A former Nebraska county prosecutor has pleaded guilty in federal court to using his office to stalk his estranged wife and her boyfriend.
Former Dodge County Attorney Oliver Glass was convicted of the misdemeanor Monday after he entered his plea. The Omaha World-Herald reports that the 47-year-old will face up to a year in jail when he is sentenced in February.
Prosecutors said Glass improperly accessed a law enforcement database to look up his estranged wife’s boyfriend and asked Fremont police officers and Dodge County deputies he knew to follow the man and his estranged wife for several months in 2020. It wasn’t immediately clear whether any of the officers involved are being investigated for their roles.
The federal indictment against Glass said a few days after he learned about the relationship Glass sent 46 text messages and made 10 phone calls to the boyfriend.
Glass also asked police officers and sheriff’s deputies to monitor his wife’s and her boyfriend’s homes and to try to catch them driving under the influence, the indictment says. Glass is accused of at one point telling a Nebraska State trooper that he was angry enough to "kill them both."
Glass resigned from office last year after his second drunken driving arrest several months before he was indicted. Previously, Glass had refused to resign after his first DUI conviction in March 2020. He was sentenced to 18 months probation in that case for violating the terms of his probation in the first DUI case.
The boyfriend has filed a lawsuit against Dodge County over the harassment that he says prompted him to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital because he considered killing himself. He told the newspaper that for a time officers would regularly park outside his apartment and he would be followed by police or Glass himself wherever he went.
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Glass’ law license has been indefinitely suspended and his four-year-old divorce case remains pending. His attorney, Clarence Mock, said Glass acknowledges that it was wrong to use officers as his own personal detectives and now wants to put the ordeal behind him.
"The collateral consequences for him have been so severe and possibly long-lasting," Mock said. "It’s going to be difficult for him to recover."
Mock said Glass says he never meant to harm the couple, but he was worried about the safety of his children because the man has a criminal record.
Glass went through alcohol treatment in 2017 and 2020, and Mock said he is now working for a business that sells ads on golf course benches and sober.
