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Season Seven: Dirty Badges; Death Poole
187 Plays4 days ago
In this episode, we talk about the twists and turns of a rabbit hole involving a name.
https://www.gulfcoastnewsnow.com/article/deputy-shot-killed-man-florida/68917961
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Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Warning and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:57
Speaker
You send me stuff and I send you stuff. I get like reels of stuff.
Shocking Reel from Florida
00:01:02
Speaker
and so back in the fall, but like 2025, last year, I got this reel out of Florida, I think.
00:01:13
Speaker
I knew I wanted to do some Dirty Badge episodes. I knew we were going to have a different kind of season premiere this year. And then I wanted to do a couple of those. And this reel just stuck in my head. And I don't know how to explain like how crazy it was.
00:01:34
Speaker
But you know do you ever just see things that you can't unsee sometimes? i Yeah, I see all kinds of things I can't unsee, yes. In fact, I'm not so sure I ever unsee anything. well so This is one of those things. It's awful.
Deputy Timothy Poole Incident
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I saw a couple of these like weird reels um where it was basically cops doing stuff that I just could not wrap my head around.
00:02:10
Speaker
And one of those things this year involved ah a deputy named Timothy Poole. Did you see this whole thing?
00:02:21
Speaker
did. I did. Okay, so there are
00:02:27
Speaker
multiple things going on with this that are just wrong. But Timothy Poole, from what I can tell, is a Charlotte County deputy. um At one point, the local news down there, including Wink News, which I didn't know what Wink News was, so if that's a terrible source...
00:02:47
Speaker
It's really only, it's only for this one thing. W-I-N-K. um They did an investigative
Investigation and Controversy
00:02:55
Speaker
piece on this. So I wanted to like bring it up. ah Back October 24th, Maddie Heron and Brianna Lanham, um they put up an article on the website there that is under Wink underscore investigations for Wink News. And,
00:03:13
Speaker
And it says the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office has concluded its investigation into a deputy-involved shooting and handed the case over to the state's attorney for review. Okay.
00:03:24
Speaker
They give a two-sentence summary here, and then we're going to talk about this. It says on September 23rd, Deputy Timothy Poole shot and killed 50-year-old Daniel Birch during a call for battery. The incident captured on body camera video escalated from a verbal dispute to gunfire.
00:03:42
Speaker
And then Deputy Poole retired. So this happens in September, 2025. I hear about it in October. By the time I've heard about this, like this guy has retired. He's like, I'm done. I'm just going to bail.
00:03:59
Speaker
um The video, if you guys have not seen this, I will put a link in the show notes to the body cam footage from this. And it's pretty short. Like the video itself is pretty short.
00:04:11
Speaker
But it essentially is a cop tasing a guy And then very quickly after that, now it's going to pause in the one that I'm going to put up.
00:04:22
Speaker
But the same guy that he just tased, who is still not
00:04:29
Speaker
cooperating, I guess would be the word, with the police officer. would say he's actually provoking him a little, but not with actual violence. Right. Right, right. He's just, I don't want to. He's being a smartass. Yeah, yeah. He's being really sarcastic and he's being a smartass.
00:04:46
Speaker
I don't know about you, but my thought was I could have this exact same reaction if I didn't know better. Correct. Because he's thinking to himself, why is this cop bothering me?
00:04:59
Speaker
Right, right. He can't possibly be serious. Yeah, he's super annoyed, and ah the cop is annoyed, and it pauses, and you hear the audio over top of it. The cop literally just gets tired of trying to taste the guy and shoots and kills him.
00:05:15
Speaker
It is insane. And so that results in there being a lawsuit.
Deputy Poole's Record and Retirement
00:05:20
Speaker
Obviously, as I said, Deputy Timothy Poole, who shot and killed 50-year-old Daniel Birch during this encounter,
00:05:28
Speaker
he has retired by the time I even hear about this. So essentially in October, 2025. Now, the reason I bring up the wink thing is they like pull the full personnel file. And i have not seen that happen.
00:05:47
Speaker
um Typically when i go looking for personnel file, a lot of times I end up, having to get some kind of court order. You can't do the full thing through a FOIA, but they pull the whole thing. They talk about it in this really brief blurb from October.
00:06:07
Speaker
And it just says, during his 22 year career with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Timothy Poole had six complaints filed against them, resulting in eight allegations.
00:06:19
Speaker
Only two of these allegations were sustained. One of them is a traffic violation. The other is a failure to properly document a domestic dispute, and he got a written warning for that.
00:06:32
Speaker
um According to Timothy Poole's attorney, Stephen Leskovich, he described his client's personnel file as unremarkable. ah The exact quote is, his personnel file to me is unremarkable. There is nothing in there that I'm overly concerned about.
00:06:48
Speaker
Now, Timothy Poole's file includes his history of service in the Air Force. He also worked as a state correctional officer before joining the Sheriff's Office in 2003. And that, he has multiple, uh, entries in his file about the Air Force and about being a correctional officer.
00:07:08
Speaker
He received numerous accolades and awards throughout his career. One notable commendation came a day after the fatal shooting. when the Punta Gorda police chief thanked Timothy Poole and other deputies for their assistance with an arson investigation.
00:07:23
Speaker
Now, um the attorney here, Steven Leskovich, he goes on to say, you're talking about three decades of experience and you've got to take your three decades of experience and utilize that in a matter of one second or two seconds.
00:07:35
Speaker
um Now, Birch's brother, Jeff Birch, is quoted in this article. He says that Poole's past actions do not change the impact of the shooting on their family. What he did the day before, the day after, has no concern to my family. Our only concern is what he did to my brother. Now, at the time that you and I are recording this, we're like deep into our holiday stuff. You're editing, and we're putting those out for people. So we're releasing this a couple months after we record it. Now, at the time that we're doing all of that, there's no prosecution pending for Timothy Poole down in Florida. But it definitely does go viral.
00:08:17
Speaker
um This video, when I first saw it, I think I saw it as a Facebook reel. And so I went back through and I pulled like an article earlier in the month from the gulfcoastnewsnow.com.
Lawsuit and Allegations of Excessive Force
00:08:33
Speaker
This is from a guy named Tyler Watkins down there. And the title of it is just Charlotte County Deputy Retires After Shooting That Killed Deep Creek Man.
00:08:42
Speaker
It says the Charlotte County deputy who shot and killed a man during a confrontation along Saxony Circle in Deep Creek has retired. The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office announced that Timothy Poole submitted his retirement notice, which went into effect on Thursday.
00:08:57
Speaker
On September 23rd, deputies were called out multiple times to the condo complex. At approximately 8.50 a.m., m the CCSO responded to a criminal mischief call possibly involving 50-year-old Daniel Scott Birch.
00:09:12
Speaker
Although Sheriff Bill Prummel said it was believed that Birch was responsible for some damage around his neighbor's property, there was no evidence at the time. Prummel said the responding deputy only documented the damage and left.
00:09:24
Speaker
Later on that day, the CCSO was called back to the complex by Birch's neighbor, who said that Birch had physically assaulted him at the Deep Creek Golf Club. Body camera footage that was released ah earlier this week showed Poole and Birch's confrontation, during which...
00:09:41
Speaker
Timothy Poole shot Birch. Birch was taken to the hospital. he ends up dying on September 25th. According to the sheriff's office, Poole's retirement does not impact his investigation, and it would have continued regardless of this decision.
00:09:55
Speaker
ah Sheriff Promo also said internal findings findings about the investigation are expected to be turnedover turned over to the state's attorney's office next week. So that's all back in ah September and October of 2025.
00:10:12
Speaker
This case is crazy. It is one of the most interesting examples of like an officer just straight up murdering someone.
00:10:25
Speaker
He absolutely straight up murders this guy. And at first, ah you sort of kind of, well, I mean, it wasn't like to be mean, but you like sort of blindsided me with it because it literally is a guy without a shirt on and it's body cam, right? Yes, it is And yeah I'm watching it. I'm like, you know, what is this? And,
00:10:49
Speaker
It got my attention really fast because i had to watch it again. And I'm like, did he just kill that dude? Because I watch i did watch the version that I think it i think it pauses. But I think like there's an explanation going on as well. Like, we're pausing this, so we're not showing this man actually getting killed. Right. Something to that effect. well Or they're not showing the shooting itself. He doesn't like get killed right there. It takes him two days to die.
00:11:16
Speaker
ah Right. But they like nothing else happens to him. Correct. the shit The being shot by the police officers, what killed him. Correct. Uh, but yeah, he doesn't die right there on camera, but they don't even show like the actual exchange, but leading up to it, they show that.
00:11:32
Speaker
And I was so confused because I thought for certain that I had to have missed something. Yeah. And I didn't, I didn't miss anything. the,
00:11:45
Speaker
The deputy, ah he I thought perhaps he had lost his mind temporarily. Now, you said something about, ah the i believe it was the deputy's attorney saying that there was nothing notable in the file. The personnel file, yeah. Okay, well, is the attorney the reason we have access to the file?
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, it seems to be. Yes. Okay. That makes sense because it seems like he's presented it as a, look, this dude is completely ah fine. Right. Like there's, he has a it's not an exemplary record, but it's a pretty clean record.
00:12:26
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And thinking about um what the victim's brother stated earlier, is I agree with that. I agree that, like, nothing about anything else has anything to do with this. In fact, the only thing I thought when you were kind of reading through ah the record and how he had been with the office for 22 years or in law enforcement for that long or whatever it was, I thought, well, he should have known better.
00:13:01
Speaker
And then i also was thinking, does is it just because you know previously he didn't shoot somebody, but if he took this attitude with him to work every day, i can only imagine the kind of cop he was.
00:13:19
Speaker
Well, it seems to be in that department because one of the things that happened like while all this is going on, and when I first started researching this, I sort of get hung up on things and I have to like pull a bunch of information together and start sorting out what matters. Right.
00:13:36
Speaker
Maddie Herron, so the same person writing for Wink, investigates about this incident. She has an October 31st, 2025 article that pops up, and it says Charlotte County family sues sheriff over deadly deputy shooting. So at first, I thought it was the same incident.
00:13:53
Speaker
It is not. It is a different shooting, but still the Charlotte County Sheriff's deputies. But not the same deputy, right? He had retired.
00:14:07
Speaker
Well, no, this is prior to that. and it I can't tell if the same deputy is involved or not. But Sheriff Bill Prummel is, again, defending his deputies. Here's what that one says. It says the family of Elroy Clark, a Charlotte County man shot and killed by deputies last year, filed a civil rights lawsuit in May against Sheriff Bill Premal and three deputies. So this is all in 2025.
00:14:32
Speaker
The lawsuit accuses the sheriff and deputies of excessive force. Okay. The incident gained attention after body camera footage was released showing deputies interacting with Clark at his home after calling 911 to remove a trespasser.
00:14:47
Speaker
Deputies claim that Clark, so Elroy Clark, the guy who called 911, has an outstanding warrant. So when they attempt to arrest him, the situation escalates, and that results in Clark's death.
00:15:00
Speaker
And according to Michael Beckman, now this is a different attorney who represents the Clark family. He says, Mrs. Clark, you know, she's now a widow with four children. Her reason for filing the lawsuit is not to get publicity.
00:15:13
Speaker
So Beckman, while he says that, he has released a couple of press releases. And in one of those press releases, he talks about Deputy Timothy Poole. And he says that these two cases share similarities. Right.
00:15:28
Speaker
He claims that Deputy Poole's actions are comparable to those of the deputies involved in Clark's case. And to be clear, Timothy Poole is not named in the other case, but the same sheriff is in the same department.
00:15:40
Speaker
So according to court records, no Timothy Poole in the Clark family's lawsuit. ah But Beckman says it really upset Clark's family when they saw that another person had been shot on his own property, just like Elroy Clark was, ah and both of them So he says, one, it was on its own property, just like Elroy.
00:16:02
Speaker
Two, they were unarmed. Most importantly, the deputies in the shooting of Mr. Clark, they were briefly put on leave, and then they went back to work. The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office declined to comment on this particular lawsuit, and Steven Leskovich, he says that the press release, so this is the guy that's Timothy Poole's attorney. He says the press release paints a false narrative about Mr. Poole.
00:16:26
Speaker
He said Mr. Poole had nothing to do with Mr. Clark's death. In October 2024, Sheriff Bill Prummel defended his deputy's actions in a press
Qualified Immunity and Dismissal Motion
00:16:34
Speaker
conference. He said they used every piece of tool they had in their non-lethal toolbook toolbox.
00:16:39
Speaker
ah Michael Beckman said he hopes a favorable decision for Clark's family will lead to changes within the sheriff's office. said it'll give a peace of mind to the widow. This is according to Beckman. Hopefully it changes a lot of the practices that we've seen in training.
00:16:53
Speaker
So court records at this time show that ah a judge had granted a renewed motion to stay discovery. That had been filed on behalf of the CCSO or the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office. So the evidence gathering pauses while that goes on. They're all due back in court over the holiday season.
00:17:10
Speaker
um There's a second... kind of follow up to this, but this actually comes out of mysuncoast.com, which is, that's ABC7 down in Florida. And this one says, the byline is from Jim Dela. It says, the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office has asked a federal court to dismiss a wrongful death suit filed by the family of a man shot to death by deputies in 2024.
00:17:33
Speaker
The motion filed on behalf of the sheriff's office contends that the three deputies involved in Sheriff Bill Prummel are entitled to qualified immunity. Qualified immunity protects law enforcement and other government officials from lawsuits in the course of their duties unless a plaintiff can show they violated a clearly established statutory or constitutional right.
00:17:52
Speaker
The civil suit filed in May by the family of 42-year-old Clark, so they're back, they call him Leroy here, they call him Leroy and the other um article. It contends the deputies involved were not properly trained and unnecessarily escalated the situation and used deadly force against Clark.
00:18:11
Speaker
So he asked the question, was the shooting justified? And says on October 23rd, 2024, deputies responded to a 911 call about a disturbance between two men in Punta Gorda The sheriff's offices, once they arrived, deputies Brad Stender and Mitchell Palmer encountered 42-year-old Elroy Clark, so we're back to Elroy here, who wanted another man named Troy Johnson to leave his property.
00:18:36
Speaker
During their investigation, the deputies discovered that a warrant had been issued for Clark's arrest on an unrelated trespass charge. So they call in additional deputies. Specifically, Brad Stinder calls for an additional deputy to assist them, and they attempt to take Elroy Clark into custody.
00:18:55
Speaker
At this point, the sheriff's office and the family disagree on exactly what happened next. The deputies say that Clark had been acting erratically, identifying himself to the 911 operator as, quote, unquote, the king, K-I-N-G.
00:19:11
Speaker
So Deputy Stender grabbed Elroy Clark's left wrist in an attempt to place him in handcuffs. Elroy Clark resisted and refused to obey orders.
00:19:22
Speaker
This is all according to the sheriff's take on this. Clark continued to resist, and two deputies fired tasers and used pepper spray multiple times, all of which then failed to subdue Elroy Clark.
00:19:35
Speaker
So a third deputy, Alexander Magoon, arrives to assist. By now, deputies have actively been fighting with Mr. Clark for 10 minutes. They've used multiple verbal commands, attempted cuffing him, have deployed the taser four times, deployed OC spray twice, They've used the baton. They have tackled him, all of which were ineffective in gaining compliance.
00:19:56
Speaker
Okay, this is according to the motion that the sheriff's office writes, but I've got to tell you, if you did that much stuff and you didn't get this guy under control, you need a different career, maybe checking the cards at Costco to make sure people are members.
00:20:13
Speaker
So after three rounds from a 12-game shotgun were loaded with non-lethal beanbags and they failed to have any effect on Clark, Clark began to charge at Deputy Stinder and Deputy Magoon.
00:20:23
Speaker
Magoon draws his handgun and begins firing at Clark. Clark continues to advance toward the deputy when Deputy Stinder fires one round from his service weapon and Clark falls. He then dies at the scene.
00:20:36
Speaker
Now, what the family puts out according to this article is very different. In their civil suit, they contend that Elroy Clark was having a mental health crisis. He was not a threat to anyone that day. And it says, quote, during the incident, Elroy Clark, who was in obvious mental distress, never acted aggressively toward the deputies, imposed no threat, end quote.
00:20:55
Speaker
um It also mentions a little further down, despite that, the deputies sprayed, chased, attacked, and physically beat Elroy Clark. The suit alleges that deputies use lethal force because el Roy Clark is an African-American of Jamaican descent.
00:21:11
Speaker
And Elroy Clark would not have been engaged with lethal force but for the fact that he is a member of this protected class. The suit also contends that Clark was shot by Deputy Cinder after he had fallen to the ground. And when this shot occurred, according to this lawsuit, Clark clearly is not a danger to any person. He had been injured from other gunshots. He is on the ground, not making any movements toward the deputies or any member of the public.
00:21:37
Speaker
I got to say, if that's true and he's on the ground, and these are two different sides to to a story here that are going to play out in
Family's Lawsuit and Racial Bias Allegations
00:21:44
Speaker
court. That is awful if these cops shot him when he was on the ground.
00:21:48
Speaker
Well, there's body cameras. they're not There is body cam footage of this. um I don't have a clear answer on that, the way they're cutting it and releasing it. um The family also accuses the sheriff's office of having a history of of excessive force. They say the CCSO intentionally fails to investigate its officers' use of excessive force against civilians or hold deputies accountable for such misconduct. As a result, CCSO officials come to believe they can harm civilians with impunity.
00:22:16
Speaker
Sheriff Bill Prummel is also named in the suit, saying he failed to properly train the deputies and discipline them for misconduct, citing up perpetuating a culture of violence within the sheriff's office.
00:22:28
Speaker
The civil suit is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. The civil case is on hold until a judge rules on this sheriff's office motion to dismiss. The sheriff has basically said, they can't sue us, which is pretty standard for those of you who don't know. um And I'll probably include a link below so you guys can see the motion to dismiss and the original complaint.
00:22:52
Speaker
Right. And so now I just want to make sure i understand this. Clark, Elroy Clark calls 911 and says... that King Troy Johnson, I don't think he actually called him that, but somebody who's clearly having an issue needs to leave his property, right? Right, right.
00:23:11
Speaker
And so Elroy Clark is at home. is that right? Yeah, he calls himself the king. Elroy Clark calls himself the king? Yeah, he says this is the king, like the king of my castle.
00:23:27
Speaker
Oh, I guess I'm going to... In the 911 call. yeah No, it's confusing. It's not you. it's This is confusing, the way that Suncoast put this out there. But it's the only one that had this detail. But the family is reiterating it to this reporter, and they're reiterating on the lawsuit from the perspective that that shows he was having some kind of crisis. um Okay. I think he has a heavy accent, too.
00:23:51
Speaker
Okay. And so... Okay, but he calls them out there because somebody else is trespassing. And it's legit, right? Correct.
00:24:03
Speaker
Okay. And i don't know ins and outs of what occurred, except that an emergency situation, i don't know if this was actually an emergency or not, but if he was on his own property and there was somebody there that he didn't want to be there any longer, that it is the police officer's job to remove the person or to tell them they can't come back, right? Correct.
00:24:34
Speaker
And I realize that law enforcement takes every single opportunity that they have to run every single person's information to check for warrants.
00:24:48
Speaker
But I feel like that that was entirely inappropriate here. this is So the bottom line is is this for me. I get so angry about cases like this. If you're on someone else's property and they are unarmed and you shoot and kill them you have committed murder. No matter who you are, no matter what you thought you were doing, no matter who excuses you.
00:25:13
Speaker
Well, right. And so from what I can see, he had a misdemeanor failure to, no, he had a failure to appear on a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
00:25:27
Speaker
that's Correct. A nonviolent misdemeanor trespassing charge. Correct. Okay. And ah a lot of times, I don't know that it's the case here. a lot of times people have no idea that they have a failure to appear.
00:25:42
Speaker
um A lot of times people appear or their attorney appeared and like there's no reason a failure to appear should be there. That is correct. Yes. It does seem like he was trying to divert attention away from the fact that he was Elroy Clark.
00:26:01
Speaker
I can't tell if they actually took care of the trespassing problem first. I do not believe they did. he so He tells one of the deputies that his name is Ben Day.
00:26:13
Speaker
B-E-N-D-E-Y. Something is going on with this guy where I don't know if he's high or if he's really having a mental health episode, just like the family describes. But the bottom line is, like he's on his property. He's asked the police for help.
00:26:29
Speaker
These situations should never result in the person who calls 911 and being shot and killed if you have even remotely competent officers right and so i guess my thought on this is they wanted they found he had a warrant they wanted to arrest him he disagreed beyond that why did they shoot him Ultimately, the the shooting by both sides is acknowledged to have started with Alexander Mangoon, the
Police Escalation vs. De-escalation
00:27:03
Speaker
deputy who is called to the scene, pulling out a firearm during the middle of an attempt at a non-lethal de-escalation.
00:27:14
Speaker
He pulls out the firearm. He fires. Well, that's not non-lethal. Yeah. No, no, no. There is a non-lethal de-escalation happening. He drives up on it and he pulls out a firearm.
00:27:29
Speaker
That's where the problem happens. Both sides agree to that. Okay. But they're saying he was within his job duties protecting the other two deputies, Deputies Palmer and Deputies Cinder, who were not having like they were not in the right shape to take down Elroy Clark.
00:27:48
Speaker
Okay, ah so you don't take him down. Right. And that doesn't mean you shoot him. Probably the minute that you say to him, you know what, we're not going to arrest you. We are, however, going to issue you that ticket again today.
00:28:03
Speaker
So you have to go to court. And you need to show up in court for this misdemeanor or infraction trespassing charge that you have. that's what they needed to do to like, because minute they threatened to arrest him, they are escalating the situation.
00:28:19
Speaker
Well, right. And it's, I mean, if it had been for like first degree murder or something, that's one thing. ah and you know, maybe I'm wrong in that perception, but he literally just wanted somebody to leave his property and you killed him.
00:28:37
Speaker
It, that is wrong. Yes, it is. It is so incredibly wrong. And, I'm not sure. Like this, this is, so this happened, I believe like October of 2024. Is that right? Correct. As opposed to September of 2025 when they killed the other person who was unarmed on his property. Okay. And so this is becoming alarming.
00:29:01
Speaker
it is alarming. Yep. And, and so I see why Elroy Clark's family was like horrified when it happened again. I'm not sure what part of law enforcement and that specifically in Charlotte County, i' not sure where it's gone awry.
00:29:25
Speaker
However, i also know that this could be true anywhere. Correct. And i don't know what the disconnect is, but it's almost like these deputies say,
00:29:40
Speaker
think that when they encounter a citizen, like, they can shoot them. And that's my point for me. We have created this environment for police where we have sort of an odd dichotomy happening.
00:30:02
Speaker
One is smart people are rarely police anymore. Because they're smart. Right. and And I'm saying that because it's happened more and more to the point that, like, I sat starting during the pandemic, technically parts of 2020 and then parts of 2021, through recruitment efforts for two local jurisdictions as they were attempting to keep their police force together.
00:30:34
Speaker
They were losing their best officers, like from a financial perspective. And they thought throwing more money at those roles would keep those type officers. But the truth was that there were a number of frustrating things happening. Nothing to this level where you've got two fatal shootings by Charlotte County Sheriff's officers on unarmed people on their own property within, you know, essentially a year of each other.
00:31:05
Speaker
Nothing like that. But The truth was that like we're entering a new age. And I i made ah a comment that there's not a lot of smart police left because a lot of the people who were smart and were involved in law enforcement move on fairly quickly.
00:31:26
Speaker
So that's part of the dichotomy. And that's not to say, like, I have seen so many dishonest police in the last year Like if I had not seen it with my own eyes, and I'm not trying to convince anybody that this is just my opinion.
00:31:42
Speaker
If I had not seen it with my own eyes, it's things as simple as $200 disappearing from a wallet on camera. You never see that $200 again. You have no idea what happened to it except you do.
00:31:54
Speaker
I saw multiple traffic stops where body cameras were cut off at key moments, and then suddenly drugs were discovered. And having gone and interviewed those officers for other reasons... And realizing that like it was happening right in front of me, it shaped my opinion of this. And I've dealt with probably 12 jurisdictions in the last year where multiple, multiple officers were doing things like this.
00:32:21
Speaker
And I am shocked by it, but I'm not going to get on a soapbox and try and convince other people. I'm just telling you where my opinion is coming from. So when I see something like this, and that is the first part of the dichotomy,
00:32:36
Speaker
We then have this other part of the dichotomy where, similar to the efforts during the pandemic to keep police officers on the force and like throw more money at the situation, we have given police officers a wide latitude under qualified immunity to, quote-unquote, do their jobs when the time they needed that latitude has passed.
00:33:03
Speaker
The world has changed. particularly with a new generation of kids who barely leave their house, um the the way that police interact with the public has changed.
00:33:14
Speaker
The way that people are arrested has changed. i have seen less and less violent arrests of people who have never had contact with the police before. It still happens, but it's like,
00:33:29
Speaker
kind of minimal. There are still crimes happening. um A lot of crime is actually down right now. But police get more and more protections and more and more money is thrown at those rolls.
00:33:43
Speaker
And citizens just in the current state of the world have a very high hurdle to surmount in order to hold police accountable for horrible behavior.
00:33:56
Speaker
And I have to say that killing two unarmed people on their own property, women a year of each other, means that like as sheriff, one, you should probably resign. Two, if you don't resign and you're insistent upon like keeping that role, because he's been in this role for 13, 14 years at this point. He's worked for this department since 1992, according to his bio online.
00:34:21
Speaker
You have to consider If you need to make an example of one of your officers who is doing this, and I know he's going to say, oh, we turned it over to the state's attorney's office. But that's the weird thing that happens with qualified immunity as well.
00:34:37
Speaker
Cops already have the protection of very rarely being prosecuted for their actions by any type of local attorney because of a conflict or by a state's attorney who's disconnected from the situation.
Qualified Immunity and Accountability
00:34:49
Speaker
Would you agree with that?
00:34:50
Speaker
I do agree with that. ah However, i would have absolutely no trouble ah prosecuting any law enforcement officer who had committed murder. and Both these cops committed murder.
00:35:03
Speaker
They absolutely did. I can't even believe that they're trying to present it as anything else. In fact, I would say that it is not an officer's duty to ever shoot an unarmed person on their own property, regardless of how irritated they are at the person or how much what they're saying bothers them.
00:35:29
Speaker
Yeah, and I have trouble with this because my personal experiences with cops have gotten worse. Like, i don't I don't have run-ins with them anymore. i i Like, the run-ins I have are professional now, but that doesn't make them good.
00:35:45
Speaker
when i like I do not like having to confront somebody about something that's on camera because it's no longer our opinions. It's video. It's happening. Exactly, and everything's on camera now. Yeah, everything is now on camera, including – that's one of the things that makes this particular behavior so shocking is we have these two guys on their own property ultimately involved in what appear to be attempts at misdemeanor detentions, okay, right?
00:36:12
Speaker
I don't even know that that's what was happening and the in the case we started with. Well, so they've had property damage earlier in the day that's thought to be a misdemeanor. We have this possible battery that's happened, which would be a misdemeanor. It's not assaulting battery. it's just a battery.
00:36:32
Speaker
So my point saying that, like, misdemeanor detentions is like cops are allowed to get involved at the point an accusation is made from the perspective of attempting to investigate.
00:36:46
Speaker
And ultimately, if you have a confrontational person, probably you need a supervisor on the scene. Like, so you step away from it, let it deescalate a little bit. And I know people say, oh, that's not how it works. It is how it works in 2025. Right.
00:37:01
Speaker
Because people really aren't trying to harm other people the way it has been in the past. i mean I don't see anything happening in that video that indicates that that guy is trying to harm anyone.
00:37:17
Speaker
Oh, he just wants to wait from the cop. He wants the cop to get out of his business. And he has some kind of dispute going on with a neighbor that's probably better handled in civil court. And i I feel like... I don't know. it's I'm really surprised to hear that that man worked for the county that long as a sheriff's deputy.
00:37:40
Speaker
well So that was, yeah, that was the deputy. And then the sheriff himself has also been there forever. He's been with the sheriff's office since 1992. He's been sheriff since 2012. And I've seen somebody talking. I'm actually not sure who it was, but whomever it was gave me the impression that they were well aware of how awful this was and that they were sort of skating around it in that they were saying that like, they didn't give the, the typical dog and pony show. They were like, this is not how this should have been handled. Well, i think with the first shooting, you have a problem with the second shooting.
00:38:26
Speaker
You have a pattern of problems. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. every And I was going to say, you were saying like what needs to happen. Every single one of the Charlotte County Sheriff's deputies, they need to be trained on when they absolutely should not be using lethal force.
00:38:45
Speaker
Right. And so going to read this to poke a little fun in it. And then going to explain how this all ends up in dirty badges. And like, believe it or not, we're leading off with this as a part of a couple episodes.
00:39:00
Speaker
This is not the worst thing that's going on. um This is just like where we started, but I have some commentary here. I pulled this up because I wanted to see what the sheriff's office put out there as the biography for the sheriff himself.
00:39:16
Speaker
And you're right. The sheriff has like come out and kind of talk both sides of the fence here. He defends actions through the attorneys. He doesn't have a lot to do with that. That's the attorneys like defending the town.
00:39:30
Speaker
But he ultimately refers Timothy Poole, who retires. Sheriff allows him to retire after 23 years of service, um and rather than firing him. But he refers him over to the state's attorney's office for them to take a look at this. I don't know how that's going to go.
00:39:47
Speaker
they should charge him. He should be charged. and if like You and I may have to come back to this episode when we go to put it out and like actually address whether or not he's charged. Yeah.
00:39:58
Speaker
I want to read the sheriff's bio for a second. It says, Sheriff Bill Prummel is a 26-year veteran in law enforcement who began his career with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office in 1992.
00:40:10
Speaker
He worked his way through the ranks and throughout most areas of the agency. He was elected as sheriff on August 14, 2012, and assumed the office of sheriff January 8, 2013. He ran for re-election in 2016, winning both the primary and general elections.
00:40:28
Speaker
Sheriff Premal holds a Bachelor's of Arts degree from St. Leo University in Criminology with a minor in Psychology, a Master's degree in Business Administration from IMPAC University, and a Master's degree in Criminal Justice from American Public University.
00:40:45
Speaker
In addition, he is a graduate of the Florida Sheriff's Institute, the National Sheriff's Institute, the 239th session of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. the Law Enforcement Executive Development Seminar out of the University of Virginia, and Florida's Senior Leadership Program in Tallahassee, Florida.
00:41:04
Speaker
Sheriff Prummel was one of the founders of the Region 6 Intelligence Exchange for Southwest Florida. He's on the Board of Directors for CARE. He is the chair for Drug-Free Charlotte County, a member of the Florida Sheriff's Association serving on their legislative committee, and chairman of the Board of Directors for the Florida Sheriff's Youth Ranches. Sheriff Prummel was selected by the Florida Sheriff's Association as the state task force chair.
00:41:27
Speaker
In 2015, he was appointed by the governor to serve as a commissioner on the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission and sits as a member of the Officer Discipline Penalty Guidelines Task Force. Despite all of this, Sheriff Prummel says his greatest accomplishments are his family. He is married to Tara, a kindergarten teacher. They have two sons and a daughter, Billy, Caitlin, and Andrew, along with Billy's wife, Marla, and grandson, Billy IV.
00:41:52
Speaker
fourth Okay, just throwing this out here for a second.
00:41:58
Speaker
Probably shouldn't be doing all that other stuff. Probably should be just focusing on being the sheriff of Charlotte County and maybe training your deputies to the point that that because there's some contradictions in here. It says he's a 26-year veteran in law enforcement.
00:42:15
Speaker
Okay, 25 years plus eight years, meaning he's basically been you know employed here for 25 years it appears, plus eight years, is not 26. So obviously math is not the strong suit unless I'm missing something and he went to do something else.
00:42:33
Speaker
But it appears that he's been sheriff this whole time and he was a deputy before that.
00:42:38
Speaker
All these things that he is doing sound great. They are absolutely useless pieces of paper. I'm all for getting... Your degree, getting a master's degree.
00:42:50
Speaker
You definitely don't need all the extra stuff if you have two deputies 32, 33 years into your career shooting unarmed people on private property.
00:43:05
Speaker
No. In fact, it brings all those, whatever they are, entities, programs, whatever, it brings all of them down to associate him with them. Yeah.
00:43:20
Speaker
Yeah. And like, you know, I, i've I looked at this and I tried to like have some kind of positive spin on all of this, but the bottom line is within a year,
00:43:34
Speaker
Two people on private property.
Criticism of Sheriff Prummel's Leadership
00:43:36
Speaker
So this is not like a George Floyd situation where you've got somebody who's like constantly interacting with law enforcement and like he does something to get law enforcement's attention and he's trying to be detained and he's killed.
00:43:49
Speaker
You have two. And honestly, there's not a race element to this either because one of these people that they shoot is black and the other one is white. So they're obviously equal opportunity murderers at the Charlotte County Sheriff's office.
00:44:02
Speaker
So. When I look at this, the only thing I can think is you may put integrity, professionalism, and trust up as your little logo on your website, but you have failed your constituents and your public by at least two people by having your deputies like be able to murder them at their own house when they call your deputies for assistance because they think they can trust
00:44:33
Speaker
your deputies it it's a disgrace yeah this is it this is absolutely awful so this is going to come back up do you have a lot more on charlotte county right now because i want to tell you the rabbit hole i went down here no go for it whenever something like this happens you and i use a number of sources um It used to be I could pull up any good news source and just kind of go with a couple of key facts and and like build a stack of of resources for you and I to go through. And that's where the stories come from that are on True Crime Access. You and i probably...
00:45:14
Speaker
75% is like we're reading written words. A lot of that is court documents. um We're big on finding newspaper articles or news articles, depending on, because today it's more news articles. It used to be, if it's an older case, it's probably more newspaper articles.
00:45:30
Speaker
And then figuring out where the facts came from, we both read tons of court records. and we've got all these new tools in this thing on age where it used to be,
00:45:43
Speaker
You'd have like the local sources. um I frequently use PACER and Justia, like J-U-S-T-I-A. um i also use LexisNexis for work, so I have access to that. These are places that you can go and get like summaries of court cases to a degree, but but it tells you where to go look. You can go and grab trial transcripts. You can grab motions. You can grab original complaints. You can you can get arrest warrants. and You can learn so much that the news never bothers to cover in 2025.
00:46:21
Speaker
um You refer to it when you and I talk as like headline skimming. They like grab the most salacious bit or what they think is the most salacious bit. And they kind of turn it into the headline and they put out what what frequently amounts to like a puff piece. Right, it's to grab attention. Right. And in order to get to the real story, you go and you dig into it.
00:46:43
Speaker
So I start looking around whenever something like this pops up, and I just start looking for the names. And I'm going to go ahead and tell you that like the person I started being the most interested here in terms of all of this when when you and I were looking at this was Timothy Poole, Deputy Timothy Poole.
00:47:05
Speaker
the the next the rest of this episode and the next episode are not about the same Timothy Poole. I just will go down really deep rabbit holes sometimes simply based on a name.
00:47:20
Speaker
And i have this new source called Vlex that I'm able to like look through. It's powered by Clio. And I tested it here to see if I could find like why my, my brain was remembering the name Timothy pool.
00:47:37
Speaker
Cause I was like, I've heard that. So I found two cases. One was, a case of a different Timothy Poole. And I'm going to tell that story today. And that's not so much a dirty badge case as it is a straight up interesting case that has some elements that you and I have talked about over the years.
00:47:53
Speaker
um And then you'll see next week that like, it gets a little crazy, but I was right. I had remembered the name Timothy Poole being associated with a murder before.
00:48:07
Speaker
um So I had to narrow my search. I started as deputy Timothy Poole and then I went to Timothy Poole And i came up with an old case and I wanted to talk a little bit about that today ah on the heels of this like dirty
Historical Case: Another Timothy Poole
00:48:21
Speaker
badge thing.
00:48:21
Speaker
Cause this is a little different. um This is a Maryland case from 1979.
00:48:29
Speaker
ninety seventy nine Do you remember me talking to you about a pharmacy shooting from a long time ago? yeah Okay. So I had like this little like blurb about it and um What I'm pulling from today, i actually pulled from VLACS, but it is a court of appeals ruling in Maryland. It's an important one.
00:48:48
Speaker
um There are a lot of attorneys involved here, so I'm just going to use the top-level attorneys. So we have Deborah Handel and Stephen Capelis. They are the assistant attorneys general for Baltimore at the time this all is going down.
00:49:05
Speaker
And then George Burns Jr., he is the assistant appellate public defender in Baltimore. The actual document is called Timothy Poole versus the State of mary Maryland, and it's from the Court of Appeals in Maryland.
00:49:19
Speaker
And it is given to the public April 21st of 1981. They are arguing over some some bits, but I'm going to tell you guys the statement of facts because I think it's an interesting case.
00:49:34
Speaker
It says that David Creel... He's 18 years old. He's working at McLarty's Pharmacy on the evening of October 22nd of 1979. According to statements, about 8 o'clock that evening, two African-American men come into the store.
00:49:54
Speaker
One pulls a mask over his head as he walks down steps to the back room where Dr. David McLarty, so McLarty's Pharmacy, and this is going to be the pharmacist, Dr. David McLarty, is preparing prescriptions.
00:50:11
Speaker
The other person, and according to the statements that we have from witnesses and the statement of facts and this long court case, um that person is identified as Timothy Poole.
00:50:26
Speaker
Obviously not anything to do with the case in Florida we're talking about. But that Timothy Poole walks up to David Creel, who's behind the counter, and he points a shotgun at him.
00:50:39
Speaker
So this man that he's able to identify is not wearing a mask. he tells ah david creole to go unlock them He tells David to go and lock the front door.
00:50:51
Speaker
So David Creel walks to the front of the pharmacy, and he locks the door, and the gunman is behind him the whole time, and he's holding onto his belt. like the belt of his pants, but he's got the shotgun leveled at the back of David Creel's head.
00:51:07
Speaker
So after the man watches David close and lock the front door, David hears two gunshots in the back room.
00:51:18
Speaker
Dr. McLarty says, is there anyone else out there?
00:51:25
Speaker
The gunman orders David Creel to say no. So he whispers to him, tell him no. And then he forces David Creel to walk ahead of him into the back room where they find the the other gentleman who had come in and pulled his mask down, guy named Stephen Horat. He is lying on the floor of the pharmacy.
00:51:45
Speaker
He's breathing hard and he has a head wound. So Dr. McLarty, David McLarty, he is standing by the safe of the pharmacy.
00:51:58
Speaker
So... David Creel basically steps out and the person who has the shotgun at his back steps past David Creel and he shoots Dr. McLarty in the chest with a shotgun.
00:52:14
Speaker
So McLarty falls to the floor and he's having trouble breathing. But whoever this is, we believe it's Timothy Poole. He orders David to get the money.
00:52:26
Speaker
so The assailant then picks up a gun off of the floor that's lying beside Dr. McLarty, and he points it at McLarty's head. And David Creel says to him, you don't have to do that.
00:52:39
Speaker
The man has the gun like an inch away from Dr. McLarty's face, and he double taps the trigger. David Creel hands over what is thought to have been $150 man with shotgun,
00:52:55
Speaker
to the man with a shotgun And he leaves. So Stephen Hored, the masked man, he dies. And David Minglardi, he also is going to die from his wounds.
00:53:09
Speaker
One of the men that they use in the Statement of Facts to talk about this case is a guy named Mark Blob. So Mark Blob recalls that about the time the shooting occurred, he and some friends were sitting on a curb not far from McLarty's Pharmacy, and they saw three black men drive by in a late 60s silver Cadillac that had a black vinyl roof.
00:53:35
Speaker
So Mark Blob remembers this because the men in the car were, quote, looking at us. They were looking at us real hard. So that's his quote about like why he remembers their faces.
00:53:49
Speaker
On October 25th, 1979, Mark Blob participates in a photograph array. He selects two photographs of people that look similar to the men that hadn't been in this Cadillac.
00:54:04
Speaker
So he selects the photo of a man named David Brown. He identifies one of the men as sitting in the back seat, and he believes this is Stephen Horrid.
00:54:19
Speaker
And he also identifies who he believes is Timothy Poole. So in Stephen's pocket, so the guy that dies and has the ski mask on,
00:54:32
Speaker
They find little address books, which I don't think people are familiar with that anymore. But finding an address book in 1979 in the pocket of someone like involved in a murder, that's the equivalent of finding their phone today, wouldn't you say?
00:54:48
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the information is going to be relevant. Yeah. So in one of these little address books, there's 100 listings And one of those listings is Poole, P-O-O-L-E, and it has two telephone numbers.
00:55:08
Speaker
So because of that, police go to speak to Timothy Poole. When he's told about this, um the day basically in the days after, he shows no reaction to the police.
00:55:23
Speaker
He says that he's not seen Stephen Horad since the afternoon, the day of the shooting. He also says that at the time of the shooting, he was with his girlfriend and her roommate, and that they were at 3H, so apartment 3, so building 3, apartment H, at Neptune Court in Baltimore County.
00:55:47
Speaker
Police do a deep dive investigation into Timothy Poole, and they're able to see that he was signed out of his residence from the, quote, Dismas house on a six-hour pass, and that he was headed to 3H Neptune Court.
00:56:01
Speaker
So... The girlfriend, Alibi, and her roommate, their names are Jennifer Lanier, that's the girlfriend, and Tamara White. So they live at Neptune Court.
00:56:13
Speaker
When the police go and talk to them about where Timothy Poole was on the evening of the shooting, they say he was not with us. So Jennifer Lanier...
00:56:24
Speaker
says to the detectives that sometimes Timothy Poole would use her address as a quote-unquote sign-out, but would go other places.
00:56:36
Speaker
And their other questions, she says she never recalled seeing Timothy Poole driving a car. But...
00:56:48
Speaker
Tamara White said she remembered there was a time that she saw Timothy Poole operating a large dark gray car, but she didn't remember the make, the model, or the year. So the prosecution has presented their case, and the defense comes up, and they bring a woman named Yvonne Bethea, and she testifies for the defense.
00:57:10
Speaker
She states that on the evening of the shooting, Timothy Poole was actually at her residence at 1604 East Monument Street. Everyone kind of agrees this is about a 10-minute walk from the Dismas house.
00:57:24
Speaker
And Yvonne says that Timothy was helping her with schoolwork that she had been having some difficulty with. To his credit, at the time this all occurs, Timothy Poole is a student at Morgan State University.
00:57:40
Speaker
Now, obviously, by the time we see this, the The reason that there's an appeal is there's been a conviction.
00:57:54
Speaker
So Timothy Poole has been convicted of being involved in the murder of David McLarity. And what they've done here is they've convicted him of premeditated murder, also felony murder. So that's technically the felony murder that they put on him is is both ways. It's actually also encompassing the death of Stephen Harad at the time.
00:58:21
Speaker
They have convicted him of robbery with a dangerous weapon and the aggravating factor, special enhancement and additional charge of the use of a handgun in a crime of violence. So that's in the circuit court over in Calvert County, Maryland, that a jury has convicted him.
00:58:38
Speaker
This same jury sentences him to death. In addition to the death penalty, he, on the other charges, sentenced to life imprisonment, 20 years to run concurrent, and 15 years to run consecutive.
00:58:54
Speaker
So because Timothy Poole is convicted on this statement of facts that I just put out there, And sentenced to die.
Appeals Court Ruling and Witness Impeachment
00:59:02
Speaker
All of his convictions and sentences under Maryland code, and I think it's now under the U.S. code as well, they are all directly reviewable by the Court of Appeals in Maryland and the corresponding district because they involve the death penalty.
00:59:20
Speaker
That is not true in every single conviction. That is usually true in most jurisdictions in a capital case. Would you agree with all those statements I just made? Okay, sorry.
00:59:33
Speaker
well I mean, it's possible I'm wrong, but I agree with you. Okay. um So when we get to the point this is up for appeal, Timothy Poole raises eight issues.
00:59:46
Speaker
Now, we're going to talk about him, but we get to a point where the court agrees with him. So he contends that the trial court committed a reversible error in allowing the state within its state in its case proper to impeach its own witness, thereby prejudicing his defense and depriving him of a fair trial.
01:00:08
Speaker
He maintains that the trial court permitted the state to violate the so-called witness voucher rule. I'm going to explain a little bit of that. um So...
01:00:20
Speaker
According to this appellate document, it says there exists in this state, meaning Maryland, the general rule that a party who who produces a witness in court vouches for that witness's credibility and trustworthiness, and no direct attack upon that veracity should be made by the producing partner in the absence of surprise, hostility, or deceit.
01:00:43
Speaker
So essentially, if you put on a witness— You are saying that what the witness is going to say, as far as you know, is the truth. Well, it's not just the truth. It also backs up your position in the case.
01:01:03
Speaker
a Right. Yeah, that's a better way to to phrase it. So you're you shouldn't be putting on... extraneous witnesses anyways, but you're correct.
01:01:14
Speaker
Like you bringing the witness as a party to the facts of the case and you believe them to be true. Correct. And unless it's by surprise, ah or I can't remember what else you said, ah you know, it's going to follow a certain narrative that has been mostly decided in like pretrial issues, right? Yeah, it's surprise, hostility and deceit. So essentially, surprise would basically be the witness says something that you didn't think of asking them.
01:01:46
Speaker
Hostility means that the witness is called sort of against their own interest and when they get on the stand say something that like not only did you not expect it but it's like contrary because they're saying they don't want to be a part of this.
01:02:01
Speaker
to some degree. it It can be misread as anger or deceit, meaning they have lied to you. And now for whatever reason, they either decide to tell the truth on the stand or the defense is able to cross examine them in such a way that like you have to go along with it in order to rehabilitate the witness.
01:02:22
Speaker
Right. And this is just, I mean, it actually sounds a little confusing, but it's pretty much straightforward. Law school 101. With regard to the adversarial ah procedure of criminal justice, you don't ever want to be you don't ever want to have somebody on the stand that you don't know the answer to the questions you're asking them. Right. Right? And you don't want it to undermine any position you are trying to put forth.
01:02:54
Speaker
And in these appellate documents, they outline a number of precedent cases where the rules for how you can impeach a witness are laid out.
01:03:07
Speaker
And... You have to meet all these different requirements that federal courts and in this instance, the Maryland like appellate courts and Supreme Court have like they've decided this is how you interpret the different parts of this the statute in order to get to the point that in this adversarial system, you know how to handle things that happen when you bring up a witness. So in this case, they have a the following factual setting as how they're saying the state impeached the credibility of their own witness.
01:03:43
Speaker
And it says that the state established that on October 1979,
01:03:49
Speaker
Timothy Poole signed out of Dismas House, the halfway correctional facility where he resided, and he gave Jennifer Lanier's address as his destination. That's the 3H Neptune Court. So the state produces Detective March.
01:04:01
Speaker
Detective March testifies that Timothy Poole told him he was with Jennifer Lanier and Tamara White at their house on the night of the shooting. However, when White got on the stand, she testified that Timothy Poole had not been there.
01:04:17
Speaker
Jennifer Lanier, the state's final witness, also testified that Timothy Poole was not there the night that the shooting occurred. So Timothy Poole is contending that at trial, it was common practice for him to sign out of Lanier's house.
01:04:34
Speaker
sign out for Lanier's house when in fact his destination was elsewhere. And we have a state's witness here, Jennifer Lanier, admitting that. So when they're confronted by police the morning after the shooting, it may have been natural for him to say that he was at her house so that his story would be consistent with what's on paper, not just for the police, but also for like the people in charge of him at this halfway house, Dismas house, because he can go back to prison if he's found to be in violation of his release.
01:05:04
Speaker
So Poole's alibi was not that he had been but Jennifer Lanier the night of the shootings, but rather that he had been with Yvonne Bethea. And that's his entire defense rests on her. That's the only, aside from the cross-examination they do of the state's witnesses, the only defense witness that's presented is Yvonne Bethea.
01:05:25
Speaker
And according to her, Yvonne says, he was at my house helping me with homework. So we get ah this series in here, which is not not every um appellate document, but sometimes we do.
01:05:41
Speaker
We get a transcript of a series of questions that are asked. And it says it's with this backdrop that we analyze the impact of the prosecution's examination of Jennifer Lanier, the state's final witness.
01:05:54
Speaker
And I love when they do this because it's interesting to to see why they make the decisions they make. So the question asked is, what was your conversation with Timothy Poole the morning of October 1979?
01:06:08
Speaker
Jennifer Lanier answers, well, we just talked. So the state's attorney says, talked about what? And Jennifer Lanier answers, school and people. The state's attorney tries to talk a little more about it and says, did you have a conversation concerning his whereabouts on the day prior, October 1979? And jennifer says no So the state asks, have you ever indicated to anyone that you had that conversation concerning his whereabouts?
01:06:38
Speaker
And Jennifer says, yes. And so at this point, the state's attorney says, what was that? Any conversation that you indicated? At this point, the defense objects.
01:06:51
Speaker
The court overrules the objection and basically says, go ahead. um The state's attorney says, continue, please. And Jennifer Lanier says, I had told the officer that he had told me to say he was there the night before.
01:07:07
Speaker
And the state's attorney tries to get out the question, did you tell? The court basically stops everything and says, just a minute. And reaches over to the court reporter and says, would you read the answer back, please, Mrs. Bates? I don't believe the jury heard it.
01:07:26
Speaker
The reporter says, I told the officer that he had told me to say he was there the night before. And at this point, the attorney is asked to approach. So the court has them come up. There's a conference at the bench or a bench conference being held. And the defendant is present.
01:07:42
Speaker
The jury is taken out. And here are the proceedings that are recorded by the court reporter. Mr. Carden says, Your Honor, it would appear to me that the state at this point trying to is trying to impeach his own witness. If that's what it's doing, I think it's an incumbent upon the state to proffer it to the court ah that it is surprised, caught by surprise by the witness's testimony. Otherwise, I don't think it's proper for the state to impeach its own witness. So Mr. Carden is Timothy Poole's attorney.
01:08:09
Speaker
And then Mr. Anders responds, he's the state's attorney. He says, well, the state's in the position where this witness has given several stories concerning what has occurred, and I'm really calling her to explain which is true and why.
01:08:21
Speaker
i don't know that I'm attempting to impeach her here. I'm not claiming surprise because whereas Mr. Carden has heard the stories that she's told, she's a necessary witness, and I'm calling her to explain what occurred and what she said before and why.
01:08:36
Speaker
The court says, well, it seems to me in this case that although you may have had more than one story and Mr. Cardin objected, you didn't have any choice but to ask the question. And then having asked it, you now have the matter which is inconsistent, apparently, with the first statement given. I really don't think this amounts to anything other than to demonstrate to the court that she's trying to help the defendant if she could.
01:08:59
Speaker
State's attorney says, beg your pardon. And the court says, i I said I think it's pretty obvious to the court that the witness is in a tough spot. And it's certainly obvious to the jury that she's in a tough spot.
01:09:10
Speaker
She is apparently trying to help the defendant if she can. It's only natural since they're boyfriend, girlfriend. To that extent, I think you have demonstrated to the court that you did have knowledge of another statement, and she has said that she made other statements. I sustained the objection that Mr. Carden made when I thought he was right, and I overruled it when I thought he was wrong.
01:09:31
Speaker
I don't think you're impeaching your witness by bringing out more than one story, which everybody already knows. So the bench conference is concluded. Everybody goes back and and the proceedings continue for a few more questions.
01:09:45
Speaker
And the state's attorney says, Jennifer, to clear this up, you indicated that you told the police originally that Timothy had come over to your house and asked you to tell the police he was at your house the night before. Is that right?
01:09:57
Speaker
And she says, yes, sir. State's attorney says he was not at your house before. And she says, no. And your testimony today is that you had a general conversation concerning what on October 23rd when he came over to your house. And she says, school mostly because I wasn't going to school that day.
01:10:16
Speaker
So the court ends up agreeing with Timothy Poole. That's the appellate court here. Do you think what she's doing there counts as impeaching her own statement? Or is she just trying to get out that, like, she said a bunch of different things about that evening?
01:10:33
Speaker
If I'm going to be completely honest, I feel like they're just going around in circles. They are. They really are. And I feel like this is, like, a textbook example of, like, a crazy technicality. ye
01:10:50
Speaker
And it's a death penalty case, though, so crazy technicalities count. Well, I think it should count. um it's It's sort of, it's interesting. This is actually really interesting. And I do see exactly why they put the dialogue in ah the explanation of their opinion, right? Right. And so they go with, the appellate court has a different opinion than the trial court did here. They say, we agree with Poole that when the state elicited Jennifer's prior statement after her sworn testimony, she had never conversed with
01:11:22
Speaker
ah Timothy Poole about his whereabouts on the day of the shootings, that this would constitute impeachment. And it is very technical, and reading it back is probably very different than how it went down in court.
01:11:33
Speaker
um It's also apparent from this dialogue that the state was not surprised by Jennifer Lanier's sworn testimony. In fact, surprise was expressly disclaimed. Equally clear is the basis for our conclusion that Jennifer Lanier's in-court testimony was not prejudicial to the state's case.
01:11:50
Speaker
Jennifer Lanier's no, meaning that she had not converts with Poole about its whereabouts, was simply not beneficial. The state had established all the elements of its case. Lanier's no did nothing to advance or hinder it. In short, two of the prerequisites for invoking the exception to the voucher rule were missing.
01:12:08
Speaker
So the things that they have to do to vouch here, like they're not allowed to impeach her. So nevertheless, the state contends that Timothy Poole's statement to Jennifer Lanier constituted as an admission by conduct.
01:12:21
Speaker
And as such, it's not excludable as hearsay, but is independently admissible as substantive evidence. What the state overlooks that it's not Poole's statement in which we're concerned here. It is Lanier's prior out-of-court statement which is at issue.
01:12:36
Speaker
Thus, even if Jennifer Lanier had been properly examined undirect, her prior unsworn statement would not have been admissible to prove the existence of Poole's statement which was contained herein.
01:12:47
Speaker
So they go on for a minute here. They rule on this using a couple of other ah
01:12:56
Speaker
precedents. And they ultimately decide that ruling in Poole's favor here, here's how they say it.
01:13:11
Speaker
I'm going to give you the two paragraphs. and The state's rejoinder is that in any event, Jennifer Lanier's statement
01:13:20
Speaker
Jennifer Lanier's statement that Timothy Poole had told her to say he had been in her house was harmless, as merely cumulative to all the other evidence would tend to to show that Timothy Poole was not with Jennifer Lanier on the night of the shootings. We disagree.
01:13:32
Speaker
This statement is more than just cumulative to ah Tamara White and Jennifer Lanier's testimony. it cuts far deeper. This evidence permitted the jury to infer not only that Timothy Poole was not at Jennifer's Lanier's house, but also that he had done something that night, the fact of which he wanted to hide and for which he needed to invent an alibi. It permitted the jury to infer that Timothy Poole had no innocent explanation for his whereabouts, that he had gotten himself involved with some kind of serious trouble.
01:14:01
Speaker
It is also apparent to us that Jennifer Lanier's prior statement cast a shadow over the credibility of Yvonne de Thea. If the jury believed Timothy Poole attempted to persuade Jennifer Lanier to lie, might they not also conclude that Yvonne Bethea's testimony was perjured?
01:14:18
Speaker
Without Jennifer Lanier's prior statement that Timothy Poole had at least the opportunity to present to the jury a defense untainted by the suggestion that he had a propensity to tamper with witnesses— We find that the admission of Jennifer Lanier's statement was fraught with prejudice.
01:14:34
Speaker
Because of this error, the judgments must be reversed and a new trial must be granted. Okay. Just because she says basically that little no at the end of her testimony, we end up having this entire capital murder case being that has resulted in a very serious sentence, which is the death penalty, in addition to life in prison, 20 years concurrent and 15 years consecutive, thrown out.
01:15:11
Speaker
Right. And I think ah it might be helpful to sort of understand ah
01:15:19
Speaker
contextually ah what they were saying in those paragraphs was Right.
01:15:30
Speaker
and it's it's a pretty in-depth technical analysis however it's not wrong right Yeah, so they ultimately, they split the baby on this. um According to an article in the Washington Post, they end up reversing the death sentence and then they order a new hearing because they do uphold the murder conviction based on all this.
01:15:57
Speaker
um If you go onto Case Mind, you can read a little bit more about this. But weirdly enough, and we'll talk about this ah a little bit more, but weirdly enough, this is not like all of my digging into the name Timothy Poole revealed. And it wasn't what I was thinking of. It was just something I found so interesting that we could like essentially find ourselves sitting here on a capital case.
01:16:26
Speaker
and the word no is ultimately like what causes the death penalty to to be kicked. That's pretty wild, right? It is wild. And ah I find it also interesting.
01:16:42
Speaker
I'm pretty sure if the objection hadn't initially been made by defense counsel, they would not have been able to touch it. I don't think they could have brought it up on appeal. Correct. And so that is really fascinating. That is a and defense ah a defense attorney that's really thinking on their feet, right? Yes.
01:17:02
Speaker
Because how easily could that have passed everybody by? i mean, it would have passed a lot of attorneys by. That's the nicest way I can think of to say it.
01:17:14
Speaker
Because it it's almost like an afterthought. It is, yeah. It's very interesting. It's very interesting. Yeah, so what I think we'll do is we'll cut here, and then we'll come back and talk a little bit more about this Timothy pool, and that will segue into why this is all wrapped up in our Dirty Badges case.
01:17:47
Speaker
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01:18:12
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I break things like guitars.
01:18:21
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No scars. We're in trouble. We took it too far.
01:18:31
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01:18:42
Speaker
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01:18:53
Speaker
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01:19:11
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.