Saturday, March 18, 2000
Candidate used drugs extensively
But Piper says 'wild youth' ended long ago
BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON — Butler County prosecutor candidate Robin Piper admitted Fridaythat his drug-using past involved much more than an isolated marijuana incident in 1981.
At a news conference, he confessed to experimenting liberally with illegal drugs in his high school and college years.
“Assume I tried everything,” Mr. Piper said, declining to name specific drugs.
“I had a wild, rebellious youth,” he said at his campaign headquarters in Hamilton. “I did things I'm ashamed of and would not want my children doing. But I cleansed myself of that a long time ago.”
Mr. Piper, who was an assistant prosecutor for 14 years, said he was never addicted to drugs and has not used illegal drugs since he began practicing law in 1983.
With his wife, Nancy, and two Republican Party leaders near his side, the 46-year-old Hamilton native said he hoped Butler County voters won't hold his past against him.
“I'm asking for forgiveness,” Mr. Piper said. “This race should not be about who I was 20 years ago, but about who I am today and what I can bring to the prosecutor's office.”
Joe Statzer, political director of the Butler County Republican Party, said the party leaders still strongly support Mr. Piper.
“We are very proud to have a candidate as courageous as Robin Piper, who was willing to confront his past and overcome it,” he said.
But Prosecutor John Holcomb, the Democrat Mr. Piper is trying to unseat, said Mr. Piper's past drug use destroys his credibility as a prosecutor.
“How would it be if he's prosecuting a guy on drug charges?” Mr. Holcomb said. “There'd be a jailbird sitting in court whispering to his lawyer, "What's going on here? I used to blow dope with that guy.' That's why it's such disgraceful conduct and it's all so deceitful.”
Mr. Holcomb said that if he had known about the drug use, he never would have hired Mr. Piper as an assistant prosecutor in 1983.
Mr. Piper's drug use became an issue in the prosecutor's race this week when a local TV station revealed that he had been cited for marijuana possession on Memorial Day weekend 1981 in the Lake Erie town of Put-in-Bay.
Mr. Piper said he accepted a marijuana cigarette being
passed around at a park, was cited for a minor misdemeanor and paid a $60 fine by mail.
He said he had started reforming his lifestyle a year or two before the Put-in-Bay incident. He said he was a very successful, hard-working assistant prosecutor and handled many drug cases without a problem.
“I was evenhanded and fair,” he said.
Mr. Piper accused Mr. Holcomb of leaking the marijuana incident to the TV station and engaging in “character assassination” tactics.
Mr. Holcomb has admitted he sent one of his investigators to Put-in-Bay to pick up documents on the marijuana incident. But he denied divulging it to the media.
“He did it to himself,” Mr. Holcomb said. “I didn't blow any dope. It's only after his past has caught up with him and bagged him that he started to come partially clean with some halfway disclosures.”
Mr. Piper said Mr. Holcomb violated a law in allowing a county employee to use a vacation day to fly to Put-in-Bay to pick up the documents.
He cited an April 1998 letter from assistant prosecuting attorney Vickie Daiker telling County Auditor Kay Rogers it was illegal for her to allow two of her employees to use their vacation time to help her in a personal matter.
But Mr. Holcomb produced a May 1998 letter from State Auditor Jim Petro on that same issue. Mr. Petro said it was legal as long as the county employees had used their accrued vacation time.
Another issue facing Mr. Piper is whether he should have disclosed the marijuana conviction on his Ohio bar exam application in 1982.
This was one of the questions on the application: “State whether since registering as a candidate for admission to the practice of law you have been or presently are party to any action or legal proceeding, including civil, criminal, quasi-criminal, administrative or any proceeding in a juvenile court.”
Mr. Piper said he can't remember how he answered the question. The application is confidential, and Mr. Piper has declined to release it.
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