Records bring Henry County law enforcement issues to light

This article is the first in a two-part investigative series, diving into the placement of a sheriff’s deputy on a Brady-Giglio list, and what it means for Henry County.

MT. PLEASANT — In late October of 2023, Henry County Attorney Darin Stater mailed a letter to Sheriff’s Deputy Carlos Lopez, advising the officer he was under consideration for a spot on the local government’s “Brady-Giglio list,” a record of law enforcement officials that the prosecutor deems potentially unreliable. The decision has since been made official, and was reaffirmed after a formal reconsideration process.

In hundreds of documents and internal emails obtained by The Southeast Iowa Union, Stater said Lopez made inaccurate statements under oath, and planned to arrest three suspects in a felony theft case in Wayland, regardless of a search warrant’s findings.

But Henry County’s law enforcement leadership said those claims were overblown and out of context. Sheriff Rich McNamee argues Lopez has an exemplary career as an officer to stand on, and community members in the New London School District where Lopez works as a part-time School Resource Officer, say he’s had an “invaluable” positive impact there.

The incompatible narratives have raised tensions between the county’s law enforcement office and its chief prosecutor, departments whose effectiveness depends on their mutual collaboration. Fallout from the dispute has also revealed illegal spending by the sheriff, false sworn statements by the officer and a handful of potentially wrongful arrests.

Lopez’s conduct questioned after dropped felony theft case

The Henry County Attorney’s decision to place Deputy Carlos Lopez on a Brady-Giglio list stemmed from a now dismissed 2023 felony theft case in Wayland. The attorney’s office said Lopez gave inaccurate statements under oath, made arrests without probable cause and provided insufficient evidence to prosecutors after the fact.

On the morning of April 21, 2023, Lopez received a search warrant for Wayland saw mill Outdoor Tradition CO, which was under investigation after the county documented several complaints from customers who said their money and materials weren’t returned after the business failed to deliver goods as promised.

While executing the search warrant, Lopez arrested three members of the Wagler family, which owns Outdoor Tradition. The deputy later told attorney’s office personnel that he believed he had reasonable cause to do so based on the number of complaints he’d gathered, a total of eight according to a copy of the search warrant, although in informal conversations police have estimated as many as 14.

But county legal staff said the move may have violated the Waglers’ rights.

In a meeting on Dec. 5—a recording of which was obtained by The Union—County Attorney Darin Stater argued that Lopez’s decision to arrest the Waglers was based on “directionally motivated reasoning,” and said the deputy’s confirmation bias led him to act prematurely.

“It didn’t matter what you received during the search warrant because you already had your mind made up that probable cause was met,” Stater said, before asking, “Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Lopez replied. “I believe that probable cause was met.”

The attorney said that was a potential violation of the Constitution’s due process clause, foregoing the benefit of a reasonable doubt afforded to all alleged criminals.

“You had your mind made to arrest three Henry County citizens at the time of the execution of the search warrant,” Stater said. “It appears that you didn’t examine any information that was seized that day because the arrests were made (simultaneously) with the search warrant. It appears that you drafted complaints against three people, they were arrested, there was a press release issued, and then you were—I guess—hoping the information seized from the search warrant would support your charges.”

At the same meeting, Assistant County Attorney Blake Vierra said he had specifically instructed Lopez to only gather information while executing the warrant. He recounted explaining that unnecessarily hasty moves could cause inaccuracies, which would undermine allegations of financial crimes in court, a concern that was eventually realized.

Vierra said felony fraud was remarkably hard to prove, and that the county would need to show not only that the Waglers failed to correctly fill orders, but had no means or intentions of correcting flubbed deliveries down the road.

“I explained to you that this is a financial crime, that it takes a lot of going through the search warrant, going through all the information that you gathered, in order to even figure out what we could potentially charge them with,” Vierra said to Lopez at the December meeting. “I think I was pretty clear about how complex the issue was and that it would take time to go through it and figure out.”

Lopez said he didn’t recall the details of that conversation, and didn’t leave the office with that understanding in April of 2023. In written correspondences with the attorney’s office, the deputy said he believed he was tasked with simply proving enough time had passed since complaints were made to demonstrate a “pattern and clearly defining intent” of scams by the business.

In affidavits and other under-oath testimonies tied to the case, Lopez recounted Outdoor Tradition’s dealings with other businesses who paid for lumber, claiming that, as of April 2023, there had been “no received product or refund in money” from Outdoor Tradition.

  Buy Photo

The claim was repeated in criminal complaints, and in a news release shared with local media outlets shortly after the Waglers’ arrest.

It has since been proven false.

River City Lumber, for example—a sawmill in Muscatine County—did receive product from Outdoor Tradition after paying roughly $6,000, but it was lower-grade wood than they’d purchased, and arrived three hours late on a Friday. Curt Canada, a sales representative for River City, took the Wayland company to small claims court over the issue last year.

While on the stand, Canada was cross-examined about the wording of his complaints to the Henry County Sheriff’s Office, eventually saying that he never used the words “no product,” and had no desire to prompt a felony case—only to answer the questions of officers who contacted him.

“I agreed I got the lumber, but it was the wrong lumber,” Canada said, according to the court’s transcript. “I don't know where he would have got that because I sent everything to them, the invoices, the lumber that was returned, the board footage and everything … And with the criminal lawsuit, I don't know nothing about it. I don't want to know nothing about it.”

Police argue the inaccurately worded testimonies were simple slip-ups.

In an undated, unaddressed letter shared with The Union, Lopez said his statements were based on information from another officer who opened the case before handing it off to him, as well as a line from Muscatine County’s civil trial notice which said Outdoor Tradition, “did not complete the job and it was incorrect and they will not correct it.”

McNamee said he believed Lopez had made an honest mistake in his verbiage, but the sheriff said he still believed the Waglers broke the law, since the buyers didn’t get what they paid for, and struggled to get a hold of Outdoor Tradition after the fact.

“It’s a simple disagreement over language,” McNamee said in an interview with The Union. “River City Hardwoods thought they were buying top-grade, oak lumber that they could make furniture out of … it was garbage, they didn’t get what they bought.”

But the errors came with a heavy impact: “no product” and “wrong product” are the difference between a criminal case with possible jail time, and a civil one that a small claims court could resolve.

The county attorney’s office asked Lopez for more information about the case in the days after he arrested the Waglers. A few weeks later, prosecutors said, the deputy submitted a 400-page report, but the contents were unusable in court and failed to correct inaccurate testimonies.

“That thing can barely be called a report,” Vierra said at the Dec. 5 meeting. “That was 400 pages of fluff. It was very poorly written. It didn’t back up with factual information any of your affidavits.”

On Oct. 31 of last year, the county attorney’s office mailed a letter to McNamee and Lopez, informing both that the deputy was under consideration for placement on the county’s Brady-Giglio list. In emails and letters, the two urged Stater to reconsider the move, leading the attorney to formally review it. But by April 23 of this year, just over a years after the Waglers’ arrest, he said his decision was final.

On Nov. 7, Stater told police he would not prosecute the theft charges against the Waglers. The criminal cases have since been dismissed, according to court records.

“After receiving the complaints that afternoon, my office was left scrambling to determine the legitimacy of thirty felony charges without a single report or any type of notification that Deputy Lopez intended to take any of these actions,” Stater wrote in a memo to the sheriff’s office at the time. “Not only did Deputy Lopez’s report fail to include evidence in support of criminal charges, but there is information showing that at least one of Deputy Lopez’s sworn affidavits contains a false statement.”

Lopez is now the sole officer on Henry County’s Brady-Giglio list.

The attorney’s office has stressed that consideration for a Brady-Giglio list “isn’t about lying,” necessarily, but stems from any history of false or misleading statements that prompts credibility concerns, whether intentional or not.

In an email to The Union, Stater added that the Wagler case was a major contributing factor to Lopez’s placement on the list, but not the only one.

“Deputy Lopez wasn’t placed on a Brady-Giglio list solely for swearing to false statements,” he wrote. “To respect Deputy Lopez’s privacy, I will not go into detail, but I will say … other factors include additional inconsistent statements and candor issues. It is the totality of Deputy Lopez’s actions, taken in context, which forms the basis for his placement on the list.”

Brady-Giglio list has high stakes

The words “Brady-Giglio list” were unfamiliar to a handful of officials and many members of the public, when they were invoked by Henry County Attorney Darin Stater in May. Essentially, the list is a collection of names compiled by a state or county prosecutor’s agency detailing any of that government’s officers with a history of questionable credibility.

Specifically, it’s a list of any law enforcement officials that the prosecutor determines to have a history of “incidents of untruthfulness, criminal convictions, candor issues, or some other type of issue which places the officer’s credibility into question.”

The language is based on U.S. Supreme Court cases Brady v. Maryland (1963) and United States v. Giglio (1970) which established that a prosecutor’s failure to disclose possible credibility issues among their witnesses violated the Constitution’s due process clause.

Under those precedents, Lopez’s placement on the list affects more than just his personal reputation.

Stater said the county generally tried not to use affidavits presented by officers or agents with “identified impeachment history” to begin any prosecution or issue any warrant or summons. That means any evidence Lopez gathers is less likely to lead to criminal charges, as long as he remains on the list.

If the county does call upon Lopez in a trial, federal law would require prosecutors to disclose the officer’s presence on the Brady-Giglio list upfront to defense attorneys, typically well before courtroom proceedings begin.

Criminal law attorneys say that can give alleged offenders an easy addition to their defense case with no drawbacks. Henry County officers and prosecutors alike said they worried the caveat to Lopez’s testimonies might sway the outcome of important trials, persuading juries and judges against any charges he’s involved with.

“I don’t think you intentionally falsified the affidavit, doesn’t matter,” Assistant County Attorney Steve Giebelhausen said to Lopez in a recorded meeting. “I’m going to have to give it to the defense attorney and say … ‘Here’s stuff you might be able to work with and get this case dropped. You will certainly have something to sway a jury with,’ but I have to do that in every case now.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com