Two guilty pleas were heard in high profile cases in
Monroe County Court Monday, but a third high profile
case did not turn out as well for prosecutors.

A former Monroe County jailer who was indicted on a
statutory rape charge in June, then asked for a diversion
on the charge, decided to go ahead and plead guilty to the
charge.

Nathan Ogle, 22, Madisonville, will be sentenced on Jan.
28. A statutory rape conviction normally carries a
sentence from one to two years, but it will not be known
how much time, if any, Ogle will serve until his official
sentencing.

Ogle resigned from the Sheriff's Office on May 16 after he
told his superiors about the allegations against him.

Former Chief Deputy Dewayne Mason told The Advocate &
Democrat in May that his office turned the investigation
over to the Madisonville Police Department, who contacted
the district attorney's office. That office turned the case
over to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

Ogle, 22, did not begin his law enforcement career at the
Sheriff's Office. He was an Explorer for the Madisonville
Police Department. The Explorer program is worksite-
based at law enforcement agencies for young men and
women who have completed the eighth grade and are
ages 14 through 21. He also worked for the county's
animal shelter.

Another guilty plea was made by a Vonore woman who
pleaded to a charge of criminally negligent homicide.
Karen Ann Wallace, 42, Lakeside Road, Vonore, was
arrested in August when Sheriff's Capt. Bill Johnson
arrived at her apartment and found her performing CPR on
James Mitchell Dodson, 21, Kincaid Road, Madisonville.

Johnson said Dodson had turned blue in color.
An EMT arrived on the scene and took over the CPR, but
Dodson could not be revived.

Johnson asked Wallace if Dodson had been taking any
medication and she said she didn't know, but admitted
they had snorted some crushed hydrocodone pills earlier
in the evening. She said she went to bed and when she got
up later that night, she found Dodson on the couch, not
breathing.

Detective Travis Jones said his investigation showed
Wallace and Dodson had also been snorting Xanax in
addition to the hydrocodone.

Wallace received a one-year sentence of which she has to
serve 30 percent. She has been in jail for all but 11 days
since Aug. 16 and will receive credit for time served,
meaning she will be released not long after the first of the
year.

The case that didn't work out so well for prosecutors also
involved a criminally negligent homicide.

Charles Chester Kaczmarczyk was arrested on the charge
in June, more than a year after a death in Coker Creek was
ruled accidental.

Authorities don't think Kaczmarczyk, 53, actually killed
Robert J. McClancy, 56, at the time of his death, but rather
stood by and let him die.

Sheriff's deputies answered what they thought was a
suicide call on Unicoi Lake Road on May 15 of 2006. Initial
reports made it sound like McClancy had shot himself with
a pistol, and officers did indeed find a gun in McClancy's
hand, but there were no bullet wounds to his body.

While sheriff's detectives had misgivings about the case
from the start, after an autopsy showed it was an
overdose that killed McClancy, a previous district
attorney's administration decided not to pursue the case.

"Assistant District Attorney Jim Stutts reviewed the case
and told me to take it before the grand jury," detective
Travis Jones said at the time of the arrest. "I did and they
gave us an indictment."

Jones believes Kaczmarczyk was at the house when
McClancy overdosed, but did nothing to help.

"We knew something was out of whack when we found a
digital camera," Jones said. "One of the pictures showed
McClancy sitting in the chair, appearing to have already
died, without a gun in his hand. But when we arrived on
the scene after 5 p.m., more than two hours later, he was
sitting there with a gun in his hand."

It was the pictures that put a huge dent in the state's
case. Defense attorney's asked Judge Carroll Ross to
suppress the camera as evidence and he agreed when the
state couldn't provide a search warrant for the camera.

The suppression also took Kaczmarczyk's second
statement out of the trial, the one in which he admitted he
lied in his first statement, then told what had happened
and why the pictures showed two different things.

While the case has not been dismissed, neither was it
given a new hearing date. Court records show no official
action was taken in the case.

In a related note to the case, McClancy's wife Martha is
suing former Monroe County Deputy Chris Williams and
Monroe County for $700,000, saying he physically abused
her the day her husband died. McClancy claims Williams
used excessive force and injured her while she was trying
to get to her husband's body. This case was moved to
federal court.

Michael Thomason can be reached at 442-4575 or by e-
mail at democrat@xtn.net.