- November 1, 2024
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A defense attorney's attempt to have Sheriff Rick Staly subjected to a gag order ended the afternoon of Sept. 27 in a 15-minute hearing before Judge Melissa Moore-Stens, who dismissed the attorney's motion.
Attorney Joshua Davis was representing Eric Cooley, the Flagler Beach city commissioner charged with domestic violence. He'd filed a "motion for gag order" to prevent Staly from speaking publicly about Cooley's case — arguing that the sheriff's statements could affect Cooley's ability to have a fair trial — and had motioned to have Staly subpoenaed to testify.
Neither Staly nor Cooley attended the Sept. 27 hearing.
Kayla Hathaway, the Sheriff's Office attorney representing Staly, said that in order to have Staly testify, Davis would have to reveal what statements he was alleging that the sheriff had made so that the sheriff could testify that he had either made them or had not made them.
"Well, Mr. Davis, it sounds like you’re on a fishing expedition, quite frankly," Moore Stens said at the hearing. "You are alleging statements that were made immediately after the arrest, and I haven’t seen anything substantive alleged from the sheriff more recent than that. And beyond that, and you are asking him to be placed under subpoena and forced into court to testify with no other particularized information of statements that were made by him beyond what’s already been acknowledged by counsel?"
"Exactly," Davis said. "And that is my motion, to try to keep the sheriff from saying those sorts of things to the public in this little county, from its top law enforcement officer, that people are guilty before their attorney has a chance to get a police report."
Moore Stens asked if Davis knew of any particular instance in which Staly had called Cooley guilty.
Davis mentioned Staly's statement in a press release about the case, in which Staly had said, "This is an unfortunate situation, but it goes to show you that domestic violence has no boundaries."
That public statement, Davis said — combined with the fact that Staly issued a press release on the Cooley case but does not do so with every case — "means that if a commissioner is guilty of domestic battery, then anyone could be. That is what you get from that statement."
"But that is not what the statement says," Moore Stens replied. "That may be your inference as his attorney, but that is not what the statement says. ... If this is the only statement we are talking about, in a press release that occurred immediately after, I don't think that rises to the level needed."
Hathaway, in her response to Davis' motion, had cited precedent and argued that Davis' motion for a gag order was overly broad and that granting it would violate the sheriff's First Amendment rights.
Moore Stens denied the motion for a gag order.
