A federal magistrate judge said Tuesday he won't impose a gag order in a civil case against former Chattanooga police detective Karl Fields.
The plaintiff, a woman whose rape Fields was investigating, filed a civil rights lawsuit claiming the city was negligent and inflicted emotional distress by allowing Fields to commit assault and battery against her.
The city, which is named as a defendant along with Fields and police Chief Fred Fletcher, had sought an order that would keep attorneys from commenting on the case in the press.
The city's request alleges that in the months since the woman accused Fields of making unwanted sexual advances, attorneys on both sides have poisoned a potential jury pool through public statements made to the press. The city says the comments violated both a local rule and Tennessee rules of professional conduct. The woman's name is being withheld in accordance with Times Free Press policy on alleged victims of sex crimes.
But in an unusual instance of agreement, the attorneys whose back-and-forth prompted the request said they didn't think either side had acted inappropriately.
In early September, the victim of an alleged rape accused Fields of pursuing her while he was investigating her case. She said he sent her inappropriate text messages, groped her after driving her home drunk and called her dozens of times in one night. In November, she filed the federal lawsuit.
Fields was fired from the Chattanooga Police Department, where he worked as a major-crimes detective, in early April.
In response to the city's request, Fields' attorney, Jerry Tidwell, said that any statements he made to the press were a legitimate response allowed in a provision of the rules that permits him to defend his client in the press.
The city took particular issue with a news release Tidwell disseminated after Fields' firing.
In that release, he explained a process by which the woman could have made up the suggestive text messages from Fields she gave to investigators. He said he only included information about that practice, called "spoofing," in response to the allegation that Fields lied to internal affairs investigators when he said he didn't remember sending certain messages.
In a line-by-line breakdown of every article about his client published in the Times Free Press over the last seven months, Tidwell both defended Fields and gave examples of what he said were disparaging portrayals of the former detective.
Fields has been "beaten like a rented mule by the press for six months," Tidwell said at the Wednesday hearing.
Stuart James, an attorney for the woman, agreed with the attorney who will be his opponent in any future trial.
James argued that he was not providing any information to reporters that wasn't public and was responding to "appropriate and legitimate" questions from reporters.
James said he disagreed with some of Tidwell's statements, but didn't think they were outside the rules of professional conduct.
"I did have a dispute with Mr. Tidwell about the press release, and we worked it out," James said.
The city's attorney, Keith Reisman, argued that violations had occurred and that an order was necessary to stop future comments. In addition to the discussion of spoofing, Reisman said discussion of the "veracity" of statements from both individuals was outside any realm of appropriate comment.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William B. Carter disagreed. Carter said no order was necessary, and found that no rules had been violated up to that point. He warned, however, that attorneys should be careful not to poison a potential jury pool going forward.
"My hope would be that we could go forward from here and not have any more problems," Carter said.
Contact staff writer Claire Wiseman at cwiseman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347.