Witness testimony continued in sheriff’s trial with local investigators, law enforcers.
Athens County Prosecutor’s Office Investigator Tom McKnight testified Tuesday that when he went to a garbage dump in Hocking in May of 2013, he and his colleagues literally had to unearth files that had been allegedly disposed of by suspended Sheriff Pat Kelly.
McKnight and six other witnesses testified in the Athens County Common Pleas Court Tuesday, including two sheriffs from neighboring counties.
Video evidence presented by Assistant Attorney General James C. Roberts on Tuesday showed the jury the recovery of documents that had allegedly been disposed of by Kelly without proper legal procedures.
Charlie Adkins, an Athens County commissioner, testified Monday that he had witnessed surveillance footage of two Southeast Ohio Regional Jail trusties throwing boxes of county files into a dump truck in late May 2013.
McKnight, who was the first witness the prosecution called to the stand Tuesday, said he was called in to investigate after files from the Athens County fairgrounds went missing in May 2013.
The investigation first took McKnight to the Lancaster Street building, where he testified that he overheard Kelly and Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn discussing the county’s missing files in the back of the building.
McKnight characterized Kelly’s demeanor as “agitated” and “upset.”
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After McKnight searched the Lancaster building for the files, he said he received a tip to search for the files at the Hocking dump site.
McKnight said he went to the site on May 24.
When he arrived, employees at the site directed him to where they believed the files had been buried. McKnight said he had brought a video camera that day in order to record the files being recovered.
The prosecution showed that video to the jury. The video showed employees uncovering a portion of the ground at the Hocking site and pulling out “thousands” of files.
The jurors also heard testimony from James Heater, a detective with the sheriff’s office charged with investigating narcotics cases.
Heater testified to Kelly’s use of confidential informants to bust several drug rings.
Heater told the jury that confidential informants are people who have been charged with a crime involving narcotics and have agreed to help the sheriff’s office to accomplish a bigger drug bust and are usually responsible for buying drugs from suspected dealers.
Heater said that Kelly directly paid the informants to give him information and that he tended to rely on “buy busts,” in which Kelly immediately busted a drug ring rather than following the lead to reveal higher drug rings. “Buy busts” make it easier to recover the money used by a sheriff’s informant, but they almost always end up burning that informant.
He said Kelly did that because immediate drug busts garnered more publicity, and that he wanted to be in newspapers.
He also told the jury that Kelly tended to embellish the busts on his personal Facebook page.
“It’s just the way it was presented,” Heater said. “It was definitely embellished.”
The prosecutors also called Brent Hayes, who had previously donated campaign money to Kelly, to testify.
Hayes told the jury that in the summer or fall of 2012, he and his then-business partner decided to each donate $250 to Kelly’s campaign.
Hayes said he met with Kelly’s campaign manager, Clinton Stanley, in a parking lot to donate the money
Hayes said Stanley accepted the donation, even though donors can only offer a maximum of $100 in cash to a campaign.
Robert Cornwell, the executive director for the Buckeye State Sheriff’s Association, also testified Tuesday regarding allegations that Kelly had misused county funds for personal gain. The Buckeye State Sheriff’s Association organizes seminars teaching sheriffs and deputies how to deal with funding, documentation and transparency.
He told the jury he had received calls from Kelly asking for legal advice on purchases funded through the department’s Federal of Justice Fund, including two suits from Men’s Wearhouse.
Cornwell said Kelly was angry after he advised him against buying the suit with the funds.
Kelly eventually bought the suits anyway.
Cornwell said he also had a similar conversation with Kelly when he wanted to hire his son, Joel Kelly, to the sheriff’s office.
The prosecutors also brought Albert “Tim” Rodenberg, the sheriff of Clermont County, and Larry Mincks, the sheriff of Washington County, to the stand Tuesday.
Rodenberg testified that he had trained Kelly when he was elected to the Athens County Sheriff’s Office in 2008.
He also told the jury that during training he had taught Kelly that any expense taken out of the Federal of Justice Fund account had to be well-documented.
The prosecution showed the jury the receipts Kelly had filed from previous meals at Ponderosa and Bob Evans, paid for with county money.
Rodenberg said Kelly hadn’t fully disclosed the purpose of the meals on each check, which he was trained to do, and that the purpose for those meals seemed dubious.
When brought to the stand Tuesday, Mincks told the jury Kelly once requested confidential information about a family member from his office in Washington County, but Mincks denied that request.
The prosecution also questioned Special Agent Justin Root from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, although he was not asked to provide information directly pertaining to the evidence, other than explaining dates and metadata associated with files obtained from Kelly’s computer.
— Allan Smith, Emily Bohatch, Julia Fair, Joshua Lim and Chelsea Sick contributed to this report.
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