Former Greene DA found guilty of official oppression in seizure of ‘stop the bleed’ kits
Ex-chief detective not guilty of all charges
A judge delivered a not guilty verdict Friday on nearly all charges filed against a former Greene County district attorney and his former chief detective who had been accused of conspiring to misuse their posts for malicious prosecutions and investigations of political rivals.
Former District Attorney David Russo, 49, of Waynesburg, was found guilty in the non-jury trial of a misdemeanor charge of official oppression for seizing “stop the bleed” kits via a search warrant with no legitimate basis for a criminal investigation or probable cause. Fayette County Senior Court Judge John Wagner acquitted Russo of five other charges.
Russo’s former chief detective Zachary Sams, 42, of McDonald, was found not guilty of all six counts against him.
The “stop the bleed” kits, designed for mass casualty events, had been purchased by the county through grants; a state task force had earmarked the kits for trained medics.
Detectives working for Russo had looked into the kits in response to a shooting outside the Circle K in Carmichaels where police complained they did not have equipment to aid the three gunshot victims. They seized 14 kits from the county 911 offices, as well as four ambulances where they had been equipped, moving them to his office before later returning them to the 911 center.
“This defendant took an oath to serve and protect citizens of Greene County as its highest-ranking law enforcement official, but instead abused that power to settle personal feuds,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said in a statement Friday. “By having these kits illegally seized, the defendant left emergency responders with fewer tools to help residents. This prosecution and verdict show that no one is above the law.”
Russo was acquitted on six other counts, including official oppression of and retaliation against former Commissioner Michael Belding and Solicitor Robert Eugene Grimm, who Russo had charged with numerous misdemeanors regarding their handling of the second drawing of lots to determine the order in which candidates would be listed on the 2023 primary ballot. The state attorney general’s office later dropped the charges for lack of evidence.
The accusations against Russo included conspiring with Sams.
“We’re close to 750 days now, but ultimately I’ve been vindicated,” Sams said after the hearing. “It was a long road, but this is the way the system’s supposed to play out. This is the way it’s supposed to work. It’s when the system’s interrupted, or judges don’t get the opportunity to make rulings that issues start coming up in the way the system works. But thankfully, this week, it worked properly, and the truth is out there now.”
Sams said he had been fairly confident throughout the trial that he would be acquitted.
“I’ve been waiting for somebody to do the right thing in this case for a very long time, and I have always believed that that was going to happen, and it ultimately did,” he said.
Russo and his attorney, Stephen Stallings, declined comment after Friday’s verdict.
Wagner, who presided over the case, drew a distinction between errors of misfeasance — the negligent performance of lawful actions — and malfeasance, or intentional wrongdoing.
The misfeasance had already been addressed by voters, who led to Russo’s defeat in a 2023 primary, Wagner said. That left the accusations of malfeasance, and whether they amounted to criminal conduct.
It was in the case of the “stop the bleed” kits, where Wagner said Russo had failed to articulate a valid reason for obtaining a search warrant to seize the kits.
“I still don’t know what the crime was,” Wagner said.
In several points in his explanation, Wagner pointed out things he would have handled differently — instead of tasking a chief detective with a mission to “root out corruption” in Greene County, he would have delegated investigations to local departments. He bemoaned the contentious relationship between Russo and the county Board of Commissioners, where “there’s enough angst, emotion and anger … to have re-created the Battle of Midway.”
But for most of the charges, Wagner said, he couldn’t prove criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
Sams may have been “overzealous” in some cases, but had thoroughly documented his investigations and reached out to others for advice, such as neighboring counties in the 911 case or an elections expert with the governor’s office, Wagner said.
In the election scenario, Wagner said, if he had worked in the district’s attorney’s office, he would have recommended candidates who felt they were wronged by the decision to draw lots for a second time to pursue civil actions, like filing an appeal with the president judge.
However, he said, the elections expert Sams consulted left the door open by mentioning criminal violations in the elections code, even if they’re rarely used.
“It doesn’t seem like he was willy-nilly filing charges against people … he seemed to have investigated these things to their logical conclusion, or illogical conclusion,” Wagner said.
Conspiracy between Russo and Sams to knowingly commit criminal acts was a “probable, possible, likely” conclusion, but couldn’t be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, Wagner said.
“There were no texts, no e-mails, not even a Post-It note between them,” he said.
Russo’s sentencing was postponed to Dec. 10 to allow a victim in the case to deliver an impact statement.