Last week, Camp Verde Town Councilman Joe Butner lobbed an apparently unfounded allegation at an applicant for the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission.
Butner produced a police report that alleged an applicant committed a crime. The report is notable in that only two witnesses were interviewed and the subject had not yet been contacted.
Yet Butner held up the report, distributing it to fellow council members, the applicant and the town manager, as irrefutable proof that the applicant was guilty and suggested the guilt made the applicant ineligible for appointment, neither of which is accurate.
Embarrassed by Butner’s brazen attack, the applicant withdrew, apparently to avoid publicizing the allegation. Yet Butner demanded the allegation be added to council’s record even though it was an incomplete report and the applicant was never arrested and never charged with any crime.
Our reporting found that the subject denied the allegation and the Camp Verde Marshal’s Office dropped the case. It is astounding that Butner chose to ignore this and did not present a full police report to council — only the portion that appeared to defame and assassinate an otherwise upstanding Camp Verde resident’s character.
Thus, while there was an allegation of wrongdoing, it either did not happen or could not be proved, thus the matter is dead.
It is unfortunate that a newspaper must remind Butner — an ex-judge — this basic tenet of American law: “An allegation alone is not proof and it must be rigorously tested in a court of law before accepted as fact or dismissed as erroneous.”
It would appear that if a prosecutor came into Butner’s courtroom and claimed “we have this allegation against the suspect, but we don’t need to hear from witnesses, nor hear what police officers found, nor follow it up with a pesky trial, nor allow the defendant to challenge the allegations against him or her,” it seems Butner would reply, “Well, that’s good enough for me. Send the suspect to jail.” One would also think that with all those years in the criminal justice system, Butner would understand how “blackmail” works.
Councilman, if you want to blackmail someone, you do it in private, not in a public forum. And when you get what you want from your victim — in this case a withdrawal by the applicant from the commission process — you hide the embarrassing evidence, you don’t then read it into the council’s official record. Now you’ve lost your hand because the target of your blackmail has been embarrassed, the one thing the victim was hoping to avoid by bending to your will.
Of all the members on the Camp Verde Town Council, one would least suspect a former judge of betraying the criminal justice process for his own personal gain. Who might he target next? “Innocent until proven guilty” is the foundational belief of American jurisprudence.
Did former judge Butner forget this?
Or did he just choose to ignore it because there was no other way he could push out this applicant, who was likely to be approved?
Or did he willfully choose to deny it just to win a spat and embarrass a political foe?
It reeks of petty desperation and we hope that both other council members and voters remember Butner’s shameful behavior when it comes time to decide if he should represent Camp Verde residents on council.
If you don’t want an applicant on a commission, councilman, then vote against him or her and let the rest of the council decide. That’s democracy.
Yet here we are with an ex-judge throwing out a mere allegation to discredit and defame a Camp Verde resident in a public session — a single, minority member of council subverting the process to impose his will on the rest of council.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
