- Oct 17, 2011
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An Alabama D.A. Filed Legally Impossible Charges Against School Board Members Who Crossed Him
A board employee and a local reporter were arrested on the same bogus charge of divulging nonexistent grand jury secrets.
On October 12, 2023, the seven-member board that overseas [sic] public schools in Escambia County, Alabama, met to consider renewing Superintendent Michele McClung's employment contract. The board had narrowly rejected a motion to renew McClung's contract at a meeting the previous August, and it did not look like the members in the majority, who had concerns about her performance, were inclined to change their minds. Steve Billy urged them to reconsider, effusively praising McClung and arguing that board members who voted against the new contract would be violating state law by forsaking their oaths of office.That speech was pretty weird, especially because Billy was not just an ordinary citizen. He was (and is) Escambia County's district attorney, and he would later use the powers of that office to file patently frivolous criminal charges against two board members who voted against the new contract, along with a school board employee and a local newspaper reporter. Those charges and the ensuing arrests, Billy's targets argue in a federal lawsuit they filed on Wednesday, violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights.
"I don't control much in Escambia County, Alabama, but I do control the grand jury of this county, and I can tell you this lady right here [McClung] is not going to be brought before a grand jury because there's nothing to bring before a grand jury."
At a local Republican Party meeting on September 18, 2023, according to the lawsuit, [County Sheriff] Jackson "said that he investigated the rumors about the audit and confirmed for himself that McClung had done nothing wrong." He "told the meeting that he would arrest McClung's detractors on a Friday so that they couldn't bail out until Monday and would have to 'eat his hotdogs all weekend.'" After that meeting, the complaint says, Jackson "confided in a community member that, if the vote for the superintendent did not 'go the way it should,' then 'the wrath would be coming down on some school board members.'"
[The vote didn't and the wrath did. Then the wrath was dismissed with prejudice by a state assistant AG, and now the victims are suing.]
