their own virtually
at every step of the way.
Also and vitally, Woliver stressed, no
way did any of the five defendants get off on a technicality, that
being the Garrity Rule.
“There never should have been any
prosecution of these five people who devoted themselves to public
service,” Woliver said. “Treating these people as felons was
absurd.”
Woliver said also that public workers
are often in a unique employment setting whereby following or not
following an agency's guidelines or policies might end up as
potential criminal activity, as was assumed by the prosecution in
this case.
“In this setting, as a public
employer operating with public funds, you have an obligation to act
in a certain way that follows the Constitution and protects (one's)
civil rights,” Woliver said.
Agreeing completely is Lehman's
attorney, Mt. Orb, Ohio-based lawyer Michael E. Cassity.
“Sometimes bad things happen to good
people and that's the beauty of our legal system; where one court –
the (state) Supreme Court – can overrule an appellate court,”
Cassity said.
Cassity said as well that even though
his client and the other defendants achieved a tremendous legal
victory the likelihood now is that some people will still consider
them guilty.
In effect, Cassity says, Lehman and the
others have seen their reputations sullied and “tarnished,”
something that will be difficult to entirely be cleansed.
“I'm glad for my client and for the
four other defendants, (but) this never should have happened,”
Cassity said. “(Lehman) is a good man. It's unfortunate. These
people aren't criminals; far from it.”
And though the Ohio Supreme Court's
decision was a victory for his client and the other four defendants,
Woliver says it is also a victory for county prosecutors as well as
investigators such as the Ohio Inspector General.
The reason, Woliver continued, is
because prosecutors can ensure that an investigative processes will
not be not “undermined by sloppy” work but rather follow
Constitutional principles.
“What's important to remember is that
the Ohio Inspector General must follow the law; be aware of and
sensitive to the fact that Garrity must be considered applicable,”
Woliver said.
However, the supremes do acknowledge
that Garrity is not the do-all to end-all when it comes to testimony
by public officials, including those in law enforcement.
In effect, both sides got a paddling.
On the one hand, the Court says in its
13-page document:
“In
reaching this conclusion, we reject the state’s
characterization of the OIG as a toothless agency with little
or no coercive powers. While it was the ODNR (not the OIG) that
compelled appellants’ statements in this case, we reject the notion
that the OIG is incapable of compulsion simply because it lacks the
ability to arrest or directly discipline employees of other state
agencies.”
Then
on the other hand the Court says:
“Nor
do we embrace appellants’
sweeping proposition that every
OIG
investigation is coercive within the meaning of Garrity.
“To
be sure, this case has more in common with cases extrapolating from
Garrity
than
it does with Garrity
itself.
“Other
than the express threat contained in the ODNR notice, there is scant
evidence establishing that appellants subjectively believed that they
were compelled to cooperate with the OIG investigation.
“Appellants
did not testify at
the
hearing, and their claim of disciplinary policy and the general duty
to cooperate with OIG investigations under R.C. 121.45.
“Unlike
the officers in Garrity,
appellants were neither threatened by their interrogator nor
confronted with a statute mandating removal from office.”
Even
so, a ruling was needed and subsequently made by the supremes, that
being:
“Appellants
answered questions after receiving a warning that they could
be fired for failing to do so. “Statements extracted under these
circumstances cannot be considered voluntary within the meaning of
Garrity.
“Accordingly,
the court of appeals erred by reversing the trial court’s
suppression order.
“We
therefore reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and reinstate
the judgment of the trial court.”
Which
closes the book on the matter.
Little
says she will file papers to dismiss the felony charges against each
of the five former Wildlife Division officials, the Brown County
prosecutor noting that without the defendants' statements made to the
Ohio Inspector General she lacks sufficient evidence to proceed in
court.
Even
so, Little says she has high praise for the work and role of the Ohio
Inspector General's office.
Asked,
however, if she believes the Wildlife Division and its parent Ohio
Department of Natural Resources have themselves institutionally
learned anything through this long process, Little was only slightly
shy in responding that an end is near to an oft-times expressed
concern by some of the state's hunters and anglers how there is a
culture of a “good 'ol boy” attitude within the agencies.
“Honestly
I can't answer that because I'm not a sportsman, but I think we've
had some good, positive changes in the (way) the ODNR's is involved
here,” Little said.
- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
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