The SBI has ended its probe into the purchase of portrait by former state mental hospital director Patsy Christian without action.
The investigation was requested by the state Department of Health and Human Services in June following reports in The News & Observer about a painting of herself that Christian commissioned from J. Lee Harris, a hospital nurse who sidelined as an artist, reports Michael Biesecker.
The artwork was paid for using vending machine revenue from John Umstead Hospital that the state budget manual says should be spent to benefit patients.
Following public uproar about the portrait, Christian resigned her position as chief executive officer of Central Regional Hospital in Butner and was reassigned to a newly created position within the department at 95 percent of her former salary.
DHHS Secretary Dempsey Benton ordered that the portrait not hang in the new hospital for which it was commissioned and that state money paid for the artwork be recovered. Harris refunded the $572 she was paid for the "executive portrait" and its gilded frame.
Though state law explicitly forbids the awarding of state service contracts to state employees, Erik Hooks, an assistant SBI director, wrote in an Aug. 14 letter that he had concluded "no further inquiry by the SBI is necessary at this time."
More after the jump.
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Hooks wrote that he "will rely on DHHS to continue to evaluate internal controls" and that the department should contact him if "information regarding criminal activity" comes to the attention of administrators.
Wake County District attorney Colon Willoughby, who was consulted by Hooks about the potential for criminal charges in the case, said he saw no need to prosecute Christian or Harris.
"It looked like more of a management issue to me than something that rose to the level of a criminal matter," Willoughby said.
Last week, Christian was dispatched to Goldsboro as part of a two-person team sent to help at Cherry Hospital, which is in trouble with federal regulators following the death of one patient and the assault of another.
As for what may now be the most infamous portrait in state government, the department will now say only that it is in private hands.
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