Guilty.
That’s the verdict from visiting Judge Dean Dankelson, who recently oversaw a criminal case pitting the State of Missouri — along with prosecution witnesses, including Springfield City Councilman Abe McGull and his wife Crista Hogan — against the defendant, 88-year-old local lawyer Ted Salveter III.
Salveter was found guilty on all four harassment counts for which he was charged. After the judge took the case under advisement, he reduced two of the charges from class-E felonies to class-A misdemeanors. That means Salveter was found guilty of four misdemeanor harassment charges, each potentially punishable with up to a year in county jail and/or a fine of no more than $2,000. His sentencing hearing is set for September 26.
In his brief order posted to Missouri’s online court record system on Wednesday, Judge Dankelson dismissed defense arguments that Missouri’s harassment statute might be overbroad and unconstitutional by citing a legal precedent he called “very similar” to the current case.
The case was a bench trial, meaning the judge decided the facts and applied the law rather than a jury of the defendant’s peers.
Greene County prosecutors argued that back in 2021, Salveter committed two class-E felonies of harassment by sending what they called a racist letter containing an implied threat about McGull and Hogan to the Springfield News-Leader.
Salveter says he’s sent letters to the newspaper’s editor and its opinion page for some 50 years. He provided copies of several of his letters to and about McGull and Hogan to Ozarks Public Radio.
Headlined “Do All Black Lives Matter,” one two-paragraph writing sent to the News-Leader in April 2021 was not published by the newspaper, but appeared to reference Salveter’s concerns about Councilman Abe McGull; McGull’s wife, Crista Hogan; and Salveter’s own failed marriage to Hogan’s mother, Becky Hogan.
Another letter featured a cut-up image of McGull, a Bible verse about the sanctity of marriage and the headline “If City Councilman Abe McGull had never come to Springfield, Attorney Ted Salveter and Becky Hogan will still be happily married.” Prosecutors viewed that language as an implied threat against McGull and Crista Hogan. They testified in court on July 25 that the letters were fearsome and prompted McGull to buy a firearm for protection.
Crista Hogan testified that various letters, including anonymous ones sent to the church she and McGull attend, had been sent by Salveter over a period of several years since early 2019.
In March of 2023, Salveter agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement, meaning the state would stop pursuing its criminal case against Salveter, so long as he stopped sending letters to or about McGull and Hogan for at least one year.
“I thought this whole thing was over,” McGull testified at the trial.
But nine months after the agreement was signed, Salveter sent another letter to McGull and Hogan’s church, one of at least two letters sent to the church, according to McGull’s court testimony. Prosecutors responded December 27 by adding a second pair of harassment charges, this time class-A misdemeanors.
Salveter and his attorney argued that the letters, which Salveter’s attorney Brady Musgrave described as “unsavory” and “despicable,” were meant to be criticism of the character of a politician — McGull — and a public figure, Crista Hogan, director of a local lawyers’ association.
In the view of the defense, the letters were protected under the First Amendment. Musgrave argued that any prosecution of Salveter is a “direct violation” of the free-speech provisions at the heart of the U.S. and Missouri Constitutions. In court papers, he wrote that prosecutors weren’t able to prove that a crime took place.
Elizabeth Kiesewetter Fax, first assistant prosecuting attorney, argued such a view was not a “fair representation” of what was at stake in the case. During closing arguments, she told the judge, “What you saw, the charged conduct especially, the Black Lives Matter letter, is not political.” She added, “The church letter is not political. It’s personal and it’s harassment.”
On Wednesday night, Ozarks Public Radio was not immediately successful in obtaining comment by Salveter or McGull and Hogan on Judge Dankelson’s verdict.
