One of my favorite movies is Martin Scorsese’s “Casino,” with Robert De Niro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein running a major Las Vegas casino.

The whole movie is great, but my favorite scene in “Casino” is a scene where a local county commissioner comes to visit Ace to get a relative of his reinstated as an employee at the casino.

This employee was fired by Ace after the employee was negligent, allowing three gambling machines to be hit three times in a row. De Niro gives a line that continues to rattle around in my head.

“Either he was in on it, or — forgive me for saying this — but he was too dumb to see what was going on. Either way, I cannot have a man like that working here.”

That line came to mind last week after accusations of state officials allegedly allowing electronic documents — such as emails — to be destroyed came to light in two separate federal class action lawsuits.

The big story last week was a federal magistrate recommending for summary judgment against the state in a federal class action lawsuit began last year over conditions at the Southern Regional Jail near Beckley. In his order, U.S. Magistrate Judge Omar Aboulhosn accused officials with the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation of intentionally destroying evidence, such as grievances from inmates and emails from current and former DCR employees.

“…The failure to preserve the evidence that was destroyed in this case was intentionally done and not simply an oversight by the witnesses,” Aboulhosn wrote. “The intentional decisions to not preserve evidence, and to allow evidence to be destroyed was not done by low-level employees of the WVDCR but was perpetrated by the highest persons in the chain of command…”

A judge calling for summary judgment — which basically means awarding the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit everything they are asking for — is extraordinary. And Aboulhosn’s order was enough to scare the scat out of the Governor’s Office. Both Gov. Jim Justice and new Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia pushed back Wednesday, saying there was no intentional destruction of documents.

During the Wednesday presser, Sorsaia alluded to discipline taken against state employees involved with the snafu. Some blame was placed on miscommunication between DCR and the Office of Technology, which serves as the IT department for all state departments. Apparently, OT has a policy of deleting emails for former state employees after a certain period of time unless there is a litigation hold placed on the account during pending court cases … more on that in a moment.

WV MetroNews Statewide Correspondent Brad McElhinny found out later Wednesday night that interim DCR commissioner Brad Douglas and Phil Sword, the chief counsel for DHS, were fired. Also, almost by magic, some of the documents that DCR officials had testified has been accidently destroyed are now suddenly available.

One has to wonder: If Aboulhosn had not issued such a scathing order and had recommended for summary judgment, would the documents in question still remain missing? Was this all done by current and former DCR officials or was there a higher hand involved, such as current or former Department of Homeland Security officials or even officials in the Governor’s Office? Was this unintentional negligence or a cover-up performed poorly?

Was someone in DCR or the governor’s administration “in on it,” or “too dumb to see what was going on?” I don’t know the answer, but either option is not good. And it wouldn’t be surprising to find out that Aboulhosn has phoned the U.S. Attorney’s Office to look into this matter further.

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I said I would return to the issue of the Office of Technology and emails of former state employees. Sorsaia explained Wednesday that OT has a policy of deleting emails for former employees.

“We were unaware that (The Office of Technology) had a policy when an employee ceased working for the state … after five months they deleted their emails from the system,” Sorsaia said.

However, in a different federal class action lawsuit brought on behalf of children in the state’s foster care system, attorneys for those children are seeking sanctions against the Department of Health and Human Resources for … you guessed it … not holding on to emails for former DHHR officials. In an Oct. 6 email, attorneys for DHHR explained:

“Unfortunately, in retrieving emails for the custodians requested by Plaintiffs, Defendants’ counsel discovered that the West Virginia Office of Technology (‘OT’) did not preserve PST files for several custodians formerly employed by DHHR. Instead, they were automatically deleted 30 days after the termination of employment, which is OT’s standard and automated practice for individuals leaving state employment.”

So, Sorsaia says the period of time emails are preserved for former state employees is five months. Attorneys for DHHR say the policy is 30 days. Which is it? According to the Department of Administration which oversees the Office of Technology, state departments are required to inform OT when a state employee departs via a form.

It appears OT does delete emails for former state employees after 30 days, but it also puts the onus on state departments to store those emails. Also, departments are to immediately let OT know about legal holds during pending court cases so that OT can preserve the emails.

There needs to be legislation requiring state departments and/or OT to not delete emails from former state employees. Those are public documents that are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. And the argument made by some that emails must be deleted to free up server space is nonsense.