Witness-intimidation charges dismissed in election-fraud case
Judge said he did not see evidence of any crime in a video he was shown.
A JUDGE yesterday dismissed witness-intimidation charges against a man accused of slashing the tires of a poll watcher who had complained to officials about alleged election fraud committed by the man's family members.
"I just cannot see in that video that that's what occurred," Municipal Judge Roger Gordon said of allegations that defendant Brandon Way, 31, punctured the poll watcher's tires.
Gordon dismissed charges of witness retaliation, intimidation, possession of an instrument of crime - in this case, a drywall saw - and related charges at Way's preliminary hearing.
Way's attorney, Fortunato "Fred" Perri Jr., said afterward: "We felt from the outset Mr. Way had nothing to do with this."
Trisha Phipps, a poll watcher for the past 10 years at the Hancock Recreation Center, at Hancock and Master streets, in North Philly, testified that after the polls closed in the Nov. 4 general election, she saw evidence of voter fraud by four people.
"Votes were casted without people being in the booths," she said.
She reported the alleged fraud.
After investigating, authorities on May 18 arrested Sandra Lee, 60, the judge of elections at the Hancock center; Alexia Harding, 22, the minority inspector; and James Collins, 68, and Gregory Thomas, 60, both machine inspectors, on fraud charges.
The next morning, May 19, primary election day, Phipps went to her parked Chevy Equinox, on Front Street near Master, on the block where she lives. Her two driver's-side tires were slashed.
She contacted authorities and later viewed video from her block. The nighttime video, played in court on a large projector screen by Assistant District Attorney Michael Bonner, showed two people crossing that block of Front Street, then one who was near Phipps' SUV.
It was hard to see in the nighttime video what was happening.
Another video clip showed two people walking on a sidewalk on that block. A man in front has a hoodie on, with the hood up.
Phipps identified that man as Way by "the way he walks." She also said when the man's face is zoomed in on, she could clearly see it was Way.
She said she has seen Way over the years when he came to the Hancock polling station and when he had visited his relatives' house, across the street from hers.
Way, she said, is a nephew of Lee and Collins, and a cousin of Thomas and Harding. And his father, Ray Way, was a poll watcher at the Hancock location, she said.
Perri argued for the charges to be dismissed, saying that "there's no way on God's green earth" that someone could make an identification of the man with the hoodie, walking on the sidewalk, during the brief and dark video clip.
He also argued that Phipps does not know Way well.
Bonner contended that the video clips showed a person walking to Phipps' SUV, bending down, and then crossing the street to Way's relatives' house and tossing something. He said a detective in the D.A.'s Office recovered a 12-inch drywall saw on that property.
The judge, after seeing a zoomed-in close-up of the man with the hoodie on Bonner's laptop, said it "possibly could have been this defendant."
But, he said he could not see any criminal activity being done in the video clips shown to him.
After the charges were dismissed, Bonner said his office may refile charges against Way.
He contended that this certainly "was intimidation and retaliation for someone reporting a crime."
Yesterday's hearing came a day after the D.A.'s Office announced the arrests of three other election officials - Robin Trainor, 55, a judge of elections in Juniata Park; Laura Murtaugh, 56, that division's minority elections inspector; and Cheryl Ali, 56, a machine inspector in Point Breeze - with election-fraud or related charges.