A16
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Both sides rest in motion to dismiss
Ex-Grant County deputy
seeks to have criminal
charges thrown out
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
CANYON CITY — Attorneys for
both sides made their closing argu-
ments Monday, June 6, in a Circuit
Court hearing to dismiss criminal
charges against a former Grant County
sheriff ’s deputy accused of assault,
attempted rape and child neglect.
Attorneys for Tyler Smith argued
the prosecutors have engaged in prose-
cutorial misconduct and selective pros-
ecution since the beginning and con-
tinue to withhold evidence they claim
would clear the former deputy of any
wrongdoing.
Andrew Coit, one of Smith’s attor-
neys, said Monday the prosecution had
committed an egregious violation of
the Brady Rule, which requires excul-
patory evidence — information that
could acquit a defendant in a criminal
case — to be turned over to the defense
by the government.
The evidence in question, which
prosecutors fi led on the eve of Smith’s
trial in late October, included docu-
ments and internal reports from the
Grant County Sheriff ’s Offi ce, which
fi red Smith in December 2019, three
months after his arrest and charges in
this case.
Additionally, there were two
recorded interviews with Smith’s
accuser, including one in which she
acknowledged placing a tracking
device on Smith’s vehicle and keep-
ing the Grant County Sheriff ’s Offi ce
informed of his whereabouts.
Jamie Kimberly, an assistant Ore-
gon attorney general acting as a special
prosecutor in the case, argued Mon-
day that prosecutors were unaware of
the October dump of discovery mate-
Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle, File
Tyler Smith, a former Grant County sheriff ’s deputy accused of attempted rape
and other crimes, appears in Grant County Circuit Court April 20, 2022.
rials until the last minute and that it
was “awful” and “unfortunate” the evi-
dence was not turned over sooner.
However, she said, it took one
phone call to Grant County Sheriff ’s
Sgt. Danny Komning the day before
the trial began to retrieve the evidence.
Komning testifi ed in the fi rst day
of the evidentiary hearing he asked the
Wheeler County sheriff to conduct an
internal aff airs investigation of Smith,
and the sheriff recorded the interview
with Smith’s accuser.
In that interview, according to the
recording that was played in court on
April 20, Smith’s accuser acknowl-
edges placing a tracker on Smith’s
vehicle and keeping the Grant County
Sheriff ’s Offi ce updated on Smith’s
whereabouts.
The other recorded interview with
Smith’s accuser was conducted by
Komning on June 20, 2019. The date
of the interview, Smith’s camp argues,
is important.
In a federal lawsuit fi led by Smith
for wrongful termination and civil
rights violations, he states that then-
Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer
called him into his offi ce that day and
berated him, saying he knew that Smith
planned to make allegations about
Deputy Abigail Mobley in an upcom-
ing interview with the Oregon Depart-
ment of Justice, which was investigat-
ing her.
Komning testifi ed that Undersheriff
Zach Mobley, Abigail’s husband, had
called him in on his day off to come
into the Sheriff ’s Offi ce and Palmer
told him to interview Smith’s accuser
and the accuser’s coworker.
Komning testifi ed last month that
he did not think the recordings were
relevant to anything but the internal
investigation of Smith that he initi-
ated against Smith and not the criminal
investigation.
Kimberly argued in Monday’s hear-
ing that while one could argue Komn-
ing had a beef with Smith and, there-
fore, was motivated to keep things from
him, it is more likely he was asked to
take statements and they went no fur-
ther and then, several months later,
Smith was arrested.
Whether it was the right decision or
whether, in hindsight, that was an intel-
ligent decision, it did not make Komn-
ing vindictive or guilty of attempting
to obstruct justice and it did not war-
rant the case being dismissed, Kim-
berly said.
Coit fi red back that Komning had a
duty under the Brady Rule to turn over
the evidence. “That is what the law is,”
he said.
In the event the judge should rule
against dismissal and the case goes
to a trial, Coit warned that Komning,
Palmer and others would be called as
witnesses and cross-examined.
“These are people that are most cer-
tainly going to be called as witnesses
that are going to be extremely damag-
ing to the state’s case,” he said.
Palmer, the prosecutor and the
personnel fi le
Coit touched on Grant County Dis-
trict Attorney Jim Carpenter’s April 20
testimony in which he said that Palmer
had emailed him asking for assistance
in fi nding a legal avenue to arrest Haley
Olson, Smith’s girlfriend, who claimed
on social media that she had docu-
ments that proved Smith was innocent
of the charges brought against him.
Carpenter said he directed Palmer
to work with Gretchen Ladd-Dobler,
Wheeler County’s district attorney, one
of the special prosecutors, along with
Kimberly, who was handling Smith’s
case.
The entirety of the email exchange,
according to Coit, was not turned over
to the defense.
Kimberly contended that the rea-
son the email exchange was brief was
because there was nothing more that
was discussed. The email exchange
was typical of one between prosecutors
and sheriff s during pending litigation.
“There was no conspiracy,” she
said. “There was no bad faith and there
certainly was no misconduct.”
Coit said the additional personnel
fi le that Palmer testifi ed that he kept on
Smith and placed in a sealed envelope
before leaving offi ce was gutted of any
exonerating evidence.
Coit asked the court to verify
whether the evidence was turned over
in a sealed envelope.
Kimberly responded that the prose-
cution had never been in possession of
the personnel fi le and would not have
known what was in the fi le.
‘Crossing the thin blue line’
Coit said Smith crossed the “thin
blue line” and was the target of retal-
iation for allegations he made to the
Oregon Department of Justice on
July 31, 2019, that Abigail Mobley
had used illegal drugs and had a sex-
ual relationship with an inmate incar-
cerated for drug crimes while she was
a jail deputy with the Grant County
Sheriff ’s Offi ce.
The criminal charges brought
against him were part of a plan by
former Grant County Sheriff Glenn
Palmer, Undersheriff Zach Mobley,
Mobley’s wife, Abigail, and Komning,
her older brother, to have him removed
from the Sheriff ’s Offi ce and get him
arrested.
Smith also argues that his accuser
was a close friend of the Mobleys and
Komning.
After a 21-month investigation
found that Abigail Mobley commit-
ted eight violations of the depart-
ment’s code of conduct, ranging from
abuse of her position to conduct unbe-
coming an offi cer and neglect of duty,
she resigned from the Sheriff ’s Offi ce
on Dec. 26, 2021, following a 30-day
suspension.
Abigail Mobley, who was on paid
leave throughout the investigation, was
not found to have used illegal drugs.
Circuit Court Judge Dan Bunch said
he would issue a written ruling on the
motion to dismiss as soon as possible.
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