LEESBURG, Va. — The defense attorney for fired Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler argued Thursday that charges against her client should be dropped. But the trial will continue after a judge denied the defense’s request, saying it would be extraordinary to interfere in the grand jury’s decision to indict.
Erin Harrigan filed a motion earlier this month to request to dismiss three indictments against Ziegler because there was “extensive abuse of the special grand jury process” by prosecutors from the Office of Attorney General.
Ziegler faces a misdemeanor charge of false publication following a special grand jury empaneled by Attorney General Jason Miyares (R-Virginia) over how LCPS handled two high-profile sexual assaults at two different schools by the same student. He was also indicted for conflict of interest and allegedly penalizing an employee who testified before the grand jury.
On Thursday, Harrigan argued the prosecution influenced the grand jury based on their questioning, conversations about the credibility of witnesses, and selecting to show only some of the evidence collected.
In her motion, Harrigan argued the OAG was “grossly misleading” by collecting thousands of pieces of evidence but only showed a sample of it to the jury, creating false impressions and impacting their conclusions.
“This prosecutorial misconduct violated Virginia law and the defendant’s right to due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and dismissing the indictments is the only appropriate remedy for these violations,” stated Harrigan.
But prosecutors fired back, saying since it was a special grand jury, their scope of being involved and how they present evidence is wider than a normal grand jury.
Ziegler's trial is slated to start Monday.
This was not the first attempt to drop the case against Ziegler by his attorney.
"For the second time in as many months, counsel for the Defendant has engaged in gamesmanship with the filing of a public motion containing spurious claims of prosecutorial misconduct to be heard two business days before a scheduled jury trial," Theophani Stamos, special counsel to the attorney general, wrote in a response to the motion to dismiss. "Counsel's motion has no legal or factual merit. The Commonwealth urges the Court to deny the motion and further to consider sanctions given the gravity of the misrepresentations contained therein."
The school board fired Ziegler in December 2022 after the special grand jury report that criticized the district’s response to the sexual assaults on campus. The jury also found that there was no “coordinated cover-up” of the assaults.
LCPS public information officer Wayde Byard was also indicted for felony perjury charge, but a judge acquitted him in June.
A judge recently approved to release the independent investigation into the sexual assault cases, after months of demands from parents to release it for transparency.
Among the conclusions, the school system shouldn’t have delayed its Title IX investigation after the first incident at Stone Bridge High School.