Mobile County 911 Director Charlie McNichol pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor public intoxication charge last week, closing out a nearly yearlong court process tied to his arrest in Spanish Fort in the fall of 2018.
McNichol entered the plea Sept. 26 in Spanish Fort Municipal Court, nearly a year after he was found in a 911 Board-owned Chevrolet SUV stopped at the intersection of highways 98 and 31, an area residents commonly call “the top of the hill,” around 12:35 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2018. McNichol was seated in the driver’s seat when Spanish Fort police approached the vehicle, though he has said in the past that he was asleep and not driving at the time.
The case moved slowly through the court system, in part because Spanish Fort, like many small Baldwin County municipalities, holds municipal court only once a month at its community center. Proceedings that might otherwise have concluded by early this year instead stretched on for months, with multiple continuances granted along the way, some just hours ahead of a scheduled hearing. Court Clerk Twila Pierce signaled last month that patience for further delays had run out, telling those involved in the case that no additional continuances would be granted.
When McNichol finally appeared before Judge Derek Rose, he pleaded guilty to the public intoxication charge. Rose ordered him to pay court costs and complete a Level II DUI class, a requirement McNichol said he had already fulfilled ahead of the hearing. Level II classes are typically longer and geared toward repeat DUI offenders, though court records do not show any prior DUI-related incidents involving McNichol.
McNichol brings a lengthy career in law enforcement to his current post overseeing the Mobile County Communications District. He previously served as an assistant chief with the Daphne Police Department and later worked as a law enforcement coordinator in the office of then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama David York. That chapter of his career ended in 2007, when he was accused of leaking details of an active public corruption investigation to a friend. McNichol pleaded guilty to one count of theft of public property in that case and was sentenced to a year of unsupervised probation, resigning from the U.S. Attorney’s office as part of the plea agreement.
Speaking briefly after last week’s hearing, McNichol declined to discuss the case in detail but described the process as difficult. “I accepted responsibility when this happened, and I accept responsibility for it now,” he said. “Now the court system is handling it, and I’ll follow whatever their decision is.” He has previously said he was embarrassed by the arrest, though the Mobile County 911 Board has continued to support him throughout the proceedings.
McNichol was represented in the case by Jay Ross, an attorney who normally handles legal matters for Mobile County government. Ross said he took on McNichol’s case as a personal favor to a longtime friend, noting that the Mobile County Communications District, despite its name, is not a county agency and falls outside his usual scope of representation.
According to Ross, McNichol’s attorneys reached an agreement with Spanish Fort prosecutor Karol Kemp to delay final adjudication of the case for six months. Under that arrangement, if McNichol avoids any further legal trouble through March, the public intoxication charge will be nolle prossed, effectively dismissing it from his record.
The resolution has left some residents questioning why McNichol was not charged with driving under the influence at the time of his 2018 arrest. Spanish Fort Police Chief David Edgar has said the decision on which charge to pursue rested with the responding officer’s discretion. Under Alabama law, a person can be convicted of DUI if found driving, or in “actual physical control” of, a vehicle with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent or higher, and courts in the state have upheld such convictions even when an officer did not directly witness someone driving.
A public intoxication charge carries a lower bar for prosecutors. State law defines the offense as appearing to be under the influence of alcohol, narcotics or other drugs to a degree that endangers the person or others, or engaging in boisterous or offensive conduct that disturbs people nearby. Unlike a DUI charge, officers do not need to administer a field sobriety test to file a public intoxication charge.
Edgar has said the Spanish Fort Police Department’s policy prevented the release of body and dash-camera footage from the arrest until the criminal case against McNichol was fully resolved. It remains unclear when, or whether, that footage will now be made public given the delayed dismissal timeline built into the plea agreement.