Laramie County DA continues defense

Laramie County DA continues defense 
By Hannah Black
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Via Wyoming News Exchange
CHEYENNE —Laramie County District Attorney Leigh Anne Manlove continued her defense Tuesday in ongoing disciplinary proceedings brought by the Wyoming State Bar. 
Manlove was called on to further explain sentiments she expressed during Monday’s testimony, including her belief that the outcome of the hearing has already been decided. She also defended aspects of specific cases mentioned in allegations against her, denying that she’d lacked diligence in prosecuting certain cases. 
Formal charges filed by the Office of Bar Counsel last year with the State Bar allege that Manlove mishandled the prosecution of cases in Laramie County and inappropriately dismissed certain cases, and that she created a hostile work environment for employees of the district attorney’s office. 
Following the hearing, which may last until Friday, a three-person panel chosen from the Bar’s full Board of Professional Responsibility will decide whether to recommend disciplinary measures against Manlove to the Wyoming Supreme Court.
The hearing is expected to resume Wednesday morning in the Wyoming Ballroom at Little America Hotel and Resort, 2800 W. Lincolnway. 
On Monday, Manlove said she believed the proceedings were a coordinated effort among the county’s judges, some of her former employees and the Office of Bar Counsel – the Bar’s disciplinary arm – to remove her from office. The effort was sparked largely by personal and political biases against her, she said. 
Manlove was questioned about this further by the hearing panel following the conclusion of her testimony Tuesday afternoon. 
All three members of the hearing panel expressed being troubled by a statement Manlove agreed to on Monday and said in a radio interview at the end of January – that she has no faith in her disciplinary process, and that she already knows what the decision will be at the end of the hearing. The panel members – two attorneys and one layperson, who are appointed by the Wyoming Supreme Court – said they took being impartial in the case very seriously, and that they hadn’t known anything about the investigations into Manlove until the first formal charge was made public in June. 
John Masterson, an attorney from Casper and member of the hearing panel, called Manlove’s statements about the tribunal not being impartial “disappointing and offensive.” 
Manlove later explained that a series of procedural decisions by the panel had given her the sense that it was biased against her. These included a denied request for communications between the seven Laramie County judges and Bar Counsel Mark Gifford, and a last-minute reversal in a decision to allow live streaming of the hearing. 
Manlove’s attorney, Steve Melchior, also on Tuesday reversed a request he made in December to withdraw an affirmative defense that the formal charges “result in part from, or are in part motivated by” Bar Counsel Gifford’s and Special Bar Counsel Weston W. Reeves’ political and personal bias against her, and from Gifford’s “affront and outrage” at Manlove because of her public comments about refusing to enforce the county’s mask order. 
According to the motion, Manlove had not received enough evidence during discovery to support the argument. 
On Tuesday, however, Melchior said it was clear from testimony up to that point that personal and political biases had, at least in part, motivated the charges against Manlove. 
Hearing panel chair Christopher Hawks granted the motion, but cautioned Melchior to stick to defending the case on the merits of the Rules of Professional Conduct that Bar Counsel accused Manlove of breaking. 
In defending against allegations in the second formal charge, Manlove said her office had been in a continuous struggle with the Cheyenne Police Department to obtain evidence. One example was the fairly recent case of an alleged victim of child sexual abuse. 
Manlove said she had learned from the Rodney Law case, which was also discussed in the second formal charge, that she wouldn’t make a charging decision until she had an entire body of evidence. Because there was not much in the initial evidence that supported a charge, Manlove said, she waited to hear from law enforcement regarding additional evidence. 
She said the investigating detective had delayed uploading a report for months, and when it was, she was not notified. There was no further communication between her office and CPD until after she sent a “declination of case” letter to the police department in June, requesting additional information, she said. 
A reply to this letter by former Lt. Rob Dafoe, who led the detective bureau at the time, indicated that the department was frustrated with Manlove’s lack of prosecution of the case. Dafoe described the disclosure, facts and probable cause in the case “one of the most substantial I’ve seen in 20 years of law enforcement.” 
If this was the case, CPD had the power to go ahead and arrest the alleged perpetrator, even without charges filed by the DA’s office, Manlove said Tuesday. 
The mother of the victim ultimately filed a complaint with the Bar against Manlove, alleging “delay or lack of diligence” in prosecution. 
Manlove testified that she believed the complaint was an attempt to target her, based on the first formal charge filed about a month before. 
Manlove pushed back at the suggestion that she or a legal assistant could have gone into the database for Wyoming State Crime Lab results and checked for them, saying she didn’t have any information from CPD that would have indicated anything related to the case was submitted to the crime lab. 
When faced with the threat of budget cuts in 2020, Natrona County DA Daniel Itzen said his office’s approach was to find cases the city attorney could prosecute in municipal court. Two positions were cut – a receptionist and a legal assistant. 
“Maybe a handful” of cases in the county were dismissed because of budget cuts, Itzen said. 
Previously in the case, Natrona and Laramie counties were described as each being responsible for one-third of crime prosecuted in Wyoming. 
Manlove testified Tuesday that about 410 cases were dismissed “without prejudice” because of budget cuts to her office, meaning the cases could potentially be prosecuted in the future. 
Hearing panel lay member Alisha Rone asked Manlove if she may have “jumped the gun” on policy decisions related to potential dismissals and dismissals themselves. 
Manlove said that, with the benefit of hindsight, she would likely have made different decisions. Though she couldn’t specifically recall speaking with Laramie County Attorney Mark Voss before making her decision about prioritizing certain types of cases in fall 2020, Manlove did at some point reach out to him and ask whether his office would be able to help prosecute certain cases, she said. Voss replied that he simply did not have enough staff or resources to do so. 
Reeves rested his case late Tuesday afternoon, giving Melchior the opportunity to call two witnesses: Kevin Haugland, who worked in the DA’s office from January through until November, and Steve McManamen, a prosecutor in the office since October. 
Countering previous testimony from five former employees, Haugland and McManamen said they had never witnessed abusive behavior or public shaming of employees from the district attorney. 
They also said they had not seen anything akin to a toxic work environment, or a denial of overtime pay. 
Manlove said she agreed with a suggestion Monday that her disciplinary proceedings were the result of a coordinated effort among the county’s judges and the Office of Bar Counsel to remove her from office. Some of her former employees had also contributed to the effort, she said. 
During questioning by Reeves, who represents the Bar in the case, Manlove agreed with the suggestion that the Office of Bar Counsel began pursuing disciplinary measures against her following an apparent disagreement in November 2020 over her public statement that she would not prosecute anyone who violated a new COVID-19 masking order in Laramie County. 
Manlove also agreed that the current proceedings against her are a result of the Office of Bar Counsel working with Laramie County’s four district court judges and three circuit court judges to dig up anything they can to remove her from office. 
Manlove said there were other prosecutors in the state who said similar things about not taking cases related to mask enforcement. Those attorneys aren’t in her position today, she said, because they aren’t “the target of personal animus by Bar Counsel.” 
Following an Oct. 31, 2020, radio interview in which she said her office would not be enforcing the health order, Manlove received an email from Gifford in which he said that her statements raised competence questions and issues related to the administration of justice, according to Monday’s testimony. In the ensuing email chain, Gifford urged Manlove to use her elected position to encourage Laramie County residents to be safe and “put on a mask, for God’s sake.” Gifford went on to say there are “signs of hope:” he’d heard Utah’s governor might soon issue a mask order, which would “hopefully” be “the start of a trend of courageous leadership in the Rocky Mountain West.” 
Manlove said she interpreted Gifford’s comments as an attempt to pressure and influence her in her response to Laramie County’s masking order. 
Further, she said, she interpreted it as a political statement by Gifford, because he encouraged her in the same email exchange to reach out to Teton County’s prosecuting attorney – a Democrat – for guidance in how to handle the health order. 
Manlove has identified herself as a conservative Republican. She said she does not know what political party Gifford associates with. 
Following a December 2020 letter from the seven Laramie County judges to Gifford, in which the judges expressed concern about Manlove’s ability to effectively do her job, Manlove said attorneys across the state “repeatedly” suggested she file motions to have all of her cases reassigned to judges outside the county. 
She said it was within her power to do so, and it would have been justifiable because of the judges’ letter. But she said because she knew doing so would wreak havoc on the pursuit of justice in the county, she chose not to. 
“In fact, you are the one who preserved the administration of justice, not interfered with it?” Melchior asked. Manlove agreed. 
When asked by Melchior what her life has been like since she became aware the Bar was pursuing disciplinary measures against her, Manlove said the process has been “all-consuming.”
“My world has been absolutely shaken to its foundation,” she said.
This story was published on Feb. 9, 2022