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Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff "re-tweeted" a message on Friday urging people to enter a raffle. He says, through a spokesman, that the raffle doesn't violate Utah's ban on gambling — even though a police department canceled a similar raffle last year after figuring it would break the law.
Shurtleff, the state's top law enforcement officer, wrote on his Twitter account on Friday, "RT [re-tweet] the crap out of this: help a Cop and you could win a trip to Hawaii!" He then gave a link to another message promoting a raffle to benefit the Utah Meth Cops Project.
For a $5 ticket, the raffle offers a chance to win prizes including a round-trip ticket to Hawaii or an autographed Real Salt Lake soccer ball. It said the raffle is designed to help a group that works with police officers exposed to meth labs who later suffer debilitating symptoms.
However, Utah Code 76-10-1011 bans "any scheme for the disposal or distribution of property by chance among persons who have paid or promised to pay any valuable consideration for the chance."
Paul Murphy, spokesman for the attorney general's office, said Shurtleff understood that it is possible to enter and win the raffle without buying a ticket by becoming friends on Facebook with the raffle's organizer.
"You can have a raffle with donations [legally] as long as there is an equal chance of winning without making donations," Murphy said.
However, the link that comes up from Shurtleff's re-tweet on Friday afternoon did not mention the possibility of winning without buying a ticket. It merely tells how to buy them, and where the money will go.
Last year, the Lone Peak Police Department in Utah County called off a raffle it had planned after it said it figured that raffles are illegal in Utah.
Police in Highland and Alpine were trying to raise $10,000 to buy and train their first drug dog, and they offered tickets with a chance at a $1,000 shopping spree.
It isn't the first time that Twitter posts have caused a flutter of controversy for Shurtleff.
In 2009, he inadvertently confirmed that he would run for the U.S. Senate in a series of what he thought were private Twitter postings that instead went public. He had posted them in the middle of the night while in Israel on a trade mission.
After that foul-up, Shurtleff posted, "Thinking of 'texting while drowsy' law after private 1AM tweet went public. Formal announcement on 5/20 about senate race and tweeting plans."
More recently, after the A.G.'s office said it planned to appeal the recent exoneration of Debra Brown's 1993 conviction for murder, Shurtleff instead tweeted that he would not appeal. Later, he reversed that and decided to appeal.
Shurtleff, who is battling cancer and was in a hospital undergoing chemotherapy at the time, later said he got caught up in the emotions of the ruling — feeling "enough was enough" — when he had posted that tweet.