Warren Circuit Judge J.B. Hines

The case of a man who was acquitted by a judge of impersonating a peace officer in Bowling Green after a jury had found him guilty of the same charge has made its way up to the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

A legal team with the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General has asked the state appeals court to reinstate the guilty verdict the jury returned against Robert Sharp at a trial earlier this year.

Kentucky Deputy Solicitor General Shawn Chapman filed an emergency motion Friday to stay the order from Warren Circuit Judge J.B. Hines that acquitted Sharp notwithstanding the jury’s verdict.

On Monday, the state appeals court denied the motion, but noted that its decision has no bearing on an accompanying petition filed by Chapman to reinstate the guilty verdict, a petition that will be decided by a three-judge panel of the appeals court at a later date.

Sharp, 37, was found guilty by a jury on a count of impersonating a peace officer and faced a one-year prison sentence, but Warren Circuit Judge J.B. Hines, who presided over the trial, granted a motion last month from Sharp’s attorney, Ken Meredith, to acquit Sharp notwithstanding the jury’s verdict.

Sharp was alleged to have offered two 11-year-old girls some candy as he was driving along Cardinal Way on Sept. 28, 2022, and they were walking home from school.

When the girls hesitated, Sharp reportedly reassured them that he was a police officer and displayed a badge before driving away.

The two girls testified at trial that Sharp showed them a badge and appeared to be driving in what looked to them like a police car.

Sharp testified that he told the girls he was a former police officer, telling jurors he was wearing his work uniform from his job at a private security firm at the time and was out campaigning for election as a Warren County constable.

Hines issued a ruling in which he said that while the jury could have reasonably concluded from the evidence that Sharp pretended to be a peace officer in order to induce the girls to rely on his pretended authority, Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney Kori Beck Bumgarner failed to prove that Sharp did so with an intent to harm the girls.

State law prevents the prosecution from appealing Hines’ ruling, but Chapman argues that the appeals court can intervene by issuing a writ of mandamus – a court order to a lesser court or government body to perform an act required by law that that entity has refused or neglected to perform.

Chapman said in his filing that, because Hines’ order of acquittal was scheduled to take legal effect at the end of the day on Monday, time is of the essence for the appeals court to act in order to prevent “great injustice and irreparable injury.”

“Snatching away a jury’s verdict finding a defendant guilty of a felony is … a great injustice,” Chapman said in the petition. “And that injury is irreparable because the defendant cannot be retried … Wrongly undoing a jury’s verdict in a criminal case is the definition of injustice.”

Chapman argues that Hines should have upheld the jury’s verdict because, when looking upon the proof in the light most favorable to the prosecution as a judge is required to do when considering a motion to acquit, the proof showed that Sharp intended to have the girls submit to his pretended authority.

“When the girls were reluctant to approach him, he did not assuage their concerns by telling them that he was running for office and lived just down the road,” Chapman said in his filing. “Instead, he jumped immediately to falsely claiming to be a police officer and showing them a badge … It was an attempt to invoke fake authority to induce their compliance.”

Chapman also argued that there was enough evidence at trial to show that Sharp induced the girls to rely on his “faux-thority” to their prejudice.

A jury could have inferred that Sharp held himself as a police officer to overcome the girls’ fear of strangers offering candy and that he did so to keep them from reporting a suspicious encounter, Chapman argued.

“The statute does not require that Sharp intended to harm the girls – only that he intended that they act against their interests,” Chapman said.

Meredith said he has not consulted with his client on how to proceed regarding the petition before the appeals court.

“I thought (Hines) did a very admirable job researching the entire statute,” Meredith said about the judge’s ruling, noting that there was a lack of earlier published rulings covering impersonating a peace officer that the judge could have relied on to make his decision to acquit.

Meredith said that this was just the second judgment of acquittal he had obtained in a criminal case, and he believed Hines’ ruling became final as of the end of Monday night.