Highway Patrol defends itself from former sergeant’s conspiracy allegations

Attorneys representing the Highway Patrol said a former sergeant has no evidence proving the top ranks of the patrol conspired to punish him for critical comments.

Assistant Attorney General Jordan Williams laid out that argument Monday afternoon in federal court, while Randy Henry, a former sergeant, looked on from his right. To Williams’ left, seven current and former members of the patrol that worked with Henry, including two former superintendents and the current director of the Department of Public Safety, listened as the lawyer worked to get a judge to agree to drop the case.

Henry sued the patrol in 2016 for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights following statements he made to state lawmakers and the media about Brandon Ellingson’s drowning at the Lake of the Ozarks in 2014. A year later, Henry was demoted from sergeant to corporal and transferred out of mid-Missouri to an area three hours away from his home.

Williams argued that the patrol’s punishment came from comments Henry made about Amanda Grellner, the special prosecutor handling the Ellingson investigation. Henry told a group of people on Facebook that Grellner may have had a conflict in handling the case since the patrol dropped a rape case against her son a year earlier. Williams described Henry’s behavior several times as “bizarre,” and caused two prosecutors to stop taking cases he supervised.

None of those “lies,” as Williams put it, amounted to protected speech under the First Amendment.

“He spoke when he wanted to speak,” Williams said. “They can’t show there was a violation of his constitutional right.”

Henry’s attorney, J.C. Pleban, said their evidence is circumstantial that a conspiracy took place. Shortly after Henry was deposed as part of the Ellingson family’s wrongful death lawsuit, Henry was demoted. Pleban argued that everything Henry talked about was of public interest, including Grellner’s appearance of impropriety and his opinion that the patrol was trying to cover up the cause of Ellingson’s death. Grellner would later recuse herself from the case.

Henry was one of the first people to speak with Trooper Anthony Piercy after Ellingson’s 2014 drowning. Piercy, a new trooper to water patrol, put the wrong type of life vest on Ellingson after he arrested him on suspicion of boating while intoxicated. Ellingson fell off the boat when it hit a wake, and the life vest came off in the water.

Henry testified at two state legislative hearings about his concerns with the level of training road troopers were getting when transitioning to the water as part of the two patrols’ merging. Piercy was one of those road troopers that moved to water patrol.

Henry’s transfer out of the Lake of the Ozarks area, where he spent nearly 30 years, to Truman Lake wasn’t done as a punishment, attorneys argued, but out of necessity. Grellner and Morgan County prosecutor Dustin Dunklee both said they would no longer take cases from Henry. Capt. Michael Turner, who handled part of Henry’s supervision, said he had become “radioactive.” Williams said the patrol should have “wide latitude” in disciplining its members to maintain order.

Pleban said the transfer was a tactic used by the patrol’s top echelon as a way of forcing dissidents out. The patrol, he claimed, had previously ordered other troopers critical of the agency transferred hours away from their usual post in an effort to get them to leave on their own.

“[Johnson] knew what to do to get people out of the Highway Patrol,” Pleban said.

As Pleban argued this, Bret Johnson, the now-retired superintendent that ordered Henry be transferred, shook his head.