Summer is winding down. As the days get shorter, you might find that you have overlooked some key court-case developments and stories.
Did you know a hydroelectric power plant is being proposed along the Kiamichi River in southeast Oklahoma? Meanwhile, it’s been determined that a nonprofit owns the historic Freedom Center of Oklahoma City, and a large fine is being proposed against a PAC associated with the Oklahoma Republican Party for misreporting income and expenses to the Federal Election Commission.
Throw in the new arrest of an infamous child predator and the dismissal of charges against two conservative Edmond gadflies, and there are plenty of legal news nuggets to review below.
Drummond opposes power plant application plan
An application from the Southeast Oklahoma Power Corporation to build a hydroelectric power plant on the Kiamichi River in Pushmataha County is being opposed by Attorney General Gentner Drummond.
In a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Drummond said SEOPC has provided only limited information to the commission and that the corporation has not requested the proper state licenses or permits for the project. Plans call for the power plant to have a transmission line extending through Pushmataha and McCurtain counties to provide power for companies within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and to the Southwest Power Pool (SPP).
Drummond said the project appears to be inconsistent with numerous mechanisms in the state’s water settlement agreement with the Choctaw Nation and the Chickasaw Nation, which is intended to preserve the flow of the Kiamichi River and protect the region.
“As the chief law officer of the state of Oklahoma, I will not tolerate violation of Oklahoma law or flagrant disregard for the sovereignty or federal law, protected rights of a tribal nation and similarly situated property owners,” Drummond wrote.
SEOPC has indicated it intends to rely on powers of condemnation to acquire private property from Oklahomans to build the power plant. Drummond said the SEOPC has not considered the implications of its project under federal law, including the Endangered Species Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the Clean Water Act.
An August 2023 analysis from ZGlobal — a California energy consulting company — describes the proposed project as “a closed loop with 1,200 MW and 1400 MW generating and pumping facility on an upper reservoir, a lower reservoir, and a regulating reservoir in Southeast Oklahoma using the Kiamichi River as the water source.”
“The pumped-hydro storage technology has been proven for decades. It involves using excess power from the grid to pump water to a higher elevation, where it’s stored in a reservoir. When the power is needed, water flows back down, generating electricity along the way,” the analysis states. “Pumped storage hydropower stands for the bulk of the United States’ current long-duration energy storage capacity of 23 gigawatts (GW) of the 24-GW national total. This capacity was built between 1960 and 1990.”
Jimcy McGirt arrested again for violating sex offender rules
Also in southeast Oklahoma, Seminole Nation Lighthorse Police arrested Jimcy McGirt on Aug. 31 just more than three months after he was released from federal custody following a plea deal that ended his incarceration for sexual abuse of a child.
A designated sex offender in the federal system, McGirt was charged Sept. 6 with a felony count of unlawfully residing within 2,000 feet of a school, park or childcare facility. He was also charged with a pair of misdemeanors: failure to register as a sex offender and providing false or misleading sex offender registration information. His arraignment is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. today in Seminole Nation Tribal Court.
McGirt successfully appealed his state conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, which functionally affirmed eastern Oklahoma as a series of Indian Country reservations, meaning only the federal government and sovereign tribal nations have criminal jurisdiction to prosecute major crimes committed there by tribal citizens. His eventual plea deal for the crime of sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl aimed to avoid a new criminal trial nearly 30 years later, prosecutors said.
On Aug. 31, the Seminole Nation Lighthorse Police Department received a report about McGirt concerning an incident in a Seminole Nation Housing Authority neighborhood on the north side of Seminole, within reservation boundaries. McGirt, a Seminole Nation citizen, allegedly spoke with two siblings in a manner that made them report the conversation to their parents, according to police and court records. Both parents spoke with police, with the mother reporting that the children stated they were subjected to a “kidnapping” attempt. The father said he saw McGirt in an electric wheelchair after the children reported their interaction with him, and the mother said she identified McGirt based on his statements about a relative in the area.
Police made contact with McGirt at a house in the same Housing Authority neighborhood where McGirt’s son answered the door. McGirt allegedly claimed that he had only been staying at the house for a few days after his car broke down, and he told officers that he had communicated that to his federal parole officer. However, police reported that was not the case.
“After placing Jimmy into custody he requested he be allowed to get shoes out of the residence prior to heading to the jail,” the report states. “While walking through the house I did not see any form of wheelchair, electric or otherwise as described in the original call, upon reaching a room on the West side of the house Jimcy requested I grab his wallet that was located on a piece of furniture next to the bed side that was being used as a nightstand. Additionally inside the room was multiple document holders that Jimcy, unprovoked, stated contained all his paperwork from his federal court case. This is. something I would consider odd as Jimcy had previously stated that the only reason he had been at the residence for the time he had was due to his car being broken down and it seemed unusual that someone would carry that many documents around on a day to day basis if not planning for an extended stay. The room that Jimcy had ben staying in also appeared to contain other items that would indicate that he intended to stay at the residence on a more permanent basis.”
According to federal sex offender records, McGirt is registered as living at a house down a dirt road near Spaulding, a town southeast of Seminole and about 33 miles from where he was arrested by police.
Read the affidavit and criminal charging documents against Jimcy McGirt.
OKC Freedom Center ownership decided
An appellate court has affirmed a previous ruling that relatives of a deceased Oklahoma City man have no claim to ownership of the historic Freedom Center in northeast OKC, which instead is owned by a nonprofit.
Carolyn Gates and Phillip Gates sued the Freedom Center of Oklahoma City on behalf of the late Robert Lee Gates, but a judge ruled in 2023 that his descendants had no claim to ownership of the real estate along Martin Luther King Avenue that includes the Freedom Center.
“Based on our review of the record and applicable law, we affirm the trial court’s order finding Gates had no right, title, claim or interest in the real property; the center was the owner of good and perfect title; and ejecting Gates from the property. Based on our review of the record and applicable law, we affirm the order under review,” according to the opinion issued Sept. 5 by the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals.
Robert Lee Gates and later his nephew, Phillip Gates, operated a barbershop in the building from 1979 until June 2022 when the Freedom Center filed a petition to have him ejected from the property. At the time, the center claimed Philip Gates was a “squatter” who had no rights to the land on which the barbershop building stood.
In a counter-petition, Phillip Gates alleged that he owned the property through adverse possession, a legal process by which extended occupation of a property can result in the transfer of its ownership. Specifically, Gates asserted that he owned approximately 1,000 square feet of the center’s real property, which included 336 square feet where the barbershop was located and 700 square feet of parking. Phillip Gates claimed he owned the property since 2005 and that he had taken care of the maintenance of the property from 2010 to 2018. His uncle died in 2016.
Ultimately, the courts ruled against the Gates family.
The ownership of the Freedom Center had been in dispute before. In 2017, eccentric OKC activist Michael Washington claimed he had control of the Freedom Center, filing paperwork with the Oklahoma Secretary of State’s Office to make him the registered agent. That move drew criticism from leaders in the community at the time, including Phillip Gates.
“Nobody appointed him to do anything,” Phillip Gates told The Oklahoman in 2017.
The Freedom Center, at 2609 N. Martin Luther King Ave., was founded in 1969 by civil rights activist and educator Clara Luper. In 2019, voters approved a MAPS 4 package that included $25 million for renovations of the Freedom Center and construction of a new Clara Luper Civil Rights Center on the property. The package specified that $9 million of the money would be established as an operational trust.
In 2021, the Freedom Center’s restoration was removed from the MAPS 4 project, although the new Clara Luper Civil Rights Center component was designated to receive an additional $1.84 million. Led by an Oklahoma County district judge and other community leaders, the Freedom Center nonprofit is expected to attempt to raise funds for the renovation of the original building, which was constructed in the 1960s as a service station.
Feds propose hefty civil penalty for Oklahoma GOP’s PAC
The Federal Election Commission is proposing a political action committee associated with the Oklahoma Republican Party pay a civil penalty of $271,000 after a federal audit last year uncovered misreported income and expenses.
A FEC audit found the Oklahoma Leadership Council’s bank records did not match its federal campaign finance reports by nearly $2 million.
The OLC is a federal PAC that the Oklahoma Republican Party uses to back GOP candidates and fund independent expenditures against their opponents.
According to the audit, the PAC underreported its receipts by $829,858 and its expenditures by nearly $1.1 million over a two-year period that ended Dec. 31, 2020. The committee also failed to report $230,595 in debts.
In addition, the FEC alleges that OLC accepted 15 contributions totaling $16,981 from unregistered political organizations that “may have come from impermissible funds” and failed to maintain any monthly payroll logs to document the amount of time employees spent in connection with a federal election. The OLC made 10 payments to employees, totaling $25,013, without monthly payroll logs.
In a Sept. 5 letter emailed to John Elliott, the PAC’s current treasurer, FEC Chairman Sean Cooksey said the OLC had seven days from receipt of the letter to accept the proposed agreement. If a mutually acceptable agreement cannot be reached in 60 days, the matter may be turned over to enforcement officials, Cooksey said.
“Please note that once the commission enters the next step in the enforcement process, it may decline to engage in further settlement discussions until after making a probable cause finding,” Cooksey wrote.
In an FEC filing attached to the letter, the OLC did not deny the allegations in the audit findings.
“Instead, the [OLC] acknowledges that errors were made, states that the committee has taken steps to prevent it from occurring again, and requests that the commission take no further action,” the document states. “While the committee claims to have taken corrective action, it has failed to file amended reports in response to the audit to correct the public record.”
Michael McCutchin, who served as OLC’s treasurer during most of that period, is deceased. State Sen. Nathan Dahm (R-Broken Arrow), who was elected last year as chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, did not return messages left Friday on his voice mail.
David McLain, who served as chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party from 2019 to 2021 during the time of the audit, provided a lengthy statement that said other current and former party officials were to blame for the situation.
“Over three years have passed since the McLain administration, spanning three chairmen,” McLain said. “The persistence of this issue raises concerns about why it has not been resolved by either the [prior] administration, under which it originated, or by subsequent leadership. This underscores the necessity for a dedicated, professional accounting firm for the OKGOP. At the 2023 OKGOP Convention, a proposal aimed at preventing such issues was rejected by the committee, highlighting ongoing challenges in administrative oversight and decision-making.”
Paying the $271,000 penalty could be challenging for the OLC. In its latest FEC filing, OLC reported that it had $87,869 on hand with $14,157 owed to debts/loans as of July 31.
Charges dismissed on Leonard Scott, Ed Moore, after they write First Amendment essay
Just days before a pair of notable Edmond locals were to be tried for a slew of 2023 misdemeanors tied to a scuffle outside an Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting, Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna’s office dismissed all charges.
Leonard Scott, a 76-year-old Vietnam War veteran and former teacher better known as “Old Ranger” around Edmond, was charged with obstructing passage into a state building and disturbing state business after a June 2023 state board meeting. A jury trial had been scheduled to begin Monday, but it was stricken just before the weekend.
While members of the public and media waited ahead of the June 2023 meeting at the Oklahoma State Department of Education, Scott, who is unaffiliated with the state, began to distribute numbers to those standing in line outside the meeting room.
Scott said he was attempting to maintain order, but confusion ensued when a law enforcement officer informed those gathered outside the meeting that “the numbers do not mean anything” and that Scott was not a state employee. According to the probable cause affidavit, Scott later used his “body and walker” to block entrance to the room.
Also present and charged was 79-year-old Ed Moore, who briefly filed to run for Edmond mayor in 2023. Like Scott, Moore has often attended Edmond City Council meetings and criticized city leaders. Moore was charged with the same misdemeanors as Scott, plus two counts of assault and battery for allegedly shoving a law enforcement officer and grabbing a woman trying to enter the meeting.
But according to OSCN online filings and Behenna’s communications director, the case against Scott and Moore was dismissed Sept. 5.
“The defendants were required to complete mitigation. They did so and their cases were dismissed,” Brook Arbeitman told NonDoc. “We required each defendant to write an essay on the importance of the First Amendment.”
In a response to a request for a copy of the essay under the Open Records Act, Arbeitman cited a portion of the act that says a district attorney’s office “may keep its litigation files and investigatory reports confidential.”
“Unfortunately, by law, I cannot provide it to you,” she said.
Moore and Scott were represented by attorneys Billy Coyle and Gary Richardson, according to OSCN.
Health clinic funding still denied as SCOTUS declines application
Oklahoma will continue to miss out on $4.5 million in federal funding for county health clinics after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against granting an emergency application filed by Attorney General Gentner Drummond.
According to Oklahoma Watch, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service put the funding on hold after state officials declined to make an abortion referral hotline available upon request.
Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022, abortion has been almost entirely illegal in Oklahoma owing to the state’s abortion “trigger law.” Trigger laws are written to take effect when certain conditions are met, and such a law in Oklahoma made abortion illegal when the Dobbs decision overturned the previously held federal right to abortion access.
While a 2023 Oklahoma Supreme Court decision held that the Oklahoma Constitution protects “the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy in order to preserve her life,” there are no abortion clinics operating in the state. The nearest clinics for Oklahomans, Texans and Arkansans seeking access to abortion are in Kansas. Planned Parenthood recently opened a new clinic in Pittsburg, Kansas.
Drummond’s office argued that the federal agency regulations requiring the provision of an abortion referral hotline upon request violated federal laws, but the position only persuaded three justices — Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — to favor taking up the case.
With the U.S. Supreme Court declining to weigh in, the case returns to federal court in the Western District of Oklahoma.
Two Tulsa County residents indicted over marijuana licenses
Oklahoma’s multi-county grand jury has indicted two Tulsa County residents and another individual in connection with an alleged scheme to defraud the state through the recruitment of straw owners of medical marijuana grow licenses.
Kody Sumter, 34, allegedly recruited Oklahoma residents to serve as straw owners on licenses and registrations of medical marijuana grow businesses. In a court filing, prosecutors allege Sumter connected Oklahoma residents with nonresidents while charging nonresidents a fee that was used in part to pay Oklahoma residents for the use of their information. These types of schemes have been used in the past to circumvent state law regarding residency requirements from medical marijuana licensing in Oklahoma.
Michael Dudek, 35, and Dengfeng Huang, 44, were also indicted for knowingly providing fraudulent documentation and information to obtain medical marijuana licensing and registration. According to the court filing, Sumter paid Dudek to be a straw owner for a medical grow operation in Seminole County. In another instance, Sumter allegedly submitted fraudulent information to the state claiming he owned 75 percent of a medical marijuana grow operation in Ada and that Huang owned 25 percent.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond praised the work of the grand jury.
“These cases illustrate how unscrupulous individuals have exploited Oklahoma’s medical marijuana industry for nefarious and illegal criminal activity,” he said. “While many individuals are lawfully abiding by the regulations governing medical marijuana, law enforcement is tirelessly cracking down on the bad actors who are feeding the nation’s illegal marijuana market. These ‘straw ownership’ schemes made a mockery of our laws, and they will not be tolerated.”
The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority and the state of Oklahoma have been working to curb out-of-state interests from becoming actively involved in the state’s medical marijuana industry. The OMMA has also imposed a licensing freeze.
