A jury trial is expected to end today, April 11, in Blaine County 5th District Court in the felony grand-theft case against a Hailey woman who is accused of embezzling about $40,000 from a business where she was previously employed.
The trial for Barbara Lynn Adams, 47, started on Tuesday and was expected to last four days.
Adams is currently free on $25,000 bail. She is represented by Ketchum attorney Andrew Parnes under his public defender contract with Blaine County.
Presiding is Judge Jonathan P. Brody, who normally presides over 5th District Court cases in Minidoka County. Brody was assigned to the case after Judge Robert J. Elgee was disqualified on a motion filed in May 2013 by former public defender Daniel Dolan, who is now the Camas County Magistrate Court judge but frequently presides over cases in Blaine County. Parnes, who previously shared an office with Dolan, took over Dolan’s public defender cases when Dolan was appointed judge in late 2013.
Dolan was not required by Idaho Judiciary rules to state a reason for filing the disqualification motion against Elgee.
The case against Adams, who is also known as Barbara Lynn Hall, was filed in January 2013 following a lengthy investigation by the Ketchum Police Department.
The investigation was started in June 2012 when the owner of Sun Valley Dental Group notified police about a possible embezzlement.
Ketchum Detective Tom Moreland alleged in a probable-cause affidavit that Adams, a former payroll supervisor for Sun Valley Dental, wrote checks to herself, without authorization, that totaled about $40,000. Moreland further alleged that the thefts occurred between June 2006 and September 2010.
Moreland claimed that during the four-year period that Adams wrote at least 13 checks to herself without authorization and that several of them were as high as $6,500.
