First in-person hearing in JCPD/Sean Williams-related lawsuit Friday

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Opposing sides are scheduled for their first courtroom appearance Friday in a bitterly contested federal civil lawsuit alleging Johnson City Police Department (JCPD) corruption related to accused serial rapist Sean Williams.

Federal Magistrate Judge Jill McCook is set to hear arguments in a federal courtroom on the plaintiffs’ motion to compel the defendants — the City of Johnson City and several current and former police officers — to produce years worth of financial records.

Defense attorneys oppose the motion and have called the requests “a fishing expedition” and say their clients have already produced significant amounts of financial records with no proof yet from plaintiffs of any corruption.

Lawyers for the multiple alleged Williams victims claim the requested records could hold keys in their bid to prove what is perhaps their primary argument: that police took money or otherwise benefited in exchange for overlooking Williams’ alleged serial sexual assaults.

Why a hearing now?

Both sides in the Doe suit have filed numerous dramatic and fiercely opposing claims in recent months. Along with deposition transcripts, the filings in the suit exceed 300 and the pages filed are in the thousands.

Judges — both McCook, the magistrate in the case, and presiding Judge Travis McDonough — have ruled on previous contested motions based just on the paper filings. Just over two weeks ago, McDonough dismissed individual claims against former Capt. Kevin Peters and officers Justin Jenkins and Brady Higgins, leaving former Chief Karl Turner and officers Toma Sparks and Jeff Legault along with the city as remaining named defendants.

But the case that’s currently scheduled for an April 2025 trial may be nearing some additional important rulings, including whether to allow it to proceed as a class action. The plaintiffs have deposed numerous “related parties” who aren’t specific defendants, including Ball and Williams’ former business partner, known as Female 4 — whom plaintiffs attorneys have suggested was at the center of the alleged corruption scheme.

An Oct. 1, 2023 Facebook post, written on a page supposedly belonging to Williams (he was jailed at the time), included multiple allegations of JCPD corruption. Among them was a claim that Female 4 “made $2,000 a week payments” to JCPD officers “because she got caught selling cocaine and the corrupt officers targeted her for extortion probably due to her association with me.”

The Jane Doe attorneys successfully subpoenaed bank records related to Williams’ former company, Glass & Concrete Contracting (GCC), and asked Female 4 numerous questions about transactions during an hours-long deposition. She repeatedly denied that any of the withdrawals and transfers attorneys brought up were improper in any way.

In filings, defense attorneys noted they’ve agreed to provide some of the additional requested financial documents but that the extent of the requests is overbroad and burdensome.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys, conversely, say the information they have received, the depositions they’ve conducted and the claims they’ve made in filings so far show strong circumstantial evidence pointing toward police corruption.

“Plaintiffs’ requests are not intended to harass, nor are they unduly burdensome, but are reasonably calculated to obtain material evidence proving that the Defendant officers had a financial incentive to carry out acts of obstruction,” a portion of the motion to compel reads.

“(B)ank records and deposition testimony tend to corroborate Plaintiffs’ allegations regarding the movement of funds out of GCC to Female 4 in ways that do not appear to be explained by legitimate business activity,” it states elsewhere.

It claims officers might have benefited as, according to the plaintiffs, Female 4 liquidated Glass and Concrete Contracting’s assets in 2022.

“All of this further supports that evidence of the corruption scheme is likely to be found in Defendants’ financial records,” the motion says.

Attorneys for the city and several current and individual defendants have fired back.

Kristin Berexa represents Toma Sparks, a JCPD detective at the center of the corruption claims. Her response to the motion to compel references the Oct. 1, 2023 Facebook post, which specifically claims Sparks was among recipients of money laundered through “using bogus fraudulent 1099 names and forged owner’s draw.”

Berexa claims the post is “(t)he underpinning of this specious theory of bribery and extortion by JCPD officers…”

Her response accuses plaintiffs of “weaving together unfounded allegations, incomplete deposition testimony, incomplete and inaccurate analysis of bank records, and an inaccurate analysis of City-produced audit trails.”

Berexa claims that was done “in an attempt to support their baseless theory that Johnson City police officers engaged in an extortion and bribery scheme with Sean Williams. Plaintiffs use this theory as the basis for their need to obtain wide-reaching financial information from the Defendants through discovery requests.”

The motion also seeks the real estate contract City Manager Cathy Ball entered in early 2022 to buy Williams’ fifth-floor condominium at 200 E. Main St. Ball did not purchase the condo, and in a deposition and in a later news conference, she said she withdrew from the contract after learning Williams was a fugitive .

Dozens of women are alleged to have been sexually assaulted in that condo, mainly between 2018 and 2021, with authorities now claiming to have video and still recordings of those incidents after allegedly recovering digital devices from Williams when he was arrested in April 2023. One affidavit claims that the women in the images appear to be drugged.

In addition to providing some financial records to attorneys for multiple alleged victims of Williams, 52, in the “Doe et al vs. Johnson City” civil suit that was first filed in June 2023, they and other parties have sat through hours of depositions. “Doe” is the second federal civil suit related to JCPD and Williams, who was at large for almost two years after JCPD unsuccessfully tried to arrest him on a federal ammunition charge at his condo in early May 2021.

Williams’ alleged sexual assaults first made news in June 2022, when former Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Kat Dahl sued the city for wrongful termination. Her suit, currently set for trial in October, alleges JCPD terminated her in mid-2021 as retaliation for her efforts to get JCPD to more aggressively investigate allegations that Williams was a serial sex offender.

A year after Dahl filed suit, Vanessa Baehr-Jones and other attorneys sued the city on behalf of what were then nine Jane Doe plaintiffs. The suit has been amended twice and lawyers are now seeking class-action status. All defendants have denied all allegations and claims in both lawsuits.

Williams, meanwhile, was arrested in Cullowhee, N.C. April 29, 2023 by campus police from Western Carolina University (WCU) after an officer checked on a parked car at an off-campus parking lot in the middle of the night. That officer allegedly found more than 14 ounces of methamphetamine and 12 ounces of cocaine.

When WCU police searched thumb drives and other devices for evidence of drug transactions, they allegedly stumbled across a massive cache of digital files — some arranged by name in folders — purportedly showing Williams sexually assaulting dozens of apparently drugged women in his apartment. Williams has since been indicted in state and federal court for sex crimes against children based on some of that evidence and faces an October federal trial on three such counts that could net up to 90 years in prison.

While attorneys for both sides have engaged in heated exchanges during depositions and sometimes been far from collegial in their filings, their scheduled appearance before a judge in the case would mark a first.

McCook has not indicated in her very brief notice of the hearing whether she will rule on the motion immediately Friday or issue a ruling later.

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