BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – A grand jury violated Highway Commissioner Allan Pope’s constitutional rights when it indicted him on a series of corruption and theft charges in July according to a motion his attorney filed in court Tuesday.
Pope was charged with seven counts of theft, official misconduct and private use of county equipment July 20 for his involvement in a series of road projects where prosecutors claim he did work on private land that benefited private landowners.
On Tuesday, Pope’s attorney, Ricky Curtis, filed a motion in Sullivan County Criminal Court claiming that when the highway commissioner performed the work in question he followed a series of policies and procedures other highway officials used in the past.
Because no previous highway officials have been brought up on criminal charges for following these procedures, the attorney said, the case against Pope could be construed as selective prosecution and is a violation of his constitutional rights.
“If every highway commissioner has done this and none of them have been indicted, then you may have a 14th Amendment violation,” Curtis said Tuesday when he presented a motion to dismiss the charges to Judge Jerry Beck.
Specifically, Curtis wrote in his motion, the charges violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Beck said little of Curtis’ claims in court Tuesday and set an Oct. 15 hearing to consider his motion.
During an interview that followed his indictments, Pope said most of the road projects that prosecutors have called into question involved work where highway crews knocked down banks that interfered with a driver’s ability to see when going around a curve.
The highway commissioner also said he signed a temporary right-of-way easement with each of the landowners that gave his crews permission to work on their property and explained why the work was needed.
Curtis included a copy of these easements in the motion to dismiss that he filed Tuesday. He also included similar right-of-way easements that previous highway commissioners have used when they needed to work on private land.
When asked about the documents, District Attorney Greeley Wells said he did not question whether Pope had easements to do the work on private land or whether the documents were obtained in a proper, legal manner.
The prosecutor said his case against Pope is focused on another claim that Curtis made in his motion, specifically that the work the highway department performed was done “for the improvement of the Sullivan County highway system,” and for the public’s benefit.
“The allegation is that the work was not done for the improvement of the Sullivan County highway system,” Wells said in an interview after Curtis presented his motion to dismiss.
Wells said the work was done to benefit a private individual. But when pressed, Wells refused to say which “private individual” benefitted from the road projects in question.
“All of that will come out during the trial,” the prosecutor said.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Wells also presented a new set of indictments against Pope clarifying that the highway commissioner was being charged with theft of services rather than normal theft.
These new indictments came in response to an earlier motion to dismiss that Curtis filed claiming the language used in the indictments was unclear – they referenced theft of services in the description of each charge but cited a code section for normal theft – and made it difficult for him to properly defend his client.
gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518
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