GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS: Sabra Thornton guilty of grand theft in sheriff's kickback scheme

PENSACOLA — Sabra Thornton was found guilty Friday of six counts of theft.

After seven days of testimony, a six-member jury returned the verdict after nearly eight hours of deliberation that began Thursday. After recessing for the night, the panel resumed its discussion Friday morning and reached the verdict about 2 p.m.

Click here to see a photo gallery from today in court.

“This is a great victory for the taxpayers of Okaloosa County and for all law enforcement officers who do their duty, serve the public and risk their lives every day,” prosecuting attorney Russ Edgar said following the decision.

Thornton spoke briefly to reporters outside the Escambia County Courthouse after the verdict. She declared her innocence and claimed that the public will eventually learn things “that didn’t come out at the trial.”

Thornton, who worked as chief of staff for former Okaloosa County Sheriff Charlie Morris, faces a minimum sentence of 25 months in prison and could be sentenced to as long as 61 years.

Although Edgar argued that she should be remanded to custody, Circuit Judge Linda Nobles allowed Thornton to be released on her own recognizance until sentencing.

A sentencing date will be determined March 17 or at a later date, depending on when a pre-sentencing investigation is completed.

Thornton was the third person in Morris’ administration to be convicted of theft, and was the first one found guilty on state charges.

Morris and his former administrative director, Teresa Adams, are serving federal prison sentences for fraud, theft and money laundering. They also face state charges of racketeering.

Morris, who testified at Thornton’s trial, is serving a 71-month prison term in Arkansas. However, Edgar confirmed Friday that he has remained in Florida while plea negotiations are under way.

 Thornton was the only one of five Morris employees who wasn’t charged with racketeering — conspiring to carry on a criminal enterprise — and was never formally accused of participating in the employee bonus kickback scheme that led to Morris’ downfall.

She was charged with five counts of grand theft and one count of theft as the primary beneficiary of Morris’ theft of taxpayers’ money.

He used most of those funds to pay Thornton’s bills and buy her gifts. He gave her an $80,000 job that didn’t require her to work, prosecutors said, and equipped her with Sheriff’s Office equipment she wasn’t entitled to.

The six counts of theft against Thornton were:

l One count for a salary she didn’t work to earn;

l One count for an $8,400 lease payment buyout obtained from Morris;

l One count for $40,000 Morris gave her to pay off credit card debt;

l One count for use of Sheriff’s Office vehicles she wasn’t entitled to use;

l One count for use of a Sheriff’s Office fuel card she wasn’t entitled to use; and

l One count for use of firearms, a laptop computer and a cell phone she wasn’t entitled to use.

Her attorney, Mark Welton, called the verdict “completely unexpected.”

“I believe that Ms. Thornton handled it with grace and poise,” Welton said.

“It was an honor to represent Sabra Thornton,” added Brad Stewart, Welton’s co-counsel.

Welton said an appeal of the verdict will be discussed.

Trials for Morris, Adams and three others — former Chief Deputy Michael Coup, former Finance Director Sandra Norris and former Information Technology Specialist David Yacks — are scheduled to begin June 1. They all are charged with racketeering and face a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

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2:45 p.m. - After the verdict was read, prosecutor Russ Edgar said, “This is a great victory for the taxpayers of Okaloosa County and for all law enforcement officers who do their duty, serve the public and risk their lives everyday.”

No sentencing date was set but that will be determined March 17 when the status of a pre-sentencing investigation for Thornton is determined.

Having been found guilty of the six counts, Thornton faces a minimum sentence of 25 months in state prison and a maximum in the neighborhood of 70 years.

She was released on her own recognizance until sentencing. The judge issued a stern warning that if she didn’t appear in court, it would not go well for her at sentencing.

2:10 p.m. - Sabra Thornton was found guilty on all counts against her. She was charged with six counts of grand theft. More to come.

1:45 p.m. - It was just announced that a verdict has been reached in the Sabra Thornton grand theft case. People are filing back into the courtroom. More to come.

10:00 a.m. - An eerie quiet reigned Friday morning outside of courtroom 307 at the Escambia County Courthouse.

Tucked away in quarters somewhere behind the courtroom proper, six jurors deliberated the fate of Sabra Thornton. The jurors began deliberations Thursday at 3:00 and were dismissed by Circuit Court Judge Linda Nobles at 8:15 p.m.

They reconvened Friday morning at 9 a.m.

Outside the locked doors of the courtroom, in a hallway that had bustled all week with would-be witnesses, attorneys and trial onlookers, no one connected to the trial could be seen. Thornton and her lawyers were somewhere nearby and Assistant State Attorney Russ Edgar and his staff were in their first floor offices.

The witnesses were no longer needed and spectators had apparently found somewhere else to hang out.

Thornton is accused of manipulating “corrupt and needy” former Okaloosa County Sheriff Charlie Morris into stealing thousands in taxpayer dollars to buy her gifts, pay her bills and employ her in a job she didn’t have to work at.

“She is just as complicit (in Morris’ highly publicized kickback scheme) as Charlie Morris,” Edgar had told jurors in his closing argument rebuttal. “She used his corruption and need to exploit him.”

Read Thursday's report.

PENSACOLA - Circuit Court Judge Linda Nobles allowed jurors to deliberate until 8:15 p.m., Thursday before sending them home for the night.

They are considering a six count complaint of grand theft against Sabra Thornton, former chief of staff for the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.

The three men and three women serving as jurors in the grand theft trial of Sabra Thornton declined an offer to go home for the evening and will deliberate until 7:30 p.m. or they reach a verdict.

Prosecutor Russ Edgar, in his closing remarks, had called Thornton’s “a case of crimes of opportunity.”

“The defendant took advantage of opportunities presented to her to take money and items she was not entitled to,” he said.

He said the man Thornton had taken advantage of was former Okaloosa County Sheriff Charlie Morris, presently serving a 71-month federal prison sentence for overseeing a bonus kickback scam that netted him and several key employees thousands in taxpayer dollars.

“She took advantage of a man who was weak but had issues of ego,” Edgar said.

Edgar has contended throughout the trial that Thornton led Morris on by encouraging him to think she would one day be his lover, but that all the while she, though married, maintained contact with Mark McHargue, with whom she’d conducted an affair for seven years.

The manipulation began in earnest at dinners the two had on Dec. 9 and Dec. 11, 2008, Edgar said, when Thornton met Morris at a dinner she’d arranged and told him she’d broken off her relationship with McHargue. At that time she’d also presented him with a list of grievances she had over her October firing, which Morris testified was for failure to show up for work.

“At that dinner she was baiting the hook, making him believe he had wronged her,” Edgar said.

Morris rehired Thornton following the dinner, though he hid her employment, and her $80,000 salary from all but a few select Sheriff’s Office employees.

And for three months after the dinner, up until Morris was arrested Feb. 27 by the FBI, Thornton teased him along, Edgar said, traveling with him, occasionally having sex with him and encouraging him to buy her expensive gifts.

He said her accepting a salary when she wasn’t working amounted to grand theft. So, he argued, was taking financial payments to cover her debts and using Sheriff’s Office issue equipment even though she lived in Tallahassee.

“It may be fun for some people to have a mistress on the payroll, making $80,000 a year, driving a company car and living in another county 150 miles away,” Edgar argued. “That may be fun for some people, but it’s not a reasonable expenditure of Sheriff’s Office funds and that makes it theft,” he told the jury.

Defense attorney Mark Welton called the grand theft case against his client a “modern day witch hunt.”

He told them that Morris was the only person to blame “in this case” for illegal activity. It wasn’t Sabra Thornton who was playing Charlie Morris to profit from his ill-gotten gain, but Charlie Morris who was playing Sabra Thornton, Welton argued.

“No one in this case is to blame but Charlie Morris. Charlie Morris was the one playing his employees,” Welton said.

He called on jurors to use common sense to see through the state’s arguments against Thornton.

“The logical inference the state wants you to make are illogical. They don’t allow you to arrive at the conclusions the state wants you to arrive at.”

He painted Morris the sheriff of a man who thought of himself as “the king of Okaloosa County” who wanted to show everyone how grandly he could do things. He was eager, Welton said, for people to know that Thornton, who took the stand to deny she’d ever had anything but a professional relationship with Morris, was indeed his mistress.

Welton went count by count through the six counts of theft Thornton faces. He notified the jury that they had to find intent to convict her on each and every count.

The first count, that she’d stolen her salary by not actually working for the Sheriff’s Office, held no weight, Welton argued, because as Thornton herself testified, she believe she was entitled to it. The funds she was handed by the sheriff, Welton argued, were presented as a gift, so there could be no intent to steal.

She also believed she was entitled, or assigned by the sheriff, the vehicle, weapon, laptop, cell phone and fuel card she received.

“I agree with the state that Charlie Morris was corrupt and needy,” Welton said. “In electing him sheriff … he was handed a cook jar, his own bank. Is Sabra Thornton guilty of theft because he used and misused our public funding? No.”

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7:00 P.M. UPDATE - The three men and three women serving as jurors in the grand theft trial of Sabra Thornton declined an offer to go home for the evening and will deliberate until 7:30 p.m. or they reach a verdict.

Circuit Court Judge Linda Nobles called the jurors into the courtroom where Thornton’s seven-day trial was conducted and presented them that choice. They deliberated briefly before returning word they’d like to continue.

3:40 P.M. UPDATE - Closing arguments concluded in the grand theft trial of former Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office chief of staff Sabra Thornton. The jury received instructions from the judge and got the case shortly after 3:30 p.m.

In his closing argument, defense attorney Mark Welton called the case against his client a “modern-day witch hunt.”

He told them that former Okaloosa County Sheriff Charlie Morris, now serving 71 months in federal prison, was the only person to blame in this case for illegal activity. It wasn’t Sabra Thornton who was playing Charlie Morris to profit from his ill-gotten gain, but Charlie Morris who was playing Sabra Thornton, Welton argued.

“No one in this case is to blame but Charlie Morris. Charlie Morris was the one playing his employees,” Welton said.

Welton went count by count through the six counts of theft Thornton faces. He notified the jury that they had to find intent to convict her on each and every count.

The first count, that she’d stolen her salary by not actually working for the Sheriff’s Office, held no weight, Welton argued, because as Thornton herself testified, she believe she was entitled to it. The funds she was handed by the sheriff, Welton argued, were presented as a gift, so there could be no intent to steal.

She also believed she was entitled, or assigned by the sheriff, the vehicle, weapon, laptop, cell phone and fuel card she received.

“I agree with the state that Charlie Morris was corrupt and needy,” Welton said. “In electing him sheriff … he was handed a cook jar, his own bank. Is Sabra Thornton guilty of theft because he used and misused our public funding? No.”

11:30 A.M. UPDATE -- In his closing argument prosecuting attorney Russ Edgar called grand theft defendant Sabra Thornton “an old fashioned girl in an old fashioned profession.”

He established for jurors a timeline between Dec. 18, 2008 and Feb. 28, 2009, and laid out how Thornton had “played” former Okaloosa County Sheriff Charlie Morris.

Edgar said there was no evidence Thornton “did much work” as an employee after being rehired by Morris in December. He called a $40,000 gift from the sheriff to her, from money he’d obtained through his illegal bonus kickback scheme, “the largest kickback of the entire scheme.”

He offered the jurors the opportunity to infer that the two had conspired to obtain that money and that Thornton had laid $10,000 from the payment aside in case someone followed a paper trail to the taxable portion of the money.

He used fishing references. He said in December Thornton told Morris, described as a “corrupt and needy” man that she had ended a long-time extramarital affair and was available.

That sent Morris into a giddy tailspin, according to Edgar.

“She set that hook so good, this time he wasn’t going to spit it out,” he said.

Morris then found a job, or the pretense of a job, for Thornton, Edgar said. He used illegally obtained funds to pay off a lease contract that didn’t need to be paid off he said. He gave her an SUV and Sheriff’s Office equipment and a gas card “items that someone not working for the Sheriff’s Office was not entitled to.”

“In the next two-and-a-half months, in this so called professional relationship she called him 117 times and he called her 187 times,” Edgar said.

He said evidence shows Morris gave her as presents items from a list she’d given him and that “she was being paid not for work but for her company.”

“The question is, did she obtain money under false pretenses and she did obtain it that way,” Edgar said. “She did and therefore you should find the defendant guilty as charged.”

Edgar’s lengthy closing argument was still continuing at 11:30 a.m.