Sheriff asks Oxford County to pay for his attorney who defended him against removal

PARIS, Maine — Oxford County Sheriff Christopher Wainwright, whose job was saved by Gov. Janet Mills in May, asked the county to pay his legal fees during a commissioners meeting in Paris on Tuesday.

The three Oxford County commissioners unanimously denied the request in the meeting.

Joan Kelly, a former county employee, said she strongly opposed paying for the sheriff’s legal fees. Kelly has alleged she was unfairly disciplined for reporting concerns of employee misconduct.

“I am here just to point out the audacity of him for requesting this, knowing the investigations and everything that this county and its taxpayers have paid for because of his actions,” she said.

Wainwright submitted a bill from his attorney, Jonathan Berry, totaling $42,750. An invoice dated May 1 was marked “past due.”

The county received the request in late June, with a handwritten note specifying that the county pay the sum in equal amounts of $21,375 from two separate line items in the sheriff’s office’s budget: the “other professional services” line and the county jail’s legal services line.

While the sheriff’s request did not say what the legal costs were for, the commissioners understood them to be for the legal fees the sheriff accrued when he hired a private attorney to represent him after the commissioners asked the governor to remove him from office.

“Sheriff Wainwright has provided no itemization of the costs represented in the Request, nor provided any supporting documentation either as to the nature of the costs themselves or why such costs may or must be paid with County funds,” the commissioners wrote in a statement.

Wainwright was not present at the meeting.

The county is required to pay for legal expenses incurred in the performance of the sheriff’s public duties, but Wainwright hired Berry to represent him personally, the commissioners wrote. The sheriff hired Berry without consulting the commissioners ahead of time or receiving approval from them.

Berry’s representation of Wainwright “in the constitutional proceeding seeking Sheriff Wainwright’s removal from office for unethical, imprudent, and illegal conduct was for Sheriff Wainwright’s personal benefit and in that capacity solely,” they wrote.

The commissioners in February unanimously voted to send a 10-page complaint to the governor asking for Wainwright’s ouster for violating the law on several occasions.

The commissioners cited Wainwright for threatening a deputy in 2022 who reported him for asking the deputy to go easy on an acquaintance; for allowing men who were not certified as law enforcement to work as school resource officers despite contracts with school districts mandating certified officers; and for trading guns from the evidence room without telling county officials, conducting an auction or first trying to contact the gun owners as required under Maine law.

In response, Wainwright said he had acknowledged his mistakes but did not believe they warranted removal.

The governor is the only one with the authority under the Maine Constitution to fire sheriffs, but doing so is rare. The last time a governor appears to have approved a sheriff’s removal was in 1926 in Kennebec County.

After asking Mills to remove Wainwright from office, the governor appointed retired Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice Donald Alexander to oversee a two-day administrative hearing in Augusta.

At the hearing in April, commissioners said they had lost trust in the sheriff . Amy Dieterich, an attorney for Oxford County, said the sheriff had potentially committed theft when he traded dozens of guns from evidence to a gun shop without following the legally required steps.

What’s more, the sheriff didn’t tell the commissioners about any of his actions, Dieterich said at the hearing. Commissioners said they learned about them from news stories by the Bangor Daily News.

Meanwhile, Wainwright and his attorney said the sheriff regretted what he had said to the deputy, that giving guns to men hired as school resource officers was a mistake, and that three sheriffs before Wainwright had also sold guns from evidence without holding auctions.

While the governor did not remove Wainwright from office, she noted that her decision should not be viewed as a vindication of him, the commissioners pointed out Tuesday.