Brent Swadley’s time behind bars has been eventful after the 56-year-old restaurant chain owner was convicted on six fraud and conspiracy counts May 28 in Oklahoma County District Court. Since then, Swadley has made headlines for phone call recordings released to the media, losing part of a finger in an altercation with an Oklahoma County guard and, most recently, being transferred to the Grady County Jail in Chickasha on July 2.
Swadley’s transfer to another jail an hour away came as a surprise to his defense team and may have been prompted by fears for Swadley’s safety, as well as concerns over negative media coverage of the troubled Oklahoma County Jail’s most high-profile detainee.
“Brent Swadley, his family, and his defense played no role — directly or indirectly — in having him transferred,” Swadley’s attorneys said in a statement Friday afternoon.
In the phone calls released to the media, Swadley had expressed concern for his safety.
“Those people just want to touch me and eat me. These people here, they just want to kill me,” he said. “I’m with killers now. They’ve had murderers here and everything.”
Swadley’s attorneys have also sparred with state prosecutors. On July 2, attorney Robert Don Gifford filed an application for injunctive relief on behalf of Swadley over the state’s release of phone calls with his attorneys to the media. In the court filing, Gifford said the state has been “surreptitiously recording” Swadley since he was booked into the Oklahoma County Jail on May 28.
“By deliberately intruding upon confidential and protected communications between Mr. Swadley and his counsel, the state has engaged in conduct that strikes at the heart of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and casts a shadow on the fairness and integrity of these adversarial proceedings. Immediate judicial intervention is necessary to stop the violation, neutralize the taint caused by the state’s intrusion, remedy the prejudice caused to Mr. Swadley, and restore fairness and integrity to these proceedings,” Gifford wrote in the filing. “In a nearly identical case involving Kansas prosecutors intercepting privileged calls (that played a similar recording at the beginning as here), the court was so troubled by the government’s conduct that it ordered a special master to conduct an investigation. The court must intervene immediately to remedy the prejudice inflicted upon Mr. Swadley.”
In the state’s response, Assistant Attorney General Gayland Gieger denied listening to calls between Swadley and his attorneys.
“As interns and/or attorneys for the state reviewed the defendant’s calls, despite the said notifications and procedure for attorneys, counsel for the defendant, including Peter Scimeca, participated in recorded calls with the defendant,” Gieger wrote. “When counsel for the defendant was identified as a participant on the call, the state immediately stopped its review of that call. Therefore, while the jail’s phone system may document a call from Mr. Scimeca or another attorney of record herein was accessed by the state, none of those calls were reviewed or listened to by the state’s attorneys beyond identification of the participating party who was provided the verbal notification on the call as referenced above.”l
Jail calls released to the media included a prerecorded message stating that calls were recorded at the beginning of each call. Because of that, Geiger said Swadley should not have expected privacy.
“Even if the state had reviewed Swadley’s jail calls with attorneys herein (which it did not), any claimed privilege is deemed waived upon the participants receiving notice the calls were recorded and subject to monitoring/review,” Gieger wrote.
Swadley’s next scheduled court date is set for July 16 on an appeal bond hearing and formal sentencing.
The jury that convicted Swadley recommended a 10-year prison sentence and a $75,000 fine. District Court Judge Susan Stallings can accept the jury’s recommendation or modify Swadley’s sentence. If an appeal bond is granted, Swadley would be released from jail, likely with some restrictions, while his appeal plays out.
