“We had to dismiss it,” said District Attorney Don Anderson, who appeared in court to announce the dismissal of the case against Rowland Mosser.
“Rowland was delighted to finally have an end to his ordeal,” said Mosser’s attorney, Mitch Hauptman.
Mosser, 67, of Lucerne served as the senior center’s executive director from 2002 to 2005.
He had faced two felony counts of embezzlement and two felony grand theft counts for allegedly taking an unspecified amount of funds from the senior center between Jan. 1, 2005, and Aug. 12, 2005.
In October 2010, following the conclusion of a preliminary hearing that lasted two and a half days, Judge Andrew Blum had ordered Mosser to stand trial on the charges, as Lake County News has reported.
Hauptman said the District Attorney’s Office previously had offered Mosser a plea deal that would have reduced the case to a misdemeanor, but he said Mosser turned it down.
Anderson told Lake County News that he concluded that he could not move forward with the case because of the death of its lead investigator, Ron Larsen, who died in August.
“He was the only one who can authenticate the evidence, the documents we have, and testify to the chain of custody,” said Anderson.
Without Larsen’s testimony, the prosecution lacked the evidence it needed, Anderson said.
Anderson said he and the case’s prosecutor, Gary Luck, went over the case in detail and tried to find a way to rehabilitate it before concluding they couldn’t move forward.
“We have no choice in this case at all,” Anderson said.
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