LEESBURG, Va. (CN) — A Virginia judge delayed sentencing Thursday and indicated that he was mulling a motion to overturn the guilty verdict against a school superintendent caught up in a national scandal.
Judge Douglas Fleming was to sentence former Loudoun County superintendent Scott Ziegler during a hearing in Leesburg, Virginia, on Thursday. The judge had presided over a trial in September that ended when the jury convicted Ziegler of retaliating against Erin Brooks, a special education teacher who had testified in a grand jury probe of the school system. The jury acquitted Ziegler on a second count related to the incident — penalizing an employee for a court appearance.
As the hearing began, Ziegler's attorney argued the verdict should be set aside, as no evidence at the trial proved that Ziegler knew his conduct was prohibited by law. The jury was not properly given instructions on this necessary legal element, said Erin Harrigan, of Gentry Locke’s criminal and government investigations practice.
In court filings, Harrigan wrote the law Ziegler was convicted of violating, the State and Local Government Conflict of Interests Act, limits the criminal implications of violations. The goal of the law is to "define and prohibit inappropriate conflicts." In limited circumstances, criminal penalties apply.
In Ziegler's case, "there is no ability to impose a criminal punishment," Harrigan said during the hearing.
But in court filings, prosecutors pointed to testimony during the trial that the superintendent "brazenly admitted to an elected official that he was firing Brooks because she obeyed a special grand jury subpoena."
Ziegler "knew he was being charged with a crime," argued Brandon Wrobleski, special assistant to the Attorney General Jason Miyares, whose office spearheaded the case. "He knew his actions violated the statute."
In announcing that he would take the case under advisement, Fleming said "this is a very important point" and he needed to consider the issues. He did not specify when he would make a ruling.
The former superintendent’s legal jeopardy stems from a separate controversy involving a student who was moved from one high school where he was accused of raping a student in a bathroom, to another school, where he was charged with assaulting another student.
The case made national headlines and the issue became a central talking point in Glenn Youngkin’s successful gubernatorial campaign. The school board at the booming Washington-area suburb fired Ziegler. When Youngkin took office, he issued an executive order calling for an investigation of the school system.
Ironically, Miyares moved to dismiss a third misdemeanor charge against Ziegler prompted by accusations he lied to the school board about the rape case. The charge stemmed from a remark at a school board meeting when Ziegler was asked whether there had been assaults in school bathrooms.
“To my knowledge,” he responded, “we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our bathrooms.”
In dropping the charge, prosecutors wrote that the “ends of justice mitigate against expending the significant additional resources that would be required to try the defendant by jury.”
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