(INDIANAPOLIS) — Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill will not be criminally charged in the alleged drunken groping of a state lawmaker and three legislative staffers at a party this year because it would be too difficult to prove a case against him, a special prosecutor said Tuesday.
Special prosecutor Daniel Sigler said he considered bringing misdemeanor battery charges against Hill, a Republican, but that witnesses gave varying accounts of what happened in the Indianapolis bar during a March 15 party to mark the end of the legislative session.
“The setting of this lent itself to problems prosecuting,” Sigler said at a news conference in Indianapolis. “It was in a bar. It was in the early morning hours. Free alcohol was being served and flowing.”
Hill’s private attorney Kevin Betz did not immediately respond to a call from The Associated Press seeking comment on the decision.
A confidential legislative memo leaked to the media revealed the four women’s allegations against Hill. Three of the women soon went public , including Democratic Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon, who described Hill’s behavior as “deviant” when she encountered him in the early morning hours.
She said Hill leaned toward her, put his hand on her back, slid it down and grabbed her buttocks. The Munster lawmaker says she told Hill to “back off,” but he approached again later in the night, put his hand on her back and said: “That skin. That back.”
In his report on the investigation released Tuesday, Sigler said there was not sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt “that Hill’s intent in the touching was rude, insolent or angry,” as required for a battery conviction.
In the report, which includes interviews with 56 witnesses, Sigler noted that Hill didn’t deny the touching occurred, but that he justified it as “incidental … in the crowded bar” and “not intended to be disrespectful, sexual in nature or rude.”
Sigler said he found the allegations from the four women credible and that he believed Hill drank a “significant” amount of alcohol that night. But he said prosecuting Hill would be tough because several weeks passed before the allegations were raised.
“I did believe them,” he told reporters. “Nonetheless, I decided I didn’t think I could meet my burden” of proof.
Sigler, who was appointed in July to determine if charges should be brought against Hill, also said he didn’t see any benefit to a potentially lengthy and expensive prosecution.
“This would be a drawn out, complicated — legally and factually — case that would last a long, long time,” he said. “The victims would be put through a heck of a lot. It would be a tough, tough case to prove.”
Hill, who was elected to a four-year term in 2016, has publicly denied he groped the women and rejected calls from Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and legislative leaders to resign .
Indiana’s constitution allows for a public official to be removed from office, “for crime, incapacity or negligence” either by “impeachment by the House of Representatives, to be tried by the Senate,” or by a “joint resolution of the General Assembly” with two thirds voting in favor.
But there’s debate whether that applies to Hill, because the attorney general — unlike the state auditor, treasurer and secretary — is not specifically listed as a “state officer” in the constitution.
The Legislature could impeach him “for any misdemeanor in office” under a different Indiana law. But that would likely require criminal charges or a conviction — a higher threshold than the “incapacity or negligence” standard in the constitution.
Legal observers have suggested that Hill could be removed from office if he is found to have violated the state court’s code of professional conduct.
Hill will need to be nominated by the Republican Party at the state party convention before he can run for office again in 2020.
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Associated Press writer Tom Davies contributed to this story.
