Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson, seen here at a press conference in 2016.

Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson was called to the stand Tuesday morning during the third day of the jury trial in a $3.4 million wrongful termination lawsuit in federal district court in Eugene.

Former deputy Eric Kozowski is alleging Nelson violated his constitutional right to free speech and rights as a whistleblower, among other claims.

Nelson called the meeting he had with Kozowski in early 2018 to tell him he was fired an “unpleasant experience.”

“He didn’t say much,” Nelson testified.

Nelson was asked how Kozowski’s lawyer, who was with him at the meeting, reacted to the news.

“He said, ‘We’ll see you in court,’” Nelson said.

Nelson was appointed sheriff in 2015 at a tumultuous time at the sheriff’s office. A number of senior staff members had been outed for corruption. Nelson, who came from the corrections side of the sheriff’s office, pledged to clean house of bad actors.

In 2016, he ran to keep in his position. Kozowski, then a six-year veteran of the office with no conduct blemishes on his record, campaigned against him, saying problems with management and culture had continued under the new sheriff.

Starting in October 2016 — a month before the election — Nelson opened conduct investigations against Kozowski.

That November, Nelson was elected by a 10% margin.

A number of the investigations were quickly determined to be unfounded. One was related to statements Kozowski made during a televised debate. That investigation was soon dropped, but another was opened alleging that during the debate. Kozowski wore his uniform, in violation of the sheriff’s office policy against “politicking” while at work as a public employee. Nelson wore his uniform as well, but as an elected official, he was considered exempt from his office’s uniform policy, county attorney David Doyle testified Tuesday.

Kozowski asked to meet with Doyle during the 2016 race for clarification on the uniform rule.

“I told (Kozowski) the one advantage to this is if you win, in four years you’ll be the one to have this advantage,” Doyle testified.

The uniform investigation led to a separate, 12th conduct investigation, this one examining if Kozowski lied to the office’s private investigator during the internal investigations.

Kozowski was ultimately terminated with several justifications asserted by the sheriff’s office, including that Kozowski was insubordinate by wearing his uniform during campaign events, and that he was untruthful with investigator Tim Moore during the uniform investigation.

After the lunch break Tuesday, District Attorney John Hummel was called to testify.

Deschutes County’s outspoken top prosecutor played a minor role in the Kozowski affair in two ways discussed Tuesday. First, in 2016, Hummel allowed Nelson to use the DA office’s private investigator to assist with numerous conduct investigations occurring at the sheriff’s office. That investigator, Adam Heyman, looked into several of the conduct allegations against Kozowski.

Hummel spent more time Tuesday discussing why he did not add Kozowski’s name to his “Brady” list.

Named for the landmark Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, Brady lists are kept by prosecutors in many parts of the county to document police officers who have been found to be untruthful.

Hummel was asked why he didn’t add Kozowski to the list after the county forwarded the matter to his office.

“In this case I didn’t move this to the hearing phase because it looked like the investigator and Kozowski, they both knew what they were talking about in that interview,” Hummel said, adding that he didn’t think Kozowski was trying to deceive anyone.

Emails from Chris Bell, lawyer for Deschutes County, were read to the jury. In them, Bell advised Nelson numerous times to consider the optics of his investigations into Kozowski.

“There’s a very natural reaction in your head to think this guy just ran against Nelson and now we’re opening up conduct investigations against him,” Bell said. “My concern was that we do our best to document everything clearly and treat Eric Kozowski with fairness.”

Kozowski’s lawyers called Tim Moore to the witness stand.

Moore worked for 30 years for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, retiring in 2016 to focus on consulting. His main client became the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, for which he conducted personnel investigations. The sheriff’s office had a number of open conduct investigations, and Moore testified he was told the agency wanted an outside investigator to look into Kozowski to avoid conflicts.

Moore earned more than $50,000 from Deschutes County in 2017 and $60,000 in 2018.

In 2018, he was penalized by the state for performing private investigative work without a license. The span of time he was in violation of state law includes part of the time he was investigating Kozowski, Moore admitted under questioning.

Kozowski’s wife of more than 30 years, Kristen, testified in the afternoon she witnessed physical and mental deterioration in her husband starting during the 2016 election, including depression, anxiety, insomnia and stomach problems that led to a trip to the emergency department.

“To me, it seemed like he was getting bullied at work, and it seemed like one phony accusation after another,” she said.

Following her testimony, the plaintiff rested.

“Some of these issues we are still experiencing,” she said. “I think Eric experiences some depression because this was something he wanted to do with the rest of his life and I think he realizes that’s not the case.”

The trial is scheduled to continue Wednesday with witnesses from the defense.