For the past two years, I have been advised by friends, lawyers and just about everybody else in between to keep quiet about my son’s case.
After reading about the last couple of press conferences held by the Marshall County prosecutors, I think now is the time to speak my mind.
I spent 30 years in law enforcement, 16 of which were served as Kosciusko County sheriff. I know the job well. I want to say this as clearly as possible: My son was a good sheriff. He did nothing wrong. I’m proud of him and the community should be, too.
Aaron faced the most brazenly political prosecution I have ever seen. Our county prosecutor and the Warsaw Police Department did not like the way he ran the jail. Normally, that’s the type of thing that voters get to sort out at election time.
Instead of letting voters have a say, though, they wasted an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars trying desperately to make it into a criminal matter.
The only evidence they were able to dredge up for their crackpot theory was the word of a poor conman who claimed to have given “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to law enforcement through his will.
They claimed this county inmate was a dangerous man who needed to go to prison, but then, after he agreed to testify, they put him out on work release.
The fact that this political disagreement made its way into a criminal court of law is a failure of our justice system on many levels.
