Tillman appeal under review
Thursday, December 21, 2006
By DAN MURTAUGH
Staff Reporter
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals is reviewing an appeal that could
erase guilty pleas that former Mobile County Sheriff Jack Tillman entered
earlier this year.
Tillman is asking the appellate court to dismiss the case because Robert
Campbell, an attorney who used to represent the Sheriff's Office,
testified before a grand jury that was hearing Tillman's case.
Tillman's attorneys filed the same motion during the criminal proceedings,
but it was denied by Jefferson County Circuit Judge James H. Hard, who
heard the case because all the local circuit judges recused themselves.
Following that denial, Tillman and prosecutors reached a deal in which the
sheriff pleaded guilty on April 10 to misdemeanor charges of perjury and
an ethics violation, and stepped down from the office he had held for more
than 11 years.
In return, prosecutors dropped three other felony charges against Tillman
and agreed to let him appeal the motion to dismiss.
Lane Mann, clerk for the Montgomery-based Alabama Court of Criminal
Appeals, confirmed Monday that the appeal was in front of the judges, but
said he could not estimate when they would issue a ruling.
Regardless of how the appellate court rules, attorneys from either side
can appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court.
Tillman was indicted in April 2005 on charges of perjury, theft and using
his office for personal gain. One of the perjury charges and both of the
theft charges were dropped in the plea deal, and the last two charges were
reduced to misdemeanors.
While Tillman was sheriff, he would feed prisoners at Mobile County Metro
Jail for less money than the state gave him to feed them. One of the theft
charges related to Tillman's withdrawal of almost $13,000 of excess jail
food money to open a personal retirement account.
Tillman has argued that state law allows him to keep the jail food money,
while prosecutors maintained that Tillman was bound by a County Commission
resolution directing that any surplus go to law enforcement. That theft
charge was dropped in the plea deal.
The charges also stemmed from his sister-in-law Brenda Pate's conviction
of stealing from the department. Pate, the planning director at the
department, kept money left over after a law enforcement conference she
organized.
The district attorney's office claimed Tillman perjured himself when his
grand jury testimony contradicted what he said on the witness stand in
Pate's trial.
Campbell served as the attorney for the Mobile County Sheriff's Office
from 1995 until January 2002. In February 2002, according to the motion
filed by Tillman's attorneys, Campbell testified to a Mobile County grand
jury hearing a case against Tillman.
Tillman's attorneys said that testimony is a breach of Tillman's
attorney-client privilege, and therefore the case should be thrown out and
Tyson's office be disqualified from the case.
"Basically, he stabbed me in the back," Tillman said of Campbell. "He
betrayed me."
Mobile County Assistant District Attorney Nicki Patterson said Campbell
did nothing wrong. Campbell represented the Sheriff's Department, not
Tillman personally, she said. When Campbell testified to the grand jury he
only testified about discussions with other people, such as Mobile County
commissioners, which do not fall under attorney-client privilege.
Furthermore, Campbell did not testify in front of the grand jury that
actually handed down the indictment against Tillman, she said.
"Bob Campbell is a widely respected attorney who, in both his opinion and
the opinion of the district attorney's office, avoided absolutely anything
that could be even remotely construed to violate attorney-client
privilege," Patterson said.
Tillman's attorneys dispute the prosecutors' claims. In a brief to the
appellate court, attorney Arthur Madden said sealed grand jury testimony,
which the judges will have access to, proves that Campbell did indeed
breach attorney-client privilege.
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