CONWAY - An attorney for former University of Central Arkansas Chief of Staff Jack Gillean contended Wednesday that the prosecution is trying to prejudice prospective jurors in Gillean’s commercial-burglary trial.
Defense attorney Sam Perroni was responding to a prosecution document that accused the defense of making “baseless” allegations intended to harass and cause delays.
That document, filed Tuesday in Faulkner County Circuit Court, was in response to a Jan. 31 defense motion asking Judge Charles E. Clawson Jr. to reconsider his decision at an October pretrial hearing not to seal future motions relating to evidence. The defense also has asked Clawson to bar the prosecution from filing information about evidence instead of just sharing it with the defense.
In an interview Wednesday, Perroni said, “We stand by everything that we said in our [January] motion, and the record is abundantly clear that the prosecution in this case has embarked upon a strategy to try to prejudice the defendant in the newspaper, and we want to put a stop to it.”
Gillean, 57, faces five counts of commercial burglary in addition to charges of fraudulent insurance acts, all felonies, and issuing a false financial statement, a misdemeanor. His trial, scheduled to start March 10 in Van Buren County Circuit Court in Clinton, will focus on the commercial-burglary charges. The other counts are to be tried later.
Gillean has pleaded innocent.
At the defense’s request, Clawson moved Gillean’s trial away from Conway because of pretrial publicity.
Told of Perroni’s comments, Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland said Wednesday, “It would be inappropriate for me to comment on a pending motion before the court.”
Perroni said he “may have been off on the timing” of a prosecution document that provided information on certain witnesses being given immunity. The defense had said the prosecution filed that document “a few days after” the October hearing, but Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Troy Braswell said Tuesday that it was filed in June.
“But when it was filed really is irrelevant,” Perroni said. “The issue is whether or not he should be filing that discovery material in the record. There’s no law that requires him to do so. He’s only doing it to try to get additional publicity for himself.”
Perroni, asked if he was referring to Braswell or Hiland, said, “They are responsible. I don’t care who’s actually doing it. I’ve never seen prosecutors do it before. … If they have those kinds of [immunity] agreements and things, they just send them to us. They don’t post them. They don’t file them.”
Perroni said the defense does not plan to seek a trial delay.
“We’re not the ones that delayed it last time,” he said. “We didn’t ask for a continuance the last time; they did. … We were ready to go to trial.”
Gillean resigned from his UCA job June 15, 2012, after UCA President Tom Courtway asked him about a “grandmaster” key given to police by Cameron Stark, now a former student. The prosecution contends that Gillean gave Stark UCA-issued keys and a key card, knowing that Stark intended to use them to steal tests from professors’ offices.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 02/20/2014