Ford's story, based in large part on an interview with Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland, indicates the attorney general's office initially considered charging Pickup with a felony:
The sheriff said initially, the attorney general's office was going to file a felony criminal charge against Pickup but, for some reason, decided to go with a misdemeanor count.
It's a decision which left the veteran law officer perplexed.
"The guy's a cop," Copeland said. "We're not above the law: In fact, we ought to be held to a higher level of accountability. He betrayed everybody's trust: This girl, her family, his department, the community."
The decision by the attorney general's office to charge Pickup with a misdemeanor could cause difficulty bringing him back to Missouri to stand trial, according to Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland:
Copeland explained that to extradite a person across state lines, that person must be charged with a felony. Pickup is believed to be in Broken Arrow, Okla., the sheriff said Saturday night.
“In my 32 years of experience in law enforcement, I've never seen an extradition on a misdemeanor,” Copeland said. “I've never seen them do it. The attorney general's office is saying we can extradite him on a misdemeanor, but I don't think so. I've never seen them do that in my life.”
Copeland said his office knew where Pickup was and where he was working, but officers there nor in Oklahoma could arrest him until the warrant is entered into the National Crime Information Center. This database will accept only felony criminal warrants, Copeland said.
A felony charge could have at least offered leverage to bring Justin Pickup back to Missouri.
Did he allegedly provide her the booze, did she drink it and then have the wreck?
ReplyDeleteWas she drunk on the booze allegedly provided at the time of the wreck (not something provided by someone else or obtained in some other way)?
If it is the first and they call that a MISDEMEANOR, then that's a travesty.