HOOD COUNTY, Texas — An employee at a Bitcoin mining operation in Granbury was found not guilty of 12 charges of disorderly conduct, despite numerous complaints from Hood County residents of noise at the facility.
The Marathon Digital Holdings employee, David Fischer, was charged by Hood County Precinct 2 Constable John Shirley earlier this year.
This was not a case against the facility itself, just the employee. Fischer's attorney, Miles Brissette, said the mining operation would have continued regardless of the verdict.
"What happened is the Constable made this a campaign issue," Brissette said.
Brissette argued that Shirley was writing noise violation statutes, but used an incorrect method for measuring noise that isn't recognized by any certification body in the U.S. for how to properly measure sound.
He also said the jury had issues with the procedure of how the constable's office went about swearing to the charges.
"[Shirley's] employee, Mary Haller said she used the Constable's signature stamp to sign these and then she notarized them as if he signed them," Brissette said. "These documents were not found in her notary log book. Nor were the other charging instruments used in these proceedings."
Brissette argued that this testimony raised serious concerns about the legitimacy of the documents.
"And at the end, they found filing charges at an individual who was working at an establishment was not the correct thing to do and they found him not guilty," Brissette said.
Fischer was simply the employee who answered the call when Shirley showed up at the operation's door, he added.
In an emailed response, Shirley said there were no issues with the affidavits, and that he only recognized the document his office produced. His office turned in one set of signed, notarized affidavits to the County Attorney's Office, which they use for their own purposes in the charging process.
"You can tell which is the one I submitted as the original because it has the cause number handwritten (by another office) in the once-blank space at the top," Shirley said. "The subsequent documents shown to me on the stand by opposing counsel had the cause number typed in text. (Although I only saw them briefly.)"
