Saturday, November 25, 2006

Eighteen Months Later..Still No Examination Into the Bad Warrant

Sandusky Register: Baumgartner indicted on charges from chase
Wednesday, June 8, 2005, 09:10 AM
Vicki Palmer: “Grand Juries Look At All The Circumstances.”
Baumgartner indicted on charges from chase
By KEVIN PURDY
kevinpurdy@sanduskyregister.com
SANDUSKY - A former Oak Harbor attorney has been indicted on four charges related to a two-county chase she was reported to have led law enforcement officers on in May.

Elsebeth Baumgartner, 55, who gave a Lambertville, Mich., address at Erie County Jail last week, has been charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle, resisting arrest and two counts of failure to obey the order or signal of a police officer, according to documents released by the Erie County Prosecutor's office.

Factual error: Baumgartner is 50, not 55.

The indictments came from the Erie County grand jury sessions late last week. Baumgartner pleaded not guilty June 2 to two misdemeanor counts stemming from the same incident, and a hearing on a felony charge was continued to this Thursday.

Erie County Assistant Prosecutor Vicki Palmer, who handles grand jury proceedings for the prosecutor's office but did not present Baumgartner's case, said that in her case and others, a grand jury can consider more evidence than what police use in initially charging a suspect.

"Often times, police officers will file a charge immediately, which is their job, to make sure that somebody is arrested," Palmer said. "(A grand jury) is looking at everything at all the circumstances; they're looking at everything that's there."

Laughable.

What other “evidence” do they have against Baumgartner? I’d love to see those Grand Jury transcripts. They no doubt attempted to smear her so bad that indicting a ham sandwich seemed like the natural thing to do.

Dan Kasaris, the Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor assigned as a special prosecutor to Baumgartner's case, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Baumgartner said Tuesday she intends to file motions to dismiss the charges based on what she claims were a number of legal and procedural violations by both law enforcement and prosecutors in her case.

"There wasn't a lawful warrant for my arrest, and that's been proven on the record in municipal court," Baumgartner said. "For whatever reason, this special prosecutor has chosen to ignore that bad faith on the part of law enforcement."

Proven by the fact that the Visiting Judge issued a bench warrant without anyone attaching a criminal charge. In other words, Ohio Visiting Judge John Adkins, after claiming that he himself was the complaining witness, issued a bench warrant for Baumgartner’s arrest in order to summarily revoke her probation. Bay View officials, after being warned that the warrant was no good, acted on the bench warrant anyway. There is so much misconduct in Baumgartner’s case that I can’t wait to see that trial.

It’s gonna be a circus.

Baumgartner said she had not been served with an indictment Tuesday or arrested on a warrant.

She has never failed to appear and she’s already been released on bond. Yet an Erie County Judge finds it necessary to issue another arrest warrant.

Baumgartner was one of 29 indictments released by the prosecutor's office Tuesday, but complete identification of those indicted could not be provided because of complications with a new computer system. The Register will run a complete list when all the information is available.

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