In March, a federal inmate named Jon Harper Farmer approached Assistant District Attorney General Leslie Longshore and offered to snitch. Farmer, in jail on sex trafficking and drug distribution charges, didn't have anything useful at the time. But he had another suggestion: Put me in a cell with Rhasean Lowry, Farmer said, and I'll get you information about the killing of 3-year-old Tatiana Emerson.
Three-year-old Tatiana Emerson died Aug. 27, 2014, from blunt force trauma. Her mother's boyfriend, Rhasean Lowry, 34, has been charged with criminal homicide and is accused of beating her to death. The toddler died Aug. 27, 2014, a day after Lowry brought her to the hospital. An autopsy would show she had been repeatedly beaten and raped before her death.
According to court documents, Longshore agreed to the move, and on April 1 Farmer was put into Lowry's cell at the Hamilton County Jail.
It's not clear what Lowry told him during the time they shared cell 4E2. Their communications were provided to Longshore in emails from Farmer's attorney dated April 6 and April 30, court documents state.
But on May 15, Longshore apparently backpedaled.
She wrote a memo to Lowry's public defender, Steve Brown, saying she didn't intend to use any of the information Farmer gleaned from Lowry.
"I have concerns about the reliability of the information, inmate Farmer's motivation for obtaining this information and the manner in which that information was obtained," Longshore wrote in a memo now available in Lowry's case file.
Then, on May 21, Brown withdrew as Lowry's attorney. He had been Lowry's appointed attorney for more than six months, since before Lowry's indictment on charges of aggravated child abuse, felony murder, rape of a child and false reports in Tatiana's death and child abuse in a case involving her brother.
In a lengthy motion that included Longshore's memo, Brown wrote that because the Public Defender's Office had previously represented Farmer on a number of cases, he could not continue to represent Lowry. To do so would constitute a conflict of interest, Brown wrote.
Rhaesean LowryLongshore is one of three finalists for the seat left open by Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Rebecca Stern's recent retirement. She is scheduled for an interview today with Gov. Bill Haslam, who will make the final decision on the appointment.
According to several local attorneys who declined to give their names for professional reasons, Longshore's actions broke a "cardinal" rule of legal ethics.
Since the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the assistance of counsel, the thinking goes that extracting information from a defendant for purposes of prosecution is unconstitutional if it's done without that counsel being present. Brown was appointed March 27, so Lowry was represented at the time of Farmer's attempts to gain information for the prosecution.
That position is supported by case law, the attorneys argued.
Longshore declined to comment for this article. Melydia Clewell, spokeswoman for the Hamilton County District Attorney General's Office, said she could not comment on pending cases.
However, Clewell said that Longshore, Brown and District Attorney General Neal Pinkston met with Judge Don Poole last week to discuss Brown's withdrawal. She said Poole indicated he appreciated Longshore's forthrightness in bringing the situation to Brown's attention and her "upholding to a higher ethical standard than the rules require," Clewell said.
Clewell also provided examples of two Tennessee opinions she said would support the use in court of whatever Lowry told Farmer.
Lowry is scheduled to appear before Poole on June 3.
Contact staff writer Claire Wiseman at cwise man@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow her on Twitter @clairelwiseman.