Former county administrator Joe Baird has pled “not guilty” to stalking his former girlfriend earlier this year, and his attorney is asking a judge to dismiss the misdemeanor case contending the issues were already litigated in Circuit Court.
“This kind of motion is very rare, so I don’t know if it will be granted, but the state wants to re-litigate issues that already have been decided,” said Vero Beach attorney Andy Metcalf, who is representing Baird.
“We already had a three-hour hearing,” he added. “The alleged victim was represented by her own lawyer. Evidence was presented and witnesses testified. And the judge ruled there was no stalking.
“Now we’re back in court for a criminal case with no new allegations, no new evidence, and the burden of proof is higher.”
The case has been assigned to County Judge Robyn Stone.
The earlier hearing was held on June 7, when Circuit Judge Robert Meadows presided over a hearing on the Vero Beach woman’s request for a restraining order against Baird, whom she claimed was stalking her.
After listening to the testimony of seven witnesses – including the woman, her parents, a private investigator and a Vero Beach Police detective – Meadows denied the request, citing the close proximity of the island homes in which Baird and his ex-girlfriend reside and the absence of the former county executive exhibiting any threatening behavior.
“There’s not one scintilla of a threat presented to this court,” Meadows said at the hearing, adding, “I see a relationship gone bad, but I don’t see the malice or intent … There has to be some kind of action besides being in the same town that she’s in.”
The judge said if he granted the restraining order, Baird would be arrested “because there is no way he can drive down the street in the same place that she lives – in that small area – without her saying he’s following her.”
Baird, 65, was arrested three weeks later, after returning to Vero Beach from a rented summer home in Rhode Island and turning himself in at the County Jail, where he spent the night before posting a $2,500 bond and being released the next morning.
In a probable-cause affidavit used to obtain an arrest warrant on June 24, Vero Beach Police Detective Jennifer Brumley wrote that Baird “willfully, maliciously and repeatedly followed, harassed and cyberstalked” his former longtime girlfriend.
Metcalf, who also represented Baird at the June hearing, disputed the allegations and dismissed them as the remnants of a “messy breakup,” referring to the couple’s romantic-but-tumultuous, eight-year relationship that the woman claims to have ended in February.
The couple had lived together on an on-and-off basis in Baird’s Indian River Shores home since April 2019. The woman, who asked that her name be withheld under Florida’s victims’ rights law, has lived in the Vero Beach area for 13 years, most of the time on the barrier island.
Metcalf said he was “shocked” the police pursued the case after Meadows had rejected the woman’s stalking claims in the earlier hearing, at which he said the judge “gave them all day to make their case, and they couldn’t do it.”
The woman, however, said in July that Meadows didn’t consider all of the evidence – because, she claimed, the judge refused to view visual evidence collected by a private investigator she had hired.
She said the investigator, who was allowed to testify at the hearing, wasn’t permitted to support his testimony with photographs and videos that showed Baird stalking her.
Metcalf is basing his motion to dismiss the stalking charge on the “doctrine of collateral estoppel,” which, he wrote, “exists to enforce the finality of a court’s work and to discourage re-litigation” by preventing “identical parties from re-litigating identical issues that have been determined in a prior litigation.”
He said “each and every issue” cited in the arrest affidavit was addressed at the June hearing, where the burden of proof was by a preponderance of the evidence.
Charges in criminal cases must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt – a significantly higher burden for prosecutors to meet. Also, prosecutors will be much more limited to what evidence they can introduce.
The State Attorney’s Office formally charged Baird on Aug. 29, when prosecutors alleged that Baird stalked the woman between May 1 and June 27.
“It’s obvious the state took a long time to decide whether to file,” Metcalf said, “probably because it realizes it doesn’t have a good case.”
Stone has scheduled a status hearing for 8:30 a.m. Friday.
Metcalf said both Baird and his ex-girlfriend have been living in separate summer homes in Newport, Rhode Island.
“Joe is upset,” Metcalf said of the criminal charge. “He’s embarrassed that his private life has again become public. But he completely rejects the claims she’s making.”
While Baird was Indian River County Administrator in May 2009, he was charged with driving under the influence after being stopped by Vero Beach Police on his way home from a charity fundraiser. Baird refused the breathalyzer test, and Baird’s defense attorney argued that Baird suffered from vertigo. At the trial, which was heavily covered by the media, Baird was acquitted of the DUI charge.
