In District 22, a southeast Oklahoma judicial district plagued with misconduct from officials and and strained criminal justice infrastructure, a drug task force leader fired from the district attorney’s office for allegations of theft and narcotics abuse subsequently investigated cases for the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, which ultimately spurred the DA to reissue a series of disclosure letters, accept three plea deals and make a change to his leadership team.
Christopher Perteet Sr. was dismissed from District Attorney Erik Johnson’s office in January 2024 after a “period of three weeks” of “substance abuse issues,” according to Johnson. Nonetheless, Perteet was hired by Seminole County Sheriff Anthony Louie in a staff position at the county jail. After a few months, Perteet rose in the sheriff’s office ranks to become “investigations captain,” and he was even appointed to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
With Perteet handling cases again, U.S. Attorney Christopher Wilson formally notified Louie in an April 14 letter that Perteet had lost his job with Johnson’s office “for misconduct including theft of controlled dangerous substance evidence, illegal drug use and inconsistent statements about illegal drug use.”
“The termination bears on Perteet Sr.’s credibility,” Wilson wrote in what’s known as a Giglio letter. “Consequently, in all future cases in which Perteet Sr. is endorsed as a government witness, the United States is required to notify the defendant of this memorandum.”
Giglio letters, a term derived from a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision, place officers on a roster of people whose testimony prosecutors must treat skeptically and disclose in court. A key protection of defendants’ rights, they function alongside Brady notices, which require prosecutors to reveal any potentially exculpatory information to defense attorneys.
Perteet was ultimately terminated by Louie’s office April 26, according to The Seminole Producer.
“My office received the letter on April 14, and after an internal investigation, Mr. Perteet is no longer with the Sheriff’s Office as of April 26,” Louie told the newspaper.
According to OSBI spokesman Hunter McKee, however, Louie’s office appears to have known about Perteet’s jeopardized credibility as early December 2024. McKee said OSBI’s leader of the ICAC Task Force was alerted Dec. 5 that Perteet was no longer leading investigations for the sheriff’s office. McKee said that meant Perteet was no longer part of the task force, and he said no cases worked by OSBI were affected by Perteet’s involvement.
Louie did not respond to a request for comment prior to the publication of this article, but court records indicate that Perteet was still identifying himself as a “criminal investigator” with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office after OSBI was notified that he had changed roles in December.
District 22, which covers Pontotoc, Seminole and Hughes counties within portions of the Chickasaw, Seminole, Muscogee and Choctaw reservations, has featured prominent criminal cases in recent years, including a rash of gang violence, separate child sex crime cases involving successive mayors of the same town, a deferred prosecution agreement with Louie’s predecessor as Seminole County sheriff, and the closing of the Hughes County Jail. Johnson has served as District 22’s elected district attorney since 2023 when he succeeded Paul Smith, who drew criticism from state officials — including Johnson — for working as an “adjunct high school teacher” during the final year of his tenure as district attorney.
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Johnson: ‘CLEET doesn’t do anything on substance abuse issues’
Johnson outlined the Perteet situation in an interview with NonDoc before the start of a Sept. 18 meeting of the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council.
Saying that he “immediately disclosed” Perteet’s problems to attorneys representing those charged based on Perteet’s investigations, Johnson called Perteet’s departure from his office a “voluntary separation.” He said his office’s “internal investigation” into allegations of Perteet’s drug use and alleged theft of drug-crime evidence took two days to complete.
Because Perteet is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, Johnson said he forwarded that investigative file to the Chickasaw Nation Office of Tribal Justice Administration and “the feds,” although he said neither agency chose to file charges.
“His misconduct was for a period of about three weeks where he just dipped off the radar,” Johnson said. “I don’t feel like there was probably much of a basis for criminal charges. There probably could have been.”
A Chickasaw Nation spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about the situation prior to the publication of this story.
Johnson called the overall impact of the Perteet saga “negligible,” but he outlined the timeline of events.
“I had given instructions to my office not to utilize him or any of his affidavits, and we issued our Brady letters to counsel in about 13 cases he was involved in when that deal broke — when we found out about it,” Johnson said. “Initially, those reports were placed in those 13 cases, but then subsequently, he was placed on a Giglio list by the feds eight months later. And then I did a follow up with our Seminole County office to determine whether, in fact, what I was telling (U.S. Attorney) Chris Wilson was accurate — that we weren’t utilizing him. But we had utilized him in about 11 to 12 cases. So I had to go remake the disclosures, and it really affected about three cases that I had to plead down that I didn’t want to. But we got them resolved.”
In addition to reporting Perteet’s misconduct to tribal and federal prosecutors, Johnson said his office notified the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training, better known as CLEET. Since no charges were filed against Perteet, however, Johnson said nothing stopped Perteet from being hired by another law enforcement agency.
“We reported this misconduct to CLEET as required by law, but CLEET doesn’t do anything on substance abuse issues,” Johnson said. “So he was basically reemployed by the Seminole County Sheriff’s [Office] as a jail transport officer, and then he worked his way up there to the point that he was working cases.”
CLEET records show that Perteet voluntarily surrendered his full-time peace officer certification June 24, 2025.
In a letter to then–CLEET interim director Marcus Williams, Perteet requested to surrender his certification and said he intended to apply “for a bail enforcement license.”
The council issued a final order July 9 accepting Perteet’s voluntary surrender. The order stated that CLEET had no pending investigations involving Perteet and knew of no pending or concluded proceedings related to any statutory or rule violations that would prevent him from surrendering his certification. A footnote said agency rule required Perteet to attest in its final order that “my request has not been made to avoid investigation or the outcome of a pending or concluded proceeding involving allegations of violation of” state law or CLEET rules.
CLEET’s website shows that Perteet’s bail enforcer license became active July 11.
Meanwhile, The Seminole Producer reported that First Assistant District Attorney Candace Irby resigned from Johnson’s office April 21, though the paper could not officially confirm whether the departure was related to the Perteet controversy. Irby had worked for the district attorney’s office since 2011, and she had been promoted to first assistant in 2016.
Asked by NonDoc whether Irby’s departure stemmed from how the Perteet disclosures were handled, Johnson declined to say.
“I’m going to tell you it’s a personnel matter that I’m not going to discuss publicly,” he said. “But what I would do is introduce you to my new first assistant, Krystina Phillips, who is sitting here next to me.”
Court records show that, between January 2024 and February 2025, Perteet served as the arresting officer in eight felony cases and four misdemeanors filed in Seminole County District Court. Irby handled seven of those felony cases, one of which ended in a plea and agreement and others of which remain pending.
Two of the felonies — one involving the possession of child sexual abuse material and another alleging the offering/transportation to a minor for prostitution/lewdness or sex trafficking — were dismissed. Johnson’s office refiled the child sexual abuse material case against William Allen Southern in Seminole County District Court without Perteet being endorsed as a witness, and Southern faces a Dec. 8 trial on three criminal counts.
But the attempted sex trafficking allegation against Olaf Curtis Green — which involved digital communications with someone overseas — has not been refiled for several reasons, Johnson said.
“This was a case that was obviously investigated and filed by Christopher Perteet, and we couldn’t proceed on it,” Johnson said. “There were other factors in the case that led to its dismissal besides Mr. Perteet’s involvement.”
