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Outgoing judge, district attorney clash over probation handed to 20-year-old in shooting case

Posted: Jan 9th 2019 By: Harrison Grimwood

A district attorney and an outgoing judge traded verbal blows in separate appearances on a morning radio talk show after a sentencing in which the judge handed a man a decade-long probation for shooting with intent to kill in lieu of the district attorney’s sought-after 10-year stint in prison.

Last week, District Judge James Caputo granted a 10-year suspended sentence to Joseph Andrew Zannotti, 20, for shooting with intent to kill. Zannotti had previously pleaded no contest to the charge. District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler had recommended 10 years in prison for Zannotti.

Caputo and Kunzweiler appeared individually on Pat Campbell’s morning show on KFAQ on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

“I can only make decisions based on what’s presented to me by the state of Oklahoma (Kunzweiler’s office) and consider that information with the law and with the constitution, and that’s all I have to consider,” Caputo said on the talk show. “If the state fails to present something to me, there’s no way I can consider something I don’t know exists, evidence-wise.”

Caputo made those statements in response to questions from the husband and father of the victims. Caputo, during the sentencing hearing, referenced the case of Blake Hagin. Hagin, the great-grandson of the founder of Rhema Bible Training College, pleaded guilty to committing a similar crime in Broken Arrow and, along with his co-defendants, received eight years in prison.

Hagin and the co-defendants, Gordon McAuliff and Sevey Price, had the rest of their sentences suspended by a different judge during a judicial review in December.

Caputo, who is leaving office next week, said he perceived the Hagin case was a “much more egregious situation than what I had in front of me.”

Zannotti was convicted of shooting at a vehicle driven by a woman who was tailing another vehicle driven by a man who allegedly had threatened her son with a gun, the World reported previously. Authorities said the mother tailed the other vehicle in an effort to write down its tag number.

Zannotti came to the aid of the tailed driver on Jan. 19, 2018. Detectives state in a probable cause affidavit that, when he arrived to help the other driver, he leaned out of a vehicle window and shot at the mother’s vehicle.

Responding officers noted bullet holes in the woman’s vehicle. The father and husband told Campbell and Caputo they still own the vehicle and it still has bullet holes in it.

Caputo said during his time on the morning show that it was a “physical impossibility for that defendant to have fired the weapon that caused those two holes.”

Kunzweiler, who spoke with Campbell on Tuesday, took issue with Caputo’s references to evidence and the state’s case. The district attorney said the matter at hand was a sentencing for a man who had pleaded no contest to the charges and was subsequently found guilty of the shooting.

“The fact that he (Zannotti) was lucky enough not to hit another person isn’t the point,” Kunzweiler said. “The point is he engaged in conduct that was so violent and so egregious without regard to human life. Those are the type of people, I think, that the citizens of Tulsa want off their streets.”

Kunzweiler further referenced the judicial review process, which was included in Kunzweiler’s recommended sentence. After one year in prison, the case would have been brought to a judge for review, similar to the Hagin case.

The district attorney further noted on Campbell’s show that evidence and court files are available for Caputo to review at his leisure. If Caputo had doubts about Zannotti’s innocence, Kunzweiler said, it may have been more prudent to postpone sentencing.

“We’re not talking about somebody possessing crack-cocaine,” Kunzweiler said. “You’re talking about somebody who admits there’s evidence that can demonstrate or prove that I was trying to kill people.”