Butler County Commissioner Jim Eckstein denies ever saying there was a conspiracy between fellow Commissioner Dale Pinkerton and President Judge Thomas Doerr to gain leverage in a defamation case.

Eckstein said at the commissioners meeting Wednesday that he never made comments that meant the jury for the case in which he is the defendant would be tainted.

“I never used the words jury tampering,” he said.

However, Eckstein did use the word tampered during the question-and-answer session with the media at the June 19 meeting.

“It can be tampered with,” he said then.

Eckstein said in an interview Wednesday that jury pools can be tainted despite court officials claims to the contrary.

“People manipulate things all the time,” he said. “The system can be altered.”

Eckstein on June 19 said it wasn’t fair the two jury commissioner posts were cut when he’s facing a court case.

He accused Pinkerton, one of the three people suing him, of pushing for the jury commissioners’ removal so Doerr would be the only person left to oversee jury pool selection.

“Now Dale is spearheading the campaign to have Judge Doerr oversee the jury pool selection process,” Eckstein said June 19.

Eckstein on Wednesday claimed his previous accusations of political bias on Doerr’s part do not mean he was levying a jury tampering charge.

But during the June 19 meeting, Eckstein compared the situation to the 1980 rigging of the Pennsylvania lottery. He said people thought the lottery couldn’t be fixed either before the scandal erupted.

Eckstein also brought up the kickback scandal in Luzerne County, where judges were imprisoned for sentencing juveniles to detention centers in return for payments from those facilities.

“The difference between this and Luzerne County is the judges were dealing with teens,” he said.

Despite making those comparisons June 19, Eckstein said Wednesday he only was pointing out there is an appearance of impropriety, which violates the state judicial code of conduct.

Eckstein said when he stated on June 19 that county government regressed into an unethical abyss, he was not referring to the judiciary.

But his previous sentence referred Pinkerton’s “zeal” on having the jury commissioners removed.

Pinkerton on Wednesday disagreed with Eckstein’s denial of alleging a conspiracy.

“He certainly gave that type of feeling to me,” Pinkerton said.

Commissioner Bill McCarrier agreed.

As part of reaction to the June 19 meeting, attorneys in the Butler County Bar Association voted to review whether they should respond to remarks made by Eckstein. A three-member committee is reviewing the situation.

Eckstein denied he was backpedaling because of scrutiny by the bar association.

“I’m not under any heat,” he said Wednesday. “I think it’s a joke.”

Eckstein also declared he was not more concerned about his political image than conducting county business.

“I’m not worried about my image,” he said.

McCarrier and Pinkerton on May 23 voted to eliminate the jury commissioner posts as of 2014. They cited cost savings as the reason.

Eckstein, who opposed the move, was absent from that meeting to attend a conference in Harrisburg.

County court administration previously stated its office could absorb the jury commissioner duties.

While Eckstein is distancing himself from accusations of people plotting jury tampering, he maintains Pinkerton was politically motivated in his push to cut the posts.

Eckstein said in an interview it was a conflict of interest for Pinkerton to vote against keeping jury commissioners when he is suing Eckstein.

“He promoted it,” Eckstein said of ending the jury commissioner positions.

Pinkerton maintains his only motivation for eliminating the jobs was to cut costs.