Judge: Defense violated gag rule
Hearing set for graft-case lawyer
FAYETTEVILLE — A letter detailing the wiping of computer records in a public-corruption case involving state legislators should never have been posted on a public website of court records, a federal judge declared in an order Tuesday.
A Jan. 25 hearing has been set to consider disciplinary action against Gregory Payne of the Story Law Firm in Fayetteville, the defense attorney named in the court order.
The letter was posted late Monday along with a defense motion to dismiss the case against Oren Paris III, one of three defendants in a federal kickback case that includes former Sen. Jon Woods of Springdale and consultant Randell Shelton Jr.
Woods is accused of taking kickbacks from Paris, president of Ecclesia College, in return for arranging state General Improvement Fund grants for the private Christian college. Kickbacks were paid through consulting fees that went to Shelton, according to the government’s case.
Former state Rep. Micah Neal of Springdale pleaded guilty Jan. 4 to his role in the scheme.
Neal covertly recorded telephone conversations, some of which are set to be used in the government’s case.
Another 79 recordings were discovered after Shelton’s defense counsel discovered gaps in the narrative, according to court records.
The government learned that the laptop used in the investigation had its memory wiped after unauthorized personal use by an FBI agent. Those details were in the three-page letter at-
tached to the defense motion that was posted late Monday and removed from the court’s website early Tuesday, but not before the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported the contents.
U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks ordered Payne to appear Jan. 25 to “show cause why this court should not find that he willfully violated the court’s protective order and should not take disciplinary action against him, to include monetary sanctions, disbarment from the bar of this court, and reporting any sanctions imposed on him in this matter to any other courts of whose bar he may be a member.”
A request for comment by phone from Payne or the law
firm was not returned by 6 p.m. Tuesday.
All matters of discovery in this case are under a court-ordered seal, something the letter in question states, Brooks said in his order Tuesday.
“The opening sentences of the very letter at issue stated in unmistakable language that the following disclosures are considered discovery materials,” the court order said.
Payne and other defense counsel in previous motions have protested the secrecy surrounding the case, expressing frustration and calling the protective order sealing records an infringement of their clients’ rights. Brooks overruled those objections.
The case trial is set for April 9.
“Mr. Payne may disagree with this court’s ruling on that motion,” the Tuesday order states. “But the court’s ruling was clear, and he had notice of it. Disagreement with a court order is not a license for an officer of the court to disobey it.
“Finally, the timing of Mr. Payne’s actions is especially troubling to the court,” Tuesday’s order states. “He caused these materials to be filed publicly at 6:04 p.m. on Dec. 18, more than an hour after the court had closed for the day. By 4:30 a.m. the following morning — several hours before the court would be open again for business — a lengthy article had already been published in a prominent Arkansas newspaper containing extensive discussion of these materials.”
The circumstances make it appear that the timing was deliberately intended to make sure the court could not either stop the posting nor remedy the situation, the order says.