Judge OKs petition to recall Benton County sheriff over theft, lying and intimidation claims

A judge found that all eight counts of an effort to recall the Benton County sheriff were sufficient to move forward to gather signatures for a public vote.

“It’s only the sufficiency of the charges that I’m looking at. I’m not making any finding about their factual basis,” said Judge Scott Wolfram from Walla Walla County Superior Court. “I don’t consider the motives for the people who filed the charges.”

Now, 14,000 signatures need to be gathered in order to hold a special recall election.

That equals 25 percent of the votes cast in Sheriff Jerry Hatcher’s last election.

Alan Harvey, the attorney leading for the recall effort, was happy with the decision.

“We really did appreciate the judge taking the time to listen,” he said. “There was a lot of effort and a lot of people who provided statements that are not easy to make. ... It’s a good example of law enforcement policing itself.”

Hatcher has 15 days from when the order is entered next week to appeal the decision. The appeal heads straight to the Washington State Supreme Court.

Hatcher’s attorney, George Telquist, is confident Wolfram’s decision will be reversed before petitions are sent out.

“I feel bad for Sheriff Hatcher. I don’t think that Sgt. (Jason) Erickson has been completely candid about his motivations,” he told the Herald. “A lot of these cases get reversed. As a state, we don’t favor recall.”

Wolfram’s ruling followed a more than two-hour hearing Thursday in Benton County Superior Court.

The petition was filed by one of Hatcher’s officers, Sgt. Jason Erickson. While he took the lead, nearly the entire membership of the Benton County Deputy Sheriff’s Guild has supported him and called for Hatcher’s removal.

Erickson was a lieutenant and took a demotion after learning about nearly 14,000 rounds of county ammunition found at his boss’ house.

After he took a day off and wrote out why he left the lieutenant’s position, he was brought in for formal questioning, Harvey told the judge on Thursday.

It was just a one example of a pattern of intimidation, lying and theft carried out by Hatcher, Harvey said Thursday morning.

“The motives in this are clear,” Harvey said. “I believe the facts are sufficient.”

Harvey spent an hour and a half Thursday morning going through the eight potential charges that could end up on a ballot.

He presented the judge with background on the county-owned ammo found in Hatcher’s home, and how he tried to deflect whistleblower investigations, and accused others, including Erickson, of violating rules as a way of intimidating them.

He also claimed Hatcher hid his access to 10 more guns after he was ordered to turn over all firearms as part of an initial protection order granted to his wife during a divorce proceeding.

The employees and former employees allege Hatcher asked for an administrative review by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office under the pretext of finding out who was talking to his wife.

Harvey described a situation where several of the top officers in the sheriff’s office were faced with being told that Hatcher was the “gatekeeper for all things criminal in Benton County.”

“Any reasonable person would be intimidated by those acts,” Harvey said.

Insufficient proof

Hatcher’s attorney, George Telquist of Richland, argued Erickson’s accusations were based on piece of information and did not meet the necessary standard to prove there was a crime.

He painted the effort as a way for Hatcher’s command staff to perform a coup d’etat and thwart the voters’ will.

“They can’t identify a law or a standard or a rule that was violated,” Telquist said referring to the ammunition at Hatcher’s home. “There is no standard in Benton County that was violated.”

He also pointed out the ammunition was purchased in 2016, months before he became sheriff.

He argued that none of the accusations that the command staff were threatened by Hatcher were true. The sheriff sets the rules for his employees in the office.

None of the employees were threatened with harm, which Telquist said is a necessary factor for intimidating a public servant.

He also suggested Erickson willingly “under reported” the facts around the weapons that were found in Hatcher’s former home. Telquist said Hatcher took all of the necessary steps to get those weapons into the custody of Kennewick police, and blamed his wife Monica Hatcher for not responding to calls from Commander Chris Guerrero.

Hatcher was trying to follow the order by staying away from the house because of the protection order.

Telquist said he’s confident that the recall effort will fail and when it does he plans to ask for significant sanctions against the people involved.

He said the recall petition was for the purpose of harassing Hatcher, and has previously referred to it as “frivolous” and politically motivated.

Harvey refuted that Erickson has any political motivation.

“It’s a fantastic theory, but it’s not supported by any real facts,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything that connects Jason Erickson in any material way to this concern.”

The hearing was broadcast through Benton County’s website and attracted about 130 viewers and about 15 people in the courtroom.

This story was originally published August 20, 2020 at 2:27 PM.