No charges in undersheriff probe

SANDPOINT — The Idaho Attorney General’s Office is declining to seek charges against former Bonner County Undersheriff David Hale for creating a website mocking the sheriff’s candidacy of Terry Ford in the run-up to the primary election.

The site, which has since disappeared, seemed calculated to portray Ford as amateurish and unprepared for office. It also falsely stated that the site was the handiwork of Ford supporters, when it was actually the work of Hale, a colleague of Sheriff Daryl Wheeler.

Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall asked the AG’s office to investigate whether the unauthorized website amounted to false personation, libel or an electioneering violation.

“Our investigation revealed that the evidence does not support a successful prosecution of Mr. Hale or any other person, for the above offenses,” Deputy Attorney General Paul Panther said in a Nov. 16 letter to the prosecutor’s office.

The AG’s investigation determined that Hale in fact created the unauthorized website, but that alone was insufficient to establish that a criminal offense was committed. The probe also turned up no evidence that anybody else was involved with the site’s creation.

To establish a felony charge of false personation, the state would have been required to prove that Hale actually falsely impersonated another, but the website did not claim to have been published by a real or actual person.

“Instead, the website asserted that a fictitious organization created it. Accordingly, this charge is not applicable to Mr. Hale’s conduct,” Panther wrote.

To successfully prosecute a charge of libel, a misdemeanor, the state would have to prove Hale had malicious intent in creating the site and populated it with falsehoods. Panther allowed that the site portrayed Ford in a negative light, its content was a mix of factual assertions and statements of opinion.

“But the website refrains from publishing clear, demonstrably false statements about the candidate and therefore fails to provide a sufficient basis to support a criminal prosecution of libel,” Panther said in the letter.

Panther concluded that electioneering communication charge, a misdemeanor, would have required the state to prove that Hale transmitted communication without filing a required statement with the county clerk. However, such communication would have had to have been made 30 days before the primary and 60 days before the general election, which Panther said did not occur with respect to the website.

Hale was ultimately resigned from his post and Wheeler went on to defeat Ford in the primary election to retain the GOP nomination. Ford ran as a write-in candidate in the general election, but Wheeler decisively won re-election.

NOTE: This story was updated to correct an error regarding the nature of Hale’s departure.