Defense attorneys say undue influence and an unconstitutional law should be grounds for dismissal in the case against a Limestone County judge, and a hearing on the motion could be held virtually, records show.

Attorneys representing District Judge Douglas Patterson filed a motion in March to dismiss the case. The motion claims another judge in the courthouse exerted undue influence over Patterson and the special grand jury that indicted him, and that the Alabama Ethics Act is unconstitutional both in its existence and in its application to Patterson’s case.

The motion filed March 31 does not name a specific judge in its claim of undue influence. However, in a Feb. 11 court hearing, defense attorney Chuck Warren argued Limestone Circuit Judge Robert Baker tried to pressure Patterson into taking a plea deal by threatening to convene a special grand jury to indict him if he didn’t.

The March 31 motion claims the same judge who summoned and thus presided over the selection of jurors for a special grand jury in June would have left enough of an impression that it affected the same jurors’ decision on a different case months later. An order filed Feb. 12 by Special Circuit Judge Stephen Haddock confirms the jurors who returned an indictment against Sheriff Mike Blakely in August 2019 were not discharged from further service and returned an indictment against Patterson in December.

However, Haddock said while Baker may have empaneled the special grand jury in June, he did not take the jury’s report, set bail or sign an indictment in either case.

Warren doesn’t believe that matters.

“By virtue of re-empaneling the same grand jury, the same judge exerted de facto undue influence over the grand jury, its deliberations, its procedures and ultimately other issues and circumstances which ultimately resulted in the special grand jury indicting the defendant,” Warren said in the March 31 motion.

Unconstitutional

Warren also claims the Alabama Ethics Act is being applied unconstitutionally against Patterson. He cited a 1939 Supreme Court case, Lanzetta v. New Jersey, in which the Court reversed the convictions of three alleged gangsters because the state law was too vague and required people to guess at what it meant or how it should be applied.

“The Alabama Ethics Act … provides extensive definitions for a list of 36 words and/or phrases employed by the Alabama Legislature in the Alabama Ethics Act,” Warren said in the motion. “However, crucially, many of the material elements of the statute subsection … under which the defendant is charged in this case, are left completely undefined and are therefore subject to the very speculation condemned by Lanzetta (v. New Jersey).”

Warren says those words include the following: “official position,” “office,” “use,” “gain,” “authorized by law,” “receives,” “obtains,” “exerts control over,” “converts to personal use” and “object.” The motion also states that while one could say “personal gain” is defined in the last sentence of the statute, the sentence ends with the very phrase it’s trying to define, “thus violating the time-honored rule of syntax that one should not use the word or phrase that is being defined in the definition itself.”

In this case, the statute reads, “Personal gain is achieved when the public official, public employee or a family member thereof receives, obtains, exerts control over or otherwise converts to personal use the object constituting such personal gain.”

Patterson is accused of using his position as a district court judge, in which he supervised the county’s judicial court system, to obtain $47,008.24 from the county’s juvenile court services fund. He is further charged with financial exploitation of the elderly related to an alleged breach of fiduciary duty to Charles Hardy, in order to obtain all or part of $47,800 in Hardy’s conservatorship account.

Finally, Patterson is accused of obtaining or exerting control over a sum of money between $99 and $1,500 belonging to the estate of Rudolph Allen, either without authorization or by deception.

Warren’s motion for dismissal says because the law is so ill-defined, it applies to too many people, it’s confusing for the “thousands of public employees and officials” who do not have legal training but to whom the law could be applied, and it could get in the way of people engaging in constitutionally protected conduct.

State response

Haddock gave state prosecutors until Wednesday to respond to the motion for dismissal. As of The News Courier’s press deadline Monday, no response had been filed in Alacourt, the state’s public court records system.

Haddock’s order was filed April 3, just hours after Gov. Kay Ivey announced her stay-at-home order. Haddock said in his order that a hearing on the defense’s motion would be set after Wednesday. He added the hearing may be conducted through an internet video conference or an in-person proceeding at the Limestone County Courthouse.