By Bill
Bartleman
Friday, September
24, 2004
BENTON, Ky.
Lyon County Attorney Lindell Choat and his wife, Mary Jane
Choat, are facing multiple felony and misdemeanor charges
related to a February beer party police say they hosted for
75-80 teenagers at Kentucky Dam Village State Resort Park,
according to indictments returned Thursday by a Marshall
County grand jury.
The grand jury also charged Christopher Lee Hollis, 19, of
Princeton with attempted rape of a 16-year-old girl who
attended the party. The indictment said the girl was
"physically helpless" at the time, apparently because she had
consumed too much alcohol.
The indictment said the Feb. 13-14 party was for Mary Jane
Choat's son. It was held in a rented cabin at the park after
Lyon County's homecoming basketball game.
The Choats are charged with attempting to conceal the
attempted rape, trying to influence police officers not to
investigate the attempted rape and with providing a keg of
beer without supervising who was old enough to drink.
The Choats turned themselves in to Marshall County
authorities Thursday morning and were released on $10,000 bond
each. Hollis had not been arrested late Thursday afternoon.
His bond was set at $25,000. They are to be arraigned before
Marshall Circuit Judge Dennis Foust on Thursday.
Choat automatically was suspended from his prosecutorial
duties in Lyon District Court, according to Todd County
Attorney Harold Johns, who was appointed by Attorney General
Greg Stumbo to prosecute the case. A special prosecutor is
expected to be appointed today to handle Choat's cases in Lyon
County, a spokeswoman for Stumbo said.
Lyon Judge-Executive Sara Boyd said she wasn't sure of
Choat's future as the county's legal adviser. "We'll have to
look into that," she said. As of 4 p.m., she said he had not
resigned.
Lindell Choat is charged with one count of tampering with
physical evidence and two counts of tampering with a witness,
which are felonies, and two counts of first-degree official
misconduct and 13 counts of third-degree unlawful transaction
with a minor, which are misdemeanors.
Mary Jane Choat faces one count of tampering with physical
evidence and 13 counts of unlawful transaction with a minor.
If convicted of the felony charges, they face up to five
years in prison while the maximum sentence for the misdemeanor
charges is one year in jail.
Hollis' attempted rape charge is a Class B felony, which
carries a punishment of 10 to 20 years in prison.
The tampering-with-physical-evidence charges accuse Mary
Jane Choat of performing "an unlawful pelvic examination" of a
minor girl to determine if the girl had been raped. The
unlawful examination concealed "any potential evidence that a
crime had occurred and preventing its introduction at trial,"
the indictments said.
The tampering-with-a-witness charges against Lindell Choat
say that he tried to persuade a Princeton police officer and a
Marshall deputy sheriff not to proceed with a criminal
investigation into the alleged rape by telling the officers he
"had taken care of the matter and there was nothing to it."
The official misconduct charges relate to Lindell Choat's
failure to report a suspected rape, which he is required to do
as an officer of the court, and for providing alcohol to
underage drinkers.
The unlawful-transaction-with-a-minor charges relate to
providing beer to underage drinkers, including several who
were 15.
The Marshall County Sheriff's Department began the
investigation soon after the party and turned it over to
special investigators for the attorney general's office. Johns
was then appointed special prosecutor to oversee the
investigation.
