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Kosciusko County Prosecutor David Kolbe is seeking to dismiss an attempted murder case because crucial information was allegedly withheld by Sheriff's Department officer Joe Mooney during the investigation.
The motion to dismiss is subject to refiling, however, and Kolbe said he will ask Kosciusko County Sheriff Al Rovenstine to assign another officer to completely reinvestigate the case.
Kolbe said he told Rovenstine on Sept. 3 that "Mooney's investigations will no longer be accepted by the office" and requested the sheriff to appropriately discipline him.
Mooney, a detective sergeant, "failed to supply the documents necessary" to prosecute the case of attempted murder, Kolbe said Monday.
He alleges Mooney had information relevant to the case that was not given to the prosecutor's office.
Mooney was the lead investigating officer on a case involving a shooting in Leesburg last October. Raymond Montgomery, 22, of South Bend, was charged with the attempted murder of Luis Martinez Diaz of Warsaw.
Mooney said today he doesn't think it appropriate to comment on the situation with Kolbe. "I want to put my efforts toward getting the man convicted," he said.
Because of the problem with Mooney, Kolbe said, "I prefer cases come through another officer handling the matter."
Kolbe said he discussed the situation with Kosciusko County Sheriff Al Rovenstine. "The sheriff has been very, very anxious and willing to correct the problem," he said.
Rovenstine said he still does not have a clear picture of what happened.
"I've talked to the players involved and I'm trying to get to the bottom of what really happened to my satisfaction," he said Monday. "Right now my main concern is the court case."
Montgomery's jury trial was scheduled for Sept. 30.
The first trial was originally scheduled for April, but Kolbe said he learned shortly before the trial that he had not received the statements of two witnesses. Those statements were found in the sheriff's department files, not the prosecutor's case file.
The trial was continued to August, and two days before the trial date the defense attorney, Andre Gammage of South Bend, notified Kolbe that the defense still had not received statements from other witnesses. The prosecutor is required by law to make such information available to the defense.
Kolbe said he again checked the sheriff's department files and discovered a subfile he had never seen that included "statements of witnesses and reserve officers, line-ups and pictures." One of those statements included an eyewitness identification of another person as the shooter, Kolbe said.
The situation has led Gammage to claim that the prosecutor's office has withheld information from the defense, and Kolbe said a civil rights lawsuit could be filed.
Kolbe and Rovenstine were reluctant to publicize what they considered an internal problem.
"I'm sorry that it's a public spectacle," said Kolbe, who has discussed the situation with the sheriff's department's merit review board.
"Joe is not my employee - he is employed by the sheriff," he said. "But to some extent I'm his superior, and I owe it to the community to tell his superior officer."
Kolbe's motion to dismiss was filed today in Kosciusko Superior Court.
