Cell Phone Records Would Have Cleared White If Offered

Could have, should have, would have. Two private investigators are questioning why Charlie White's attorney, Carl Brizzi, didn't call an expert to explain his cell phone records, which they tell WISH-TV's Karen Hensel proved White was living at his ex-wife's home and not at the Overview condominium he had purchased to live with his second wife following their marriage where prosecutors convinced a jury he was really living. Here's some of what Hensel reported:

He has two experienced private investigators questioning why cell phone records were never used as evidence. They said they hold the evidence to prove White never should have been convicted on the six felony counts in his voter fraud trial.

Tim Wilcox of International Investigators LLC has been an investigator for 42 years. Wilcox believes White did not get a fair trial.

"The jury was not given the evidence that could change their minds,” he said. “His attorney decided not to present the key witnesses, and we had the key witness."

That key witness, Wilcox said, is Ryan Harmon, a former Indiana State Police officer who once worked on the public corruption section as a detective and retired after being investigated in connection with a hit-and-run accident. He is now a private investigator.

"Their State Police investigator had no knowledge in cell phone tower triangulation," Wilcox said, noting that Harmon does.

Harmon explained why cell records could have changed opinions on White’s residency: "The cell records are not just a day and time. We have longitude and latitude of the towers. We have different azimuth laid out." . . .

The case against White centers around this: He used his ex-wife's address, where he used to live, instead of a condo he shared with his then-fiance, on his voter registration form. Prosecutors said it's because he didn't want to give up his Fishers Town Council salary after moving out of the district he was elected to represent. White and the two private investigators said it's because he was never actually living in the condo.

That's where the cell phone records come in. Nearly two years of phone calls - 30,000 records. Harmon conducted a specific technique called triangulation to analyze them.

"During a six-month period, I looked at every night where the last call was made and the first call in the morning," Harmon said, because the last call made was most likely where White stayed all night.

"48 percent of the time over a six-month period, this phone was on tower 74,” Harmon said. “Tower 74 is the tower in question where the condo is located."

Harmon then looked at the stats just during the work week, assuming White stayed at the condo to see the then-fiance on weekends. Cell records show the percentage of time he spent there dropped dramatically during the week.

"12 percent of the time in a six-month time, Monday through Friday, on that tower. Back it down to a Sunday-Thursday work week, and it is 9 percent,” Harmon said. “It doesn’t fit. He was not living at the condo. He was visiting the condo."

Harmon said the cell phone records show White only stayed there nine nights in more than three months.

"Let's look at the date when the felonious acts took place on May 4, 2010, when Mr. White committed this felony by voting,” Harmon said. “96 days leading up to May 4, there was only nine nights in 96 days one could logically conclude he stayed at the condominium. Out of 96 days. To me, that is beyond a reasonable doubt."

Then, when White got remarried, 16 days after voting, on May 20, Harmon said: "The records tripled on tower 74. He is living at the condo now. He is married."

It just sickens me that Brizzi didn't call Harmon as a witness. A source tells me that Brizzi didn't want to call Harmon because the prosecutors planned to discredit him because of his firing by the Indiana State Police. Harmon was charged with two felonies and two misdemeanors after he plowed into a row of motorcyles parked on South Meridian Street and drove off without stopping while driving his department-issued Jeep Cherokee a couple of years ago after he left the Cadillac Ranch bar near Union Station. Ironically, Brizzi was the Marion County Prosecutor who charged Harmon in 2010. Regardless, his testimony would have been quite valuable assuming he qualified as an expert to testify on these matters. From what I heard, the government's witness didn't know how to properly interpret the cell phone tower evidence and gave some very unreliable information to the jurors. Even worse, I'm told the evidence offered by the government did not include the entire period under question; only a small time frame where it tended to support their contention he was living at the condo, a deceptive practice known as cherry picking. I thought there was some rule of evidence about completeness when offering such evidence, but I digress. I question the reliability to even offer this evidence in the first place, but observers say that Judge Nation pretty much allowed the prosecutors to offer any evidence they wanted to prove White's guilt over Brizzi's objections.

White told Hensel that he and Brizzi felt that the prosecutors had failed to meet their burden of proof so there was no need to put on a defense, but what they forget is that every damn one of those jurors were convinced of his guilt before the trial started regardless of what they claimed during voir dire because that's all they heard the media report for an entire year. If the law had been properly applied, the prosecutors would have never brought the indictments against him. Once the prosecutors showed their willingness to recreate well-stated law with their imaginative interpretations in an effort to destroy White, it was the duty of Judge Steven Nation to step up and dismiss the charges on Brizzi's motion that clearly explained why the charges were incompatible with Indiana law. Only Judge Nation knows why he chose to ignore Brizzi's well-argued statement of the law and side with the over zealous prosecutors.

Hensel also tried to find out how much the special prosecutors, John Dowd and Dan Sigler, charged taxpayers for prosecuting White. She was told their final bill has not yet been submitted. Sigler engaged in good old fashioned nepotism by adding his son, Dan, Jr., to the special prosecution  team to provide an opportunity to further drive up prosecution expenses to the state, and to provide a good billing opportunity for his son. Brizzi handled White's defense alone.