10 unexpected moments our team witnessed in 2024

This year proved a wild one in which to start a journalism career. I experienced surprising moments — like when the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals held municipalities have some criminal jurisdiction over tribal citizens — and historic moments, like Tulsa electing our first Black mayor. It feels impossible to capture all of the emotions and details of every major development, but it sure is a helluva lot of fun to try.

Few moments in my first year at NonDoc stuck out like the Scott Sapulpa v. Gannett libel trial in Muskogee County District Court: driving from Tulsa daily at sunrise, sitting alone in the back row of an unfamiliar courtroom, and listening to a movie-worthy story on the dangers of journalistic hubris. Sapulpa lost his job — and his business lost lucrative contracts — after a reporter for The Oklahoman erroneously identified him as the user of a racial slur on the live stream of a high school basketball game.

In reality, the game’s co-commentator and a former friend of Sapulpa — Matt Rowan — used the slur, but the damage of being publicly named a racist the year after the summer of protests following George Floyd’s murder was already done by the time The Oklahoman slowly decided to correct its error. Sapulpa faced harassment both on- and offline, including brutal text messages and phone calls after his cell phone number was shared on social media.

Listening to a large football coach cry in court as he told how his children no longer wanted to use his last name publicly felt heartbreaking, and it offered a good lesson for a young journalist about how our words can have devastating effects on real people whose lives continue when the reporting is done.

A jury awarded Sapulpa $5 million in actual damages and another $20 million in punitive damages, an indication of how the public feels about journalistic misconduct in the modern world. However, Sapulpa’s his multi-million dollar pay day is on hold while Gannett, the largest newspaper company in the United States, appeals the decision. The appeal is filed as two companion cases, one of which argues the judge erred in awarding such high punitive damages, while the other argues a litany of points.

— Tristan Loveless

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the next story.)

I don’t know what case holds the record for the longest preliminary hearing in criminal law history, but the prosecution of Epic Charter School’s co-founders for alleged racketeering and embezzlement might be in the running.

Nine months after it began, the preliminary hearing in the case against Ben Harris and David Chaney remains on hold as the parties sort out various recusal motions. The preliminary hearing itself came a year and nine months after the two men — along with their former chief financial officer, Josh Brock — were charged for allegedly carrying out a massive embezzlement scheme while leading the state’s largest online charter school.

Typically, criminal cases have a preliminary hearing before beginning discovery to allow prosecutors to demonstrate to a judge that they have enough evidence for a case to go to a jury trial. Sometimes, defendants waive their right to a preliminary hearing, as was the case with Brock, who agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors. When preliminary hearings happen, they typically do not last more than a few days.

But Harris’ and Chaney’s hearing had not concluded after a week’s worth of testimony from various witnesses in March 2024. When the attorneys and defendants met again in May to resume the hearing, a motion to force the recusal of Chaney’s attorney put it on indefinite hold.

When that motion set to be adjudicated later in the summer, Harris — and his attorney, Joe White — filed another recusal motion against Oklahoma County District Judge Susan Stallings, which delayed proceedings even further.

Although the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied the recusal motion against Stallings this month (the third court to do so), the motion dealing with Chaney’s attorney will have to be resolved before the hearing can resume.

All of this means that 2.5 years after the men were charged with 15 counts related to fraud, racketeering and embezzlement, a jury trial feels as distant as it ever was.

The wheels of justice turn slowly, but someone seems to have applied molasses, rather than oil, to the drive shaft in this particular case.

— Bennett Brinkman

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the next story.)

On the final afternoon of April, I had just completed a spot-on story about the few remaining items in need of negotiations to conclude the 2024 Oklahoma Legislature’s budget cycle. For a brief moment, I felt good about myself. My story had sources, details and stuff you needed to know about high-level Capitol conversations that seemed to portend a much-needed early adjournment in an election year.

About two hours later, however, Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat (R-OKC) announced the removal of Sen. Roger Thompson (R-Okemah) from his longtime position as chairman of the Senate Appropriations and Budget Committee. The move suddenly made Thompson’s cautious comments in my article make more sense.

Frustrated by Thompson privately discussing final decisions with House leaders, Treat blew up their near-deal and thrust the building into a four-week protracted subcommittee process and eight public Budget Summits that created more audio of idiocy than the FBI ever earned playing in golf scrambles with schnockered senators.

With a June primary election on the horizon, the Senate’s sudden implosion marked a preposterous end to the six-year game of political football between Treat and House Speaker Charles McCall — an overtime of extraordinary punting. When Senate Floor Leader Greg McCortney (R-Ada) and then House Budget Chairman Kevin Wallace (R-Wellston) subsequently lost their reelection bids, people pointed to the Budget Summits as wastes of time at best and disastrous dysfunction at worst.

Most glaringly, May’s madness highlighted an embarrassing and long-standing state dispute between the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training and the Department of Public Safety. To rehash it all here would be trauma triggering, but suffice it to say McCortney felt an allegiance to CLEET and suggested pulling back money to undercut a half-funded DPS training facility being built in Wallace’s district. That’s right. In 2024, Oklahoma’s Republicans were arguing over whether to defund the police.

Eventually, Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Tipton publicly proclaimed that McCortney had lied to him, a development that sat poorly with former Secretary of Public Safety Chip Keating and others.

After the year’s budget deal was finalized days later, Treat sternly told the press that an agency head revealing how a senator had been untruthful is entirely inappropriate. In politics, obviously, it’s OK to lie to the cops.

— Tres Savage

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the next story.)

Before becoming one of NonDoc’s newest hires, I spent the summer of 2024 as an editorial intern, fresh off the block as a recent Langston University graduate and learning my way around Oklahoma City as a budding journalist.

My first assignment as a summer intern involved covering the House District 99 race between incumbent Rep. Ajay Pittman (D-OKC) and challenger Brittane Grant. Knowing I would be covering local elections for the summer, I didn’t think twice about being assigned the HD 99 race, but after reading a hefty email from our managing editor, Michael McNutt, I realized this particular election was a bit different.

On my first day, I received pages and pages of legal filings and documents from the Oklahoma Ethics Commission explaining how Pittman had agreed to pay $35,000 in fines and restitution after she was caught spending 2020 and 2022 campaign funds on steak dinners, flights, hotel stays and even shopping sprees at Target and TJMaxx — a wild introduction to Oklahoma politics, to say the least.

Of course, I soon learned the other reason that NonDoc was receiving so many phone calls and emails about the HD 99 election in northeast OKC. While the records had largely been scrubbed from Oklahoma’s court system, Grant had experienced some legal troubles of her own. In 2016, she had pleaded guilty to felony charges for fraudulent representation on food stamp applications. Confused by the limited public information about each situation, members of the public had been reaching out to our newsroom for answers about their candidates, and I was suddenly responsible for finding them.

On June 6, Pittman and Grant participated in a joint forum for HD 99 alongside the candidates for the open Senate District 48 seat. I entered the forum with a slew of information about the legal pasts of both HD 99 candidates, and I expected the matters to be brought up for discussion. However, neither the constituents nor the forum moderators directly asked about or mentioned any of Pittman’s or Grant’s legal troubles — which I guess some might call a blessing, as voters could focus on policy issues instead of legal drama.

After sitting behind Pittman’s mother, former HD 99 Rep. Anastasia Pittman, for two hours as she recorded the event on her phone and yelled out for her daughter to plug her campaign website, the forum came to an end, and I set out to interview both candidates.

Pittman was unwilling to address her legal troubles and referred back to a statement she had given McNutt, who initially covered the story when the Ethics Commission approved her settlement. Grant, however, was more than willing to explain her situation and address the charges and probationary period brought against her. What neither Grant nor anyone else knew was whether she would even be eligible for office after affirming an oath in her candidacy declaration saying she had not pleaded guilty to a felony, even though she had.

Ultimately, that question became moot when, despite Pittman’s admission to using thousands of dollars of her campaign funds on fine dining and fashion, Pittman was re-elected to represent HD 99 for another term.

— Sasha Ndisabiye

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the next story.)

Staredowns between a prosecutor and the defendant in a criminal case are somewhat common in the courtroom. After all, they’re on opposite sides and the stakes are high, with the prosecutor many times aiming to take away the defendant’s freedom.

But Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney Tom Marrs wasn’t looking at Newalla resident Ellie Pennit Grino, who originally faced 59 felony counts of animal cruelty, possessing birds with the intent for them to be used in cockfights and keeping a place or equipment to be used in permitting cockfighting.

“Who’s that guy staring at me?” Marrs asked an associate before Grino’s preliminary hearing got underway Sept. 10.

I had noticed him also: a tall, lean fellow sitting next to Grino while clutching a cowboy hat and staring intently at Marrs.

After the hearing, the man stood alongside Grino as I interviewed him about being ordered to stand trial on just one count, that of possessing birds for cockfighting purposes. Marrs stopped by to apologize to the man for staring back at him.

“No problem,” said the man, who identified himself as B.L Cozad Jr. from Indiahoma.

A multi-time legislative candidate, Cozad is a private investigator who also raises about 300 game fowl. He had come to OKC to support Grino, whom he has known for about 30 years. As far as his staring in the courtroom, he told Marrs he was trying to identify the Oklahoma County District Attorney Office’s pin on his suit jacket. Cozad told me he didn’t take offense to Marrs’ return glare because he was used to getting attention after appearing in a 2017 episode of HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel about cockfighting.

After Marrs left, Cozad went into a monologue on why it was wrong for the government to prosecute people for raising game fowl, borrowing a piece of paper from my notepad to illustrate his point.

On the piece of yellow legal paper, Cozad drew two triangles — the one on the left had the word “God” on top, “man” in the middle and “animals” on the bottom. The other triangle had the word “rulers” on top and “manimals” on the bottom.

“This is the foundation of America,” Cozad said, pointing to the left triangle. “In the Declaration of Independence, it says our rights are derived from our creator, God. God created man. You go to Genesis 1:26-28 in the Bible, it says God created man, gave man dominion, control and rule over the animals, earth, fish and fire.”

Pointing at the middle of that triangle, he continued: “The Constitution and our government was created here, in the center tier of man, OK? The purpose of our government is to protect the God-given rights of one man from another man, because no matter what you write in a law, it does not apply to God. It’s over you. It does not apply to animals. They’re property. They’re beneath you.”

Pointing to the right triangle, Cozad said it illustrates what happens “when you pass laws giving animals rights, dogs and cats and horses and chickens, you’re now raising animals up into the tier of man. You don’t have that authority. What you’re doing is erasing the line between man and animals and reducing all men to the status of animals.”

As he said this, Cozad pointed to the bottom of the triangle where he had printed “manimals.”

“See, that’s what Adolf Hitler did in Nazi Germany when he enacted animal rights laws,” Cozad said. “He then became the source of rights because he removed God as a source of dominion, because he’s now telling people what the limits of their dominion are. By doing so, he could go out and euthanize six million Jewish people because he was culling the government herd of those people he considered inferior to animals.”

Cozad concluded his discourse by saying animal rights laws in this country are based on paganism.

“The Pagan Federation International, their own definition of paganism is a nature-worshipping religion,” he said. “Animals are part of nature. So animal rights laws are all based on paganism.”

And if that wasn’t enough, Cozad threw in a little Red Scare as well.

“The Humane Society of the United States was created as a propaganda organization to lay the foundations for communism,” he said. “People don’t know what’s going on.”

Asked what he does with the birds he raises, Cozad said: “I’m a gamecock farmer. I harvest my livestock the same way George Washington did. You do with them whatever you want, they’re your property.”

He said he doesn’t sell any of his birds. So, what does he do with most of them?

“I fight them,” Cozad said.

Asked where, he said, “All over.”

That September day in Oklahoma County District Court, Cozad took me down a path involving Hitler, communism, paganism and animal rights that I hadn’t expected. It just proves everyone has a story to tell.

— Michael McNutt

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the next story.)

My first gig out of college was writing for The Norman Transcript, where my greatest passion project became covering the proposal for a controversial publicly-funded arena and surrounding entertainment district. Public financing for the arena could reach up to $600 million, paid for through tax increment financing, which I know more about now than I ever would have dreamed. Or hoped.

The Norman City Council had to approve the TIF, and ultimately did by a vote of 5-4, but it did so in spite of months of complaints during public comment portions of meetings. A whole lot of Norman residents hated the thought of diverting tax dollars generated from a currently undeveloped lot to finance an arena for use by a university with a 2025 operating budget of $1.57 billion. Supporters who believe the arena and district will bring new spenders to Norman called those folks NIMBYs. Intended for questions only, the first public hearing after the project’s details were finally announced lasted several hours in early September as supporters and opponents took to the podium, often using rhetorical questions the council ignored, and then getting mad that the council wouldn’t answer their rhetorical questions.

A group who remained silent throughout, though, sat right in front of me. More than a dozen young men in polos of various colors took up the first few rows of the council chambers, some listening, but most scrolling their phones or studying. I watched with rapt attention as the one sitting directly in front of me used ChatGPT to fill out his coding homework. Cynthia Rogers, an OU professor and ardent critic of the arena project, leaned over to me and said, “Isn’t it weird they’re here? You should ask them why they’re here.”

I didn’t ask them why they were there. Turns out, I should have. A few weeks later, after I had begun my new job here at NonDoc, The OU Daily’s Anusha Fathepure revealed the students had been paid to be attend the meeting. Some of the payments were facilitated by a fraternity member named David Echols — the son of former House Majority Floor Leader Jon Echols — who had been a member of the OU President’s Leadership Class. It wasn’t Echols’ money, however. That came from Jayke Flaggert, another alumnus of OU PLC. Flaggert was also a contractor with the Norman Economic Development Coalition — one of the arena’s biggest boosters. According to The Daily, during the meeting to approve the TIF district, Flaggert “humbly” asked the council to “add another 65 in favor,” gesturing to the students he had paid to fill the chamber.

It’s not illegal to pay students to show up in council chambers, as NEDC CEO Lawrence McKinney told The Daily in a statement where he criticized the publication’s coverage as “disheartening.” But it is pretty funny, and it does nothing to improve the optics of a project critics have called shady from the get-go.

— Andrea Hancock

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the next story.)

While one might expect justice being served for more than a dozen Ninnekah girls subjected to years of sexual abuse by their basketball coach to have been a time to rejoice, that’s not what I found walking into an elementary school auditorium filled to the brim with parents, grandparents and property owners seemingly more concerned with a looming tax hike.

Prior to the rural district’s Oct. 7 board meeting, Ninnekah Public Schools had just settled a $7.5 million lawsuit alleging the district failed to stop the decade-long misconduct of convicted sexual predator Ronald Gene Akins.

The meeting started in the elementary school library, but NPS Board President Brock Perryman made a motion to move to a cafeteria in a different building on the Ninnekah campus. I’ll admit, I was a bit confused, as there were no more than 20 people in the library when the meeting was called to order.

After a quick walk across the street to the cafeteria, I noticed an immediate rise in temperature and tension as board members filed in behind me, seemingly unprepared for what was to come.

At least 200 Ninnekah residents filled the new room, apparently furious about the board’s decision to raise the town’s property taxes in order to pay off the remaining $6 million of the settlement — a decision some of the town’s taxpayers claimed had been made unbeknownst to them.

The meeting — which had an agenda full of items, none of which were related to the lawsuit settlement — was then upended by almost two hours of interruptions and disorganized discourse about possible alternatives to the tax hike.

“I propose to strike the agenda, because we’re all here for the same reason,” a man yelled from the crowd. “Strike the agenda and have a question and answer.”

Many residents in attendance grumbled in agreement, but Ninnekah board members declined the proposal, further upsetting the crowd and spurring even more heckling.

All in all, I was not surprised that so many community members were angry over such a terrible scenario. What did surprise me that night, however, was the limited regard for the 14 victims of Akins’ abuse.

— Sasha Ndisabiye

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the next story.)

One of the first events I attended after being hired as NonDoc’s news editor this fall was our Senate District 21 debate in my beloved hometown of Stillwater. As the event approached, I felt some nerves that no one would show up — I even made my grandpa invite all of our family friends.

Well, our family friends showed up; as did, seemingly, half of Payne County. The auditorium in the Stillwater Public Library became standing-room only by the time the debate started, and our editor in chief later remarked he was pleasantly surprised Stillwater residents turned out so well.

“Of course they did,” I said, as if I had never feared we’d be holding the debate in an empty room, “it’s Stillwater!”

And the candidates certainly gave those assembled a good show. It became clear Robin Fuxa and now-Sen. Randy Grellner (R-Cushing) discounted each other’s opinions from the way one would scowl and shake their head as the other spoke. They spent an hour waxing on everything from the optics of carrying a gun on campus to the concept of presumption of innocence.

The latter came from a discussion about State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, whom Fuxa named when asked the biggest issue facing Oklahoma. Grellner said he found Walters “too bombastic,” but also too vilified.

“He has never been charged for a crime, right? Has he ever been charged for a crime?” Grellner asked Fuxa.

Fuxa responded, “A person doesn’t have to be charged with a crime to be impeached.”

Grellner scoffed.

“Really? So you’re not innocent in this country anymore?” he asked. “You’re not innocent, you’re proven guilty before you ever get charged? I mean, that’s the kind of rhetoric we’re seeing, and it’s on both sides.”

But the most heated moment of the night came toward the end of the debate when Grellner was asked about his prescriptive use of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Grellner claimed he “probably treated over 10,000 people” across the country with ivermectin. Turning to Fuxa, he said, “Nobody is an expert on this, except me, and so, you can say whatever you want.”

Fuxa grilled Grellner on his stance on vaccines, too. Grellner said he “doesn’t like” declining vaccination rates for preventable diseases such as polio, diphtheria or measles, but he said if parents choose not to vaccinate their children against those diseases, he “supports” that. He took exception to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, however.

“I’ll tell you, the COVID vaccine is gene therapy,” Grellner said. “It’s not a vaccine. It encodes your mitochondria to make a protein called the spike protein.”

Fuxa didn’t like his rhetoric much.

“Children are going to die because of this kind of vaccine skepticism that is being fomented by my opponent,” she said.

Fuxa called into question why Grellner was not endorsed by the Oklahoma State Medical Association, to which Grellner responded, “Because they’re a bunch of left-wing hacks.” Grellner criticized Fuxa for questioning his medical expertise in the first place, seeing as he was the only doctor on stage. Well, the only medical doctor — Fuxa holds a doctorate in education from Oklahoma State University, which she said taught her media literacy skills that give her the ability to “look at a quality study and discern whether that is accurate or not.”

“I can look at medical consensus and make an informed decision,” she said.

Grellner may respect the wishes of parents who choose not to vaccinate their children against preventable disease, but he was unimpressed by any sort of research review Fuxa claimed to have done.

“You have no clinical experience,” Grellner said. “You have no right to even answer this question.”

No right? Whatever happened to free speech? Some people in the audience gasped, some people clapped. I scribbled down the quote.

— Andrea Hancock

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the next story.)

As someone who cares deeply about media preservation, I find everything from a presidential interview to a cartoon episode has some bit of cultural or historical value — and I hope the admittedly catchy campaign jingle of failed House District 85 candidate “Rootin’ Tootin'” David B. Hooten remains online, in some form, long into the future.

Hooten, a meat-sauce mogul, proud trumpeter and self-professed “genetically altered” individual, stood as one of the 2024 election cycle’s most eccentric and controversial candidates. Despite rootin’ and tootin’ for members of European royalty and having a trumpet blessed by now-canonized Pope John Paul II, the exploits that landed Hooten in national headlines during his tenure as Oklahoma County clerk involved multiple accusations of workplace sexual misconduct in 2022 and bizarre boasts to colleagues that his modified DNA prevented him from getting drunk. He made those claims in an audio recording where he is heard proposing a team-building exercise wherein employees would drink, gamble and embark upon other activities to take them “out of their comfort level.”

Perhaps hoping Oklahomans had forgotten that strange saga, Hooten challenged HD 85 incumbent Rep. Cyndi Munson (D-OKC) in November. His return to the ballot was punctuated by a slate of campaign jingles:

• a potentially AI-involved “my name is Rootin’ Tootin’ David B. Hooten” rap;
• a rock ballad TV ad proclaiming Hooten as “a trumpet player at heart — so rare“;
• and
• a jazzy “Hooten for the House” campaign jingle a la 1950s America.

“Swingin’ through the town, in his jazz man’s crown, playin’ that sweet sound, won’t let you down,” the jazzy jingle proclaims. “Feel the spirit fly, David makes you sigh.”

Perhaps because NonDoc covered his 2022 resignation so thoroughly, Hooten never responded to my requests for a campaign interview. As a result, it remains unclear if the genetically modified jazz man himself is the trumpeter featured in the jingle, but I can’t deny it is a fun tune. The jingle proved not enough to get voters to sigh in the way Hooten had hoped, though, as he collected just 39 percent of the vote against Munson.

— Blake Douglas

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the next story.)

When voters went to the polls to approve bond funding for a new Oklahoma County Jail in June 2022, few, if any, expected the $260 million total would be but a drop (or two) in the bucket for a project cost that would eventually balloon far beyond that.

Eventually, the jail will be built. Probably. But as the long-awaited project races the apocalypse, it faces an obstacle course reminiscent of an episode of Battle of the Network Stars. And in this case, Gabe Caplan and Telly Savalas are not walking through that door to save the day. And even if they could, they would need about $400 million more to get the jail job done. The problem is not so much that there is a gap, it’s that the gap has grown to be so gargantuan.

The new Oklahoma County Jail is now estimated to cost upwards of $670 million, depending on whether the county builds a 1,800-bed or 2,400-bed facility. That gap feels massive and is likely to be made up through a sales tax hike or an increase in property taxes. Neither was mentioned in the summer of 2022 when voters went to the polls and approved the bond package.

What’s more, the county remains tangled in a nasty lawsuit with the city over whether it has the authority to build the new jail at the county’s preferred site: 1901 E. Grand Blvd. County leaders hope an opinion issued Dec. 30 by Attorney General Gentner Drummond — which says the county has immunity from city zoning requirements to build the jail at the site — might put an end to the lawsuit. However, nothing ever feels certain with this excruciating project.

“Who loves ya, baby?” Stay tuned.

— Matt Patterson

(Note: Click the arrows above this section to toggle to the prior stories.)