Young, Rogich in regular contact during Gibbons probe

By Jeff German

Saturday, Feb. 10, 2007 | 7:10 a.m.

Former Sheriff Bill Young was in regular telephone contact with the top campaign adviser to Gov. Jim Gibbons during the investigation into allegations that Gibbons tried to force himself on a woman last Oct. 13, cell phone records show.

The content of the phone calls between Young and Sig Rogich, Gibbons' top political strategist, is not known because they were private.

And the cell phone records are not proof of any impropriety by anyone, limited, as they are, to showing simply when calls were made, not what was said .

Rogich and Young have a long-standing relationship and could have been discussing subjects unrelated to the allegations.

The calls, however, raise the question of whether a public official in Young's position should have been speaking as often as he did with Gibbons insiders - with whom he had both personal and political connections - with a criminal investigation pending.

Criminal justice experts told the Sun this week that Young should have severed contact with Rogich during the investigation.

Joshua Marquis, vice president of the National District Attorneys Association, said he often gets calls from the friends or family of those under investigation. When that occurs, he seeks to deflect the call and head off future ones.

"I tell them, 'I can't talk about it,' " said Marquis, the district attorney for Clatsop County, Ore.

Michael Lymon, a professor of criminal justice at Missouri's Columbia College, said under such circumstances police chiefs should strive to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

In this instance, the appearance question is raised by Young's relationship with Rogich and others in the Gibbons camp whom Young spoke to throughout the probe: attorney Don Campbell, who represented Gibbons, and private investigator David Groover.

"I think a reasonable member of the community would question what these calls were about," said Lymon, a former criminal investigator for police agencies in Kansas and Oklahoma. "It comes down to motive, and the calls suggest that there is a favor owed or that a favor might be asked down the road."

The calls are documented in records released by Clark County District Attorney David Roger, who announced Feb. 1 that he would not file criminal charges. On that day, Roger's office released 1,400 pages of documents, including the cell phone records of principal and cameo players in the case.

Most of the records recounted the by-now-familiar details about Chrissy Mazzeo's allegation that then-candidate Gibbons tried to force himself on her after an evening of drinks at a Hughes Center restaurant 3 1/2 weeks before the election.

Cell phone records show that Rogich telephoned Young 23 times, often during critical phases of the investigation, from the morning after the Oct. 13 incident through Nov. 10, the day that Gibbons was reinterviewed by police.

Ten of the calls lasted a minute or less, suggesting they went to Young's voicemail. The 13 other calls lasted two to eight minutes.

Any callbacks from Young to Rogich could not be determined because Rogich's records do not show the phone numbers for incoming calls and Young's phone records were not subpoenaed by the district attorney.

Metro Police officials declined a Sun request for the records, saying they were not obligated to turn over documents dealing with Young's personal cell phone.

The phone records Roger released also do not include any local calls made from land lines.

The cell phone calls from Rogich to Young usually were accompanied by a flurry of other calls between Rogich, Campbell and Groover.

The records also show that Young, who retired in January, had one phone conversation with Groover on Oct. 24, the day before Mazzeo held a news conference to stand by her assault claim in the face of strong public denials by Gibbons, who was winding down his campaign for governor at the time.

Young strongly defended his actions and those of his department in the investigation.

"I will tell you that Sig called me a few times wanting to know the status of the case," Young said. "I think he wanted some kind of conclusion to the case prior to the election. He was in a big race."

But Young argued that he did nothing wrong by talking to Rogich, who also has been the former sheriff's top political adviser, in the middle of the Mazzeo investigation.

Young could not recall how many times he called Rogich. But the former sheriff insisted that he was not influenced by Rogich or anyone else in the Gibbons camp.

"I can handle Sig Rogich," Young said.

That, one prominent trial lawyer said, is not the issue. The flow of calls from Rogich to Young smacks of collusion - and should have been halted early on, he said.

"People trust the police to conduct impartial investigations," said John Wesley Hall Jr., a Little Rock, Ark., defense attorney and vice president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "But it sounds like the sheriff was feeding them information from the sheer number of the calls."

But Marquis, the district attorney from Oregon, said the calls from others to the sheriff, by themselves, "do not raise red flags for me." He said that he would be more concerned if it had been shown that Young made several calls to Rogich.

Rogich would not comment about his calls to Young, other than to say in a prepared statement that "all contacts initiated by me or my staff regarding the Ms. Mazzeo accusation were solely for the purpose of gathering and providing accurate information to Metro in their assessment of the allegations."

"As the senior member of the Gibbons campaign team, it was my responsibility to ensure that we were fully cooperating with the authorities, that the truth was revealed quickly and that the candidate wasn't harmed by false allegations," Rogich said in the statement.

Young previously acknowledged calling Gibbons the morning of Oct. 14 to inform him that Metro Police were investigating claims made by Mazzeo, a 32-year-old cocktail waitress and single mother, that Gibbons had assaulted her the night before in a parking garage near McCormick & Schmick's restaurant.

Young was in Boston at the time attending a police chiefs conference. During that call - which does not show up on the records - he arranged for Gibbons to be interviewed by detectives later in the day.

Young's actions, coupled with several public statements that he made supportive of Gibbons, a fellow Republican whom the sheriff had endorsed, prompted civil libertarians, legal ethics experts and the Democrats' gubernatorial nominee, state Sen. Dina Titus, to question whether Gibbons received special treatment in the probe.

Young, as he has all along, denied that was the case, adding that the calls from Rogich and others close to now-Gov. Gibbons had no effect on the investigation.

"I'm not bashful," Young said, stressing that Rogich "didn't get me to break the rules."

"What happened that night couldn't be undone or manipulated by Sig Rogich or anyone else," Young said.

The longest call between Young and someone in the Gibbons camp throughout the investigation - at least among the records released by Roger's office - was a 12-minute conversation between the sheriff and Groover on Oct. 24.

Groover said his discussion with Young that day was about a subject he declined to disclose that was unrelated to the Mazzeo investigation. In fact, Groover contends that he never had any telephone conversations about the Mazzeo case with Young, whom he described as a friend of 30 years.

Groover recalled sending Young an e-mail six days earlier, on Oct. 18, asking for help in obtaining initial police reports on Mazzeo's encounter with Gibbons, but was told to contact the records department.

"He did the proper thing and referred me to records," Groover said. "I've never gotten anything out of the guy."

The Mazzeo case, Young concluded, was "faulty from the beginning" with no independent evidence to corroborate Mazzeo's changing story.

"It is what it is," Young said. "Only Gov. Gibbons and Chrissy Mazzeo know exactly what happened or didn't happen."