LAWRENCE CO.—An Aggravated Battery case filed against a Lawrenceville businessman in 2010 has ended in a nolle prosequi filing in Lawrence County circuit court.
The case, filed by former Lawrence County prosecutor Lisa Wade August 10, 2010, came to a quiet conclusion on the morning of Friday, July 18, after Lawrence’s current prosecutor Chris Quick made good on a statement he’d issued in early December 2012, shortly after he’d taken office: That if he’d been prosecutor at the time, he’d have never filed the charge against James A. Brunson following an altercation between Brunson, 42, and one Jody Harshman, 39, after Harshman was caught by Brunson busting out the glass at Brunson’s Bridgeport business, Bridgeport Package.
What makes the dismissal significant isn’t just the extended (and unusual) period of time the case languished in court; and it isn’t just that it should already have been dismissed.
It’s that now, upon dismissal, the entire situation leans toward the argument that what Wade did in 2010 equates to “false arrest”…and this will have a direct impact on the federal civil lawsuit Brunson filed against Wade, along with now-imprisoned former Bridgeport mayor Max Schauf, Harshman, and a host of other entities, which suit is inching toward its own conclusion with recent default judgments in Brunson’s favor…and a jury trial, possibly this year, in which Brunson is requesting extensive damages as a result of the corruption he says caused his arrest to begin with.
Willoughby convicted, sentenced
As reported in the July Special Edition, the pressure in Brunson’s case increased when it was discovered that an employee, Elizabeth Willoughby of New Albany, Indiana, had stolen lottery tickets from the package store.
Willoughby, 20, was charged with Retail Theft over $300 and jailed, and an ongoing investigation into a much larger amount of cash it was alleged she had taken from the drawer was launched.
Willoughby pled guilty to the felony offense on Wednesday, July 9, and was placed on two years probation and ordered to make restitution.
In speaking with Quick about the Willoughby case after its conclusion, Disclosure learned that the decision to nolle pros the felony case against Brunson had been made.
Quick wasn’t sure that Hopkins would sign off on the nolle pros, however; Hopkins, Quick said, generally likes to hear arguments from both sides before making such decisions.
Brunson’s attorney Brian Shinkle had been given the opportunity to argue his February 28 motion to dismiss the case, which was based on falsehoods Lisa Wade had put forward during the pendency of the felony, but Shinkle had chosen not to make those arguments during a phone conference set for the matter on July 1, and two previous Fridays, June 20, had been denied the opportunity to do so because of Quick’s unexplained absence at that hearing.
Quick didn’t exactly explain why he left that day (which circumstances were covered extensively in the July Special Edition), but did advise that Shinkle’s recounting of events wasn’t exactly what had happened: Shinkle had said that he’d called the state’s attorney’s office and had advised Quick’s staff that he was running late, and that he’d be there for the 1:30 hearing at 2 p.m. instead.
That, Quick said, wasn’t the case; his office staff had told him that there was no such phone call made, and so he left the courthouse on errands that day, and the hearing was delayed.
Pressure on
However, the pressure was on, as it appeared that, since there were pending motions and hearing dates set in the federal case in Benton, it seemed that every time there was movement in the state case, there was consequently some kind of delay in getting that movement to go forward.
Disclosure wondered openly in print if one didn’t have direct bearing on the other.
Therefore it was somewhat of a surprise when Quick, admirably, opted to take up the motion for dismissal of Brunson’s felony case from the state.
The matter had already been set for a conference on July 18 when Quick filed his motion Monday, July 14.
Brunson said Shinkle advised him that he didn’t need to go to the hearing. Brunson, out of respect for the court and concern for the serious charge pending against him (in which it was alleged that he battered Harshman in a public place, which, Wade claimed, was in part exacerbated when Harshman was struck by a bullet when Brunson’s weapon discharged…a claim learned later to be completely false), went anyway.
With Quick being absent in court that Friday morning, Hopkins took up the motion and called Brunson to the bench. There, he advised simply that he was granting the state’s motion for dismissal, and told Brunson to go to the circuit clerk’s office to retrieve his bond money (minus 10 percent, of course).
The $1,500, minus the 10 percent, was refunded Brunson in the afternoon; with the case having dragged on for just short of four years, it’s highly likely that the county made more money off the interest in the deposit of the bond funds than the 10 percent of Brunson’s they kept.
Default judgments entered
As it turned out, in the federal court case, some significant developments had occurred as well.
On that Monday that Quick filed the nolle pros in the state case, a federal judge had issued a default judgment against two of the defendants in the federal civil: One against Harshman, and one against Max Schauf’s son, Mark Schauf, who was present and driving by the store repeatedly on the night that Brunson’s place was damaged by Harshman.
The reason for the default judgment was simple: Neither one of them showed up to explain, when the case was called, why there shouldn’t be a judgment against them.
Neither Harshman or Schauf had been formally apprised of the default judgment as of press time.
Harshman, however, reacting to the fact that Brunson’s state case had been dismissed, griped on his Facebook page about the matter:
“I hear that the case has been dismissed against Brunson,” he whined in a post at about 10 a.m. Saturday morning, July 19. “So this is a warning, this gives anyone the right to beat nearly to death anyone who damages your property, so you better keep your punk kids locked up.”
Given the fact that Mark Schauf, who was all of 19 when the damage against Brunson’s business was perpetrated (and which, it’s suspected, he might have been behind other reported damage, such as the cutting of an air compressor line and damage to the back door of the place), Harshman’s public statement carried the requisite irony that the entire matter is steeped in, the ultimate of which, of course, is the fact that Max Schauf turned out to be as corrupt as Brunson was exposing him to be, as he’s now sitting in the federal penitentiary in Marion, convicted of stealing from the city for “personal enrichment” from 2009-2012.
Didn’t know what he did
But Harshman’s words were more of what is making the case for Brunson even stronger.
That’s because the statement “beat nearly to death anyone who damages your property,” being a reference to what he is claiming happened to him, is of course false…and perpetuates the lies Brunson, through his legal counsel, Richard Fedder, in the civil case, claims Wade was issuing.
Medical documents, finally obtained by Shinkle in the case after Wade had been obfuscating their existence for three years, showed that Harshman suffered a punch to the face when Brunson confronted him and Harshman advanced on Brunson with the hammer he was using to bust out the windows of the store. Aside from some bumps and scrapes, which Harshman, with a blood alcohol content of over three times the legal limit for driver or pedestrian, probably inflicted upon himself falling down at the scene in his efforts to attack Brunson, he was otherwise uninjured.
Brunson’s claim of False Arrest as a plank in his federal civil suit is therefore supported now by three facts: Harshman wasn’t “injured,” in the way Wade claimed he was, for an Aggravated Battery to have been charged; Brunson was defending himself on private property (he owns the store, and the incident occurred on the parking lot) so he wasn’t battering, he was defending; and with all that in mind, the arrest was “false.”
Wade, of course, is making the argument in the federal venue that she can “only charge what police turn over to her,” much like she did when Mark Schauf and JP Stevenson nearly beat Derek Blair to death in late 2009.
Wade is claiming civil immunity in her actions taken against Brunson; she has requested a summary judgment in her part in the federal civil suit.
Still under the suit remains Bridgeport police chief Scott Murray, and Max Schauf, who, if the case is brought to jury trial later this year as hoped, will have to be brought up to Benton in custody from the Marion federal pen…a fact that will not be lost on the federal judge.
Wade’s attorney, which we’re all paying for
The federal case, as stated previously, seemed to be following the state case against Brunson very closely.
Each time the state case was continued forward to another date (viable explanation for it or no), something would happen with the federal case to slow or delay action there, as well, this filed by any one of the many defendants.
Wade’s attorney, Jennifer Lutzke (who is with the Illinois Attorney General’s office and was appointed to Wade’s case early on in the March 2012 filing), Disclosure learned, remained in close contact with Quick’s office, attempting to learn more of the state’s case every time there was some sort of continuance issued from the bench.
Interested in just how much involvement the attorney general’s office was showing in a case that effectively no longer required their presence (since Wade is no longer a public official in any capacity, and really should now be funding her own way through the matter instead of relying on the taxpayers to fund it), Disclosure submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the AG’s office for recorded contact between Lutzke and Quick’s office, this done in early July.
The AG’s office reported back that there was no recorded contact between the two offices, including one particular instance of Lutzke calling Quick on the morning of a scheduled federal hearing, June 23, 2014, which Disclosure learned really did take place. So apparently, either the AG’s office is prevaricating on the matter in an effort to cover over for how they’re handling Wade’s case…or, quite simply, Lutzke was acting on her own when making the inquiry, and had used a personal cell phone to place a call to Quick’s office on that June date.
The latest in the federal case
Federal deadlines, regardless of the new status of Brunson’s case, have now been reset.
Fedder, concerned about the ongoing continuances in the possible dismissal of the state case (as well as the possibility that Hopkins might just refuse, outright, to dismiss it, even on a nolle pros motion), had in mid-July sought and received a continuance, at least in part, on his end of the case.
That continuance, federal documents show, was granted on July 14…in part.
Federal magistrate Nancy Rosenstengal stated in her decision on the continuance that “Plaintiff (Brunson, through Fedder) contends for the first time in this case that Count 1 for false arrest is dependent on the outcome of his criminal trial for aggravated battery.
“The court disagrees and denies the portion of the motion based on that reasoning,” Rosenstengal wrote in her July 14 ruling on the matter. “However, in light of the still pending motions for summary judgment, the court will cancel the final pretrial conference set for next Monday, July 21, 2014.”
Rosenstengal advised that if Brunson at the time was going to file a motion for default judgment for any of the other defendants, he needed to submit, separately, material that indicated specifically damages inflicted against him for each defaulted party (meaning that which was already ordered, Harshman and Mark Schauf.)
Brunson was to have submitted that material by midnight Monday, July 21 (deadline for this issue).
Disclosure spoke with Brunson about what he believed “damages” were, and Brunson would only state that when taken in totality, the “damages” inflicted on his personal property in the August 7, 2010 attack on his store (which Harshman was allowed to plead down from a felony Criminal Damage to Property over $300, to a misdemeanor count of same, this being inexplicably done in March of 2011 while Brunson’s felony case was allowed to proceed forward), as well as the damage to his reputation in the community thanks to Schauf’s ongoing assault on his character and business, were difficult to assess as regards a monetary value.
However, it appears that’s not what the court (in the form of Rosenstengal as judge) is after.
Court documents in similar cases of False Arrest and 14th Amendment violations of a personal business being discriminated against due to the adverse influence of a public official (in this case that would be Max Schauf) focusees more on the mental and emotional toll such effects of ongoing corruption can take on a person, impacting every aspect of their lives, and not just their livelihood, as has been done to Brunson over the past five and a half years, as covered in this publication since the very outset when Brunson purchased the store from Henry Kijonka, former Lawrenceville and Grayville mayor.
Schauf, in his capacity as mayor, has already lost two such lawsuits against the city under the same auspices as the one Brunson has brought: A 14th Amendment violation as filed by Jamax Trash, and a Wrongful Termination case as brought by former Bridgeport officer Dave Dooley in the same year Brunson filed his suit.
Both those losses were damaging to the city monetarily. And in the wake of the mess Max Schauf left for the city of Bridgeport, and which Wade left for the county, many local residents are now hoping Brunson prevails similarly.