Published: September 04, 2009 12:03 pm      

UPDATED - DA Jim Bob Miller gets deferred prosecution

District 18 District Attorney Jim Bob Miller won’t be seeking re-election — by agreement with the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office.

The agreement became known Thursday as the state’s Multicounty Grand Jury completed its probe into allegations of misconduct by Miller’s office.

While Miller will be prohibited from seeking re-election under terms of the deferred prosecution agreement, it does not require him to resign, according to the attorney general’s office.

Allegations against Miller, whose district includes Pittsburg and Haskell counties, concerned his attempts to subpoena identifying records of up to 35 bloggers who had posted comments critical of him on the McAlester Watercooler Web site.

Miller had filed a police report last year which listed him as the victim of remarks made on the Web site.

“To settle the state’s concerns, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s office has agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement on a charge of common barratry,” said the attorney general’s spokesman Charlie Price.

“Common barratry” is defined by law “as exciting groundless judicial proceedings.”

“This was a situation where a subpoena was issued to Harold King,” Price said, referring to the operator of the Web site known as the McAlester Watercooler.

“It’s our opinion that the district attorney did not have the authority to issue that subpoena,” Price said.

The News-Capital reported in August 2008 that McAlester police had delivered a subpoena to King ordering him to produce the names, addresses and other identifiers of 35 people who had posted comments on the McAlester Watercooler Web site.

In addition, the subpoena requested the Social Security numbers “of the bloggers.”

Documents obtained by the News-Capital showed that Miller had filed an offense report against King with the McAlester police department in August 2008.

The offense report filed with police had listed Miller as the person who reported the complaint to McAlester police and listed the phone number of the district attorney’s office.

The 2008 report had listed King as the suspect.

A narrative report filed at the police department last year said “Victim said the suspect is criminally libel for his comments and other people’s comments on the ‘mccooler.”

King had said last August that he had never been informed that he was a suspect when the subpoena had been delivered to him.

King also contended he could not be compelled to do anything that might incriminate himself in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights.

Asked if he now feels vindicated by the attorney general’s deferred prosecution agreement prohibiting Miller from seeking re-election, King said “I consider this a political cover-up.

“This was to get Jim Bob off with as little as possible,” King said.

“They had to look long and hard to find a misdemeanor,” he said.

Miller issued a statement, first appearing in the Daily Oklahoma, saying he had been considering whether to run for re-election, but the decision had been helped along by allegations from the attorney general’s office.

The statement also quoted him as saying threats to his family and vandalism of his property had given him concern for his family’s safety.

The agreement made on Thursday also requires Miller to waive the statute of limitations for the alleged crime so the state can pursue the allegations should he violate the terms of the agreement, the attorney general’s office said.

In other words, should Miller go ahead and file for re-election, the state could move forward with the prosecution. The office is up for election in 2010.

“In addition, the agreement requires Miller to recuse his office from any investigation where he or his office are the alleged victim,” the attorney general’s spokesman said.

Assistant Attorney General Joel-lyn McCormick represented Edmondson’s office in the case.

McCormick, who is the director of the Multicounty Grand Jury Unit of the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office, was in McAlester this week working with the Pittsburg County Grand Jury which indicted child rapist David Earls on Wednesday.