Former detective’s background won’t be heard in federal court

Posted by Cameron Heron on January 19, 2012 Leave a comment (0) Go to comments

CINCINNATI — The Ryan Widmer jurors didn’t hear about former Hamilton Twp. Lt. Jeff Braley’s false employment records and neither will a jury in another case in federal court.

A lawsuit filed by Mary and Edward Pritchard several years ago accuses Braley, former Police Chief Frank Richardson, Lt. Phil Johnson, and former Officer Roger Gilbert and his wife, Gail, of staging an improper raid on their home in 2007.

The trial starts Monday in Cincinnati.

Braley was also the lead detective in the case against Widmer, who is serving 15 years to life in prison for drowning his wife, Sarah, in the bathtub of their home in August 2008. Widmer’s attorneys tried twice to get Braley’s falsified employment records before jurors to discredit him. The judge disallowed the revelations because Braley denied putting inflated employment and educational experience in his records.

The Pritchards’ attorney, Konrad Kircher, was allowed to depose Braley a second time about the false documents, after a Hamilton Twp. investigation revealed Braley apparently lied about several aspects of his employment and training. Chief Judge Susan Dlott ruled the jury in her federal courtroom won’t hear about the local investigation.

Kircher said he interviewed Braley again and former police chief and current Hamilton Twp. Trustee Gene Duvelius. Braley is claiming a “conspiracy theory,” Kircher said, that Duvelius planted the false information to frame him. Kircher said Duvelius flat out denied it.

“Judge Dlott is not going to let us get into that because it’s he said, he said,” Kircher said. “It really doesn’t have anything to do with what happened at the Pritchard residence in 2007.”

Braley resigned from the police department in June.

Dlott also recently reversed an earlier ruling that let the township off the hook in the case. She now says the jury can consider whether the township was liable because the now-deceased police chief allegedly allowed the raid on the Pritchards’ home.

Kircher said he never thought the township was off the hook. But Wilson Weisenfelder, the attorney for the township and its employees, had maintained the township was immune. Weisenfelder could not be reached for comment.

The crux of the case is Braley got a tip there might be underage drinking at the Pritchards’ party, so he arranged a sting operation. Court records show Braley drove by the party several times and didn’t see anything actionable until around 11:45 p.m. on his final check of the home. He reported seeing four individuals on the side of the home, and one appeared to be loud and intoxicated.

The suit says a decision was made to have Gilbert’s wife call in a noise complaint from her home in another county, since no Pritchard neighbors had complained.

The police converged on the party and made two arrests, one a party-goer who ran when the police arrived and another guest who was filming the action on his cellphone. Police asked him to stop, which he did, but opened his phone again when he received a text message, the lawsuit said. The underage drinking arrest of the guest who ran was dropped, as were disorderly conduct charges against the cellphone user.

Mary and Edward Pritchard and some party guests sued the officers, claiming the raid involved an unlawful search and arrests. They are seeking in excess of $75,000 in damages.

Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.