Dorsey Blasts Fritz Over Failing To Account For Drug Funds, Lying About Gambling
COMPTON (October 1998) --- St. Mary’s States Attorney Walter B. Dorsey accused Richard Fritz, his former deputy who is running as a Republican to succeed him, with maliciously and falsely attacking his political enemies while serving as deputy states attorney as well as failing to account for thousands of dollars in drug funds administered by Fritz in 1992. Dorsey also called Fritz’s attempt to convince citizens that would be a tough antidrug prosecutor a "masquerade" and he promised to "unmask" Fritz .
Walter Dorsey;
Dorsey said;
"The Office of States Attorney of St. Mary’s County is very important and it should not be used as a way to attack political enemies or to attack anyone and hold them up to public ridicule. One cannot talk about what took place in a Grand Jury room if an indictment is not forthcoming, in order to protect the Grand Jury process. The same is true if an investigation does not yield an indictment or criminal charges."
Dorsey;
" I am going to say some things tonight that I could not before," warned Dorsey. "You may remember some articles in the paper a few years ago, they surfaced because Richard Fritz misrepresented to the local press that he had evidence that Sheriff Wayne Pettit and Commissioner Eddie Bailey were gambling with drug dealers and prostitutes in an illegal gambling hall."
"Fritz later told me he knew nothing about it when the articles were published," said Dorsey. "I met with the officials of the Maryland State Police and they reported to me that they had no evidence of Bailey and Pettit playing cards or being in the Cinderblock Building."
"The only evidence that Fritz had was a drug dealer named Gary Lee Stanley, whom he gave $4,000 in drug fund money to probably play cards with," said Dorsey. "Fritz misrepresented to the press that these public officials were gambling in there, he used this office to embarrass Pettit and Bailey for political purposes because he supported their opponents."
Dorsey said that Fritz knew that the state police reported to him that they had not been able to collaborate the information from the drug dealer after they sent an undercover investigator in to gamble at the Cinderblock Building. When Fritz then turned around and gave out information about the gambling investigation, which the state police say did not produce any incriminating evidence against the two officials, Dorsey equated that act with revealing Grand Jury testimony.Following the publication of several articles about the alleged presence of the sheriff and the county commissioner in the Cinderblock Building the two filed a $1.5 million libel suit against the newspaper. Prior to publication of the articles, Pettit and Bailey failed to comment on the allegations when asked for comment, an act that contributed to their plight.
After a year and a half of legal proceedings, the newspaper proved it’s reliance upon Fritz, as a public official, as the source of information on Pettit and Bailey being in the building. Fritz gave a affidavit certifying he supplied information about the sheriff and commissioner frequenting the gambling hall to the newspaper. Upon discovering that fact, the two plaintiffs were forced to drop their suit as the newspaper had every right to report to it’s readers the information it relied upon from Fritz, as deputy states attorney, to be accurate and true, and therefore, did not act in a malicious manner.
Fritz Lied To Newspaper, and Public Dorsey said after the speech last Thursday that he felt Fritz’s misuse of prosecutorial powers was outrageous, in that he apparently deliberately misled the newspaper about the truth concerning Bailey and Pettit; that not only did the former prosecutor lie and hurt them, but he also lied to everyone in St. Mary’s County.
"We have just seen this vividly demonstrated that when the president admitted that he lied to the nation when he spoke on television in January, that when a public official lies to a newspaper about a material fact, that he is lying to the entire community as well when that information is published and relied upon by the publisher and the readers to be true," said Dorsey.
"A public official, which is what Fritz was when he was a member of my office," said Dorsey, "has to tell the public the truth, and in this matter he did not. He thrived on manipulating, lying and misleading and therefore, by having the newspaper, Pettit and Bailey all fighting each other, he was able to stand aside with amusement at the results of his political manipulations with ST. MARY’S TODAY taking the sheriff and the commissioner to task for being in the gambling hall when they actually were not."
Dorsey said that when he confronted Fritz about the information contained in the articles; that Fritz denied having contacted the state police about the alleged activities in the Cinderblock Building and the alleged presence of the sheriff and the commissioner.
Dorsey said that Fritz claimed the state police probe at the Cinderblock Building began as an offshoot of a gambling operation in Charlotte Hall.
That operation was later halted after state police conducted a raid and made several arrests.
When Dorsey went back to the state police about the matter, they gave him a copy of the letter Fritz had sent them as an official request for an investigation, after having it typed by his wife who works in the prosecutor’s office, requesting the state police investigate the presence of the two officials in the gambling hall which formerly was located next to the Sign of the Whale Liquors in Lexington Park.
Dorsey said when he confronted Fritz about lying to him that there were also other issues taking place at the same time which led to Fritz walking out, quitting his job with no notice or regard for the several drug cases he was handling and returning to the practice of law which has led him to become the principal attorney for all of the local drug dealers.Fritz ran for election as states attorney in 1994, a race he lost in the Democratic Primary and is running once again this year, but now as a newly minted Republican.
Fritz Repeatedly Failed To Give Accounting For Drug FundFritz was also accused by Dorsey on Thursday of failing to ever account for thousands of dollars that passed through a drug fund over which the deputy prosecutor had control.
"We had a drug fund that was not audited by the county, but was administered by Fritz," said Dorsey. "He would not account for the money. I told him to give an accounting of the money and instead, he quit."
"I repeatedly asked Fritz for a proper accounting of the money, thousands of dollars, and he never provided any such accounting," explained Dorsey in an interview after the rally. "He would direct that checks be issued to him and not to any specific person. No record was ever furnished as to what then happened to the money. $3,200 in supposedly ‘flash money’ which is never spent and always returned has never been accounted for."
Fritz, at the time, responded to the warning of the state police that they would not trust him with secret information, by saying he would drop cases in which they failed to give him prior information."Fritz has masqueraded as being tough on drugs long enough and it is time to unmask him," said Dorsey. "He is the attorney for all the drug dealers in the county. He portrays himself as if he is the opponent of drug dealers, but the facts prove otherwise."
"In the last few years that he was my deputy and in charge of the narcotics division, there were 302 drug distribution cases, serious cases, and there could reasons to drop a few cases, but not the 201 cases that Fritz personally dropped," pointed out Dorsey about Fritz’s record.
"But now that Fritz is campaigning, he has the audacity to say he will fight the drug dealers," said Dorsey at the meeting.
Later, the chief prosecutor stated bluntly; "Fritz has lied repeatedly about these matters. His record as a prosecutor was certainly not what he portrayed to the public and now he makes a very good living off the drug dealers, many of whom, pay their attorney fees in the same cash they make from those who are addicted to and use illegal narcotics --- the very same cash generated from the two-thirds of crime, chiefly burglaries of homes and businesses."
Richard Fritz did not return a call requesting comment on Dorsey’s charges prior to press deadline.
. One person even said that before this election that the ST Mary's Today had quite a few unflattering stories about Mattingly back in the day but now has amazingly reversed course when suporting Mattingly was an opportunity to strike at his even larger enemy Fritz.
