More On "UNBRIDLED" CORRUPTION IN Clay County, Kentucky.
One trial's end is only the beginning
Clay County residents expect more fallout in Vote-buying case
By Bill Estep
MANCHESTER — There's a feeling in Clay County these days of waiting for another shoe to fall.
In the past five years, more than a dozen local officials have been convicted of crimes that included extorting kickbacks from a contractor, laundering money for a drug dealer and buying votes on a grand and pernicious scale.
What has people holding their breath, though, is that more than a dozen other current or former public officials also allegedly took part in vote fraud, according to witnesses, prosecutors and court documents.
After several years with FBI task-force agents in town, local residents don't think they've seen the last of the arrests.
"Everyone's asked me a thousand times, 'Who's next, who's next?'" said Manchester police Chief Jeff Culver. "I say, 'I don't know, but I know there'll be more.' I was told that this is not over by people who make those decisions."
Aside from the people convicted, those allegedly involved in election fraud include Circuit Judge Oscar Gayle House; Judge-Executive Carl "Crawdad" Sizemore; county Attorney Clay Massey Bishop Jr.; Commonwealth's Attorney Gary Gregory; property valuation administrator Phillip Mobley; Manchester council member Penny Robinson, former state Rep. Barbara White Colter; state Rep. Tim Couch; former Judge-Executive James Garrison; former Sheriff Edd Jordan; former Magistrate Johnny "Poss" Gregory; and former Jailer Charles Marcum, who planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself if called to testify at a recent trial.
Those current and former officials were identified in court proceedings, but none has been charged.
Sizemore, Bishop, Mobley, Robinson and Couch are up for re-election this year. Jordan is trying to win back the sheriff's office from the man who beat him in 2006, and Johnny "Poss" Gregory is running for judge-executive.
Many of those officials have denied involvement in vote-buying in the past. Last week, several declined to comment or did not return calls, though Sizemore, the affable judge-executive, said he did not give money to buy votes.
If someone included him in a slate of candidates to buy votes for, he wasn't aware of it, Sizemore said.
Whether anyone else is charged, the federal investigation already has uncovered troubling examples of corruption, toppling a cadre of prominent people who once held power and influence locally.
For instance, two-term county Clerk Jennings White admitted he laundered money for Kenny Day, who ran a large drug operation from a pawn shop.
In another case, longtime Manchester Mayor Daugh White, assistant police chief Todd Roberts and Vernon Hacker, a city council member who later headed the 911 system, were charged with getting a drug dealer to burn down a vacant house so the city could buy the lot to build a new police station on it, then paying the dealer with cocaine and protection.
Roberts also was accused of stealing $5,000 from the evidence locker.
Darnell Hipsher, a Manchester council member, pleaded guilty in a scheme to win political points by paving private drives in town at taxpayers' expense.
D. Kennon White admitted that after his mobile-home sales business failed and his father created a job for him as Manchester city manager, he extorted $67,000 in kickbacks from a contractor.
In the most recent phase of the investigation, former Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle, former school Superintendent Douglas C. Adams, county Clerk Freddy Thompson and Magistrate Stanley Bowling were convicted of being involved in a wholesale conspiracy to commit vote fraud in pursuit of power, jobs and contracts.
They denied the charges and plan to appeal. Thompson, who filed to run for re-election this year, and Bowling, who did not, can stay in office while appealing.
Clay County, one of the nation's poorest, had a reputation for corruption and vote-buying before the string of arrests the last few years.
"We've been looking at that place for a long time," said David Keller, a former FBI agent who heads the Kentucky section of the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federally funded drug task force that covers parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Clay County precinct his first day on the job in Kentucky, in November 1980.
Agents parked an unmarked van near the polling place so they could watch an informant who was wearing a recording device. The agents flattened a tire on the van to keep down suspicion about why it was parked there, he said.
But people at the polling place shook the van and followed it out of the county after an undercover agent changed the tire and drove it away. The informant got scared and quit helping the FBI, Keller said.
That was the same story for years in the county — local people with inside knowledge of corruption wouldn't cooperate with state police and federal agents, Keller said.
Keller recalled an unsolved murder from around 1980 in which a man's head was cut off and his body dumped in a pond. That and other killings contributed to a reputation for violence in the county that didn't encourage people to cooperate with authorities.
The FBI first had trouble getting people to cooperate in its investigation of vote-fraud in the 2002 May primary, even though candidates spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bribe voters.
People lined up to sell their votes in early, absentee voting. Sizemore, driving past the polling place downtown, said he thought someone was giving away commodity cheese.
But finally, drugs provided a door into the investigation of corruption and vote-buying.
One key figure was Day, arrested in 2005 as part of a multistate cocaine and marijuana ring. Authorities ultimately arrested more than 50 people in the case and confiscated millions of dollars worth of drugs.
In addition to selling drugs, however, Day had been a county election commissioner and longtime vote-buyer, so he had information about vote fraud.
Bobby Joe Curry, the drug dealer who burned down the vacant house for the city officials, also provided information on corruption after he was arrested.
"The stars just lined up to finally clean up Clay County," said Frank Rapier, director of the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
The task force helped fund the investigation in Clay County, headed the last few years by FBI Special Agent Timothy S. Briggs.
The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area focuses on drug investigations. But Rapier said he asked officials in Washington to approve spending its funds on the corruption case because of the link to drugs and because public corruption undermines justice.
"We can't have any kind of law enforcement if we don't have honest public officials," he said.
Local officials said that notwithstanding the uncomfortable publicity over vote fraud and corruption arrests in Manchester and Clay County, there are more honest, hardworking people here than not.
It's also true, however, that inaction by good people played a role in the growth of corruption and deadly drug abuse, said Doug Abner, pastor of Community Church in Manchester.
"Down through time, good people, we just quit being involved," Abner said.
That began to change even before the first public officials went to prison.
A march organized by churches to rally the community against drugs in May 2004 was a key event in the turnaround.
It was a cold, rainy Sunday, but thousands of people walked through town to a rally at a city park.
"You really felt the empowerment of citizens that day," said Karen Engle, director of Operation UNITE, an anti-drug task force in southern and Eastern Kentucky, who attended.
Since then, a coalition of churches and volunteers continued working to increase civic involvement and fight drugs.
Pastors encouraged members to vote. Volunteers set up a program to monitor criminal cases. A television station operated by Abner's church broadcasts local government meetings, and churches work with government officials to tackle local issues.
But the federal investigation has given people hope as well, said Manchester Mayor Carmen Webb Lewis.
Before, many people had stopped voting or being involved in civic affairs because they felt a select few controlled the community or because of the widespread vote fraud, Lewis said.
"You'd leave the voting booth with this empty feeling that what I just did didn't matter," said Ken Bolin, a minister who helped organize the 2004 march.
The federal investigation, however, has shaken up the old power structure and done away with what Culver called the "intimidation factor" from people who controlled jobs, and used that to political advantage.
Lewis said there are people running for office in Clay County this year who wouldn't have considered it before.
"I think there's definitely more hope," she said.
The election this year is a further opportunity for good people to get involved, Abner said.
A group called Clay Countians United plans to promote voting this spring.
"It looks really promising. But if good people don't step up, we'll get back in the same rut," Abner said.
Editor's comment: I wonder when the feds. will wrap up their "CLEAN UP" in Clay County, and bring their cleaning products to the other 124 counties in Kentucky.
Clay County residents expect more fallout in Vote-buying case
By Bill Estep
MANCHESTER — There's a feeling in Clay County these days of waiting for another shoe to fall.
In the past five years, more than a dozen local officials have been convicted of crimes that included extorting kickbacks from a contractor, laundering money for a drug dealer and buying votes on a grand and pernicious scale.
What has people holding their breath, though, is that more than a dozen other current or former public officials also allegedly took part in vote fraud, according to witnesses, prosecutors and court documents.
After several years with FBI task-force agents in town, local residents don't think they've seen the last of the arrests.
"Everyone's asked me a thousand times, 'Who's next, who's next?'" said Manchester police Chief Jeff Culver. "I say, 'I don't know, but I know there'll be more.' I was told that this is not over by people who make those decisions."
Aside from the people convicted, those allegedly involved in election fraud include Circuit Judge Oscar Gayle House; Judge-Executive Carl "Crawdad" Sizemore; county Attorney Clay Massey Bishop Jr.; Commonwealth's Attorney Gary Gregory; property valuation administrator Phillip Mobley; Manchester council member Penny Robinson, former state Rep. Barbara White Colter; state Rep. Tim Couch; former Judge-Executive James Garrison; former Sheriff Edd Jordan; former Magistrate Johnny "Poss" Gregory; and former Jailer Charles Marcum, who planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself if called to testify at a recent trial.
Those current and former officials were identified in court proceedings, but none has been charged.
Sizemore, Bishop, Mobley, Robinson and Couch are up for re-election this year. Jordan is trying to win back the sheriff's office from the man who beat him in 2006, and Johnny "Poss" Gregory is running for judge-executive.
Many of those officials have denied involvement in vote-buying in the past. Last week, several declined to comment or did not return calls, though Sizemore, the affable judge-executive, said he did not give money to buy votes.
If someone included him in a slate of candidates to buy votes for, he wasn't aware of it, Sizemore said.
Whether anyone else is charged, the federal investigation already has uncovered troubling examples of corruption, toppling a cadre of prominent people who once held power and influence locally.
For instance, two-term county Clerk Jennings White admitted he laundered money for Kenny Day, who ran a large drug operation from a pawn shop.
In another case, longtime Manchester Mayor Daugh White, assistant police chief Todd Roberts and Vernon Hacker, a city council member who later headed the 911 system, were charged with getting a drug dealer to burn down a vacant house so the city could buy the lot to build a new police station on it, then paying the dealer with cocaine and protection.
Roberts also was accused of stealing $5,000 from the evidence locker.
Darnell Hipsher, a Manchester council member, pleaded guilty in a scheme to win political points by paving private drives in town at taxpayers' expense.
D. Kennon White admitted that after his mobile-home sales business failed and his father created a job for him as Manchester city manager, he extorted $67,000 in kickbacks from a contractor.
In the most recent phase of the investigation, former Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle, former school Superintendent Douglas C. Adams, county Clerk Freddy Thompson and Magistrate Stanley Bowling were convicted of being involved in a wholesale conspiracy to commit vote fraud in pursuit of power, jobs and contracts.
They denied the charges and plan to appeal. Thompson, who filed to run for re-election this year, and Bowling, who did not, can stay in office while appealing.
Clay County, one of the nation's poorest, had a reputation for corruption and vote-buying before the string of arrests the last few years.
"We've been looking at that place for a long time," said David Keller, a former FBI agent who heads the Kentucky section of the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federally funded drug task force that covers parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Clay County precinct his first day on the job in Kentucky, in November 1980.
Agents parked an unmarked van near the polling place so they could watch an informant who was wearing a recording device. The agents flattened a tire on the van to keep down suspicion about why it was parked there, he said.
But people at the polling place shook the van and followed it out of the county after an undercover agent changed the tire and drove it away. The informant got scared and quit helping the FBI, Keller said.
That was the same story for years in the county — local people with inside knowledge of corruption wouldn't cooperate with state police and federal agents, Keller said.
Keller recalled an unsolved murder from around 1980 in which a man's head was cut off and his body dumped in a pond. That and other killings contributed to a reputation for violence in the county that didn't encourage people to cooperate with authorities.
The FBI first had trouble getting people to cooperate in its investigation of vote-fraud in the 2002 May primary, even though candidates spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bribe voters.
People lined up to sell their votes in early, absentee voting. Sizemore, driving past the polling place downtown, said he thought someone was giving away commodity cheese.
But finally, drugs provided a door into the investigation of corruption and vote-buying.
One key figure was Day, arrested in 2005 as part of a multistate cocaine and marijuana ring. Authorities ultimately arrested more than 50 people in the case and confiscated millions of dollars worth of drugs.
In addition to selling drugs, however, Day had been a county election commissioner and longtime vote-buyer, so he had information about vote fraud.
Bobby Joe Curry, the drug dealer who burned down the vacant house for the city officials, also provided information on corruption after he was arrested.
"The stars just lined up to finally clean up Clay County," said Frank Rapier, director of the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
The task force helped fund the investigation in Clay County, headed the last few years by FBI Special Agent Timothy S. Briggs.
The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area focuses on drug investigations. But Rapier said he asked officials in Washington to approve spending its funds on the corruption case because of the link to drugs and because public corruption undermines justice.
"We can't have any kind of law enforcement if we don't have honest public officials," he said.
Local officials said that notwithstanding the uncomfortable publicity over vote fraud and corruption arrests in Manchester and Clay County, there are more honest, hardworking people here than not.
It's also true, however, that inaction by good people played a role in the growth of corruption and deadly drug abuse, said Doug Abner, pastor of Community Church in Manchester.
"Down through time, good people, we just quit being involved," Abner said.
That began to change even before the first public officials went to prison.
A march organized by churches to rally the community against drugs in May 2004 was a key event in the turnaround.
It was a cold, rainy Sunday, but thousands of people walked through town to a rally at a city park.
"You really felt the empowerment of citizens that day," said Karen Engle, director of Operation UNITE, an anti-drug task force in southern and Eastern Kentucky, who attended.
Since then, a coalition of churches and volunteers continued working to increase civic involvement and fight drugs.
Pastors encouraged members to vote. Volunteers set up a program to monitor criminal cases. A television station operated by Abner's church broadcasts local government meetings, and churches work with government officials to tackle local issues.
But the federal investigation has given people hope as well, said Manchester Mayor Carmen Webb Lewis.
Before, many people had stopped voting or being involved in civic affairs because they felt a select few controlled the community or because of the widespread vote fraud, Lewis said.
"You'd leave the voting booth with this empty feeling that what I just did didn't matter," said Ken Bolin, a minister who helped organize the 2004 march.
The federal investigation, however, has shaken up the old power structure and done away with what Culver called the "intimidation factor" from people who controlled jobs, and used that to political advantage.
Lewis said there are people running for office in Clay County this year who wouldn't have considered it before.
"I think there's definitely more hope," she said.
The election this year is a further opportunity for good people to get involved, Abner said.
A group called Clay Countians United plans to promote voting this spring.
"It looks really promising. But if good people don't step up, we'll get back in the same rut," Abner said.
Editor's comment: I wonder when the feds. will wrap up their "CLEAN UP" in Clay County, and bring their cleaning products to the other 124 counties in Kentucky.
Labels: Avarice, Crime, Greed, Keeping them honest, Kentucky politics, Punishment
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 2:02 PM
7 Comments:
Why didn't the attorney generals office do anything about the crimes taking place in Clay County?
I suspect Kentucky politics took a FRONT seat!
very informative and interesting blog.
Thanks for sharing:-)
I just wonder if anything will ever be done to the rest of them or is it over?
This IS CLAY COUNTY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT AFTER ALL!
Every one of them scu bags were dirty. I was charged in that county for receiving stolen property in 2004 an I had receipt an all Ed Jordan could do is laugh an threw it in the garbage. So I told you all including the judge miricale u laugh now I'll laugh later I just wish I was driving the karma bus when it picked your alls ass up
In 1994, when I was seven years old, my mother, Selena Kay Martin, was shot and killed in our apartment in Manchester, Ky. My mother's boyfriend, Abraham Mitchell, had been beating her for weeks, if not months. The week before the murder, he had purchased a new revolver (the first gun he had ever owned), and had cut the phone lines to the apartment building (he was the manager there) in order to prevent my mother from calling my father or whoever it was she was calling. The unfortunate circumstance, in this situation, is that Mr. Mitchell was close friends with a group of local police officers and sheriffs. Mr. Mitchell was given a very minor charge, and a VERY minute sentence. Nobody has ever, to my knowledge, actually solved the case. Just shocked but not surprised to realize that Clay County, KY is a hotseat of Kentucky corruption.
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