OKLAHOMA CITY – A judge presiding over the major embezzlement trial against the co-founders of Epic Charter School is facing bias charges as a defense attorney accuses her of being a “prosecution representative.”
District Judge Susan Stallings denied the motion to disqualify her during a hearing Thursday in Oklahoma District Court. Both she and prosecutors from the attorney general’s office disagreed with the defense’s argument that she was unable to be impartial.
“The court concludes that many assumptions were made but there are no facts,” Stallings said.
Defense attorney Joe White, who filed the motion, said he plans to appeal Stallings’ decision. The case would first go before the Oklahoma County Chief Judge, a jurisdiction that district judges share on a rotating basis. If he is denied again, White could take the case to the Oklahoma Court of Appeals.
It is not uncommon for a judge to receive a motion to recuse, but most are resolved in a confidential hearing. Far fewer disqualification cases are ever contested in a public hearing.
White said Stallings should be disqualified because of her professional history with the Oklahoma County Attorney’s Office, which investigated Epic and brought charges against the school’s co-founders.
Stallings is a former Oklahoma County prosecutor and headed the county’s domestic violence unit.
“You may have been involved at least in the hearing of information on the Epic case,” White told the judge during the hearing. “There is reasonable evidence, reasonable grounds for me to question your impartiality. What matters is not the reality of the bias, but its appearance.”
Stallings said she was unaware of the Epic investigation until the charges were filed years after she left the prosecutor’s office.
Prosecutors charged Epic co-founders Ben Harris and David Chaney in 2022 with organized crime and a range of financial crimes, accusing the defendants of creating a complex scheme to enrich themselves with millions in public education funds. Harris and Chaney deny ever misusing taxpayer money.
The Attorney General’s Office has now taken over criminal prosecution in the case.
Former Epic CFO Josh Brock faces many of the same allegations as Harris and Chaney. He has since agreed to testify against the co-founders in exchange for a deal that would save him from a prison sentence.
Although more than two years have passed, the legal proceedings are still at an early stage due to numerous delays.
A one-week preliminary hearing presented the evidence against Harris and Chaney in March, but one week was not enough to go through all the witness statements.
Special Judge Jason Glidewell presided over the preliminary hearing. He will decide whether prosecutors have sufficient probable cause to move the case forward before Stallings, Glidewell’s supervisor.
The preliminary hearing was scheduled to continue in May, but it was again delayed by a motion to disqualify Chaney’s lawyerGary Wood. Brock’s lawyers said Wood had previously represented their client and should therefore not be allowed to cross-examine him.
Wood denies ever having represented Brock.
In an unexpected turn of events, Stallings chose to conduct the Woods disqualification hearing himself rather than appoint the special judge overseeing the preliminary hearing.
White, who represents Harris, said Stallings’ work history came to light during meetings before Wood’s hearing. He said she should have disclosed the information sooner.
The attempt to force Stallings out of the case further delays an already stalled case. It remains unclear when the preliminary hearing will resume or when a decision will be made on Woods’ motion to disqualify.
White complained that Stallings could not remain impartial at Woods’ disqualification hearing because her old boss, former Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater, could be called as a witness.
Prater’s former first assistant Jimmy Harmon said there was “no” basis whatsoever to fire Stallings and called White’s complaints an attempt at “judge shopping.”
Harmon, who is now chief of the attorney general’s criminal division, said all information about the Epic investigation remained between him and the district attorney. He said Stallings would not have known details because the team leaders did not discuss ongoing, sensitive investigations in front of each other.
“That is not how Mr. Prater ran his office,” Harmon said during the court hearing on Thursday.
White also alleged that Harmon disclosed details of confidential negotiations between Prater and Wood – information that he said compromised the judge’s impartiality. The information was disclosed in a witness list Harmon submitted for the hearing on Wood’s disqualification.
The witness list said Prater would testify that Wood tried to negotiate a settlement on behalf of Harris, Chaney and Brock. The settlement, which never materialized, would have involved the defendants paying a “substantial sum up front as restitution” in exchange for not filing charges, the testimony said.
The fact that Stallings now has knowledge of this information is disqualifying and “reeks of bias,” White said.
Prater declined to comment on the disqualification proceedings against Stallings and Wood.
“I believe it is appropriate that all information about the Epic case come to light in future court hearings,” he told Oklahoma Voice.
Get the morning’s headlines straight to your inbox
