Hocking County Prosecutor Laina Fetherolf asked the Ohio Elections Commission to figure out a case involving her panties. Fetherolf has said that there was a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ that caused her to leave a courtroom and fix an undisclosed problem recently but that is as much as she has said. Fetherolf definitely did not hand her panties to Common Pleas Court Judge John T. Wallace.
Fetherolf is trying to be elected to a second term against opponent Republican Jason Sarver. She has asked that Sarver be branded a liar by the state panel because he spread lies about her conduct in the courtroom. The complaint issued by Fetherolf was dismissed by the elections commission today because the complaint was not a public statement, campaign literature and was not based on personal knowledge.
According to Fetherolf, she said that she was sent a letter by a businessman in September that mentioned Sarver. The letter said that Sarver discussed Fetherolf’s panties and the lack of them. The rumors say that Fetherolf had dark panties on underneath a light-colored dress. This caused snickers in the courtroom and she was told to fix her mistake by the judge.
According to the letter, the businessman and his wife were told by Sarver that Fetherolf exited the courtroom, went into the men’s room, took off her panties and entered them into evidence before Judge Wallace.
“I was willing to laugh it off until the story began to spread … I’ve heard about it from multiple people. Everybody in Logan is talking about this story he made up,” Fetherolf said.
Wallace did not discuss the issue too much but did agree with Fetherolf, saying, “No panties have ever been placed on my bench by anyone, including her.”
Fetherolf said that she issued a written request to Sarver for a public retraction of the story by via the use of advertisements in the Logan Daily News and radio commercials. Fetherolf said that she never received a response to the written request.
The executive director for the elections commission, Philip Richter, said, “This is one of the more interesting complaints we’ve ever received.”