‘Not guilty’ in trial of former Tribal Council candidate

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‘Not guilty’ in trial of former Tribal Council candidate

Following the May 2017 impeachment of then-Principal Chief Patrick Lambert, tribal member Lori Taylor lost her job with the Tribal Prosecutor’s Office when charges were filed against her alleging disorderly conduct. Now, nearly a year later, the case has gone to trial with a six-member jury taking less than half an hour to return a verdict of not guilty.

“There was no truth to it. There never was no truth to it,” Taylor said. “That’s why I had to fight it. That’s why I had to go all the way to the end and show the people what happened.”

The impeachment, which spanned three days of hearings and a fourth day for deliberation and delivery of a verdict, was an explosive time in Cherokee. Many felt that the process used to remove Lambert from office was unjust and made their misgivings known — sometimes vocally — throughout the ordeal. When the Cherokee Tribal Council ultimately voted to remove Lambert from office, the atmosphere in the council house became so heated that the swearing-in of then-Vice Chief Richard Sneed to the office of principal chief had to be halted and relocated, ultimately taking place at the EBCI Justice Center.

Taylor, who had been present throughout the impeachment hearings, was in the Justice Center at the time Sneed’s swearing-in occurred.

According to a criminal complaint filed May 25, 2017, Taylor “purposely caused public inconvenience, annoyance and risk by continually making offensively coarse utterances as well as addressing offensive language to Cherokee Indian Police Department officers and public in the hallway when refused entrance by Sgt. Neil Ferguson into the main courtroom where Richard Sneed was being sworn in.”

The complaint continues to say that the building was on “emergency security lockdown” and that Taylor refused to leave when Ferguson asked her to and continued to “curse and scream” when Officer Luke Hyde escorted her out of the building. The complaint alleges that Taylor was “instrumental” in causing the “disturbance” at the Cherokee council house that prompted Sneed’s swearing-in to be relocated to the EBCI Justice Center.

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Taylor has consistently denied the allegations, refusing to take a plea deal even when the charges were upgraded to include assaulting a police officer. That charge was eventually dropped, with disorderly conduct the only offense considered at trial.

“All it was, was political,” Taylor said. “Political, political, political, but my family had to hurt and be under stress for an entire year.”

At the time of the impeachment, Taylor was working as a victim witness coordinator for the Tribal Prosecutor’s Office and running to represent Big Cove on Tribal Council. She said she was fired from her job when the charges were filed, even though they hadn’t yet been adjudicated in court, and that the situation negatively affected her run for office. Taylor ran against nine other candidates in the June 1 Primary Election, coming in third with 11.4 percent of the vote, but in the Sept. 7 General Election she came in dead last in the narrowed-down field of four, with 18.9 percent of the vote.

The trial lasted all day April 24, with Taylor taking the stand before closing statements on April 25.

According to Taylor, multiple elements of the officers’ version of events were false. In her version of the story, Ferguson was the “only person that was hostile or aggravated or angry.” She said that she left when asked to, but that the building was not on lockdown — “There were people still going to do their business, people still going to the clerk’s office. It was never on lockdown or evacuated,” she said.

Taylor said she hadn’t even been planning to go see Sneed’s swearing-in. On a video The Smoky Mountain News took during the failed swearing-in attempt at the council house, Taylor can be seen on video shouting, “They’re going to TOP (Tribal Operations Program)” when Sneed is escorted out. The TOP office is next door to the council house, more than a mile from the justice center.

According to Taylor, she went to the courthouse to fill out her timesheet, something her supervisor had been needing her to do. She hadn’t been able to do it earlier that week because Tribal Council had subpoenaed her to be present at the impeachment hearings, which lasted Monday through Thursday. The reason she’d tried to go in the courtroom, she said, is that she’d seen Chief Justice Kirk Saunooke go in there and wanted to ask him a question about the legality of the day’s proceedings — she said she didn’t know that Sneed was about to be sworn in there until Ferguson told her.

While Taylor is no longer facing charges and won’t have a criminal offense on her permanent record, the ordeal has not been without consequences. For one, she lost her job of nearly 20 years, placing financial hardship on her family. And the stress and worry related to the court case have taken their toll. She said she plans to file suit against those who she believes have acted purposely to harm her.

“You can’t do that to people,” she said. “That’s what our tribe and our government needs to learn is the days of inflicting fear and intimidation are over. People are standing up. They’re getting smart, they’re getting educated on things that are happening in our tribe, and they’re going to fight it.”

Tribal Prosecutor Justin Eason declined to comment on the case.

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