Theft charges against incoming Hamilton County Board of Education member Larry Grohn were dismissed by a Marion County judge Monday. The state prosecutor assigned to the case also agreed to the dismissal, according to a news release.
Grohn, an unsuccessful Chattanooga mayoral candidate in 2017, was accused of taking $710 worth of campaign signs belonging to the Democratic candidate for district attorney, John Allen Brooks. Brooks lost the race to Republican Coty Wamp.
In an email from state prosecutor Kevin Allen obtained by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Allen said the case was dismissed “based on the failure of the state to prove any intent to permanently deprive the Brooks campaign from (their) signs.”
According to a sworn Chattanooga police affidavit in support of his arrest, Grohn allegedly removed six of Brooks’ signs near the area of 400 S. Moore Road on June 10.
Grohn’s former Democrat opponent for the District 8 school board seat, Katie Perkins, reported witnessing Grohn placing the signs in the back of his truck while driving through the area, according to the affidavit. Perkins told her then-campaign manager, Elizabeth Baker, what she saw. Baker alerted Brooks’ campaign manager, Al Douglas, who filed a police report.
“We are very pleased that the judge as well as the state prosecutor all concluded that no crime was committed in this case,” Grohn’s attorney, Bryan Hoss, said in a news release.
“Dismissing a case like this before any hearing shows not just how weak this case was, but that there never should have been charges filed in the first place. It was a total waste of law enforcement resources. For two political candidates to waste law enforcement resources like this for political gain is really ridiculous,” Hoss said.
Baker said Perkins had nothing to do with the case.
“She only witnessed the incident,” Baker said in a phone call. “She did not file the report. She is not a defendant, she is not a complainant as stated in the court’s stipulation of facts. She was simply a witness.”
Grohn told the Times Free Press in a previous interview that he didn’t steal any signs and only removed two, which he attempted to return to Brooks’ office.
“The evidence in the case showed that candidate Larry Grohn initially removed two campaign signs of John Brooks, an unsuccessful candidate for Hamilton County district attorney, which were blocking Grohn’s campaign signs,” the news release stated. “While the removal was witnessed by Grohn’s opponent, Katie Perkins, the evidence also showed that Grohn offered to return the signs to the Brooks’ campaign office, but Brooks’ campaign refused to respond. Shortly thereafter, Grohn returned the signs to the same area where they were initially placed.”
Grohn was initially scheduled to appear in court before Hamilton County Judge Gerald Webb in late July, but District Attorney Neal Pinkston and all General Sessions Court judges recused themselves from the case, stating they wanted to “avoid any possible appearance of impropriety.”
The case was then transferred to Marshall Raines Jr., a General Sessions judge in Marion County, with a hearing date of Aug. 23.
“It is unfortunate that individuals can file false and slanderous claims with hardly a shred of evidence in an attempt to get elected,” Grohn said in the news release.”On the campaign trail, I had voters who unfortunately believed what they read, which proved to be false. They had been misled. Thankfully, the judge and even the prosecutor agreed that there was no case. I look forward to moving past this and serving the citizens in District 8 and Hamilton County.”
District 8 includes Brainerd Hills, Concord and East Ridge. Grohn, alongside four new school board members and two incumbents, will officially take their seats Sept. 15.
Contact Carmen Nesbitt at cnesbitt@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327. Follow her on Twitter @carmen_nesbitt.