A Mobile County Circuit Court case took an unusual turn this month when a man facing a terrorist threat charge asked the court to pay thousands of dollars for a specialized therapy program, arguing the sessions would help prove his innocence. The motion instantly became the most discussed filing in a case that has already drawn attention for its strange trajectory through the local courts. Whatever the court decides, the request is a rare example of a defendant proposing that the state fund a personal program as a step toward acquittal.
Chase Anderson Romagnano, 29, filed a five-page motion asking the court to cover $25,000 in costs for the therapy, which he said would include work with a licensed sexual surrogate. The filing laid out the request in unusual detail for a court document, walking through the program’s structure and its projected cost. Romagnano argued the expense was justified by what he characterized as the therapy’s evidentiary value to his defense.
In the filing, Romagnano acknowledged the request was unusual, writing that he was “beyond embarrassed” it had come to this point. The admission stands out in a motion otherwise drafted in the formal language of court practice, and it framed the request as a last resort rather than a routine request for defense funding. Romagnano told the court he had exhausted the options available to him without it.
According to the motion, Romagnano believes that participating in the sessions and sharing details of them with the court would demonstrate that prosecutors do not have a valid case against him and that the proceedings have wasted the court’s time. The theory, as presented, treats the therapy as something between evidence and exoneration, a process whose outcome would speak to the truth of the allegations against him. Legal observers were quick to note that no standard mechanism exists for a court to fund such a program in a criminal defense.
He did not lay out in detail how the therapy sessions would establish his innocence, but described them in the filing as central to refuting the state’s allegations. The gap between the request and its stated purpose is where the motion’s fate will likely be decided, since courts funding defense expenses generally require a clear connection between the expenditure and the defense of the charge.
The underlying case
Romagnano was indicted in 2013 in Mobile County Circuit Court on a single count connected to threatening phone calls and emails prosecutors say were directed at staff members of Spring Hill College in Mobile. The charge, filed under Alabama’s terrorist threat statute, carries serious potential consequences despite involving no allegation of physical violence. Prosecutors have maintained the communications were threatening in substance and pattern, not isolated expressions of frustration.
Spring Hill College, a private Jesuit institution perched on Mobile’s Spring Hill avenue corridor, is one of the oldest colleges in the Deep South, and its compact campus community is accustomed to a quiet profile in the city. The allegation that staff members were targeted by threatening communications brought an unusual kind of attention to the school, which has otherwise kept its distance from the litigation. College officials have not commented publicly on the case as it has moved through the courts.
The case has remained active in the local court system since that time. Two years of motions, scheduling orders and procedural skirmishes have passed between the indictment and this month’s filing, with the underlying charge no closer to trial than it was when the grand jury returned it. The slow pace has been a source of frustration for everyone involved, and it forms the backdrop for Romagnano’s argument that the proceedings themselves have become the problem.
The court’s deliberation
Circuit Court Judge Robert Smith is overseeing the case and had not ruled on the therapy-funding motion as of this month. The request presents the judge with questions Alabama courts have rarely confronted, starting with whether the court has authority to direct public funds toward a program of this kind at all. Judges in criminal cases can order evaluations and treatment in some circumstances, but those orders typically flow from a conviction or a plea, not from a defendant seeking to fund a defense theory before trial.
Smith’s handling of the motion is being watched for what it signals about the rest of the case. A denial would push Romagnano toward arguing his defense through conventional channels; an approval, however unlikely, would chart territory local practitioners say they have never seen. Either way, the ruling will shape the case’s next phase more than any filing since the indictment.
Prosecutors respond
Prosecutors, for their part, were dismissive of the request. Chief Assistant District Attorney Deborah Tillman told reporters the office considers the motion frivolous, noting it has no bearing on the underlying terrorist threat charge and declining further comment. The state’s position is straightforward: the therapy proposal, whatever its subject, does not address the conduct alleged in the indictment, and no evidentiary path leads from the sessions to the charge.
Tillman’s brief public comments were notable mainly for their firmness. Prosecutors generally decline to characterize defense filings at all, and calling a motion frivolous on the record is a step reserved for requests the state views as entirely outside the case. The characterization sets up a likely contested hearing if the judge wants argument before ruling.
Turnover on the defense side
The case has also seen turnover on the defense side. Romagnano’s attorney, Jeff Deen, filed a separate motion asking to withdraw from representing him after Romagnano indicated he no longer wanted Deen as his counsel. Withdrawal motions are common enough in long-running cases, but the timing, arriving alongside the therapy funding request, added another layer of uncertainty to the defense’s structure.
Deen said he read the sex-therapy motion after it was filed but declined to comment on its contents, noting that Romagnano appeared to be representing himself going forward. A defendant’s decision to proceed pro se transfers full responsibility for the case onto his own shoulders, from meeting deadlines to examining witnesses, and judges typically warn defendants of that on the record before allowing it. Romagnano’s willingness to take on his own defense has struck local attorneys as consistent with the independent streak the motion itself displays.
Judge Smith had not ruled on the withdrawal motion either. Until he does, Deen remains formally counsel of record, and the case’s representation question sits alongside the funding question on the court’s pending docket. The two rulings are linked in practice, since how the court handles representation will determine who argues against the state when the funding motion, if it survives, comes up for hearing.
What the filing says about the case
The unusual filing has drawn attention within Mobile’s legal community, where terrorist threat cases involving local institutions such as Spring Hill College are relatively rare. Attorneys following the docket describe it as the kind of case that circulates by word of mouth, less for the charge than for the defense strategy attached to it. The $25,000 figure and the nature of the proposed program have made the motion a talking point among local practitioners, even those with no connection to the case.
The request also illustrates the pressure long, unresolved prosecutions place on defendants. Two years of uncertainty, mounting legal costs and a case that has not moved to trial have produced, in the defense’s own telling, a situation where a defendant felt compelled to propose funding a personal program as a path to vindication. Whatever one makes of the theory, the filing is a document born of a stalled case, and it says as much about the pace of justice in Mobile County as it does about Romagnano’s strategy.
The case remains pending, with both the funding motion and the question of Romagnano’s legal representation still unresolved as proceedings continue in Mobile County Circuit Court. Judge Smith’s rulings on the twin motions will determine the case’s direction: who stands before the court, and on what theory. Until then, the file grows thicker, the charge from 2013 waits, and Mobile’s legal community keeps watching one of the stranger dockets in town.
Alabama’s terrorist threat statute, under which the indictment was brought, targets threats made with the intent to terrorize or cause evacuation or serious public inconvenience, and prosecutions under it typically turn on the content and context of the communications themselves. That makes cases like this one evidence-heavy in a particular way: the state’s proof is built from phone records, email archives and the interpretation of specific messages, rather than from witnesses to a physical act. Defenses, correspondingly, focus on intent and on whether the communications meet the statutory standard at all.
The funding motion will also be measured against the practical limits of court-appointed defense resources. Alabama courts can, in defined circumstances, cover expert and investigative costs for indigent defendants, but those requests connect to recognizable defense functions like forensic testing or mental evaluations. Romagnano’s proposal asks the court to stretch that framework to a program whose connection to the charge exists, so far, only in his own description of it, which is why even attorneys sympathetic to defendants’ funding struggles have called the request a long shot.