Constance Days-Chapman with her attorney, Lee Vartan.
The attorney for suspended Atlantic City High School Principal Constance Days-Chapman has insisted she is the first to be criminally charged for failing to report an abuse claim.
Now, he says, he has evidence backing that up.
Days-Chapman faces several counts of official misconduct along with endangering the welfare of a child and hindering prosecution after she allegedly did not report abuse claims made by the teen daughter of Atlantic City's mayor and superintendent.
She is accused instead of warning her longtime friends about their daughter's allegations.
Attorney Lee Vartan has said that, while Days-Chapman did not call the reporting hotline, she did reach out to a supervisor at the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, or DCPP, about the claims.
Regardless, Vartan argued at a motion to dismiss the indictment last month that no one has ever been criminally charged for failing to report.
Chief Assistant Prosecutor Kathleen Robinson said that the hearing that she did not know what other offices have done, but "what I do know is that's wholly irrelevant."
Vartan now says it's not only relevant, but the state failed to present evidence that proved the prosecution is a first.
He filed a letter with the court to add to his motion, focusing on an audio file the state just produced to the defense Monday, the last day Vartan could file anything in the motion to dismiss.
Judge Bernard DeLury is expected to make his decision July 17.
The March 29, 2024, audio file is a phone call Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office Detective Sgt. Ryan Ripley had when he called the DCPP hotline to notify them that a criminal complaint was filed against Days-Chapman.
The DCPP agent's response is telling, Vartan said.
“Cause, I mean, I always hear, you know, that they’re going to be prosecuted for failure to report but I’ve never actually heard of anybody ever getting charged, you know, with failure to report,” the agent replied, according to a letter Vartan sent to the court Monday.
"Sgt. Ripley did not testify to this statement when he was the sole witness in front of the grand jury," Vartan writes, adding that a grand jury “cannot be denied access to evidence that is credible, material, and so clearly exculpatory.”
Vartan has long insisted that Days-Chapman is merely collateral damage in the state's attempts to come after the Smalls.
Now he says the state withheld information "proving that we were right."
"It’s disturbing that this new evidence came to light only after our motion had been briefed and argued," Vartan told BreakingAC on Tuesday. "Even more disturbing is that the state claimed that it had no way to know if this was a first-of-its-kind prosecution. Meanwhile, prosecutors had this recording from DCP&P the entire time."
