By Scott Charton, The Associated Press
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- A Missouri State Highway Patrol investigator wanted a prosecutor and a judge charged with misdemeanors for improperly settling two speeding tickets -- one involving the prosecutor’s brother, documents obtained by The Associated Press show.
An assistant attorney general agreed the charges should be filed against Cole County Prosecutor Bill Tackett and Callaway County Associate Circuit Judge Joe D. Holt -- but the assistant was overruled by Attorney General Jay Nixon and no charges were filed, the patrol investigator told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
While Nixon called the actions of the judge and prosecutor “questionable,” both have said they did nothing criminal.
However, “we thought it should go to court,” said the patrol investigator, Dennis Overbey. “It was no great felony case, but I thought it was a violation of the law.”
Nixon told the AP he decided the misdemeanor charges couldn’t be proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard for getting a conviction.
But he said both Tackett’s and Holt’s actions should be investigated by the separate state offices that weigh complaints against lawyers and judges.
In the investigative file released Wednesday, Tackett and Holt acknowledged the disciplinary investigations were launched. The disciplinary offices declined comment Wednesday, as is routine.
“I think there certainly was questionable conduct involved here,” Nixon told the AP. “Why are two guys in a room talking about a speeding ticket for one guy’s brother? It doesn’t look good for law enforcement or for the state.”
Holt told the AP he had heard nothing from any disciplinary investigation for more than a year, when he exchanged letters with the Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline of Judges.
A judge since 1998, Holt said previously and again Wednesday that he “screwed up” by signing papers resolving the speeding cases -- but that he had no criminal intent.
Instead, Holt said, he believed Tackett was acting as special prosecutor to settle the speeding cases. “The judge was consistently adamant about the role he thought Tackett was playing,” Overbey said.
Holt’s handwritten docket entries from a Dec. 18, 2002, meeting with Tackett at the judge’s office in Fulton indicated the cases were resolved by an assistant prosecutor named “Tackett.”
Tackett did not return repeated calls Wednesday and Thursday from the AP.
But he told the Fulton Sun on Tuesday evening: “This result is not unexpected, but nonetheless, I’m pleased to have this issue resolved.”
The newspaper said Tackett declined comment when asked about Nixon’s call for legal disciplinary investigations.
Tackett told the patrol he visited Holt to discuss an unrelated case about stolen gravel, for which he had been appointed special prosecutor for Callaway County, just north of the Missouri River from Cole County.
Tackett, then top assistant prosecutor in Cole County, said he wanted to clear up unfinished special prosecutor business because he was taking over as Cole County prosecutor the following month.
After that discussion, Tackett said, he brought up with Holt the proposed resolution of the speeding cases as a favor to Curtis Hanrahan, attorney for both defendants -- the prosecutor’s brother, Roland Tackett, and Brandon Manumaleuna, a St. Louis Rams player.
Tackett said he had told Hanrahan he would be meeting with Holt on other business Dec. 18, and would alert the judge about Hanrahan’s proposed pleas and penalties in the speeding cases.
Later, Tackett told the patrol he did not realize Holt was making docket entries to resolve the speeding ticket cases even as they spoke.
Tackett has called the entries a misunderstanding by Holt, because the judge was in a hurry to leave on a holiday vacation after dealing all day with a busy courtroom docket. But Holt told the patrol he wasn’t hurried, and wasn’t departing for two more days.
Tackett first told Overbey that he didn’t ask that a court clerk to bring the two speeding case files to Holt’s office on Dec. 18.
But Overbey wrote that Tackett later acknowledged in the same interview that he asked for the files. Holt separately told Overbey he didn’t recall how the files reached his desk that day.
The patrol investigated at the behest of Nixon’s office. The attorney general was appointed special prosecutor in the matter when Callaway County Prosecutor Bob Sterner’s office discovered what had happened to the cases and objected.
Overbey told the AP he and Ted Bruce, the assistant attorney general assigned to the case, worked together to recommend misdemeanor charges:
-- Against Tackett, two counts of acting as a defense attorney while serving as a prosecutor, and two counts of falsely impersonating a special prosecutor.
-- Against Holt, two counts of tampering with a public record, for his entries in the files during his meeting with Tackett.
Bruce’s secretary said he was traveling Wednesday and unavailable for comment.
Nixon declined to discuss Bruce’s recommendation for charges, saying the decision “was a tight corner -- but it’s my job to make a decision, and I thought the jury would not find this beyond a reasonable doubt.”