National File Publisher Files 37-Count Citizen Criminal Petition Against WV Judges, Magistrate — National File

A founding-era constitutional safeguard nearly extinct in modern American jurisprudence was invoked Wednesday in Martinsburg, West Virginia, when National File Editor Noel Fritsch hand-delivered a 67-page sworn criminal complaint to the Berkeley County Circuit Court asking the citizen grand jury to indict eight officials of the Berkeley County justice system on 37 counts — including felony forgery of a sworn court document by a sitting circuit judge, extortion under color of office, witness tampering, and felony child neglect resulting in serious bodily injury.

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — Citing the West Virginia Constitution and the state Supreme Court of Appeals’s binding 1981 decision in State ex rel. Miller v. Smith, which guarantees that “any person may go to the grand jury to present a complaint to it,” Fritsch invoked one of the oldest accountability mechanisms in the Anglo-American legal tradition: the citizen’s right to bring a criminal complaint directly to a grand jury, bypassing the prosecutor’s office entirely.

The mechanism — exercised at the founding by colonial grand juries against Crown officials, embedded in the Fifth Amendment specifically to preserve it as a citizen check on captured government, and dormant in nearly every American jurisdiction for the last century — survives in West Virginia. The state Supreme Court of Appeals reaffirmed it as recently as 2020 in In re Application to Present Complaint to the Grand Jury (Dreyfuse), holding that a circuit court “may not deny a private citizen’s application to present a complaint to the grand jury without a showing that the private citizen’s conduct demonstrates a clear intention to obstruct the administration of justice.”

“Mountaineers are always free,” Fritsch said outside the Berkeley County Judicial Center, citing the state motto Montani Semper Liberi. “The Founders gave the American people one weapon they could never take away. It’s not the vote — they rig that. It’s not the trial jury — they pick those. It’s the grand jury. The people’s panel. The one door in the courthouse the machine couldn’t lock. Today, in Berkeley County, the people are walking through it.”

The Eight Named Targets

The targets named in the petition — every one of them either a Berkeley County public official or an attorney admitted to practice in Berkeley County — are:

• Circuit Court Judge R. Steven Redding, the 2018 appointee whose name was on Governor Patrick Morrisey’s “short list” of four candidates for a West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals vacancy until National File’s November 2025 reporting derailed the nomination;

• Circuit Court Judge Laura V. Faircloth, the same 27th Judicial Circuit judge who in 2022 sentenced a veteran, father and ex-husband to Judge Steven Redding’s step-daugther in the proceeding the petition alleges was procured by a forged Domestic Violence Protective Order;

• Magistrate William H. Norris, who signed both the forged 2017 DVPO and the 2019 arrest warrants that deployed it against the same veteran;

• Magistrate Clerk Laura E. Creamer, who released an unredacted criminal file — including the residential address of a crime victim and the name of a minor child — to a non-party attorney as a matter of “policy”;

• Taylor Loren Staubs, Judge Redding’s stepdaughter and the former forensic interviewer at the Children’s Home Society in Martinsburg, who was terminated from Washington High School in November 2025 for producing pornography on school property;

• Attorney Rebecca J. Hess, charged with submitting a written Proposed Order to a Berkeley County Family Court judge that fraudulently described three pending investigations — including the open Judicial Investigation Commission charge against Judge Redding — as “unfounded”;

• Attorney Jeffery Jay Gould, captured on a recorded statement saying, “I picked up a dozen cars that way. They didn’t think it was possible, and it worked” — describing a scheme of obtaining court orders that compelled citizens to deliver vehicles to the courthouse parking lot for repossession under threat of contempt of court;

• Casey Peer-Payne, a Berkeley County Child Protective Services worker, charged with two counts of felony perjury in a March 11, 2024 felony proceeding before Berkeley County Circuit Judge Debra McLaughlin in Case No. 24-F-297.

The petition charges 16 felony counts and 21 misdemeanor counts, with statutory maximum exposure approaching 160 years across the eight named targets. It seeks a visiting judge from outside Berkeley, Jefferson, and Hardy Counties — every Berkeley County judge is mandatorily disqualified — and asks the grand jury convening on or about May 19, 2026 to consider indictment.

A Sitting Judge’s Forgery, an FBI Examination, and Two Independent Forensic Examiners

At the center of the petition is what the filing calls “the forged 2017 Domestic Violence Protective Order” — a sworn court document filed in Berkeley County Magistrate Court in 2017 in the name of Taylor Loren Staubs and on behalf of her then-minor daughter against Staubs’s then-husband.

The petition alleges that the body of the document was authored by R. Steven Redding — who was a private attorney at the time, six months from his 2018 appointment to the bench — and was deployed through Magistrate Norris to manufacture a false history of family violence for his step-daughter, Taylor Loren Staubs. That forged document, the petition alleges, was the foundation of Staub’s ex-husband 2019 arrest warrants, his 2022 conviction by Judge Faircloth, and his immediate discharge from the United States military six years short of retirement.

Two independent forensic document examiners have examined the 2017 document, according to the petition. Brenda Petty, a Certified Questioned Document Examiner-Diplomate court-qualified to testify in fourteen states, Canada, Bermuda, and the Bahamas, and Chairperson of the International Association of Document Examiners, found that the two purported “Taylor Staubs” signatures on the document “were not written by the same hand and point towards two different hands as author” — that one was “written fluidly and at a higher skill level” while the other displayed “slowness, hesitancy, retracing, stiffness, and different formation of letters,” with the “common characteristics of signatures that an attempt to simulate is being attempted.”

A second examiner, forensic scientist Muhammad Asif Ali, comparing the questioned handwriting against authenticated specimens of Redding’s handwriting drawn from his election candidate certificates, a guilty-plea filing, and his application for the West Virginia Supreme Court vacancy, concluded that the questioned text bears “enough identical characteristics” with Redding’s specimens “to be called as a good match.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is presently examining the document, the petition states.

The forged document, according to the petition, sat unseen in the Berkeley County Magistrate database for nearly nine years — never physically produced to any party, never reviewed by Judge Faircloth at sentencing, never inspected by the man’s defense — until West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ordered its release in early 2026 and made it available for forensic examination.

The wrongly convicted man has, separately, filed a Petition for Writ of Error Coram Nobis seeking vacatur of his 2022 criminal conviction. That civil proceeding, before Hardy County Circuit Judge John H. Treadway as visiting judge, is set for evidentiary hearing on June 12, 2026.

$8,300 Cash, a Therapy Dog, and an Extortive Text Message

The petition charges Judge Redding with felony Obtaining Money by False Pretenses under W.Va. Code §61-3-24, alleging he solicited $8,300 in cash from an out-of-state donor in 2025 under the represented purpose of training a therapy dog for the Berkeley County Courthouse — three days, the petition alleges, after the West Virginia Judicial Investigation Commission advised Redding in writing that the transaction was unethical.

Independent documentary evidence cited in the petition — the published pricing of Good Start Puppy Training, LLC, the trainer that conducted the dog’s ten-week program — establishes the actual cost of the program at $6,500. The petition alleges Redding pocketed the $1,800 differential while representing to the donor that the transaction was proper and that the donor was “basically family” to Staubs.

A separate count charges Redding with felony Extortion under W.Va. Code §61-2-13 for an August 21, 2025 text message to the same donor. The petition alleges the message threatened the exposure of private sexual details — supplied to Redding by Staubs — naming the donor’s clients in an effort to compel the donor to abandon any civil claim against Staubs. The petition charges Staubs as a co-principal under aiding-and-abetting principles for supplying the kompromat that gave Redding the leverage to threaten.

Quoting Redding’s August 21, 2025 message verbatim, the petition reads: “You have no right, legally or morally to request a penny from her and I have instructed her to not agree to any such nonsense.”

A Second Sitting Judge Surveils a TikTok Critic

The petition also names sitting Circuit Judge Laura V. Faircloth in two misdemeanor counts — conspiracy to commit stalking under W.Va. Code §61-10-31 and stalking under W.Va. Code §61-2-9a — alleging she used Berkeley County probation officers, court personnel, an Eastern Regional Jail lieutenant, and a privately retained investigator to surveil a private citizen who had publicly criticized her court on TikTok.

The non-party citizen, the petition states, had no pending matter before Faircloth and was not a party, victim, or witness in any proceeding before her. According to on-the-record statements quoted in the petition, Faircloth acknowledged at a June 9, 2025 hearing in State v. Quinn, Case No. 25-F-23, that she had been informed of the woman’s social media criticism “not from one, not from two, but from three different individuals familiar with the Court, who work here,” and proceeded immediately on the record to direct court staff and probation to verify the woman’s admission to a Veterans Affairs rehabilitation facility.

“I want to be assured she is in rehab,” Faircloth said on the record, according to the petition. “She is out of the house. She’s nowhere and I want some verification of that.”

The petition alleges that the resulting course of conduct destroyed two of the woman’s businesses — Top Shelf Performance, LLC, and Hub City Auto Clinic.

A $39,000 Fraud, Three Counts of False Swearing, and Felony Child Neglect

The charges against Taylor Loren Staubs constitute the largest single felony stack in the petition. They include:

• one count of felony Conspiracy under W.Va. Code §61-10-31;

• one count of felony Obtaining Money by False Pretenses under W.Va. Code §61-3-24, alleging that between approximately December 2023 and August 2025 Staubs obtained in excess of $39,000 from the same out-of-state donor through a sustained pattern of false representations — including soliciting approximately $500 for a medical cast for her daughter that had already been paid for by insurance, and repeatedly soliciting “mortgage” funds that were not applied to the mortgage;

• one count of felony Witness Tampering under W.Va. Code §61-5-27 against the named victim of the underlying Coram Nobis case;

• one count of felony Extortion as a co-principal in Redding’s August 21, 2025 message;

• one count of felony Child Neglect Resulting in Serious Bodily Injury under W.Va. Code §61-8D-4(b) — a felony carrying five to fifteen years under the recently amended statute;

• three misdemeanor counts of False Swearing in family court for sworn declarations the petition describes as “materially and demonstrably false” — including a declaration of $38,400 annual income contradicted by Staubs’s own financial worksheet showing $56,097 (a 46% understatement), and a declaration of 99.5% parenting time contradicted by documentary records showing 37%;

• one misdemeanor count of False Swearing for Staubs’s separate sworn 2019 emergency-protective-order petition against the named victim of the her ex-husband’s criminal case, denied by the magistrate court for failure to prove the allegations by clear and convincing evidence;

• one misdemeanor count of Unlawful Holding Out as a Licensed Social Worker under W.Va. Code §§30-30-1 and 30-30-29(b), alleging Staubs has advertised herself on Indeed.com as a “Licensed Graduate Social Worker (LGSW)” — a credential the petition states she has never held — and continued to display the title “Licensed Social Worker (LSW)” after her LSW license expired in or about October 2025;

• two misdemeanor counts of Giving False or Misleading Information to a Member of the West Virginia State Police.

The Children at the Center

Beyond the institutional charges, the petition describes specific injuries to specific children.

The minor child N.M., now nine, was used as the named protectee on the forged 2017 DVPO. According to pediatric dental records cited in the petition from Shenandoah Smiles Pediatric Dentistry, N.M. underwent on a single day in May 2021 — at age four — four tooth extractions, two pulpotomies, seven prefabricated crowns, two resin restorations, and the placement of two space maintainers. Charges for that single day exceeded $4,200. The child has had twelve documented streptococcal infections traceable, the petition alleges, to the bacterial reservoir created by years of untreated dental decay.

Each time the father of the child attempted to obtain dental care for his daughter, the petition alleges, Judge Redding used his judicial authority to threaten the father with arrest, characterizing the requests as “harassment” of Staubs. The petition charges Redding with Accessory to Child Neglect Resulting in Serious Bodily Injury under W.Va. Code §61-8D-4(b) and with Failure to Report Suspected Child Abuse or Neglect under West Virginia’s mandatory-reporter statute, W.Va. Code §§49-2-803 and 49-2-812.

The Grand Jury will be presented with the appalling photos of a child so severely neglected that her teeth were rotted black. Her mother, Taylor Staubs, a former social worker who was entrusted to identify and be the voice of neglected and abused children, will now have charges of felony child neglect presented to a Grand Jury.

The Citizen Workaround

The petition arrives nearly six months after the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals appointed Grant County Prosecutor John Ours as Special Prosecutor on December 15, 2025 to investigate Redding, Faircloth, Staubs, and Berkeley County Sheriff Captain Trent Heckman.

That appointment — first reported by National File — followed a swift sequence of events: National File’s November 10, 2025 reporting; Berkeley County Prosecuting Attorney Joe Kinsner’s recusal nine days later; the appointment of Special Prosecutor Ours by Judge Debra McLaughlin in December 2025.

A grand jury was projected at the time to convene on February 17, 2026.

It is now May 6, 2026. No indictments have been announced through the Special Prosecutor track. In a November 2024 prosecution of two former Jefferson County commissioners on 42 misdemeanor counts of neglect of duty, Special Prosecutor Ours obtained convictions in approximately one calendar year. The Berkeley County investigation is now in its sixth month.

The Fritsch petition does not allege misconduct by Special Prosecutor Ours. It does, however, expressly cite Article III, Section 4 of the West Virginia Constitution — the constitutional guarantee that “no person shall be held to answer for treason, felony or other crime, not cognizable by a justice, unless on presentment or indictment of a grand jury” — and Article III, Section 16, the right to petition for redress of grievances, as the basis for direct citizen access to the grand jury independent of any prosecutor, special or otherwise.

The right belongs to the citizen, the petition argues. Not to the State.

What Comes Next

The petition asks the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to assign a visiting judge from outside Berkeley, Jefferson, and Hardy Counties to receive and rule on the application. (Hardy is excluded because Judge Treadway is presiding over the parallel Coram Nobis proceeding.) If the application is granted, Fritsch is asking for leave to present evidence — including testimony from Brenda Petty, Trooper Andy O’Dell, and the named victim in the underlying Coram Nobis case — to the Berkeley County Grand Jury at its session on or about May 19, 2026.

Then twelve citizens of Berkeley County will decide whether their public officials face indictment.

The petition addresses, in advance, the abuse-of-process attack the petitioner anticipates from counsel for one or more of the named targets. Citing NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963), the petition argues that prior journalistic reporting on the underlying conduct does not transform a citizen grand jury application into an abuse of process — that to so hold “would convert prior awareness of a crime into a disqualification from reporting it to the grand jury.”

This is a developing story. National File will provide updates as the visiting-judge assignment is announced and as the May 19, 2026 grand-jury session approaches.

Read the full 67-page Grand Jury Petition: