Court e-mails shed little light

Events that led to the demise of Kootenai County’s juvenile drug court became no clearer Monday, when the county released heavily edited copies of roughly half of 1,060 e-mail exchanges between Prosecutor Bill Douglas and the court supervisor.

The Kootenai County commission asked for the e-mails two weeks ago in an attempt to find out more details about the management and finances of the now-defunct drug court. The commissioners, who received unedited copies, haven’t yet come to any conclusion.

Commissioner Rick Currie said the commission hadn’t previously had a chance to review the e-mails between Douglas and Juvenile Education and Training administrator Marina Kalani because they were given to an attorney for review after The Spokesman-Review requested the same information.

The county released 461 e-mails Monday afternoon to the newspaper but refused to make public another 599 correspondences between Douglas and Kalani citing in most cases that they “appear not to relate to the conduct or administration of the public’s business.” The county also said that some of those correspondences contained juvenile, personnel and health records.

Of the released e-mails, 290 of them were heavily edited by using a marker to black out much of the content. The county cited the same reasons for the redactions, as for withholding the other e-mails.

What’s left to be read mostly pertains to the day-to-day operations of the court, upcoming conferences and a few mentions about the need to get more juveniles into the program to justify a $498,000 grant. There also are a few references to the Justice Department temporarily shutting off federal funds and having the county take over a banking account for money generated through various fund-raisers in which Kalani, a gospel singer, often performed.

Several e-mail messages between Douglas and Kalani were previously leaked to The Spokesman-Review and show the nature of the type of blacked-out information.

In a Feb. 28 e-mail, Kalani asks Douglas about an upcoming ceremony.

Douglas responds that the ceremony is May 13 and that he may drive. The county blacked out the remainder of the message that reads “I hate airports, besides, my golf clubs don’t travel on planes well. Wanna sing?”

Another example is in a March 3 exchange in which Kalani writes, “Thank you. You are so good to me. Just wait until I get you alone!”

Douglas responses “promises, promises.”

Both comments are redacted in the copies released Monday.

In previous interviews both Douglas and Kalani said that the messages are harmless bantering. Kalani called the exchanges “joking and irreverent” and part of her communication style.

“I’ll call a judge and say ‘Hey handsome, how you doing,’ ” Kalani said in a March 11 interview. “Banter in that nature is not unlike me.”

Currie said all the e-mails are now available for him and the other commissioners to review but they are just interested in the ones pertaining to the federally funded JET Court that prosecutors offer to children as an alternative to jail time.

The commission has also asked for an accounting of the program’s finances, specifically how private donations were spent, in addition to federal dollars.

“We just got the stuff back from the attorneys and we need to decide what to do now,” Currie said.

The court came to an abrupt end Feb. 16 when 1st District Judge Benjamin Simpson quit. Simpson won’t comment on his decision but wrote in a memo that he had “serious concerns about ongoing personnel problems and legal issues.”

The judge’s disassociation from the court followed a nearly monthlong period when the U.S. Department of Justice shut down the county’s access to $498,000 in grant money because Kalani failed to provide a quarterly report on how the program was running.

The report was received in mid-February and the county regained access to the cash.

Douglas said Monday that he hadn’t seen what was released to the public and that it was premature to make a statement. He added that he had reviewed some of the correspondence given to commissioners with an attorney provided by the county’s insurance company. He declined to elaborate.

The insurance company also provided an attorney to review the e-mails for the commission and decide which ones could be released to the public. The insurance company is involved because the prosecutor’s office has a conflict of interest, as do the county’s civil attorneys because they all have been deputized by Douglas.

After the commission requested the e-mails there was a swarm of speculation about Douglas’ potential resignation. The prosecutor, who was re-elected in November, called local media outlets March 11 to reassure them he wasn’t resigning.

At the time, Douglas said there were rumors circulating about him having an affair with Kalani, an accusation they both denied. Douglas is Kalani’s direct supervisor, having hired her in March 2004 to oversee JET Court.