COLUMBUS — Former Williams County Sheriff Steven Towns urged the Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday to throw out his misdemeanor conviction for posting confidential information online because the Ohio Ethics Commission did not clear the charge before the prosecutor brought it.
Based on their questioning, the justices appeared to be skeptical of the argument.
“If there's an ethics investigation and there's a criminal investigation as here, they are parallel. They work in tandem with each other,” Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor told Mr. Towns' Toledo attorney, Henry Schaefer.
“But it's the prosecutor that brings the criminal charges, not the ethics commission,” she said. “The ethics commission is concerned with ethics violations.”
Mr. Schaefer responded: “Here they are one and the same.”
Mr. Towns was convicted by a jury in Bryan Municipal Court in 2019 of posting hundreds of pages of files related to county child abuse cases that contained confidential information on his official website the prior year. He had also posted notices on social media pointing the public toward that disclosed information.
The improper disclosure, a misdemeanor, was tied to Mr. Towns' criticism of Williams County Protective Services. The confidential information was eventually removed from public view.
He received a suspended 180-day sentence and was placed on three years of monitored community control.
While still serving his suspended sentence, Mr. Towns resigned as sheriff with just months left in his second term as part of a separate deal to avoid prosecution on three felony counts of theft in office. Those allegations related to his submission of costs related to his misdemeanor conviction to county officials for payment by taxpayers.
He had already announced he would not seek re-election.
Mark Weaver, a Columbus area attorney who served as special prosecutor in the case, argued that two investigations can proceed on separate tracks. Attorney General Dave Yost's office and the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association have agreed.
“We knew that Mr. Towns had violated the confidentiality statute by putting confidential child abuse reports on Facebook,” Mr. Weaver said. “We didn't need the tools of the ethics commission to do further inquiry.”
But Mr. Schaefer argued that lawmakers had made the ethics commission the first stop in addressing what he said amounted to an ethics violation allegation brought against a public official.
“I think the legislature carved this section out separately for a reason,” he said. “I think the citizens of Ohio want ethics to be considered differently for a reason...Let's face it, if one political party is entirely in charge of an area of government, they may turn their backs on a lot of ethical violations and pay no attention to them.”
But justices repeatedly asked where in state law it states that a prosecutor couldn't pursue a criminal charge without the ethics commission leading the way.
The Toledo-based Sixth District Court of Appeals upheld the improper disclosure conviction.
The Supreme Court did not immediately rule.
First Published November 10, 2021, 4:23 p.m.
