Attorney General Marty Jackley announced yesterday that a grand jury has indicted Dan Guericke, Stephanie Hubers, and Stacy Phelps for felonies related to their involvement in the GEAR UP/Mid-Central scandal. The charges are identical to those Jackley filed on March 15. No new news there.
The new news comes in a tidbit toward the bottom of Dana Ferguson’s update on the charges, in which A.G. Jackley says he hasn’t offered anyone in this investigation immunity, including GEAR UP profiteers Rick Melmer and Keith Moore:
Jackley said that those involved in the state’s investigation would not receive immunity as witnesses. That means two men who oversaw the Gear Up program after working as state employees could be called to testify.
“I have not offered or provided anybody immunity in the Gear Up investigation,” Jackley said.
Rick Melmer was the state’s secretary of education when South Dakota received its first Gear Up grant in 2005 and Mid Central was picked to administer the grant.
Last March, Mid Central approved $241,000 to Rick Melmer Services. Melmer left the department in 2008.
Keith Moore, who served under Melmer as the state’s director of Indian education and later went with Melmer to the University of South Dakota, was also on Mid Central’s payroll, where records show he was regularly paid $4,000 a month [Dana Ferguson, “Three Indicted in Connection with GEAR UP Scheme,” that Sioux Falls paper, 2016.04.14].
A.G. Jackley is not ruling out people on whom the next shoes may drop. Let’s see who shows up in the next affidavits.
my, my, jackley has been in the news a lot lately. so proactive. (this is satire, mr. bruner)
How about some immunity for Joop?
Perhaps the crimes charged don’t scare him but his friends who own shotguns do.
Jeff, are thinking not of immunity but of witness protection?
Joop may wish he could get witness protection! I’d be afraid of anyone who knows anything about this case and owns a shotgun!
At Jackley WARP speed,we will all die of old age before this ever gets to trial. That’d be my guess.
Maybe he is saving immunity for family and friends in case a virulent strain of “do the right thang” breaks out in South Dakota’s conscience.