Bubbaworld

Either OHP Trooper Rocky Northcutt or Latisha White is a liar.

Then too, one can argue that Carter County District Attorney Craig Ladd is a liar also, since he apparently attempted to extradite White from Louisiana under false allegations.

This in order to try her on felony perjury charges for filing an allegedly false complaint against Northcutt.

Huh?

This fiasco and obvious waste of the taxpayers’ money started on September 3, 2006 when Trooper Northcutt conducted a traffic stop of White’s sister, Stormy Knight, on U.S. 77 south of Ardmore, Oklahoma.

It was during this traffic stop that White says that Northcutt repeatedly used the “f-word” in yelling at her for parking her vehicle behind his patrol car during the traffic stop of her sister.

White filed a complaint against Northcutt with the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety. DA Craig Ladd then filed a criminal perjury charge against White claiming she lied in her complaint against Northcutt. Ladd obtained a warrant for her arrest, a warrant which is outstanding to this date.

White in turn filed a civil lawsuit in Louisiana against Northcutt alleging claims of defamation and free speech deprivation.

Oklahoma City attorney Gary James who represents the Oklahoma State Troopers Association reportedly says, “I promise you Miss White’s going to pay for her actions from a legal standpoint because we are going to file suit on her in Oklahoma for libel and slander. And we’re going to go after her.“

And to top it all off, DA Ladd after White turned down his offer of pleading guilty to a perjury she says she did not commit got Governor Henry to seek White’s extradition from Louisiana.

And she probably would have been dragged back to Oklahoma in chains were it not for the fact that the folks in charge of extraditions in Louisiana discovered Ladd’s extradition request was in a polite phrase “factually inaccurate” or a “damned lie” in less polite circles.

It would appear that DA Ladd in his desire to prosecute Latisha White included some “factual inaccuracies” or “damned lies”, take your pick, in his extradition request.

Of course no one except DA Ladd can say whether his “factual inaccuracies” were accidental or on purpose and he is apparently abandoning a sinking ship as gracefully as possible by turning the extradition mess over to the governor and attorney general.

Ladd in a phone intervew with the Tulsa World was quoted as saying, “I don’t really want to comment on it. I don’t want to throw any fuel onto the fire.“

Chris J. Roy Sr., White’s attorney in the civil case in Louisiana speaking in reference to the Carter County DA Craig Ladd was quoted as saying, “What he (Ladd) did is worse that what he’s saying Tisha did.”

The scandal gets even more interesting when one realizes there is supposedly a video of the incident, made by the dashboard camera of Northcutt’s patrol car. The position of the “pro-Northcutt camp” is that there is no evidence of any cursing on the part of Northcutt. The position of the “pro-White camps” is that there are “gaps” within the video and White’s defense attorney maintains that he has never received a “full copy” of the video. The Tulsa World asked attorney Gary James for a copy of the video and was denied although the newspaper was invited to Oklahoma City to”view” the video.

Early on, back when White made her complaint against Northcutt, she dropped the gauntlet on the table by offering to take a lie detector test regarding her allegations against Northcutt.

White’s attorney has basically challenged Trooper Northcutt to join White in taking lie detector tests in “neutral territory”, an offer which Trooper Northcutt has apparently not acknowledged, let alone accepted.

While polygraph tests are not accepted as “evidence” in either civil or criminal trials they certainly are valuable tools in getting to the facts of the matter and do so at times by simply existing to demonstrate who is willing to take the polygraph test and who is not.

Regardless of who is telling the truth and who is lying, nothing good is going to come of pursuing criminal charges against Latisha White.

All that has happened thus far is that DA Craig Ladd has managed to make both himself and the state of Oklahoma look the fool for trying to extradite and try someone for filing a complaint against a state trooper. White’s complaint has obviously already been reviewed by the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety which just as obviously found no fault in Trooper Northcutt’s actions. That should have ended it, then and there.

Anything more is simply silliness in what some may well see as an effort to protect the reputation of a “hero trooper” who in spite of having been selected as both Oklahoma Trooper of the Year and National Trooper of the Year is apparently too scared to face his accuser over a lie detector test.

Why you reckon that is?

And why do we have to read about it in the Tulsa World rather than one of the media outlets in Carter County?

References:

Traffic stop no longer routine (9/16/07)

Extradition bid halted; faulty paperwork cited (9/25/07)

Lawyer: Perjury case is alive (9/29/07)

Similarities are found in traffic stop, OHP cases (9/30/07)