Attorney General, judicial complaints council pointed court to Oklahoma Supreme Court precedent governing signature requirements.
OKLAHOMA CITY — A district judge has vacated his own order convening a citizen-requested grand jury in Payne County after concluding the petition failed to meet Oklahoma’s constitutional signature requirement, bringing an abrupt halt to proceedings less than a week after authorizing the investigation.
Oklahoma County District Judge Richard Ogden, who was assigned by the Oklahoma Supreme Court to hear the Payne County case, entered an order June 29 declaring the petition “null and void” after determining petitioners failed to obtain enough valid signatures to convene a grand jury.
The ruling reversed Ogden’s June 23 order that had authorized the grand jury after finding the petition met the required signature threshold.
The petition was filed by Parents for Payne County, a grassroots organization seeking a grand jury investigation into former Payne County District Attorney Laura Austin Thomas. After reviewing the petition in April, Ogden allowed allegations involving Thomas to proceed while dismissing claims against former House Speaker Charles McCall, judges, private organizations and state agencies that he found fell outside the scope of Oklahoma’s citizen grand jury law. He then gave petitioners 45 days to gather the required signatures.
Following certification of petition signatures by the Payne County Election Board, Ogden concluded in his June 23 order that the petition exceeded the required number of valid signatures and ordered a grand jury convened. Because the petition sought to investigate the Payne County District Attorney’s Office, he also disqualified that office from serving as prosecutor or legal adviser to the grand jury.
Three days later, however, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office and the Oklahoma Council on Judicial Complaints separately urged the court to reconsider.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a notice advising the court of what he described as controlling legal authority, citing the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Board of County Commissioners of Muskogee County v. King. The Attorney General argued the decision established that the required number of signatures equals 16% of the votes cast in the county in the most recent gubernatorial general election, with a minimum of 500 and a maximum of 5,000 signatures. Using the Payne County Election Board’s certified total of 21,778 votes cast in the 2022 gubernatorial election, the filing calculated that 3,484 valid signatures were required.
The Council on Judicial Complaints filed a separate motion asking the court to modify or stay its order, arguing the petition incorrectly asserted that only about 850 signatures were required. The filing contended the Oklahoma Supreme Court had already resolved the issue in King and noted a Payne County district judge had reached the same conclusion in similar litigation last year. According to the council, petitioners submitted 2,910 signatures, of which 2,542 were verified as valid by the election board—well below the number required under the Supreme Court’s formula.
After reviewing the additional filings, Ogden agreed the petition failed to satisfy the constitutional threshold.
In his June 29 order, the judge concluded the petitioners “failed to obtain a sufficient number of valid signatures” within the statutory period and declared the petition null and void, vacating the earlier order convening the grand jury.
The decision ends the current grand jury proceeding unless petition organizers successfully challenge the ruling on appeal or file a new petition that meets Oklahoma’s constitutional signature requirement.
The case also underscores the significance of the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s 2024 King decision, which clarified how signature requirements for citizen-initiated county grand jury petitions must be calculated statewide.
