Vanderburgh County Prosecutor's Office linked to firm of lawyer who wasn't charged for DUI

EVANSVILLE — Longstanding political and financial alliances link Vanderburgh County Council attorney Jeff Ahlers' law firm with prosecutors who have not charged him after his June 26 arrest on suspicion of drunken driving.

Kahn, Dees, Donovan & Kahn, where Ahlers is a partner, has been paid almost $453,000 since 2013 on a contract with the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor's Office to pursue forfeiture money from the seizure of cash, cars, real estate and other assets from criminal suspects, according to county auditor records. It's a relationship that, in America, is only legal in Indiana.

The law firm keeps 25% of what it collects and gets reimbursed for expenses, with the rest distributed to the prosecutor's office and law enforcement agencies in the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Drug Task Force.

The total compensation to KDDK is unknown. The partnership began in 2008, when Stan Levco was prosecutor. But the auditor's office isn't required by state law to keep expenditure claims for more than 10 years, and it hasn't. Neither KDDK nor current Prosecutor Nick Hermann has terminated the contract since Hermann took office in January 2011.

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KDDK didn't answer a series of questions about its political and business relationships with the prosecutor's office, including whether firm partner Ahlers gets a cut of the forfeiture assets the law firm recovers.

Evansville police arrested Ahlers, 60, just after midnight June 26 on suspicion of drunken driving, only to see Hermann decline so far to file charges against the veteran attorney. Sheriff Dave Wedding removed Ahlers' mugshot and charge information from his jail's website within hours of his arrest. Two months later, Hermann hasn't filed any charges against the attorney and has refused to explain why, ignoring multiple email and text messages seeking comment. The Courier & Press messaged Hermann as recently as Tuesday about the case.

Ahlers and other KDDK attorneys have helped fund Hermann's election campaigns for years. Ahlers is one of two current KDDK attorneys who have contributed to Hermann dating back to 2010, the year Hermann defeated Levco to take control of the prosecutor's office.

Diana Moers, who defeated Hermann in a May 3 Republican primary election, says she didn't bother asking for the support of KDDK attorneys in that campaign, citing the law firm's contract with the prosecutor's office.

While Moers and Democratic prosecutor nominee Jon Schaefer got no money in the primary from attorneys at KDDK, Hermann received $250 from Mike DiRienzo, the KDDK attorney and partner who manages the civil forfeiture litigation; $500 from partner Ryan Schulz and $1,000 from Mike Schopmeyer, a partner and former co-managing partner.

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Schopmeyer and Schulz and their wives were listed among 16 sponsors of a March 31 campaign fundraising event for Hermann.

DiRienzo, Schopmeyer and Schulz also contributed to Hermann's 2018 re-election campaign, as did Ahlers and KDDK co-managing partner Mark Samila. Democrat Levco, who was trying to recapture the prosecutor's office that year, did get contributions from KDDK attorneys Ted Barron and Brian Williams.

Ahlers and Schopmeyer also gave $100 and $200, respectively, to Hermann's winning 2010 campaign to oust Levco.

The Courier & Press asked KDDK's management team and Hermann whether the law firm’s contract with Hermann's office and the support of KDDK attorneys for Hermann's re-election campaigns are related to the prosecutor's decision not to file drunken driving charges against Ahlers.

'I don't want to be in your story'

The contract and Ahlers' past political support of Hermann may provide context to a conversation he had with the Courier & Press in March, at the height of the primary campaign.

Asked earlier that month about $25,000 in forfeiture money that his office gave to a private nonprofit he runs, Hermann replied with an email stating the nonprofit is a "youth mentoring program" formed under state law. The statute Hermann cited also contained a requirement that a prosecutor "provide an annual report to the county fiscal body" about such an organization.

In Vanderburgh County, that's the County Council. So the Courier & Press asked Ahlers — the council's attorney since 1997 — whether Hermann had provided such annual reports. The newspaper had not found them in council minutes.

"I don't want to be in your story," Ahlers replied.

In a conversation that lasted several minutes, Ahlers repeatedly said the Courier & Press should ask Hermann whether he had given the required reports to the body Ahlers advises. The newspaper did ask Hermann if he had any such reports. He didn't answer. Ahlers said he didn't know whether Hermann had provided the reports to the County Council and suggested the prosecutor may have given them verbally.

"I don't want to be in your story," he said again.

Finally, the County Council's executive assistant answered the question. The council wasn't aware of Hermann's nonprofit and had never received any reports on it from him, employee Teri Lukeman said.

Here's the problem, according to critics

Indiana is the only state in the nation that allows the type of contract KDDK has with the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor's Office, according to Washington, D.C.-area nonprofit public interest law firm The Institute for Justice. The group filed a federal class-action lawsuit in November seeking to declare unconstitutional an Indiana statute it says allows criminal prosecutors to outsource forfeiture prosecutions to private attorneys who take a cut of the money.

Sam Gedge, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, calls them, "private, for-profit prosecutors."

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"If they lose a forfeiture case, they don’t get any money – so there’s a very strong personal financial incentive for them to prosecute as many of these cases as they can, to forfeit as much money as they can," Gedge said. "And we don’t want private lawyers making decisions about public prosecutions based on their own financial self-interests.

"It’s really kind of a money-making treat that prosecutors can hand out to their lawyer friends."

A few years ago, Gedge said, The Institute for Justice combed Indiana court databases and sent public records requests to all 92 counties to compile a list of those using private contingency-fee attorneys for forfeiture cases. Vanderburgh and Posey, which also works with DiRienzo of KDDK, were the only far Southwest Indiana counties on it.

In a brief July 28 statement sent in response to initial questions, KDDK said its civil forfeiture work helps local law enforcement "offset operational costs."

"Requests to file a forfeiture complaint are received from the (Evansville-Vanderburgh County Drug) Task Force," KDDK said.

Evansville Police Chief Billy Bolin said that is correct. Bolin said he hasn't seen KDDK pursuing forfeiture proceeds too zealously or pushing the Task Force to request excessive numbers of forfeiture complaints.

"It's only when the Task Force asks them to," the chief said. "It's driven by our end."

That didn't move Gedge, who said law enforcement agencies have just as big a financial incentive as private attorneys to try to rake in as much in forfeiture proceeds as possible since they share in the money too.

Criminal prosecutors in other states and in other parts of Indiana do their own forfeiture prosecutions, Gedge said.

"At the Department of Justice in D.C., there’s an inscription saying, 'The United States wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts,'" Gedge said. "That principle applies with equal force to state and local prosecutors. And the government’s justice-oriented mission is squarely at odds with contingency-fee arrangements like the one we see in Vanderburgh County."

'Lawyer friends'?

The Vanderburgh County Board of Commissioners approved the original contract with KDDK in a public meeting on Oct. 21, 2008.

"What it will do is allow the prosecutor to use the services of Chris (Lee), I don’t have his name in front of me, it’s in the contract, at Kahn Dees Donovan and Kahn to do some particular services for the prosecutor," then-County Attorney Ted Ziemer Jr. told the commissioners.

Beyond stating that he had made changes in the proposed contract, that's all Ziemer, who died in 2019, said about it. Commissioners Jeff Korb, Troy Tornatta and Bill Nix immediately and unanimously approved the contract without discussion. The commissioners did not mention the drug task force or KDDK in the context of the forfeiture contract again that year.

Levco's recollection is that sometime before 2008, he decided his prosecutors handling drug-related cases were spending too much time having to pursue forfeiture proceeds. So he convened a committee of himself plus local law enforcement agencies that received shares of the money. They chose among private lawyers who could do the work.

Gedge's assertion that prosecutors often give such gigs to their "lawyer friends" sounded harsh to Levco.

Levco acknowledged that fellow Democrat and friend, attorney Trent Van Haaften, got the job from the committee and that he wanted Van Haaften to get it, but he said it wasn't his call alone. The committee picked Van Haaften.

Lee, the attorney who managed the civil forfeiture litigation for KDDK after Van Haaften? He wasn't so much a friend as an acquaintance, Levco said. KDDK said it got the contract by responding to a request for proposals.