Judge: Gray attorneys can use Johnson's employee time record

By BOB GIBBINS

TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS May 09, 2008 12:38 pm

— The judge assigned to preside at the trial of former District Attorney Richard Gray will allow defense attorneys to use the employee time records of a key state witness.
Assistant Attorney General Charles Rogers, prosecuting Gray with Assistant Attorney General Joel-lyn McCormick, filed a motion this week asking the court to prohibit use of Clint Johnson’s time records from March 2004 through June 2004. District Judge H. Michael Claver denied the state’s request.
Gray is scheduled to be tried June 2 in Okmulgee on an em-bezzlement charge, which alleges he took nearly $9,000 from a drug task force safe. Johnson, a former DTF investigator, is a key witness against Gray.
The trial was moved from Tahlequah when attorneys for each side agreed to its move to to Okmulgee, Claver’s home county.
Gray denies taking the money. But Johnson testified at Gray’s preliminary hearing he was in the DTF office when Gray took the funds from the safe and said claimed was taking them to a safe deposit box.
Gray’s attorneys have said in motions that other state witnesses denied Johnson was present when Gray took the money from the safe.
In their attempt to keep Johnson’s time records out of the case, prosecutors argued that the documents wouldn’t show whether Gray took the money, so the time records should be inadmissible.
Claver agreed with Rogers in a motion to bar an affidavit of Shaunna Clark from being used as a defense exhibit. Rogers argued the affidavit was hearsay and therefore not admissible.
The prosecution’s attempts to keep the defense from using exhibits pertaining to the felony case filed against Roy Aaron Brewer were approved, but Claver ruled the documents and testimony may become relevant at trial and will be addressed at that time.
Claver also ruled in favor of the state’s request to keep the defense from using a Nov. 13, 2006, memorandum to Gray from Misty Brinlee, a former administrative aide in the DA’s office. But the judge added that, as with the Brewer situation, Brinlee’s testimony may become relevant at trial and will be addressed at that time.
The same ruling came from Claver concerning a memorandum from former Assistant DA Jeff Sheridan, now the first assistant DA in Muskogee County.
Rogers argued both were inadmissible because they were not business records and added that Brinlee’s memo might qualify as gossip, but should not be used in Gray’s defense.
Prosecutors have filed no motion concerning defense plans to use Johnson’s bank records, which have been subpoenaed by Gray’s attorneys.