Criminal charges against former Lakota school board member dismissed

LIBERTY TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WXIX) – Former Lakota school board member Darbi Boddy no longer faces a criminal charge related to a court order requiring her to stay 500 feet away from fellow board member Isaac Adi.

At Adi’s request, the misdemeanor charge was dismissed Thursday in Butler County District Court 2.

The Butler County Sheriff’s Office cited Darbi Boddy on Nov. 17 for violating the order when she attended the same school board meeting as Isaac Adi.

She was granted a reprieve to attend meetings with him while she appealed the order, but the appeals court denied it on Nov. 13 and the sheriff’s office cited her for violating the order when she attended the next school board meeting four days later.

Violating a protective order is a first-degree misdemeanor in Ohio, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and six months in jail.

Boddy has since lost all efforts to overturn the court order and has since been removed from the school board and replaced after missing meetings for 90 days.

The protective order was issued on September 20, 2023 by Butler County Common Pleas Court Magistrate Matthew Reed and will remain in effect until September 20, 2025.

Adi and Boddy once campaigned together, but Adi claimed in his August 2023 application for court protection from her that he was under “mental distress” because his relationship with Boddy “has deteriorated to the point where Ms. Boddy is “extremely aggressive towards me and has become very confrontational.”

Adi cited a series of events that he described as harassing and impacting his health and then said under oath on September 15, 2023 that hearing all the anguish over this resulted in his hospitalization a few months earlier in July 2023.

Boddy testified that she had no ill will towards Adi. She said she was only criticising him for not being conservative when she thought he should be, for not voting conservative and for supporting the former superintendent.

Boddy’s attorney argued last year that Ohio’s harassment law is being used as a “sword” against Boddy to silence his conservative voice.

However, Judge Reed disagreed.

Boddy’s actions, he wrote in his decision, “are more than simply expressing political views; they are actions clearly directed at another individual to exert undue pressure on him to conform to his beliefs or to punish him for not changing his beliefs.”

The judge’s decision also made clear that he believed Boddy was the problem, not Adi:

“During the attorneys’ arguments, it was asserted that granting a protective order on behalf of Isaac Adi with respect to Darbi Boddy would disenfranchise Boddy’s constituents. However, the Court finds that it was, and is, Boddy’s conduct that has disenfranchised his constituents. (Adi) has shown, by a preponderance of the evidence, that (Boddy) knowingly engaged in a pattern of conduct that caused, and will continue to cause, him mental anguish.”

Had the criminal case against Brodi gone forward, her attorney planned to defend her based on the charge of “government entrapment/inducement,” according to court records.

“Obviously, we are satisfied that the prosecutor has agreed to dismiss the case,” said her attorney, Curt Hartman. “As a result, we are unable to explore in this forum why, after a Butler County Sheriff’s Office detective opened the door and motioned for Ms. Boddy to come in, Ms. Boddy was cited for violating the protective order.

“Additionally, the question of why the Butler County Sheriff’s Office thought it was necessary to have five or six detectives on the scene just to issue a citation, instead of doing their jobs and investigating actual crimes that occurred in Butler County, has not been answered.”

Sheriff Richard Jones declined to comment Thursday and referred FOX19 NOW to District Attorney Mike Gmoser, who is out of town and could not immediately be reached.

The Ohio Supreme Court appointed a visiting judge to oversee the case after the Area 2 court judge recused himself during Boddi’s first court appearance.

Judges are not required to explain why they drop cases, but the Area 1 Court judge is Robert Lyons, Adi’s attorney. Lyons also oversees the area’s courts, including Area 2, as the presiding administrative judge.

Boddy still faces multiple contempt charges related to the protective order in civil court, including an incident that Adi’s attorney alleges in court documents occurred at the Costco store in Liberty Township earlier this year.

The civil contempt cases were suspended until the criminal case was resolved.

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