Mississippi County sheriff fights efforts in court to remove him from office

Mississippi County Sheriff Cory Hutcheson is fighting efforts by Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley to remove him from office.

Hutcheson’s lawyer, Thomas Rynard of Jefferson City, Missouri, filed motions Thursday in Mississippi County Circuit Court to dismiss the attorney general’s quo warranto petition and quash a preliminary order issued by Judge William Syler that bans Hutcheson from office.

Until the May 9 preliminary order, Hutcheson had continued to handle administrative duties as sheriff while facing criminal charges.

The Attorney General’s Office filed charges of assault, robbery and forgery against Hutcheson last month.

The attorney general petitioned the court to remove the sheriff from office on grounds the sheriff no longer has a valid peace-officer license, “willfully violated and neglected his duties related to the jail” and committed a “willful act of misconduct, malfeasance” by submitting a false probable-cause statement.

Drew Juden, director of the Missouri

Department of Public Safety and former police chief in Sikeston, suspended Hutcheson’s peace-officer license.

But in a court document filed in support of the dismissal motion, Rynard said the sheriff has a valid peace-officer license. According to the motion, Hutcheson’s license was the subject of “an emergency, temporary suspension.”

Hutcheson is appealing the suspension before an administrative-hearing commission.

According to the document, “any temporary suspension does not subject him to ouster from the office to which he was elected.”

As for allegations concerning operation of the Mississippi County Jail, Rynard wrote incidents that occurred in December 2014 and May 2015 happened before Hutcheson was sheriff. He previously was jail administrator.

Those incidents involved an inmate’s baby being stillborn as a result of pregnancy complications and the death of another inmate. Civil-rights lawsuits are pending in both cases.

According to the document, those allegations cannot be considered a violation of sheriff’s duties because Hutcheson was “neither a sheriff nor an elected county official at the time.”

The Attorney General’s Office also cited the death of an inmate May 5. But Rynard said that incident still is under investigation and “falls well short of the high bar necessary to oust a public official from his hard-fought office and undermine the will of the voters who put him there.”

As for the “misconduct” allegation, Rynard said it forms the basis of criminal charges to which the sheriff has entered a not-guilty plea.

Rynard wrote “the mere existence of criminal charges ... is insufficient to constitute a ‘willful or fraudulent violation’ or ‘neglect of an official duty.’”

According to the document in support of the dismissal motion, the attorney general’s actions to remove Hutcheson from office “circumvent the presumption of innocence and all of the other due-process protections ... thereby undermining the respondent’s ability to mount a defense and jeopardizing his Constitutional rights.”

Hawley said earlier this month he wanted the court to “strip Hutcheson of his office of sheriff and prevent him from interfering in any way with our investigation and other law-enforcement efforts.”

Last week, Hawley requested a court revoke the sheriff’s bond regarding the criminal charges.

A hearing on that motion is scheduled for June 22 in Mississippi County Circuit Court.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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