This is the second chapter in a five-part investigation. For the first, click here.
ATHENS, Ohio — On Oct. 7, 2023, officers with the Athens Police Department visited the home of Bryan and Harmony Wharton to investigate an alleged domestic violence incident earlier that evening.
According to the department’s criminal complaint filed in Athens Municipal Court on Oct. 9, 2023, the Whartons and their child were in their car on West Union Street when Bryan Wharton allegedly became “involved in a domestic with his wife.”
“The wife was recording the altercation and when she told [Bryan Wharton] that she was going to call 911, [he] took the phone from her and threw it out the window of the vehicle while driving to prevent her from calling 911,” the APD complaint stated.
Because Bryan Wharton allegedly attempted to disrupt a call to emergency services, APD charged him with disrupting public services, a fourth-degree felony, as well as first-degree misdemeanor domestic violence.
Under Ohio law, municipal courts may hear felony cases within their jurisdictions. However, the City of Athens Law Department does not prosecute felonies, Law Director Lisa Eliason said in an email, and “did not have any involvement in this [alleged] felony.”
Instead, the case went to Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn’s office.
On Oct. 10, 2023, Blackburn asked the Athens County Court of Common Pleas to appoint a special prosecutor. The filing did not cite a reason for the request; Vinton County Prosecutor William Archer was appointed to the case.
The Ohio Attorney General’s office provides a special prosecution service division for instances where a prosecutor may have a conflict of interest. Only a court or prosecutor can request such assistance.
Blackburn told the Independent that he had been friends with Bryan Wharton, but that they are no longer close. But in a Jan. 31 affidavit filed in the divorce case, Harmony Wharton’s defense attorney Scott Petroff stated that Archer had told him that “Blackburn personally called him and asked that Archer accept the appointment as special prosecutor based upon Blackburn’s close personal relationship with Bryan Wharton.”
Archer told the Independent in April that he didn’t remember the details of his conversation with Blackburn.
In contrast to Blackburn’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor in the domestic violence case, he did not immediately do so for his drug trafficking investigation involving Harmony Wharton.
In his affidavit, Petroff said he requested that Blackburn seek a special prosecutor for Harmony Wharton’s alleged drug case in January. Blackburn refused these requests on multiple occasions, Petroff said in the affidavit.
In an interview in June, Petroff said he’d heard that Delaware County may be handling Harmony Wharton’s case; in mid-July, he confirmed Delaware County’s involvement. The Delaware County Prosecutor’s Office declined to comment on its involvement.
However, Petroff told the Independent he believes it took far too long for Blackburn to appoint a special prosecutor — and he isn’t the only one disturbed by the apparent difference between Blackburn’s actions in the cases involving each Wharton.
“A situation like this, where there is a conflict of interest, where the lawyer was aware that there was a conflict, and then became involved in the [Harmony Wharton drug] case after the fact — I think that certainly goes to the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness and fitness,” said Heather Zirke, the director of the Miller Becker Center for Professional Responsibility and an assistant professor at the University of Akron School of Law.
Blackburn told the Independent he requested a special prosecutor for Bryan Wharton’s case not because of a personal conflict per se, but because his office had already begun investigating Harmony Wharton’s alleged involvement in a criminal case against an alleged local drug ring — and because he was familiar with “the truthfulness of the parties involved.”
“I thought because of the upcoming issues we were going to have in the drug case — the things I knew about truthfulness — I thought it was appropriate to have someone else look at it and make the determination,” Blackburn said.
Bryan Wharton filed for divorce in late October, 2023. In court filings in the divorce case, he has chalked the Oct. 7, 2023, incident up to his wife’s “false statements.”
Harmony Wharton’s narrative of the incident is supported by her and Bryan Wharton’s child, according to body camera footage from APD’s visit to the Whartons’ home.
The body camera footage also shows Bryan Wharton telling an officer, “Well, I just grabbed her phone. I’m like, ‘I know you’re recording’ … And she’s like, ‘I’m gonna call 911’ … I put my other hand on her arm, and I’m like, ‘Go ahead and do it.’ And then I took my hand and I threw her phone on the floorboard.”
A game of musical chairs
In an April 4 interview, Archer told the Independent that his office dropped the Bryan Wharton case earlier this year because it had too much work of its own.
The next special prosecutor, Gallia County Prosecutor Jason Holdren, recommended on June 3 that the Athens City Law Office charge Bryan Wharton with domestic violence only, and not the felony charge of disrupting public services.
Eliason said in an email on July 19 that a prosecutor from outside the Athens Law Office is reviewing the case for a misdemeanor domestic violence charge. There was no update as of Aug. 6, Eliason said in an email.
The October 2023 incident was not Bryan Wharton’s first brush with the law. In 2005, APD charged him with assault after a physical altercation with a tenant who, according to a news report at the time, called him “asshole” through a window while passing the University Off-Campus Housing office on North Court Street.
According to the news article, Bryan Wharton came out of the office, grabbed the individual and hit him in the face with his elbow. He later pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct.
Harmony Wharton alleges that her husband has engaged in a pattern of physical abuse, including several incidents that aggravated a previous neck injury.
The Independent cannot verify her allegations of physical abuse.
Bryan Wharton has not been charged with domestic violence in either the Athens County Court of Common Pleas nor Athens Municipal Court. He declined to comment for this series.
Read the third chapter in the Independent’s investigation.
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