Sammy William Ray v. Mississippi Department of Public Safety

172 So. 3d 199, 2014 Miss. App. LEXIS 598, 2014 WL 5334783
CourtCourt of Appeals of Mississippi
DecidedOctober 21, 2014
Docket2013-SA-00972-COA
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 172 So. 3d 199 (Sammy William Ray v. Mississippi Department of Public Safety) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Mississippi primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Sammy William Ray v. Mississippi Department of Public Safety, 172 So. 3d 199, 2014 Miss. App. LEXIS 598, 2014 WL 5334783 (Mich. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinions

BARNES, J.,

for the Court:

¶ 1. Trooper First Class Sammy Ray joined the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol (a component of the Department of Public Safety and hereafter referred to as the “Highway Patrol” or the “Department”) in 2003. During the summer of 2009, Ray issued tickets to four motorists, which formed the basis of charges leading to his dismissal from the Highway Patrol for falsifying documents. Ray appealed the dismissal to the Employee Appeals Board (EAB), where the hearing officer upheld the termination. Ray appealed to the full EAB, which also affirmed his termination. Ray next appealed to the Hinds County Circuit Court, which likewise affirmed the EAB’s decision.

¶ 2. Ray now appeals to this Court, claiming wrongful termination and seeking reinstatement. Ray raises four issues on appeal:

1. A Mississippi Department of Employment Security ruling that Ray had not committed misconduct collaterally estopped the Department of Public Safety from finding that Ray falsified records.
2. The hearing officer erroneously considered evidence other than the four tickets with which Ray was charged and upheld the termination on the basis of the uncharged conduct.
3. The termination was based on the wrong legal standard, which removed . the intent-to-defraud element.
4. The EAB ruling was not supported by substantial evidence.
A. There was no record support for the four specific violations.
B. Ray’s conduct was distinguishable from other cases involving termination.

Upon review, we agree that Ray was terminated for conduct other than that with which he was charged and that his due-process rights were violated. The Department has conceded that it has no other proof of the specific charged offenses, and we further find there is no substantial evidence to support the EAB’s ruling. See LaCour v. Claiborne Cnty. Sch. Dist., 119 So.3d 1128, 1132 (¶ 20) (Miss.Ct.App.2013) (An administrative agency’s decision will not be disturbed “unless the order ... is not supported by substantial evidence!.]”). Accordingly, we reverse the circuit court’s decision, upholding Ray’s termination, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

[201]*201FACTS

¶ 3. The charges against Ray were limited to his encounters with four specific motorists: Kacie Patterson, Joshua Ulmer, William Thomas, and Sandra Carpenter.1 Ray was charged, on these four specific occasions, with falsification of records by using personal information from the motorists he stopped and ticketed, to write additional “ghost tickets.” The Performance Review Board, which terminated Ray, made no findings of fact, other than that the charges were “founded.”

¶ 4. Between his termination in January 2010, and his hearing before the EAB hearing officer in January 2011, Ray had a hearing before the Mississippi Department of Employment Security (MDES). Ray was awarded unemployment benefits. The Highway Patrol appealed, and an administrative law judge found that the Highway Patrol had failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Ray had engaged in misconduct and affirmed the award of unemployment compensation to Ray.2

¶ 5. Ray received a de novo trial before an EAB hearing officer, where the following facts were developed. Although there is no regulation defining “ghost tickets,” testimony at Ray’s hearing established that it was generally understood to mean a trooper’s writing of tickets for offenses that never occurred.3 There are no regulations forbidding writing ghost tickets, but the parties agree that writing tickets for fictitious offenses is falsification of records and is a terminable offense. Throughout these proceedings, Ray has denied doing this.

¶ 6. During Ray’s termination proceedings, the Department identified four prior instances of troopers writing ghost tickets, which led to their terminations. Ronald Wilburn was terminated in 1996, for writing tickets for offenses that had not occurred to motorists after they left traffic stops, which he would then attempt to dismiss after they were turned in to the court. This resulted in motorists having charges lodged against them of which they had no notice. Wilburn’s termination was upheld in Wilburn v. Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol, 795 So.2d 575, 578 (¶ 11) (Miss.Ct.App.2001). William Berry was terminated in 1999, for issuing numerous tickets to individuals who were unaware that they were being given a ticket. An audit of Berry’s tickets for a five-month period revealed that 212 out of 345 citations fell into this category. Berry would turn the tickets in to the court, and the motorists would have to pay fines for offenses of which they were unaware. John Butcher was terminated in 2002, for turning in reports to his supervisors claiming 537 tickets written while only filing four tickets with the court. Jerry Merrill was terminated in 2009, for fondling a female motorist’s breast during a traffic stop, not turning over seized drugs, and writing tickets days after a motorist had been stopped that were not for legitimate offenses.

¶ 7. The Department contended that Ray also had written “ghost tickets” for which there was no valid offense, in an [202]*202attempt to “pad” or increase his ticket numbers. Ray was accused of violating Department of Public Safety General Order 23/01, III, B., 3, d.4 The offense outlined in this section is the: “falsification of records, such as, but not limited to, vouchers, reports, leave records, employment applications, or other official state documents.” The penalties for a group III offense include termination.5

¶ 8. All witnesses testified that there is no “quota system” requiring troopers to write a certain number of tickets. The testimony at the hearing made it abundantly clear, however, that troopers felt pressure from their supervisors to “keep their numbers up.” Department witnesses testified that this simply meant “do your job” and that there were plenty of offenses on the roads justifying tickets for diligent troopers. A former trooper testified that troopers could be punished for not keeping their number up by being put on “directed patrol” or “line patrol.”6

¶ 9. There are four copies of each sequentially numbered ticket written. One copy goes to the Commissioner of the Highway Patrol; one copy goes to the justice court; one copy is the officer’s copy which goes to his master sergeant along with the trooper’s ticket-control sheet; and the final copy is for the motorist. The ticket-control sheet lists all tickets, whether they are voided or not.

¶ 10. Ray testified that, on occasion, he would write “warning” tickets, and that for these warning tickets, Ray would write “void” on the justice court and Commissioner’s copies and not write “void” on the motorist copy or the copy turned in to the master sergeant. Since his tickets to the justice court were “voided,” no adverse consequences were possible for the motorists. Ray would shred the undelivered motorist’s copy of his voided tickets. Ray and other witnesses testified that it is a common practice, when giving out warning tickets, not to hand the ticket physically to the motorist because it causes confusion about whether the motorist had to respond to the ticket.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
172 So. 3d 199, 2014 Miss. App. LEXIS 598, 2014 WL 5334783, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sammy-william-ray-v-mississippi-department-of-public-safety-missctapp-2014.