TBT Exclusive: Assistant State Attorney Comments on Horne

BRADENTON – At Tuesday’s meeting, the Manatee County School Board voted to pay a former employee’s legal fees against the advice of its attorney and Superintendent. On Friday, the assistant district attorney who handled the case shot a hole in the logic used by the employee, her counsel and a majority of the board in doing so.

Former Manatee School District Office of Professional Standards investigator, Deborah Horne, who’d been arrested on a felony charge of failure to report child abuse in connection with the Rod Frazier sex scandal, resigned from the district in 2013 and later entered a pre-trial intervention program.

The board voted 4-1–against the advice of its attorney and the recommendation of its superintendent and the district’s–to reimburse Horne a whopping $18,600 in legal fees, even though she never went to trial. This was despite staff attorney Mitch Teitelbaum’s discovery of inflated and irregular billing by Horne’s attorneys, including around $1,800 in fees related to press conferences and other media matters that had nothing to do with her defense.

Florida law requires that the district repay an employee’s legal fees for matters that occur as a result of discharging their employment duties, provided they are successful in defending themselves against said charges.

Horne and her attorneys – Scott Martin, who was the district’s former attorney and also resigned at the same time in lieu of being investigated for his role in the scandal; and John Bowen, the board’s former attorney – argued that because Horne was never technically found ”guilty“ and the charges were dismissed at the end of the program’s completion, they essentially no longer existed (her record was also expunged), and that qualified as a ”successful defense.“

PTI’s are programs administered at the discretion of State Attorney’s offices for first-time offenders on qualifying charges. The accused can avoid going to trial on the charge(s) and have them dropped upon completion of the program. Many cases are then expunged afterward.

While most PTI programs require a statement from the participant that is consistent with guilt, Assistant State Attorney Dawn Buff, who handled Horne’s case, confirmed that the contract for PTI with the 12th Judicial Circuit does not impose that requirement for any of its participants. However, when asked if completion of the PTI in any way would equate to ”successfully defending yourself against the charge,“ she responded quickly, ”No, not at all.“

Buff said that while the 12th Circuit does not require a statement of facts, they do not offer PTI’s to defendants for whom they do not believe they have found evidence of guilt. ”If we would have found something in our investigation or during the course of another investigation that would have suggested (Horne) did not commit the crime she was charged with, we would have dropped the charges against her,“ said Buff, who also explained that Horne being released early from the program was in no way indicative of the strength (or lack thereof) of the case against her.

The board had suggested because the PTI was scheduled for 18 months but ended by the state attorney’s office after only four, this was further reason to consider Horne’s PTI as a ”successful defense.“ There was even mention of the fact that Horne’s PTI was ended on the same day that former Assistant Superintendent Bob Gagnon, who was also charged with a felony failure to report charge, was found not guilty. The suggestion was that Gagnon’s verdict somehow vindicated Horne. Buff stated unequivocally that such was not the case.

”When you enter a pre-trial intervention program, there are certain things that we require of you and once they are completed, the program is typically ended,“ Buff explained. ”Quite often, they are ended much earlier than they are scheduled for. There’s definitely a reward for finishing those things early.“ In fact, Buff said that completion of such stipulations is usually the primary factor in when the PTI is ended and that there was nothing extraordinary about Horne’s.

”As a condition of the PTI, we required her to continue testifying in the other related cases,“ said Buff. ”When the Gagnon case was over, she’d done everything we’d required in her agreement and we would typically end the PTI for any participant at that point. It had nothing to do with the result of the (Gagnon) case.“

Buff seemed perplexed by the board’s logic. She said that both sides understood everything she was explaining to me. ”It was made clear to both Mrs. Horne and the legal counsel for the school board (attorney James Dye),“ said Buff.

Indeed Dye informed the board at every turn that the logic it was attempting to use was not legally sound and misrepresented the status of a PTI, explaining to board members that it wasn’t a ”successful defense,“ but rather a tool to avoid making a defense at all. Staff attorney Mitchell Teitelbaum may have put it best, arguing that the PTI ”could not be used as both a sword and a shield“ simultaneously exonerating the defendant while allowing them to avoid the process that would lead to such an exoneration.

Nonetheless, the board voted 4-1 (with only Karen Carpenter dissenting) to have taxpayers foot the bill for Horne’s legal defense – media consulting and all. It was the third straight case in the Frazier scandal in which it went against the recommendation of its Superintendent and legal counsel in favor of a former school district employee.