Jeff Braley, then the lead detective for Hamilton Township Police, testifies in the second murder trial of Ryan Widmer, of Mason. File photo
Janice Morse reports:
A federal court case ended on two parallel tracks Friday, in favor of a Warren County couple and two young men who sued police and won.
An eight-member jury unanimously agreed that Hamilton Township police conspired to violate the plaintiffs’ rights and raided a party illegally in 2007 – and word of that decision reached lawyers just moments after they had hammered out a settlement of monetary damages, said attorney Konrad Kircher.
He and attorney Michael Arnold represented the plaintiffs who sued the police, Ted and Mary Pritchard and their party guests, Zachary Christman and Kevin Clark.
The jury’s verdict still prevails on the facts of the case, Kircher said, because that was what both sides agreed upon. However, he said, the plaintiffs will receive the settlement amount of $350,000, not the amounts the jury set: $29,114 for each of the Pritchards, $4,325 for Christman and $8,007 for Clark, plus attorneys’ fees.
Kircher said that, as time passed, both sides worried the jury might be hung, without the required unanimous verdict, and neither side wanted to face another trial after nearly five years of court battles.
Even though the jury-set amounts were more modest, Kircher said the fact that the jury decided to impose punitive damages was significant. “You just rarely see that happen,” Kircher said, noting that, in his 20-year law career he has never had a jury grant a punitive award against a government official. “The jury had to find that they acted in bad faith, with ill will, actual malice – and most government officials are able to establish that they were just negligent, that they made a mistake. That wasn’t what we had in this case.”
Wilson Weisenfelder, a lawyer who represented the police, said he was disappointed in the verdict and still maintained his clients did nothing wrong.
At least 40 times, Judge Susan J. Dlott read the word, “yes,” repeating the jury’s findings that the defendants had violated the plaintiffs’ rights. The defendants were Police Chief Frank Richardson, now deceased; two lieutenants, Phil Johnson and Jeff Braley; plus Officer Roger Gilbert and his wife, Gail, a civilian.
Mary Pritchard wept. She later said it was because she felt the verdict vindicated her and her husband and, “it lifts a burden off my shoulders.”
The raid happened Aug. 10, 2007, after Braley, acting on an unverified tip that the Pritchards were throwing an underage drinking bash, lined up state liquor agents and other personnel to raid the party. He drove past the Pritchards’ property a half-dozen times and saw no laws being broken. Then, Braley and Johnson conferred. Next, Johnson asked Gilbert to have his wife call the dispatch center to report she was hearing a loud party at the Pritchards’ even though she was miles away at her home in another county.
After that call, nearly two dozen officers swarmed the property; Christman and Clark were arrested. Christman was then 18 and was charged with underage consumption even though he was drinking under his father’s supervision on private property, which is allowed under Ohio law. Clark, then 21, was arrested for disorderly conduct after he used his cell phone to check a text message after an officer ordered him to stop using his phone to videotape the raid. Their charges were dropped.
Later, two anonymous letters, possibly from other police officers, arrived, alerting the Pritchards to Mrs. Gilbert’s bogus phone call and other details. To the letter-writers, Mrs. Pritchard says: “Thank God…thanks for your honesty.”
Braley was then a detective lieutenant. He resigned last year after controversy over his employment credentials surfaced in an offshoot from the Ryan Widmer murder case. Braley was the lead detective in that case, which ended with Widmer, who last lived in Mason, being convicted of murder in the 2008 bathtub drowning of his newlywed wife, Sarah, 24. Widmer is now serving 15 years to life in prison.
Kircher says he has no idea whether Widmer is guilty or not, but “I would question any investigation Jeff Braley ever did.”
Posted in: News, Widmer Trial |
Legal experts who’ve followed the Ryan Widmer case say the chances of the convicted Mason man getting a fourth trial are “fair” at best.
