WOODSTOCK – An embattled deputy with a long history of animosity toward the sheriff once again has been fired from the McHenry County Sheriff's Office.
Zane Seipler was fired Tuesday for violating the department's general orders when he lied under oath in his civil lawsuit against the department, the Sheriff's Office Labor Attorney John Kelly said.
A federal judge in March ruled that Seipler and his wife lied on the stand, and ordered him to pay a substantial amount of the sheriff's legal bills.
The rift between the two dates to Seipler's first termination from the department in 2008. Shortly after, Seipler sued the sheriff, alleging that his civil rights were violated and that he was fired out of retaliation for blowing the whistle on racial profiling.
Nygren has said Seipler was fired the first time because he wrote traffic tickets or warnings to passengers rather than drivers who did not have valid licenses.
After arbitration and a series of rulings in Seipler's favor, Nygren in September 2011 was forced to give Seipler his job back.
In 2010, Seipler asked for, but was denied, a special prosecutor to investigate Nygren on allegations of campaign violations.
That same year, he ran an unsuccessful bid against Nygren in a Republican primary election.
The Sheriff's Office referred all inquiries on Seipler's most recent firing to Kelly, who said he anticpates this firing will be much like the first.
"Under the terms of the labor contract, [Seipler] can file a grievance to protest the firing, and I expect that he will," Kelly said.
Blake Horwitz, Seipler's attorney in the still-pending federal lawsuit, said his client would not speak to the Northwest Herald, but said "we expect the same results to happen as before – that the termination will be overturned."
As part of his federal lawsuit against the sheriff, Seipler was given confidential internal documents including disciplinary records, which ended up on a blog called "The Real MCSO Exposed."
The now-former deputy first said that he did not know who ran the website, but he later said that his wife, Rosalinda, created the blog and posted the documents without his knowledge. Rosalinda Seipler took the stand to support her husband’s latest claim, but when asked to walk through the steps of creating a blog, she couldn't do so.
U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Kapala in March called the Seiplers' testimony a "fabricated narrative that conveniently explained what had transpired."
"There is no justification for such a blatant disregard of the oath that they each took, and their willingness to repeatedly lie to the court in order to protect this case from the possibility of being dismissed is an affront to the integrity of this court," Kapala said.