South Carolina court drops contempt charge against Dusten Brown
Dusten Brown and the Cherokee Nation reach an agreement with Baby Veronica's adoptive parents.
Dusten Brown: The deal won’t affect a
criminal complaint of custodial interference, which
Brown still faces in South Carolina.
Posted: Friday, January 17, 2014
A South Carolina judge dropped a contempt of court case against Baby Veronica's biological father Thursday, bringing a definitive end to the drawn-out custody battle there.
The case was dropped "with prejudice," meaning it can never be refiled, after Dusten Brown and the Cherokee Nation reached an agreement with the adoptive parents. No settlement was paid, officials said.
Matt and Melanie
Capobianco had been seeking compensation for expenses they racked up
during a seven-week visit to Oklahoma last year to fight for custody of
their 4-year-old adopted daughter, according to previous reports.
Thursday's agreement
won't affect a criminal complaint of custodial interference, which Brown
still faces in South Carolina, even though authorities are no longer
seeking his extradition from Oklahoma.
It also won't affect a
separate civil case here in Oklahoma, where the Capobiancos' attorneys
are seeking more than $1 million in fees and expenses from Brown and his
tribe, which fought alongside him to keep Veronica.
An agreement in South
Carolina, however, might suggest that a similar resolution is possible
for that case, which was filed in Oklahoma's Nowata County, where Brown
and his wife live.
"I hope so, but I don't
know," said Chrissi Nimmo, an assistant attorney general for the
Cherokee Nation. "We'll have to see what happens."
Meanwhile, both the Capobiancos and the Browns have steadfastly stayed away from the media.
Brown hasn't spoken
publicly since early October, when he spoke at a brief press conference
to announce that he was dropping all legal efforts to get Veronica back.
The Capobiancos appeared briefly on the "Dr. Phil" television show in late October but have not given interviews since.
At the time, they
confirmed that Brown and his family were still in contact with Veronica,
although they didn't elaborate on what kind of contact or how much.
There's no information on whether such contact is still happening.
The Capobiancos arranged a private adoption with Brown's ex-fiancee and came to Oklahoma for Veronica's birth in 2009.
Brown, who was about to
deploy to Iraq with the Oklahoma National Guard, didn't find out about
the adoption until Veronica was 4 months old.
He says he was tricked into a signing a document that said he wouldn't contest the adoption.
With help from the
Cherokee Nation, he gained custody of Veronica in 2011, but the
Capobiancos appealed that decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme
Court.
The justices ruled that
Brown didn't have standing under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act,
but they sent the case back to a South Carolina court for a custody
ruling, and the legal battles continued for months.
Brown refused orders to
return Veronica to South Carolina until the Oklahoma Supreme Court
issued an unfavorable ruling Sept. 23, when he gave the girl back to the
Capobiancos.
Posts
