A Franklin elected official faces two misdemeanor drunken driving charges after an appointed prosecutor reviewed the circumstances of his March arrest.
Andrew Eggers, 32, has been charged with operating a vehicle with a blood-alcohol content of at least 0.08 and operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
He has been an elected member of the Franklin City Council since 2016 and works as a local attorney. He resigned his position as a deputy prosecutor at the Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office after his arrest.
The legal proceedings are just beginning, and Eggers is cooperating with the process and had an automatic not guilty response to the charges, his attorney Dan Vandiver said.
A police officer stopped Eggers, of Franklin, in the early morning hours of March 26 and he failed several sobriety tests, according to the probable cause affidavit.
He was pulled over in a neighborhood near Jefferson Street and Westview Drive and initially refused to get out of his vehicle when the Franklin police officer suspected he had been drinking. The officer could smell alcohol and said Eggers’ eyes were glassy, the police report said. Eggers did eventually agree to perform the standard field sobriety tests, the report said.
Eggers demonstrated multiple signs of intoxication during the sobriety tests, the report said.
He refused to take a portable breath test, and police got a warrant to collect and test his blood for blood-alcohol content, the affidavit said. The test showed that Eggers’ blood-alcohol content was 0.13, the affidavit said. Under state law, a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 percent or more is considered too intoxicated to drive.
A drunken driving arrest in Franklin would typically be reviewed by the Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office and handled by the Franklin City Court judge, but in this case, Prosecutor Brad Cooper asked for an outside prosecutor to review the case due to Eggers’ employment.
City court Judge Kim Van Valer also recused herself from the matter because Eggers is a member of the Franklin City Council, which approves the city court budget, she said.
She asked the Indiana Supreme Court to appoint a special judge, and Floyd County Circuit Court Judge Terrence Cody of New Albany was selected.
Cody then selected a special prosecutor, and choose Cynthia Crispin, a state senior prosecutor from Wayne County, Van Valer said.
Crispin conducted an investigation, which included interviewing the officer who arrested Eggers, she said. She filed the charges June 7.
Eggers reported his arrest to the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission but it has had no effect on his license to practice law at this time, Vandiver said.
He is considered an active attorney in good standing with no disciplinary history, supreme court spokeswoman Sarah Kidwell said.
Attorneys can face a range of discipline if a confidential investigation determines they violated professional rules of conduct or legal ethics standards, but an arrest such as Eggers’ may not trigger that process, she said.
If an attorney is arrested and charged, the disciplinary tracks the case to conclusion before making a decision on whether to bring ethics or misconduct charges, Kidwell said.
