GREENE: Price sentencing hearing postponed

By Editor | July 26, 2023 |

By Carmen Ensinger

The sentencing hearing for Kyle Price, scheduled for Monday, July 15, was postponed once again after his lawyer filed a Motion to Strike portions of the presentencing investigation report.
Price, 51, was arrested on Feb. 12, 2021 and charged with three counts of Violating an Order of Protection with the victim being a minor child. Price, at the time, was a teacher in the Carrollton School District as well as an assistant girls basketball coach.
The three counts of Violating the Order of Protection accuse Price of making phone calls to the victim and driving by Carrollton High School and St. John’s School, both of which were protected places listed on the Order of Protection.
Per a plea agreement reached on March 3, 2023, charges one and two were dropped and Price pled guilty to charge three – driving by St. John’s School.
A sentencing hearing was scheduled for April 26, but Price’s attorney, Rick Verticchio asked, and was granted a continuance. The date was then changed to May 1. Then it was again postponed to July 17, this time in Macoupin County since Judge Kenneth R. Diehl has been presiding over the case.
In April of 2022, Greene County State’s Attorney Caleb Briscoe stepped aside from the case and tried to hand the case over to the State Appellate Prosecutor’s Office, but there was a conflict there as well so Brown County State’s Attorney Mike Hill was appointed as Special Prosecutor on the case.
Verticchio filed the Motion to Strike on June 22. He wanted stricken from the record the impact statements from the minor victim, her father and her step-mother along with certain documents that the probation officer put in from the Greene County Sheriff’s Office file that he feels are “substance of a civil matter” on the victim on a no contact order and the emails exchanged through the parties.
“She does not list other protected persons and failure to do so, they are not protected persons and once they are not protected persons this matter has nothing to do with any of it,” he said.
“The defendant (Price) pled guilty to driving by St. John’s Catholic School, which is what he was prohibited from doing, one of the locations in the no contact order, but as far as counts one and two that were dismissed,” he said. “The three people mentioned – they were not the victims which is why the Motion to Strike. I frankly don’t know what the probation office is doing including all of this in the charge that is here for sentencing so we ask the court to strike all that from the record.”
Hill said the issue is the definition of protected person or victim.
“The definition of a petitioner sometimes goes to the order itself,” Hill said. “The definition of a petitioner on the petition is any named petition on any page of a no stalking order. It says a petitioner is any named petitioner who is seeking a no contact order or any named person on behalf the petition is being brought. This person is being brought on behalf of the minor victim, therefore she is a petitioner and therefore she is a protected party.”
Verticcio also said that while the mother of the minor child listed herself as the petitioner, her two children and the minor victim on page one of the petition in heading on page two, she did not choose them as petitioners on page two.
“It requires other protected persons, other than the petitioner,” Verticcio said. “She didn’t list her daughter as a petitioner, she doesn’t list other protected persons – failure to do so means they are not protected persons and once they are not protected persons, this matter has nothing to do with any of it. The plea is driving by an address.”
Judge Diehl said he would take the matter under advisement and set a new sentencing date for Aug. 15 at 11 a.m. at the Greene County Courthouse.
After the hearing, Hill was asked several questions about the proceedings, one of which was who decided which count Price would plead guilty to.
“His attorney came to me and said they would plead guilty to Count 3 and I said that is fine,” Hill said. “Why they decided to do that, I couldn’t tell you. I do know that is where the victim’s mother worked and not where she went to school.”
But Hill said that shouldn’t matter.
“I think the language of the Order of Protection is pretty clear.
“The victim is a petitioner in all of them and so she is a victim,” he said. “You can’t have a petitioner that is not a victim – that is the State’s position so I don’t necessarily think it was a smart or crafty move on their part. But he is saying since she isn’t there, she isn’t a victim.
“Well, okay then, my question would be then, who is the victim? If it wasn’t her, was it the school, the building? You can’t have a building come and testify. She is a protected person. That is a protected place for her. Just like if you were to say I work at a restaurant and that is my protected place – they can’t go there because you have a right to feel safe there at any time you want to go so that is why I don’t think it was. That is why I think she is a victim and respondent and the court should leave those statements in.”