By Rowynn Ricks CNHI News Service
August 23, 2008 12:57 am
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WOODWARD — “There are two sides to every story.”
And suspended Woodward County Sheriff Les Morton thinks he finally has the opportunity to tell his.
For months, Morton has followed the advice of his attorney and remained relatively quiet about issues raised when he was indicted by a grand jury in March on 20 felony counts of filing fraudulent travel claims.
Last month, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office dropped those 20 counts against Morton. However, Morton still faces nine felony embezzlement charges accusing him of using a county vehicle and county funds to take personal trips between October 2005 and November 2007. A preliminary hearing on the charges has been set for Oct. 27-28 in Woodward County District Court.
In keeping the nine charges against Morton, Associate District Judge R. W. Collier earlier this month said although he believes the court should hear more about the embezzlement charges the 20 felony fraud counts originally filed against Morton were “very intelligently dismissed by the attorney general.”
“Now that the 20 counts have been dropped, I think we can have somewhat of our say about it,” Morton said.
As for the travel claims, Morton admitted he did request portions of his travel allowance, which was supposed to be for in-county use of his personal vehicle, for reimbursement of costs he incurred while using his personal vehicle to conduct transfers and other out-of-county business on behalf of the Woodward County Sheriff’s Office.
However, he said he only prorated his allowance as per the advice of the state auditor’s office.
“I was putting tons of miles on a vehicle that was anything but cost-effective,” Morton said, explaining he used his personal vehicle in order to allow more of the county’s limited number of marked sheriff’s units to be out on patrols.
“I was not making a penny on it,” he said. “I was actually losing money on it, contrary to what the district attorney’s office says.”
When Morton received the advice to prorate his allowance, he said the state auditor’s office was being run by Clifton Scott. However, when Scott retired and Jeff McMahan took over as state auditor, Morton said “the new auditor told us it was not acceptable” to prorate the vehicle allowance.
By this time an investigation was under way looking into Morton’s travel claims, and “a special prosecutor was assigned to hear the case to determine if criminal action was involved,” he said.
That prosecutor was Gene Christian, who spoke with the state auditor’s office. In a letter to Woodward County commissioners dated Sept. 7, 2005, Christian wrote while there were some unallowable claims, there was “insufficient evidence ... to bring any type of criminal action in this matter.” Included with the letter was a check for $6,954.98, which was the amount Christian noted in his letter “as those items identified in the audit that we could not document as appropriate travel matters or that were not appropriate for reimbursement”
Morton said if Christian had determined the full amount of $16,964.11 requested by county commissioners was unallowable, he would have repaid the full amount.
He said he never had any intent “to make a buck or hide anything from the county.”
“I was just acting on the advice of the state auditors,” Morton said. “There was no intent on my part to mislead.”
Even Christian realized this, Morton said, quoting from the prosecutor’s letter: “I must agree with the findings of the others who have reviewed this matter that the sheriff made no effort to mislead in the filings presented ...”
And since the sheriff repaid the amount the special prosecutor determined was due, Christian “consider(ed) this matter officially closed.”
However, the matter only stayed closed for approximately 31 months, Morton said, as the indictment against him was filed in March 2008.
“It was brought up again because an assistant district attorney with the Woodward County district attorney’s office was not happy with the findings,” Morton said. “He went to the new district attorney, Hollis Thorp, and convinced him to go back to the attorney general’s office.”
Morton said this happened be-cause he is “outspoken.”
“My history with the Wood-ward County district attorney’s office has been one of displeasure with some of their prosecution of cases, of which I’ve been very vocal,” Morton said.
Morton said he is vocal with crime victims, sending them up to the district attorney’s office when they had questions about why the criminals who victimized them was back on the streets.
“When victims of crime come to me, I have no qualms telling them where the problem is as far as I was concerned,” he said.
Ricks writes for the Woodward News.
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