Sheriff threatens to arrest complainant at son’s assault hearing

Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly's son came to court Monday afternoon for a motion hearing in his misdemeanor assault case, in which he was accused of having attacked the nephew of one of his father's political opponents in the bathroom of an Athens restaurant last July.

The court appearance ended up turning into a plea hearing, as 22-year-old Joel Kelly – about to ship out to Cuba with the U.S. military – agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of persistent disorderly conduct.

Before that happened, however, the sheriff had come to Athens County Municipal Court, and made a point of communicating to a special prosecutor in the case that the complaining witness, 35-year-old Joshua K. Wise, was wanted on a warrant out of Logan County – for a year-old minor misdemeanor charge of failing to display a fishing license.

Wise is the nephew of Stephen Kane, a former investigator for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation who ran unsuccessfully against Pat Kelly for sheriff in 2008, and is running against him again in November.

Kelly has suggested the criminal complaint against his son was politically motivated; both Wise and Kane have denied this.

Wise alleged that Joel Kelly shoved him into a urinal in the restroom of Leghorn's restaurant on East State Street, where he was working. Kelly denied doing this, and claimed that Wise had told him he had spit into some food he prepared for Kelly.

Sheriff Kelly insists that in bringing up Wise's warrant during his son's court hearing he was just doing his job, and not making any attempt to influence the outcome of Joel Kelly's criminal case.

"Was it an attempt to do anything (to affect the case)? No, it was not," the sheriff declared Wednesday. "It was an attempt to let (special prosecutor Catherine Reynolds) know that her client had a warrant… This goes to the credibility of the witness… By law, shouldn't I notify her?"

Of course Wise, in legal terms, was not Reynolds' client; a prosecutor represents the state. Kelly said he recognizes this, but still insisted that Wise "was a client – he was not a victim."

Asked about the sheriff's involvement in the heasring and case, Reynolds, who works in the Marietta law director's office, was extremely circumspect. She stressed that Pat Kelly never tried to discuss terms of a case resolution with her, but she confirmed that he did have his son's Public Defender attorney convey the fact of Wise's outstanding warrant. She said Kelly's involvement in the case had "no bearing" on its outcome.

Reynolds said Kelly's comments raised the question of whether he should arrest Wise on the warrant for the fishing license violation; the prosecutor then asked whether Athens was in the "pickup range" for the warrant. (Arrest warrants come with a pick-up radius; if the defendant is outside it, typically no arrest is made. For a minor misdemeanor, the radius would probably have been the smallest, countywide.)

When Kelly told her Wise was outside the pick-up radius, Reynolds said, she told him to forget about arresting him.

Sheriff Kelly claimed that Reynolds was "upset" by his information about the warrant. "I think she was embarrassed," he added, because she had failed to run a check on whether Wise had any outstanding warrants.

"She said, 'Is this a Rule 4 (extradition) hearing?'" he recalled.

Asked whether she felt Kelly's raising the warrant issue in the middle of a hearing on his son's case was appropriate, Reynolds replied, "I don't think it's appropriate for me to discuss that with the media… But certainly you're aware that it was the Athens Police Department that investigated this incident, not the Sheriff's Department."

Asked whether she saw Kelly's interest in the warrant issue as related to his interest in his son's case, Reynolds said, "yes" – though she added that Kelly himself never explicitly connected the two issues.

THE HEARING ON MONDAY was to consider a motion to dismiss, based on the claim that Athens Police should never have allowed Wise himself to file a complaint against Joel Kelly, but should have required it to be filed by a law enforcement official.

After Judge William A. Grim said he needed more time to research this issue, however, Kelly said, the defense pressed for a resolution of the case, because Joel Kelly was about to ship out.

"They've had six months to research this," the sheriff complained. "The prosecutor clearly dropped the ball…  The bottom line is, Joel was clearly not guilty to begin with, but he had to take a plea, because he was heading overseas."

Wise said he showed up for the hearing Monday, and was asked by Reynolds whether he would be satisfied with having Joel Kelly plead to disorderly conduct. Wise said no; he wanted to go to trial.

After hearing Kelly's exchanges in the courtroom hallway with Reynolds, however – which he characterized as "negotiations" – Wise said, he left and was not present in court when Joel Kelly pleaded to the persistent disorderly charge – slightly more serious that simple disorderly conduct.

Even as he was leaving, Wise said, the sheriff was apparently still trying to have him taken into custody.

"He got on his cell phone right there in the hallway and was trying to call his establishment to see if there was anything I could be arrested for right there at the courthouse," Wise alleged. He argued that Kelly's involvement in the case was wholly inappropriate.

"This had nothing to do with Pat," Wise insisted.

Athens Police Ptl. Rick Olexa, who was involved in the case and was present during some of the exchange between Kelly and Reynolds, would not comment on the appropriateness of Kelly's actions the day of his son's hearing. Olexa did say that he couldn't think of any case in which a defendant wanted on a year-old minor misdemeanor warrant was arrested several counties away.

Would Kelly's office have had to search actively to locate the warrant on Wise, as opposed to getting some type of alert from the county that wanted him?

"I would assume," Olexa said.

Though Joel Kelly's defense attorney has argued that the APD went far outside its normal procedure to allow the alleged victim to sign off on a criminal complaint, Olexa insisted this isn't so.

"It's the same way I've handled hundreds of other assault cases," the officer said.

Sheriff Kelly, however, said his son was "absolutely innocent," and was only charged "since his name was Joel Kelly… It was because he was my son."