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Some money did turn up, days later when Spaulding texted the chief and asked him over to his house only to reveal three evidence bags of cash. He had been securing the money, he told the chief, and at the chief's direction returned the bags containing $17,611.
But not all bills are the same. Unique serial codes make it possible to tell when money went into circulation, and investigators determined that about $5,700 of these bills were not in circulation when they were supposedly seized. And during the time period when Spaulding had access to the evidence room, investigators found, there were patterns of Spaulding accessing the room, leaving the room, and then depositing money into a mortgage account that otherwise wouldn't be able to clear the next mortgage payment.
Spaulding was placed on administrative leave in 2017 and resigned after a trial judge issued a guilty verdict.
Allen insisted "we're not denying that there was misconduct." But it should not rise to a criminal offense, she said, because the statute barring that behavior is too vague to clearly prohibit his conduct. It did not clearly define "fraudulent intent" or "unwarranted privilege," Allen argued.
Justice Frank Gaziano, visibly amused, suggested that this was essentially a "no-interest loan," which would have a fair market value of the money used over the period of time. "So it's the best loan available," and a misuse of the benefits of Spaulding's office unavailable to anyone else, Gaziano said. "I mean, he's using this evidence as a private piggy bank."
The issue goes beyond the police department technically getting its money back, Assistant Attorney General Tara Johnston noted in court. This was cash, yes, but it was specifically evidence room cash. More than 100 bills were replaced.
"Two of the cases were ongoing when Mr. Spaulding took this money from them," she said. "He was breaking chain of custody. He was compromising cases. He put back bills, but as we know, they weren't the same bills."
The question before the court was, in effect, whether a police officer who is one of three people that has access to this evidence room would understand that borrowing money to pay their mortgage would subject them to the criminal penalties.
Spaulding's team said the law is broadly written to prevent a public employee from "becoming involved in a situation which could result in a conflict or give the appearance of a conflict."
Under their interpretation, they wrote, a person of common intelligence "would not understand that borrowing money from the evidence room" would be a criminal violation of a statute.
The state ethics commission, in a filing arguing that common experience and common sense supports the state's interpretation of the statute, explained that the purpose of the law is "to prohibit the use of public office for personal gain to protect the public interest and promote the public's confidence in the integrity of its government."
Unwarranted privilege is understood to mean someone has access to something of value because of their unique position, the ethics office wrote. This method of getting a loan is simply not available to most people, it noted.
In this case, the meaning of the terms and their application to this specific case "is obvious," Kafker wrote in the decision. "An officer of 'ordinary intelligence' would know, or have reason to know, that using money in the evidence room to pay his personal expenses would constitute an unwarranted privilege. This is true even if the officer intends to pay the money back at some point."
Even treating it as a loan could be making a jump, though not one the court decided to engage with in its decision, Justice Gabrielle Wolohojian said during oral arguments.
"There's certainly sufficient evidence," she said, "to conclude it only became a loan once he realized he was being caught."
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